The History of China - #206 - Ming 3: I Think I'm Paranoid

Episode Date: December 26, 2020

The founder of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang, the Hongwu Emperor... has got a bit of a trust problem. It starts with him getting upset that his officials are "cutting corners" when it comes to official counts of tribute payments & the stamped documents verifying them. But it quickly spirals into full-blown paranoia that absolutely everyone is out to get them, and the only was he knows how to confront this problem is by getting all of his "enemies" first. Time Period Covered: ca. 1373-1382 CE Major Historical Figures: The Hongwu Emperor (Zhu Yuanzhang) [r. 1368-1398] Crown Prince Zhu Biao [1355-1392] Zhu Shuang, Prince Min of Qin [1356-1395] Zhu Gang, Prince Gong of Jin [1358-1398] Zhu Di, Prince of Yan [1360-1424] Chancellor Hu Weiyong [d. 1380] Gao Qi [1334-1374] Prefect Ye Boju [d. 1376] Academician Zheng Shili [d. 1376] Sources Cited: Brook, Timothy. The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China. Langlois, John D., Jr. “The Hung-Wu-Reign” in The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 7: The Ming Dynasty, 13698-1644m Part I. Laozi. Dao De Jing. Luo, Yuming. A Concise History of Chinese Literature. Strassberg, Richard E. Inscribed Landscapes: Travel Writing from Imperial China. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. TD Direct Investing offers live support. So whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to the History of China. Episode 206. I think I'm paranoid.

Let the state be small, and the inhabitants few, such that, though possessing machines with the ability of tens or hundreds, they have no use for them. Let the people cherish life and abhor death, yet have no need to move to avoid it. Though they may have carts and ships, let them have no need to use them. Though they have strong armor and strong weapons, let them have no occasion to take them up. Let the people return to the task of weaving ropes and cords rather than writing words. Let them think their coarse food sweet, their plain clothes beautiful,

their humble homes as places of rest, and their simple ways sources of fine enjoyment. Though there may be neighboring states so nearby that a cock's crow or a dog's howl in one may be heard clearly in the next, let the people be so sated that they should grow old and die without ever desiring to see the other lands. The Tao Te Ching, Chapter 80, a rather typical translation. Let the state be small and the people few, so that the people, fearing death, will be reluctant to move great distances, and even if they have boats and carts, will not use them,

so that the people will find their food sweet and their clothes beautiful, will be content where they live and happy in their customs. Though adjoining states be within sight of one another, and cocks crowing and dogs barking in one can be heard in the next, yet the people of one state will grow old and die without having had any dealings with those of another. B. Dao De Jing, Chapter 80, Hongwu Emperor's Translation, by Timothy Brook It is pretty interesting when it comes to translation just how much relatively minor variations can really radically alter the coloration or meaning of a piece of text. This holds true not just for textual translation, but also about the meaning of a text, or a rumor, or an action, or a person, or a group of people. Typically, the stanzas of the Dao De Jing are taken and understood in a rather positive

meditative sense, a way to maximize the positive qualities of life for the most number of people. Yet the very same section can be taken with a markedly different and rather startlingly dark and threatening vibe if read even a little differently. And today we're going to see exactly how the Hongwu Emperor's rather dark and threatening read of philosophies like those found in the Dao De Jing will color and influence his reign in horrifying ways. We begin today with a court case of the highest possible magnitude, one demanded by no less than the Emperor himself, and bearing with it the ultimate penalty, death, for any and all found guilty. And, man oh man, will people be found very guilty indeed. It would, in fact,

become rather infamous all across the empire, both for the seemingly innocuous nature of the crime being prosecuted, which some would eventually argue, at their own peril, wasn't even a crime at all at the time, but also for the brutal harshness of the sentence hanging over the accused, which would ultimately serve but as a dire prelude to the latter half of Hongwu's three bloody decades on the Ming throne. The quote-unquote crime that had so enraged the emperor was the widespread practice of pre-stamping official documents before they had been completely filled in. So it was that the criminal case would take its name, the Kongyin An, or the pre-stamped documents case. Now a few things right off the bat. First off, what the

