The History of China - #213 - Ming 8: Oh, Happy Days!

Episode Date: April 11, 2021

The Yongle Emperor has taken command... and we're in for a really, really, really great time.... Time Period Covered: 1402-1424 CE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. 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

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And now, on with the show. Hello and welcome to the History of China. Episode 213, Oh Happy Days. Last time, we went through the short, unhappy reign of the Jianwen Emperor, culminating with his uncles, the Prince of Yans, war against what he termed the machinations of deceptive and evil ministers against the empire and the throne. This concluded, of course, with the main capital, Nanjing, invaded and aflame, and with Jianwen and almost his entire family line either roasted to a crisp or perhaps having snuck off into permanent exile, never to be heard again.

With that, as of the year 1402, Prince Zhu Di, the fourth son of the Hongwu Emperor, had, oh so reluctantly, assumed the throne as the third, or was that second, absolute ruler of the Great Ming Empire, with a mandate from on high that he was to protect at all costs the legacy of his father's creation. At least, so long as they didn't directly conflict with his own visions and ambitions. And so that is where we pick up today. When Judy assumed the throne on July 17th, 1402, he was 42 years old. Until his plunge southward to Nanjing to ultimately seize the imperial throne, he'd spent virtually the entirety of his adult life as one of the northernmost marcher lords, tasked with guarding the realm from his principality at

Yan against those threats that ever loomed from the steppes. This meant that, much like his father before him, Zhu Di was a warrior and a commander first and foremost. Though he did possess an extensive and first-rate imperial education, it should be said, knowledge that he would indeed extensively use to great effect in the course of his more than two decades on the throne. Even so, his rule would not be one marked by gentle civility or thoughtful introspection about philosophy of governance, but rather one of action, adventure, and the kind of split-second decisiveness that one would far more expect from a warrior than from a sage. Even so, as we'll see in the coming episodes, Yongle, as he came to be known, would prove to be, in general, an erudite, far-seeing, and competent ruler, albeit one with his fair share of caveats to any such words of praise. In spite of his rocky, usurpacious beginnings,

he will prove himself to be not nearly the monster that many feared, but rather a diligent, serious, if flawed, ruler. One does tend to relate. The subject of what he did, and how it's viewed, leads me to one final bit of pretext before we launch in directly, which is about how I'll be structuring our look at the life and times of the Yongle Emperor, as he'll come to be known. During our extensive look at his father, Hongwu, we tended to largely stick to a pretty consistently chronological telling of events, because that flowed well, and I am personally just naturally inclined to that sort of telling.

Hongwu was the kind of guy who tended to get really focused on one or maybe two things at a time and obsessively see it through to absolute completion, ASAP. He was the kind of guy who would whole-ass one thing, not half-ass two things, before relentlessly moving on to the next item on the imperial agenda. Since he was so monomaniacal, egotistical, and, as his reign went on, distrusting of letting anyone else at all ever take over the helm of any project that he deemed important, Hongwu's reign was three solid decades of the Hongwu show, and that makes it pretty easy to tell in a first, next, last fashion. Yongle's reign will prove to be rather different. Though in many ways he is indeed a chip off the old block, Yongle never displays those

especially deleterious qualities of paranoia and bloodthirstiness, at least not for its own sake, his distrust in ministers and institutions, or the obsessive control freakishness of his father. He will prove, therefore, far more capable in launching multiple simultaneous grand projects and designs, which can take years and even decades to achieve fruition. That's very cool in its own way, though not an unalloyed positive for the Empire, as we will come to discuss in due course. What it does do is make a strictly linear telling rather more difficult, nigh unto impossible. There's just too many moving parts in too many places doing too many things.

If we did it that way, we'd spend the next 22 years flitting from Mongolia to Vietnam to Nanjing to Beijing to the Indian Ocean to Africa to Central Asia, and then back again round and around and around, because the Yongle Emperor had so much going on all at once. It's hard to keep track of everything. And so, what I decided was, after a solid attempt to structure things in a chronological fashion, that idea inevitably crashed and burned shortly after takeoff. So I decided not to try to reinvent the wheel here, versus the way that my sources structured it, and instead go with a thematic approach. So what we'll do is take related aspects of the Yongle era, and then run through them from start to more or less finish at least, before going back and looking at other sets of related aspects of the era. The easiest way to do this is to start with

a situation at home, i.e. the Ming's domestic policies under Yongle, and then thereafter expand out to the foreign situation, including these situations with the Mongol Khans, Tamerlane, Tibet, Vietnam, the movement of the capital from Nanjing back up to Beijing and the construction of the Forbidden City, and of course, the six grand voyages of Admiral Zheng He all over the South Seas. And as to that last one, you can take to the bank the idea that the Grand Admiral will have at least an episode all to himself, so fear not, devoted Zheng heads. Alright, so that being said, where should we begin?

