SHUNZHI EMPEROR DOCUMENTARY - FALL OF THE MING - MANCHU CONQUEST OF CHINA

The year is 1638. In East Asia, a new empire has recently risen. The Great Qing Dynasty, founded by the Manchu people, who are led by Huang Taiji, an aging conqueror. In the Yongfu Palace in the imperial city in Mokden, the capital, his ninth son is born. That child would grow up to be the first emperor to rule from Beijing, officially replacing the once great Chinese Ming Empire with the Manchu Qing Dynasty, the last dynasty to rule over China. That man was Emperor Shunzhi. Born under the personal name of Fulin, the future leader was son to the Qing Emperor and his secondary consort, the daughter of a Mongol prince, who would later play a significant role in ruling China. Not much is known about his early childhood, but he certainly grew up in the imperial city of Mokden, around the wealth and power that his father, Huang Taiji, had amassed in his rule. In 1643, the emperor however died, designating no heir, much like his father Nurhaci before him. To succeed in the leadership of the Qing Dynasty, the different factions in the court either supported Dorgon or Houge, the late emperor's half-brother and eldest son respectively. To resolve the dispute, a state council was held, at the issue of which it was decided that the five-year-old Fulin was to be the next emperor. Dorgon and another Manchu nobleman, Jirgalang, would however be co-regents until Fulin was old enough to rule. Fulin's mother also became an Empress Dowager, holding influence in the court. The boy ascended the throne on the 8th of October 1643, becoming the Emperor Shunzhi. Jirgalang, one of the two co-regents, had little interest in the state affairs and conceded almost all of his power to Dorgon in 1644. That same year, an alleged conspiracy by Houge, elder brother to Emperor Shunzhi, was discovered. This gave Dorgon the opportunity to eliminate the pro-Houge faction once and for all, consolidating his own power even more. On the geopolitical level, the Qing authorities were about to conquer China. Beijing, where the Chongzhen Emperor of the Chinese Ming Dynasty ruled, was in arm's reach for the Great Manchu Eight-Banner Army, but while the Manchu soldiers were preparing to march on the Chinese capital city, an unexpected event happened. China had been plagued with domestic rebellions for several years. A charismatic rebel leader from the west, named Li Zicheng, had managed to defeat the Ming armies and marched on Beijing in April 1644, overtaking the Manchus. But Chongzhen Emperor of the Ming Dynasty was surrounded. Even if he managed to defeat Li Zicheng, he would not resist the following Manchu attack. During the night after Li Zicheng laid siege to Beijing, a eunuch opened the gates of the city, allowing Li Zicheng's troops to overrun the city rapidly. Resigned, the Chinese Ming Emperor hanged himself to a tree in the imperial city the following day, symbolically marking the end of the once-great Ming Dynasty. Li Zicheng then occupied the capital city. His forces severely mistreated the population. The Ming Dynasty had fallen, but a new enthusiastic army stood in Beijing, replacing it. In the Manchu camp, Han Chinese advisers to Dorgon, who had defected and joined the Qing Dynasty, saw this as an opportunity. If the Qing Dynasty could crush Li Zicheng's rebellions, it could present itself as a saviour of imperial power and of Beijing, and rule over China with legitimacy. The Qing soldiers saddled up. Although the Ming was technically overthrown, it still held armies across China. Between Magden and Beijing stood the Shanhai Pass of the Great Wall. In this huge garrison, Wu Sangui, one of the last great generals of the Ming, stood his ground surrounded by the Qing in the north and Li Zicheng in the west. As the Manchus had done with most Chinese officials since the beginning of their conquests, they tried to convince Wu Sangui to defect and join the Qing. He had no choice and reluctantly accepted, but contrarily to many defectors, his loyalty to the Manchu invaders was weak. Li Zicheng's forces finally arrived, reaching Shanhai Pass on the 27th of May. The battle could begin. Wu Sangui's forces fought for hours alone against Li Zicheng, suffering heavy casualties. It is possible that Dorgon purposely delayed his attack to make sure Wu Sangui's forces would be greatly reduced after the battle. After maliciously waiting for a few hours, Dorgon finally dispatched his Manchu cavalry. Now reinforced, the ex-Ming alongside the Qing soldiers were able to defeat Li Zicheng's army, whose remaining forces could only flee back to Beijing. The outcome of the battle was a decisive tactical victory for the Manchus, whose forces suffered minor losses, contrarily to Li Zicheng and Wu Sangui. Back in the capital city, Li Zicheng stayed for 42 days, until he decided to escape back west with a portion of his army, fearing the advancing Manchu forces. Before leaving on the 4th of June, the rebel soldiers took as much wealth as they could carry and set fire to the palace. A couple thousand rebel soldiers could only stay behind and were slaughtered by the Beijing population. The following day, a council of city elders and officials prepared to receive their liberators. In their perspective, they expected Wu Sangui to arrive with a young prince, soon to be emperor for the Ming