heck do I mean by stamped documents? Now this is going to be an obvious one for anyone who's been in Asia or lived in Asia for any significant period of time. But for those of you who might not have, this might be something of a foreign concept. In imperial and modern China alike, and many other countries across Asia and the world aside, a document only carries legal weight if it has been stamped with the relevant seal stamp, which is also known as CHOP. From the highest formal imperial writs all the way down to a local official receipt of sale, it's either got a stamp or it's legally meaningless. My latest work contract? I signed it, my boss signed it, but it wasn't really done until the CHOP stamp had been

applied. Want to get reimbursed by your job for grocery expenses or housing costs? Well, you better get an official receipt with the district stamp affixed, which, yeah, you do pay extra for. It's just the way things are done, and have always been done, for centuries. Everyone knows this. Everyone also knows that pre-stamping blank documents has been a long and well-established practice. Now, my work contract did not come pre-stamped, but those grocery and housing receipts, you better believe that they're already ready to just be filled in and used. Ain't nobody got time for that. procedure of convenience whereby pre-stamped but uncompleted report forms used in reporting tax revenue shipments to Nanjing were sent to Nanjing where the actual amounts were entered after deducting the losses incurred in transit. This, to almost everyone, made perfect sense because filling in the document beforehand would lead to potentially sizable discrepancies in the reported

amounts sent versus the amounts that actually, you know, arrived. That would mean, in effect, that the whole set of paperwork would have to be done all over again, a process that, for an operation of such scale and frequency, could easily swamp the relevant capital departments and lead to work backlogs of even a year or more. Now, was this a perfect workaround? Of course not. It absolutely left open, and even to this day, leaves open, the door for those in the know to who knows how much corruption and skimming off the top. After all, who would ever know the difference between the actual losses incurred in transit and those that had just been quote-unquote lost into embezzlers' pockets. But everyone knew that such graft was going on, and as it was, in large part, as long as it was kept to a reasonable level, it was usually just considered a more or less

acceptable cost of doing business in such a way that kept the workload manageable and moving along for everyone. Hongmu, however, was not one of the people who accepted such an obviously corruptible practice as just the price of keeping the gears greased. He viewed this as a holdover from the tremendous and ultimately fatal, quote, bureaucratic abuses that had emerged under the Mongol Yuan regime, end quote. As such, he ordered that any and all of those officials who were found to have engaged in this corrupt illegal practice of pre-stamping documents must be put to death. Hundreds were subsequently rounded up and dragged to the capital before the imperial court. They were, of course, almost all found guilty. After all, their names were literally signed to the documents in question, and shortly thereafter mass executed, as the emperor

hoped, a demonstration and warning to the other officials, as well as the populace at large. Corruption simply would not be tolerated in his new regime. The time of the Mongols was over and done. This was a nation of laws and punishments. Hongwu surely thought that such brutal application of imperial justice meted out upon so many officials would evoke anger, but more than that, much like Grand Moff Tarkin's expectation of the Death Star's capabilities, Hongwu must have expected it to spread awe and fear among the masses, which would keep them in line. He would swiftly be proven wrong, much to his confusion, chagrin, and further frustration. He would note this himself in his collected works,

published as the Gao Huangdi Yuzhe Wenji. Quote, At the time, the empire had just been pacified, and the people were wicked, the officials corrupt. Even though ten were executed in public in the morning, a hundred would be at it again that night. End quote. Pretty quickly, Hongwu realized, based on public and official opinion, that he might have somewhat overreacted in his application of punishment against the pre-stampers. This was also, it should be well noted, helped along greatly by the fact that his court astronomers had been reporting rather worrying activity among the stars and planets in their heavenly motions, long understood

as a sign of divine displeasure with the sovereign. By mid-October of that year, the emperor seemed to have somewhat backed down on his initial hardline stance, and even, in a truly rare show of royal humility, solicited critiques and criticism over his handling of the pre-stamped documents case. And you can bet that they began to roll in. Not in some great torrent, mind you. Most officials were conscious and protective enough of their own personal well-being to more or less keep a lid on however they might actually be feeling. But several particularly brave souls from the ministerial ranks did indeed take the emperor up at his word on his call for frank criticism of his actions toward their colleagues. There are two criticisms in particular that would reach the emperor that are the most cogent and

frank. The first is that of Ye Bozhu, an official then serving at Pingyao, a town just southwest of Taiyuan City in Shanxi. His criticisms were threefold, and struck at the very heart of what many felt was already beginning to go wrong within the newborn Ming regime. First, that Hongwu was setting the empire up for serious trouble in the future by choosing to enfeef his princely sons and bestow them with so much autonomous power and authority. Second, that the emperor's over-reliance on harsh punishments was, in fact, detrimental to his own ultimate goals, and therefore the empire's as well. And third, that the emperor was being unreasonable in his demands upon his own bureaucracy and their methods, while at the same time moving with excessive speed to establish his own institutions of rule without necessarily giving their long-term ramifications due consideration.

