Fall of the Ming and Manchu Conquest
Beijing fell to a peasant army in April 1644, the last Ming emperor hanged himself, and the Manchus took the city six weeks later. The dynasty had been failing for decades. Silver imports from Japan and Spanish America collapsed in the 1630s while taxes were assessed in silver; the cold and drought of the period historians call the Little Ice Age produced repeated harvest failures in the north-west; epidemics killed a large share of the population of Shanxi and Hebei; and the treasury was funding a permanent frontier war against the Manchus in the north-east. Soldiers went unpaid and postal-relay workers were laid off as an economy — among them Li Zicheng, who became the rebellion's leader. Li took Beijing on 25 April with little resistance. The Chongzhen emperor rang the bell for his ministers, none came, and he hanged himself on a tree on Coal Hill. The decisive act was Wu Sangui's. He commanded the frontier army at Shanhai Pass, was caught between Li and the Manchus, and opened the gate to the Manchus. The Qing entered Beijing in June, proclaimed the Shunzhi emperor, and spent forty years subduing the south, where Ming loyalist courts held out and Zheng Chenggong took Taiwan from the Dutch. The queue — the shaved forehead and braid — was imposed on all men in 1645 on pain of death. The Qing ruled until 1912. Li Zicheng was defeated at Shanhai Pass within weeks of taking the throne and was dead within a year, having held Beijing for forty-two days. The dynasty he ended had lasted 276 years, and the one that replaced it lasted 268.
- Year: 1644 CE
- Category: Political
