The History of China - #195 - Yuan 13: The Lords of Light

Episode Date: July 11, 2020

As the cataclysmic decade of the 1340s rolls in to the 1350s a planned rerouting of the Yellow River will trigger a massive uprising by what the Yuan authorities call the Red Turban Rebels. But who are they really? What do they believe? Why are they fighting? And how do they tie in with the eventual overthrow of the Mongols from their hegemony over China? Major Historical Figures: Maitreya Buddha, Successor to Gautama Buddha [???] Mani the Last, Prophet of Manichaeism [ca. 216-277 CE] Red Turbans: Peng Yingyu, Buddhist Monk, "Father" of the Red Turbans [d. ca. 1348-1358] Northern: Han Shantong, Lord of Light [d. 1351] Han Lin'er, the Young Lord of Light [1340-1367] General Liu Futong (AKA "Liu Fangshi") [1321-1363] Guo Zixing, Leader of Red Turban Army, Lord of Haozhou [d. 1355] Zhu Yuanzhang, Buddhist mendicant monk, Guard Commander of the Red Turbans [1328-1398] Southern: Xu Shouhui, cloth-merchant, Emperor of Tianwan Kingdom, Maitreya Incarnate [1320-1360] Qing Dynasty: Huang Yupian, Qing Dynasty Magistrate and White Lotus Hunter [mid-19th century] Major Sources Cited: Brook, Timothy. The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China. Buckley Ebrey, Patricia and Anne Walthall. Pre-Modern East Asia: A Cultural, Social, and Political History, Volume I. Chao, Wei-pang. “Secret Religious Societies in North China in the Ming Dynasty” in Folklore Studies, Vol. 7. Farmer, Edward L. Zhu Yuanzhang and Early Ming Legislation: The Reordering of Chinese Society following the Era of Mongol Rule. Flower, Theresa. “Millenarian Themes of the White Lotus Society.” Hung, Hing Ming. From the Mongols to the Ming Dynasty: How a Begging Monk Became Emperor of China, Zhu Yuan Zhang. Lin, Wushu. “A Study On Equivalent Names of Manichaeism in Chinese” in Popular Religion and Shamanism. Lin, Wushu. Manichaeism and its Dissemination in the East. Ma, Xisha. “The Syncretism of Maitreyan Belief and Manichaeism in Chinese History” in Popular Religion and Shamanism. Mote, Frederick W. Imperial China: 900-1800. Mote, Frederick W. “The Rise of the Ming Dynasty, 1330-1367” in The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 7: The Ming Dynasty. Overmeier, Daniel L. “Folk-Buddhist Religion: Creation and Eschatology in Medieval China” in History of Religions, Vol. 12, No. 1. Shek, Richard. “Religious Dissenters in Ming-Qing China” in Religion and the Early Modern State: Views from China, Russia, and the West. Tan, Chung. Across the Himalayan Gap: An Indian Quest for Understanding China. Ter Haar, B.J. The White Lotus Teachings in Chinese Religious History. Wang, Kristen. “Scandalous Tales Behind Nanjing’s 70 Ancient Names” in The Nanjinger, 07/04/2019. Waterson, James. Defending Heaven: China’s Mongol Wars, 1209-1370. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. Hi everyone, this is Scott. If you want to learn about the world's oldest civilizations, find out how they were rediscovered, follow the story of Mark Antony and Cleopatra's descendants over ten generations, or take a deep dive into the Iron Age or the Hellenistic era, then check out the Ancient World Podcast. Available on all podcasting platforms or go to ancientworldpodcast.com. That's the Ancient World Podcast. Hello and welcome to the History of China.

