The History of China - #253 - Ming 38: Manchus, and Pirates, and Rebels, Oh My!

Episode Date: April 27, 2023

The Chongzhen Emperor takes command of the Ming, but things are not going well... and they're not going to get any better. After purging his government of partisan elements, he find he's now condemned it to hopeless deadlock. Along the southern coasts, pirate fleets and Dutch privateers prowl the water, making trade all but impossible. Economic and currency woes lead, combined with repeated natural catastrophes lead to widespread banditry and rebel factions doing what they must to survive... and through it all, the Manchu threat to the north continue to press its advantage, breaking through the Great Wall, and going so far as to raid around Beijing itself! Time Period Covered: 1628-1636 Major Historical Figures: Ming Empire: The Chongzhen Emperor (Zhu Yujian) [r. 1628-1644] General Yuan Conghuan [1584-1630] Zheng Zhilong, Admiral of the South Seas [1604-1661] Grand Secretary Wen Tiren [1584-1639] Qing Dynasty: Hong Taiji (Emperor Taizong of Qing) [r. 1626-1643] Amin [1585-1640] Commander Kong Youde [d. 1562] Geng Zhongming [1604-1649] Rebels: Li Zicheng [1606-1649] 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 253, Montus and Pirates and Rebels. Oh my. 后不愁无将拥,中魂依旧守辽东。 A life always ends in vain, it seems. Half my life's work is but a dream. Though I face death, fear not the end. My loyal soul shall still Liao Dong defend. By Yuan Chonghuan, Ming general and politician, 1630.

We left off last time at the end of the Tianqi Emperor's seven-year-long reign over Ming China, deemed to be, perhaps, one of the most disastrous in the regime's long and storied history. And you and I both know at this point that's really, really saying something. The Tianqi era had been foremost marked by the widespread purging of many of the more rational and diligent members of government by one of those perennial bugaboos of Chinese historiography, an evil, no-good, low-down eunuch trying to consolidate power for himself. Unfortunately for that power-mad official in question, Wei Zhongxian, the puppet emperor whose strings he was pulling keeled over dead at the end of September 1627 at just 21. Ironically, and sadly enough, he left no heirs of his flesh, as his fifth and last living son, Prince Zhu Sejong, had been among

the perhaps as many as 20,000 people killed just a year prior to his own death in the mysterious incident known as the Wang Gongchang Explosion of May 30th, 1626. And I say mysterious because it's not precisely known exactly what set off the explosion, but it's not that mysterious, as it happened at the Wanggongchang Armory, about three kilometers south of the Forbidden City itself, which was one of the capital's largest production centers of gunpowder and ammunition, so we can pretty well work out a lot of the details. It was described as looking like a black lingzhe, or mushroom-shaped cloud, that didn't disperse for hours, and had enough force to throw a 5,000 caddy, or 3 metric tons stone lion,

clear over the main city wall on the other side of the city. It produced a 21-foot deep crater, had an obliteration radius of some 13 square li or about 1.5 square miles, and was felt in terms of seismic activity as far away as Tianjin. The Wang Gongchang explosion would prove to be a pivotal event in the terminal phase of the Ming Dynasty, as it, whether through accident, act of god, or intentional sabotage, all of which have been put forth as possible instigators, had significant impacts on Chinese society, both militarily and sociopolitically. Militarily, of course, the loss of one of the empire's greatest weapons and ammunition stockpiles would have been a devastating setback at any time, but especially in the midst

of ever-rising military expenditures facing Great Ming as the ascendant Manchu rebellion continued to gather steam in the northeast. In terms of sheer loss of military hardware, the dynasty would never prove able to recover from this disaster, and its attempts to do so only further exacerbated its already strained economy. Socially, this was widely seen, especially amongst the peasantry and the particularly superstitious, as a grave sign of the Ming dynasty's declining health, and heaven's disfavor with the increasing misrule of the imperial Zhu clan, especially the recent reigns of such layabouts as the Wanli and Tianti emperors.

