Li Zicheng Held Beijing for Just 42 Days, So Where Did He Lose the Empire

Li Zicheng Held Beijing for Just 42 Days, So Where Did He Lose the Empire

In the small hours of April 25, 1644, Emperor Chongzhen, Zhu Youjian, the last emperor of the Ming dynasty, climbed alone to Coal Hill (today's Jingshan) just outside Beijing and hanged himself from a crooked old tree with a white sash. Before dying he scrawled across the front of his robe: "My virtue is meager, my person unworthy, and I have invited Heaven's wrath, yet all my ministers misled me." That same day, Li Zicheng's Shun army marched into the Forbidden City, formally ending the Ming dynasty's 276-year reign. What no one expected was that Li Zicheng would last just 42 days in Beijing. By the end of May, Wu Sangui had led Qing troops back to the capital, Li Zicheng fled the palace in disarray, and in June the following year he was killed by peasants on Jiugongshan in Hubei at age 39. His Shun regime had not even lasted a year. How did this "Dashing King" of the peasant rebellions fall so quickly from the summit? Where exactly did he lose?

How Did Li Zicheng Reach Beijing

Li Zicheng was born in 1606 in Mizhi, Shaanxi, into a poor family. He had been a courier, the man who rode the post horses delivering official documents. In 1629, the second year of Chongzhen, the court closed many post stations to save money. Li Zicheng lost his job and, with no other option, joined a peasant rebellion in Shaanxi.

From the third year of Chongzhen, when he first took up arms, Li Zicheng roamed Shaanxi, Henan, Hubei and Sichuan, his army repeatedly beaten down to near-extinction by government troops. In Chongzhen's ninth year he was nearly wiped out by Hong Chengchou and escaped with just 18 men into the Shangluo mountains, only to rise again each time. In 1640, he led his troops into Henan, just as the province was suffering drought, plague and locusts. Rebellions sprang up everywhere, and Li Zicheng raised the banner of "equal fields and no taxes," attracting tens of thousands of followers; in three years he grew from 10,000 men to 1 million.

In 1643, the 16th year of Chongzhen, Li Zicheng established a government in Xiangyang, styling himself "Marshal Civil and Military, Raised in Righteousness by Heaven." In the first month of the 17th year of Chongzhen, he founded the Dashun dynasty in Xi'an, with the reign title Yongchang, and proclaimed himself emperor. In the third month, he personally led 200,000 troops east against Beijing. Ming forces surrendered or melted away along the way, and on the 19th day of the 3rd month, Li Zicheng marched into Beijing.

What He Did After Entering Beijing

Before his arrival, Ming officials assumed an "enlightened ruler" was coming and rushed to surrender, expecting to keep their posts and property under the new regime. What he actually did stunned them all.

First, the "pursuit of plunder to fund the army." Li Zicheng's strategist Niu Jinxing and general Liu Zongmin discovered that, although they held Beijing, only 100,000-odd taels of silver remained in the treasury, far too little to feed an army of hundreds of thousands. Liu Zongmin's solution was to round up every former Ming official and levy a "contribution" based on rank: 100,000 taels for first-rank officials, 70,000 for second-rank, 50,000 for third-rank, with torture for those who could not pay. Barbaric but effective, the army squeezed more than 70 million taels from Beijing's officials and rich merchants in a single month.

The cost was that every official, wealthy merchant and educated man in Beijing was terrorized by Liu Zongmin's clamps and irons. By the time Li Zicheng entered the capital, he had already alienated the entire urban ruling class who should have been the new regime's social base, and made every one of them his enemy.

Second, soldiers running wild. The Shun army's discipline had never been strong, and in Beijing it collapsed entirely. Soldiers seized money, goods and women; the streets filled with rape and looting. Beijing residents who had welcomed "the Dashing King who exempts taxes" discovered that this lot was crueler than the Ming army. In a month, Li Zicheng went from "savior" to "bandit" in the eyes of Beijingers.

Wu Sangui's Turn

At the moment Li Zicheng entered Beijing, the Shanhaiguan commander Wu Sangui stood with 40,000 elite Liaodong cavalry at Yongping, the Ming dynasty's last real fighting force. Li Zicheng sent envoys offering to make Wu a king. Wu was at first willing and even began moving toward Beijing.

