Zhu Yousong

Biography

Descent and Life as a Prince

Zhu Yousong was born in the ninth month of 1607, the eldest son of Zhu Changxun, Prince Zhong of Fu, and a grandson of Emperor Shenzong; he was a cousin of the Tianqi and Chongzhen emperors. His grandmother, Consort Zheng, stood at the centre of the disputes over the succession and the three cases of the Wanli reign, a background repeatedly raised when his accession was debated, since officials of the Donglin persuasion feared that he would take revenge for the earlier attacks on Consort Zheng and therefore favoured the emperor's nephew Zhu Changfang, Prince of Lu. By the order of descent, when the Chongzhen emperor died his sons were in Qing hands, he had no surviving brothers, the Tianqi emperor had no sons, and his other brothers had died young without heirs; the choice therefore lay among the younger brothers of the Chongzhen emperor's father, Emperor Guangzong, and as Zhu Changxun was the eldest of these and Zhu Yousong his eldest son, the Prince of Fu held the first place in the succession.

In 1641 Li Zicheng took Luoyang and killed Zhu Changxun, and Zhu Yousong inherited the princely title. In the first month of 1644, with alarm at Huaiqing, he fled to Weihui and joined Zhu Changfang, Prince of Lu; in the third month, on renewed alarm, he fled with him to Huai'an, where he arrived on the same day as more than eighty boats carrying the princes of Zhou and Chong and two others. The grain-transport commissioner Lu Zhenfei and the garrison commander of Huai'an, Liu Zeqing, came out to meet them and, for safety, lodged all four princes in boats at the West Lake mouth below the town; on the eleventh day the Prince of Zhou, then sixty-five, died aboard, and on the eighteenth the other three went ashore to stay in the garden of a salt merchant. On the nineteenth Li Zicheng entered Beijing and the Chongzhen emperor hanged himself, news of which reached Huai'an on the twenty-ninth.

The Decision at Nanjing and the Regency

On the fourteenth day of the fourth month two eunuchs who had escaped the palace reached Nanjing, and only then did the officials of the capital learn that Beijing had fallen and the emperor was dead; the choice of a successor became urgent. The emperor's three sons were all in Li Zicheng's hands and the nearer princes were far away, so that the choice lay between the Prince of Fu at Huai'an and the Prince of Lu. On closeness of blood the Prince of Fu, a grandson of Shenzong and nearest in line, had the advantage, the Prince of Lu being a grandson of Muzong and nephew of Shenzong; but most of the ministers held that the Prince of Fu was viciously inclined and had stolen his princely seal. The former assistant surveillance commissioner of Shandong, Lei Yanzuo, and the vice director of the ministry of rites, Zhou Biao, went about urging that the Prince of Fu, though properly placed by order of descent, had seven disqualifications — greed, lust, drunkenness, unfilial conduct, cruelty to subordinates, neglect of study and interference in the courts. Shi Kefa likewise said that the Prince of Fu "was unfilial in his principality and would hardly be fit to rule the realm". Modern scholars hold that among the southern officials Qian Qianyi and Lü Daqi did most to promote the Prince of Lu, and that one of them was probably the first to draw up the seven disqualifications; since those of Donglin background could not deny the Prince of Fu's place in the order of succession, they attacked his personal character in order to remove the legitimacy of his accession, while Ma Shiying and Ruan Dacheng used the claim to slander the Donglin group, and the Qing compilation of the History of Ming adopted it to argue that the Hongguang court had no moral standing, marking the Southern Ming as a puppet regime.

The course of the installation was itself more complicated. According to Jiang Yueguang's Seven Matters across the River, Shi Kefa had already crossed with the relief army to Pukou and "was not in Nanjing and took no part in the central decision"; the proposal to install the Prince of Lu came rather from the gentry north and south of the river, who "rose in a body" for him; when Ma Shiying discussed the matter with Jiang Yueguang he said that "by closeness and worth the Prince of Gui alone is suitable", and Shi Kefa agreed and prepared to welcome that prince; the eunuch of the guard Lu Jiude "swore alliance" with the commanders Gao Jie, Huang Degong and Liu Liangzuo and planned of his own accord to raise the Prince of Fu, whereupon Ma Shiying, seeing that the thing was done, "hid his earlier words and begged to join the alliance". Shi Kefa, not knowing that Ma Shiying had changed course, still wrote against the Prince of Fu, and this letter was later used against him, becoming a lever in Ma Shiying's hands; and Jiang Yueguang's proposal in council that the ancestral temple be informed before the installation, a matter of procedure, was twisted by Ruan Dacheng into opposition to the installation itself. Jiang's account is personal and partisan, but it discloses the three-cornered contest of civil officials, commanders and eunuchs and breaks the simple story that Ma Shiying alone made the emperor. On the other side Ma Shiying joined with commanders such as Liu Zeqing to gain support within and without, and wrote to Shi Kefa and Lü Daqi that "in order and in worth there is none like the Prince of Fu"; Shi Kefa objected, and Ma Shiying, without arguing at the time, sent word privately that "in choosing a ruler worth should decide, and order of descent should not be held to rigidly", whereupon Shi Kefa, taking this for good faith, wrote back the seven disqualifications.

