Battle of Shanhai Pass (1644): Wu Sangui Lets the Qing In

The Battle of Shanhai Pass, fought on 27 May 1644 at the eastern end of the Great Wall, was the moment the Manchu Qing dynasty broke into China proper. The Ming general Wu Sangui, caught between a rebel army that had just seized Beijing and the Manchus beyond the wall, joined forces with the Manchu regent Dorgon. Together they routed the rebel leader Li Zicheng, and within ten days the Qing held Beijing, beginning more than 260 years of Qing rule.

Background: a dynasty collapsing

By the 1640s the Ming dynasty was crumbling under famine, debt, peasant rebellion and decades of war with the Manchus in the north-east. The Manchus had built a powerful state under Nurhaci and his son Hong Taiji, who renamed it Qing in 1636. Their attempts to break through the Great Wall had been blocked mainly by Ming forts along the Liaoxi corridor, the narrow coastal strip leading to Shanhai Pass.

Inside China, the rebel Li Zicheng had built a large army in the north-west and proclaimed a new Shun dynasty in early 1644. His troops took Beijing on 25 April 1644, and the Chongzhen Emperor hanged himself on the hill behind the palace. The story of that collapse is told in the fall of Beijing in 1644.

Wu Sangui’s dilemma

Wu Sangui commanded the strongest remaining Ming field army, based at Ningyuan beyond the wall. Ordered to come to the capital’s aid, he abandoned Ningyuan and withdrew to Shanhai Pass, but Beijing had already fallen. Li Zicheng held Wu’s father, Wu Xiang, and other relatives, and invited Wu to submit to the Shun regime.

Wu’s exact sequence of decisions is debated. He appears at first to have considered submitting, then turned against Li. Facing a large Shun army marching on the pass, he wrote to Dorgon, regent for the child Shunzhi Emperor, asking for help in avenging the Ming. Dorgon, already moving an army towards the frontier, agreed but demanded that Wu submit to the Qing rather than act as an equal ally.

The battle on 27 May 1644

Li Zicheng led his army east from Beijing, bringing Wu Xiang and the captured Ming heir with him. Contemporary and later figures for his force vary widely, from about 60,000 to well over 100,000 men; Wu probably had somewhere around 40,000 to 50,000 troops, and the Qing force was also large but of uncertain size. Dorgon reached the pass shortly before the fighting, and Wu formally shaved his head in the Manchu style as a sign of submission.

On 27 May Wu’s army advanced onto the plain west of the pass and engaged Li’s troops in a long, hard fight. Sources describe a strong wind raising clouds of dust. When the Shun army was committed and tiring, Qing cavalry under the princes Ajige and Dodo charged from Wu’s flank. Li’s men, surprised to find Manchu horsemen on the field, broke and fled.

Why the Qing prevailed

Several factors explain the speed of the victory. Li Zicheng’s army had grown quickly from a rebel host into a would-be imperial force, but its discipline in Beijing had been poor, and the looting and extortion of officials there cost it support among the capital’s elite. Many of its soldiers were recent recruits rather than seasoned veterans.

The Qing, by contrast, fielded the banner armies, an organisation of hereditary military units created by Nurhaci, with experienced cavalry used to fighting on open ground. Dorgon also had Han Chinese advisers, among them Fan Wencheng and the former Ming commander Hong Chengchou, who urged him to present the Qing as restorers of order rather than as foreign plunderers. That message, repeated after the battle, helped persuade many Ming officials in the north to accept the new dynasty.

Timing mattered as well. By holding his own cavalry back until both Chinese armies had fought each other to exhaustion, Dorgon ensured that the Qing took the decisive role at the lowest cost, and that Wu Sangui could no longer act independently.

Key people

• Wu Sangui (1612–1678): Ming frontier general whose alliance with Dorgon decided the battle. He later became a powerful Qing prince in the south-west.
• Dorgon (1612–1650): Manchu prince and regent who directed the Qing conquest of northern China in the first years of the Shunzhi reign.
• Li Zicheng (1606–1645): leader of the largest late Ming rebellion and founder of the short-lived Shun dynasty.
• Ajige and Dodo: Manchu princes, brothers of Dorgon, who led the decisive cavalry attacks.

Consequences

Li Zicheng retreated to Beijing. Wu Xiang was killed during the retreat, and dozens of members of Wu’s household were executed in the capital. Li held a hurried enthronement ceremony and left the capital on 4 June, setting parts of the palace on fire. Qing troops entered Beijing on 6 June 1644, and Dorgon announced that the Qing had come to punish the rebels and avenge the Ming emperor.

The Qing then pursued Li into Shaanxi and Hubei, where he died in 1645 in circumstances that remain unclear. In the south, Ming loyalists set up a new court at Nanjing, but Qing armies moved south in 1645, a campaign marked by the Yangzhou massacre. The young Shunzhi Emperor was installed in Beijing in October 1644, making the city the Qing capital.

Myths and facts

The best-known legend says Wu Sangui let the Manchus in because rebels had seized his beloved concubine, the courtesan Chen Yuanyuan. The poet Wu Weiye’s “Song of Yuanyuan” made the image of a general betraying his country “for a red-faced beauty” famous. Historians generally see Wu’s choice as driven by the destruction of the Ming court, the threat to his army and the hostage-taking of his family, though personal grievance may have played a part.

Another misconception is that Wu literally opened the gates to a Manchu army that could not otherwise enter. The Qing had raided through other passes several times before 1644. What Shanhai Pass gave them was a crushing victory over the main rebel army and a direct road to the capital, with a Ming general as their partner.

Timeline

• 1644, 25 April: Li Zicheng’s army takes Beijing; the Chongzhen Emperor dies by suicide.
• 1644, May: Wu Sangui, at Shanhai Pass, appeals to the Qing regent Dorgon for help against Li.
• 1644, 27 May: Wu’s army and Qing cavalry defeat Li Zicheng near Shanhai Pass.
• 1644, 4 June: Li abandons Beijing after executing members of Wu’s family.
• 1644, 6 June: Qing forces under Dorgon enter Beijing.
• 1644, October: the Shunzhi Emperor is installed in Beijing as ruler of China.
• 1645: Li Zicheng dies in Hubei; Qing armies take Yangzhou and Nanjing.

Legacy

Wu Sangui was rewarded with the title Prince Who Pacifies the West and later governed Yunnan as a semi-independent ruler. In 1673 he rose against the Qing, beginning the Revolt of the Three Feudatories. Chinese tradition long remembered him as a traitor to both the Ming and the Qing.

Shanhai Pass itself, with its gate tower inscribed First Pass Under Heaven, remains one of the best-known sites on the Great Wall and draws large numbers of visitors.

Why it matters

Shanhai Pass turned a Manchu frontier state into the ruler of China. A single day’s battle, born of a general’s desperate choice, decided that the Qing rather than Li Zicheng’s Shun or a revived Ming would govern the country until 1912.