The History of China - #201 - Ming 1: Overflowing Martial Accomplishment

Episode Date: October 6, 2020

How does a peasant, orphan, son of a farmer in the Black Death, made a monk in the middle of a forgotten spot In central Anhui by providence impoverished In squalor, grow up to be a rebel hero, then a monarch? Time Period Covered: 1364-1368 CE Major Historical Figures: Ming: Zhu Yuanzhang (Hongwu Emperor) [r. 1368-1398] General Xu Da [1332-1385] General Chang Yuchun [1330-1369] Commander Li Wenzhong [1338-1384] Yuan: Emperor Toghon Temür [r. 1333-1368, 1368-1370] Crown Prince Ayushiridara [1340-1378] General Chaghan Temür [d. 1362] General Köke Temür [1330-1375] General Bolod Temür [d. 1364] Wu: Zhang Shicheng (King of Dazhou) [r. 1354-1367] General Li Bosheng Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. TD Direct Investing offers live support. So whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to the History of China. Episode 201, Ming-1, Overflowing Martial Accomplishment

We last left off in the unraveling of the Yuan world order with the true sea change moment in the south, the cataclysmic battle of Lake Poyang, and the downfall of the self-proclaimed Emperor of Han, Chen Youliang, to the rising might of Zhu Yuanzhang's Ming state. And so that's exactly where we'll pick up again today, as the fight for China's future barrels onwards towards its climactic conclusion. As we'll see today, though the outcome at Poyang wasn't in itself enough to wrest control of the empire away from its teetering Mongol overlords in the north, it certainly put Zhu and the Ming in a nearly unassailable position in the south and brought their latent imperial ambitions to the forefront.

Much of the two years immediately following Poyang, 1364 and 1365, consisted of Zhu Yuanzhang shoring up his vast gains over the former Han territories and possessions. The siege of Wutang, the modern urban core of Wuhan City, for instance, would begin in late October of 1364, and last for almost five months before the enemy capital at last capitulated the following March. This major take was quickly followed by the immediate and quote-unquote voluntary declarations of surrender of all the subordinate Han strongholds across Hubei and Hunan. Beginning on the Ides of May, the long

stalled-out siege of Luzhou in southeast Sichuan was resumed and lasted until mid-August before it too was taken and occupied. As the city prepared to surrender, one of its defending commanders, Zhuozhunbi, was able to make good an escape from the city and flee north into the territories controlled by the Yuan loyalist, Kokatemur, bringing with him, of course, news of the fall of Han and the rising dominance of the Ming in its stead. The capture of these two key urban centers, Wuchang and Luzhou, was of pivotal import because, in the words of Edward L. Dreyer, it was, quote, an essential preliminary to the next stage, that of actual military occupation of already surrendered or wavering cities in Jiangxi and Huguang, end quote. Now just to take a quick moment to clarify what the heck Huguang is, you won't find it on any modern map of China, as since the 14th

century it has been repartitioned quite a few times. As of today, it's an enormous slice of the south, essentially all of Hubei south of the Yangtze River, Hunan, Guizhou, and Guangxi, including Hainan Island. So, into Huguang is sent none other than the Ming top-tier general, Xu Da, and his army. This was a careful and very delicate choice, as it was known far and wide that General Xu ran an exceptionally tight ship in terms of keeping strict control over his troops and their conduct. His purpose, therefore, was not to go in cannons a-blazing, but instead essentially politely knock at the city gates of the south and ask to be let in, while promising that all of its troops would be on their very best behavior the whole time. Only someone with Shudah's reputation and sterling record of command

would possibly have been believed, and it was, needless to say, of paramount importance that absolutely everyone in the army was aware of and on board with the program. No stealing, no looting, no murder, no rape, because gentlemen, all it's going to take is one, one of you, screwing around and getting frisky with the locals in even one of these cities, and the whole south is going to fall into hard resistance against us all. Seemingly, against all odds, somehow or another, Xu Da and his corps of very good boys was able to pull it off. From Dreyer, quote, In late October of 1364, Xu's army was admitted to Jiangling, Yiling, and Changsha without incident. Most of the Han commanders and aboriginal chieftains opened their gates without resistance after that,