On the twenty-sixth day of the fourth month the court met in council; Li Zhan, Liu Kongzhao and the eunuch Han Zanzhou proposed the Prince of Fu and the decision was made to install him, to inform the temple and to prepare the Wuying Hall. Lü Daqi, who held the seals of the ministries of rites and war, entered the hall, alleged the seven disqualifications and argued for the Prince of Lu; Liu Kongzhao turned red with anger and railed at the Lu party together with Li Zhan and Guo Weijing, overawing them; in the confusion Han Zanzhou produced a prepared oath of support for the Prince of Fu and called for a brush, so that many officials signed under pressure and the news was published abroad, and Shi Kefa could only accept the accomplished fact. Ma Shiying, with the four garrisons of the north bank, then went to Huai'an to welcome Zhu Yousong, who was met on the twenty-seventh at Yizhen by the ministry of rites and the assembled departments.

On the twenty-eighth Zhu Yousong reached Pukou, where the duke of Wei, Xu Hongji, crossed the river to meet him; the next day his boat lay at Swallow Rock, and on the thirtieth the officials of Nanjing met him aboard at Longjiangguan and asked him to take the regency. He was then wearing a plain cap and hemp robe, "an old pillow and worn fur, a lone shadow and an empty purse", and answered the ministry of war's petition that "the empress mother of the state has not yet been heard of; I have come away with my body alone and brought not one of my household; I first meant to take refuge in a remote part of eastern Zhejiang, and dare not accept an invitation to the throne". When the ministers bowed he raised them with his hand, entertained them with tea and spoke most mildly, pressing his refusal and saying that "the great plans of the frontier rest on you gentlemen". After three formal refusals he accepted the regency: on the first day of the fifth month he rode round the city from the Sanshan Gate to pay his respects at the Xiaoling and the tomb of the Heir Apparent Yiwén, entered by the Chaoyang and Donghua gates, sacrificed at the Fengxian Hall, left by the Xihua Gate and took the Nanjing guard headquarters as his temporary palace; on the second the ministers urged the throne and he replied that with the crown prince and the princes of Ding and Yong of unknown whereabouts, and the princes of Rui, Hui and Gui of his father's generation, a worthy should be chosen — so that, on the precedent of Emperor Jingtai, he took the regency; on the third he entered the palace by the Daming Gate and performed the regency rites at the Wuying Hall, on the same day that Wu Sangui brought the Qing regent Dorgon into Beijing. At the beginning of the regency Shi Kefa advised him that "the prince should sit in plain mourning outside the city and send the army to punish the crime, showing the realm that vengeance must be taken", to which he said only "yes" without a decision; when Xu Hongji and the guard officers spoke he listened and stayed silent, and the court rose. That day the ministers decided that he should take the throne after the regency, sending three petitions; he agreed only to the regency for the first two, and on the eleventh day of the fifth month accepted the third, having already ordered mourning for the Chongzhen emperor on the sixth day; on the fifteenth he took the imperial throne at the Wuying Hall and changed the era name to Hongguang.

Posthumous Honours and the First Appointments

In the sixth month he honoured his grandmother Consort Zheng as Empress Dowager Xiaoning and his father as Emperor Zhenchun Suzhe Shengjing Renyi Gong, later changed to Emperor Xiao, with a temple at Nanjing and the tomb called Xiling; he gave his adoptive mother, of the Zou clan, the title Empress Dowager Kezhen Renshou, and his own mother, of the Yao clan, Empress Dowager Xiaocheng Duanhui Cishun Zhenmu; he honoured his younger brother Zhu Youju, killed when Luoyang fell, as Prince of Ying with the posthumous name Chong. In the same month he gave the Chongzhen emperor the temple name Sizong and the posthumous name Lie; in the seventh month he restored the imperial title to the Heir Apparent Yiwén and posthumous names and temple names to the Jianwen and Jingtai emperors; and in the ninth month he ordered posthumous names for those who had died in Beijing — twenty-one civil officials, two noblemen and one of the imperial kin — after which he added names for founders such as Feng Guoyong and Feng Sheng and for the loyal dead of the Jianwen, Zhengde and Tianqi reigns, including Fang Xiaoru, Qi Tai and Huang Zicheng among the Jianwen partisans and Zuo Guangdou and Zhou Qiyuan among those who died at the hands of the eunuch faction.

