The History of China - #199 - Yuan 15: On the Waterfront

Episode Date: August 30, 2020

You don't understand! Chen Youliang coulda had class! He coulda been a contender! He coulda been somebody... instead of a bum, which is what he is after the fiasco on the waters of Lake Poyang. Let's face it. Time Period Covered: 1360-1363 CE Major Historical Figures: State of Ming: Zhu Yuanzhang Commander Hua Yun [d. 1360] Han Lin'er, "Emperor of Song" General Kang Maocai General Xu Da General Hu Dahai [d. 1361] General Shao Rong [d. 1361] State of Han: Emperor Chen Youliang [r. 1360-1363] General Chen Yuren Xu Shouhui, "Emperor" of Tianwan [d. 1360] State of Wu: Zhang Shicheng Yuan Dynasty: Emperor Toghon Temur Prince Chaghan Temur [d. 1361] Köke Temur (Wang Baobao) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. 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. From a revolution of hope and liberty to the infamous Reign of terror. You can't understand the modern world without understanding the French Revolution. So search for the French Revolution today. Hello and welcome to the History of China. Episode 199, On the Waterfront.

Last time, we left off with Zhu Yuanzhang's nascent Ming state, achieving something of an uncomfortable equilibrium with its southern neighbors. Strong enough to resist anything but the most concerted attack by multiple foes, and yet not quite strong enough to itself attack without opening itself up to a crushing counter-assault. As of 1360, it seemed likelier than not that southern China would remain in that holding pattern indefinitely, much as had been the case during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period four centuries prior following the collapse of the Tang. Without a major shift in that balance of power, the south seemed to be going nowhere fast. And so today, we're going to give the South that major kick in the pants it needs to nudge it out of that deadlock

and put Zhu Yuanzhang definitively back on the path towards ultimate victory and the Dragon Throne. So just as a quick recap of our major players in the conflict, Zhu's Ming state, centered on his capital, Nanjing, is sandwiched between, go figure, his two main rivals. To his east is Zhang Xicheng's coastal state of Wu, nominally having repludged itself to the Yuan court, but really, Zhang is looking out only for Zhang. To Zhu's west, meanwhile, is Chen Youliang's upriver state of Han, centered at Jiangzhou in modern northern Jiangxi. Chen would prove to be Zhu Yuanzhang's primary enemy in the battles to come, and arguably across the whole of this period. But of course, neither of them could yet know that for sure. To Zhu Yuanzhang at this time, both of his neighbors had the potential to deliver a

knockout blow if he let his guard down. And just as a quick point of clarification from the get-go, from here on out, I'm going to be frequently referring to these states and armies by these names, Ming, Han, and Wu, because it's an easy shorthand and it's pretty widely adopted anyway, so don't get confused. Even though it shares the name of the long-dead Han dynasty, I'm talking about the 14th century regional power of Chen Youliang. Likewise, even though he hasn't quite formally declared himself as such just yet, I will be referring to Zhu Yuanzhang's state as Ming. So, while Zhu and the Ming armies shored up their recent territorial gains across southern Anhui and inland Zhejiang, Chen Youliang took Zhu's preoccupation as an opportunity to potentially wipe him off the map once and for all. This would involve a markedly different strategy than Ming's

largely overland military approach up to this point. Chen's forces were, after all, far more adept at river, naval, and amphibious operations, and he had the numbers to back such a strategy up. Dreyer writes, quote, Chen had a better appreciation of the potential of inland naval power than his contemporaries. Swift moves aiming at strategic surprise were the best way to employ his much stronger river fleet, end quote. This whole situation had been at least proximally touched off the year prior, in November of 1359, with the Ming's capture of the strategically important city of Qizhou, upriver from Nanjing, from Chen Youliang, during Ming's general expansion during that period.

This, of course, had prompted Chen to plot his revenge against this Ming upstart, which was planned in the form of a surprise attack to retake the city all at once. Unfortunately for Chen, Zhu Yuanzhang seems to have been exceptionally well-informed of the Han state's plans and movements at this time, including this upcoming surprise attack. This seems to have been because Zhu had recently taken in a number of defectors from the very region around Chao Lake, immediately adjacent to the capital of modern Anhui, Hefei City, north of the Yangtze. These Chao Lake soldiers had been loyal to their commander, an officer named Zhao Puxiang, who had only recently been cut down on Chen Youliang's very orders, thereby prompting his men's defection en masse. What this meant for Chen Youliang's surprise attack in early 1360, then, was that it was doomed from the outset.

Zhu sent two of his top generals, Xu Da and Cha Yucheng, to ambush the Han would-be besiegers as they approached Qizhou and destroyed them. More than 3,000 Han soldiers were captured, and were thereafter largely put to death, with a lucky few allowed to limp back to Chen Yuliang to inform him of their terrible fate. As you might well imagine, this didn't sit very well at all with Chen. Enraged at this costly and humiliating defeat by what he surely saw as a lesser state, Chen dispatched at once a considerably larger force to punish the Ming. It's worth noting that though this Han expeditionary force is said to have numbered a hundred thousand or so soldiers, this was only a portion of Chen's total strength,

and it seems to have been what he had immediately at hand and available to move against Zhu Yuanzhang at once, and indeed it was roughly equivalent in strength to the garrison forts stationed within Nanjing itself, which any military commander will tell you is not a great position to be attacking from. Setting out downstream on June 11th, 1360, the Han forces' first target was the riverside city of Taiping. Though defended by a garrison force of just 3,000 or so, its commander, Hua Yun, resolutely refused to surrender to the vastly superior Han flotilla. For three days, Chen sent his soldiers by the thousands to storm the city via its landward walls, but the defenders held fast within.

