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The Collapse of the Ming Dynasty
Li Zicheng & Wu Sangui
In
the early decades of the seventeenth century, the Ming court slowly
lost control of its rural bureaucracy and, as a result, of its tax
structure. Pressed at the same time for more money to pay and supply
the troops needed to counter the attacks of the Jürchen tribesmen
who were growing in power and seizing great areas of land in Manchuria,
the court both increased extra levies on those populated areas that it
still controlled and laid off many employees in the northwest, where
the danger to the state seemed less pressing. One of those laid off in
this economy move was a post-station attendant from a rural family
named Li Zicheng. (SMC, 21)
With the Manchu armies to his east and Li Zicheng’s forces to his west, General Wu Sangui
was in a desperate situation. His only hope to survive was by allying
with one of his opponents. Among arguments for joining Li were the fact
that he was Chinese, that he seemed to have the support of the local
people, that he promised to end the abuses that had marked the late
Ming state, and that he held Wu’s
father as a hostage. Otherwise, Li was an unknown quantity, violent and
uneducated; moreover, the behavior of his army in Peking after he had
seized the city in April 1644 was not encouraging to a wealthy and
cultured official like General Wu. Li’s
troops had looted and ravaged the city, attacking and pillaging the
homes of senior officials, seizing their relatives for ransom, or
demanding enormous payoffs in “protection money.” Even
though Li had declared the formal founding of a new dynasty, he was
unable to control his own generals in Peking, and Wu might well have
wondered how effective Li would be in unifying China.
As
for allying with the Manchus, there was the disadvantage that they
were ethnically non-Chinese, and their Jürchen background included
them in a history of semicivilized frontier people whom the Chinese had
traditionally despised; furthermore, they had terrorized parts of north
China in their earlier raids and had virtually wiped out some of the
cities they had occupied. Yet in their favor was the early development
of their embryonic regime, the Qing, which offered a promise of order:
the six ministries, the examination system, the formation of the
Chinese banners, the large numbers of Chinese advisers in senior
positions — all were encouraging signs to Wu. And their treatment
of senior Chinese officials who surrendered had been good. (SMC, 32) |
A Letter from Wu Sangui to Dorgon
Renshen Day, 4th Moon, 1644
Our country has had
good relations with your northern dynasty for more than two hundred
years. Now, for no reason, we face this national catastrophe. Your
northern dynasty should consider our plight with compassion. Moreover,
these mutinous officials and bandits also cannot be tolerated by your
northern dynasty. To be rid of this violent evil will be greatly
favorable to you. ... Moreover, it is impossible to calculate how much
wealth or the number of women the roving bandits have already
accumulated; when your righteous army arrives all this will be yours
and this shall be a great profit. As the world’s greatest hero,
your majesty has this opportunity to rip down what is withered and
rotten: certainly there will never be a second chance!
I beg you to consider the loyal and
righteous words of this solitary official of a destroyed kingdom and
immediately summon crack troops to enter the central and western zones.
I, Sangui, will lead my command to arrive at the gates of the capital.
We can then destroy the roving bandits who have taken the court and
make manifest great righteousness in China. Then will our dynasty repay
your northern dynasty merely with wealth? We will give land as a reward
and absolutely shall never betray our word. ... (DC, 22-23)
Dorgon’s Reply
Guiyu Day, 4th Moon, 1644
We always wanted to
cultivate a good relationship with the Ming and often sent you letters;
however, the Emperor and officials of the Ming did not consider the
chaos afflicting the state or the death of its troops and people and
you never replied. Therefore, on three occasions our state launched
campaigns to show your officials, troops, and common people that we
wanted the Ming Emperor to make careful plans and befriend us. We shall
do this no longer. We seek only to pacify the nation and give the
people rest. ... When your excellence dispatched an envoy with your
letter, I was enormously happy and, therefore, am leading my army
forward. Your excellence thought to repay your [Ming] lord’s
graciousness toward you and refused to share the same sky with the
roving bandits. This is certainly the righteousness of a loyal
subject! ... If your excellence is willing to lead your troops to us, we
will enfeoff you with a domain and ennoble you as a prince. Your state
will then be avenged and you and your family will be protected. Your
posterity will enjoy wealth and nobility as eternal as the mountains
and rivers. (DC, 23-24)
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For
a combination of [the reasons cited above] and, according to popular
tales, because Li had seized one of Wu’s favorite concubines and had
made her his own, General Wu Sangui threw in his lot with the Manchus,
fought off the army that Li sent against him, and invited Dorgon to
join him in recapturing Peking. Li retaliated by executing Wu’s father
and displaying his head on the walls of Peking. But the morale of Li’s
troops was fading fast, and not even his formal assumption of imperial
rank on June 3, 1644, could shore him up. The next day he and his
troops, weighed down by booty, fled to the west. On the sixth of June,
the Manchus and Wu entered the capital, and the boy emperor was
enthroned in the Forbidden City with the reign title of Shunzhi,
meaning “obedience in rule.” The adopting of such a traditional Chinese
title by the young emperor showed that the Manchus now formally claimed
the mandate of heaven to rule China. (SMC, 32-33)
Qing emperors had to grow up fast if they were to grow up at
all. Shunzhi had been thirteen when, taking advantage of Dorgon’s
sudden death, he put himself in power. Shunzhi’s son, Kangxi, was also
thirteen when he first moved to oust the regent Oboi;
and he was fifteen when, with the help of his grandmother and a group
of Manchu guard officers, he managed to arrange for Oboi’s arrest in
1669 on charges of arrogance and dishonesty. Oboi soon died in prison,
and Kangxi began a reign that was to last until 1722 and make him one
of the most admired rulers in China’s history. (SMC, 48)
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Ending the Resistance
The Execution of the Prince of Gui
The
prince of Gui (Emperor Yongli) was the most
prominent of several Ming pretenders in the decades after the
conquest.