Episode 195, The Lords of Light. Last time, we had an overview of the not-so-wonderful decade that was the 1340s, and its impacts on the already wobbly stability of Togon Temur's Yuan Dynasty. We finished off with a brief account of the young life of one Zhu Yuanzhang, along with a promise that we'd get more into the origins and beliefs of the Red Turban Rebellion that would rock the middle regions of the empire this time. And so that is indeed where we'll begin today, by me doing my level best to explain the chaotic garden salad of syncretic belief systems that were taken up by the hodgepodge of disaffected Chinese in the mid-14th century as a call to action against

the status quo. Yeah, wish me luck. Alright, so first let's get a functional understanding of some of the more baseline terminology out of the way. The Red Turbans and their theological quasi-basis within the Greater White Lotus Society sect umbrella thing are known most often as a millenarian or millennialist movement. That's a word that gets tossed around a fair bit, but it is worth taking the time to define. It's not quite as simple as believing in the apocalypse or being a death cult. I've found that Norman Cone's attempt at laying out a standard set of ground rules for so-called millenarian sects outside of the Christian world

serves as a pretty good baseline. He says that there are five chief beliefs that qualify a movement for being as such. They're listed as being a movement inspired by a dream of salvation, which would be, one, collective, in the sense that it is to be enjoyed by the faithful of the group, two, terrestrial, in the sense that it is to be realized on this earth of the group. 2. Terrestrial, in the sense that it is to be realized on this earth and not in some otherworldly heaven. 3. Eminent, in the sense that it is to come both soon and suddenly. 4. In the sense that it is to utterly transform life

on earth so that the new dispensation will be no mere improvement on the present but perfection itself. And 5. five, accomplished by agencies which are consciously regarded as supernatural. So by that standard, the White Lotus Society fits the bill to a tee. All members of the society are deemed as the chosen children of the All-Mother, Lao Mu. This would occur here on Earth, and it was going to happen soon. The agent of this total transformation, according to the Maitreya Pure Land sect of Buddhism, was the arrival and dominion of Maitreya, the bodhisattva and successor of the current Buddha, Gautama Buddha. In Buddhist prophecy, the infinite cycles of life and death would lay out in a way markedly familiar to those who understood Chinese political shifts as being cyclical. A Buddha would arrive and then teach humanity the perfect dharma, after which,

for a time, the world would live in perfect harmony, a golden age. But as time went on and humanity became more temporally distant from this golden age, it would slowly descend further from the Buddha's teaching, gradually becoming more corrupt, until such a time as the Dharma had been all but forgotten by everyone. That time of ignorance and darkness would herald the arrival of Maitreya, to teach again the pure Dharma and renew the cycle once more into a renewed golden age. From the Maitreya Vyaka Karana, gods, men, and other beings would, quote, lose their doubts, and the torrents of

their cravings will be cut off. Free from all misery, they will manage to cross the ocean of becoming, and as a result of Maitreya's teachings, they will lead a holy life. No longer will they regard anything as their own. They will have no possession, no silver or gold, no home, no relatives, but they will lead the holy life of oneness under Maitreya's guidance. They will have torn the net Yet even this would not be quite the end of the path, for even though the people would be all tranquil, egalitarian, and unified, Maitreya would look and see that they all still held in their hearts the five desires. From Ma Xixia, quote, When Maitreya sees such desires generating such misery, in which people suffer the great pains of life and death, and thus cannot escape the three evil paths, he resolves to attain Buddhahood

and deliver all sentient beings out of the bitter sea of mortality. End quote. That, admittedly brief description, leads us to the other major sect that's typically understood to have been incorporated into the White Lotus belief system, which is Manicheism. The teachings of Mani, a 3rd century mystic prophet born in Persian Babylonia, had spread as far as India in relatively short order. Mani's teachings were, like several other notable world religions of that period, significantly impacted by the earlier religion of the region, Zoroastrianism. Although, Mani believed that the teachings of Zoroaster were only partial truths, and that a far broader, more universal system transcending all other teachings had been according to him, the reincarnation of Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, and Zoroaster,

as well as the final messenger sent from his father, sent to deliver the ultimate stance on faith and salvation. From Mote, quote, This mutually opposed binary would ultimately culminate in a fearsome final apocalyptic struggle in which light would at last triumph over darkness once and for all. This cosmic scale disaster was, in fact, a necessary step on the path towards that new cosmic order. And yes, in case that's ringing any bells from those of you who've read from, say, the Book of Revelation, it's no accident that early Christianity likewise drew significant elements of its theosophy from the Zoroastrian cosmology.

