Battle of Shanhai Pass - Aftermath

Aftermath

On the evening of May 27, Li Zicheng and his main army stayed at Yongping (永平) on the road to Beijing while many of his officers and soldiers fled toward the capital. On the next day he retreated toward Beijing, which he reached on May 31. He then let his troops loot the capital's official residences and government bureaus. On June 3, as a "final gesture of defiance" after his decisive defeat, Li officially declared himself Emperor of the Great Shun at the Wuying Palace (武英殿). After 42 days in Beijing, Li Zicheng set the imperial palace complex on fire and abandoned the capital to flee toward the west. The Beijing population then massacred nearly two thousand rebels who had not fled.

On June 5, the Beijing population prepared to welcome those who had defeated Li Zicheng. The elders and officials who went out of the city expecting to greet Wu Sangui and the Ming heir apparent were shocked when the leader of the victorious army turned out to be Prince Regent Dorgon of the Qing. Dorgon and his retinue rode to Donghua Gate (東華門), an eastern gate to the Forbidden City, to receive the imperial regalia; Dorgon was then escorted to Wuying Palace by the former Ming imperial bodyguards, who had previously submitted to Li Zicheng but now vowed to serve the Qing. Dorgon welcomed the Shunzhi Emperor to Beijing on October 19. The young monarch was officially enthroned as Emperor of China on Novermber 8, 1644, marking the moment when the Qing seized the Mandate of Heaven.

On May 28, Wu Sangui's Ming title of Pingxi Earl (平西伯) was raised to Pingxi Prince (平西王). His troops shaved their heads and joined the main Qing forces. Very soon after entering Beijing, Dorgon despatched Wu and his troops to pursue Li Zicheng. Wu managed to engage Li's rearguard many times, but Li still managed to cross Gu Pass into Shanxi; Wu then broke pursuit to return to Beijing. Li then reestablished a power base in Xi'an (Shaanxi province), where he had declared the foundation of his Shun dynasty in February 1644.

After repressing revolts against Qing rule in Hebei and Shandong in the Summer and Fall of 1644, in October of that year Dorgon sent several armies to extirpate Li Zicheng from his Shaanxi stronghold. Qing armies led by Ajige, Dodo, and Shi Tingzhu (石廷柱) won consecutive engagements against Shun forces in Shanxi and Shaanxi, forcing Li Zicheng to leave his Xi'an headquarters in February 1645. Li retreated through several provinces until he was killed in September 1645, either by his own hand or by a self-defense peasant group.

The Qing conquest of China lasted for several more decades. Resistance to Qing rule was intensified by the "haircutting command" of June 1645, which forced all Chinese men to shave their forehead and tie their remaining hair into a queue. Zhu Youlang, the last emperor of the Southern Ming, was killed by Wu Sangui in 1662. Wu Sangui was given a large territory in the southwest China, where he reigned as a satrap until he was recalled to Beijing in 1673. He and three other governors then rose in rebellion against the Qing. Though Wu died in 1678, the rebellion of the Three Feudatories lasted until 1681. In 1683 the Kangxi Emperor (r. 1662-1722) defeated the forces of Koxinga, the leader of the last Ming restoration movement. After this period of solidification, the Qing controlled China until 1912.