dynasty, and all would be back in order. But to their disbelief, it was Dorgon, a Manchu cavalier hardened by years of fighting on the saddle, who appeared with his fellow Manchu soldiers. There was really nothing the population could do, so it accepted the Qing dynasty's authority. Dorgon was however cautious of treating the population well. He forbade his soldiers from pillaging the city, restored order and allowed officials who swore loyalty to keep their positions. Finally, in October 1644, the young Shunzhi emperor was escorted from Magden to Beijing. He would soon be guided into conducting sacrificial ceremonies at the altar of heaven, claiming the mandate of heaven. Shunzhi was not simply the Qing emperor anymore, he was emperor of all China. But the young boy was still only six years old, and controlled by the regent Dorgon, who gradually grasped more power. A massive migration of members of the Eight Banners began, as each one's prominent soldiers and nobles moved to Beijing, now the capital city of the Qing dynasty. Minor tensions sparked out between the locals and new inhabitants, as farming lands around the city were given to the Qing nobles, making their original Chinese owners only tenants. Dorgon however managed to calm the population down with tax remissions and major building programs. To facilitate relations between Manchus and Han Chinese, marriages between the two were legalized and encouraged under certain conditions. The imperial civil service examination was established. The main subject of it would remain the same for several years. How can Manchus and Han Chinese be unified so that In the following years, as the Shunzhi emperor was growing up, Dorgon would conduct the subjugation of the rest of China. In the west, Li Zicheng still ruled over the Xi'an region. In the south, the remnants of the Ming dynasty clinged on to power, with their remaining armies. In Sichuan province, the bandit kingdom of Daxi was controlled by Zhang Xinzhong. In the northern Gansu region, Muslim rebels rose up against the Qing, claiming to want to restore the Ming. In December 1650, an event would shake the Qing court. Dorgon suddenly died in a hunting accident. He may have been assassinated. Nonetheless, the 13-year-old Shunzhi could now seize the opportunity to rid himself of the regency. The pro-Dorgon faction in the court were still influenced, preparing to take charge of the government. But Jirgalang, the other co-regent, came back into the picture. Pushed by supporters discontent with Dorgon's rule, mainly two Manchu officials named Oboi and Cuxaha, he managed to officially abolish the regency, cutting short the ambitions of the pro-Dorgon faction. Oboi and Cuxaha were later rewarded with influential positions. Dorgon was posthumously stripped of his titles and his faction swept away. Shunzhi, the young adolescent, could now rule on his own as a son of heaven. One of his first edicts was to declare he would put an end to corruption within the officials, a statement that would sow discontent within many of the unscrupulous officials who would hinder his reforms in the future. A first marriage was arranged for the young emperor in 1651, but he would repudiate his empress two years later. A new marriage was arranged in 1654, and although Shunzhi also disliked this second empress, he was unable to demote her. They would Although the emperor was young, he was quite active. In a political move, he invited the fifth Dalai Lama living in Lhasa, leader of Tibetan Buddhism and recent unifier of religious and secular rule in Tibet, to a state visit in Beijing. Both Shunzhi's grandfather and father, Nurhachi and Huangtaiji, had been patrons of Tibetan Buddhism, and several Mongol tribes that had not yet subdued to Qing rule were followers of Tibetan Buddhism, answering to the Dalai Lama. Therefore, Shunzhi could gain great influence from this state visit. In preparation for the event, the emperor ordered the construction of the White Dagoba in Beijing to honour his guest. It still stands today. The fifth Dalai Lama departed from Lhasa with 3000 men and travelled for 9 months, finally arriving in Beijing in 1653. The two leaders met, symbolically marking the beginning of relations between Tibet and the Qing empire. After the visit, Shunzhi gifted the Dalai Lama with a golden seal as a symbol of his authority over Tibet. The Dalai Lama declined and began returning to his capital city of Lhasa. Shunzhi then dispatched men to bring him the seal, and this time, the Dalai Lama reluctantly accepted the gift. Reportedly, the Tibetan inscriptions on the seal had been made by a bad translator and were a poor translation in broken Tibetan. The fifth Dalai Lama soon discarded the golden seal and made his own. Another religion was starting to play a significant role in China. In the mid-17th century, Christian Catholic missionaries from the Society of Jesus, more famously known as the Jesuits, thrived in the Asian continent. Having already established relations with the Ming dynasty before it collapsed, they now reached the Qing. Their knowledge in domains such as astronomy and mathematics greatly fascinated the Qing court, much like the Ming before. One of the missionaries, a German Jesuit from the Holy Roman Empire named Johann Adam Scharn von Bell, who had been given official positions in astronomy by Dorgon