The History of China - #210 - Ming 5: The Problem With Princes

Episode Date: March 1, 2021

The Hongwu Emperor enters the twilight of his life. But before he's ready to ride off into that long sunset, he's going to take a hell of a lot more people with him... Time Period: 1387-1398 CE Major Historical FIgures: The Hongwu Emperor (Zhu Yuanzhang) [r. 1368-1398] Crown Prince Zhu Biao [1355-1392] Crown Prince Zhu Yunwen (The Jianwen Emperor) [1377-1402] Zhu Shuang, the Prince of Qin [1356-1395] Zhu Gang, the Prince of Jin [1358-1398] Zhu Di, the Prince of Yan [1360-1424] Zhu Su, the Prince of Zhou [1361-1425] General Fu Youde [1327-1394] General Feng Sheng [d. 1395] Major Sources: Langlois, John D., Jr. “The Hung-Wu-Reign” in The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 7: The Ming Dynasty, 13698-1644m Part I. Robinson, David M. In the Shadow of the Mongol Empire: Ming China and Eurasia. Sun, Bing. “The burial system of imperial concubines in the Ming Dynasty and the ‘ancestral system’ of the Ming Dynasty.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. The French Revolution set Europe ablaze. It was an age of enlightenment and progress, but also of tyranny and oppression. It was an age of glory and an age of tragedy. One man stood above it all. This was the Age of Napoleon. I'm Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast. Join me as I examine the life and times of one of the most fascinating and enigmatic

characters in modern history. Look for the Age of Napoleon wherever you find your podcasts. Hello and welcome to the History of China. Episode 210, The Problem with Princes. We begin today outside of China proper. Rather, we find ourselves in the peripheral, peninsular kingdom of Korea, or to be more accurate, the kingdom of Goryeo, right about where we left off last time, as of the year 1387. The kings of Korea had found themselves in something of a rather tight spot. On the one hand, they were intimately bound by marriage and family to the Mongol Yuan dynasty, and had worked long

and hard to become so. Heck, the last empress of Great Yuan had herself been Korean. On the other hand, there was an undeniable wind of change coursing across the region, and by this point, no one could deny it. The Mongols were in full flight back to their desolate homeland, and a new power, the Ming, had firmly established itself as the principal power of the known world. About this, there could be no argument. So, what to do? Well, unsurprisingly, at first, the kings of Korea sought to do the obvious thing, which was to have their cake and eat it, too. They tried to remain formally a vassal state of the Yuan, while also sending mission after mission south to Nanjing

with costly tribute gifts to likewise acknowledge their fealty to the new kid on the block, the Ming. It didn't go particularly well. Northern Yan, of course, was in no position to really complain about, well, anything at this point, as their list of potential allies grew thinner by the day. As for the Ming government of the Hongwu Emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang, on the other hand, they were not nearly such beggars that they couldn't be choosers at this point. Between 1379 and 1385, the Goryeo kings sent no fewer than 18 emissaries to the Ming capital, laden with the most precious and costly gifts of tribute the peninsula could offer the newly acknowledged Son of Heaven.

They did this with very good reason, it should be noted, as by this point the legitimacy of Goryeo itself and its ruling House of Wang rested on very shaky ground indeed. Such tributary missions, therefore, no matter the expense, were deemed as absolutely vital in shoring up the legitimacy of the ruling government. Without such legitimacy bestowed by the Son of Heaven, the royal House of Wang opened itself up to subversion, attack, and even overthrow. For all this, the Hongwu Emperor, in what can perhaps be deemed as a rather classically imperial fashion, remained aloof and rather nonplussed. Some of Goryeo's tribute missions his government accepted,

while others it rejected after being deemed inadequate. The general policy of Hongwu's regime toward its neighbors can be summed up as being broadly non-interventionist. Lengua puts it, All foreign states he held were equal to one another, but less equal to the Middle Kingdom. can be summed up as being broadly non-interventionist. Lengua puts it, All foreign states he held were equal to one another, but less equal to the Middle Kingdom. Therefore, the Ming court would not attack unless compelled to do so for defense. End quote. Or, in the words of Hongwu himself,