It was only then that Chen decided to change his tactics. His fleet contained numerous types of ships, among them some truly awe-inspiring capital-class warships of the day. Now, unfortunately for us, naval warfare was still considered only secondary to overland warfare, and even as it begins at this point to truly become one of the prime focuses of Chinese warfare in the Ming and later periods, beginning as we're going to come to see here today, we really don't get any cool names to call these hulking behemoth class ships. In general, they're just referred to as boats and ships. In Chinese, both just called chuan, which was later unfortunately anglicized via Portuguese in one of the truly phoneticization

fails of all time as junk. But there's nothing at all trashy about these marvels of engineering. They were more like mid-sized office buildings that floated sometimes four, five, or even six stories in height. The Muslim scholar and legendary world traveler Ibn Battuta wrote of these Chuan ships that he encountered during his voyage to China in 1347 with an obvious sense of awe. He said, quote, We stopped in the port of Calicut, in which there was at the time 13 Chinese vessels, and disembarked. The Chinese vessels are of three kinds, large ships called junks,

middle-sized ones called daos, and the small ones called kakams. As a quick aside here, just note that these are the names given by Ibn Battuta via his own translators, not their actual Chinese designations. Anyway, continuing the quote, the large ships have anything from 12 down to 3 sails, which are made of bamboo rods plated into mats. They are never lowered, but turned according to the direction of the wind. At anchor, they are left floating in the wind. A ship carries a complement of a thousand men, six hundred of whom are sailors and four hundred men-at-arms,

including archers, men with shields, and arbalests who throw naphtha. Three smaller ones, the half, the third, and the quarter, accompany each large vessel. The large vessels have four decks, and contain rooms, cabins, and saloons for merchants. A cabin has chambers and a lavatory, and can be locked by its occupant, who takes along with him slave girls and wives. Some of the Chinese own large numbers of ships, on which their factors are sent to foreign countries. There's no people in the world wealthier than the Chinese. End quote. But anyways, all that description is to paint you a picture of just the type of craft that we're dealing with. Again,

like a mid-sized office building sailing around as though it were Monty Python's The Crimson Permanent Assurance. So just keep that in mind when I say that Chen Youliang's new strategy for breaching the walls of Taiping was to simply back his ships right up to the walls, which were close to flush with the upper stern decks, and then just proceed to, you know, board the city. With the walls overcome, the small Ming defense force was easily defeated and taken captive. Its commandant, Hua Yun, was dragged before Chen Youliang and given the opportunity to submit to his conqueror. Instead, Hua refused and chose a heroic martyr's death, which was swiftly granted. In spite of that little hiccup of defiance, Chen refused to let it spoil his mood. After all,

this new battle tactic had worked gangbusters, and he was very excited to use it against more unsuspecting riverside cities. But first, just a quick little side trip to take care of a bit of housekeeping business. On June 16th, about 30 miles or so upriver from Nanjing, Chen stopped at the jetty at the Caishen crossing point of the Yangtze, a place not only where the Ming forces had crossed into Han territory five years prior, but also the attempted crossing point of the Jurchenjin armies into the south two centuries before. Either already there awaiting him, or delivered swiftly from what had been his capital at Hanyanghe Bay, which is a part of modern Wuhan, was the nominal emperor of the Tiananmen Kingdom, that upjumped cloth merchant

Xu Shouhui. Xu had been a reasonable enough figurehead as such things went, but the time for such puppetry was over in Chen Youliang's estimation. It was time for the power and the throne to now be one and the same. To that end, therefore, he had the Tianwan Emperor dragged before him at Taisha, and then pronounced his death sentence. On what specific formal grounds are uncertain, but given the choice of venue, probably something like abdication of duty for allowing the rebel Zhu Yuanzhang to invade their sovereign territory from that spot. In any event, Xu Shouhui was swiftly dragged off and then beaten to death. Thus always to figureheads. Shortly after this perfunctory execution, in a courtyard of the local temple which had been

specially commandeered for this very purpose, Chen Youliang officially usurped the throne from the late Tiananmen Emperor and proclaimed a new dynasty, the Great Han, or as it's often known, in order to better differentiate itself from the half-dozen or so other nominal Han dynasties, Chen Han. In what might have been considered a portentous turn of events, midway through the ceremony, the imperial entourage was forced to pause and then wait out a sudden summer rainstorm that swept through the area.

If one were to believe in such things, that might be a bit of a problem, but Chan wasn't about to let a little rain squall dampen his mood and resolutely pressed forward. Once he was formally enthroned as the Dahan Emperor, which was both the name of his state and his era name, Chen sent an envoy eastward, to the state of Wu and its leader, Zhang Shicheng. The envoy carried with him a message offering a strategic alliance, and urging the coastal warlord to attack their mutual enemy, Zhu Yuanzhang's Ming, and calling for a dual strike on Nanjing from both east and west.

With that message sent, Chen had his army make preparations to set out once again, this time directly for Nanjing and his mortal foe, Zhu Yuanzhang. For his part, Zhu learned of the fall of his garrison at Taiping two days later, on June 18th. The implication was as clear as it was dire. The Han warlord Chen, for of course he didn't yet know of his self-promotion, meant to sail his mighty fleet against them with all speed. This was a truly grim situation, because even though the defenders of Nanjing were about as numerous as the Han force set against them,

they were massively outnumbered and outclassed on the river, with only about 10% or so of the ships the Han navy had fielded. From Dreyer, quote, The Han could sail at will on the river, striking vulnerable riverbank cities similar to Taiping, including Yangzhou, north of the river on the Grand Canal, Zhenjiang, and Jiangyin by the Wu frontier. If the Ming army pursued them on land, they risked exhausting themselves and leaving themselves open to Han attack. End quote. Proposals came forth from Jews generals and counselors, with some advising an

