Zhang Xianzhong (張獻忠 or Chang Hsien-chung; 18 September 1606 – 2 January 1647), courtesy name Bingwu (秉吾), art name Jingxuan (敬軒), was a Chinese peasant leader who led a peasant rebellion from Yan'an wei, Shaanxi (today Yulin, Shaanxi province) during the Ming-Qing transition. He conquered Sichuan in 1644, and named himself king and later emperor of the Xi dynasty. His rule in Sichuan was brief, and he was killed by the invading Qing army. He is commonly associated with the massacres in Sichuan that depopulated the region. However, the extent of his killings is disputed.
Biography Early life Zhang was born in Liushujian (柳树涧; literally 'willow spring', modern Dingbian, Shaanxi province), in 1606 into a poor family. He was described as tall in stature, had a yellow complexion and a "tiger chin" (, meaning an impressive beard), and hence was given the nickname "Yellow Tiger".Ming shi Original text: 献忠黄面长身虎颔，人号黄虎。 In the mid-1620s, he enlisted in the Ming army. He was sentenced to death for breaching military law. He was reprieved after a senior officer intervened, impressed by Zhang's demeanour.
As rebel leader Towards the end the Ming dynasty, drought, famines and epidemics broke out in various parts of China. In the late 1620s, peasants revolted in Shaanxi, resisting attempts by the Ming government to collect grains and taxes. They coalesced into rebel armies called "roving bandits" (liúkòu 流寇) because of their highly mobile nature, and spread into other parts of China. Zhang deserted from the army around 1630, joined the rebel forces in Mizhi County, and established himself as a rebel leader with a few hundred followers, styling himself Bada Wang (八大王, Eighth Great King). Among his followers was his adopted son Li Dingguo. His mobile forces would conduct raids along the western edge of Shaanxi, plundering swiftly and hiding out in the hills. Later he moved into other provinces, moving from place to place raiding towns and cities. He made forays into Sichuan by the late 1633 but was repelled by Qin Liangyu. He was also defeated at various times by the Ming forces; Zhang would also surrender when it was expedient for him to do so, for example in 1631 and 1638, but would then later regroup and resume the rebellion.
In 1635, Zhang joined a larger confederation of bandits with other rebel leaders including Li Zicheng (Li would later capture Beijing and end Ming rule there). They devastated Henan and pushed into Anhui. After they had burnt the Ming ancestral temple at Zhongdu (Fengyang) in Anhui and ravaged the area, the rebel armies broke up and Zhang headed to Huguang (now Hubei). He failed to subdue the city of Luzhou, but captured Xiangyang with 70,000 men under his command the following year in 1636. In 1637, joined by other rebels and with an army now reaching a size of 300,000 men, he again pushed into Anhui, then to Jiangsu to capture Suzhou, and almost down to Nanjing, auxiliary capital of Ming. But he was immediately defeated there and he retreated back to Huguang. He besieged Chengdu in 1637 but failed to take it. In 1638, Zhang was injured in a battle in Huguang with Ming general Zuo Liangyu, and he then surrendered to Ming supreme commander Xiong Wencan () who believed in peaceful suasion, and was allowed to settle in Gucheng and serve as a regional Ming commander. However, he reneged on the agreement in early 1639 and rebelled, killing the local prefect and burning the town. He then ambushed and inflicted heavy losses to the Ming forces led by the Ming general Zuo Liangyu. In 1640, he suffered a defeat at the hand of Zuo at Mount Manao in Sichuan, and was forced to flee with his few remaining followers to hide in the mountains of Eastern Sichuan for a few months.
Zhang gathered the remnants of his forces, and continued with his raids which Ming commander Yang Sichang found hard to contain. In 1641, he emerged from Sichuan and attacked Xiangyang, capturing and executing the imperial Prince of Xiang there. Zhang's army swelled as he took a number of towns and cities such as Sucheng, Luzhou and Tongcheng, and declined when he suffered setbacks at the hands of Ming generals Zuo Liangyu. In 1643, he took Macheng in Huguang, and his army swelled to some 57,000 after incorporating the city's rebels. He then captured the provincial capital of Wuchang, killed the imperial prince there, and proclaimed himself "Xi Wang" (King of the West). He attempted to set up a government in Wuchang, but abandoned the city after two months when Ming forces gathered strength, and captured Wuchang soon after Zhang left. With an army of 200,000, Zhang took Yuezhou, Hengzhou and Changsha, and for a while Zhang stayed at Changsha where he controlled much of Hunan and part of Jiangxi.
Conquest of Sichuan In 1644, Zhang decided to abandon Hunan and led 100,000 of his troops towards Sichuan. His army converged on Chongqing from two directions and surrounded the city. After several days of fighting, his army managed to blast a hole through the city wall and captured the city on 25 July 1644. He was said to have cut off the hands of the city's defenders and massacred a large number of people.
The conquest of some other parts of Sichuan was made easier after he promised not to harm the local population if they seized their officials, took possession of the storehouse and surrendered without resistance. He took Chengdu on 9 September 1644, and met no real opposition in the rest of Sichuan afterwards. He then set up court in Chengdu, which he renamed Xijing (西京, Western Capital), and declared himself king of the Xi dynasty (大西王朝, Great Western dynasty). In the 10th lunar month of 1644 he declared himself as emperor with the reign title Dashun.
