Ming China, 1600–1660

In 1600 Wanli had reigned for twenty-eight years and still would not name an heir. The son he wanted was Zhu Changxun, child of his favourite, Lady Zheng; custom gave the place to his eldest, Zhu Changluo, born to a palace maid. When officials pressed him, he stopped holding audiences and left their memorials unanswered.

Lady Zheng had been raised to Imperial Noble Consort in 1586, the year her son was born, one rank below the empress. A rumour went round that Wanli had sworn to her before the gods to make the boy his heir, and it drove the officials to press all the harder for the eldest son.

The Empress Dowager Li, Wanli's mother, had herself been a palace maid. When Wanli scorned Zhu Changluo as a maid's son, she told him that he was one too, and he knelt to beg her pardon. With her behind him, the eldest son was never only the officials' candidate.

In 1601, after fifteen years of argument, Wanli gave way: Zhu Changluo became crown prince, and Zhu Changxun Prince of Fu, with Luoyang as his fief. Changxun stayed on in Beijing for thirteen more years, and nobody at court believed the matter closed.

Shen Yiguan led the Grand Secretariat from the end of 1601. Officials of his Zhejiang following gathered round him and fought the men around Gu Xiancheng; his handling of the 'evil book' scandal of 1603 and the evaluation of capital officials in 1605 brought their attacks on him, and he was dismissed in 1606.

Gu Xiancheng, a bureau director in the Ministry of Personnel, had fought Wanli's plan of 1593 to make all three princes kings and leave the heir undecided, and he was struck from the rolls in 1594. At home in Wuxi he went on teaching, and students came to him.

Gu Xiancheng lectured there three days a month to audiences of hundreds. Officials out of office met there to judge the men in power by name, and the academy's verdicts reached the young officials in Beijing. Its opponents began to speak of a Donglin party.

Gao Panlong, a Wuxi man demoted in 1593 for attacking the senior grand secretary, lectured beside Gu Xiancheng, and people spoke of the two together. When Gu Xiancheng died in 1612, Gao took charge of the academy.

Zhao Nanxing had run the evaluation of capital officials in 1593 and purged men with powerful friends, then been thrown out himself. He had been Gao Panlong's examiner, and with Gu Xiancheng and Zou Yuanbiao he was counted one of the 'three gentlemen' of the Donglin.

Li Sancai, grain-transport commander on the Grand Canal since 1599, had fought the palace's mining-tax eunuchs. When he was put forward for censor-in-chief, Gu Xiancheng wrote to the grand secretary Ye Xianggao in his favour. The letters were copied and spread, the court was in uproar, and in 1611 Li Sancai resigned.

The Jesuit Matteo Ricci reached Beijing in January 1601 with clocks and a map of the world for the emperor, and was allowed to stay. He made friends among the scholar-officials and taught them mathematics, astronomy and geography, as a way of drawing them toward Christianity.

Xu Guangqi, baptised in Nanjing in 1603, worked with Ricci in Beijing while he was a Hanlin scholar. Together they translated the first six books of Euclid's Elements, printed in 1607; many of the geometrical terms they coined are still used in Chinese.

Li Zhizao, an official from Hangzhou, studied with Ricci from 1601 and worked with him on his great map of the world and on Western arithmetic. Gravely ill in Beijing in 1610, he was nursed by Ricci and baptised. Ricci died in Beijing that May.

Yang Tingyun, a former censor from a Buddhist family in Hangzhou, saw a fellow official there clear the Buddhist images from his house and bury his father without monks. In 1611 Yang sent away his concubine and was baptised. Xu Guangqi, Li Zhizao and Yang became known as the Three Pillars of the Chinese church.

On 30 May 1615 Zhang Chai, a villager from Jizhou, walked into the crown prince's palace with a date-wood club and struck down the gate eunuch before he was seized. Under questioning he named Pang Bao and Liu Cheng, eunuchs of Lady Zheng's household, as the men who had brought him in.

The case could bring down Lady Zheng, and the grand secretary Wu Daonan had to decide how far the questioning should go. He asked the advice of Sun Chengzong, a Hanlin official who had come second in the palace examination of 1604.

Sun Chengzong answered that the case touched the crown prince, so it had to be pursued, and touched the consort, so it must not be pursued too far: as far as the two eunuchs, and no higher. Wu Daonan took his advice. Seven years later the court gave Sun Chengzong its northern frontier.

Wanli faced his assembled officials for the first time since 1602 and ordered that no one else be implicated. Zhang Chai was put to death by slicing, and the two eunuchs were beaten to death inside the palace, still denying everything. Lady Zheng's son had already left for Luoyang in 1614.

Beyond the Liaodong frontier, Nurhaci had spent thirty years uniting the Jurchen clans and organising their fighting men into banners. In 1616, at his fortress of Hetu Ala, he proclaimed himself khan of a state he called Jin, which historians call the Later Jin.

In 1618 Nurhaci listed seven grievances against the Ming, most of them about Ming support for his Jurchen rivals, the Yehe, and took the border town of Fushun. Its commander, Li Yongfang, surrendered and was married into Nurhaci's family.

Yang Hao, who had commanded the Ming army in Korea against the Japanese, was made military commissioner of Liaodong and given an imperial sword. In the spring of 1619 he sent about a hundred thousand men, Koreans among them, toward Hetu Ala in four columns by separate roads.

Du Song, the commander at Shanhai Pass, led the main column out of Shenyang by torchlight. He reached Sarhu ahead of the others; Nurhaci massed his banners against him, Du Song was shot dead, and his army was destroyed.

Ma Lin, the commander at Kaiyuan, heard of Du Song's defeat and dug in at Shangjianya behind three rows of trenches. The banners broke his camps the next day; his two sons were killed and he escaped with a few horsemen. He died later that year when Kaiyuan fell.

Liu Ting, a veteran of the wars on the Burmese border, led the eastern column, with the Korean contingent, deep into the hills. Yang Hao's order to fall back never reached him; the banners turned on him next, and he died fighting.

Li Rubai, son of the old Liaodong commander Li Chengliang, whose family had long dealings with Nurhaci, withdrew on Yang Hao's order and lost only a few hundred men. He was impeached for sparing an old family connection, and killed himself the next year.

Xiong Tingbi took over Liaodong in 1619. Instead of another march he executed officers who had fled, rebuilt the walls, trained the garrisons and kept the Jurchens out for a year. Yang Hao went to prison and was put to death ten years later.

Nurhaci met the columns one at a time, and within a week three of the four had been destroyed. Later that year he took Kaiyuan, and before the year was out he conquered the Yehe, the last Jurchen rivals the Ming had backed against him.

Wanli died on 18 August 1620, and Zhu Changluo, nineteen years crown prince, was enthroned ten days later as the Taichang emperor. He sent a million taels of silver to the frontier armies and ended his father's mining taxes. Within days of his accession he fell ill.

Fang Congzhe had run the Grand Secretariat almost alone for seven years. When a purgative given by a palace eunuch made the emperor worse, Fang let Li Kezhuo, a minor official of the Court of State Ceremonial, bring in a medicine of his own.

