Court eunuch leaders of the Directorate of Ceremony, such as Wei Zhongxian in the 1620s, have acted as virtual, de facto dictators of the state, since the assumption of power by court eunuchs under the Wanli emperor.

Wei Zhongxian, considered by most historians as the most powerful and notorious eunuch in Chinese history, had taken the step of becoming a eunuch and entering palace service to escape from his creditors, taking the name Li Jinzhong.

After entering the palace, he had become attached to the service of Madam Ke, the wet-nurse of the future emperor.

The couple had begun manipulating the Tianqi Emperor, who had renamed him Wei Zhongxian.

Zhu Youxiao had become the Tianqi emperor at the age of fifteen, on the death of his father who had ruled less than a month.

He pays little attention to affairs of state, and is accused of failing in his filial duties to his dead father by not continuing his father's wishes.

It is possible that Zhu Youxiao suffers from a learning disability or something more: he is illiterate and shows no interest in his studies.

Because he is unable to read memorials and uninterested in the affairs of state, his head eunuch, Wei Zhongxian has usurped the power along with Madam Ke.

The young emperor apparently devotes his time to carpentry.

Wei has taken advantage of the situation and begun appointing the people he trusts to important positions in the palace.

Meanwhile Madam Ke seeks to retain power by removing all other women from the emperor's harem by locking away the concubines of the emperor and starving them to death.

The emperor's favor had soon given Wei absolute power over the court, enabling Wei to persecute anyone who opposes his decisions, resulting in the death and imprisonment of many officials.

One Confucian moralist group, the Donglin Party, had expressed distress at the conditions of the Imperial State.

In response, the palace had covertly ordered the execution of a number of officials associated with the Donglin.

Living conditions have worsened during Tianqi’s reign and he has faced several popular uprisings.

Wei Zhongxian had eventually proclaimed himself to be Nine-Thousand Years, which means that he is symbolically the second most important person in the country, just after the emperor, who is called the Ten-Thousand Years.

Wei also builds many shrines and erects god-like statues of himself in them.

His control of the court ends in 1627 with the death of the Tianqi Emperor, whose brother and successor promptly eliminates him.

He is forced to commit suicide (some sources say executed by strangulation) and his corpse is disemboweled.

The Manchu, under Hong Taiji, initiate a war of conquest against the Koreans in 1627.

Huang Taiji in 1627 dispatches Amin, Jirgalang, Ajige and Yoto to Korea, guided by Gang Hong-rip and other Koreans.

The Korean army, having still not recovered from Seven-Year War against Japan, is ill-prepared for defense against the Manchus, who manage to march deep within Korean territory and defeat Mao Wenlong's troops but fail to capture the commander.

When the Manchus advance southward to Hwangju, ...

...King Injo flees from Hanseong (Seoul) to Ganghwa Island in panic.

The Manchus, despite their dominance over the situation, push for peace negotiations, probably because Hong Taiji is concerned about home defenses.

Their peace offer to Korea is soon accepted, despite the opposition of some anti-Manchu statesmen who fail to appreciate the strong position of Manchus.

The following settlement is agreed upon in Ganghwa Island:

1.Korea will abandon the Ming era name Tianqi.

2.Korea will offer Yi Gak as a hostage as a substitute for a royal prince.

3. (Later) Jin and Korea will not violate each others' territory.

In the meantime, Amin in Pyongyang loots the city for days, before he is ordered by Hang Taji to sign the peace agreement, which is more favorable to the Manchus.

After the four month expedition, the Manchu army withdraws to Mukden.

The two sides conduct postwar negotiations.

The Manchus force Korea to open markets near the borders because the long conflict with Ming China has brought economic hardship to the Manchus.

Korea also returns the Warka tribe to Later Jin.

The Manchus are to exact regular tribute from Korea for the next several years.

Yuan Chonghuan, reinstated in 1628 under a new government as field marshal of all the forces of the northeast, embarks on an ambitious five-year plan for the complete recovery of Liaodong.

Chongzhen, the new emperor of the Ming Dynasty, reiterates the state prohibition against female infanticide in 1629, while the empire and the Chinese economy begin to crumble.

In the same year, a third of the courier stations are closed down due to lack of government funds to sustain them.

Born Zhu Youjian, Chongzhen is the fifth son of the Taichang Emperor.

As such, he has grown up in a relatively quiet environment, since most of the younger sons are left out of the power struggle that their elder brother the Tianqi Emperor had had to endure.

Chongzhen succeeds his brother to the throne at age seventeen and immediately eliminates the eunuch Wei Zhongxian and Madam Ke, who had become de facto rulers of the empire.

Chongzhen tries to rule by himself and did his best to salvage the dynasty.

However, years of internal corruption and an empty treasury make it almost impossible to find capable ministers to fill important government posts.

The Chongzhen Emperor had taken the reign in 1627 at the age of sixteen, and in 1629 (at the age of 18) he grants Yuan Chonghuan the title of "Senior Guardian of the Heir Apparent".

The Chongzhen Emperor gives him his Imperial Sword and states that he will fully support Yuan's decisions.

Yuan now has to face again a larger Manchurian force (slightly above two hundred thousand) under Huang Taiji.

This time the Manchurians have incorporated many more men including the newly surrendered Mongols, rebel Ming army, and the conquered Korean forces and various small states of the North.

