The History of China - #248 - Ming 33: Dragon Head, Snake Tail

Episode Date: January 24, 2023

Ming China gets down and dirty with a Miao Rebellion the the Southwest, a Mongol(-ish) urprising in the Northwest, and a newly re-unified Japan gettin just a little too big for their britches in Korea. Time Period Covered: 1587-1600 CE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 247, Dragon Head, Snake Tail. During the past 15 years, the Emperor had sacrificed to heaven and earth, performed ritual motions of farming, and celebrated New Year's Day and the ferry boat festival that fell on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. He had sacrificed to imperial mausoleums and the family temple, and meticulously observed the birthdays and dates of death of all preceding emperors and empresses of the dynasty. He received missions from foreign tributaries and retiring officials who bade him farewell. He reviewed troops, issued battle banners, and accepted prisoners of war after the Imperial Army's major and minor battles. The disposal of war prisoners was usually one of the most awe-inspiring occasions of the Emperor's Court.

He sat atop the Meridian Gate, overlooking the granite-paved courtyard, flanked by general officers who held noble titles. Lined up next to them was a full battalion of imperial guards, soldiers of gigantic stature clad in shiny armor and helmets adorned with red tassels. Down below, while thousands of court officials and soldiers watched, the prisoners, in chains and red cloth with holes cut out for their necks, were forced to kneel on the stone pavement. Then, the Minister of Justice came forward to read aloud a list of crimes those prisoners had committed against humanity. Upon completion of the charges, he petitioned the Emperor that the prisoners be executed in the marketplace. The reply from the throne,

Take them there, be it so ordered, could not have been heard by all present. The order, however, was repeated by the two nobles standing immediately next to the sovereign, and then echoed in succession by four, eight, sixteen, and thirty-two guardsmen, until it touched off a thunderous shout of the same order by the entire battalion of soldiers, their chests inflated. From 1587, A Year With No Significance, by Ray Huang. Welcome back! Wishing you all a very fortuitous spring festival and lunar new year, and I hope you and yours are happy and healthy as we hop right into this year of the fire rabbit. Today we take a look at the last three significant military actions taken in the course of the

Emperor's period of rule. They are often, collectively, known as the Three Campaigns, though that's at least a bit puzzling of a categorization. Though they did occur around about the same time, or at least the same decade, other than that, there's really very little to actually link or associate the three military excursions. One was a campaign to eradicate an aboriginal chieftain in the southwest, another was yet another suppression campaign against Sino-Mongolian troops and rebellion along the northwestern border, while the third was an out-and-out war with Japan on the Korean peninsula. Not much of a relationship between any of them, really, other than that they just so happen to be chronologically overlapping. Of course, it's only natural, then, that later Ming historians would link them all together as the three major campaigns of the

late Wanli era, no matter how tentative their actual connections. Huang writes, quote, The campaigns varied in scale and dimension, and they are not similar in their historical origins. Nor did all the three campaigns end in clear-cut victories, as Ming writers claimed, end quote. Rather, by treating them as an interrelated series of uniformly successful military adventures, historians in the twilight years of the Ming dynasty were seeking to exaggerate the military prowess of their dying dynasty, to eulogize its imminent collapse, and, quote, consciously or unconsciously to sanction such an ideological state, even at the expense of the truth.

As such, it follows that today, we take a similar form of speaking about all of the three campaigns in the same breath, or at least the same podcast episode, while striving to at least partially unravel the myth-making done in service of story over substance. We'll start off today along the southwestern frontiers of China, amidst the towering mountains and steaming jungles bordering the provinces of Huguang, Sichuan, and Guizhou. Then as now, much of this region is peopled by indigenous non-Han tribes and communities, amongst whom one of the largest and most famous are the Miao. The chieftain of the Miao in the Bozhou region of Guizhou of the 1590s, also known as the Tusi, was a man named Yang Yingong.

