The Last Empress: The She-Dragon of China (5 page)

Though not for the Manchu. The most able of Nurhachi’s surviving sons, Dorgun, was barred by house laws from the throne, though not from a position as Regent. Using a combination of charm and intrigue, Dorgun placed a five-year-old youngster on the throne, with himself as Chief Regent. This went against all tradition and precedent, but it would have taken a hero or a fool to object: Dorgun’s military prowess was undeniable, and he enjoyed the wholehearted support of the bannermen, the cream of the Manchu army.

With his authority confirmed for the foreseeable future, Dorgun continued his predecessor’s plans for the destruction of the Ming. Just six months after the death of Tien Tsung, all the bastions guarding the route to Beijing had been captured save one–the impregnable fortress of Ning Yuan. The garrison there was commanded by a famous Chinese warrior, Wu San-kuei, and under his generalship the city had proved impregnable to Manchu arms, and looked set to remain so for some time to come. Then, suddenly, news was brought to Mukden that Wu San-kuei had abandoned this most strategic of fortresses and was marching his army on the Chinese capital. The news was disbelieved at first–it was inconceivable that Wu San-kuei could make such a monumental blunder–this was military suicide for the Ming.

What the Manchu did not know was that events had been moving swiftly to the south of the Great Wall. Li Tzu-cheng’s revolt had prospered and he was moving rapidly north-east towards the capital, driving all before him.
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He had lost his left eye to an enemy arrow during one of his many battles, but–as an ancient prophecy claimed that the Ming would be conquered by a one-eyed man–he accepted the wound joyfully. Li’s whole rebellion was based upon superstition: Chinese historians relate that, while a young man out hunting with two close friends, he had suddenly driven an arrow into the ground and stated that, if a snowstorm came that night, and if the snow reached level with the top of the arrow, he would take this as a sign from Heaven that he would eventually become Emperor. The snow duly fell, and to just the right height, leaving Li with a conviction that his rebellion would succeed.

The rebel leader combined superstition with cruelty–his ruthlessness was legendary. When a captured Imperial general refused to submit, Li had him fastened to a high beam and shot at him with arrows until he was dead. When another captive, Prince Fu, refused even to speak with him, Li decided on a grim jest. The Prince’s full name indicates ‘good fortune’. Li had him decapitated and mixed a cupful of his blood with cooked venison, naming the dish ‘red pottage of good fortune’ before eating his fill. But perhaps the most extreme example of his bloodthirsty nature occurred in 1643, when his advance through Hunan Province had been held up for almost two years by the stubborn resistance of the city of Kaifeng. Enraged, he imposed
corvée
labour on the farmers in the surrounding area in order to cut away the embankments of ‘China’s Sorrow’, the Yellow River, and so flood the town. When the river finally broke its banks it swept away over one hundred thousand of these unfortunates (and took with them a further ten thousand of Li’s own men). But the scheme worked. The destruction visited on Kaifeng was almost inconceivable: of a population of over a million souls, less than one in ten survived–more than nine hundred thousand lost their lives in the flood, sacrificed to Li’s ambition.

Li then led his men into Shanxi, to the ancient city of Xian. Here, dressed in Imperial dragon-robes, on the first day of the new year (1644) he proclaimed the inauguration of the ‘Great Obedient’ dynasty and took upon himself the Imperial title of Yung Ch’ang. As far as Li was concerned, his victories confirmed that the Mandate of Heaven, given by the gods, and held by the Ming Dynasty for almost three hundred years, had been revoked–and given to him. In Beijing, the news of Li’s rival dynasty, and his proximity to the capital was met with despair and fear. Yet even now it did not serve to shake the Ming and its courtiers out of their self-induced lethargy. Steeped in superstition and belief in auguries, they may have taken heart from the strangely titled ‘Song of the cakes’, a prophecy said to have been uttered by the first Ming Emperor, Chu Yuan-chang, concerning the fate of his Dynasty. It is claimed that this ‘Song’ tells of the coming of the eight banners of the Manchu, and the ultimate overthrow of Manchu power by the Japanese (which did in fact come to pass, but only after the Manchu had swept away the Ming). One line of the prophecy is striking. It states:

Ten-mouthed women, with grass on their heads,

once more carry a babe in arms

to be Lord over the Empire.
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Remarkably, in Chinese, the first character of the name Yehonala, is composed of the symbols ‘ten’ and ‘mouth’ side by side; and above them (‘on their heads’?) is the sign for ‘grass’.