immediate counteroffensive to retake Taiping from its Han occupiers before the attackers could strike again, while others went so far as to recommend that the Ming High Command simply abandon Nanjing altogether, whose very riverside defensive posture had quite suddenly been transformed into a potential liability, and to instead retrench themselves on the slopes of the nearby Purple Mountain just east of the city proper. Neither of these proposals met with Zhu's approval, though, and he instead pushed ahead on a third plan, which would attempt to lure Chen Youliang's army to debark at a carefully predetermined point, with the Ming's forces waiting in ambush. Now, this next little part is a bit tricky to follow, since it reads

more or less like something out of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, so just remember that as we go into it, but here we go. One of the main proponents of this plan was a general by the name of Kang Mao Cai, who had defected from Chen's Han army to Zhu's Ming army back in 1356. Well, Kang actually still had a guy on the inside of the Han's general staff, acting as a double agent. He reported to Chen, yes, but fed info back to the Ming high command at regular intervals, and in retrospect seems to have been truly loyal to Kong and the Ming. This double agent was the doorway through which Kong was able to send a message to Chun, indicating that he wished to undefect and rejoin the, obviously soon-to-be-victorious Han army while the getting was good.

As proof of his good intentions, Kang offered to engineer the destruction and removal of a pivotal wooden bridge that spanned the Sancha River, a tributary of the Yangtze that provided direct naval access to Nanjing's western wall, called the Jiangdong Bridge. In due time and in turn, Chen sent the double agent back to Kang, indicating his approval of the plan. So, game on, right? Well, not so fast. See, I told you this was like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. This is just layer one. Instead of allowing Kang to set up his ambush by removing Jiangdong Bridge as agreed to,

Zhu Yuanzhang instead ordered that the bridge be, in the span of a single night, first demolished but then replaced with a far stronger stone bridge. What gives there? Well, deception is the name of the game here, and Zhu had already determined what Chen's next move would be if this little bridge gambit of Kang's was either discovered or indeed a ruse. As he saw it, making it appear that he'd caught wind of this little bridge plot and nixed it would allow Yuan Zhang to set up an even more decisive ambush against Chen's army. Three separate armies were then stationed around the city in preparation for the attack. Kang's force at the newly rebuilt Jiangdong Bridge, General Yang Jing's army blocking the Dasheng Mountain Pass, and finally Zhao Dasheng at the mouth of the Xinhe River.

General Xu Da and his force was deployed on the southern wall of the city away from the river, where it could observe both Yang and Kang's forces and march to their aid if it were necessary. Meanwhile, all up and down the navigable waterways surrounding the Ming capital, sharpened stakes called lotus flowers, or lianhua, were planted to ensure that Han troops couldn't just debark anywhere they pleased. Instead, they'd be subtly directed to a very specific place. Chen Youliang's younger brother, Chen Yuzhen, had been allowed to sail with his force of about 10,000 to Longwan Bay and set up a stockade. He didn't know it, of course, but he'd been allowed to do this because Zhu Yuanzhang had determined that Longwan was the ideal ambush point. As a flat, open plain, it would allow most of the Han armies to debark

their ships all at once, while the nearby Shihui Hills would allow a 30,000-strong Ming ambush force to lie in wait safely out of sight until the right moment. Zhu Yuanzhang would himself lead the main Ming army, conspicuously positioning himself and his reserve force at the commanding height of Lion Hill, just northwest of Nanjing's walls, where he could observe the totality of the battle to come. And critically, his commanders could all see him. In any battle, of course, communication is key. It's often the single greatest factor in determining whether an army is victorious or defeated. And the wider a force is spread out, the more difficult that communication tends to become.

As such, Zhu Yuanzhang's occupation of Lion Hill proved pivotal. His command staff carried with it two sets of flags to fly. Red flags flying would signal the arrival of the Han enemy force and the beginning of the battle. But the running of yellow banners would be the signal for the ambush force waiting in the Shihui Hills to advance and cut off their enemy's retreat back to their ships, if all went well. In the dark of night on June 22nd, the greater bulk of the undersized Ming navy raised anchor and slipped themselves downriver safely out of harm's way. Then the Ming soldiers settled in and awaited dawn to herald the battle to come. In the morning light of June 23rd, Chen Youliang's army set sail for Nanjing. They initially meant to push through Dasheng Pass, but its narrowness and stiff defense by

General Yang Jing caused him to swiftly press on to a different location. His secondary option was the Jiangdong Bridge, which he had hoped would no longer be there, as per his agreement with Kang Maocai. Instead, Chun was dismayed, if perhaps not totally surprised, to find that not only did the bridge still block his fleet's path to Nanjing's western walls, but it had actually been substantially upgraded into stone, rendering it effectively impenetrable. Still, he tried to get General Kang to make good on his own defection, but the commander didn't respond to his call, making Chun fear that an ambush lay in store for his forces at the bridge. He quickly pulled back, and now made for Longwan Bay and his brother's position there. Once they arrived, the Han soldiers debarked and assembled into

their formations. Through all this, Zhu Yuanzhang atop Lion Hill watched and waited, ordering his men to eat, drink, and save up their strength. As luck would have it, the humidity and summer heat resulted by the afternoon in the rolling in of a thunderstorm. Far from calling off operations, however, Zhu used this weather as something of an impromptu cover of sorts. He raised his red flags, signaling a beginning to combat operations, and then ordered his own army to advance northward in a seemingly reckless move. From Chen Yuliang's perspective, a detachment of the Ming defenders had broken off from their line and placed themselves into a dangerously exposed situation where they could be surrounded and captured. It was too good

of an opportunity to pass up, and he ordered his men forward to capitalize on Zhu Yuanzhang's mistake. As the two forces approached one another, the rain let up. The Han army had left behind their landing site and committed to the battle. They'd taken the bait, and now was the time to raise the yellow flags, signaling the hidden 30,000 to cut off the Han soldiers' retreat. The troops of Changyu-chun and Fengsheng fell on the rear of the Han deployment and won the battle quickly. The Han line fell apart and groups of Han soldiers struggled to escape. Those who reached the river found that the tide had gone out and that many of their ships were stuck in the mud, end quote. It would prove to be nothing short of a massacre. By day's end, more than 20,000 Han troops lay dead on the north field of Nanjing,