Himself at least partially Han Chinese ancestry, his family had held control over the aboriginal tribes of Bozhou since at least the 9th century, when a young clansman and Tang general had subdued the natives and staked out his claim over them. The Yangs were thereafter successfully able to hold the region as an autonomous state within a state under the various Chinese and Mongol dynasties for the subsequent 700 years. Quote, dynasties rose and fell, and the Yangs received various forms of enfeefment and commission, but the family's control over the mountainous region had never been broken by an imperial administration. End quote. In the time of Yang Yinglong, he held control over the various factions within Bozhou through

seven powerful sub-chieftain families, the headsmen of each also making up his chief council. Yang himself identified strongly with the cause of the Miao, who it seems he was also partially related to, and in time managed to rally the seven other clans to their mutual cause against Ming authority. The actual causes of Yang Yinglong's rebellion remain contested and uncertain, and the inciting incident, as described by contemporary Chinese chroniclers, strains credibility. As they tell it, in 1587, Yang divorced his wife, Lady Zhang, in order to marry another concubine of the Tian family. Yang then decided to take his separation one step further, and had his ex-wife slaughtered.

Her family, quite understandably, informed the Ming authorities of Yang's murder and his plans to rebel against the state. Which, I don't know, seems a little suspiciously convenient, don't you think? And Huang agrees. He says, quote, It's more likely that the family feud upset the balance of power within the tribal structure, and the Chinese decided to intervene, for the Jiangs and Tians numbered among Yang's Another potential reason behind the rebellion is everyone's favorite topic, taxation. The Ming central authority had been taxing the region heavily, mainly in the form of lumber extraction of rare and expensive hardwood such as nanmu for palace construction and similar projects. Time and again, Yang and his clansmen had butted heads with

the Ming authorities and their onerous levels of taxation, and in fact, prior to 1587, Yang had gotten himself arrested, or rather, he had voluntarily surrendered to Ming authorities no less than twice after having been deemed as having broken into rebellion against their strictures. On both occasions, he'd managed to just keep his head attached to his shoulders and instead receive a suspended death sentence by offering a redemption fee against his life. On the first occasion, the price was set at 20,000 tails of silver. On the second time, the fee was doubled, plus an additional fee of an unspecified quantity of lumber. Yang Yinglong gave his word and bowed and scraped, and then,

once he'd been let go on both occasions, quite simply forgot to pay anything at all. Whoops, just slipped his mind. And as it so happened, the Ming authorities were then so bogged down in their wars against the Mongols and Japanese, that we'll get to in just a little bit, that they couldn't spare the manpower to maintain pressure on the wily southern chieftain. Though Yang's campaign against Ming authority touched off in 1587, and the imperial government officially declared war on him as of 1590, even then, so divided was Beijing's focus that the Wanli Emperor initially commissioned a paltry 3,000 soldiers to its suppression. Unsurprisingly, that tiny Ming

task force was quickly and easily crushed by the rebels, and Yang's rebellion continued nearly uninterrupted through the entire final decade of the 16th century, its settlement only coming as of 1600 once the Korean campaign had been concluded. This remarkably quick turnaround after a decade of inconclusive low-level raiding and fighting was largely the result of the deployment to the southern battlefield of the Ming Supreme Commander Li Hualong, who had been redeployed in late 1599 immediately after the Korean situation had been brought under control, and charged with the total suppression of the Miao rebels and their leader, Yang. Against Yang's 40,000 to 50,000 indigenous fighters, General Li brought to bear an overwhelming force of some 200,000. Though the majority were local or indigenous troops opposed to Yang and his Miao raiders, many of the Ming troops were drawn from as far off as Shanxi

and Zhejiang, making it a truly imperial force, and enlisted large numbers of veterans fresh from the Korean campaign, along with even a small contingent, by reports, of Japanese warriors. Quote, firearms were deployed. Each advancing column was led by a company of elite troops. The terrain was studied beforehand. The Supreme Commander was himself an expert at psychological warfare, and he made effective use of bulletins and handbills. Once General Li had deployed onto the battlefield, it was pretty much all over but the crying for Yang and his soldiers. Actual fighting lasted just 104 days, with Li reporting back to Beijing that his men had killed nearly 22,700 enemies and captured another 1,100. Huang points out,

with an appropriately professional level of dry understatement, quote, the proportion suggests atrocities, end quote. Uh, yeah, you don't say. Rather than face capture, humiliation, and the painful and horrifying public execution that was sure to follow, Yang Yinglong committed suicide as the Ming soldiers closed in around him. But true to form, Li's imperial forces didn't let anything as trivial as the rebel commander already being dead get in the way of carrying out the imperially specified degree of vengeance against him. Instead, Yang's corpse was transported up to the capital, where it was duly mutilated and desecrated. After seven centuries of regional domination, the Yang clan's overlordship of the

Bozhou area came to a sudden and brutal end, and it was thereafter reorganized into two centrally administered prefectures. We move now to the second of our campaigns today, and rather ironically, it's probably the least consequential of the trio. I say it's ironic because who the Ming is facing off against here has long been the absolute boogeyman of Ming China since, well, before the Ming even became the Ming. And of course, speaking of those northern terrors of the Asian steppes, the recurring nightmare of the imperial Zhu clan one and all, the one, the only, wait for it, the Mongols.

