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The Southern Throne Shattered
Under the steady hand of the Yongguang Emperor, the Southern Ming was able to recover a measure of peace and stability, and some would even say prosperity. Commercial relations were reestablished with Japan through the Red Seal Company, along with Portuguese, Dutch and Spanish trade, whereas the stabilization of the southern provinces and the establishment of a centralized government in Nanjing brought an end to the economic turmoil suffered by the Loyalist Regime between 1644 and 1646. The Civil administration of the realm also benefited from the Emperor’s wise and sharp mind, and the Six Ministries along with several key positions in the central and provincial governments were awarded to the Confucian faction that stood behind Shi Kefa and the Prince of Lu during the succession struggle, leading some to call this a “resurrection of the Donglin Faction”, after several years that the strict Confucians spent in the wilderness. Yet, not all was good for the Ming: Military magnates and aristocrats, along with the Guardian Generals continued to depredate the land and act as iron-fisted autocrats in the provinces their armies occupied. Infamous was the case of Yangzhou, besieged in two occasions by two of the Guardian Generals, or that of the Province of Hunan, which had become a de facto fiefdom of Huang Degong. [1]
Yet Shi Kefa knew that he needed the Guardian Generals and their armies, for without them the Son of Heaven would stand no chance against the Usurper and his army of bandits and turncoats. The all-powerful Minister of War was so confident in the recovery he had seen in the year of 1647, with the ascension of the Yongguang Emperor, the campaign against Daxi in Guizhou and the purge of the Eunuchs, that in the spring of 1648 he began to envision a campaign to reclaim the Mandate of Heaven and restore the Ming to Beijing and the northern provinces. In Shi’s vision, Gao Jie would invade the Central Plains and retake Kaifeng in the summer of 1648, while he and Zuo Liangyu would march from Huainan to link with the rebel armies in Shandong and drive the Usurper from Beijing. [2]
Circumstances would nevertheless conspire against Shi Kefa’s plans and see that the military situation of 1648 be completely reversed.
Shun incursions along the Huai River, coupled with the continued wave of desertions along the temporary Shun-Ming border had weakened the northern defenses of the Ming, while Gao Jie’s inability to keep the Shun in check or to put a decisive end to his feud with Lu Zhenfei caused great rifts within the Ming court and the Ministry of War. The status quo that had persisted since the Battle of Dezhou was nevertheless only broken shortly after the so-called Third Battle of Huainan, when Li Jiyu, warlord of Suizhou in Hubei, defected to the Shun and invited their armies to the city, putting Wuhan and all of Hubei under direct threat from the Northern Forces. Shi Kefa reacted as fast as he could by sending relief to the Ming Army at Wuhan, but the wheels had already been set in motion: in April of 1648, the Armies of Great Shun descended upon the lands the Southern Ming in great force, carrying the banners of the Xianbao Emperor and marching across the Huai to conclude the Great Enterprise. [3]
The Shun Armies were led by the “Two Pillars of Great Shun”, Yuan Chonghuang and Wu Sangui, both Ming turncoats who had made names for themselves pacifying the northern provinces for Li Zicheng, and under them the “Nine Princely Generals”, all of whom gained great fame by serving in the Southern Campaigns of 1648-1650 and would form the backbone of the new Dynasty’s military hierarchy for the rest of the Xianbao emperor’s reign. [4]
During the initial phase of the campaign, General Li Gou led the Shun armies in the siege of Wuhai, whereas the main invasion force under the direct command of Yuan Chonghuan invaded Huainan, converging to meet Gao Jie’s army at the Battle of Hefei. Outnumbered, Gao was nevertheless able to take some advantage of the poor communication between the Shun headquarters in Hefei and the field commanders, thus being able to outmaneuver the Shun right flank and leave the field with minimal casualties. The Guardian General received reinforcements from Shi Kefa and Lu Zhenfei near Lake Chao the following day, in time for the Battle of Chao Hu, which saw a Ming army of 60,000 engage a Shun force of 80,000 for two days and hold them off until further Shun reinforcements tilted the balance and force the Ming to retreat once more.
