Late Ming Dynasty: Winds Rise in Western Liaoning

In the fifth year of the Tianqi reign (1625), two years remained until Prince of Xin Zhu Youjian would ascend the throne, and nineteen years until the fall of the Ming Dynasty.

That year, the Donglin faction's campaign against Wei Zhongxian failed. Yang Lian, Zuo Guangdou, and four other loyalists were killed. The eunuch faction falsified the Compendium of the Three Reigns and compiled the Donglin Roster of Heroes. The late Ming factional struggle reached its boiling point.

That year, the Later Jin regime accelerated its expansion: it captured Lushun in the first lunar month and moved its capital to Shenyang in the fourth. Nurhaci killed those who lacked grain and issued an order: "All Han people who resist the Jin are to be executed."

That year, Xiong Tingbi was executed at the western market, and his head was sent to the nine frontier garrisons.

That year, Ming finances worsened, forcing the government to impose limits on stipends for imperial clansmen.

That year, work resumed on the reconstruction of the Three Great Halls, a project costing millions of taels.

That year, disasters struck northern Ming in one wave after another. A blizzard hit Yan'an. Locusts darkened the skies over Jinan, destroying the autumn crops. A great famine followed, and people resorted to cannibalism.

That year, the world's first newspaper advertisement appeared in England's Weekly News.

That year, Spanish colonists founded the city of San Salvador in Keelung, Taiwan.

That year, Sun Chengzong, the Ming commander in Liaodong, could no longer bear the censors' accusations and finally decided to launch an offensive against the Later Jin. General Ma Shilong sent Deputy Commander Lu Zhijia and Commander Li Chengxian across the Sancha River with the vanguard battalion.

That year, Zhao Meng, the county town's big brother, arrived in the Ming Dynasty. A breeze rose at the tip of a duckweed leaf in western Liaoning, then swept up the heavens and uprooted trees, stirring yellow clouds across thousands of miles.