before his death, developed a personal relation with the young Shunzhi emperor. It is reported that the emperor affectionately called Scharn von Bell Mafa, the Manchu word meaning grandfather. He regularly consulted him for guidance. The Jesuit received many favours from Shunzhi who gave him permission not to bow in his presence, gave him land to build a church and allowed him to adopt a son out of worry that Shao would die without an heir. The missionary would however not be able to convert to the Qing emperor as he embraced Chan Buddhism in 1657, becoming a devout practitioner. Shunzhi also adopted many aspects of Chinese culture. He enjoyed opera and theatre, indulged in calligraphy and read many Chinese texts and poetry. This was criticised by many in the Manchu nobility. But war was still going on in the empire. For a few years, the Tsardom of Russia had been exploring and settling in Siberia. In the 1650s, Russian Cossacks tried to subdue several Siberian tribes that were already paying tribute to the Qing empire since Shunzhi's father, Huang Taiji, had conquered the Amur river valley. Manchu soldiers were dispatched to investigate Russian activities in the area but they were driven back by the Cossack leader Oyufri Stepanov in 1654. The Russians were beginning to anger the Qing authorities. In 1658, the Manchu general, Sharhuda, set sail on the Amur river with 40 ships and attacked Stepanov's men. Most of the Cossacks were killed, captured or managed to escape. For now, the Russians had been driven off. Shunzhi, leading the Qing dynasty, could now focus on pacifying China, where anti-Qing sentiment rose in some regions. The south of the nation was still in control of the remnants of the Ming dynasty, under Emperor Yongli. The Qing authorities, whose army was composed of more and more Chinese soldiers, created a new division separate from the Eight Banner Army. The Green Standard Army was created, with Chinese officers, mostly ex-Ming defectors, and Chinese soldiers, mostly captured Ming forces at first. The Eight Banners slowly became more of a reserve and an elite troop, intervening in emergency. Trying to finally quell pro-Ming resistance in the south, the Qing court dispatched Hong Chunchou, who I've talked about in my Huang Taiji video, and his men in 1653, now part of the Green Standard Army. During the last years, the Yongli Emperor had fled around south China, and was now entrenched in the town of Kunming. General Hong Chunchou slowly built up his force, and in 1659 besieged the Ming capital, the last bastion of the court. The Yongli Emperor was forced to escape out of China into Burma, where he found asylum. The Ming dynasty's court was over. Now, practically all of China was under rule of the Qing. Only Fujian province, where the Zhang family of Ming loyalists desperately clinged onto power, and several small regions still resisted. Chunchou was known to have a very bad temper. When the Zhang family opposed resistance in the south, and threatened to retake the advantage, besieging the town of Nanjing, the Emperor reportedly got furious and destroyed his own throne with a sword, only calming down with the intervention of the Jesuit Zhao, and news that Zhang was repelled. It is noted that Chunchou's health had always been very poor. After his favourite consort, Donguo, died in 1660, Chunchou was overwhelmed with grief, much like his father had been in a similar situation. Over the next months, his state worsened. He spent a lot of time praying, having become a devout Chan Buddhist practitioner. On the 2nd of February 1661, the Qing Emperor contracted smallpox, a disease that the Han knew well, but that did not exist in Manchuria. The Manchu people therefore had no immunity against it. Two days later, on his deathbed, he was asked to give his will. On the 5th of February, the Emperor finally died, at the age of 22. His will was most likely modified by four Manchu nobles and his mother, the Empress Dowager. When it was made public, it stated that the Emperor regretted having embraced Chinese culture as he had done, and designated his third son, a seven-year-old, to be the next Emperor. He would rule under the name of Kangxi. As he was too young, a regency would be put in place, controlled by the four Manchu nobles, Suonin, Ebilon, Oboi and Suoxaha, the last two having already amassed a lot of power during Chunchou's reign. A few rumours spread that the Emperor had not died, but actually retired to a monastery, to devote himself to monastic life, or had been deposed after a coup. Nonetheless, after a period of mourning, his corpse was interred in the Eastern Qing Tombs, over a hundred kilometres away from Beijing. During his short rule, Shunzhi certainly broke the conquering tradition of his father and grandfather, who had founded the Manchu state. Instead of ruling from atop the saddle of a horse with a bow in hand, the third Manchu Emperor was first to govern from a throne in Beijing, using a brush to promulgate edicts. He fought corruption, oversaw the final destruction of the Ming Dynasty, and the virtual elimination of all resistance from China proper. His son Kangxi would become the greatest Emperor of the Qing Dynasty. Thank you for watching my video, I hope you enjoyed it. If so, please leave a like and subscribe to the channel. 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