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8.1 – Preparations for the Armada (1610 – 1612)

China in 1610 can be described as being in a period of calm before the storm. After rising out of the ashes of the wars to eject Genghis Khan’s descendants from China, the Ming Dynasty had entered a period of deep decline in the mid-16^th century, when pirates had infested and seized effective control over large portions of the coast. However, the Ming had recovered by the end of the century, just in time for four major military campaigns in the 1590s: one against an army mutiny, one against a rebellious indigenous chieftain, and two against the Japanese invasions of Korea in the Imjin War.

Once these were over with, Ming was able to get back to the economic growth and prosperity that otherwise characterised the late 16^th and early 17^th centuries in China. Through all of this, China was benefiting from the stability of the longest reign in Ming history: that of the Wanli Emperor. Things were actually going so well in 1610 that one could be forgiven for thinking that the Ming Dynasty would last until the end of the century. Ah, but the cracks that would lead to the dynasty’s demise had not yet truly become visible.

That being said, preparing to launch a military expedition across the world’s biggest ocean is easier said than done (and it’s a mouthful to say). Numerous proposals were considered, drawn up, edited, and discarded by the Wanli Emperor’s advisors. Some questioned whether or not the enterprise should even be attempted at all. The state’s finances had not entirely kept up with the economic boom of the past few decades, and the army was still heavily reliant on mercenaries, who could be expensive and unreliable.

However, such questions were quickly shot down. Although it would require substantial financial investment, military intervention in Xinguo would be a worthwhile endeavour. Necessary, even. The Emperor’s prestige at home had taken a hit when Wei Yonglong conquered South Province, and another hit when his successor refused to come to China to perform the proper obeisance to the Emperor. People were beginning to question whether or not the Wanli Emperor could hold China together. Xinguo was an ulcer haemorrhaging imperial legitimacy, and it was high time to staunch the flow. At the same time, any intervention was bound to fail without local support. Fortunately, the Great People’s Revolt offered a golden opportunity; if Ming struck now, while the revolt was still ongoing, the expedition stood a real chance of success.

Plans for the intervention were set into motion around April, 1611, at the same time as the Treasure Fleet was supposed to disembark for Xinguo. This year, however, it would not disembark. Instead, the gigantic treasure ships were to be refitted to carry men and horses. 30,000 men and 12,000 horses, to be exact, as well as donkeys, mules, 50,000 muskets and 300 cannons with lead and gunpowder, as well as halberds, glaives, pikes, swords, armour, food, and fresh water. And that wasn’t counting the 20,000 men needed to crew the ships or the weapons and supplies they needed.

Fortunately, the refitting wouldn’t take that long. Because the same ships may be required to carry either cargo or passengers at different times, the original treasure ship design from the 1420s and ’30s had been modified in the 1470s and ’80s to make it easy to convert the holds between cargo and passenger space.

What would be much harder was recruiting the soldiers and acquiring the weapons and supplies necessary for the expedition. Men were recruited from all over eastern China. Foreigners were hired too, from Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines. Ethnic minorities participated as well, including many men and women from the Prior minority who’d established themselves in the Lower Yangzi region. To communicate, all these men from different backgrounds spoke to each other in Junhua, or Army Speech, a Chinese dialect that emerged in the 14^th and 15^th centuries as a lingua franca among units in the Ming army who hailed from different regions. All those who participated in the land army portion of the expedition were promised generous plots of land at the end of it. Those who brought family members along could have their family accept the land on their behalf if the soldier in question was killed on campaign. They were not expected to ever return to Asia.

All told, between soldiers and sailors, family members and blacksmiths, tailors, sutlers, and anyone else an army on campaign needed to bring along, there were something like 70,000 people crossing the Pacific in the armada. This is a lot of people to have crossing the ocean all at once, but it didn’t make any sense in splitting the fleet. For all practical purposes, there was only one route across the ocean, and that was to take the usual Treasure Fleet route from China to Guandao Island, then to North Sunrise Island, to the Xiaweiyi archipelago, and finally to Xinguo. There was a northern route past what would later become the Russian Far East, crossing the Bering Strait, and then sailing south along the coast of Alasaka and past Ryōseikoku to Xinguo, but there would be no major port along the way until they reached Ryōseikoku. At the time, only a handful of trading posts were scattered along the great crescent coastlines of the Old World and the New from Japan to Ryōseikoku.

