Manchu Emperor Shunzhi / Chuntche / Shun Chih - 1650-1661
The rebellion of Li Tzu-ch'eng and his capture of Peking were the immediate causes of the suicide of the last of the Mings. The Tatar conqueror, Tsung Teh, was invited to occupy the vacant throne, and lived just long enough to enter Peking. He died in A. D. 1644, after proclaiming as his successor the young prince who at the age of six assumed the title of Shun Chih and is generally regarded as the first of the Manchu sovereigns of China. The dynastic title chosen was that of Tai Ch'mg, or Great Pure Dynasty. According to the accounts given by the Jesuit fathers, China at this time contained a population of eleven and a half million families. At the end of the reign another estimate was made of nearly fifteen million families, or eighty-nine million individuals.
For the greater part of the successful achievements of the early part of the reign of Shun Chih the credit should be given to the Emperor's uncle, the Regent Ama Wang. His was the comprehensive intelligence and the strong arm which grasped and suppressed most of the dangerous outbreaks of rebellion and when he died, whilst on a hunting expedition, in A. D. 1651 the conquest had been to a large extent secured. Shun Chih showed less than gratitude. A royal funeral was, indeed, celebrated and posthumous honors awarded, but a few months afterwards the tongue of slander reached the ears of Shun Chih and, under the impression that Ama Wang had before his death been seeking his own aggrandizement the Emperor degraded his memory, destroyed his tomb, and even mutilated the dead body.
The security of the Tai Ch'ing Dynasty was far from complete with the conquest of the north. The situation was not unlike that in England after the death of Harold at the Battle of Hastings. New pretenders to the Ming succession were constantly put forward and leaders were found to head the obstinate rebellions which broke out in various provinces. There were, too, many Portuguese from Macao ready to serve as mercenaries. Some of these were enlisted and promised to provide artillery, but jealousy of the foreigners proved a stronger passion than even hatred of the Manchu. The chief resistance to the invader was naturally in the south. At Nanking a great rally was made around the person of the prince Fu Wan, but the Chinese were defeated and the claimant drowned in the waters of the Yangtse River. One Ming princeling was put forward in Fuhkien, others in other places. But it was all in vain. One was captured and sent to Peking to be strangled with the bowstring. Another was slain in battle. Remorselessly the conquerers continued their advance.
Two of the most romantic figures in the story of the conquest are those of the great pirates, Ching Chih-lung and his son, Ching Ch'ing-kung, better known as Coxinga, a corruption by the Portuguese of the title Kuo-hsing-yeh, "Possessor of the National Surname." The father was a native of the province of Fuhkien, but had lived for many years in a Japanese settlement in Formosa where the son was born of a Japanese mother. The elder Ching was first of all only an ordinary freebooter, but gradually he developed into a serious opponent of the Manchu supremacy and the conquerors had more difficulty with him and his apparently omnipresent fleet than with all the land forces of China. The son earned an even more terrible name and became to the Manchu what Hereward the Wake was to the Norman. After many adventures the father fell into the hands of the Manchus and was executed in Peking in A. D. 1661. The son survived only one year, dying at the age of thirty-nine after a most romantic career. His adventures form the subject of one of the best known of Japanese plays by the dramatist Chikamatsu. It is interesting to add that the descendants of Coxinga were ennobled under the title of Hai-ching-kung (Sea Quelling Duke) presumably for their services in restoring the island of Formosa to the Empire.
The first Manchu Emperor of China made serious efforts to secure popularity among his new subjects. He showed himself as much as possible among the people and ratified as far as possible the existing Chinese laws. He retained the Six Boards, accepted the counsels of the literati, and, in the interests of the old order, refused permission to the Chinese to learn the Tatar language. On the other hand, the insistence on the wearing of the queue as a badge of subjection to the Manchu provoked the intensest resentment. The Chinese were as inordinately attached to their national manner of wearing the hair long and unshaven as the Koreans were of their top-knot at the time of the Japanese occupation of the peninsula. Hence when the order came to shave the head with the exception of one long lock at the back there were thousands of people who preferred to lose their lives rather than dishonor their heads. In some provinces, such as Fuhkien, the resistance lasted until recent times and the general willingness to sacrifice the pigtails exhibited in the recent revolution has shown that even centuries are not sufficient to recommend a fashion against the sentiment of a nation.
Shun Chih's death took place in AD 1661, according to one account from small-pox, but, according to another and more circumstantial one, from grief at the decease of a favorite wife. This wife had been the spouse of a young Manchu whom the Emperor summoned to Court and, with malice prepense, boxed his ears. Of course the insulted subject could not with honor survive the indignity and, on his suicide, which had been foreseen, Shun Chih at once married the widow. When she died the grief-stricken Emperor was with difficulty prevented from slaying himself. He had thirty women immolated, according to the old fashion, at her tomb and preserved the body, reduced to ashes, in a silver urn. Then he shaved his head and went, like a madman, from pagoda to pagoda till death ensued. Just before his death he selected as his heir his second son, then eight years old,- destined to bear the great and glorious name of K'ang Hsi. He then exclaimed, "I shall soon depart to rejoin my ancestors," and expired at the age of twenty-four after a reign of eighteen years.
Gossip has been busy with the name of Shun Chih. Stories have been circulated of his illegitimate birth and it is furthermore believed by many that, instead of dying in 1661, he abdicated and retired to a Buddhist monastery. In a temple 14 miles from Peking a mummy statue was shown whose features were strikingly like those of Shun Chih. The Emperor's devotion to Buddhism was well known and one writer says: "He threw away the Empire as one casts away a worn out shoe; he rejected the sovereignty thrust upon him in this incarnation and, following the example of the Lord Buddha, prepared to seek the mystic solitudes."
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