The realm of the Mountain

This TL continues to really fascinate me because you bring such detail into an area of world history that very very few others have any depth of knowledge or interest to write about. I am definitely looking forward to what you accomplish with the Ainu. Also, I laud how you are opening a lot of avenues for the Japanese without wanking them, which adds even more plausibility and interest to your story.

Hmmm, I suddenly have an urge to watch a Kurosawa movie marathon...:p
 

maverick

Banned
Tugning, Part I

So I was going to do something for the three year anniversary of the TL, but I couldn't get anything done for that day, and on the following day, my favorite TL was cancelled, so I didn't feel like writing that weekend.

Sorry. I'll do the special for the next anniversary, hopefully.

**



Tungning/Dongdu/Formosa

Exodus




News of the fall of Nanjing reach Fort Zeelandia fast, only to be greeted by dull surprise or disinterest; only with the benefit of hindsight could any of the residents of the Dutch castle foresee that the downfall of the Ming Dynasty would have catastrophic consequences for them and the Dutch Empire in the Far East. Built over ten years under the auspices of the Dutch East India Company, Fort Zeelandia was the nerve center of the Dutch colonial empire in East Asia, which extended from the shores of Africa to the port of Kagoshima in southern Japan and had trading posts in Persia, Bengal, Malacca, Siam, Canton and Macau in mainland China, the Coromandel and Malabar Coasts in India, Kagoshima in Japan and, of course, direct control over half of Formosa, which the Dutch had come to subdue and colonize after an arduous process that lasted nearly twenty years. Dutch Hegemony, or Pax Hollandica, is said to have lasted from 1624, year in which the Dutch forces took over Macau and Formosa, [1] to the autumn of 1648, where the Great Ming Fleet of Shi Kefa and Zheng Zhilong arrived at the southern shores of Formosa, passing Taoyan and facing the great Dutch stronghold. [2]

The Ming remnant that arrived to face Fort Zeelandia at the time numbered some 1,200 or 1,400 war junks and perhaps 30,000 soldiers, albeit only 300 or so of the vessels and 20,000 of the soldiers would actually partake in the siege operations against the Dutch castle, whereas the rest of the loyalist forces were tasked with reestablishing Ming control over the rest of the island.[3]Opposition throughout Dutch Formosa was, despite the best attempts from the local authorities, lackluster to say the least, as the Chinese villagers either threw their arms or greeted the Ming loyalists as liberators. On more than one occasion, the Chinese militias set up by the Dutch mutinied against their officers while entire villages, tired of the abuses and high taxes endured under the rule of the Dutch East India Company and its colonists, rose up in arms against their overlords. Shortly after the arrival of the first Ming forces, expeditions to Keelung, at the northernmost part of the Island, and Huwei, in central Formosa, were undertaken with relative ease in the early stages of the “Ming Restoration”, eliminating all Dutch presence outside of Fort Zeelandia by the august of 1648. In early September Shi Kefa undertook proper operations against the castle. [4]

Francois Caron, Governor of Dutch Formosa and commander of Fort Zeelandia, counted with 1,300 well armed and determined men, directly facing 300 War Junks and 22,000 Chinese soldiers and sailors. The Loyalist Army, under the direct command of Shi Kefa and a seasoned staff composed of veterans of the recent war, was not only numerically superior and experienced, but also better armed, as Shi Kefa and his followers had taken as much as they could from the armories of Nanjing, including modern pieces of artillery and firearms. Furthermore, the Ming army had the added advantages of counting with the support of the freed Dutch slaves in the island and the local population, whereas Fort Zeelandia can only count with whatever reinforcements the Dutch authorities in Batavia could muster. [5]

The first stage of the siege began with a series of assaults and artillery barrages against the fortress, before operations were bogged down and turned into a conventional siege by October 2nd. As operations crawled to a halt and continued for the duration of the fall and winter of 1648, the Ming Loyalists consolidated their control over Formosa from their provisional capital of Huwei, bringing the entirety of the Island under their control by the spring of 1649. At Huwei, Shi Kefa and Zheng Zhilong had replicated the Ming Court with the Ministers, Officials, Scholars and commanders that had followed the Loyalist Generals in their exodus to Formosa. The spring of 1649 also saw Shi Kefa proclaim the Ming remnant in Formosa as the only legitimate government of All Under Heave, as well as the last bastion of Ming resistance against the Bandit Usurper, as the Xianbao Emperor was known in the Island. The claim to legitimacy was further boosted, or so did Shi Kefa believe, by the enthronement of the Prince of Zhou, one of the many Ming Princes that had survived the Shun conquest of the South, as the Kangde Emperor shortly after the establishment of the government in exile at Formosa. Huwei, and later Dongdu, as Fort Zeelandia was renamed after its fall, were in a way the last capitals of the once mighty Ming Dynasty, at least for those die-hard loyalists who refused to give up following Nanjing. In a way, the fight against the Dutch, particularly in the prolonged siege of Zeelandia seem to give the exiles a new purpose and energy. Some would even notice that the Ming fought the Dutch with zeal “that the northern usurpers never knew.” [6]In May of 1649, the Ming fought with renewed strength and ferocity as Dutch resistance crumbled. The triumph over Fort Zeelandia and the surrender of the last few European soldiers on June 2nd of 1649 coincided with the capture of the Pescadores Islands and the beginning of an anti-Shun rebellion in the port of Xiamen, in Fujian province. For the general staff of Shi Kefa and the court of the Kangde Emperor, as reduced and austere as it was, the string of victories appeared as a divine sign and even a mandate to take the war back to mainland China. It’s hard to estimate what were the true goals and intentions of the Ming government in exile between 1649 and 1653, and whether Shi Kefa had become insane or not, or whether he and his men truly believed that they could reclaim the Mandate of Heaven following the fall of Nanjing. A common historical consensus points to Zheng Zhilong’s desire for fame and plunder, Shi Kefa’s desire to keep the remnant in Formosa alive and moralized and the Kangde Emperor’s weakness as the key factors behind the Shun-Ming War of 1649-1653, also known as the First Shun-Tungning War. [7]

