The Strange Story of Prince-Regent Dorgon

The Architect of the Qing Conquest of China

The sequence of events which propelled the Manchu into control over China in the years 1640-1650 is remarkably strange.

Today, the Sage will talk about one key man, Dorgon, 14th son of Nurhaci, the founder of the Manchu people.

Nurhachi’s life is not very well documented, strangely so considering how important a figure he is in the history of China, and by extension, the world. Nurhaci started out as an obscure and unimportant tribal leader living in what western historians call Manchuria [the Chinese call his homeland Liaoning].

Nurhaci built a kingdom out of nearly nothing, doing so by dint of military campaigns against rival clans and strategic marriages to the daughters of allied - or potentially allied - clans. He also married at least a few Mongol women, beginning a practice which his descendants would continue for the next 300 years. The danger of marrying the daughters of powerful clan leaders is obvious to anyone who knows history. As soon as sons are born, the rivalry between the wives begins. As the king gets older, the battle for succession becomes fiercer.

To an amazing degree, Nurhaci had capable sons. In European history, he rivals King Henry II of England who had four capable sons. Nurhaci’s capable sons included Daisan (2nd son, lived 65 years, died in 1648), Manggultai (5th son, lived 45 years, died in 1633), Hong Taiji (8th son, lived 50 years, died in 1643), and Dorgon (14th son, lived only 38 years, assassinated in 1650).

Dorgon’s mother was the beautiful and clever Lady Abahai, who moved up in rank from 3rd wife to Prime Wife just two years after she married Nurhaci (biography by Fang Chao-Ying). She bore the king three sons: the second son was Dorgon in 1612. Nurhaci was mortally injured in a battle against the Ming in 1626 and word was sent to his wives to come see the injured king. Lady Abahai sailed south on a riverboat and met the king just before he died. However, Nurhaci either failed to leave explicit instructions for who should rule his kingdom following his death, or his instructions were ignored.

Instead, in a remarkably vicious turn of events, the older sons of Nurhaci ordered that Lady Abahai commit suicide to serve her husband in death. She refused but they told her she didn’t have a choice - so she died the next morning. The custom of having one - or more - of the junior wives of the Huangdi (Emperor of China) commit suicide to serve the king in death had been followed periodically in Chinese history. The first Ming Huangdi was buried with a number of women from his collection of consorts, but few, if any, later Ming Huangdi continued this barbaric practice. The Manchu stopped this practice themselves in later years, likely by 1690.

The new ruler of the Manchu was not Prince Daisan, the eldest living son of Nurhaci. Instead, the fourth major son, Prince Hong Taiji was selected. Why Prince Daisan stepped aside in favor of his half brother Hong Taiji is unknown. Daisan was a skilled military commander, and he led the Red Banner. His son, Yoto, was also a major military commander in the Manchu army. There is no obvious reason why Daisan would have stepped aside in favor of his younger half-brother.

One would have thought that Daisan and Hong Taiji, having forced the death of Dorgon’s mother, would have also eliminated Dorgon and his two brothers, but that did not happen. Instead, the new king, Hong Taiji, gave Dorgon the important position of leader of the Plain White Banner, while his younger brother, Dodo, was given command of the Bordered White Banner. Dorgon led his banner in the lightning campaign against the Joseon dynasty in 1627. The following year, Dorgon defeated the Chahar Mongols of Inner Mongolia in 1628 and forced their surrender to Manchu control in a second war in 1635.

In 1636, Hong Taiji declared he was no longer king of the Manchu, but instead he was the Huangdi - meaning that he was the one and only Son of Heaven. The Korean kingdom of Joseon refused to acknowledge Hong Taiji as the Son of Heaven, because there could be only one Son of Heaven, and that the was Ming Huangdi in Beijing. Thus, for a second time, the Manchu attacked Korea, and again they demolished the Korean army in a month. This time, the Koreans formally disavowed their centuries long relationship with the Ming and declared, under severe duress, that they were the loyal allied state of the new Qing Dynasty.

Prince Dorgon was always successful in his many military campaigns. The Manchu armies were constantly in motion: raiding the Ming, attacking various Jurchin tribes in Manchuria, and subduing various Mongols clans who had been the major military power of northern-eastern Asia since the time of Genghis Khan.

