The History of China - #249 - Ming 34: Nurhachi, Part 1
Episode Date: February 13, 2023Please help support the show by taking this quick survey! Thanks very much! www.surveymonkey.com/r/airwave. In the frigid wilds beyond the Great Wall, a young warrior will begin a grand campaign to e...stablish himself as the sovereign of All Under Heaven, and overthrow an ancient rival. Time Period Covered: 1559-1619 CE Major Historical Figures: Ming: The Wanli Emperor General Li Chengliang Aisin-Gioro/Later Jin/Manchu: Nurhachi, Heavenly Mandated Khan of Jin [1559-1626] Giocangga [d. 1582] Surhaci [d. 1611] Cuyen [d. 1615] Hong Taiji Nikan Wilan Dragon-Tiger General Meggebulu Check out the French History Podcast by Dr. Gary Girod: http://thefrenchhistorypodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Hello, and welcome to the History of China.
Episode 249, Nerhachi, Part 1
The Diamond Lao. The deal was for the diamond.
Now, you bring me Nerhachi.
My pleasure. Who on earth is this Narhachi?
Here he is
This Narhachi's a real small guy
Inside are the remains of Narhachi
First Emperor of Manchu Dynasty
Welcome home, old boy
Hahahaha Manchu dynasty. Welcome home, old boy. And now,
you give me the diamond.
Are you trying to develop a sense of humor, or am I going deaf?
What's that?
Antidote.
To what?
To the poison you just drank,
Dr. Jones.
From Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
Last time, we looked at the so-called three campaigns of the Ming Dynasty against the Miao, the Mongols, and the Japanese, respectively.
And while they could not have known it,
this would prove to be the last of Ming's large-scale offensives, or at least punitive military expeditions. This is, of course,
not to say that it will be the last battles facing the imperial house of Zhu. No, far from it. And
so today, we're going to start on that long, strange tale that will result in the brilliant
dynasty's final overthrow. To do so, we must venture far away from Beijing and the towers
of its forbidden city once more, and in a direction we've not traveled in quite a long while.
To the far northeastern reaches beyond the Great Wall, to that cold and harsh region between what
is today Korea and Russia, though today it's divided between three provinces, Heilongjiang,
Jilin, and Liaoning, but it's still commonly known as Manchuria.
From Gertrude Roth Lee,
The Liao Valley is the heartland of a region known as Manchuria,
a place where forest, steppe, and agricultural lands overlap.
In the 16th century, this region extended southward from the Ama River, or Heilongjiang,
and included a Ming administrative area in the lower Liao Valley, on the Liaodong Peninsula.
In the east, it reached the Tatar Strait, the Sea of Japan, and the Korean border.
In the west, it connected to what in the 20th century was Zhehar,
extending northwest from the Great Wall to the Mongolian pasturelands on the slopes of the greater Qinggan Mountains, or Da Xin Gan Ling.
Because most Chinese activities in Manchuria were carried out via the Zhehar,
this area, particularly the southern portion, also known as Liao Shi, was of great importance to the history of Manchuria.
This was a thoroughly wild frontier, at least as far as the Ming were concerned.
Though as early as 1412, during the reign of the Yongle Emperor, the dynasty had nominally established the northeast as a military commandery centered about Yiling County.
In truth, that counted for very little. The Chinese had only occasional presence in the region,
and generally left almost everything up to autonomous local control. Jianzhou was so
named by the Ming, who asserted at least a nominal military suzerainty over the region and its people.
Theoretically, this made the people who would become known as the Manchus an auxiliary
wing of the Ming imperial army, but, quote, such recognition, however, had very little substance.
The Ming empire had never clearly defined the territorial boundaries of the commandery,
and there was no evidence that the orderly succession of the tribal chieftains was kept
under close imperial supervision, save during perhaps the very early years, end quote.
In terms of the people themselves, the term Manchu only came into common usage after 1635,
and its meaning and origins remain obscure.
Some theories link it to the Mahayana Badassatva, Manjusri.
Others theorize it to be a compound of the word for strong, or manga, and the word for arrow, or dew.
Whatever its true etymology, the demonym it
replaced helps us see that, far from coming out of nowhere to sweep the Ming edifices away,
the Manchu were just a slight rebranding of an age-old foe of the Chinese, the Jurchen.
Yes indeed, those descendants of the very same Jin dynasty that had ruthlessly driven the Song
from northern China and then harried them
for a further century until they were themselves subsumed in the 1230s by the rising Mongol Empire.