In the first stage of this new war, Admiral Zheng Zhilong’s fleet, numbering some 1,2000 War Junks and 10,000 soldiers and sailors, were tasked with supporting the Loyalists resistance in the provinces of Fujian and Guangdong. At the time, the Prince of Yangming had set up a loyalist government at Canton, being recognized by his followers as the Shaowu Emperor. Elsewhere, insurrections sprung up along the eastern coasts of China, at Ningbo, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Wenzhou and Hangzhou, all in the spring and summer of 1649. Determined and daring, Admiral Zheng led the first attack against Xiamen in July of 1649, meeting only limited resistance from the local Shun garrisons. In subsequent raids the Admiral was able to further weaken Shun presence in Fujian, taking Wenzhou with relative ease as his son, Zheng Chenggong, led the occupation of Hangzhou in an operation that took the combine armies of Shun Generals Liu Wu and Zu Zerun off guard and forced them to retreat. Even as enemy resistance grew fiercer in August and September, the Ming Loyalists were still able to maintain complete naval supremacy in the Southern China Seas for the entirety of the summer of 1649. In late September, Zheng Chenggong took the final shot in the Ming war against the Dutch by capturing Macao and later Canton, taking as much time destroying what Dutch presence remained as he did fighting the Shun Armies. [8]

The crushing naval victories that the Ming was able to inflict upon the northern usurpers between June and October of 1649 would of course pale in comparison to the apex of the Ming Campaign of 1649. Using Xiamen as his headquarters, Zheng Zhilong and his son undertook the most stunning operation in the war, using half his fleet and 10,000 men to capture the Island of Hainan in November of 1649. The move, which in hindsight could be seen as a waste of time and men, not to mention resources, all of which were rather lacking on the Ming side at the time, was at the time seen as a tour de force both at Dongdu and Beijing. [9]While the Zheng ultimately only controlled Hainan for a span of four years before being forced to abandon their hard-earned spoil, in the short term the shocking conquest coupled with the effects of the ever so pervasive victory disease that affected the higher echelons of the Ming military organization during a great part of 1649 and 1650 would leave to an encounter with far graver and far more lasting consequences: the Second Battle of Nanjing.



Notes:​

1. ITTL, the Dutch conquer Macao during the Dutch-Portuguese wars, which end earlier than IOTL but with similar results, except that the Portuguese lose Macao yet keep their outpost at Nagasaki; developments at Formosa/Taiwan are mostly IOTL;

2. Basically, the siege of Fort Zeelandia a decade or so earlier, and this time it’s the father, not the son, the one who leads the operation, along with a surviving Shi Kefa; IOTL, Zheng Zhilong fought the Qing but eventually surrendered and was taken prisoner in the 1650s;

3. The Dutch controlled several posts along the Island’s coasts, but their control is not too tight; they haven’t built Fort Provintia yet and the natives aren’t particularly happy with Dutch taxes and exploitation;

4. The siege is mostly similar to the IOTL siege, although shorter;

5. Yakarta under Dutch rule, capital of the Dutch East Indies and their base of operations in the region;

6. Dongdu is how Zheng Chenggong (Koxinga IOTL) renamed Fort Zeelandia (Tainan) IOTL as well as how Shi Kefa and Zheng Zhilong rename it ITTL; ITTL Tugning is for the moment an attempt to keep the Southern Ming alive, rather than an independent fiefdom under Koxinga as was the case IOTL;

7. The Prince of Zhou is one of the many, many, many Ming princes that had a rather minor role during the twilight years of the Ming Dynasty, as one of the many possible successors to the Chongzhen Emperor; Kangde means “Tranquility and Virtue”, and had some significance due to the man who took that name IOTL;

8.This is more than Zheng Chenggong (Koxinga) managed, IIRC; especially the following bits;

9. Basically, the Zheng takeover of Hainan is pointless and a waste of resources that would be better spent elsewhere, but you need to keep the victories and the morale going somehow, so why not a hollow, pointless victory? Plus, it looks cool on a map.


**


Next Chapter:

Part II of this, taking us to what Tugning/Southern Ming/Dongdu is doing in the 1650s and maybe the early 1660s.
 
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maverick

Banned
Tungning Part II.

**

Tungning/Dongdu/Formosa II


The Last Full Measure


Still intoxicated by the fatal condition that is victory disease, the general staff of General Shi Kefa and Admiral Zheng Zhilong began preparations for their most ambitious endeavor of the second Ming-Shun War: to capture Nanjing and reignite the spark of the Loyalist cause in mainland China. On paper, the great loyalist armada counted with 800 war junks and 140,000 men for the operation, a number the Ming commanders hoped would be bolstered by the help of local pro-Ming elements from within the city and in the countryside even, which would join the ranks of the righteous armies en masse and sack the followers of The Usurper. From his base of operations at Xiamen, Zheng Zhilong boasted that he’d “sail the distance to Nanjing within a day, rid the city of the bandit usurpers within fifteen and march upon Beijing in less than three months.” The armada entered the Yangzi River, past Suzhou, in the early days of April of 1650. Mere days later, Zheng Zhilong engaged the Shun flotilla at Zhejiang, capturing the city swiftly after repulsing the Shun attacks. As had been the case during the spring and the summer of 1649, Admiral Zheng’s audacity paid well, the Loyalist Fleet destroying all semblance of resistance in seven days’ time and reaching Nanjing well before it was anticipated by the enemy. [1]

At Beijing and Nanjing, the forces of Great Shun had grown weary of the renewed strength the Ming seemed to display in the seas. At the northern capital, the Ministry of War was given further resources and leeway to deal with the issue of the “Pirate Rebels” of the eastern shores, while rumors about the incompetence or outright negligence displaced by Minister Yuan Chonghuan spread like wildfire in the court and the street alike. Far from complacent, Minister Yuan was nevertheless preoccupied with the northern frontier and his duties as Viceroy of all the northern territories, and often dismissed the Ming Flotilla as a “miserable, starving pirates.” The fall of Canton and Hainan of course dramatically altered the way in which the war against the Ming was perceived and prompted the Ministry of War into action. General Zu Zehong was appointed as commander of the Nanjing Garrison, along with Colonel Zhang Cunren, Commander of the City’s Artillery and reserves, in the winter of 1649 and 1650. In charge of the Yangzi River Flotilla was Liu Wu. Zheng Zhilong’s lightning campaign at the Yangzi, while displaying great strength and valor, was more than evenly matched in terms of skill and talent. [2]

