The History of China - #211 - Ming 6: The Jingnan Rebellion

Episode Date: March 17, 2021

In the wake of the Hongwu Emperor's death, his grandson - Zhu Yunwen - will assume command. He's been brought up and trained in the highest of Confucian ethics and morals, and will seek to curb the excesses of his dear grandfather's... more bloodthirsty policies. But not everyone is thrilled at the new leaf being turned in the book of the regime... especially those who stand to lose much more than they could possibly gain. Time Period Covered: 1398-1399 CE Major Historical Figures: The Jianwen Emperor (Zhu Yunwen) [r. 1398-1402] Zhu Di, the Prince of Yan [1360-1424] Minister Huang Zicheng [1350-1402] Minister Qi Tai [d. 1402] Minister Fang Xiaoru [1357-1402] General Geng Bingwen [1334-1403] General Li Jinglong [1369-1424] Major Works Cited: Andrade, Tonio. “How Yongle learned to stop worrying and love the gun” in The Ming World. Chan, Hok-lam. “The Chien-wen, Yung-lo, Hung-hsi, and Hsüan-te Reigns, 1399-1435” in The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 7: The Ming Dynasty, 1368-1633, Part I. Ditmanson, Peter. “Venerating the Martyrs of the 1402 Usurpation: History and Memory in the Mid and late Ming Dynasty” in T’oung Pao, Second Series, Vol. 93. Ditmanson, Peter. “Fang Xiaoru: Moralistic Politics in the Early Ming” in The Human Tradition in Premodern China. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hello and welcome to the History of China. Episode 211, The Jingnan Rebellion and the Incredible Vanishing Emperor. You think you are wise, Miss Randier. Yet for all your subtleties, you have not wisdom. Do you think the eyes of the White Tower are blind? I have seen more than you know. With your left hand you would use me as a shield against Mordor, and with your right you would seek to supplant me.

I know who rides with Theoden of Rohan. Oh yes, words have reached my ears of this Aragorn, son of Arathorn. And I tell you now, I will not bow to this ranger from the north, last of a ragged house, long bereft of lordship. Authority is not given to you to deny the return of the king, steward. The whole rule of Gondor is mine, and no others. From the Return of the King. Last time, we finally concluded, after much pomp, circumstance, and more grisly executions than you could shake a stick at, the life and reign of Zhu Yuanzhang, the Hongwu Emperor and founder of the Ming Dynasty. His life had been, as his very reign-era title states, one of vast martial accomplishment, and he'd ruled his new order with a similar militaristic

spirit that had carried him to his great victory over the Mongol Yuan, albeit, as the years went on, further and further infused with a creeping paranoia that by the end bordered on the genocidal. Yet Hongwu, like so many great conquerors, had come to understand that his style of rule, so effective as it had been in winning the realm through force of arms and his own personal charisma, was at its core unsuitable for ruling the peace that would follow victory. He couldn't, he knew, change his own militaristic instincts, but he could raise up a worthy heir that would listen to those better and more civil angels of the imperial nature. Therefore, in the very first year of his formal reign as the Ming sovereign,

he established his eldest son, Zhu Biao, as his chosen heir. The boy would be raised in a manner fitting of a moral and benevolent sage-king, skilled in statesmanship, philosophy, diplomacy, poetry, and prose. His younger brothers, meanwhile, would be raised in a manner far more consistent with their own father. They would learn the ways of war, the horse and bow, the spear and sword, in order to command armies and, in due time, guard the realm from the barbarous foes that surrounded civilization in every direction. Hongwen envisioned the emperor as the beating heart and soul of the realm, dispensing his benevolence and just dealings upon all, while his faithful brothers, the princes, would serve as its impenetrable armor and slicing claws,

guarding that tender core. But then it all went wrong. On May 17, 1392, at the age of just 37, the crown prince, Zhu Biao, suddenly died, leaving both father and empire to both mourn the loss, but even more than that, scramble to decide what could be done to repair such grievous damage to the aging emperor's carefully constructed balancing act between that heart and those claws. Though there would later be some rather blatant and self-serving historical revisionism by Hongmu's fourth, and arguably favorite, son, the Prince

of Yan, Zhu Di, to claim that he'd here and now been almost picked by his father for the top job, but for the meddling of Confucian advisors. Hak Lam Chan writes, quote, the first emperor had, in fact, never considered appointing another of his own sons. End quote. That is not, after all, what they'd been raised to do. That's not what they were for. One does not use a wolf to guard a flock of sheep. As such, the decision was never truly in question.