The leader of at least some of the Mongols of this era, specifically those of the Ningxia region along the southern border of the Gobi Desert, had been a chieftain called Pubei. As had long been the case of many of the ethnic Mongols that lived within the borders of Ming, he had spent his career as a military commander within the imperial army, and had been charged with keeping out those of his other, wilder brethren, who refused to bend to the knee. As with many of these borderland step-warriors, we don't have a real solid grasp

of his date of birth, but suffice it to say that he'd been at it long enough that by 1592, he was getting ready to retire after what had been a long and successful career. His rank, that of du zhe hui, or regional military commissioner, was soon to be inherited by his son, who had adopted the Chinese-style name of Pu Chang'an. Huang writes of the Pu family's status among the inner Mongols of Ningxia, quote, As was customary, the family retained more than a thousand household men, or veteran fighters, who took personal orders from their lord commander and were often on his payroll. Observers have commented that the retention of such a private army, probably more than the mutiny in which the father and son were involved, had necessitated their destruction.

Their situation in the strategic walled capital city of Ningxia, now called Yinchuan, their ongoing connection with the potentially hostile elements of Mongol peoples beyond the imperial borders, and the retention of this wild card of a personal fighting force, had come to deeply worry Ming authorities. As such, it's likely that they were already looking for any excuse, no matter how ostensibly minor, to justify moving against the father and son. That pick-a-spark-any-spark moment would come in March of 1592, with a seemingly random enough rising in revolt of another totally unrelated, completely different figure, Chinese military officer Liu Dongying. Liu had had it up to here with not being paid on time, and so, as was

long-standing Ming military tradition, he and his fellow travelers murdered the regional governor, forced the commander-in-chief of the military district to commit suicide, and then proclaimed himself commander-in-chief in his stead. How in the world did the Mongols get roped into this regular twice-a-week late Ming military breakdown and command authority? Well, Liu then proceeded to proclaim the younger Mongol leader, Pu Cheng'an, as his left deputy, meaning one of his two second-in-commands. Mongol the elder, Pu Bei, never actually assumed any title at all in any of this, but it didn't seem to take much convincing to the Ming high command that, yeah, it probably was, no wait, definitely was somehow all his fault. From Huang, quote,

From the very beginning, the report to the emperor by the supreme commander in charge of the northwestern frontier played up the roles of Pu Bei emperor by the supreme commander in charge of the northwestern frontier played up the roles of Pubei and his son and played down those of the Chinese personnel. By exaggerating Pubei's connections with the Mongols, he hoped to make the incident take on the character of a frontier war instead of an internal uprising that had resulted from Chinese mismanagement of subordinate commanders. End quote. It wasn't me. I didn't do it. It's not my fault. It was

the one-armed man. The Mongols did it. The months that would follow were a particularly anxious period for the Ming court, since they just so happened to coincide with the Japanese invasion of Korea that, again, we'll get to more of in a little bit. The Mongol misinformation continued to fly, as even though the rebel activity across the Ningxia region was primarily conducted by rogue Chinese contingents under the likes of Liu Dongying, reports continued to pour into the Central Imperial Court that it was the steppe barbarians truly behind it all. Moreover, fears abounded that these border raids were actually just preparatory actions ahead of a supposed massive Mongol strike deep in the Ming territory,

which of course necessitated the costly redeployment of large numbers of Chinese troops in an attempt to counter this figment army. Nevertheless, neither the court nor the emperor remained totally in the dark as to the true nature of the situation, at least not forever. Once aware of the financial nature of the problem, once again the long overdue back payments to the troops and officers in Ningxia, the imperial treasury dispatched silver from other regions. The Wanli emperor, upon learning of the untrue nature of the reports of Mongols and Ordos troops massing for some concerted attack, twice rebuked the officials who had delivered such false reports and contradictory proposals to quell the unrest. Huang notes that had the Mongols actually been planning to attack in any sizable numbers,

