A New Emperor in a Ravaged Capital

In the autumn of 1644, the newly enthroned Shunzhi Emperor entered Beijing, a city still smoldering from the destruction wrought by rebel forces. The grand palaces and towering gates, symbols of Ming imperial authority, lay in ruins, deliberately torched by the retreating army of Li Zicheng. This act of devastation forced a symbolic shift in the proceedings of the Qing dynasty’s consolidation of power. Unable to use the Hall of Supreme Harmony—the traditional site of imperial coronations, often called the “Throne Hall”—the young emperor instead conducted his enthronement ceremony at the Gate of Imperial Supremacy, later known as the Gate of Supreme Harmony. This was not merely a logistical adjustment; it was a potent declaration. By reaffirming his sovereignty in the heart of the former Ming capital, Shunzhi, under the regency of his uncle Dorgon, proclaimed the Qing’s unwavering intent to unify the realm and eradicate all rival claimants to the Mandate of Heaven.

This second coronation was steeped in political theater. The Qing, having only recently crossed the Great Wall, controlled a precarious foothold in North China, with their authority largely confined to parts of Zhili, Shandong, and Shanxi. The rest of the empire was fractured and contested. To the west, Li Zicheng’s Shun regime held sway in Shaanxi and Sichuan, while Zhang Xianzhong’s Xi Kingdom dominated Sichuan. South of the Huai River, the Southern Ming court, loyal to the fallen dynasty, had established a government in Nanjing. Each of these powers represented a direct challenge to Qing legitimacy, and coexistence was not an option. The stage was set for a prolonged and bloody struggle for supremacy.

The Qing Strategic Offensive

Recognizing the immediacy of the threat, Prince-Regent Dorgon prioritized the elimination of Li Zicheng, whose forces, though battered from their recent defeat in Beijing, remained the most formidable military opponent in northern China. In the tenth month of 1644, the Qing high command launched a meticulously planned three-pronged invasion into Shaanxi, the heartland of the Shun regime.

The northern army, commanded by Ajige, advanced from beyond the passes north of Xuanfu and Datong. Its objective was to penetrate Shaanxi from the north and pin down Li’s forces. Simultaneously, the southern army, led by Dodo, marched south with the aim of forcing the critical Tong Pass, the eastern gateway to the fertile Guanzhong Plain and the city of Xi’an. A central column under the command of Ye Chen drove into Shanxi to secure the Qing flank and prevent any reinforcement between fronts. The coordination of these armies across vast distances demonstrated the superior military organization and strategic acumen of the Qing leadership.

The Fall of the Shun Strongholds

The campaign unfolded with remarkable speed and success for the Qing forces. Ajige’s northern army swiftly captured the strategic city of Yan’an. There, they encountered fierce resistance from Li Jin, one of Li Zicheng’s capable generals, who had fortified both Yan’an and the nearby town of Fushi in a mutually supportive defensive posture. For over twenty days, Ajige’s assaults were repulsed. Adapting to the stalemate, he employed a cunning stratagem: feigning a major attack on Fushi to draw the defenders’ attention while massing his forces and powerful Hongyi cannons against Yan’an. The massive cannonade breached the walls, and Li Jin, unable to withstand the bombardment, abandoned the city. His retreat turned into a rout as Qing cavalry pursued and cut down his scattered troops.

Meanwhile, on the southern front, Dodo’s army engaged the main Shun field forces commanded by Liu Zongmin, Li Zicheng’s most trusted general, in a series of battles outside Tong Pass. These engagements highlighted the decisive advantage held by the Qing: their elite mounted archers. In open field combat, the Manchu and Mongol cavalry were virtually invincible. Liu Zongmin, a veteran of countless battles against Ming troops, found his strategies and formations useless against the swift, hard-hitting Qing horsemen. He was defeated repeatedly, forcing a retreat behind the formidable walls of Tong Pass.

The pass itself was a natural fortress, and cavalry alone could not reduce it. The siege reached its climax in early 1645. On the ninth day of the first month, the Qing army’s siege train, including its heavy Hongyi cannons, arrived at the front. Under a relentless artillery barrage, the Shun defenses crumbled. Qing troops stormed the pass, securing the key that unlocked the Guanzhong Plain. With the barrier fallen, Dodo’s cavalry raced across the open country, covering the distance to Xi’an in just one week.

