In the seventeenth year of Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty, Li Zicheng, the leader of the rebel army, ascended the throne as emperor in Xi'an and successfully captured Zhu Qiugui, the king of Jin. Next, he sent his troops to attack Beijing in two ways, hoping to quickly conquer the Beijing division overnight.
This news caused a great shock at the time, especially in Beijing, and people felt very nervous and uneasy. Emperor Chongzhen was also in an isolated and helpless situation at this time, unable to sleep at night, restless.
In this tense atmosphere, Yang Helian, the governor of Jiliao, and Wang Yongji, the governor of Shuntian, jointly wrote to Emperor Chongzhen, proposing to evacuate the four cities outside the Guanhai as soon as possible, guard the Shanhaiguan alone, and transfer Wu Sangui back to guard the Jingshi.
However, in the face of this proposal to abandon the land to save his life, Emperor Chongzhen couldn't make up his mind for a while, so he summoned several confidants and ministers to discuss countermeasures. However, fearing that he would be liquidated afterwards, the ministers suggested that Wu Sangui's father be summoned back to Beijing first, and then renegotiated.
In the chaotic war, the combat advantage of the front-line troops gradually disappeared, and Zhou Yuji, a famous general who held the Wuguan Pass in northern Jin, fell into an isolated situation. Eventually, the city gate was breached by the peasant army, and Zhou Yuji was martyred after seven days of street fighting in the city, and the rebel army has been unimpeded since then, reaching the capital.
Time passed, a hundred years passed by in a snap of a finger, and while people denounced the decadent rule of the late Ming Dynasty, they also deeply admired General Zhou Yuji's loyalty and courage. However, there have been different opinions about the reason for his martyrdom.
Some believe that he fought to the death with the rebels after the city was broken, and was not killed by random arrows until the last moment; It is also said that he went down the city alone with a rope when there was no hope of defending the city, and was eventually beheaded by the rebels with a knife.
It was not until 1997 that his mausoleum was discovered near the railway station in the eastern suburbs of Ningwu County, Shanxi Province, and the cause of his death was completely revealed. And that period of loyal history, which was carried by yellow sand and strong winds, was able to reappear in front of the world ......He was a heroic warrior of the late Ming Dynasty, and he practiced courage when he had nothing to do, preparing to use force in the future.
And in the officialdom of the late Ming Dynasty, he was one of the few outliers. In the late Ming Dynasty, the government was mediocre, the officialdom was corrupt, and the civil and military officials were all deceived and concealed. Even the generals and soldiers who were responsible for guarding the imperial city were all "related households" who were born in official eunuchs and did not learn or have no skills.
Among this group of inactive people, Zhou Yuji was promoted from an ordinary soldier to a guerrilla commander in Beijing by virtue of his outstanding military exploits. Born in troubled times, he had the ambition to serve the country, but he was not reused.
Although the people around him often laughed at him, he still adhered to his moral bottom line, trained diligently, and never slackened. He believes that it is much better to serve the motherland by diligent training in military affairs than to do nothing all day long.
As long as you stick to it, there will always be a chance to prove your strength. After Emperor Chongzhen succeeded to the throne, he reorganized the Imperial Forest Army established during the Zhu Yuanzhang period and had become a flower fist embroidered legs, and appointed Sun Yingyuan, Huang Degong and other generals to personally train the troops, and the soldiers were renamed the "Black-headed Army".
Zhou Yuji, the top general in the Blackhead Army. Different from the traditional training methods, the soldiers who enter the Yongwei Battalion have to go through strict screening and assessment, and train hard under the command of the generals every day without any slackness.
Under such strict training, the strength of the blackhead army of the Yongwei battalion far exceeded that of other barracks in the imperial court. Although the number of the Blackhead Army was not large, and there were no more than 10,000 at its peak, they won many battles and became the most feared existence in the hearts of the rebels from all walks of life.
In the ninth year of Chongzhen, the Manchu Emperor Taiji led the Qing soldiers to invade, entered the pass from the Dushikou, and broke through the important town like a withering and decaying state, and the Changping City Tower was also destroyed after the defeat of the Ming army, which had a bad impact.
