Ch 13 - The Hermit Kingdom

Rise of the Manchus

The Jurchen leader Nurhachi united nomadic tribes in southern Manchuria into a solid military state, the Qin, and set his sights on the decaying Chinese Ming Dynasty and the perceived threat posed by Choson's shift to a pro-Ming foreign policy.

During the latter sixteenth century, a new and powerful force coalesced in eastern and southeastern Manchuria when Jurchen nomadic tribes began to transform their loose federation into a solid military state. The dynamic and brilliant Jurchen leader Nurhachi, chieftain of the Chien-chou tribe, united these tribes under his battle standard and organized their warriors, households and slaves into self-contained legions. Beginning in 1583, the Jurchen tribes of Manchuria reasserted their influence in the region by initiating a number of large-scale attacks along Choson's northeastern border. The fact that many Jurchen still lived on the Choson side of the border and supported the incursions only increased the seriousness of these attacks. Choson always managed to repulse the Jurchen raids, but could never completely deter them. There were almost continuous battles with the northern raiders right through the first of the Japanese invasions in 1592.

Nurhachi sent his envoys to the city of Uiju in late 1592 to meet with King Sonjo and his retinue after their flight from the advancing Japanese. Simultaneously, he sent a second delegation to Ming Emperor Shenzong in Beijing with an offer to send his own armies to aid Choson in its fight against the Japanese. The Chinese rejected the Jurchen offer outright, but Sonjo sent an embassy to Nurhachi's headquarters in the military town of Hung-gyong-nosong to further investigate Jurchen intentions. Though no agreement was reached with Nurhachi, the embassy returned to Uiju with a detailed report of conditions in the area and a map of the city. When China sent General Li Rusong's 50,000 man army into Choson in 1593 to engage the Japanese, Nurhachi saw his first real opportunity to assault the Chinese in the Liaodong region and began a series of military campaigns westward against the weakened Ming outposts in southwestern Manchuria.

China's weakened position in Manchuria was symptomatic of a far deeper problem rooted deep within the heart of the Ming Dynasty. The Chinese had long understood that concentrating absolute power in the hands of an emperor was an invitation to disaster if the emperor were incompetent or disinterested in government. When ascendancy to the imperial throne became hereditary, the Chinese created the office of Prime Minister or Chief Minister, believing that while emperors would rise and fall, the Prime Minister would guarantee some level of continuity and competence in government. Despite an auspicious start in 1368, the Hong-wu Emperor Taizu wanted to concentrate absolute authority in his own hands. The brilliant and dynamic ruler who devoted himself to a grueling schedule created a centralized government and abolished the office of Prime Minister, thereby cancelling the only insurance against incompetent future emperors.

The Yung Lo Emperor, Chengzu, who usurped the throne from Taizu's son, was also a very active and competent administrator. He was also perhaps the cruelest emperor in China's history. In response to opposition of his usurpation from government ministers, Chengzu executed all the families of the men who opposed him, and arbitrarily executed thousands throughout his reign. He also reversed the earlier policy that kept eunuchs out of government. Worse, his rule confirmed everyone's deepest fears about an absolute ruler:  the emperor could do whatever he pleased.

Following Chengzu's reign, the Ming Dynasty was ruled by an uninterrupted series of unremarkable, often mediocre emperors, men raised in luxury who had neither the will or the ability to run the government with the same enthusiasm and concern of the dynasty's founder. By the sixteenth century, the Ming emperor had retreated to a life centered on his family and indulging his own pleasures. Meanwhile, ruling power in the imperial court swung between the eunuchs and government officials, eventually resting almost entirely in the hands of the Grand Secretary. The Jia Qing Emperor Shizong took no interest whatsoever in government, leaving his government to fall into an abyss of corruption and abuse under the powerful Grand Secretary, Yen Song. Many of the torrid public scandals that swirled around Yen Song, and later his son and successor, Yen Shifan, drove government scholars to band together and challenge corrupt officials and the eunuchs for control of the government.

By the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Ming government was split among four separate factions, each fighting for control. The Donglin faction eventually prevailed, but it still had to contend with the eunuchs, a problem that plagued the later years of Emperor Shenzong's reign and eventually tore the government to pieces. Peasant rebellions added to the process of political decline, fueled largely by ever-increasing taxes on the common people to pay for the imperial court's extravagances and military expeditions against the Mongols in the north and the increasingly aggressive Jurchen in the northeast. The increased taxes inspired more rebellions. The expense of controlling the rebellions required more taxes. In order to check the growing threat of Nurhachi's Jurchen armies pressing their advantage in the Liaodong region, the imperial government had to raise even more taxes. The weakened Ming Chinese were trapped on a treadmill they could not escape.