Those foreign states that do China no harm must not be hastily invaded. End quote. Therein, by the way, lays the rationale for the singular exception for that rule. Wait for it. The Mongols. As they'd been such an existential threat before, and even now, clung to their pretensions to the throne of China, aggressively attacking them was actually defensive. Anyways, concurrent with the neutralization of the Mongol general of the northeast, a man named Nagachu, circa 1387, the regions surrounding the Korean peninsula were brought more firmly to heel, and Hongmu began taking more attentive interest in the peninsular kingdom. This was helped along in no small part by the Koreans' own dire misreading of the

international forecast following the Mongol defeat in Manchuria as of 1387. Seeing the Yuan general expelled from the northern region, Goryeo sought to capitalize on the seeming power vacuum by asserting its own significant territorial claims on the region north of the Yalu River. And for reference, that's the river that serves even today as the border between North Korea and China. That, as you might well imagine, did not fly with the Ming court. But even if it had, the Goryeo efforts were doomed from within. The Korean general and warlord Lee Song-gye, who made his career and renown on the preceding decade plus as a staunch anti-Mongol fighter and supporter of the Ming and Zhu Yuanzhang, adamantly opposed the expansionary policy of the Goryeo government under his rival, General Choi Yong, arguing, correctly, that it would put

the already tottering kingdom into direct conflict with the preeminent power of the era. Facing such an existential crisis, Yi Songye made a truly momentous decision, his own crossing the Rubicon moment, known in Korea as the Weehawado Huigun, or the military pullback from Weehaw Island, ordered to take his army and cross over into Liaodong as a part of the invasionary force. Yi instead turned his force around and marched on the Goryeo capital, Kaesong. Defeating and then dispatching General Choi, Yi Songye proceeded to de facto overthrow King Wu of Joseon. Yet, as was ever the case, it would have seemed a bridge too far to do so in an overt manner. As such, for the time being, he enthroned Wu's son,

Chang, as what would be the final king of Goryeo, while simultaneously installing himself as the right chancellor of state, in effect, the true power behind the boy king's throne. Once enough heat had bled off his little revolution, about four years' time, as it were, around about 1392, Yi Songye did what surely everyone knew was always coming. He formally, uh, accepted the king's abdication, a different king, it should be noted,

as Chang had been murdered at the tender age of nine to be replaced by a ridiculously distant clansman of apparently more royal lineage called Gongyan. And I took the time to look this up for some reason, and apparently this is what's called a sixth cousin twice removed, which insofar as I can tell, makes them about as closely related as I am to Ronald Reagan. Regardless, thus ended the Goryeo dynasty, and was established in its place the Joseon dynasty, based out of Seoul. Between 1392 and 1394, the newborn Joseon regime would repeatedly attempt to win its recognition from Big Brother Ming by establishing a formal tributary relationship with it.

The Ming government, rather unsurprisingly, responded in a pretty high-handed manner. Several embassies were returned without being given an audience, and at least one even beaten when they failed to perform the necessary kowtow to specification. It was only in 1394, after a highly flattering obsequious Korean mission, in which the Ming was formally informed that the Joseon state had established a new moral order in Korea, that the Hongwu Emperor at last permitted the establishment of a regular tributary relationship with the Peninsular Kingdom. Even this, however, did not end the rough relations between the two upstart powers. From Leng Hua, quote,

Even then, the Koreans angered their Chinese counterparts on several occasions by insufficient flattery in their formal communications to the Chinese throne, and by alleged faults in the literary style of their documents, end quote. We must remember that Hongwu was the kind of guy who wanted his messages to be written in a very particular manner, and he was liable to have you beaten half to death if your prose dragged on for too long. More than just simple faults in style, though, Ming Hongwu's ill temper towards Korea was reflective of his larger policy goal of having his China largely retreat from the outside world. He desired a realm that wanted and needed

nothing from anyone else, and would not so much as even look beyond their respective localities toward distant horizons. A peaceful land, a quiet people. What this meant in terms of formal foreign policy, then, was that Great Ming was going to be in the business of not messing with anyone who did not mess with them first. Neighboring countries were assigned to a fairly comprehensive not-to-be-invaded list, with formal tributary relations limited to only three of them, Angkor Cambodia, Sukhothai Siam, which is modern Thailand, and the Ryukyu Archipelago, modern Okinawa. Notably absent from that list, both in terms of trade relations and peaceful intentions,

it should be noted, were, once again, wait for it, the Mongols. After all, they had attacked first, which as far as the Ming Chinese were concerned, made them a legitimate target from now until the end of recorded time, or at least until the Ming could get some sort of binding submission from their leadership, whichever came first. Hongwu had never been the sort of guy who was terribly interested in what lay beyond the lands of the Middle Kingdom itself. What he wanted was simple enough. Again, a peaceful land, a quiet people. And yet for all his power and prestige, inconceivably, many across the empire disagreed with his policies. It turned out that there were actually quite a few people who made their livelihood on foreign trade, and many more who weren't

exactly content with unspiced pork for the rest of their days. There's an ancient Chinese saying that goes, 天高,皇帝远, which means heaven is vast and the emperor is far away. The imperial court at Nanjing could make whatever stipulation it so wished, but that would hardly prove enough to stop too terribly many people from finding the cracks through which they could squeeze a few black market goods here and there. And make no mistake, the cracks were plentiful. Though foreign spices and foreign goods were indeed officially banned, one might still expect to find them in abundance in any home of reasonable means, especially the closer one got to the coasts. In all, what might best be said about the Hongwu

