The Ming-Manchu War (1618-1662): Nurhaci's Revolt, the Shanhaiguan Defection, and Zheng Chenggong's Last Campaign in China, 1618–1662 (Chinese Wars - Untold History Book 16)

Chinese Wars turns to the conquest that ended the Ming: forty-four years from Nurhaci's first grievances to the last Ming court's collapse on Taiwan.

In 1618 Nurhaci proclaimed his Seven Grievances against the Ming and took Fushun, building on the reputation his forces had won years earlier at Gure. Ming armies were broken at Sarhu, Shenyang and Liaoyang in turn, though at Ningyuan in 1626 Yuan Chonghuan's cannon halted a Later Jin assault—a success that did not save him from execution by lingchi four years later, an act the Ming's own history calls a mistake that hastened the dynasty's fall.

Hong Taiji renamed the state Da Qing in 1636, the same year his armies forced Korea's surrender at Samjeondo. Zu Dashou finally surrendered Jinzhou in 1642, eleven years after his first promise at Dalinghe, and Hong Chengchou's relief army was destroyed the same year at Songshan; Hong Chengchou himself surrendered after refusing food for days, while Beijing built him an imperial shrine believing him dead.

Inside China, Sun Chuanting died defending Tong Pass in 1643 and Zhang Xianzhong proclaimed a rival state at Chengdu, but it was Li Zicheng's rebellion that reached Beijing first. The Chongzhen Emperor hanged himself on Coal Hill after Li Zicheng's forces took the capital in 1644, forty-two days of occupation ending only when Wu Sangui, at Shanhaiguan, chose Dorgon over the rebels and opened the way for the Qing.

What followed was the slower war: the Hongguang court at Nanjing, the Longwu court at Fuzhou, the Shaowu and Yongli courts at Guangzhou and Zhaoqing, Shi Kefa's defense and the massacre at Yangzhou, and the twice-sacked city of Jiading. It ended, finally, at the edges of the empire—Zheng Chenggong taking Fort Zeelandia from the Dutch on Taiwan, and the Qing pursuit of the Yongli Emperor into Burma closing, in 1662, the war that had opened at Fushun forty-four years before.