So let's break these down a little bit more. As per the first point, Ye turned out to be pretty much dead on in predicting what would happen to the empire in the years following Hongmu's own eventual death. Namely, that the Princes of the Blood would, using their own massive personal armies, vie against each other for power regardless of the chosen successor, and either kill one another off to usurp the throne, or else rip the realm apart in the attempt. Looking ahead to our good friend, the Prince of Yan, and his eventual campaign to render himself as the Yongle Emperor, spot on, Ye, spot on indeed. But we'll burn that particular bridge when we get there. As for the second point, as per Zhang Dilenghua, Ye noted that literati of the day considered it their great good fortune not to be summoned into the emperor's service.

They felt that way, he asserted, because they were sure to be sentenced to heavy labor or to be whipped for their efforts. End quote. How do you expect the best and brightest to seek out or even accept imperial service if they're certain they'll be heavily punished for even the slightest breach of strict protocols? Finally, quote, alluding to the pre-stamped documents case, Ye criticized the emperor for placing excessive and inhumane stress on simple bureaucratic honesty and efficiency, and he blamed the emperor for failing to exhort his officials to exert greater efforts in improving public morals and mores, end quote. The other official that merits pointing out for taking the emperor up on his call for frank criticism was the scholar Zheng Shili, who argued that, quote,

the emperor's anger over the use of pre-stamped forms was not rational. The forms were used in this way because otherwise the reporting of accurate figures would, for remote counties, take as long as a year, end quote. Zheng also pointed out that, technically speaking, no one had actually broken any formal law. That's right, Hongwu had gotten murderously bent out of shape for his officials doing something that was not only time and cost-saving, not only a well-established bureaucratic practice, but hadn't even actually been rendered illegal until Hongwu found out about it, got mad, and then punished them all ex post facto. So given all this, given the very cogent and correct points that such ministers had bravely put forward, and that they had done so, oh yeah, at the emperor's own request, how do you guess

Hongwu took the remonstrations of Ye and Zheng? With humility and contrition? With even an icy silence betraying nothing? Oh no, of course not. No, Hongwu became absolutely furious at these impudent ministers who were criticizing him, clearly demonstrating the treachery and disloyalty that they must surely feel in their hearts against him. Zheng Shili was arrested and sentenced to hard labor, and that, it turned out, was getting off easy. Ye Boju was dragged to Nanjing in chains and then thrown into the imperial dungeon, where he starved to death soon thereafter. Welp, so much for frank and honest critiques of the system by a loyal, concerned opposition. I guess it's back to the old standby mode of terrified silence and whispered

grumblings. As a separate but parallel and related point, here's another tale of Hongwu's infamous temper from Timothy Brooks' The Confusions of Pleasure. Quote, Hongwu followed this directive with another in 1373, banning the use of the parallel prose, pian ti, style, in laudatory texts, not so much to get people to say what they meant as to get their writing out of the high stylization that favored the well-educated. He ordered the Ministry of Rights to circulate sample texts by Tang Dynasty authors like Liu Zongyuan and Han Yu as models for composition. In 1375, the emperor received a memorial from Ru Taizu, a bureau secretary from

the Ministry of Justice, that was 17,000 characters long. He had the memorial read aloud to him. When the lector got to the 16,370th character, Hongwu took offense at two harsh comments and had the man summoned and beaten at court. The following evening, when Hongwu finally had the whole text read to him in bed, he decided that, in fact, four of Ru's five recommendations in the memorial were quite good, and at court session the next morning, ordered that they be carried out. He admitted that he had erred in getting angry, but blamed the victim for having left the substance of the memorial to the last 500 characters. Arguing that a truly loyal official should not trouble an emperor with 16,500 characters worth of fluff,

he extracted the last 500 characters as a model of memorial writing, adding a preface explaining his distaste for florid prose, and ordered it distributed throughout the realm as a model of how officials should write. Clarity of communication mattered in the running of so vast a bureaucratic operation, though who knows whether he was successful in trimming the loquaciousness of his other officials down to precise prose. End quote. Having a guy beaten for writing too fancy.

