When it comes to the wars during the Wanli years, people will always remember the three major marches of the Wanli Calendar. In these three battles, even though the Wanli Emperor did not go to the dynasty for decades and was extremely dim-witted, the Ming Dynasty also won victories.
The Wanli Emperor Zhu Yijun used Li Rusong to quell the Mongol rebellion at the Battle of Ningxia; In the Battle of Bozhou, Li Hualong quelled the rebellion of Yang Yinglong, the head of the Miao territory; and Ma Gui and others defeated him in the Battle of Korea in which the Japanese Toyotomi Hideyoshi regime invaded Korea. The victories in these three battles also seemed to be more like a fig leaf for the Wanli Emperor Zhu Yijun's dimwitting to cover up one or two.
But in fact, during the reign of the Wanli Emperor, the Ming Dynasty also had two major wars, one was the Battle of Ming and Burma, and the other was the Battle of Salhu, and both battles ended in failure, and the impact was even more far-reaching.
First: the Battle of Ming-Burma
In the fourteenth year of Hongwu (1381), Zhu Yuanzhang sent Mu Ying to defeat the Liang king who had occupied Yunnan by the Fengyuan Dynasty, and Mu Ying himself remained in Yunnan as the Duke of Qianguo who guarded Yunnan. Subsequently, the Ming Dynasty adopted the Xuanwei Division system outside Yunnan, and set up six major Xuanwei Divisions, including the Mubang Xuanwei Division, the Burmese Xuanwei Division, and the Mengyang Xuanwei Division. As an effective way of governing the Indochina Peninsula, this system also played an important role in the early Ming Dynasty.
But also in 1554, the Toungoo Dynasty of Burma eliminated the Awa Dynasty, and Burma was basically unified. In order to expand its territory, the Toungoo Dynasty began to attack other Xuanwei divisions, and gradually took control of Mubang and other places.
In the fourth year of the Wanli Dynasty (1576), the Dongwu Dynasty attacked Mengyang again. On the one hand, the Mengyang Xuanwei Division asked for help and reinforcements from the Mu clan stationed in Yunnan, and on the other hand, actively prepared grain and grass and prepared for the war.
In the end, the Ming Dynasty sent troops, and the Battle of Ming and Burma officially broke out. At the First Battle of Ming-Burma, the Mengyang and Daming armies were victorious; but after three subsequent battles, Mang Yinglong of the Dongwu Dynasty finally eliminated the Mengyang Tusi. Mengyang, Mubang, Longchuan and other places were all occupied by Myanmar. In the following twenty years, the war between the Ming Dynasty and the Dongwu Dynasty in Burma did not end, but with the civil unrest in Burma, mangyinglong's death and his son Mang Yingli was captured, and the marquis of Liangyuan ascended to the throne, many other reasons were intermittent.
However, in 1604, Mengyang was annexed by Burma, and in 1606, Mubang fell again. The Ming Dynasty's control over the Indochina Peninsula also disappeared.
Second: the Battle of Salhu
In 1583, just after Nurhaci's father TakShi and grandfather Jue Chang'an were successively killed by the Ming Dynasty, he started an army with the "ThirteenTh Armor", and his power was weak, on the one hand, he appeased Li Chengliang, the general soldier of liaodong province, on the other hand, he successively annexed hada, Huifa, and Ulabu, and finally completed the unification of the Jurchen departments and established the eight flags system, after Li Chengliang's death, in 1616, at the age of 58, he established Houjin.
Subsequently, as his power grew, he set the goal of the struggle on the Ming Dynasty. In 1618, he published the "Seven Great Hates" and threatened that "this year we will conquer the Great Ming Kingdom." After successively winning the victories of Liaoyang and Fushun, in the forty-seventh year of the Wanli Dynasty (1619), the Wanli Emperor sent Du Song, Ma Lin, Liu Ling, and Li Rubai to divide the troops into four roads, with a total of 120,000 troops (in addition to Yehebu and more than 10,000 Koreans each to assist in the battle), claiming to be 470,000 troops, to encircle and suppress Nurhaci.
At this time, Nurhaci was only 60,000, but he used the guerrilla warfare method of "Ren'er several roads, I go all the way", and finally in this war that seemed to have a huge disparity in strength, it ended with 310 Ming officers and 45,870 soldiers martyred.
The victory in this war was a turning point in the comparison of the strength of the Ming Dynasty and the Later Jin in Liaodong.