The Chinese governor of the Liaodong strip in the later sixteenth century was Li Chengliang, thought to be a sinified Korean.1 Manchu folklore claims that Li accepted the post of Liaodong governor, along with a secret mission to hunt down and kill the last prince of the Manchu tribes. He adopted a local orphan boy called Nurgaci and raised him as his own son. Supposedly, the boy noticed two birthmarks on Li’s feet when the two were bathing, and asked him what they were. Li answered that such blemishes marked their owner out as a ruler in the making, at which the boy raised his own feet and proudly showed his stepfather that he had not two, but seven.
Li realised that the future Manchu leader was actually living under his roof, and plotted to murder the boy, but Nurgaci was warned by his stepmother, and fled Li’s house in the company of a dog and a black horse. The wrathful Li Chengliang killed his wife for her insubordination, and burned down the forest where he thought Nurgaci was hiding. The boy’s dog died in the flames, but Nurgaci fled on horseback, concealed from the eyes of searching soldiers by a swirling flock of magpies. The horse bore him to safety before it perished from exhaustion, and the boy swore revenge – honouring his stepmother in the afterlife, and repaying his animal allies. The magpie he adopted as his guardian spirit, the dog was for ever excluded from Manchu sacrifices, and the Chinese word for the clear black coat of the horse lent its name to the name of the dynasty that would eventually conquer China – Qing.2 Or so the story went.
The historical reality is hardly less incredible. Li Chengliang was never Nurgaci’s stepfather, but instead an occasional trading partner with the Manchus. Demonstrating a bipolar and occasionally hostile attitude strangely familiar to that which the Dutch would adopt a generation later in south-east China, Li Chengliang alternately traded peacefully with the Manchus, before warring against them in a series of disputes over territory and jurisdiction. Nurgaci reached manhood during a period of peaceful commerce with Li Chengliang, when the Manchus gained considerable riches, particularly over their supplies of the magical root ginseng, which was literally worth its weight in silver.
Records are vague as to how the break between the Manchus and Chinese came about. It is known that Nurgaci’s father and grandfathers perished in a battle at the remote stronghold of Mount Gure, but it is less clear on which side they fought. Later Manchu records would claim that the feckless Chinese attacked Nurgaci’s grandfather Atai, and that the other relatives perished when they rushed to his aid with reinforcements. However, it is also possible that Atai had fallen out of favour with the other Manchus, and that Nurgaci’s other grandfather, Giocangga, had formed an alliance with Li Chengliang in order to do away with him. Whatever the truth, something went wrong at Mount Gure, and both grandfathers perished in the fighting, along with Nurgaci’s father Taksi.
Now the leader of the tribe, the 23-year-old Nurgaci demanded that his former ally somehow make amends for the disaster, but the Chinese governor refused to either pay reparations or return Taksi’s body to his people. Nurgaci reputedly left the matter unresolved, but began a series of campaigns in the interior against other tribes, uniting many of the tough warriors of Manchuria in a new confederacy. In the early years of the seventeenth century, it was the Manchus who began to encroach on the land of the Chinese, crossing the ‘uncrossable’ borders they had earlier agreed by treaty with Li Chengliang, and seizing a number of Chinese towns. In 1616, on the first day of the Chinese New Year, Nurgaci proclaimed himself to be more than a mere lord among other tribal leaders. He proclaimed himself to be a khan, the ruler of the area and the supreme commander of the other clan leaders. At an elaborate ceremony at his capital, he received pledges of fealty from ambassadors from other tribes, from Mongolia, from Tibet and from Korea. It was a direct challenge to the Ming dynasty that ruled China, and a sign that Nurgaci regarded himself as a rival to the ruler of the Celestial Empire itself. He was encouraged in this by many of his new recruits – Chinese turncoats who had tired of the corruption of the Ming regime, and astrologers who pointed at the terrifying conjunctions and aspects that awaited the Ming dynasty over the next few years. As part of the climactic changes that were bringing harsh droughts and cold winters, the period also saw magnificent and striking outbursts of the aurora borealis – Nurgaci believed that the lights in the sky were messages to him.3
For some years, as he consolidated his power north of the Great Wall, Nurgaci dealt with a peculiar state of affairs. The Manchu political system was forced to deal with a situation wherein the ruling class was greatly outnumbered by its Chinese vassals. The people of the Liaodong peninsula were included in the Manchu government itself, and turncoat generals and officials were co-opted into the Manchu state, by marriage and appointment. Nurgaci sat at the head of a nation that was, in the eyes of the Chinese, little more than a barbarian upstart, but was already setting up a system of conquest and inclusion that his descendants would put into effect on China itself. He also established the military system that would eventually conquer the Celestial Empire, dividing his people into legions or ‘Banners’, each led by a Prince. The initial Yellow, White, Blue and Red Banners, were later augmented with Bordered Yellow, Bordered White, Bordered Blue and Bordered Red Banners. Initially, foreign allies fought under their own Black Banner. Later, Nurgaci incorporated them into the main legions. The headmen of conquered villages were appointed as captains in specific Banners, thereby involving both them, their menfolk and the rest of their village directly in further conquests. By the time the Manchus invaded China, the ‘Eight Banners’ actually comprised twenty-four separate armies, the original eight now augmented by further legions of Mongols and Chinese. The Banner system, which cunningly swept aside former clan allegiances in favour of loyalty to a military unit, itself part of a greater whole, became so important to Manchu identity that it even entered the Chinese language – the descendants of Manchus can still be heard referring to themselves as qiren, Banner People.