He was enthroned by Ming local officials in November 1646 in Wuzhou,
Guangxi. ... In 1659, with the Qing army in pursuit, Yongli crossed the
border into Burma, where he was placed under virtual house arrest but
was not mistreated. Two years later, following a coup
that brought to power a new Burmese king eager to mollify
the Qing state, the last Ming pretender was turned over to Wu Sangui,
the celebrated turncoat. As the following document suggests, Wu had no
compunction about
putting Yongli to death. This 1662 memorial, sent to the court by Wu
Sangui and Aixing, includes a copy of a letter from Yongli imploring Wu
for mercy (DC, 33)
Letter from Yongli to Wu Sangui
1662
Your excellency has already ruined my family and you now seek to take away my posterity. This is like reading the poem in the Shijing
about the owl that devours its own young. Can you not feel moved? Your
excellency is the descendant of a family long honored with
appointments; even if you cannot pity your servant, can you not think
of the late Emperor? If you have no consideration for the late Emperor,
can you not recall the Ming ancestors? If you do not recall the Ming
ancestors, can you not remember your own father and grandfather? I
cannot understand what sort of grace the great Qing has bestowed you or
what sort of grievance your servant has given to your excellency. Your
excellency considers himself clever but is actually foolish. You
believe yourself to be generous but you are mean. After some time has
passed, there will be biographies and historical accounts; what sort of
person will future generations consider your excellency to have been? (DC, 34-35) |
What is the basis of the Yongli Emperor's appeal?
How should we judge Wu Sangui?
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Unifying the Empire
The War of the Three Feudatories, 1673-1681
The most important of the many problems facing the
young ruler [i.e. the Kangxi Emperor] was that of unifying China under
Manchu control. Although in 1662 Wu Sangui had eliminated the last Ming
pretender in the southwest, the region had not been fully integrated
into Peking’s administrative structure. ... Instead, the whole of
south and southwest China was left under the control of the three
Chinese generals who had directed most of the fighting there in the
late 1650s.
These three were named as princes by the Manchu court and honored by
having their sons married to the daughters of Manchu nobles; each of
the three was granted what amounted to an almost independent domain,
and in Western histories they are named the “Three
Feudatories.” The first, Wu Sangui himself, controlled the provinces of Yunnan and Guizhou
as well as sections of Hunan and Sichuan; the second [Shang Zhixin] ruled Guangdong and
parts of Guangxi from his base in Canton; and the third [Geng Jingzhong] controlled Fujian
from the coastal city of Fuzhou.
Together the three men were virtual masters over a
region equivalent in size to France and Spain combined, or to
America’s southern states from the Georgia coast to Texas. Within
these areas, despite the nominal presence of Qing bureaucrats, the
Three Feudatories supervised all aspects of military and civil
government, the examination systems, relations with the indigenous
peoples, and the collection of taxes. Not only did they keep local
revenues for themselves and control lucrative trade monopolies, they
also constantly demanded lavish subsidies from the Qing court as the
price of their continued loyalty. By the 1660s, they were receiving
more than 10 million ounces of silver every year. ... Despite an attempt by some of Kangxi’s
most trusted confidants to persuade Wu Sangui to leave his base
peacefully [and retire in Manchuria], Wu threw off his allegiance to
the Qing in December 1673, declaring the formation of a new dynasty,
and driving his armies deep into Hunan. The other two generals joined the fray
in 1674 and 1676 respectively. (SMC, 48-9)
Was this war inevitable ... and if not, who was to blame — Kangxi or the Feudatories?
Given the strength of the Feudatories, why didn't they succeed?
With their huge standing armies and sound
administrative and economic base, Wu and his supporters had a better
chance of success than the Ming loyalist princes of Fu and Gui before
them. ... [and indeed] the rebellion almost succeeded in destroying the
Qing. At the very least, it looked as if the Manchus would lose control
of all of China south of the Yangzi River, and that permanent partition
of the kingdom would be the result.
