Chapter 186: The Situation (Part One)

With all power in his hands, Sun Kewang could have forced Yongli to "abdicate" without any difficulty, but his intention met with opposition from Li Dingguo, Liu Wenxiu, and other former followers, which left Sun Kewang in a dilemma.

He knew very well that if he forcibly took the Ming throne for himself, Li Dingguo, Liu Wenxiu, and the others would certainly never acknowledge him as Son of Heaven, so the matter of abdication was dragged on and on.

Yet although Sun Kewang did not don the yellow robe, the Yongli Emperor, living in Anlong Prefecture in Guizhou, felt as if a sharp treasured sword hung above his head, with the danger of being deposed or even losing his life at any moment.

To secure his own safety and that of the Yongli court, Yongli, at the suggestion of Grand Secretary Wen Anzhi, issued a secret edict summoning Li Dingguo to bring troops to guard him.

Wen Anzhi said to Yongli: "Liu and Li are bound to join forces; the general will has turned away from Sun. Only the outcome of the affair remains uncertain."

Yongli then said to the palace eunuchs Zhang Fulu and Quan Weiguo: "Kewang no longer treats Us with the courtesy due from a subject. The treacherous ministers Ma Jixiang and Pang Tianshou serve as his eyes and ears, and We cannot rest or eat in peace.

Recently We have heard that Li Dingguo, the Western Frontier Guardian, personally commands a great army and has struck straight into Chu and Yue, capturing the rebel Chen Bangfu and his son.

His loyalty in serving the state has long been known far and wide, and his army's prestige is resounding. The one who will deliver Us from danger in the future must be this man.

Moreover, Dingguo and Kewang have long been at odds. We wish to secretly draft an edict and send an official to carry it to his camp, summoning Dingguo to come and protect Us.

Can the two of you secretly arrange this matter for Us?"

Although Zhang Fulu and Quan Weiguo were palace eunuchs, they were utterly loyal to Yongli, and at once proposed that Xu Ji, Lin Qingyang, and others had once impeached Ma Jixiang and Pang Tianshou for attaching themselves to the Prince of Qin, and were loyal and reliable, suggesting that they discuss the matter with them in secret.

After the Yongli Emperor agreed, Zhang Fulu contacted Xu Ji and the others to deliberate together, and after their discussion they went to Wu Zhenyu, the Senior Grand Secretary of the Yongli court, to secretly work out the concrete plan.

Wu Zhenyu had long been dissatisfied with Sun Kewang's arrogance, and at once agreed to the plan of summoning Li Dingguo to bring troops to guard the Emperor.

He said to Xu Ji and the others: "The court has declined to this point; this is the season for men like us to lay down our lives. But the treacherous power-holders are watching at every moment, and I fear the secret may leak.

Which of you gentlemen can serve as this envoy?"

Lin Qingyang volunteered to go. Wu Zhenyu then ordered Jiang Qianchang, a vice director in the Bureau of Sacrifices of the Ministry of Rites, to draft the edict, and Zhu Dongdan, a secretary in the Bureau of Operations of the Ministry of War, to write it out in fair copy.

Zhang Fulu and the others carried it into the palace to affix the Emperor's seal.

Lin Qingyang, according to the prior plan, took leave under the pretext of burying a parent, concealed the secret edict on his person, and set out in the eleventh month of the sixth year of Yongli (the false ninth year of Shunzhi) for Dingguo's camp.

At that time, Li Dingguo was fighting the Qing army in the region of Hunan and Guangxi and had no leisure to look inward.

When the Yongli Emperor saw that Lin Qingyang had been gone half a year with no word at all, he grew anxious and had Wu Zhenyu send another envoy to seek news.

Zheng Yunyuan, the Earl of Wu'an, suggested that they should find a way to send away Ma Jixiang, Sun Kewang's trusted man, to prevent the secret from leaking.

The Yongli Emperor then used the pretext that after the recovery of Nanning a senior minister was needed to hold it, and sent Ma Jixiang to Nanning to take up that post.

After Ma Jixiang left Anlong for his new post, the secret envoy set out in secret. Upon reaching Li Dingguo's camp, the envoy read out the edict, whose words were sorrowful and grief-stricken.

Li Dingguo was deeply moved; he kowtowed until his forehead bled and said through sobs: "So long as your subject Dingguo has a day left to live, how could he allow Your Majesty to endure prolonged confinement and humiliation? I beg you to bear it a little longer.

Your subject has served Kewang as an elder brother for many years; I would rather betray a friend than betray my sovereign."

Unexpectedly, after Ma Jixiang reached Guangxi, he encountered Liu Yixin, a Yongli court official who had come from Li Dingguo's army. Liu assumed that Ma Jixiang, long favored by the Yongli Emperor and ennobled as a marquis, must have been party to the secret summons of Dingguo.