In fact, the initial name of the empire we'll see established here today
harkened directly back to his Jurchen origins, later Jin. Before that name change, the people
to whom Nurhaci was born were known as the Jinjo-Jurchun, of which he was
a member of the Aisin-Gyoro clan. Aisin-Gyoro is a compound signifier, with the first word,
Aisin, being the Manchu term of Jin, or gold, itself the imperial dynastic household. Gyoro,
then, referred to the specific region of the northeast they hailed from, Yiling County, some 240 meters northeast of Harbin.
The Jianqiao Zhechun were, according to our Chinese sources, one of the three major divisions at the time.
Them, the Haishi Zhechun, and the Ye, or wild Zhechun, though the Chinese at times still collectively referred to all Zheens as the Yiren, or in effect, wildlings.
The lifestyles of the Jurchens were as highly variable as the lands they occupied,
but their respective names give us a clue as to their primary ways of making a living.
Unsurprisingly, the so-called wild Jurchens, living furthest from China in the northern and western reaches of Manchuria,
maintained an overall more nomadic and steppe lifestyle as, quote,
hunters and fishermen who supplemented their economy by pig-raising and, where possible,
migratory agriculture. Mongolian influences were considerable, especially in the west, end quote.
The Haishi Zhechun, who primarily lived in modern Heilongjiang, east of the Noni River,
and around modern Harbin, cultivated crops toward the east while relying more on pastoralism in the west near the Mongolian borders. The Zhenzhou Zhecheng, meanwhile, concentrated along
the Mudan River and in the shadow of the Long White Mountain, known as Sangyan Alin in Manchu
or Changbai Shan in Mandarin, in modern Jilian province. They, quote, hunted for food and furs,
fished, and engaged in agriculture.
They also gathered pearls and ginseng and were proficient in spinning and weaving, end quote.
As has long been the case, this region was anything but ethnically homogenous.
Living alongside the Jurchens were Chinese, Koreans, Mongols, and any number of other peoples of the Northeast.
Culturally, the Jurchen shared many aspects of culture with their nomadic and
semi-nomadic brethren of the steppe and near-steppe. This included a deep affinity and pride in
horsemanship, archery, falconry, large-scale and ritualized game-hunting, shamanism, and perhaps
that most immediately noticeable feature of the Manchus, the queue hairstyle, in which the men
would shave the front of their heads completely bald while growing the back out into long, braided cues. As the Manchu population continued to grow, the Ming government
utilized that time-tested strategy of the Chinese when dealing with their neighboring foreign
populations. That is to say, give them girls and keep them busy fighting each other, also known as
yi yi zhi yi, use the barbarians to control the barbarians. From Huang, quote, to use to their advantage. Unable to fend off the pressure of the growing Manchu population, they usually sought to give aid to a weaker chieftain in his contest for power with a
stronger one. End quote. Just keep them constantly stabbing each other in the back and seeking
revenge, and they'll never realize that you're the one actually pulling the strings.
Into all this semi-controlled chaos was born Nurhaci as of 1559, making him about four years older than our main
man, the Wanli Emperor. Now, a quick note about his name. I've heard it pronounced both with a
soft C as in Nurhaci, and with a hard Ch as in Nurhaci, and given that the second is more in
line with the Mandarin transliteration, and also the pronunciation used by the villainous Lao Che
in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, that's the one I'm going to go with,
but your mileage may vary. His parents both seem to have come from powerful ruling families,
ensuring a strong claim to the chieftainship. As it so happens, they also moonlighted as
undercover contacts and informants of the Ming Dynasty General Li Chengliang, though this was
only revealed after both Nurhaci's father and grandfather were mistakenly killed by Li's
troops in a raid against another leader at war against the Ming in 1582. After their identities
were discovered by the Chinese commander, he sent for the young Nurhaci, then about 23,
and quote, gave him comfort and treated him well, end quote. In time, at least some records indicate that Nurhaci may have been formally adopted by General Lee as his son,
which was actually a fairly common practice at the time.
Within a year of his father's death, Nurhaci began the process of assembling his own base of power
that would in time become the core of his nascent empire.
To call it a humble beginning would be
putting it rather mildly. In fact, later in his life, Nurhachi would look back on those early
days and claim that his followers only had 13 sets of armors to share between them.
With these sets of armor, and a small contingent of loyal retainers, Nurhachi began that most
ancient of stepquests, seeking revenge for the murder of his father and grandfather.