And boy howdy did Mani bring some rules with him. From Lin Wushu, quote, Four prohibitions. Do not eat meat. Do not drink alcohol. Do not marry. Do not accumulate personal wealth. Ten sins for confession. To act

hypocritically. To make false promise. To testify on behalf of a bad person. To persecute a virtuous person. To stir up trouble amidst people. To practice sorcery. To kill living creatures. To cheat. To disbelieve in God and do things to anger the sun and the moon. Ten admonitions. Do not worship idols. Do not cheat. Do not be greedy. Do not kill. Do not have sexual relations.

Do not steal. Do not practice sorcery. Do not doubt belief in God. Do not be lazy. Do pray every day at the fourth or seventh two-hour period. So, no meat, no booze, no sex, no money, and no magic. Sounds like a whole barrel of fun. Only strict adherence to these disciplines could save a believer's soul,

which would depart upon death from the Moon Palace and ascend to the Sun Palace before finally returning to a new paradise. Conversely, those who did not repent were to be buried with the dark matter in hell following the end of the world. By the Tang period, Manichaeism had gained a significant foothold in China, appealing to the put-upon common classes by espousing that all must choose between service to the king of darkness and death, the Heian Wanguo, or else side with the kingdom of light and life, the Guangming Wanguo. Similar to any sects of monastic Buddhism, the followers of Mani were to live ascetic lives, eschewing those things of the physical world of darkness, such as flesh and the pleasures of the

flesh, in lieu of partaking, ideally, only in the light of the cosmic bright kingdom. Unsurprisingly, this tended to rub the powers that be in China rather the wrong way, and by the Song dynasty, followers of Manicheism were derisively referred to by imperial officials as 恰才什么, literally, those who eat vegetables and worship demons. Although it should be noted that this was more of a catch-all term for any sinister folk religion that the authorities wished to demonize, rather than a name specific to Manicheism. Among its followers, it was known as the Teaching of Light, or Mingjiao, which would wind up being no accident.

Professor Tan Chong writes of accounts of the religion in the mid-13th century, quote, Such a phenomenon developed after the Song Dynasty, particularly along the coastal regions where secret societies and rebellions sprang up by leaps and bounds. In Fouzu Tongji, which is an important historiography of Buddhism in China, compiled by Buddhist scholars during 1258 to 1269, there is an account

which categorically identifies these vegetarian followers of the devil as belonging to the association of Mingjiao. The account says that the leader wore headgear of violet color, while the followers wore white costumes. They worshipped the white Buddha. Many of these followers demonstrated their rebellious spirit and were quelled by the Song government. After that, all subsequent governments were suppressive against Manichean activities, albeit the Manichean followers' tenacity in their faith and their organized activity. End quote. Even by the 8th century, elements of Maitreyan Buddhism and

Manicheism had started blending together, as belief systems will often do given enough time and proximity. Enough so that the Tang government issued two separate proclamations banning them. The first, issued in 715, stated, quote, Strictly forbid Buddhist followers wearing white clothes and keeping long hair. Strictly forbid those who pretend to be descendants of Maitreya from making fanatical and fallacious statements and recruiting large numbers of followers. These persons declare they interpret the Buddhist doctrine and practice. They in fact falsely proclaim the auspicious and the inauspicious and stealthily elaborate unauthentic scriptures called as the true sayings of Buddha.

End quote. The second proclamation was issued just 17 years later in 732, stating, quote, The teaching of Mani the Last is above all else an evil doctrine, and falsely declares itself to be Buddhism. This false declaration bewilders and cheats the public, and it shall be banned absolutely. End quote. The syncretic blending of the two faiths continued unabated, in spite of repeated official condemnations and occasional purges, through the end of the Tang, into the Five Dynasties, through the Song, and into the Yuan, and by the 14th century, having developed into a general set of philosophies of religious beliefs that were generally called the White Lotus Society. This is, it should be said again,

a very generic term for a variety of heterodoxical societies and schools that, while agreeing to many central principles, much like the fractious Protestant churches in the West in the centuries to follow, were often bitterly at odds about the specifics of their doctrinal faiths. Still, one of the unifying themes of these different sects was participation in rituals known as incense gatherings. This, from Ma, quote, referred to as burning incense and burning lamps. This kind of meaning conformed to the conventional Manichean aspiration for the light. In addition, it implied holding incense as the token. In the 39th volume of the Annals of the Patriarchs of Buddhism, it reads, The practice of this sect is to sleep through the day and come out at night,

