In 1567 the Longqing Emperor ascends the throne as the 12th Ming Emperor as China. Before his accession, the bureaucracy had grown venal and nepotistic; eunuchs controlled the palace and intrigues were rife. Furthermore, the martial nobility was weak and the Imperial Armies disorganised; border defences were lax and China remained isolated and alone in the world.
The Emperor, however, had a reformist mind and he set about clearing the decks of the bureaucracy. The Emperor felt that the Imperial bureaucrats were too corrupt to be trusted with the offices of state, and so he gave ever greater powers to his own cortege of eunuchs. The Emperor believed that if these half men were kept under close scrutiny and were kept in personal servitude to the Emperor, then they would serve loyally, as they had fewer reasons to rebel against the Imperial system through embezzlement and bribe taking. The Emperor also sacked the Chief Secretary who had once run the bureaucracy, and replaced him with Cao Menong; a eunuch and a Muslim from the south. Far away from home and his allies, the Emperor believed he could control Cao and thereby harness his administrative brilliance for his own personal use.
Cao, however, was an astute political animal, and used his post as Chief Secretary to form associations and to buy favours from those below him. He filled the ranks of the civil bureaucracy with eunuchs and, more specifically, eunuchs that he knew and could trust; who were almost as loyal to him as they were to their Emperor. Furthermore, Cao took over the Office of Court Brocade, the Imperial Secret Police, and made its headquarters of the Eastern Depot his own lair. From here he pulled the strings of government and manipulated them to centre control around himself, although ostensibly for the good of the Emperor.
The Emperor himself, however, should not be sniffed at as a rogue element in Chinese history. Unlike his predecessors, he had little time for Confucianism, which perhaps accounts for his hatred of civil bureaucrats. He believed that Imperial control of trade was important, but also that trade itself was important. In 1569 he endowed the port of Suzhou with new docks and jetties which he hoped would stimulate commerce. He also cut taxes in the city and improved roads and bridges. He had his own personal reasons for the renovations-the renovation would facilitate the movement of rice up the Grand Canal towards Beijing, which was necessary as there were already grumbles about the price of food.
In 1571 a horde of Mongol raiders managed to penetrate China’s borders and came within 70 miles of Beijing. In response, the Emperor himself led 400,000 men north to combat them. He was warned by Cao that history set a poor precedent-the defeat, capture and humiliation of the Zhengtong Emperor. Longqing, however, could not be dissuaded, and he marched his men north and engaged the Mongols in several battles. He was victorious in all of these, and the Mongols were driven north of the Great Wall once more. The Emperor ordered the renovation of the Wall and the strengthening of its garrisons.
He also began a series of reforms to the aristocracy in the area. The Wall was, at that time, maintained by local communities as their labour service, which they were obliged by law to attend to. They were also obliged to share responsibility for the defence of the Wall with the Imperial Army. This, the Emperor believed, was far too inefficient for such an important border-he did not want the Imperial back guarded by Manchurian peasants. He therefore founded a string of military-agricultural colonies along the Wall, from the Korean border to Inner Mongolia. This attracted thousands of peasants from the south who moved there in droves. These colonies were organised under military lines, and each settlement of 500 was commanded by a minor noble, and also had a detachment of 100 soldiers. These were responsible for the garrison of 50 miles of Wall during peace time. If there was an attack, then these forces would defend the Wall as best they could while signalling the main Wall Armies to come to their aid.
Cao dipped his fingers into this expansion of the Imperial government too, as he ensured that each town also had an Imperial bureaucrat to collect taxes and to inspect the conditions of the Wall and to ‘oversee’ the actions of the nobility. Despite bureaucratic interference, the new posts of nobility created were filled by military figures-minor officers or meritous soldiers. The Emperor created a new rank of nobility-the lowest both in the landed aristocracy and the martial hierarchy; the Bannerman. His rank derived from his right to fly the Imperial banner, which he would hold in battle and which the 100 men under his command would rally to. From 1571-1575 11,000 Bannerman were created, to command professional army units or to lead military garrisons like those of the Great Wall. A Bannerman was obliged, through his ennoblement, to serve the Emperor as a soldier for forty years and then after that to serve in either the Military Bureaucracy or in the Civil Bureaucracy until his death. After his retirement from the army, he would receive an Imperial Pension, which although not generous, was enough for an old man to live off.
With China’s borders secure, trade picking up once more, and the government stable, the Emperor began to indulge his own whims and desires. In 1574 he began construction of his Winter Palace, on the eastern bank of Weishan Lake. For three years, thousands of tonnes of building materials were shipped along the Grand Canal to the lake side, where an enormous palace complex took shape. Cute pavilions and stately offices formed a phalanx of gaudy traditionalist architecture among thousands of acres of landscaped gardens. Built somewhat separate of the complex yet still very much part of them was the Hall of Officials, where Imperial eunuchs would relay important information to the Emperor from the capital which required his attention. The Emperor began to spend more and more time in his new Palace, and so Beijing became Cao’s city.
Despite his huge power, Cao remained loyal to the Emperor. He had no desires to take the throne, and he knew that despite his hordes of bureaucrats, the nobility was loyal to the Emperor and the ink wells and brushes of his supporters were no match for the pikes, swords and muskets of the Emperor’s men. despite this, he continued to centre power around himself. In 1577 he founded the Imperial Chamber. This was a meeting of leading bureaucrats who were in charge of the various Imperial Offices; he chaired it and he would draft the minutes which would be sent to the Emperor for his seal of approval. However, unbeknownst to him, a greater snake dwelt within the halls of power. Lao Xien, head of the Office of Court Brocade, desired primacy for himself. He therefore sent coded messages to his own supporters and also open propaganda to bureaucrats, nobles and even the general public, slandering Cao, saying that he desired the throne for himself and that he was not really castrated, but was rather a philanderer who pretended to be a eunuch in order not to rouse suspicions. Fearing what Lao would do next (his spies and assassins were everywhere) Cao fled to his country estate with a few supporters. Here he penned his resignation letter to the Emperor, who accepted it. Cao then fled south to Guangzhou, where he took a post as head of the city’s Rice Commissions. His work here, although small in scale, was still significant; he ordered the Pearl River dredged and introduced more advanced agricultural techniques to the area from the north.
