Chapter 24d - Rama I (fl 1796 - fl 1798)
Opening Moves
The war began in now-traditional fashion, with the fleets of Delhi sailing forth into the Gulf of Gujarat in an attempt to blockade Bombay. They were met by the Indian Squadron of the Ayutthayan Navy and, despite the superior numbers of the Indians, Ayutthayan discipline and training prevailed and the aggressors were driven off, time and again. Meanwhile, the Navy's other fleets had swept the remnants of the Qing navy from the China Seas, and armies had advance from Guangzhou and Shanghai to lay siege to the Qing-held cites of Nanjing and Hangzhou (1).
As in the previous war, an Ayutthayan army had set forth from Guizhou across Ming territory to occupy Hebei province, the heart of Qing rule in China and the crucial link to their remaining possessions in the south. The walls of Beijing were reached in April 1796, but the army had been weakened by its long march and it was not until the following month that formal siege operations could begin. By then, the Kingdom's Tibetan allies had roused themselves from their customary torpor and sent a large if ill-equipped army against the western Qing stronghold of Sichuan. The attack failed, and the surviving troops were withdrawn a few weeks later, but the gesture was deeply appreciated in Bangkok. The Qing, for their part, had massed a considerable army, over fifty thousand men, against the Ming capital of Mukden in Liaotung.
A Few Minor Distractions
The first setback to the Ayutthayan strategy occured in April when the Indian Squadron, reduced to half strength by three months' near-continuous engagement with the Sultan's fleets, was forced to abandon the Gulf of Gujarat and withdraw to the south. Bombay was blockaded and prepared itself for a siege. This, at least, was half expected. Much more serious was the news the following month, when the Russians, seeking to take advantage of the Kingdom's preoccupation with China, attacked the Ural frontier in Siberia.
The Russian war was short and sharp. Ayutthayan forces struck first, routing a Russian detachment in Nura and pressing on into Aralsk, where they were driven back by the first wave of Russian reinforcements arriving from the west. The Russian hordes took time to assemble, though, and the Kingdom's soldier were able to reorganise and mount another successful raid into Nura in October. By then the Siberian winter was fast approaching, and the Russians had still not yet crossed the frontier. No easy victory beckoned, and Ayutthayan diplomats (and Ayutthayan money) soon persuader the Czar to think better of his aggression (2).
The summer of 1796 also saw action in China, where the Ming army attempted to relieve its capital in July. It was defeated in a major battle outside the walls of Mukden (more than seventy-five thousand soldiers fought, and twenty thousand of them fell) and driven east into Korea, but the Ming threat successfully diverted the Qing from the south. The few forces available to them there were rapidly defeated by the Ayutthayan armies, and in September Nanjing surrendered. Even the Vietnamese had marched - for reasons that no doubt made sense to their 'Emperor', they too struck into the wilds of the western Qing territories, against Gangri in Qinghai. When they arrived, they found the city under the control of local Chinese rebels, who had driven out the Qing governor. This, however, was only the prelude for what happened next.
The Return of the Lotus
Since the fall of the Old Ming, the White Lotus had become little more than a name - a tale told to children, of heroes, villains or madmen, according to allegiance and the taste of one's memories. But even children's tales have power, and as Qing rule in China failed so that power grew. The Chinese had ever had small love for the Manchu, and few of them regretted the decline of the Qing. But fewer still desired that their rule should pass to a different set of foreigners. What they desired was the China of old, a truly Chinese China, dominated not by Manchu or Thais, nor by Vietnamese or Tibetans, nor even by the Mukden Ming, who were now so intermixed with their rivals as to be virtually Manchu themselves. Once again little groups met in teahouses, once again white-sashed soldiers drilled in the night, once again men and women from all over the Middle Kingdom came together to pledge themselves to Confucian principles and the freedom of China.