Rule in Sichuan
In Sichuan, Zhang tried to set up a civil administration. Initially, he won much support. According to an account by Gabriel de Magalhães, a Portuguese Jesuit who was working in Sichuan with another Jesuit Lodovico Buglio (but both pressed to serve as astronomers to Zhang), "he began his rule with such liberality, justice and magnificence by which he captivated all hearts that many mandarins, famous both in civic as in military affairs whom fear was keeping concealed, left their hideouts and flew to his side."
However, resistance to his rule did not cease, and Chongqing was retaken by Ming loyalists in the spring of 1645. Zhang then embarked on a campaign of terror, which was well under way by the middle of 1645, to stamp out the remaining resistance in Sichuan. In November 1645, according to de Magalhães, Zhang, after hearing that "a huge and powerful army was coming against him", announced that "the people of his kingdom had a secret pact with the enemy and planned an uprising; because of this he was determined to kill any suspected resistors". The Jesuits, who now "understood the evil of this man", reported that while they managed to save a few of their Jesuit brothers who were taken, the rest were killed. Zhang's policy of terror increased in intensity, especially in 1646 after he had decided to abandon Sichuan. By then, Zhang's government had virtually disintegrated, all but three of his principal officials had either committed suicide or were executed.
Death In 1636, the Manchu Hong Taiji had founded the Qing dynasty. The Qing army advanced through the Great Wall after the 1644 fall of the Ming dynasty to Li Zicheng. In 1646, the Qing sent out a force under the leadership of Haoge intending to attack Zhang's domain in Sichuan. In October 1646, Zhang abandoned Sichuan. He headed towards his homeland in Shaanxi, from whence the Qing army advanced. In January 1647, Zhang and the Qing forces met in Xichong where Zhang had set up camp. He was killed in the confrontation. According to one account, he was betrayed by one of his officers, a native of Sichuan named Liu Chin-chung (Liu Jinzhong) who resented his policy of terror in Sichuan. Zhang was alerted to his foes. He confronted them with only eight to ten men. Liu pointed Zhang out to the Qing when Zhang rushed out from his tent on learning of the betrayal. He was killed by a skilled Manchu archer.Parsons 1957, p. 399. The Draft History of Qing has an entirely different account of his death and says he was killed by Oboi during a battle.Draft History of Qing, Volume 4, "Annals of Shunzhi 1": "On the jisi day of the eleventh month of the third year of Shunzhi [2 January 1647], Hooge's army reached the southern regions [of China]. At that time, Zhang Xianzhong [held] a line of fortifications in Xichong. Oboi and others advanced together to attack and they routed [the rebels], beheading [Zhang] Xianzhong on the battlefield. They then divided their forces to attack the remaining bandits, overrunning more than 130 [enemy] camps/battalions. Sichuan was thus pacified." (清史稿·本紀四·世祖本紀一) "順治三年十一月己巳，豪格師至南部，時張獻忠列寨西充，鰲拜等兼程進擊，大破之，斬獻忠於陣，復分兵擊餘賊，破一百三十餘營，四川平。
Devastation of Sichuan The events surrounding Zhang's rule and afterwards devastated Sichuan, where he was said to have "engaged in one of the most hair-raising genocides in imperial history". Lurid stories of his killings and flayings were given in various accounts. According to Shu Bi (), an 18th-century account of the massacre, after every slaughter, the heads or skulls were collected and placed in several big piles, while the hands were placed in other big piles, and the ears and noses in more piles, so that Zhang could keep count of the killings. Shu Bi Original text: 賊每屠一方，標記所殺人數，儲竹園中。人頭幾大堆，人手掌幾大堆，人耳鼻幾大堆。所過處皆有記。 In one incident, he is said to have organized an imperial examination ostensibly to recruit scholars for his administration, only to have all the candidates, who numbered many thousands, killed. In another, to give thanks for his recovery after an illness, he was said to have cut off the feet of many women. The severed feet were heaped in two piles with those of his favorite concubine, whose feet were unusually small, placed on top. These two piles of feet were then doused in oil and set alight to become what he called "heavenly candles".
He was reported to have ordered further massacres before he abandoned Chengdu in advance of the Qing armies. The massacres, a subsequent famine and epidemic, attacks by tigers, as well as people fleeing from the turmoil and the Qing armies, resulted in a large-scale depopulation of Sichuan. The worst affected areas are believed to be Chengdu and its surrounding counties (mainly in Chengdu Plain), and places on the path of Zhang's retreat from Chengdu to Shaanxi.
Seven Kill Stele
A popular account of his life has it that he erected in Chengdu a stele, which came to be known as the Seven Kill Stele (), with the following inscription:
There are, however, considerable doubts that this account is accurate. In 1934, a stele thought to be this very one was found by a missionary – its reverse side contains an added inscription by a Southern Ming general commemorating Zhang's numerous victims whose bones he had collected and buried in 1646. While the first two lines of the poem on this stele are similar, the line with the seven kills is absent in this stele. Instead the actual line reads: "The spirits and gods are knowing, so reflect on this and examine yourselves" (鬼神明明，自思自量).The inscription reads: 天有萬物與人，人無一物與天。 鬼神明明，自思自量。 On its reverse are inscriptions by Yang Zhan (楊展) titled Ten-thousand-men Tomb (萬人墳), and described his distress at the sight of the remains of the massacre, so he had them collected and buried. Many therefore considered the story to be a distortion from the Qing era.
Deaths