Since the ming emperor Zhu Yuanzhang established the Ming Dynasty, the Wukou in jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces have been very serious, and this situation has continued for hundreds of years, until the emergence of Qi Jiguang, a famous general who resisted the Ming Dynasty, and the Wukou on the southeast coast of the Ming Dynasty gradually calmed down. So the question is, how fierce was the Ming Dynasty's Wokou combat effectiveness? Why were the regular troops of the Ming Dynasty at that time helpless against these Wokou? Was it because the Ming commanders and soldiers were too incompetent?
According to the "Jinling Trivia" of Zhou Hui, a scholar of the middle and late Ming Dynasty, in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, a Group of 72 Japanese Ronin people quietly smuggled ashore from Yanqu, Zhejiang, burning and looting along the way, and snatched all the way to the city of Nanjing along the routes of Huizhou and Ningguo, at this time, there were nearly 3,000 civilians who were hacked and injured by them. It should be known that although the Ming Emperor at that time had moved the capital to Beijing, but despite this, the strategic location of Nanjing City was also very important, and these 72 Wokou were able to run unscathed to nanjing city and still intended to attack the city, which shows how arrogant the Wokou were at that time.
As a result, the city of Nanjing soon declared martial law, and the people of the city helped the local army to defend the city, because Nanjing had 13 gates, so the troops were too scattered. However, even if there were only a few thousand troops, it should be easy to annihilate these 72 Japanese ronin, but the fact was surprising: after the Nanjing defenders sent troops to meet the battle, the 72 Japanese ronin actually fell into no man's land, killing more than 900 Ming soldiers before retreating, and none of the 72 people on the other side were killed.
In fact, after evacuating Nanjing, the Wokou hid in a farmhouse in a nearby village, devouring the stolen wine and delicacies, and fell asleep after eating. If at this time, the defenders in the city of Nanjing could send a group of scouts to reconnoiter the position of these Wokou, then an army of several hundred people in the darkness of the night could defeat them. Unfortunately, the generals in Nanjing City basically did not understand the military, not only were they cowardly and incompetent, but they also had no strategy, only knew that they were blindly reckless to fight with others, and once they were defeated, they closed the city gates like dogs that lost their families and did not dare to come out, so that these Wokou fled from under the city of Nanjing with a big wave.
Zhou Hui, who told about this incident, also commented angrily: "Every month, tens of thousands of defenders in Nanjing eat more than 80,000 stones of grain, but they can't even deal with 72 small Wokou, which is simply a great shame and humiliation of the Ming Dynasty!" So everyone thinks that so many people in the Ming Dynasty army are helpless against the 72 Wokou, is the Wokou too powerful or the Ming army too incompetent?