Without his loyal Chief Secretary, the Emperor returned to Beijing in 1578 aged 41, and he took on once ore the mantle of head of the administration. His previous successes, however, had gone to his head, and in 1580 he ordered an invasion of Manchuria. 700,000 men were gathered to cross north of the Wall in order to capture the enormous plain. The initial invasion made heavy use of river ships to ferry soldiers around and to defend crucial towns and lines of communication. However, this policy was abandoned in 1582, as the Manchus were regrouping away from the waterways and their attacks were becoming more concerted and better organised. Casualties began to mount as the campaign span out of control.
The harvest of 1583 was a poor one. Normally, the peasants would be able to make it through a poor year, however the war had siphoned off their surplus food, and so they began to go hungry. The provinces most affected were Shaanxi and Hebei, to the west of Beijing. These were caught in the vice of the demands of the capital and the needs of the army, both of which they had to give food to. The Emperor ordered food to be moved there from more prosperous provinces, yet the next year the harvest failed altogether, and famine set in. from 1583-1587 some 700,000 people starved to death. Riots blossomed in provincial town as angry buyers were forced to pay grossly inflated prices for rice or wheat. These were joined by angry peasants, and in March 1585 a horde of angry provincials descended on the capital.
The Emperor, realising the damage done by his frivolous war, ordered his forces back south of the Wall. The campaign had resulted in 60,000 dead Chinese and that was on top of the famine and the civil unrest in China itself. The Emperor was keen to shift blame for the campaign onto others; several leading bureaucrats were forced to resign, and the leader of the campaign was exiled. However, many blamed the Emperor, as did the rioting commoners, and it was their angry shouts that mattered most. In September 1585 Cao, the powerless old man in the south, was assassinated and the Emperor ordered an investigation. It became apparent that Lao had ordered his death, and the Emperor became determined to crush this apparent subversion of Imperial power. He had several leading eunuchs publicly hanged, yet Lao was swift in turning the bureaucracy against the Emperor. Popular resentment of the Emperor turned into anger at the man who claimed to hold the Mandate of Heaven, and by November the riots turned into pogroms as anyone wearing an imperial uniform was liable to be lynched.
The Emperor, having fled back to his Winter Palace in October, was away from the danger zone, but was also powerless to stop Lao from harnessing the power of the mob to make himself master of the city. In December, Lao invited the Emperor to return to the capital. The Emperor refused, sensing a trap, and sent his son and heir the Prince of Wuxin who, aged 27, had shown himself easily led.
As soon as he entered the city, the Prince was bombarded by applicant and starving commoners, and when he refused to meet them, a riot started. He therefore fled the city to Lao’s country estate (formerly Cao’s estate) and here he met with several leading eunuchs. They beseeched him to help them restore order, and the Prince wrote to his father asking him to remove several non-eunuch bureaucrats (whom Lao accused of profiteering from the troubles) and to make Lao Chief Secretary.
When it became apparent that the Emperor had ignored his letter, the Prince was incandescent with rage. On the 13th May 1586 a crowd of commoners mobbed the Forbidden City. They overpowered the guards and burned the gatehouse on Tianenman Square. They also burned large parts of the palace and the city. In response, the Prince declared military rule. Under his own authority, he ordered soldiers into the city in ever greater numbers to restore order. At this point the Emperor, sensing Lao’s machinations, decided to visit the capital.
The visit was too little too late. Had he come in February, when the Prince and Lao were out of the city, he could have made himself the saviour of the people. However, by June it was too late. The momentum was with the Prince, and the Emperor confined himself to his own out of town estate, some 30 miles north of the city.
Riots continued and were harshly put down. the Emperor was burnt in effigy as even Beijing began to starve. Hordes of roaming beggars broke into wealthy houses and not even the soldiers could keep order around the clock. The Emperor, in one desperate bid to regain power, ordered the soldiers in the city to arrest Lao. He hoped that if he threw the eunuch to the mob they would be placated. The opposite occurred, however, as the Prince declared himself Emperor. With Lao’s support he gained control over the city and then sent entreaties to his supporters in the provinces. Those nearest the capital declared for him first, including beleaguered Shaanxi and Hubei. Longqing offered his son terms; they would rule as co-Emperors. Lao, however, persuaded the Prince that his father meant to kill him. The Prince refused, and so Longqing surrendered.
The new Emperor, the Wanli Emperor, was inclined to be merciful. However, Lao eventually persuaded him that the deposed Emperor was marshalling support as they deliberated. The new Emperor finally ordered his father, the old Emperors concubines and wives, as well as his own siblings to be murdered. The only exceptions were two sons: one, who was deaf and blind, was made the Emperor’s heir. The second, who was the third son of the Second Concubine, had been close to Wanli in his youth, and the soft-hearted Emperor took pity upon him. Nonetheless, the boy, Zhu Wangxing, was packed off to Xian. A long life in the army was planned for him, even though he was 3rd in line to the throne (having previously been 13th). This suited him just fine, as he loved the army, and he advanced swiftly through the ranks.
Zhu had been eleven in 1586 when the coup took place. He had been spared, yet he had still watched his family be slaughtered by eunuchs. This mental scarring drove him for the rest of his life, and even as he was sent into exile, he swore vengeance.
The civil war against the Wanli Emperor ended in 1588 with total victory for his forces. Wanli and Lao (his Chief Secretary) then launched a bloody purge of the bureaucracy and the army which killed 40,000. Once this was done, the Emperor withdrew to the Summer Palace in Chengde, where he hunted the plentiful deer and went boating on the placid artificial lake.
