Item: i72282

Authentic Coin of:

China – Ming Rebel (Ming-Qing Transition)
Li Zicheng – Emperor: 1644-1645 A.D.
Bronze Cash 24mm

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The transition from Ming to Qing or the Ming-Qing transition, also known as the Manchu conquest of China, was a decades-long period of conflict between the Qing dynasty, established by Manchu clan Aisin Gioro in Manchuria (contemporary Northeastern China), and the Ming dynasty of China in the south (various other regional or temporary powers were also associated with events, such as the short-lived Shun dynasty). Leading up to the Qing conquest, in 1618, Aisin Gioro leader Nurhaci commissioned a document entitled the Seven Grievances, which enumerated grievances against the Ming and began to rebel against their domination. Many of the grievances dealt with conflicts against Yehe, which was a major Manchu clan, and Ming favoritism of Yehe. Nurhaci’s demand that the Ming pay tribute to him to redress the seven grievances was effectively a declaration of war, as the Ming were not willing to pay money to a former tributary. Shortly afterwards, Nurhaci began to rebel against the Ming in Liaoning in southern Manchuria.

At the same time, the Ming dynasty was fighting for its survival against fiscal turmoil and peasant rebellions. On April 24, 1644, Beijing fell to a rebel army led by Li Zicheng, a former minor Ming official who became the leader of the peasant revolt, who then proclaimed the Shun dynasty. The last Ming emperor, the Chongzhen Emperor, hanged himself from a tree in the imperial garden outside the Forbidden City. When Li Zicheng moved against him, the Ming general Wu Sangui shifted his alliance to the Manchus. Li Zicheng was defeated at the Battle of Shanhai Pass by the joint forces of Wu Sangui and Manchu prince Dorgon. On June 6, the Manchus and Wu entered the capital and proclaimed the young Shunzhi Emperor as Emperor of China.

The conquest was far from complete however, and it required almost forty more years before all of a China was securely united under Qing rule. The Kangxi Emperor ascended the throne in 1661, and in 1662 his regents launched the Great Clearance to defeat the resistance of Ming loyalists in South China. He then fought off several rebellions, such as the Revolt of the Three Feudatories led by Wu Sangui in southern China, starting in 1673, and then countered by launching a series of campaigns that expanded his empire. In 1662, Zheng Chenggong (Koxinga) drove out the Dutch colonists and founded the Kingdom of Tungning in Taiwan, a Ming loyalist state with a goal of reconquering China. However, Tungning was defeated in 1683 at the Battle of Penghu by Han admiral Shi Lang, a former admiral under Koxinga.

The fall of the Ming dynasty was largely caused by a combination of factors. Kenneth Swope argues that one key factor was deteriorating relations between Ming Royalty and the Ming Empire’s military leadership. Other factors include repeated military expeditions to the North, inflationary pressures caused by spending too much from the imperial treasury, natural disasters and epidemics of disease. Contributing further to the chaos was a peasant rebellion in Beijing in 1644 and a series of weak emperors. Ming power would hold out in what is now southern China for years, though eventually would be overtaken by the Manchus.

Li Zicheng (22 September 1606 – 1645), born Li Hongji, also known by the nickname, “Dashing King“, was a Chinese rebel leader who overthrew the Ming dynasty in 1644 and ruled over northern China briefly as the emperor of the short-lived Shun dynasty before his death a year later.

Born in 1606 as Li Hongji to an impoverished family; Li Zicheng came from Li Jiqian village, Yan’an prefecture, northeast Shaanxi province. Li came from a family of farmers and had an older brother who was 20 years older than him whose son, Li Guo, grew up alongside Li. Li was literate though it is disputed from where Li attained his education. While a teenager and as a young adult Li held jobs in a wineshop, a blacksmith’s shop, a farm, and also as a mailman in the state courier system.

According to folklore, in 1630, Li was put on public display in an iron collar and shackles for his failure to repay loans to a usurious magistrate, Ai. Ai struck a guard who offered shade and water to Li, whence a group of peasants friendly to Li tore apart Li’s shackles, spirited him to a nearby hill, and proclaimed him their leader. Although they were only armed with wooden sticks, Li and his band managed to ambush a group of government soldiers sent to arrest them, and obtained their first real weapons.

