Regardless of her family antecedents, Miss Tagawa was a powerful person and it is recorded that her famous pirate son, although separated from her at the age of six, cherished her as his constant ideal and prayed to her memory during the crises of his life. Says a chronicler: “Every day he would face east and look toward his mother, hiding his tears.”
Coxinga,* the name by which this son became known to the world, was thus the offspring of an adventurous Chinese man and a loyal Japanese woman, and much of the symbolic power which was accorded him both during his life and later stems from the fact that he represents the ideal Chinese-Japanese union. There are many today who prophesy that if Japan and China ever unite, it will be for the production of endless Coxingas.
Coxinga was born in Hirado during the Seventh Moon of 1624, the year in which his father Nicholas Iquan left Japan to work for the Dutch in Formosa. At the unlikely age of six the boy was bundled aboard a junk and sent with an older companion to China, where at the village of Anhai he joined his father and became that successful pirate’s prize son. He appears to have been a very brainy boy, and at the age of fifteen he was enrolled in the Imperial Collegiate School, where he gained a solid foundation in classical studies and the beginnings of a remarkable education that would have ended in his becoming a learned Confucian scholar and a mandarin. In 1641, at the age of seventeen, the future pirate married a Miss Tung, the first of many wives, and in the next year had a son of his own.
Quickly the moral problems which engulfed and destroyed Coxinga’s father crowded in upon the boy. He was forced to choose between the old Ming rulers and the invading Manchu barbarians, and in Coxinga’s case the problem of choice was even more difficult, in that his father had already cast his lot with the winning Manchus and enjoyed, for the time being, a position of privilege with them.
For some reason that is not now apparent, young Coxinga chose the dying Ming cause, and defended his choice with passion. One of the most touching features in this confused period of Asiatic history is the resolute loyalty of this pirate chieftain, for never once, so far as the records show, did he waver in his steadfastness. Adhering to a lost cause through agonies of defeat, humiliating retreats, exile from China and harassment on all sides, he stands forth in his epoch as a veritable monument to fidelity. It was because of this dedication, persevered in for more than twenty years, that Coxinga was ultimately created a god in both China and Japan, and the most remarkable aspect of his deification was that it was initially promulgated by the very rulers who had greatest cause to hate him, the Manchus, toward whom his fiery enmity was constantly directed. When he was dead they recognized in him the steadfastness they hoped to promote as a national characteristic.
The steps whereby the youth Coxinga became both the leading pirate of his age and the head of Asia’s largest operating army are fully documented in Chinese sources, but they parallel so closely the steps taken earlier by his father, Nicholas Iquan, that to repeat them here would be superfluous. There are, however, certain moments of decision which are of great interest to students of his character, but unfortunately these have been so inflated by romance and legend as to be of doubtful historical value. Nevertheless, the burning of his robes has acquired such symbolic significance that most historians accept it. Certainly, something like this activated Coxinga in his hour of decision.
In 1646, after his father had defected to the Manchus, and following his immigrant mother’s suicide on the walls of the family castle at Anhai, Coxinga reached his lowest spiritual point, and although the Manchus held out to him rewards of an almost incredible richness and variety, he spurned them, swore fresh allegiance to his Ming emperor and disappeared into the hills, attended by only a few close friends. There he sought out an ancient Confucian temple, and in a moving ceremony burned his scholar’s robes, crying to heaven, “This one-time Confucian scholar is now an unfortunate subject. My every action must have a purpose, whether I serve or oppose, stay or go. I now bid farewell to my Confucian attire. Will the Master in Heaven please take cognizance of this fact?”
Thereupon, as Coxinga the soldier, he crept down out of the hills with an insignificant force of ninety comrades and soon led an army of thousands. No doubt he achieved this military miracle by simply commandeering his traitorous father’s armies; it is certain that he inherited Iquan’s imposing pirate fleet, and henceforth he operated as his father had. At the age of twenty-two he constituted the balance of power on the mainland and controlled the China Seas.
So impoverished were the Ming for leaders that young Coxinga was created an earl, with the title Field Marshal of the Punitive Expedition. At the age of twenty-four he was a marquis, at twenty-five a duke and at thirty-one a full prince with suzerainty over an imposing area. He discharged the obligations of these titles gloriously and, while remaining still a pirate whose fleets probed the China Seas for personal loot, he perfected an amazing military machine dedicated to support of the Ming cause. “His force consisted of fifty thousand cavalry and seventy thousand infantry. Of the latter, ten thousand were known as ‘iron men,’ they being encased in heavy armor decorated with red spots like the leopard, and were always placed in the front rank that they might cut off the feet of the Tartar [Manchu] horses.” To support this force, Coxinga personally maintained seventy-two military stations along the coast.