Lao, meanwhile, started his own series of reforms. He split the bureaucracy into eight Offices: the Army, Temples, Trade, the Court Brocade, Nobility, the Treasury, Borders and the Provinces. He himself held two of these offices (trade and the Court Brocade) while he had loyal eunuch supporters in the rest. however, his reforms would provoke controversy from the bureaucrat’s oldest enemy: the noble. The Office of Nobility attempted to cut Nobles’ pensions in 1690 and this provoked a storm of anger from nobles. Numerous societies were set up which got together to send an appeal to the Emperor. Wanli was sympathetic, and issued a decree which restored to nobles their pensions. However, they then went further and made a list of demands, including the right to raise their own militias, the right to arm the peasantry during times of war, and the shift of responsibility of infrastructure from bureaucrats to the military authorities.
This was too much for Lao, who ordered the Court Brocade to break up the nobles’ conventions. The nobles resisted, however, and low-key warfare raged across China for three months. Finally in May 1690 the Emperor issued a decree that gave in to several of the nobles’ demands, and in the face of this decree the nobles backed down. however, the Emperor ordered them to obey the edicts of the Office of Nobility from then on. Lao rushed to make himself Secretary of Nobility.
By 1594, Zhu had reached the rank of Count; he was only nineteen yet due to his prestigious station and his enormous talents, he rose swiftly through the ranks. He also had his half brother to thank, who had launched a purge of the nobility (under Lao’s advice) which had freed up a post for him in the upper echelons of power.
In April 1595 an army of Manchus attacked the wall north of Beijing. The Wall had been neglected for a decade, and now an army of 200,000 had broken through. Count Zhu, who was stationed near Beijing, mobilised a force of 140,000 men and marched to meet the Manchus at Chengde. The small resort town lay on the banks of the Rehe River, which the Manchus would have to cross. Zhu secured the bridge across the river and posted spies on Sledgehammer Rock to look out for the Manchus. Meanwhile, Zhu ordered several floating platforms to be built on either side of the bridge. They were taller than the bridge itself, and he filled them with archers and musketeers.
The Manchus attacked the bridge early in the morning of the 12th May 1595. It was a cool morning, and there was a fog in the valley which the Rehe ran through. Because of this, the Imperial archers were not able to fire on the Manchus until they were on the bridge itself, at which point they were too close to the Chinese infantry to shoot lest they hit their comrades. The infantry battle on the first day was fierce, and the Manchus were forced back with heavy casualties on both sides.
The second day was clearer, and the Manchus were subjected to fierce bombardment from arrows and small bronze cannons, which had been affixed to the platforms the previous day. They fired back on the platforms with fire arrows, and one of them burnt down, drowning everyone inside. Count Zhu then ordered the men to rivet iron sheets to the wooden platforms and these stopped most of the fires. The second day was even more bloody than the first, yet the casualties were largely on the Manchu side. Zhu, however, engineered a plan to win him the battle.
The third day came with a final Manchu assault. The Chinese infantry at the other end of the bridge, however, were far less numerous than the previous two days. Assuming they were only the survivors from their onslaught, the Manchus pushed through these ranks and whooped with joy at their victory-Beijing was defenceless and as good as theirs.
However, from their flanks came a braying of horns and a combined force of infantry and cavalry charged into their flanks while meanwhile the Count himself led an assault on their front. Trapped in their bridgehead, the Manchus were slaughtered. While this happened, those stationed on the platforms crossed the river and took the other end of the bridge. Trapped, the Manchus were slaughtered by the thousand. 87,000 Manchus were killed as opposed to 9,000 Chinese.
News of the victory spread throughout the country and was greeted with rejoicing in the streets of Beijing; Zhu was beloved and Lao popularly reviled. The eunuch dared not touch the Count for fear of being lynched. He did, however, ensure that his next posting was far away from the capital.
In 1597, Zhu was sent south to Annam. Here, in the steamy south, he fought a constant guerrilla war with the natives. Here he was forced to change his tactics dramatically; he experimented with iron-clad river boats filled with archers and musketeers. These patrolled the sluggish rivers of the sodden land while the Count set about building up infrastructure.
He marshalled his forces into throwing up great causeways between towns and villages. Every mile they built a guard tower with a watch fire and a small guard. These new roads were a way of resupplying his farthest flung outposts and also a means of moving soldiers to trouble spots quickly. He also built several settler colonies on firmer ground and encouraged jungle clearance to make way for rice paddies. Thousands of Chinese immigrants rushed south and, despite the actions of Vietnamese insurgents, they prospered. The settler colonies were usually built on raised ground and were surrounded by a ditch and stockade. Agriculture grew steadily, and soon rice was being exported to Guangzhou and even Beijing itself.
In 1601 the Wanli Emperor died. Many thought Lao had killed him as a final act of revenge for his part in the Nobility Crisis. His successor, the Tormen Emperor, was blind and deaf; seemingly the perfect tool for Lao’s machinations. However, even the great plotter succumbed to treachery. Three months after his accession, the Emperor was presented with a petition. He signed it and its contents carried out. What he did not know was that it was an order for Lao’s execution. The old eunuch was killed and his head stuck on a pike and paraded through the streets of Beijing to wild applause.
Lao was, however, swiftly replaced; Wei Guxian was made Chief Secretary on the 23rd June 1601. He lacked both the tact and the competence of Cao or Lao, and did not last long. He wasted his time drinking and composing lewd poetry. Meanwhile, Count Zhu grew stronger. He was made a Prince in 1602 and with his rank grew his ambitions. He began plotting against the Emperor and his Secretary and finally, in January 1603, he acted.
