Wu Sangui - Loyalty and Revolt

Loyalty and Revolt

After he defeated remnant forces consisting of Ming loyalists in southwestern China, he was rewarded with the title of Pingxi Wang (平西王; translated as "Prince Who Pacifies the West" or "King Who Pacifies the West") with a fief in Yunnan by the Qing imperial court. It had been extremely rare for someone outside of the imperial clan, especially a non-Manchu, to be granted the title of a wang. Those being awarded the title of wang who were not members of the imperial clan were called Yixing Wang (異姓王; literally meaning "kings with other family names") or known as "vassal kings". It was believed that these vassal kings usually came to a bad end, largely because they were not trusted by emperors as members of his own clan were.

Wu was not trusted by the Qing imperial court, but he was still able to rule Yunnan with little or no interference from the Qing imperial court. This was because the Manchus, an ethnic minority, needed time after their prolonged conquest to figure out how to impose the rule of a dynasty of in very small minority on the vast Han-Chinese society they held in their hands. In fact, as a semi-independent ruler in the distant southwest, he was seen as an asset to the Qing court, and for much of his rule he received massive annual subsidies from the central government. This money, as well as the long period of stability, was spent by Wu in bolstering his army in the southwest, in preparation for an eventual clash with the Qing Dynasty.

In 1673, the Kangxi Emperor decided to make Wu Sangui and two other princes who had been rewarded with large fiefs in southern and western China, move from their lands to resettle in Manchuria. As a result, the three revolted and thus began the eight-year-long civil war known as the Revolt of the Three Feudatories, with Wu Sangui declaring himself the "All-Supreme-Military Generalissimo" (天下都招討兵馬大元帥). In 1678, he went further and declared himself emperor of the "Great Zhou Dynasty", with the era name of Zhaowu (昭武). He established his capital at Hengzhou (present-day Hengyang, Hunan). When he died in October 1678, Wu's grandson Wu Shifan took over command of his forces and continued the battle. The remnants of Wu's armies were defeated soon thereafter in December 1681 and Wu Shifan committed suicide; Wu Sangui's son-in-law was sent to Beijing with Wu Shifan's head. The Kangxi Emperor had Wu Sangui's corpse scattered across the provinces of China.

Wu Sangui's son, Wu Yingxiong (吳應熊) (Wu Shifan's father), married Princess Jianning (建寧公主), the 14th daughter of the Kangxi Emperor's grandfather Hong Taiji.