Liu Wu was the first to prove his worth as he continued to harass Admiral Zheng along the course to Nanjing, as preparations were made at the city. The arrival of the Zheng fleet was greeted by three hours of artillery barrages and renewed attacks from Liu Wu throughout the day, but numbers and brute force carried the day and the Ming remained in control of the river. Then things turned complicated. Admiral Zheng’s army, numbering some 150,000 well-equipped and disciplined men, armed with shields and swords, long and short, along with rifles, artillery and ammunition. For the attack, Admiral Zheng even brought a company of black soldiers, former Dutch slaves, who were reputed to be excellent marksmen. Opposing him were 56,000 soldiers of Great Shun. Further enticed by the relative ease with which the Yangzi was pacified, Admiral Zheng ordered the city to be overwhelmed in a massive onslaught, as over 100,000 men entered the city’s southern and eastern gates with all the order and elegance of a marauding horde. Unable to mount proper defenses, the Shun Garrison was nevertheless able to contain the attacks for several days, even if at the cost of tens of thousands. Finally, on the dawn of the third day of the battle, Zu Zehong died in battle as Zhang Cunren retreated with the remaining 21,000 men of Great Shun through the three western gates, which in its hurry the Ming had not secured. What followed was one of the greatest blunders in the history of the Mandate of Heaven. The exultant celebrations in which the Ming armies engaged soon turned into an orgy of plunder and depravity. While the Shun armies escaped, the Admiral’s forces turned to the city rather than to the fleeing enemy, pillaging and ravishing the city for three straight days as Zheng Zhilong and his Lieutenants simply enjoyed the spoils left behind by the rich and powerful of the southern capital. The promise of “marching upon Beijing in less than three months” was soon forgotten as a drunken stupor began to set amongst the ranks of the Ming army. [3]

In the meantime, the Armies of Great Shun were less than idle. Zu Kefa, cousin to Zu Zehong, marched from Wuhu with 140,000 troops, whereas General Ma Shiyao did the same with an army 80,000 men strong from Hefei. At Nanjing, where the people suffered from privations, abuses, hunger and disease as a result of the Ming return, news of the approaching armies were greeted with excitement and hope, whereas the men surrounding admiral Zheng were somewhat more confident in the abilities of their army. Far from numbed or slow, the Ming admiral planned to take advantage of the occasion to deal a further blow to the Shun and conquer Wuhu, before turning north, defeating Ma Shiyao and taking Hefei. An army of 100,000 men marched southwards to meet Zu Kefa in the early days of May, while 300 war junks set sail towards Wuhu under his subordinate, Gan Hui. In his attempt to replicate his daring glories of April and October, Zheng Zhilong was nevertheless unable to predict the turn events would take.

On May 6th of 1650, the armies of Zheng Zhilong and Zu Kefa met two hundred Li southwest of Nanjing, their numbers evenly matched. The enemies fought indecisively for hours, tens of thousands falling on the fields covered in blood. Around noon, the fighting first stopped and Zheng Zhilong noticed a gap in his rival’s left flank. As the Ming army shifted to its right and the Shun army to its left, the tide slowly turned to favor the Admiral. After spending four hours trying to seize the moment and drive his vanguard through the weak point of the Shun defenses, the loyalists finally managed take the field and rout the enemy, at the cost of shedding even more rivers of blood. The day ended with the Shun retreated a few Li southwards and the Ming in control of the field. The next morning, the Ming attacked the Shun with renewed ferocity, knowing that victory was within their grasp. Three hours after sunrise, the armies were evenly matched once more, but that the momentum was on Admiral Zheng’s side and he knew it; thus why the following turn was all the more painful to him.

Two days before, Ma Shiyao had crossed the Yangzi just a few hundred Li north of the battlefield at Xuanzhou. Around noon, just as the Ming armies managed drive towards the center of Zu Kefa’s camp, Ma Shiyao appeared on the Admiral’s rearguard with 80,000 fresh troops. At the time, Zheng Zhilong’s army was more or less reduced to 80,000 men, of which a vanguard of 60,000 was engaged fighting an army of more or less 75,000 men to the south, while from the north and northwest an army of roughly the same size attacked with unparalleled might, effectively trapping Zheng Zhilong between a hammer and an anvil. Even though the Ming forces were fierce, experienced and well-armed, the result was predictable. In less than three hours, 40,000 men were dead, wounded or captured, including Zheng Zhilong, who was to be taken to Beijing itself, where he would be executed on December of that year. [4]

The men who avoided the same fate at the Battle of Xuanzhou were nevertheless more fortunate because of it. The flotilla tasked with capturing Wuhu was greeted by 600 war junks under Liu Wu, while the rump army that managed to limp its way back to Nanjing was harassed by Ma Shiyao’s cavalry all the way to the city and then forced to defend the city in a bloody, brutal siege. By the end of the spring, the once proud conquering army of 150,000 men and 1,000 war junks was reduced to a bloody pulp barely north of the 50,000 men. Gan Hui, commander of the Ming forces since the loss of Zheng Zhilong, finally ordered Nanjing to be abandoned on June 18th of 1650. The following day the Shun broke through the last line of Ming defenses as the remains of the Zheng fleet abandoned the Yangzi, although not without suffering from one last humiliation.