With Jurchen power on the rise in the north and Japan advancing from the south, circumstances trapped King Sonjo at the center of an intense factional struggle over royal succession. Sonjo's queen died without bearing him a son and Crown Prince Kwanghae was the son of one of King Sonjo's concubines. When the king married a second queen and fathered another son, members of the Northerner faction then in power contended that it was he who should succeed Sonjo on the throne, not Crown Prince Kwanghae. Members of the royal household seeking to advance their own clan line actively participated in the sometimes violent debates that focused on the issue of royal succession, particularly if there was any chance of placing a grandson on the throne.

The heated debate over the issue of Sonjo's successor split the Northerner faction. The Greater Northerner faction supported Crown Prince Kwanghae, while the Smaller Northerner faction supported the newly born son of the queen. The Greater Northerner faction ultimately won its position of power and moved quickly to eliminate all opposition from the Smaller Northerners. Armed members of the Greater Northerner faction executed Prince Imhae and Prince Yongch'ong for opposing Kwanghae's accession and kept Yongch'ong's mother under close guard. When King Sonjo died in 1608, Crown Prince Kwanghae took possession of Choson's beleaguered and tattered crown.

The growing power of the Jurchen foreshadowed the development of a perilous new situation on the Asian continent. Nurhachi's Jurchen warriors took gainful advantage of China and Choson's preoccupation with the Japanese invasions to grow steadily stronger. In 1607, Nurhachi had become so powerful in the north that the Mongols gave him the title, "Kundulun Khan," the "Respected Emperor." Eight years later, in 1616, having consolidated the Jurchen tribes under his banner, Nurhachi claimed the Mandate of Heaven and proclaimed himself the "Brilliant Emperor Who Benefits All Nations." In a display of the resurgent power of China's earlier Qin dynasty, he declared the creation of a new state, the Qin, and set his sights on the whole of China. Nurhachi ordered his armies directly against China's northeastern borders in an apparent determined effort to conquer the Chinese and overthrow the weakening Ming dynasty.

Fearful of the threat from Manchuria, Ming Emperor Shenzong mobilized 200,000 troops to defend his dynasty and invaded Manchuria along four separate roads. He also sent word to King Kwanghae for help. Unable to refuse such a request, Kwanghae dispatched a nominal contingent of about 10,000 soldiers under the command of General Kang Hong-nip. The Choson monarch displayed an uncommon talent for directing both domestic and foreign affairs. Fearful of the potential effects of an entanglement in the impending Jurchen-Chinese war in the north, he secretly enjoined General Kang to observe the situation carefully before committing himself or his troops to any particular course of action. Only through the king's adroit foreign policy did Choson manage to avoid being drawn into the developing conflict.

On April 14, 1619, Jurchen forces soundly defeated advance forces of the Ming army near Fushun in the Liao River valley. General Kang realized that he could not hope to hold out against such an imposing armed force and hesitated to commit his troops fully to battle. Three days later, monsoon rains swept the countryside, drenching the combined Ming-Choson army encamped in the area around Pu-ko in Hamgyong Province. The Chinese quickly discovered that their matchlock rifles would not fire in such high humidity, a situation that turned the tide of battle in favor of the Jurchen, who quickly took advantage and overran the Ming army. General Kang grasped the opportunity at hand to prevent a Jurchen retaliation against his own country. He quickly surrendered himself and nearly 5,000 of his troops to the Jurchen army. The plan worked, and the Jurchen took no punitive action against Choson.

Following the disasterous defeat of the Ming army, King Kwanghae altered his foreign policy from one of being pro-Ming to one of non-alignment and appeared to go out of his way to avoid involvement in the fighting raging in southern Manchuria. Nevertheless, he also spared no effort to rebuild Choson's state of military preparedness. He ordered the strengthening and repair of defensive strongpoints, the renovation and modernization of weapons and the establishment of new training programs for the Choson army. Not surprisingly, the sudden policy switch triggered a new round of factional struggles within the royal court in Seoul.

The battle for power involved two prominent court factions:  the Greater Northerners, who supported Kwanghae, and the Westerners, whose members deeply resented the Greater Northerners for depriving King Sonjo's second queen of her rights. King Kwanghae and his supporters, ever fearful of the possibility of a coup d'état, quickly seized upon any pretext to prevent an attempt to usurp the throne. The murder and robbery of a travelling merchant in the Oryong Pass provided ample pretext for the king's supporters. After a period of harsh questioning, government agents coerced one of the captured bandits into writing a statement that claimed several hundred ounces of silver taken in the robbery were to be used in support of a movement to put the Lord of Yongch'ang on the throne. The coerced confession not only angered the Westerner faction, it paved the way for the eventual downfall of King Kwanghae.