The emperor took Li Kezhuo's red pill, felt better, and took a second that afternoon. By dawn he was dead, twenty-nine days into his reign. Censors called it murder; Fang Congzhe tried to close the matter with a token punishment and became their target himself. Li Kezhuo was later exiled to the frontier.

Li Xuanshi, the dead emperor's favourite consort, had raised his eldest son, Zhu Youjiao, and stayed on with him in the emperor's palace. The officials feared she would rule through the boy, with her eunuch Li Jinzhong, later known as Wei Zhongxian, at her side.

Wang An, the eunuch who had served Zhu Changluo as crown prince, warned the officials of her plans and worked with them from inside the palace to get the boy out of her hands.

Once Li Xuanshi had left the palace, the fourteen-year-old Zhu Youjiao was enthroned on 1 October 1620 as the Tianqi emperor. The club, the red pills and the removal from the palace became the Three Cases, and for years each was a test of loyalty at court.

Yang Lian, a supervising secretary in the Office of Scrutiny for War, had pressed the grand secretaries to see the dying emperor. Now, with the censor Zuo Guangdou, he demanded that Li Xuanshi leave the emperor's residence; she gave way and moved out with her daughter.

Zuo Guangdou, a censor from Tongcheng who had passed the examinations of 1607 in the same list as Yang Lian, stood with him in forcing Li Xuanshi out. Among the young men he took up as students was Shi Kefa, who would defend Yangzhou against the Qing in 1645.

Liu Yijing, newly a grand secretary, joined the officials who pressed Li Xuanshi out of the palace. In the first years of Tianqi's reign the Donglin and their friends held the high posts, and it was said that the court was 'full of upright men'.

Censors accused Xiong Tingbi of squeezing the people of Liaodong and deceiving the throne, and late in 1620 the new court dismissed him, after a year in which he had kept the Jurchens out.

Yuan Yingtai, a capable administrator of the Donglin party but no soldier, took over Liaodong and loosened Xiong's discipline, taking in Mongol deserters as fast as they came against his generals' advice. In spring 1621 Nurhaci took Shenyang, then Liaoyang, and Yuan hanged himself as the city fell.

Mao Wenlong, a junior officer, crossed to Zhenjiang on the Yalu in July 1621 with about a hundred men and took it by night, the first Ming success of the war. From that raid grew his command on Pi Island off the Korean coast, behind Nurhaci's lines.

Beijing sent Xiong Tingbi back as military commissioner in 1621. His plan was to hold the Liao River line from Guangning and to send fleets from Tianjin and Shandong to land behind the enemy, then wait.

Wang Huazhen, governor at Guangning, held most of the troops and meant to attack, counting on Li Yongfang, the officer who had gone over at Fushun, to turn back to the Ming. The minister of war backed him against Xiong. Early in 1622 Nurhaci crossed the Liao, Wang's army broke, and one of his own officers opened Guangning to the enemy.

Xiong Tingbi could only lead the refugees back inside Shanhai Pass. He and Wang Huazhen were both arrested. Everything beyond the pass was lost, and Beijing was put under martial law.

Yuan Chonghuan, a secretary in the Ministry of War, rode out alone to look at the frontier and came back saying that with men and money he could hold it. He was made an intendant and sent beyond the pass.

Sun Chengzong, the emperor's tutor, now minister of war and grand secretary, went to Shanhai Pass himself and took command. He overruled the plan to hold only the pass, pushed the line four hundred li back out, and in 1623 sent Yuan Chonghuan and Man Gui to hold Ningyuan.

Man Gui, a rough, brave cavalry officer, possibly of Mongol birth, impressed Sun Chengzong and was posted to Ningyuan with Yuan Chonghuan. Under them the town filled with more than fifty thousand households of soldiers and settlers, farming out to fifty li.

In the spring of 1621 Nurhaci took Shenyang and Liaoyang and moved his capital to Liaoyang: all of Liaodong east of the Liao River was his. Early in 1622 he crossed the river and took Guangning.

The boy emperor had lost his mother young and clung to his wet nurse, Madam Ke, whom he made Lady Fengsheng, 'she who serves the sage', soon after his accession. He loved carpentry and building, and left the business of government to others.

Madam Ke had been the palace companion of the eunuch Wei Chao, a protégé of Wang An. She took up instead with Wei Chao's friend Wei Zhongxian; when the two men quarrelled over her, Wang An sent Wei Chao away, and from then on Madam Ke and Wei Zhongxian worked as one.

In 1621 the emperor offered Wang An the seal of the Directorate of Ceremonial, the highest eunuch post. He declined, as custom required, and Madam Ke had the refusal accepted. A censor then impeached him; he was sent to labour in the Nanhaizi park and strangled there.

Wei Zhongxian, by the Ming records a gambler who had castrated himself to escape his debts, became a writing eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial and the emperor's constant companion. At the end of 1623 he took over the Eastern Depot, the palace's secret police.

Ye Xianggao, senior grand secretary again since late 1621, led a cabinet friendly to the Donglin and won money for Liaodong and support for Mao Wenlong. He thought Wei Zhongxian could not be removed and had to be managed; the Donglin men would not listen. In the summer of 1624 eunuchs besieged his house, and he resigned.

Zhao Nanxing, minister of personnel from 1623, filled the posts with men of upright name and refused every request from the powerful. Wei Zhongxian tried to win him over; Zhao told him that palace and court should each do their own duty, and made an enemy of him.

Gao Panlong, back after thirty years at home, rose to censor-in-chief in 1624. That autumn he impeached the censor Cui Chengxiu for corruption, and Zhao Nanxing proposed to send Cui to a frontier garrison.

Wei Dazhong, who had followed Gao Panlong as a student, was chief supervising secretary for the Ministry of Personnel. He lived so poorly that his wife still wove her own cloth, and he joined every attack on Wei Zhongxian.

Huang Zunsu, from Yuyao in Zhejiang, had passed the examinations of 1616 in the same list as Wei Dazhong and became a censor in 1622. He attacked Wei Zhongxian's followers without let-up and was known among his friends for his foresight.

In the summer of 1624 Yang Lian, now vice censor-in-chief, impeached Wei Zhongxian for twenty-four great crimes and asked that he be put to death. More than seventy officials, Zuo Guangdou among them, followed with memorials of their own.

Yuan Huazhong, a censor who as a county magistrate had built dikes and irrigated thousands of acres, joined in, writing that Wei Zhongxian 'blots out the sun and moon' and treated high ministers as slaves.

Wei Guangwei, son of a respected official of the Donglin generation, had called himself Wei Zhongxian's kinsman and entered the Grand Secretariat in 1623 with his help. Zhao Nanxing remarked that his old friend 'had no son', and Wei Guangwei never forgave the Donglin.

Cui Chengxiu, notorious for taking bribes, had been refused by the Donglin. Facing exile on Gao Panlong's charges, he went to Wei Zhongxian, who had the emperor declare him falsely accused. Cui became Wei's man in the outer court and called him 'father'.

Ruan Dacheng, a supervising secretary from Zuo Guangdou's own county, had begun on the Donglin side. When Zhao Nanxing's ministry blocked his promotion he went over to Wei Zhongxian, and in 1624 he impeached Wang Wenyan and Zuo Guangdou, starting the case Wei would use.