The growth of Nurgaci’s power throws some light on the situation in distant Fujian. In 1626, as Chinese officials prepared to buy off criminals like Nicholas Iquan, their counterparts in the north of the Empire faced a terrifying sight. The Manchus were marching ever closer to the Great Wall, and one of the last cities in their way was the strongly fortified town of Ningyuan. Nurgaci suffered one of the only setbacks of his campaign when he failed to take the town, but it was also to be his last battle. Wounded in the fighting, he died of medical complications that September.
The military official in charge of Ningyuan proudly reported to Beijing that he had halted the Manchu expansion – a claim that would return to haunt him a mere two months later, when Nurgaci’s son Aberhai led a second assault. Aberhai was also beaten away, but not for long.
The continued military advance of the Manchus hid a power struggle behind the scenes, as the sons of Nurgaci debated the succession. Nurgaci had three wives and many concubines, creating rivalry among their male children. At his death, the government was in the hands of four senior princes. Daisan was the son of his first wife, Manggultai the son of his second, Amin was his nephew, and Aberhai was the son of a concubine. Some believed that Nurgaci intended the monthly rotation of ruler to continue after his death, while others argued that Nurgaci had merely set up that system in order to observe how each brother handled the task. As Nurgaci lay dying, he ordered that the junior princes Ajige, Dorgon, and Dodo, his three sons by his third wife, should each receive command of an entire Manchu legion. Although they were among his youngest children, command of such forces would give them considerable power among the other princes, and the fact they shared a single mother could unite them even more. According to a report from a Korean observer,4 it was Nurgaci’s wish that Dorgon would eventually become the leader, with Daisan as regent until the teenager reached manhood.
Daisan was having none of it. A stern man in his fifties, he ensured that only two legions were handed over to the three brothers. The eldest, Ajige, had to make do with a few companies borrowed from the other two. Daisan also convinced his relatives that the best choice as overall ruler would be Aberhai, the youngest of the senior princes, and hence the easiest to control.
Aberhai, however, was fiercely ambitious, such that the belligerent Nurgaci himself had rebuked him on several occasions for his attitude. Before long, he had managed to talk the other senior princes out of sharing the throne dais with him – all the better, he claimed, to emulate the Chinese system they were preparing to conquer. In 1630, cousin Amin was accused of cowardice after retreating ahead of a Ming counter-offensive. He died in prison, and his Bordered Blue legion was handed over to a supporter of Aberhai.
Aberhai’s next victim was Manggultai, a prince whose bloodline had been gradually falling from favour. He had been obliged to kill his own mother in 1620, when she was accused of hoarding jewellery and flirting with Daisan.5 In 1631, Manggultai drew his sword in a quarrel with Aberhai during an argument at the siege of a Chinese town.6 Though he was restrained by other relatives, he was later censured by a council of the princes, and suffered a loss in rank. Manggultai and his brother were dead by 1635, but the campaign against them continued long after. In 1636, it was discovered that Manggultai had been preparing seals proclaiming himself as Emperor. It was the excuse that Aberhai needed to execute Manggultai’s children, and expunge him from the family records.7
Within months of the removal of his last serious rival, Aberhai proclaimed himself the imperial ruler of the Manchus. He left the Ming Chinese alone for a while, creating a period of relative peace for a couple of years – notably, the lessening of Manchu pressure on the north led to prosperity elsewhere, and this was the period when Coxinga was brought from Japan to Anhai. Instead, Aberhai sent armies against the Chakhar Mongols, the last descendants of Khublai Khan, who had once ruled all China. After a prolonged campaign, Aberhai’s generals obtained the surrender of the Chakhar, and also possession of the great seal of the Mongol khan. As its owner, he could now claim to be the successor of Genghis Khan, and his power on the steppes of Asia increased. It was just one of several incidents which showed the Manchus were practising for the conquest of China itself. The period also saw Aberhai adopt a number of policies, laws and practices of Ming China – the barbarians north of the Great Wall were now aping and shadowing the Ming system, rehearsing for a time when they would seize it for themselves.