Lord Yun Pang, leader of the Westerner faction, married one of King Sonjo's daughters and had been planning to move against King Kwanghae for quite some time. Taking advantage of the internal dissention among the various Northerner factions, Lord Yun gathered a force of several hundred soldiers. One night in 1623, Lord Yun's men broke into the Ch'angdok Palace. In the fighting that followed, they captured King Kwanghae and burned the palace. The coup d'état ended quickly. The victorious Westerners enthroned Kwanghae's nephew Injo and began a bloody purge that decimated the two Northerner factions to the point where they never again regained power in the Yi court. The bitterness of the power struggle and the deeply-rooted hatred of the Northerners kept Kwanghae from ever receiving a posthumous title. Like Prince Yonsan, Yonsangun, history refers to him simply as Prince Kwanghae, or Kwanghae'gun.

A number of men in the Westerner faction received recognition for their support during the coup d'état that enthroned King Injo. Among them was Yi Kwal, a military officer who, along with his son and his brother, had been quite active in helping the Westerner faction. The royal court awarded Yi Kwal the status of "Merit Subject, Second Class" for his efforts. His son and brother received no recognition whatsoever.

Angered by the belief he had received less than he deserved, Yi Kwal contacted a number of other officials in northwest Choson. In early 1624, he openly rebelled against the court with a rebel army said to have numbered approximately 10,000 men, including a detachment of a few hundred captured Japanese soldiers put into service of the Choson army. Yi Kwal's well-organized rebels captured Seoul in about three weeks. Court officials hurriedly reacted to the insurrection by capturing and executing a few dozen yangban thought to have been associated with the revolt. Fearing for the safety of the throne, court officials hurriedly fled south from the capital with King Injo to the city of Kongju. A large government force from the southern provinces assembled to deal with the rebellion and decisively defeated Yi Kwal and his rebels in heavy fighting near the city of Kwangju. Following the battle, Yi Kwal was captured and executed and the scattered remnants of his rebellious forces fled north to Manchuria.

Under the influence of the Westerner faction that put him on the throne, King Injo almost immediately reversed Kwanghae's non-alignment foreign policy in favor of a staunchly pro-Ming and decidedly anti-Jurchen policy. Nurhachi looked at this sudden policy shift as an affront and found himself in a situation similar to that of the earlier Mongols. While clearly intending to conquer China, he became extremely sensitive to the new threat on his southern flank posed by Choson and its alliance with the Ming dynasty. Ming China furthered alarmed the Jurchen when General Mao Wenlong and a well-armed garrison force landed on Kado Island just off the mouth of the Yalu River. From Kado, General Mao made numerous forays against local coastal villages and fortresses as the first step in a plan to recapture the Liaodong Peninsula. The Jurchen lost their sense of a secure southern frontier and believed they had to eliminate the new combined threat posed by Choson and the Ming Chinese. In preparation for the planned conquest of China, Nurhachi successfully drove his armies across Manchuria and, in 1625, moved his capital to Shenyang and renamed the city Mukden.

Nurhachi died in September 30, 1626, succeeded by his thirty-four-year-old second son, Abahai (Huang Daiji). The great Jurchen leader was laid to rest with his mistress at Fuling, the East Tomb, located in a forested area some 8 km east of Mukden. While Abahai pondered what to do about the situation in Choson, former rebels under Yi Kwal gave him the answer. Whether driven by revenge or a sincere motivation to redress the injustice done to King Kwanghae, Yi Kwal's rebels appear to have urged the new Jurchen leader to help them right a terrible wrong by deposing Injo and restoring Kwanghae to the throne. Abahai could not have asked for a better pretext to solve his problem in Choson.

With former general Kang Hun-nip and members of Yi Kwal's rebels as guides, Abahai sent a 30,000 man force south across the Yalu River in 1627. One army, under command of Prince Amin moved against Ming General Mao on Kado Island, while two other armies, one under Prince Jirgalang, and the other under Prince Yoto, rode south toward Seoul. In their drive south, the Jurchen pillaged the countryside, destroyed grain fields and supplies, and perpetrated wanton atrocities, including kidnapping women and children for ransom. Thousands died in the southward advance, soldiers and civilians alike. The Jurchen crossed the Chongchon River in less than thirty days, captured Anju, and pressed on toward the Taedong River, where they quickly took Pyongyang. When news of the sudden fall of the city reached the capital it triggered a panic in the halls of government.