holding incense as the token and secretly mingling with other persons and calling themselves virtuous friends. Accordingly, we know that the incense of the incense gathering contains another meaning. End quote. Another rather shocking precept of these already highly unorthodox and suspicious nocturnal gatherings was that both men and women were allowed, indeed encouraged, to mingle freely during them, a scandalous breach of normal social protocol, though Mote helpfully notes that they were probably not orgiastic, which does stand to reason since, after all, sex was still a pretty big no-no. By the time of Ye Lü Chü Cai in the Yuan period, he was calling these incense gatherings an evil variant of Buddhism, a testament to how

intermingled the practices had actually become. One of the few chroniclers of the White Lotus society that survived to us today is that of Huang Yupian, a magistrate of the Qing government in the mid-19th century and avid hunter of White Lotus rebel factions. In an attempt to catalog, and thus better root out, the by nature secretive members, what he likely would have approved of calling cultists, Huang wrote a three-volume compendium called the Po Xie Xiang Bang, or Detailed Refutation of Heterodoxy, that detailed the practices of the various sects, based on copies of their secret documents, called Bao Zuan, literally Precious Scrolls. It's from this compendium, rather than the name White Lotus

itself, that they could be seen as generally a united front, rather than multitudinous independent rebel cells. Through the ages, the name White Lotus was seldom used by its own members, in fact prompting one Ming-era official from the Ministry of Rights in the late 16th century to complain, quote, The sects avoid using the name White Lotus, yet in practice they espouse White Lotus teaching. For every sect there is a different patriarch, and ignorant men and women delude themselves and spread the sect's doctrines. Indeed, in true Melanarian fashion, many of the devotees were not only willing,

but positively eager to embrace death, as they had been taught that it was actually to their spiritual benefit to do so. Juan Upien himself writes, The sectarians blatantly claim that all men who become believers are incarnated Buddhas, and that all women who become believers are incarnated Buddha mothers. Ignorant men and women who have swallowed the charm water of the sects become convinced that they are indeed Buddha incarnates. They are therefore eager to return to heaven.

They then earnestly practice their religion, In fact, at least some of the sects came to preach that the worse and more painful the punishment inflicted on the condemned member, the higher place they'd receive upon returning to heaven. Quote, Non-capital punishment will enable one to avoid hell, but not enough to reach heaven. There will be, however, no red capes to wear in celebration. Death by decapitation will enable one to ascend to heaven wearing a red cape. Death by slow sizing will enable one to enter heaven wearing a red gown. End quote.

Ultimately, this led many, including Huang himself, to despair of ever ridding themselves of the mortal and spiritual danger of the White Lotus Society posed to his government. He wrote, quote, Ignorant men and women are not fearful of violating the law or committing seditious acts. As they are eager to return to heaven, they are happy to face capital punishment. Thus, penal sanction is useless in deterring them." Now, again, Huang is writing from a solid 500 years later than the White Lotus as it existed during the end stages of the Yuan Dynasty, but there are almost certainly more than a few strong

philosophical and theological connections between these two iterations. Given that the Red Turbans would be giving the Yuan a massive headache for more than a decade, and the Mongols were at least as willing to employ capital punishment as the Qing Manchus, we have to imagine that there were very similar promises of paradise after martyrdom. By the opening stages of the late Yuan period of the 1340s and beyond, the White Lotus incense gathering groups began forming bonds with various local rebel groups, eventually becoming a kind of centralized organizing axis point for many of them. Ultimately, they reorganized themselves into what were called incense armies, at odds with and in rebellion against the already straining

Yuan government. I mentioned in previous episodes, but it's worth bringing up again that though these groups were nominally all affiliated with the same broad doctrinal beliefs, they were still very much independent of one another and, in due course, would even sometimes war against each other. Broadly speaking, there were two major factions of what would become known as the Red Turbans. The Southern, or sometimes known as Western Red Turbans. The Southern, or sometimes known as Western Red Turbans, which were based out of Southern Hubei and eventually expanded their control north to the Yangtze River, and then the Northern, or Eastern, Red Turbans, based in central Anhui between the Yangtze and Huai rivers, eventually spreading eastward to