At the centre he made Shi Kefa, Gao Hongtu, Ma Shiying, Jiang Yueguang and Wang Duo grand secretaries, Shi Kefa holding first place as minister of war and Ma Shiying, though coming in from the governorship of Fengyang, retaining the ministry of war. This balance broke quickly: Ma Shiying, claiming the chief credit for the installation, at once extended his power, and Shi Kefa, seeing his strength and the quarrels of the four garrisons, asked on the seventeenth day of the fifth month to be sent to command the northern front, crossing the river the next day with eighty taels of silver and two lengths of brocade and orders to act at his discretion and to be obeyed by all the garrisons. Shi Kefa's departure left no one at court able to stand against Ma Shiying.

Ma Shiying's Ascendancy, the Four Garrisons and Factional Strife

Once in power, Ma Shiying allied with noblemen and eunuchs: Liu Kongzhao, Tang Guozuo and Zhao Zhilong acted for him at court while Han Zanzhou and Lu Jiude did so in the palace, and he brought back Ruan Dacheng, who had been proscribed in the Chongzhen reign. Gao Hongtu and Jiang Yueguang insisted that the proscription could not be reversed, holding that Ruan Dacheng's return would "bring calamity on the state", and the supervising secretary Luo Wanxiang mocked him by saying that his plays might prove to be "the secret talisman beneath his pillow". Ruan Dacheng himself linked his return to the merit of the installation, claiming that he had "swept aside wicked schemes and upheld the order of descent" at the time of the decision, whereupon the emperor gave him a cap and belt and summoned him to audience, employing him on the eighth day of the sixth month and finally making him an additional right vice minister of war on the thirtieth day of the eighth month, while ordering that "the court officials may not obstruct by holding fast to their opposition". With him came a crowd of the old eunuch faction — Zhang Jie as minister of personnel, Yang Weiyuan as transmission commissioner — while upright officials left one after another: Zhang Shenyan retired in the sixth month, Jiang Yueguang asked leave in the ninth, Liu Zongzhou departed after forty-nine days, and Xu Shiqi and Qi Biaojia were dismissed; Yang Weiyuan at once asked for the republication of the Sanchao yaodian drawn up under Wei Zhongxian.

Alongside these appointments came the "case of those who had complied", in which it was alleged that "the greed and shamelessness of the gentry reached its height in the late emperor's last years", with Zhou Zhong, Guang Shiheng and others named and Zhou Biao, who had argued for the Prince of Lu, deliberately drawn in through his cousin. The emperor ordered the ministry of justice to convict the compliant officials "by the six grades of the Tang", and between the seventh and ninth months many were arrested, Zhou Biao and Lei Yanzuo going to prison in the ninth month. The ministry's sentence of Zhou Zhong to death in the autumn assizes was thought too light by Ma Shiying, and the emperor ordered reconsideration; in the first month of the next year Xie Xuelong, pressed to amend it, raised the sentences by one grade, whereupon Zhu Guobi impeached him for "selling the law to close the case" and the emperor, furious, dismissed him. The real purpose of the case was to strike at political enemies, since Zhou Biao had in fact complied with nothing.

The restoration of the secret police raised a further storm. On the first day of the eighth month the emperor ordered the revival of the Eastern Depot, with the guard commander Feng Kezong to "send men to investigate", and the censor Qi Biaojia memorialised against the three great abuses of imperial prisons, arrest and beatings, saying that "with the depots and guards, the overbearing borrow their terror and the cunning profit by them, so that anyone may be called a rebel and any matter made a pretext". The emperor, refusing to listen, insisted; Gao Hongtu opposed him and argued on paper, and the emperor, enraged, summoned him and rebuked him for "factionalism and obstruction, treating the imperial orders as waste paper, so that I am allowed to sit here in name only". Gao Hongtu would not obey, memorialising again that "arrest as government is disorder and can never be carried out", at which the emperor grew angrier still and accused him of insolence; the minister knocked his head and asked leave, and the emperor, weighing the consequences, accepted the advice of Gao Hongtu and Jiang Yueguang and dropped the matter.