quote, it is doubtful that the rebellion could have been suppressed, end quote. Nevertheless, in spite of the initial confusion within Beijing, by the height of summer 1592, the imperial forces had surrounded the rebellious garrison fort at Ningxia and laid it to siege. The siege would endure for a further two months, through the end of September, before a solution was found by the Ming army. A dike was constructed parallel to the city wall, and the space in between was filled with lake

water. The dike, when completed, was three and a half miles long. Inside, the water reached a height of nine feet. Soon, sections of the city wall began to crumble. The rebels, running out of food, became thoroughly discouraged, end quote. The city managed to hold out for a further three weeks, until it finally capitulated and was recaptured on October 20th. Just prior to the city's fall, the Mongol lieutenant, Pu Chang'an, had turned on his commander, Liu Dongying, and struck his head from his body. He then took Liu's severed head and hung it from the city gate, as a signal to the waiting Ming forces that their resistance was at an end. Though pretty blatantly trying to secure his own life by having ended the rebellion with a stroke of his sword against Liu, Pu would find that absolution did not come nearly so easily.

Upon visiting the government headquarters later on, he was seized and arrested, and thereafter taken to Xi'an to face execution. His father, Pube, decided to go out in a much more Buddhist style by self-immolating rather than meet the same fate as his son in imperial captivity. All in all, this northwestern campaign was little more than a distraction, the Ming government jumping at shadows and apparitions of an enemy that did not truly exist. Though quite understandably wary of the idea of some shadowy Mongol horde riding out of the wastes and grasslands beyond the Gobi, poised to exact its revenge once more against all of China, all in all, the Ningxiao campaign turned out to be a relatively minor

affair, at least as far as Chinese military actions are concerned. Yes, we must always keep in mind that what sounds like a mind-bogglingly large campaign in one part of the world may be little more than an annoying distraction in another. We don't have any official tally of the size of the forces, rebel or imperial, but Rei Huang notes that as of 1578, the entirety of the Ningxia circuit had listed a maximum of just under 28,000 soldiers. And so it's doubtful that the rebel contingent under Liu Dongying and Pu Zong'an ever exceeded about 20,000. When compared to our next theater of war, such a clash would seem to barely show up on the radar at all. 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. We turn now at last to the Korean Peninsula, where across the final decade of the 16th century, two titanic forces would clash head-on over the fate of the hermit kingdom they both fought across and alongside. Obviously, insofar as the Ming court was concerned,

this operation was markedly different than either the Bozo or Ningxia campaigns, because it was expeditionary in nature rather than an internal affair. But even more than that, the Ming would be facing a type of warfare it had not been forced to contend with in living memory, a struggle against a comparably powerful and numerical foe, against whom Beijing could not rely on merely the overwhelming weight of its own manpower. First, though, a bit of background. As of 1592, Japan was controlled by a man called, variously, Kinoshita Tokichiro, Hishida Hideyoshi, but is best known as Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

Born a peasant in the late Japanese Warring States period, he rose to prominence as a samurai and retainer of the powerful Daimyo lord, Oda Nobunaga, as he sought to unify the fractious island kingdom. After Nobunaga was betrayed by his erstwhile ally, Akechi Mitsuhide, and committed seppuku rather than face defeat, Toyotomi took up his master's position and vision to unite Japan as of 1582. From 1585 to 1592, he pursued this grand vision as both the chief advisor to the emperor as well as chancellor of the realm, which is known as Kampaku and Daijo Daijin, respectively. This made him, as any student of Japanese history will no doubt already know, the effective dictator over the nation, as markedly unlike the Chinese imperial system, the emperor of Japan had long served as little more than a ceremonial figurehead

with no actual political or military power. As of 1592, Toyotomi's goal of unifying Japan had come to fruition. Yet that victory was marred by the bitterness of losing his only son and heir at just three years old, as well as his brother the year prior. Nearing 60, and with his health beginning to falter, it seems that Hideyoshi resolved to secure an even greater legacy than that of Japanese reunification. That is, to take up the further dream of his late master Nobunaga, and invade and conquer China. At least, that's what he's said to have espoused as his goal. It remains unclear as to just how serious or committed he ever actually was to that. As historical events both prior and subsequent would often demonstrate and re-demonstrate again,

getting involved in a land war in Asia is typically not a great idea. One may bite the dragon, but the real trick is managing to swallow it. In any event, Toyotomi passed the title of Kampaku onto his nephew, in effect declaring him his heir, while appointing himself as Taiko, or Retired Regent, still retaining absolute command over the realm. With that, he set out to, ostensibly at least, take on Great Ming. The logical first step would be to secure a foothold in that bit of the Asian mainland closest to Japan itself, Korean Joseon. Though ostensibly discussed by many historians, there has never been any true consensus as to what Hideyoshi's true motives for this campaign were. Having announced his avowed goal of the conquest of China, he would never even set foot in Korea to carry out his ambitious plan. His first attack would take place in 1592, taking the Koreans and