The emperor kept Wei Zhongxian and rebuked his accusers. By the end of 1624 Ye Xianggao and Han Kuang had left the cabinet and Zhao Nanxing and Gao Panlong had been dismissed. The Donglin had named themselves, and Wei knew whom to destroy.

In 1625 Wei Zhongxian's men reopened the case against Wang Wenyan, a Donglin go-between, and used a forged confession to charge Yang Lian, Zuo Guangdou and four others with taking bribes from Yang Hao and Xiong Tingbi, the beaten commanders of Sarhu and Guangning. The six went to the Embroidered Uniform Guard's prison.

In 1626 Wei forged a memorial in the name of the Suzhou textile eunuch Li Shi, accusing seven more Donglin men of embezzlement, and sent the Guard to fetch them.

Xiong Tingbi, in prison since the fall of Guangning, was the man the six were accused of taking money from. In September 1625 he was beheaded, and his head was sent round the frontier garrisons.

Wang Wenyan, a former county clerk who had bought a minor office, had lodged with the eunuch Wang An and carried plans for Yang Lian, Zuo Guangdou and Wei Dazhong; people said he ran the empire without holding office. Tortured in 1625 to name his friends, he would not, and died under the rods.

Yang Lian was assessed twenty thousand taels of 'bribes' and beaten every five days to make him pay. He died in the prison in 1625. When his house was searched, it held some five hundred taels.

Zuo Guangdou was charged the same twenty thousand. His student Shi Kefa got into the prison to see him and found him tortured beyond recognition. Zuo died there in August 1625.

Wei Dazhong was charged three thousand taels and flogged by the Guard commander Xu Xianchun until he died. At Suzhou on the road north, the official Zhou Shunchang came aboard his prison boat and betrothed a daughter to Wei's grandson.

Yuan Huazhong, the censor who had written that Wei Zhongxian blotted out the sun and moon, was named among the bribe-takers, arrested with the others and tortured to death in the same prison.

Zhou Chaorui, a supervising secretary who had crossed one of Wei Zhongxian's men over the Guangning affair, was arrested with the others and died under torture in the prison.

Gu Dazhang, an official of the Ministry of Justice, was the only one of the six handed to the regular courts. He made known how the others had been tortured to death, then killed himself. They were remembered as the Six Gentlemen of the Donglin.

Gao Panlong was named in the forged memorial of 1626. When he heard the Guard was coming, he paid his respects at the shrine of a Song scholar, wrote a last memorial to the emperor and drowned himself in a pond at Wuxi.

Zhou Shunchang was arrested at Suzhou in 1626 for the betrothal to Wei Dazhong's family and his words against Wei Zhongxian. Thousands rose to stop the Guard taking him and two of its men were killed; five townsmen died for it. Zhou Shunchang was murdered in the prison.

Miao Changqi, a Hanlin official from Jiangyin, was believed to have drafted Yang Lian's memorial against Wei Zhongxian. He was arrested in 1626 and died in the prison.

Li Yingsheng, a censor from Jiangyin, had sent up a memorial listing seventy-two crimes of Wei Zhongxian. Dismissed in 1625, he was arrested in 1626 and died in the prison.

Zhou Zongjian, a censor from Wujiang, had impeached Wei Zhongxian in memorials of his own. He was arrested in 1626 with the others and died in the prison.

Huang Zunsu gave himself up in prisoner's clothes. Xu Xianchun demanded 2,800 taels of him; knowing he would be killed, he bowed toward the emperor, wrote a poem and killed himself in the prison. He left a sixteen-year-old son, Huang Zongxi.

Sun Chengzong had built a line of forts beyond Shanhai Pass and recovered four hundred li. Wei Zhongxian's allies used a small defeat at Liuhe against him, and late in 1625 he resigned.

Gao Di, minister of war and a follower of Wei Zhongxian, took over the frontier and ordered every fort beyond Shanhai Pass abandoned and its troops brought back inside.

Yuan Chonghuan refused the order and stayed in Ningyuan. Early in 1626 Nurhaci came against it; Western cannon mounted on the walls broke every assault, and the banners drew off. Yuan was made governor of Liaodong.

Man Gui held Ningyuan beside Yuan Chonghuan. Zu Dashou fought under them on the walls. It was the first time Nurhaci had been beaten, and it made Yuan Chonghuan and Man Gui famous.

In 1627 Yuan Chonghuan, Man Gui and Zhao Shuaijiao beat Hong Taiji off from Ningyuan and Jinzhou. Wei Zhongxian's men took the credit and accused Yuan of failing to relieve Jinzhou, though he had asked for a shrine to Wei at Ningyuan; that summer he resigned.

Nurhaci, sixty-seven, led the attack on Ningyuan himself early in 1626. It was the first great defeat of his life, and he died that September.

With no heir named, the senior banner princes chose Nurhaci's eighth son, Hong Taiji, as khan. Early in 1627 he invaded Korea, the Ming's ally, off whose coast Mao Wenlong had his base, and that summer he tried Ningyuan and Jinzhou and failed.

Tianqi died in the autumn of 1627, aged twenty-one, without a surviving son. Wei Zhongxian held his power to the last, and the throne went to Tianqi's younger brother, Zhu Youjian.

Zhu Youjian, sixteen, became the Chongzhen emperor. Within three months he had stripped Wei Zhongxian of his posts and sent him to guard the founder's tombs at Fengyang.

On the road to Fengyang in December 1627 Wei Zhongxian heard that the emperor had ordered the Embroidered Uniform Guard to arrest him, and he hanged himself at an inn.

Madam Ke, Tianqi's wet nurse and Wei Zhongxian's partner, was beaten to death in the palace laundry that December; her body was burned and the ashes scattered.

Cui Chengxiu, Wei Zhongxian's minister of war, knew he would not escape. He laid out his treasures, called for wine, smashed each cup as he emptied it, and hanged himself.

Han Kuang, recalled as senior grand secretary at the end of 1628, drew up the list of Wei Zhongxian's followers to be punished. Ruan Dacheng was on it, and could hold no office under Chongzhen.

Huang Zongxi, eighteen, went to Beijing carrying an awl to seek justice for his father. At the trial of Wei Zhongxian's jailers he stabbed Xu Xianchun with it. The victims of the purges were rehabilitated and given posthumous honours.

In 1628 Chongzhen recalled Yuan Chonghuan as minister of war and supreme commander of the frontier from Ji to Liaodong. Yuan promised to recover Liaodong in five years and was given an imperial sword with power of life and death.

Zu Dashou, of an old Liaodong military family, had helped build Ningyuan and fought in both its battles. Yuan Chonghuan made him commander at Jinzhou, the forward fortress.

Zhao Shuaijiao, who had held Jinzhou against Hong Taiji in 1627 and shared the honours of that victory with Man Gui, was moved to command Shanhai Pass, the gate behind Yuan Chonghuan's line.

Mao Wenlong still held Pi Island with its swarm of refugees and traders. He drew pay for more men than he had and answered to no one, and his raids had failed since 1624. Yuan Chonghuan told a grand secretary he meant to be rid of him.

