Historical background

In the 1580s, when China was ruled by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), a number of Jurchen tribes lived northeast of Ming territory in the region that is now known as China's Northeast, or "Manchuria". In a series of campaigns from the 1580s to the 1610s, Nurhaci (1559–1626), the leader of the Jianzhou Jurchens, unified most Jurchen tribes under his rule. One of his most important reforms was to integrate Jurchen clans under flags of four different colors—yellow, white, red, and blue—each further subdivided into two to form an encompassing social and military system known as the Eight Banners. Nurhaci gave control of these Banners to his sons and grandsons. Around 1612, Nurhaci renamed his clan Aisin Gioro ("golden Gioro" in the Manchu language), both to distinguish his family from other Gioro lines and to allude to an earlier dynasty that had been founded by Jurchens, the Jin ("golden") dynasty that had ruled northern China from 1115 to 1234. In 1616 Nurhaci formally announced the foundation of the "Later Jin" dynasty, effectively declaring his independence from the Ming. Over the next few years he wrested most major cities in Liaodong from Ming control. His string of victories ended in February 1626 at the siege of Ningyuan, where Ming commander Yuan Chonghuan defeated him with the help of recently acquired Portuguese cannon. Probably wounded during the battle, Nurhaci died a few months later.

Nurhaci's son and successor Hong Taiji (1592–1643) continued his father's state-building efforts: he concentrated power into his own hands, modeled the Later Jin's government institutions on Chinese ones, and integrated Mongol allies and surrendered Chinese troops into the Eight Banners. In 1629 he led an incursion to the outskirts of Beijing, during which he captured Chinese craftsmen who knew how to cast Portuguese cannon. In 1635 Hong Taiji renamed the Jurchens the "Manchus", and in 1636 changed the name of his polity from "Later Jin" to "Qing". After capturing the last remaining Ming cities in Liaodong, by 1643 the Qing were preparing to attack the struggling Ming dynasty, which was crumbling under the combined weight of financial bankruptcy, devastating epidemics, and large-scale bandit uprisings fed by widespread starvation.

Becoming emperor

When Hong Taiji died on 21 September 1643 without having named a successor, the fledgling Qing state faced a possibly serious crisis. Several contenders—namely Nurhaci's second and eldest surviving son Daišan, Nurhaci's fourteenth and fifteenth sons Dorgon and Dodo (both born to the same mother), and Hong Taiji's eldest son Hooge—started to vie for the throne. With his brothers Dodo and Ajige, Dorgon (31 years old) controlled the Plain and Bordered White Banners, Daišan (60) was in charge of the two Red Banners, whereas Hooge (34) had the loyalty of his father's two Yellow Banners.

The decision about who would become the new Qing emperor fell to the Deliberative Council of Princes and Ministers, which was the Manchus' main policymaking body until the emergence of the Grand Council in the 1720s. Many Manchu princes argued that Dorgon, a proven military leader, should become the new emperor, but Dorgon refused and insisted that one of Hong Taiji's sons should succeed his father. To recognize Dorgon's authority while keeping the throne in Hong Taiji's descent line, the members of the council named Hong Taiji's ninth son, Fulin, as the new emperor, but decided that Dorgon and Jirgalang (a nephew of Nurhaci who controlled the Bordered Blue Banner) would act as the five-year-old child's regents. Fulin was officially crowned emperor of the Qing dynasty on 8 October 1643; it was decided that he would reign under the era name "Shunzhi." Because the Shunzhi reign is not well documented, it constitutes a relatively little-known period of Qing history.

Dorgons regency (1643–1650)

A quasi emperor

On 17 February 1644, Jirgalang, who was a capable military leader but looked uninterested in managing state affairs, willingly yielded control of all official matters to Dorgon. After an alleged plot by Hooge to undermine the regency was exposed on 6 May of that year, Hooge was stripped of his title of Imperial Prince and his co-conspirators were executed. Dorgon soon replaced Hooge's supporters (mostly from the Yellow Banners) with his own, thus gaining closer control of two more Banners. By early June 1644, he was in firm control of the Qing government and its military.

In early 1644, just as Dorgon and his advisors were pondering how to attack the Ming, peasant rebellions were dangerously approaching Beijing. On 24 April of that year, rebel leader Li Zicheng breached the walls of the Ming capital, pushing the Chongzhen Emperor to hang himself on a hill behind the Forbidden City. Hearing the news, Dorgon's Chinese advisors Hong Chengchou and Fan Wencheng (范文程; 1597–1666) urged the Manchu prince to seize this opportunity to present themselves as avengers of the fallen Ming and to claim the Mandate of Heaven for the Qing. The last obstacle between Dorgon and Beijing was Ming general Wu Sangui, who was garrisoned at Shanhai Pass at the eastern end of the Great Wall. Himself caught between the Manchus and Li Zicheng's forces, Wu requested Dorgon's help in ousting the bandits and restoring the Ming. When Dorgon asked Wu to work for the Qing instead, Wu had little choice but to accept. Aided by Wu Sangui's elite soldiers, who fought the rebel army for hours before Dorgon finally chose to intervene with his cavalry, the Qing won a decisive victory against Li Zicheng at the Battle of Shanhai Pass on 27 May. Li's defeated troops looted Beijing for several days until Li left the capital on 4 June with all the wealth he could carry.

Settling in the capital

After six weeks of mistreatment at the hands of rebel troops, the Beijing population sent a party of elders and officials to greet their liberators on 5 June. They were startled when, instead of meeting Wu Sangui and the Ming heir apparent, they saw Dorgon, a horseriding Manchu with his shaved forehead, present himself as the Prince Regent. In the midst of this upheaval, Dorgon installed himself in the Wuying Palace (武英殿), the only building that remained more or less intact after Li Zicheng had set fire to the palace complex on 3 June. Banner troops were ordered not to loot; their discipline made the transition to Qing rule "remarkably smooth." Yet at the same time as he claimed to have come to avenge the Ming, Dorgon ordered that all claimants to the Ming throne (including descendants of the last Ming emperor) should be executed along with their supporters.

On 7 June, just two days after entering the city, Dorgon issued special proclamations to officials around the capital, assuring them that if the local population accepted to shave their forehead, wear a queue, and surrender, the officials would be allowed to stay at their post. He had to repeal this command three weeks later after several peasant rebellions erupted around Beijing, threatening Qing control over the capital region.

Dorgon greeted the Shunzhi Emperor at the gates of Beijing on 19 October 1644. On 30 October the six-year-old monarch performed sacrifices to Heaven and Earth at the Altar of Heaven. The southern cadet branch of Confucius' descendants who held the title Wujing boshi 五经博士 and the sixty-fifth generation descendant of Confucius to hold the title Duke Yansheng in the northern branch both had their titles reconfirmed on 31 October. A formal ritual of enthronement for Fulin was held on 8 November, during which the young emperor compared Dorgon's achievements to those of the Duke of Zhou, a revered regent from antiquity. During the ceremony, Dorgon's official title was raised from "Prince Regent" to "Uncle Prince Regent" (Shufu shezheng wang 叔父摄政王), in which the Manchu term for "Uncle" (ecike) represented a rank higher than that of imperial prince. Three days later Dorgon's co-regent Jirgalang was demoted from "Prince Regent" to "Assistant Uncle Prince Regent" (Fu zheng shuwang 辅政叔王). In June 1645, Dorgon eventually decreed that all official documents should refer to him as "Imperial Uncle Prince Regent" (Huang shufu shezheng wang 皇叔父摄政王), which left him one step short of claiming the throne for himself.

One of Dorgon's first orders in the new Qing capital was to vacate the entire northern part of Beijing to give it to Bannermen, including Han Chinese Bannermen. The Yellow Banners were given the place of honor north of the palace, followed by the White Banners east, the Red Banners west, and the Blue Banners south. This distribution accorded with the order established in the Manchu homeland before the conquest and under which "each of the banners was given a fixed geographical location according to the points of the compass." Despite tax remissions and large-scale building programs designed to facilitate the transition, in 1648 many Chinese civilians still lived among the newly arrived Banner population and there was still animosity between the two groups. Agricultural land outside the capital was also marked off (quan 圈) and given to Qing troops. Former landowners now became tenants who had to pay rent to their absentee Bannermen landlords. This transition in land use caused "several decades of disruption and hardship."

In 1646, Dorgon also ordered that the civil examinations for selecting government officials be reestablished. From then on they were held regularly every three years as under the Ming. In the very first palace examination held under Qing rule in 1646, candidates, most of whom were northern Chinese, were asked how the Manchus and Han Chinese could be made to work together for a common purpose. The 1649 examination inquired about "how Manchus and Han Chinese could be unified so that their hearts were the same and they worked together without division." Under the Shunzhi Emperor's reign, the average number of graduates per session of the metropolitan examination was the highest of the Qing dynasty ("to win more Chinese support"), until 1660 when lower quotas were established.

To promote ethnic harmony, in 1648 an imperial decree formulated by Dorgon allowed Han Chinese civilians to marry women from the Manchu Banners, with the permission of the Board of Revenue if they were registered daughters of officials or commoners, or the permission of their banner company captain if they were unregistered commoners. Only later in the dynasty were these policies allowing intermarriage rescinded.

Conquest of China

Under the reign of Dorgon—whom historians have variously called "the mastermind of the Qing conquest" and "the principal architect of the great Manchu enterprise"—the Qing subdued almost all of China and pushed loyalist "Southern Ming" resistance into the far southwestern reaches of China. After repressing anti-Qing revolts in Hebei and Shandong in the Summer and Fall of 1644, Dorgon sent armies to root out Li Zicheng from the important city of Xi'an (Shaanxi province), where Li had reestablished his headquarters after fleeing Beijing in early June 1644. Under the pressure of Qing armies, Li was forced to leave Xi'an in February 1645, and he was killed—either by his own hand or by a peasant group that had organized for self-defense in this time of rampant banditry—in September 1645 after fleeing though several provinces.