Halfway there, however, Wu Sangui learned two things. First, his father Wu Xiang had been seized by Liu Zongmin for "contributions" and tortured nearly to death. Second, his favorite concubine, Chen Yuanyuan, had been seized by Liu Zongmin. Wu Sangui was incensed, the famous "raising hackles in anger for a beauty." In truth, the more important factor was that Wu Sangui realized the Shun regime had no genuine respect for former Ming officials like him; to surrender would mean extortion and humiliation. He decided to rebel.

Wu Sangui marched back to Shanhaiguan and dispatched messengers beyond the pass to seek aid from Dorgon. Dorgon had been waiting for this moment for decades. He immediately mobilized the Eight Banners en masse and joined Wu Sangui in the great battle of Yipianshi at Shanhaiguan against Li Zicheng.

The Crushing Defeat at Shanhaiguan

On the 22nd day of the 4th month of the 17th year of Chongzhen, Li Zicheng personally led 60,000 troops in a showdown against Wu Sangui at Shanhaiguan, the turning point of the Dashun regime's fate.

At first, Li Zicheng had the upper hand, pushing Wu's force back step by step. After a full day of fierce combat, with Li's army exhausted, Dorgon's 80,000 Banner troops suddenly attacked from the flank. A great wind whipped up the sand, and Li Zicheng could not tell how many enemies he faced; all he saw was an overwhelming tide of braided warriors. He shouted "the Manchus have come!" and fled. His army collapsed, losing more than 40,000 men in a single battle. Li Zicheng retreated to Beijing with what remained.

He stayed in Beijing for just one more day. On the 29th day of the 4th month, he held a hasty enthronement ceremony in the Wuying Hall, and on the 30th day he fled the capital westward with as much gold and silver as he could carry, heading back to Xi'an. From entering Beijing on the 19th day of the 3rd month to fleeing on the 30th day of the 4th month, his total time in Beijing was 42 days.

The Rapid Collapse of the Shun Regime

After fleeing Beijing, Li Zicheng's fortunes only declined. In the 6th month of the 17th year of Chongzhen, he lost Shanxi. In the 10th month, he lost Tongguan in Shaanxi. In the first month of the second year of Shunzhi, he lost Xi'an and retreated to Hubei. In the 5th month, on Jiugongshan in Tongshan county of Hubei, he was ambushed by local peasants. A peasant named Cheng Jiubo killed him with a hoe at age 39.

From founding the Dashun regime to its annihilation was barely more than a year. From entering Beijing to being killed was just 14 months. Such a roller-coaster rise and fall is extraordinarily rare in Chinese history.

Where Exactly Did Li Zicheng Lose

Historians have debated for centuries. To my mind, several core problems stand out:

First, no stable foundation of rule. Li Zicheng's "contributions" alienated every official, landlord and gentry household, the social base on which any regime in China had to rest, and pushed them all into opposition. A regime needs to win over at least part of the entrenched interests; Li Zicheng did the exact opposite. Second, indiscipline. The Shun army had won hearts in the field with "equal fields and no taxes," but in Beijing it pillaged at will, and popular support collapsed overnight. This shows that his army was never really a "people's army," just a band of peasants driven by famine to seize what they could. Third, a lack of qualified administrators. Niu Jinxing and Liu Zongmin came from the bottom of society and had no governing experience. They knew only the playbook of roving bandits, and the moment they reached Beijing, chaos broke out. Fourth, strategic misjudgment. Li Zicheng should have secured Wu Sangui before taking Beijing. Instead he antagonized him and pushed him into the arms of the Manchus, a fatal strategic error.

The Historical Significance of the Shun Regime's Collapse

Li Zicheng's failure left a deep lesson for Chinese history and indirectly enabled the Qing to take over the Central Plains. Had he secured Wu Sangui, the Qing could not have entered, and a new Han dynasty might have emerged. But because of his many mistakes, the Manchu Eight Banners pushed through the pass and began 276 years of Qing rule.

One historians' view is that Li Zicheng came closer to success than any peasant leader in Chinese history but failed faster than any. He showed that peasants can win an empire but to govern one requires a bureaucracy and a complete institutional framework; slogans like "equal fields and no taxes" are not nearly enough. From Chen Sheng and Wu Guang to the Taiping Rebellion, every peasant rebellion fell into the same trap: knowing how to destroy the old order but not how to build a new one.

Li Zicheng's 42 days of glory, and his collapse afterward, form one of the most dramatic episodes in Chinese history. A great story ending in the most ironic possible way, perhaps the cruelest and most profound lesson history has to offer.