The Last Empress: The She-Dragon of China by Keith Laidler Read Free Book Online

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. 15 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.
    With General Wu pursuing the rebel Emperor, the way was open to the Manchu to assume the rights and prerogatives of the Dragon Throne. The Mandate of Heaven had been bestowed upon the Aisin Gioro. Nurhachi’s dream had finally been achieved; the long-dead Manchu warrior had at last taken his revenge on the hated Ming. Fu Lin, the first Manchu Emperor of China, was now given the reign title Shun Chih. He was just five years of age when he attained the Imperial dignity. Dorgun was the effective ruler of China, acting as primus inter pares among the Regents.
    Dorgun died in 1650, when Shun Chih was twelve, but already the child Emperor was revealing the serious and highly moral aspects of his character that were the marks of his short reign. The Manchu had despised the weakness and indolence of the Ming. And they knew their victory was due as much to their opponent’s bondage to luxury, to the presence of sycophants at court, and to the ascendancy of the eunuch clique within the palace, as to their own skill at arms. They therefore took pains to remove those aspects of Ming rule that had contributed to their downfall. When Shun Chih died in 1661 he had set the foundations of a strong and stable monarchy: he had revised the corrupt system of examinations for the Chinese bureaucracy and instituted regulations governing admission to and training of the priesthood. But by far the greatest innovation, undertaken when he was still in his minority, was the suppression of the eunuchs as a clique in the politics of the Forbidden City. Had his strict regulations been followed by his successors, it is possible that a Manchu Emperor might still reign in the Forbidden City today.
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    In Chinese Daoist philosophy, the symbol known as Tai Chi encapsulates the cyclical nature of all material creation.

    In this system, opposites are seen as complementary–and they succeed one another in an infinite cycle. The months of life, spring and summer, are followed by autumn and winter, the seasons of decay and death. But winter is once again followed by spring. Day follows night, and night day. The dot in the centre of the opposing colour symbolises the fact that within each day some anticipations of night occur, just as each night contains intimations of the coming day. All things contain the seeds of their own destruction. 16
    And so it proved with Manchu rule. Despite Shun Chih’s able beginnings, within a few decades the Manchu too had been seduced by the cloying and voluptuous atmosphere of the Forbidden City, by the absolute power that they wielded over the world’s most populous nation. The root of the problem was twofold. The very size of the Middle Kingdom made it seemingly impossible to govern; and yet, for centuries, the country had been held together by its formidable (though thoroughly corrupt) bureaucracy. Throughout its long history, when the Mandate of Heaven was given to a new Emperor, be he native sovereign or foreign conqueror, the