Defending the Nation 69
lin and other monastic troops. The most detailed account is Zheng Ruoceng’s
(fl. 1505–1580) “The Monastic Armies’ First Victory” (“Seng bing shou jie
ji”), included in his The Strategic Defense of the Jiangnan Region (Jiangnan jing
lüe) (preface 1568).^45 Even though he never passed the examinations, Zheng
gained the esteem of his contemporaries as an expert geographer of China’s
coastal regions. For this reason, he was selected in 1560 as advisor by Hu
Zongxian (1511–1565), who was then the supreme commander of the armies
in Fujian, Zhejiang, and the Southern Metropolitan Region (today’s Jiangsu).
Zheng’s tenure in Hu’s headquarters must have contributed to his familiarity
with the campaign against piracy, of which Hu was in charge.^46
Collating Zheng’s and other late Ming accounts, we can ascertain which
official initiated the mobilization of fighting monks: Wan Biao (hao: Luyuan)
(1498–1556), who served as vice commissioner in chief in the Nanjing Chief
Military Commission.^47 We can also pinpoint at least four battles in which mo-
nastic troops participated. The first took place in the spring of 1553 on Mount
Zhe, which controls the entrance from the Hangzhou Gulf, through the Qian-
tang River, to Hangzhou City.^48 The remaining three were waged in the canal-
strewn Huangpu River delta (which during the Ming belonged to Song jiang
Prefecture): at Weng jiagang ( July 1553), at Majiabang (spring of 1554), and at
Taozhai (autumn of 1555).^49 The incompetence of an army general led to a mo-
nastic defeat in the fourth battle, following which the remains of four fallen
monks were enshrined underneath the “Stupa of the Four Heroic Monks” on
Mt. She, some twenty miles southwest of today’s Shanghai (map 3).^50
The monks scored their biggest victory in the Weng jiagang battle. On
July 21, 1553, 120 fighting monks defeated a group of pirates, chasing the
survivors for ten days along the twenty-mile route southward to Wang jia-
zhuang (on the Jiaxing Prefecture coast). There, on July 31, the very last ban-
dit was disposed of. All in all, more than a hundred pirates perished, whereas
the monks suffered four casualties only. Indeed, the monks took pity on no
one in this battle, one employing his iron staff to kill an escaping pirate’s
wife. (Zheng Ruoceng does not comment on the monks’ disregard for the
Buddhist prohibition on killing, even in this instance when the murdered
woman presumably was unarmed.)^51
Not all the monks who participated in the Weng jiagang victory came
from the Shaolin Monastery, and whereas some had previous military expe-
rience, others presumably were trained ad hoc for this battle. However, the
cleric who led them to victory did receive his military education at Shaolin.
This is Tianyuan, whom Zheng extols both for his martial arts skills and for
his strategic genius. He elaborates, for instance, upon the ease with which
the Shaolin friar defeated eighteen Hangzhou monks, who challenged his
command of the monastic troops:
Tianyuan said: “I am real Shaolin. Is there any martial art in which you
are good enough to justify your claim for superiority over me?” The