Mavericks › Uprising Leaders
Gao Yingxiang
Ansai rebel who called himself the Dashing King, led the strongest of the early rebel bands with his nephew Li Zicheng, and was captured by Sun Chuanting in 1636
A mountain camp at night, with a beacon fire burning on a wooden platform at the upper left, several white tents on the slope and a red cloth tied to a rope; a wooden palisade with a gate stands at the right beyond a timber bridge over a rough river, under a clouded moon.
Also known as Hao Chuangwang
- Roles
- Uprising Leaders
Gao Yingxiang came from Ansai in Shaanxi; the Ming History (Mingshi) calls him a horse bandit and says he was Li Zicheng's maternal uncle. When famine struck Shaanxi in 1628 he gathered a following with the starving peasant Wang Daliang and styled himself Chuang Wang, the Dashing King, and Li Zicheng later joined him with his nephew Li Guo, taking the title Dashing General. With Zhang Xianzhong and other chiefs he raided through Shanxi, the capital region and Henan, and after the rebel council at Xingyang in 1635 he marched east with Zhang, sacked Fengyang and burned the tombs of the Ming founder's ancestors; at that time his band was the strongest of all. In 1636 he came north out of Hanzhong to break into the Wei valley, but in the seventh month the Shaanxi governor Sun Chuanting ambushed and captured him at Heishuiyu in Zhouzhi. He was sent to Beijing and executed by slicing, and his followers chose Li Zicheng to succeed him as the Dashing King.
Life and times
Dates Birth unknown–1636 CE