Yang Jing

Biography

Early Rebellions and Southern Expansions

Yang Jing emerged as an energetic cavalry and infantry officer during the collapse of the Mongol Yuan dynasty. He attached himself to Zhu Yuanzhang when the latter was building up forces in Anhui. Displaying steady discipline and tactical boldness, he was appointed a Brigade Commander (Wanhu). In the fierce crossing of the Yangtze River in 1355–1356, Yang Jing was among the first officers to scale the city walls of Jiqing. ### The Subjugation of Guangxi Yang Jing's greatest military achievement lay in the southern theater. Following the expulsion of Mongol authority from central China, southwestern regional warlords and local chieftains resisted imperial authority. Appointed commander of the Southern Expedition, Yang Jing advanced through rugged terrain into Guangxi. Laying siege to Guilin, he cut off relief supplies while deploying fire-arrows against defensive towers, forcing the regional Yuan commanders to surrender unconditionally.

In the winter of 1367 Yang Jing marched into Guangxi. In the fourth month of the following year he attacked Yongzhou, where the Yuan commander Deng Zusheng drew in his troops for a stubborn defense and a relief force of Yuan soldiers encamped in seven camps along the Xiang river; Yang Jing defeated it and took more than a thousand prisoners. He then ringed the city with earthworks, threw a pontoon bridge across the West River and pressed the assault until Deng Zusheng, his strength spent, took poison and Yongzhou fell. Before Jingjiang he found the city long impregnable, judged that its defense rested only on the water of the western moat, and sent the commander Qiu Guang against the Duankou pass; the dike guards were killed, the moat was drained, five earthen ramparts were run up to the wall, and after two months of hard fighting the city was taken and a Yuan governor captured. Earlier, Zhang Bin, insulted by the defenders at the southern gate, had wanted to massacre the people; Yang Jing, entering, at once forbade it and the population was steadied. He then turned his army to receive the surrender of the native officials of the two rivers, Huang Yingcen and Boyan, and with Liao Yongzhong completed the pacification of Guangxi.

In the winter of 1369 he was sent as envoy to Sichuan to urge the Xia ruler Ming Sheng to submit. He argued repeatedly from advantage and harm, and wrote to him that no one who held Shu had ever been saved by its mountains and rivers, advising early submission; Ming Sheng assembled his ministers, but they were engrossed in their own power and would not hear of it, and within two years Xia perished. In the great distribution of 1370 Yang Jing was made marquis of Yingyang with a stipend of fifteen hundred piculs; in 1371 he campaigned against Xia under Tang He and fought at Qutang, and for want of achievement in the conquest of Shu received no reward. He died in the eighth month of 1382 and was posthumously made duke of Rui with the style Wuxin; in 1390 he was posthumously condemned as a partisan of Hu Weiyong, on the ground that he had been blamed for the defeat at Qutang and harbored seditious designs. Among the founding generals of the Ming he was a commander in his own right with notable service in a theater of his own; his record falls short of Xu Da or Chang Yuchun, yet it left its mark on the pacification of Guangxi and the handling of Sichuan.

Major Activities

Pacification Campaigns

Yang Jing was trusted by the Ming court for handling delicate frontier and ethnic garrison logistics. Throughout the late 1360s, he governed Huguang and Guangxi, establishing agricultural military colonies (tuntian) that permanently integrated Guangxi into the Ming dynastic framework.

Personal Relations

• Sovereign: Zhu Yuanzhang (Emperor Taizu)
• Comrades: Xu Da, Chang Yuchun, Tang He

Historical Assessment

Traditional Ming historians commended Yang Jing as a resolute general whose conquests of the remote southern frontiers brought tranquility to Guangxi and Hunan. His record was tragically clouded decades later when his family was implicated in the political purges surrounding Hu Weiyong.