Well, let's start with a broad-ish overview of Yongle's place in Chinese history and historiography, and then work our way inward from there. In spite of being the third Ming monarch, Yongle is probably most often regarded, even today, as a kind of second dynastic founder, very much in the same way that Tang Taizong is seen alongside his own father, Tang Gaozhu. It's not a perfect parallel, to be sure, but there is at least enough similarities there to make the comparison rather fitting, at least. Like the first and second founders of Tang, the two Ming founders were father and son. Like Tang, the younger Ming was a warrior born and bred, and ultimately had to contend with his own family in order to seize the throne that would otherwise not have been his to claim. Like Tong, the second founder of Ming would largely hold to the spirit

of his progenitor's new order, at least as he chose to understand it, while still making sweeping changes in its actual form. The Yongle Emperor is a rich and complicated person. As we've already seen at the end of the last episode, he would have very few qualms indeed about meeting out the most horrific punishments imaginable against those who got in his way or betrayed his vision. Yet he would also never become the sort of brooding, paranoid psychopath that his father devolved into. The often stunning violence meted out by Yongle during his time on the throne was, to the very end, carefully considered and judiciously applied. And whether that makes it any better than the wanton flailings of cruelty under Hongwu by the end, I leave that

up to you to decide. As first and foremost a soldier and battlefield commander, he would spend much of his reign pursuing those feats of martial glory that would bring his own period of rule to match or perhaps even surpass that of his father's. As the Prince of Yan, this would unsurprisingly take largely the form of a heavy focus on the northern borders beyond the Great Wall, and to the still very dangerous Mongol barbarians that prowled the edges of the empire, as ever, seeking a way back in. This would, most famously, be embodied by his eventual, and ultimately permanent, removal of the imperial capital from Nanjing to the newly rechristened and reconstructed Beijing. Yet, the north was not Yongle's sole region of military focus. So too would he concentrate his military strength

on the far south, especially the Vietnamese region of Annam, later called Dai Viet, which continued to stubbornly and frustratingly resist its inevitable, permanent annexation into the greater Chinese regime. If Yongle's overt expansionism was a rather stark break from the dynastic founder's vision of a permanent, stable peace, then so too was the second founder's visions of Ming intercourse with the wider world, beyond direct military conflict. Yongle would seek to, if not undo, then at least relax, Hongwu's stringent orders against foreign trade missions with its neighboring regions and kingdoms, specifically Japan and Central Asia, as well as the islands of Java and the South Seas. But, of course, the greatest and most well-known of these enterprises are the voyages of Zheng He to the southern and

western oceans. All of these would serve to greatly enhance the influence and prestige of Great Ming on the world stage. All of that we'll get to in due time, but where we're going to devote most of our attention to today are the internal changes and effects Yongle had on the civil government of the time. As we'll see, in spite of his martial focus and military background, and possibly burning to death his own gentle, civil, educated nephew, the Yongle Emperor was himself no slouch in the area of effective civil governance. Hak Lam Chan writes that, in spite of his military upbringing, quote, Yongle received a thorough classical education and had inherited a civil administration able to govern the country well and to sustain his wide-ranging military activities. For practical as well as ideological

reasons, he promoted strong civil government and an effective and stable bureaucracy. Otherwise, he would not have been able to carry out his grandiose military adventures. During his reign, reforms and changes took place in almost every branch of the civil and military administration." So, let's begin by launching in on those administrative changes. First to bat is a brand new class of nobility for imperial China, the military nobility. Well, I say it's new, it's renewed, it's back, it's back again, it's coming back, it's here now. It's no surprise that Yongle, before, during, and after his accession to the throne, understood the immediate need to shore up his support among those who'd helped him, you know, get there,

and especially those who could best help him keep his newly claimed promotion. As such, the military commanders who had loyally served him during the Jingnan Rebellion, against his little nephew Zhenwan, were created almost immediately into a brand new class of high lords. This began, as one does, with posthumous honors and promotions to those officers and commanders who had given their lives during the campaign. It's always a good call, after all, to honor the dead first. No one can object to that. But right after that, in 1402, he set out on his still-living commanders.