era's policies regarding foreign trade was that it was a net negative in both intent and effect. This is meant both as a negative in the sense of overall outcome, but also a negative in the sense of its goal being further suppression. It rested on a ban on all trade, except that which was conducted expressly under the auspices of the tributary framework. This policy was not easily enforced, and there is reason to suspect that it may have driven many merchants into covert activity. Driven by real economic pressures, traders in some hard-pressed coastal regions were eventually forced into smuggling. The spread of piracy in the 15th century can be explained in part by the emperor's negative policies toward maritime trade and interstate relations, end quote. In fact, one might even understand the imperial government's policies thereafter, both Ming and Qing, of

periodically offering amnesty and pardons for piracy, as a sort of tacit acknowledgement that their own legal policies were so restrictive and damaging as to force people outside of the law, and allowing a means of returning to the fold every so often. It's a possibility, at least. Let's get back to Ming proper, though. On March 22nd, 1393, pretty much just as the Hu Weiyong rolling 15-year-long series of purges and mass executions was winding down, General Lan Yu, one of the founding military commanders of Great Ming that had been with Zhu Yuanzhong for more than two decades, was found guilty of treason, to which he confessed, though the efficacy of that is a suspect to put it mildly given Ming interrogators' methods, and subsequently put to death. In the course of his confession,

he had likewise implicated a number of other high-level officials and nobles within the regime, including numerous marquises, as well as the imperial minister of personnel, a man named Chan Hui. Minister Chan's own downfall is a near case study in irony, as he'd been the prosecutor that had overseen a previous case against General Lan three years prior, in 1390, of which he was ultimately acquitted. Chan was tapped again to prosecute this new case against the general, but this time, perhaps realizing that he had zero chance of escaping a second such accusation, Lan opted to implicate Minister Chan himself in the course of his confession. The result was predictable. Lan Yu was publicly dismembered on March 22nd, and Chan Hui was put similarly to death. That was not, of course,

the end of things, because of course it wasn't. Rather, all told, some 20,000 additional people would be rounded up, tried, sentenced, and executed that very spring. What could possibly have been the reason for yet another mass purge such as this? Well, one might take the Ming government at its word that they were all indeed criminal conspirators, or close enough to one to merit collective punishment. Or, one could subscribe to the idea that Hongwu was wanting to clear the way for his successor, specifically getting rid of those in powerful and dangerous enough positions to potentially pose a threat to the accession of the crown prince. Tantalizing hints of this possibility are offered by the fact that,

markedly unlike previous purges that had wandered on for years and decades, Hongwu quickly wrapped this thing up after the initial torrent of bloodletting, issuing an edict in early September of 1393 that granted blanket amnesty for all of the as-yet-surviving members of the targeted Hu and Lan clans. But oh, the succession, and oh the princes. Let's delve right in there. Now as I've mentioned before, Hongwu had no shortage of offspring. With at least 26 acknowledged sons and 16 daughters across at least 21 wives and consorts, he most certainly did not have the sort of offspring problem that the later Song emperors had struggled with for so long. Rather, he would have something of the opposite problem in his twilight years and beyond. Far too many of his male issues surviving,

and often the wrong ones at that. Let's take, for instance, his choice of primary heir, Zhu Biao. Born in 1355, just before Zhu Yuanzhang and his army managed to successfully take and hold Nanjing, rendering it his headquarters and capital, Zhu Biao had been, since birth, as Yuanzhang's first son, and to his empress at that, the obvious and indeed only choice to succeed his father as, well, at that time, no one knew exactly what he might succeed as. Rebel warlord? Regional king? Certainly few at the time would have thought that the boy would one day be the next in line for the golden dragon throne of the entire realm. And yet his

father had virtually from day one had the boy educated and trained in the art of governance, diplomacy, and statecraft, so that he could learn as a child what had taken his father a lifetime of struggle to comprehend, and to be a better leader, ruler, and man as a result. Hongwu's subsequent sons came in rapid succession. In 1356 arrived number two, Zhu Shuang, in 1358, Zhu Gang, in 1360, Zhu Di, and in 1361, Zhu Su, all of which to Zhu Yuanzhong's principal wife and eventual empress, Ma Xiuying. It would be about these principal brothers that much of the family drama to come would orbit. They, along with their various half-brothers to Hongwu's other various consorts, would all be educated and tasked with a various half-brothers to Hongwu's other various consorts,

