Shunzhi Emperor

In the 1650s, he faced a resurgence of Ming loyalist resistance, but by 1661 his armies had defeated the Qing's last enemies, Koxinga and the Prince of Gui, both of whom would succumb the following year.

[8] His string of victories ended in February 1626 at the siege of Ningyuan, where Ming commander Yuan Chonghuan defeated him with the help of recently acquired Portuguese cannon.

[21] On 17 February 1644, Jirgalang, who was a capable military leader but looked uninterested in managing state affairs, willingly yielded control of all official matters to Dorgon.

On 24 April of that year, rebel leader Li Zicheng breached the walls of the Ming capital, pushing the Chongzhen Emperor to hang himself on a hill behind the Forbidden City.

[26] Hearing the news, Dorgon's Chinese advisors Hong Chengchou and Fan Wencheng (范文程; 1597–1666) urged the Manchu prince to seize this opportunity to present themselves as avengers of the fallen Ming and to claim the Mandate of Heaven for the Qing.

[30] Aided by Wu Sangui's elite soldiers, who fought the rebel army for hours before Dorgon finally chose to intervene with his cavalry, the Qing won a decisive victory against Li Zicheng at the Battle of Shanhai Pass on 27 May.

[44] In June 1645, Dorgon eventually decreed that all official documents should refer to him as "Imperial Uncle Prince Regent" (Huang shufu shezheng wang 皇叔父攝政王), which left him one step short of claiming the throne for himself.

"[47] Despite tax remissions and large-scale building programs designed to facilitate the transition, in 1648 many Chinese civilians still lived among the newly arrived Banner population and there was still animosity between the two groups.

"[51] Under the Shunzhi Emperor's reign, the average number of graduates per session of the metropolitan examination was the highest of the Qing dynasty ("to win more Chinese support"), until 1660 when lower quotas were established.

[56] Under the pressure of Qing armies, Li was forced to leave Xi'an in February 1645, and he was killed—either by his own hand or by a peasant group that had organized for self-defense in this time of rampant banditry—in September 1645 after fleeing though several provinces.

[67] On 21 July 1645, after Jiangnan had been superficially pacified, Dorgon issued a most inopportune edict ordering all Chinese men to shave their forehead and to braid the rest of their hair into a queue identical to those of the Manchus.

When the city wall was finally breached on 9 October 1645, the Qing army led by Ming defector Liu Liangzuo (劉良佐; d. 1667) massacred the entire population, killing between 74,000 and 100,000 people.

[80] The two Ming regimes fought each other until 20 January 1647, when a small Qing force led by Li Chengdong captured Guangzhou, killed the Shaowu Emperor, and sent the Yongli court fleeing to Nanning in Guangxi.

[84] Meanwhile, in October 1646, Qing armies led by Hooge (the son of Hong Taiji who had lost the succession struggle of 1643) reached Sichuan, where their mission was to destroy the kingdom of bandit leader Zhang Xianzhong.

[107] The scandal, which soon spread to Nanjing examination circles, uncovered the corruption and influence-peddling that was rife in the bureaucracy, and that many moralistic officials from the north attributed to the existence of southern literary clubs and to the decline of classical scholarship.

[108] During his short reign, the Shunzhi Emperor encouraged Han Chinese to participate in government activities and revived many Chinese-style institutions that had been either abolished or marginalized during Dorgon's regency.

He discussed history, classics, and politics with grand academicians such as Chen Mingxia (see previous section) and surrounded himself with new men such as Wang Xi (王熙; 1628–1703), a young northern Chinese who was fluent in Manchu.

[112] Eunuchs had been kept under tight control during Dorgon's regency, but the young emperor used them to counter the influence of other power centers such as his mother the Empress Dowager and former regent Jirgalang.

[120] Also in 1646 sultan Abu al-Muhammad Haiji Khan, a Moghul prince who ruled Turfan, had sent an embassy requesting the resumption of trade with China, which had been interrupted by the fall of the Ming dynasty.

[124] In 1651 the young emperor invited to Beijing the Fifth Dalai Lama, the leader of the Yellow Hat Sect of Tibetan Buddhism, who, with the military help of Khoshot Mongol Gushri Khan, had recently unified religious and secular rule in Tibet.

[127] To prepare for the arrival of this "living Buddha," the Shunzhi Emperor ordered the building of the White Dagoba (baita 白塔) on an island on one of the imperial lakes northwest of the Forbidden City, at the former site of Qubilai Khan's palace.