A band of soldiers stormed the Winter Palace and told the Emperor that Wei was plotting against him and that he must flee; his half brother Zhu would protect him, and they rushed to Nanjing, where Zhu waited. The Emperor ordered the eunuch killed, and signed the order. This was then taken to Beijing in all haste and the deed done by the officer who presented the notice to the Secretary. The eunuch’s body was dumped in the Grand Canal that night. The Emperor arrived in Nanjing two days later, by which time Zhu had declared himself the Qinlong Emperor. He informed the deposed Emperor of his actions and then ordered his nose removed. Zhu then led 2,000 soldiers north and entered Beijing at their head. The people welcomed him with open arms. Simultaneously, his numerous supporters declared loyalty to the new Emperor and the Tormen Emperor was stricken from the official lists.
The Qinlong Emperor began by smashing the eunuch bureaucracy. He reintroduced the examination system for bureaucrats, although his new exam placed literature and verse below accounting and numeracy. He then ordered thousands of Imperial eunuchs killed. They were hanged, shot, stabbed, beheaded and burned. Those who had taken part in the death of the Longqing Emperor were killed by Qinlong’s own hand. Both the common people and the nobles rejoiced as the petty, corrupt and debauched half men were annihilated. The Emperor passed an edict banning the creation of new eunuchs and commanding the death penalty for anyone found creating one. He also decreed that no Imperial office was to employ a eunuch and that any existing eunuchs were to resign their posts or face the death penalty.
To replace the eunuchs, the Emperor introduced the Tables of Nobility. These were ranks of nobility that were drawn up between 1602 and 1610 which gave noble rank to civil bureaucrats according to their station. The lowliest of provincial bureaucrats were made Bannermen while the Chief Secretaries were made Dukes. These ranks not only held great esteem and dignity, but also pay increases and more generous pensions. However, promotion could only be made through a series of internal examinations that got progressively more difficult the further one climbed in the bureaucracy.
With the bureaucracy once more subordinated to the throne, the Emperor set about reorganising the army. Having served within it for decades, he knew its weaknesses and made its overhaul his next priority. First, he split China into 44 Military Regions. These had their own organisations and their own centres of power (which came to be called Imperial Garrison Cities). They had two leaders: one civil, one martial. The civil leader (Count) was responsible for procurement, pay and the maintenance of military infrastructure and buildings (barracks, supply depots, arms workshops etc.) while the military leader (Duke) was the general in command of the soldiers within the region. Each of these Regions had its own militia, which was to be organised by the Duke, and spending on the militia was closely watched by Imperial agents. Furthermore, all the hereditary military nobles (families who owned land on the condition they serve in the army) were suborned to the Duke and their inheritance laws (that ensured that the head of the household was fit for military service) and other accounts were managed by the Count.
With China’s military bureaucracy reformed, the Emperor turned to the standing army. He reorganised the homogenous mass of troops into eight frontier armies; three Wall Armies; two Sichuan Armies; one Vietnamese Army; and two Western Armies. By 1610 they numbered 800,000 men in a country with over 120 million inhabitants. Each Army was led by a Duke with his own bevy of bureaucrats both military and Imperial who were responsible for procurement, recruitment, discipline etc.
In 1606 Qinlong led a campaign of revenge against the Manchus. Leading two Wall Armies (220,000 men) across the Manchurian plain. The Manchus, however, were too swift and casualties began to mount. Fearing a repeat of his father’s fateful campaign, the Emperor withdrew south of the Wall after only 18 months north.
The campaign had severely hurt the treasury, and the armies’ morale was low. The Emperor needed revenue, yet he did not dare raise taxes as he feared a repeat of 1583. He therefore turned abroad for finance. The Portuguese trading post at Macao had been made a ‘City in the Name of God’ by Phillip II of Spain, whose father had ‘unified’ Spain and Portugal in 1580 as the Iberian Union. The small outpost had grown wealthy from trade with China, and only paid a cursory amount of rent to Xiangshan County. The Emperor renegotiated trade through Macao so that the Portuguese had a monopoly on foreign trade with all ports on the Pearl River Delta, excluding Guangzhou. In return, the Portuguese would pay a tax of 10% on all goods according to their value as assessed by Chinese bureaucrats. This tax, although small when compared to the profits made in Europe, was still a significant source of income. The Emperor also opened the ports of Guangzhou, Shanghai, Suzhou and Nanjing to European trade. These ports were open to all foreign trade with a 15% tax rate on all sales. Soon Dutch, English, Spanish and Ottoman ships sailed for China to trade. Tea, silk and lacquerware were traded. The Emperor also allowed important on a large scale, so cotton, sugar, tobacco and other commodities entered China in bulk for the first time.
The explosion in commerce proved to Qinlong the value of European trade. He himself bought five large clocks which he positioned around his palaces; he kept one nearby him at all times. He ordered one clock taken apart and reproduced exactly; thus China produced its first mechanical clock. It required almost constant winding, but more would follow.
In order to support his military reforms, the Emperor established four arms workshops in Beijing to produce gunpowder and muskets. He also established two more shops to produce fine artillery. He then split the Chinese army into three corps: the infantry, the musketeers, and the cavalry. The infantry were equipped with armour, a sword and a pike. The muskets were given lighter armour and a wheel lock musket. The cavalry were equipped with swords, lances and bows. The Emperor established that each army would have cavalry, pikemen and musketeers in a ratio of 1::6:3. He also made the First Wall Army his ‘First Model Army’ which he himself commanded. He ordered the Dukes to drill their men constantly and to instil iron discipline into the soldiers. In return for these exacting demands, the soldiers were given increased pay and the promise of a pension after 20 years’ service.
Attached to the infantry was artillery. Cannons had existed in China for hundreds of years, yet now they were refined yet more into three types: light cannons which were put on carriages and used on the front line of battle; heavier cannons that were used from behind the ranks to pummel enemy formations; and finally siege guns, which included mortars.
In 1611 Qinlong led three armies numbering 320,000 men back into Manchuria. This time he was far more successful and after three years of campaigning he annexed Manchuria. Qinlong opened the floodgates of Chinese immigration and thousands flooded north to settle on the plains. He founded a string of colonies similar to those south of the Wall- those of his father- yet attempts at agriculture took much backbreaking labour under the extremes of the Manchurian climate.