On June 24th, just as Gan Hui’s ships abandoned the waters of the Yangzi for those of the East China Seas, the Ming fleet was intercepted by several thousand war ships of Great Shun, coming from the ports of Shandong and Jiangsu, under Liu Liangchen. Desperate and outnumbered, the Ming commander’s forces were further surrounded by the Yangzi flotilla of Liu Wu, which blocked the entrance to the Yangzi and the Ming Fleet’s rear. The battle took place north of Hengsha Island, and was the last engagement of the Great Spring Campaign undertook by the Southern Ming. Most of the fleet managed to escape through the strait that separates Hengsha Island from Chongming Island, yet Gan Hui and several other lieutenants of the Zheng family nevertheless died as a result of the battle on the Yangzi River Estuary. [5]

***

The rump force that returns to the Ming capital of Dongdu at Formosa on July of 1650 found a completely changed nation and a war that had taken a violent turn for the worse. While the main fleet and the bulk of the army fought at Nanjing, the armies of Great Shun had regained the initiative elsewhere. On May, Dong Xueli captured Canton and drove all of the city’s defenders, along with the partisans of the Prince of Yangming (or the Shaowu Emperor) to Macao, whereas the Shun Armies at Wenzhou and Hangzhou began siege operations against the Loyalist forces of Shi Kefa and Admiral Zheng.

The colossal fiasco that was the second Battle of Nanjing and the loss of Zheng Zhilong not only upset the balance of power set by the 1649 campaigns, but also the balance of powers at the capital of Dongdu, where the supporters of Shi Kefa and those of Zheng Zhilong, who know recognized Zheng Chenggong as their leader, began to openly clash both at court and at the streets of the Ming capital. The Kangde Emperor, trapped between two ambitious and powerful men with their own privates armies and even their own capitals (Zheng Chenggong controlled Xiamen, while Shi Kefa had Dongdu), turned a blind eye to the factional struggle and resigned himself to accept whoever came on top. The crisis between the factions, compounded by the increasing reversals suffered on the battlefield, and the difficulties in supporting the war effort on the mainland, finally came to an end in January of 1651, with the death of Shi Kefa.




Notes:​

1. I’m somewhat modeling this on the IOTL attack Zheng Chenggong (Coxinga) undertook against Nanjing in 1659 against the Qing; IOTL Coxinga had 250,000 men whereas his father ITTL has 150,000 but more War Junks; the initial Ming numbers were of course increased by defections and the help of Ming Loyalist elements that had not been yet whipped out by the Shun;

2. Yuan Chonghuang has the combined titles of Vice-Roy/Governor-General of the Northern Territories, Liaodong, the Ministry of War and other lesser titles, so he’s somewhat preoccupied with affairs that’ll be covered in a future update; all the name-dropping I just did refers to several characters that IOTL served in the northeastern frontier and ended up serving the Qing IOTL;

3. Conxinga’s army IOTL was similarly well disciplined and armed and included the former Dutch slaves as well; during his 1659 expedition, he showed caution and rather than following Gan Hui’s advice to overwhelm the city, he chose to besiege it, which left the army vulnerable to Qing countermeasures; ITTL, his father is less cautious;

4. A similar fate befell Zheng Zhilong IOTL when serving the Ming, although in less grandiose circumstances; can’t remember if he was executed or just imprisoned for life, though;

5. Hengsha and Yangming are just off the coast of Shanghai, which is just a little port with little importance in the 1600s;


TO BE CONTINUED...


Next Episode: Tungning in the 1650s and the aftermath of the Second Ming-Shun War.
 
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Those poor Ming! Such a drawn-out death. It's very unlikely they'll ever be able to recover the mainland, and even keeping Formosa stable seems to be outside their grasp.
 
Man, in China everything is big -- 40,000 casualties in single battles and thousands of war boats in naval battles. The Europeans would be crapping themselves if they seriously considered for a minute how much even the Ming remnant was able to bear in the civil war.
 
I've just started this- always been intimidated before now. I like it so far and I can only imagine it has gotten better since.
 

maverick

Banned
Thanks, everyone!

***

Tungning/Dongdu/Formosa III

The Pirate-King of the Southern Seas


From the very moment in which Shi Kefa’s body was found lying pale and lifeless in the makeshift palace of the makeshift Ming Ministry of War at Dongdu, it became very clear to every citizen in the realm that Zheng Chenggong was behind the death of the Grand Secretary, even if no evidence or document has ever corroborated this version, which nevertheless became the official one with the passing time. Whatever was the truth, the result was that all the cards were now in the hand of the second Admiral Zheng, who controlled the fleet from his stronghold at Xiamen and was now the sole pillar on which the rump Ming state rested. Sensing that the winds of history had changed, perhaps for the worse, many prominent men in Dongdu began to disappear from the public life of the erstwhile empire. The Prince of Gui, escorted by several former scholars and minor Princes, was the first to leave, officially on a diplomatic mission to Japan, from which he’d never return. Also in the winter of 1651, many officers and lieutenants of Shi Kefa, amongst them Chen Yujie and Ma Yingkui, left the city never to be seen again. According to legend, they both simply abandoned their positions at Dongdu and became farmers in southern Formosa, while at least more than once source puts Chen Yujie at Manila in the 1650s. By the time Zheng Chenggong made his expected entrance to Dongdu, escorted by his private army and fleet, very few of Shi Kefa’s followers remained at the city. Even fewer survived the first month of Admiral Zheng’s direct rule. [1]

The spring of 1651 sees the end of the Second Ming-Shun War, as an agreement is struck between the court of Great Shun at Beijing and that of the Ming at Dongdu, although it’d be more accurate to say that the deal was struck between Beijing and Xiamen. The conditions by which the war was ended were simply. The forces of Zheng Chenggong vacated the city of Hangzhou, the Island of Hainan and the former Portuguese and Dutch colony of Macao. In exchange, Zheng Chenggong was given the title of Grand Admiral and Protector of the Eastern Shores, a title which carried a hefty payment and the control of the ports of Shantou, Wenzhou, Fuzhou and Quanzhou, along with his personal fiefdom of Xiamen. The treaty effectively recognized and confirmed Zheng Chenggong’s status and position, elevating him to the level of vassal and commander in the official documents of the Shun, while in reality he served the role of Warlord and Pirate King for the South China Seas. Regardless of the title or position, the reality was the same. The treaty also meant the virtual enthronization of Zheng Chenggong as the sovereign of Dondgu and its portuary protectorates, and the reduction of the Kangde Emperor to a position of complete insignificance. [2]

At this point, the history of Formosa becomes complicated, as the lines between the Late Ming Dynasty and the Kingdom of Tungning are blurry. The Kangde Emperor, Prince of Zhou, officially remained on the throne until his death in 1669, yet at the same time official documents from Dongdu, Japan and even China recognize Zheng Chenggong as Sovereign of King of Tungning. Documents and edicts were after a while proclaimed solely by Zheng Chenggong, who in addition to his title of Grand Admiral and Protector of the Eastern Shores, began accumulating titles and offices, starting with those left by Shi Kefa upon his death: those of Grand Secretary and Minister of War. Dongdu was in the meantime transformed, from a provisional base of operations for a decadent twilight dynasty to the capital of an independent realm, worthy of the glory and might of its sovereign. Works in the capital would be continued intermittently through the best part of the decade, as the interest of the Zheng the Young in the project waned and returned through the years. [3] Having concentrated all power within his realm within just a few years, the impetuous Admiral soon sought to expand his power beyond the boundaries of his small Island fiefdom. Thus Zheng Chenggong came to set his eyes upon the Kingdom of Ryūkyū.