In July 1629 Yuan Chonghuan met Mao Wenlong at Shuangdao, read out twelve crimes and had him beheaded under the imperial sword. Mao's officers and men were scattered among other commands.

When the Jurchens broke through the Wall, Zhao Shuaijiao rode from Shanhai Pass to meet them. A garrison town shut its gates on him; in December 1629 he met the banners at Zunhua and was killed with his whole force.

Man Gui brought five thousand horse from Datong to Beijing. In the fighting outside the walls he took five arrows, some of them marked as belonging to Yuan Chonghuan's own troops, which fed the talk against Yuan.

Yuan Chonghuan raced back and fought outside the city. But the enemy was at the capital despite his promises, he had killed Mao Wenlong on his own authority, and he had once exchanged envoys with Hong Taiji. On 13 January 1630 Chongzhen had him arrested.

When Yuan Chonghuan was arrested, Zu Dashou broke away with the Liaodong troops and marched back east through Shanhai Pass. Yuan wrote to him from prison and Sun Chengzong sent envoys, and Zu turned back to fight.

Chongzhen recalled Sun Chengzong, sixty-six, as minister of war and grand secretary, and he took charge of the armies east of the capital from Tongzhou.

Made commander of all the armies that had come to the capital, Man Gui told the emperor the enemy was strong and his own men few. Pressed to attack, he moved out beyond the Yongding Gate in January 1630, was surrounded and killed.

Sun Zushou had commanded the garrisons round Zunhua until he was dismissed in 1627 for holding back from battle. He came to defend the capital, went out with Man Gui beyond the Yongding Gate and was killed in the same fight.

Hong Taiji did not attack Yuan Chonghuan's forts. In late 1629 he led his banners west through the lands of the Mongols who had joined him, broke through the Great Wall passes, took Zunhua and rode to the walls of Beijing.

Yuan Chonghuan was put to death by slicing on 22 September 1630 on charges of treason. Han Kuang, whose examination student he had been, had already been forced out of the cabinet over the killing of Mao Wenlong.

Sun Chengzong and Zu Dashou retook Luanzhou, Qian'an and Yongping in 1630; the Jurchen garrison left behind massacred the people of Qian'an and Yongping before it withdrew. The Ming line beyond Shanhai Pass stood again.

Zhou Yanru, a top graduate of the palace examination and a favourite of the young emperor, was brought into the Grand Secretariat during the 1629 emergency. By the autumn of 1630 he was senior grand secretary; Wen Tiren would push him out in 1633, and he would return in 1641.

Xu Guangqi's followers predicted the solar eclipse of 1629 correctly, and Chongzhen put him in charge of reforming the calendar with Jesuit astronomers. He also persuaded the court to bring Portuguese gunners and cannon from Macau; the guns went to Dengzhou, where his student Sun Yuanhua was governor.

Zheng Zhilong had grown up in the trade between Fujian, Japan and Taiwan and by the late 1620s led a pirate fleet. In 1628 Xiong Wencan, governor of Fujian, accepted his surrender and made him a Ming naval officer, and Zheng Zhilong hunted down his former rivals at sea.

In 1631 Zu Dashou was building a new fort at Dalinghe, beyond Jinzhou, when Hong Taiji surrounded it. The relief columns were beaten in the field. After three months, his men starving, Zu killed the one general who would not give in, He Kegang, and surrendered.

Zu Dashou talked Hong Taiji into letting him go to Jinzhou, promising to win it over by a trick; once inside, he went back to the Ming. Hong Taiji kept Zu's sons and nephews.

Wu Xiang, a Liaodong commander married to Zu Dashou's sister, fled from the relief battle, and his column was destroyed. He was jailed, and his son Wu Sangui was made a commander in his place.

Censors blamed Sun Chengzong for building Dalinghe at all. He resigned at the end of 1631, was stripped of his rank and went home to Gaoyang, where he lived for seven years.

Sun Yuanhua, a Christian convert and Xu Guangqi's student, governed Dengzhou on the Shandong coast, where Portuguese gunners were training his troops in Western artillery. Among his officers were men from Mao Wenlong's broken command, Kong Youde and Geng Zhongming.

Kong Youde, once Mao Wenlong's man, was sent north with eight hundred horse to relieve Dalinghe. At Wuqiao, unpaid and starving, his men mutinied in January 1632 and turned back toward Dengzhou.

Geng Zhongming, another of Mao Wenlong's old officers, opened Dengzhou to the mutineers from inside, and they took the city with its Western guns. Twelve of the Portuguese gunners were killed in the fighting.

Sun Yuanhua was arrested for the loss of Dengzhou and put to death in September 1632. Xu Guangqi, a grand secretary since that spring, pleaded for him in vain, and died the next year.

Hong Taiji brought cannon to Dalinghe, worked by Chinese gunners captured in the raid of 1629–30, and took the fort by siege and starvation instead of assault. It was the first real test of the Chinese gun crews he had taken into his army.

Driven out of Dengzhou by a Ming army, Kong Youde and Geng Zhongming sailed north in 1633 and went over to Hong Taiji with their men, their ships and their Western cannon.

Shang Kexi, a third officer from Mao Wenlong's islands, was deputy commander on Guanglu Island. When a rival Ming commander lured him to Pi Island meaning to frame him, he went over to Hong Taiji in 1634.

Yang He, supreme commander in Shaanxi, met the rebellion that famine had set off with amnesty first and force second. Bands surrendered and rose again, and in 1631 he was arrested and sent into exile; his son, Yang Sichang, pleaded for his life.

Hong Chengchou, who replaced Yang He in 1631, hunted the rebels instead of buying them off, across Shaanxi, Henan and Huguang, with cavalry brought in from the Liaodong frontier.

Cao Wenzhao had served under Xiong Tingbi and Sun Chengzong and come to Beijing's defence with Yuan Chonghuan in 1629. In 1630 he was sent to Shaanxi with a thousand Liaodong cavalry, and he broke one rebel band after another until he was killed in battle in 1635.

Cao Bianjiao had fought beside his uncle from the start. When Cao Wenzhao was killed he gathered the survivors and joined Hong Chengchou, and became one of his most trusted generals.

Gao Yingxiang, a horse trader from northern Shaanxi, led one of the largest bands under the name of the Dashing King. In 1635 his allies burned the Ming founder's ancestral temple at Fengyang, and the bands spread through Henan and Huguang.

Li Zicheng, a former courier on the postal relays and a kinsman of Gao Yingxiang, led a band under him. In 1634, trapped in the Chexiang gorge in southern Shaanxi, Li Zicheng and other leaders pretended to surrender and got away.

Zhang Xianzhong, from Yan'an in northern Shaanxi, led another band. He was among the rebels who burned the temple at Fengyang in 1635, then broke away to Huguang; the bands split, rejoined and surrendered by turns.

Luo Rucai, called 'Cao Cao' for his cunning, ran with Gao Yingxiang, then with Zhang Xianzhong, and finally with Li Zicheng, until Li Zicheng had him murdered in his sleep in 1643.

Lu Xiangsheng, a civil official who had raised and drilled his own troops, was given the rebel war in five provinces and beat Gao Yingxiang, Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong in several battles. In 1636 he was moved north to face the Manchus.

