Zhu Yuyue

Biography

Installation as Emperor

In 1646, after Emperor Longwu Zhu Yujian was captured and killed in Fujian, Zhu Yuyue fled to Guangzhou with Longwu court officials. The Yongli Emperor Zhu Youlang had abandoned Zhaoqing, creating a power vacuum in Guangdong. Zhu Yuyue was installed as emperor by Su Guansheng and other officials under the principle of brother succeeding brother.

Legitimacy Struggle

Immediately after his installation, the Shaowu regime clashed with the Yongli regime based in Zhaoqing over which was the legitimate continuation of the Ming. The two regimes fought multiple battles against each other, severely depleting the anti-Qing resistance forces in Guangdong.

Martyrdom

On the fifteenth day of the twelfth month of the Longwu second year (January 20, 1647), Qing forces under Tong Yangjia and Li Chengdong launched a surprise attack on Guangzhou. Zhu Yuyue disguised himself as a beggar in an escape attempt but was captured. He refused Qing offers of surrender and hanged himself, reigning for only forty days.

Zhu Yuyu was a ninth-generation descendant of the Ming founder and younger brother of the Longwu emperor, Zhu Yujian. After Longwu was captured and died in Fujian in 1646, he fled to Guangzhou with the Longwu court's officials. With power in Guangdong vacant, he was raised by the grand secretary Su Guansheng and others on the principle of succession from elder to younger brother, taking the throne on 11 December 1646 with the intended era name Shaowu, which for want of time was never formally proclaimed.

His accession was extremely hurried: ceremonial dress could not be prepared, and the accounts say his insignia and robes were of the barest, whence the later talk of his being enthroned in theatrical costume. At the same time another branch of the Southern Ming raised the Prince of Gui, Zhu Youlang, as the Yongli emperor at Zhaoqing, and the two fought over legitimacy — the contest of Shaowu and Yongli — further weakening the Southern Ming forces in Guangdong.

On 20 January 1647 the Qing army entered Guangzhou and the Shaowu regime fell, Zhu Yuyu having reigned forty-one days, one of the shortest reigns in Chinese history. After his death the center of Southern Ming resistance moved southwest, where the Yongli regime lasted more than a decade. The brevity of Shaowu's regime is directly bound up with factional strife within it, the lack of money and troops, and the swift Qing advance south — a typical instance of the many short-lived Southern Ming courts.

The officials of the Shaowu regime were mostly old ministers of the Longwu court, its institutions broadly following Ming forms, though its brief life and small territory left little room for real operation. When Guangzhou fell, Su Guansheng and others took their own lives, the regime's officials dying or submitting, which is why its record in the histories is brief.

Between 1644 and 1662 several Southern Ming courts were set up in succession — Hongguang, Longwu, the Lu prince's regency, Shaowu and Yongli — their quarrels interwoven with the Qing advance south. The showdown between Shaowu and Yongli was especially bitter, the two sides fighting in Guangdong and gravely weakening the resistance there, an internal drain that is a chief reason the Southern Ming could not form a united front.

Though his era name Shaowu was never formally proclaimed, later ages still call his regime by it, a treatment common in post-Ming histories: the regime was too short-lived for anything but the era name to serve as its label. The remains and records of the Southern Ming at Guangzhou are important material for the study of that period.

Qing official histories generally did not recognize the Southern Ming regimes, whose deeds appear mainly in related biographies in the History of Ming and in local gazetteers, while Qing and modern scholars have added much from gazetteers, collected works and archives. As for sources, the Shaowu regime left few documents, its history being reconstructed chiefly from accounts of contemporaries.

After the fall of Shaowu, Southern Ming resistance centered on the Yongli court in the southwest and the Zheng group in the southeast, and only with the Yongli emperor's capture in 1662 did it effectively end. The forty-one days of Shaowu are a brief episode in that sequence of resistance and defeat.

The Guangzhou-Zhaoqing area on which his regime rested was among the last Southern Ming footholds in Guangdong; with the fall of Guangzhou the Qing quickly took the province, ending Southern Ming power in Lingnan. Resistance thereafter shifted to the southwest and the southeast coast, changing in character from dynastic government to prolonged exile and guerrilla fighting.

In terms of the Ming clan system, Zhu Yuyu was a distant member, his elevation resting not on a clear order of succession but on expediency under pressure. This is the root of the legitimacy disputes among the Southern Ming courts: with the fate of Chongzhen's sons unknown, clansmen and officials in different regions raised different sovereigns on different grounds, producing a long internal drain.