The role of heir apparent would, in strict primogeniture fashion, fall to the eldest living son of the previous heir, Du Biao's second son, the then fourteen-and-a-half-year-old Zhu Yunwen. Over the subsequent six years until his grandfather's own death, both the emperor and his court would do everything in their power to prepare the untried, untested, and thoroughly outclassed boy prince for the job that would soon be thrust upon him. Sadly, we have relatively little record of what this crown prince and eventual emperor was really like, either individually or even as a ruler. The reason is that we'll get much more into a bit later. Most of them wound up getting destroyed or heavily tampered with. As such, much of what

we do know about him, both before and throughout his brief, troubled reign, is highly suspect or quite literally up in smoke. From Chan, quote, during his successor's reign, court historiographers distorted and gave highly critical accounts of the Jianwen Emperor's conduct to justify the Yongle Emperor's seizure of power. They accused the Jianwen Emperor and his advisors of profligacy and immorality, depicted the Emperor as unfilial, evil, and lascivious, and charged him with neglecting his duties and with committing acts of treason. Later scholars sympathetic to the deposed Emperor produced contradictory, laudatory accounts of the reign, presenting the Emperor as a filial son and benevolent ruler, a paragon who followed

the advice of Confucian scholars and ameliorated the harsh administration of the dynastic founder. He concludes, continuing the quote, These defective, conflicting sources require the most careful scrutiny. The truth about many aspects of the Jianwen reign will always remain obscure. End quote. But today, we're going to do our best to shed at least some light on this long-benighted reign. It certainly seems clear enough that we can largely discard the charges leveled against Zhu Yunwen by the agents and historiographers within his usurpacious

uncles, the Prince of Yans, Amploi, following his own seizure of the Ming throne in 1402. As we'll explore further later on, we already know that Prince Zhu Di was not at all shy about bending facts and even entire biographies to cast himself in a better light than the quote-unquote truth might tell. Then there's also the fact that Yunwen was chosen by his grandfather to be the replacement successor. And yes, yes, I realize I just said that that was a function of by his grandfather to be the replacement successor. And yes, yes, I realize I just said that that was a function of Hongwu's commitment to the principle of primogeniture, but the thing is, with as many potential options as were available to the Ming

founder, if Zhu Yunwen had been the immoral, evil, treasonous character that Yongle's chroniclers made him out to be, principles would have almost certainly bent to the practical needs of, you know, not seating a villainous tyrant on the throne. We can therefore pretty safely take a position far more in line with that of the scholars who would write later on about the crown prince, that he was much more like his own father than either his grandfather or his uncles. That is to say, he was bookish, gentle, moderate, and reflective. Quote, he appeared meek and inexperienced in state affairs, and possessed none of the assurance, the forceful character, or the ability of his ambitious uncles, let alone the former emperor. End quote.

Faint praise indeed, and it will prove quite problematic before we're done today. Again though, before we get too terribly critical of the young emperor's personality, it was that same reflective, gentle, and contemplative nature that Hongwu felt his empire required once he was out of the picture. It would likewise lead the young emperor to feel deep concern towards the outcomes and effects of his grandfather's reign and policies had had on the people as a whole, and as such he would seek to reform them into a far more civil and virtuous administration, even if it meant, at times, acting against, or even contradicting, the founder's own instructions.