Southern Hebei, Shandong, Northern Jiangsu, and westward to Henan. By the way, I've posted maps of these various rebel factions online, and so you should consider checking them out at thehistoryofchina.wordpress.com. Still, before moving forward, it's important to state that even though these sub-designations as northern and southern red turbines are still broad categorizations that tend to mask the truly decentralized and often antagonistic relationships between the different factions that have been categorized within them, and as we'll further note later on in this episode. Mote writes to this, quote, Within each wing there were separate groupings, retaining features of their distinctive local

origins, and often hostile to each other. The Red Turban phenomenon was thus complex and varied, some of its branches eventually different enough to stand as independent movements. Traditional historians, generally sympathetic neither to folk religions nor to rebellions, have tended to apply the Red Turban label to them all indiscriminately, and have even extended it to non-sectarian rebels in some instances. End quote. History isn't black and white, yet too often it's presented as such. Grey History the French Revolution is a long-form history podcast dedicated to exploring the ambiguities and nuances of the past. By contrasting both the experiences of contemporaries and the

conclusions of historians, Grey History dives into the detail and unpacks one of the most important and disputed events in human history. From a revolution based on hope and liberty to its descent into the infamous reign of terror, there's plenty to discuss and plenty of grey to explore. One can't understand the modern world without understanding the French Revolution. So if you're looking for your next long-form, binge-worthy history podcast, one recommended by universities and loved by enthusiasts, then check out Grey History, The French Revolution today. Or simply search for The French Revolution. It's going to be primarily with the northern sect of the Red Turbans that we deal with for now, because it's going to be primarily with the northern sect of the Red Turbans that we deal with for now, because it's going to be out of this particular grouping

of uprisings that we will eventually see Zhu Yuanzhang rise to power and establish his great Ming state out of Nanjing. But before getting to him directly, it's worth looking at where, and through who, this sect rose up in the first place. Our first figure is a man of considerable mystery, undoubtedly by his own design, and yet often credited with being the founder of the Red Turban Movement altogether, as well as the initial leader of its incense armies. He's called Peng Yingyu, a Buddhist monk from Yuanzhou Prefecture, today the borderlands between Jiangxi and Hunan provinces. Monk Peng is, quote,

credited with having turned the centuries-old Maitreya cult of the White Lotus into a potent movement of social action, end quote. Now, it remains uncertain, maybe even dubious, if there was indeed such a figure at the root of that fusion of Maitreyan and Manichean elements into a military force with a centralized doctrine. But regardless of Peng's personal involvement, or lack thereof, he stands as at least a placeholder for that process very much taking place in the 1330s and 1340s. The story goes that Meng Peng made his debut onto the pages of history by serving as a kind of doctrinal leader of an uprising in his native Yuan Zhou, under the overall leader and

eventual self-proclaimed emperor of the movement, Zhou Zewang. The reign of Emperor Zhou didn't last long, as he was quickly captured and executed by the Yuan authorities, whereupon Meng Peng and the other survivors fled north to the region between the Huai and Yellow Rivers, concealing themselves for years in the homes of the locals friendly to the cause. In this time of laying low, Meng Peng hardly sat idle, but instead secretly taught the masses of the imminent arrival of Maitreya. Quote, The Buddha of Wealth and the Great King of Radiance, who would bring the millennium to the suffering of earth.