That it had destabilized the imperial succession by killing the heir apparent would have only furthered such speculation and prognostications of impending regime collapse. As such, the throne passed to the next in line, the emperor's younger brother, the then 16-year-old Prince Zhu Yujian. Yujian, enthroned as the Chongzhen Emperor, wasn't about to take any guff from the likes of Wei Zhongxian, and quickly had him banished from the capital. And before he could issue an arrest warrant for the multitudinous crimes undertaken by the eunuch lord and his many friends, servants, and allies, Wei opted to take advantage of the express checkout service and hanged himself. This did not spare his allies, and the Chongzhen Emperor went on to conduct a widespread purge of his influence and cohorts throughout the government,

ultimately leading to more than a dozen more executions and or forced suicides, and with many more lesser punishments all the way from demotion to outright banishment and exile. While certainly hailed by contemporary and even later Confucian chroniclers of the era for having gotten rid of a clearly dangerous and self-interested eunuch positioning himself towards possible usurpation, in fact, the expulsion and forced suicide of Wei Zhongxian, whatever his failings, served only to set the already-foundering Ming central authority further adrift into what would amount to be a fatal factionalism at a time it most needed to come together and unite against a determined existential

threat. Part of this, ironically enough, was due to the Chongzhen Emperor himself and his seeming overcorrection of the mistakes his forebears had made, which had led to the rise of an official like Wei in the first place. Taking as his lessons from both the Wanli and Tianqi reigns that allowing any single faction to have overwhelming control of his government was an inherently bad thing, Chongzhen instead went hard the other direction, ensuring across his reign that his imperial court

was always in some form of a balance between members of the recently rehabilitated Dongling faction and its various detractors. This desire for equilibrium, therefore, did little more than ensure governmental deadlock and disunity, and at the worst possible time. Moving away from events at the capital for a little while, we're going to sweep southwest to the coasts, where, surprise surprise, we're still dealing with pirates. So, so many pirates. I'm in the process of putting together another South China piracy episode soon, as to the developments in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, so do be on the lookout for that in the relatively near future, likely on the Patreon bonus feed. But until then, let's just briefly dip our toes in. The mid-1620s had been a rough

time for coastal southeastern China, largely owing to the activities of both Wukou raiders and Dutch privateers across the Taiwan Strait and the South Sea. The southeast's fortunes would rather dramatically change, however, when, in 1628, the highly successful Fujianese pirate lord, Zheng Zhelong, having just defeated the Ming Dynasty's southern fleet in battle, decided that it was time for him to do what most European and Caribbean pirates only ever wished that they could before they wound up at the end of a rope, which was to cash out and go legit. As such, instead of holding the Chinese fleet for ransom, he quit his position as the leader of the pirate organization known as the Shiba Zhi, meaning the Eighteen Brothers of Zhelong, and officially surrendered to the Ming in exchange for an extremely cush he had been pirate lord, and within three years had effectively swept the South Seas of both Wokuo and Dutch predations to such an extent that the governor of Fujian petitioned the imperial court for a full-scale

resumption of official maritime trade as of 1630. One other minor, almost trivial little detail about Zheng Zhaolong before moving on is that he just so happens to have been the father of a certain Zheng Chenggong, better known in certain circles as Koxinga, Prince of Yanping. And yes, we will definitely be getting to him in due course, as he's sorta kinda a pretty big deal when it comes to the early Qing and Taiwan. So fear not, you haven't heard the last of Zheng Zhaolong or his family from THOC. In terms of trade, however, traders were going to do what traders always do, not exactly wait for the official go-ahead to start back trading, especially if that means that they stand to gain more profit in exchange for a bit more risk.

Yes, by the late 1620s, with or without the official OK from Beijing, Chinese coastal merchants were at it again, trading with the Spanish in the Philippines in large numbers, and even larger amounts. Records from Manila indicated that by 1632, the amount of silver flowing into Main China in exchange for all the usual domestic goods, I mean tea, spices, silk, and porcelain, to the tune of some 2 million pesos per year, which is an amount almost impossible to effectively render into any realistic modern value. That said, let's go ahead and give it a bit of a shot. Spanish records indicate that over the period of 1621 to 1640, Spanish-American production of silver totaled approximately 395,000 kilograms.

And with the silver peso at just over 25.5 grams, that's about 15.5 million pesos, which over 20 years is about 775,000 pesos annually. Which is all to say that, at least by these figures, Spain was pouring more than double the silver into China via the Philippines in the early 17th century than it was extracting from all of America at that same time. Or, in the early 17th century than it was extracting from all of America at that same time. Or, in the words of historian William Atwell, quote, it was an extremely large sum, end quote. Trade had also picked up once again between China and Japan at this time, leading, at least temporarily, to a significant boom to the Ming local economies up and down the

coastline, but especially in the south. Unfortunately, other regions of the empire did not share in this economic windfall. In the northwest, the province of Shanxi was struck particularly hard beginning in 1628. Severe drought gripped the region to the point that, when winter came, conditions had grown so appallingly dire that the selling of women and children had become widespread, and there were even semi-regular reports of cannibalism taking place. When and where the government proved unable to provide for the suffering population, violence broke out, with particular ferocity in the eastern and central parts of the province. As early as 1629, the Chongzhen Emperor responded to this spiraling crisis in a nearly incomprehensible manner. He decided that now was a good time to cut imperial costs, admittedly a notable problem