From newly captured Xi'an, in early April 1645 the Qing mounted a campaign against the rich commercial and agricultural region of Jiangnan south of the lower Yangtze River, where in June 1644 a Ming imperial prince had established a regime loyal to the Ming. Factional bickering and numerous defections prevented the Southern Ming from mounting an efficient resistance. Several Qing armies swept south, taking the key city of Xuzhou north of the Huai River in early May 1645 and soon converging on Yangzhou, the main city on the Southern Ming's northern line of defense. Bravely defended by Shi Kefa, who refused to surrender, Yangzhou fell to Manchu artillery on 20 May after a one-week siege. Dorgon's brother Prince Dodo then ordered the slaughter of Yangzhou's entire population. As intended, this massacre terrorized other Jiangnan cities into surrendering to the Qing. Indeed, Nanjing surrendered without a fight on 16 June after its last defenders had made Dodo promise he would not hurt the population. The Qing soon captured the Ming emperor (who died in Beijing the following year) and seized Jiangnan's main cities, including Suzhou and Hangzhou; by early July 1645, the frontier between the Qing and the Southern Ming had been pushed south to the Qiantang River.

On 21 July 1645, after Jiangnan had been superficially pacified, Dorgon issued a most inopportune edict ordering all Chinese men to shave their forehead and to braid the rest of their hair into a queue identical to those of the Manchus. The punishment for non-compliance was death. This policy of symbolic submission helped the Manchus in telling friend from foe. For Han officials and literati, however, the new hairstyle was shameful and demeaning (because it breached a common Confucian directive to preserve one's body intact), whereas for common folk cutting their hair was the same as losing their virility. Because it united Chinese of all social backgrounds into resistance against Qing rule, the hair cutting command greatly hindered the Qing conquest. The defiant population of Jiading and Songjiang was massacred by former Ming general Li Chengdong (李成东; d. 1649), respectively on 24 August and 22 September. Jiangyin also held out against about 10,000 Qing troops for 83 days. When the city wall was finally breached on 9 October 1645, the Qing army led by Ming defector Liu Liangzuo (刘良佐; d. 1667) massacred the entire population, killing between 74,000 and 100,000 people. These massacres ended armed resistance against the Qing in the Lower Yangtze. A few committed loyalists became hermits, hoping that for lack of military success, their withdrawal from the world would at least symbolize their continued defiance against foreign rule.

After the fall of Nanjing, two more members of the Ming imperial household created new Southern Ming regimes: one centered in coastal Fujian around the "Longwu Emperor" Zhu Yujian, Prince of Tang—a ninth-generation descendant of Ming founder Zhu Yuanzhang—and one in Zhejiang around "Regent" Zhu Yihai, Prince of Lu. But the two loyalist groups failed to cooperate, making their chances of success even lower than they already were. In July 1646, a new Southern Campaign led by Prince Bolo sent Prince Lu's Zhejiang court into disarray and proceeded to attack the Longwu regime in Fujian. Zhu Yujian was caught and summarily executed in Tingzhou (western Fujian) on 6 October. His adoptive son Koxinga fled to the island of Taiwan with his fleet. Finally in November, the remaining centers of Ming resistance in Jiangxi province fell to the Qing.

In late 1646 two more Southern Ming monarchs emerged in the southern province of Guangzhou, reigning under the era names of Shaowu (绍武) and Yongli. Short of official costumes, the Shaowu court had to purchase robes from local theater troops. The two Ming regimes fought each other until 20 January 1647, when a small Qing force led by Li Chengdong captured Guangzhou, killed the Shaowu Emperor, and sent the Yongli court fleeing to Nanning in Guangxi. In May 1648, however, Li mutinied against the Qing, and the concurrent rebellion of another former Ming general in Jiangxi helped Yongli to retake most of south China. This resurgence of loyalist hopes was short-lived. New Qing armies managed to reconquer the central provinces of Huguang (present-day Hubei and Hunan), Jiangxi, and Guangdong in 1649 and 1650. The Yongli emperor had to flee again. Finally on 24 November 1650, Qing forces led by Shang Kexi captured Guangzhou and massacred the city's population, killing as many as 70,000 people.

Meanwhile, in October 1646, Qing armies led by Hooge (the son of Hong Taiji who had lost the succession struggle of 1643) reached Sichuan, where their mission was to destroy the kingdom of bandit leader Zhang Xianzhong. Zhang was killed in a battle against Qing forces near Xichong in central Sichuan on 1 February 1647. Also late in 1646 but further north, forces assembled by a Muslim leader known in Chinese sources as Milayin (米喇印) revolted against Qing rule in Ganzhou (Gansu). He was soon joined by another Muslim named Ding Guodong. Proclaiming that they wanted to restore the Ming, they occupied a number of towns in Gansu, including the provincial capital Lanzhou. These rebels' willingness to collaborate with non-Muslim Chinese suggests that they were not only driven by religion. Both Milayin and Ding Guodong were captured and killed by Meng Qiaofang (孟乔芳; 1595–1654) in 1648, and by 1650 the Muslim rebels had been crushed in campaigns that inflicted heavy casualties.

Transition and personal rule (1651–1661)

Purging Dorgons clique

Dorgon's unexpected death on 31 December 1650 during a hunting trip triggered a period of fierce factional struggles and opened the way for deep political reforms. Because Dorgon's supporters were still influential at court, Dorgon was given an imperial funeral and was posthumously elevated to imperial status as the "Righteous Emperor" (yi huangdi 义皇帝). On the same day of mid-January 1651, however, several officers of the White Banners led by former Dorgon supporter Ubai arrested Dorgon's brother Ajige for fear he would proclaim himself as the new regent; Ubai and his officers then named themselves presidents of several Ministries and prepared to take charge of the government.

Meanwhile, Jirgalang, who had been stripped of his title of regent in 1647, gathered support among Banner officers who had been disgruntled during Dorgon's rule. In order to consolidate support for the emperor in the two Yellow Banners (which had belonged to the Qing monarch since Hong Taiji) and to gain followers in Dorgon's Plain White Banner, Jirgalang named them the "Upper Three Banners" (shang san qi 上三旗; Manchu: dergi ilan gūsa), which from then on were owned and controlled by the emperor. Oboi and Suksaha, who would become regents for the Kangxi Emperor in 1661, were among the Banner officers who gave Jirgalang their support, and Jirgalang appointed them to the Council of Deliberative Princes to reward them.

On 1 February, Jirgalang announced that the Shunzhi Emperor, who was about to turn thirteen, would now assume full imperial authority. The regency was thus officially abolished. Jirgalang then moved to the attack. In late February or early March 1651 he accused Dorgon of usurping imperial prerogatives: Dorgon was found guilty and all his posthumous honors were removed. Jirgalang continued to purge former members of Dorgon's clique and to bestow high ranks and nobility titles upon a growing number of followers in the Three Imperial Banners, so that by 1652 all of Dorgon's former supporters had been either killed or effectively removed from government.

Factional politics and the fight against corruption

On 7 April 1651, barely two months after he seized the reins of government, the Shunzhi Emperor issued an edict announcing that he would purge corruption from officialdom. This edict triggered factional conflicts among literati that would frustrate him until his death. One of his first gestures was to dismiss grand academician Feng Quan (冯铨; 1595–1672), a northern Chinese who had been impeached in 1645 but was allowed to remain in his post by Prince Regent Dorgon. The Shunzhi Emperor replaced Feng with Chen Mingxia (ca. 1601–1654), an influential southern Chinese with good connections in Jiangnan literary societies. Though later in 1651 Chen was also dismissed on charges of influence peddling, he was reinstated in his post in 1653 and soon became a close personal advisor to the sovereign. He was even allowed to draft imperial edicts just as Ming Grand Secretaries used to. Still in 1653, the Shunzhi Emperor decided to recall the disgraced Feng Quan, but instead of balancing the influence of northern and southern Chinese officials at court as the emperor had intended, Feng Quan's return only intensified factional strife. In several controversies at court in 1653 and 1654, the southerners formed one bloc opposed to the northerners and the Manchus. In April 1654, when Chen Mingxia spoke to northern official Ning Wanwo (宁完我; d. 1665) about restoring the style of dress of the Ming court, Ning immediately denounced Chen to the emperor and accused him of various crimes including bribe-taking, nepotism, factionalism, and usurping imperial prerogatives. Chen was executed by strangulation on 27 April 1654.

In November 1657, a major cheating scandal erupted during the Shuntian provincial-level examinations in Beijing. Eight candidates from Jiangnan who were also relatives of Beijing officials had bribed examiners in the hope of being ranked higher in the contest. Seven examination supervisors found guilty of receiving bribes were executed, and several hundred people were sentenced to punishments ranging from demotion to exile and confiscation of property. The scandal, which soon spread to Nanjing examination circles, uncovered the corruption and influence-peddling that was rife in the bureaucracy, and that many moralistic officials from the north attributed to the existence of southern literary clubs and to the decline of classical scholarship.

Chinese style of rule

During his short reign, the Shunzhi Emperor encouraged Han Chinese to participate in government activities and revived many Chinese-style institutions that had been either abolished or marginalized during Dorgon's regency. He discussed history, classics, and politics with grand academicians such as Chen Mingxia (see previous section) and surrounded himself with new men such as Wang Xi (王熙; 1628–1703), a young northern Chinese who was fluent in Manchu. The "Six Edicts" (Liu yu 六谕) that the Shunzhi Emperor promulgated in 1652 were the predecessors to the Kangxi Emperor's "Sacred Edicts" (1670): "bare bones of Confucian orthodoxy" that instructed the population to behave in a filial and law-abiding fashion. In another move toward Chinese-style government, the sovereign reestablished the Hanlin Academy and the Grand Secretariat in 1658. These two institutions based on Ming models further eroded the power of the Manchu elite and threatened to revive the extremes of literati politics that had plagued the late Ming, when factions coalesced around rival grand secretaries.