and Xu Da was able, on his return to Nanjing in April of 1365, to report Huguang as pacified. The push to likewise pacify the Jiangxi region, meanwhile, was to be headed by General Chang Yuchen. He proceeded first to Nanchang, where he and his army were joined by further contingents of troops and officers, all toward a singular objective, the conquest of central and southern Jiangxi. The local leaders of central Jiangxi had nominally submitted to Zhu Yuanzhang's authority as of 1361, but since then hadn't raised so much as a little finger to help in his efforts thereafter, meaning that they would require a little bit of a reminder of just what submission was supposed to mean. Meanwhile, the local and aboriginal warlords of the extreme south had,

as it turned out, never actually surrendered at all to the Ming power, even nominally. One of these local warlords with pretensions of a more regional power base was Xiong Qianrei of Ganzhou, which sits right on the triple border of modern Jiangxi, Fujian, and Guangdong, who had been a Han vassal, albeit in name only. He had never really been under Han control, but had been using his continued attachment to Han as a pretext for attacking other city commanders who'd submitted to the Ming as of 1361. Thus, while the main Ming-Han war had played itself out, he, quote, had extended his control from southern Jiangxi into northern Guangdong. He now resisted the Ming stoutly, and Ganzhou did not fall until February 1365.

Chang Yuchen occupied the city without bloodshed and disorder, much to Zhu Yuanzhang's amazement. With the Southlands thus secured, by April 23rd, 1365, Zhu and both of his victorious commanders, Xu Da and Chang Yuchen, had arrived back in Nanjing and begun preparations for the next phase of their master plan. This involved now pressing northward, first seizing and occupying key cities in the central Han River Valley, such as Anlu and Xiangyang. The reason for this was to provide a power base along the Han River,

such that Ming forces could begin directly interacting and coordinating with fellow enemies of the most powerful of the UN commanders of the North, who else? Koka Temur. And bad as he surely must have wanted to, the situation in the North, as we'll get to more in a bit, was so fractious by this point that Koka couldn't possibly have hoped to cobble together enough of a force to substantively oppose Ming northward expansion into the Han Valley. Now he could only sit by and, in effect, do nothing but watch it happen.

By late that summer, essentially all major areas and hotspots within the former territories of Han had been subdued and occupied, and their respective military forces integrated within the Ming command structure and reassigned to new posts. The former city garrisons, one and all, had been relieved by seasoned and reliable Ming troops, and instead sent off to join the reserves from which future expeditionary armies would be formed. Interestingly, it's this reshuffling and amalgamation of the now-combined Han-Ming military command structure that would necessitate a rather drastic reform in the nature of how that reformed military would organize, and yes, even count

itself. Again from Dreyer, quote, Military units were composed of subunits loyal to their immediate leaders. Unit sizes and nomenclatures were not standardized, and higher commanders could not easily interfere in the administration of their subunits. End quote. Remember that it was actually this very sort of semi-independent subunit military culture that had allowed Zhu Yuanzhang to break into a command of his own in the first place. But, like so much else that had propelled him towards greatness, the system that had allowed him to stand out as a young officer now held the potential to hold back or even actively undermine his authority over this rapidly growing Ming military machine. After all, if an orphan peasant turned mendicant monk from

Anhui could do it, I mean, what was there to stop anyone else from doing the same thing? Well, him, that's what. The Ming armies would therefore be reorganized into a much more centralized, controllable fashion than the old, more independent, free-company style of the Red Turbans, into a military organization that would much more heavily mirror the organization of the Yuan armies. The various wing commander headquarters, or yi yuan shuai fu, were redesignated as guard corps, wei, and for the first time, stipulated a given troop strength at 5,000 soldiers each, which is, I'm sure you remember from the history of Rome, approximately equal to that of an old Roman legion. Each guard corps was thereafter subdivided into five battalions, qian hushou, of 1,000, which was in turn divided into ten companies, bo hushou, of 100 soldiers.