In early August 1652, Li Dingguo, who had served as general in Sichuan under bandit king Zhang Xianzhong (d. 1647) and was now protecting the Yongli Emperor of the Southern Ming, retook Guilin (Guangxi province) from the Qing.

[135] Headquartered in Changsha (in what is now Hunan province), he patiently built up his forces; only in late 1658 did well-fed and well-supplied Qing troops mount a multipronged campaign to take Guizhou and Yunnan.

[135] In late January 1659, a Qing army led by Manchu prince Doni took the capital of Yunnan, sending the Yongli Emperor fleeing into nearby Burma, which was then ruled by King Pindale Min of the Toungoo dynasty.

[137] In 1659, just as the Shunzhi Emperor was preparing to hold a special examination to celebrate the glories of his reign and the success of the southwestern campaigns, Zheng sailed up the Yangtze River with a well-armed fleet, took several cities from Qing hands, and went so far as to threaten Nanjing.

[d] The emperor's will expressed his regret about his Chinese-style ruling (his reliance on eunuchs and his favoritism toward Chinese officials), his neglect of Manchu nobles and traditions, and his headstrong devotion to his consort rather than to his mother.

[173] The regents also adopted aggressive policies toward the Qing's Chinese subjects: they executed dozens of people and punished thousands of others in the wealthy Jiangnan region for literary dissent and tax arrears, and forced the coastal population of southeast China to move inland in order to starve the Taiwan-based Kingdom of Tungning run by descendants of Koxinga.

[178] Once victory had become certain, a special examination for "eminent scholars of broad learning" (Boxue hongru 博學鴻儒) was held in 1679 to attract Chinese literati who had refused to serve the new dynasty.

"[181] Ironically, however, the prolonged Pax Manchurica that followed the Kangxi consolidation made the Qing unprepared to face aggressive European powers with modern weaponry in the nineteenth century.

[186] Empress Consort Concubine Enthroned in 1626 as Khan, Hong Taiji changed the dynastic name to "Great Qing" in 1636 and claimed the title of emperor.In 1644, the Shunzhi Emperor began to rule over China proper, replacing the Ming dynasty.