The aftermath of the installation dispute also reached the court. On the twenty-third day of the fifth month Liu Kongzhao quarrelled loudly over court ceremonial, with someone crying that "no such court rule has ever existed", and the emperor sat on his throne and never said a word; on the twenty-fifth he rewarded the ten men who had supported him, among them Xu Hongji and Liu Kongzhao; Zhang Shenyan, seeing right and wrong confounded, again asked leave, which was at first refused and then granted on the tenth day of the sixth month. Other incidents show his attitude: when Li Zhan impeached Lü Daqi on the twenty-eighth day of the fifth month for "wavering at the time of the decision", the emperor answered that "I met with evil times and my grief for my father is deep; what thought had I for the great treasure? Only because the ancestral altars were at stake did I bear the burden; the ministers who then loyally supported the decision I have noted, and there is no need to probe further", for which Li Qing in his Sanyuan biji praised him as "magnanimous and generous, never blaming those who had differed", his "magnanimity beyond reach"; and when Ma Shiying once raised the question of the Prince of Lu, he replied that "had my uncle been installed, it would have been his place".

In military affairs he accepted on the thirteenth day of the fifth month Shi Kefa's proposal of four garrisons on the north bank — Huang Degong, Gao Jie, Liu Zeqing and Liu Liangzuo, each with a district to hold and with "the soldiers, horses, money and grain of every subordinate district at their own disposal" — and on the sixteenth enfeoffed them as Marquis of Jingnan, Earl of Xingping, Earl of Dongping and Earl of Guangchang, each with an annual subsidy of six hundred thousand taels, seven hundred and forty thousand in all. The four garrisons caused trouble from the first: Gao Jie plundered outside Yangzhou with such savagery that "the corpses of the slain filled the fields and the violated included young girls", and when the citizens shut the gates and held out he attacked the city; the other three each sought their own advantage and quarrelled over territory, and Shi Kefa spent his energies in mediation until the tenth month, when they were at last settled in their stations, though they kept their troops for themselves, disobeyed the court and plundered the people, so that "the people hated the soldiers rather than the rebels".

Finance, Sale of Office and Bribery

The Hongguang court held only part of Jiangnan, its territory and tax base far smaller than in the height of the Ming, and although the ministry of revenue reckoned ordinary annual receipts at some six million taels, the pay of the four garrisons and Zuo Liangyu's troops alone came to more than seven million, besides the stipends of the imperial clan, official salaries and palace expenses, with the treasury empty and no reserve in the privy purse. There was no lack of promises of remission at the outset — one tenth of the land tax remitted, the Liao campaign levy abolished, the title-deed fee limited to three per cent and reclaimed land taxed at half the local rate for good — but in the ninth month of 1644 Ma Shiying memorialised for the "works-office precedent", by which ranks and offices were sold for silver: a schoolboy could enter the government school without examination for three to six taels, a stipendiary for three hundred, an expanded student for six hundred and an attached student for seven hundred, while the published scale of the twenty-fifth day of the ninth month priced a secretaryship in the Wuying Hall at nine hundred taels, one in the Wenhua Hall at fifteen hundred, a secretariat secretaryship at two thousand and a Hanlin waiting appointment at three thousand, with a prefectural judgeship or magistracy at one thousand and other posts in proportion. Ever more offices were added, until even the selection of stipendiaries was decided by silver rather than merit; buyers were "more than twenty in a large county and several in a small one", and the people sang that "secretaries are everywhere, military commissioners walk the streets; inspectors are as numerous as sheep and staff officers as cheap as dogs", and, in another verse, that "the lords love only money and the emperor only wine". Once the sale of Hanlin waiting appointments began in the second month of 1645 the verse was amended to "the Hanlin walk the streets".

Bribery was the other great abuse. A rhyme of the day ran that "if you seek Tian you get emolument, if you buy from Ma you get office", Tian being the eunuch Tian Cheng, then in the emperor's favour, and Ma being Ma Shiying, who took bribes openly for offices; Ruan Dacheng, once restored, made bribery a standard of appointment, saying openly that "the state need never fear a want of wealth, since in the matter of impeachments and recommendations nothing is done without bribe or bribe-seeking", and telling of a man who sought an inspectorship and offered five hundred in gold, then a thousand, then two thousand before it was taken "to fill the army's pay". Those seeking reinstatement were restored "whatever their merits, once the bribe came in", and Zhang Jinyan, a former minister of war who had surrendered to Li Zicheng and later returned south, was given command of the northern provinces after bribing Ma Shiying, the censors' protests going unanswered. Xia Wanchun wrote that "bribery flourished in a thousand forms, and since the recipients were many the givers thought nothing of it". In the single year of the court's life almost none of the money raised went to relieving the people or repairing waterworks; apart from the army, it was spent on the luxury of the emperor, the palace and the officials, with the double result that the people lost heart and that officials and commanders, their purses heavy, thought of their own households and, when the crisis came, mostly fled or surrendered.

