(Letter from the Ming Emperor in the Museum of the Roman Capital).
Since the fifteenth century, the Europeans opened the Age of Discovery, with the continuous development of overseas **, the connection around the world is also getting closer, driven by advanced navigation technology, many missionaries and colonists from Europe, brought Europe's advanced technology, culture, and religion to the world. Among them were Western missionaries such as Bumig (Polish) and Matteo Ricci (Italian), who braved the difficulties and resolutely came to China to carry out missionary activities.
In the 36th year of Jiajing of the Ming Dynasty, in 1557 AD, Portugal leased Macao, and then more Western missionaries came to Chinese mainland through the Jesuits in Macao. From then on, the spread of Catholicism in China officially began.
In 1644, King Li Zicheng broke through Beijing, Emperor Chongzhen hanged himself on the coal mountain, and the Ming Dynasty collapsed. After Wu Sangui surrendered to the Qing Dynasty and let the Qing army enter the customs, the descendants of the Ming Dynasty royal family continued to resist south of the Yangtze River, and successively established three small regimes in the Southern Ming Dynasty, among which the Yongli small court established by Zhu Youlang, the king of Gui, who insisted for a long time. After the news of the death of the Chongzhen Emperor Zhu Youzhen reached Nanjing, the Ming Dynasty bureaucrats who stayed in Nanjing, the capital of Nanjing, panicked, and the ministers of Nanjing believed that the country could not be without a king for a day. However, due to the internal and external contradictions of the ruling clique, such as corruption and mediocrity, struggle for power and profit, wanton expropriation and extortion, and partial intentions, and internal strife among the warlords, the internal and external contradictions have deepened day by day. Only a year later, Nanjing was captured by the Qing army, the Hongguang Dynasty fell, and Zhu Yousong fled to Wuhu, and then was escorted to Beijing, and was executed by the Qing army the following year at the age of forty.
(Map of the situation in the Southern Ming Dynasty from 1654 to 1655).
After the death of Emperor Hongguang, Zhu Yujian, the king of Tang, ascended the throne in Fuzhou with the support of Zheng Zhilong (that is, Zheng Chenggong's father) and others, and the era name was Longwu. Because Emperor Longwu had long heard that the Portuguese were advanced, especially the red-clothed cannons, in order to fight against the surging Qing soldiers and save the Ming Dynasty from broken mountains and rivers, Emperor Longwu sent the great eunuch Pang Tianshou and the missionary Bi Fangji to Macao together, hoping to get help from the Portuguese authorities in Macau.
In 1646, that is, in the second year of Longwu, when Pang Tianshou and Bi Fangji led the Portuguese authorities in Macao to send 300 reinforcements and 6 artillery pieces to return to life, they heard the bad news that Emperor Longwu had been killed on the way, and then learned that Zhu Youlang, the king of Gui, had ascended the throne in Zhaoqing, Guangdong, so he changed his route and went straight to Zhaoqing and defected to Emperor Yongli, which was also the last regime of the Southern Ming Dynasty. At that time, the army also went to Zhaoqing with the Austrian priest Qu Shawei and later the Polish priest Bu Mig. In order to win the trust of the Yongli court, these priests also provided a large number of arms to the Yongli army, and formed a ** sect army directly led by Pang Tianshou and Jiao Lian, two ** disciples. This army played a certain role in the Yongli court's battle to recover Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian and Jiangxi, and once helped the Southern Ming to recover a lot of lost territory. Later, in February 1647, the Qing army Li Chengdong and Shang Kexi attacked Guilin, and the defender Qu Shiyun could not resist the attack of the Qing army's iron hooves, so he asked the imperial court for help, and the Yongli Emperor incorporated the Portuguese mercenaries from Macao into the reinforcement team, rushed to Guilin to participate in the war, and undertook the arduous task of defending the city. What people didn't expect was that after several brutal battles, this small army composed of the Portuguese, with its ferocious muskets and artillery, actually repelled the Qing army led by Li Chengdong and Shang Kexi, and killed the Qing soldiers and lost their armor. When the news came, the entire small court was extremely excited, and its infatuation with foreign weapons rose to worship of foreign religions.