All of these people had to be crammed into about 80 treasure ships, along with all their weapons and supplies. Of these, about half were 500-1,000 tons while the remainder were over 1,000 tons, with some being as high as 2,000. This made them comparable in size to Spanish galleons and Portuguese carracks, although 2,000 ton galleons and carracks were rare to non-existent until a little later in the 17^th century while the Chinese had been sailing 2,000 ton treasure ships since Admiral Zheng He’s first expeditions in the early 15^th century

Not all of these ships came from the Treasure Fleet that went to Xinguo, of course. Although China had wound down its overseas tributary network in the late 15^th century, it had picked up again after the pirates were cleared out of China’s coastal areas in the 1550s and ’60s. A fevered rash of shipbuilding had ensued, enabling a winding back up of the tributary network so that by the 1610s, Chinese treasure ships were once again visiting Indonesia, India, Arabia, Africa, and the many island chains of the Pacific. About half of the Armada’s transport ships would be coming from the Xinguan Treasure Fleet while the other half came from these other, smaller treasure fleets.

In addition to the treasure ships, there were some smaller cargo ships and an escort complement of around 30 warships. A total of about 130 ships were mustered to cross the Pacific.

In summary, the Grand Armada looked like this:

40 treasure ships 1,000 – 2,000 tons

40 treasure ships 500 – 1,000 tons

20 cargo ships less than 500 tons

30 warships

20,000 sailors and marines

30,000 soldiers

20,000 non-combatants

As you can imagine, all of this was hideously expensive. In order to pay for it, taxes were raised. This would have consequences. Furthermore, corners were cut by doing things like paying the soldiers in promises that they’d receive land after the successful completion of the campaign, rather than giving them actual cash.

To command the Grand Armada, four men were selected: Commissioners Peng Fumu and Shui Jiakai, Admiral Ning Fenhe, and General Gao Jianjie. Admiral Ning was, naturally, in charge of the naval forces while General Gao commanded the land forces, while Commissioner Peng Fumu was in overall command of the armada. Commissioner Shui, meanwhile, had equal rank and authority to Peng. Shui’s job was essentially just to keep eyes on Peng and take over command of the armada if anything happened to him—or arrest Peng and take over if Peng turned against the emperor. Having two co-equal commanders of military expeditions was not something practiced routinely by the Ming Dynasty, but in this case it was judged to be necessary to prevent any one man from having complete control.

Peng and Shui were bureaucrats, not soldiers, so their role was one of civilian oversight, overall coordination, and negotiating with disaffected locals to get them on the Armada’s side. They weren’t really intended to command troops or ships directly in battle, although they did have the authority to do so if they saw fit. Peng Fumu was a lifelong bureaucrat, but Shui Jiakai had transferred into the bureaucracy from the army, and as such did have experience with military command.

One other expedition member worthy of note was a man named Chen Jushi, who served as Peng Fumu’s secretary. More importantly, however, he was also tasked with writing a chronicle for the expedition. Chen Jushi’s chronicle, given the rather straightforward title of Great Ming Armada Chronicle, was published in 1615, and is the best primary source document for the events we will shortly be covering.

It took a full year for the Grand Armada to finally be ready. In April of 1612, the Grand Armada of Ming set sail for Xinguo.

8.2 – Voyage of the Grand Armada (April – July, 1612)

Several months before of the Armada’s departure, a fleet of cargo ships carrying grain, dried fish, salted pork, and dried citrus fruits sailed ahead of the main expedition. They stopped at Guandao, North Sunrise Island, and Xiaweiyi, dropping a portion of cargo at each, about two-thirds of which was dropped off at Xiaweiyi, then the fleet returned to China. With this accomplished, when the Grand Armada set sail in April, it did so knowing that supplies were already waiting for them in the ports they had to stop at.