However, although he proclaimed himself the Emperor of the forthcoming Qing dynasty, and prepared to attack China himself, Aberhai would never see Beijing. The aging warrior, now in his sixties, died in 1643, even as his armies amassed for the march on China.
The Manchus needed to select a new ruler from among his brothers or sons. There were a large number of candidates, though the chief prospects seemed to be Aberhai’s eldest son Haoge, and Aberhai’s younger brother Dorgon.
Fully understanding the crippling responsibilities of the emperorship, Haoge turned down the offer. It is possible that he also refused to involve himself in family power politics. Although Haoge was an obvious choice as Aberhai’s heir, he was the master of only a single legion. Dorgon, Dodo and Ajige were still close as brothers, and were no longer the children they had been at the death of Nurgaci.
Dorgon, however, also refused to accept the emperorship, claiming it would be disrespectful to the man who had all but raised him since the death of his father. In the years since Aberhai’s succession, Dorgon and his brothers had been loyal servants of the usurper. From the age of fourteen, Dorgon had led his legion in almost every military campaign the Manchus undertook for a decade. At sixteen, he had earned the sobriquet ‘wise warrior’ during the campaign against the Chakhar Mongols, and was the leader of one of two Manchu armies that made a brief incursion into China itself in 1638. Aberhai may have hoped that his half-brother would meet with an untimely end on one of a hundred battlefields, but Dorgon returned from every campaign. By the time of Aberhai’s death, the 31-year-old Dorgon was one of the greatest and most respected generals among the Manchus, and a prince of the first rank. He was the perfect choice as a figure to unite the Manchus ready for their attack on China. But Dorgon was not called the ‘wise warrior’ for nothing – he instead suggested another candidate. Dorgon recommended Aberhai’s youngest son Fulin who was barely five years old.
Before the time of Aberhai, wives and concubines of a dead ruler had been obliged to commit ritual suicide on their master’s death. Aberhai had reformed this practice, which now called merely for principal wives to follow their lord into the afterlife. In fact, he ensured that one of the last noblewomen to take her own life in such a way was Dorgon’s mother, in a failed attempt to reduce the unity and connections between Dorgon and his two full brothers. On Aberhai’s own death, two of his main spouses had killed themselves, thereby removing themselves from any debates over the succession, and possibly reducing the support for their sons. However, Aberhai’s youngest wife Borjigid was not called upon to commit suicide on account of her junior status. She was a formidable woman of thirty, a descendant of the famous Genghis Khan himself, and the mother of the young Fulin. At various points in years to come, palace rumour-mongers would also suggest that the young princess was a secret lover of Dorgon – her imperial husband was an old man, but the handsome young general was only a year her senior. Some even whispered that Fulin might not be Aberhai’s son at all, but Dorgon’s.
The choice of Fulin pleased all parties, or at least displeased almost everyone equally. Dorgon became co-regent with his cousin Jirgalang, although there were still some members of the royal family who would have preferred Dorgon to be the absolute ruler. Discussing such thoughts after the accession of a new leader was tantamount to treason – when Prince Daisan discovered that his own son and grandson were plotting to put Dorgon on the throne, he reported the incident immediately, and the two minor royals were also executed.
The descendants of Nurgaci were finally back in control of their domain. A mere six months after they had crowned their child-Emperor, news reached them of trouble in China. Their long-term enemies, the Ming dynasty, whom the Manchus had always intended to overthrow, had just been overthrown by someone else. The Manchu nobles listened in disbelief as messengers described the madness of the Emperor of Lofty Omens, his assault on his own family members, and his suicide. Now Beijing was under the control of Li Zicheng, the ‘dashing general’, who had proclaimed himself the ruler of a new dynasty. The time was right for the Manchus to strike.