for the government at that point, by cutting staff positions across imperial post stations and attendants. This, however, served only to increase the number of the disaffected and angry people across Shanxi. Quote, this swelled the ranks of the rebels, for the dismissed attendants had no means of support. They were joined by army deserters and mutineers, and before long, bandit activity was being reported throughout the province. End quote. In response to this entirely foreseeable set of outcomes, the imperial court in March 1629 appointed Vice Censor-in-Chief Yang He as the brand new Supreme Commander of the Northwestern Military Region, giving him sweeping jurisdiction over Shanxi in order to, you know,

make the peasants shut up and stop revolting. And so, off Yang went to go do Supreme Commander stuff. The only real problem here was that Yang He was, well, a civil official, a censor, and had no military experience or strategic thinking to speak of. As such, his tenure in Shanxi produced mixed results at best. Again from Atwell, quote, Though he had some success in persuading rebel leaders to surrender and even to commit their forces to the government cause, he failed to eliminate those rebels who could not be trusted. Critics pointed to a number of rebels who had surrendered and then rebelled again when it suited their purpose.

Others refused to surrender at all, and one group greatly embarrassed Yang by capturing a strategic town in northwestern Shanxi, which they held during the summer and early autumn of 1630. Through the rest of 1630 and into 1631, the Shanxi rebels and bandits continued to destructively raid all across the region, which gradually served to dull the emperor's once-enthusiastic support of Yang He's pacification efforts. By the following October, the rebels now more numerous than ever, Chongzhen had had enough and ordered Yang relieved of his command and arrested. Meanwhile, to the northeast up in Liaodong, the Manchus were regrouping to renew their assault on the weakened and pathetic Southlands under the command of their new supreme

commander, the eighth and eldest surviving son of the late Nurhaci, sometimes called Abahai, but far better and apparently more accurately known as Hong Taiji. Now, as for that naming confusion, it is indeed confusing. In fact, we still can't say to this day with any absolute certainty exactly where the title came from or what precisely it means. I mean, it certainly sounds like it could be a Manchu corruption of the Chinese Huang Taizhe, or Crown Prince. But that can't be correct, as Huang Taiji was never declared as such by his father. Nurhaci famously never did lock down his succession in life. There are arguments that it

might have stemmed from Mongolian, meaning something like respected son, but nor is it clearly Manchurian, as the Manchus very rarely referred to this second imperial leader by any such moniker, instead typically referring to him as Doitsa Vela, meaning the fourth prince. This, in fact, strengthens the argument that Hong Taiji may have simply been the man's actual personal name, as it would have been upon his accession to the throne of Qing placed under an imperial naming taboo. The name I used before, Abahai, thought by many to have been his personal name, may have in fact been a corruption of his reign-era name, Abkhai, or Abkhai Sore, meaning the Era of Heavenly Wisdom. Regardless, in December of 1629, Hong Taiji's forces achieved a surprising breakthrough south of the Great Wall, just west of the fortification's easternmost defensive stronghold,

known as Shanhai Pass, which hugged the Pacific coast. This unexpected plunge southward caught the Ming defenders completely off-guard, and allowed the Manchus the freedom they needed to begin rampaging across Beijia Li, that is to say, the areas north of Beijing itself. Within a few days, they had taken the important fireworks at Chunhua and had forced the commander of the Ming forces across Liaoning, General Yuan Chonghuan, to rush back from the frontier in order to aid the defense of Beijing. Even before his arrival on December 30th, rumors began circulating in the city. Rumors started, as it was by the Manchus themselves, that Yuan was secretly in league with the enemy. Having seen firsthand what he was capable of on the battlefield, the Manchus hoped

to use a different and more subtle method of defeating this truly formidable foe, one that had worked all too often against the most indefatigable of Chinese military commanders against northern incursion, that is to say, turn their own government against them. The rumors gained credibility because Yuan had negotiated a temporary truce with Hong Taiji several years earlier, and with surprising swiftness, even the Chongzhen Emperor himself came to suspect General Yuan of double-dealing with the enemy. On January 13th, 1630, General Yuan was arrested and charged with treason. The loss of Yuan Chonghuan from the forward battle command was felt almost immediately along the front lines. In the weeks and months to follow, Ming military forces suffered a series of humiliating defeats in Beizheeli. The day after Yuan's arrest,

Manchu units took the city of Gu'an, 30 miles south of Beijing. Two weeks later, the respected general Meng Gui was killed in action as he fought the enemy just outside the capital walls. By mid-February, when the Manchu forces finally withdrew from the capital region, thousands upon thousands of rotting, unburied corpses lined the approaches to the city, in an image almost evocative of the stinking desolation left by none other than Genghis Khan some four centuries prior. However, even as they made their seasonal withdrawal, the Manchu campaign was not yet over. They subsequently overwhelmed several cities in eastern Beijia Li, stopping at a point only a few miles southwest of Shanghai Pass.

