Author: Kobo-Daishi
Date: 01-30-02 04:07
Dear Guo,
I¡¦m not a historian, either. But I enjoy reading a lot.
The account in my posting is based mainly upon the 1990 edition of ¡§The Search for Modern China,¡¨ by Jonathan D. Spence. Spence is a professor at Yale University who specializes in Chinese history since the 16th Century.
In the book, Spence also gives a list of pros and cons that must have gone through Wu Sangui¡¦s mind as to which of the two sides should he ally with.
Here is what he wrote:
¡§Among arguments for joining Li were the fact that he was Chinese, that he seemed to have the support of the local people, that he promised to end the abuses that had marked the late Ming state, and that he held Wu¡¦s father as a hostage. Otherwise, Li was an unknown quantity, violent and uneducated; moreover, the behavior of his army in Peking after he had seized the city in April 1644 was not encouraging to a wealthy and cultured official like General Wu. Li¡¦s troops had looted and ravaged the city, attacking and pillaging the homes of senior officials, seizing their relatives for ransom, or demanding enormous payoffs in ¡¥protection money.¡¦ Even though Li had declared the formal founding of a new dynasty, he was unable to control his own generals in Peking, and Wu might well have wondered how effective Li would be in unifying China.
As for allying with the Manchus, there was the disadvantage that they were ethnically non-Chinese, and their Jurchen background included them in a history of semicivilized frontier people whom the Chinese had traditionally despised; furthermore, they had terrorized parts of North China in their earlier raids and had virtually wiped out some of the cities they had occupied. Yet in their favor was the early development of their embryonic regime, the Qing, which offered a promise of order: the six ministries, the examination system, the formation of the Chinese banners, the large numbers of Chinese advisers in senior positions¡Xall were encouraging signs to Wu. And their treatment of senior Chinese officials who surrendered had been good.
For a combination of these reasons and according to popular tales, because Li had seized one of Wu¡¦s favorite concubines and had made her his own, General Wu Sangui threw in his lot with the Manchus, fought off the army that Li sent against him, and invited Dorgon to join him in recapturing Peking. Li retaliated by executing Wu¡¦s father and displaying the head on the walls of Peking. But the morale of Li¡¦s troops were fading fast, and not even his formal assumption of imperial rank on June 3, 1644, could shore him up. The next day he and his troops, weighed down by booty, fled to the west. On the sixth of June, the Manchus and Wu entered the capital, and the boy emperor was enthroned in the Forbidden City with the reign title of Shunzhi.¡¨
Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.
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