execute him, turning appeasement efforts to naught. In December, confident in his prospects and his invulnerability, Wang Zhi made landing at Hangzhou. There he was accorded respectable treatment by the authorities, who feared antagonizing his followers, while they figure out what to do with him. During this time Hu Zongxian asked Wang Zhi to help manufacture arquebuses for the Ming army, which led to the weapon being widely used in China. Finally in February next year, Wang Zhi was sent to prison, where he was given the luxuries of novelties, books, and healthy foods. Wang Zhi believed this was a temporary arrangement and remained hopeful for a pardon until 22 January 1560, when an imperial edict handed down the death sentence and he was summarily beheaded. By capturing and executing Wang Zhi, the Ming court had hoped to perform a decapitation strike in which his followers would disband. In fact, as officials who supported negotiations had feared, Wang Zhi's followers gave up hope for peaceful trade and went back to their violent ways. Feeling betrayed after Wang Zhi was apprehended, Mao Haifeng made Zhoushan Island his base and launched raids on Zhejiang and Fujian. Hu Zongxian made a concerted effort to dislodge Mao from Zhoushan in March 1558, converging on the island from six directions with the generals Yu Dayou and Qi Jiguang, but failed and was forced to retreat. He tempered the rising criticism against him by blaming Yu and Qi, while sending Beijing a white deer, an auspicious Taoist symbol, to the emperor's great delight. The pirates eventually abandoned Zhoushan in December of the same year owing to the heavy military presence there, and scattered south to Fujian which became their new area of operation. In the summer of 1559, the remaining pirate bands in the Yangtze River Delta were wiped out. The end of the wokou crisis Military action in Fujian Hu Zongxian turned his attention to Fujian after the situation in Zhejiang settled down, however, as he did so, his ally Yan Song began to fall out of imperial favour and finally lost his position as Senior Grand Secretary in June 1562. In the following purge of Yan's associates, Hu Zongxian was impeached for being too friendly to Wang Zhi and mishandling military funds, among other perceived transgressions. The Jiajing Emperor interceded on his behalf and allowed Hu to retire with all his titles intact in