The Selection of Consorts, the Palace and Daily Life

The emperor at once ordered the selection of consorts, sending eunuchs into the streets of Nanjing so that every household with an unmarried daughter had her name pasted on the door in yellow paper and taken away, and the city was thrown into turmoil; he also rebuilt the west range of the western palace as the Cixi Hall for his adoptive mother. When the empress dowager arrived from Henan in the eighth month, he ordered the ministries of revenue, war and works on the fourteenth to "gather ten thousand in gold within three days for gifts", and on the sixteenth the imperial household ordered beds, canopies and gold and jade furnishings costing several hundred thousand taels; for the empress's crown he had gems, emeralds and more than a hundred large pearls of over a mace each bought up. On the last night of 1644 he sat alone in the Xingning Palace in low spirits and, asked by the eunuch Han Zanzhou whether he was thinking of his imperial brother, answered only that "there are very few good actors in the company". In the first month of 1645 he ordered the repair of the Fengxian Hall and the Meridian Gate and sent Tian Cheng to Hangzhou and Jiaxing to choose consorts. According to Ji Liuqi, on the twenty-third day of the second month the ministry of rites was ordered to make a wide selection; Tian Cheng brought a Miss Cheng from Hangzhou, and the emperor, displeased, ordered the authorities to search Jiaxing with care for "dignified and proper" candidates, Ruan Dacheng adding that "three in number cannot be fewer". The governor of Zhejiang and the eunuch posted the order, and the whole city was seized with panic, marrying off sons and daughters day and night, "rich and poor, high and low, fair and ugly, old and young all mismatched", Suzhou doing the same and the people making songs of it; of seventy chosen at the examination hall one, of the Ruan clan, was taken, and of fifty in Zhejiang one of the Wang clan, with a third offered by a clerk, until on the morning of the tenth day of the fifth month the three were sent back to their families. Lu Qi records that the consorts Chen and Wang were singing girls of Huai and Yang, and that when the ministers urged their dismissal the emperor had a new selection proclaimed under the notice "the beginning of the osprey's teaching". Wang Yingkui described Ma Shiying as "in the Hongguang court very like Jia Sidao", fond of cricket-fighting even as the post rode in, so that he was called "the cricket minister", while the emperor, needing aphrodisiacs at the very time the Qing were on the river, had toads caught for him, the lanterns bearing the words "by imperial order, toads are caught", and the people called him "the toad emperor". Such anecdotes have the character of rumour and the sources themselves transmit them as notes, so the entry records their circulation without turning each into an established fact.

The Case of the Heir Apparent and the Case of Consort Tong

On the first day of the third month of 1645 a young man claiming to be the crown prince Zhu Cilang of the Chongzhen emperor came to Nanjing; the emperor had him confined in the police prison and then had the officials examine the "prince from the north" outside the Meridian Gate, deciding at last that he was a false prince, Wang Zhiming, grandnephew of the marquis Wang Bing. The youth is said to have laughed coldly and said "you acknowledge my Wang of Ming, but not Zhiming of Wang"; two further hearings failed to settle the matter, and once the news spread the people generally believed him true, resenting a court that "took the true for false", while commanders such as Huang Degong and Liu Liangzuo memorialised for his protection on grounds of the propriety of two reigns. In the third month Zuo Liangyu, Marquis of Ningnan, rose at Wuchang in the name of "rescuing the crown prince and destroying Ma Shiying", issued a proclamation listing eight crimes and moved downstream, whereupon Huang Degong and Ruan Dacheng were sent against him and the Southern Ming fell into civil war; Ma Shiying, gathering forces to block him, pressed the emperor to kill Zhou Biao and Lei Yanzuo, saying that "Zuo's troops were summoned by these two", and on the eighth day of the fourth month the emperor ordered the two to die and had Guang Shiheng and Zhou Zhong executed the same day.

