allegiance was, of course, unknown to Liu Chin) secured appointment as army commander.  With the army intended for the crushing of the revolt, Liu Chin’s palace was attacked when he was asleep, and he and all his supporters were arrested.  Thus the other group came into power in the palace, including the philosopher Wang Yang-ming (1473-1529).  Liu Chin’s rule had done great harm to the country, as enormous taxation had been expended for the private benefit of his clique.  On top of this had been the young emperor’s extravagance:  his latest pleasures had been the building of palaces and the carrying out of military games; he constantly assumed new military titles and was burning to go to war.

11 Risings

The emperor might have had a good opportunity for fighting, for his misrule had resulted in a great popular rising which began in the west, in Szechwan, and then spread to the east.  As always, the rising was joined by some ruined scholars, and the movement, which had at first been directed against the gentry as such, was turned into a movement against the government of the moment.  No longer were all the wealthy and all officials murdered, but only those who did not join the movement.  In 1512 the rebels were finally overcome, not so much by any military capacity of the government armies as through the loss of the rebels’ fleet of boats in a typhoon.

In 1517 a new favourite of the emperor’s induced him to make a great tour in the north, to which the favourite belonged.  The tour and the hunting greatly pleased the emperor, so that he continued his journeying.  This was the year in which the Portuguese Fernao Pires de Andrade landed in Canton—­the first modern European to enter China.

In 1518 Wang Yang-ming, the philosopher general, crushed a rising in Kiangsi.  The rising had been the outcome of years of unrest, which had had two causes:  native risings of the sort we described above, and loss for the gentry due to the transfer of the capital.  The province of Kiangsi was a part of the Yangtze region, and the great landowners there had lived on the profit from their supplies to Nanking.  When the capital was moved to Peking, their takings fell.  They placed themselves under a prince who lived in Nanking.  This prince regarded Wang Yang-ming’s move into Kiangsi as a threat to him, and so rose openly against the government and supported the Kiangsi gentry.  Wang Yang-ming defeated him, and so came into the highest favour with the incompetent emperor.  When peace had been restored in Nanking, the emperor dressed himself up as an army commander, marched south, and made a triumphal entry into Nanking.

One other aspect of Wang Yang-ming’s expeditions has not yet been studied:  he crushed also the so-called salt-merchant rebels in the southernmost part of Kiangsi and adjoining Kwangtung.  These merchants-turned-rebels had dominated a small area, off and on since the eleventh century.  At this moment, they seem to have had connections with the rich inland merchants of Hsin-an and perhaps also with foreigners.  Information is still too scanty to give more details, but a local movement as persistent as this one deserves attention.