Why did Lang, the champion of the Ming Dynasty, become a propaganda cadre of the peasant uprising army in Li Zicheng?

At the end of Ming Dynasty, Li Zicheng, a postman, stood out from many peasant uprising troops and became a real grave digger in Ming Dynasty. Since the fifteenth year of Chongzhen, because the Ming army led by Hong Chengchou was defeated in the Shanhaiguan Pass, Li Zicheng defeated Sun Chuanting in Henan, and his troops were unstoppable in the civil war.

Therefore, Li Zicheng formally established Dashun regime in Xiangyang in the first month of the sixteenth year of Chongzhen, but Li Zicheng's regime was not recognized by the gentry of the Ming Dynasty. Until the demise of Li Zicheng, no gentry took the initiative to recognize the Li Zicheng regime. The reason is also very simple. Li Zicheng did not take a conciliatory attitude towards the gentry.

Since Li Zicheng started his army, he has provided supplies for the troops by plundering wealth and food, and all the wealth and food were snatched from the gentry. At least fifteen years before Chongzhen, the Li Zicheng rebels, who had been in the form of bandits, never thought of wooing the gentry in the past.

Under his command, only a few literati, such as Niu Jinxing and Yan Li, were forced to take refuge in the rebel army because of their crimes. Their rank is only juren. For a new regime, it is extremely abnormal that there is no scholar or gentry to help manage it. Even writing some encouraging slogans requires temporary arrest.

According to unofficial history's records, the peasant rebels in Li Zicheng once caught a future imperial examination champion in the Ming Dynasty to help them write slogans. This man is called Yang Tingjian, a native of Jiangsu. He was originally a juren. In the fifteenth year of Chongzhen's reign, he went to Beijing to catch the exam, bypassing Henan to visit an old friend. As a result, he was arrested as a able-bodied man by the peasant rebels in Li Zicheng.

Because Yang Tingjian is a scholar, he happens to be a talent badly needed by the rebels. In order to save his life, Yang Tingjian was forced to cater to Li Zicheng and helped the peasant rebels write many anti-Ming slogans, such as

Kill cattle and sheep, prepare wine pulp, open the door to meet the king, and the king will not receive food when he comes? ,? Open the door early to worship the king and make everyone happy?

Wait a minute.

However, Yang Tingjian is still a serious scholar and unwilling to commit himself to Li Zicheng. At that time, he was just a juren, and he was not famous yet. The peasant rebels were not very strict with him, so Yang Tingjian found an opportunity to escape and continue to take the imperial examination in Chongzhen for sixteen years.

As a result, Yang Tingjian was highly valued by Emperor Chongzhen when he entered the palace for the exam. Chongzhen won't know, of course. He personally selected the top scholar, who once wrote many slogans for the traitor Li Zicheng.

After Li Zicheng went to Beijing, he searched for officials above the first three categories, but most junior officials and new officialdom officials did not move and were ready to reuse them. Yang Tingjian, a new champion, is naturally valued, and there is still some incense between them.

But what Li Zicheng did in Beijing made Yang Tingjian look down on him. He didn't think Li Zicheng, an anti-thief who didn't pay attention to the gentry, would come to a good end. Therefore, he fled again. It is said that he climbed three thousand miles and finally fled back to his hometown Changzhou after several hardships. After his death, he ignored the repeated entreaties of the Qing Dynasty and refused to serve the Qing Dynasty until his death.

In the fifteenth year of Chongzhen, in fact, many people had already seen that the Ming Dynasty was dying, but after being captured by the rebels in Li Zicheng, Yang Tingjian still insisted on fleeing to take the imperial examination. The Ming dynasty has not officially perished, which is one reason. Most importantly, Li Zicheng always exterminated the gentry, which made Yang Tingjian regard it as a thief.

If Li Zicheng took some appeasement measures to the gentry and made his regime compromise with the so-called landlord class, as it did after the Qing Dynasty entered the customs, maybe Yang Tingjian might have worked for Li Zicheng when he was captured for the first time. Later, he refused to accept the solicitation of the Qing Dynasty, and there was no such gap between Li Zicheng rebels and him. However, Li Zicheng never knew the importance of the gentry class and scholars.