Having accepted Li Chengliang's explanation that, for his part, it was just an unfortunate accident, Nurhaci instead
focused his vengeance on the man he blamed, another Manchu chieftain called Nikan Wailan.
From Roth Lee, quote, deaths of his grandfather and father, Nurhaci, like Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, got an early start on his own career. He lost his mother when he was young, and for a time, he made a living by
collecting ginseng and cones and settling them in the Fuxian market, end quote. Under Li Chongliang's
tutelage while living with a general, he learned to speak, read, and write Chinese, as well as gain
at least some basis of understanding of Chinese history and military strategy from reading novels.
Nurhaci began his campaign against Nikon Wailan by asserting that, by right of vengeance,
he could act with impunity from Ming laws against his family's killer,
and went so far as to demand that the Ming authorities hand Nikon over to him to mete out justice.
The Ming government of Liaodong sympathized with him, at least to a degree,
returning his father and grandfather's corpses to him for burial, along with issuing him 30
patents that gave him the right to succeed his grandfather as the leader of the Gyoro clan.
Yet they still refused to hand over Nikan Wailan, and even went so far as to threaten to make Nikan
Khan of all the Jurchen should Nurhaci keep up his demands.
Even worse, Nurhaci's uncles and granduncles were unwilling to submit to his Ming-granted authority over them,
and made threats against his life.
In spite of disapproval and threats on his life from his own relatives,
Nurhaci gained a few friends and went to war against Nikon Wailan.
When Nikon fled and sought refuge with the Ming,
Nurhaci turned his attention
to subduing the neighboring Jianzhou regions. By 1586, Nurhaci's prestige was such that the
Ming authorities no longer refused his demands that Nikon Wailan be killed. But by then,
his goal was far beyond eliminating just a personal enemy. In 1588, he subjugated the
Wangya tribe and received the submission of the Dongguo tribe
in the southeast. A year later, he attacked smaller Jurchen tribes in the vicinity of the
Longwhite Mountain and along the Yalu River, but before he could subdue them, the Yehe demanded
his attention in the north. Counting on Ming's support, the Yehe demanded that Nurhaci cede some
of his territory to them. Nurhaci rejected their demand and prepared for a conflict.
At the same time, he also attended to his own relationship with the Ming government.
Officially, he still considered himself a guardian of the Ming border and a local representative of
imperial Ming power. In 1589, he endeared himself to the Ming by rescuing several kidnapped Chinese
and delivering them back to Ming authorities, an act which earned him the title of Assistant Commissioner-in-Chief.
In 1590, he led his first of eight tribute missions of Jurchen chiefs to Beijing.
Two years later, he offered the Ming his assistance in their defense of Korea
against the Japanese invasion under Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
The Ming did not accept his offer, but in 1595,
awarded Nurhaci the title of Dragon Tiger General or Longhu Jianjun,
an honor which at the same time, undoubtedly to balance the scales out, they also bestowed on the Hara leader, Mangabulo.
Seemingly paradoxically, the very deeds that earned him rewards from the Ming aroused fear from the neighboring Hulun Jurchen. In 1593, a force of
nine allies, including the four Hulun tribes, the Korchin Mongols, and tribes from the Long White
Mountain region, attacked Nurhaci's Manchus. The allies were defeated, and the result was that the
Jurchen chiefs no longer dared to oppose Nurhaci outright, and instead started offering him their
sisters and daughters in marriage. These marriage
alliances, however, did not buy them peace. After conquering the long White Mountain tribes,
Nurhaci's forces vanquished the Hara between 1599 and 1601, killing his rival, Dragon Tiger General,
in the process. Nurhaci conquered the Huifa in 1607, the Ula in 1613, while the Yehe remained independent until 1619.
Nurhaci sent numerous expeditions to the wild Jurchens in northern Anturia.
The end of Ula independence in 1613 opened up the region of the Warka,
who until then had been within the Ula sphere of influence and used the Ula areas as a transshipment center for their furs.