Rise of Li Zicheng and the peasant rebellions

The late Ming Dynasty considerably weakened as the government struggled with finances and these economical issues as well as environmental problems and sickness plagued China. Sicknesses included smallpox and possibly the black plague. In 1639 An extreme epidemic hit the Yangzi region and as it spread across the north, it became known as the Chongzhen Slough. The hardships from the environment and resulting toll on the Ming subjects led to major peasant uprisings in Northern China, namely from the Shaanxi province. The northern areas of China experienced famine first due to the failure of the Chongzhen government to fix the financial issues and provide aid to the northern areas suffering from famine and sickness. Once the drought hit the Shaanxi province in 1628, this spurred the first rebellions. Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong (also from Shaanxi province) were two of the major leaders in the peasant rebellions under the late Ming dynasty.

Li joined a rebel army led by Gao Yingxiang who was nicknamed “Dashing King”. in 1633. He inherited Gao’s nickname and command of the rebel army after Gao’s death.

Within three years, Li succeeded in rallying more than 30,000 men to form a rebel army. They attacked and killed prominent government officials, such as Sun Chuanting, in Henan, Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces. As Li won more battles and gained more support, his army grew larger. People attributed that the rebel armies were kind to the poor and that they would only attack Ming officials.

Some battles Li fought in this period

• Battle of Chexiang Pass
• Battle of Fengyang

Battles of Luoyang, Nanyang and Kaifeng

Li advocated the slogan of “dividing land equally and abolishing the grain taxes payment system” which won great support from the peasants. The song of “killing cattle and sheep, preparing tasty wine and opening the city gate to welcome the Dashing King” was widely spread at that time.

The 1642 Kaifeng flood (during the 3rd Battle of Kaifeng), caused by breaches of the Yellow River dikes by both sides, ended the siege of Kaifeng and killed over 300,000 of its 378,000 residents.^[4] After the battles of Luoyang and Kaifeng, the Ming government was unable to stop Li’s rebellion, as most of its military force was involved in the battle against the Manchus in the north. Li declared himself the King of the Shun dynasty in Xi’an, Shaanxi.

From the Battle of Xiangyang to the creation of the Shun dynasty

In 1642, Li captured Xiangyang and proclaimed himself “King Xinshun”.

Battle of Beijing and establishment of the Shun Dynasty

Li Zicheng led one of the major peasant uprisings that the weakened Ming administration struggled to combat. When Li took over the Ming capital it marked the end of the Ming dynasty. In April 1644, Li’s rebels sacked the Ming capital of Beijing, and the Chongzhen Emperor committed suicide. Li proclaimed himself the Emperor of the Shun dynasty.

Claim to the Mandate of Heaven

Li, as all contenders for the throne were required, claimed to have the Mandate of Heaven bestowed upon him. Firstly, Li hailed from the Shaanxi province of China, which strengthened his legitimacy to the throne versus the foreign Manchus. Li also gained the support of scholar officials which was important in leading over the people of China as a Confucian state. The name of the dynasty is translated to mean “Obedient to Heaven”.

Battle of Shanhai Pass and end of Shun Dynasty

Li’s army was defeated on 27 May 1644 at the Battle of Shanhai Pass by the combined forces of the defecting Ming general Wu Sangui and the Dorgon Prince leading the Manchus. The Ming and Manchu forces captured Beijing on June 6 and Fulin ascended to the throne to establish the Shunzhi reign with the Dorgon prince as regent.

Death

When Wu Sangui and the Dorgon Prince took control of Beijing, Li fled to Xi’an in Shaanxi. It is not exactly known how Li died and there are multiple accounts of his death which vary and some are exaggerated by folklore. Across multiple sources, the year of his death is said to be in 1645. One account states that in the summer of 1645 Li went to raid a village in search of sustenance with his remaining followers and was killed by soldiers guarding the village.

Historiography

Although the success of the Manchu conquest of China was attributed to the weakening of the Ming dynasty (exacerbated by Li Zicheng’s rebellion), official historiography during the Qing dynasty regarded Li as an illegitimate usurper and outlaw. This view sought to discourage and demonize notions of rebellion against the Qing government, by propagating that the Manchus put an end to Li’s illegitimate rule and restore peace to the empire, thus receiving the Mandate of Heaven to rule China.