Since 1470, the Kingdom of Ryūkyū had been ruled by the Second Shō Dynasty, established by the pretender Shō En after a short war of succession. A Golden Age followed in the late 15th and early 16th centuries thanks to the thriving maritime trade with Ming China, Joseon Korea, Siam and other continental realms. The Kingdom was nevertheless severely weakened in the late 16th century, as a result of the decadence of Ming China and the irruption of European merchants. Thus the Satsuma conquest of
Ryūkyū came as a mixed blessing for both the Kingdom and the faltering Dynasty. For the Shimazu Clan and the Satsuma Domain, their fiefdom was a source of both resources and pride, the Kingdom described as a great foreign kingdom second only to Korea and the Chinese Empire; the greater Ryūkyū, the greater the glory of Satsuma. The prestige, along with the growth of his status, as the Satsuma incorporated the 120,000 koku of Ryūkyū to their own 770,000 koku, meant that the Satsuma Domain was the third largest domain and third most powerful daimyo, being roughly equal with the Mori Clan of Chōshū. [4] The Ryūkyū Kingdom was nevertheless also benefited by the change, the government being stabilized and strengthened, the declining dynasty being prompted by Satsuma and its designs for maintaining the status quo. The Shō Dynasty was thus revitalized, and although nominally a vassal to the Satsuma, retained a large degree of autonomy and governed the island just as before. [5]

Lacking the military resources with which the Second Ming-Shun War was possible, Tungning’s military expansionism could only be taken one step at a time. The Sakishima Islands, the westernmost domain of the Ryūkyū, were first to be occupied in the winter of 1653. The invasion was launched with only a few hundred war junks and less than 1,200 men, with the purpose of testing the strength and resolve of the Kingdom. The sovereign, Shō Ken, swiftly realized the danger which threatened his realm and prepared what little forces he could muster, while at the same time asking for the help of the Satsuma Daimyo. Prince Gushikawa Choei, who would later be known to history as Shō Shōken, was tasked with leading an embassy to Kagoshima and Kyoto to ask for assistance. [6] The winter of 1653 passed and by the time the spring arrived, the mood in Dongdu swung in favor of continued intervention. Far from the grandiosity of the 1650 Armada led by his father, Zheng the Young prepared a force of merely 430 war junks and 5,000 soldiers. Against this invasion force, King Shō Ken was only able to organize a small token force barely north of the 1,000 troops, aided by a local garrison of 500 Satsuma soldiers stationed in the capital of Shuri. Only at Okinawa was any resistance actually attempted, the Tungning fleet easily conquering the rest of the realm and even encountering an enthusiastic population who greeted them as liberators. Even at Shuri, the invasion was not without its supporters, from the common people to members of the court and the noro, the magistrates in charge of several government and religious functions at a local level, who were traditionally the most opposed to the Satsuma domination. At Kunemura, the cultural capital of the realm, just outside of Shuri, the last ditch attempt to resist the invaders until reinforcements from Japan came was attempted by the King. For three days they resisted, but the defenders were no match for fierce and well-armed soldiers of Formosa. On the morning of the fourth day of the defense, Kumenura, the city of scholars, diplomats and bureaucrats, fell to the forces of Tugning. The march upon the capital began almost immediately. [7]

King Shō Ken was taken prisoner the day Shuri fell. Paraded in chains through his former capital by the conquering army, the king saw the banners of the Kingdom of Tungning raised over his palace and at every corner of every street of Shuri. This was the last time the sovereign would see his city. Shō Ken died in captivity three months later, due to the poor conditions in which he was kept according to some sources, poisoned according to others, or at his own hand, as a vocal minority claims. At this point, Zheng Chenggong’s vanity and sense of grandeur played in favor of the Shō Dynasty. Officially a vassal and even an officer of the Xianbao Emperor, he was enticed by the prospect of being a great ruler whom foreign kings would call their lords. In the summer of 1653, Admiral Zheng ordered Shō Ken’s younger brother released from his imprisonment and enthroned as King of the Ryūkyū, taking the name of Shō Shitsu. Almost immediately the new king was forced to disown the previous treaties and vassalage with the Satsuma domain and essentially switch masters. [8]

For the people of Ryūkyū, one master was replaced by another. Dongdu officially maintained the old apparatus and even the old Satsuma tax system, but the gross negligence showed to the Islands meant that very few of the Islands resources were actually put to use, and that most of the tribute sent to Dongdu was lost in the hands of corrupt bureaucrats and officials. Furthermore, while the economy stopped suffering from over taxation, the profitable position that the Kingdom enjoyed as the link between China and Japan was lost, nearly destroying the realm and creating a crisis that would last for as long the kingdom was dominated by Tungning. For Admiral Zheng, the issue was irrelevant. The small pacific realm had served its purpose of exalting his glory and prestige. Following the conquest, little attention was paid to the new fiefdom and all focus was put on the building of the capital and the reorganization of the once great army of Tungning. The influx of exiles and emigrates from the mainland through the five ports Zheng controlled had given the population of Tungning, the first Ethnic Chinese state to rule Formosa, an important boost. Throughout the decade of the 1650s, the state was consolidated and strengthened. The task of bringing the entirety of the Island under the rule of Dongdu was undertaken every now and then, as the aboriginal tribes of the highlands and mountainous provinces of the east proved hard to subjugate. Thanks to continuous Han immigration, the frontier was expanded and the natives driven from their land steadily between 1648 and 1658, year in which the Taoka and Siraya peoples were finally brought under the yoke of the nascent Kingdom. [9]

But the ambitions of the Pirate-King, as he was being called in Japan and China, were greater than anticipated and the conquest of the Ryūkyū only increased his voracity. Through the winter of 1656 and the spring of 1657 Zheng envisioned an empire that would rule the waves undisputed, all the peoples, nations and realms of the east vowing to him as master of the seas. The destruction of Dutch power in the region was the first step. The next one was obvious to Zheng Chenggong. The perfidious influence of Europe was the first obstacle to his grandiose designs, and the perfect enemy to vanquish if he was to rally the nations of the Southern Seas in a crusade.