Yeah, that's pretty much peak Zhu Yuanzhang. It's a wonder that good help was so hard to find these days. You know, come to think of it, Hongwu strikes me as the kind of guy who would have absolutely loved Twitter. All right, here's one more example of the Hongwu Emperor just absolutely losing it. So born into this era is a young man by the name of Gao Qi, a young gentleman scholar who had, really, all the makings of being one of the greatest poets of his era. Until, that is,

he got on the wrong side of the emperor. Born in Suzhou to a modest family, Gao would, in his short life, write more than 3,000 works of poetry, primarily about nature and the countryside. Upon his total victory and accession to the throne in 1368, Hongwu summoned Gao Qi, who was then just 32 years old but having already won great renown for his poetic prowess, to the capital in order to aid in completing the compilation of the history of Yuan, as well as tutor the young imperial princes. Gao, however, had little taste for politics in general, or the hustle and bustle of the capital, and so within just two years he had retired from his imperial appointment and in the process declined a promotion to the right

vice minister of revenue, begging off by saying that he had absolutely no head for money or numbers. This was almost certainly an excuse, as is apparent from his writing, both while at the capital and even after he'd been allowed to return home, that compared to his previously idyllic life of hermitage and natural solitude, he was absolutely miserable there, and it permanently depressed him. Let's compare and contrast a few of his works. These first two are called Farmhouse and A Mountain Retreat, respectively. Now don't worry about the style, let's just pay attention to the tone here. So Farmhouse goes,

I heard the sound of the spinning wheel, mingled with the sound of flowing water, sight of wooden bridge, flowerless trees and hazy spring. Where from the aroma the breeze brought so close? Ah, my next door neighbor is brewing afternoon tea. And here is a mountain retreat. If it was some official envoy who rode slowly atop the distant ridgeline, the old monk neither knew And here is a mountain retreat. has already been collected, leaving little left for the apes. The crane's nest now sits exposed and abandoned. These walls hold no ancient monuments in need of names inscribed, only the verdant moss covering all. Peaceful, idyllic, full of natural beauty, and a real sense of calm and contentment, right? Okay, now let's take a look at one more poem, this third one written after his stint in Nanjing,

called Taking a Walk at the Eastern Plateau. It goes, The slanting sunshine keeps half the river bright. The reclusive man often takes a solitary walk. In gloomy mood, he confronts the somber dusk. His poetic mind gets refreshed when autumn arrives. A bird keeps pecking, tearing apart the withered willow. With an insect hanging on it, a leaf falls so lightly.

How is it that even after getting to return, he feels the same as when he's away from home? He sounds like a completely different person. Perhaps it was in part the lingering depression and distaste that led Gao Qi in 1374 to, rather naively, contribute to a poem that honored the legacy of his hometown, Suzhou, and specifically its magistrate named Wei Guan. The official tale, in the History of Ming, would tell it that his writings on the topic were taken as satirizing or otherwise criticizing the Hongwu Emperor. This was because Magistrate Wei's office had been constructed atop the same site as the old residence of Hongwu's old enemy, Zhang Shicheng, and the increasingly paranoid Ming founder took that as a treasonous slight against him. Napoleon Bonaparte rose from obscurity to become the most powerful

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Find The Age of Napoleon wherever you get your podcasts. Yu Mingluo, however, posits that that explanation doesn't quite pass muster, and it was instead a consequence of Guoqi's steadfast refusal to cooperate with the Ming Yu Mingluo, however, posits that that explanation doesn't quite pass muster, and it was instead a consequence of Guoqi's steadfast refusal to cooperate with the Ming Emperor, wishing that he serve him at Nanjing. Quote, The primary reason was his non-cooperation. Because of his fame and prestige, the warning that Zhu Yuanzhang issued to those among the literati who were unwilling to submit to his will

became even more grim and stern. End quote. In any event, the magistrate Weiguan affair was used as a pretext to round up a whole big group of officials that the emperor had deemed uncooperative or otherwise seditious. They were put to death, with Gao Chi's particularly grisly punishment likely being the standard go-to for the lot of them. The condemned were to be subjected to one of the cruelest methods of execution one can imagine, yao zhan, the dreaded waste chop. And I mean, it's pretty much all right there in the name. The prisoner was to be laid out on a large raised platform, and then the executioner, using a humongous guillotine-like blade,

actually more like a giant paper cutter, would cut the victim in half at the waist and then leave them to die in agony. And the process could last for a horrifyingly long time. In 1734, for instance, the waist chop would actually be discontinued as a form of capital punishment after its final victim remained alive long enough to write the character of misery seven times in his own blood before finally expiring. The then-sitting Qing Emperor, Yongzheng, found it just too cruel and torturous to even watch, and thereafter ordered its abolishment. But yeah, Gao Qi was apparently chopped not just once, but three times in total, leaving him in eight pieces. This sounds even worse, but it may well have been something of a small mercy since it must have at least sped up death.