would all be educated and tasked with a far different skill set and purpose than their eldest brother, Zhu Di. Rather than statecraft and diplomacy, they would study the ways of warcraft and live lives of military command. Hongwu, you see, wished to use them as the royal shields that would guard the realm from its foes without. They would be stationed at the very periphery of Great Ming, leading and commanding the imperial armies, while within, the more civil and literary imperial line of successors would guide the state itself with enlightened magnanimity. That would be the plan, at least. But the best-laid plans of my sin emperors oft go awry. In late 1391, Crown Prince Zhu Biao had been sent on a mission by his father to tour and soothe the people of Shanxi, and to make his own determination as to whether Xi'an would be a

suitable permanent capital in the north for the Ming dynasty. It was widely held and understood, even by Hongwu himself, that while Nanjing was great and all, ultimately the capital of China should be returned to the north as it had always been before. Returning from his trip that December, Zhu Biao made his report to his father, though unfortunately we seem not to know what his final recommendations had been. Yet in January of 1392, the prince took ill. By May 17th, he had died, much to the shock and horror of his family and the empire at large. He'd been the golden boy that was to succeed Hongwu, and now that was completely upended. So what do we do now? The emperor declared an official period of mourning for the crown prince, as was only proper. Yet for much of it, rather

than truly grieve the loss of his son, Hongwu feverishly met instead with his closest advisors, discussing the different possibilities for an alternate line of succession. Many of Hongwu's officials pointed to the obvious choice, son number two, the literal spare to the old erin-a-spare line. Others, however, advised a different course of action. By the family laws set out by Hongwu himself, after all, they argued, the line of succession should ever favor primogeniture. Prince Shuang was there, and available, of course, but it would not be proper to cut Zhu Biao's own progeny, his son, Zhu Yunwan, from his rightful inheritance simply on account of his father's premature shuffling off the old mortal coil. Only, these advisors pressed, after the line

of the primary son had been exhausted, should any of the secondary princely lines be considered as viable replacements to the throne. Their argument wasn't based solely on abstract principles of bloodline or birth order, either. They pointed out to Hongwu that, much like his own dearly departed first son, young Zhu Yunwen had been and continued to be educated as, quote, a man of letters, someone who would prefer to rule by civil techniques of moral suasion and indoctrination than by harsh, repressive techniques characteristic of martial rule, end quote. The other princes had been brought up much like their father, as weapons of war, and Hongwu realized before, as he realized again now, that that was not what he wished for the future of the realm that he'd created. Again, from Leng Hua, quote, At issue was the nature of the monarchy. Zhu Biao had been groomed as a

literate and civil ruler, whereas Zhu Shuang, like his brother Zhu Di, was a man of arms. Zhu Shuang and Zhu Di were by now men of the northern frontier, with many Mongols in their employ. Zhu Di himself may have been the son of a Mongol consort of the emperor, end quote. And while that is certainly an interesting road to go down, we're going to go ahead and circle back to it once Zhu Di takes more of a leading role in this series. For now, it's enough to say that Hongwu realized that the future must lay in the hands of gentle, learned, civil, and moral men. The sword must yield to the brush. Du Yunwan, at age 14, was therefore officially proclaimed as the heir apparent on September 28,

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respected generals. Ju Biao had commanded respect from them because of his age, reputation, and pedigree, but there was an extreme danger that the moment Hongwu finally keeled over, his heir might very well suddenly go missing, never to be seen again. As such, the emperor acted swiftly. First, he had the new heir surrounded by three of the top military minds from across the realm, the great generals Fu Youde, Lan Yu, and Feng Sheng. Though the particular rationale behind his choice to station these top tier commanders, all on his grandson's staff, is not made super clear in the texts, Lengua posits that it may have had to do with Hongwu, quote, attempting to give dignified positions to the generals and keep them out of harm's way under the watchful eyes of the heir apparent's staff. Or perhaps he was trying to build up the

heir apparent's military position vis-a-vis the other princes, end quote. By keeping these three great heroes close at hand, they'd be far less likely to get any kooky ideas about striking off on their own to form some sort of rogue state or take up arms against the throne. They'd also get to know the emperor-to-be, and he them, and maybe the crown prince would earn a little street cred with the soldiery through sheer proximity. That, of course, still left the question of the heir's princely uncles. They couldn't be kept close at hand, or even anywhere near the capital for long periods of time or without specific reason. It would just be far too easy for one of them to just happen to see himself on the throne while no one was looking if they were allowed to stick around. As such,