End quote. By 1340, the doctrines of the Red Turbans had begun popping up across the Huai region with alarming frequency. In 1341 alone, for instance, more than 300 separate bandit uprisings in different locales across the Hunan, Hubei, Shandong, and southern Hebei regions were reported by the authorities. This sounded only the opening salvo of the Red Turban threat that would, over the following decade, wage a continuous guerrilla war against the already strained and frayed Yuan government. Events would turn from low-level smolder into a truly explosive situation, however, as of 1351. That year, the Yuan court commanded that 150,000 corvée laborers

be conscripted from among the long-suffering peasantry and sent to labor on a vast megaproject, the rerouting of nothing less than the Yellow River itself following its disastrous flooding in the year 1344. When this was completed, it would reopen the Grand Canal where the two bodies were to meet up in western Shandong. It's here, amid the toilings of the starving peasantry in Shandong, that our next major figure of the Red Turbans emerges, a man named Han Shantong. The grandson of apparently a prominent White Lotus sect leader, who had been banished to the southern tip of Hebei for burning incense and deluding the masses, Han Shantong had risen to become a prominent Red

Turban leader in his own right. Curiously, it seems that following his banishment, the grandfather did not directly pass on his White Lotus teachings to his progeny, and by the life of Han Shantong himself, whatever it was specifically seems to have been largely merged with the more directly political doctrines of Meng Peng. It's actually rather doubtful if even this is quite correct, as it's been posited for some time now that even the grandfather's ostensible association with the White Lotus sect may have been, in the words of modern historian Wu Han, little more than, quote, just a pretext made by the history scholar officials of the early Ming for the founding emperor of Ming and for the eventual state title. Their purpose was completely clear, end quote. In other words, the eventual victor of the rebellion

against the Mongol Yuan, Zhu Yuanzhong, would have the tale recast in order to better link his own claim to the throne with both the Maitreyan and Manichean sects of the incense armies of the Red Turban, and also to the far older White Lotus, both of which were held in high esteem by the public at large. While amongst the canal laborers, Han claimed to have uncovered a stone statue of a man with only one eye and inscribed on the back with the prophetic message, meaning, when the world finds itself in chaos, the Maitreya Buddha shall descend and be reborn, and the King of Light shall appear in this world. It's widely speculated that the statue was placed there by none other than Han Shantong himself,

only to be discovered by him when the time was right. A further rumor suggests that there may have been a children's song in Hanan at this time, singing that the Yellow River would change its course, and an uprising would take place when a stone man with one eye was found. This is, of course, impossible to confirm or refute, but it does serve to show that in this chaotic and uncertain time, rumors and supposed prophecies were flying all over the place, in spite of official warnings and attempts to stop their spread. Prophetic carvings on statues

weren't the only thing that Han Shantong was ready to bring to bear in his quest for power against the Yuan state. He styled himself, and of course his son, Han Lin'er, as the last scions of the royal house of Zhao, the long-lost descendants of Huizong, the last emperor of northern Song. As his right hand, he presented his top general, Liu Futong, himself going by the alias Liu Guangshi, one of the foremost generals of Huizong, and instrumental in suppressing the infamous Fangla Uprising of 1120-1121. Likewise, this would-be-reborn Huizong claimed the mantle of his own prophecy, that it was he who was the prince who was promised, the Mingwang, the Lord of Light. Unfortunately for this would-be Azor Ahai, this claim to the throne didn't last long. Details are fairly spotty, but when Han and Liu started their uprising in 1351,

after an initial surge of red-turbine activity across the region, the Yuan government clamped down and captured many of the rebels, including King Han Shantong. After a suitably lengthy and probably painful incarceration, he was ultimately put to death. So endeth the Lord of Light. But wait, not so fast, because as luck would have it, General Liu Futong was able to escape his lord's arrest and locate Han's wife, the Lady Yang, and their son, Han Lin'er, both of whom had been safely kept in hiding against just such an eventuality. Spiriting the boy, who was at this point perhaps only 11 or 12, to the birthplace of Meng Peng, Yang Zhou, Lin'er was to take up Shantong's mantle, and was thereby dubbed the Xiao Mingwang, or the Young Lord of Light, and Yang Zhou the capital

of the Red Turban rebel government in the region. We're going to leave the Young Lord of Light, and Yangzhou the capital of the Red Turban rebel government in the region. We're going to leave the Young Lord of Light Hanlin R safely ensconced for now, and turn our attention southwest. For at just about this same time, the mysterious monk Peng Yingyu, or perhaps one of his principal followers, it's hard to be sure, is said to have made contact with and assessed the worthiness of a new figurehead of the Red Turban government in Qizhou, Hubei. The man they marked out checked all the correct boxes. He was a simple cloth vendor of modest intelligence, immense stature, and no discernible leadership qualities by the name of Xu Shouhui. In other words, a perfect puppet. Here's a rather supernaturalized account from the complete records of Hunan and Hubei, compiled for the Wanli Emperor in the late 16th century. Quote,