Field units smaller than 5,000 were thereafter redesignated as independent battalions, shouyu, of 1,000 men in ten companies. A new series of rank designations for officers was introduced, of 1,000 men in 10 companies. A new series of rank designations for officers was introduced, keyed to the new organization. Unit commanders then had to submit to having their men counted, giving up their old ranks and titles and receiving new ranks according to the number of men they commanded. Another significant trade-off of this centralizing reorganization

was that in exchange for his commanders submitting to this new order, Zhu Yuanzhang was for the first time willing to confirm his officers in their new positions on a hereditary basis. Quote, to the approval of the prince, thereby regularizing a long-standing practice that, like the decimal units of the guards, had been the norm in the UN military organization, end quote. So both of these are striking examples of instances where the nascent Ming state is taking ideas wholesale from the Mongol military command structure that worked well, and then were willing to directly apply them to their own Chinese-style military.

This is no small deal. After all, hereditary titles, especially military ones, had been at least officially a non-entity since the end of the Zhou Dynasty a millennium and a half prior. In that whole period between then and now, at least on paper, an office was given solely at the pleasure of the throne, and was absolutely not inheritable. Now it was, and so it would remain throughout the the pleasure of the throne, and was absolutely not inheritable. Now, it was, and so it would remain throughout the entire lifespan of the Ming, with consequences both good and bad. This reorganization likewise allowed for a period of troop and command redistribution, even among those armies that had served Zhu Yanjiang's forces the longest.

In their case, they were typically rewarded for their legal service with increased rank and commands. The soldiers longest in Ming service, the main body Zhu Yuan Zhang had led in person from 1360 to 1363, was divided into 17 guards. Older men in the group were allowed to retire completely, while the rest went into garrison duty, cultivating military farmlands in the Nanjing area. Soldiers in similarly good standing, but with shorter service records within the Ming command structure, were now dispatched to garrison the cities throughout Hunan, Hubei, and Jiangxi, as well as serving as the veteran corps of the regional field armies based in Nanchang and Wuchang. Those new recruits and newly submitted ex-Han soldiers, meanwhile, were brought back to the capital, had their old units dissolved, and were then interspersed among the rank and file of the

remaining Ming veterans that would form the basis of the expeditionary forces later used against Wu, and ultimately Yuan. And as for the glorious leader himself, Zhu Yuanzhang, he would thenceforth retire from active military command and thereafter remain ensconced within the Nanjing Palace, adopting a traditionally imperial posture. With Han thus swallowed and digested, Ming turned next to its other major southern rival, Zhang Zhecheng's state of Wu to the east along the seacoast. This was a process that would last just two years, from 1365 to 1367, and is summarized as being, quote, a straightforward sequence of operations beginning in the outlying regions of Wu and culminating in the successful siege of Suzhou, end quote. By the time Zhu Yuanzhang had turned his attention to Zhang, there was precious little the sovereign of Wu could have hoped to do to

stave off his inevitable doom, save perhaps some sort of all-out offensive that might have managed to take the Ming by surprise. But that would not prove to be forthcoming. That certainly hadn't stopped him from trying, of course. In November of 1364, the Wu armies attempted to capture the city of Changxing from the Ming, but were driven off with heavy losses after a month of fighting by a relief force arriving from the nearby Changzhou. In March of the following year, a Wu army of 200,000 under the command of General Li Boshen marched on Juchuan in Zhejiang and proceeded to besiege the recently constructed fortress city of Xincheng. This assault was countered by the Ming commander, Li Wanzhong, who would personally break the

Wu lines with a cavalry charge into their ranks on the field. As the broken Wu army retreated past the gates of Xincheng Fortress, the garrison within launched a sortie of its own, turning the Wu soldiers' flight into a full-on bloody rout and marking a decisive end to Wu offensive attempts. It was now time for the Ming to go on the offensive. The command staff agreed to a strategy that they referred to as clipping the wings of Wu,

meaning, in essence, that they would dismantle the state from the outside in, beginning along its peripheral holdings north of the Yangtze, followed by the Wu-controlled regions of Zhejiang to the south, and only then striking at its heart, the capital Suzhou. General Xu Da was tapped once again to lead the initial strike. He and his army marched forth in December of 1365, first taking Taizhou, Jiangsu, and then using the indomitable Ming fleet to continue moving north along the Grand Canal, reaching Gaoyu by late April 1366 and swiftly capturing it. Continuing

