UNIVERSIDAD PEDAGOGICA NACIONAL

The Qing conquest of China occurred at a time when the Ming dynasty had been subverted by peasant rebellions, and thus the Chinese had lost the capacity to mobilize military and political resources

to fight against Qing attacks. The Manchu conquest, unlike western invasions in the mid-nineteenth century, did not bring in technological, cultural, or political elements that inspired the Chinese to learn willingly. On the contrary, the Manchus had little to nothing to offer to the Chinese, except for few Manchu ethnic marks such as the male hairstyle, dress, and sociopolitical discriminations imposed on the Chinese, which caused long-term Chinese animosities, as we shall see in Chapter IV. This section intends to give a concise description of the Manchu conquest of China in the 1640s to illustrate the point that Manchu military conquest and ethnic policies on the Chinese, who deemed themselves a civilized people as opposed to the “barbarian” Manchus, sowed the seeds of hatred among the Chinese, which smoldered throughout the dynasty and surfaced in the last decade of the Qing dynasty, prompted political unrest, and eventually led to the downfall of the government.

The Ming began to suffer a chronic internal disorder in 1627 when peasants in the northwestern Shaanxi province revolted against local government due to heavy taxation at a time of natural disasters. Soon peasant uprisings swept across the country. In the following decade of so, rebels struck many provinces, slashed local governments, and gradually but steadily destroyed Ming political and economic structures. On May 6, 1644, one of the peasant armies, the Dashun, led by Li Zicheng, captured Beijing. The Chongzhen emperor committed suicide before the troops entered the Forbidden City. Ming rule of China came to an end.

The Qing state, after Nurgachi’s issuance of his “Seven Great Grieves” against the Ming in 1618, officially took on the Ming as its enemy country, and sought to contend hegemony in East Asia after having subdued the Mongol state in 1635 and vanquished Korea in 1636. The Qing capitalized on Ming’s internal conflicts. In 1638 Qing besieged the city of Jinzhou, the one closest to the Qing among the eight Ming fortresses along the Liaoxi corridor linking Manchuria to China proper. Fully aware of the Qing’s attempt, the Ming emperor hastily transferred the notable general Hong Chengchou to Jinzhou from the battlefront with the peasant troops next year. A war broke out between the Qing and the Ming in Jinzhou and the surrounding areas, and lasted until spring 1642, ending with the Ming defeated. At the time the Ming was still strong enough to assemble troops from the provinces and move them to the Northeast to

confront the Qing. Against such a political backdrop, the Qing tried to pacify the rebel armies in the hope of winning them over. On November 6, 1642, Hung Taiji sent envoys to the Ming to observe the situation. The Manchu officials were instructed to negotiate with the Chinese rebels, telling them that the motive for the Qing attack on the Ming coincided with that of the Chinese rebels in that they were both fighting against a government engaging in inhumane policies, but the mission ended in vain (Li 1999).

By the time he took Beijing, the rebel leader Li Zicheng had established the regime the Shun, and attempted to bring China under his control. After the fall of the capital, Li sent a letter to Wu Sangui, the general stationed at the Shanhaiguan Pass at the east end of the Great Wall, urging him to surrender. Wu refused to reply.9 _{Before Li Zicheng’s army took Beijing on April 25, the Chongzhen emperor instructed}

Wu to bring his troops southward to protect the capital from the rebel. Wu did follow the instruction, but the capital fell in Li’s hand before Wu reached there. On April 28, knowing the possibility to take over the capital was slim; Wu retreated to Shanhaiguan Pass, a strategic point overseeing the entrance to China from Manchuria.

Sandwiched between the Qing to the Northeast and the rebel regime Shun to the Southwest, Wu’s troops, mounting to 30,000 to 40,000 men, were unable to confront either side. Wu had to choose between surrendering to the Qing or the Shun. Wu first opted for the Chinese side. He gave over the Shanhaiguan Pass to Tang Tong, representative of Li, then led his troops down to Beijing to join Li’s course. On May 10 on his way to the capital, however, Wu encountered his family members who fled the city, from whom Wu learned that the Shun mistreated Ming officials who had voluntarily surrendered to the Shun, forcing them to contribute large sums of wealth to the regime by torturing the officials, including his father, Wu Xiang. Wu realized that he could meet the same fate as his father. Wu then ordered his troops to turn around to march back to Shanhaiguan. On May 13 Wu recaptured the pass. Foreseeing Li’s attack, Wu recruited new soldiers, bringing his troops to over 60,000 men. Meanwhile Wu sent envoys to the Qing to request help. On May 20 Dorgon met with Wu’s representatives and received a letter written by Wu himself, in which Wu implored Dorgon to “lend” troops to help him to

restore the Ming, and promised to cede Chinese territory in return. In the letter Wu designated two routes for Qing troops to enter China: one was the Xifengkou-Longjingguan line, the other was the Qiangziling- Miyun, both being the routes the Qing had used before to assault the Ming, thus having no strategic value. Dorgon was cautious about Wu’s intention. In his reply on May 21, Dorgon requested Wu to surrender and promised noble title in return.

