Source: Taifu Shaoqing
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, Wu Sangui followed Zu Dashou on the Liaodong front against the Manchus.
When Li Zicheng captured the capital, Wu Sangui held the last elite army in the late Ming Dynasty, and according to scholars' estimates, his total strength was about 20,000.
In the Battle of Shanhaiguan, he made the final choice and surrendered to Dolgon.
After he entered the customs, he spent more than ten years helping Emperor Shunzhi completely wipe out the remnants of the Southern Ming Dynasty and become the main force of the green battalion. But after Kangxi decided to cut the domain, he began to launch a rebellion.
Wu Sangui's confidence in eastern Liaoning and Yunnan has changed greatly.
So before Wu Sangui's uprising, how many people did he have? Where did the confidence come from?
1. The green camp system of the Qing Dynasty, and the king of Pingxi of Wu Sangui
When Nurhachi "started a business", the Eight Banners of the establishment.
But he didn't expect that the territory would be too big later, and the Eight Banners system was not enough, so he later followed the Ming Dynasty's townside system and established green camps one after another. After the Eight Banners entered the Central Plains, they were also restructured according to the needs of the fundamental defense of the garrison, and officially became the administrator of the empire
This green battalion is classified according to the participating ethnic groups, and is also divided into Mongolian green battalion and Han army green battalion. This Wu Sangui is the green battalion of the Han army.
Why is it called the Green Camp? Because of the color of the flag. The green camp is marked by the green flag, and the battalion is the basic unit, which is called the green camp for short.
Network map: The flag of the green battalion of the Qing army
The Qing Dynasty made the area of a province or several provinces the highest administrative unit of a military region according to its importance. The highest commander of this unit is called "Admiral", and his full name is "Admiral XX Military Affairs Chief Officer", and his rank is from the first rank.
But there are also leaders above the admiral, that is, the governor and the governor.
The following commanders are: general soldiers, deputy generals, staff generals, guerrillas, capital divisions, garrisons, thousand generals, generals, etc.
Wu Sangui was the chief soldier of a town in Liaodong in the Ming Dynasty; after the battle of Shanhaiguan, he entered the customs and went all the way from attacking Zhang Xianzhong to the Southern Ming Dynasty, and his final duties were: General of Pingxi, King of Pingxi, opening a feudal domain and setting up a government, guarding Yunnan, and being in charge of military and civilian affairs.
In addition, after Wu Sangui conquered Guizhou, Yunnan and other places, in the fifteenth year of Shunzhi, he had already followed the example of other places and set up the governor of Yunnan, Guizhou, and Yunnan and Guizhou.
The first governor of Yunnan and Guizhou was Zhao Tingchen.
Of course, at this time, the governor of Yungui was still under the jurisdiction of Wu Sangui. At this time, Wu Sangui's greatest wish should be to emulate Mu Ying of the Ming Dynasty and guard Yunnan for generations.
But in the Kangxi Dynasty, the situation changed.
2. Wu Sangui's four towns and ten battalions
As mentioned above, the Manchu Qing set up a green battalion for Han soldiers. After Wu Sangui surrendered that year, Dolgon divided Wu Sangui's surrender force into ten battalions, each with 1,200 men. The specific ten battalions are as follows:
- The five battalions of loyalty and bravery, divided into center, front, rear, left and right;
- The five battalions of volunteers are divided into center, front, rear, left and right.
This is Wu Sangui's initial family background.
In the more than ten years of fighting to clear and suppress the remnants of the Southern Ming Dynasty, Wu Sangui continued to strengthen his strength, first of all, of course, constantly expanding the establishment of ten battalions. However, one of the biggest problems with not expanding the "battalion" and only increasing the number of people is that the total amount of salaries allocated by the higher authorities is limited.
So, with the help of the Southern Ming Dynasty, he wrote to Emperor Shunzhi to add "Yunnan Aid and Suppression Four Towns", namely: Left Town, Right Town, Front Town, and Back Town. The source is this:
- With the right side of Sichuan, the chief military officer, the right governor Ma Ningwei, Yunnan to aid the former town chief military officer;
- Shen Yingshi, the governor of the Sichuan Left Road General Military Office, was the chief military officer of Yunnan to aid the suppression of Zuo Town;
- With Huguang Yiyang General Military Officer's Office, Tongzhi Wang Fuchen as the Yunnan Aid and Suppression Right Town Chief Military Officer;
- The governor of the same town, Yang Wuwei, Yunnan aid and suppression of the town commander-in-chief.
At this point, Wu Sangui's final family base "Four Towns and Ten Battalions" was completely formed. After the Southern Ming Dynasty was completely exterminated, Wu Sangui also knew that the "Four Towns and Ten Battalions" would only be compressed and not expanded, so he also continued to incorporate supernumerary military forces such as the Tusi of Yunnan and Guizhou.
In the end, what is the total military strength of Wu Sangui?
According to the record of "Qing Shizu Record", under the jurisdiction of King Pingxi, there were 10,000 officials and soldiers, and there were more than 60,000 green battalion soldiers and Tucheng soldiers. This is the number on the books, when Wu Sangui raised the army, plus other mobilized manpower and material resources, the total number of troops gathered under Wu Sangui alone was about 100,000.
3. Emperor Kangxi's strategy of cutting the feudal domain, and Wu Sangui's expansion game
When Emperor Kangxi succeeded to the throne, he was young and vigorous, and he could not tolerate Wu Sangui's ambitions, so he began to implement the reduction of feudal domains. The specific strategy was to ask Wu Sangui to dismantle some of the "four towns and ten battalions" and assign the non-commissioned officers of the towns and battalions to other places to guard them, which means to change places and leaders.
Then, as the years progressed, it was reduced little by little, and finally the feudal domain was reduced.
Wu Sangui has been living at the knife all his life, so he is naturally unwilling. Every time there was an intention to cut the feudal domain, he reported: Tufan Kangdong invaded here, and Zhu Miao entered the Kou over there, and then shouted that there was a lack of people, and changed the law to be tough with Kangxi.
Until the end, Wu Sangui broke out, he calculated the 100,000 family bases in his hand, plus Geng Jingzhong, Shang Zhixin, and those local governors who surrendered to Cheng, looking at the 19-year-old Emperor Kangxi, he felt that his strength was almost the same.
In the fourteenth year of Kangxi, the rebellion of the three feudatories broke out completely, and this battle was 8 years, but this time Wu Sangui lost.