It's also possible that the second and third chops were done post-mortem to further desecrate his corpse, and thereby humiliate his spirit in the afterlife, which was a big part of the point of Imperial China's particularly gruesome execution methods. Later on, Hongwu would, once again, rethink his initial rush of murderous fury. From Richard Strasburg, quote, Later, the emperor regretted his hasty judgment and posthumously rehabilitated magistrate Wei Guan, end quote. Gao Qi's verdict, however, remained unchanged. Which is really, for me at least, the final nail in the coffin that the seditious poetry charge was just a fig leaf to hide the fact that Hongwu was actually just like,

if I can't have them, then no one can. Strasburg concludes, quote, Gao's martyrdom exemplified for many the repression of the literati class under the paranoid Emperor Taizu, that's Hongwu's temple name, and may have contributed to the subsequent lackluster quality of the poetic scene, which lasted until the rise of the Orthodox poets a century later. End quote. And wouldn't you know it, it turns out that having an open and relatively terror-free work environment and lines of communication between the ruler and his ministers is actually sort of a positive and important thing. Even when, yeah, it can sometimes be a bit of a bummer. Without such clear lines of communication, the emperor was increasingly cut off from reliable information from those who advised him, while they themselves hoarded more and more information to use against their own political rivals in factional power moves. In short order, the Hongwu emperor felt compelled to form and empower a new office

called the Tongzhengshu, or the Office of Transmission, to review all commands and allow, quote, communications into the dark recesses of the palace, end quote. The Emperor likewise, for the first time, allowed the imperial censors to begin circuit inspections of the local governments across the empire in order to better keep Hongwu informed of his realm's local goings-on. This would begin to see results as of the late 1370s, but would really come to play a greater role as of the year 1380, which we will get into in just a little bit. In the meantime though, it was time for Hongwu's in's enfeefed princely sons to start the process of

learning how to better take up the duties and responsibilities that they would eventually be fully entrusted with. The crown prince, Zhu Biao, now as of 1387, about 13 years old, was beginning to sit in on his father's court audiences, and even sometimes weigh in on important decisions, albeit with strong, one might even say overbearing, paternal oversight. As for the princes of the blood, the expectations for them were far different, and as such, so too would be their education. The princes of Qin and Jin, 12 and 10 respectively, were each sent off to take up formal residence at their princely estates, Xian and Taiyuan. Meanwhile, the Prince of Yan,

the then eight-year-old Zhu Di, as well as three of his other likely half-brothers were sent off to what amounted to princely boarding school at the capital of the old family territory, Fengyang, which would serve as a place where princes received the military training that would prepare them to defend the empire's strategic points, end quote. Back at the southern capital, a storm was brewing, specifically around a rising star within the imperial court, Anhui native Hu Weiyong, whose year of birth doesn't appear to have been recorded, so we don't know his specific age, but we do know that he was at least old enough to have joined up with Zhu Yuanzhang as of 1355 and been a major contributor to the Ming cause as of 1363 by giving Zhu Yuanzhang use of his ships against Chen Youliang at the Battle of Lake Poyang. This, as you might well expect,

earned him a seat at the table when the Ming dynasty was formally established five years later. Given that information, by my rough math, that would put him at least in his late 20s by 1368, or possibly older, but probably about a decade or so younger than the Hongwu Emperor himself. Though his rise through the ranks had already been swift, it went meteoric as of 1373, when he was appointed to serve as one of the replacements to the eminent General Xu Da as Hongwu's chancellor. The elder statesman, Xu, it had been agreed, would be of better service to the empire pursuing and eliminating the Mongol threat east of Lake Baikal. Though no one could replace Xu Da, it was hoped that several lesser men might fill each of his shoes. Thus, Hu Weiyang

was appointed as the junior chancellor of the right in 1373, and over the next few years, between all the chancellors, there was just so, so much tension, factionalism, and angling to get more power each for themselves. All this is to say that by late 1376, there was a great reshuffling over the order of the chancellors after one of them impeached the senior most on charges of arrogance and disloyalty. The upshot is that Hu Weiyong went from the number three guy to the new number two guy, the senior chancellor of the left, while the old chancellor of the left was now the senior chancellor of the right, and the old senior chancellor of the right was now Hu's subordinate, the junior chancellor of the left. And believe me, I am boiling this down as much as I possibly can.