To counteract the power of the Imperial Household Department and the Manchu nobility, in July 1653 the Shunzhi Emperor established the Thirteen Offices, or Thirteen Eunuch Bureaus, which were supervised by Manchus, but manned by Chinese eunuchs rather than Manchu bondservants. Eunuchs had been kept under tight control during Dorgon's regency, but the young emperor used them to counter the influence of other power centers such as his mother the Empress Dowager and former regent Jirgalang. By the late 1650s eunuch power became formidable again: they handled key financial and political matters, offered advice on official appointments, and even composed edicts. Because eunuchs isolated the monarch from the bureaucracy, Manchu and Chinese officials feared a return to the abuses of eunuch power that had plagued the late Ming. Despite the emperor's attempt to impose strictures on eunuch activities, the Shunzhi Emperor's favorite eunuch Wu Liangfu (吴良辅; d. 1661), who had helped him defeat the Dorgon faction in the early 1650s, was caught in a corruption scandal in 1658. The fact that Wu only received a reprimand for his accepting bribes did not reassure the Manchu elite, which saw eunuch power as a degradation of Manchu power. The Thirteen Offices would be eliminated (and Wu Liangfu executed) by Oboi and the other regents of the Kangxi Emperor in March 1661 soon after the Shunzhi Emperor's death.

Frontiers, tributaries, and foreign relations

In 1646, when Qing armies led by Bolo had entered the city of Fuzhou, they had found envoys from the Ryūkyū Kingdom, Annam, and the Spanish in Manila. These tributary embassies that had come to see the now fallen Longwu Emperor of the Southern Ming were forwarded to Beijing, and eventually sent home with instructions about submitting to the Qing. The King of the Ryūkyū Islands sent his first tribute mission to the Qing in 1649, Siam in 1652, and Annam in 1661, after the last remnants of Ming resistance had been removed from Yunnan, which bordered Annam.

Also in 1646 sultan Abu al-Muhammad Haiji Khan, a Moghul prince who ruled Turfan, had sent an embassy requesting the resumption of trade with China, which had been interrupted by the fall of the Ming dynasty. The mission was sent without solicitation, but the Qing agreed to receive it, allowing it to conduct tribute trade in Beijing and Lanzhou (Gansu). But this agreement was interrupted by a Muslim rebellion that engulfed the northwest in 1646 (see the last paragraph of the "Conquest of China" section above). Tribute and trade with Hami and Turfan, which had aided the rebels, were eventually resumed in 1656. In 1655, however, the Qing court announced that tributary missions from Turfan would be accepted only once every five years.

In 1651 the young emperor invited to Beijing the Fifth Dalai Lama, the leader of the Yellow Hat Sect of Tibetan Buddhism, who, with the military help of Khoshot Mongol Gushri Khan, had recently unified religious and secular rule in Tibet. Qing emperors had been patrons of Tibetan Buddhism since at least 1621 under the reign of Nurhaci, but there were also political reasons behind the invitation. Namely, Tibet was becoming a powerful polity west of the Qing, and the Dalai Lama held influence over Mongol tribes, many of which had not submitted to the Qing. To prepare for the arrival of this "living Buddha," the Shunzhi Emperor ordered the building of the White Dagoba (baita 白塔) on an island on one of the imperial lakes northwest of the Forbidden City, at the former site of Qubilai Khan's palace. After more invitations and diplomatic exchanges to decide where the Tibetan leader would meet the Qing emperor, the Dalai Lama arrived in Beijing in January 1653. The Dalai Lama later had a scene of this visit carved in the Potala Palace in Lhasa, which he had started building in 1645.

Meanwhile, north of the Manchu homeland, adventurers Vassili Poyarkov (1643–1646) and Yerofei Khabarov (1649–1653) had started to explore the Amur River valley for Tzarist Russia. In 1653 Khabarov was recalled to Moscow and replaced by Onufriy Stepanov, who assumed command of Khabarov's Cossack troops. Stepanov went south into the Sungari River, along which he exacted "yasak" (fur tribute) from native populations such as the Daur and the Duchers, but these groups resisted because they were already paying tribute to the Shunzhi Emperor ("Shamshakan" in Russian sources). In 1654 Stepanov defeated a small Manchu force that had been despatched from Ningguta to investigate Russian advances. In 1655 another Qing commander, the Mongol Minggadari (d. 1669), defeated Stepanov's forces at fort Kumarsk on the Amur, but this was not enough to chase the Russians. In 1658, however, Manchu general Šarhūda (1599–1659) attacked Stepanov with a fleet of 40 or more ships that managed to kill or capture most Russians. This Qing victory temporarily cleared the Amur valley of Cossack bands, but Sino-Russian border conflicts would continue until 1689, when the signature of the Treaty of Nerchinsk fixed the borders between Russia and the Qing.

Continuous campaigns against the Southern Ming

Though the Qing under Dorgon's leadership had successfully pushed the Southern Ming deep into southern China, Ming loyalism was not dead yet. In early August 1652, Li Dingguo, who had served as general in Sichuan under bandit king Zhang Xianzhong (d. 1647) and was now protecting the Yongli Emperor of the Southern Ming, retook Guilin (Guangxi province) from the Qing. Within a month, most of the commanders who had been supporting the Qing in Guangxi reverted to the Ming side. Despite occasionally successful military campaigns in Huguang and Guangdong in the next two years, Li failed to retake important cities. In 1653, the Qing court put Hong Chengchou in charge of retaking the southwest. Headquartered in Changsha (in what is now Hunan province), he patiently built up his forces; only in late 1658 did well-fed and well-supplied Qing troops mount a multipronged campaign to take Guizhou and Yunnan. In late January 1659, a Qing army led by Manchu prince Doni took the capital of Yunnan, sending the Yongli Emperor fleeing into nearby Burma, which was then ruled by King Pindale Min of the Toungoo dynasty. The last sovereign of the Southern Ming stayed there until 1662, when he was captured and executed by Wu Sangui, the former Ming general whose surrender to the Manchus in April 1644 had allowed Dorgon to start the Qing conquest of China.

Zheng Chenggong ("Koxinga"), who had been adopted by the Longwu Emperor in 1646 and ennobled by Yongli in 1655, also continued to defend the cause of the Southern Ming. In 1659, just as the Shunzhi Emperor was preparing to hold a special examination to celebrate the glories of his reign and the success of the southwestern campaigns, Zheng sailed up the Yangtze River with a well-armed fleet, took several cities from Qing hands, and went so far as to threaten Nanjing. When the emperor heard of this sudden attack he is said to have slashed his throne with a sword in anger. But the siege of Nanjing was relieved and Zheng Chenggong repelled, forcing Zheng to take refuge in the southeastern coastal province of Fujian. Pressured by Qing fleets, Zheng fled to Taiwan in April 1661 but died that same summer. His descendants resisted Qing rule until 1683, when the Kangxi Emperor successfully took the island.

Personality and relationships

After Fulin came to rule on his own in 1651, his mother the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang arranged for him to marry her niece, but the young monarch deposed his new Empress in 1653. The following year Xiaozhuang arranged another imperial marriage with her Khorchin Mongol clan, this time matching her son with her own grand-niece. Though Fulin also disliked his second empress (known posthumously as Empress Xiaohuizhang), he was not allowed to demote her. She never bore him children. Starting in 1656, the Shunzhi Emperor lavished his affection on Consort Donggo, who, according to Jesuit accounts from the time, had first been the wife of another Manchu noble. She gave birth to a son (the Shunzhi Emperor's fourth) in November 1657. The emperor would have made him his heir apparent, but he died early in 1658 before he was given a name.

The Shunzhi Emperor was an open-minded emperor and relied on the advice of Johann Adam Schall von Bell, a Jesuit missionary from Cologne in the Germanic parts of the Holy Roman Empire, for guidance on matters ranging from astronomy and technology to religion and government. In late 1644, Dorgon had put Schall in charge of preparing a new calendar because his eclipse predictions had proven more reliable than those of the official astronomer. After Dorgon's death Schall developed a personal relationship with the young emperor, who called him "grandfather" (mafa in Manchu). At the height of his influence in 1656 and 1657, Schall reports that the Shunzhi Emperor often visited his house and talked to him late into the night. He was excused from prostrating himself in the presence of the emperor, was granted land to build a church in Beijing, and was even given imperial permission to adopt a son (because Fulin worried that Schall did not have an heir), but the Jesuits' hope of converting the Qing sovereign to Christianity was crushed when the Shunzhi Emperor became a devout follower of Chan Buddhism in 1657.

The emperor developed a good command of Chinese that allowed him to manage matters of state and to appreciate Chinese arts such as calligraphy and drama. One of his favorite texts was "Rhapsody of a Myriad Sorrows" (Wan chou qu 万愁曲), by Gui Zhuang (归庄; 1613–1673), who was a close friend of anti-Qing intellectuals Gu Yanwu and Wan Shouqi (万寿祺; 1603–1652). "Quite passionate and attaching great importance to qing (love)," he could also recite by heart long passages of the popular Romance of the Western Chamber.

Death and succession

Smallpox

In September 1660, Consort Donggo, the Shunzhi Emperor's favourite consort, suddenly died as a result of grief over the loss of a child. Overwhelmed with grief, the emperor fell into dejection for months, until he contracted smallpox on 2 February 1661. On 4 February 1661, officials Wang Xi (王熙, 1628–1703; the emperor's confidant) and Margi (a Manchu) were called to the emperor's bedside to record his last will. On the same day, his seven-year-old third son Xuanye was chosen to be his successor, probably because he had already survived smallpox. The emperor died on 5 February 1661 in the Forbidden City at the age of twenty-two.

The Manchus feared smallpox more than any other disease because they had no immunity to it and almost always died when they contracted it. By 1622 at the latest, they had already established an agency to investigate smallpox cases and isolate sufferers to avoid contagion. During outbreaks, royal family members were routinely sent to "smallpox avoidance centers" (bidousuo 避痘所) to protect themselves from infection. The Shunzhi Emperor was particularly fearful of the disease, because he was young and lived in a large city, near sources of contagion. Indeed, during his reign at least nine outbreaks of smallpox were recorded in Beijing, each time forcing the emperor to move to a protected area such as the "Southern Park" (Nanyuan 南苑), a hunting ground south of Beijing where Dorgon had built a "smallpox avoidance center" in the 1640s. Despite this and other precautions—such as rules forcing Chinese residents to move out of the city when they contracted smallpox—the young monarch still succumbed to that illness.