The wild Jurchens were ruled by many
independent small chiefdoms, and it took many expeditions and campaigns throughout the pre-1644
period until they were finally incorporated within the new regime. Neither Narhachi nor his son and
heir, Hong Taiji, occupied the northern territories at any point, but military expeditions to those
areas regularly returned with prisoners and surrendered people. The wild Jurchens who stayed behind served the Manchus
by bringing tribute to the eventual Qing court. After defeating the Ula in 1613,
Nurhaci made several attempts to win the allegiance of the Mongols in preparation
for confrontation with the Ming. Bordering Nurhaci's state to the northwest were the Korchians,
the Five Khalkhas, and the Chahars. The Korchian Mongols participated in the nine-member alliance
against Nurhaci in 1593, but soon thereafter concluded a pact of friendship with him and
then over the years entered countless marriage alliances with the Manchu royal house. The
Korchians' loyalty ultimately earned them the resentment of the Chahars, but also Manchu
protection against their attacks.
Narhachi was eager to establish friendly relations with the Kalkas and win their support for
campaigns against the Ming, or at least to ward off attacks from that front.
The five Kalka Mongols had exchanged women with Narhachi as early as 1594, and groups of Khalkha Mongols came to submit to the Manchus throughout Nurhaci's reign.
In 1607, a Khalkha group honored Nurhaci with the title of Honored Great Khan, or Kundalyn Kayan.
However, most of the Mongols who submitted at this point were just minor chiefs.
The more powerful among the five Khalkhas refused to cooperate with Nurhaci.
They depended on Ming markets to exchange their horses and furs for grain and daily necessities,
and they received liberal payments from the Ming in order to keep them loyal.
Therefore, when the Ming government was forced to close the Mongol markets after Nurhaci's attack
on Liaodong, the five Khalkhas came to the aid of the Ming, hoping to restore their trading
privileges and continue to receive silver for their cooperation.
Nurhaci's statements referring to the Five Kalkas reflect an ambivalence about the Mongol
relationship. In 1619, when proposing joint military action with the Five Kalka Mongols,
Nurhaci chose to stress the similarities between the Manchus and Mongols and their
dissimilarities with the Koreans and Chinese. He wrote, quote,
The languages of the Chinese and Koreans are different, but their clothing and way of life
is the same. It is the same with us Manchus and Mongols. Our languages are different,
but our clothing and way of life is the same. End quote.
Yet only four months later, on an occasion when no alliance was sought,
and when, on the contrary, the Mongols had invaded the territory recently conquered by the Manchus,
the emphasis is on dissimilarity.
Quote,
Why do you Mongols take the grain, people, horses, oxen, and everything from the Yekha?
Did you Mongols help us destroy their towns? Did you help us work their fields?
You Mongols raise livestock, eat meat, and wear pelts.
My people till the fields and live on grain.
We too are not one country, and we have different languages.
Thus, the relationship between Nirhachi and the Mongols at this time
seemed to be one of mutual opportunism and not a solidarity based on cultural affinity.
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Even without a firm commitment to the Mongols across the border, Nahachi prepared for a break with the Ming. For about 20 years, he had maintained his tribute relationship with the
Ming court, but as his power grew, the relationship became strained and border conflicts multiplied.
In 1608, border transgressions by the Chinese ginseng diggers led to an agreement which defined
a boundary that the Ming subjects were prohibited from crossing for the purposes of gathering
ginseng or pearls for the cultivating of land. In 1611, Nurhaci arrived in Beijing for his last
tribute mission, though he seems to have sent
a final delegation as late as 1615. Even though the Manchus needed tribute gifts and trades to
ameliorate the increasingly difficult economic conditions to come, Nurhaci proclaimed his
independence from the Ming in 1616. Three years later, he declared war by issuing a list of
grievances and attacking Fushun.
By this time, the idea of a Manchu state and recognition of it outweighed the value of Ming imperial gifts.
Nurhaci's unification of the Jurchens depended on his ability to deploy his new manpower.
Making use of the customary term company, or niru, for the units under which Jurchan men were organized for hunts and wars, Nihachi in 1601 subdivided his followers, including the newly captured Hara, into companies,
which was each headed by a company commander, or niru-i-ejin.
He then joined several companies to form four banners, in Manchu, gusa, and in Chinese, chi, each flying a different color, yellow, white, red, and blue.
Building on the traditional clan system of squads and companies and an even earlier system of the
Jian dynasty, the early banner system, or baqi, did not disturb the pre-existing social units.
As tribes, clans, or villages of Durchens, Mongols, or Chinese submitted to the Manchus,
each unit remained intact and their leaders retained authority over their people. Gradually, tribal and village units
were transferred into new artificial units of more or less equal size. This provided Nurhaci
with an organizational system which was expandable as new manpower became available,
and which was not restricted by clan size or clan loyalties.
Unlike earlier uses of squads and companies, the new banner system was not temporary organizations for specific tasks.