Just take my word for it. It was a vicious, merciless bloodsport from the inside, and really confusing, opaque, and terribly petty from the outside. And by no means did any of that stop with the 1377 reshuffling. That same year, Hu Weiyong would himself receive his first plot against him personally. From Leng Hua, quote, Hu Weiyong had moved close allies into positions at high levels and had begun to oust those he felt were not likely to support him. This prompted a censor named Han Yikou, a native of Zhejiang, to attack Hu and two of his allies in their presence before the throne.

He charged Hu and the others with disloyalty, and with having arrogated to themselves imperial powers. He begged the emperor to have them beheaded. Hongwu was incensed at such a charge leveled against his longtime friend and ally, and rather than indicting Chancellor Hu, he ordered the censor Han arrested, tried, and imprisoned, though he did spare Han's life, and he went on to serve Hongwu's eventual successor even. Hu Weiyong had managed to ably dodge that literal chopping block. But the thing is, charges of disloyalty, even ones summarily dismissed, have a way of sticking to an official like the stink of rotten

fish. And should the official be looked at sideways again by the emperor, well, it's pretty tough to talk your way out of that same corner twice. That day would come just three years later, in 1380. For all of its lasting infamy, remarkably few of the details surrounding the actual incident or allegations can be corroborated enough to really say that we know what happened for certain. The official version of the story, as compiled in the 17th century History of Ming, seems to have blended elements of the likely with the highly dubious. It states that Hu Weiyang and a cabal of others had by then conspired to assassinate the Hongwu Emperor, and that, apparently, Hu himself hoped to either take over directly, or else personally select an imperial puppet to rule through. One of the army officers in on the plot, the commander of the garrison of Ningbo, was dispatched to enlist the Japanese Wokuo's aid against Hongwu,

while another, called Fengqi, a figure who Lengua states many scholars have come to doubt existed at all, was supposedly dispatched to Mongolia to get the Mongol Khan, Togus Temur, in on their side. It was supposed to have been a coup d'etat of the highest possible order. It's hardly surprising that such a supposedly wide-ranging plot would leak, as they almost invariably do, and all the more so with every moving part added. More surprising was that it was apparently Hu Weiyong himself who kind of tipped the emperor off to his vast treason. Quote, One day, Hu's son fell from his horse in Nanjing and was killed beneath the wheels of a passing cart. Hu killed the cart driver in revenge. When the emperor heard about it,

he grew angry and ordered Hu Weiyong to compensate the driver's family. Yet when Hu requested permission to give gold and silk to the driver's surviving relatives, the emperor forbade him from doing so. This made Hu afraid, and so with the censor Chen Ning and the vice censor-in-chief Tu Jie, he plotted the mutiny." Hu got so wrapped up in his plot to destroy Hongwu that he actually started forgetting to do the rather important elements of his own actual job. In late 1379, a delegation from the southern Vietnamese kingdom of Champa reached Nanjing to present tribute to the throne, and Hu failed to report their arrival. When Hongwu learned of this, he, in a fury, demanded to know exactly who had messed up. And the fingers of blame went flying each and every witch away, leading to

just about everyone in the high government positions to be arrested, and the senior censor-in-chief, and one of Hu's former fellow chancellors, immediately put to death. Well now, this managed to loosen the lips of the vice- censor-in-chief, Tu Jie, who quite understandably was suddenly feeling the cold breath of the reaper against the back of his own neck. And so, as one of the co-conspirators, vice censor Tu Jie spilled just all of the beans to Hongmu in early 1380. After investigating, the emperor ordered the execution of Hu Weiyong and Cheng Ning, and also Tu Jie. Oh what, you thought he'd get out of this just for reporting it? Not likely. Snitches don't get stitches in Hongwu's empire. Snitches get graves. An alternate version of the affair, quote, holds that Hu Weiyong had invited the emperor to his