Chinese completely by surprise. Japanese forces landed on the Korean peninsula late in May and took both Seoul and Pyongyang within just two months. By the autumn of 1592, two vanguard divisions had reached the Yalu and Tumen rivers, which bordered Ming territory itself. Yet no effort was made to advance beyond these rivers, or even to raid into Chinese territory, which is very curious indeed if the goal was to use Korea to establish a foothold and invade China thereafter. This failure to exploit the initial surprise and advantage could be attributed to the Korean

Navy and Korean irregular forces, who continued to harass the Japanese and threaten their rear. But Hideyoshi may have had a less ambitious war aim than he was willing to publicly admit, or than at least the sources tell us. Historian George Sansom, for instance, doubts that he understood the problem of a continental war or anticipated serious Chinese intervention. As it so happened, Kaneshi Yukinaga, the Christian daimyo of Japan, who commanded a vanguard division of 18,000 soldiers and did most of the fighting against the Chinese, was also in charge of carrying out most of the peace talks in the field. This double role required him to alternate combat with friendly visits to Chinese generals. The truce has probably worked more to the advantage of the Ming rather than the Japanese. Likewise, taken very much by surprise, the token forces that were dispatched to Korea by the Ming were swept from the field by the initial Japanese assault.

This prompted Beijing to begin a much wider-scale mobilization later that year. An expeditionary force of a prescribed strength of 42,000 men was assembled, with units contributed by five northern military districts. A contingent of 3,000 soldiers proficient in the use of firearms came from the south. The entire empire was put on a wartime alert. Seaports were closed all along the eastern coast for fear that the local pirate invasions of the 1550 would be repeated. Western visitors bore witness to the general suspicion against foreigners. When the Dai was cast, the Wanli Emperor decreed that an expeditionary army comprised of 100,000 men, with far more to come from Siam and the Ryukyu Islands,

would be assembled to retake Korea and eventually invade and conquer Japan itself. In line with standard practices, a civil official, Song Yingchang, was made supreme commander while Li Rusong was commissioned as commander-in-chief. This Chinese expeditionary force crossed the Yalu River into Korea as of January 1593. Its first battle, aimed at the recovery of Pyongyang, was a clear Chinese victory. But just 20 days later, Li Rusong took personal command of a thousand mounts ahead of the main body of his army in a valiant pursuit only to meet with disaster. Some 15 miles north of Seoul, he was checked by a Japanese battle formation three times the size of his own force. The Chinese were routed, the commander-in-chief himself barely escaping capture with his own life. This engagement ended the hostilities of the first phase of the war, and peace negotiations followed.

The Chinese delegation to the negotiations was headed by Shen Weijiang. Curiously, he was neither a member of the civil service nor an army officer, but was instead recommended by the Minister of War and was hastily given a field commission as Yu Zhi, or somewhat comparable to a colonel, to meet the Japanese field commanders. His parlay is credited with having cleared the way for the Japanese evacuation of Seoul that May. The real problem behind the withdrawal was that the invaders faced serious logistical problems, having suffered the loss of a huge food depot which had been burned by Chinese-Korean agents. Hideyoshi had directed

the Japanese to fortify their position near Busan, on the southernmost coast of Korea. The Chinese lacked the strength necessary to destroy this bridgehead, and a stalemate thus developed. The ensuring truce was to last for close to four years. The protracted diplomatic effort to untie this Gordian knot, and the slow pace with which the negotiations and their accompanying etiquette were conducted, can in part be said to have resulted from cultural misunderstandings, or at least factors. But looking past these surface elements, we must suspect that Hideyoshi's calculating mind was hard at work. This new