Forged last will

The emperor's last will, which was made public on the evening of 5 February, appointed four regents for his young son: Oboi, Soni, Suksaha, and Ebilun, who had all helped Jirgalang to purge the court of Dorgon's supporters after Dorgon's death on the last day of 1650. It is difficult to determine whether the Shunzhi Emperor had really named these four Manchu nobles as regents, because they and Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang clearly tampered with the emperor's testament before promulgating it. The emperor's will expressed his regret about his Chinese-style ruling (his reliance on eunuchs and his favoritism toward Chinese officials), his neglect of Manchu nobles and traditions, and his headstrong devotion to his consort rather than to his mother. Though the emperor had often issued self-deprecating edicts during his reign, the policies his will rejected had been central to his government since he had assumed personal rule in the early 1650s. The will as it was formulated gave "the mantle of imperial authority" to the four regents, and served to support their pro-Manchu policies during the period known as the Oboi regency, which lasted from 1661 to 1669.

After death

Because court statements did not clearly announce the cause of the emperor's death, rumors soon started to circulate that he had not died but in fact retired to a Buddhist monastery to live anonymously as a monk, either out of grief for the death of his beloved consort, or because of a coup by the Manchu nobles his will had named as regents. These rumors seemed not so incredible because the emperor had become a fervent follower of Chan Buddhism in the late 1650s, even letting monks move into the imperial palace. Modern Chinese historians have considered the Shunzhi Emperor's possible retirement as one of the three mysterious cases of the early Qing. But much circumstantial evidence—including an account by one of these monks that the emperor's health greatly deteriorated in early February 1661 because of smallpox, and the fact that a concubine and an Imperial Bodyguard committed suicide to accompany the emperor in burial—suggests that the Shunzhi Emperor's death was not staged.

After being kept in the Forbidden City for 27 days of mourning, on 3 March 1661 the emperor's corpse was transported in a lavish procession to Jingshan 景山 (a hillock just north of the Forbidden City), after which a large amount of precious goods were burned as funeral offerings. Only two years later, in 1663, was the body transported to its final resting place. Contrary to Manchu customs at the time, which usually dictated that a deceased person should be cremated, the Shunzhi Emperor was buried. He was interred in what later came to be known as the Eastern Qing Tombs, 125 kilometers (75 miles) northeast of Beijing, one of two Qing imperial cemeteries. His tomb is part of the Xiao (孝) mausoleum complex (known in Manchu as the Hiyoošungga Munggan), which was the first mausoleum to be erected on that site.

Legacy

The fake will in which the Shunzhi Emperor had supposedly expressed regret for abandoning Manchu traditions gave authority to the nativist policies of the Kangxi Emperor's four regents. Citing the testament, Oboi and the other regents quickly abolished the Thirteen Eunuch Bureaus. Over the next few years, they enhanced the power of the Imperial Household Department, which was run by Manchus and their bondservants, eliminated the Hanlin Academy, and limited membership in the Deliberative Council of Princes and Ministers to Manchus and Mongols. The regents also adopted aggressive policies toward the Qing's Chinese subjects: they executed dozens of people and punished thousands of others in the wealthy Jiangnan region for literary dissent and tax arrears, and forced the coastal population of southeast China to move inland in order to starve the Taiwan-based Kingdom of Tungning run by descendants of Koxinga.

After the Kangxi Emperor managed to imprison Oboi in 1669, he reverted many of the regents' policies. He restored institutions his father had favored, including the Grand Secretariat, through which Chinese officials gained an important voice in government. He also defeated the rebellion of the Three Feudatories, three Chinese military commanders who had played key military roles in the Qing conquest, but had now become entrenched rulers of enormous domains in southern China. The civil war (1673–1681) tested the loyalty of the new Qing subjects, but Qing armies eventually prevailed. Once victory had become certain, a special examination for "eminent scholars of broad learning" (Boxue hongru 博学鸿儒) was held in 1679 to attract Chinese literati who had refused to serve the new dynasty. The successful candidates were assigned to compile the official history of the fallen Ming dynasty. The rebellion was defeated in 1681, the same year the Kangxi Emperor initiated the use of variolation to inoculate children of the imperial family against smallpox. When the Kingdom of Tungning finally fell in 1683, the military consolidation of the Qing regime was complete. The institutional foundation laid by Dorgon, and the Shunzhi and Kangxi emperors allowed the Qing to erect an imperial edifice of awesome proportion and to turn it into "one of the most successful imperial states the world has known." Ironically, however, the prolonged Pax Manchurica that followed the Kangxi consolidation made the Qing unprepared to face aggressive European powers with modern weaponry in the nineteenth century.

Family

Although only nineteen empresses and consorts are recorded for the Shunzhi Emperor in the Aisin Gioro genealogy made by the Imperial Clan Court, burial records show that he had at least thirty-two of them. Twelve bore him children. There were two empresses in his reign, both relatives of his mother the empress dowager. After the 1644 conquest, imperial consorts and empresses were usually known by their titles and by the name of their patrilineal clan.

Eleven of the Shunzhi Emperor's 32 spouses bore him a total of fourteen children, but only four sons (Fuquan, Xuanye, Changning, and Longxi) and one daughter (Princess Gongque) lived to be old enough to marry. Unlike later Qing emperors, the names of the Shunzhi Emperor's sons did not include a generational character.

Before the Qing court moved to Beijing in 1644, Manchu women used to have personal names, but after 1644 these names "disappear from the genealogical and archival records." Only after their betrothal were imperial daughters given a title and rank, by which they then became known. Although five of the Shunzhi Emperor's six daughters died in infancy or childhood, they all appear in the Aisin Gioro genealogy.

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Consorts and Issue:

• Consort Jing, of the Khorchin Borjigit clan (静妃 博尔济吉特氏), first cousin, personal name Erdeni Bumba (额尔德尼布木巴)皇后→静妃

• Empress Xiaohuizhang, of the Khorchin Borjigit clan (孝惠章皇后 博尔济吉特氏; 5 November 1641 – 7 January 1718), first cousin once removed, personal name Alatan Qiqige (阿拉坦琪琪格)皇后..仁宪皇太后

• Empress Xiaoxian, of the Donggo clan (孝献皇后 董鄂氏; 1639 – 23 September 1660)贤妃→皇贵妃

　• Prince Rong of the First Rank (荣亲王; 12 November 1657 – 25 February 1658), fourth son

• Empress Xiaokangzhang, of the Tunggiya clan (孝康章皇后 佟佳氏; 1638 – 20 March 1663)..慈和皇太后

　• Xuanye, the Kangxi Emperor (圣祖 玄烨; 4 May 1654 – 20 December 1722), third son

• Consort Dao, of the Khorchin Borjigit clan (悼妃 博尔济吉特氏; d. 7 April 1658), first cousin

• Consort Zhen, of the Donggo clan (贞妃 董鄂氏; d. 5 February 1661)

• Consort Ke, of the Shi clan (恪妃 石氏; d. 13 January 1668)

• Consort Gongjing, of the Hotsit Borjigit clan (恭靖妃 博尔济吉特氏; d. 20 May 1689)

• Consort Shuhui, of the Khorchin Borjigit clan (淑惠妃 博尔济吉特氏; 1642 – 17 December 1713), first cousin once removed

• Consort Duanshun, of the Abaga Borjigit clan (端顺妃 博尔济吉特氏; d. 1 August 1709)

• Consort Ningque, of the Donggo clan (宁悫妃 董鄂氏; d. 11 August 1694)

　• Fuquan, Prince Yuxian of the First Rank (裕宪亲王 福全; 8 September 1653 – 10 August 1703), second son

• Mistress, of the Ba clan (巴氏)

　• Niuniu (牛钮; 13 December 1651 – 9 March 1652), first son

　• Third daughter (30 January 1654 – April/May 1658)

　• Fifth daughter (6 February 1655 – January 1661)

• Mistress, of the Chen clan (陈氏; d. 1690)

　• First daughter (22 April 1652 – November/December 1653)

　• Changning, Prince Gong of the First Rank (恭亲王 常宁; 8 December 1657 – 20 July 1703), fifth son

• Mistress, of the Yang clan (杨氏)

　• Princess Gongque of the Second Rank (和硕恭悫公主; 19 January 1654 – 26 November 1685), second daughter

　　• Married Na'erdu (讷尔杜; d. 1676) of the Manchu Gūwalgiya clan in February/March 1667

　• Fourth daughter (9 January 1655 – March/April 1661)

• Mistress, of the Nara clan (那拉氏)

　• Sixth daughter (11 November 1657 – March 1661)

• Mistress, of the Tang clan (唐氏)

　• Qishou (奇授; 3 January 1660 – 12 December 1665), sixth son

• Mistress, of the Niu clan (钮氏)

　• Longxi, Prince Chunjing of the First Rank (纯靖亲王 隆禧; 30 May 1660 – 20 August 1679), seventh son

• Mistress, of the Muktu clan (穆克图氏)

　• Yonggan (永干; 23 January 1661 – 15 January 1668), eighth son

Ancestry

In popular culture

• Portrayed by Jung Yun-seok in the 2013 JTBC TV series Blooded Palace: The War of Flowers.