This was, if true, a laudable goal indeed, and likely even what Hongwu himself had expected and wanted from his successor, a mellowing out of his own repressive and overly harsh and punitive measures. Yet, when these changes set the young emperor against the ambitions of his far older and excessively powerful princely uncles, it would quickly spell disaster for his entire reign. Zhu Yunwen would formally take the throne on June 30, 1398, six days after his grandfather's passing at the age of 21. As his first act in office, he designated that the beginning of the subsequent calendar year would mark Year One of Jianwen, the era of establishing civil virtue. This, from the very outset, marked his reign period as a sharp shift away from that of the

vastly martial Hongwu period, and we have good reason to accept this rhetorical tone shift as legitimate and followed up by fact and deed. Though an adult and capable of ruling in his own right rather than requiring a regency, Jianwan was still nevertheless a very young and untested man, and against an entire cadre of some of the mightiest heroes the realm had ever produced. Though Grandpa Hongwu had managed to kill off pretty much every one of the great generals who could have posed a serious challenge to his military authority, he obviously hadn't done the same regarding his own surviving sons. Even though their authority and powers had been

sizably diminished by Hongwu's late-game revisions to the Ancestral Injunctions, the laws that were supposed to bind the princes in their powers, they still each retained massive semi-autonomous armies. Though these were theoretically under the joint control of the respective prince and the throne himself, that had never actually been tested as of yet. But boy oh boy, was it about to. Anyways, in order to assist him in the oversight and administration of the realm, the Jianwen Emperor took into his confidence three senior Confucian tutors as his closest advisors. They were Huang Zicheng, Qi Tai, and Fang Xiaoru. Now, it's not that often that I throw three imperial ministers at you all at once, but this particular trio are going to pretty much serve as the linchpin of this whole

story here, so they ought to all be introduced together. Huang Zicheng had been ranked first in the Imperial Metropolitan Examinations of 1385, and had, in the decades since, built a laudable career and become a highly respected member of the Imperial Court. He would, during the Jianwen reign, be further commended by being promoted to a station as a Hanlin academician, as well as serving as the young sovereign's counselor of state affairs. Qi Tai graduated alongside Huang, and had a similarly accomplished career, with his specialty being ritual and military affairs. He had been personally charged by the Hongwu Emperor as he lay on his deathbed to guard the heir's life with his own,

and thereafter become Jianwan's minister of war as well as counselor of state affairs. Finally, we come to Fan Xiaoyu, who, only in his early 40s, was the baby of this ministerial triad. In spite of his relative youth, he too had made a name for himself as a well-respected and widely renowned scholar, especially as a writer and political philosopher, focusing on the Neo-Confucian school of Zhu Shi. Strikingly, he had never earned an official degree, and begun his imperial career far later in life than many of his contemporaries. Nevertheless, his sheer brilliance saw him rise swiftly up the ranks, and during the Jianwan era, he was installed as an expositor-in-waiting at the Hanlin Academy. This trio of advisors would, as I just

mentioned, prove pivotal both to the emperor himself and in shaping the policies of his reign, and, unwittingly, serve as the excuse through which it would all come crashing down upon their heads. From Chan, quote, they were responsible for developing and putting into practice new policies designed to reorganize the imperial administration and to consolidate imperial authority. Fang Xiaoru, a specialist in Zouli, the institutions of the Zhou dynasty, the canonical description of a utopian government, perceived what he saw as the shortcomings of autocratic rule and advised the emperor to put into effect a benevolent administration based on ideas and forms derived from the ancient classics.

All three men were of courage, integrity, and idealism, but they were bookish men, who lacked practical sense, experience in public affairs, and the ability to lead. Their analysis of problems was often theoretical rather than realistic, end quote. So, to put it bluntly, it was a nerd bookworm emperor being advised by three older bookworm nerds about utopian idealism, and expecting reality to live up to their 3,000-year-old models. Yeah, this is gonna go great. Now, you'll remember that Hongwu had a bit of a problem when it came to finding good help.