China remained a unified country (with all
the significance that has for later world history) as the result of
five crucial factors. One was Wu Sangui’s indecisiveness in not
driving across the Hunan border and up to the north when he first held
the initiative in 1674. A second was Kangxi’s ability, despite
his youth, to rally his court behind him and to develop a long-range
strategy for conquest and retrenchment. A third was the courage and
tenacity of a number of Manchu generals — some also young and
untried in battle — who spearheaded the Qing counterattacks. ... A
fourth was the inability of the Three Feudatories to coordinate their
endeavors and to mount a sustained campaign against the Qing on any one
front. A fifth was their inability to appeal to the most loyal of the
Ming supporters, who were fully aware that the Three Feudatories had
previously been active collaborators with the Manchus. (SMC, 50) |
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Expanding the Empire
The Annexation of Taiwan
In the later years of the Ming dynasty, Taiwan was
still largely unknown. ... In the 1620s Taiwan began to feature in global
politics [with the arrival of the Portuguese, the Spanish, and finally
the Dutch]. ... The Dutch stayed largely aloof from the fighting by the
Ming loyalists in the 1640s and 1650s, but the development of the
coastal war and its interconnections with Ming loyalists eventually
made Dutch isolation impossible. The fighting escalated when the leader
of the powerful and wealthy Zheng family, a pirate and trader who plied
the waters between Fujian, Taiwan, and southern Japan, was finally made
an official by the desperate Ming. Although he went over to the Qing
court in 1646, his impetuous son, Zheng Chenggong, refused to do so.
Instead he made his troops and ships available to the fleeing Ming, and
continued to support them in name and deed even after they had been
driven inland.
This remarkable naval warrior, known to history as Koxinga, ... [took
Taiwan from the Dutch in February 1662, allowing him to] trade goods
and cash estimated to be worth over 1 million ounces of silver. ... Even
after the war of the Three Feudatories was over, Kangxi still found it
hard to assemble the necessary forces to capture the island from the
Zheng family [though they ultimately surrendered in 1683]. ... Kangxi
decided to incorporate Taiwan into his empire. It became a prefecture
of Fujian province, with a capital at Tainan, and was divided into
three counties, each under a civilian magistrate. (SMC, 51-55)
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Legitimizing the Empire
Converting the Chinese
The
protracted resistance of the Ming claimants, the support given to
Koxinga and his descendants, the swift spread and near success of the
Three Feudatories: all these pointed to a lack of support for the Qing
among the Chinese. From the beginning of his reign, Emperor Kangxi
addressed himself to this problem by trying to strike a balance in
which he reassured the Manchu nobles as to his martial vigor and
political firmness on the one hand, and tried to convince the Chinese
of his respect for their traditional culture on the other. (SMC, 56)
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The
teachings of Confucius had an undisputed place in Chinese society. ...
In essence, during the fifth century B.C. Confucius had been the
spokesman in China for the values of morality and dignity in private
life and in government. He had argued for the importance of
righteousness and loyalty, reinforced by correct rituals that would
place a given individual in proper relationship with the cosmos and
with his contemporaries. He had stated that worthy men should not serve
unworthy rulers and must be ready to sacrifice their lives, if
necessary, in the defense of principle. He argued further that humans
should concentrate on the problems of this world and, while paying
proper respect to the memory of their own deceased ancestors, should
not seek to understand the forces of heaven and the realm of the
spirits. ...
From the moment he imprisoned the regent Oboi, Kangxi
showed the utmost respect for this complex legacy. In 1670 he issued to
the nation a series of sixteen maxims that were designed to be a
summation of Confucian moral values. ... Kangxi subsequently named a team
of Manchu and Chinese tutors, with whom he read meticulously through the
Four Books and then the Five Classics [i.e. the essential texts of the
Confucian tradition]. ... Judiciously “leaked” to the court,
the news of these studies, along with Kangxi’s intensive work on
Chinese calligraphy, gave the young monarch the aura of a “sage
ruler.” (SMC, 57-58)
One of the great powers of the Chinese state lay in its
control of the examination system. Shunzhi had revived this system, and
Kangxi continued to hold the exams every three years — even during
the civil-war period. But he was vexed at the number of accomplished
scholars who refused even to sit for the examinations on the grounds
that to do so would be to betray the memory of the Ming dynasty under
which they had grown up. As an ingenious solution to this predicament,
Kangxi, in 1679, ordered that nominations be sent from the provinces
for a special examination — separate from the triennial national
exams — to be held for men of outstanding talent. Although some
austere scholars still refused to come to Peking for this exam, and
others would not permit themselves to be nominated, the venture was a
success. Fifty special degrees were awarded, mostly to scholars from
the Yangzi delta provinces; and, in a tactful gesture to their past
loyalties, these scholars were put to work helping compile the official
history of the defunct Ming dynasty. (SMC, 58-59)
Those who would not serve in administrative office and
would not take the examinations could still be lured by the promise of
good company and hard cash. Literary compilations especially proved a
fine focus for their energies. Kangxi assembled several groups of
scholars and hired them to write dictionaries, encyclopedias, records
of imperial tours, and collections of classical prose and poetry. Other
senior ministers sponsored massive geographical studies and local
histories, which enabled restless scholars to travel the country in
search of material and then to return to a comfortable home base to
write it down. Yet other officials gave promising writers jobs as
private secretaries with light duties, which allowed them ample time
for pursuing their own creative paths, whether as novelists,
short-story writers, poets, or dramatists. The result was a flowering
of Chinese culture in the later seventeenth century, despite the recent
bloody imposition of alien rule. (SMC, 61) |
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