Hong Taiji returned to the Manchu capital in Shenyang in April 1630, and thereafter sent Amin, the hero of the two Korean campaigns who had been serving as regent in his absence, to consolidate and if possible to expand the unanticipated gains made south of the Great Wall during the previous four months. Early in May, Amin arrived in Yongping, 125 miles east of Beijing, to face a Ming offensive directed by Sun Chongchong, the former supreme commander of Liaodong, who had returned to service a few months earlier. Late in June, with Chinese troops pressing him from several directions and his supply lines in danger of being severed, Amin was forced to retreat through the Great Wall at

Lungkou, some 50 miles west of Shanghai Pass. The immediate threat to Beijing and to the Ming had passed, but the court had been badly frightened, so much so that the emperor, believing now fully the earlier rumors, had his most talented general, Yuan Chonghuan, sentenced to death on September 22, 1630, in one of the most horrible ways imaginable, a process known as ling che, slow slicing, or as it's often translated, death by a thousand cuts. So, a little bit more on this dreaded and rightly feared process of execution. I'm certainly not saying that I'd recommend it, definitely no more than I would have any other execution via torture. That said, it has, again, much like many other forms of medieval execution,

been somewhat elaborated and dramatized in the popular imagination as time has gone on. That universal trend has been further compounded by the fact that it came to serve, essentially, as a kind of trope of the Orient in its especially mysterious and, yes, backwards and barbarous ways. In reality, from the data and first-hand testimonies that we have of its implementation, the lingering death was as methodically bureaucratic a process as just about any other official action of the imperial court. Every part of it was stipulated by law and designed to convey maximum effect, both to the condemned undergoing it, but all the more so to those

who would observe its grisly results. Tales, especially Western tales, tell of slow-slicing routinely lasting hours or even days of torture as the body was incised and cut away piece by piece. This is almost certainly exaggeration, as we know that physiologically the body would die of both blood loss and shock, often after just one or a few major amputations. Rather, the process is generally described as occurring relatively quickly, 10 to 20 minutes. And yeah, those are going to be some pretty awful 10 to 20 minutes, but at least that's all it would be. Exceptions, however, could be made. Given that such a punishment would have only been meted out for high treason, the sky was the limit to the physical torments that could be inflicted upon the condemned leading up to the execution, and the emperor could even order that the execution phase

of the process be extended. In the case of Yong Chonghwan, for instance, it is reported that his anguished cries were heard for as long as a day and a half before he finally died. Ultimately, however, the punishment did not require the condemned to remain aware or even alive for much of it. In fact, bribes could and often were issued to the executioners by the condemned's friends or family to swiftly issue a coup de grace by plunging one of the daggers into his neck or heart first before any other cuts were administered, ensuring immediate death and preventing suffering.

From actual Western eyewitness testimony to a death by a thousand cuts, George Ernest Morrison wrote, quote, Lingzhi was commonly, and quite wrongly, translated as death by slicing into 10,000 pieces, a truly awful description of a punishment whose cruelty has been extraordinarily misrepresented. The mutilation is ghastly and excites our horror as an example of barbarian cruelty, but it is not cruel and need not excite our horror, since the mutilation is done not before death, but after." Typically, once death had occurred, the executioners set about the actual process for the consumption of the rest of the audience, the division and display of the corpse. Ming-La stipulated a rather extreme number, with a reported record of 3,000 cuts issued over a course of three corpse. Ming-La stipulated a rather extreme number, with a reported record of 3,000 cuts

issued over a course of three days. At that point, the flesh of the condemned was typically taken by the gathered crowd and, get this, either eaten outright or else sold and turned into medicinal ingredients. Any remnants, such as bones, would have likewise been chopped up, cremated, and then scattered. This process was, of course, to instill a ghast likewise been chopped up, cremated, and then scattered. This process was, of course, to instill a ghastly sense of what could happen to you if you betrayed the emperor and his regime, but also acted as a posthumous punishment for the dead as well. In traditional Confucian belief, the body was the ultimate gift given to one by their ancestors. Any tampering of it, therefore, right down to the cutting of hair or fingernails, was considered a grave insult to the sanctity of the gift and a breach of filial piety. The ultimate punishment, therefore, was to have one's corporeal body completely