And like many a monomaniacal monarch, he'd at last said, well, screw it, and abolished much of the imperial infrastructure that would have typically overseen the day-to-day operations of the court. Instead, he had resolved to do it all himself. He'd even gone so far in his legally binding ancestral injunctions that the position of chancellor, or chengxiang, was strictly and permanently forbidden. So it was always going to be pretty awkward for the next guy, unless he was exactly like the old guy. Which, as we've seen already, Jianwan definitely wasn't. Still, Jianwan did all that he could do to improvise, adapt, and overcome the imperial

hobble that dear old grandad had placed about his reign. Rather than throwing his hands up, as many of the not-so-ambitious successors had and would continue to do across time, Jianwen found ways to work around the prohibitions of the injunctions, while still stitching back together a competent and functional government apparatus that you didn't need to be a complete psychopath to operate. This involved giving the top-level imperial ministers and academicians more than just the advisory role in government that they had had under Hongwu. Instead, once again, they would be entrusted to actually make decisions within their respective roles and to carry out executive authority in their own right. This was especially true of, you guessed it, our ministerial triad, Huang, Qi, and Fang.

They and others in charge of the six departments were empowered to formulate and execute, quote, policies in much the same way that a chancellor would have done in earlier dynasties. They lacked only the chancellor's title, end quote. Other than that, our information regarding the enacted and planned changes to the form and mechanics of the Ming government under Jianwan are pretty scant. Again, the vast majority were deliberately destroyed as a part of the Prince of Yan's campaign of damnatio memoriae against his nephew post-usurpation. So, unfortunately for history, but maybe fortunately for those of you who'd just like me to get on with it already, we can't say too much more about what else was going on in the Imperial Palace between 1398 and 1402. We do know, though,

that there was a concerted push to elevate the civil administration to overtake that of the military commissioners as the primary authority over all regions of the empire, which, as you might well imagine, the men carrying swords were often none too happy about. We won't really get into any more of these proposed changes, but it's enough to leave it with Chan, who says, quote, These changes were not simply symbolic restorations of archaic models, or as Judy and his historians And yeah, you can probably see exactly where this is going by now. The ministerial triad of Huang Zicheng, Qitai, and Fang Xiaoru were elevated to levels of authority and command that far exceeded anything of the Hongwu reign. This was not in itself a negative, and in fact, had they been able, or perhaps a better word would be allowed, to follow through on their elevation and actually establish an order of civil virtue rather than vast martiality, it could have resulted in a truly new direction for the Ming Empire and its populace as a whole. But that would

have come at the expense of those who currently held the power, and the swords, and the spears, and the arrows, and the guns. And as we're all still keenly aware of in the year 2021, power is a really tough thing to convince someone to give up willingly. As such, it would be Huang, Qi, and Fang who, though essentially innocent of any wrongdoing themselves, would nevertheless serve as the scapegoats and proximal cause of the civil war that would descend shortly upon the realm, as their power in the imperial court and the substantive changes that they had been charged with overseeing gave the Prince of Yan the pretext he needed to march his armies against the capital in defiance of imperial orders. After all, each Prince of the

Blood had been specifically empowered to guard against both external threats, but also against any potential usurpation from treacherous advisors. And who was to say that the young emperor wasn't simply serving as this trio of ministers' unwitting puppet? If that were the case, or at least if that case could be convincingly made and no one was left to refute it, then what the Prince of Yan was about to do wasn't a rebellion at all. It was saving the realm from those evil forces who were seeking to undermine it from within. How noble. Zhu Di was far and away the most powerful prince in the Ming Empire. As the senior most surviving

son of Hongwu, since just months before their father's death, his last remaining elder half-brother, the Prince of Gang, had died in March of 1398. The vastly overpowered princes in general, but especially so Zhu Di, who by this point ruled virtually the entire north of China himself in all but name, had been a pressing concern to the late great Hongwu in his waning years, and he repeatedly revised the rules and prohibitions that would govern his sons ever after, in an attempt to curb and even largely liquidate most of that autonomous power that had once upon a time seemed like a really good idea to give them all. Though technically none of the princes held any autonomous authority over the civilian population of the region, they did directly control the three

auxiliary army units of between three to fifteen thousand soldiers apiece. In an attempt to stave off any potential challenge for the throne once he'd passed, Hongwu had been sure to include in his injunctions the stipulation that no prince could visit the capital or attend the court within three years of the accession of a new emperor, but should instead remain cozy in their own little fiefs. From Fort Sumter to the Battle of Gettysburg. From the Emancipation Proclamation to Appomattox Courthouse. From the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Compromise of 1877.