They were permanent organizational units.
During the early years of his rule, Nurhaci shared power with his brother, Sirhachi, and his eldest son, Chuyen.
Though Nurhaci retained most of the decision-making authority,
his brother and son enjoyed a certain autonomy and maintained their own outside alliances,
often strengthened by marriage ties.
Sir Hachi's personal relationship with the Huifa leader
presented a problem when the Manchus annexed the Huifa
and killed their leader and son.
Noting Sir Hachi's lack of enthusiasm for this military
action, Nurhachi in 1609 asserted his authority over his brother by claiming that Sir Hachi
held his position not by hereditary right, but by the generosity of the Khan himself.
Two years later, Nurhachi had his brother and two of his brother's sons put to death.
Sir Hachi's death left Chiyun as second-in-command and the likely heir apparent.
Unhappy with the state of affairs, Chuyen's brothers, Daishan, Mangletai, and Hong Taiji,
joined with their cousin, Amin, to sow suspicion in their father's mind against Chuyen.
In 1613, Nurhachi placed Chuyen in confinement, and two years later had his son executed.
Having freed himself from his co-rulers
with hereditary rights, Nurhaci began limiting the power of the other beylas. He first turned
to five long-term companions-in-arms who owed their positions to him, not to their birth.
These five grand ministers had direct, individual access to Nurhaci and were to advise him and see
to the execution of his commands. All communication to
and from the Khan, including those to his beylas, had to pass through these grand ministers.
This arrangement was the forerunner of the series of short- and long-term official and unofficial
beylas and ambans council, in which the interests of the aristocrats and the bureaucracy would
eventually merge. For further empowerment, Nurhaci gave each of the five grand ministers
one of his daughters in marriage,
making them not just ambans, or high officials,
but also sons-in-law,
and therefore quasi-aristocrats.
Nurhaci also employed other high-level advisors,
among them scholarly, multilingual experts
who held the title of baksı.
Ardeni baksı helped develop the Manchu script,
served as interpreter of heavenly omens, proclaimed calls for surrender,
wrote high-level communications, and recorded the Khan's laws.
Two other advisors, Kharchan and Dahai, both multilingual Manchus, also served under Nurhaci,
though they became more prominent under his successor, Hong Taiji.
Dahai translated numerous Chinese works into Manchu, among them the Ming Penal Code.
In order to administer the nation's law, Nurhaci created a three-tiered system.
He appointed ten supreme judges who tried cases and then referred their decisions to the grand
ministers, who in turn reviewed the evidence and the law, issued their own opinions, and passed
the cases on to the beilas. Thus, the five grand ministers, who as advisors to the Khan were functionally
equal to, if not above, the Beilas, were subordinate to the Beilas in the judicial process.
Every five days, Nurhaci himself came to the seat of government and held court, at which time the
plaintiffs reiterated their charges and the Khan reviewed the previous findings.
In 1615, Nurhaci reorganized the banner system and in the process standardized the strength of the companies.
He collapsed the earlier smaller companies into 200 units of 300 men each
and appointed two assistant commanders to help the company commander with overseeing the four squads.
Each squad was led by an adjutant with a village driver
or gassan bosoku as assistants. For military duties, five companies moved together as a regiment.
Five regiments, in turn, formed a banner, led by a banner commander who was assisted by two vice
commanders and who reported to a banner beila above him. All banner Belas received the highest princely rank of infiefdom,
with the four elders among them also being called the Four Senior Belas.
Those of Nurhaci's sons and grandsons who did not have a banner command
retained their title of Bela,
but as a member of one of the banners, each served under a banner Bela.
Nurhaci set aside a certain number of companies
to serve the Belas and ambans as
bondservant companies, and he and the Manchu belas also had their own personal guard.
In time, these personal guards grew into units of elite troops within the overall banner system.
Nohachi's personal guard, the white guard, protected the person of the Khan, but also
could be deployed in times of war. The other personal guards, the Red Guards, functioned within the individual banners.
Like the Jurchen's traditional clan organization,
Nurhaci's banner system combined military, social, and economic functions,
including the entire population, and retained a fair degree of collective decision-making.
In time, the banner system served to eliminate the roles of former tribal aristocrats
as they lost their status as beiluz and were transformed into military officers who drew
their authority and prestige from their rank in the banner system. During the early years of his
career, Nurhaci pursued power through wealth, which he needed to attract and reward his followers.