with an additional 7,000 surrendering and thereafter almost all defecting to the Ming cause. Perhaps even worse, though, was that Chen Youyang had been forced to leave a large number of his own warships behind to be captured intact by the victorious Ming. Over a hundred large ships and several hundred smaller craft, perhaps as much as half of his standing fleet, was left stuck in the low-tide mudflats of the Yangtze shore. These vessels would thereafter serve as the backbone and what would prove to be a decisive margin Ming naval superiority, in the fights to come. In spite of the heavy casualties, Chen and the greater bulk of his soldiers were able to make good their escape, albeit in a thoroughly humiliating fashion, by cramming themselves like sardines aboard the

ships that they could still float. Dreyer writes of the fiasco, quote, Chen Youliang's position in Jiangxi had been shaken by his defeat and the loss of his personal forces. The initiative had passed to the Ming, end quote. Zhu Yanzhang must certainly have been riding high after this climactic victory over Chen Yuliang, and deservedly so. Perhaps this sense of confidence might explain, at least in part, his near-disastrous miscalculation in the following year. First off, he waited almost a year before attempting to capitalize on his 1360 victory, finally setting out upstream in Han-controlled Jiangxi territory only in mid-1361.

He spent the winter of 1361-62 securing the surrender of the various cities across the region. Yet the following spring, a sense of rushedness seems to have suddenly gripped Zhu. Rather than consolidating his position in Jiangxi before pressing further, Zhu and his armies moved out before the surrendered cities had been completely secured. It's hardly surprising, then, that rebellion against him began springing up in these quote-unquote captured cities nearly as soon as his soldiers had moved past them, forcing him to quickly turn around and then recapture the cities. Worse yet, cities across Zhejiang to the south broke out in rebellion as well, culminating in the Miao tribes rising up and killing the overall regional commander, Hu Dahai, that march, and then defecting to Zhang

Shicheng in the state of Wu. This forced Zhu to divert considerable resources towards repacifying that region as well. In spite of both of these problems, Zhu Yuanzhang might still have possessed sufficient strength and resources to continue his offensive against Han, had it not been followed by the midsummer treason within the ranks of his own high command, led by the Ming's very own Benedict Arnold, Xiaorong. Though one of Zhu Yuanzhang's longtime, apparently original, companions, by 1362, Xiaorong had apparently grown bitter and discontented at not being put in charge of a sufficiently important or glorious enough command to satisfy his own ambition. As such, he and a few other malcontents with the Ming's general staff organized a coup d'etat to be carried out on August 3rd, 1362.

Quote, The conspirators arranged to have their own contingents at the head of the column when the Ming army marched back into Nanjing after a military review. They planned to shut and hold the gates after their own units had followed Zhu inside and then kill him in the confusion. End quote. Quite sinister indeed. But rather than a deviously executed plot, they were undone by the weather. Riding back toward the city gate, a sudden gust of wind twisted a banner around Zhu Yuanzhang himself, which he took as an ill omen. As a result, he very suddenly decided that he would rather not return to the city via that specific gate, and instead rode around to a different one, killing Xiaorong's in the cradle. As with any such plot, secrets can only be kept by two people if one of them is dead,

and leaks can only be forestalled for so long. Inevitably, details of the abortive coup made their way to Zhu's ear, and the conspirators were arrested and then sentenced to death one and all. With tremendous difficulty, Zhu Yunzhang was able to reassert his authority over the Ming territories and quell the uprising amidst his own officers, and yet much of the damage was done. The considerable momentum that he'd been gathering as of 1360 was effectively halted in its tracks, and Chen Yuliang had been given the time that he so desperately needed to recompose and rearm his soldiers and then prepare for a new offensive against the now reeling Ming regime.

Through all of this southern drama, it's worth asking once again, hey, what's going on up north? Why didn't the UN just roll in and curb-stomp these guys? Well, the short answer is they were in no fit state to do anything of the sort. As I mentioned previously, the UN emperor at Dadu, Togon Temur, was busy canoodling with his dancing girls, and otherwise just being an exceptionally ineffective leader in all respects. That left the other regions of the north, outside of the direct imperial domain, in the hands of their own set of warlords who were at least nominally loyal to the idea of the Yuan Mongol Empire, but that certainly didn't mean that

they intended to share authority with one another, fellow Mongol or not. Meanwhile, oh yeah, how can I forget, the climate, agriculture, and rampant disease were all continuing to just go completely haywire, meaning that the peasantry was pretty much just fed up with the UN jerks bossing them around while not actually helping them, you know, at all. The most powerful of these regional Mongol generals slash warlords was Chagan Temur, and if anyone was likely to be able to unite the Yuan forces to effectively deal with the death spiral of stacking crises, it was probably him. Until, that is, he was unceremoniously assassinated by a local leader of rioting farmers who had

quote-unquote surrendered in order to get close enough to the Mongol general to pull the deed off on July 6th. Though he was succeeded by his nephew and adopted son, the half-Chinese Kokutemur, the latter lacked quite the stature of his uncle, and the north lapsed once again into fractious chaos. Good times, good times. In all human history, there are few stories like that of ancient Egypt. On the banks of the Nile, these people created one of the most enduring and significant cultures. Their tale comes to life in the History of Egypt podcast. Every week, we explore the tales of this amazing culture, from the legendary days of creation and the gods, all the way to Cleopatra, and everything in between. The History of Egypt

podcast is written and produced by a trained Egyptologist. We go much deeper than your average documentary or magazine article to uncover tales of life, great endeavours, and the amazing arc of a mighty kingdom. The History of Egypt podcast is available on all podcasting platforms, apps, and websites. Come, visit ancient Egypt, and experience a legendary culture. Anyways, back to the Southlands. As 1362 ticked over into 1363, the new year opened with a bang all its own. One of the field commanders of the ostensibly Yuan-loyalist state of Wu under Zhang Xicheng advanced his army into the Red Turban capital, Anfeng, capturing the city, as well as its so-called Song Emperor of the movement, the young Lord of Light himself, Han Lin'er. He then went

