Conquest dynasties long before the Qing had been confronted with
such conflicting environmental interests, as in the Khitan Liao throne’s
decree in 996 that military personnel could not hunt when it would affect
agriculture.^25 In 1642 , when elite hunters’horses damagedfields, Hong
Taiji could already reminisce that in his father’s time this offense merited
a whipping, and even execution if sufficiently serious. Nine years previ-
ously during afishing trip in Fushun the emperor had the ears of two
offenders pierced when he saw their horses freely grazing in peasantfields.
In 1635 , again harkening back to a ban from his father’s reign, Hong
Taiji scolded clansmen for hawking nearfields and livestock. He declared
that when he“deployed troops for the hunt, all bivouac in the outskirts,
even in seasons of bitter cold, and do not enter villages lest they harm
people and property.”^26
Hong Taiji’s son, the Shunzhi emperor, faced a similar problem under
different conditions once the Manchus rode south to occupy China
proper. A March 1651 decree reflected growing pressures on traditional
Manchu foraging practices amid Hanfields:
[Han] commoners...all rely on the land for sustenance. We have heard that
commoners’fields are being everywhere enclosed to provide bivouacs for hunters
passing through. Now while hunting is a military exercise to which the people of
old held, We fear it will inevitably cause agricultural grievances to the detriment of
commoners’affairs. How can commoners carry on with their places now wrested
from the plough and hoe, and their route to food and clothing cut off. This is a
great burden Our heart cannot bear. The Board of Revenue will immediately
order local officials to return the whole of the lands previously enclosed to their
original masters and charge them to cultivate it as opportunity permits.^27