Meanwhile on May 16, Li sent representatives to Wu demanding his surrender. Two days later Li himself commanded 100,000 troops to swoop on Shanhaiguan. On the morning of May 26, Li’s troops arrived at the destination and a battle began between the two armies. Dorgon’s troops arrived on the outskirts of Shanhaiguan in the evening through rapid march. A day before Dorgon received a second letter from Wu, requesting him to bring troops immediately to Shanhaiguan to resist the Shun. By the time Dorgon’s troops arrived at the scene, Wu had fought with Li for a whole day, and was in the inferior position. Li’s troops broke through Wu’s first defense line, and gained the upper hand in the battles at supporting castles around the Shanhaiguan fortress. At the time Dorgon’s troops were still outside Shanhaihuan, while the main forces of Li’s troops were engaging in combat with Wu. Dorgon defeated a detachment of Li’s soldiers at Yipianshi, thus cleared the way to Shanhaiguan. On the morning of May 27, Dorgon led his troops to Shanhaiguan, but ordered his men to stop outside the fortress, not joining the battle as Wu expected. Li’s troops started to attack again, up to three times Wu implored Dorgon to help. Dorgon was still skeptical of Wu’s intention and wanted to ensure that Wu would definitely submit to him. Before he sent soldiers to join the battle, Dorgon detached scouts to obtain details about the combat between Wu and Li up to eight times. Under the fierce assaults by Li’s troops, Wu was unable to hold his own. Protected by 200 bodyguards, Wu broke out of Li’s encirclement, and galloped to Dorgon’s camp, where the two men completed a negotiation that would influence China for the many years to come. In a nutshell, Dorgon agreed to dispatch soldiers to help Wu. In return Wu promised to divide up Chinese territory and cede the land north of the Yellow River to the Qing. As a sign of submission, Wu agreed that he and his soldiers would adopt the Manchu male hairstyle immediately, like Chinese who had been brought under Manchu rule before.

After the negotiation, Wu opened the Shanhaiguan gate and Qing troops entered the fortress secretly. Dorgon then ordered Wu to fight with Li first. For the rest of the day, the two armies fought fiercely against each other as Wu knew he could not lose. The battle lasted until the evening, and Li gradually gained the upper hand. At the juncture, Dorgon sent 20,000 cavalrymen to join the combat, and defeated Li. Li retreated to Beijing. On June 15 he left the capital for Xi’an, capital of his home province Shaanxi. Two days later Dorgon entered Beijing and soon settled the capital and surrounding areas. Then he sent troops to Henan and Shanxi provinces surrounding Shaanxi to contain Li. With his subordinates losing several battles in other areas in the province, Li believed he could not defend Xi’an; thus he abandoned the city and moved southward. On his way he lost one battle after another. Finally he was killed in Jiangxi province the next year and the Shun regime came to an end (Li 1999).

After Qing troops took Beijing, Ming loyalists continued to resist in the south. Four former Ming princes established southern Ming governments successively in different locations. The last one lasted until early 1662.

Another force fighting against the Qing was Zheng Chenggong’s army. Zheng set the two islands Jinmen and Xiamen (Amoy) in the southeastern province of Fujian as his bases, and further expanded his influence to some areas in Fujian, Guangdong, and Zhejiang provinces, where he collected supplies for his military campaigns. Parallel to his effort on the mainland, Zheng also actively engaged in maritime trading between China, Japan, and Southeast Asian nations to raise funds. Moreover Zheng and his family sought to enlist foreign help from counties as far afield as Liuqiu (Ryukyu), Luzon, and the Roman pope. Most noteworthy was that up to 10-20 times Zheng and his family appealed to Japan to send troops to help with their cause. Unfortunately the Bakufu denied their requests. Nevertheless, Zheng was determined to carry out his ambitious plan to reestablish the Ming. In June 1658 Zheng launched a campaign to attack the mainland now under Qing control. From Fujian he led troops northward, taking towns and cities in Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces, and finally reached Nanjing in the summer of 1559. Zheng’s troops besieged the city. Capturing Nanjing was the first important step in his plan. In a poem he wrote at the time, Zheng said he was standing on the bank of the Yangtze River wearing white mourning

apparel for his lost country, and was determined to exterminate the barbarians. In the last line Zheng expressed his firm belief that he would be able to reestablish the Ming state: “Look, if I throw my whip into the natural moat [the Yangtze River] and across it, then I believe that I will make the Middle Plain [China] have the surname of Zhu [the surname of the Ming emperors]” (Ishihara 1967: 59). However, secret enemy agents within Zheng’s ranks rendered his defeat at Nanjing, and he had to retreat to Fujian. In 1661 Zheng captured Taiwan and from then on the island served as the base for his cause. The Qing approached Zheng’s army in two ways: military campaign on the one hand and on the other hand the Qing’s declared amnesty for those who would surrender, further promising rewards to them. In 1662 Zheng died in Taiwan and his son Zheng Jing succeeded him as the leader. In 1667 twice the court sent envoys to Taiwan to negotiate with Zheng Jing, who eventually refused the Qing conditions that he had to shave his head and move to the mainland. In 1683 the court ordered the general Shi Lang to attack Taiwan. Shi took the Penghu islands between the mainland and Taiwan. Under military pressure, Zheng Keshuang, the son of Zheng Jing, surrendered, bringing the last organized resistance force to an end (Qin 2001). Evidence suggests that Zheng Chenggong’s subordinates formed the Heaven and Earth

Association (Luo 1997), whose purpose was to subvert the Qing and reestablish the Ming. The association was an important social force throughout the Qing dynasty, organizing a large number of rebellions in the south against the government. Many of its members participated in the Taiping rebellion and the 1911 Revolution.