At the turn of the Ming and Qing dynasties, China's total population plummeted from about 200 million in the late Ming Dynasty to tens of millions. The population losses here are both the attrition of the war, the epidemic caused by the war and the large reduction in food production, and the large number of people who have died of illness or starvation.
However, there is another point, after the Manchu Qing entered the customs, policies such as shaving orders were implemented, which led to dissatisfaction and refusal to comply with the people everywhere, as well as the people's anti-Qing and Ming movements. These events led to the Brutal Suppression of the Qing Court, the population losses caused by barbaric massacres.
Xiaobian will take stock of the ten major massacres and atrocities in the early Qing Dynasty.
The Liaodong Massacre, this one was before the Manchu Qing Dynasty entered the customs. After Nurhaci established the Houjin regime in the northeast, he adopted the system of land enclosure serfdom against the Han people in the Liaodong region (now Liaoning Province), where the Han people could not tolerate this "historical regression" and rebelled and defected. Nurhaci mercilessly slaughtered the rebels and slaughtered more than a million Han Chinese.
The Tu of Nanchang, in 1649 AD, after the Manchu Qing Entered the Customs, the great general Tan Tai of Zhengnan carried out a large-scale slaughter of the city in Nanchang Province, Jiangxi! Jin Shenghuan and Wang Deren (these two are not good things, "repeatedly jumping") rebelled against the Qing and surrendered to the Ming, and after the Qing army defeated them, they retreated to Nanchang Province. The Qing army besieged Nanchang until the city was destroyed, during which time it burned and committed adultery, and about 200,000 people were killed.
On the tenth day of Yangzhou, the Ming general Shi Kefa led the army and civilians to block the Qing army from going south, and after the failure of the battle, the Qing army slaughtered the city. The massacre lasted for ten days! "Ten days without sealing the knife"! Hence the name "Ten Days of Yangzhou".
After the Qing court issued an order to shave their hair, the people of Jiading could not accept it, and under the leadership of Hou Zhizeng, they raised a banner against the Qing, and Li Chengdong, the general of the Qing Army, led an army to slaughter the city. After the slaughter of the city, the villagers who escaped by chance re-rebelled against the Qing under the leadership of Zhu Ying, and Li Chengdong once again led an army to slaughter the city. Later, the Southern Ming general Wu Zhifan led an army with the support of the local people to defeat the Qing army and capture Jiading. But soon, Li Chengdong gathered his strength to counterattack, defeated the Ming army, and incidentally slaughtered again. History is called "Jiading Three Massacres".
On the 81st day in Jiangyin, after the Qing Dynasty issued an order to shave their hair, the people of Jiangyin refused to accept it, and under the leadership of Yan Yingyuan and others in Jiangyin, an anti-Qing uprising was carried out. The resistance lasted for eighty-one days, and finally the city was destroyed, and nearly 200,000 people died in the city, and none of them surrendered!
The massacre of Jiaxing, the people of Jiaxing could not stand the atrocities of the Qing army, under the leadership of the former Ming Hanlin scholar Tu Xiangmei and others, the city was destroyed, except for a large number of young women who were plundered by the Qing army as military prostitutes, as well as temple monks, the rest of the residents were slaughtered.
Under the leadership of Shang Kexi, the king of Pingnan, and Geng Jimao, the king of Jingnan, the Qing army carried out a ten-month siege of Guangzhou. After the destruction of Guangzhou, the Qing army carried out a large-scale slaughter of the city for twelve days. The dead were between seven hundred thousand and one million people.
The Ganzhou Massacre, the Manchu Qing army from Nanchang south, the Ganzhou capital defenders are composed of reinforcements from all over the place, and there is no ability to cooperate with each other. After the city was destroyed, the governor of Jiangxi, Wan Yuanji, the university scholar Yang Tinglin and others and 6,000 defenders were martyred, and the Qing army also slaughtered the city on a large scale, with about 200,000 dead.
In 1648, the datong general army rebelled against the Qing Dynasty and restored the Ming Dynasty, and because it was in the north of Shanxi, it directly threatened the Qing capital Beijing. The Qing court mobilized heavy troops, and it took a year to re-occupy the entire territory of Shanxi, and the officials and people of Datong were slaughtered.
After entering Sichuan to slaughter Shu, following the "Great Western King" Zhang Xianzhong who killed countless people in Sichuan, the Qing army also killed Sichuan after it captured Sichuan. Sichuan, which originally had a population of several million, was killed by less than 100,000 people! It triggered the "Lake Filling Sichuan" organized by the Qing court later to supplement the population of Sichuan.