家世背景

14世纪，数支女真部落生活在大明（1368年–1644年）东北长城疆域外，即现代被称为中国东北或「满洲」的地区明太祖时，为压抑北元残馀势力，于是东北设立远东指挥使司。

明成祖永乐年间（1403年－1424年），在东北疆域置奴儿干都司等卫所，明政府先后将建州建立3个三个卫，总称「建州三卫」防卫女真侵入，其中建州女真一部最为强大，其后建州女真首领努尔哈赤（1559年–1626年）经过三十馀年的征抚，完成对女真各部的统一。

努尔哈赤最重要的一项改革，是将松散的女真诸部的力量凝聚在黄、白、红、蓝四色旗之下，此后，又在原有四色旗基础上再增镶黄、镶白、镶红、镶蓝四旗，形成八旗。此社会军事组织制度是为八旗制度。努尔哈赤将旗主交由子侄担任。在1612年左右，努尔哈赤为使其部族人与其他支觉罗部族人相区别，故将部族名变更为爱新觉罗氏（意为「黄金般高贵神圣的觉罗一族」）。

1616年，努尔哈赤宣布叛明自立国号，史称后金，建元天命。尔后，努尔哈赤继而攻打原大明领土的辽东大多数主要地区，其军队所向披靡，直到1626年1月，努尔哈赤在宁远攻城之时，被驻守该地的明军指挥官袁崇焕，以不久前收购的葡萄牙人的红夷大炮击败。努尔哈赤可能在宁远之战中受了致命伤，因而在战后数月逝世。

努尔哈赤之子皇太极（1592年–1643年）继续致力于其父的大业：他把权力集于自己之手，仿效明朝政治制度，并完善和拓展八旗制度，在原有满洲八旗的基础上增设蒙古八旗和汉军八旗。1629年，他率军入侵北京郊区，在此期间俘获了知道如何铸造红夷大炮的汉人工匠。1635年，皇太极改称女真为「满洲」，1636年，他又将国号「后金」改为「大清」。在松锦之战后的1643年，明朝已经在财政破产、瘟疫肆虐以及大饥荒导致的明末农民战争等致命危机之中摇摇欲坠，清朝准备展开对明朝的最后一击。

早年

出生

清世祖福临出生于崇德三年正月三十（1638年3月15日），为皇太极第九子，其时皇太极与爱妃海兰珠之子（皇八子）刚夭折两天。福临的母亲是布木布泰（1613–1688），博尔济吉特氏，科尔沁部贝勒寨桑之女；1636年至1651年的封号为「永福宫庄妃」，她在儿子亲政后尊为皇太后，后世习称她为孝庄文皇后。

崇德七年 (1642年) 十二月初二日，皇太极率诸王贝勒及文武大臣行猎于叶赫地方。同月十二日，到达噶哈岭。圣汗之五岁幼子方喀拉章京射杀一包。学者杨珍在《顺治朝满文档案札记》认为方喀拉即为福临的原名或乳名，章京即为方喀拉在此次随皇太极行猎时，临时得到的职位。

王储之争

1643年9月21日，50岁的皇太极去世，他生前未指定储君，清朝面临著可能出现的严重分裂危机。皇太极的 34岁长子豪格广有战功，但他与战功彪炳的叔叔多尔衮不合。长子豪格之外，皇太极尚有叶布舒、硕塞、高塞、常舒、韬塞、福临(5岁)、博穆博果尔等七名儿子。其中叶布舒、高塞、常舒、韬塞四人中，有三人年长于福临，但皆生母地位低微，无法越过福临、博穆博果尔继承皇位。而硕塞的生母叶赫那拉氏则早被皇太极赐给大臣，博穆博果尔则年幼于福临。

此时，数名亲王与贝勒争夺皇位——努尔哈赤的次子兼在世的长子和硕礼亲王代善、努尔哈赤第十四子和硕睿亲王多尔衮和第十五子和硕豫亲王多铎（两人为同母所出）以及皇太极之长子和硕肃亲王豪格——开始逐鹿皇位。皇太极的弟弟多铎、多罗武英郡王阿济格及多尔衮（31岁）掌有正白及镶白旗，代善（60岁）掌有两红旗，而豪格（34岁）则获得其父两黄旗的支持。

议政王大臣会议著手议立新帝，此会议直到军机处在18世纪20年代出现以前一直是满清的主要决策机构。许多亲王、贝勒主张多尔衮这个久经考验的军事将领成为新皇帝，但多尔衮拒绝为帝，而是坚持让皇太极的一个儿子承袭父位。

会议接受多尔衮的具有权势的主张，继续让皇太极的后裔继承大统。最终商议决定立皇太极第九子福临承袭父位为新皇帝，但亦决定立和硕郑亲王济尔哈朗（努尔哈赤之侄，他掌有镶蓝旗）和多尔衮作这个五岁孩子的摄政。

1643年10月8日，福临正式登上清朝皇帝位；定年号为「顺治」。由于记载顺治年间的文献语焉不详，所以这段时期同整个清朝历史相比显得较为鲜为人知。

多尔衮摄政（1643－1650年）

入关以前

济尔哈朗是一位骁勇善战、受人尊敬的将领，但看起来对多尔衮已很快就抓到手中的日常行政事务毫无兴趣。1644年2月17日，济尔哈朗召集内三院、六部、都察院和理藩院的官员，向他们宣布：「嗣后，凡各衙办理事务或有应白于我二王者，或有记档者，皆先启知睿亲王档子，书名亦宜先书睿亲王名，其坐立班次及行礼仪，注俱照前例行。」此后在同年5月6日，豪格暗中动摇摄政统治的阴谋暴露。豪格的党羽全部被处死，豪格本人被褫夺亲王爵位。多尔衮在此后不久，以自己的支持者接替取代了豪格的拥护者（大多来自黄旗），从而掌控了两白旗以外的旗。至1644年6月初期，他已牢牢地把清政府及其军政大权掌握在自己手中。

1644年初期，正当多尔衮与其谋士苦思钻研如何攻大明之时，民变逼近北京。同年4月24日，民变领袖李自成攻破明都城墙，促使崇祯皇帝朱由检在紫禁城后的万岁山歪脖树上自缢身亡。多尔衮的汉人谋士洪承畴和范文程闻讯，敦促满洲亲王抓住此机遇，给大明报仇雪恨，进而为大清夺取天命。驻扎在长城东端山海关的大明总兵吴三桂，是多尔衮同北京之间的最后一道障碍。此时他正被满洲人与李自成军间的武力夹得左右为难，吴三桂请求多尔衮帮助他驱逐土匪，恢复大明。当多尔衮要求吴三桂替大清效力之时，吴三桂除了接受之外别无选择。清兵因此得到了吴三桂的精兵的辅助，后同李自成军进行一片石之战，在多尔衮最终选择用骑兵介入此战斗前，吴三桂的精兵就已和李自成军交战了数小时。5月27日，大清取得此战的决定性胜利。战败的李自成军在北京洗劫数日，直至6月4日携带著所能带走的财物离京。

定都

6月5日，被叛军之手肆虐了六周的北京市民，派出了一批士绅及官吏迎接他们将要来到的解放者。可当他们见到的是骑著马、把前额头发剃光并自称摄政王的满洲人多尔衮，而不是大明皇太子朱慈烺及其保护者平西伯吴三桂时，吃了一大惊。在此场动乱之中，多尔衮将自己安置在武英殿，后者是李自成在6月3日火烧大内后，唯一未被损坏的建筑。旗军们被命令不许抢劫；他们的纪律约束使统治过渡到大清「出奇地顺利」。然而在同时，多尔衮却声称他是为报复大明而来。他下令将大明皇族（包括大明末代皇帝朱由检的后裔）及其拥护者全部处决。

6月7日，进城仅两天的多尔衮向首都的官员发布谕告。该谕告向官员们保证，如果本地居民剃发易服并且接受归降，那么他们则可以官复旧职。可是在此谕告发布后的三周内，北京爆发数场农民起义，威胁大清控制首都地区。面对威胁，多尔衮不得不将此谕告废除。

1644年10月19日，多尔衮在北京大门迎接福临。10月30日，六岁的福临被带到北京南郊的天坛祭拜天地。11月8日，福临的登基仪式正式举行。同日，年幼的皇帝将多尔衮的功绩同周公进行比较，后者为古时一个受人尊敬的摄政。在登基仪式上，多尔衮的官衔由「摄政王」升为「叔父摄政王」。满语「叔父」（ecike）在此表示高于亲王的一级身份。三天后，多尔衮的摄政同事济尔哈朗的官衔由「摄政王」降为「辅政叔王」。多尔衮在1645年6月发布仪注规定，今后所有公文均应书写「皇叔父摄政王」称呼他，这使得多尔衮距离皇帝权威仅剩一步之遥。最终多尔衮在1648年更凌驾于小皇帝之上，称「皇父摄政王」。

多尔衮进入大清新首都后的最初的一个命令是，将北京北部全部腾出，然后把它分给旗人。两黄旗分得荣耀的宫殿北部，其次，东部为两白旗，西部为两红旗，南部为两蓝旗。八旗的此种布局，是为了使京城同满洲在征服中原前的故乡保持一致。此种布局「按照罗盘的指针指向，给颜色不同的旗人分配在一个固定的地理位置。」尽管大清为了加快过渡而减免税收，推迟大型建筑建造计划。但到了1648年，新来的旗人与共同生活的汉人百姓间仍有敌意。而首都以外的农业用地则全部被清军圈占。昔日的地主，现在却成了给外居旗人地主支付租金的佃户。这种土地用途的转变导致了「数十年的中断和苦难。」

在1646年，多尔衮还下令重建选任政府官员的科举考试。从那时起，他们效仿大明，每三年定期举行一次科举。同年，大清统治下的第一次殿试举行，大多数报考者为北方汉人，他们被提问如何使满汉同心合志。1649年，考试询问「联满汉为一体，使之同心合力，欢然无间，何道而可？」在1660年确定减少中额前，顺治朝下每届会试的考中人数的平均为大清最高（「得到了汉人更多的支持」）。

一统中原

多尔衮被历史学家不同地称为「大清征服的优秀策划者」和「满洲洪业的首席建筑师」，大清在他的统治下，征服了中原大部分地区，并将「南明」的势力范围推到了遥远的中国西南地区。李自成从北京逃到西安，并在后者重建指挥部。多尔衮在同年夏、秋将河北、山东抗清起义镇压后，派遣军队进入西安（陕西省）主要城市搜寻李自成。1645年2月，在清军的压力下，李自成被迫离开了西安。他被杀了——无论是死于自己之手，还是被当地村民疑以为劫盗而误杀——1645年9月后，他在几个省份中消失了。

1644年6月，福王朱由崧于长江中下游以南的江南富饶的商农区建立大明弘光政权。1645年4月初，大清从新占领的西安出发，准备向那里发起进攻，南明政权的党派之争和不计其数的逃叛，阻碍了其有效抵抗能力的增强。1645年5月初，数支清军席卷南方，随手夺取了徐州淮河以北的主要城市。此后不久，他们向南明北部防线的主要城市——扬州——拥去。史可法面对包围，勇敢地反抗。5月20日，遭受一周炮轰的扬州被满洲人攻破，史可法依旧拒绝投降。多尔衮的弟弟多铎遂下令屠杀扬州全城人民。作为目的，这场大屠杀作为恐吓江南其他城市降服于大清。紧接著南京在6月16日，即最后的防卫者使多铎保证不会伤人后，钱谦益开城而降。大清在不久俘获了大明皇帝（他在翌年被处决于北京），并迅速夺取了江南包括苏州杭州的主要城市；至1645年7月初，清朝与南明之间的边界被推到南方的钱塘江。

