The Heshian War for Independence began in earnest following a skirmish at Dongshan, where Ming forces initially routed a rebel militia but failed to quell the broader uprising. Instead of suppressing the dissent, the violence galvanized the populace across the southern provinces, transforming isolated pockets of resistance into a coordinated revolutionary movement. By early 1783, rebel militias achieved a stunning victory by capturing the vital port of Shan Wan from Imperial regulars. This success emboldened the political leadership to convene the Second Regional Assembly, where they declared that the Emperor had lost the Mandate of Heaven and appointed the disgraced but brilliant tactician Zhang Mingxi to lead their disorganized forces against the professional Ming army.

Despite these early political strides, the military reality remained grim for the rebels. Mingxi’s attempt to besiege the colonial capital of Huangcheng ended in disaster when the Imperial commander, Zhao Tianwu, launched a devastating breakout that shattered the rebel army and forced a chaotic retreat. With the revolution on the brink of total collapse in the winter of 1783, Mingxi gambled on a retreat into the treacherous Zhai Gu mountains. When the overconfident Tianwu split his forces to trap them, Mingxi executed a masterful ambush in the valley, annihilating a column of 8,000 Imperial soldiers. This miraculous victory completely reversed the momentum of the war, forcing the Ming army to withdraw to the loyalist northern province of Bei Senlin and allowing the rebels to consolidate control over the south.

Buoyed by this survival, the rebels formally declared independence as the "United Provinces of Mornaea" in early 1784. The conflict soon expanded into a proxy war between global powers when Britain, seeking to undermine its Asian rival, formally allied with the new republic. The intervention of the Royal Navy proved decisive, as British ships severed the Ming’s trans-Pacific supply lines and raided coastal convoys, slowly starving the Imperial army of men and materiel. Simultaneously, Mingxi secured his northern flank by crushing the Ming’s native allies at the Battle of Lake Tianchi, clearing the way for a final offensive into the north.

The war concluded in 1785 with a grueling campaign to capture the last Imperial stronghold of Sēnlín Wān. Supported by British marines and naval bombardment, Mingxi’s Provincial Army besieged the city for two months before launching a combined assault that broke the Ming defenses. The surrender of the Imperial army at Sēnlín Wān effectively ended Chinese rule in the colony. Although low-level skirmishing continued for another year, the Ming court in Beijing eventually recognized the futility of waging a cross-oceanic war against British naval supremacy and tacitly accepted the loss of the colony in 1787, securing the birth of the new republic.