(Portuguese arquebus).
(Portuguese soldier in the 17th century).
(Portuguese Red Cannon).
Taking advantage of this victory, Pang Tianshou and Bi Fangji began to carry out missionary activities in the court. In the end, with the efforts of Pang Tianshou and others, and as a reward, Emperor Yongli joined the Roman Catholic Church with all the members of the Southern Ming royal family, and the Empress Dowager Wang, Xiao, Empress Wang, Crown Prince Zhu Cixuan, and harem concubines were baptized. Several of them also took their own Christian names. The Queen Mother Ma was named Our Lady. Mary, the Shaw was Lena, the Empress Wang's religious name was Anna, and the crown prince's religious name was Constantine, although the Yongli Emperor himself was not baptized, but also accepted the Catholic faith. In October 1648, the Southern Ming regime was again in crisis, and Emperor Yongli once again asked for help from Macao, but because the Qing army was wanton in Guangzhou after the capture of the city, hundreds of thousands of people died, and the Macau authorities, who witnessed the atrocities of the Qing army, did not dare to provide assistance to the Ming Dynasty for fear of the threat of the Qing army.
(Ming Dynasty ** with missionaries).
(The Empress Dowager of Yongli in the Southern Ming Dynasty).
Seeing that there was no hope for help, in the third year of Yongli, that is, in 1649 AD, with the attitude of treating a dead horse as a live horse doctor, the Yongli Emperor personally wrote a letter to the Pope in the name of his mother Queen Mother (because the Queen Mother was a Catholic), imploring the Vatican Pope in Rome to send troops to save the Ming Dynasty, which was about to fall. He also appointed the Western missionary in China Bu Mige as a plenipotentiary envoy, and the young ** Chen Ande accompanied the emperor with a letter written by the emperor. This is simply unprecedented in Chinese history, which shows that the degree of openness of the Ming Dynasty was quite considerable.
(Nan Ming's diplomat Chen Ande went to Europe).
(Letter from Emperor Yongli of the Southern Ming Dynasty to the Pope of Rome).
Going to Europe was undoubtedly an extremely difficult task for Bu Mige, not to mention that Rome was far away from Guangdong, and there were many dangers on the way, and it was impossible to come to the rescue of the Ming Dynasty based on the situation in Europe at that time. Because Europe was at the end of the Renaissance, the power of the pope had long since declined, and the Thirty Years' War in Europe had just ended, so there was no time to look east. There was also John Tong, a missionary who was highly valued by the Qing Dynasty, who also sent people around Europe to spread political propaganda favorable to the Qing Dynasty and portrayed the Southern Ming Dynasty as a degenerate and vulnerable regime, which also greatly influenced the choice of Catholic countries. In the end, Bu Mige and Chen Ande resolutely embarked on a journey to Europe for the sake of their beliefs. After a long journey, they arrived in Macao at the end of 1650, but the governor of Macau, fearing anger at the Qing Dynasty, detained Bu Mige and his party, and finally escaped from Macau with the help of some believers. He set out from Macao in January 1651 and traveled to Vietnam and the Dutch East Indies (formerly known as Indonesia) to Goa, India, a state on the west coast of India and a Portuguese colony. Upon arrival in Goa, the Goan authorities and ecclesiastical institutions had learned that the Qing government had allowed the Jesuits to spread Catholicism in the country, and that friendship with the Qing was the main policy of the Portuguese, so they detained Bumig. The local governor believed that he was a threat to Portugal's national interests, so he reported to the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, hoping to expel Bumigue. Fortunately, the ship carrying the report letter sank halfway through, and Bumig was temporarily unharmed. Knowing that the Safavid dynasty of Persia was friendly to the ** disciples, he decided to risk escaping from prison and returning to Europe by land.
(Polish missionary Michel Boym).
After escaping from prison, they disguised themselves as Armenian traders and fled overland to Persia (present-day Iran). After many hardships, they came to Isfahan (a city in central Iran), where he met some fellow Polish countrymen. After a long journey, they traveled to Izmir (present-day Turkey) on the Aegean Sea, where they made contact with the local Jesuits and successfully arrived in Venice.