江南刚有了表面上的平静后，多尔衮便在1645年7月21日发布了一个最不合时宜的告示，他命令所有的成年男人剃去他们前额的头发，将他们的头发按照满洲人的髡发辫式编扎起来。不服从告示者将被处以死刑。对于满洲人来讲，此象徵著屈服的政策，有助于他们分清敌我。不过，在汉人官员和文人看来，新发型是一种奇耻大辱（因为它有悖于孔门弟子关于保持身体完整的指导）。而对于普通百姓来说，剃发如同丧失他们的。由于剃发令逼使社会的各个阶层的汉人联合起来反抗满清统治，所以极大地阻碍了满清的征服。在1645年8月24日和9月22日，前明将领李成栋分别对嘉定和松江反抗的人民进行屠杀。而江阴还同约一万名清军进行了八十三天的对抗。当城门最终在1645年10月9日被攻破时，降清明将刘良佐对全城人进行屠杀，这场屠杀造成了七万四千至十万不等的人的死亡。这些大屠杀结束了长江中下游的反清武装抵抗。有几个忠诚的勤王者成了隐士，并希望著清军败溃。虽然他们退出了世界，但至少象徵著在继续反抗外族统治。

南京沦陷后，两支明宗室建立了两个新的南明政权：一个是以福建沿岸附近为中心隆武皇帝唐王朱聿键——明太祖朱元璋的九世孙——而另一个是浙江附近的「监国」鲁王朱以海。但由于双方彼此不服，无法联合抗清，不但无法反攻满清，也导致丧失维持政权的机会，造成汉人政权走向衰亡。1646年7月，贝勒博洛领导的新的南方军事活动使鲁王的浙江朝廷陷入混乱状态，继而向隆武政权发起进攻。朱聿键于10月6日在汀州（福建西部）被俘，即刻处死。他的养子国姓爷郑成功则随他的船队逃往泉州。11月，江西剩馀的忠明抵抗中心崩溃，整个江西降清。

1646年末，广州出现了两个新的大明皇帝：一个是年号为绍武的朱聿键之弟唐王朱聿𨮁，另一个为年号为永历的桂王朱由榔。由于朝服不够，此后绍武政权所任命的官员不得不向本地伶人购买戏袍。两支南明政权彼此残杀，直到1647年1月20日，李成栋率领的一支小规模清兵组成的先头部队开进广州，处死了朱聿𨮁，迫使永历朝廷逃往广西南宁。然而，李成栋于1648年5月起兵抗清，与江西的前明将领金声桓并发起义，帮助朱由榔夺回了中国南方的绝大部分地区。但南明的复兴只是昙花一现。清军于1649年和1650年重新征服湖广中部（今河北和湖南）、江西和广东。朱由榔再度逃亡。最后，1650年11月24日，尚可喜所统率的清军攻占广州，杀死七万多人。

同时，1646年10月，豪格（福临长兄，于1643年继承斗争中失去继承权）所统率的清军抵达四川，任务是摧毁张献忠领导的大西国。1647年2月2日，张献忠与清军在川中西充附近作战时被杀。1646年末抗清势力进一步向北蔓延，由一个穆斯林将领米喇印领导的武装力量反抗大清对甘州（甘肃）的统治。另一名穆斯林丁国栋很快加入了他的抗清运动。他们以恢复大明为号召，攻克了甘肃的数个城镇，其中包括省会兰州在内。这些起义者愿意同非穆斯林的汉人进行合作，这表明他们不是仅仅被宗教所驱使。1648年，米喇印战死于水泉（今甘肃永昌水泉子村），丁国栋则被孟乔芳俘获并被多尔衮下令处决，至1650年，造成了大量人员伤亡的穆斯林起义运动被粉碎。

过渡和个人统治

肃清多尔衮集团

1650年12月31日，多尔衮在狩猎途中意外死亡，引发了一段激烈的派系斗争，开辟了深层次政治改革之路。由于多尔衮的支持者在朝廷上仍具影响，所以多尔衮的丧礼依帝礼，多尔衮死后获追尊为皇帝，谥号懋德修道广业定功安民立政诚敬义皇帝，庙号成宗。然而，在1651年1月中旬的同一天，多尔衮的前部将吴拜统率下的数名白旗军官为防范多尔衮的胞兄阿济格自立为新摄政而将其逮捕；之后，吴拜让福临任命自己及他的几位追随者为各部尚书，准备接管政府。

同时，于1647年被褫夺摄政头衔的济尔哈朗，获得了对多尔衮统治心怀不满的旗官的支持。济尔哈朗为了巩固直属皇帝的两黄旗（前两旗自清太宗开始直属皇帝）对自己的支持，争取白旗支持者，赋予正黄、镶黄、正白三旗一个新名称：上三旗（此三旗自此由皇帝直接统辖）。于1661年成为玄烨的辅政大臣的鳌拜和苏克萨哈，是给予济尔哈朗支持的旗官，济尔哈朗以指定他们参加议政王大臣会议作为回报。

1651年2月1日，济尔哈朗宣布即将13岁的福临亲政。摄政正式废止。济尔哈朗此后展开攻势。1651年3月12日，他控告多尔衮僭越皇权：多尔衮被判有罪，他获得的追尊被剥夺。济尔哈朗继续肃清多尔衮集团前成员，为上三旗中越来越多的支持者升官晋爵，所以到了1652年，多尔衮的前支持者或是被杀，或是被有效的从政府中清除。

派系政治和反腐之争

福临仅仅亲政两个月后，便于1651年4月7日发布谕告，宣布他将肃清官场腐败。该谕告引起文人间的派系之争，令福临沮丧无比，至死也无可奈何。福临的最初的一项行动是罢免大学士冯铨。冯铨为北方汉人，先前曾于1645年受弹劾，但摄政王多尔衮仍准其任职如故。福临以陈名夏取代冯铨。陈名夏是个有影响力的南方汉人，同南方文人集团关系良好。陈名夏尽管曾于1651年受控以权谋私，但旋于1653年官复原职，旋即成为皇上的亲密的私人顾问。陈名夏甚至获准可以像昔日的明代内阁大学士那样起草诏书。同于1653年，福临决定召回声名狼藉的冯铨。皇帝如此行事，本意是想让南北汉人官员在朝廷上势均力敌，从而平息派系冲突。然而，冯铨回归后，派系之争反而激化，令皇帝始料未及。在1653年和1654年的数次朝议中，南方人形成反对北方人与满洲人的阵营。1654年4月，陈名夏向北方汉人官员宁完我建议，清廷应恢复明代衣冠，宁完我旋即向皇帝揭发此事，并指控陈名夏干犯有包括贪污受贿、裙带关系、结党营私和僭越皇权在内的各种罪行。1654年4月27日，陈名夏被绞死。

1657年11月，北京顺天省试的一场重大作弊丑闻爆出。八名江南考生贿赂了京城的主考官，希望能得到更高的名次。七名主考官以受贿的罪名被处以死刑，数百人被判处贬谪流放和没收财产。这场丑闻很快蔓延到了南京会试，揭露了官僚制的腐败和以权谋私，许多坚持正统观念的北人官员将之归因为南方文人小团体的存在和经典学问的衰落。

中原式统治

福临在他短暂的统治期间，鼓励汉人入仕，恢复了许多多尔衮摄政期间废止或排斥的中原王朝制度。他和大学士（诸如陈名夏，见上文）谈论历史、经典和政治，他周围聚集了一批新人，诸如能讲一口流利满语的北方年轻汉人王熙。福临于1652年颁布的《六谕》是玄烨1670年颁布的《圣谕》的前身，后者是一部「正统儒家思想的梗概」，用于指示百姓遵守孝道和法律。顺治帝用中原王朝的一些体制改革清朝制度，于1658年恢复了翰林院和内阁。这两个机构承袭明代模式，进一步削弱满洲贵族的权力，这使得深深困扰晚明的党争问题死灰复燃成为可能。

为了削弱内务府和满洲贵族的权力，1653年7月，福临设立十三衙门，后者虽由满洲人监督，但由汉族宦官而非满洲包衣阿哈掌控。宦官在多尔衮摄政期间受严格的限制，但小皇帝用他们来制衡像皇太后和皇叔济尔哈朗这样的实权派人物的影响。至1650年代后期，宦官的权力变大：他们处理关键的政治和经济问题，就官员任命提出建议，甚至负责起草诏令。由于宦官削弱了官僚集团与皇帝间的联系，满汉官员担心困扰晚明的宦官擅权局面会重现。尽管皇帝尝试限制宦官权力，他最宠爱的宦官吴良辅还是于1658年陷入腐败丑闻，吴良辅于1650年代早期帮助他肃清多尔衮集团。但吴良辅收受贿赂仅仅受到谴责，未能平息宦官权力膨胀引发的满洲贵族的怒火。。福临死后不久，1661年3月，鳌拜和另外三位辅政大臣将十三衙门裁撤，吴良辅被处决。

边疆、进贡国和对外关系

1646年，博洛率清军进入福州，发现来自琉球国和安南的使节和马尼拉的西班牙人。这些朝贡使团前来拜见已倒台的南明隆武皇帝朱聿键，而后者此时已被押送至京，最终，这些使者听从清廷命令辞归。最后残存的南明抵抗势力从与安南接壤的云南撤离后，琉球王尚质于1649年首次向大清派出朝贡使团，暹罗和安南分别于1652年和1661年向大清派遣朝贡使团。

同于1646年，统治吐鲁番的一名蒙兀儿王公苏丹阿不都拉哈·哈吉汗派遣一支使团，请求恢复因明亡而中断的与华贸易。使节团虽未受邀请便来到中国，但清朝准其请求，允许其在北京和兰州进行朝贡贸易。但该协议因1646年一场席卷中国西北的穆斯林起义（参见前文「一统中原」末段）而中断。大清与资助反政府武装的哈密和吐鲁番的朝贡贸易最终于1656年恢复。不过在1655年，清廷宣布来自吐鲁番的朝贡使节每五年才能接受一次回赐。

