Southern Ming Dynasty
The Southern Ming Dynasty (Chinese: 南明; pinyin: Nán Míng) was the Ming loyalist regime that continued in Southern China from 1644 to 1662 following the capture of Beijing by rebel armies and the death of the last Ming emperor in 1644.
On April 24, 1644, Li Zicheng's rebel soldiers, of the recently proclaimed Great Shun dynasty, breached the walls of Beijing. The Chongzhen Emperor committed suicide the next day to avoid humiliation at their hands. Remnants of the Ming imperial family and some court ministers then sought refuge in the southern part of China and regrouped around Nanjing, the Ming auxiliary capital, south of the Yangtze River. Four different power groups emerged:
- The Shun Dynasty, led by Li Zicheng, ruled north of the Huai river.
- Zhang Xianzhong's Great West (Ch:大西) regime controlled Sichuan province.
- The Manchu-founded Qing Dynasty controlled the north-east area beyond Shanhai Pass, as well as many of the Mongol tribes.
- The remnants of the Ming Dynasty could only survive south of the Huai river.
The Prince of Fu and the Hongguang reign
Enthronement
The news of the Chongzhen Emperor's suicide was met with consternation when it reached Nanjing in mid May 1644.[1] The highest officials in Nanjing soon met to deliberate about how to face the crisis.[2] Since the fate of the official heir apparent was still unknown at the time, many thought it was too early to proclaim a new emperor, but most agreed that an imperial figure was necessary to rally loyalist support for the Ming in the south. In early June 1644, the court decided that the caretaker government would be centered around Zhu Yousong, Prince of Fu, who was next in line for succession after the dead emperor's sons.[3] When he arrived in the vicinity of Nanjing (he had come from his princedom in Henan), the Prince could count on the military and political support of Ma Shiying (馬士英) and Shi Kefa.[2] On June 5 the Prince entered the city, the next day he accepted the title of "Protector of the State" (監國, sometimes translated as "Regent"),[4] and on June 7 he moved into the imperial palace, where he received the insignia of his new office.[5] Prodded by some court officials, the Prince of Fu immediately started to consider becoming Emperor.[6] Fearing confrontation with Ma Shiying and other supporters of the Prince, Shi Kefa convinced reluctant members of the court to accept the enthronement.[7] The Prince of Fu was officially crowned as Emperor on June 19, 1644, under the protection of Ma Shiying, who had arrived in Nanjing two days earlier with a large war fleet.[7][8] It was decided that the next lunar year would be the first year of the Hongguang (弘光) reign.
Internal conflicts and final demise
The Hongguang court proclaimed that its goal was "to ally with the Tartars to pacify the bandits" (聯虜平寇), that is, to seek cooperation with Qing military forces in order to annihilate rebel peasant militia led by Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong.[9]
Because Ma Shiying was the main supporter of the current emperor, he started to monopolise the royal court's administration by reviving the functions of the remaining eunuchs. This resulted in rampant corruptions and illegal dealings. Moreover, Ma engaged in intense political bickering with Shi Kefa, who had been a staunch follower of the Donglin movement.
In 1645, Zuo Liangyu (左良玉) (a former warlord who now served as governor of Wuchang for the Hongguang regime) sent his troops towards Nanjing with the purpose of "clearing corrupt officials from the emperor's court." Seeing that this threat targeted him, Ma Shiying declared: "I and the emperor would rather die at the hand of the Great Qing, we will not die at the hand of Zuo Liangyu." By then, the Qing army had begun to move southwards: it had occupied Xuzhou and was preparing to cross the Huai River. Ma Shiying nonetheless ordered Shi Kefa to direct his riverine troops (which were positioned to counter the incoming Qing attack) against Zuo Liangyu.