north from there, Xu Dao was able to surprise and destroy one of the main fleets of Wu commanded by Xu Yi, leading to the capitulation of the commandant of Huayan without a fight, followed shortly thereafter by those of Haozhou, Suzhou, which is a different Suzhou than the capital, and Shuzhou. Xu Da then pressed his advantage westward, capturing Anfeng on May 29th. When news of this reached the Yuan High Command, it was ordered that Kogatemer dispatch his army to push Xu Da back. This, however, would prove to be impossible, not because of some great battlefield victory or stratagem by the Ming commander, but instead because Kogatemer simply couldn't wrangle enough of his predecessor Chagantemer's erstwhile subordinates to get with the program and quit

bickering long enough to drive off the southerners. Dreyer puts it, quote, The post-rebellion class of Yuan quote-unquote loyalists all remained blind to the growth of the Ming power that would soon destroy them, and so failed to operate in their own defense, end quote. With that, therefore, the campaign season of 1365-66 came to an end with the arrival of the farming season. As usual, the captured and surrendered Wu troops were shipped back to the Nanjing region to be absorbed and integrated into the burgeoning Ming force, while everyone else went home and got busy tilling and planting over the course of the summer. The campaign season picked back up again after the fall harvest,

and once more, Zhu Yuanzhang insisted on sticking with the clip-the-wing strategy they'd already agreed to. As such, phase two of the operation would be focused on the southern wing of Wu. A Ming army of 200,000 was dispatched, this time under the joint command of Xu Da and Chang Yuchun, to besiege Huzhou, while the Zhejiang army under Li Wenzhong set up a blockade of Hangzhou. Huzhou at last capitulated on December 8th, 1366, which led to the commandant of Hangzhou to see the light and surrender just a week later. Both of the bird wings had been clipped, and as such, it was time for the arrow to the heart. The Ming armies marched directly for the Wu capital at Suzhou, and by December 27th,

the city was fully encircled and invested by Ming besiegers. But if Zhu Yuanzhang and his Ming commanders might have guessed that the end would come swiftly for Zhang Xicheng or his pretensions to the kingdom of Wu, they would have been wrong. Though not typically thought of as one of the great fortress cities of the south, the walls of Suzhou had been robustly rebuilt, and it was, by 1366, a truly hardened target. Moreover, as the capital of Wu, there was no great out for its lord, Zhang Xiecheng. He was fighting for his very life, or at least assumed he was, and quite understandably planned to do so with every ounce of his strength and to the bitter end. As such, the siege of Suzhou would drag on for more

than ten long, grinding months of misery. When diplomatic legations promising peaceful conduct and fair treatment for the Lord of Wu were rebuffed, in spite of the Ming forces until now having in every instance remained true to their word when it was promised, it was time to bring forth the hurt. Nine separate forces were tasked, each with the blockade of a specific segment of the city's walls, such that the pressure would be constant and from all sides simultaneously. Earthworks were constructed, an almost Julius Caesar-like tactic of building a secondary wall around the outside of the defensive inner wall to prevent any escape, such as at the Battle of Alesia. Next came the battle platforms atop the earthworks, and on them catapults and other siege

machines, used to hurl all sorts of goodies into the city, with a particular emphasis apparently being placed on severed heads and rotting corpses, but also, of course, accompanied by constant salvos of flaming arrows and incendiary rockets, while, quote, At last, after ten months of this misery, the walls of Suzhou were finally breached, and the Ming armies stormed into the city. Zhang Xicheng, who until this point had been personally at the walls and leading attempted

sorties against the besiegers, was now forced to fall back to the inner sanctum of his palace as it was surrounded and battered by the invaders. With little time left, he slipped the noose around his neck and attempted to hang himself rather than be taken captive. As he dangled, though, Ming troops burst into the quarters and immediately cut him down, taking him alive. Dragged back to Nanjing and chains, Zhang steadfastly refused to submit to Zhu Yuanzhang or even so much as eat the food given to him. And in the end, he apparently did succeed in finding a way to end his own life, surely much to the chagrin of Zhu Yuanzhang, who, in typical imperial manner, desired above all a formal submission from his defeated

foe, not merely his death. In spite of this minor setback in style and form, the conquest of Wu had otherwise gone off virtually without a hitch. Suzhou was added to Ming as a huge source of wealth for the burgeoning imperial power, and Zhu Yuanzhang was sure to tax the region at an especially high rate, reflecting his lingering disdain for the intransigence of its gentry. Of an even more immediate benefit, though, was that with the acquisition of Zhang Xicheng's territories came to his armies, which would add another quarter million troops to the Ming forces as they prepared now to turn north in truth and faced off against the Yuan directly. 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 10 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. So let us take this opportunity to take our leave for now of Nanjing and Zhizhu Yuanzhang, and sweep north to assess the state of North China on the eve of the Ming Conquest. It was, as we've noted now quite a few times, something of a hot mess. To even call it a united Yuan empire anymore by this point would be to strain the word well past the point of meaninglessness.