The Emperor, however, had a reformist mind and he set about clearing the decks of the bureaucracy. The Emperor felt that the Imperial bureaucrats were too corrupt to be trusted with the offices of state, and so he gave ever greater powers to his own cortege of eunuchs. The Emperor believed that if these half men were kept under close scrutiny and were kept in personal servitude to the Emperor, then they would serve loyally, as they had fewer reasons to rebel against the Imperial system through embezzlement and bribe taking. The Emperor also sacked the Chief Secretary who had once run the bureaucracy, and replaced him with Cao Menong; a eunuch and a Muslim from the south. Far away from home and his allies, the Emperor believed he could control Cao and thereby harness his administrative brilliance for his own personal use.
Cao, however, was an astute political animal, and used his post as Chief Secretary to form associations and to buy favours from those below him. He filled the ranks of the civil bureaucracy with eunuchs and, more specifically, eunuchs that he knew and could trust; who were almost as loyal to him as they were to their Emperor. Furthermore, Cao took over the Office of Court Brocade, the Imperial Secret Police, and made its headquarters of the Eastern Depot his own lair. From here he pulled the strings of government and manipulated them to centre control around himself, although ostensibly for the good of the Emperor.
The Emperor himself, however, should not be sniffed at as a rogue element in Chinese history. Unlike his predecessors, he had little time for Confucianism, which perhaps accounts for his hatred of civil bureaucrats. He believed that Imperial control of trade was important, but also that trade itself was important. In 1569 he endowed the port of Suzhou with new docks and jetties which he hoped would stimulate commerce. He also cut taxes in the city and improved roads and bridges. He had his own personal reasons for the renovations-the renovation would facilitate the movement of rice up the Grand Canal towards Beijing, which was necessary as there were already grumbles about the price of food.
In 1571 a horde of Mongol raiders managed to penetrate China’s borders and came within 70 miles of Beijing. In response, the Emperor himself led 400,000 men north to combat them. He was warned by Cao that history set a poor precedent-the defeat, capture and humiliation of the Zhengtong Emperor. Longqing, however, could not be dissuaded, and he marched his men north and engaged the Mongols in several battles. He was victorious in all of these, and the Mongols were driven north of the Great Wall once more. The Emperor ordered the renovation of the Wall and the strengthening of its garrisons.
He also began a series of reforms to the aristocracy in the area. The Wall was, at that time, maintained by local communities as their labour service, which they were obliged by law to attend to. They were also obliged to share responsibility for the defence of the Wall with the Imperial Army. This, the Emperor believed, was far too inefficient for such an important border-he did not want the Imperial back guarded by Manchurian peasants. He therefore founded a string of military-agricultural colonies along the Wall, from the Korean border to Inner Mongolia. This attracted thousands of peasants from the south who moved there in droves. These colonies were organised under military lines, and each settlement of 500 was commanded by a minor noble, and also had a detachment of 100 soldiers. These were responsible for the garrison of 50 miles of Wall during peace time. If there was an attack, then these forces would defend the Wall as best they could while signalling the main Wall Armies to come to their aid.
Cao dipped his fingers into this expansion of the Imperial government too, as he ensured that each town also had an Imperial bureaucrat to collect taxes and to inspect the conditions of the Wall and to ‘oversee’ the actions of the nobility. Despite bureaucratic interference, the new posts of nobility created were filled by military figures-minor officers or meritous soldiers. The Emperor created a new rank of nobility-the lowest both in the landed aristocracy and the martial hierarchy; the Bannerman. His rank derived from his right to fly the Imperial banner, which he would hold in battle and which the 100 men under his command would rally to. From 1571-1575 11,000 Bannerman were created, to command professional army units or to lead military garrisons like those of the Great Wall. A Bannerman was obliged, through his ennoblement, to serve the Emperor as a soldier for forty years and then after that to serve in either the Military Bureaucracy or in the Civil Bureaucracy until his death. After his retirement from the army, he would receive an Imperial Pension, which although not generous, was enough for an old man to live off.
With China’s borders secure, trade picking up once more, and the government stable, the Emperor began to indulge his own whims and desires. In 1574 he began construction of his Winter Palace, on the eastern bank of Weishan Lake. For three years, thousands of tonnes of building materials were shipped along the Grand Canal to the lake side, where an enormous palace complex took shape. Cute pavilions and stately offices formed a phalanx of gaudy traditionalist architecture among thousands of acres of landscaped gardens. Built somewhat separate of the complex yet still very much part of them was the Hall of Officials, where Imperial eunuchs would relay important information to the Emperor from the capital which required his attention. The Emperor began to spend more and more time in his new Palace, and so Beijing became Cao’s city.
Despite his huge power, Cao remained loyal to the Emperor. He had no desires to take the throne, and he knew that despite his hordes of bureaucrats, the nobility was loyal to the Emperor and the ink wells and brushes of his supporters were no match for the pikes, swords and muskets of the Emperor’s men. despite this, he continued to centre power around himself. In 1577 he founded the Imperial Chamber. This was a meeting of leading bureaucrats who were in charge of the various Imperial Offices; he chaired it and he would draft the minutes which would be sent to the Emperor for his seal of approval. However, unbeknownst to him, a greater snake dwelt within the halls of power. Lao Xien, head of the Office of Court Brocade, desired primacy for himself. He therefore sent coded messages to his own supporters and also open propaganda to bureaucrats, nobles and even the general public, slandering Cao, saying that he desired the throne for himself and that he was not really castrated, but was rather a philanderer who pretended to be a eunuch in order not to rouse suspicions. Fearing what Lao would do next (his spies and assassins were everywhere) Cao fled to his country estate with a few supporters. Here he penned his resignation letter to the Emperor, who accepted it. Cao then fled south to Guangzhou, where he took a post as head of the city’s Rice Commissions. His work here, although small in scale, was still significant; he ordered the Pearl River dredged and introduced more advanced agricultural techniques to the area from the north.
