Although the chongzhen emperor of the Ming Dynasty hanged himself on the coal mountain, and the Ming Dynasty came to an end, the remnants of Daming still had the strength to rebel against the Jurchens. The seeds of rebellion are growing in the cracks, in addition to the successor regime of the Ming Dynasty looking for the last glimmer of hope in southern China, the anti-Qing people who came to the people are also trying to move, under the guise of the blood of the descendants of the Ming Dynasty, carrying out anti-Qing activities. Among them, the most famous is the "Third Prince of Zhu" case.
Who is Prince Zhu San?
Ming historical records record that the Chongzhen Emperor had seven sons in his lifetime, and by the end of the Ming Dynasty, there were definite records of three sons, namely Zhu Cijiong, the prince of Xian, Zhu Cijiong, the king of Dinglai, and Zhu Cijiong, the king of Yong mourning, of which Zhu Cijiong was the so-called "third prince of Zhu". After Chongzhen hanged himself, the three sons fled the capital and disappeared. Because of this, the whereabouts of the three princes are unknown, and anti-Qing people in the world have fought against the Qing government under the banner of "Zhu SanZi".
In the eighth year of Shunzhi (1651 AD), Zhu Yinglong, a disciple of the Ming royal family, became a Taoist monk, changed his name to Wang Daozhen, claimed to be the prince of the Eastern Palace of the Heavenly Apocalypse, and confessed after being captured by the Pingjing Government in Shaanxi Province, which was actually a trick to confuse the public and wanted to restore his old business. Although it was later confirmed that Wang Daozhen was indeed a royal family, the Qing government still executed him according to the descendants of the Zhu family.
In the sixteenth year of Shunzhi (1659 AD), Zhang Jin, the capital of Jinhua, Zhejiang, felt that the folk rumors of "Zhu Sanzi" might as well impersonate, so he called himself "Zhu Ciying", the fourth son of the former emperor, and went around cheating, and was later captured by Zhucheng in Henan and sent to the Punishment Department, where he was executed in prison.
In the twelfth year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1673), Yang Qilong secretly infiltrated Beijing, claiming to be the "Third Prince of Zhu", and some homeless people in Beijing and the Eight Banners rebelled against slaves, plotting against the Qing Dynasty and restoring the Ming Dynasty, and the "Third Prince of Zhu" case broke out, which shocked the government and the opposition.
One after another, the "Third Prince of Zhu" revolted
In January of the year of Yang Qilong's uprising, Wu Sangui, the king of Pingxi, formally rebelled against the Qing, and the imperial court urgently mobilized troops to encircle and suppress it. Yang Qilong felt that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. On the evening of December 21, he held a secret meeting at the home of Zhou Gongzhi on Gulou West Street in Xicheng, Beijing, and made specific arrangements for matters related to the uprising, including Huang Qi's overseer Lang Tingshu's servant Huang Tailor, and Zhenghuangqi Zhou Gongzhi's servant Chen Yi.
Yang Qilong decided to call himself emperor, changed his era name to "Guangde", and on the 23rd, "wrapped his head in white cloth, and draped his body with red cloth, set fire to things in and around the capital." Because of his imperceptible behavior, he was overheard by one of Zhou Gongzhi's domestic servants and told Zhou Gongzhi. Zhou Gongzhi Ma Ma reported the matter to Lang Tingshu. The stakes were so high that the Yellow Banner Commandery Tuhai and Zu Yonglie quickly raised up officers and men and personally led them to capture them. They surrounded Zhou Gongzhi's mansion. The deputy governor of the yellow flag, Ji Hari, and others also led officers and soldiers to help in the suppression.
Zhou Gongzhi's servant Chen Yijian was surrounded, so he set fire to resist arrest. Officers and men rushed into the courtyard, and after a short battle, they captured chen yi and more than thirty other people, and then searched for and arrested them extensively, capturing the chief personnel Li Zhu and hundreds of people involved in the incident, and the "first offender" Yang Qilong fled. Immediately afterward, the Qing government hunted down the rebels in the city of Beijing, arrested hundreds of people, implicated thousands, more than 200 of whom were executed, and wanted yang Qilong, the chief evil "Prince of Zhu San" in the country.
However, in the blink of an eye, three years have passed, and the "Third Prince of Zhu" has not only failed to catch the case, but has instead appeared another "Third Prince of Zhu" in Fujian. This "Third Prince of Zhu" was originally Cai Yin, a native of Xi County, LongXian County, Zhangzhou Prefecture, Fujian Province, who called himself "Prince Zhu San" and gathered some soldiers from the sea to contact Zheng Jing, the son of Zheng Chenggong, in an attempt to join forces with Zheng Jingli and retake Quanzhou, which had been recovered by the Qing government. In the meantime, the rebel army wrapped its head in white cloth, which was then known as a white-headed thief, and due to the disparity in strength between the enemy and us, the army was soon defeated, so it defected to Zheng Jing and changed its name to Cai Wenming.
In the eighteenth year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1679 AD), the Qing government captured Zhu Cican, the Prince of Chongzhen, in Xinhua County, Hunan. According to Zhu Cican's confession, he escaped from Beijing, but was imprisoned in Nanjing by Zhu Yousong, the Fu King, and after his release, he became a monk and studied Buddhism with the monk of decaying wood. Later, due to illness, he plotted against the Qing in the area of Yongzhou and Baoqing. The Kangxi Emperor said that when the Ming Dynasty was attacked by Li Zicheng, the crown prince was still young and certainly could not escape from the capital, and how could he still live now must be false. Therefore, Kangxi sent him to the capital to confront Yang Qilong's Yu Party, and as a result, even Yang Qilong's wife did not know him, and Kangxi beheaded him on the grounds that the person was a fake.
Exactly who The Third Prince of Zhu or Yang Qilong really is, there is still no conclusion, just as the Kangxi Emperor said: When traitors have trouble everywhere, they will take the name of Prince Zhusan at every turn, and they will not be able to bend.
Perhaps, the anti-Qing struggle waged by anti-Qing people borrowing the name of Zhu Ming's descendants does not necessarily refer to Chongzhen's third son, and it does not really mean much as to whether Zhu Sanzi is Yang Qilong, Zhu Cican, or Zhu Cihuan. This also shows that in the early days of the Qing Dynasty, due to the Manchu Qing government's policy of national oppression, the contradictions between the Manchu and Han nationalities were still in a tit-for-tat stage for a short period of time, and if this contradiction was to be eliminated, the Qing government could not solve the problem by relying entirely on force.