Black-and-white print of a severe-looking man with long rising eyebrows and a mustache, wearing skin shoes, a round-edged fur cap, and clothing with several folds held together by a sash and surmounted by a fur collar. He is holding a bow in his right hand. Three Chinese characters that read "Nüzhen tu" ("image of a Jurchen") appear on the upper right corner.
Depiction of a Jurchen man on a Ming woodblock print dated 1609. The original caption explained that the Jurchens lived near the Changbai Mountains and wore "deerskin shoes and fish-scale clothing." [ 1 ]
Three-quarter painted portrait of a thickly bearded man wearing a red hat adorned with a peacock feather and dressed with a dark long robe with dragon patterns. Clockwise from bottom left to bottom right, he is surrounded by a sheathed sword mounted on a wooden display, Manchu writing on the wall, a three-clawed dragon and a five-clawed dragon (also printed on the wall), and a wooden desk with an incense burner and a book on it.
Prince Regent Dorgon in imperial regalia. He reigned as a quasi emperor from 1643 to his death in 1650, a period during which the Qing conquered almost all of China .
Color photograph of a three-level stone structure with railings on each level, viewed from the outside, facing a staircase that leads to the top level.
The circular mound of the Altar of Heaven , where the Shunzhi Emperor conducted sacrifices on 30 October 1644, ten days before being officially proclaimed Emperor of China . The ceremony marked the moment when the Qing dynasty seized the Mandate of Heaven .
A black-and-white picture of a stone-paved alley going from bottom right to top left leading to a three-roofed gate and bordered on the right by a line up of small roofed cubicles open on one side.
Examination cells in Beijing. In order to enhance their legitimacy among the Chinese elite, the Qing reestablished the imperial civil service examinations almost as soon as they seized Beijing in 1644.
A black-and-white print of an outdoor scene depicting a broken city wall and two destroyed houses, with several corpses lying on the ground (some beheaded), and two men with swords killing unarmed men.
A late- Qing woodblock print representing the Yangzhou massacre of May 1645. Dorgon's brother Dodo ordered this massacre to scare other southern Chinese cities into submission. By the late nineteenth century the massacre was used by anti-Qing revolutionaries to arouse anti-Manchu sentiment among the Han Chinese population. [ 55 ]
A black-and-white photograph from three-quarter back view of a man wearing a round cap and a long braided queue that reaches to the back of his right knee. His left foot is posed on the first step of a four-step wooden staircase. Bending forward to touch a cylindrical container from which smoke is rising, he is resting his left elbow on his folded left knee.
A man in San Francisco's Chinatown around 1900. The Chinese habit of wearing a queue came from Dorgon 's July 1645 edict ordering all men to shave their forehead and tie their hair into a queue similar to those of the Manchus .
Black-and-white print of a man with small eyes and a thin mustache wearing a robe, a fur hat, and a necklace made with round beads, sitting cross-legged on a three-level platform covered with a rug. Behind him and much smaller are eight men (four on each side) sitting in the same position wearing robes and round caps, as well as four standing men with similar garb (on the left).
Johan Nieuhof 's portrait of Shang Kexi , who recaptured Guangzhou from Ming loyalist forces in 1650. He was one of the Han Chinese generals the Qing relied on to conquer and administer southern China. Entrenched in the south, he eventually took part in the anti-Qing rebellion of the Three Feudatories in 1673.
A painted image of the head and chest of a black-haired man with droopy eyes wearing a white-edged two-tiered red cap and a bright yellow garment whose lapels are decorated with five-clawed yellow dragons against a blue background with clouds and vegetation.
Portrait of the Shunzhi Emperor in adulthood
Painting of a bearded man dressed in dark robes (on the left), with two much smaller young men, one wearing his hair in a top-knot and carrying something rolled in red piece of cloth. The background is a winter scene.
Court dress was a controversial topic during the Shunzhi era. High official Chen Mingxia was denounced in 1654 because he advocated returning to Ming-dynasty court dress, an example of which is shown in this 17th-century portrait of Ni Yuanlu .
A black-and-white print depicting three standing men wearing turbans, a long robe with a sash, and shoes with rising pointed tips, against an architectural background of buildings with roofs that point upwards. The man on the left, slightly in the background, is carrying a long folded umbrella on his left shoulder. The one in the center, who faces the viewer, is resting on a cane. The man on the right, seen in profile view, faces the center man.
"Moghul embassy" (emissaries from a Mughal prince who ruled Turfan in Central Asia ) as portrayed in 1656 by Dutch visitors to the Shunzhi Emperor's Beijing. [ 119 ]
Color photograph of a white, bell-shaped building composed (from bottom to top) of a square base, three round disks of increasingly smaller diameter, a cut reverse cone, and a thinner tapering column with horizontal flutings crowned by the golden statue of a sitting figure. It appears to emerge from a forested area, against the background of a slightly cloudy blue sky.
The bell-shaped White Dagoba, which can still be seen in Beihai Park in Beijing, was commissioned by the Shunzhi Emperor to honor Tibetan Buddhism .
A map of southern China showing provincial boundaries in black, with a blue line running between several cities marked with a red dot.
The flight of the Yongli Emperor —the last sovereign of the Southern Ming dynasty—from 1647 to 1661. The provincial and national boundaries are those of the People's Republic of China .
Color print of a man with a long white beard wearing a double-edged round cap and dressed in a long robe, who is pointing a compass to a celestial globe that is sitting on a table on the left.
Johann Adam Schall von Bell , a Jesuit missionary the Shunzhi Emperor affectionately called mafa ("grand'pa" in Manchu ).
Grainy photograph of twelve slightly elongated round lumps clustered together.
Electron micrograph of the smallpox virus, which the Manchus had no immunity against. The Shunzhi Emperor died of it, and his young successor, Xuanye , was chosen because he had already survived it.
Full-face painted portrait of a severe-looking sitting man wearing a black-and-red round cap adorned with a peacock feather and dressed in dark blue robes decorated with four-clawed golden dragons.
An official court portrait of Oboi , who on 5 February 1661 was named as the main regent to the newly enthroned Kangxi Emperor , who was only seven years old.
A painting in which a yellowish river flows diagonally from the bottom left to the top right, with one road on each side. On the side of both roads are gray-roofed houses. Those on the other side of the river have counters that open directly on the river. There are dozens of people dressed mostly in blue on both roads and crossing a bridge in the foreground. Several barges with canopies are on the water.
The Kangxi Emperor 's three "southern tours" in the Jiangnan region—1684, 1689 (here depicted), and 1699—asserted the prestige and confidence of the newly solidified Qing dynasty a few years after it defeated the Three Feudatories . [ 170 ]
Full-face-view color painting of the head and shoulders of a young man wearing a two-tiered red cap with a white edge, a necklace made of red beads except for two larger blue beads each surrounded by two white beads, and wearing a yellow robe covered with dragon-and-clouds patterns in green, blue, and red.
The Shunzhi Emperor's third son, Xuanye, after he had become the Kangxi Emperor (r. 1661–1722)