Li Zicheng

Li Zicheng the Chinese rebel leader of the late Ming dynasty (1606-1645) who rose from humble origins to lead a vast peasant rebellion that overthrew the Ming and briefly established his own dynasty, only to be driven out of the capital and destroyed by Manchu and Chinese forces. His uprising was one of the most destructive civil conflicts in Chinese history and opened the way for the Qing conquest.

Origins and Early Life

Li Zicheng was born in 1606 in Mizhi in the province of Shaanxi, in the impoverished and turbulent north-west of China. The region suffered from drought, famine, heavy taxation and official corruption, and it was from these hard conditions that the great rebellions of the late Ming drew their recruits. Little certain is known of his early life, but tradition holds that he was of peasant stock and that he served for a time as a postal courier before losing his position.

According to the accounts that survive, he became involved in violence and outlawry during the disasters of the 1620s, when famine and the collapse of local order drove many men to banditry. He joined one of the numerous rebel bands that formed in Shaanxi and the neighbouring provinces, and he soon showed the qualities of courage, cunning and leadership that would carry him to the head of the movement.

The collapse of the Ming state in the north provided the opportunity. Corrupt and inefficient government, the cost of defending the frontier against the Manchus and the ruin of agriculture by war and drought combined to produce an explosive situation, and the rebel armies grew with each new wave of desperate refugees. Li Zicheng emerged from this chaos as one of the two or three most powerful rebel leaders of the age.

Rise of the Rebellion

Through the 1630s Li Zicheng and his followers campaigned across the north and centre of China, sometimes winning great victories and sometimes suffering defeats that seemed to end their cause. His armies were repeatedly scattered by government forces, and he himself was at times reduced to a handful of companions, yet he recovered each time, drawing fresh strength from the misery of the countryside and from the defection of hungry soldiers and officials.

He adopted a policy of appealing to the common people against the corrupt officials and landlords who oppressed them, promising relief from taxation and the restoration of order. His forces distributed grain and abolished taxes in the areas they controlled, and this propaganda won him widespread support among the peasantry even as it terrified the gentry and the wealthy. The slogan of welcoming the king and being free from taxes became associated with his movement.

The government's attempts to suppress him were hampered by factional conflict at court, by lack of money and by the demands of the war against the Manchus. In 1641 and 1642 his armies captured the important city of Luoyang and then the great regional capital of Kaifeng, and his strength grew to the point where he controlled much of the central plain. By 1643 he had made himself master of Xi'an and had begun to organise a government and a court.

The Fall of the Ming and the Short-Lived Dynasty

In the spring of 1644 Li Zicheng marched upon the Ming capital at Beijing. The defending armies were weakened by plague, by the failure of the treasury and by the demoralisation of the government, and his advance met little effective resistance. In April 1644 his forces entered the city, and the last Ming emperor, the Chongzhen Emperor, took his own life on Coal Hill as the dynasty collapsed.

Li Zicheng proclaimed himself emperor of a new dynasty and attempted to establish an administration, but his position was precarious. His troops alienated much of the population of the capital by their treatment of the rich and the officials, and he failed to secure the loyalty of the scholar-gentry whose cooperation a stable government required. His control extended over only part of the country.

The decisive blow came from the north-east. The Ming general Wu Sangui, commanding the garrison at the great wall pass of Shanhaiguan, refused to submit to Li and instead allied himself with the Manchu forces beyond the frontier. In the summer of 1644 the combined Manchu and Chinese armies defeated Li Zicheng in battle, and he abandoned Beijing and fled westward toward his old bases in Shaanxi.

Defeat and Death

After the loss of the capital, Li Zicheng's position deteriorated rapidly. He attempted to defend Xi'an and other strongholds, but he was pursued relentlessly by the Manchu armies and by the Chinese who had rallied to the new Qing government. His forces were beaten in a series of engagements, and his authority among his followers and among the population of the regions he had controlled weakened with the reverses.

He retreated southward into the province of Hubei and then into the hills along the border with Hunan, apparently still hoping to regroup and to continue the struggle. His remaining adherents held out in scattered strongholds, but the great rebellion that had toppled the Ming was effectively over, and the initiative had passed to the Manchus and their Chinese allies.

He died in 1645 under circumstances that remain uncertain. The official accounts hold that he was killed by local militia or by villagers while foraging in the countryside, though other versions claim that he died of illness or that he escaped to become a monk. Whatever the truth, his death marked the end of the most powerful of the peasant movements that had shaken the late Ming state.

Legacy and Historical Assessment

Li Zicheng is remembered as the man whose rebellion destroyed the Ming dynasty and thus opened the way for the Manchu conquest of China. His uprising is often seen as a symptom of the deeper ills of the late Ming: fiscal collapse, official corruption, agrarian distress and the failure of the governing elite to reform. He was both a product of those ills and the instrument of their consequences.

Later generations have judged him in widely different ways. Some have seen him as a brutal and destructive bandit whose ambition and violence brought ruin upon the country; others have emphasised his humble origins and his struggle against oppression, and in modern times he has sometimes been portrayed as a leader of a peasant revolution against an unjust order. The debate over his character reflects larger questions about rebellion, legitimacy and the fall of dynasties.

He left behind no lasting institutions and no dynasty, and the state he founded lasted only a matter of weeks in practical terms. Yet his career transformed the history of China, for the collapse of the Ming under the pressure of his armies made possible the establishment of the Qing, the last imperial dynasty, whose rule would endure for nearly three centuries.

See also

• Transition from Ming to Qing
• Chongzhen Emperor
• Wu Sangui
• Qing conquest of the Ming