In the face of the danger in the capital, Zhou Yuji disregarded his own safety and repeatedly asked the emperor to go on expeditions to fight against foreign forces. Finally, his persistence impressed Emperor Chongzhen, and Zhou Yuji was able to lead the army into battle together with Zhang Fengyi, the secretary of the military department.
In the fierce battle with the Qing soldiers, Zhou Yuji showed incomparable bravery and strength, and successfully thwarted the arrogance of the enemy army. When the Ming Dynasty army arrived at Changping City, it happened to meet the Qing soldiers who were preparing to retreat, and the Qing soldiers could not resist for a while and retreated in defeat.
Under the command of Zhou Yuji and Zhang Fengyi, the Ming Dynasty army became more and more courageous, inflicting heavy losses on Huang Taiji's Qing army and successfully completing the task of defending the Beijing Division. This battle recognized Zhou Yuji's personal talent and foresight by the imperial court, and he was promoted two levels in a row to become the deputy general of the forward battalion, responsible for encircling and suppressing the rogues.
Since then, Zhou Yuji has a stage to show his talent, he is not afraid of hardships and dangers, leading the troops to life and death, and has established many military exploits.
In the twelfth year of Chongzhen, Xu Dingguo, the chief soldier of Shanxi Town, was executed for his crime, and Zhou Yuji was ordered to take over the post of chief soldier. He was rushing to Shanxi to take up his post, but was reported by the soldiers that tens of thousands of Qing soldiers were rampant in the Yangliuqing area of Tianjin, smashing and looting.
Zhou Yuji hated the brutal behavior of the Qing army, and resolutely decided to return to Tianjin and fight against the Qing army. However, the soldiers he led were only a few thousand, while the Qing army had a nearly tenfold advantage.
But Zhou Yuji did not back down because of this, and his patriotic fervor drove him to step into the main area of the Qing army, ready to fight them to the death. The Qing army almost never encountered resistance after entering the customs, and they were unable to cope with Zhou Yuji's surprise attack for a while, and thousands of Qing soldiers were ** by Zhou Yuji, and their morale was greatly reduced.
After the Qing army understood who was coming, they quickly adjusted their state and started a fierce battle with Zhou Yuji.
When the Qing troops attacked with all their might, they did not expect that although the thousands of Ming soldiers could be seen at a glance, they showed no signs of defeat or retreat. On the contrary, in the face of an enemy army several times their size, Zhou Yuji's troops became more and more courageous, resisting the enemy's fierce attack with a one-man attitude.
On the third day of the battle, although the Qing army had nearly 70,000 troops, they were inevitably a little unconfident in their hearts. Coupled with the cable report, the reinforcements of the Ming army were on the way, and after weighing it repeatedly, the Qing army, which was extremely heavy, finally decided not to continue the battle with Zhou Yuji's troops and retreated first.
In this battle of winning more with less, Zhou Yuji won cleanly. After the news came out, all the generals of the Ming Dynasty expressed their admiration for Zhou Yuji's courage and wisdom, and his outstanding military exploits also reached the ears of Li Zicheng, the leader of the peasant army uprising.
The duel between Zhou Yuji and Li Zicheng seemed to have been arranged in the dark, but neither side expected this day to be so sudden. In Ningwu Pass, Zhou Yuji resisted bravely until he was martyred, and the cause of death became a mystery.
In the sixteenth year of Chongzhen, after Li Zicheng captured Chengtian, he proclaimed himself "King Xinshun" and led the main force to advance northward, preparing to conquer the city of Beijing. As a farmer, he knew the importance of grain and grass to the army, so in the process of going north, he mobilized the people to clear the field on the one hand to cut off the grain of the Ming army; On the other hand, an army was sent to Ruzhou to directly cut off the grain route of the Ming army.
As expected, due to the lack of sufficient grain and grass**, the Ming army was seriously affected and was defeated all the way. For Sun Chuanting, a veteran of the Ming Dynasty who fought against him at that time, Li Zicheng was undoubtedly a big trouble.
The Ming army and the rebel army fought at Tongguan, and the Ming army appeared weak. After getting the news, Zhou Yuji, who was in Shanxi, immediately reacted and planned a complete defense route.