Gao Jie, one of Li Zicheng's officers, ran off with Li Zicheng's wife, Lady Xing, and surrendered to the Ming in 1635. He rose to be a Ming general.

Hong Taiji had renamed his people Manchu in 1635. In May 1636, at Shenyang, Manchu, Mongol and Chinese notables proclaimed him emperor of a new dynasty, the Qing, and he gave his brothers, sons and nephews princely ranks.

Dorgon, Nurhaci's fourteenth son, had led the campaign of 1635 against the Chahar Mongols that ended their khanate and brought Hong Taiji the old Yuan emperors' jade seal. He was made Prince Rui.

Dodo, Dorgon's younger full brother, was made Prince Yu. With Dorgon and their elder brother Ajige he controlled two of the eight banners. That winter he led a column into Korea.

Ajige, the eldest of the three brothers, was made only a commandery prince, Prince Wuying. That summer he led a raid through the Great Wall into the country round Beijing.

Jirgalang, the son of Nurhaci's brother Šurhaci, was made Prince Zheng. In 1643 he would share the regency with Dorgon, and in 1644 be named the uncle prince who assisted in government.

Hooge, Hong Taiji's eldest son, was made Prince Su and put in charge of the Board of Revenue. When his father died, he would be the obvious heir, and Dorgon's rival.

Kong Youde was made Prince Gongshun, Geng Zhongming Prince Huaishun and Shang Kexi Prince Zhishun: three of Mao Wenlong's old officers now stood among the princes of the new dynasty.

King Injo of Joseon would not recognise Hong Taiji as emperor. That winter the Qing invaded; Injo was shut up in the mountain fortress of Namhan while Dorgon took Ganghwa Island and the royal family, and Kong Youde's ships helped take Pi Island. In February 1637 Injo submitted at Samjeondo, and Korea left the Ming's side.

Sun Chuanting, governor of Shaanxi, caught the Dashing King, Gao Yingxiang, in an ambush at Heishuiyu in 1636 and sent him to Beijing to be put to death.

Li Zicheng, Gao Yingxiang's kinsman, took over his title and his followers, and became the Dashing King himself. Early in 1638 Hong Chengchou caught him on the border of Shaanxi and Sichuan and beat him heavily.

In 1638 Hong Chengchou drove Li Zicheng toward Tong Pass, where Sun Chuanting had laid an ambush on Hong Chengchou's plan. Li Zicheng's army was destroyed and he escaped into the hills with about seventeen men. For a moment the rebellion looked finished.

In the autumn of 1638 a Qing army under Dorgon broke through the Great Wall and raided deep into Zhili and Shandong. Lu Xiangsheng, supreme commander of the armies sent against it, wanted to fight; the grand secretary Yang Sichang wanted talks, and held back his supplies and men.

Gao Qiqian, the eunuch commanding the other half of the army, lay at Jize with tens of thousands of men less than fifty li away. Lu Xiangsheng, with about five thousand, fought at Jiazhuang near Julu in January 1639, sent to Gao for help, got none, and was killed.

The same raid reached Gaoyang, where Sun Chengzong, seventy-five and retired, led his household in defending the walls. When the town fell he was captured and hanged himself, and his sons, grandsons and nephews died fighting. Yang Sichang blocked the honours due to him.

Yang Sichang, Yang He's son, entered the Grand Secretariat in 1637 as Chongzhen's chief strategist. His plan, 'four main and six corner' commands forming a net of ten sides, was to ring the rebels with armies and crush them, and to settle with the rebels before the Qing.

Xiong Wencan, the governor who had won over the pirate Zheng Zhilong in 1628, was recommended by Yang Sichang for the rebel war. He offered terms again, and in 1638 Zhang Xianzhong surrendered to him at Gucheng with his army intact.

Zhang Xianzhong kept his men and arms at Gucheng. In 1639 he rose again, wrecked the town and took Fangxian. Xiong Wencan was arrested, and put to death in 1640.

Hong Chengchou, who had nearly finished Li Zicheng, was moved with his best troops to face the Qing in 1639, and the pressure on the rebels eased.

Sun Chuanting fell out with Yang Sichang, was accused of feigning illness to avoid service, and was thrown into prison in 1639. He stayed there three years.

Late in 1640 Li Zicheng came down from the hills into Henan, where famine had left the people starving, and the hungry joined him by the tens of thousands.

Niu Jinxing, a provincial graduate from Henan, joined Li Zicheng that winter and urged him to kill less, feed the starving and win the people over.

In March 1641 Li Zicheng took Luoyang. The famine had swelled his following to an army, and the city held the palace and the granaries of the Prince of Fu.

Zhu Changxun, Prince of Fu, the son Wanli had wanted as heir forty years before, had lived in Luoyang since 1614 on vast estates. Li Zicheng's men put him to death. His son, Zhu Yousong, escaped.

That spring Zhang Xianzhong's riders killed a messenger from Yang Sichang's headquarters, took his tokens, rode three hundred li in a day and a night and talked their way into Xiangyang. Zhang Xianzhong put the Prince of Xiang to death.

Yang Sichang was in the field when he heard that two princes of the blood had died on his watch. Sick with anxiety, he died there in 1641.

Zuo Liangyu, an illiterate Liaodong officer, had become the strongest Ming general in Huguang. He had slashed Zhang Xianzhong across the face in 1638, but his men plundered as they went, and after quarrelling with Yang Sichang he ignored summons and kept his army to himself.

Chongzhen sent Hong Chengchou with eight generals and about a hundred and thirty thousand men to relieve Zu Dashou at Jinzhou. Hong Chengchou wanted to advance slowly with secure supplies; the court pressed him for a quick victory.

Wang Pu, commander of Datong, was the first general to break when Hong Taiji cut the army off from its grain. He fled by night along the coast, the others followed, and thousands were cut down or driven into the sea. The court had him executed in 1642.

Wu Sangui, Zu Dashou's nephew and commander at Ningyuan, fled with Wang Pu and got through to Ningyuan. Officials asked why he was not punished too; he kept his command.

Tang Tong, commander at Miyun, north of Beijing, was another of the eight generals who fled; he bought his way out of punishment and went back to his post at Miyun.

Cao Bianjiao refused to flee. Wounded, he charged into the Qing camp as far as Hong Taiji's own tent, then fell back into Songshan with Hong Chengchou. When an officer opened a gate to the Qing in March 1642, Cao Bianjiao was captured and killed.

With the relief army gone, Zu Dashou surrendered Jinzhou in April 1642, and this time he stayed with the Qing. He wrote to his nephew Wu Sangui at Ningyuan, urging him to follow.

Hong Taiji came from Shenyang to direct the battle himself. He seized the Ming army's grain at Bijiashan and let its generals run into his ambushes on the road home.

Taken alive at Songshan, Hong Chengchou was persuaded by Hong Taiji's Chinese adviser Fan Wencheng to submit, and did so at Shenyang. In Beijing, Chongzhen thought him dead and made offerings to his spirit.

In 1642, with Li Zicheng besieging Kaifeng, Chongzhen took Sun Chuanting out of prison and sent him to Shaanxi. Marching to relieve Kaifeng, his army was caught in heavy rain without food and broken: the 'persimmon-garden defeat'.