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But there was a single exception to this rule, one that would be enough to blow the hinges right back off that door that Hongwu had spent his last years desperately trying to shut tight. Quote, If, however, wicked officials held sway at court, the princes were to prepare their military forces, wait for the new emperor to summon them to rectify disorder, and, having accomplished their duty and driven out the evildoers, returned to their fiefs. Now, where could we find, oh, say, three officials that we could paint as being wicked and causing disorder? Hmm, I wonder. The specific policy shift that would touch off the civil war was called xiao fan, reducing the feudatories, that is to say, the powers of the princes. Though traditionally attributed to Huang Zicheng and Qitai, it may have in fact been the Jianwen Emperor's own idea. Nevertheless, it would be

Huang who would prove the policy's champion, and quote, reportedly impressed the importance of this measure on the Emperor by reminding him of the rebellion of the seven feudatories against the Han Emperor Jing in 154 BCE, as we covered way back in episode 26, and by alluding in general to the potential danger of powerful semi-autonomous princedoms. Of course, the chief concern here was, who else, the Prince of Yan, and as we'll see, rightly so. Two possible courses of action were put forward. Either we could just abolish the princes outright and just yank that band-aid off all the way at once, or we could just, you know, slowly reduce their military and political importance over time and, I guess, just, you know,

wait for them to be cool with that before we make our next move. Jianwen deliberated long and hard about which course to take, and at last he made his decision, as much to my own personal surprise as probably anyone actually present at the time, considering the sovereign's typically quiet, reserved, wallflower demeanor. Do it, he said. Rip the band-aid off. Abolish the principalities outright. Find a way. Now this was inarguably a bold move. But, and you knew there was going to be a but, that band-aid rip meant that the princes stood now to lose everything. Which meant that a guy like the Prince of Yen suddenly found that he had nothing left to lose. Thus began the three-year-long bloody rebellion of the Prince of Yan,

which would later be cloaked in the purposely bland alias of the Jingnan Zhiyi, literally, the Crisis Pacification Campaign, though it's more often referred to just as the Jingnan Campaign. With the imperial declaration that it was, in effect, liquidating the Ming principalities, the Jianwen court began to seek out and prosecute the lesser princes one by one on either trumped-up or even wholly concocted charges of criminality. Within a year of the new emperor's enthronement, five of Zhu Di's brothers, the princes of Zhou, Tai, Xiang, Qi, and Min, had all been effectively stripped of their powers and seen it reconsolidated in the throne itself, in a series of campaigns called

the Xue Fan, literally the rending of the shields or the striking down of the martyr lords. In July 1398, Zhou was brought up on charges of treason and exiled to Yunnan. In April 1399, Qi, Dai, and Xiang were stripped of their royal statuses, with the first two confined to indefinite household arrest, while Xiang preferred the express checkout system and opted to commit suicide instead. In June, Min was likewise stripped of his status and sent to exile in Fujian. The Prince of Yan was to be target number six of Nanjing's centralization campaign. Yet, as the imperial court well understood that it faced a wholly different and more formidable opponent in duty than of any of his lesser brothers, it proceeded cautiously in its initial moves against the prince. Unfortunately for the throne, that only served

to give the prince the time he needed to gather and marshal his forces to prepare for a bloody conflict. It isn't certain precisely when the prince finalized his decision to militarily confront the court. Some sources suggest that he'd considered a confrontation much earlier under the influence of the Buddhist monk Daoyan, who's alleged to have predicted that the prince was destined for the throne after Zhu Yunwen had been designated the heir apparent, and to have encouraged him to make plans to further his ambition. Zhu's personal ambition and hunger for further power and rank was never in doubt. As I've mentioned by this point several times over, not only had the prince long held that he ought to have been his father's choice as imperial heir, but by late 1398 was also the ritual head of the entire imperial clan, being its eldest living male.