This displacement of troops facilitated the Qing capture of Yangzhou (which led to the Yangzhou massacre) and the death of Shi Kefa in May 1645, and led almost directly to the annihilation of the Hongguang regime. After the Qing armies crossed the Yangtze River near Zhenjiang on June 1, the Hongguang Emperor fled Nanjing. Qing armies led by the Manchu prince Dodo immediately moved toward Nanjing, which surrendered without a fight on June 8, 1645.[10] A detachment of Qing soldiers then captured the fleeing emperor on June 15, and he was brought back to Nanjing on June 18.[11] The fallen Hongguang emperor was later transported to Beijing, where he died the following year.[11][12]
The History of the Ming, written under Qing sponsorship in the eighteenth century, blamed Ma Shiying's lack of foresight, his hunger for power and money, and his thirst for private revenge for the fall of the Hongguang court.
The Prince of Tang and the Longwu reign
In 1644, Zhu Yujian, a ninth-generation descendant of Zhu Yuanzhang who had been put under house arrest in 1636 under the Chongzhen Emperor, was pardoned and restored to his princely title by the Hongguang Emperor.[13] When Nanjing fell in June 1645, he was in Suzhou en route to his new fiefdom in Guangxi.[14] When Hangzhou fell on July 6, he retreated up the Qiantang River and proceeded to Fujian from a land route that went through northeastern Jiangxi and mountainous areas in northern Fujian.[15] Protected by general Zheng Hongkui, on July 10 he proclaimed his intention to become regent of the Ming dynasty, a title that he formally received on July 29, a few days after reaching Fuzhou.[16] He was enthroned as emperor on August 18, 1645.[16] Most Nanjing officials had surrendered to the Qing, but some followed the Prince of Tang in his flight to Fuzhou.
In Fuzhou, the Longwu Emperor was under the protection of Zheng Zhilong, a seatrader with exceptional organizational skills who had surrendered to the Ming in 1628 and recently been made an earl by the Hongguang emperor.[17] The Longwu emperor, who was childless, adopted Zheng Zhilong's eldest son, granted him the imperial surname, and gave him a new personal name: Chenggong.[18] The name Koxinga by which this adopted son is still known to Westerners was a distortion of his title "Lord of the Imperial Surname" (Guoxingye 國姓爺).[18]
In October 1645 the Longwu emperor heard that another Ming pretender, the Prince of Lu Zhu Yihai, had named himself regent in Zhejiang, and thus represented another center of loyalist resistance.[18] But the two regimes failed to cooperate, making their chances of success even lower than they already were.[19]
In February 1646, Qing armies seized land west of the Qiantang River from the Lu regime and defeated a ragtag force representing the Longwu emperor in northeastern Jiangxi.[20] In May of that year Qing forces besieged Ganzhou, the last Ming bastion in Jiangxi.[21] In July, a new Southern Campaign led by Manchu Prince Bolo sent the Zhejiang regime of Prince Lu into disarray and proceeded to attack the Longwu regime in Fujian.[22] Zheng Zhilong, the Longwu emperor's main military defender, fled to the coast.[22] On the pretext of relieving the siege of Ganzhou in southern Jiangxi, the Longwu court left their base in northeastern Fujian in late September 1646, but the Qing army caught up with them.[23] Longwu and his empress were summarily executed in Tingzhou (western Fujian) on 6 October.[24] After the fall of Fuzhou on 17 October, Zheng Zhilong surrendered to the Qing and his son Koxinga fled to the island of Taiwan with his fleet.[24]
The Prince of Gui and the Yongli reign
The Longwu Emperor's younger brother Zhu Yuyue, who had fled Fuzhou by sea, soon founded another Ming regime in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province, taking the reign title Shaowu (紹武) on 11 December 1646.[25] Short of official costumes, the court had to purchase robes from local theater troops.[25] On 24 December, Prince of Gui Zhu Youlang established the Yongli (永曆) regime in the same vicinity.[25] The two Ming regimes fought each other until 20 January 1647, when a small Qing force led by former Southern Ming commander Li Chengdong (李成東) captured Guangzhou, killing the Shaowu Emperor and sending the Yongli Emperor fleeing to Nanning in Guangxi.[26]
