Ten Great Campaigns

The Ten Great Campaigns (zh-cp |c=十全武功 |p=shí quán wǔ gōng) were a series of warsSoldiers of the Dragon: Chinese Armies 1500 BC-AD 1840, Part IV - Late Imperial Chinese Armies 1520-1840, page 226, By C. J. Peers, Osprey Publishing (2006), ISBN 1846030986] fought during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor, much celebrated in the official Qing Dynasty annals. They included three to enlarge the area of Qing control in Central Asia: two against the Dzungars (1755-1757) and the pacification of Xinjiang (1758-1759). The other seven campaigns were more in the nature of police actions on frontiers already established - two wars to suppress the Jinchuan rebels in Sichuan, another to suppress rebels in Taiwan (1787-1788), and four expeditions abroad to chastise the Burmese (1766-1788), the Vietnamese (1788-1789), and the warlike Gurkhas in Nepal on the border between Tibet and India (1790-1792), the last counting as two.

The Dzungars and pacification of Xinjiang (1755 - 1757)

Of the ten campaigns, the final destruction of the DzungarsEncyclopædia Britannica online entry on Kazakhstan, page 19 of 22 [http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-73648/Kazakhstan#598978.hook] ] was the most significant. It secured the northern and western boundaries of Xinjiang and eliminated rivalry for control over the Dalai Lama in Tibet, and thereby the elimination of rival influence in Mongolia. It also led to the pacification of the Islamicised, Turkic-speaking southern half of Xinjiang immediately thereafter. To commemorate this victory, Qianlong had the Puning Temple of Chengde constructed, home to the world's tallest wooden sculpture of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara and hence its alternate name, the 'Big Buddha Temple'.

uppression of the Jinchuan hill peoples (1747-1749, 1776)

The suppression of the Jinchuan hill people was the costliest and most difficult, and also the most destructive. The Jinchuan (literally "Golden Stream") was northwest of Chengdu in western Sichuan. The tribal peoples there were related to the Tibetans of the Amdo. The first campaign in 1747-1749 was a simple affair; with little use of force the Manchu general induced the native chieftains to accept a peace plan, and departed.

Interethnic conflict brought the Manchus back after twenty years. The result was Qing expeditionary force being forced to fight a protracted war of attrition costing the Qing treasury several times the amounts expended on the earlier conquests of the Dzungars and Xinjiang. The resisting tribes retreated to their stone towers and forts in steep mountains and could only be dislodged by European cannon. The Manchu generals were ruthless in annihilating the rebellious tribes, then reorganised the region in a military prefecture and repopulated it with more cooperative inhabitants.

The Burmese Campaigns (1767-1771)

The rise of Konbaung dynasty in Burma was the main reason for Qing's military expeditions to reassert its overlordship. Despite four campaigns, the Qing were unable to make any progresses. Ming Rui (明瑞), son-in-law of Qianlong, and leader of one of the expeditions, died in campaign. Nonetheless, King Hsinbyushin was faced with dealing not just against the Qing, but also a rebellion in recently occupied Siam. The Siamese found a new leader in Taksin who defeated the Konbaung occupation force. Hsinbyushin was reportedly angered when his commanders negotiated a settlement with the Qing, a fact which Qianlong chose to interprete as his victory.

The Gurkha Campaigns (1790-1792)

The Gurkha wars display the Qing court's continuing sensitivity to conditions in Tibet. The late 1760s saw the creation of a strong state in Nepal and the involvement in the region of a new foreign power, Britain, through their British East India Company. The rash Gurkha rulers of Nepal decided to invade southern Tibet in 1788.

The two Manchu resident agents in Lhasa (Ambans) made no attempt at defense or resistance. Instead they took the child Panchen Lama to safety when the Nepalese troops came through and plundered the rich monastery at Shigatse on their way to Lhasa. Upon hearing of the first Nepalese incursions, the Qianlong Emperor commanded troops from Sichuan to proceed to Lhasa and restore order. By the time they reached southern Tibet, the Gurkhas had already withdrawn. This counted as the first of two wars with the Gurkhas.

In 1791 the Gurkhas returned in force. Qianlong urgently dispatched an army of 10,000. It was made up of around 6,000 Manchu and Mongol forces supplemented by tribal soldiers under the able general Fu Kang'an, with Hailancha as his deputy. They entered Tibet from Xining (Qinghai) in the north, shortening the march but making it in the dead of winter 1791-1792, crossing high mountain passes in deep snow and cold. They reached central Tibet in the summer of 1792 and within two or three months could report that they had won a decisive series of encounters that pushed the Gurkha armies across the crest of the Himalaya and back into the valley of Kathmandu. Fukang'an fought on into 1793, when he forced the battered Gurkhas to accept surrender on Manchu terms.

The victory of 1793, however, did not prevent repeated Nepalese incursions thereafter.

The Campaign in Vietnam (1786-1789)

For most of her history, the Vietnamese rulers sometimes recognized the Chinese Emperor as their feudal lord, while ruling independently in their own land. This had been the case throughout the reign of the Later Lê Dynasty. This changed however when the brothers of Tây Sơn, leading a national uprising, defeated the feuding Trịnh and Nguyễn lords and overthrew the last Lê ruler, Emperor Lê Mẫn Đế.

Emperor Lê Mẫn Đế fled to China and appealed to Emperor Qianlong ( _vi. Càn Long) for help. In 1788 a large Qing army was sent south to restore Lê Mẫn Đế to the throne. They succeeded in taking Thăng Long (Hà Nội) and putting Emperor Mẫn Đế back on the throne, but many of his supporters were angered by their subservient position. Mẫn Đế was treated as a vassal king by Qianlong and all edicts had to be authorized by the Qing before becoming official. In any event, the situation did not last long as the Tây Sơn leader, Nguyễn Huệ, launched a surprise attack against the Qing forces while they were celebrating the lunar New Year festival of the year 1789. The Chinese were unprepared but fought for five days before being defeated at Battle of Đống Đa. Mẫn Đế fled back to China as Nguyễn Huệ was proclaimed Emperor Quang Trung. A History of Vietnam: From Hong Bang to Tu Duc, Chapter 6 The Nguyen Hue Epic, pages 153-159, by Oscar Chapuis, Greenwood Publishing Group (1995), ISBN 0313296227]

The Campaigns in Perspective

In his later years, Qianlong referred to himself with the grandiose style name of "Old Man of the Ten Completed [Great Campaigns] " (十全老人). He also wrote an essay enumerating the victories in 1792 entitled "Record of Ten Completions" (十全记) [Monarchy in the Emperor's Eyes: Image and Reality in the Ch`ien-lung Reign. by Harold L. Kahn, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Feb., 1972), pp. 393-394] .

The campaigns were major financial drain on Qing, costing more than 151 million taels of silver. [Zhuang Jifa, "Qing Gaozong Shiquan Wugong Yanjiu" (Taipei, 1982), p.494. (庄吉发, 《清高宗十全武功研究》)] .

* The tribes at Jinchuan numbered less than 30,000 households and took five years to pacify.
* Nearly 1.5 million piculs (1 picul = 100 catty) were transported for the Taiwan campaigns.
* Instead of restoring Emperor Lê Mẫn Đế to the throne as the Vietnam campaign was intended, Qianlong ended up settling with the new Nguyen dynasty, and even arranging for imperial marriage between Qing and Nguyen.

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