on to execute the power behind the throne, such as it was, Lord Liu Futong. Quote, the entire Song Empire had now been reduced to the Ming regime, plus this one insignificant city in the midst of a largely depopulated area of the Anhui-Henan border. End quote. In Nanjing, Zhu Yuanzhang and his court were already seeking more and more to distance themselves with the more radical leanings of the Red Turbanist movement, and some of his advisors urged Zhu to simply leave Han Linar to his fate, quote, but the veneration still felt for Han Linar by much of the Ming army made a relief mission unavoidable, end quote. It ultimately didn't matter how correct the

advisors were, that it was a needless, pointless distraction, and that Ming had much bigger fish to fry. Zhu understood that the common soldier simply wouldn't stand at this point for such a callous abandonment of their holy lord. As such, that march, a rescue mission was indeed dispatched to Anfeng, led by, who else, Zhu Yuanzhang himself. It was a resounding success, resulting in the Wu commander being expelled from the city and, against all odds, the recovery of the Lord of Light alive. Strategically insignificant, though, Anfeng city itself was thereafter left to rot, abandoned by all until it was eventually occupied by some no-name Yuan forces. While Zhu Yuanzhang had been off on this imperial side quest, his real enemy, Chen Yuliang, had no such pointless distraction lashed about his neck. He had mobilized the totality of his manpower from across Hubei and Hunan to construct a vast new fleet of warships, and stunningly, all while keeping its

construction a complete secret from the Ming army. Yeah, it's basically like the whole Death Star 2 Endor scenario. Quote, the main body of this new fleet consisted of very large, red-painted, three-decked galleasses, with iron-sheathed turrets for archers and sterns high enough to overtower any city's walls. One source claimed that each of these ships could carry two or three thousand men. Accompanying the great ships were boats and crafts of every kind. Chun's operating style had always stressed personal leadership of his main forces. He was now sticking everything on the creation of an army fleet large enough to overcome any possible opposition, but whose defeat would mean

the inevitable loss of his territorial base, end quote. It was truly an all-or-nothing gamble, but one that Chen Yuliang, whose prestige and reputation had suffered a catastrophic setback outside of Nanjing three years prior, must have sensed that he needed to take. And as just a brief point of comparison about the size and complement of these ships, when we say 2,000 to 3,000 soldiers, that includes both men-at-arms and sailors. Nevertheless, it's important to keep in mind just the scale of that. So I looked it up, and by comparison, even the largest galleon-class warships of Europe in this period, and even several centuries thereafter, held at their absolute maximum a complement of a few hundred total sailors and soldiers alike. I think the highest

that I saw was 400, so we're talking magnitudes of order bigger. But then again, we're probably not all that surprised by this information. After all, this is China, and everything in China is bigger. Anyways, traditional sources like the Yuan Shi number Chen's strength at 600,000 men, though this is, as per usual, just an unbelievable, ridiculous figure. Dreyer posits that half that number would be a credible estimate, which in any case would still have vastly outnumbered the Ming army in both ships and manpower. Along with the soldiers themselves, sailed their families, horses, and all the supplies that they might need to carry out their sweeping attack down the course of the Yangtze. Like I said, it was truly an all-in gambit. Chan's plan centered on

using his massive capital ships just as he'd done before against Taiping, sailing them up to the river walls of the enemy cities, and then just rushing in his overwhelmingly huge numbers of men to capture them right off the bat. The Han fleet set out in the spring of 1363, as the rivers were in flood. By June 5th, it had reached the city of Nantang, the regional seat in eastern Nanshi, on the far western inlet of Lake Poyang. If it were to fall, and especially if it fell quickly, Chen could be reasonably sure that it would serve as a stark warning of his power to the other cities of the area, who would then opt to voluntarily surrender to him, thus regaining all of the territory he'd lost in 1359 in one single fell swoop. From there, he'd be able to sweep downstream in something of a naval

blitzkrieg, with all opposition simply crumbling before him. Unfortunately for Chen Youliang's grand visions, under the command of Zhu Yuanzhang's young nephew, Zhu Wenzheng, the walls of Nanchang had been both fortified and rebuilt as of 1362, both higher than before and now actually set back from the riverbank, rendering his whole just-rush-over-the-walls-from-the-back-of-the-ships strategy completely unworkable. Instead, he was now forced to set up a full blockade of the city, which, as you can imagine, massively disrupted his whole lightning war timetable. The Ming garrison within the city ruthlessly pummeled the Han attackers, inflicting heavy casualties upon them day after day. Even when the Han soldiers were, on June 9th, able to blow a gaping 300-foot-long hole into one section of Nanchang's walls,

the Ming defenders heroically filled the critical gap, pouring volley after volley of cannon fire, arrows, and cross bolts at the attacking forces, while their own engineering corps hastily constructed a crescent-shaped defensive readout behind the collapsed section of the wall. Ten days later, an assault on the main city gate was repelled by a Ming sortie, and more than a month after that, on July 24th, another assault on the water gate was again repelled. What was meant to have been a clean and quick start to a lightning conquest of the Riverlands had devolved into a grueling slugging match between two seemingly equal enemy forces.

In addition to the heavy toll this siege was now taking on his manpower and material resources, this delay likewise meant the slipping away of the flood season, making any further dreams of overrunning the tops of city walls from ship deck more remote by the day. Still, it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows for the defenders of Nanchang either. Quote, nonetheless, attrition and hunger were weakening Nanchang's defenders. Even if he did no more in 1363, the reconquest of Nanchang would have permitted Chun

to resume the war on very favorable terms the following year. End quote. In light of that, it is very curious, and likely speaks to the desperate straits

his own army was in by the end of July, that Chun apparently agreed to call a truce with the Nanchang garrison in return for a pledge that they would, quote, surrender at an unspecified later date, end quote. If that was actually the case, I am honestly baffled. In any event, with or without the supposed incomprehensible ceasefire in effect, a small fishing boat was able to run the Han blockade for the first time in two months and get word at last to Nanjing and Zhu Yuanzhang of Nanchang's dire situation.