Oh sure, the regional warlord, I mean commanders, all nominally claimed to be loyal to the throne at Dadu and the emperor who sat it, Togon Temur. At least that was until he actually tried to tell them to do something they didn't already want to do. But even by the 1350s, North China resembled little more than a series of bickering warlord states than anything like a united front against southern aggression, which in any event, as we've also noted, they didn't take as a serious threat regardless. By the dawn of the 1360s, the only Yuan warlord who seemed even remotely capable of seizing enough power and authority to unite the fractious Mongol forces enough to deal with the looming Ming threat was Chagantemur, who had carved out his own rather massive state-within-a-state in Henan

and had even captured the former imperial capital at Kaifeng. Alas, on July 7th, 1362, while besieging the city of Yidu in Shandong, he was assassinated by two recently surrendered subordinates, one an ex-Red Turban leader and the other a former Yuan general. Quote, the murderer cited Chagan's hypocrisy, in that he was actually concerned only with his own regional power, despite his pretended devotion to the Yuan, as justification for their act. End quote. It's with no small measure of historical irony, therefore, that we can look at Chaggan Temur's murder as perhaps the single event that sounded the death knell for reunification of North China and any hope of

effectively fighting back against the rising might of Ming when it came a-knockin'. With his death, Chaggan's command fell to his nephew, the half-Mongol, half-Chinese, Kokatamer, known prior to his being bestowed with a proper Mongol name by the Khayan himself by his Chinese name, Wang Baobao. In spite of inheriting his uncle's ranks and titles, Kokatamer was certainly no Chaghan, not on the battlefield and certainly not in the esteem of other Mongol generals. Many, if not most, of Chaghan's hard-won allies and subordinates simply refused to acknowledge the command of the young, relatively inexperienced, and half-breed Koka Temur, a pattern of indiscipline and insubordination that Koka would be fighting against within his own ranks, and it should be

well-noted not-at-all-winning, all the way up until the Ming invasion in 1367. To the Yuan commanders, there simply was no larger threat or issue than their own regional and factional struggles. Dreyer puts it, quote, In general, contemporaries throughout China had failed to grasp the significance of the rise in Ming power since 1363. In all of China's imperial and pre-imperial history, the South had never conquered and rarely invaded the North, and one is left with the strong impression that after the collapse of the Red Turban Movement, a certain complacency had come over the northern warlords. End quote.

Hmm. A powerful but fractured and divided state remaining willfully blind to a clear and present danger and simply refusing to acknowledge it whatsoever until it's beating down the gates and storming the palace, why does that sound familiar? It must be nothing. After all, there is no war in Ba Sing Se. In May 1364, one of these would-be underlings, Bolod Temur, seized control of the imperial capital itself, in part as a reaction to an attempt by the crown prince, Ayashiriridara to take command of Bolad's army. This resulted in the crown prince fleeing Dadu and making for Kokatemur's camp to seek safety. By August of 1365, in one of his rare moments of apparently actually giving a crap, Emperor Tolgontemur managed to arrange for the assassination of Bolad Temur, and then granted Kokotemur overall command of the northern armies,

now at last with orders to suppress the southern rebels. This attempt to force national unity via imperial fiat, however, rather spectacularly backfired, because of course it did. Quote, Bolod's former supporters in Shanxi and Shanxi joined forces with Li Siqi and other of Chagan's old companions, It seems that for all of his tail-chasing and erotic rituals with his demon dancing girls, Emperor Togontemur actually had his fingers somewhat on the pulse of the empire, at least enough to realize more than any of his nominal subordinates that the threat from the south was real and it was serious. He'd been apprised, after all, that all of the grain shipments from the south to the north had been permanently cut off as a result of the

