When did Li Zicheng invade Beijing?

1644 China was at the turn of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. There are three protagonists on the historical stage: Zhu Youjian, the founder of Ming Dynasty, Li Zicheng, the king of peasant rebels, Dourgen, the regent of Qing Dynasty, and perhaps Wu Sangui, the general of Liaodong in Ming Dynasty. In fact, there is also a protagonist who is ignored by people: the little mouse.

1644 Lunar March 15, Lin Wang Li Zicheng led Dashun Army to Juyongguan in the northern suburb of Beijing. This is the last natural barrier in Beijing, but the pass is unguarded, and Tang Tong, the general of the Ming Dynasty, went through the customs. Everyone knows what happened next: Li Zicheng's troops were on a roll. On March 8, 2008, they attacked Beijing, and Zhu Youjian hanged himself on an old pagoda tree in Jingshan.

However, in March of 1644, Li Zicheng faced Beijing, which was actually a ghost town ravaged by epidemic diseases. This epidemic was prevalent from the sixth year to the seventeenth year of Chongzhen. Originated in Xing County, Shanxi Province, then in Datong, then in Lu 'an. Then, the plague spread to Yulin and other places in Shaanxi. In the fourteenth year of Chongzhen, the great plague spread to Daming House, Shuntianfu and other places in Hebei Province. There is a saying of "plague" in local chronicles, and most people died. Kill each other. " In the sixteenth year of Chongzhen, that is, the year before the city of Beijing was breached, a major epidemic also occurred in Beijing.

Why is it certain that the plague in Beijing this time is plague? At that time, Ming people's notes called this epidemic "a knot in one's heart plague" and "gangrene", which was actually a name for swollen lymph nodes of patients with bubonic plague. At that time, it was so contagious that "ten rooms were empty, and even all the residents were exhausted and no one converged." Only the plague can be so powerful.

By April of the sixteenth year of Chongzhen, tens of thousands of people died every day in Beijing, so that the gates were blocked by coffins that were transported out. Five or six of the ten small households along the street died, most of them died at the door, and there were no children playing in the street. According to statistics, the epidemic killed 200,000 Beijingers. At that time, Beijing's population was estimated to be 800,000 to 1 10,000, that is, 1 person died for every 4 to 5 Beijingers. This is a super plague. At that time, there were rumors in Beijing that people in white clothes were heady. At night, people knock on copper and iron all night to exorcise ghosts, and officials can't stop it-what a haunted city it is!

What can the government do at this time? The emperor at that time seemed to ignore it. Although the epidemic broke out in February of the sixteenth year of Chongzhen, it was not until July that Xu Gong Ge Yong said that he asked the emperor to "remember his legacy and give him first aid". At this time, Zhu Youjian issued a decree to allocate 22,000 taels of silver for the five city governors to collect and bury the bodies, and then allocate 1200 taels of silver to the Imperial Hospital to treat the sick people. However, there are too many patients and dead people, and the money is a drop in the bucket, which is simply not enough.

Even if you are a court official, you can't escape the plague. At first, everyone who died in the palace could get a pension of 4 thousand yuan. Later, even this money was gone.

It is conceivable that the Ming army stationed in Beijing at this time could not be spared from the plague. At that time, the Ming army in Beijing was nominally 10 million, but it was reduced by half after the great epidemic. According to Yoko, a adherent of the Ming Dynasty, when Li Zicheng's team was killed, even 10,000 soldiers who could defend the city walls could not get together. Not only did soldiers, vendors and employees fall down and die in large numbers, but even beggars could not be found in Beijing. The general guarding the city at that time humbly asked for help guarding the city. "It has been confiscated for more than five or six days." Zhu Youjian ordered three or four thousand eunuchs to go to the Great Wall. By the time of Enemy at the Gates and Li Zicheng, there was only one soldier in the five battlements in the inner city of Beijing, and they were all old, weak and sick. "It's just a short story." On March 17, when Li Zicheng arrived in Xizhimen, there was no decent defense in Beijing, and the soldiers only had more than 100 pence to buy porridge every day to satisfy their hunger. How can they resist the elite of Li Zicheng?

According to historical records, when the Ming army was fighting, the soldiers were lying on the ground and refused to move, and the officers "whipped one person to get up again", but they got up and came down, saying that they were distracted and had no fighting spirit. Perhaps, these are half-dead patients.

However, there are still questions here. First of all, Li Zicheng's team entered a city with a serious epidemic, so they won't be infected themselves? The expert's explanation is that the time for Li Zicheng to enter the city is just right. At this time, the bubonic plague in Beijing has basically subsided, but the pneumonic plague has not spread because of the warmer weather.

Here is an explanation of bubonic plague and pneumonic plague. As we all know, plague is a serious infectious disease spread by rats. Specifically, it is fleas carried by rats that spread Yersinia pestis to people. This is the Black Death. The salient features of bubonic plague are swelling and ulceration of lymph nodes. Pneumonic plague is usually transformed from bubonic plague, characterized by severe chest pain, cough and vomiting blood. The seriousness of pneumonic plague is that it is an infection between people, and rats are no longer needed as a medium. However, the prevalence of pneumonic plague is generally in winter, which requires low temperature.

Every disease has its pathogenesis. When both rats and people die to a certain extent, the epidemic of plague will subside. At this moment, Li Zicheng came. If Li Zicheng had come a few months earlier, they would have been wiped out by the plague. However, the Qing army will eventually come in, and this general trend will not change. The evolution of history is really interesting.

If there was no war, perhaps the Ming government could concentrate on dealing with famine. However, at the end of the Ming Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty faced a powerful foreign invasion. In order to cope with the heavy defense burden in Liaodong, we stepped up the apportionment of exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous fees to the society, which led to the intensification of social contradictions and aroused round after round of civil unrest. The war has led to the consequences of famine and epidemic diseases, which can't be cleaned up.

Famine, epidemic disease, war, and China in the1640s, these factors influenced and interacted with each other, which made the land of China devastated and the mountains and rivers shattered. According to scholars' statistics, the population of China decreased by about 40-50 million due to abnormal deaths during the Ming and Qing Dynasties.