Guandao is an island in the Micronesia region of the Western Pacific, southernmost and largest of the Saiban Islands. Chinese adventurers discovered the island in the 1420s during their island-hopping exploration of the Pacific, and it swiftly became a base for further exploration. In 1427, a man named Yang Kangling arrived on the island of Guandao with 1,000 settlers and built a fort. Others soon flocked to him and he established a brutal dictatorship over the island’s native inhabitants. According to official government estimates made at the time, a third of the natives were killed, enslaved, or died of smallpox in two years. Yang Kangling was brutal toward visiting Chinese merchants as well, which was what ultimately persuaded the Chinese government to send an expedition to impale him and his lieutenants and assert control over Guandao. The rest of the Saiban Islands were left to the rule of indigenous chiefs who paid tribute to the Chinese emperor. Despite ostensibly having the emperor’s protection, the chiefs had to deal with frequent visits from Chinese adventurers who caused all kinds of problems for them. Under Chinese rule, it was controlled by a military governor appointed by Beijing.

The North Sunrise Islands were named for the Sunrise Islands which, together with the neighbouring Sunset Islands, have somehow become known in English as the Marshall Islands after some British guy who went there once. North Sunrise is in the far western end of the Xiaweiyi archipelago and was uninhabited at the time of discovery. It’s a tiny triplet set of islands with a total of less than six square miles of land. For a time, it was occupied by a Japanese ronin named Sō Chikara, who ran both a resupply station for passing ships and also launched piratical attacks on passing ships. Sō Chikara’s base was attacked by the Chinese navy, who seized control of North Sunrise and turned it into a naval base.

Xiaweiyi was reached by Bai Haolong in 1430, whereupon he claimed discovery of the island, even though there were already people living there and he was shown the way by guides from the Sunrise Islands. Bai Haolong was the first to attempt the crossing from Xiaweiyi to the rumoured land to the east, but was lost at sea. His son Bai Hongjin would later partner with Wei Shuifu to make the crossing and the two of them jointly blazed the first trail to Xinguo. The rest is history.

Xiaweiyi is an archipelago that consists of eight main islands. For the first few decades of Chinese settlement, the settlers were strangers in a foreign land dominated by the well-established indigenous chieftaincies in the islands. Settlers folded themselves into the local rivalry structure. Selling weapons and other technology to their favourite chiefs, they exacerbated existing rivalries and greatly increased the frequency and deadliness of war in so doing. By the end of the 15^th century, not many powerful chiefs were left. The Hawai’ian people had, by then, become a minority in their own homeland.

Through the 16^th century, Xiaweiyi was officially counted among the provinces of China and was part of the Viceroyalty of the Eastern Ocean, alongside Xinguo’s two provinces. In practice, the governor’s authority was largely limited to the city of Pearl Harbour while other cities in the archipelago were ruled by local strongmen. In effect, Xiaweiyi was a series of feuding city-states on an archipelago in the middle of the ocean. Most important of these city-states were Pearl Harbour (the provincial capital) and Huonuolulu, just a few miles to the east on the same island.

Xiaweiyi’s economy was heavily dependent on the passing of the Treasure Fleet every year. One of their major imports was preserved food—especially dried citrus fruits to stave off scurvy—that were brought in from Xinguo every year. With the downturn in transpacific trade in the past several years and the complete failure of the Treasure Fleet to even show up in 1611, Xiaweiyi’s economy had suffered a great deal. When the supply fleet had arrived ahead of the coming Grand Armada and dropped its cargo off in the provincial capital of Pearl Harbour, the ruler of Huonuolulu got a bright idea.

Lu Haiguan was descended from one of the earliest Chinese settlers in Xiaweiyi and held onto his ancestor’s self-proclaimed title ‘Duke of Blue Waters’ despite no member of his family ever having been officially ennobled by any emperor. His bright idea was to seize control of the supplies and then ransom them to the armada when it arrived. To that end, he prepared his army and laid siege to Pearl Harbour in May, around the time the Armada was leaving Guandao. An officer in command of a section of wall was bribed to let some of Lu’s soldiers enter the city and open the gates, thereby allowing the whole army in. Pearl Harbour was sacked, the provincial governor was taken into custody, and the Armada’s supplies were transferred to Huonuolulu.