Without his loyal Chief Secretary, the Emperor returned to Beijing in 1578 aged 41, and he took on once ore the mantle of head of the administration. His previous successes, however, had gone to his head, and in 1580 he ordered an invasion of Manchuria. 700,000 men were gathered to cross north of the Wall in order to capture the enormous plain. The initial invasion made heavy use of river ships to ferry soldiers around and to defend crucial towns and lines of communication. However, this policy was abandoned in 1582, as the Manchus were regrouping away from the waterways and their attacks were becoming more concerted and better organised. Casualties began to mount as the campaign span out of control.
The harvest of 1583 was a poor one. Normally, the peasants would be able to make it through a poor year, however the war had siphoned off their surplus food, and so they began to go hungry. The provinces most affected were Shaanxi and Hebei, to the west of Beijing. These were caught in the vice of the demands of the capital and the needs of the army, both of which they had to give food to. The Emperor ordered food to be moved there from more prosperous provinces, yet the next year the harvest failed altogether, and famine set in. from 1583-1587 some 700,000 people starved to death. Riots blossomed in provincial town as angry buyers were forced to pay grossly inflated prices for rice or wheat. These were joined by angry peasants, and in March 1585 a horde of angry provincials descended on the capital.
The Emperor, realising the damage done by his frivolous war, ordered his forces back south of the Wall. The campaign had resulted in 60,000 dead Chinese and that was on top of the famine and the civil unrest in China itself. The Emperor was keen to shift blame for the campaign onto others; several leading bureaucrats were forced to resign, and the leader of the campaign was exiled. However, many blamed the Emperor, as did the rioting commoners, and it was their angry shouts that mattered most. In September 1585 Cao, the powerless old man in the south, was assassinated and the Emperor ordered an investigation. It became apparent that Lao had ordered his death, and the Emperor became determined to crush this apparent subversion of Imperial power. He had several leading eunuchs publicly hanged, yet Lao was swift in turning the bureaucracy against the Emperor. Popular resentment of the Emperor turned into anger at the man who claimed to hold the Mandate of Heaven, and by November the riots turned into pogroms as anyone wearing an imperial uniform was liable to be lynched.
The Emperor, having fled back to his Winter Palace in October, was away from the danger zone, but was also powerless to stop Lao from harnessing the power of the mob to make himself master of the city. In December, Lao invited the Emperor to return to the capital. The Emperor refused, sensing a trap, and sent his son and heir the Prince of Wuxin who, aged 27, had shown himself easily led.
As soon as he entered the city, the Prince was bombarded by applicant and starving commoners, and when he refused to meet them, a riot started. He therefore fled the city to Lao’s country estate (formerly Cao’s estate) and here he met with several leading eunuchs. They beseeched him to help them restore order, and the Prince wrote to his father asking him to remove several non-eunuch bureaucrats (whom Lao accused of profiteering from the troubles) and to make Lao Chief Secretary.
When it became apparent that the Emperor had ignored his letter, the Prince was incandescent with rage. On the 13th May 1586 a crowd of commoners mobbed the Forbidden City. They overpowered the guards and burned the gatehouse on Tianenman Square. They also burned large parts of the palace and the city. In response, the Prince declared military rule. Under his own authority, he ordered soldiers into the city in ever greater numbers to restore order. At this point the Emperor, sensing Lao’s machinations, decided to visit the capital.
The visit was too little too late. Had he come in February, when the Prince and Lao were out of the city, he could have made himself the saviour of the people. However, by June it was too late. The momentum was with the Prince, and the Emperor confined himself to his own out of town estate, some 30 miles north of the city.
Riots continued and were harshly put down. the Emperor was burnt in effigy as even Beijing began to starve. Hordes of roaming beggars broke into wealthy houses and not even the soldiers could keep order around the clock. The Emperor, in one desperate bid to regain power, ordered the soldiers in the city to arrest Lao. He hoped that if he threw the eunuch to the mob they would be placated. The opposite occurred, however, as the Prince declared himself Emperor. With Lao’s support he gained control over the city and then sent entreaties to his supporters in the provinces. Those nearest the capital declared for him first, including beleaguered Shaanxi and Hubei. Longqing offered his son terms; they would rule as co-Emperors. Lao, however, persuaded the Prince that his father meant to kill him. The Prince refused, and so Longqing surrendered.
The new Emperor, the Wanli Emperor, was inclined to be merciful. However, Lao eventually persuaded him that the deposed Emperor was marshalling support as they deliberated. The new Emperor finally ordered his father, the old Emperors concubines and wives, as well as his own siblings to be murdered. The only exceptions were two sons: one, who was deaf and blind, was made the Emperor’s heir. The second, who was the third son of the Second Concubine, had been close to Wanli in his youth, and the soft-hearted Emperor took pity upon him. Nonetheless, the boy, Zhu Wangxing, was packed off to Xian. A long life in the army was planned for him, even though he was 3rd in line to the throne (having previously been 13th). This suited him just fine, as he loved the army, and he advanced swiftly through the ranks.
Zhu had been eleven in 1586 when the coup took place. He had been spared, yet he had still watched his family be slaughtered by eunuchs. This mental scarring drove him for the rest of his life, and even as he was sent into exile, he swore vengeance.
The civil war against the Wanli Emperor ended in 1588 with total victory for his forces. Wanli and Lao (his Chief Secretary) then launched a bloody purge of the bureaucracy and the army which killed 40,000. Once this was done, the Emperor withdrew to the Summer Palace in Chengde, where he hunted the plentiful deer and went boating on the placid artificial lake.