No settled version of his era, temple or posthumous name exists in later usage, consistent with the general non-recognition of the Southern Ming sovereigns. Accounts appear scattered in the Southern Ming Chronicle, the Unofficial History of the South and Guangdong gazetteers, the chief sources for studying this brief regime.

Guangzhou's importance at the Ming-Qing transition let the Shaowu regime stand briefly and also brought its fall the sooner: the Qing advanced south from Jiangxi and Fujian, Guangdong being a prize it had to take, while Southern Ming forces in the province were divided by internal strife and could not hold.

The Yongli emperor, his contemporary, afterward moved about the southwest with the remnants of the Daxi army and the old Southern Ming ministers for more than a decade, until Wu Sangui had him killed at Kunming in 1662. Two "emperors" existing at once without recognizing each other is a miniature of the Southern Ming's destruction.

After the Qing secured Guangdong it dealt severely with the Southern Ming clan, resistance there being put down over the following years. Though the Shaowu regime existed only forty-one days, its coexistence with Yongli has made the question of Southern Ming legitimacy a recurring subject for later scholars.

The study of Southern Ming history has drawn much attention in modern times, scholars differing on the nature and responsibility of the Shaowu-Yongli dispute, while the collecting and criticism of sources continues.

His memory survives in local traditions about Guangdong, the related sites and legends forming part of the local study of Southern Ming history.

After the Shaowu regime fell, its officials appear mostly in the loyalist sections of local gazetteers, records marked by the standpoint of their time.

The circumstances of his accession and death are described in the Southern Ming Chronicle and similar works, the main evidence for understanding the Shaowu regime.

Guangdong lost heavily in population and production amid the wars of the Ming-Qing transition, the changing hands of Guangzhou being a key link in that process.

The extraordinary brevity of the Shaowu regime gives it a special place among Chinese dynastic states: a court whose era name was never proclaimed and a direct product of Southern Ming infighting. Discussions of the Southern Ming's fall generally set such contests over enthronement beside military defeat as the two reasons it could not last.

His regime occupies an awkward place in the resistance in Guangdong: it neither organized effective defense nor politically united the various forces, and its forty-one days left it no more than a name among the many powers of the Ming-Qing transition.

Guangdong at the Ming-Qing transition was both a prize contested by the Southern Ming courts and a meeting point of Qing and Zheng power, its politics reversing several times within a few years.

The circumstances of his death are variously given, some accounts recording suicide by hanging and others murder, a difference not unusual in the sources of the Southern Ming.

His accession and death both took place at Guangzhou, the whole history of the Shaowu regime moving with the city's changing hands.

The era names of the Southern Ming courts often serve later ages as their names — Hongguang, Longwu, Shaowu, Yongli — a practice reflecting the scattered sources and confused titles of these regimes.

The regime left few sources, and present-day accounts of Shaowu rest largely on early Qing private writings and local records.

He is remembered by later ages largely for the brevity and peculiarity of his regime.

The forty-one days of his regime are a very brief page in Southern Ming history.

Major Activities

Establishing the Shaowu Court

Zhu Yuyu established a short-lived Southern Ming court at Guangzhou, granted offices to Su Guansheng and others, and adopted "Shaowu" as the intended new era name. The Shaowu era was to begin in 1647, but Guangzhou fell at the start of the new year and the era never came into actual use. The beginning and end of his reign can be established, while the histories and encyclopedic accounts differ between forty and forty-one days when counted day by day; neither figure is used here to judge his position.

Rivalry with the Yongli Regime

The exchange of envoys and the fighting between the Guangzhou and Zhaoqing sides were the chief political events of Zhu Yuyu's rule. The fighting both weakened Southern Ming military strength in Guangdong and made it difficult for Su Guansheng and others to concentrate troops in time to defend against the Qing armies. These are events and results recorded in the histories; the whole course of the war cannot be explained by Zhu Yuyu's personal intentions alone.

Personal Relations

• Zhu Yujian**: Elder brother, Emperor Longwu of Southern Ming
• Su Guansheng**: Grand Secretary who supported Zhu Yuyue's installation
• Zhu Youlang**: The Yongli Emperor, rival claimant to the throne

Historical Assessment

Zhu Yuyue's brief imperial career, though hastily established and contributing to Southern Ming's internal conflicts, ended with an act of martyrdom that earned him recognition for his integrity. Historical evaluations are mixed: some views affirm his martyrdom, while others argue that the regime lacked a solid foundation and had no positive historical value. His tomb, initially called the "Shaowu Emperor and Ministers Tomb," was relocated several times and was designated a cultural heritage site by the Guangzhou Municipal People's Government in 1963.