In September of 1658, Tungning ships occupied the Batanes and the Bayuban Islands, north of Luzon. Shortly afterwards, the Zheng Fleet began to engage in operations against the Spanish in the area, harassing Spanish merchants in the South China Seas and in the vicinity of the Spice Islands in an attempt to disrupt their commercial routes and break their stranglehold of the area. Attacks and raids against Spanish ports in Luzon and Mindanao were escalated through 1659 and 1660s, culminating with a daring attack on the Manila Galleons [10] en route to Acapulco in early 1661, in which a squadron of Chinese War Junks intercepted 5 Manila Galleons. A treasure of silver, spices, lacquer ware, Ivory and porcelain was taken by the raiders.

Thus was the prelude to the Tungning-Spanish War of 1663.



Notes:​



1. Anticlimactic, ain’t it? Most of these guys died with Shi Kefa in 1645 IOTL; The Prince of Gui was known as the Yongli Emperor to the Ming Loyalists, a title which he kept between 1646 and 1662; When the Ming were driven from southern China, Gui and his followers escaped to northern Burma, where they were chased and killed by Wu Sangui on orders of the Qing;

2. Anyone remotely informed about Zheng Chenggong (IOTL Koxinga) might of course point out that the man fought the Qing to the bitter end and wouldn’t have compromised with the Shun either, but I envision a different Zheng Chenggong here; being born in 1624, 50 years after the POD, I think that I can mess around with people’s personalities and treat them as fictional characters rather than historical ones; While this Zheng Chenggong has the same name as the IOTL Koxinga and a similar role, he is nevertheless a different man, based on other admirals of Chinese history and more opportunistic, selfish ones at that;

3. Might be as good a time as any to mention that Zheng Chenggong is only 27 years old in 1651; also, while we’re at it, he was born in Hirado and was half-Japanese on his mother’s side;

4. A Koku is a Japanese unit, originally defined as a quantity of rice, used as a unit of measurement during the Tokugawa Shogunate to measure the wealth of the Han (domains) in terms of rice production; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koku

5. This is mostly IOTL, although other sources might dispute whether the Ryūkyū Kingdom truly benefited this much;

6. IOTL, Shō Ken died at the age of 23 in 1647; Shō Shōken was a Prince and Scholar who IOTL served as Prime Minister in the 1650s and 1660s, being known as a good administrator and efficient reformer; more on him later;

7. Kunemura was a community of scholars, diplomats and bureaucrats which formed the backbone of the aristocratic class of scholar-bureaucrats who served as government officials at home and as diplomats abroad;

8. Shō Shitsu took the throne in 1647 IOTL after the death of his brother, and was a loyal puppet/ally of Satsuma;

9. IOTL, the aborigines were mistreated by everyone who ruled the islands; ITTL, the process is conquest and colonization is sped up as the ITTL Conxinga is more interested in the island that the IOTL one;



To be Concluded...



***


Part IV will deal with Zheng Chenggong's invasion of the Philippines, Tungning in the 1660s and the Japanese reaction (or lack of reaction) towards the loss of Okinawa.


I promise I'll return to the Ryukyus Kingdom and the Taiwanese Aborigenes when its pertinent to the story!
 
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The poor Ryukyus, though it's good to see them included in any AH. Nice developments here. Are the Ming going to fade away for good? I think it's likely that Ming revivalism will be less influential ITTL compared to OTL, considering the domestic nature of the Shun.

Looking forward to the Tungning-Spanish War :D:D:D
 
Hmm, the Spanish can't afford to let this unanswered but are at the end of a long logistical route. I'd say things end in status quo ante at best(for the Spanish), unless they get closer allies.

BTW, footnote 10 is missing.
 
It's awesome to see the Pirate-King have the bollocks to take on the Spanish and Dutch colonial empires. I can't imagine that the Spanish can defend their far-flung territory with the technology on-hand, but I don't know a lot about the power-project abilities of the era. This next war should be very entertaining.
 

maverick

Banned
And now, the exciting conclusion of the Adventures of Captain Coxinga and the Pirates of Dongdu.


***


Tungning/Dongdu/Formosa IV


Coseng the Conqueror



Panic and fear had been widespread in Manila, the capital of the Spanish Philippines, ever since the return of Friar Riccolo Ricci from the dreaded court of Zheng Chenggong, bringing news of war and an ultimatum demanding a surrender of the City to the hosts of the Pirate King, Coseng.[1] In the aftermath of the occupation of the Bataan Islands and the naval war of harassment undertaken against Spanish interests in the area, Governor Sabiniano Manrique de Lara took utmost actions in the preparations for the defense of Manila, to the point of dismantling the fort of Zamboanga in Mindanao in the spring of 1662, as well as the outposts of La Sabinilla and Iligan, also at Mindanao, Ternate at the Moluccas Islands and those at the Calamianes Islands, all with the purpose of concentrating all the available forces and resources at Cavite and Manila in Luzon. Along with the Spaniards and Filipinos, the natives of Ternate and other nearby islands were offered lands at Cavite, where they founded a town with the name of Ternate. [2] Manrique de Lara also took several steps to prevent the native Chinese population, be them the Sangley or Mestizos, from acting as a Trojan horse of sorts for the invading forces. The Sangley, perhaps the most numerous minority in Luzon, had in the past taken part in rebellions against the central authority and been the victims of horrendous massacres in 1603 and 1640, with at least tens of thousands of Sangley Chinese dying each time. [3]

