Batu

Overview

Batu was a member of the Zhangjia clan of the Bordered Yellow Banner. Volume 40 of the official Qing dynasty clan genealogy, *The Comprehensive Genealogy of the Manchu Clans of the Eight Banners*, records that he lived in Baldu City and submitted to the Qing dynasty at its beginning. Batu is the name in this entry; the character "Lu" cannot be added arbitrarily simply because it resembles the name of the military commander Batu Luyong. Baldu City was his ancestral home, not the Shandong county town conquered by later generations.

His grandson, Qiulan, served in the campaign as a non-official, attacking the seventh city wall in Yanzhou and the second in Ningyang, earning the rank of Yunqiwei (hereditary merit rank). He was further promoted through imperial decree and military merit. He was wounded by artillery fire during the attack on Hunyuan and later retired due to old age. His fourth son, Hetuo, inherited the title and participated in the Yunnan campaign, earning the rank of First-class Qingche duwei. "Non-official" refers to a state of official service; Yunqiwei, Qiduwei, and Qingche duwei were all hereditary titles.

Later, the title was passed down through Saibihan, Sangge, Chengming, and others to Qingzhu. During the succession, the imperial decree and the portion earned through military merit after the ancestral decree were deducted, ultimately retaining the rank of Qiduwei. Since the objects of deduction vary each time, it cannot be uniformly stated that all ranks of nobility were inherited in their original form. Later generations held additional substantive positions such as Champion Envoy, Physician, and Clerk, which cannot be attributed to Batu himself. The ancestral home, the dates of military achievements over two generations, and the complete succession details require verification through original inscriptions and archives.