on the last day of February, 1393, Hongwu ordered four more of his sons to pack their things and take up their residences within their fiefdoms. Zhu Ying, the prince of Su, was dispatched to a seat at Ganzhou, in southern Jiangxi. Zhu Zhi, the prince of Liao, was sent far to the northeast to take up residence in Guangning, in Liaoning. Zhu Zhan, the prince of Qing, was dispatched to Ningxia, in the far northwest, bordering Mongolia. Finally, Zhu Chuan, the prince of Ning, was sent to Daning, likewise along the Sino-Mongol border region in modern Inner Mongolia. Though it was hand-waved away that the princes were merely filling the positions left vacant by the reassignment of the three generals recalled to the capital, rather tellingly, these trips were all hastily arranged and then sent off, so much so that three out of four of the princes mentioned arrived in their domains, only to find that their formal residences hadn't even been fully built yet,

and were forced to stay for a time in temporary digs outside their own capitals, which is kind of awkward, to say the least. As for the older set of princes, well, the further away they were sent, the better. On March 14th, the Prince of Qin was ordered to lead his army out of Taiyuan and proceed on an expedition beyond the Great Wall in order to assist the Ming forces better. On March 14th, the Prince of Qin was ordered to lead his army out of Taiyuan and proceed on an expedition beyond the Great Wall in order to assist the Ming forces in building up fortifications and constructing further military farming colonies, called Tuntian, across Ming- controlled Inner Mongolia. Just a month later, the Prince of Tai was ordered to take his own force

from Datong, likewise lead them to the far side of the Great Wall, and then join up with his brother, the Prince of Qin, and act as his lieutenant. This was not, of course, even a medium, much less long-term solution, but it would at least buy some time for Hongwu to get his and his grandsons, ducks in a row, and things in Nanjing all settled before the inevitable formal reintroduction of the new crown prince would be made to them, and they would be forced to accept it. That formal reintroduction would be made that autumn of 1393, with the ten most important princes of the realm being summoned in two groups of five to Nanjing, apparently under the pretense of consulting with the throne about the ongoing political situation. The first batch arrived that September, consisting of the princes of Qin, Jin, Yan, Zhou, and Qi,

while the second batch, Tai, Su, Liao, Qing, and Ning, would arrive a month later in October. In both instances, the lack of subsequent details indicates that, at least for the time being, it all seems to have gone off pretty much without a hitch. Still, it's notable that Hongwu published in January of the following year the Yongjianlu, or the Record of the Eternal Mirror, which was a formal history of princes who had rebelled against their lawful rulers and the resultant ruination it had brought upon their own heads and kingdoms. That the record was first and foremost promulgated to those princes who'd been summoned to the capital the prior autumn speaks to the nervousness the emperor clearly felt about his young heir vis-a-vis his power-hungry uncles.

Hongwu would go even further, though, ordering his staff, for instance, to republish the works of Mencius with the very specific redaction of any and all passages that asserted a right of rebellion against tyrants. The redacted versions were subsequently published and promulgated, and schools and examinations were forbidden from testing candidates on the prescribed passages. Still, in a rather curious oversight, the Hongwu Emperor did not ever outright ban or order destroy the non-redacted versions of the Mencian texts already in circulation, which is strange indeed for one so obviously paranoid that his subjects or sons might get the wrong impression. Between 1394 and 1395, in what by this point was classic

Hongwu fashion, the emperor had eliminated several ranking members of his government whom he thought could prove dangerous to the heir apparent. While he obviously couldn't get rid of his own kids, the same was definitely not the case for the military generals he'd grown to deeply distrust in his twilight years. The first to bite it, therefore, was that maestro of the battlefield, the great Fu Youde himself. Fu had faithfully and victoriously served the Ming and Emperor Hongwu for more than three decades, since 1361. But now it was time that he be retired. And by retired, Hongwu meant the most permanent sort of retirement. Either by his own hand at imperial order or via outright execution, General Fu Youde met his demise on December 20, 1394,

at the age of 67. The second military commander to face the imperial axe was Wang Bi. He had served Zhu Yuanzhang even longer than Fu Youde, since the 1350s, and had, in 1388, accompanied Lan Yu on the expedition to Lake Buyur, performing with valor and brilliance. For his service, he'd been made a marquis, but none of that had been sufficient to spare him when Hongwu had at last decided that his number was up. Though no records can attest to the cause of the emperor's unhappiness with him, like General Fu, he was either executed outright or ordered to commit suicide on January 1st, 1395. The third victim of this late-game military purge would be none other than the great Feng Sheng himself, a little more than a month and a half later on February 22nd, in circumstances near identical, or at least identically unclear, as the other two

commanders. Perhaps the only one of Hongwu's top-tier commanders who managed to avoid such an ignominious fate was General Tang He, and he only because he'd been fortunate enough to suffer a debilitating stroke in 1390 which permanently crippled him, leading to an early retirement. As he was clearly no threat, he was left alone, but still had the good sense to die of natural causes late that same August 1395. These were just some of the most prominent of a much broader swath of military commanders and civil officials alike who faced in the 1390s, as David M. Robinson puts it, quote, the omnipresent threat of an abrupt, catastrophic turn of fortune under a mercurial sovereign in which service often felt