1651年，小皇帝邀请藏传佛教格鲁派领袖第五世达赖喇嘛访问北京，后者不久以前在蒙古和硕特部首领固始汗的军事帮助下，成为西藏的宗教统治者和世俗统治者。尽管满洲对藏传佛教的支持和保护至少始于努尔哈赤治下的1621年，但此次邀请背后仍有政治原因。即西藏正在成为大清西部一个强大的政治实体，达赖喇嘛对蒙古部落具有影响力，而其中一些蒙古部落并未屈从于大清。为了迎接这位「活佛」的到来，福临下令在紫禁城西北边北海琼华岛的昆仑山上建造了一座白塔，其位置就在以前薛禅汗宫殿的遗址上。经过多次邀请和外交往来，西藏领袖拿定主意，接受会见大清皇帝，1653年1月14日，达赖喇嘛抵达北京。达赖喇嘛日后将此行访问的场面雕刻在拉萨的布达拉宫，后者于1645年开始建造。

与此同时，在满洲人故乡北部，探险家瓦西里·波亚尔科夫（1643–1646）和叶罗菲·哈巴罗夫（1649–1653）越过罗刹国的山谷来到了黑龙江流域。1653年，莫斯科召回哈巴罗夫，委派奥努夫里·斯捷潘诺夫接替他，斯捷潘诺夫掌握了哈巴罗夫的哥萨克军队指挥权。斯捷潘诺夫南下进入松花江，强迫当地原住居民诸如达斡尔人和久切尔人交纳「牙萨克」（毛皮税），但遭到抗拒。因为满洲当地民族已向顺治皇帝朝贡。1654年，斯捷潘诺夫击败从宁古塔被派遣去调查罗刹计划的小规模的满洲军队。1655年，另一名清军指挥官蒙古人明安达礼在黑龙江流域的呼玛要塞击败斯捷潘诺夫军，但这还不足以追捕罗刹人。不过在1658年，满洲将领沙尔虎达率四十馀艘船向斯捷潘诺夫发起进攻，罗刹人大多数被击毙或生俘。经过此役，黑龙江流域哥萨克地带已无太大冲突，但大清和罗刹的边境冲突则持续了下去，直至1689年《尼布楚条约》签订，固定了罗刹和大清之间的边界。

持续打击南明活动

尽管大清在多尔衮的领导下成功将南明推到华南，但大明遗民尚未死心。1652年8月初，正在保护朱由榔的张献忠前部下李定国，从大清手中夺回桂林。一月之内，广西清将大多向南明投降。此后两年，尽管对湖广和广东的军事行动偶尔成功，但李定国未能夺取重要城市。1653年，清廷命洪承畴负责夺回西南地区。洪承畴驻扎长沙，耐心地建立起自己的军力；惟在1658年底，营养充足、物资供应良好的清军分多路向桂州和云南进军。1659年1月末，铎尼率清军攻陷云南府，朱由榔逃入邻近的缅甸，后者此时正由东吁王朝国王莽平德勒统治。此后南明末代皇帝一直留在缅甸，直到1662年被1644年4月降满的前明将领吴三桂俘获并处决。

郑成功在1646年成为明绍宗朱聿键义子，赐姓朱，故称国姓爷，1655年由明昭宗朱由榔封为延平王，亦是他继续捍卫南明的原因。1659年，正当福临准备举行一场特殊的考试来庆祝他辉煌的统治和西南战役的胜利时，郑成功率领全副武装的船队驶向长江，从大清手中夺取了几座城市，进而围攻江宁（今江苏南京）。当郑成功围攻江宁的消息传入皇帝耳中时，他就大发雷霆，据说一怒之下用剑劈了宝座。但南京的威胁最终解除，郑成功被清兵击退，被迫求助于东南沿海的福建省。迫于清军的压力，郑成功于1661年4月攻击由荷兰东印度公司占领的台湾岛，并死于同年夏天。他的子孙依然自称为延平王，继续在台湾反抗大清统治，直至1683年顺治帝之子康熙帝派遣降将施琅占领该岛。

个性和人际关系

顺治帝于1651年亲政后，他的母亲昭圣慈寿皇太后安排儿子娶她的侄女额尔德尼布木巴，但福临废黜第一任皇后。次年，昭圣慈寿皇太后另为儿子安排了一场同蒙古科尔沁部的婚姻，这次她将自己的侄孙女阿拉坦琪琪格嫁给福临。

顺治帝是位开明的皇帝，不仅在天文学和科技问题上，而且在处理国事和宗教问题时都向一位来自神圣罗马帝国科隆的日耳曼耶稣会教士汤若望请教。1644年末，多尔衮为制定一部尽可能精确的新历法而任用汤若望，因为他的日蚀预报比那些清廷天文学家的预报更精确。多尔衮死后，汤若望同小皇帝建立了私人友谊，福临用满语称他为「爷爷」。在他们关系最亲密的1656年和1657年，福临常常驾临他的府中，和他交谈到深夜。他被免除叩头礼，在北京获得建造教堂的土地，甚至被允许收养一个儿子（因为福临担心汤若望没有继承人），但自1657年以后，福临开始崇信佛教禅宗，汤若望试图使清帝信仰天主教的努力最终未能成功。

顺治帝亲政后，发愤学习，熟练地掌握了汉语，能够欣赏中国艺术如书法和戏曲。反清知识分子顾炎武和万寿祺的一位密友归庄所作《万古愁曲》是福临最喜欢的文章之一。福临「极富感情，重情钟情，至其极处」，他还能成段的引用背诵援引《西厢记》。

大清与中国的概念

清朝皇帝自顺治帝开始以「中国」自居，并且在对外条约和外交文件中称清为「中国」。1689年，也就是康熙二十八年，中俄尼布楚条约上第一次在国际法的层面上确立了「中国」的概念。

驾崩和继承

其实天花和瘟疫在于明、清两代和全国各地早就已流行。顺治帝的十五叔豫亲王多铎就因天花病死;十二叔阿济格的两位福晋也因天花而死。皇太极时期，据《清初内国史院满文档案》：『东北痘疫，太宗于十日至避痘所』。顺治帝宠爱的妃子皇贵妃董鄂氏因丧子，于1660年9月病猝。福临为此悲痛欲绝，沮丧数月，直至他于1661年2月2日染上天花。1661年2月4日，福临急召礼部侍郎兼翰林院掌院学士王熙（福临的知己）和原内阁学士麻勒吉到自己身边，口述遗诏。同日，7岁的皇三子玄烨因曾经感染到天花，但因为他从天花疾病中幸存下来而被获选立为皇太子。。顺治帝于1661年2月5日崩于紫禁城内的养心殿，年仅二十二岁。两年后，康熙二年（1663年）2月，玄烨的生母慈和皇太后也不幸病逝，年仅22岁。

满族人对天花病毒没有免疫，一旦感染天花，几乎只能等死，所以他们对天花的恐惧甚于其他任何疾病。1622年，他们建立一个机构，用于研究天花病例，隔离患者避免传染。在天花流行之时，皇室成员为保护自己免受感染，定期进入避痘所。福临之所以感染如此可怕的疾病，是因为他年轻，而且居住于附近有传染源的大城市。而事实上，根据记载，在顺治年间，至少有九次天花在北京爆发和全国各地的大小瘟疫，每次爆发，都迫使福临搬到保护区。保护区为北京南部的狩猎场南苑，此前多尔衮已于17世纪40年代在那里建立一所避痘所。尽管有这样的预防措施——例如规定迫使感染天花的汉族居民搬出城市——但顺治最终仍死于天花。

遗诏

2月5日夜间，顺治帝的遗诏颁示天下，特命索尼、苏克萨哈、遏必隆和鳌拜四人为了顺治帝年幼的儿子，此四人都曾于多尔衮死后帮助济尔哈朗肃清朝廷上的多尔衮势力——现代历史学家推论在施政之中偏向任用汉族大臣而且疏远了满洲官员，过分信用宦官，袒护汉官，忽视了满洲亲贵和满洲传统，对皇贵妃的精神投入超过了对自己的母亲。尽管福临在位时经常发布罪己诏，但这份遗诏中所谴责的政策自他亲政以来对清政府至关重要。被称为鳌拜辅政的1661年末至1669年间，该遗诏给了四位辅政大臣「皇权外披」，使他们的亲满政策得到支持。

身后

由于朝廷没有明确宣布顺治帝的死因，很快便流言四起。坊间传言福临其实未死，而是因为对爱妃之死过于悲痛或是四位获任为辅政大臣的满洲贵族发动了政变，他退位隐居佛教寺院，匿名为僧。因为顺治帝于17世纪50年代成了佛教禅宗的狂热追随者，甚至让僧人进入皇宫，这些流言似乎不那么令人难以置信。中国现代历史学家认为福临出家之谜是清初三大疑案之一。但一位僧人记录说1661年2月初皇帝因感染天花而健康严重受损，而在皇帝的葬礼上有一名妃子和一名侍卫为其殉葬，由此来看福临之死应该并非假象。

福临的遗体被安放在紫禁城，受到为时27天的哀悼，1661年3月3日，一支规模宏大的行进列队将福临的遗体运送至景山（紫禁城北部的一个小丘）, 之后大量贵重物品在葬礼上被烧掉。距离葬礼仅两年后的1663年，福临的遗体被运到他最后的安息之地。与当时的满洲习俗相同，福临的遗体在火化后安葬。他的骨灰安葬在北京东北方的昌瑞山，后来通常称为清东陵。他的陵墓孝陵是建在那里的第一座陵墓。

政治遗产

以顺治帝的名义公布的遗诏表示，他对自己放弃满洲传统深表歉意，这一表示赋予了四辅政大臣实行本土主义政策的权力。鳌拜和其他三位辅政大臣援引遗诏，迅速革除了十三衙门。在此后的几年里，他们提升了满洲人及其包衣阿哈掌管的内务府的权力，革除翰林院，规定只有满洲人和蒙古人才能参加议政王大臣会议。辅政大臣还向大清治下的汉人推行强硬政策：他们发动文字狱处决了江南富庶地区的十馀人，并以拖欠税收的罪名对该地区的数千人处以刑罚；他们强迫东南沿海地区人口从该地迁出，以便截断郑成功的子孙统治的台湾东宁王国的粮食供给。