There was also the earlier case of Consort Tong: Liu Liangzuo sent a woman to the capital claiming to be the emperor's wife, and the emperor, far from pleased, was enraged and had her thrown into the guards' prison. He had married her when Prince of Dechang and had a son by her before they were separated in the fighting; hearing of his accession she had petitioned the governor in Henan, and the governor and Liu Liangzuo, believing her, sent her to Nanjing with ceremony, only for him to insist that she was a "witch". She wept out her story to Feng Kezong, who reported it faithfully, and the emperor, taking up her written statement and turning red, threw it down and said that he did not know the witch and that she should be interrogated at once, replacing Feng Kezong with the eunuch Qu Shangzhong, who tortured her; she screamed and cursed the faithless man and starved to death in prison in the fourth month, while Chen Qianfu and Wu Erxun, who had supported and escorted her, were arrested on the charge of "privately visiting the witch".

Negotiation with the Qing and Military Dispositions

The Hongguang court faced two enemies: the Qing, already in possession of the north bank of the Yellow River, and the rebel armies of Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong in the centre. The emperor and his ministers regarded the rebels as enemies beyond reconciliation but cherished illusions about the Qing: hearing that the Qing had entered the passes under the banner of avenging the Ming, they believed that Wu Sangui had borrowed Qing troops to defeat the "rebel" and recover Beijing, and thought to "use the barbarians to pacify the rebels". On the twenty-seventh day of the fifth month Ma Shiying memorialised on the "great plan of recovery", urging that Wu Sangui be at once supplied and that Ma Shaoyu and Chen Xinjia, who had once negotiated, be employed, since what had been a poor policy was now the best; the emperor approved, and on the twenty-eighth enfeoffed Wu Sangui as Duke of Ji and sent fifty thousand taels and a hundred thousand piculs of grain as reward. In the seventh month he sent Zuo Maodi and Chen Hongfan north with a thousand taels of gold, a hundred thousand of silver and the patent for Wu Sangui, offering to be "uncle and nephew" with the Qing emperor and to "make the two houses one and destroy the rebels together", but the Qing had no intention of negotiating and the embassy was coldly received at Beijing.

In military dispositions, besides the four garrisons he faced the dispute over the defence of the Huai. When Yangzhou was in danger in the fourth month Ma Shiying wished to withdraw all the northern troops to deal with Zuo Liangyu, and Shi Kefa sent three memorials asking that troops be left to hold the Huai, arguing that "the upper river only wishes to remove the wicked from the sovereign's side and would not dare to make war on the father of the state, but if the northern troops once come the altars are at risk", to which Ma Shiying paid no attention. On the tenth day of the fourth month the emperor held audience and, when the chief justice of the court of judicial review, Yao Sixiao, and Li Zhichun of the seal office asked jointly that the defences of the Huai and Yangzhou be strengthened, he was somewhat moved and told Ma Shiying that "although Zuo Liangyu should not have raised troops, judging by his memorial he never meant rebellion, and we should still hold the Huai and Yangzhou"; Ma Shiying, enraged, pointed at the ministers and shouted that "these are all Zuo Liangyu's sworn friends speaking for him; I have already moved Huang Degong and Liu Liangzuo across the river. If the northern troops come we may still negotiate, but if the rebel Zuo comes, then you will hold high office and we, sovereign and ministers, will die alone", glaring and crying that anyone who spoke of holding the Huai would be beheaded, at which the emperor sat stupefied and dared not say another word, and the ministers withdrew in silence, after which no one raised the matter again.

One further exchange is recorded with the outside world. The Jesuit Francesco Sambiasi memorialised the throne, presenting a star screen and a terrestrial screen, a western keyboard instrument, a wind-box, a striking clock, a telescope, four glass cups, western incense, a burning-mirror, an hourglass and a white parrot, and proposing four policies: to clarify the calendar to display the legitimate succession, to survey mineral veins to enrich the army, to open trade with the west to increase maritime profit, and to buy western guns for war; the next day the emperor replied that "the sea ban being newly opened, Sambiasi is to go with Liu Ruojin to the sea to discuss the affairs of the Macao ships", sending him with the newly appointed maritime commander of Fujian and Guangdong to Macao and granting him the inscription "sincere in serving heaven, upright in self-culture, of established good faith". Sambiasi reached Macao in the winter and was received by the Portuguese government there, agreements being made to open the Canton trade, remit duties and build a church, but with Nanjing already lost the promised military aid never materialised. The Ryukyu islands also sent Jin Yingyuan and others to bring tribute, ask for investiture and request the lifting of the ban on white silk; arriving in Fujian they learned of the Chongzhen emperor's death and came on to Nanjing, where the emperor granted both the investiture and the white silk trade and sent the Fuzhou guard commander Hua Kun to Ryukyu to announce his accession, with a further embassy planned in the third month of 1645.