It seems pretty weird that Zhu hadn't yet figured out that something was up at Nanchang, given that it had been completely cut off from all communication for two entire months by this point, but it does seem to have somehow been that situation. Maybe he was just so busy with his ongoing campaigns against Liu Zhou that his nephew's plight had just, you know, slipped through the cracks. Regardless, once the messenger arrived at the main capital, Zhu Yuanzhang finally sprang into action, recognizing the important strategic location that Nan Chang held as the gateway of the vast waters of Lake Poyang. Ordering his commanders to drop whatever it was they were doing and to reassemble at once at the capital, Zhu then prepared his forces for total redeployment to relieve Nanchang and drive Chen

Youliang back. A primary relief force under the command of General Hu Deqi was dispatched at once overland, while the greater bulk of the Ming armies prepared to sail upriver at once and face off against the mighty Han fleet directly. It wasn't going to be an easy fight by any stretch of the imagination. Though the protracted siege at Nanchang had indeed drained some of Chen's fighting strength, his army was at least still double that of the force Zhu Yuanzhang was heading. Most sources list his river army at 200,000 strong aboard a thousand ships, so if we're being fair and applying the same halving to the Ming force as we did to the Han force, that's still 100,000 soldiers making their way upriver to face off against the 300,000 or so Han troops. Much like Chen Youliang's gamble betting everything on this all-out assault against Ming,

Zhu Yuanzhang pulling back his armies from their fights against the state of Wu to send a smaller army to attack Han was a desperate gamble as well. Both of these commanders stood to lose everything that they had fought so long and so hard for here and now in the fight to come. On August 24th, the Ming fleet reached Hukou, a place name which tells you exactly what it is. It literally means Lake Mouth, as in the mouth of Poyang Lake, as it emptied into the lower course of the Yangtze. Pausing at this vital choke point, Zhu ordered his soldiers to construct twin sets of fortifications on the north and south banks in order to hopefully slow and harass any Han fleet

movement through the narrows should it come to that. Nanchang, however, lay on the far side of Lake Poyang from Hukou, and as such, Zhu Yuanzhang couldn't simply wait there and hope to entrap Chen's fleet. At least, not yet. Instead, once the positions had been built and then manned, the Ming fleet pushed onward into the lake itself. By either happenstance, or more likely, because word had reached him of the Ming fleet's arrival, that same day Chen Youyang at last lifted his blockade of Nanchang and pulled his troops back to their ships, and then set his own fleet north into the misty waters of Poyang. It would take the navies four days to search one another out, until the evening of August 29th off the shores of Kanglang Island. It was too late to engage one another, and so both

mighty fleets tensely waited over the course of the night for the battle to open the following dawn. While we wait with them in this darkest of nights before battle begins, a question that we might ask ourselves is, what kind of weapons were these two cutting-edge navies preparing to use against one another? The mind might immediately spring to scenes from Pirates of the Caribbean. Heck, even the Chinese media renditions of this famous clash today tend to do exactly that. Rows upon rows of long-barreled, massive guns unleashing spectacular broadsides against one another as they sail by each other, and punching tremendous gashes into their enemies' hulls. Sadly, that specific form of naval combat was

still a few centuries off. Tonio Andrade lets us know the real guns these ships were packing. The most important difference between such 17th century western-style cannons and real Ming cannons is the size. Cannons like those portrayed in modern dramas of the battle would have weighed at least 500 kilograms, yet most early Ming guns weighed 2 or 3 kilograms, and the ones considered at the time large weighed only 75 or so kilograms. In addition, the cannons in the drama, with their long barrels, have small muzzle bores relative to their length. In reality, early Ming guns were short, with relatively large bores. So what kind of guns would have been found on Zhu Yuanzhang's ships? Among the early Ming guns excavated in China is a type called the Great Bull Mouth Tube,

Dawangkotong, a short, small, wide-mouthed gun. It weighs just 17.75 kilograms and is short, 36.5 centimeters in length. Its muzzle opening is 11 centimeters in diameter, near a third as large as the length of the gun. Other specimens of this type of gun range from about 8.35 to 26.5 kilograms. Thus, although they were not handheld firearms, they were usually mounted on ships or gates, they were nonetheless far smaller than the massive cannons we associate with naval warfare of the 16th and 17th centuries, end quote. Now, to be clear, this certainly wouldn't have been the only type of firearm or cannon or weapon

employed by the Navy. Much to the contrary, such Navy's armories are recorded as using firebombs, fire guns, fire arrows, fire seeds, which were probably incendiary grenades, large and small fire lances, large and small commander fire tubes, large and small iron bombs, and rockets, in addition to the metal and stone shots fired from the main cannons. Perhaps the most intriguingly named weapon from the Battle of Poyang, though, must be the No Alternative. It was a device that was, quote, made from a circular reed mat about five inches around and seven feet long that was pasted over with red paper and bound together with silk and hemp. Stuffed inside it was gunpowder twisted in with bullets and all kinds of subsidiary gunpowder

weapons, end quote. It would be hung from the foremast of a ship, and then, when an enemy ship sailed underneath, the weapon's fuse was lit and it was dropped onto the opposing vessel's deck, where it would then detonate and, quote, burned everything to bits with no hope of salvation, end quote. It sounds basically like Satan's firecracker. The following morning would mark the beginning of what would become a four-day long running engagement all across the waters of Poyang. Upon surveying the enemy fleet's composition and deployment, Zhu Yuanzhang noted that the Han ships were chained together head to tail, a strategy good for general movement and ferrying since it reduced the rocking motion of the ships and thus seasickness, and it also prevented the