Gao Mingheng, governor of Henan, held Kaifeng through three sieges while the people inside starved. In October 1642 the Yellow River dikes were cut and the flood drowned the city; who cut them has been argued over ever since. Gao was rescued and dismissed.

Luo Rucai had fought beside Li Zicheng at Kaifeng. Early in 1643 Li Zicheng had him killed in his sleep and took over his men; Luo Rucai's army was in uproar for seven days before it gave in.

Made minister of war and supreme commander in 1643, Sun Chuanting knew his army was not ready, but the emperor demanded a battle. He marched out of Tong Pass, was beaten in Henan, and was killed when Li Zicheng stormed the pass in November; Xi'an fell.

Zhou Yanru, recalled as senior grand secretary in 1641, went out himself in 1643 to command against a Qing raid near Beijing, avoided battle and reported false victories. When the truth came out he was dismissed, and he was ordered to kill himself.

At Xi'an, early in 1644, Li Zicheng proclaimed his own dynasty, the Shun, and marched on Beijing through Shanxi. Datong and Zhending fell, and the commanders on his road surrendered or died.

Niu Jinxing headed Li Zicheng's government as its grand secretary, appointing officials and drawing up the rites for Li Zicheng's enthronement. He had brought in the strategist Song Xiance.

Tang Tong held Juyong Pass, the last barrier before Beijing, for eleven days against Liu Zongmin. When the supervising eunuch opened the gate, he surrendered and went over to the Shun.

Liu Zongmin, Li Zicheng's leading general, entered Beijing with him on 25 April. He then ran the office that tortured officials and rich families for 'contributions' to pay the army.

Zhang Xianzhong had led about a hundred thousand men west into Sichuan. He took Chengdu and in 1644 proclaimed his own state there, the Great Xi.

Chongzhen called Wu Sangui and his army in from Ningyuan, too late. On 25 April 1644, as Li Zicheng's men came in, he went up the hill behind the palace and hanged himself.

Wang Chengen, the eunuch who had served Chongzhen since the emperor was a baby prince, stayed with him to the end and hanged himself beside him.

Hong Taiji died suddenly at Shenyang in September 1643, aged fifty, without naming an heir. His brothers and his sons each had banners behind them.

Hooge, Hong Taiji's eldest son, had his father's two Yellow Banners; Dorgon and his brothers had the two White. Rather than fight, the princes passed over both men.

The princes chose Hong Taiji's five-year-old son, Fulin, who became the Shunzhi emperor, with Dorgon and Jirgalang as regents. His mother, Bumbutai, worked with Dorgon to put him on the throne.

Dorgon became the stronger regent. When Beijing fell to Li Zicheng he marched south with the banners, and Wu Sangui's letters reached him on the road. He answered that Wu must submit, and promised him a princely title.

On 6 June Dorgon rode into Beijing, ordered three days of mourning for Chongzhen and declared that the Qing had come to punish the rebels who killed him.

Wu Sangui had abandoned Ningyuan and was marching toward Beijing when it fell; he turned back to Shanhai Pass. Li Zicheng sent Tang Tong to take over the pass, and Wu drove him off and wrote to Dorgon for help.

Wu Xiang, Wu Sangui's father, had been given command of the capital garrison weeks before Beijing fell. Now he was in Li Zicheng's hands, and Li Zicheng made him write to his son urging him to submit.

On 27 May Li Zicheng's army attacked Shanhai Pass. Wu Sangui opened it to the Qing; after hours of fighting the banners charged out of a dust storm, and the Shun army broke.

Beaten at Shanhai Pass, Li Zicheng put Wu Xiang and his family to death, had himself enthroned in Beijing, and left the city the next day. Ajige and Dodo, with Wu Sangui, pursued him west.

Zhu Yousong, son of the murdered Prince of Fu and grandson of Wanli, had fled to the south. He was the nearest heir by blood, and to the Donglin men in Nanjing also the son of the prince their party had fought in Wanli's time.

Shi Kefa, minister of war at Nanjing and Zuo Guangdou's student, hesitated over Zhu Yousong and looked for a compromise, while many Donglin men favoured another prince.

Zhu Changfang, the Prince of Lu (潞王), a nephew of Wanli, had fled his fief in Henan for the south. Many Donglin officials wanted him, but he had no army.

Ma Shiying, supreme commander at Fengyang and a friend of Ruan Dacheng, did not wait. With four generals behind him he brought Zhu Yousong to Nanjing as regent, and in June 1644 the prince took the throne as the Hongguang emperor; Ma became chief minister.

Gao Jie, the former rebel who had run off with Li Zicheng's wife, was one of the four. He was made Earl of Xingping and given one of the four commands north of the Yangzi.

Huang Degong, a soldier from Kaiyuan in Liaodong who had risen from the ranks, was another. He had been made Earl of Jingnan for putting down a mutinous general in Henan alongside Ma Shiying.

Liu Zeqing, a Shandong man made Earl of Dongping, was the third, posted to guard Huai'an and the road from Shandong. Within a year he would fail Shi Kefa when it mattered.

Liu Liangzuo, Earl of Guangchang, was the fourth. The four were known as the four commands of the river; within a year Liu Liangzuo would go over to the Qing with a hundred thousand men.

Ma Shiying brought back Ruan Dacheng, on the treason list since 1629, over the protests of Liu Zongzhou and other Donglin men, and he rose to minister of war. Ruan drew up lists of Donglin 'remnants' to be arrested.

Shi Kefa left the court for Yangzhou, north of the Yangzi, with the rank of grand secretary, to hold the four quarrelling generals together, while Ma Shiying ran the government.

Huang Zongxi had been one of the young scholars who signed the manifesto that drove Ruan Dacheng out of Nanjing society after his disgrace. Now Ruan had him arrested as a Donglin remnant.

Early in 1645 Gao Jie moved north from his base at Xuzhou to strike at the Qing, and went to Suizhou to join forces with the local commander, Xu Dingguo.

Xu Dingguo had already offered his submission to Dodo. He gave a banquet for Gao Jie, got him drunk and killed him, and took his head to the Qing.

Zuo Liangyu, commanding the largest Ming army at Wuchang, hated Ma Shiying and Ruan Dacheng. In April 1645 he set off down the Yangzi to 'clear the evil ministers from the emperor's side', and Nanjing pulled troops back to stop him. He died on the way.

Zuo Menggeng hid his father's death and kept coming, until Huang Degong beat his vanguard back. He retreated to Jiujiang, and when Ajige's army arrived from the north, he surrendered to the Qing with the whole army.

Liu Zeqing, ordered to relieve Yangzhou, withdrew to Huai'an instead, and when the Qing came he fled by sea. He went over to the Qing, who put him to death for plotting in 1648.

Shi Kefa shut himself in Yangzhou with what troops remained and refused Dodo's call to surrender. The city was stormed on 20 May, Shi Kefa was put to death, and Dodo let his soldiers sack Yangzhou for days.

The Hongguang emperor fled Nanjing early in June and made for Huang Degong's camp at Wuhu. Nanjing opened its gates to Dodo on 16 June.