Judging from the direction of Li Zicheng's attack, Zhou Yuji believed that if he wanted to enter the capital quickly, in addition to Shaanxi, which was being captured, Shanxi was the last line of defense. Considering that there was a veteran Sun Chuanting in front of him, Zhou Yuji transferred the main force of the deployment to Xinzhou and Daizhou, which were closest to the capital.
However, before he could complete the defensive deployment, the news came that Sun Chuanting had died in battle and that Tongguan had been lost. The rebel army, which did not encounter resistance, was unimpeded in Shanxi, and captured Fenzhou, Yangcheng, Puzhou and other places all the way, and approached Taiyuan City.
After entering Taiyuan, because Zhou Yuji had gone to Daizhou to set up control, coupled with the threat of traitor generals, only 5,000 soldiers of Niu Yong and Wang Yongkui were left in Taiyuan to defend the city. Under the strong pressure of the enemy, the strength of the 5,000 Ming army was insignificant, and Niu Yong and Wang Yongkui were also killed in battle.
Under grief and indignation, Cai Maode, the governor of Shanxi, chose to commit suicide and martyrdom, and Taiyuan was lost so far.
Zhou Yuji was in trouble after learning the news in Daizhou. His duty was to resist the enemy with all his might, but in the absence of soldiers, horses, and food and grass, the probability of victory was not high, despite his bravery and skill.
After weighing it, he decided to retreat to Ningwu Pass and sent people to ask for assistance from Jingshi. As one of the three outer passes, there are many beacon towers in Ningwu Pass, and the barriers are strict. If he waits for reinforcements here, it is entirely possible that Zhou Yuji will once again stage the feat of winning more with less.
Zhou Yuji asked for support from the imperial court in a difficult situation, but was misjudged by the incompetent Emperor Chongzhen, did not adopt Wang Yongji and Yang He's suggestions to retreat, and did not take the disadvantages of grain and grass to heart, which ultimately led to Zhou Yuji losing the best opportunity for support.
In the first battle of Daizhou, although Zhou Yuji led his subordinates to defeat the rebel army, he was outnumbered after all, and although he repelled the rebel army many times, he still had some **, and the food and grass were in a hurry.
After retreating to Ningwu Pass, Zhou Yuji waited for the support of the imperial court and began to train his own army.
Although they showed great courage and repelled several surprise attacks of the rebels, under the fierce offensive of the rebels, due to the lack of follow-up troops, their courage and good fighting could not resist, and the fierce battle points gradually moved from outside Ningwu Pass to under the Ningwu Pass Tower.
In the case of the shortage of military rations, Zhou Yuji was in a difficult situation. Faced with Zhou Yuji's predicament, Li Zicheng had no intention of continuing the battle, but sent Xiong Tong, the late Ming guard, who had defected, to persuade him to surrender.
However, Zhou Yuji insisted on his loyalty to the country and was unwavering, and even killed Xiong Tong, who came to persuade him to surrender, and sent his head to Jingshi to show his determination. In the face of the unfavorable situation, Zhou Yuji not only invented the battle plan of "fighting outside the city gate during the day, luring the enemy into the city gate at night, and dividing and annihilating them", but also severely damaged the elite troops of the rebel army, which made Li Zicheng very angry.
However, under Li Zicheng's high-density artillery offensive, although Zhou Yuji's army was able to withstand the forward assault of the rebel army, it was gradually defeated in the end because of the lack of supplies.
After several days and nights of fierce fighting, Ningwu Pass was breached, and the rebel army poured in. Zhou Yuji chose to persevere to the end, martyred the country, and sacrificed his life for the country. Under Zhou Yuji's heroic resistance, the rebel army lost the momentum of resistance and attacked the capital smoothly.
Before Wu Sangui's troops could reach the city of Beijing, Emperor Chongzhen had already hanged himself on a coal mountain, ending the last breath of the Ming Dynasty. Li Zicheng "ascended the Emperor's Pole Palace" at Chengtianmen, symbolizing the final victory of the rebel army in the battle with the Ming Dynasty.