There is a portrait of the pirate leader at this period of his life, and it shows a hefty beardless young man who wears his hair Dutch style and whose armor, joined at the neck in a wide collar, seems also to have been borrowed from the Hollanders. He carries two swords, which he holds before his rugged chest in a strange manner, as if ready to repel an assault. From a heavy leather belt hangs some unidentifiable instrument of war, but it is the man’s face that is unforgettable. We see a full-faced warrior who could easily have slipped into the armies of Oliver Cromwell without occasioning much comment, for although his countenance has some Chinese elements, it is not what the Westerner considers an Oriental face. These are the features of an international man who would have been at home anywhere in his contemporary world. It is the face of Coxinga, the Chinese pirate, who by the chances of history had become Coxinga, the timeless adventurer, the lord of the seas.
The Manchu enemy, realizing that they could not subdue China while young Coxinga maintained his power against them, endeavored to seduce him by the same lures that had succeeded with his father. Accordingly, without waiting to see whether he would accept or not, they created him in turn earl, duke and prince. They offered enormous riches and power. They assured him of amnesty and promised him a military command far exceeding what he already had.
His answer was forthright and amazing. He spurned the Manchu offers of nobility, trebled his forces and launched an assault intended to drive the invaders right out of China. It soon became apparent that the crucial battle would be fought at Nanking, for if this redoubt some miles up the Yangtse fell, Peking and the other Manchu positions to the north would be clearly imperiled if not untenable. Coxinga’s bold decision was that his fleet should capture Nanking.
It was an unprecedented armada that in 1659 made its way up the coast from Amoy and into the Yangtse under the command of the pirate prince. An observer wrote, “Never before or since was a more powerful and mighty fleet seen in the waters of this empire than that of Coxinga numbering more than 3,000 junks, which he had ordered to rendezvous in the bays and rivers around Amoy. The sight of them inspired one with awe. This squadron did not include the various fleets he had scattered along the neighboring coasts.” In addition, Coxinga had a huge land army consisting of 170,000 armored men, 50,000 marines, 5,000 cavalry and 1,000 iron men. His entourage included ten personal concubines, at least one legal wife and three sons. It was a two-pronged thrust by land and river that he made at Nanking, whose outlying centers of resistance soon fell under this pressure. The occupation of the city itself seemed inevitable, and leaders of the Coxinga expedition anticipated the quick humiliation of the Manchu invader
s and the restoration of the ancient Ming line.
Then Coxinga, with great victory in his grasp, behaved like a true pirate. On the eve of the final assault he celebrated his thirty-fifth birthday with a wild carouse that soon spread to his entire encampment. The long night of revelry and congratulation was drawing to a close when the Manchus, kept aware of the drunkenness by spies, unleashed a furious attack.
The result was a debacle. Coxinga’s mighty force, the most powerful then operating in Asia, was completely demoralized. Manchu cavalry stormed the perimeter of Coxinga’s headquarters. Boats in the river were set ablaze. The iron men were stampeded and as dawn broke over the confused and milling Coxinga forces, a disreputable retreat set in.
The high tide of Ming hopes had passed, and as Coxinga led his battered remnants away from the scene of his lamentable birthday party, the Manchu invaders consolidated their control step by step. It was a terrible defeat and unnecessary. It destroyed the Ming and might have been expected to end Coxinga’s career.
Certainly the Manchus thought that it had, for they quickly launched a major naval expedition of more than eight hundred ships in a mopping-up operation against Coxinga, whose shabby undestroyed remnants consisted of only about four hundred junks, which were quickly bottled up at Quemoy. The Manchu admirals moved in for the kill.
But now Coxinga’s piratical skill manifested itself, and in a fearful day-long battle that recalled Nicholas Iquan’s fight against the Dutch in these same waters twenty-seven years earlier, Coxinga toward evening maneuvered his crippled and outnumbered ships masterfully, brought the entire Manchu fleet under two files of cannon and annihilated it. “For many weeks after this terrible catastrophe the beaches of Amoy were covered with rotting bodies and naval debris that the flux and surge of the sea would daily cast on the shores.… Not one man lived to tell the tale.”
In surly peace, unable to dislodge Coxinga from his harbors or to win him to their side through his father’s influence, the Manchus were forced to accept a temporary division of China. They had ninety percent of the sprawling land area. The pirate Coxinga controlled the seas and a thin strip of coast.
Accordingly Coxinga re-established headquarters in Amoy, with his main fleet based on Quemoy, and from here he dominated his realm. But his continued depredations called forth a spectacular retaliation, one that still confounds the imagination.
The Manchus, irritated beyond endurance by this pirate with whom they could not come to grips, foresaw that it might be decades before they could consolidate the coastal areas and cleanse them of his marauders. Moreover, they had cause to suspect that most of the coastal people were both Ming patriots and Coxinga partisans. Accordingly they promulgated one of the most Draconian edicts on record.
All residents of the coast were required on three days’ notice to move inland at least seventeen miles. No provision was made for them behind the barrier, and upon arrival they found no food, no water, no housing, no commerce, no government. The law was simple and simply enforced: “Move inland or have your head chopped off.”
The misery involved in this countermeasure against Coxinga was appalling. A contemporary writes: “At first the people thought they would return and tried to stay together, but when they saw there was no hope they began to separate. Sons were sold for a bushel of rice, daughters for a hundred cash. Speculators were able to buy people into slavery for practically nothing. Those who were strong and able were made to join the army. The authorities looked on the people as so many ants.”