Flight and Capture

On the twenty-sixth day of the fourth month of 1645 Yangzhou fell and the Qing massacred the city for ten days, in what is known as the ten days of Yangzhou; the news reached Nanjing the next day and the emperor asked his ministers about moving the capital, but the minister of rites Qian Qianyi opposed it and the others could offer nothing. On the twenty-eighth the court met again in silence until the emperor said that "people outside all say I mean to go", to which Wang Duo, grand secretary, replied that outside talk should not be repeated and proposed instead a lecture on the classics, the emperor, his mind in disorder, answering only "after the Dragon Boat Festival". At the next session a minister struck Ma Shiying with his tablet, demanding to know how he had let Yangzhou fall, and in the confusion the emperor sat silent on his throne and went back to the palace when the ministers dispersed. On the first day of the fifth month couplets appeared on the pillars of the east and west Chang'an gates: "The man of Fu lies drunk and not yet awake, all depending on Ma's bluster; the music of triumph at headquarters has stopped, and still we hear tunes change in Ruan's halls", with a second verse naming Lu Jiude, Ma Shiying, Zhang Jie and Li Zhan; popular resentment was at boiling point. On the fifth day, the Dragon Boat Festival, he did not hold court because he was "busy with plays", and when the eunuch Che Tianxiang rushed in at noon with the news that the northern tidings were urgent and dangerous, he was drinking and watching a play, and in a fury threw down his cup and refused to hear more. On the night of the eighth the Qing crossed at Guazhou, the Ming fleet collapsed without a fight, Zhenjiang fell the next day, and on the tenth, after summoning his ministers for a last useless audience, he had the three consorts sent home in the afternoon and at the second watch, in pouring rain, left by the Tongji Gate to the southwest with the consorts Chen and Wang and a few eunuchs, none of the officials knowing. At dawn on the eleventh Nanjing fell into chaos; seeing the palace gates open and the women running out, the people knew the emperor had fled, some plundering the palace so that imperial objects lay in the streets; the mob brought the "crown prince" out of prison and seated him in the Wuying Hall amid shouts of homage, while Zhao Zhilong posted a notice saying that the Qing commander had been informed and the people need not fear, openly preparing to surrender. On the fifteenth Zhao Zhilong, Wang Duo and Qian Qianyi led the officials in surrender and Dorgon's brother Dodo entered Nanjing.

Fleeing, the emperor reached Taipingfu, where Liu Kongzhao had already arrived and shut the gates against him; at a loss by the river he turned to Wuhu and threw himself on the camp of Huang Degong, Marquis of Jingnan, who was then fighting Zuo Liangyu's troops and, hearing of the emperor's arrival, was greatly shaken and called off his men, weeping that "had Your Majesty held the capital, we could still have acted with its weight; why did you listen to wicked men and come out lightly?" The emperor had no answer, and Huang Degong, though disappointed, did his duty, lodging him aboard a boat and preparing the defence. On the twenty-second they decided to move to Zhejiang with Zhu Dadian and Fang Guoan going ahead, and as the escort crossed the river the surrendered general Liu Liangzuo came up in pursuit; Huang Degong, fighting him, was struck by an arrow and died. The garrison commander Tian Xiong leapt aboard the emperor's boat and carried him off to the Qing camp, the emperor biting his shoulder in fury so that, as the notes record, Tian Xiong bore a running sore for eighteen years and died of it. On the twenty-fifth Dodo had him brought into the city: with a black kerchief over his head, a blue cloth robe, in an open sedan chair and hiding his face with an oiled fan, with the consorts Chen and Wang on donkeys behind, he was spat at and pelted along the streets; kneeling before Dodo in the guard headquarters he was asked why, his late sovereign having a son, he had ignored the testament and made himself emperor; why, having usurped the throne, he had sent no soldier against the rebels; and why, when the late emperor's only son came as a fugitive, he had neither yielded nor suffered him to live, and he answered nothing, sweating and stammering. The "crown prince from the north" sat above him at the meal, after which he was thrown into the Jiangning county prison, where the former ministers were sent to see him; most would not come to this painful emperor, and only Liu Zuochang and He Kai did so, finding him laughing and at ease as if nothing had happened, asking only where the wicked minister Ma Shiying was. He was kept under guard and dined merrily on every festival until, in the fifth month of 1646, when the Qing, having seized the seals of the princes of Lu and Jing and the heir of Heng, executed eleven princes including Zhu Changfang, he was among them, on the second day of that month, one account saying that he was given a bowstring to hang himself.