Upon meeting him, Liu without any reserve laid out the whole story of the court's two edicts ordering Li Dingguo to bring troops to welcome the imperial carriage, and even said: "When the Western Headquarters received the edict, he was moved to tears.

Before many days he will come to Anlong to welcome the imperial carriage."

Ma Jixiang was shocked and at once sent men flying to report to Sun Kewang. When Sun Kewang received the report, he understood deeply that once Li Dingguo succeeded in welcoming the Emperor, the situation in which he alone monopolized the court would be completely transformed.

He therefore resolved to get to the bottom of the matter, and sent his trusted generals Zheng Guo and Wang Aixiu to enter the Anlong palace on the sixth day of the first month of the eighth year of Yongli, to force the Yongli Emperor to explain the affair and to demand the names of those who had initiated it.

Pressed by the two generals, Yongli could only shift the blame, saying: "As for the secret edict, the ministers at court would certainly never dare do such a thing. In recent years there have been many forged edicts and forged seals from outside.

You gentlemen must investigate further in secret — how could all of this be a matter within the court?"

Zheng Guo and Wang Aixiu then joined forces with Pang Tianshou, and on the sixth day of the third month arrested Wu Zhenyu and about twenty other officials connected with the secret edict.

After severe torture, Wu Zhenyu and the others, to avoid implicating the Yongli Emperor, confessed that a number of court officials had colluded with the palace eunuchs Zhang Fulu and Quan Weiguo to forge an edict in secret and summon Li Dingguo, all without the Yongli Emperor's knowledge.

Zheng Guo pressed them: "Did the Emperor know?"

Wu and the others insisted: "It was never reported to him."

Zheng Guo and those in the Yongli court who had attached themselves to Sun Kewang could do nothing more, so they settled the case under the charge of "stealing the seal, forging an edict, deceiving the sovereign, and harming the state," and reported to the Prince of Qin.

Sun Kewang ordered that the trial be organized in the name of the Yongli court.

On the twentieth day of the third month, Zhang Juan, Zhang Fulu, and Quan Weiguo were named the principal offenders and sentenced to death by slow slicing; Jiang Qianchang, Xu Ji, Yang Zhong, and others were named accessories and executed at once; and the Senior Grand Secretary Wu Zhenyu, named the chief plotter, was, in consideration of his rank as a high minister, ordered to commit suicide.

This was the famous "Case of the Eighteen Gentlemen" of the Southern Ming.

Politically, Sun Kewang was extremely wary of the Yongli court, but militarily he was single-mindedly aggressive. As early as the eleventh month of the sixth year of Yongli (the false ninth year of Shunzhi), Sun Kewang personally came from Guizhou to Yuanzhou in Hunan.

He sent his great general Bai Wenxuan with more than fifty thousand horse and foot soldiers to attack Chenzhou. On the twenty-first day, the Ming army advanced on Chenzhou by both water and land and surrounded the city on all four sides.

The Qing Chenzhou and Changde Regional Commander Xu Yong ordered his Vice Regional Commander Zhang Pengxing to lead troops out to fight, and Zhang was killed by Ming artillery fire. Xu Yong still vainly attempted to hold the city and resist.

The next day, Bai Wenxuan used elephants as the vanguard, broke through the east gate, and his main force surged into the city. Xu Yong was hacked to death by random blades in the melee.

The Qing circuit intendant of Chenzhou and Changde, Liu Shengzuo, the Chenzhou Prefect Wang Renqi, and other civil and military officials were also captured and executed.

Afterwards, Sun Kewang renamed Yuanzhou as Qianxing Prefecture, made Xingyuan County the prefectural seat, and placed under it one department and nine counties: Jingzhou, Xingyuan, Qianyang, Mayang, Tongdao, and Pingxi, and transferred the prefecture to the jurisdiction of Guizhou Province.

At the same time that Sun Kewang captured Chenzhou, Li Dingguo killed the Qing commander Nikan at Hengyang. At this point the Qing army had suffered repeated major setbacks: its commander had fallen in battle and its morale was shattered.

This was precisely the best opportunity for Sun Kewang to organize the Ming army, with the Daxi Army as its main force, to launch a great counteroffensive against the Qing forces that had entered Hunan. Yet Sun Kewang failed to seize this favorable opportunity.

Instead, because Li Dingguo had twice toppled famous princes and shaken the realm with his fame, Sun Kewang feared that Li Dingguo's achievements would overshadow him, the "master."

When Li Dingguo planned the Hengyang campaign, the original arrangement was for Ma Jinzhong and Feng Shuangli to move their troops to Baiguo Market, while Dingguo's main force was stationed at Hengzhou, waiting for Nikan's great army to pass Hengshan County.

Then Ma's and Feng's two divisions would circle behind the enemy and, together with Dingguo's division, strike from north and south to annihilate the Qing army under Nikan in one blow.