Widespread panic and mistrust between the Sangley and the Spanish soon resulted in open violence in the streets of Manila and throughout southern Luzon, as militias were formed on both sides and engaged in irregular warfare throughout the tense months of 1662 and early 1663. The local Japanese, most of them Christian immigrants tied to the dioceses of Manila and Nagasaki, or merchants and mercenaries at the employ of the Red Seal Company, took an active role in the suppression of the Sangley, along with the Filipinos. In the medium to long term, the Chinese Sangley would be joined, although not precisely in the form of an alliance, by the several native peoples and tribes, Moors and Southern Sultans who came to see the invading hordes of Coseng as a blessing in disguise. Although the Spanish were superior in terms of numbers, armament and organization throughout 1662, by the time in which the 33,000 Sangley Chinese of Luzon rose in arms, Manrique de Lara could not crush the movement fast enough. [4]

The uprising began in January of 1663. In April, Coseng’s fleet appeared at Cavite.

The fortified Cavite, the “City of Solid Gold”, point of entry of the Manila Galleons, was besieged between April and July of 1663 by an army seven times larger than the defending force, armed with modern artillery, firearms and supplied by a fleet of 200 war junks. The Naval Battle of Cavite, such as it is, involves a Chinese Armada of 400 junks against 12 Galleons, exchanging fire for three days and their nights until the Spanish are forced to abandon Cavite for Manila. Three days later, the rival fleets meet again north of Cavite once more, while the armies of Coseng skirmish with the main Spanish forces south of Manila. By the end of April, Manila Bay has become a Tungning Lake and Coseng’s forces have successfully landed on both ends of the Bay, at the Bataan Peninsula and Cavite. By the early days of May, Manila is threatened by the abating but still ongoing Sangley Rebellion and by the main army of Coseng, numbering some 85,000 soldiers. Against this behemoth, the Spanish forces found themselves dispersed, with their armies fighting against the invaders at Cavite and Bataan, south of Manila and against the Sangley at Binondo and the hills of Antipolo, with the help of the local Zambales and Pampanga allies. Sabiniano de Lara, trapped between a rock and a hard place, chose to make a stand at Manila, encouraging the population to resist the invaders. The heroic Spanish and Filipino resistance through the spring and summer of 1663 mark a high note for the defenders in the first stage of the war, even if ultimately the force of sheer numbers meant than a successful defense was all but impossible. The desire to erase the mistakes of the past, especially those committed by his father at Nanjing, and to cement his glory and power pushed Coseng to cast aside all caution and move to overwhelm Manila, even as operations at Cavite and Bataan were still ongoing and far from resolved. But for those little details, Coseng cares not, and between May 3rd and May 5th his armies crushing the resistance of the Spaniards, along with their Japanese and Native allies. Ten thousand defenders are killed as the back of the Spanish army is broken. The retreat into the city, where urban militias try to slow down the Tungning steamroller, soon turns into a massacre as 80,000 Chinese soldiers break through the last lines of defense and pour into the city in a drunken, brutal victory parade that nearly results in the complete destruction of the city whose downfall had obsessed Coseng for years. [5]

On May 7th of 1663, Coseng achieves what the Pirate lord Li Ma Hong could not eighty-nine years before: to conquer Manila.

The end of this, the first phase of the Tunging-Spanish War, ultimately cost some 40,000 lives. The death of Sabiniano de Lara and twenty thousand defenders in the spring of 1663 is shortly followed by the fall of Cavite and a rather lackluster campaign in the surroundings of Manila and Bataan, where resistance against the invaders peters out rapidly as news of the downfall of the Spanish spreads like wildfire. The war in central Luzon nevertheless continues, as a local official by the name of Lorenzo Ruiz takes the surviving Spanish forces and officers to link up with the Kampampanga, Sambal and Cagayan allies in the central and northern provinces in the Larga Marcha, or Marcha de Ruiz.[6] In this juncture, the local Sangley returned to Manila to rebuild and repopulate the city, while the Spanish officials and authorities were arrested and executed throughout the summer of 1663. The Sangley, many of whom were descendant from immigrants of the Southern Provinces of China and thus shared a cultural heritage with Coseng, soon formed the backbone of the new regime at Manila, now named “Yanping”, enthusiastically taking up positions in the local government or joining the Tungning Army and even giving Zheng the moniker of “Coseng the Great”. [7]

North of Manila Bay, on the other hand, the war was far from over. Two pincers, one from Bataan numbering some 18,000 men and another from Manila, just north of the 65,000 troops, were sent northwards to the provinces of Zambales and Pampanga with the purpose of finding and crushing the Ruiz Column, now engrossed thanks to the native allies. The late summer and early autumn of 1663 are thus spent in a fruitless campaign to pacify the Northern provinces while Ruiz’s Long March continues to harass the Chinese forces while eluding their main armies. The highlands of Zambales become the scenery for a bloody campaign of harassment, hit-and-run campaigns and skirmishes against Coseng’s forces. The early days of 1664 see the main frontlines move from Zambales to the northern highlands, where support from the locals also contributes to boosting the numbers of Ruiz’s Column. By the time in which April of 1664 arrives, a year has passed and Coseng remained at “Yanping”, still forced to direct operations in the organization of his newly acquired domain, while sending expeditions against Lorenzo Ruiz in the north and the Spanish and native remnants of the southern provinces. The Island of Mindoro is occupied in late 1663, along with the city of Lucena in the province of Quezon, but elsewhere in the region, in the provinces of Laguna and Camarines, resistance against the new authorities does not die out until well into 1665.

The death of Lorenzo Ruiz in August of 1665, the occupation of Marinduque Island east of Mindoro and the fall of Bulan and Sorgoson in the southernmost areas of Luzon mark the end of the Tungning Conquest of Luzon, but the pacification campaign would not end until the very late 1660s, with local centers of resistance springing up from time to time for the duration of Chinese rule in the Island. The Tungning-Spanish War, on the other hand, would not end until December of 1672, when a truce recognized Coseng’s possession of Luzon, Mindoro, the Bataan Islands, Maranduque and the Calamian Islands, whereas the Spanish suzerainty was recognized over the Islands of Panay, Negros, Cebu, Leyte and the rest in the Visayas Group.