ships from breaking formation or even getting lost in the dark of night. But it was obviously unsuitable for actual battle, and such a constraint made it all but impossible for the crafts to independently maneuver, making them exceptionally vulnerable. Zhu decided, therefore, that in spite of his numerical inferiority, superior tactics could allow his fleet to seize victory. To that end, he ordered his generals to divide the Ming flotilla into a number of squadrons, though sources are unclear whether that was 11 or 20, but in any case, then advance against the Han armada. Their weapons, he instructed, were to be used in the following sequence, quote, get close to the enemy ships and first set off gunpowder weapons, then bows and crossbows,

and finally attack their ships with short-range weapons, end quote. Wang Jiaochun writes of the strategic value of this early form of gunnery, quote, The decisive battle of Poyang Lake is the first war in Chinese history in which guns, which is to say early shipboard guns, were used in water warfare. This battle employed three methods, first using, at long distance, cannons to attack the enemy fleet and smash and burn the enemy's vessels, destroying and decreasing their combat effectiveness and mobility. Second, using arrows Such tactics were wholly unlike the naval warfare methods of the Song period and prior, and Wang marks them as the inauguration of a new era of sea-based warfare. Still, Andrade points out that perhaps Wang was getting a little bit ahead of himself

with that whole new era talk. Though the wide use of fire weapons was indeed a shift in tactics, the Chinese language surrounding the weapons of this period is frustratingly non-specific. The term huopao applied both to new types of cannonry, but also to the old-fashioned firebombs fired from catapults, as had been the case during the Song. Indeed, Andrade posits that it was likely to have been far more of the latter than the former employed on the waters of Poyang. Quote, This shouldn't surprise us. It's a pattern in the history of technology that new inventions

don't completely displace old ones. During the early Ming, older gunpowder weapons remained in use alongside guns. Military manuals discuss an enormous range of such weapons. Fire lances that shot out poison gases or caltrops, gunpowder arrows and crossbow bolts, exploding rockets, and bombs and grenades that would make Lucifer himself proud, such as arrow and shrapnel bombs, watermelon bombs, which shot out hooks and caltrops, one-mother-and-fourteen-children bombs, and so on, end quote. In fact, it wouldn't be the newfangled guns at all that carried the Battle of Poyang Lake, but rather a far older and more primal form of warfare, fire. By the end of the first day of the battle, the Ming commanders had, in spite of inflicting

heavy damage on the enemy fleet and destroying over a score of them, lost much of their fighting resolve. The larger Han capital vessels seemed to them like mountains towering over their own smaller craft, daunting and nigh indestructible. Late in the day, the Han fleet wound up driving into the center of the Ming fleet and pushing them back by the day's end. The engagement was finally called off late that evening when the Ming fleet retreated into the shallows of the lake where the larger, deeper keels of the Han fleet couldn't follow, though they themselves lost several of their own ships in the process when they ran aground. That night, Zhu ordered his general, Xu Da, to take the most heavily damaged of their ships that were no longer battle-worthy and make back for Nanjing to begin repairs. By dawn of the third day, as battle was set to resume,

it was clear that dissent had begun to ripple ominously through the command staff. Some advised Yu Yuen-Zhang to quit the lake entirely and retreat back to their defensive position at Hukou. Yu Yuen-Zhang acted decisively, and when ten of his commanders refused to carry out the attack as he ordered, he had them publicly executed as an object lesson to the rest. This was not a debate club. You do as you're told. The remaining officer corps got the message loud and clear, and pressed the attack, but with little to show for it. The larger and more numerous Han ships were able to drive the Ming formations back once again, and at great cost. At last, one of Zhu's lieutenants suggested the oldest trick in the book.

From the Ming veritable records, Zhu Yuanzhang ordered that seven boats be prepared, loaded with reed and prepared with gunpowder. Men shaped bundles of straw were dressed up in armor and helmets and posted, each holding lances as though fighting the enemy. He ordered that men unafraid of death be found to man them and that fast warships follow behind to press the enemy vessels, end quote. That's right, ripped straight out of the pages of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and the Battle of Red Cliffs, the Ming were going to employ kamikaze fireboat attacks. The conditions were, after all, uncannily similar to those of 1400 years ago. Much like the ancient fleet of Cao Cao, Chen Yuliang had strung his great ships together end

to end, meaning that they were dangerously close to one another and couldn't possibly pull away or move out of the way of poorly directed fire ships. Quote, when, during the afternoon, the wind shifted and blew the Ming toward the Han, these boats, manned by specially chosen dare-to-die crews, were sailed into the closely-mast Han fleet and ignited. The tight Han array had maximized the effectiveness of the large Han warships in the close-and-board battles of the prior days, but left them correspondingly vulnerable to fireship attack. End quote.

As the wind continued to pick up over the lake, it fanned the flames which soon engulfed the helpless Han fleet, which would reportedly lose in the course of the attack several hundred of their ships and some 60,000 of their soldiers to the flames, the follow-up Ming attack, and the lake depths. It wasn't a complete sweep for the Ming, though. They reportedly lost some 7,000 men of their own, but the game-changing efficacy of the surprise attack was undeniable, and even Chen Youliang himself experienced direct loss when two of his brothers were reported as being among the dead. The two fleets pulled back again and spent the next several days making repairs and

recuperating. When combat resumed on September 2nd, though the Han fleet still retained its numerical edge over the Ming, it was evident to all that it was now a far narrower margin. Chen Youyang and his commanders had learned from the fireship disaster this time, and obviously unwilling to risk a second such fiasco, had opened up their fleet's deployment as proof against another such attack. That meant, however, that the Ming strategy of attempting to swarm the large Han capital ships with dozens of their smaller vessels from every side, you know, the very reason that the Han ships had bunched together in the first place, was now all the more effective. Even so, it became clear to the Ming commanders that this sort of attritional warfare would be unlikely to result in a decisive outcome, or at least, outnumbered as they still were,