However, the Manchus are not confident enough to attack Jinzhou or Ningyuan again and change their strategy.

Bypasssing Jinzhou, Ningyuan and Shanhai Pass, the Manchus break through the Great Hall west of Shanhai Pass and suddenly appear north of Beijing in the winter of 1629.

Yuan rushes back with an elite army from Ningyuan to defend the capital, reaching Beijing just days before the Manchus.

Outside the city wall of Beijing, he defeats the Manchurian "Eight Banners", which number one hundred thousand, but is not strong enough to destroy the attacking army.

Yuan, instead of being fêted, is heavily criticized when he arrives in Beijing, and some eunuchs even accuse Yuan of collaborating with the enemy.

They have in fact been tricked by Huang Taiji into thinking that Yuan had betrayed them.

Huang Taiji had publicly stated that he would never be able to beat Yuan in a fair game, thus, making the Chongzhen Emperor kill him had been the only method to get rid of him.

When the message of Yuan's death reaches Huang Taiji, he changes the name of the manchu state from Jin to Qing and proclaims himself Emperor Qing Taizong.

Some historical information states that Huang Taiji feared Yuan's last word stating his soul will always guard Liaodong Peninsula: As the name Chonghuan means Undying Flames, containing the element "Fire", Huang Taiji had chosen the word Qing, meaning cleanse, which contains the element "Water", to overcome it; however, even if this is the case, the main reason is probably because the "Ming" of the Ming Dynasty contains the element "Fire" itself.

The Chongzhen Emperor orders Yuan’s arrest during an interview on January 13, 1630.

He is accused, without much evidence, of collusion with the enemy and condemned to the "death by a thousand cuts" at Ganshiqiao in Beijing.

When Yuan is asked for last words before his execution, he produces the poem: "A life's work always ends up in vain; half of my career seems to be in dreams. I do not worry about lacking brave warriors after my death, for my loyal spirit will continue to guard Liaodong."

His family is resettled.

He is left there after the torture, shouting for half a day and then stops.

It is said that because of his "betrayal", many Beijing citizens hated him so much that they rushed to buy his body parts so they could eat them.

His head, the only recognizable part after the torture, is taken outside the Inner City Wall by a city guard, whose surname is She, and buried near Guanqu Men.

The guard's family have guarded it from one generation to the next ever since.

Yuan is mourned throughout most of the country outside Beijing and even in Korea; with his death many now regard the Ming Dynasty and its allies as highly vulnerable.

Zheng Zhilong, born in Fujian, the son of a mid-level financial official for the Quanzhou government, had once, when he was a child, wanted to eat a longan fruit.

Finding a tree, he threw a small stone at the tree in the hope of knocking some fruit loose.

The mayor of Quanzhou, surnamed Tsai, was passing by, and his hat was knocked off by the stone Zheng had thrown.

Due to the child's age, the mayor forgave Zheng and released him, but Zheng's father never forgave him for embarrassing the family, and had forced him out of the family home at the age of seventeen.

Studying business under his uncle in Macau at the age of eighteen, he had been baptized as a Catholic in Macao, receiving the Christian name Nicholas Gaspard.

He later worked for Li Dan, a Chinese businessman in Nagasaki, Japan, where Zheng married Tagawa Matsu, a local woman.

When Dutch forces took over the Pescadores archipelago off the Taiwan Strait in 1622, Li Dan had sent Zheng to Pescadores to work with the Dutch as a translator.

The Dutch, wishing to control and monopolize commerce routes to Japan, collaborate with Chinese pirates; Zheng was one of the collaborators, engaging in robberies along coastal China.

After Lee died, Zheng acquired his fleet of ships in 1623.

Zheng's son, Zheng Chenggong, was born in Nagasaki in 1624.

Zheng relocated his enterprise to Taiwan in the same year, due to the feudal nature of Japan during the Edo period.

He had built ten outposts in the island's southwestern coastal region, between Tainan and Chiayi, but had been evicted shortly after when the Dutch arrived on the island.

Zheng had in 1625 founded Shibazhi, a pirate organization of eighteen well-known Chinese pirates.

Members include Shi Dashan, the father of Shi Lang, the future commander-in-chief of the Manchu fleets that will one day destroy the power of the Zheng family and conquer the short-lived Kingdom of Tungning (now Taiwan) founded by Zheng Chenggong, better known to history as Koxinga.

The Shibazhi have begun to challenge the Ming fleet and have won a series of victories.

The Ming Dynasty's southern fleet had surrendered to Shibazhi in 1628, and Zheng Zhilong receives the appointment of major general.

Tsai, the mayor who had forgiven Zheng for de-hatting him so many years ago, comes to Zheng and asks for a position in the Ming navy; Zheng grants this request.

After joining the Ming navy, Zheng and his wife had resettled on an island off the coast of Fujian, where he operates a large armed pirate fleet of over eight hundred ships along the coast from Japan to Vietnam.

Appointed by the Chinese Imperial family as "Admiral of the Coastal Seas", he defeats Dutch East India Company vessels in the Gulf of Kinmen on October 22, 1633.

Zheng will continue to serve the Ming dynasty after the fall of Beijing in June 1644.

Massive epidemics had broken out in northern and central China in 1640 and raced south down along the Grand Canal of China and the densely populated settlements there, from the northern terminus at Beijing, to the fertile Jiangnan region.

The epidemic wipes out ninety percent of the local populace in some areas and towns.