Lao, meanwhile, started his own series of reforms. He split the bureaucracy into eight Offices: the Army, Temples, Trade, the Court Brocade, Nobility, the Treasury, Borders and the Provinces. He himself held two of these offices (trade and the Court Brocade) while he had loyal eunuch supporters in the rest. however, his reforms would provoke controversy from the bureaucrat’s oldest enemy: the noble. The Office of Nobility attempted to cut Nobles’ pensions in 1690 and this provoked a storm of anger from nobles. Numerous societies were set up which got together to send an appeal to the Emperor. Wanli was sympathetic, and issued a decree which restored to nobles their pensions. However, they then went further and made a list of demands, including the right to raise their own militias, the right to arm the peasantry during times of war, and the shift of responsibility of infrastructure from bureaucrats to the military authorities.
This was too much for Lao, who ordered the Court Brocade to break up the nobles’ conventions. The nobles resisted, however, and low-key warfare raged across China for three months. Finally in May 1690 the Emperor issued a decree that gave in to several of the nobles’ demands, and in the face of this decree the nobles backed down. however, the Emperor ordered them to obey the edicts of the Office of Nobility from then on. Lao rushed to make himself Secretary of Nobility.
By 1594, Zhu had reached the rank of Count; he was only nineteen yet due to his prestigious station and his enormous talents, he rose swiftly through the ranks. He also had his half brother to thank, who had launched a purge of the nobility (under Lao’s advice) which had freed up a post for him in the upper echelons of power.
In April 1595 an army of Manchus attacked the wall north of Beijing. The Wall had been neglected for a decade, and now an army of 200,000 had broken through. Count Zhu, who was stationed near Beijing, mobilised a force of 140,000 men and marched to meet the Manchus at Chengde. The small resort town lay on the banks of the Rehe River, which the Manchus would have to cross. Zhu secured the bridge across the river and posted spies on Sledgehammer Rock to look out for the Manchus. Meanwhile, Zhu ordered several floating platforms to be built on either side of the bridge. They were taller than the bridge itself, and he filled them with archers and musketeers.
The Manchus attacked the bridge early in the morning of the 12th May 1595. It was a cool morning, and there was a fog in the valley which the Rehe ran through. Because of this, the Imperial archers were not able to fire on the Manchus until they were on the bridge itself, at which point they were too close to the Chinese infantry to shoot lest they hit their comrades. The infantry battle on the first day was fierce, and the Manchus were forced back with heavy casualties on both sides.
The second day was clearer, and the Manchus were subjected to fierce bombardment from arrows and small bronze cannons, which had been affixed to the platforms the previous day. They fired back on the platforms with fire arrows, and one of them burnt down, drowning everyone inside. Count Zhu then ordered the men to rivet iron sheets to the wooden platforms and these stopped most of the fires. The second day was even more bloody than the first, yet the casualties were largely on the Manchu side. Zhu, however, engineered a plan to win him the battle.
The third day came with a final Manchu assault. The Chinese infantry at the other end of the bridge, however, were far less numerous than the previous two days. Assuming they were only the survivors from their onslaught, the Manchus pushed through these ranks and whooped with joy at their victory-Beijing was defenceless and as good as theirs.
However, from their flanks came a braying of horns and a combined force of infantry and cavalry charged into their flanks while meanwhile the Count himself led an assault on their front. Trapped in their bridgehead, the Manchus were slaughtered. While this happened, those stationed on the platforms crossed the river and took the other end of the bridge. Trapped, the Manchus were slaughtered by the thousand. 87,000 Manchus were killed as opposed to 9,000 Chinese.
News of the victory spread throughout the country and was greeted with rejoicing in the streets of Beijing; Zhu was beloved and Lao popularly reviled. The eunuch dared not touch the Count for fear of being lynched. He did, however, ensure that his next posting was far away from the capital.
In 1597, Zhu was sent south to Annam. Here, in the steamy south, he fought a constant guerrilla war with the natives. Here he was forced to change his tactics dramatically; he experimented with iron-clad river boats filled with archers and musketeers. These patrolled the sluggish rivers of the sodden land while the Count set about building up infrastructure.
He marshalled his forces into throwing up great causeways between towns and villages. Every mile they built a guard tower with a watch fire and a small guard. These new roads were a way of resupplying his farthest flung outposts and also a means of moving soldiers to trouble spots quickly. He also built several settler colonies on firmer ground and encouraged jungle clearance to make way for rice paddies. Thousands of Chinese immigrants rushed south and, despite the actions of Vietnamese insurgents, they prospered. The settler colonies were usually built on raised ground and were surrounded by a ditch and stockade. Agriculture grew steadily, and soon rice was being exported to Guangzhou and even Beijing itself.
In 1601 the Wanli Emperor died. Many thought Lao had killed him as a final act of revenge for his part in the Nobility Crisis. His successor, the Tormen Emperor, was blind and deaf; seemingly the perfect tool for Lao’s machinations. However, even the great plotter succumbed to treachery. Three months after his accession, the Emperor was presented with a petition. He signed it and its contents carried out. What he did not know was that it was an order for Lao’s execution. The old eunuch was killed and his head stuck on a pike and paraded through the streets of Beijing to wild applause.
Lao was, however, swiftly replaced; Wei Guxian was made Chief Secretary on the 23rd June 1601. He lacked both the tact and the competence of Cao or Lao, and did not last long. He wasted his time drinking and composing lewd poetry. Meanwhile, Count Zhu grew stronger. He was made a Prince in 1602 and with his rank grew his ambitions. He began plotting against the Emperor and his Secretary and finally, in January 1603, he acted.
A band of soldiers stormed the Winter Palace and told the Emperor that Wei was plotting against him and that he must flee; his half brother Zhu would protect him, and they rushed to Nanjing, where Zhu waited. The Emperor ordered the eunuch killed, and signed the order. This was then taken to Beijing in all haste and the deed done by the officer who presented the notice to the Secretary. The eunuch’s body was dumped in the Grand Canal that night. The Emperor arrived in Nanjing two days later, by which time Zhu had declared himself the Qinlong Emperor. He informed the deposed Emperor of his actions and then ordered his nose removed. Zhu then led 2,000 soldiers north and entered Beijing at their head. The people welcomed him with open arms. Simultaneously, his numerous supporters declared loyalty to the new Emperor and the Tormen Emperor was stricken from the official lists.