On this basis, then, the Manchu were the enemy to be taken seriously, with Li’s rebellion nothing more than an annoyance, simply another of the periodic revolts which shook the peace of the Middle Kingdom. A Grand Secretary, Li Chien-tai, a man of great wealth, offered to fund the expenses of the army and to march at their head against the rebels. But while this disorganised Ming host searched vainly for the foe (and lost thousands of its own soldiers to starvation) the wily ‘Emperor’ Li Tzu-cheng and his army had slipped away northwards, before swinging east into Chihli Province, on the very doorstep of Beijing.

A second Ming army sent to oppose Li’s forces was headed, not by a commander of vast experience, but by the powerful, and militarily ignorant, court eunuch, Tu Hsun. As Li’s men converged on the next strategic town, Ta T’ung-fu, this same eunuch commander-in-chief refused to fight and, quickly turning his coat, abjectly agreed to the town’s surrender. When the rebels finally appeared before the gates of the capital itself, Tu Hsun fired a message in a quill into the city, in which he advised his late master that the rebels must win and that the Emperor’s best course of action was to commit suicide.

Even this treachery did not bring the Ming Emperor to his senses. He appointed yet another eunuch, Wang Ch’eng-en, as commander-in-chief of the Beijing defences. The result was predictable. One by one the city’s strong-points fell to Li’s forces. But in the face of this disaster the court still could not free itself from the obsessive dream of Ming invincibility: on the day the first gate of the outer city fell, just two miles away (and with no line of defence between him and the rebels) a eunuch grandee was entertaining guests with a theatrical extravaganza.

Li’s rebel troops surged forward and with very little fighting took the Chien Men, the main southern gate into the northern half of the city, making speedily for the last bastion of Ming power, the purple-walled enclosure of the Great Within. Suddenly realising the hopelessness of his position, the Emperor attempted to send his two sons to safety, dressing them in the ragged clothes of the ‘stupid people’ (the demeaning aristocratic term for Chinese hoi polloi). ‘Today you are Heir to the throne,’ he is reported to have told his eldest son ‘tomorrow you will be...a wanderer on the face of the earth. Reveal not your names and dissemble as best you may. If perchance your lives should be spared, remember in time to come to avenge the wrongs which your parents have suffered. Forget not these my words.’ With that, the boys were spirited away out of the city. His daughters were to share an altogether different fate.

The Emperor now proceeded to get drunk, quaffing bowl after bowl of wine. Then, filled with the Chinese equivalent of Dutch courage, he assembled his harem and told the ladies bluntly, ‘All is over. It is time to die.’ His senior concubine, Lady Yuan, tried to flee, panic-stricken, but the Emperor cut her down with his sword. The Empress Consort was made of sterner stuff: she retired immediately to the Palace of Feminine Tranquillity, and there hanged herself. Altogether some two hundred of the Emperor’s women committed suicide.

The Emperor’s eldest daughter, the Princess Imperial, was waiting at the ironically named Palace of Peaceful Old Age. Crying, ‘By what evil fortune were you born into our ill-starred house?’ the Emperor cut off her right arm and left her dying on the ornate tiles of the palace floor. He then made his way to the pavilion of Charity Made Manifest, and slew his second daughter.

Dawn was breaking. Some loyal follower, remembering palace routine, rang the bell for the morning audience, where in happier times the Emperor had received homage and reports from across his wide domain. No one arrived. Most of the palace servants had fled, but the Celestial Prince was attended by Wang Ch’eng-en, the one eunuch who remained faithful to him to the end. Frenzied and distracted, the Emperor changed from his Imperial robe into a short tunic with a dragon motif and, with a shoe on the right foot and his left foot bare, made his way to Coal Hill, a towering mound surmounted by pavilions, just to the north of the Forbidden City. Once again, his departure was not without irony, for he fled by way of the Gate of Divine Military Prowess. Mounting to the top of Coal Hill he stopped; and there in the Imperial Hat and Girdle pavilion the last of the Ming Emperors hanged himself. As custom demanded, his last act had been to compose his valedictory message. Lacking writing materials, he set it down on the lapel of his tunic:

I, feeble and of small virtue, have offended against Heaven; the rebels have seized my capital because my ministers deceived me. Ashamed to face my ancestors, I die. Removing my Imperial cap and with my hair dishevelled about my face, I leave to the rebels the dismemberment of my body. Let them not harm my people!
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Against all expectation, Li Tzu-cheng had won through to the Dragon Throne, and the former brigand was proclaimed Emperor of All Under Heaven. China was his. The prophecy had been fulfilled and a one-eyed man had toppled the once-mighty Ming. But as is usual in such cases, the prophecy revealed only half the truth–Li was Emperor, but his reign was to be measured not in years but days.

