The time: May, 1645. The place: the city of Yangzhou, not far northeast of the capital of the surviving Southern Ming government, Nanjing. A year earlier, Manchu cavalry had swept south from Manchuria to take Beijing. As far as history books are concerned, the Qing Dynasty already replaced the Ming. But Ming loyalists still gathered in the south, determined to resist the "barbarians." And now the Qing army has reached Yangzhou.The Minister of Defense of the Southern Ming, a rectitudinous man named Shi Kefa, now personally took command of the Yangzhou's defenses. What followed was a battle--and also a massacre--that will go down in Chinese history as one of the most memorable and infamous.
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