The Military Collapse of the Ming

 Fear not, gentle reader, or at least those who are thinking ‘Not another 1600 – Something post’. No, indeed, I have been reading, albeit slowly, a book which has been on my road map for a while, but which I have only just finished.

The said tome is The Military Collapse of China’s Ming Dynasty, 1618-1644, by Kenneth M. Swope (Routledge, 2014). Swope is, of course, the author of another book reviewed here, about the Japanese invasion of Korea in the 1590s, and, to some extent, this is a follow-up to that book. Swope asks the question of how, in the first half of the next century, the Chinese military machine could have collapsed so far. After all, in the 1590s, it was capable of defeating the Japanese military, rated by many people as being particularly good. But by the 1640s, it went down to a bunch of peasant rebels and barbarians from beyond the Great Wall.

The normal account of the collapse of the Ming empire is of increasing corruption and lethargy. The old empire, it says, lost the Mandate of Heaven, its officials were either incompetent or corrupt, and, in many cases, treasonous. Its leadership had drifted so far from the people that they did not know how to handle rebellion, and it only needed a shove from outside to implode. All very reasonable.

Swope, of course, has a slightly different account. His book starts with the failed Liadong campaign of 1619, where the Ming did not manage to bring the Jin to heel. This was for a variety of reasons, including incompetent military leadership, logistic difficulties and the possession, by the Jin, of internal lines of communication which allowed them to defeat the columns in detail. Closer inspection of the circumstances yields a picture of overlapping lines of command, conflicts between civil and military officers, and a near-fatal lack of decision-making at the centre.

The result was a fascinating, albeit gory, slide into the destruction of the Ming Empire, although, as Swope observes in the conclusion, the Little Ice Age certainly did not help. After all, many other polities suffered from starvation and rebellion in the middle of the Seventeenth Century – most of Europe and Britain were engulfed in warfare, for example, and the Eastern Europeans did not fare much better.

For the wargamer, there are a few set pieces to consider. The Liaodong campaign of 1619 is detailed, and there is a final section on the Battle of Shanhaiguan, 1644, which led to the overthrow of the newly declared Shun dynasty and the advent of the Manchu Qing. I believe that the latter battle is occasionally referred to as the Chinese Hastings, although the forces engaged in Hastings were paltry compared to Shanhaiguan. The final Manchu cavalry attack was carried out by 20000 men.

That fact underpins a lot of the problems and wargame opportunities with Early Modern China. China is big, very big. The mere fact that the Ming lasted so long is testimony to the fact that, firstly, the Ming were not widely regarded as incompetent or having lost the Mandate of Heaven at least until 1644, and were reasonably popular, as far as it went in a very large country indeed.

It is a shame that the activities in Asia are not more widely known and wargamed. There is a bit of a dearth of information (Swope’s book is academic, and its cost was commensurate with that), and even this book, combined with the available Ospreys, gives only a flavour of the forces. Still, there are some interesting snippets to take away and ponder.

Firstly, artillery was important. The Chinese made their own and also imported foreign cannon, some with Portuguese gunsmiths and crew. Until the Manchu got their artillery act together, they did not make all that much progress against Chinese fortresses. Once they did, the Chinese had to withdraw their artillery into the fortresses themselves. Yes, you read that right, in the early days, the Chinese artillery was deployed outside the walls. It seems to me that the idea was that a few salvoes from the guns and the barbarians would run away. This was probably true until the more disciplined Manchu arrived.

The other thing to garner from the book is the peasant rebellions and the Ming attempts to contain them and put them down. Again, the numbers are huge, and the operations are on a vast scale. In fact, that was part of the problem. The Ming had real logistical problems in supplying their forces, and frequently, the peasants feared the arrival of government forces more than they did rebels. Again, as the rebels advanced, they gained numbers, arms and equipment, including gunpowder weapons, and confidence.

The book details a couple of sieges. One a fairly local affair where a country town held out against rebel forces. With the cooperation of officials, local gentry and the townspeople, the town survived. Swope observes that the Ming polity was not doomed from the outset, but let down by infighting between officials, attempts to gain office and take down one’s rivals, and a fatal lack of understanding between civilian and military commanders, exacerbated by the Emperor’s habit of sending eunuchs from court to take control. When officials objected, he pointed out that he could not trust anyone else to carry out his orders!

There are some maps, mostly useful, in the book as well. One of the key areas was the Bohai Gulf in the north-east, where China, Korea and Manchuria meet. There was quite a lot of naval activity in the Gulf, which was a bit of a surprise to me, as I thought the Chinese had abandoned naval action. In the Korean war, there was a lot of transport, but they did not really, so far as I can recall, get involved in the naval action. I will have to recheck that.

Still, a fascinating book on an under-appreciated part of wargaming, I think. In 1600 – Something, the Chinese are currently rich and fairly inactive. I suspect that might change.