supreme commander of Japan was well aware of the grave consequences that might ensue if he pressed the issue too hard. He was, after all, already having a difficult time enough supplying his army. He was therefore willing to bide his time. Moreover, his grasp on power within Japan wouldn't remain secure if there was a major setback within Korea. In the summer of 1593, a Chinese delegation, in which Sun Weijing served as an advisor, visited Japan directly. Hideyoshi received the delegation in June, and it stayed at his court for more than a month. Nothing of real substance resulted from this round of negotiations,

but tensions on the Korean peninsula did lessen. The Chinese decided to keep some 16,000 men in Korea to guard the armed truce, while the rest of the expeditionary forces were withdrawn back to Ming proper. Evidence suggests that the Japanese, predisposed toward a peaceful settlement, could not reach an agreement among themselves as to the terms. Hideyoshi's envoy to China, a man named Konishi Joan, or referred to in China as Xiao Shefei, first had to debate in Busan with his own generals representing the invading army. His discussions with a Chinese negotiator set off a similar-sounding round of disagreement in Beijing. The majority opinion favored war. As a result, the envoy was detained in Korea and Manchuria for more than a year. The Minister of War, however, argued strongly for a peace settlement,

citing the financial difficulties of continuing war. It took the personal intervention of the Wanli Emperor, however, to make his argument prevail in open court. A junior official who was identified as the person responsible for obstructing the peaceful settlement most vociferously was discharged from the Imperial Service and thereafter arrested. Only then was the envoy Kunishi escorted to the capital, where he stayed for over a month. Satisfied with these Japanese overtures, the court in Beijing dispatched an embassy to invest Hideyoshi with the title of King of Japan. A precondition for this settlement was the complete withdrawal of the Japanese forces in Korea, which did meet with some resistance, and lengthy haggling

was to ensue. The Chinese embassy was first held in Seoul, then under Chinese occupation, and in Busan, under Japanese occupation, from 1595 to 1596. However, by the time that these negotiations concluded in July of 1596, the imperial patent and silk robe, which were supposed to be delivered to the Japanese warlord Hideyoshi, had become so soiled that they were no longer usable, and new ones had to be rushed from Beijing. During the negotiations, the chief Chinese emissary, afraid for his life, abandoned the mission and fled. His place had to be filled by his deputy, who crossed the Korean straits to Japan only after the main body of Japanese forces had done so. A small garrison was nevertheless left by the invaders in Busan. The audience granted by Hideyoshi to the Ming embassy in

October of 1596 must go down in history as one of the greatest diplomatic blunders of all time. The Japanese overlord, who considered himself the victor in the war, was enraged to find out that he was to be installed as the tribute-bearing vassal to the Chinese emperor and to pledge never again to make another incursion into Korea. He had expected the partition of Korea, the delivery of a Korean prince as a hostage, and the hand of a Ming princess. Suffice it to say that Japan had outgrown the Chinese concept of world order, with its dominant cultural influence radiating from the celestial capital to the peripheral areas.

It's not difficult to understand that no one dared to report this new development to the Emperor. Ray Huang writes, 220 years later, even under an alien Manchu ruler, when the Amherst mission from the English throne was sent to China in 1816, the Chinese court still clung dearly to its particular concept of a universal empire, a concept essential to its ideological foundations. The puzzling aspect of this case was that Hideyoshi, who had seen Shen Weijing more than once and whose representatives had been in touch with the Chinese for years, had a result of it, peace negotiations ceased, and the war entered its second phase. Early in 1597, both sides resumed hostilities. Soon after the Chinese embassy was given safe conduct home,

it was reported that 200 Japanese ships carrying troops had reached the shores of Korea yet again. During the summer, another thousand such troop ships anchored at Busan. The court in Beijing appointed Yang Hao, supreme commander of a new army. The governor-general, in control of Manchuria and the territory around Beijing, functioned as the headquarters of a rear echelon and logistical commander. Eventually, that official, Xing Jie, as defense coordinator, exercised power superior to that of the supreme commander himself. Meanwhile, those officials who previously had advocated a peaceful settlement were disgraced. Shen Weijing was set aside to die. The Minister of War,

who earlier had so much imperial confidence, was given the death penalty at the throne's insistence. But before the penalty could be carried out, he was reported as having died in prison. Chinese documents indicate that for this second campaign, 38,000 troops were initially mobilized. These were assisted by a naval force of 21,000 sailors. Shinjiya said that he planned a winter offensive using 100,000 men, but it seems as though his army numbered about half that of what he reported. A modern Japanese scholar holds that Ming's strength was likely on par with Hideyoshi's invasion force of about 140,000, but that, too, might not have been the case. Rather, the Chinese force was made up for by transferring units in active service and recruitment throughout the empire.