玄烨于1669年设法囚禁鳌拜后，撤销了辅政大臣的许多政策。他恢复了父亲所青睐的机构，包括使汉族官员在政府中获得重要发言权的内阁。他还平定了三藩之乱。内战（1673年–1681年）使清人的忠心一度受到考验，但清军最终占得上风。当胜利成为定局时，1679年玄烨为吸引前明遗臣出仕清廷，而举行了特别考试博学鸿儒科。中试者被邀请参与编写官修《明史》。叛乱于1681年被平定，同年，玄烨开始倡导使用人痘接种为皇家儿童预防天花。郑氏家族在台湾建立的的东宁王国于1683年倒台后，清政权完成了统一天下的事业。在多尔衮、福临和玄烨奠定的体制基础上，清朝成为一个疆域辽阔、文化灿烂的强大帝国，被誉为「世界上最成功的帝国之一」。然而具有讽刺意义的是，正是康熙皇帝的赫赫武功带来的长时间的「满洲和平」，使大清面对19世纪列强武装侵略之时毫无准备。

家族

先祖

福临生在满清皇室爱新觉罗家族。

• 父亲皇太极（1592－1643），大清开国皇帝，福临为皇太极第九子。

• 母亲布木布泰（1613－1688），博尔济吉特氏，科尔沁部贝勒寨桑之女；1636年至1651年的封号为「永福宫庄妃」，她在儿子亲政后尊为皇太后，后世习称她为孝庄文皇后。

• 祖父努尔哈赤（1559－1626），大清实际建立者，后世尊为太祖高皇帝。

• 祖母孟古哲哲（1575－1603），叶赫那拉氏，叶赫部贝勒扬吉努之女；努尔哈赤之中宫大福晋；后世尊为孝慈高皇后。

后妃

尽管宗人府撰写的爱新觉罗族谱中记载的福临后妃仅有十九位，但埋葬记录显示福临的后妃至少有三十二名。有十一名后妃为福临生育，福临在位时的两任皇后皆为福临母亲昭圣慈寿皇太后的堂亲。1644年大清入主中原后，逐渐以后妃的封号和姓氏称呼她们。

皇后

• 第一任皇后额尔德尼布木巴，博尔济吉特氏，科尔沁卓礼克图亲王吴克善女，孝庄文皇后侄女。1651年9月27日，册为皇后，因她个性不好福临不喜欢她。1653年9月27日降后为静妃。

• 第二任皇后孝惠章皇后（1641年11月5日－1718年1月7日），博尔济吉特氏，科尔沁贝勒绰尔济女，孝庄文皇后侄孙女，静妃堂侄女。1654年6月7日聘为福晋，7月19日，册为皇后。1661年玄烨即位，尊为皇太后，居慈仁宫，1662年11月14日上徽号宪章皇太后。

• 孝康章皇后（1638年－1663年3月20日），佟氏，都统佟图赖和妻子觉罗氏之女，「尼堪」——满洲对「汉人」的称呼——佟氏本为女真佟佳氏，其族先世曾数代居于大明辽宁抚顺，同汉民共同生活，因受汉俗影响较深，满洲视其为汉人，未将之编入满洲八旗，而是编入汉军八旗。儿子玄烨1661年即位后尊为皇太后，1662年11月14日上徽号慈和皇太后。后世习以孝康章皇后称呼她。日后，孝康章皇后之弟佟国纲上奏大清政府，欲归入满军旗，1688年佟图赖这一支佟氏复为佟佳氏，自此被视为满洲人。

• 孝献端敬皇后（1639年－1660年9月23日），董氏，内大臣鄂硕女，1656年10月12日拟立为贤妃，11月15日册立为贤妃并拟立为皇贵妃，1657年1月20日册立为皇贵妃。福临深深爱上了她，两人的儿子夭折后不久，董鄂妃去世了，福临伤心不已。此后，他就死于天花。

妃

• 悼妃，博尔济吉特氏，科尔沁连尔罕亲王满珠习礼之女，孝惠章皇后之堂姑，年龄幼小待年宫中，未行册封，1658年4月17日卒。1658年5月5日福临追封其谥号为悼妃。

• 贞妃，董鄂氏，一等阿达哈哈番巴度之女，孝献皇后堂姐妹。1661年2月5日，在福临死后为他殉葬，康熙皇帝登位后，1661年3月12日即追封其[为皇考贞妃。

• 恪妃，石氏，吏部左侍郎滦州人石申和妻子赵淑人之女，福临当初考察古代制度，选汉官的女儿充塞后宫，册为福晋，赐石氏居永寿宫，冠服准许用汉式，1668年1月13日薨。1668年1月15日康熙皇帝初年追封其谥号：皇考恪妃。

• 恭靖妃，博尔济吉特氏，浩齐特多罗鄂尔特尼郡王博罗特之女，刚入宫时册为福晋，是为阿格福晋；1674年1月10日尊徽号为皇考恭靖妃。1689年5月20日薨。。

• 淑惠妃，博尔济吉特氏，科尔沁贝勒绰尔济之女，孝惠章皇后之妹。1654年6月7日聘为福晋，1674年1月10日尊徽号为皇考淑惠妃。1713年12月17日卒，享年七十馀。。

• 端顺妃，博尔济吉特氏，阿霸垓一等台吉布达希之女，刚入宫时封为福晋，1674年1月10日尊徽号为皇考端顺妃。1709年8月1日去世。。

• 宁悫妃，董鄂氏，长史喀济海之女，刚入宫时册为格格，生皇次子福全，1674年1月10日尊徽号为皇考宁悫妃。1694年8月11日薨。

福晋

• 塞母肯额捏福晋，即庶妃穆克图氏，父亲云骑尉伍喀，生皇八子永干。

• 笔什赫额捏福晋，即庶妃巴氏，生皇长子牛钮、皇三女、皇五女。

• 唐福晋，即庶妃唐氏，生皇六子奇授。

• 牛福晋，即庶妃钮氏，生皇七子纯亲王隆禧。

格格

孝东陵内葬有十七位格格，分别为京及格格、捏及呢格格、赛宝格格、迈及呢格格、厄音珠格格、额伦珠格格、梅格格、兰格格、明珠格格、芦耶格格、布三珠格格、阿母巴偏五格格、阿几偏五格格、丹姐格格、秋格格、瑞格格和朱乃格格。她们的生平事迹基本上没有被记录，目前仅知阿母巴偏五格格为大费扬古格格，阿几格偏五格格则作小费扬古格格，两人可能为亲姐妹关系。目前已知太皇太后在康熙元年将已故费扬古格格从娘家带来的女子还给她的娘家，上三旗包衣女子则给予阿哥额捏福晋，即后来的恭靖妃使唤。以下四位庶妃包括在十七位格格之内：

• 庶妃杨氏，生皇次女。

• 庶妃乌苏氏，生皇四女。

• 庶妃纳喇氏，生皇六女。

• 庶妃陈氏，生皇长女、皇五子恭亲王常颖。

子女

福临的妻妾共为其生育了十四个子女，但只有四子（福全、玄烨、常颖、隆禧）一女（和硕恭懿长公主）活到婚龄。和之后的大清皇帝不同，其皇子没有按辈分取名。

子

• 牛钮（1651年12月13日－1652年3月9日）。笔什赫额捏福晋出。

• 福全（1653年9月8日－1703年8月10日）。宁悫妃董鄂氏出。1667年2月6日恩封和硕裕亲王；谥号为宪。

• 玄烨（1654年5月4日－1722年12月20日），即康熙帝。孝康章皇后佟氏出。

• 皇四子（1657年11月12日－1658年2月25日），命名前夭折。孝献皇后董鄂氏出。死后追封和硕荣亲王。

• 常颖（1657年12月8日－1703年7月20日）。庶妃陈氏出。1671年3月1日恩封和硕恭亲王。

• 奇授（1660年1月3日－1665年12月12日）。唐福晋出。

• 隆禧（1660年5月30日－1679年8月20日）。牛福晋出。1674年2月2日恩封和硕纯亲王；谥号为靖。死后独子富尔祜伦袭爵，又一年后身故无子，纯亲王绝嗣，封爵废除。

• 永干（1661年1月23日－1668年1月15日）。塞母肯额捏福晋出。

女

清廷在1644年入关之前，相关资料会记录满洲女性的名字，但在1644年后这些女性人名逐渐「在玉牒和档案材料中消失了。」六名皇女的闺名在一份康熙年间为修纂玉牒而记述福临子女生卒年的档案中被记录了下来，其中皇三女与同母兄牛钮同名。与其她贵族女性类似，日后相关资料会用皇女获得的头衔（公主）称呼她们。尽管福临的六个女儿中有五个幼年夭折，但她们在《爱新觉罗宗谱》上都有记载。

• 皇长女（1652年4月22日－1653年11月22日至12月19日之间）。庶妃陈氏出。

• 皇二女（1654年1月19日－1685年11月26日）。庶妃杨氏出，初封和硕公主，康熙年间晋封和硕恭悫长公主。1667年2月23日至3月23日之间下嫁瓜尔佳氏的纳尔杜（1676年死）。

• 牛钮（1654年1月30日－1658年4月3日至5月1日之间）。笔什赫额捏福晋出。

• 皇四女（1655年1月9日－1662年1月20日至2月17日之间）。庶妃乌苏氏出。

• 皇五女（1655年2月6日－1661年1月1日至29日之间）。笔什赫额捏福晋出。

• 皇六女（1657年11月11日－1662年3月1日至3月29日之间）。庶妃纳喇氏出。

养女

福临的三名养女均为满清皇室成员的次女，和顺、柔嘉、端敏分别为三人的封号，而非名字。

• 和硕和顺公主（1648年10月8日－1692年1月25日），皇太极第五子、福临异母兄硕塞次女。1660年7月7日至8月5日之间下嫁尚可喜之子尚之隆。

• 和硕柔嘉公主（1652年6月11日－1673年8月23日），努尔哈赤第七子阿巴泰第四子岳乐次女，孝惠章皇后的外甥女。1663年11月30日至12月28日之间下嫁耿仲明孙耿聚忠。

• 固伦端敏公主（1653年8月5日－1729年6月14日），济尔哈朗次子济度次女。1670年10月14日至11月12日之间下嫁博尔济吉特氏班第。