destroyed, scattered, and denied a proper burial with one's ancestors. Your soul would arrive in the afterlife looking like a complete ghoulish catastrophe, and what would Great-Grandmother have to say about that? Napoleon Bonaparte rose from obscurity to become the most powerful and significant figure in modern history. Over 200 years after his death, people are still debating his legacy. He was a man of contradictions, a tyrant and a reformer, a liberator and an oppressor, a revolutionary and a reactionary. His biography reads like a novel, and his influence is almost beyond measure. I'm Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast, and every month I delve into the turbulent life and times of one of the greatest characters in history, and explore the world that shaped him in all its glory and tragedy. It's a story of great battles and campaigns, political intrigue, and massive social and

economic change, but it's also a story about people, populated with remarkable characters. I hope you'll join me as I examine this fascinating era of history. Find The Age of Napoleon wherever you get your podcasts. Upon returning to Liaodong, the Manchu general Amin fared somewhat better, although not that much. On his arrival in Shenyang, he was arrested, tried, and convicted of various crimes, including fleeing his post. More noteworthy was the charge that he had permitted murder and looting in several Chinese cities during his withdrawal from Beijia Li, thereby dealing a severe blow to Hong Taiji's scheme of presenting Manchu rule as an alternative to Ming

rule. Amin's death sentence was commuted, and he died later in confinement in 1640. The northeastern frontier then remained fairly quiet until early September of 1631, when Hong Taiji surrounded the new fortifications at Dalinghe City, a strategic outpost just north of the Ming stronghold at Jinzhou, about 120 miles northeast of Shanghai Pass. Relief columns sent in October were decimated by the Manchu forces. By mid-November, the defenders at Dalinghe were reduced to eating their horses and even their dead comrades. Finally, on November 21st, the Ming commander, Zhu Daxiu, surrendered, but not before killing at least one of his own officers who had balked at such an order and wished to continue what

Zhu understood by that point to be a hopeless fight. Zhu subsequently persuaded Hong Taiji to allow him to return to Junzhou with the understanding that he would arrange to hand over the city to the Manchus. However, once he was released, he did renege, but Hong Taiji had won an important psychological and strategic victory because a number of Ming military figures, including Zhang Chunren, defected to the Manchu side at this time. These events also affected the political stability of Shandong province. Late in 1631, troops stationed in the prefectural city of Dengzhou, many originally from Liaodong, were ordered back to the northeast to fight once again against the Manchus. As these

troops were passing through southern Beijia Li, they mutinied and persuaded their commander, Kong Yude, to join them. Sweeping quickly back across northern Shandong, Kong laid siege to Dengzhou, which fell to him on February 22nd, 1632, after a defending officer in the city defected to Kong's side and opened Dengzhou's gates for the attacking army. One casualty of this insurrection was the main commander in this region of Shandong, Sun Yuanhua, a Catholic convert and ballistics expert who was taken captive during the city's fall. Sun was subsequently freed by the rebel leaders, but the Chongzhen emperor was unwilling to excuse his quote-unquote failures, and he was executed in Beijing later

that year. I mean, gee Chongzhen, I wonder why you can't keep good help around. Meanwhile, Commander Kong and the turncoat confederate who'd opened the city gate, named Geng Zhongming, continued their rebellion. All through that year's campaign season, between March and October, the rebel forces pillaged and raided up and down the Shandong Peninsula with near impunity, and in August, they managed to capture several important Ming officials who'd walked into a cleverly set trap. However, their time was running out. Early in October, the six-month siege of Lai Zhou was at last broken, and on October 10th, Kong Yu De suffered a critical defeat northeast of the city and was forced to scramble back to

Dengzhou. The tables were then turned as Ming troops began a long siege of that rebel stronghold. After several unsuccessful attempts to escape, Kong and Gong finally made good on sneaking out of the besieged city by boat, thereafter making their way north to Liaodong the following April, 1633, where they promptly submitted to and offered their services to Hong Taiji. The Manchu sovereign accepted these new servants, and within months they'd been given renewed commands to help the Manchus capture the strategic town of Lushen, part of modern Dalian City, formerly known as Port Arthur, on the very tip of Liaodong Peninsula. Both Kong Geng would go on to have distinguished careers in the conquest of their former dynasty. These military setbacks had important