Ming conquests, so this was clearly no trifling rebellion. The emperor, therefore, ordered Kokutemur to set aside his own little regional dispute with his UN commanders and focus, damn it, focus on defeating the Ming before they turned their armies northward against us all. This was, to the surprise of no one, except Tokantemer probably, utterly ignored by Kokotemer, who was like, uh, no, I'm not just going to ignore my own regional problems and insubordinate officers, like, do you even know how militaries function, or, far more importantly at this moment, don't function? Well, that level of disrespect certainly wasn't going to fly with Togentemur, who in February of 1368 played his trump card of aiming an arquebus directly at his own foot and pulling the trigger.

He fired Cocotemur, and further, ordered all of his other northern warlords to crush him militarily, an order that, again, spectacularly backfired when Koka's forces beat all of the other Yuan warlords sent against him and remained the preeminent military power in the north, only now with a decided grudge against Togon Temur. All of this, just in time for the newly declared Imperial Ming armies to come storming over the nearest ridge and end the whole farce once and for all. Alright, so that's the situation in the clown car that is the Imperial Remnant. Anyways, back to the Ming. While all of that was happening up north, back down south, Zhu Yuanzhang was having no such problem with his command staff. Instead, he issued formal

orders on November 13, 1367, commanding a northward expedition of 250,000 soldiers to be led by, who else, the generals Xu Da and Chang Yuchun. Concurrently, a secondary invasion force commanded by Hu Mei would be launched against the southern coastal kingdom of Fujian under the command of Fang Guozhen, who had been deemed treacherous after failing to surrender to Ming as per his earlier agreement following the fall of Hangzhou. All the while, the Ming fleet would sail south down the eastern coast, attacking first Fujian and then Guangdong from the sea. Chang Yuchen, with the typical brashness and bravado that he was famous, and at times infamous, for, proposed an immediate attack directly against the imperial Yuan capital Dadu,

which he bragged would be as easy as splitting bamboo, and that the Ming armies would sweep aside any Yuan resistance. Zhu Yuanzhang, ever the cautious commander, vetoed this strategy as overly risky. He'd achieved his flawless victory over Wu not by striking at the bird's heart at the start, but first by carefully clipping its wings, and he intended to do that yet again. This time, it would be a four-stage operation to remove any possibility of threat from the northern regime before taking Dadu itself. First, the conquest of Shandong, followed by Henan, which included the vital Dongguan Pass into Shanxi. Thirdly,

it would be the outlying capital regions surrounding Dadu, cutting off the capital from any outside aid. And finally, the Shanxi and Shanxi regions. In hindsight, such a cautious strategy may have actually worked against the long-term interests of Zhu Yuanzhang and the Ming, as it would turn out that the brash braggadocio of Chang Yuchen was pretty much spot on. Yuan was on the chopping block and proved to be as easy to slice as spring bamboo. But by clipping the wings before striking the heart, the Ming army systematically defeated Koka Temur's rivals, thereby leaving the Yuan emperor with no choice but to leap back into Koka's protection and giving the warlord the precious time he needed to pack up the imperial family

and, with much of his army still intact, ultimately flee back into the wilds of Mongolia to fight on another day. But of course, hindsight is 20-20, and no one could have known that for certain beforehand. The first victory of the Ming northern expedition took place on December 28, 1367, at Jinan in Shandong, which would then serve as the army's first forward base in reducing the resistance across the eastern peninsula over the course of the following two months. The southern expedition found similarly easy pickings. Hu Mei's army captured the Fujianese city of Xiaowu on December 28th, while the Ming fleet arrived at Fuzhou on January 18th, 1868,

and captured it in short order before sailing up the Min River to receive the commandant Zhen Yuting's formal surrender that February 17th. While all this was going on, back down south in Nanjing, Zhu Yuanzhang had decided that the time was right to make things official. By which I mean, of course, that he would officially take the Yellow. He was formally acclaimed and enthroned at the Ming Imperial Palace on the fourth day of the Lunar New Year, January 23rd, 1368. This, as per tradition as old as the Imperial Office itself, was marked by a formal change in the calendar, and it was thus designated that 1368 be marked as the first year of the Hongwu Era, the era of overflowing martial accomplishment, which by this point pretty much no one could argue with, and subsequently

would be the name that Zhu Yuanzhang would be most commonly known by in the historical annals ever after, the Hongwu Emperor. Back at the warfronts, the splitting of bamboo continued apace. The great southern port of Guangdong surrendered to the Ming fleet on April 18th, when Hezhen, the Yuan governor who had held the city in the name of Dadu for over a decade, promptly raised the white flag without fight or fuss when the Ming ships entered his harbor. They then proceeded to sail up the Xi River and secured the garrison at Wuzhou on May 26th with minimal complications. To the north, the reduction of Shandong was completed by March 1st.