The Qinlong Emperor began by smashing the eunuch bureaucracy. He reintroduced the examination system for bureaucrats, although his new exam placed literature and verse below accounting and numeracy. He then ordered thousands of Imperial eunuchs killed. They were hanged, shot, stabbed, beheaded and burned. Those who had taken part in the death of the Longqing Emperor were killed by Qinlong’s own hand. Both the common people and the nobles rejoiced as the petty, corrupt and debauched half men were annihilated. The Emperor passed an edict banning the creation of new eunuchs and commanding the death penalty for anyone found creating one. He also decreed that no Imperial office was to employ a eunuch and that any existing eunuchs were to resign their posts or face the death penalty.
To replace the eunuchs, the Emperor introduced the Tables of Nobility. These were ranks of nobility that were drawn up between 1602 and 1610 which gave noble rank to civil bureaucrats according to their station. The lowliest of provincial bureaucrats were made Bannermen while the Chief Secretaries were made Dukes. These ranks not only held great esteem and dignity, but also pay increases and more generous pensions. However, promotion could only be made through a series of internal examinations that got progressively more difficult the further one climbed in the bureaucracy.
With the bureaucracy once more subordinated to the throne, the Emperor set about reorganising the army. Having served within it for decades, he knew its weaknesses and made its overhaul his next priority. First, he split China into 44 Military Regions. These had their own organisations and their own centres of power (which came to be called Imperial Garrison Cities). They had two leaders: one civil, one martial. The civil leader (Count) was responsible for procurement, pay and the maintenance of military infrastructure and buildings (barracks, supply depots, arms workshops etc.) while the military leader (Duke) was the general in command of the soldiers within the region. Each of these Regions had its own militia, which was to be organised by the Duke, and spending on the militia was closely watched by Imperial agents. Furthermore, all the hereditary military nobles (families who owned land on the condition they serve in the army) were suborned to the Duke and their inheritance laws (that ensured that the head of the household was fit for military service) and other accounts were managed by the Count.
With China’s military bureaucracy reformed, the Emperor turned to the standing army. He reorganised the homogenous mass of troops into eight frontier armies; three Wall Armies; two Sichuan Armies; one Vietnamese Army; and two Western Armies. By 1610 they numbered 800,000 men in a country with over 120 million inhabitants. Each Army was led by a Duke with his own bevy of bureaucrats both military and Imperial who were responsible for procurement, recruitment, discipline etc.
In 1606 Qinlong led a campaign of revenge against the Manchus. Leading two Wall Armies (220,000 men) across the Manchurian plain. The Manchus, however, were too swift and casualties began to mount. Fearing a repeat of his father’s fateful campaign, the Emperor withdrew south of the Wall after only 18 months north.
The campaign had severely hurt the treasury, and the armies’ morale was low. The Emperor needed revenue, yet he did not dare raise taxes as he feared a repeat of 1583. He therefore turned abroad for finance. The Portuguese trading post at Macao had been made a ‘City in the Name of God’ by Phillip II of Spain, whose father had ‘unified’ Spain and Portugal in 1580 as the Iberian Union. The small outpost had grown wealthy from trade with China, and only paid a cursory amount of rent to Xiangshan County. The Emperor renegotiated trade through Macao so that the Portuguese had a monopoly on foreign trade with all ports on the Pearl River Delta, excluding Guangzhou. In return, the Portuguese would pay a tax of 10% on all goods according to their value as assessed by Chinese bureaucrats. This tax, although small when compared to the profits made in Europe, was still a significant source of income. The Emperor also opened the ports of Guangzhou, Shanghai, Suzhou and Nanjing to European trade. These ports were open to all foreign trade with a 15% tax rate on all sales. Soon Dutch, English, Spanish and Ottoman ships sailed for China to trade. Tea, silk and lacquerware were traded. The Emperor also allowed important on a large scale, so cotton, sugar, tobacco and other commodities entered China in bulk for the first time.
The explosion in commerce proved to Qinlong the value of European trade. He himself bought five large clocks which he positioned around his palaces; he kept one nearby him at all times. He ordered one clock taken apart and reproduced exactly; thus China produced its first mechanical clock. It required almost constant winding, but more would follow.
In order to support his military reforms, the Emperor established four arms workshops in Beijing to produce gunpowder and muskets. He also established two more shops to produce fine artillery. He then split the Chinese army into three corps: the infantry, the musketeers, and the cavalry. The infantry were equipped with armour, a sword and a pike. The muskets were given lighter armour and a wheel lock musket. The cavalry were equipped with swords, lances and bows. The Emperor established that each army would have cavalry, pikemen and musketeers in a ratio of 1::6:3. He also made the First Wall Army his ‘First Model Army’ which he himself commanded. He ordered the Dukes to drill their men constantly and to instil iron discipline into the soldiers. In return for these exacting demands, the soldiers were given increased pay and the promise of a pension after 20 years’ service.
Attached to the infantry was artillery. Cannons had existed in China for hundreds of years, yet now they were refined yet more into three types: light cannons which were put on carriages and used on the front line of battle; heavier cannons that were used from behind the ranks to pummel enemy formations; and finally siege guns, which included mortars.
In 1611 Qinlong led three armies numbering 320,000 men back into Manchuria. This time he was far more successful and after three years of campaigning he annexed Manchuria. Qinlong opened the floodgates of Chinese immigration and thousands flooded north to settle on the plains. He founded a string of colonies similar to those south of the Wall- those of his father- yet attempts at agriculture took much backbreaking labour under the extremes of the Manchurian climate.