Two Levels of Appraisal

Appraisals of Zhu Yousong fall into two levels. One is the image of the debauched ruler common in the notes of the time, the emperor who thought only of pleasure, whose last night of the old year lamented the want of singers, who had toads caught for aphrodisiacs and was called "the toad emperor" in Nanjing. The other is more cautious: some modern scholars judge him "a politician with ideas of government, broad-minded, diligent in affairs and wishing to do something", who neglected nothing until his small court fell and whose failure lay in weakness of character, indecision and excessive leniency, which relaxed discipline, in the ascendancy of Ma Shiying and the eunuchs and in the factional and financial disorders of the time, so that "the individual cannot change the social environment and political configuration, while these decide his fate". As for the seven disqualifications, research has pointed to the political intent behind them, since the Donglin group, unable to deny his place in the succession, attacked his character instead, and Ma Shiying and Ruan Dacheng used the claim against the Donglin faction, so that its value as evidence must be weighed together with its political setting.

Major Activities

The Installation and the Rites of Accession

Zhu Yousong's first role in the Southern Ming was that of the man first in line by descent and the one installed by others. His three refusals at Nanjing, his taking the regency before the throne and the replies attributed to him, such as that the empress mother had not been heard of and that the great plans of the frontier rested on the ministers, are all recorded at the time; his posthumous honours to his grandmother and father, his naming of the Chongzhen emperor and his restoration of the Jianwen and Jingtai emperors, together with the posthumous names granted to those who died in Beijing, the founders and the loyal dead of several reigns, form the ceremonies by which the Southern Ming claimed the continuation of the Ming line.

The Working of Government and Its Limits

In government he accepted Shi Kefa's plan of four garrisons on the north bank, ennobling and paying their commanders in order to shield the southern capital by district defence; but once Ma Shiying had allied with the noblemen and eunuchs Shi Kefa was forced to leave the court for the front, and no one was left to oppose Ma Shiying. His appointments passed through the reversal of the proscription and the return of Ruan Dacheng, the rise of the old eunuch faction and the departure of upright ministers, while in the case of the compliant officials the sentences of the ministry of justice were repeatedly raised to strike at political enemies. He contended sharply with Gao Hongtu over the revival of the Eastern Depot and in the end dropped the measure when the ministers persisted, a decision that contrasts with his reliance on Ma Shiying in most other matters.

Finance, the Army and Foreign Contacts

In finance he issued promises of remission and at the same time approved the sale of office by the "works-office precedent", so that the traffic in posts and the taking of bribes became general and the revenue was largely consumed by army pay and palace expense; in military affairs the four garrisons kept their troops and fought among themselves, and the loss of Yangzhou and the suppression of the proposal to hold the Huai show his inability to direct the defence. Abroad, he enfeoffed Wu Sangui and sent an embassy north without receiving any real answer from the Qing, while granting Ryukyu its investiture and silk trade and sending Sambiasi to Macao; these exchanges show the Hongguang court attempting at the outset to survive by negotiation and commerce, though none of them altered its end.

Personal Relations

• Zhu Changxun: father, Prince Zhong of Fu.
• Zhu Yijun: grandfather, the Wanli Emperor.
• Ma Shiying: major supporter of Zhu Yousong's accession and chief minister of the Hongguang court.
• Shi Kefa: Minister of War at Nanjing and supreme military coordinator; participated in the succession process and directed defenses north of the Yangtze.
• Huang Degong, Gao Jie, Liu Liangzuo, and Liu Zeqing: commanders of the Four Garrisons north of the Yangtze who had major influence on the accession and military affairs of the Hongguang court.
• Zhu Changfang: Prince of Lu and the other principal candidate during the Nanjing succession dispute.

Historical Assessment

Traditional narratives often criticized Zhu Yousong as incompetent, licentious, and poor in his choice of officials; the rapid collapse of the Hongguang regime reinforced this image. Modern scholarship also pays attention to how source partisanship, factional writing, and early Qing political narratives shaped his reputation. Whatever the case, his failure to integrate Jiangnan's resources and military groups, and the collapse of the Hongguang court in less than a year, remain central to assessments of his political responsibility. At the same time, the experiences of his father Zhu Changxun or material from other entries titled “Prince of Fu” should not be transferred directly into Zhu Yousong's biography.