Preface
In 1674 AD, Zheng Jing, the son of Zheng Chenggong, a famous anti-Qing general, colluded with the San Francisco Empire. Under the banner of anti-Qing and restoring the Ming Dynasty, he led nearly 10,000 soldiers and sailors across the Taiwan Strait to conquer the west, successively capturing Chaozhou, Quanzhou and other coastal cities in Guangdong and Fujian.
This war lasted from 1674 to 1680 and was known as Zheng Jing's Western Expedition. However, this Western Expedition did not have a substantial impact on the Qing Dynasty rule.
For most of the time, the Zheng Group was stuck in several cities in southern Fujian and northern Guangdong, unable to advance further into the mainland.
In the final analysis, Zheng Jing's Western Expedition was just a dying practice of the remaining forces of the Southern Ming Dynasty. It could not shake the current situation at all. In the end, he had to face the reality of defeat in Taiwan. Three years later, the Qing court sent general Shi Lang to counterattack Taiwan, and the Zheng Group was completely wiped out.
The background of the Western Expedition
It is said that in 1664, Zheng Jing led the Zheng family army across the Taiwan Strait and arrived in Taiwan. He inherited the policy of his father Zheng Chenggong, assigned towns to reclaim wasteland, integrated troops into agriculture, and established six ministries and other administrative systems imitating the old system of Ming Dynasty.
At this time, the Qing Dynasty was busy purging the remaining anti-Qing and Ming Dynasty forces in the mainland and consolidating its dominance in the Central Plains. It had no time to look eastward. Zheng Jing was able to take advantage of this free time to vigorously develop production in Taiwan.
Taiwan itself has a subtropical climate, with humid and rainy weather and fertile soil. They mobilized the people to plant grains, plant cane to cook sugar, and build chengdong to dry salt. They quickly established a complete agricultural production system.
Moreover, Taiwan is a maritime hub connecting Southeast Asia and East Asia, with convenient transportation and developed foreign trade. Zheng Jing used this to build ships, load goods, and sell goods to various countries. Japan, Britain, Spain, and the Netherlands were all important trading partners. The British often helped Zheng Jun train artillery.
Historical records:
"Taiwan is prospering day by day, and Tianchou's shops are not allowed to reach the mainland."
It can be seen that Zheng Jing had a good life in Taiwan, and relying on his strong naval strength, he was full of disdain for the Qing court.
From 1667 to 1669, the Qing court sent people to Taiwan twice to recruit peace. Zheng Jing proposed to join the Qing Dynasty's tribute system , without shaving or landing, and followed the example of Korea and became a vassal state of the Qing Dynasty. Kangxi pointed out:
"The Koreans have never been foreign, and Zheng Jing is a Chinese."
This is equivalent to rejecting Zheng Jing's request to follow the example of North Korea, so the recovery of Taiwan was temporarily shelved. At this time, Zheng Jing's thoughts were just to stay overseas, and there was no such thing as resisting the Qing Dynasty and restoring the Ming Dynasty. However, something happened that changed Zheng Jing's strategic direction.
In 1674, Wu Sangui, the king of Pingxi who was entrenched in Yunnan and Guizhou, proposed "reviving the Ming Dynasty and fighting against the captives". He united with the Pingnan King of Guangdong, Shang Kexi, and the Jingnan King of Fujian, Geng Jingzhong, to raise troops to rebel against the Ming Dynasty. This was known as the San Francisco Rebellion in history.
This turmoil caught the Qing court by surprise. In addition to Yunnan and Guizhou, other provinces such as Sichuan, Hunan, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Shaanxi, Hubei, and Henan responded one after another. A large area south of the Yangtze River fell.
Seeing the Qing court in chaos, the small fire in Zheng Jing's heart that had long been extinguished rekindled. As a descendant of the Ming Dynasty's surnamed master (Zheng Chenggong), no one is more qualified than him to fight against the Qing Dynasty and restore the Ming Dynasty.
The most important thing is that on the eve of the San Francisco Rebellion, Geng Jingzhong sent someone to contact Zheng Jing and asked him to send troops to assist. In exchange, the southeastern coast of Fujian was directly allocated to him.
Anyone who doesn’t take advantage of such a good thing is a fool. With Geng Jingzhong’s promise, Zheng Jing naturally made up his mind to take a gamble, and a grand plan for the Western Expedition kicked off.
The Western Expedition
In May 1674, Zheng Jing led nearly a hundred ships and an army of 10,000 people from Taiwan and arrived at Xiamen . After a short rest, he wrote to Geng Jingzhong, asking him to fulfill his promise and hand over Zhangzhou and Quanzhou to him.
But who would have thought that Geng Jingzhong would fall out of favor faster than he could flip through a book, and his reply was just one sentence: "The world is very kind, so we can fight ourselves if we can divide the land." Translated from the vernacular, it means that you can stay where you are, and I have no time to care about you.
In fact, Geng Jingzhong did this for two reasons: First, he disliked Zheng Jing's small number of troops. There were only 10,000 elites on the island. With such a small number of people, how could he fight against the Qing court? He really overestimated Zheng Jing.
Secondly, the San Francisco army was going too smoothly. When Zheng Jing arrived, Geng Jingzhong already owned the entire Fujian, as well as northern Guangdong , Zhejiang and other regions. The complacent Geng Jingzhong believed that there was no need to cede territory in exchange for support.
However, this made Zheng Jing very angry. How could the descendants of a dignified surnamed father be able to come and go at the drop of a hat?
So Zheng Jing occupied Haicheng and Tong'an on the spot, and simply refused to leave. Geng Jingzhong thought he was being polite and Zheng Jing withdrew, but unexpectedly he was so angry that he retaliated by cutting off trade with Zheng Jing, and the two sides began to turn against each other.