In popular culture

Li appears as a bandit in Baifa Monü Zhuan, a wuxia novel by Liang Yusheng, where the heroine comments he is worthy of being a king. Li is featured as a character in some of the works of Hong Kong wuxia writer Jin Yong (Louis Cha). Li’s rebellion against the Ming dynasty is featured in Sword Stained with Royal Blood and his personality is analysed from the point of view of Yuan Chengzhi, the protagonist. In The Deer and the Cauldron, set in the Qing dynasty during the early reign of the Kangxi Emperor, Li is revealed to have survived and fathered a daughter, A’ke, with Chen Yuanyuan. Li is also briefly mentioned by name in Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain and The Young Flying Fox.^{[citation needed]}

Li is the main character of the historical epic novel Li Zicheng by Yao Xueyin.

In folklore

There are many stories and folklore attributed to Li Zicheng. One such story claims that when Li Zicheng was young he killed one of his classmates and was promptly disowned by his family and shunned by his community.

The Ming dynasty was the ruling dynasty of China – then known as the Great Ming Empire – for 276 years (1368-1644) following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last imperial dynasty in China ruled by ethnic Han Chinese. Although the primary capital of Beijing fell in 1644 to a rebellion led by Li Zicheng (who established the Shun dynasty, soon replaced by the Manchu-led Qing dynasty), regimes loyal to the Ming throne – collectively called the Southern Ming – survived until 1683.

Ming China around 1580

The Hongwu Emperor (ruled 1368-98) attempted to create a society of self-sufficient rural communities ordered in a rigid, immobile system that would guarantee and support a permanent class of soldiers for his dynasty: the empire’s standing army exceeded one million troops and the navy’s dockyards in Nanjing were the largest in the world. He also took great care breaking the power of the court eunuchs^[6] and unrelated magnates, enfeoffing his many sons throughout China and attempting to guide these princes through the Huang-Ming Zuxun, a set of published dynastic instructions. This failed spectacularly when his teenage successor, the Jianwen Emperor, attempted to curtail his uncles’ power, prompting the Jingnan Campaign, an uprising that placed the Prince of Yan upon the throne as the Yongle Emperor in 1402. The Yongle Emperor established Yan as a secondary capital and renamed it Beijing, constructed the Forbidden City, and restored the Grand Canal and the primacy of the imperial examinations in official appointments. He rewarded his eunuch supporters and employed them as a counterweight against the Confucian scholar-bureaucrats. One, Zheng He, led seven enormous voyages of exploration into the Indian Ocean as far as Arabia and the eastern coasts of Africa.

The rise of new emperors and new factions diminished such extravagances; the capture of the Zhengtong Emperor during the 1449 Tumu Crisis ended them completely. The imperial navy was allowed to fall into disrepair while forced labor constructed the Liaodong palisade and connected and fortified the Great Wall of China into its modern form. Wide-ranging censuses of the entire empire were conducted decennially, but the desire to avoid labor and taxes and the difficulty of storing and reviewing the enormous archives at Nanjing hampered accurate figures. Estimates for the late-Ming population vary from 160 to 200 million, but necessary revenues were squeezed out of smaller and smaller numbers of farmers as more disappeared from the official records or “donated” their lands to tax-exempt eunuchs or temples. Haijin laws intended to protect the coasts from “Japanese” pirates instead turned many into smugglers and pirates themselves.

By the 16th century, however, the expansion of European trade – albeit restricted to islands near Guangzhou like Macau – spread the Columbian Exchange of crops, plants, and animals into China, introducing chili peppers to Sichuan cuisine and highly productive corn and potatoes, which diminished famines and spurred population growth. The growth of Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch trade created new demand for Chinese products and produced a massive influx of Japanese and American silver. This abundance of specie remonetized the Ming economy, whose paper money had suffered repeated hyperinflation and was no longer trusted. While traditional Confucians opposed such a prominent role for commerce and the newly rich it created, the heterodoxy introduced by Wang Yangming permitted a more accommodating attitude. Zhang Juzheng’s initially successful reforms proved devastating when a slowdown in agriculture produced by the Little Ice Age joined changes in Japanese and Spanish policy that quickly cut off the supply of silver now necessary for farmers to be able to pay their taxes. Combined with crop failure, floods, and epidemic, the dynasty collapsed before the rebel leader Li Zicheng, who was defeated by the Manchu-led Eight Banner armies who founded the Qing dynasty.