Late in 1796, as Ayutthayan armies shattered the last of Manchu power in south China, the storm broke (3). The Manchu emperor, secure in distant Nakhodka, laughed it off - when had the Qing ever cared what the peasants thought? But it was no laughing matter in the west, as the Chinese rose impartially against master and invaders alike, nor in the south where Ayutthayan forces found themselves facing an enemy more numerous and determined than the remnants of the Qing. As early as November of 1796, the Ayutthayan Army of the Yangtze found itself battling a substantial Chinese force under the banner of the Lotus, which sought to turn the Kingdom's soldiers back from Nanchang.
The Manchu Civil War
1797 was a year of blood and fire across the whole of China and Manchuria. The Lotus was in arms across western, southern and eastern China, fighting Manchus, Thais and Vietnamese alike. The army of Dai Viet was hastily withdrawn south to defend Canton. The armies of Ayutthaya found themselves isolated in a hostile land, where they truly controlled no more land than their guns commanded. In the north, the Ming emperor shrewdly proclaimed his allegiance to Confucius and the ideals of the Lotus (though not to the extent of formally abandoning the Ayutthayan alliance) and withdrew his armies to his own borders. He would gain little from the war, but at least his territories were mostly quiet (4).
In Manchuria it was worse. The original Lotus partisans had cared little for Manchuria, excepts as a foreign place to which the foreigners should be returned. But news of their ideals and their actions spread swiftly to the north. And the seeds fell on fertile ground, for the peasants and townsmen and even the minor nobles of Manchuria had their own greviances against the Qing Emperors, who for a generation had brought them little but high taxation and military disaster. Once, they ruled China. Now, with Canton lost and Shanghai lost and the Forbidden City about to fall once again into Ayutthayan hands, surely the Mandate of Heaven had fallen from the Qing? Many thought so. So, as the Chinese rose under the banner of the Lotus in a crusade to expel the foreigners from China, so their Manchurian cousins rose under the same banner in the name of a reborn Manchu - for the restoration of their Empire and the recovery of China (5).
Their first target was their own ruler - the Qing emperor who had brought their nation to such a pass. As rebellion blazed across Manchuria, so the last Manchu armies abandoned China - abandoned even the siege of Mukden - and marched north to fight their brothers, as their emperor summonded those still loyal to uphold his failing power.
It was not enough. The rebels were too strong, too determined, too angry and the armies could not be everywhere at once. Province after province, city after city declared for the Lotus. Their partisans ground down the Emperor's troops in a hundred nameless clashes. In the autumn they rose in Nakhodka (6) itself, the palace was stormed and the Emperor and half his court perished in a black night of fury. The war raged on around his corpse (7).
Victory in China
The Chinese Lotus met with less success than their namesakes in the north. The latter had only to face the depleted, demoralised forces of the Qing. The partisans in the south had to face the Ayutthayan Army - better equipped, better commanded and undivided in its loyalties. Despite uprisings which wracked half-a-dozen provinces in south-east China alone, despite a dozen major clashes with the soldiers of the Lotus, Rama I refused to be diverted from his objectives, and his soldiers did not disappoint him.
Beijing fell in January, and the Army of the North turned south along the coast to Shandong and Jiangsu, scatting Lotus forces as it went. The partisans in the Yangtse valley were likewise defeated and in November the King himself accepted the surrender of Nanchang. Still he pressed on, despite further Lotus uprising behind his lines, despite the Qing army which somehow evaded the Navy's patrols to land on Taiwan in in October, despite news from home of revolts in Ajeh and Da Nang. Even grim news from India, of the failure of the last attempt of the Indian Squadron - its new ships crewed by half-trained recruits - to lift the blockade of Bombay and the consquent surrender of the fortress, did not deter him. Not until the capture of Hong Kong in May of 1798 did he deign to consider peace. He sent an emissary to the fugitive Court of the new Manchu Emperor, to demand the Forbidden City.
The Qing were in no position to resist. In July 1798, in return for a withdrawal of the Kingdom's troops from Shandong, Nanjing and Nanchang, they formally acknowledged Ayutthayan rule over Kowloon and Hebei (8). Rama I sent a team of artisans north immediately, with instructions to restore the long-derelict throne room of the Emperors in the Imperial Palace at the heart of the Forbidden City. No great proclamations were needed, for the message was clear. The Mandate of Heaven had been claimed.