just as precarious and violent, if not more so, as steppe politics, end quote. As for the why behind this bloody purge, all the sources seem to agree that Hongwu felt these military men to hold too much sway and loyalty over the Ming armies, which could pose a threat to either his, or probably more accurately his successor's, authority over them. They had, to put it quite simply, become a liability. So that took care of the general's problem easy enough. But Hongwu faced now a far narrower needlehole to thread when it came, again, to his sons, the Princes of the Blood. This had obviously been on his mind for quite some time, at least as early as 1369 when he devised his long-term plan to have them serve along the border regions as the golden shields of the Ming. But the sudden and unexpected change of the crown prince had, rather understandably,

shaken his faith in that system even further. Thus, on October 5th, 1395, Hongwu promulgated a revised and updated version of the Ancestral Injunctions, that codex of laws and stipulations applying directly and specifically to the royal family, with the princes receiving their own copies by mid-November. The preface of these revised injunctions laid out plainly that it was to serve thereafter as a fixed and unchanging constitution that would govern the lives, responsibilities, and privileges of the royal princes ever after, and must be upheld in its entirety by all imperial descendants. They were under no circumstances to, quote, try to be smart and throw my established laws into chaos. Not one law may be changed. Heaven, earth, and the ancestors would ensure

blessings for those who upheld the founder's instructions, and quote, he claimed. In Hongwu's initial vision, the princes had held virtually unlimited sovereignty over their respective fiefdoms, from taxation, to internal policy, to pit and gallow, to military and civil conscription and operations. Yet in the intervening decades, he'd come to realize, with the assistance of his ministers, that giving his beloved son such wide latitude was probably not a great idea in the long run. As such, these new and revised ancestral injunctions steeply curtailed many of the princely powers. No longer could the princes recruit whomever they wished for their staffs and militaries, nor could they exercise absolute authority over sentencing for crimes any longer.

In the 1381 version of the injunctions, the princes had been overtly encouraged to apply severe forms of punishments in order to enforce compliance with their commands. By 1395, however, all sentences had to be arrived at and carried out in strict compliance with the Great Ming Code. Such brutal punishments as tattooing, amputation of limbs, cutting off of the nose, and castration were banned. Other, more minor changes included placing a ban on princes being able to seat themselves at the imperial palace during visits to the emperor, as well as inviting themselves to imperial banquets while they were there. Nor could they summon an imperial physician to their own fief to treat the ill without the emperor's leave. These sorts of rules can seem trifling and even rather silly,

but they were all put in place and enacted as a part of a very serious program to constantly remind these insanely powerful individuals of their place in the order of the realm, that they were still servants of the realm, that they were still servants of the throne, not monarchs themselves. Or at least, that was the idea. Far more important than not letting the princes invite themselves over for dinner, though, were the new set of stipulations placed on the princely militaries. This was absolutely the backbone of their danger to the imperial seat, as the royal fiefdoms, remained the only centers of military power that were not completely under court control. This prospective wildcard status was attempted to be brought to heel via an ingenious institutional

arrangement which provided two military forces for each princedom, a garrison army called Shouzhan Bing, and an escort guard called Huweibing. The escort guard was commanded by the prince himself, and was envisioned as serving more or less as a royal bodyguard. The garrison army, meanwhile, would be overseen by its own staff commander, dispatched from the capital itself, who had strict orders that he was to immediately report any attempt by the prince to issue him or his garrison any secret commands straight back to the emperor. Moreover, any garrison army could only enact a given order from either the prince or the throne if said order was countersigned and repeated by the other half of the equation.

Only once the garrison commander had two identical sets of orders, one from the emperor and the other from his prince, could he do so much as blink. Otherwise, not even the emperor himself was supposed to be able to get these armies into motion. From Hongwu as nothing more than a security measure against anything bad happening within the capital. Or as he put it, quote, In the event that at court there are not correct, i.e. disloyal, ministers, and within the palace there are evil ones, i.e. eunuchs, the son of heaven shall secretly command the princes of the blood

to lead their garrison armies and chastise them. End quote. Still, Hongwu, buddy, you're not fooling anyone. It's clear as day that the real reason behind this was to try to prevent any of the princes from using any of the exceptionally powerful armies under their command to make an illegal bid for the throne. So what was a clever and ambitious prince to do in the face of these imperial limitations on amassing and using his power. Why, find a way around it, of course. Obviously. Of the emperor's 26 sons, 17 of them would take up their princely fiefdoms during Hongwu's lifetime, while two of them died around 1390, one from suicide in fear of his father's wrath,

