Early Life and Military Career
Oboi was born to a distinguished military family of the Manchu Guwalgiya clan. Under the Manchu Banner organization created by Nurhachi, Oboi's branch of the family was registered under the Bordered Yellow division which came under the command of Nurhachi's son Hong Taiji. Oboi's father Uici (衛齊) (d. 1634) was a senior military officer who was once garrison commander of the Manchu capital city Mukden while his paternal uncle Fiongdon (费英東) was one of Nurhachi's most trusted generals. Oboi's childhood and early years are relatively obscure. Being his father's third son, he was not destined to inherit the family's hereditary seat in the Banner hierarchy. Oboi was first mentioned in official Qing history in the Chronicles of Hong Taiji (清太宗实录) in 1632, documenting his triumphant return from a minor raid into Ming territories in which he was allowed to keep his spoils as reward.
Oboi officially started his military career in 1634 during the reign of Hong Taiji as a junior officer in the Banner's cavalry guard unit in which capacity he distinguished himself many times in battle against Ming forces and was renowned for his personal bravery. For this, he was granted an hereditary commission as captain of a company (niru i janggin). In 1637 during the Manchus' second campaign against Korea, Oboi volunteered and succeeded in capturing a small but strategically important Pi Island (皮岛) south of the Yalu River after a difficult amphibious landing followed by desperate hand-to-hand battle ending in the complete annihilation of the Ming garrison. For this achievement he was promoted to the rank of a hereditary colonel third-class and bestowed the rare honorific title of "Baturu" (巴图鲁), which means "(brave) warrior" in Manchu. In 1641 Oboi again distinguished himself in battle scoring five victories in as many encounters against Ming forces in the campaign for Songshan (松山). He was promoted to full Colonel and given command of the Bayarai guards of the Bordered Yellow Banner. Oboi's raise in the Banner hierarchy continued apace with the Manchus' war with the Ming Dynasty, in 1645 he was promoted to the rank of General. It was recorded in official Qing history that in 1646 during the campaign to pacify Sichuan, Oboi was personally responsible for slaying the rebel chief Zhang Xianzhong in battle.
Read more about this topic: Oboi
Famous quotes containing the words military career, early, life, military and/or career:
“The domestic career is no more natural to all women than the military career is natural to all men.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“In the early forties and fifties almost everybody “had about enough to live on,” and young ladies dressed well on a hundred dollars a year. The daughters of the richest man in Boston were dressed with scrupulous plainness, and the wife and mother owned one brocade, which did service for several years. Display was considered vulgar. Now, alas! only Queen Victoria dares to go shabby.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)
“Your mother named you. You and she just saw
Each other in passing in the room upstairs,
One coming this way into life, and one
Going the other out of life you know?”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Weapons are an important factor in war, but not the decisive factor; it is people, not things, that are decisive. The contest of strength is not only a contest of military and economic power, but also a contest of human power and morale. Military and economic power is necessarily wielded by people.”
—Mao Zedong (1893–1976)
“The problem, thus, is not whether or not women are to combine marriage and motherhood with work or career but how they are to do so—concomitantly in a two-role continuous pattern or sequentially in a pattern involving job or career discontinuities.”
—Jessie Bernard (20th century)