As his brother's domains were rent apart one after the other, Jude perceived his own imminent destruction, and began preparation to preserve his own position against this, in his own estimation at least, egregious breach of his father's laws. In this, he had many notable allies, not the least of which were the legions of Mongol soldiers who had surrendered to him, as he was, after all, half one of them, and he had absorbed into his own army. He had also found allies with numerous eunuchs in the Nanjing court, who quickly found themselves quite at odds with the new emperor and his highly empowered and starkly Confucian, thus anti-eunuch, court, who agreed now to act as the prince's eyes and ears within the imperial palace.

Yet he still made no outward move in opposition to the throne, in large part because, as a matter of course, Nanjing maintained three of the prince's sons as hostages, I mean, honored guests, to ensure his ongoing compliance. Over the course of this rending of the shields campaign, Judy had tried numerous ruses in an attempt to free his sons from imperial clutches, and thus free his hands for further action. He's written to have first claimed that he was deathly ill, and requested his sons to attend him at Beiping. When that failed to

produce results, he then had issued claims that he'd gone mad, and continued to plead to see his beloved sons once again. And I really can't fathom why it worked, but for some reason in June of 1399, the Jianwen emperor at last relented and allowed the three sons to return to their home and attend to their father. Perhaps he by this point assumed that Yan's overthrow was a foregone conclusion, and the court had no further need of his progeny as hostages. Or maybe he was genuinely moved out of some semblance of familial concern and consideration for his uncle. It's impossible to say with any certainty. What is certain is that it was a very dumb decision on the emperor's part,

for with his son's safe return, the Prince of Yan was at last able to spring into a full offensive against the massinations of Nanjing against him. Hostilities officially commenced late that very July, when an official loyal to the emperor seized two Yan loyalists and had them transported to the capital to face charges of sedition, a capital offense. Yan used this action as his casus belli, launching several military operations against neighboring counties and prefectures as of August 5th under the premise of chastising treacherous court officials. From Chan, quote, In order to justify his rebellion, the Prince of Yan issued several carefully contrived public

documents in the following months, including two letters submitted to the court in August and December 1399, and a subsequent manifesto promulgated to the officials and the people. The prince insisted that he was taking righteous action to put an end to internal disorders, action justified both by the Confucian principle of filial piety and by the Articles of the Ancestral Injunctions governing the duties of the princes. He accused the emperor, among other things, of failure to inform him of his father's illness, of preventing him from attending the mourning, and of repudiating the Hongwu emperor's injunction by knew damn well that he was dying. And pay no mind to that section of the injunctions that specifically forbade any prince from attending an imperial funeral at the capital.

Anyways, moving on. Quote, he also charged that the emperor, acting under advice from his sycophantic advisors, Qi Tai, Huang Zicheng, and others, had persecuted the imperial princes and had falsely accused him of making military preparations against the throne. End quote. And yes, while I grasp my pearls in shock, shock I say. Please continue to ignore my large and very much prepared armies looming menacingly in the background. The thought of using them hadn't so much as crossed my mind. I crossed my heart. But so it was that with a sad Gu Zheng song no doubt playing melancholically in the background and tears streaming down his face, Prince Zhu Di had oh so reluctantly come to the heartbreaking realization that he had

no choice but to defend himself, and not only himself, his family, and the people in his charge, but nay, the empire as a whole, and the grand traditions set forth by no less than the Hongwu Emperor himself, that these treacherous so-called advisors were now trying to dismantle piecemeal. Moreover, he had a solemn duty as a son to ensure that his dear mother, the Empress Dowager Ma, who was definitely completely his totally real mother, yes, absolutely no, we will not be taking questions at this time, remained safe and not left to the villainous wiles of those treasonous traitors. And the throne? What throne? Oh, the imperial dragon throne?