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Just before the final attack on the city, the Ming Emperor had sent a desperate message to General Wu San-kuei, ordering him to bring his army of seasoned veterans to protect Beijing. It was this message that had precipitated Wu’s sudden departure from his border stronghold, the same retreat towards Beijing that had so confused and bewildered the Manchu when they first heard of his baffling departure. Now, with the Ming gone, the new Emperor Li Tzu-cheng once again commanded General Wu’s attendance in the capital.

Wu ignored the summons and continued to hold his position between the new Emperor and the Manchu Dorgun, whose forces lay like a wolf pack at the border, biding their time. Emperor Li, in exasperation, led an advance guard of more than one hundred thousand men against Wu’s forces, but was heavily defeated. Chastened, he offered talks, and at a subsequent meeting, Li and Wu signed an agreement which effectively partitioned China. Li’s ‘Great Obedient Dynasty’ was allowed to keep the treasures it had looted from the city, but agreed to relinquish Beijing to the Ming heir apparent (who was now a hostage of the General). Wu had proclaimed his ‘guest’ the new Ming Emperor, and intended to become China’s
éminence grise
and the power behind the throne. Li’s portion of China was to be all territory to the west of the provinces of Shanxi and Shaanxi. Both parties to the treaty promised to act jointly against the Manchu, should the Regent Dorgun invade.

The agreement was worthless. It gave Li the chance to escape from the catastrophic effects of a possible alliance between Wu and the Manchu, and granted him vast lands, the title of Emperor, and undreamed-of wealth. For Wu, the alliance allowed him to extricate himself from the possibility of having to fight on two fronts, against both Li and the Manchu. Even so, he knew his army was no match for Dorgun’s forces. He schemed to extend discussions with the Manchu, to use sweet words to buy time, to amass sufficient power to withstand a Manchu assault.

But Dorgun was not to be fooled. On hearing of Li and Wu’s meeting, he moved his forces through the Shanhaiguan Pass at the end of the Great Wall, and sent a stern message forbidding Wu to enter Beijing with the heir apparent. He also reminded him of the Manchu’s earlier offer, granting Wu the rank of feudal Prince should he agree to join with them. Wu now faced a stark choice: he could either ignore Dorgun’s demands, set up the heir as a puppet Emperor, and face battle with a superior enemy. Or he could abandon the heir apparent, secure his future as a wealthy and powerful noble, and help Dorgun’s attempt on the Dragon Throne.

Being a prudent soldier, Wu cast the heir apparent to the wolves, and threw in his lot with the Manchu. On hearing of this treachery, Li ordered the beheading of Wu’s father and sixteen female members of his family, before setting out with two hundred thousand men to fight the combined might of the Manchu and his former ally. The combat began in a furious dust-storm with both sides scarcely able to distinguish friend from foe. But now he was Emperor, Li’s luck seemed to desert him. His men broke before the united Manchu and Chinese banners, and he was forced to fly, escaping with as much booty as he could safely carry.

Still fearful of Wu’s power, Dorgun set him and his formidable army on the trail of Li’s forces as they made their way westwards. Ever efficient, Wu pursued and destroyed Li’s ‘Empire’ for the Manchu and, ironically, having earlier sought to set up a new Ming Dynasty, he spent the next decade hunting down the four Ming claimants to the throne. Kuei Wang, the Yung Li Emperor and the last of the Ming line, was pursued as far west as Burma; once captured Wu had him strangled with a bowstring.
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For thirty years he was the right-hand man of the Manchu and was granted a satrapy, ruling most of south-west China with an iron hand, and holding state like an Emperor. Despite this, he ended his days as a rebel, rising in revolt in 1674 upon hearing that the Manchu Emperor intended to curb his powers. His early offensives proved that he had lost none of his martial skill, and the history of China may well have been written quite differently had this formidable military genius not been cut down by a stroke in 1678, as he planned yet another campaign.