However, Geng Jingzhong was always greedy, corrupt and cruel to the people, which caused many people to come to actively rely on him. Quanzhou, Zhangzhou and Chaozhou gradually turned to Zheng Jing.
Seeing Zheng Jing's growing momentum, Geng Jingzhong decided to use force to recapture Quanzhou, but was defeated by Zheng Jingbu's general Liu Guoxuan. If Geng Jingzhong couldn't do it with force, then he should come with a letter.
At the beginning of 1675, Geng Jingzhong fulfilled his agreement and provided 5 warships to Zheng Jing, and set Fengting (today's Fengting Town, Xianyou County) as the boundary. The north belonged to Geng Jingzhong and the south belonged to Zheng Jing. The two sides stopped fighting. Anyway, the territory is allocated to you and the warships are also allocated to you. You can stay in your own one-third of an acre.
However, Zheng Jing was an unwilling master. After reconciling with Geng Jingzhong, he planned to lead his troops to conquer northern Guangdong. From June 1675 to 1676, Zheng Jing defeated Guangdong Shang Zhixin twice and captured Zhangzhou, Chaozhou and other places.
Shang Zhixin was forced to sign a city alliance with him and cede Huizhou to Zheng Jing. At this time, Zheng Jing already owned the four capitals of Zhangzhou, Quanzhou, Chaozhou and Huizhou, as well as most of the coastline of Fujian and northern Guangdong.
However, Zheng Jing made a round and found that there were already allies nearby, and there was no Qing army territory for him to seize. This put his anti-Qing and Ming restoration plan at a bottleneck.
In May 1676, Geng Jingzhong planned to join forces with Wu Sangui to attack Jiangnan, and recruited Liu Yinglin, the commander-in-chief of Tingzhou, to send troops. Liu Yinglin was unwilling to send troops, so he secretly contacted Zheng Jing and expressed that he would dedicate Tingzhou to Zheng Jing.
In this way, between allies and territory, Zheng Jing chose the latter. When Geng Jingzhong learned that Zheng Jing had captured Tingzhou, he was so angry that he resisted the Qing army's attack in the front, but his allies stabbed him in the back. So he stopped going north and led his army to turn around and attack Zheng Jing. The alliance between Zheng and Geng collapsed again.
While the fight in Zheng Geng's nest was getting lively, the Qing army on the side mobilized a large army to go south from Zhejiang. Taking advantage of San Francisco's lack of strength, they broke through Xianxia Pass and went all the way south, arriving at the foot of Fuzhou City in the blink of an eye.
At this time, Geng Jingzhong was surrounded by enemies from both sides, with Qing troops in the north and Zheng Jing in the south. He had no choice but to surrender to the Qing Dynasty. Without Geng Jingzhong's buffer, Zheng Jing could only directly confront the main force of the Qing army. He first sent 30,000 people to attack Fuzhou.
Unfortunately, the Eight Banners cavalry was not Geng Jingzhong's fighting scum. Although the Qing army was not good at water warfare, it was good at land warfare. Soon the Zheng army was defeated in Wulongjiang , and other territories were also lost one after another. Zheng Jing had to retreat to Xiamen.
Only then did he realize that without Geng Jingzhong’s flag, his Western Expedition had come to an end.
For more than a year after that, Zheng Jing tried to hold on to Xiamen and continuously sent generals to attack islands along the coast of Fujian, eastern Guangdong, southern Zhejiang.
Although there were achievements in the battle, it did not achieve a decisive victory. Instead, it fell into an endless strategic stalemate. The Qing Dynasty general Laita wrote to Zheng Jing, saying that if the Zheng army was willing to retreat to Taiwan, "this country would not regret a small territory overseas." promised that the Zheng family could stay in Taiwan forever:
From now on, there is no need to go ashore, shave your hair, or change your clothes. It’s okay to call yourself a minister and pay tribute, but it’s also okay not to be a minister and not pay tribute. Take Taiwan as Jizi 's North Korea and Xu Fu's Japan.
After years of fighting, the Zheng Group's finances have been severely overdrawn, and the army is short of supplies. In addition, the Qing government's border relocation order has cut off the Zheng Group's trade with Fujian and dealt a heavy blow to its maritime trade.
After comprehensive consideration, Zheng Jing had to abandon all strongholds on the southeast coast and led his troops back to Taiwan in early 1680. The vigorous six-year Western Expedition ultimately ended in failure. From then on, there was no substantive move to fight against the Qing Dynasty and restore the Ming Dynasty.
The Impact of the Western Expedition
Zheng Jing's Western Expedition was the last attempt to fight against the Qing Dynasty and restore the Ming Dynasty. After this battle, the Zheng family's vitality was severely damaged. From then on, the Zheng family could only retreat on the island of Taiwan, no longer having the fighting spirit and ability to compete with the Qing court.
This war also fully exposed Zheng Jing's short-sightedness and narrow-mindedness. He only cared about immediate interests without the overall concept, which led to the Qing army's profit and the victory. Zheng Jing's mother, Mrs. Dong, scolded:
"Seven prefectures were defeated in a row, and two islands were also lost. It was all because you did not have the power to make a decisive strategy and could not let others go. As a result, the left and right stole power and each established his own party."
Zheng Jing was The criticism was speechless, and he later sent a letter to the Qing army requesting to keep Haicheng as a trading place, but was rejected by Fujian Governor Yao Qisheng . In 1681, Zheng Jing died of illness in depression. Two years after his death, Qing general Shi Lang successfully recovered Taiwan.