When Sun Kewang learned of this plan, he feared that Dingguo would achieve a great success, so he secretly ordered Feng Shuangli to withdraw to Baoqing, and Ma Jinzhong followed him away.

Because of Sun Kewang's sabotage, although Li Dingguo killed the Qing commander Nikan, he was left with too few troops and too isolated a position, and in the twelfth month he abandoned Hengzhou.

After the Hengzhou campaign, Sun Kewang secretly plotted to summon a military conference, intending to arrest Dingguo the moment he arrived, and to transfer command of Dingguo's army to Feng Shuangli.

If Sun Kewang's removal of Liu Wenxiu from military command had at least reflected some principle of rewarding merit and punishing failure, his scheme to murder Li Dingguo, whose battle achievements were outstanding, was certain to be deeply unpopular.

Therefore, some who knew the inside story rushed to Dingguo's camp to warn him, urging him never to come to the meeting.

Li Dingguo had originally hoped that Sun Kewang would lead his forces east from Chenzhou and join with his own troops to strike the Qing army in Hunan (after Nikan was killed, the Eight Banners troops that had entered Hunan were commanded by Beile Tunqi).

If that army could have been annihilated, it would certainly have dealt a heavy blow to the strength of the Manchu Eight Banners and struck terror far and near; then, joining forces with the Thirteen Camps of Kuidong, they could have taken Hubei to the north and attacked Jiangxi to the east, very likely creating an irresistible momentum.

When he learned that Sun Kewang had set aside the larger cause and was deliberately plotting to murder him, he was filled with indignation and said to his subordinate generals: "Unluckily I fell into the army in my youth and have tasted every hardship and danger, thinking only to win some small measure of merit, to support the royal house, and to leave an undying name.

Now I have just slain a famous prince and won a great victory, yet suspicion and jealousy rise on every side. Moreover, I rose from Yunnan together with my younger brother Funan; once a man makes a misstep, he is cast aside.

If they are jealous of me, it will surely be even worse. My wife and children are all in Yunnan — how could I choose to flee?"

In late second month of the seventh year of Yongli (the false tenth year of Shunzhi), Li Dingguo led his forty to fifty thousand troops to abandon Yongzhou, and withdrew into Guangxi by way of Yongming and through Longhu Pass, henceforth avoiding any meeting with Sun Kewang.

The brotherly bond of some twenty years, as close as hand and foot, was wiped out by Sun Kewang with a single stroke.

Sun Kewang soon reaped the bitter fruit of driving Li Dingguo away.

At that time Sun Kewang was personally commanding a great army advancing from Jingzhou through Wugang to Baoqing, with great generals Bai Wenxuan and Feng Shuangli under him, and a total strength of one hundred thousand.

On the sixth day of the third month, the Qing General of Pacifying Distant Lands, Tunqi, led the main Manchu and Han forces north from Yongzhou toward Baoqing.

On the fifteenth they encamped at Chalukou, thirty li from Zhoujiapu, where the camps of the Ming generals Bai Wenxuan, Feng Shuangli, and Ma Jinzhong were located.

The next day, the Qing army advanced to Zhoujiapu. Because the Ming army was encamped on a mountaintop with difficult terrain, and because rain fell, the two sides formed battle lines and faced each other.

That evening Sun Kewang led his personal troops from Baoqing Prefecture to reinforce them. On the seventeenth, the Ming army came down the mountain and launched an all-out attack on the Qing army.

The Qing army met them on separate routes, and fierce fighting broke out. In the end, the Ming army under Sun Kewang was defeated, with heavy casualties.

The Qing army captured more than seven hundred horses and one elephant, and followed up the victory by occupying Baoqing Prefecture.

But the Qing army also paid a heavy price in this battle: two Mongol Meiren Janggins of the Plain Yellow Banner, Wei Zheng and Wu Jing, both fell in the fierce fighting.

After winning the Baoqing campaign, Tunqi's Qing forces, because of their severe losses, were unable to occupy all of Hunan, and Sun Kewang likewise lacked the strength to fight another pitched battle with Tunqi's forces.

Thus the Ming and Qing armies remained locked in a long standoff along the line from Jingzhou to Wugang.

These two sections on the situation may seem somewhat padded.

My original intention was to use characters and plot to explain the problems between Sun Kewang and Li Dingguo, and the reasons why the main force of the Southern Ming army and the Qing army were locked in a standoff in the Hunan theater.

But because these events occurred one after another from the fifth year of Yongli onward, while the Taiping Army's desperate defense of Xinhui took place in the ninth year of Yongli (the twelfth year of Shunzhi), the events of these intervening years are difficult to present to readers through plot in just one or two chapters.

I had no choice but to describe them briefly, and I beg your understanding.