Qīndìng jiǎopǔ Línqīng nìfěi jìlüè 欽定剿捕臨清逆匪紀略
Imperially Authorised Account of the Suppression and Capture of the Línqīng Rebels by 舒赫德 (奉敕撰), 于敏中 (奉敕撰)
About the work
The Qīndìng jiǎopǔ Línqīng nìfěi jìlüè in 16 juǎn is the imperial campaign history of the suppression of the Wáng Lún 王倫 (d. 1774) uprising in northwestern Shāndōng — the founding outbreak of the Bāguà jiào 八卦教 / Eight Trigrams sectarian lineage descended from the Míng-era White Lotus tradition. In the 9th month of Qiánlóng 39 (1774) Wáng Lún, a martial-arts master and folk healer of Shòuzhāng 壽張, raised some thousands of followers, took Yánggǔ 陽穀, and pressed against the major Grand Canal entrepôt of Línqīng 臨清 (then in Zhílì, today in Shāndōng). Local Zhílì and Shāndōng forces converged but proved sluggish, whereupon the Grand Secretary Shū Hèdé 舒赫德 was sent at imperial command with eight-banner crack troops; Wáng Lún, cornered, set fire to himself and was killed in the conflagration, the surviving sect leaders being sent under fetters to the capital and quartered. Compilation of this jìlüè was ordered immediately and the work was presented to the throne in 1777 by the chief compilers Shū Hèdé, Āguì 阿桂, and Yú Mǐnzhōng 于敏中, with a substantial zǒngcái / fùzǒngcái / tídiàoguān / zhuǎnxiūguān commission listed in the front matter (Fùlǒngān 福隆安, Fēng Shēngé 豐昇額, Héshēn 和珅, Liáng Guózhì 梁國治, Yuán Shǒudòng 袁守侗, Ēsīhā 阿思哈, Suǒlín 索琳, Péng Yuánruì 彭元瑞, and others). Although the Wáng Lún affair was small relative to the eight-trigrams revolt of 1813 or to the great White Lotus rebellion of 1796–1805, it was strategically near the heart of the empire — on the Grand Canal — and the speed of compilation testifies to Qiánlóng’s view of its symbolic importance.
Tiyao
The Qīndìng Línqīng jìlüè (the formal name in the Sìkù) in 16 juǎn was, in Qiánlóng 42 (1777), reverently composed by the Grand Secretary Yú Mǐnzhōng and others on imperial command, and presented. — In the 9th month of Qiánlóng 39 (1774), the Shòuzhāng rebel-bandit Wáng Lún rose; he stormed Yánggǔ and ran upon Línqīng. Zhílì and Shāndōng joined troops to press him, and the Grand Secretary Shū Hèdé came at imperial command with eight-banner crack troops as well. Wáng Lún, in extremity, set himself afire and died; his confederates were arrested and sent to the capital and chopped in the markets. The throne therefore commanded that the course of the suppression be set down for this volume. — Reverently: from the lièshèng down, our great moral order has been thick and bright; under heaven and in the entire reach of the empire, every reasoning being knows where to turn. Our Sage-on-the-Throne is in his thoughts the unwell, his virtue covers and curtains; he seeks ease, seeks relief, his nights and days in toil; ever he fears that one common man should not be reached; his deep mercy is endless, the remitting of taxes and the tolerance of grain-tribute now and then running into thousands and millions; the times of flood and drought drawing forth relief and clemency; over the decades the splendours have run beyond record; the four seas thoroughly steeped in his benefit, beneath the bowl-of-heaven none unprovided. Even the most savage and obstinate kind has its own seed of decency; even those of jackal-eyes and bird-ears have their inheritance. Yet Wáng Lún and his fellows raised treason, dared turn the constant order, called down the Zhèng Zé attack, drew on themselves the Bèizhōu reckoning. Heaven-and-earth’s greatness leaves nothing without seed — wolfish greed grows out of nature, viper-poison breeds in its own kindred. They first served the demonic and called the ate, with which to gather goods; then they assembled the crowd and burned incense, and so formed a band; knowing themselves of the yāoyán zuǒdào 妖言左道 which the Sage’s age would not contain, they took to fortune and broke loose, going on the desperate path. — Yet the strategy from the Nine-Heavened Court, the directing of the Seven Heroic, and the chopper-mantis spider-bee were destroyed without delay. There has been no campaign with such swift triumph. Is this not what the people’s hearts together hate, and what the Way of Heaven of necessity strikes? The volume sets out the zhīshèng (deciding-of-victory) opportunities and the mainsprings of the disturbance, that the world and posterity may take warning against putting themselves outside the shēngchéng — beyond what the Sage’s universal generation engenders. As to the comforting of the displaced and the relief of the dispersed grain-stores after the conflagration, the comprehensive forethought of the after-affairs, no plan is neglected, no kindness omitted: the imperial virtue is again seen to be of the heaven, and the crime of Wáng Lún and his fellows in conspiring against generation deeper than that of the owl and the dragon. — Reverently collated, Qiánlóng 46 (1781), 10th month. Chief compilers: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. Senior collator: Lù Fèichí.
Abstract
Wilkinson (§66.6.6.2) lists this jìlüè as the standard contemporary documentary source on the Wáng Lún affair and Susan Naquin’s Shantung Rebellion (Yale, 1981) as the standard modern study; Naquin’s book is built directly on the jìlüè together with the surviving Grand Council and Province archive. Wáng Lún’s lineage of the Bāguà jiào / White Lotus tradition is the chief connecting thread: the same lineage produced the Lín Qīng 林清 / Lǐ Wénchéng 李文成 attempt on the Beijing palace in 1813. Although the present work is on a small uprising — a single sect leader, a few thousand followers, six weeks of operations — it is the principal documentary point of entry into the late-Qiánlóng court’s understanding of folk-religious mass movements, and Naquin’s analysis of how the jìlüè’s editorial line distorts the underlying record (over-stating Manchu valour, downplaying Wáng Lún’s local support, suppressing the names of low-level officials whose negligence had allowed the rising to begin) has been taken as paradigmatic for the fānglüè genre as a whole.
The work is also the immediate testing-ground of the staffing pattern that would be used for the much larger late-Qiánlóng campaign histories: Shū Hèdé, Āguì, and Yú Mǐnzhōng would all reappear as principals on the Lánzhōu jìlüè (KR2c0015), the Shífēngbǎo jìlüè (KR2c0016), and the Píngdìng Táiwān jìlüè (KR2c0017) of the next decade.
Translations and research
- Naquin, Susan. 1981. Shantung Rebellion: The Wang Lun Uprising of 1774. New Haven: Yale University Press. The standard Western-language study, built on this jìlüè together with the Grand Council and provincial archives. Critically illuminates the fānglüè’s editorial selectivities.
- Naquin, Susan. 1976. Millenarian Rebellion in China: The Eight Trigrams Uprising of 1813. New Haven: Yale University Press. (Treats the Wáng Lún affair as the founding event of the lineage.)
- ter Haar, Barend J. 1992. The White Lotus Teachings in Chinese Religious History. Leiden: Brill.
- Wilkinson, Chinese History, §66.6.6.2.
Other points of interest
The complete commission roster preserved in the work’s front matter — zǒngcái, fùzǒngcái, tídiàoguān (Manchu and Hàn divided), shōuzhǎngguān, zhuǎnxiūguān, etc. — is one of the more detailed surviving views of how the Qing campaign-history office actually staffed a jìlüè compilation, and is regularly cited in studies of late-Qiánlóng bureaucratic personnel.
Links
- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11107178