Chapter 59 Section 12 Violence for Violence's sake

In addition to these "revolutionary" or at least forced and necessary acts of violence, some peasant armies seemed to engage in violence purely for the sake of violence, and "cruelty" sometimes even became a form of entertainment.Opening the "Ping Kou Zhi" written by Peng Sunyi of the Qing Dynasty, which specifically recorded the peasant uprising in the late Ming Dynasty, such bloody texts abound. Gao Yingxiang, who claimed to be the king of Chuang, robbed five beautiful women at one time, and gave the most beautiful Xing family to Li Zicheng as Mrs. Yazhai.Zhang Xianzhong didn't want Mrs. Yazhai at all. He snatched a beautiful woman, only stayed overnight, and got up early the next day to kill her.

At the beginning of the eighth year of Chongzhen (1635 A.D.), Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong joined forces to capture Fengyang, Zhu Yuanzhang's hometown.The peasant army burned down the majestic and tall palaces in Fengyang, and burned 300,000 towering giant pines in the Ming Emperor's Mausoleum. The fire burned for several days. In Yuchai, more than 22,650 public and private huts were burned." After withdrawing from Fengyang, they rushed to Liuhe, Anhui. "It's the day surrounding Liuhe...thousands of naked women are under the city, and those who are ashamed will be punished." Thousands of women were arrested, ordered to strip off their clothes, and shouted at the city, motivating the guards in the city to fight.Anyone who doesn't curse loudly will be shredded.This is the siege method commonly used by the peasant army.In addition, they also "gathered a hundred children, burned them around the wood, and listened to their wailing for laughter."

In December of the same year, the peasant army captured Huoshan, Anhui. "It's time to kill and kill: there are people who bind their husbands and fathers, rape their wives and daughters, and then kill them. There are people who drive away their fathers, rape their daughters, and then kill them. There are naked pregnant women who divination about the male and female in their womb. There are those who think of it as a play. There are those who boil oil in a large pot, throw babies in it, and watch them jump their horns for joy. There are those who tie people to the ground, cut their stomachs, and feed their flocks of rice and beans, and take human blood and rice to cook porridge. Donkeys and horses. Hundreds of thousands of children are plundered, and they cannot be taken with them before they leave.

The wings of human violent imagination cannot fly to the same sky.Forced fathers to rape their daughters, and dissected pregnant women to verify the sex of their babies. These scenes can be traced back to the Shang Dynasty or ancient Rome, and they were repeated frequently when the Qing army entered the customs and the Japanese invaded China.