Li Chengdong suppressed more loyalist resistance in Guangdong in 1647, but mutinied against the Qing in May 1648 because he resented having been named only regional commander of the province he had conquered.[27] The concurrent rebellion of another former Ming general in Jiangxi helped the Yongli regime to retake most of southern China, leaving the Qing in control of only a few enclaves in Guangdong and southern Jiangxi.[28] But this resurgence of loyalist hopes was short-lived. New Qing armies managed to reconquer the central provinces of Huguang (present-day Hubei and Hunan), Jiangxi, and Guangdong in 1649 and 1650.[29] The Yongli emperor fled to Nanning and from there to Guizhou.[29] On 24 November 1650, Qing forces led by Shang Kexi––one of the "Three Feudatories" who would rebel against the Qing in 1673––captured Guangzhou after a ten-month siege and massacred the city's population, killing as many as 70,000 people.[30]
Though the Qing under the leadership of Prince Regent Dorgon (1612–1650) had successfully pushed the Southern Ming deep into southern China, Ming loyalism was not dead yet. 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, retook Guilin (Guangxi province) from the Qing.[31] Within a month, most of the commanders who had been supporting the Qing in Guangxi reverted to the Ming side.[32] Despite occasionally successful military campaigns in Huguang and Guangdong in the next two years, Li failed to retake important cities.[31]
In 1653, the Qing court put Hong Chengchou in charge of retaking the southwest.[33] 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.[33] 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.[33] The last sovereign of the Southern Ming stayed there until 1662, when he was captured and executed by Wu Sangui, whose surrender to the Manchus in April 1644 had allowed Dorgon to start the Qing conquest of China.[34]
Koxinga
Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong), son of Zheng Zhilong, was awarded with the titles: Wei Yuan Hou (威远候), Zhang Guo Gong (漳国公), and Yan Ping Wang (延平王) by the Yongli Emperor of the Southern Ming Dynasty.
On the eleven year of Yongli, various anti-Qing military commanders gathered in Fujian to select a northern expedition target. Koxinga chose Nanjing, which was emperor Hongwu's choice of a state capital, which would naturally have a large anti-Qing population. Nanjing was also an important strategic location. On the fifth month and the twelve year of Yongli, Koxinga led an army of 100,000 soldiers and 290 warships to attack Nanjing, leaving a small military force for the defence of Xiamen
Koxinga's military force went through Zhejiang, Pingyang, Ruian, Wenzhou, and Zhousan, joining forces with another military commander Zhang Huanyan . On the ninth day of the eight month, near Yangsan Island a hurricane caused massive damage to the fleet, resulting in the loss of 8,000 personnel, sinking of 40 warships, and various degree of damage to all the ships. Koxinga called a temporary halt to the military advance and ordered repairs and refurbishing of the fleet, waiting for the right moment to attack. The Manchu Qing Governor called for the strengthening of its defence surrounding Chongmin Island, Mount Fu, Quanzhou, and Zhengjiang by laying a long iron chain across the river, and building wooden rafts stationed with soldiers and cannons. Koxinga ordered soldiers to cut the iron chain by axes, and to set fire to the enemy's wooden rafts. When Koxinga joined forces with Zhang Huanyan at the Yangtze River, the defending forces' resistance was minimal and soon Nanjing was encroached.
However, he had fallen into the Manchu's trap and ambush, a number of his generals perished on the battlefield. After suffering a humiliating defeat at Nanjing, Koxinga eventually decided to retreat back to Xiamen. Chinese historians concluded that the battle of Nanjing was of the utmost importance in the life of Koxinga, since it dealt a fatal blow to his grand anti-Qing ambitions.
Descendant of Ming
Now the descendants of Yongli Emperor live in Zhaoqing,Guangdong.They have the inheritance of Ming.