residence on the pretext of showing him a spring that had suddenly begun flowing on the premises, end quote. Which, I don't know, seems like kind of a weird thing to invite someone over to show, but alright. Well, it was, of course, an elaborate trap, and Hu had a whole bunch of assassins hiding inside his house just waiting to pounce and murder Hongwu once he stepped inside. This time, it was one of the palace eunuchs, a guy named Yunqi, who would come out and ruin Huayong's best-laid plans. Somehow or another, he caught wise to the plot against the emperor just in the nick of time, and came bursting out of the palace as the emperor made his way to Hu's residence, which was, as it so happened, right next door. He ran up to the emperor and stopped him, but was so worked up that he couldn't even speak to explain himself. In extremely typical Hongwu fashion, the emperor quickly got fed up with the mute eunuch failing

to explain himself, and so ordered his guards to just start beating the tar out of him for wasting his time. Yunqi's loyalty was so great, however, that even with his arm near broken, he just kept desperately pointing at Hu Weiyong's house, finally figuring out that, like, something must be wrong here, because no one just catches a beating for the fun of it. Hongwu finally snuck over to the side of Hu's outer wall, somehow manages to climb up and peek over the top, and saw all the murderous thugs waiting for him inside. The jig was up. Now these are two very different versions of the supposedly same event, which, if either, is true. Leng Lua writes, quote, despite the wild contradictions in the stories, what seems probable

is that Hu Weiyong had used his power to pack the bureaucracy with his followers and had virtually taken over the administration from within. Whether who had exceeded his legitimate authority to create a responsive and cohesive civil bureaucracy and actually intended treachery, as the increasingly suspicious emperor claimed, is not clear. What is clear is his reaction to this threat, whether real or just perceived. Simply punishing the individuals indicted wouldn't be nearly sufficient. No, no, all must suffer. It was time for the Miezu, family extermination, to come roaring back full force into standard imperial practice. Family or clan extermination was a time-tested policy dating all the way back to the Shang and Zhou. It had been regularly employed as well by both the Qin and then the Han, as well as adopted by the Tang, albeit by

then in a much more limited form than total eradication like before. Its employment had fallen out of favor during the Song dynasty, and of course, it was an alien custom during the Yuan. But Zhu Yuanzhang was a traditionalist, and if extermination to the ninth degree was good enough for Qin Shi Huang and Han Wudi, well, then darn it, it was going to be good enough for the Hongwu Emperor. The offender's parents, grandparents, brethren, both by birth, as well as sworn brothers, children, grandchildren, anyone else living with the offender, regardless of last name, uncles, nieces, and nephews, were likewise arrested and then put to death.

And then, after all that, the offenders themselves were torturously executed. For a crime such as this, we can certainly guess that it would either have been via waist-cutting, or the equally, if not even more torturous, dreaded lingchi, slow slicing, or more familiarly, death by a thousand cuts. In what might be considered the smallest possible measure of mercy, the women of the clan were typically given the option to commute their execution sentences to life enslavement. Oh goody. Hongwu didn't just stop there, however. Now really starting to fully descend into his paranoia-fueled madness that would characterize the infamous second half of his reign, he initiated a massive rolling purge, and anyone and everyone he could find who might even be suspected of having been involved in Hu Weiyong's plot against him.

Over the course of the decade and a half to follow, tens of thousands would meet their grisly ends under the blades of imperial executioners as a result of these purges. Numbers range from the Hongwu Emperor's own official estimation of 15,000 put to death to as high as 40,000 killed. Surely such a drastic empire-wide bloodletting couldn't just be from this single incident, could it? Leng Lua posits, quote, Aside from the alleged attempt at a coup, various reasons have been put forward to explain these purges. One is economic. Most were persons whose lands were liable to be confiscated by the state. The purges also allowed the emperor to weaken the influence that southerners had come to exert in the government, end quote. Still, even with these

other explanatory factors, Langlois concludes, concludes, but the main reason for the purges appears to have been the emperor's disposition. The case of the pre-stamped documents revealed in him a deep loathing for even the appearance of disloyalty or corruption. The Hu Weiyong case reveals this even more clearly. Governmentally, there was yet another consequence of the Hu Weiyong affair. The total abolition of the office of chancellor and the entire Ministry of the Secretariat from the Ming Imperial Government. Other top-tier governmental offices were likewise shuttered indefinitely, including the Chief Military Commission as well as the Tribunal of Censors. From here on out, the Hongwu Emperor would serve as his own Prime Minister, his own Commander-in-Chief, and his own Chief Justice. He could trust, he now felt, absolutely no one else. Quote,

