After learning that Li Zicheng's rebel army had conquered Beijing and captured his family, including his father Wu Xiang and concubine Chen Yuanyuan, Wu allowed the Manchu to enter China proper through Shanhai Pass to drive Li from Beijing, where the Manchu then set up the Qing dynasty.

For his aid, the Qing rulers awarded him a fiefdom consisting of Yunnan and Guizhou provinces, along with the title "Prince Who Pacifies the West" (平西王).

In 1627, the Chongzhen Emperor decided to reinstate the imperial examination system on his accession to the throne, and Wu became a first-degree military scholar (juren) at the age of fifteen.

Wu Sangui was denied help from his maternal uncle, Zu Dashou, and so decided to rescue his father with a force of about 20 soldiers chosen from his personal retinue.

Jin Guofeng, full general of Ningyuan, immediately led troops to confront the Qing army but was surrounded and killed.

Aiming to besiege Jinzhou, they reestablished Yizhou, garrisoned the troops, opened up wasteland, grew food grain, and forbade any cultivation in the Ningjin area outside Shanhai Pass.

Jirgalang led 1,500 soldiers to accept the surrender of the Mongolian people, but they were spotted by general Liu Zhaoji when passing the Ming army.

The Ming army casualties were more than 1000, with deputy general Yanglun and Zhou Yanzhou dead, but Wu Sangui's bravery was still praised.

[1] On 25 April 1641, the battle of Songjin began with an attack by the Ming army, Wu Sangui leading and personally killing ten enemies, defeating the Qing cavalry.

Even more surprising was the fact that, months later, when someone in the court called for an investigation to determine responsibility for the Songshan defeat, only Wang Pu was arrested while Wu continued to serve as a governor general of Liaodong, garrisoned in Ningyuan.

In early 1644, Li Zicheng, the head of a peasant rebel army, launched his force from Xi'an for his final offensive northeast toward Beijing.

[7] Aware that his force alone was insufficient to fight Li's main army,[8] Wu wrote to the Manchu prince-regent Dorgon for military support, under the condition of restricting the dominance of the Manchus to northern China and the Ming to south.

[13] Wu Sangui pledged allegiance to the Qing dynasty and received the title of Pingxi Wang (Chinese: 平西王; pinyin: Píngxī wáng; lit.

[3] In 1645, the Qing court rewarded Wu Sangui with the title of Qin Wang (Chinese: 亲王; pinyin: Qīnwáng; lit.

The high-sounding title was belied by transferring Wu to Jinzhou, which had lost its position as a militarily important town and become an insignificant rear area.

After giving up his title, he began to make efforts to consolidate his strength by demanding troops, territory, compensation, and reward for the generals under his command, which were all granted by the imperial court.

Wu wasn't pleased, however, since he had been set aside since his return to Jinzhou, while the army of Kong Youde, Geng Jingzhong, and Shang Kexi had been fighting against the Southern Ming regime in Hunan and Guangxi since 1646.

Jiang Xiang, the full general of Datong, waged an insurgency in Shanxi province, while, in the south, in Nanchang and Guangzhou, Jin Shenghuan and Li Chenghong also rebelled, which dramatically changed the military situation.

[2] At the beginning of 1648, the Qing court ordered Wu to move his family west and garrison Hanzhong with Chief General (Du Tong) of the Eight Banners Moergen and Li Weihan.

The situation was made difficult by the deaths of the Qing generals Kong Youde and Ni Kan, when the rebels Li Dingguo and Liu Wenxiu's troops marched into Sichuan province.

[6] In 1660, the Qing army split into three parts to march into Yunnan province and eliminated the Southern Ming regime, thus achieving the preliminary unification of China.

As a result, the imperial court approved the proposal by Hong Chengchou to withdraw those soldiers, and give Wu command of the border area.

This money, as well as the long period of stability, was spent by Wu in building his army, in preparation for an eventual clash with the Qing dynasty.

Wu in Yunnan, along with Shang Kexi in Guangdong and Geng Jingzhong in Fujian—the three great Han military allies of the Manchus, who had pursued the rebels and the Southern Ming pretenders—became a financial burden on the central government.

[4][6] The Kangxi Emperor decided to make Wu and two other princes who had been rewarded with large fiefs in southern and western China move from their lands to resettle in Manchuria.

By April 1676, the rebel force possessed 11 provinces (Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Gansu, Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, Zhejiang, and Jiangxi).

[6] Unexpectedly, Wu halted his march and stayed south of Yangzi river for three months because of a shortage of troops and financial resources, which gave the Kangxi emperor a chance to assemble his forces.

In Hong Kong TV series The Rise and Fall of Qing Dynasty (1987), Wu's military career and his love story with Chen are portrayed in a dramatic yet neutral way.

In CCTV series The Affaire in the Swing Age (2005), which covers his early life and military career, he is shown as being forced into making the fateful decisions that have made him infamous.

In the CCTV series Kangxi Dynasty (2001), which covers his late career, he is depicted in a neutral way as a force in the power play with the Manchu overlords; his son, Wu Yingxiong, is presented as torn between loyalty to the royalty and filial piety to his family.