Dorgon

Dorgon (born Nov. 17, 1612, Yenden, Manchuria [now Xinbin, Liaoning province], China—died Dec. 31, 1650, Kharahotun [now Chengde, Hebei province]) was a prince of the Manchu people of Manchuria (present-day Northeast China) who played a major part in founding the Qing (Manchu) dynasty in China. He was the first regent for the first Qing emperor, Shunzhi.

Dorgon was the 14th of the 16 sons of Nurhachi, founder of the Manchu state, who in 1616 proclaimed himself emperor of China but died in 1626 before making good his claim to the imperial title. Under his successor, Abahai (Nurhachi’s eighth son), Dorgon received the title of an imperial prince, hosoi beile. He distinguished himself in the wars against the Chahar Mongols that began in 1628 and was elevated to prince of the first degree (ruiqinwang). Dorgon commanded one of the two army groups that breached the Great Wall and sacked 40 cities in the Chinese provinces of Hebei and Shandong during Abahai’s campaigns to subjugate China in 1638–39. He also participated in the capture of the cities of Songshan and Jinzhou that resulted in a significant expansion of Manchu authority.

On Abahai’s death in 1643, Dorgon was nominated his successor but declined, reportedly because of loyalty to the dead emperor. Instead, he and the older prince Jirgalang became regents for Abahai’s five-year-old son, Fulin. The fact that Dorgon executed two princes when he discovered their plot to put him on the imperial throne is characteristic of the high moral standards for which he is praised by historians.

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When in April 1644 the troops of the Chinese rebel Li Zicheng conquered Beijing (the capital of China then ruled by the Ming dynasty), Dorgon, on the advice of a Chinese counsellor, led an expeditionary force into China. His former principal enemy, the Chinese general Wu Sangui, joined forces with him rather than allow Li Zicheng to establish his own dynasty, and the combined armies inflicted a heavy defeat on Li Zicheng’s troops. Dorgon entered Beijing in June 1644, but the last Ming emperor had already hanged himself in April. After pursuing the fleeing troops of Li Zicheng, Dorgon turned his attention to the stabilization of his administration, prudently enlisting the cooperation of several outstanding Chinese experts. He established Beijing as the capital and, adopting many Chinese customs, laid the basis for Manchu rule in China.

The youthful Fulin entered Beijing on Oct. 19, 1644, and 11 days later was proclaimed emperor (the first of the Qing dynasty) under the name Shunzhi. In 1644 Dorgon subdued the provinces of Shaanxi, Henan, and Shandong; Jiangnan, Jiangxi, Hebei, and part of Zhejiang followed in 1645; and the provinces of Sichuan and Fujian were added in 1646. Rebellious Ming troops were pushed back into the southwestern provinces of the country, and Dorgon suppressed revolts of the Mongolian tribes in Central Asia.

He took over the highly developed administrative system of his Chinese predecessors, reengaging Chinese experts and recruiting new civil servants through the proven method of selection and examination. Adam Schall von Bell, a German Jesuit missionary, served him as mathematician, director of the Imperial Board of Astronomy, and adviser on the manufacture of artillery. All these measures contributed to the generally favourable acceptance of the new dynasty, notwithstanding the forcible expropriation of land and the introduction of Manchurian customs, such as the pigtail.

Relegating Prince Jirgalang to the functions of assistant prince regent, Dorgon in 1644 began to gather more and more power in his hands, even venturing to impose humiliations on his nephew Haoge and other imperial princes who opposed him. Receiving the title of imperial father regent in 1648, he personally led the campaign against a rebellious Chinese general in Shanxi. He also designed the plans for the construction of his own palaces in Jehol (now Rehe); there, he intended to spend his remaining years as feudal overlord, but he died in late December 1650 during a hunt at Kharahotun, near the Great Wall. He was posthumously proclaimed emperor and given the temple name of Chengzong.

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Dorgon’s sudden death created confusion and disorder in the empire. Since he had left no male heirs, disturbances broke out, especially among the corps of the white banner unit that had been under his command. Internal shifts on the political scene brought his former enemies to power; they had succeeded in obtaining the promulgation of an imperial decree of March 1651 declaring that Dorgon had been a usurper. He was posthumously deprived of his princely rank, along with other honours; his relationship to the imperial house was disavowed; and a petition of two officials attempting to redeem his reputation was rejected. Only after the Qianlong emperor, in 1778, honoured Dorgon’s services in establishing the new dynasty and restored his neglected grave was Dorgon finally fully rehabilitated.