See also
Notes
- ↑ Struve 1988, p. 641.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Struve 1988, p. 642.
- ↑ Struve 1988, p. 642. Zhu Yousong was a grand-son of the Wanli Emperor (r. 1573–1620). Wanli's attempt to name Yousong's father as heir apparent had been thwarted by supporters of the Donglin movement because Yousong's father was not Wanli's eldest son.
- ↑ Hucker 1985, p. 149 (item 840).
- ↑ Struve 1988, pp. 641–42; Wakeman 1985, p. 345.
- ↑ Wakeman 1985, pp. 345 and 346, note 86.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Wakeman 1985, p. 346.
- ↑ Struve 1988, p. 644.
- ↑ Wakeman 1985, pp. 396 and 404.
- ↑ Wakeman 1985, p. 578.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 Wakeman 1985, p. 580.
- ↑ Kennedy 1943, p. 196.
- ↑ Struve 1988, p. 665, note 24 (9th-generation descendant), and p. 668 (release and pardon).
- ↑ Struve 1988, p. 663.
- ↑ Struve 1988, pages 660 (date of the fall of Hangzhou) and 665 (route of his retreat to Fujian).
- ↑ 16.0 16.1 Struve 1988, p. 665.
- ↑ Struve 1988, pp. 666–67.
- ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 Struve 1988, p. 667.
- ↑ Struve 1988, pp. 667–69 (for their failure to cooperate), 669–74 (for the deep financial and tactical problems that beset both regimes).
- ↑ Struve 1988, pp. 670 (seizing land west of the Qiantang River) and 673 (defeating Longwu forces in Jiangxi).
- ↑ Struve 1988, p. 674.
- ↑ 22.0 22.1 Struve 1988, p. 675.
- ↑ Struve 1988, pp. 675–76.
- ↑ 24.0 24.1 Struve 1988, p. 676.
- ↑ 25.0 25.1 25.2 Wakeman 1985, p. 737.
- ↑ Wakeman 1985, p. 738.
- ↑ Wakeman 1985, pp. 760–61 (Ming resistance in late 1647) and 765 (Li Chengdong's mutiny).
- ↑ Wakeman 1985, p. 766.
- ↑ 29.0 29.1 Wakeman 1985, p. 767.
- ↑ Wakeman 1985, pp. 767–68.
- ↑ 31.0 31.1 Struve 1988, p. 704.
- ↑ Wakeman 1985, p. 973, note 194.
- ↑ 33.0 33.1 33.2 Dennerline 2002, p. 117.
- ↑ Struve 1988, p. 710.
References
- Dennerline, Jerry (2002), "The Shun-chih Reign", in Peterson, Willard J. (ed.), Cambridge History of China, Vol. 9, Part 1: The Ch'ing Dynasty to 1800, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 73–119, ISBN 0-521-24334-3 Unknown parameter
|title-url=ignored (help). - Hucker, Charles O. (1985), A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China, Stanford: Stanford University Press, ISBN 0-8047-1193-3.
- Kennedy, George A. (1943), "Chu Yu-song", in Hummel, Arthur W. (ed.), Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period (1644–1912), Washington: United States Government Printing Office, pp. 195–96.
- (Chinese) Lin, Renchuan 林仁川 (1987), Mingmo Qingchu siren haishang maoyi 明末清初私人海上贸易 ["Private Ocean Trade in the Late Ming and Early Qing Dynasties"], Shanghai: East-China Normal University Press 华东师范大学出版社, ISBN 11135.24 / F552.9 Check
|isbn=value (help). - Struve, Lynn (1988), "The Southern Ming", in Frederic W. Mote, Denis Twitchett, and John King Fairbank (eds.), Cambridge History of China, Volume 7, The Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 641–725.
- Wakeman, Frederic, Jr. (1985), The Great Enterprise: The Manchu Reconstruction of Imperial Order in Seventeenth-Century China, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, ISBN 0-520-04804-0.
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