Fearing the worst, the Seoul garrison commander burned the royal storehouses and offices of the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of War. One Choson general reportedly commandeered a number of boats, loaded them with grain and sailed away. King Injo and his court fled to Kanghwa Island, the traditional refuge of the monarchy. In the provinces, the same native guerilla forces that fought so bravely against the Japanese offered at least some resistance to the Jurchen invaders. There was also a measure of unexpected help from Japan. When the Shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu learned of the Manchu incursion, he immediately ordered the daimyo of Tsushima to send 300 rifles, 300 long swords, and gunpowder to Choson.

The Jurchen had no desire to be tied down in a protracted war in Choson, preferring instead to husband their forces for a later attack against Ming China. Once the Jurchen army captured Seoul, they sent their prisoner, General Kang Hong-nip, to Kanghwa Island to negotiate a peace settlement with the Yi government. Meanwhile, Prince Amin moved his forces south to Seoul following his harsh military campaign against General Mao on Kado Island. The Jurchen prince was in no mood to seek peace and Amin's uncompromising attitude very nearly aborted the negotiations underway on Kanghwa Island. Not wanting to lose the opportunity to settle the Choson problem, Princes Jirgalang and Yoto tricked Prince Amin to reposition his army north to Pyongyang.

The arrival of General Kang Hong-nip on Kanghwa Island triggered a bitter factional debate over the advisability of continued resistance to the Jurchen. Ultimately, the "peace" faction won the debate and the Choson court opened negotiations with General Kang. To save face, the Yi court agreed to support the Jurchen against the Ming Chinese, but described its future relationship with the Jurchen as one of "younger brother-to-older brother," not one of outright vassalage. Politically, Choson was the most Confucian society in East Asia outside the Chinese heartland and its allegiance, however obtained, would be useful to the Manchu rulers. With Prince Amin encamped in Pyongyang, the Jurchen army successfully concluded a peace agreement with King Injo and the Choson government. Once Amin discovered he had been deceived, he turned his soldiers loose on Pyongyang for a three day rampage of revenge. Shortly afterward, the Jurchen withdrew their forces from Choson. Over the ensuing years, Choson authorities largely ignored the peace agreement.

With the issue of Choson seemingly settled, the Jurchen busily made other plans. Abahai put his mark on the land by subordinating the Jurchen banners to a Chinese-style bureaucracy based at Mukden (Shenyang). As the Jurchen began to adopt a more settled life, he renamed his people "Manchu" and proclaimed the beginning of a new dynasty in 1631, which he named the Qing (Chinese for "pure"). Abahai became Tian Cong. the first Manchu emperor. The land to which these nomadic warriors gave their name, Manchuria, never belonged to China proper and lay entirely beyond the Great Wall. Spread across an area the size of France, Manchuria is separated from the Gobi Desert to the west by mountains and from Siberia to the north by the Amur River. Manchuria's well watered and fertile central plain, its timber rich forests filled with fur-bearing animals, its rich coal, iron, and gold deposits made the land a place to prosper, but to be miserable doing it.

Manchu power emerged from a synthesis of abundant borrowing from Chinese culture and the ferocity and skill of the mounted steppe warrior. Emperor Tian Cong soon began assembling a number of vassal states under his protective reach. As the Manchu war against Ming China began to absorb ever more men, materiel and money, Choson became a vital resource of food and military equipment to meet the Manchu's needs. Faced with an impending showdown struggle against Ming China, Manchu demands on Choson became not only heavier, but constant. In 1632, a Manchu embassy arrived in Seoul with new and harsher terms for a country that had yet to recover from the devastating Japanese invasions a generation earlier. The embassy demanded that Choson consider the state of Qing its suzerain and supply an annual tribute of 10,000 ounces of gold and silver, 10,000 rolls of fine colored cloth, an equal amount of white ramie cloth, and 3,000 cavalry mounts. The victorious Manchus had not long ago acknowledged semi-vassalage to Choson and their demands only added insult to injury.

The memory of Ming assistance during the Japanese invasions, which remained fresh in the minds of the Choson people, apparently intensified their hatred of the Manchus. The former indifference of the authorities in Seoul quickly turned to an attitude of outright belligerence. Not only did King Injo flatly reject the preposterous Manchu demands, but he refused to receive either the Qing envoys or their official documents. He commanded that a notice be sent to all the provinces to prepare for war with the Manchus. He also ordered troops north to provide assistance to the Chinese General Mao, still holding a tenuous position on Kado Island. In an act of open defiance, a Manchu envoy who had arrived in Seoul in 1636, was given a copy of Injo's war notice and chased back across the Yalu into Manchuria. Choson would again feel the ravages of a war with its neighbor to the north.