The Flight and Death of a King

Confronted with the imminent fall of his capital, Li Zicheng made a desperate decision. He ordered the Ming Prince of Qin’s palace, which served as his own headquarters, set ablaze. Gathering his family, remaining loyal commanders, and movable wealth, he fled Xi’an through the Lantian Pass, heading southeast toward the mountainous Shangzhou region.

Ajige, relentless in his pursuit, gave chase. What followed was a harrowing retreat for Li Zicheng. His demoralized army was defeated in every subsequent engagement, its numbers dwindling through desertion and combat. In a bizarre twist that underscored the complete collapse of Ming military authority, Li’s fleeing army, though in a state of disarray, managed to defeat a massive 100,000-strong force of the Southern Ming general Zuo Liangyu. This victory allowed Li to briefly occupy the major city of Wuchang and even entertain plans to march down the Yangtze and capture the Southern Ming capital at Nanjing. This incident served as a stark testament to the ineffectiveness of the remaining Ming loyalist armies.

The Qing pursuit, however, was unyielding. Continuous defeats whittled away Li’s strength until, in the fifth month of 1645, the rebel leader met his end in the remote, fog-shrouded mountains of Hubei. While scouting near Jiugong Mountain with only a tiny escort of twenty-odd riders, he was set upon and killed by local militia forces.

The exact circumstances of his death became a subject of conflicting reports and enduring mystery. Ajige’s initial report to the throne stated that Li, leading a force that had once numbered 200,000, was defeated in eight major battles before vanishing into the Jiugong mountains. A search found nothing, but later, based on the accounts of surrendered soldiers, Ajige reported that Li had hanged himself to avoid capture, though his body was too decomposed to identify.

A more detailed and credible account emerged from the Southern Ming side. He Tengjiao, the Ming governor of Huguang, reported to the Longwu Emperor that Li Zicheng had been killed by local villagers while on a reconnaissance mission. His information came from Zhang Nai, Li’s adopted son, who had witnessed the event and subsequently surrendered to He Tengjiao in Hunan. Other former Shun generals who had defected, such as Hao Yaoqi, corroborated the story. The most vivid description comes from the early Qing scholar Fei Mi in his book Huang Shu . He narrates a dramatic final struggle: separated from his men in the rain, Li encountered a local villager named Cheng Jiubo. The two wrestled in the mud. Li gained the upper position but could not draw his sword, which was stuck in its scabbard due to mud and congealed blood. As Li struggled, Cheng’s nephew arrived and fatally struck the rebel king with a hoe.

The Qing authorities later verified this local account. After taking control of the region, the newly appointed Viceroy Tong Yanghe investigated the matter in the summer of 1645. Cheng Jiubo was found and, as a reward for his service in eliminating a primary enemy of the state, was appointed to a minor official post as the Jingli of De’an Prefecture. Local gazetteers from the Kangxi era confirm this official recognition.

The Aftermath and Historical Legacy

The death of Li Zicheng marked a pivotal moment in the Qing conquest. It removed the most significant military obstacle to their control of northern and central China, allowing Dorgon to turn his full attention to the destruction of Zhang Xianzhong’s Xi regime and the subjugation of the Southern Ming. The campaign against Li demonstrated the formidable synergy of Qing military might: the strategic genius of its leadership, the unmatched prowess of its cavalry, and the devastating psychological and physical impact of its artillery.

For the Ming loyalists, Li’s demise was a double-edged sword. It eliminated a hated rebel who had toppled their dynasty, yet it also removed a powerful, if unintended, buffer that had distracted the Qing. The ease with which Li’s battered army defeated Zuo Liangyu exposed the fatal weaknesses of the Southern Ming, which would succumb to Qing forces in the following years.

The story of Li Zicheng’s end, particularly the rustic and ignoble manner of his death at the hands of a peasant, became a powerful moral and political lesson in Chinese historiography. For the Qing, it was a tale of divine providence, proving that heaven had withdrawn its mandate from the Ming and its rebellious challengers alike, bestowing it instead upon the virtuous Qing. For later generations, Li Zicheng remains a complex figure: a champion of peasant revolt who briefly toppled an empire, only to fall victim to his own hubris and the relentless tide of a new dynastic order. His flight through the mountains of Hubei and his final, desperate struggle in the mud of Jiugong Mountain brought a dramatic close to a rebellion that shook China to its foundations and paved the way for three centuries of Qing rule.