But as soon as they came ashore, they were met with a cold reception, and the Venetians did not welcome the Jesuits, so they had to change to the official palace of the Ming Dynasty and enter the city as Chinese envoys. But the governor at the time, Francisco Morin, refused to receive the envoys of the Southern Ming Dynasty. So Bumig had no choice but to find the French ambassador through various connections and ask him to help. They were able to meet the Doge of Venice, but the Doge was indifferent to the affairs of the Eastern Kingdom, and no agreement was reached.
(The road map of Bumig's life).
(Map of the situation before Bumig left for Europe).
Disappointed, they left Venice and made their way to Rome. Preparing to meet Pope Innocent X, but the Pope and the President of the Society of Jesus did not approve of them, and there were many contradictions within the Holy See, there were various voices.
(Pope Innocent X).
In order to reach an agreement, the Roman Ministry of the Messenger decided to convene four meetings to discuss how to deal with the matter of the envoys of the Southern Ming Dynasty. But Bu Mige is not willing to give in, he has been trying to find ways to help Nanming through various means and lobbying people everywhere. In this way, Bu Mige and Chen Ande waited in Rome for three years. It was not until 1655, when Alexander VII was inaugurated as Pope of Rome, that he received Bumig and Andrew Chen. But the missionary John Tang who was in Beijing at that time also came to Europe, preaching that he should support the Qing Dynasty, saying that the Southern Ming regime had been destroyed by the Qing Dynasty, and even directly attacked Bu Mige with words, saying that he was not an envoy of the Ming Dynasty at all, but a swaggering **.
(Flora of China written by Bu Mige).
In the end, Pope Alexander VII expressed great sympathy for the plight of the Chinese, but could only give moral support, since the Qing Dynasty supported the spread of Catholicism in China, we could not send troops to help a Ming dynasty that was about to fall. Moreover, the Thirty Years' War in Europe had just ended, and it was unable to send a large army to aid China, which was thousands of miles away. Although they did not get the desired result, getting the Pope's reply still gave Bumig and Chen Ande a glimmer of hope, which also gave them room to operate in Europe. They could use this to convince the kings of some Catholic countries to help.
After that, they came to Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, and were received by King John IV of Portugal, and after negotiations, John IV finally agreed to give Nan Ming ** some material assistance.
(King John IV of Portugal).
Despite Europe's claims that the Ming Dynasty no longer existed, Bu Mig resolutely decided to return to China with an unfinished mission, and he would fulfill his promise whether the emperor was still alive or not. He didn't even make it back to his Polish hometown of Lviv to take a look at it and set out on his journey back to China.
In 1658, when he and his party arrived in Siam (present-day Thailand), they were overjoyed when the locals told them that Yunnan was still under Ming control, and he decided to cross the Sino-Vietnamese border to China on foot. Unfortunately, in August 1659, Bu Mige died of overwork on the Sino-Vietnamese border, and finally failed to come to China and meet the Yongli Emperor. The scene at that time was quite bleak, and Chen Ande was the only one to accompany him through the last journey of his life. And after Chen Ande buried Bu Mige, he carried a few important letters and continued to embark on the journey home.
At this time, the Yongli court had basically come to an end, the queen mother and Pang Tianshou had been killed by the Qing army, and the Yongli Emperor Zhu Youlang also fled to Myanmar with the remnants of the Ming Dynasty. In 1661, the Burmese king Mang Bai launched the "Curse Water Difficulty", killed a large number of Nanming** and imprisoned the Yongli Emperor, and then handed it over to Wu Sangui. In June 1662, Emperor Yongli and 25 of his dependents were killed by Wu Sangui in Kunming. At this point, the Ming Dynasty officially fell. In the end, Chen Ande failed to deliver these diplomatic letters to the Yongli Emperor, and as the first diplomat in Chinese history to go to Europe, there is no historical record of him, and he has since disappeared into the long river of history.