Manchu Conquest of China

The Manchu conquest of Ming China unfolded over more than six decades, beginning in 1618 when the Jurchen leader Nurhaci issued his Seven Grievances against the Ming dynasty, effectively declaring war, and continuing after his 1626 death under his son Hong Taiji, who renamed the regime from Later Jin to Qing on 14 May 1636. The critical turning point came in 1644: on 24 April, the rebel leader Li Zicheng's army captured Beijing and the last Ming emperor, the Chongzhen Emperor, hanged himself, and on 6 June the Ming general Wu Sangui defected to the Manchus, whose combined forces defeated Li Zicheng at the Battle of Shanhai Pass and occupied Beijing. Consolidating Qing rule across the rest of China took decades longer, including a harsh Great Clearance campaign against Ming loyalists in the south beginning in 1662, the suppression of the Revolt of the Three Feudatories led by the same Wu Sangui between 1673 and 1681, and the final defeat of the Ming loyalist Kingdom of Tungning on Taiwan at the Battle of Penghu in 1683. Because ethnic Han Chinese defectors made up roughly three quarters of the conquering Eight Banners forces by 1648, historians increasingly describe the transition as much a Chinese civil conflict between rival power centers as a straightforward foreign conquest.