repercussions within the Ming imperial court. That the Manchus were now able to campaign south of the Great Wall was a cause for great concern and even panic, such as leading to the faulty arrest and execution of Yuan Chonghuan, but also the resignation of several of his former supporters. All in all, this wave of resignations was reflective of the bitterly divided nature of the court at that time between the Donglin faction, of which Yuan and his supporters were members, and the anti-Donglin elements. Many Donglin ministers were heckled or pressured to give up their posts in disgrace following the arrest of Yuan for their known associations with this accused traitor general. This did not, however, mean that the Donglin faction had lost all influence within the imperial court, in large

part because the Chongzhen emperor seems to have been dead set on maintaining a careful balance between the two oppositional poles of his ministerial set. Another ominous political development occurred in 1631. Early that October, eunuchs were once again sent from the palace to inspect conditions along the northern frontier, a practice that had been abandoned when the Chongzhen Emperor had ascended the throne four years prior. The emperor's change of mind reflected his growing dissatisfaction with his civilian and military officials and his growing belief that he needed an independent source of information. Faced with constant infighting at court, which, again, was largely of his own doing, he may well have felt that the eunuchs were more useful because they were responsible directly to him and no one else.

This didn't mean that the emperor intended to return to the dark days of earlier reigns, when eunuchs had dominated palace and government affairs. To the contrary, he appears to have decided that he, and he alone, would make the final decisions on all policy. Nevertheless, the eunuchs continued to gain influence in the years after 1631, particularly as special investigators for the throne, who operated a large spy network in Beijing and elsewhere across the empire. For those who remember the Donglin debacle of 1625-1626,

aka for us, last episode, with all the outrage and horror that it deserved, these developments were cause for great consternation. In the midst of all this storm of drang, one ministerial figure stood apart from the pack, Grand Secretary Wen Ti-Ren, who had staked out a position in the exact midpoint of the Ming court and had convinced his imperial master that he could and would maintain absolute impartiality and disinterested decision-making, serving nothing less but the throne itself. Right. Despite the bias against him in the extant sources, and despite the fact that he built up a faction of his own, Wen did retain the confidence of an intelligent, suspicious, and diligent emperor for nearly a decade, during four years of which he

served as chief grand secretary. However, Wen never dominated his ruler, as Zhang Zhezhen had dominated the recalcitrant Wanli emperor throughout the 1570s. This was good news for the historical reputation of Wen Tiren, but it came at no small cost. For if it weren't some deviously self-interested minister tricking and hoodwinking an uninformed or idiot emperor to agree with his poor policies, well, then there's only one place that the book could possibly stop, and that's right at the Dragon Throne itself. If Wen Tiran was, indeed, whatever his personal objectives, a diligent servant of the intelligent, forceful, and commanding imperial person, then the myriad failures and ultimate blame for the collapse

of the Ming Dynasty itself must fall upon none other than the Chongzhen Emperor himself. Following his appointment to the Grand Secretariat in July 1630, Wen Tirun used his consummate political acumen to topple one opponent after another without arousing the Emperor's suspicion. As his earlier attacks had made clear, his favorite targets were officials associated with the Donglin group, dozens of whom left or were driven off from the government during the early and mid-1630s. Donglin supporters were not, however, his only targets. When he judged the time was right, one did not hesitate to move against those generally regarded even as anti-Dongliners, particularly if they proved foolish to stand in his way. During the first half of 1633, for instance, Chief Grand Secretary Zhou Yanru, who had supported

Wen's previous impeachment cases, was himself charged with a variety of misdeeds, including the absurd allegation that he had accepted bribes from a rebel leader in Shanxi. Yet when Zhou turned to Wen for help, Wen decided that it was time to cut his erstwhile ally loose. Zhou was forced to resign in disgrace that July, and was replaced by none other than, who else, Wen Tirun, of course. As the imperial court continued to bicker and dither within Beijing, outside the capital, things were going from bad to even worse, with mounting crises including drought, famines going from bad to even worse, with mounting crises including drought, famines, and resultant rebellions, and with the situation largely unchecked and

spreading out of control. Although the military situation in Shanxi was improved following Yang He's dismissal in October of 1631, the improvement was largely illusory. The rebels, far from being quelled or just disappearing, had simply moved on to other provinces in order to escape government troops and the ongoing economic catastrophe, which had become so dire in many parts of Shanxi that there was, quite frankly, very little left even to plunder. By the end of 1632, the focus of rebel activity had shifted to southeastern Shanxi, southwestern Beijia Li,

and northern Henan, where some rebel bands had considerable success. They took cities and towns along the Shanxi-Henan border, killed officials and members of the local elite, also with very little pushback or even direct encounters with the regular army troops. The most ominous development, at least from the government's point of view, was not only that the rebels had proved capable of operating effectively in the relatively prosperous areas of central Shaanxi along the Fun River, but that they had also moved into the North China Plain and were within direct striking distance of Beijing itself. The court, as such, moved quickly to counter this threat. Early in 1633, government forces scored