All the frontier districts were involved, and some of the soldiers came from as far away as Sichuan, Zhejiang, Huguang, Fujian, and Guangdong. A realistic estimate might put the combined strength of Ming army and navy at the height of the campaign at perhaps as many as 75,000 men. This second phase of the war differed from the first in a few respects. Quote, this time, almost the entire campaign was carried on south of the 36th parallel rather than along an extended north-south front. In August 1597, the Japanese pushed to within 50 miles of Seoul, but when the Ming reinforcements arrived, the battlefield became stabilized." As winter set in, the invaders had to retreat to the south. Thereafter, they were on the defensive. Naval operations, already deemed important by the first campaign, had a decisive

influence on the outcome of the second campaign. At first, the Koreans sent their admiral, Yi Sun-sin, to jail and put an incompetent officer in command of his fleet, only to quickly lose their base on Hansan Island to the Japanese. This mistake was quickly corrected. Before the end of the year, Admiral Yi was returned to his command, and with him at the helm, the Koreans soon regained control over the waters of the year, Admiral Yi was returned to his command, and with him at the helm, the Koreans soon regained control over the waters of the Straits. His successes forced the Japanese land forces to take defensive positions all along the coast, all the way from Ulsan in the east to Suncheon in the west. The Chinese, too, had not ignored the importance of sea power. At Grand Secretary Shen Yiguang's suggestion, the Wanli Emperor ordered that a fleet be organized and sent into Korean waters. Placed under the Chinese naval commander and

artillery expert Chen Lin, it arrived in Korean waters in May of 1598. The port of Tianjin and ports on the Shandong and Liaodong peninsulas were utilized to send in supplies. Eventually, this naval force saw action in joint maneuvers with the Koreans and in coordinated attacks with the Chinese land forces. Despite these strategic advantages, the land operations were by no means easy or smooth for the Ming army. The large numbers of casualties attest to the intensity of the struggle. Partisan controversies also entered into the Chinese side of the campaign, especially when the combat troops faced adverse conditions. The siege of Ulsan in February of 1598, for instance, was said to have come close to a successful completion, but the appearance of a Japanese relief column of about

3,000 men at the last moment caused the attacking Chinese force to stampede. Supreme Commander Yang Hao was censured for his failure. He was criticized for having withheld the last assault and then for having fled for his life. While he admitted that several hundred Chinese soldiers died in action, his opponents insisted that the loss was well over 20,000 men. His close contact with Shen Yiguang, a Grand Secretary having many enemies, was linked to the censure. This ultimately led to Yang's dismissal. In the spring of 1598,

Kanishi was warned that the Japanese position in Korea was untenable. The Japanese, in turn, ordered the withdrawal of close to half of the invading force, leaving in Korea mostly Satsuma warriors under Shimazu clan member commanders. These men continued to fight fiercely. The news of Hideyoshi's death on September 18, 1598 did not reach the Japanese camp until late that October. By then, they'd turned back Chinese attacks at Sunchon and Sachon. In Chinese official circles, it was admitted that the Battle of Sunchon was a grave defeat, although the Japanese claimed that they took 38,700 heads seems to be a gross exaggeration. The latest setbacks put the court in Beijing,

which was still unaware of Hideyoshi's death, into a dilemma. Suggestions were made to suspend the attack and to take a defensive position. The Wanli Emperor had already called a conference with his principal ministers to deliberate this very issue. It was only at this point that the governor of Fujian at last informed the court of the death of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. That news was welcomed as the de facto end of a seven-year-long war, which the Japanese called Ryutodabi, literally, dragon's head followed by a snake's tail, that nobody had the appetite to continue. With that third of the three great campaigns concluded, that is where we're going to leave off with today. Next time, we are going to look into

the life and times of a mysterious figure to the northeast, a man of the Aizengyuro clan of the Jurchun, known as Nurhasi. Until then, though, I have some hot pot to go eat with

my in-laws, and so once again wishing you all a very festive Lunar New Year and Year of the Fire Rabbit. And as always, 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. Look for the Age of Napoleon wherever you find your podcasts.