not a decisive outcome in their favor. By now, Zhu Yuanzhang had arrived at a similar conclusion, and was convinced that the time had come to make his withdrawal from Lake Poyang. This decision was likely helped along by reports coming to Zhu that his general, Hu Deqi, and his overland force had finally arrived at Nanchang and relieved its harried defenders from the ongoing siege. As evening approached, the Ming fleet was given the order to pull back towards Hukou and the static defenses on both of its banks. This would effectively trap the Han fleet within the lake waters. In the night's darkness, the Han armada could but watch as their enemy, with lanterns mounted on the stern of each ship, sailed in a long single-file line back toward the mouth

of the lake. It was only in the light of the morning that followed that they could finally make after them. But it was too late. The Ming fleet had effectively bottled them up in the lake. It was only in the light of the morning that followed that they could finally make after them. But it was too late. The Ming fleet had effectively bottled them up in the lake, with little hope of escape. For much of the following month, the standoff ensued. Zhu Yuanzhang was happy enough to hold his position at the lake mouth and wait for the Han forces' provisions to run out, though some of his officers continued to grumble about wanting to return to Nanjing, but by now they could be safely ignored. Meanwhile, Chen Youyang and his commanders were locked in a debate about what they should do to break themselves out of this increasingly desperate situation.

Some advised trying to force the Ming position at Hukou, relying on their superior numbers. Others advocated landing the fleet elsewhere on the lakeshore and abandoning it, thereafter marching overland back to Wuchang City, now part of Wuhan, on the far side of the Ming blockade upriver. Ultimately, the decision was made to adopt the former position, and on October 30th, the Han Armada stormed through a gap by the southern shore of the lake mouth, intent on breaking through back to the Yangtze proper and back to the safety of Wuchang, come hell or high water. Of course, though, it was a trap.

Again, from Dreyer, quote, End quote. All throughout that afternoon, the Ming formations caught up with and engaged the scattered and disordered Han ships one after the next, with both fleets drifting in the currents as far downstream as Jinjiangkou, where additional Ming elements stationed there joined the already running battle. It was at this stage of the already desperate battle that the death blow came for both Chen Yuliang himself, and with him, the state of Han overall.

While crossing in a small boat from one of his ships to another, Ming arrow fire rained down on his position, with one of the projectiles striking home directly through his eye socket, killing him instantly. In short order, word of their emperor's death had spread among both fleets, fanning the flames of victory within the Ming soldiers, while sparking panic and despair throughout the Han ranks. That night, the last gasp of their morale gave out. Chen Youliang's young son, Chen Li, was spirited away under cover of darkness back to Wuchang, where he would be abortively declared the second emperor of Han. Within the army's ranks, though, those who could now fled. And as for those who hadn't managed to evaporate by the following morning, the fight had gone out of them completely.

Some 50,000 Han soldiers surrendered then and there to Zhu Yuanzhang. Victorious, on October 8th, the Ming fleet and its captive ships and soldiers made their way back to Nanjing. The ramifications of the Battle of Lake Poyang are almost impossible to overstate. Prior to the battle, Zhu Yuanzhang's state of Ming had been not only the smallest of the three main southern powers, but also the peanut butter squeezed between the two slices of bread on either side. Committing to too much of a fight against either Wu to the east or Han to the west risked the opposite party pressing their own advantage on Ming's suddenly exposed flank. Now, though, with this one decisive outcome,

Ming had solved both of those existential problems at once. Though Chunsun was proclaimed Emperor of Han, his would be a reign in name only, and one swiftly ended by the state's incorporation into Ming. With no effective leadership and totally broken morale, Jiangxi, Hunan, and Hubei would all be swiftly taken over by Zhu Yuanzhang's armies, thus tripling the size of his own population in a stroke, which could then be turned against his only remaining enemy of consequence, south of the Yangtze, the suddenly vastly outgunned and outmanned Zhang Shicheng of Wu. At the same time, the victory was of great benefit to Zhu Yuanzhang's personal command

over the state. For several years prior, he'd been facing down successive crises of his own leadership. Poor battlefield decisions, limited intelligence, and the distrust and resentment of even his own officers had caused many to begin to question the 35-year-old's efficacy as an actual leader, even leading some to outright rebel against his authority. That was now all a thing of the past. Quote, some among the literati were still reluctant to serve him, and the soldiers still clung to their warm regard for Hanlin R, but both groups could now see Zhu Yuanzhang as the likely future emperor. September 1363 was the last time Ming officers attempted to defy Zhu Yuanzhang's wishes. Afterward, his enhanced prestige and his power to distribute captured

troops and to assign commands in captured territories, among other factors, allowed him to bend his generals to his will. That's where we're going to leave off for today. The outcome of Lake Poyang established Zhu Yuanzhang's Ming state as, almost out of the blue, the clear successor to the crumbling edifice of the rapidly disintegrating Yuan regime. It marked not only one of the largest naval engagements in world history, but was in many regards the one climactic showdown of the entire Ming-Yuan conflict. Even so, several years of fierce fighting still remain before Zhu Yuanzhang, before he can lay claim to the Dragon Throne in anything but pretense.

And next time, as the broken hulls, spent gunpowder, and spilled blood course their way down the Yangtze, Zhu Yuanzhang will consolidate his game-changing gains, and then turn to deal once and for all with Zhang Xicheng before laying claim to the realm entire. Thanks for listening. The French Revolution set Europe ablaze. It was an age of enlightenment and progress, but also of tyranny and oppression. It was an age of glory and an age of tragedy. One man stood above it all. This was the Age of Napoleon. I'm Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast. Join me as I examine the life and times of one of the most fascinating and enigmatic characters in modern history.

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