Huang Degong told the emperor he should have stayed, then swore to die for him. When Liu Liangzuo, now with the Qing, called on him to surrender, an arrow struck Huang Degong in the throat and he cut his own throat. His officers seized the emperor and handed him over.

Liu Liangzuo had gone over to Dodo with a hundred thousand men. That summer he led the Qing siege of Jiangyin, which held out for months against the order to shave the head.

Dodo, who had broken Li Zicheng at Tong Pass that winter, turned on the southern Ming in the spring of 1645 and marched to the Yangzi.

In July 1645 Dorgon ordered every man under Qing rule to shave his forehead and wear the Manchu queue, on pain of death. Towns across the lower Yangzi that had surrendered rose against the order.

Qian Qianyi, the most famous man of letters in the south and the Hongguang minister of rites, was among the officials who surrendered Nanjing. He served the Qing for five months, resigned, and later worked in secret for the Ming loyalists. Qu Shisi and the young Koxinga had both been his students.

In Zhejiang, loyalists brought Zhu Yihai, Prince of Lu (魯王), to Shaoxing, where he declared himself regent in September 1645. He would not accept the reign title of the rival court in Fujian.

In Fuzhou the Prince of Tang, Zhu Yujian, had been proclaimed the Longwu emperor in August 1645. The two courts each refused the other's authority.

Huang Daozhou, scholar, calligrapher and Longwu's grand secretary, could not get Zheng Zhilong to move. In the autumn of 1645 he raised a few thousand volunteers himself, with a dozen horses and a month's grain, and marched over the mountains into Jiangxi. His columns were beaten; he was captured near Wuyuan early in 1646, taken to Nanjing and executed that April.

In 1646 the Qing came over the mountains into Fujian, and Zheng Zhilong had already pulled his troops back to the coast. Longwu fled inland and was caught and killed at Tingzhou in October.

Zheng Zhilong held the real power in Fujian. He kept his fleet and his men on the coast and sent no army north, however hard Longwu and Huang Daozhou pressed him.

Zheng Hongkui, Zheng Zhilong's younger brother, had met the Prince of Tang at Hangzhou in 1645 and brought him into Fujian, and was rewarded as one of the men who made him emperor. Sent to defend the Xianxia Pass, he halted and waited for supplies.

Zheng Zhilong's son, born in Japan and schooled in Nanjing under Qian Qianyi, caught Longwu's eye. The emperor gave him the imperial surname, Zhu, and the name Chenggong; he became the Lord of the Imperial Surname, Koxinga, and was made an earl and given a general's seal.

As the Qing came in, Zheng Zhilong pulled his troops back to the coast and opened talks. In November 1646 he went to Bolo's camp and surrendered, and was taken north to Beijing.

Koxinga refused to follow his father. His mother died in the Qing sack of the family's home port. In January 1647, on Little Kinmen, he swore to fight the Qing, and began to gather his father's old ships and men.

Bolo, a grandson of Nurhaci, commanded the Qing armies in the south-east in 1646. He took Shaoxing and drove the Prince of Lu out to sea, then crossed the Xianxia Pass into Fujian; his general Jobtei took Fuzhou.

Liu Zongzhou, the leading moral philosopher of Zhejiang and a former censor-in-chief, would not live under the Qing. When Hangzhou fell in 1645 he stopped eating, and starved to death.

Huang Zongxi had studied under Liu Zongzhou on his father's dying instruction. When the Qing came south he raised his own armed company, the 'Loyal for Generations Battalion', to resist them.

Chen Zilong, poet, founder of the Ji literary society of Songjiang and editor of Xu Guangqi's great book on agriculture, joined the loyalist risings round Songjiang. Arrested in 1647 after a failed plot, he broke his chains on the way to Nanjing and drowned himself.

Xia Wanchun, Chen Zilong's pupil, had fought beside his father at fourteen. Captured in 1647, he was questioned in Nanjing by Hong Chengchou, now the Qing's man in the south, and praised the 'loyal martyr' Hong Chengchou to his face as if he were dead. He was executed at sixteen.

After Longwu's death, officials in Guangdong made Zhu Youlang, Prince of Gui and a grandson of Wanli, regent at Zhaoqing; in December 1646 he took the throne as the Yongli emperor.

Zhu Yuyue, Longwu's younger brother, had reached Guangzhou and was proclaimed there as the Shaowu emperor days before Yongli's enthronement. The two courts sent armies against each other at Sanshui in January 1647.

Ding Kuichu, governor-general of Guangdong and Guangxi and a Christian convert, was one of the men who put Yongli on the throne, and became his grand secretary.

Qu Shisi, a student of Qian Qianyi, was another of Yongli's founders. When the court fled again in 1647 he stayed to hold Guilin, and beat off three Qing attacks with Western cannon.

Li Chengdong had been one of Gao Jie's officers, and like him a former rebel. He went over to the Qing in 1645, led the massacres at Jiading, and followed Bolo south. In January 1647 he took Guangzhou, and Shaowu hanged himself forty days after his accession.

Li Chengdong took Zhaoqing and drove Yongli to Guilin. He caught Ding Kuichu fleeing with three hundred boats of gold and silver; Ding Kuichu surrendered, and Li Chengdong, an old enemy, killed him and his household.

In 1646 Hooge led a Qing army into Sichuan. In January 1647, at Fenghuangshan near Xichong, Zhang Xianzhong was shot dead in an encounter with Hooge's troops.

Zhang Xianzhong had four adopted sons who commanded his armies. Sun Kewang took the lead and brought the survivors south out of Sichuan into Guizhou and Yunnan.

Li Dingguo, twenty-six, from Yan'an in Shaanxi, was another of the four. In Yunnan the brothers rebuilt a state of their own, with Sun Kewang at its head.

Liu Wenxiu, the third adopted son, from Yan'an in Shaanxi like Li Dingguo, shared the command and took the title of Prince Funan in the brothers' new state in Yunnan.

Ai Nengqi, the fourth, called Prince Dingbei, was struck by a poisoned arrow while attacking Dongchuan in 1647 and died of the wound in Kunming.

Jin Shenghuan, one of Zuo Liangyu's officers, had gone over to the Qing with Zuo Menggeng and conquered Jiangxi for them. Angry at his small reward, he declared for the Ming at Nanchang in 1648.

That spring Li Chengdong, who had destroyed the Shaowu court and driven Yongli from Zhaoqing, declared for Yongli at Guangzhou. He had been angry at being left under a Qing governor-general.

Qing armies besieged Nanchang. Jin Shenghuan's appeal to He Tengjiao brought no help, and early in 1649 the city fell; Jin Shenghuan and his officer Wang Deren died with it.

Li Chengdong marched into Jiangxi to relieve Nanchang, was twice beaten back at Ganzhou, and in April 1649, retreating, drowned crossing a river. Guangzhou fell to the Qing the next year.

Kong Youde, now Prince Dingnan, commanded the Qing armies in Hunan and Guangxi. At the end of 1650 he took Guilin, while Shang Kexi took Guangzhou.

He Tengjiao, the Ming governor-general of Huguang, took into his armies the remnants of Li Zicheng's Shun troops and of Zuo Liangyu's old army, and in 1648 they retook most of Hunan. Early in 1649 the Qing took Xiangtan and captured him; he refused food for seven days and was then killed.