In 1643, the Huangdi of the Qing state died. Hong Taiji was only 50 and his death came suddenly and unexpectedly. Another succession struggle loomed, and the Qing state, less than a decade old, could easily have fallen apart in bloody civil war. Doubtless all the neighbors of the Qing - Korea, China, and the Mongols - were hoping for exactly this outcome.

Prince Dorgan was an obvious successor to Hong Taiji, but Hong Taiji had children of his own. His eldest son was Prince Hooge. However, Hooge (born in 1609) was not the equal of his uncles and he lacked any military success and really any strength of character.

Dorgon and his older half-brother Daisan came to an agreement: they would both support giving the title of Huangdi to a very young boy (the Shunzhi Emperor) - one of the youngest sons of Hong Taiji, only five years old. However, the quid pro quo was: Dorgon and Daisan would be co-regents for the next decade. However, at this point Prince Daisan was 60 years old and he could not match Dorgon’s youthful energy of age 30.

Less than a year later, in 1644, the rebel army of Li Zicheng attacked Beijing and took the city after a brief and ineffective resistance. The Ming Huangdi killed himself along with many of his wives and children. Quite suddenly, in April of 1644, the Ming Dynasty, supposedly the most powerful state of East Asia, was revealed to be a paper tiger.

Prince Dorgon seized this once-in-five-hundred-years opportunity and led the entire Manchu army into China. With Dorgon in command, the astonishingly effective Manchu army allied with a large Chinese army under the mediocre leadership of Wu Sangui and together they defeated the large but poorly led army of Li Zicheng in May of 1644 - called the Battle of Shanhai Pass.

Dorgon, again demonstrating brilliant leadership, convinced Wu Sangui to take his army and chase down Li Zicheng while Dorgon led his Manchu army to Beijing. Thus, it was Prince Dorgon at the head of the Eight Manchu Banners who arrived at the Walls of Beijing on June 5th, and announced the Qing Dynasty had come to take its rightful place as the new ruler of China.

Dorgon sent various Manchu armies out to attack other rival Ming loyalists and he, in the face of a sea of difficulties, managed the incredible task of rebuilding the government of China on-the-fly. The nominal ruler of the Qing was only six years old. Prince Daisan seems to have helped Prince Dorgon in running the new government in Beijing but he would be dead in four years (1648). Instead it was Dorgon who ruled the Qing government, assisted by his older brother Ajige and his younger brother the infamous butcher of Yangzhou, Dodo.

Six years later, all of these Manchu leaders were dead. Daisan, Dodo, and then Dorgon - one after the other. Prince Dorgon was almost certainly assassinated by supporters of the Shunzi Emperor, who had just reached the age where he could, in theory, dismiss any regents and take the throne with full authority. In fact, it seems likely that Dodo was murdered by hidden enemies of Prince Dorgon before Dorgon was himself killed. The most obvious suspects in the murder of Dorgon were the men who took power after Dorgon’s death - most notably being a former regent Jirgalang.

Despite the loss of these top leaders of the Manchu government, the Qing continued and they defeated all the Ming pretenders to the throne. Later - under the brilliant leadership of the Kangxi Emperor - the Manchu defeated Wu Sangui and gained unshakable control over China.

Without Prince Dorgon, it is likely that none of this takes place. Prince Dorgon has been unfairly neglected in world history. One would think conquering Ming China and setting up a new and effective government would be sufficient to earn your place in ranks of great leaders of the past, but Dorgon gets little credit for his accomplishments. Instead, the standard history is all how the Ming collapsed and the Manchu just happened to be at the right place at the right time. Yes, there is some truth to this but a far more likely scenario is that the Manchu do nothing in the face of the the Ming collapse, paralyzed by internal struggles following the death of Hong Taiji.

If one was inclined, one might see this sequence of events not as a set of curious events. What are the odds that Hong Taiji dies in the fall of 1643, just as Li Zicheng is about to take control over Xian? What are the odds that Prince Dodo dies in April 1649, at age 36, quite suddenly from smallpox; a disease he went to great lengths to avoid catching? What are the odds that Prince Dorgan dies less than a year later at age 38, from a leg injury which supposedly occurred when he was out hunting? Nurhaci dying from a mortal wound suffered in battle is entirely reasonable, but these other deaths seem - rather unlikely.