and the other from that ever-present pastime of Chinese royalty, alchemical poisoning. Virtually as soon as the revised ancestral injunctions were distributed among them, the princes were discovering, or perhaps a better way of putting it is inventing, loopholes to subvert their intent. The most obvious method for doing so was via the military force that did remain under their personal authority, the Royal Escort Guard. If I can't command the garrison army, then why don't I just ignore that and instead use my Escort Guard Corps as my army instead? And so, that's exactly what they did. It played out very much like that scene

in the 2006 cinematic masterpiece that is straight out of one of Herodotus' fever dreams, Zack Snyder's 300. In it, you'll remember, King Leonidas of Sparta is stymied in his quest to protect Sparta and all of free Greece from the evil Persians of Xerxes by a combination of prophecy, treacherous pedophile ephor monsters, and a queen rapist Jimmy McNulty. So what does he do? Well, Leonidas just has 300 of his best of the best soldiers all volunteer to join his personal bodyguard, and then takes a royal stroll on over to see what is to be seen about 400 kilometers north at Thermopylae, as one does. And since that wasn't technically the Spartan army, no one could stop him. And there was much pecck-flexing, bro-fist-bumping, and dining in

hell to be had. And so it was with the Ming princes as well, especially a certain Prince of Yen, one Zhu Di, who took the opportunity to build up his personal escort guard very nicely, thanks so much, Dad. And while we're on the topic of Zhu Di, let's go ahead and circle on back around to that first point I made at the top of the show, let's go ahead and circle on back around to that first point I made at the top of the show, and take a look at yet another of the revised and updated ancestral injunctions that almost seem to single out the Prince of Yan specifically. As Hongwu had determined upon deciding that it would be his grandson, Zhu Yunwan, that would succeed him, absolute primogeniture was to be the law of the land going forward.

Now ifs, ands, or buts. Why did this seem to single out Judy? Well, because in spite of what I'd stated earlier, and what Judy himself would forcefully assert upon pain of death afterwards, he was actually probably not the full brother of his fellow primary princes. Rather, he was the son of one of Hongwu's other consorts, in all likelihood, a Mongol woman at that. So now, the ancestral injunctions were changed to specifically state that no son of a secondary wife could succeed their father under any circumstance, effectively locking the Prince of Yan out of the throne forever after. And suffice it to say, Zhu Di is going to have problems with that. And in due

time, rest assured, we're all going to hear about it. Let's finish out today, though, with the final few years of the Hongwu era. Yes, that's right, everyone who's been holding their breath for Zhu Yuanzhang to finally eat dirt, it's time to get the baijiu out of the cellar and prepare for a celebratory farewell toast. But he's not going to go out quietly, but rather with just as much mass-murdering paranoia and megalomania as he's been exhibiting for decades at this point. In the summer of 1397, a rather curious conflict was brought to the emperor's attention regarding the ever-contentious imperial civil service examinations. Again, quoting from Leng Hua, quote, Liu Sanwu had presided over the Nanjing Metropolitan Examination and was blamed for the fact that not a single successful candidate came from the north. The emperor grew furious when he heard about this. He ordered the official to re-read the papers. When the official did not

find any grounds on which to impeach Liu, the emperor charged the official with deliberate falsification. He read the examination papers himself and awarded metropolitan degrees to 61 candidates, all of whom were northerners. He then punished the officials he held responsible for the original abuse. Liu Sanwu was not executed. He was sentenced instead to ordinary exile. But the others were dismembered in public. End quote. Ah, classic Hongwu. That wasn't the end, of course. Oh, you thought that was the end?

Oh, no, no, no, no, no. That's just a warm-up act. When his own son-in-law, Ouyang Lun, was caught illegally selling tea, Hongwu ordered him to commit suicide. In July 1385, the left censor-in-chief Yang Jing, with a proven track record of fairness and impartiality, was quote, slandered by someone who thought he'd been treated unjustly, and quote, after reading the charges, Hongwu,

everyone together now, grew enraged and ordered the censor to kill himself. Such events would remain ongoing through the rest of the reign era, as a sort of constant background sound effect of blood patting on the floor. Yet for all that, it's hard to accuse the Hongwu Emperor, even by the very end of his life, as having truly lost it. Was he murderous? Absolutely. Paranoid? Undoubtedly. Witless or incompetent? Eh,

the jury's kind of still out on that. In the very last year of his reign, for instance, Hongwu ordered the implementation of one of the more innovative reforms of the era regarding the lives of the common folk, the Jiao Min Ban Wang, or the placard system to instruct the people. This system, on top of ensuring that all the people across the empire would be reminded daily, in fact, of their duties and rights within the realm by having the eldermen of each township and village march through ringing a special bronze bell while proclaiming the six imperial instructions repeatedly, also greatly reformed the judicial system at the lower levels of society. Decrying the corruption and breakdown of the legal system by corrupt clerks and dishonest scholar-officials, Hongwu's placard system stipulated that while minor civil matters such as household and marital disputes, land, assaults, and fights should be resolved and adjudicated by