Qu Shisi stayed at Guilin as the Yongli court moved again. When Kong Youde took the city he was captured with his colleague Zhang Tongchang, refused to submit, and was executed on 8 January 1651.

Dorgon died on a hunting trip on the last day of 1650. He had ruled for seven years and was buried with an emperor's honours.

Jirgalang, pushed out of the regency by Dorgon in 1647, moved at once: he arrested Dorgon's brother Ajige, who was trying to take over Dorgon's following.

Ajige, who had called the boy emperor 'the child' and hoped to succeed his brother as regent, was stripped of his rank, imprisoned and made to kill himself in 1651.

Shunzhi, thirteen, took power himself in 1651. Dorgon was accused of crimes against the throne, stripped of his titles, and his body was dug up and flogged.

Bumbutai, Shunzhi's mother, a Mongol princess of the Khorchin and Hong Taiji's widow, had steered between Dorgon and her son through the regency, and helped the young emperor take over the government.

Sun Kewang, master of Yunnan and Guizhou, offered in 1649 to fight for the Ming and demanded the title Prince of Qin. His men killed Yongli's ministers who opposed it, and in 1651 the emperor gave way.

In 1652, with the Qing closing on Guangxi, Sun Kewang moved the Yongli emperor to Anlong, a small town in Guizhou, and kept him there. Sun Kewang had the army and the revenue; the emperor had the title.

In 1652 Sun Kewang sent Li Dingguo east through Hunan with war elephants. At Yanguan the elephants broke the Qing lines, and in August Li Dingguo stormed Guilin.

Li Dingguo turned north into Hunan, drew a pursuing Qing army into a trap near Hengzhou and destroyed it at the end of 1652. Huang Zongxi wrote that his victories 'twice felled famous princes and shook the whole country'.

Liu Wenxiu led the western offensive into Sichuan and pushed Wu Sangui back to Baoning, but attacked him there carelessly and was badly beaten. He fell back to Guizhou.

Kong Youde shut himself in his residence at Guilin and burned it around him. The mutineer of Wuqiao died fighting a former rebel general who now fought for the Ming.

Nikan, Prince Jingjin, a grandson of Nurhaci, was sent south with a Qing army. He drove hard after Li Dingguo near Hengzhou, was surrounded, and was killed fighting.

Wu Sangui, now Prince Pingxi, had spent early 1652 driving the Ming forces out of northern Sichuan. Pushed back to Baoning by Liu Wenxiu, he turned on him there and beat him.

In 1653 Shunzhi sent Hong Chengchou south to direct the war. He set up at Changsha, ringed the loyalists with armies along the borders of Hunan, Sichuan and Guangdong, and told them to strike back only if attacked.

Wu Zhenyu, a grand secretary at Anlong, had opposed Sun Kewang's claims. He and others secretly sent to Li Dingguo to come and protect the court. Sun Kewang found out, and in 1654 Wu was made to hang himself and seventeen others were executed: the Eighteen Gentlemen of Anlong.

Koxinga made Xiamen and Kinmen his base, renaming Xiamen Siming, 'Remember the Ming'. He controlled the sea, and his trading posts and smuggling paid for an army, a fleet and imported arms.

Gan Hui, a Fujian man who joined him in 1647, rose to command his land army and fought in nearly all his battles; Yongli made him Earl of Chongming.

In Beijing Zheng Zhilong wrote to his son at the Qing's request, urging him to come to terms. Talks dragged on until 1654 and failed.

In 1655 Yongli made Koxinga Prince of Yanping. He drilled his troops on Kinmen, beat off a Qing attack on the island in 1656, and held the Fujian coast.

In 1656 Li Dingguo brought the Yongli emperor out of Anlong to Kunming, where Liu Wenxiu held the city. Li Dingguo was made Prince of Jin and Liu Wenxiu Prince of Shu.

In 1657 Sun Kewang marched on Kunming with a far larger army, a hundred and forty thousand men, with Bai Wenxuan and Ma Bao leading the vanguard.

Bai Wenxuan, an officer of Zhang Xianzhong's old army whom Sun Kewang sent ahead with the vanguard, rode alone to Li Dingguo and joined him; other officers turned, and Sun Kewang's army broke. Bai Wenxuan was made Prince of Gongchang.

Sun Kewang fled with about four hundred followers and kinsmen and surrendered to the Qing, handing over maps of Yunnan and Guizhou. The Qing made him Prince Yi.

Hong Chengchou, worn out and blind in one eye, was still directing the war in the field in 1658 as three Qing armies converged on Guizhou and then Yunnan. When they took Kunming in January 1659, Doni called him there to set up its government.

Doni, Dodo's son, twenty-two, had been demoted to Prince Xin after Dorgon's fall. In 1658 he was made commander-in-chief and led the central army across Guizhou.

Wu Sangui led the northern army out of Sichuan, beat Bai Wenxuan at the Qixing Pass, and came into Yunnan. In 1659 he was left to govern it.

Jobtei, a Manchu general who had led one of the armies that took Guizhou in 1658, commanded the southern army, drove Li Dingguo back to the Beipan River, and joined the others at Kunming in January 1659.

Liu Wenxiu had been gathering Sun Kewang's old soldiers in the Sichuan hills in 1658 when Li Dingguo had him recalled to Kunming. He shut himself in his house, and died of illness there that spring.

Li Dingguo could not hold the river lines and fell back on Kunming, then took the emperor west to Yongchang. At Mopanshan he set an ambush for the pursuing Qing; a deserter betrayed it to Wu Sangui, and both sides lost heavily.

Bai Wenxuan, beaten at the Qixing Pass, retreated through western Yunnan toward the Burmese border with what was left of his army, some fifty thousand men.

Yongli left Kunming early in 1659 and crossed into Burma as the Qing pursued; most of his ministers scattered on the road, and by June he had reached Ava, the Burmese capital.

Koxinga's first attempt on the Yangzi, in 1658, was wrecked by a storm at Yangshan. In 1659 he sailed again with his whole army, took Guazhou and Zhenjiang, and reached Nanjing that summer.

Instead of storming Nanjing, Koxinga camped round it and waited for it to surrender, falling for the defenders' request for a delay. Zhang Huangyan, a minister of the Prince of Lu who sailed with him, meanwhile won over the towns up the river round Wuhu.

When the Qing sallied out and broke Koxinga's camps, Gan Hui was among the generals who died in the rout. Koxinga fell back to Xiamen.

Liang Huafeng, the Qing commander of Suzhou and Songjiang, was among the commanders who broke Koxinga's army before Nanjing; he said Koxinga's was the strongest army he ever fought.

In 1660 Yongli lived near Ava at the mercy of the Burmese king, the last Ming emperor, with no territory left in China and most of his court scattered.

Li Dingguo held out on the Burmese border with what remained of his army, borrowing troops from the border states and trying to get the emperor back.

In 1660 a Qing fleet under Dasu attacked Xiamen, and Koxinga destroyed it in a sea battle off the port. He still had his ships, his trade and his army.

Sun Kewang, Prince Yi, gave up his title and seals in 1660 and died that winter in Beijing, of illness by the official account; others said he was shot on a hunt.