Everyone must have heard an allusion: Chong Guan is angry and red-faced. The protagonist is about Wu Sangui, a general at the end of the Ming Dynasty, who led the Qing army to break through the Shanhai Pass for the sake of his confidante Gao Yuanyuan, and played an important role in the Qing Dynasty's entry into the customs and establishment of the country.
After Wu Sangui surrendered to the Qing Dynasty, he was crowned King of Pingxi by the Qing Dynasty Emperor Kangxi for his meritorious service in defeating Li Zicheng's Dashun regime, stationed in Yunnan Province, and concurrently administered Guizhou Province. Together with Geng Jingzhong, the king of Jingnan who guarded Fujian, and Shang Kexi, the king of Pingnan who guarded Guangdong, they were called the "three feudatories". So, how big was Wu Sangui's King Pingxi in the Qing Dynasty?
Wu Sangui was born at the end of the Ming Dynasty, and achieved the position of the chief soldier during the last emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Chongzhen, and became a senior general among the generals, with an official rank of about the second grade. But Wu Sangui's real rise was in the Qing Dynasty, after the Qing army entered the customs.
At that time, the Ming Dynasty had been replaced by the Dashun regime established by Li Zicheng. After Wu Sangui surrendered to the Qing Dynasty, he defeated Li Zicheng in the Battle of Shanhaiguan and finally eliminated Li Zicheng's Dashun regime.
In the fourteenth year of Shunzhi of the Qing Dynasty, in 1657 AD, Wu Sangui was appointed as the general of Pingxi to assist the Qing army in exterminating the Southern Ming regime. At this time, Wu Sangui was already a high-ranking official of Zhengyipin. And finally in the first year of Kangxi, in 1662 AD, he killed Emperor Yongli of the Southern Ming Dynasty in Kunming, Yunnan.
Because Wu Sangui made great contributions, Emperor Kangxi crowned Wu Sangui as the Prince of Pingxi, guarded Yunnan Province, and concurrently governed Guizhou Province, which means that the entire Yunnan-Guizhou region has become Wu Sangui's "independent kingdom".
Then, some people may ask, since Wu Sangui is in charge of the Yunnan-Guizhou region, what kind of existence is the governor of Yunnan-Guizhou? In fact, there is no conflict at all. As one of the highest-ranking feudal officials in the Qing Dynasty, the governor of Yunnan and Guizhou was in charge of the military administration, civil affairs, financial endowment, and criminal name verification of Yunnan and Guizhou provinces.
And Wu Sangui's King of Pingxi belongs to the title of the imperial court and can be hereditary. That is to say, theoretically, Wu Sangui can pass on the king of Pingxi to his son, and the son to his grandson, and the children and grandchildren are endless. Moreover, the king of Pingxi belongs to the prince, and he is the highest rank among the princes, and he is a proper super product. In other words, it is higher than any scholar or general, and its status is respected.
Not only that, Wu Sangui is very powerful as the king of Pingxi, not only can he have his own independent armed forces and army in the Yunnan-Guizhou region, but also have a complete set of his own bureaucratic system, which operates independently outside the Qing Dynasty, and the king of Pingxi can collect taxes from the local area for his own use, and the imperial court will also fund a large amount of money and grain every year to ensure that Wu Sangui exterminates border troubles.