This was the situation the Grand Armada stumbled into at the start of June. When they stopped at Pearl Harbour, the surviving locals told them about the sacking and the fact that the supplies the Armada needed were in Huonuolulu. This sparked controversy among the Armada’s commanders; not over whether or not they needed the supplies—from Xiaweiyi to Xinguo was a full third of the journey, there was no question they needed those supplies—but over how to acquire them. Peng Fumu favoured a diplomatic solution and was willing to pay ransom for what they needed while Admiral Ning and General Gao insisted they should use overwhelming force to seize the supplies and punish Lu Haiguan for his insolence. Shui Jiakai, meanwhile, was undecided. Commissioner Peng, therefore, was able to pull rank to overrule the admiral and general and set up a meeting between himself and Lu Haiguan.

Peng and Lu met on a dock outside the main Huonuolulu harbour while Shui Jiakai watched from the deck of one of the three ships nearby. What happened next is unclear, due to conflicting accounts. According to Commissioner Peng’s secretary Chen Jushi, who was by the commissioner’s side during the event, negotiations got heated when Peng flatly rejected the exorbitant ransom set by Lu. Peng demanded a lower ransom, but Lu was inflexible. Then some of Lu’s men raised their crossbows and shot Peng in the chest and neck.

An oral tradition from Xiaweiyi itself, however, maintains that Lu Haiguan was willing to accept a lower ransom, but Peng Fumu lost his mind and raised his fists to attack Lu, at which point his guards had to defend him.

What seems most likely is that Lu Haiguan played hardball, which Peng interpreted as a refusal to budge. Then Peng raised his fists in anger, which Lu’s bodyguards interpreted as an attack, and acted reflexively to protect their superior.

Either way, Peng ended up lying on the dock in a pool of blood seeping from his chest and neck while both his bodyguards and those of Lu Haiguan traded shots. Both groups of bodyguards unleashed crossbow bolts and bullets at each other, then closed in with swords and polearms. Peng’s aides dragged him back to their boat and started rowing toward the Armada’s ships moored nearby.

Shui Jiakai, meanwhile, had seen events unfold on shore and ordered the ships into action. Raising anchor, they traded salvoes with the Huonuolulu ships nearby. Once the shore party made it back to the ships, Shui ordered a withdrawal back to Pearl Harbour, where the rest of the fleet was waiting.

Taking command, Shui Jiakai decided to follow the advice of Admiral Ning and General Gao and prepared to lay siege to Huonuolulu. Huonuolulu was a major player in the game of Xiaweiyi politics, but it was a big fish in a small pond. They stood no chance against a force the size of the Grand Armada if the Armada turned its full attention on them—and that’s exactly what happened. The Armada spent the next five days besieging and assaulting Huonuolulu before the defenders were overwhelmed in the final assault. For the next five days after that, the soldiers and sailors of the Armada had the run of the city, looting, pillaging, killing and raping.

However, while they were pretty much entirely outside the control of their officers at this point, they were not completely free to do as they pleased. Shui Jiakai was reportedly horrified by the violence against the innocent people of the city. He used what few troops were still listening to orders to reign in the worst excesses of the looters. Many looters were arrested for going too far in abusing the locals and around two dozen men of the Armada were executed for murder or rape.

When the dust settled, Lu Haiguan had been taken into custody and the provincial governor had been freed. Shui Jiakai reinstalled the governor in his rightful place in Pearl Harbour and transferred Lu Haiguan into his custody. Peng Fumu, meanwhile, died of an infection in his neck. He and the other Armada members were buried outside Pearl Harbour and a ship was sent back to Beijing to inform the Wanli Emperor of all that’d happened.

The Armada then took possession of its supplies—and appropriated additional supplies from the cities of Pearl Harbour and Huonuolulu besides—and set sail for the final leg of the journey to Xinguo. With Peng gone, Shui Jiakai was now in total control of everything that was to come next.

8.3 – Arrival (July, 1612)

Ming’s Grand Armada approached the coast of western America in mid-July, about the time of year the Treasure Fleet would normally arrive. The month-long trip from Xiaweiyi with no land in sight was a gruelling one. Tens of thousands of people onboard the ships could only trust that the fleet’s navigators knew what they were doing, while the navigators trusted that maps, charts, nautical pathfinding tricks and gear, and math would see them through to land once more. For the navigators, however, it was not so much a matter of faith as one of experience; almost half the navigators had been to Xinguo and back on at least one voyage with the Treasure Fleet.

