In class, we briefly touched upon the late Ming peasant rebellions as a distraction for the Ming court in fighting the Manchus. We also touched briefly on the exploits of Li Zicheng in ending the Ming dynasty by capturing Beijing and giving the Manchus an easier time in pacifying the north of China. However, the peasant rebellions were far more extensive than one uprising to take the capitol, and several more major rebel leaders existed than just Li Zicheng.
Peasant rebellions began to be seen in the province of Shaanxi in the late 1620s. The first notable instance of unrest came when a man named Wang Dexun led a of group that killed a county magistrate. From then on, the province of Shaanxi became the focal point for unrest in the Ming state. The reasons for the peasant rebellions are varied, and have been at least partially documented in class, but the reasons for rebellion in Shaanxi particularly are perhaps the most illustrative of the wider Ming shortcomings. Shaanxi was apparently famous for its corrupt officials and the military forces in the region were woefully unprepared to fight a major uprising, being constrained by the deteriorating situation of poor discipline, poor supply systems, and draconian leadership present throughout the late Ming military. Finally, widespread drought in Shaanxi led to famine which forced the peasants to look desperately for other ways of survival.
Part of what made the situation in Shaanxi and neighboring provinces so complicated was the lack of centralization on anyone’s part in the region. It was not as though the entire peasantry had decided to rebel, and indeed the towns in which the peasants lived bore the brunt of rebel attacks. Neither were the rebels a united force. Many different groups under different commanders ranged across northern China, forcing the Ming commanders to likewise spread out their forces. The result was that no one, including the Ming troops, were truly organized.
Naturally, the result of this was hardship for the peasants, as they were left vulnerable to rebel bandit attacks. It is worth noting that very little in the way of concrete ideology existed among the rebels, nothing like a communist or nationalist cause. Instead, the goals were smaller in scope, and usually just turned in practice to preying on the peasants in order to survive. Therefore, the rebel armies of the late Ming were not very different from large bandit hordes who occasionally fought with Ming troops. In order to counter this, the peasants of Shaanxi became increasingly militarized. They formed militias and fortified their towns. It is interesting to note that many of these small towns employed cannon in their defenses, indicating the prevalence of that technology in the late Ming Empire.
The peasants were not the only ones trying to stop the rebels, and it is worth going over some of the more important ones. The first man to try to crush the rebels was a man named Yang He. Yang had enjoyed success in putting down rebellions elsewhere in China, but had less success in Shaanxi. A large part of his problem was that Yang employed a traditional Chinese tactic for dealing with bandits known as gentle suasion, where surrendered bandits were given the tools to farm with and allowed to return to work. Initially, this strategy worked. However, the rebels who originally surrendered soon found themselves disgruntled again and re-rebelled. This discredited Yang and led to his recall in 1632. He was followed by a series of relatively unsuccessful men. Generally, the Ming commanders were not necessarily incompetent, and they often scored victories, but there was not enough understanding of how to crush the rebellion completely. So there were several cases where Ming commanders won victories but did not follow them up effectively, making the cases when the rebels did win even more painful. This was especially true when the rebels struck at areas of ceremonial importance to the Ming; whenever those attacks were successful, such as the attack on the Ming traditional burial ground, they dealt more damage to Ming moral than the rebels ever suffered in one defeat.
The other key Ming commander was Yang He’s son, Yang Sichang. Yang Sichang had managed to get an appointment against the rebels by promising to end the uprising in a matter of months. In practice, Yang Sichang was hampered by the same problems as his predecessors. By the time that Yang Sichang got his command, several large, independent rebel armies were operating, with the most important ones commanded by Gao Yinxiang, Lao Huihui, Luo Rucai, Ma Jinzhong, Li Zicheng, and Zhang Xianzhong. This meant that no single decisive battle would be coming where Yang Sichang could crush his foes. On the other hand, it was not as though Yang Sichang had no advantages, as he had several skilled subordinates such as Zuo Liangyu and He Renlong; these men were among the more skilled of the late Ming commanders. Unfortunately for the Ming, Yang Sichang was not, and he effectively mismanaged his subordinates to the point that it severely weakened the anti-rebel efforts. This culminated in rebel commanders capturing and killing two Ming princes, and taking the city of Luoyang. These events were the beginnings of the end for the Ming dynasty.
Gerritsen, Anna. “From Late Ming to High Qing.” In The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China. Edited by Jeffrey Wasserstrom, 12-36. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2016.
Swope, Kenneth. On the Trail of the Yellow Tiger: War, Trauma, and Social Dislocation in Southwest China during the Ming-Qing Transition. U of Nebraska Press, 2018.
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