Previously, there was Peng the monk, who persuaded the public to recite the Buddhist title of Maitreya, to burn incense lamps at night, and to chant and worship. The number of his followers increased steadily, but there was no incarnation of a deity for them to adhere to. One day, when Xu Shouhui was bathing in the Yantang Pond, his body began shining. People who saw this were astonished. Then, Zhou Puxiang spread false words that the Maitreya Buddha was descending and was going to be the lord of the world. Xu Shouhui should respond to this. Therefore, Zhou and the other followers acclaimed Xu the lord. They staged a rebellion and marked themselves with red turbans. By the summer of 1351, he'd been anointed as the head of this new Red Turban sect,

which carved out for itself a rebel kingdom in southern Hubei, which they named the Tianwan Kingdom, meaning Heaven Consummated, and with the massive cloth salesman as his frontman, declaring a new reign era of Ziping, or Equitable Governance. The self-reclaimed Emperor Xu was able to massively boost his following when he began asserting that he was, in fact, none other than the Maitreya Buddha incarnate who sought to destroy the rich in order to benefit the poor. As a result, they were able to rapidly, albeit temporarily, expand, capturing the region's south all the way to Hanyang and nearby Hankou in 1352 before being driven off shortly

after by a Yuan counter-assault. Driven back to Qishui, the clothier emperor of the Tiananmen Kingdom was forced to lick his wounds and search about for a new military leader to lead his forces. The fate of Xu Shouhui, much like that of Han Lin'er, will have to wait for next time, though, because I'd like to end off today much as I did last time, by picking up the narrative thread of the life of our poor, tragic Zhu Yuanzhang, the boy who, when we'd last left him, had lost almost his entire family to plague and famine, and then found himself placed into the service of a local Buddhist monastery as of mid-autumn 1344. Though tall and striking in appearance, the 16-year-old Zhu was just a novice in the Yuzhui Temple, these days called the Huangzhui Temple. And so, like all the other novices,

he was required to engage in mendicancy, going out and begging amongst the people for alms and food. As a wandering mendicant monk, Zhu Yuanzhang is thought to have traversed up and down the Huai region for some three to four years, scraping out some bare existence between 1345 and 1347. It also seems possible that some of this period, at least, may have been spent in the service of some military force or another, possibly even the Yuan army, although that is speculative. What is known for certain is that he came to far more intimately understand the circumstances of the rebellions around him and of the methods of its suppression. In any case, after this required period of wandering and begging, and perhaps

soldiering, Zhu returned to the temple at around age 20 for a more formalized education in basic literacy and the Buddhist scriptures. It's written that he displayed to his mentors that he had a good mind and a powerful memory. This education would last for the subsequent four years or so, from about 1348 to early 1352. Now, as we've seen, in this time period, rebellions were breaking out all across not only the Huai region under the Northern Red Turbans, among others, but also the wider Central Empire altogether. As it happened, in mid-February of 1352, a town neighboring the Yuzhui Temple, called Haozhou,

was captured and held by a group of those Red Turban rebels, commanded by a man named Guo Zixin. Guo, who apparently had a fortune teller for a father and a blind but wealthy mother, was considered himself a skillful and able fighter, quote, but a man of rash temper who did not get along well with others, end quote. Believing wholeheartedly in the millennialist teachings of the Red Turbans, that the arrival of Maitreya was imminent and that it portended the end of the world as everyone knew it,

