spirits), was built on the embankment outside the east gate in 1405, at the time of the construction of the embankment. See
Ch'ia-hs'Lng
fu chih
1878:11.2a;Cha-p3u pei ohih
1826:20.7a.and as far as the environs of Hangchow before finally seizing boats from the C h ’ien-t’ang River and escaping out to sea.12
Li Mao, like his less fortunate counterpart, Ch’iao Teng in the neighbouring district, was the senior civil official in Hai-yen
responsible for the security of the district city, because, as in P ’ing- hu, no incumbent magistrate was present. Unlike Ch'iao Teng, Li Mao had the advantages of a barrier behind which he could defend the city, with the walled town as a fall-back. He seems also to have had a larger and stronger body of men to support him. It seems possible that his 400
yung-ahih were formed from the group of men whom the previous magistrate
had selected to patrol the district because of the numbers of robbers abroad. Four hundred was, in any case, considerably above the fixed number of district militia (min-ohuang) to which Hai-yen district was entitled, and therefore indicates some recent action to improve the ability of the local civil administration to police or to defend the district. Since Hai-yen was also the headquarters of a Guard unit whose duty it was to keep the coast clear of trouble, the expansion of
civilian forces at this time, and the necessity of using them to defend the town, arc further indication of the weakness of the Guard forces.
From (.he criticism levelled at the Guard forces by a Shanghai scholar and expert on naval matters, Li Chao-hsiang, it seems that this state of affairs was not confined to Hai-yen:
When the officers of the wei-ao are not performing their office of fighting, they still receive their monthly stipend, but when bandits come to the city they regard the responsibility of fighting as the militia's, so that those who are supported are no use, and those who are useful receive no support ...13
The first raids on the Chia-hsing coast showed that even in small numbers the pirates were more than a match for the local defence forces, and that local civil administration could not rely on the military for protection. In assessing the local Guard forces, it should be pointed out that the arrangement of troops into Guards and Battalions was
12 13
Ts*ai:l.5b.
Li Chao-hsiang, Shang ohang pan chou tsung chih shu, as contained in
intended to be the permanent defence stance of peace-time. In a
military emergency it was normal practice for a tactical force to be set up under a governor or supreme commander, containing both military and civil officials and commanding mobile forces drawn from the Guards and Battalions. In the fourth month of 1553 the Governor of Chekiang was still in the early stages of organizing his tactical defence force. Nevertheless, Guard units were responsible for the defence of the immediate coast-line against minor disturbances, and in this duty the Hai-ning Guard failed miserably.
Officials and local notables were convinced by the events of the first weeks that they could not entrust the protection of their property and administrations to the Guard troops. Influential men of the coastal districts immediately petitioned prefectural and provincial authorities
for military reinforcement to be provided from outside the prefecture. Among the requests were one from a scholar of P ’ing-hu district (the
sheng-yüan, Chqng Ho) who asked the prefect to obtain reinforcements, and another frpm the eminent scholar and writer of Hai-yen district, Ch’ien Wei, who wrote to the Governor of Chekiang also requesting more troops.14 Whether or not their prompting was needed to goad officials into action, within weeks the defence of northern Chekiang had been reinforced by 1,000 extra troops and a number of experienced military and civil offipials who had been transferred from other parts of the south-east.
When the pext pirate groups appeared in northern Chekiang several weeks later, towards the end of the fourth month, that coastline, and particularly the town of Hai-yen, were considerably better prepared against attack. The following month a much larger pirate fleet besieged Hai-yen for three days without breaking through the walls but inflicting considerable damage in the suburbs. Immediately afterwards, they over whelmed the town of Cha-p’u in a day. By the end of that year, local witnesses maintained that the town of Hai-yen had suffered four attacks
14 The respective destinations of their letters reflect the different levels of status each held, Ch’ien being a particularly influential member of the local bureaucratic elite, Chang being a man whose connections, though still important, were more confined. Chia-hsing
fu chih 1878:56.29a-b, biography of Ch’ien Wei; Cha-p’u chih 1757:
by pirates with a loss of some 3,700 local people. P ’ing-hu and Cha-p’u had each suffered three raids and Kan-p’u and Hai-ning, further to the west, one.15
Although the pirate raids of 1553 were disturbing and destructive, they were, nevertheless, restricted to the immediate vicinity of the coast. The pirates were relatively few in numbers and kept to their piratical mode of surprise attacks from the sea.
One of the most damaging results of military ineffectiveness in the first year was that pirate groups saw the possibility of putting aside their immediate dependence on sea-borne raids in favour of setting up long-term camps on shore. Had government forces been able to remove the pirates decisively, they may have remained content to confine themselves to swift raids from the sea, thus limiting the numbers of attackers and the amount they could carry away to the capacity of their fleets, and the scope of their raids to the coastal districts. Instead, resistance was feeble and the pirates were ashore long enough, and travelled far
enough, to sight the places they subsequently captured as stockades for their own sejni-permanent camps. In these they could camp in large numbers, and accumulate booty and vessels from a wide area over a long period. These camps formed the basis of pirate activity in the Chia- hsing area aver the next three years.
Raids and Resistance, 1554 to 1556
In 1554 there was a marked escalation of pirate activities. By the end of the fourth month pirates had entrenched themselves in camps along
the Sung-chiang and Chia-hsing coast. The largest was at the fort of Che-lin in Sung-chiang, but smaller groups took over a number of other fortified points along the coast. In the fourth month a small group of pirates captured the police office at Shih-tun, on the coast between Kan-p’u and Hai-ning. For seven weeks they caused continuous trouble in
the surrounding districts and resisted all attempts to dislodge them.16
15 16
T s ’a i :1.lla-b.
Earlier, in the third month, pirates went inland for the first time, on looting expeditions through the market towns of Chia-hsing. They raided store-houses, seized grain-boats and looted wealthy estates, burning houses as they went. During the spring and summer, town after town in Chiang-Che was attacked: almost every district between Lake T ’ai and
17