This monarch, however, was quite unequal to the fate which had
befallen him; and, before long, both he himself and his capital were
in the hands of the Manchus. Other claimants to the throne appeared
in various places; notably, one at Hangchow and another at Foochow,
each of whom looked upon the other as a usurper. The former was soon
disposed of, but the latter gradually established his rule over a
wide area, and for a long time kept the Manchus at bay, so hateful
was the thought of an alien domination to the people of the province
in question. Towards the close of 1646, he too had been captured, and
the work of pacification went on, the penalty of death now being
exacted in the case of officials who refused to shave the head and
wear the queue. Two more Emperors, both of Imperial Ming blood, were
next proclaimed in Canton, one of whom strangled himself on the
advance of the Manchus, while the other disappeared. A large number
of loyal officials, rather than shave the front part of the head and
wear the Manchu queue, voluntarily shaved the whole head, and sought
sanctuary in monasteries, where they joined the Buddhist priesthood.
One more early attempt to re-establish the Mings must be noticed. The
fourth son of a grandson of the Ming Emperor Wan Li (_died_ 1620) was
in 1646 proclaimed Emperor at Nan-yang in Honan. For a number of
years of bloody warfare he managed to hold out; but gradually he was
forced to retire, first to Fuhkien and Kuangtung, and then into
Kueichou and Yünnan, from which he was finally expelled by Wu
San-kuei. He next fled to Burma, where in 1661 he was handed over to
Wu San-kuei, who had followed in pursuit; and he finally strangled
himself in the capital of Yünnan. He is said to have been a
Christian, as also many of his adherents; in consequence of which,
the Jesuit father, A. Koffler, bestowed upon him the title of the
Constantine of China. In view of the general character for ferocity
with which the Manchus are usually credited, it is pleasant to be
able to record that when the official history of the Ming Dynasty
came to be written, a Chinese scholar of the day, sitting on the
historical commission, pleaded that three of the princes above
mentioned, who were veritable scions of the Imperial stock, should be
entered as "brave men" and not as "rebels," and that the Emperor, to
whose reign we are now coming, graciously granted his request.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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