That old thing? He didn't want it. He had no interest in it. He'd practically made the Sherman oath about it. If nominated, I will not accept. If elected, I will not serve. His mission, his only mission, was to eliminate the treacherous court officials according to the provisions set out in the ancestral injunctions. So, as you can clearly see, it's all very legal and above board. So, no surprise here, that would be the Prince of Yan's own post-facto re-imagineering of the events and the initial timeline. Chan points out, quote, It is doubtful, in light of the evidence provided by modern historians, that any of his charges could have been fully substantiated, or indeed, that he could have publicly proclaimed these points until later, end quote. But if Zhu Di knew

one thing, and he knew several, it was that it is the winners who write the history books. And assuming that he could pull this off, he would have all the time in the world to tinker with the timeline all he wanted to make himself the good guy fighting the good fight. So, let's now get into the nuts and bolts of the war. Zhu Di was certainly the most powerful prince, but that still made him a heavy underdog against the full might of the imperial court of Nanjing. He controlled only a single tile on the game board, his own fiefdom of Yan, and could bring to bear, even with his Mongol reinforcements, perhaps a paltry hundred thousand troops. Meanwhile, of course, his imperial nephew

controlled at least in principle every other tile on the game board, and had standing at the ready outside of Nanjing alone a force some three times that of Yan's. Jianwen could bring the totality of the imperial might to bear, and had already eliminated most of the other princes who might have been willing to join forces with Yen. But, Chan writes, it would be foolish to rely too much on these sorts of on-paper figures, for there are far more ephemeral, yet vital aspects that can turn the tide of any conflict. He writes, quote, The prince's strength lay in his own powers of leadership, in the superior quality of his army, including a large contingent of Mongol cavalry from the Uryan god commanderies,

in superior strategy, and in his own unwavering determination to win. By contrast, the imperial forces were handicapped by indecisive and ill-coordinated leadership, and by the court's preoccupation with the much less urgent tasks of government reorganization. In other words, this was going to be pitting a battle-hardened warrior and leader of men thrust into a do-or-die situation against four nerdly bookworms whose collective total combat experience was playing a rousing round of Go. The initial phase of the war began with the Yan forces seeking to break out of their effective encirclement, first within Judy's own homestead, then the city of Beiping itself, and then their home

prefecture altogether. This would last from late 1399 to about mid-1400. As of the previous December, Jianwen had directed several loyalist staff members to proceed to Beiping and either take the prince into custody directly, or failing that, at least keep him confined to his residence until further arrangements could be made. That July, when tipped off by one of his secret eunuch officials that his arrest warrant would be immediately forthcoming, Judy had his general secretary gather some 800 men within the prince's compound. When the imperial forces had surrounded the residence and demanded that the prince surrender himself to their custody in order to face the charges leveled against him, the strike force burst out, slaughtering the

surprised imperial agents, and then proceeded to storm the walls of Beiping directly, taking the entire city back for their prince by that nightfall. The rebellion was officially a go. When word of his uncle's rebellion at last arrived in Nanjing, Jianwan, probably surprised, but you know, not that surprised, appointed a retired senior commander, the 60-year-old Geng Bingwen, as the commanding general to pacify the rebellion against imperial authority. And let's just be clear here, General Geng was by this point, not exactly what you'd call the pick of the military litter. You'll remember one of those fun little things that Hongwu had done before shuffling off the mortal coil in an

effort to keep his grandson and heir safe and sound was to brutally liquidate most of the senior most military command staff. So why Gung Bing-1? Why now? Because in the words of Agent Huddleston to Lieutenant Sean Topper Harley in the classic war epic Hot Shots Part Deux, because you're the best of what's left. Marching north with an army of 130,000, Geng arrived outside of Yan by early August and deployed them around Zhendinghebei, about 200 kilometers or so southwest of Beiping itself, both to act as a forward command position,

as well as to seal off Yan's path southward towards the imperial heartlands. The imperial forces were thereafter split and encamped at the nearby Zhengzhou and Xiongxian townships while preparing for a general offensive push toward the rebel capital. Yet on August 15th, both positions were ambushed and taken by the Yan forces, with many of the respective imperial soldiers surrendering and subsequently joining the rebel movement. One such surrendered officer, a general no less, in turn told Zhu Di of the location of General Geng's main force. Zhu Di then flipped the general into a double agent and sent him back to Geng to tell the commander that the Yan's armies were swiftly approaching in order to get Geng to pool his resources for an all-out battle. Ten days later, the full might of both armies would clash just outside Geng's forward operating base, ahead of Zhending proper, when the Yan troops launched