Guo Zixing had used his family's wealth to spend liberally in order to amass a personal following of loyal fighters and likewise committed sectarians. Though this rough band of rebel fighters was able to take and hold Hao Zhou with little resistance, whatever little semblance of order between Guo and his nominal lieutenants quickly broke down into infighting and general disorder as mood soured and defiance erupted. The Yuan authorities did not immediately attempt to retake the town, but instead began sending out raiding parties to soften the populace up. This meant the wholesale slaughter of outlying settlements, the burning of towns and temples,

and the seizure or destruction of foodstuffs and other goods that might otherwise aid the rebels. In the midst of this chaos, Zhu Yuanzhang's temple was among those targeted for destruction, most likely by the Yuan forces, but also possibly by the rebels themselves for one reason or another. Though Zhu and the other monks were able to flee the temple's burning, they quickly found that they had nowhere else to go, and with the frigid February temperatures, had little choice but to return to the fire-gutted ruins. Zhu would later write of this experience, and how he received numerous messages from his friends within the rebel forces, both warning him of the danger posed to him in the monastery,

and urging him to join up with them for his own protection. At last taking them up on their advice, on April 15th, 1352, the not-quite-24-year-old Zhu Yuanzhang presented himself at the gates of the red-turbine-held Ha Haozhou and asked to join Guo Zixing's command unit. Mote writes, Ultimately, Guo Zixing was persuaded by the younger of his two wives to more firmly cement this young rising star to his own fortunes by marrying him to one of his adopted daughters,

a 19-year-old girl named Ma Xiaoying. The two would indeed be wedded, and in due course, she would come to reign alongside her husband as the first empress of the Ming dynasty, the Xiao Zigao Empress. In due course, the time-tested UN military strategy of systematically driving entire populations towards concentrated points took its inexorable toll on the rebels' fighting strength and morale. As more red-turban military commands were forced to abandon their own strongholds for the relative safety of Haozhou, the competing personalities of their respective commanding officers quickly began to grate against one another. Factions developed in the besieged city, resulting in Guo Zixing taking a wrong side and getting himself captured by an opposition member.

Zhu Yuanzhang just so happened to return from a field operation to find this having just taken place, and, with the aid of Guo's younger wife and children, was able to track Guo down and arrive with help that saved his commander's life. For an entire half a year, from the winter of 1352 until June of 1353, the city of Haozhou was systematically encircled and then besieged. It became quite apparent that unless something drastic were to change, the defenders within would be starved out to the last man, woman, and child. But as luck would have it, the commander of the siege and famed hydraulic engineer who had actually overseen the massive rerouting of the Yellow River that had touched this whole situation off, a man named Jia Lu, suddenly took ill and died at age 57, resulting in a lifting of the siege and the

salvation of the city. With Hao Zhou now no longer under threat of immediate annihilation, Zhu Yuanzhang was able to return to his hometown, where he was able to recruit a force of more than 700 volunteers led by 24 of his childhood friends. It would be from this group of loyal and lifelong companions that Zhu Yuanzhang would form the core of his personal following for the subsequent two decades. In the meantime, he continued to hone and develop his own practical experience and sense of field command by engaging in a wide variety of sorties and missions under the command of Guo Zixing. His repeated successes over the following year didn't go unnoticed by either his soldiers or his commander, and by the fall of 1354, Guo Zixing commissioned Zhu as a guard commander, with independent initiative and

a command of his own, at last allowing Zhu Yuanzhang to escape the ongoing factional struggles within Haozhou and strike southward. His first target would be the district town of Dingyuan, followed by Chuzhou on the Anhui-Zhangsu border. It would be at Chuzhou that guard commander Zhu Yuanzhang would stake out his own personal base camp and begin to amass an army of his own, and the staff to command it. By the summer of 1355, he's reckoned to have recruited more than 30,000 soldiers to his standard. This is where we're going to leave Zhu Yuanzhang for today, attracting his thousands of followers to his cause and looking southward. And next time, he'll be setting his eyes on his grand prize. Indeed,

one of the great prizes of the entire south, the great walled city on the Yangtze, Nanjing, or as it was known then, Jiching. Thanks for listening. 400 years ago, a trio of tiny kingdoms were perched on some damp islands off the coast of Europe. Within three short centuries, these islands would become the centre of an empire which ruled a quarter of the globe and on which the sun never set. I'm Samuel Hume, a historian of the British Empire, and my podcast Pax Britannica follows the people and events that built that empire into a global superpower. Learn the history of the British Empire by listening to Pax Britannica everywhere you find your podcasts, or go to pod.link slash

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