What remained were the fragmented hierarchies beneath them. The military was now headed by five lower-ranked chief military commissioners, all answering directly to the throne. The censorial system lacked a unified head until 1382, when the chief surveillance officer, Du Chaiyuan, was established, end quote. All this, obviously, meant that Hongwu had to do a tremendous amount of work all by himself. Well, he was just fine with that. Liked it that way, even. He'd make sure to get the job done right, dammit. Unfortunately, as is so often the case, such measures taken by especially active and monomaniacal emperors, who obsess over every tiny little detail of the case, such measures taken by especially active and monomaniacal emperors, who obsess over every tiny little detail of the office, are rarely passed down to their successors,

who typically would rather do more enjoyable things with their lives, thanks very much, Dad. Thus, by dissolving so much of his own government to make sure the job got done right by the only person he trusted to do it, Hongwu hollowed out the very systems that would typically aid his own successors in governing in an actually sustainable manner. As yet another act of panic over the alleged plot against him, Hongwu also ordered that the Prince of Yan, who was now 20 years old, finally depart Fengyang and take up his residence and post at Beiping City. Quote, Zhu Di was a capable man, and the emperor hoped thus to secure the northern borders of the empire. End quote. Before the year was out, though it seems that Hongwu had at least a

temporary crisis of conscience over his massive bloodletting, and as such he issued a general imperial amnesty for the purges already conducted. Quote, taking responsibility in the accompanying edict for having employed evil men whom he ultimately had no choice but to execute. End quote. This would not, however, prevent him from continuing his murderous purges for the next decade and a half. Where we'll finish out today, though, is with Hongwu's brief, abortive, tragicomic attempt to fill in the massive bleeding gaps he'd just ripped open within his own administration. Calling upon local officials to recommend worthy men for service, a dubious honor indeed, at which we can assume anyone nominated must just

have gulped deeply, he accepted some 860 new high-level officials by the end of 1380. At the top of this new, hastily rebuilt hierarchy, he appointed the Crème de la Crème to a new and ad hoc organization called the Sifuguan, or the Four Assisting Offices. In total, 12 officials were to be selected at any given time, and they were to be rotated, or at least that was the initial idea, seasonally. Hence, each group of three officials were named after the season that they were supposed to take up the reins of government. Well, that fell apart pretty much immediately. Quote, Only six officers for spring and summer were ever appointed. They were charged with bearing concurrently the duties of the six vacant offices for autumn and winter. End quote.

So we're off to a great start, as you can see. But it gets even better. Quote, Of the nine officers appointed during the two years when the posts existed, all but one were elder scholars without significant political or administrative experience. Several were men from humble farming backgrounds, which may have made them appear unthreatening to the increasingly insecure emperor. Therefore, the ad hoc cabinet had very little real power. It in no way resembled the secretariat, end quote. In fact, the only real

powers that these assisting officers ever really held during their short tenures was to be able to recommend the reversal of criminal convictions, advise the throne on matters of Confucian governance, and evaluate the merits of possible new officials. And in one of the only instances where the cabinet members actually tried to use that first power and actually managed to reverse a criminal verdict, Hongwu got so angry at them that four were almost immediately forced to resign, and one of them was executed afterward. Nice.

To the shock of exactly no one, the already very small pool of officials clamoring for these posts dried right up, and the Sifu Guan, such as it had ever been functional at all, was shuttered by 1382. There was no replacement planned or implemented. That is where we're going to leave it today and for the year. Next time, we will be leaving this cursed year of 2020 behind and ringing in the hopefully much better year of 2021. By, of course, looking at the Ming's military missions to try to shore up those regions on its periphery that were still being troublesome, all while the Hongwu Emperor slips further, that's right, even further, into a panicky blood haze of torture and death. Thanks for listening. quarter of the globe and on which the sun never set. I'm Samuel Hume, a historian of the British

Empire, and my podcast Pax Britannica follows the people and events that built that empire into a global superpower. Learn the history of the British Empire by listening to Pax Britannica everywhere you find your podcasts, or go to pod.link slash pax.