a surprise raid on the imperial encampment. A pitched battle ensued, with the Prince of Yan personally leading the charge against the government flank, and forcing Geng's forces to a humiliating and crushing defeat. More than 3,000 government troops surrendered, while the rest were routed back to the relative safety of the Junding headquarters itself. For the next several days, the Yan forces tried repeatedly to take Junding by storm, without success. Finally, on August 29th, the prince called off the attack and withdrew back to Yan itself. When news of Geng Bingwen's humiliating defeat reached Nanjing, the emperor was, shall we say, less than thrilled. On the advice of Huang Zicheng, and interestingly over the objection of Qi Tai, he appointed a new overall military commander, recalling Geng and dispatching General Li Jinglong.

Li was dispatched to the warfront with a second force, this one purportedly numbering 500,000 strong, though as always take these numbers with a grain of salt. While the Prince of Yan and his main force had left Beiping in mid-October to search for fresh recruits, Li Jinglong's army had arrived outside the rebel capital and put it to siege beginning on November 12th. In spite of his overwhelming numerical disadvantage, when the Prince of Yan learned that the imperial besiegers were being led by Li Jinglong and were outside of Beiping right now, it's written that he was more certain than ever of his victory to come. From the Ming Shilu, or the Veritable Records of the Ming, quote, Zhu Di laughed aloud when he heard the news and proclaimed, In warfare, there are five sure paths that lead to defeat, and I know Jinglong well enough to

know that he'll follow all of them to total ruination. What we must do is to keep them in chaos so that his officer corps will have no chance to correct his inherent weaknesses. First, it's unseasonably cold this year, and his southern soldiers are ill-equipped to brave the harshness of our northern winters. How can his soldiers hope to fight if their hands and feet are already stiff and frozen with frostbite? Secondly, the imperial commander thought at first only of victory and not of any risks. He's plunged in far too deep and right away, which has left him vulnerable to counterattack and of being cut off. Third, Jinglong's men are full of greed and empty of discipline.

They lack the wisdom of experience, as well as any trust in their commanders, and are instead full of insolence and stubborn pride. That's the opposite of courage and camaraderie. There's no glory or victory to be found among such men, and these armies will be easily ripped apart when the going gets tough. Fourth, those troops are green as spring grass. They're full of gusto and clamor, but shiny as their battle drums are, they haven't a single mark of battle or not showing a victory. So they flatter themselves and their commanders loudly, but really only prove themselves to be nothing but common rabble, not true soldiers.

Fifth, though he'll never admit it, Li Jinglong already knows in his heart of his defects, and that his defeat is already inevitable, and there's nothing he can do about it. Though he knows exactly where I am, he wouldn't dare attack, he doesn't have the guts. He just sits outside my city, though he knows I'm not there. So, I won't disappoint him, I'll go and meet him where he sits. He knows I'll come, he knows I'm not there. So, I won't disappoint him. I'll go and meet him where he sits. He knows I'll come. He knows I'm not the craven he is. So, let's return to Beijing and teach him a lesson he's not likely to forget.

If a commander finds himself facing an impenetrable city wall, and an enemy army shows up behind him and pins him against it, it doesn't matter how big your army is. Your defeat is already assured. End quote. Sure enough, within three weeks of laying siege to Beiping, as a result of losses inflicted by the cold, enemy action, including, brilliantly, the Yan defenders pouring water over the sides of the walls in the night to freeze solid and prevent besiegers from scaling the fortification, and the normal wastages of siege works, Li Jinglong's army had been forced

to retreat back southeast to Dezhou in Shandong to wait out the harshness of winter. 400 years ago, a trio of tiny kingdoms were perched on some damp islands off the coast of Europe. Within three short centuries, these islands would become the centre of an empire which ruled a 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.