King of Ducks V

How can I quarter my officers and men in a village flooded, while the rain is continuing?” the King of Ducks asked Yang Xu (楊旭), the headsman at Kouweizhuang, and his brother Yang Xiong, who had invited him to the feast.

“There won't be any problem,” Yang Xiong assured the King of Ducks. “We are making arrangements to let them all stay with families of our village for the night after the grand feast,” Yang Xiong answered.

The only thing Zhu Yigui could do was to acquiesce. He was invited to stay at the home of the village headsman, with a handful of bodyguards. He could not be protected by his large escort, for troops were scattered among village homesteads for the night. On the other hand, Yang Xu and Yang Xiong asked the villagers to soak the barrels of muskets the soldiers had stacked before bedding down. The bodyguards could not fire their weapons in the middle of night when their Grand Marshal called for help.

At midnight, the Yang brothers, with the help of a score of their armed tenant farmers, had little difficulty taking the King of Ducks prisoner. He had no way to resist. A few of his rebel commanders who had accompanied him were also captured

After they were taken captive on July 18, Zhu Yigui and his generals were brought before General Lan Ting-chen (藍廷珍), general in command of the garrison at Nanao (南澳) who led the Qing pacification force to suppress the rebellion in Taiwan. Facing Lan and his co-commander Shi Shi-piao (施世馬票), the King of Ducks refused to kneel in submission, whispering to one of his commanders that he did not regret at all for what he had done. Then he confronted Lan and Shi, lashing out: “I am a son of the Ming. I raised an army to restore Ming rule in China. You both myst be real men of courage; and yet you have submitted to the enemy and obey him as your lord. Aren't you ashamed of yourselves?”

The King of Ducks and his commanders were later brought to Beijing, where they were beheaded for treason. He was 33 years old.

Internal dissension was a major cause of Zhu Yigui's quick downfall. Tu Junying (杜俊英), the Hakka general of the Zhu army, withdrew his support when he could not persuade the self-styled emperor to install his son as a prince. Tu commanded at least 20,000 Hakka soldiers, who clashed with the Hoklo troops of the Zhu army. The Hakka later joined the Qing campaign against the King of Ducks.

A cousin of Lan's, Lang Ting-yuan (藍鼎元) published an eye-witness account of the campaign against Zhu Yigui. He was with the army of his Nanao brigadier cousin. In a compendium of instructions for the control of Taiwan, he advised agricultural exploitation, preparation against a possible invasion by the Japanese and the Dutch, the restriction of the aborigines to a special area, the building of schools, personnel training in forestry and reduction of taxes.

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