It was a time of sickness and misery for many, as a smallpox outbreak on several ships killed about 3,000 people. For Shui Jiakai and his top officers, it was a time spent cooped up in cramped offices pouring over maps spread on tables and discussing strategy. Unlike New Spain’s disastrous Acapulco Expedition of 1576, the Grand Armada was well-equipped with up-to-date, detailed maps of Xinguo, and with no shortage of interpreters onboard, they’d have no difficulty communicating with the locals. Furthermore, they knew they were headed into a land in open rebellion and had brought extra weapons for the purpose of arming the rebels and helping them overthrow their oppressors. The 50,000 extra muskets stowed away onboard weren’t show pieces, they were sign-up bonuses. In order to best link up with rebel leaders and enlist their help as quickly as possible, Shui and his officers agreed that the best place to land would be at Pine Bay.

Pine Bay is the second-most important bay area on the Xinguan coast after the network of bays at the border between North and South Provinces. Located not far south of the Jaw, Pine Bay was one of the first places visited by Bai Hongjin on his first voyage of discovery and was named by him for the abundance of pine trees on its coasts. Its original inhabitants had been the Coastal people of the Awaswas, Musun, and Rumsen tribes, the latter two of which inspired the names of two of the largest Xinguan settlements on the bay, namely the towns of Mucuo and Ruansen at the middle and southern ends of the bay, respectively (although Ruansen is actually on a smaller bay just around the headland of Pine Peninsula at the southern corner of Pine Bay, it’s close proximity to the larger bay means that it’s heavily integrated into the Pine Bay settlements economically).

Between Mucuo and Ruansen lies the Oak River. At Oak River’s mouth stands the mighty Chalong Fort, built during the Anti-Piracy War of 1553 – 1569 and named for the Chalon tribe of the Coastal people. A few miles upriver is the biggest Pine Bay settlement: the Cham colony of Indrapura. Settled in the 1470s by Chams fleeing the Vietnamese conquest of Vijaya, Indrapura became the destination of choice for most of Champa’s Hindu minority, while the majority Cham Muslims had settled just east of Dongguang at New Vijaya in New Champa Prefecture. Indrapura had long enjoyed a significant degree of self-rule as capital of the East Cham Autonomous Prefecture. However, the prefecture had been ravaged during the Three Governors’ War (1576 – 1587), at which time it became a battleground between the Maomao faction of Danmian and the Sangjun faction from Hue City. With the advent of Northern control in 1589, Indrapura lost its autonomous status and had then been ruled by a series of Northern prefects whose goals were to maintain Northern rule and enrich themselves.

In 1612, Indrapura was a city of 8,000 people, mostly Chams who chafed under Northern rule. Being mostly Shaivite Hindu, the Chams of Indrapura eschewed the Salvationist Western Children and White Lotus sects and instead had their own associations of ascetics who were normally pacifists, but could be persuaded to take up arms against tyrants in times of extreme duress. There was no single organisation that these ascetics belonged to. Their Yue-speaking neighbours referred to them as the Saamnei’aasaat Yuung, or Ascetic Braves, but it’s generally translated as Warrior-Ascetics. Often shortened to Saayuung, Saamnei’aasaat (三尼亞薩) is a transcription of Sanskrit संन्यास, or Sannyasa, which is the word for a Hindu ascetic (yuung (勇), meanwhile, is Chinese for ‘brave’).

The Warrior-Ascetics had been waging a campaign of tax evasion, charitable banditry (think Robin Hood), and guerilla warfare since the 1590s from hidden bases high up in the mountains surrounding the Oak River valley. They often worked together with Western Children and White Lotus groups based out of the neighbouring prefectures, particularly in the areas of Mucuo and Ruansen.

In order to appeal to these rebel groups, Shui Jiakai would first have to establish his armada on the coast and demonstrate his ability to fight and win against the Northerners. To that end, he decided that Chalong Fort would have to be conquered first, swiftly followed by the capture of Indrapura, alongside the simultaneous occupation of Mucuo, Ruansen, and the whole of Pine Bay.

With these plans already in place, the Grand Armada of Ming sailed into Pine Bay on July 19^th, 1612, unannounced and ready for conquest.

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