A historical review of the Qing army's siege of the Yongli regime and the Empress Dowager's appeal to the Pope for help
During the Hongguang period, the Southern Ming began to turn to the Portuguese for help against the Qing army in Macao. The Portuguese provided some help to the Southern Ming regime, and Emperor Yongli thanked the Portuguese missionaries for almost joining the church. However, as the situation became more and more serious, the support of Portugal began to weaken, so the Empress Dowager Cixi wrote a letter to the Pope asking for help, but the envoy overcame many difficulties and dangers, and only returned more than ten years later, the Nanming regime collapsed, and the Yongli Emperor did not expect reinforcements.
Nanming repeatedly turned to the Portuguese for help, but the aid gradually dwindled.
When the situation in the Southern Ming Dynasty deteriorated, Emperor Hongguang sent troops to Macau for help, and successive rulers of the Southern Ming Dynasty also took such measures since then.
In the second year of Longwu (1646), at the request of the Nanming regime, the Portuguese authorities sent 300 reinforcements with more cannons to Macao to help in the war, helping the Nanming to recover many lost territories. In the second year of Yongli (1648), after the Nanming regime saw the combat effectiveness of the Western army, the Yongli Emperor joined the religion with his family to maintain good relations with the West and receive long-term assistance. In addition to Emperor Yongli herself, Empress Dowager Cixi, his wife Empress Wang, and Crown Prince Zhu Cicheng were also baptized, in addition to more than 50 concubines and more than 40 harem ministers, as well as countless court servants and eunuchs.
After the second year of Yongli (1648), Geng Xianzhong, Li Chengdong and others successively launched an anti-Qing restoration movement, and the area controlled by the Southern Ming Dynasty became Yunnan, which once included parts of Shanxi, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces in the north, as well as the coastal islands of Fujian and Zhejiang provinces in the southeast, and later expanded to Guizhou, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hunan, Jiangxi and Sichuan provinces, but civil strife and factional infighting basically excluded the peasant army from the scope of suppression, and the Qing army recovered its vitality again.
Seeing that the situation had deteriorated again, Emperor Yongli sent people to Macau to ask for help, but this time the Macau authorities only provided a few hundred guns and nothing else. The Empress Dowager Cixi had no choice but to turn directly to the Pope for help, hoping for more support from the West.
The Queen Mother sent an envoy to the Pope, but this did not happen.
The Queen Mother wrote a handwritten letter to the Pope, earnestly requesting"God bless our country and its people", and hope for the Vatican"Many Jesuits"Come to China"Spread the Sacred Religion"She also sent a letter to the envoy Andrew Chen and his missionary Bai Migue, asking them to ask for help directly from the pope.
It was only in December 1652 that Chen Hongyi and the Bumai missionaries arrived in Venice, but the governor of the Republic of Venice refused to accept them because he wanted to remain neutral in the Ming and Qing wars. Bumeg turned to the French ambassador for help, and they managed to meet the governor Francesco Molano and give him the letter. However, the first contact between the two ended in failure due to French intervention, which led to opposition from Pope Innocent X and the newly elected Jesuit Patriarch, Gusves Nickel, who believed that accepting Nanming's demands would affect Jesuit missionary activities in China.
But Chen Yan and Beaumarchais did not give in, they did their work in Italy, and thanks to their efforts, the Vatican convened three synods in three years to consider how to respond to Nanming's request. However, in the ninth year of Yongli (1655), Pope Innocent X died, and the situation took a turn for the worse, and he remained in a passive state.
The next Pope, Alexander VII, received Chen Ande and Bai MiG, but did not offer any practical help to Nanming, only wrote a reply letter for them to take back to China. With the Pope's reply, Andrew Chen and Bai Mig traveled to Lisbon to meet King John IV of Portugal, who agreed to provide military assistance to the Southern Ming.
In the 10th year of Yongli (1655), Chen Ande and Bumizi returned to China after completing their mission, but when they arrived in Goa, India, they learned that the Yongli regime was about to collapse. Although John IV ordered not to be embarrassed"Envoy of the Southern Ming Dynasty", but the Portuguese colonial authorities refused to let them go to Macau because they did not want to interfere with the Qing **.
Ignoring the ban, Tran and Bu Yige traveled overland to Ayutthaya, the capital of Siam (present-day Thailand), and then chartered a ship from pirates to arrive in present-day northern Vietnam. In 1659, Buyige died on the way, and Chen Ande buried him, and then returned home with several important letters, hoping to save the dying Southern Ming Dynasty.
However, by the time he returned to Yunnan, the Southern Ming regime had collapsed, and the Yongli Emperor Zhu Youzhen had fled to Burma, where he was assassinated by Wu Sangui in 1662. Chen did not submit diplomatic letters to Emperor Yongli and disappeared from history.