a series of victories over the rebels in the Shanxi-Hanan border region. Despite occasional setbacks in southern Shanxi, by December, they had forced many of the rebel bands across the Yellow River into central Hanan, northern Hugong, and southern Shanxi. These areas, affected by drought and famine in 1633, provided new recruits for the rebel forces as they pushed south and west, away from their initial bases of operation. The city of Mianqi in northwestern Henan fell on December 27th. Lu Shi to the southwest was attacked four days later, and by early 1634, some rebel groups were operating freely along the Han River in northern Huguang. By that March and April, groups were operating freely along the Han River in northern

Huguang. By that March and April, raids were carried out along the Yangtze River, where it cut through the Wu Mountain Gorge between Huguang and Sichuan. Through tedious, costly, and extended effort, the Ming government was once again able to gradually bring the situation back under control. Early in 1634, Chen Qiyu, who had successfully fought the rebels in northern Shanxi, was named to coordinate bandit suppression in a large area encompassing parts of Henan, Shanxi, Sichuan, and Huguang provinces. Within months, Chen had trapped thousands of rebels in a remote gorge in western Henan near the Shanxi border. Then, in a controversial move that ended his career, Chen accepted the surrender of a rising rebel leader,

a peasant farmer turned bandit calling himself Li Zicheng, along with many of his compatriots, and had them and their followers escorted back to northern Shanxi. Once arrived, however, the rebels reneged on their agreement, killed their escorts, and began a series of successful raids on Shanxi's strategic Wei River Valley. Chen Shiyu retained his command for several months following this disaster, but he was subsequently arrested and replaced by two officials with previous military experience in the northwest, namely Hong Chengchou and Lu Xiangshen. Hong and Lu spent the next two years combating the mobile rebels, while also trying to control the unruly officers and men under their own command.

Rebel operations expanded during 1635-36, and it was the dynasty's good fortune that a conclave of rebel leaders held in Henan early in 1635 failed to achieve the unity of purpose and organization its planners had desired. Still, in February and March of 1635, two rebel groups did manage to coordinate their operations enough to launch a campaign deep into Nanjia Li, where they overran the city of Fengyang and burned and looted property belonging to the imperial family itself. They were unable to maintain themselves there, however,

and for the next year, they concentrated their activity in Shanxi, Henan, and northwestern Huguang. A second incursion into Nanjali in 1636 was ultimately turned back by Lu Xiansheng. Although the rebels failed to secure a firm foothold in the economic heartland of the empire, their numbers had greatly increased, and they occasionally inflicted costly defeats on the government soldiers sent to oppose them. In August 1635, the highly regarded Ming general Cao Wanzhou and more than 2,000 of his men died in an ambush in the extreme eastern portion of Gansu province. The following month, rebel leader Li Ziceng, who had by that time gone from rising rebel leader to one of the important leaders of the entire movement, took two county cities in central Shanxi, killing the magistrates on both occasions. When food shortages in Shanxi led Li to attempt to cross the Yellow River into neighboring Shanxi,

he was repulsed by Grand Coordinator Wu Sheng and forced to resume raiding his native province. Although Li continued to elude them, in August 1636, officials in Shaanxi did manage to capture the veteran rebel leader Gao Yingxiang near Zouzhe County, southwest of the ancient capital of Xianyang. Gao was carted back to Beijing, where he was executed later that year. Yet even with such victories, the government's performance during the mid-1630s left much to be desired. Its task was vastly complicated by military emergencies all over the empire. Appalling economic conditions in the northwest provided rebel leaders with a constant supply of disaffected, desperate, and disgruntled peasants turned rebel recruits. Moreover, the quality of the imperial forces in the region had been declining. Chinese military theory held that the restoration and maintenance of public confidence was essential to the suppression of rebellious activity,

yet people living in many parts of Shanxi, Henan, and Hukouang during this period considered certain Ming commanders and their unruly troops to be just as dangerous as the very bandits that they had, ostensibly, been sent to suppress. Within the walls of the Forbidden City itself, the Imperial officials were well aware of the danger inherent in this tenuous situation, but given the problems confronting them already, they were either unable or unwilling to do very much about it at all. Indeed, the court probably felt that the dynasty needed all the military support it could muster, and that to ask too many questions about the methods or ultimate loyalties of its commanders or troops would be counterproductive