Henan was up next, and its seat at Kaifeng was surrounded from three sides and seized as of April 16th. Nine days later, Kokutemra's army directly faced off against a portion of the Ming expedition, and it was soundly defeated on the field, prompting him to withdraw and leave Luoyang to fall into Ming hands unopposed. By May 13th, the second phase of the northern invasion had come to a successful close with Fengsheng's capture of Dongguan Pass, clearing the way into the two Shanxis. But it was once again planting season, and so, as per usual, the war was put on pause while the crops were tended. In the course of this seasonal lull, Hongwu made his way north to Kaifeng,

where he conferred once again with his generals about the course of the war. Once duly apprised, the emperor left back for the south, apparently quite satisfied with the news thus far, about the course of the war. Once duly apprised, the emperor left back for the south, apparently quite satisfied with the news thus far, so much so that he ordered no changes whatsoever to be made to the earlier strategic plans. Far more curiously, the Yuan force, scattered, backbiting, and uncoordinated though it was, lost out on any potential chance it might have had to gain back some level of momentum by striking back while the Ming troops were home planting. Instead, the agricultural season passed with neither side moving against the other,

and it was only with the autumnal harvest that the grinding gears of war once again cranked back to life. In August, the Ming armies crossed the Yellow River and proceeded to surround the Yun imperial capital. Here, we have the chance to look at an amusing story that comes to us from the 17th century Mongolian historian and scholar Sagan Setsin, author of the Kadun Undusudun U Erendi-in Tobchi, or the Bejeweled Summary of the Origin of the Khans. According to the Mongol side of the story, the great capital of Dadu was not taken through force of arms, but through devious trickery played on them by the treacherous Chinese. The story begins with a caravan of Kazakh carts appearing before the walls of the Forbidden City at the heart of the capital.

When their identity was demanded by the gatekeeper, the caravan driver is said to have responded, According to the command of the Khan, the lord of the masses, I have brought the tribute, levying carefully. Continuing the story, armor, and the final three myriads of wagons, kinds of food and drink, he said. When he had unloaded the very first three myriads of wagons, in truth it was jewels and possessions. On the rear six myriad wagons there were troops fully outfitted with weapons, armor, and such things.

And with them, three great ox guns, cannons, covered in wax. End quote. Because that's as much of the story as I could actually get firsthand. But I will continue it anyway. So the Ming troops were secreted within the so-called food carts and hidden away for just the right moment. Their armor and weapons were laid out from the second three groups of carts on display, as if in tribute. These three giant candles were then brought out. When it was explained that they were brought forth and that

they were ceremonial candles to honor the Kion, and then to prove that they were really candles, the traders lit the wicks on top of them, and they started burning. And of course, as they started burning, the wax started to melt off of them, revealing, slowly but surely, that something was contained within each of these candle figurines. The Mongol guardsmen were first curious, and then amazed, and then finally started growing quite panicky as they realized just what surprise was hidden within these three waxen Trojan horses, and that their burning wicks were in fact burning fuses. With a resounding thundercrash, the three cannons fired off into the Imperial Palace near simultaneously, wreaking confusion and destruction, and also

serving as the prearranged signal that the Ming troops hidden within the wagons should spring forth, don the battle armor and weapons so carefully laid out for them, and then proceed to storm the palace. It was also, incidentally, the booming report of this cannonade that managed to rouse the sleeping Togon Temur and alert him that something was amiss, thereby allowing him and his family to barely escape capture by the enemy regiment as they pillaged the capital. It's a great story, and it's almost certainly a work of pure fiction, made by and for Mongols living once again in extreme poverty at the harshest edge of the world, explaining to one another how they'd gone from being herdsmen to world conquerors to emperors,