The truce of 1672 meant anything but peace for Tungning and its great King, Coseng, nevertheless. To cement his empire, the Lord of the Waves continued to campaign against the local rebels, the Moorish Pirates, the Southern Sultanates, the Dutch, the Spanish, the Portuguese and the Japanese Red Seal Company throughout the 1660s and 1670s, although without the vigor and rage of the early naval wars. As Coseng aged, his thirst for blood and glory became satiated and was even drowned by the rivers of blood that his war in Luzon had brought upon him and his armies.

***

The nations of Asia and Europe saw the nascent Empire of Tungning with growing alarm and unease, as their possessions fell to the hands of the ambitious Zheng Chenggong, known to his enemies as the Pirate-King of Formosa and as Cosen the Conqueror. At Lisbon, Amsterdam and Madrid, the losses of their domains in East Asia, including Formosa, Macao, Canton, Manila and several other outposts meant an effective end to the influence and power of the western powers, the Dutch East India Company and the Spanish Empire, in the region. Along with the European powers, the Japanese Red Seal Company was also mortally wound by the disruption of commerce in the China Seas in the 1650s, as the dwindling European presence and the rise of the Shun and Tungning as local hegemons crippled the forces of the Red Seal Company of Osaka. This ever-growing list of disgruntled realms and offended commercial powers is completed with the Satsuma Domain of the Shimazu Clan, which has suffered the loss of their vassal kingdom of Ryūkyū as a very public humiliation. Even more painful than the loss of the Islands is the reaction at the halls of Tsutsuijigasaki, where the court of the Takeda Shogun receive the news of the invasion of what can technically be considered a vassal of the Empire with a surprising amount of indifference. What is more, it was even commented that the Shogun Nobutoyo cheered at the humiliation and disgrace of the Shimazu, along with several daimyo and advisors who saw the economic and political power of Satsuma as a threat to the Shogunate.

Thus ended the decade of the 1660s, with a rising power that was the Kingdom of Tungning spreading its wings and breaking the stranglehold of the old empires, dispersing their scattered, shattered remnants and casting them from the domains of the Empire of the Waves.



Notes:​


1. Riccolo Ricci served as similar role IOTL; I’m keeping him, in spite of 90 years of “butterflies” for literary purposes; Coseng is how Zheng’s title of Guóxìngyé (Lord with the Imperial Name) was rendered in Spanish;

2. Sabiniano Manrique de Lara took the same measures IOTL;

3. Sangley is the Spanish Colonial name for the Chinese Filipinos with no mixed blood, whereas the Mestizos are known as Mestizos de Sangley; IOTL, they rebelled in the 1570s, in 1603 and 1639, as well as in 1662, and each time a horrible massacre ensued; ITTL, Koxinga doesn’t die and what IOTL was a five-month rebellion is a successful fifth column;

4. IOTL, the measures taken by Sabiniano Manrique de Lara severely weakened the Spanish at Mindanao and throughout the Philippines, reducing Manila’s commercial importance along the way and allowing the natives to overrun several places where the Spaniards were making progress in their colonization efforts; Since the invasion is real ITTL, these local enemies of Spain have more success in the short to medium term;

5. Given the numbers, I would think this is a likely result; I might even be too optimistic about the Spaniards’ chances here; not so sure about the naval battles, since I have no idea about how a Galleon would do against a Chinese War Junk, but being surrounded 30 to 1 should compensate any technological gap, real or not; The Sangley campaign is much as IOTL, except that ITTL they receive reinforcements from Taiwan; Since IOTL Koxinga was able to send as many as 250,000 troops against Nanjing in 1659, sending 150,000 troops to Luzon even after the losses sustained at Nanjing in 1649 shouldn’t be much of a stretch;

6. Lorenzo Ruiz was a low level clerk who became a missionary in the 1620s due to a local scandal, being one of the famous Catholic Martyrs killed at Japan in 1637; ITTL, he remains at Manila rather than becoming a missionary; the other martyrs wouldn’t be killed regardless, cine Japan does not persecute the Christian minorities ITTL;

7. Yanping means “to prolong the peace”, IIRC, and was one of the titles of Koxinga IOTL, as well as a town in his home province of Fujian;
 
Fascinating indeed! I'm worried about the cohesion of Tungning, no matter how many overseas Chinese communities are behind it. Formosa, the Ryukyus, and now the northern Philippines... what are the currents like out there? Given the distances involved between island groups, surely a greater than usual level of local autonomy will have to be granted, right?
 

maverick

Banned
Thanks guys.


Fascinating indeed! I'm worried about the cohesion of Tungning, no matter how many overseas Chinese communities are behind it. Formosa, the Ryukyus, and now the northern Philippines... what are the currents like out there? Given the distances involved between island groups, surely a greater than usual level of local autonomy will have to be granted, right?

Well, this is hardly an empire to last on the long term. IOTL, Taiwan became a Qing dependency once again in the 1680s, after nearly 20 years of post-Koxinga independence.

Besides the Fukien Ports, to which Coseng is attached as his family is from there IIRC, which are protectorates/Tungning Enclaves that respond to Taiwan while legally being part of Shun China, there's the Ryukyu Kingdom, which is mostly neglected after the invasion, except for the presence of a few administrators and corrupt tax collectors who keep tabs on the vassal King.

The presence in the Philippines is stronger as a sizable army is needed to keep the peace for the first few years, and with time we might even see the balance of power within the Tungning realm shift from Taiwan to Luzon.

In the meantime, here's a map of the Philippines in 1672, so that people understand how the division of the archipelagos work.

China map.png
 
¡Oa!, this is not going to end well for Coseng's dynasty: too many enemies, too fast; not to mention the always present possibility of native uprising in both Taiwan & Luzon.

Excellent work, Maverick.
 
Really fantastic, awesome work. It certainly deserves to be called one of the greatest Asian timelines here on this forum. It's not trolling or an attempt to revive it - but I really hope that maverick could be unbanned so that the John Wayne TL could be continued.
 
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