As Li Gou was unable to break Zuo Liangyu’s forces at Wuhan and Wu Sangui chased Gao Jie across Huainan, in Jiangsu the Generals Zu Kefa and Zu Zezhong drove the Ming forces and took the northern shores of the Yangzi with great speed and ability. With Yangzhou and Wuhan under siege and Gao Jie retreating, Shi Kefa took direct command over all field armies and marched with the forces of Great Ming towards Hefei, while sending reinforcements to Yangzhou to fight the Zu and ordering Huang Degong to bring his army from Hunan to the battlefield. [5]
Through late May of 1648, the armies of Shi Kefa and Yuan Chonghuan engaged in a process of continued maneuvers in an attempt to force the circumstances against the opponent in terms of numbers and terrain. After several skirmishes in which one general managed to outnumber the other for a short amount of time, both armies finally converged once more north of the Chi River, the two armies numbering 82,000 and 76,000 men respectively, reinforcements scattered across Huainan or sent elsewhere. [6]
While having managed to obtain an advantage in term of numbers, Shi Kefa was not particularly confident enough and sought to further delay the match, if only to wait for Huang Degong’s 40,000 men to come and finally provide a decisive advantage in the Huainan theater. A further source of worries for the Ming commander was the loyalty of his commanders, which was suspect in many cases. Gao Jie and Liu Zeqing were particularly distrusted amongst Shi’s subordinates, as could be expected in the case of opportunistic warlords. Yet the Commander-in-Chief’s suspicions could not be proved, at least until the night of June 2nd of 1648, in which Ming spies discovered that the Guardian General Liu Zeqing had been exchanging correspondence with the enemy camp and that Yuan Chonghuan had sought to corrupt Shi’s subordinates and obtain several defections. The depth of the betrayal was unknown to Shi Kefa and in his mind only Liu was guilty. Yet another reason had presented itself and convinced Shi to abandon the field and seek for the decisive battle another day.
The following day, Yuan Chonghuan was informed of the suspicious movements taking place in the Ming camp and ordered his army to attack the Ming. The result was a complete rout, as the Shun vanguard of 25,000 men drove the center of the Ming army, somewhere north of the 45,000 men mark, and completely steamrolled the bulk of their force. This was the result of a clever use of artillery and cavalry on the part of Yuan, and an even cleverer use of espionage and counterintelligence used the night before.
During the night of June 2nd, Yuan had maintained correspondence with Ming General Xu Dingguo, commander of Shi’s right wing and an enemy of Guardian General Gao Jie, whose depredations during the chaotic years of 1644 and 1645 had resulted in the death of Xu Dingguo’s entire family. Having entertained notions of defection and revenge during his post on the frontier, Xu had been serving as one of Yuan’s men inside the Ming Army and finally, the night before the battle his services were called upon: under the cover of the night Xu would finally obtain his revenge, treating Gao Jie to a lavish celebration in his tent in anticipation of the “coming victory over the Usurpers” and ambushing him and his men. The massacre occurred just as Shi Kefa ordered his men to isolate Liu Zeqing in anticipation for his upcoming arrest, meaning that two of the Guardian Generals were incapacitated the night prior to the battle and their armies neutralized. [7]
The military accomplishments of Yuan during June 3rd must not be overlooked, nevertheless, as he used the bulk of his army to maneuver north of Liu Zeqing’s now headless army and pin it out, whereas he took his own veteran forces and broke the back of the main Ming army from the battlefield in less than two hours.
The battle was disastrous for the Ming: in addition to the 20,000 dead, Gao Jie and Liu Zeqing had been lost, their forces dispersed and an entire army defected en masse to the armies of the Usurper. Broken and alone, Shi Kefa retreated hastily in order to organize the Defense of Nanjing.
Notes:
1. So while some things are better, due to the Southern Ming having four years (1644-1648) as opposed to one to reorganize and having the Prince of Lu takeover instead of the Prince of Fu, others things cannot be fixed, such as the abuses of the Guardian Generals and other assorted warlords that are necessary to keep the Ming afloat and safe from invasion; these abuses were just as common IOTL;
2. Shi Kefa did indeed have hopes of retaking northern China and had plans for retaking the Central Planes in 1645, all of which were shattered when Gao Jie was murdered that year;
3. Frontier commanders are by now adjusted to skirmishes and battles including irrelevant engagements such as the Second Battle of Bengpu, in which 10,000 soldiers were lost, or the Third Engagement at Huainan, etc;
4. The background for Yuan and Wu has been given already; the 17 Princely Generals are IOTL who served the Qing, Ming and Shun but ITTL find themselves fighting for Li Zicheng in 1648;
5. The Zu here are the family of Zu Dashou, who served in Liaodong and betrayed the Ming to the Qing, trying to give them Yinzhou in 1631, an event that does not take place ITTL, so everyone who defected to the Ming that day, including some very able commanders, work at the frontier, serve under Yuan and later defect along him to the Shun, as the Qing are not an option ITTL;
6. Mostly accomplished through complicated maneuvers along the Huai and Yangzi Rivers;
7. Xu Dingguo was a Ming Turncoat who switched to the Qing IOTL, but not before luring Gao Jie and murdering him in 1645, because he killed his family as ITTL; IOTL Xu defected in 1645 along with Li Jiyu, who defects three years later ITTL;
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Next Episode: a return to the two Koreas and a look at the 1658 Hanseong Rebellion.
Thanks for reading.
