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Deng Zilong
Ming general from Fengcheng who beat back Burmese invaders in Yunnan and, past seventy, died fighting the Japanese fleet at Noryang in 1598
At dusk on a hilltop, a large tent stands open with a table holding a map marked with small stones inside, a saddled horse tethered outside, and fire stands burning; campfires dot the river plain below, and one tiny sentry stands on the slope.
Also known as Zi Wuqiao
Deng Zilong, courtesy name Wuqiao, literary name Daqian, came from Fengcheng in Jiangxi and first served in the Jiajing reign, when he answered a call for recruits against hill bands in Jiangxi and rose to company commander before fighting on in Guangdong. In 1583, when Burmese forces crossed into Yunnan, he and Liu Ting advanced by separate routes and defeated them south of Yaoguan. In 1598 he went to Korea as a deputy regional commander under the naval commander Chen Lin. At the battle of Noryang late that year, already over seventy, he led two hundred men onto a Korean warship to close with the enemy; a fire bomb thrown by mistake from another allied ship set it alight, the Japanese closed in, and he was killed, while the Korean admiral Yi Sun-sin was shot dead coming to his aid. The Ming court made him an assistant commissioner-in-chief and gave one son hereditary rank, and Korea built a shrine to him. His poems were collected as Hengge ji.
Life and times
Dates Birth unknown–1598 CE