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the ground and stated that, if a snowstorm came that night, and if the snow reached level with the top of the arrow, he would take this as a sign from Heaven that he would eventually become Emperor. The snow duly fell, and to just the right height, leaving Li with a conviction that his rebellion would succeed.
    The rebel leader combined superstition with cruelty–his ruthlessness was legendary. When a captured Imperial general refused to submit, Li had him fastened to a high beam and shot at him with arrows until he was dead. When another captive, Prince Fu, refused even to speak with him, Li decided on a grim jest. The Prince’s full name indicates ‘good fortune’. Li had him decapitated and mixed a cupful of his blood with cooked venison, naming the dish ‘red pottage of good fortune’ before eating his fill. But perhaps the most extreme example of his bloodthirsty nature occurred in 1643, when his advance through Hunan Province had been held up for almost two years by the stubborn resistance of the city of Kaifeng. Enraged, he imposed corvée labour on the farmers in the surrounding area in order to cut away the embankments of ‘China’s Sorrow’, the Yellow River, and so flood the town. When the river finally broke its banks it swept away over one hundred thousand of these unfortunates (and took with them a further ten thousand of Li’s own men). But the scheme worked. The destruction visited on Kaifeng was almost inconceivable: of a population of over a million souls, less than one in ten survived–more than nine hundred thousand lost their lives in the flood, sacrificed to Li’s ambition.
    Li then led his men into Shanxi, to the ancient city of Xian. Here, dressed in Imperial dragon-robes, on the first day of the new year (1644) he proclaimed the inauguration of the ‘Great Obedient’ dynasty and took upon himself the Imperial title of Yung Ch’ang. As far as Li was concerned, his victories confirmed that the Mandate of Heaven, given by the gods, and held by the Ming Dynasty for almost three hundred years, had been revoked–and given to him. In Beijing, the news of Li’s rival dynasty, and his proximity to the capital was met with despair and fear. Yet even now it did not serve to shake the Ming and its courtiers out of their self-induced lethargy. Steeped in superstition and belief in auguries, they may have taken heart from the strangely titled ‘Song of the cakes’, a prophecy said to have been uttered by the first Ming Emperor, Chu Yuan-chang, concerning the fate of his Dynasty. It is claimed that this ‘Song’ tells of the coming of the eight banners of the Manchu, and the ultimate overthrow of Manchu power by the Japanese (which did in fact come to pass, but only after the Manchu had swept away the Ming). One line of the prophecy is striking. It states:
    Ten-mouthed women, with grass on their heads,
    once more carry a babe in arms
    to be Lord over the Empire. 13
    Remarkably, in Chinese, the first character of the name Yehonala, is composed of the symbols ‘ten’ and ‘mouth’ side by side; and above them (‘on their heads’?) is the sign for ‘grass’.
    On this basis, then, the Manchu were the enemy to be taken seriously, with Li’s rebellion nothing more than an annoyance, simply another of the periodic revolts which shook the peace of the Middle Kingdom. A Grand Secretary, Li Chien-tai, a man of great wealth, offered to fund the expenses of the army and to march at their head against the rebels. But while this disorganised Ming host searched vainly for the foe (and lost thousands of its own soldiers to starvation) the wily ‘Emperor’ Li Tzu-cheng and his army had slipped away northwards, before swinging east into Chihli Province, on the very doorstep of Beijing.
    A second Ming army sent to oppose Li’s forces was headed, not by a commander of vast experience, but by the powerful, and militarily ignorant, court eunuch, Tu Hsun. As Li’s men converged on the next strategic town,