The End of the Lotus War
The coming of Rama I to Beijing signalled the beginning of the end of the Lotus War, though this was not obvious at the time. The surrender of the Forbidden City had destroyed the Qing Emperor's moral authority, and the dearly-bought peace was not enought to save him from his domestic enemies, who denounced him in every and village of Manchuria. A bare few weeks later, bowing to the inevitable, the Qing Emperor surrendered to the Lotus, and came to terms. The terms were easier than he had expected, for the Lotus now had leaders, who realised that further domestic conflict would now aid only aid Manchu's enemies. The Emperor kept his head, he kept his throne, he even saved some of his associates. The Lotus's demands were restricted to lower taxes, Confucian reforms in government, a purging of defeated generals and failed governors - and a new focus for the nation, on Beijing and the recovery of the Imperial Throne (9).
Late autumn of 1798 brought peace to China (and also Ayutthaya - the Sultan of Delhi was quietly brought off in September (10)), but hardly stability. In the far northeast, the Koreans again proclaimed a shaky independance. The Ming Emperor continued his equivocal course - accepting rich gifts from Ayutthaya, but declining either to bow before the restored Dragon Throne (11) or to renounce his alliance with its occupant. The reduced Manchu lands were outwardly quiet, but bubbled within with talk of recovery and revenge. And in the backstreets and on the hillsides of eastern and southern China, men stil met in the name of the Lotus, but this time with a new enemy - the foreigners who had extended their rule across the heart of China.
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Notes
(1) I also took the chance to embargo the Manchu, now they coldn't return the favour. It probably didn't do much good, but it made me feel better.
(2) Peace cost me 150 ducats - small change at this point in time.
(3) Manchu had 'White Lotus Rebellion', October 1796. They went with 'It's likely just harmless talk' and got slapped with +20RR in all provinces.
(4) China didn't get the White Lotus event. In fact, I don't think it's got any events since rebelling...
(5) ... which produced the bizarre result that the White Lotus were revolting all over Manchuria, but
not in central China.
(6) I'd expected (hoped?) that the Manchurian winter would deal with the rebels in the north, thus preventing a Manchu government collapse. Fat chance.
(7) Qianlong is (finally) dead. Ten years too late. (N.B. Manchu and China have the same monarchs, though they strangely have better stats in Nakhodka than in Mukden).
(8) A Manchu government collapse was now imminent, so I decided to take what I could get. I wanted Beijing in order to cut off the Manchu provinces in the south, and Kowloon to prevent it defecting to Portugal. (With umpteen Manchu provinces rebel-controlled, I was looking forward to picking up some defections).
(9) The Manchu government fell in October 1798, Korea became independant - and the Lotus RR simply stopped. No rebels, no RR, no defections, to me or anyone. Gaah.
(10) Peace with Delhi had cost me another 125 ducats. If Bombay had held out one more month...
(11) And even with a
poor diplomat ruling China
I still can't vassalise it!
Troggle - Good to know you're enjoying it!
Semi-Lobster - I fight the Russians the same way I used to fight China - gain a few quick VP and then buy a peace before they can capture anywhere. Oh, and Siam? Not in this universe (imagine the cost of changing the official stationary in all those tax offices
).
Keravnos - A land connection to Shanghai would be nice, but I didn't have time (this round) to get three provinces. Plus Dai Viet is in the way.
jwolf - There are several hundred loyal Thais in Turgai who would deeply resent being handed over to Russia, plus a fort I've spent a lot of money on. Besides, it wouldn't keep the Czar happy more than a year or two. Easier to just buy off the wars - I have thousands in the bank and not much to spend it on.
Machiavellian - The Qing still have lots and lots of well-fortified low-support provinces in Manchuria and Sinkiang - and even at 99% warscore I couldn't demand more than three or four per war. Expelling the Manchu from China proper, on the other hand, might just be possible.