Extensive contacts with Koreans and Chinese introduced new ideas and gave him
new goals. The Jurchens knew from first-hand experience that the Ming government viewed trade
less as an exchange of goods for mutual benefit than as an integral part of their tributary
relations. Such relations manifested the emperor's political power and moral superiority over non-
Chinese people. Aware that both the Ming
and Korean governments considered the Jurchens politically as well as culturally inferior,
Nurhaci, an aspiring leader, rethought his goals and decided that being a Ming official in charge
of the Jianzhou Guard was not good enough. In 1616, he held a formal ceremony to announce his accession to the throne.
He assumed the title of Brilliant Emperor, Nurturer of All Nations, or Garen Gurunbe Ujire Gangienhan,
inaugurated his own calendar, and, in Chinese fashion, created a reign title, in Manchu, Akba-i-Fulinga, or Mandated by Heaven, in Chinese, Tianming,
Heavenly Mandate. The Manchu version of the reign title was inscribed on the first of the Manchus
ever made coins. Besides elevating Nurhaci personally above his status, he also held as
Wise Prince, that is, Bela, or honored great khan. His new titles and
reign name were a declaration of independence from the Ming, and a statement that he considered
his new state a dynasty in the making. Even before the 1616 ceremony, Nurhaci had, at least
informally, started using the term Aisin, or Jin, for his country, alluding to the
Jin dynasty which had ruled North China in the 12th century. After his break with the Ming,
Nurhaci's communications with the Ming and Korea would bear the signature heavenly mandated Khan
of Jin, or Akwa-i-Fulinga-Aisin-Gurunhani-Doro. As far as Nurhaci was concerned, he was no longer
the Ming government's assistant
commissioner-in-chief of the Jianzhou Left Guard, a title that he'd used since 1589.
To spread the idea that the heavenly mandate was shifting toward Nurhaci and away from the
Emperor, Nurhaci interpreted unusual occurrences of lights in the sky as heavenly omens of an impending change. Unusual lines of lights in the sky
appeared in 1612, 1614, and 1615, but the notion that an emperor is endowed by heaven and received
heaven's mandate or approval or disapproval was adopted with zeal when Erhachi started to move
into Liaodong. During 1618, an overwhelming number of such heavenly signs allowed Manchus and Chinese alike
to become used to the idea that a dynastic change might be nearing.
Lines of light in the sky appeared nearly every month,
once staying for the length of an entire month, by such reports.
Along with the heavenly mandate, with the notion that a benevolent ruler would attract people from afar. History provided ample evidence that non-Chinese people felt attracted to China
and settled within its borders.
The Manchus considered it proof that they qualified as a new dynasty
because the direction of attraction was now reversed.
Quote,
There is no precedent for Chinese people going over to another country,
but because they have heard that we take good care of our people,
they have come to us to submit, end quote.
Nurhaci was not shy about trying to increase the submission rate.
In 1622, he warned his Chinese fleeing before his troops in the Guangning area, quote,
come out of hiding and down from the mountains, because even if you go inside the Shanghai Pass,
my great army will enter the pass in 1623.
As it would turn out, Nurhaci did not enter the Shanghai Pass in 1623, nor 1624. Domestic troubles
kept him at home. Over the course of his expansion, Nurhaci supported his imperial vision as well as
his military objectives by repeatedly moving his home base.
In 1603, he had left his first residence, the Old Hill, or Feala, and moved to Hatsuala, only eight leagues to the north.
Hatsuala had a better water supply, and equally important, it was the former residence of his grandfather, Gyaoka, whose title Nurhaci had inherited.
After occupying Liaodong, Nurhaci moved his base to Jiefan in 1619, to Sarhu in 1620,
and Liaoyang in 1621, and to Shenyang in 1625. Each time, he consolidated his previous conquests and moved closer to his next target. To Nurhaci, the strategic value of these moves
was obvious. When the Beilas disagreed, he admonished them, urging them to, quote,
look at the larger picture of establishing the great enterprise, end quote.
And so, Nurhaci is established, he is on the move, and he is aiming southward toward the beating heart of Ming, China.
Next time, we will pick up there and see where the fates will him to go next.
And as always, thanks for listening.
History isn't black and white, yet too often it's presented as such.
Grey History, The French Revolution is a long-form history podcast
dedicated to exploring the ambiguities and nuances of the past.
From a revolution of hope and liberty to the infamous reign of terror,
you can't understand the modern world without understanding the French Revolution.
So search for the French Revolution today.