Revolt of the Three Feudatories (1673): Wu Sangui Against Kangxi

The Revolt of the Three Feudatories was an eight-year civil war in which three powerful Han Chinese princes in southern China rose against the Qing dynasty. It began in December 1673, when Wu Sangui, the general who had let the Manchus into China in 1644, rebelled rather than surrender his domain in Yunnan. For a time the rebels and their allies held much of the south and west, but the young Kangxi Emperor fought back, and by 1681 the feudatories had been destroyed.

Background: princes of the south

The Qing conquest of China had depended on Chinese generals who changed sides. The most famous was Wu Sangui, whose alliance with the regent Dorgon at the Battle of Shanhai Pass opened the road to Beijing. In the following years Wu led Qing armies into Sichuan and Yunnan, pursuing the last Ming claimant, the Yongli Emperor, into Burma. After the Burmese handed Yongli over, Wu had him put to death in Kunming in 1662.

As a reward Wu was allowed to govern Yunnan, with great influence over neighbouring Guizhou, as the Prince Who Pacifies the West. Two other generals of Liaodong origin held similar fiefs: Shang Kexi in Guangdong and the Geng family in Fujian, where Geng Jingzhong succeeded his father in 1671. Together they became known as the Three Feudatories.

Each prince commanded a private army, appointed officials, and drew income from taxes, salt, mines and trade. Wu Sangui in particular built a court of his own at Kunming. Their armies were paid largely from imperial funds, and supporting them took a heavy share of the government’s revenue. To the court in Beijing they looked like independent kingdoms in the making.

The crisis of 1673

In the spring of 1673 Shang Kexi, by then elderly, asked to retire to his family’s homeland in Liaodong and leave his son Shang Zhixin in charge of Guangdong. The Kangxi Emperor, not yet twenty, agreed to the retirement but ruled that the feudatory itself would be dissolved. Wu Sangui and Geng Jingzhong then submitted their own requests to retire, apparently expecting to be asked to stay.

Most of Kangxi’s ministers advised caution, fearing war. A small group, including the official Mingju, supported abolition, and the emperor accepted all three requests. Officials were sent south to arrange the princes’ departure. Instead, on 28 December 1673, Wu Sangui rose in revolt at Kunming, killing the provincial governor who refused to join him.

The war

Wu declared the founding of a new Zhou dynasty and called on the Chinese to drive out the Manchus. His troops moved quickly through Guizhou and into Hunan and Sichuan. In 1674 Geng Jingzhong rebelled in Fujian, commanders in Guangxi joined the rising, and Wang Fuchen, a general in Shaanxi, turned against the Qing in the north-west. The Zheng regime on Taiwan, heirs of the Ming loyalist who had taken Fort Zeelandia, landed troops on the Fujian coast. In 1676 Shang Zhixin also joined the rebels.

Yet the rebellion had weaknesses. Wu Sangui had served the Qing for three decades and had killed the last Ming emperor, so his call to restore Chinese rule convinced few scholars. The rebel leaders distrusted one another and fought over territory, especially Geng Jingzhong and the Zheng forces in Fujian. Wu also halted on the Yangtze in Hunan rather than striking north, giving the Qing time to recover.

Kangxi responded firmly. In 1674 he had Wu’s son, Wu Yingxiong, who was living in Beijing married to a Qing princess, put to death. He kept armies along the Yangtze, offered pardons to rebels who surrendered, and in 1675 swiftly put down a rising by the Chahar Mongol prince Burni in the north. Disappointed by the slowness of several Manchu princes in command, he relied more and more on Han Chinese generals and the Green Standard Army, the Qing’s Chinese provincial troops. The Jesuit astronomer Ferdinand Verbiest supervised the casting of new, lighter cannon for the campaigns.

The turning of the tide

The rebel coalition began to break up in 1676. Wang Fuchen surrendered in Shaanxi, and Geng Jingzhong, squeezed between Qing armies and the Zheng forces, submitted late that year. Shang Zhixin returned to Qing allegiance soon after. Wu Sangui was left to fight alone.

In 1678 Wu proclaimed himself emperor at Hengzhou in Hunan, but he died in the autumn of that year. His grandson, Wu Shifan, inherited a shrinking state. Qing forces retook Hunan in 1679 and pushed into Guangxi, Sichuan and Guizhou. In 1681 they besieged Kunming, and when the city fell in December, Wu Shifan took his own life.

Key people

• Wu Sangui (1612–1678): former Ming general, Qing prince in Yunnan and leader of the revolt.
• The Kangxi Emperor (1654–1722): the young Qing ruler who chose to abolish the feudatories and directed the war.
• Geng Jingzhong (died 1682): prince of Fujian, who rebelled in 1674 and surrendered in 1676.
• Shang Zhixin (died 1680): son of Shang Kexi, who briefly joined the revolt in Guangdong.
• Wu Shifan (died 1681): Wu Sangui’s grandson and last ruler of his Zhou regime.

Timeline

• 1662: Wu Sangui has the Yongli Emperor, the last Ming claimant, put to death in Kunming.
• 1673, spring: Shang Kexi asks to retire; Kangxi decides to abolish the feudatories.
• 1673, 28 December: Wu Sangui rebels at Kunming.
• 1674: Geng Jingzhong rebels in Fujian; Wu’s son is executed in Beijing.
• 1675: the Chahar prince Burni’s rising is suppressed.
• 1676: Wang Fuchen and Geng Jingzhong surrender to the Qing.
• 1678: Wu Sangui proclaims himself emperor at Hengzhou and dies later that year.
• 1681, December: Kunming falls and Wu Shifan dies by suicide.

Consequences

The war devastated large parts of Hunan, Jiangxi, Sichuan and other southern provinces, and its cost strained imperial finances, but no reliable figures for the dead exist. Its outcome was decisive. The feudatories were abolished, and the south came under regular provincial administration. Of the surviving rebel leaders, Shang Zhixin was ordered to take his own life in 1680 and Geng Jingzhong was executed in 1682, despite their surrenders.

Victory confirmed the authority of the Kangxi Emperor, who had taken a great risk against the advice of most of his court. With the south secure, he turned to the Zheng regime on Taiwan, which fell after the Battle of Penghu in 1683.

Legacy

The revolt is remembered as the last great challenge to Qing rule from within the dynasty’s own military establishment. In later tradition Wu Sangui became a byword for treachery, having betrayed first the Ming and then the Qing. Physical traces of his rule survive in Yunnan, including the bronze Golden Hall of the Taihe Palace near Kunming, cast in 1671 while he governed the province. Coins minted by his regime, before and during the revolt, also survive in collections.

Popular memory added romance to the story. Legend holds that Wu’s famous concubine Chen Yuanyuan, whose capture in 1644 was said to have driven him into the arms of the Manchus, followed him to Yunnan and ended her days as a nun after his fall. Historians cannot confirm these tales, but they kept Wu’s name alive in Chinese fiction and drama.

Why it matters

The Revolt of the Three Feudatories decided whether the Qing would rule all of China or share it with powerful Han warlords. Kangxi’s victory ended that question, strengthened central authority and set the stage for more than a century of relative internal peace.