at best. The sheer vastness of the Ming Empire makes it difficult to gauge the impact of events in one region on developments in another. One example of this is a violent uprising that occurred in Nanjali's Tongcheng region early in the autumn of 1634. One source claims that the dissidents of Tongcheng planned to revolt when a rebel army from the west arrived in the area. That army never did arrive, so the conspirators went underground and waited for another opportunity to strike. That opportunity came on the evening of September 14th, when a mob of commoners broke

into Tongcheng city, burning and looting at will. As one contemporary named Fang Yizhe described the scene, quote, they formed strongholds, carried flags, and set fires in the night. All of the prominent families fled. This was a discernment such as Tongcheng had never experienced before. Although Tongcheng was in fact prospering, a mean-spirited, deeply resentful current had been changing things for a long time. But who would have thought that there would have been this outbreak with armed men? End quote. Other observers were rather less than surprised at the violence and suggested that the wealthy members of the community had brought it upon themselves by their outrageous and often illegal treatment of social and economic inferiors. And although the Tongcheng Uprising was put down rather quickly,

the tensions between rich and poor that existed there also existed in many other parts of southeastern China during the mid-1630s, tensions resulting from, among other things, the collusion among local officials, corrupt Mandarin functionaries, and powerful landowners. Many landowners had, for years, falsified tax records and evaded a substantial portion of their tax obligations. With the continual pressure from the central government to fill the local tax quotas, an ever greater share of the burden was therefore shifted onto smaller property owners who lacked the financial resources and political connections to defend themselves against these unfair exactions. Many of these landowners were finally confronted with two equally unpleasant choices. They could

give their land to influential families and work as its tenants, trading protection from the tax collector for higher rents. Or they could abandon their holdings and flee in the faint hope that conditions might be better elsewhere. Whichever they chose, the land in question either went unattended or fell into the hands of those in the best position to avoid paying taxes on it. The remaining small landowners were then pressured to make up the deficits, and the vicious cycle continued. The plight of many taxpayers was worsened by rising military costs, which forced the government of Beijing to reduce non-essential expenditures and, more important, to increase land tax assessments six times between 1618 and 1637.

Although some scholars have recently expressed reservations about the traditional assumption that excessive taxes contributed heavily to the Ming dynasty's downfall, there can be little doubt that tax increases, quote, added new and additional strains to an already overworked fiscal machinery and imposed an unbearable burden on certain taxpayers, end quote. The tax burden became unbearable not because the rates were outrageously high, and indeed by 16th century standards they may have actually been comparably low, but because many of the taxes were payable in silver, a commodity which had, ironically enough, become increasingly difficult to obtain owing to the ongoing drawing up of

Spanish importations of that oh-so-precious bullion. In southeastern China, the situation was exacerbated even further during the mid-1630s by a series of decisions taken by the Spanish authorities in Madrid and Acapulco between 1634 and 1636. They decided to reduce the amount of New World silver flowing into Manila, and thus to the Fujianese and Portuguese merchants who dominated Sino-Spanish trade there. This reduction did not lead to an immediate financial crisis in China, because it took some time for its impact to be felt in the economy, and also because large amounts of silver continued to be imported from Japan. Yet contemporary accounts from the wealthiest sections of the Southeast indicate that economic conditions were already deteriorating rapidly,

and that some officials and local leaders were preparing for the unrest that they now feared was inevitable. Such fears would soon be fully realized. And so, here we sit in the mid-1630s. The Ming imperial court hopelessly divided against itself, an economy increasingly in shambles, reliant on an important source of revenue that is being squeezed off due to events entirely outside of its control, and increasingly dependent on taxing the section of society least able to pay even in the best of times, and currently being hit by wave after wave of catastrophe, both natural and human-caused alike. Rebels prowl the countryside and roadways, so bold as to attack and even capture entire cities of the Central Empire and spreading further south year after year

And, oh yeah There's still those Manchus of Hong Taiji licking their chops at the spoils just waiting to be plucked from the fertile lands south of the Great Wall It's not looking so good for Great Ming And so, next time it it's going to just keep getting worse. Li Zitong will go from an annoyance to existential threat. The Manchu Crisis will continue to get worse.

Ming's economy will continue to helplessly spiral the drain. And by the end of it all, the Chongzhen Emperor will be looking for a way out of this mess. Any way out at all. Thanks for listening. Have you ever gazed in wonder at the Great Pyramid? Have you marveled at the golden face of Tutankhamun? Or admired the delicate features of Queen Nefertiti. If you have, you'll probably like the History of Egypt podcast. Every week, we explore tales

of this ancient culture. The History of Egypt is available wherever you get your podcasting fix. Come, let me introduce you to the world of Ancient Egypt.