Like ants they crawled inland, away from the life-giving coast. Those who had lived on fish perished, for they could find no substitute. Those who had lived in little shops died of starvation, for there was nothing to trade, and no money to exchange if produce had been available. Death ruled the coast of China for a thousand miles. The entire area was made waste, and it has been estimated that in the first evacuation half the residents who were forced inland died. Any who in despair attempted to return to their homes were tortured and killed, for the Manchus, in order to prevent the rebuilding of destroyed towns, erected watchtowers at three-mile intervals along the entire coast. Each was manned by a hundred soldiers, who were ordered to decapitate instantly and without trial any trespasser caught inside the immense demarcation zone.
The shocking thing about this gigantic dispersal is that it was conceived, ordered and executed on the spur of the moment without any plan or consideration of consequences. For nine determined years and desultorily for ten more, the policy was maintained, and the total loss of life and wealth was incalculable.
Ironically, by the time the law was enforced Coxinga had already left Quemoy and had embarked upon the vast enterprise for which he is best remembered today. In April, 1661, with a fleet of nine hundred ships bearing twenty-five thousand marines, he set sail eastward to resume a battle started many years before by his father, Nicholas Iquan.
He was sailing to Formosa, to declare war against the Dutch and to drive them from that rich and favored island. A stylized portrait of that time shows him as a thirty-six-year-old mandarin seated on a tiger skin and wearing heavily brocaded robes with pointed sleeves. He has a wispy, drooping mustache, tiny beard and separate lower-lip patch. His face is thinner than when he was younger and on his head he wears the ceremonial mandarin’s cap. His entire appearance is Chinese and the determination that was to mark his behavior during the events about to occur is easily noticed.
Why did he decide to invade Formosa? Manchu pressure on Amoy was actually not very great and was withstood by Coxinga and his son for many years, so that was not the effective cause. Nor could the removal policy have launched the invasion, for that did not take effect until after he had left. Three dissimilar factors probably motivated him and in them we see a picture of the forces which played upon this powerful man. First, he had an inborn hatred for the Dutch, against whom his father had often warred, and for many years he had apparently entertained ideas of ultimately evicting them from Formosa. Now was a good time. Second, Formosa was a wonderfully endowed island whose location placed it athwart the main trading routes of the Chinese, Japanese, Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish argosies. Coxinga foresaw growing strife in this area and considered the island to be the best available center for his sea-roving occupation. Third, and possibly most persuasive, with China in turmoil and with the Ming loyalists in flight everywhere, Coxinga, as the only important rallying point for the Ming, wished to establish a refuge. In an age of bitter anxiety he sought an island where he could be king, on which he could offer sanctuary for all who were disposed to support the Ming cause, and from which he could harry the Manchus.
The island which Coxinga had chosen for these purposes was a historical curiosity, for although it lay midway between the ancient civilizations of China and Japan, it remained an unclaimed, totally savage island populated by a backward race, each of whose little enclaves along the coast and in the deep mountain valleys spoke a completely different language. The Formosans were merciless head-hunters, and only the bravest visitor to the island would dare move inland without full military protection, which had to be maintained both constantly and with care.
Yet the island was probably the richest in the Pacific, and still is. It contained gold and silver, pineapples and sugar, rice and tea. Its immensely rich forests yielded camphor of the best quality, strong rattan, rare orchids for trade, and more than six dozen kinds of choice lumber. Obviously any power that controlled Formosa’s trade had a likely chance of acquiring great wealth.
In appearance the island was as lovely as its appropriate name, derived from the Portuguese word for beautiful. A hospitable western plain rose toward mountains that reached over 13,000 feet into the air. There were ample rivers for water supply, good harbors, and a profusion of wild flowers that could be matched nowhere else in that part of the Pacific. The climate was delightful, and the island was singularly free from tropical diseases.
Why had no Asiatic nation claimed Formosa? Why had neither Sp
ain, active in the nearby Philippines, nor Portugal, ensconced in Macao, occupied this rich island? Apparently the ferocity of the natives had scared away potential settlers, and it was not until 1624 that the Dutch, as we have seen, were persuaded by Captain China to abandon their entrepôt on the Pescadores and to move a few miles eastward onto the main island of Formosa. There, to protect their growing settlement, they had erected a famous fort, which was now to occupy Coxinga’s attention.
On April 30, 1661, his powerful armada loomed out of the mists of the Straits of Formosa and anchored off the Dutch fortress, Castle Zeelandia, off modern Anping (Anpin, Ampin) on the southwest coast. This stronghold was located on a curiously shaped island which looked like a club with a large knob on the end. The shaft consisted of a narrow sand spit that almost touched the shore, while the knob, on which the castle rested, faced inshore at another point. The castle was a solid affair of baked bricks, well studded with cannon and defended by determined Dutchmen whose empire in the east had been won only by the resolute defense of such fortresses in Java and elsewhere. These Pacific Ocean Dutch were a heroic breed and, once dug in, were never easy to dislodge.