A hundred years later, the remains of one of Li Zicheng's generals were exhumed, revealing the mystery of the fall of the Ming Dynasty. Rumor has it that Li Zicheng doubted whether his decision was correct after the bloody battle of Ningwuguan, because if they were all defenders like Zhou Yuji after that, the rebel army's chances of victory would be very small.
However, before he could solve this problem, the surrender of Jiang Ping, the chief soldier of Datong Town, and Wang Chengyin, the chief soldier of Xuanfu Town, arrived, opening the door for the rebel army to enter Beijing, so that the rebel army almost did not shed blood after entering Beijing, ending the rule of the Ming Dynasty.
Although Zhou Yuji was the enemy, the rebel army was in awe of his character. They sighed that if there were generals like Zhou Yuji at that time, they might not have fallen to such a point.
When people lament the shameful history of the fall of the Ming Dynasty, they will always mention this general Zhou Yuji, who sacrificed his life and bravely resisted the enemy. The cause of his death has become the truth that people want to know the most.
One theory is that after Ningwu Guancheng was breached, Zhou Yuji still led his subordinates to engage in fierce street battles with the rebels in the city, and was finally shot and killed. Even his family resisted heroically and was set on fire by Li Zicheng.
In history, there was a heroic general who defended the city, he was Zhou Yuji, a general of the Ming Dynasty who bravely resisted and fought street battles with the rebel army after the peasant rebel army entered the city.
Even if the war horse was hit by an arrow, he rushed to kill on foot, ** dozens of people, and was captured after being hit by several arrows. Although he couldn't move, he would rather die than give in, scolding the brutality and ignorance of the rebels, fulfilling his duty to defend the land and the noble integrity of treating death as home.
However, in the official history, Zhou Yuji appears as an image of "dying in battle". However, in the folk story, he "died in the city", and for this reason, he has been widely praised for hundreds of years of Manchu rule.
At the same time, this statement is also mentioned in local documents such as the Kangxi edition of "Shanxi Tongzhi". It was not until 1997 that Zhou Yuji's statement of "dying in the city" was proven.
When reconstructing the tomb of Zhou Yuji, experts found strange places on his bones, proving the credibility of this statement. Although Zhou Yuji's heroic image is different in history, his loyal and brave spirit is eternal.
The ancients said, "Hearing is false, seeing is believing." In the process of studying history, we often rely on historical records, but sometimes we will deviate from historical facts for various reasons.
Today, let's take a look at a story about Zhou Yuji, a famous general in the last years of the Ming Dynasty, who was rumored to be a hero by later generations because he "died in battle". However, a recent archaeological discovery revealed that the true cause of his death was not the case.
In the occipital part of Zhou Yuji's head unearthed, there is a knife cut mark of nearly ten centimeters, and there are only four teeth left. This discovery confirmed that Zhou Yuji was not "killed in battle", but was "killed in the city" by the enemy.
This is different from the description of the cause of his death in the History of the Ming Dynasty, which has sparked controversy in the academic community. So, why is the description in the History of the Ming different from the real situation?
Perhaps, this has something to do with the propaganda tactics of the Qing authorities. They believed that depicting the slaughter of the peasant rebel army after the destruction of the city could show its cruel, insensitive, and backward side, so as to achieve the goal of vilifying and discrediting them.
The highlight of Zhou Yuji's "fighting and dying" can show his noble sentiments of loyalty and patriotism, responsibility to defend the land, and regard death as home, which has a strong moral influence and is conducive to maintaining the rule of the Qing Dynasty.
Therefore, when the Qing Dynasty authorities revised the history of the Ming Dynasty, they said that the cause of Zhou Yuji's death was "death in battle". However, history cannot be tampered with. When the archaeologists saw the occipital part of Zhou Yuji's bones, the knife mark of nearly ten centimeters, they all paid the highest respect to this righteous and awe-inspiring loyal general who forgot to die.
Whether or not he "fought to the death", his heroic deeds deserve to be remembered forever. To sum up, although we cannot change the past, we can understand the truth of history and understand the heroes who shine in the long river of history through archaeological discoveries and historical research.
Although Zhou Yuji did not "die in battle", he was still a heroic general, a hero who gave his life for the country and the nation. His spirit will always inspire us to move forward.