and now back to herdsmen all in the span of just a single century. It had to have been a trick. It just had to be. It couldn't have been some giant spinning set of mistakes, short-sightedness, and the natural entropy of empire once it stops conquering. The invincible Mongol Empire could not possibly have been felled by force of arms in a straight fight. No, that couldn't possibly have been it. It must have been sneaky cannons and wax and hidden soldiers. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, anyway, whether by hook, crook, or just good old-fashioned siege works, which, yeah, that's the correct answer, General Xu Da victoriously entered the conquered Yuan capital on September 20th, 1368, with all the pomp, circumstance, and his usual strictly enforced and observed discipline and care to preserve the city intact and unmolested. Emperor Togontemur, Crown Prince Ayur-Siridhara, Empress Qi, and at least

some of the imperial courts under the protection of the retreating forces of Kokotemur were able to barely make good their own escape from the capital as it fell, purportedly just barely able to sneak the imperial jade seal off with him as they fled, back north to the steps of Mongolia. The war was not yet over. Holdout Mongol forces still remained in pockets both large and small across the realm, north and south alike. And yet none could deny that this was a truly momentous, world-changing victory. The Sons of Han had, after more than a century of total capitulation to foreign domination and nearly 250 years of having lost control of the Northlands, at last retaken their homeland and put the northern barbarians to flight once and for all.

To mark this grand achievement, Hongwu ordered that the former Yuan capital be henceforth renamed. Dadu, after all, was no longer in any way appropriate, as it was no longer the Grand Capital. Instead, it would be redubbed Beiping, meaning the North has been pacified. It was, to be sure, more a statement of aspiration than of actual achievement, but, you know, let's not rain on this parade too much. Again, the wars were not yet over. Mongol strongholds and warlords clung fast across both Shanxi and Shanxi in the north, Gansu and Sichuan in the mid-empire, and fierce resistance would rage on from the non-Chinese sectors of the former Yuan empire, such as Yunnan, until as late as 1382. The far north would remain a pickle of an entirely

different flavor. Manchuria would ultimately submit to Ming authority, but not until much later, and in spite of their repeated strenuous attempts, Mongolia itself would never capitulate to the Ming regime, and its Borjigin Khans and Khatuns would continue to flout Chinese attempts to force a formal surrender from them for centuries to follow. But that is a tale for another episode. As Dreyer puts it, Despite the wars still to be fought, the main phase of the military unification was over,

and the Ming was in the anomalous position of having conquered China without having established a clear identity. It had emerged out of a rebel movement based on the Chinese secret society tradition and alien religious forms. In rebellion against the Yuan Empire, it had, to some extent, adopted the worldview of its hereditary and militaristic Mongol and Semu ruling class. Only later had it attempted to win over the literati and come to terms with the Confucian tradition. The tension between these three traditions would take time to resolve, end quote. Nevertheless, a win is a win, and Zhu Yuanzhang, the Hongwu emperor of the Ming dynasty, sits the throne in Nanjing, pondering how he shall now govern this

realm he's fought so long and so hard to win. That's where we'll leave him today. But next time, we're not just going to let the Yuan and the Borjigins off the hook and easily slip off into the cold, dark night of the north, because they're not quite done with their imperial pretensions just yet. Togon Temur and his family have escaped to Mongolia, and once there, we'll attempt to salvage whatever might be left of their imperial dignity and prestige by setting up the Northern Yuan, which will... Well, it's not going to go great.

Thanks for listening. Hey everyone, before letting you go, please make sure that you tune in to the Agora Podcast Network's feed because so, so many of us this month of October are putting in for the, gosh is it, third annual Agora-phobia event in which podcasters from all over the network submit their own spooky stories and read them. And it's fantastic. It's fun. It's eclectic. And I really, it's going to be great this year. We've got a lot of new podcasts in the network this year, and a lot of them have decided to pitch in.

So it's actually going all five weeks of October. The Agora feed is releasing a new episode of Agora Phobia with usually two or maybe even three readers per episode. I am there. I think I'm week four. So tune in. Once again, that is the Agora podcast feed. Spooky month of October event. Agora phobia all five weeks. Check it out.

See you, Space Cowboy. 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 pax.