the local officialdom, more serious offenses such as adultery, robbery, fraud, counterfeiting, and loss of life were in every instance to be reported up the chain of command and to be formally tried by the imperial courts. And he was dead serious about this. The emperor prescribed severe punishments for anyone who disrupted this vision of social order. Any official or clerk who disrupted it would be executed, and any common person who did so would be exiled with his or her family to a region outside of China. End quote. Zhu Yuanzhang, the Hongwu Emperor, fell seriously ill for the first time in December of 1397. Fearing that perhaps the end was nigh, and ever the nitpicking backseat driver,

he quickly sent a series of missives to the northern princes, detailing his border defense strategies and their roles within it. Quote, He warned Zhu Di not to be deceived by Mongolian war bonfires and urged him to coordinate with the princes Liao, Tai, Ning, and Gu in an overall defensive perimeter. End quote. Yeah, Dad, I got it. Thanks.

Jesus. The following March 30th, Zhu Shuang, the Prince of Qin and second son of Hongwu, died of an illness at age 38, leaving Zhu Di the eldest and senior-most prince in the whole of the North. Hongwu wrote again to the Prince of Yan, pointing out this bleedingly obvious fact, and directing him to assume overall command of the armies of the north, and directing him to assume overall command of the armies of the north in order to continue to defend the empire's borders. He wrote a month later, quote, For repelling the foreign threats and keeping secure the interior, who is there but you?

End quote. Yeah, okay, I got it, Dad. I know, okay? You don't have to remind me every five minutes. Give it a rest. On May 24th, Hongwu again fell ill, and again even more severely the following June 22nd. It's clear from what would be his final edict, published posthumously as it were, that he knew his time was up. The document stipulated that all the princes should remain in their own fiefs and to not journey to Nanjing for the imperial funeral or to mourn. He wasn't going to have his send-off become a royal game of king of the hill with the throne as the hill.

It likewise directed the whole of the empire to acknowledge Zhu Yunwan as the legitimate successor of Great Ming and their lawful emperor, and that all of the royal escort guards were to, quote, strictly obey the prince's commands, end quote. He died two days later, on June 24, 1398, at the age of 69, and after three decades on the throne. But even in death, he wasn't quite done killing. He was entombed at the Ming Xiaolong Mausoleum, at the southern foot of Purple Mountain just outside of Nanjing, the construction of which had begun 17 years earlier in 1381, and would only be deemed complete in 1405 through the labor of more than 100,000 laborers. In the course of this funeral ceremony, 38 of the late emperor's 40 concubines were required to give up their own lives and join their lord in death. This was a

rather bizarre revival of the sort of royal human sacrifice that had been abandoned since the Han dynasty more than a thousand years prior, though another explanation might be that it was actually a far more recent import from the only recently chased-off Mongol Yuan, who very much did have a habit of burying wives with their husbands. This second explanation would be very strange itself, though, as Hongwu was well known for his hatred of Mongol corruptions of Chinese norms. Whatever the case, it would be a grisly tradition upheld by four of the subsequent six emperors over the following six decades, until the practice was finally abolished once and for all by Emperor Yingzong in 1464. Six days after his grandfather's death, Crown Prince Zhu Yunwan, at the age of just

20, formally ascended and was enthroned as the second emperor of the Ming Empire, concurrently proclaiming a general amnesty across the realm. As one of his first acts in office, he proclaimed that as of the following Lunar New Year, February 6, 1399, his new and glorious reign era and title would be enacted. He intended, as had his grandfather, to rule in a markedly different manner than that of the era of the vastly martial warrior-king, Hongwu. Rather, he'd been educated in all the finer, gentler, and more virtuous arts of civility and law. Such would characterize his title, as it would his many decades on the throne to come.

Jianwen, establishing civil virtue. It was a laudable title and goal, a proclamation to all that he intended to be all that his predecessor could not, was not, and knew he could never be. A lawful, virtuous emperor for a lawful, peaceful realm. And next time, we'll get into how that deeply, tragically ironic dream would be burned alive in its own cradle. Thanks for listening. The Civil War and Reconstruction was a pivotal era in American history. When a war was fought to save the Union and to free the slaves. And when the work to rebuild the nation after that war was over turned into a struggle to guarantee liberty and justice for all Americans.

I'm Tracy. And I'm Rich. And we want to invite you to join us as we take an in-depth look at this pivotal era in American history. Look for The Civil War and Reconstruction wherever you find your podcasts.