Two of his generals, for instance, were made dukes, or gong. Thirteen others were made marquises, hou. And nine others, earls, bou. Such ennoblements weren't even limited, though, to his own Lille command staff. A Mongol commander, Khorokshin, who had surrendered to and subsequently joined the Ming under the Prince of Y, was himself promoted to Marquis, and even defectors from or shortly after the fall of Nanjing had been included, consisting19, 1421, and 1422 for those military men who had availed themselves well on the Ming's many campaigns. Notably, the emperor's apparent non-discrimination policy seems to have held true, even as many of the campaigns themselves were explicitly anti-Mongol in nature, or perhaps more accurately, anti-yuan. Quote, These awards suggest that the emperor did not discriminate against his Mongol commanders and considered them equally worthy of recognition on the basis of merit. End quote.

Markedly unlike typical military ranks, or even civilian official status, these new titles were hereditary in nature and would be inherited by the subsequent generations of these military leaders. Yongle hoped, no doubt, that his own successors would be able to draw upon them for their own subsequent crop of heroic and capable military leadership. It should be said, though, that although such titles carried with them great symbolic weight, they did not carry particularly high stipends to go along with them. A duke, for instance, could expect to receive 2,200 to 2,500 peacles of grain per year, which is about 150,000 kilograms or 330,000 pounds. A Marquis, 800 to 1,500 peacles, which is about 90,000 kilograms. An Earl, about

1,000 peacles or 60,000 kilograms. And this is a nearly meaningless metric, I know, but if we just put that into modern rice prices in China, then a dupe would be making about $180,000 per year, which is, you know, way more than I make, but nowhere near, say, Prince Charles's cool $31 million per year from the Duchy of Cornwall. Still, the position was far more important than the salary. They had, after all, quote, the emperor's confidence. They commanded the most important army units as the emperor's deputies. They had no competition from the imperial princes, who had already conveniently been removed under the Genoan emperor from their roles in military and civil administration, and they were not subject to any restraint from the civil

bureaucracy, end quote. And that last little bit specifically, I at least read as, At first blush, this might seem like just a continuation of the policies of dear old dad Hongwu. Zhu Yuanzhang had, after all, promoted his best and most trusted military commanders to positions of high office and title. Later on, of course, they'd been almost to a man ruthlessly purged as the Hongwu Emperor's paranoia mounted. They'd been, after all, some of the preeminent powers across the realm even before joining up with the Ming cause in many cases. They had their own power bases, their own loyal followings, and as such they were far more autonomous than, eventually, Hongwu was comfortable

with. But Chan draws an important distinction between the Hongwu promotional policies and those of Yongle. He says, quote, Emperor had been social inferiors in 1399. They had gained their new positions as a result of services rendered to the Prince of Yan during the Civil War. As a safeguard against insubordination, the Emperor did not assign regular army units to their command, but placed these new nobles in command of groups formerly led by generals in the services of the Jianwen Court, or for special missions, gave them command of armies assembled from different guard and battalion units organized under the military colony system, tuan tian, end quote. In other words, they weren't their guys, or anyone with a particular specific loyalty to them personally. They were just a signed group of random soldiers that had no history with this new commander, and were rather unlikely to develop one any time soon. This was helped along

even further by the fact that, as a rule, the Yongle Emperor was still, first and foremost, a military commander, and whenever he could, delighted in leading his military campaigns as directly as possible. Apart from just getting his jollies off, this was also carefully calculated on Judy's part to, quote, strengthen his relationship with the military nobility, enhance their morale, and cement their of this was that, over the course of more than two decades of rule, Yongle's strategy vis-à-vis his military nobility far outshone that of his father. Rather than winding up with a group of dangerous, autonomous quasi-warlords he felt needed to be bloodily expunged, Yongle developed a core of prestigious yet subordinate military lords and officers who were unswervingly loyal to the throne

itself. Such a system was hugely essential in the functionality of the military as it conducted operations against its foreign neighbors over the Yongle era. Alright, so we turn now away from the newly reconstituted military nobility, and now to the civil bureaucracy. As you'll no doubt recall, the Ming court had gone through its own share of ups and downs in the course of the preceding two reigns, being first constituted, but then repeatedly purged under Hongwu, and then being restocked and empowered, albeit oh-so-briefly, during Jianwen's period in power. In the chaos of the civil war, and especially the sacking of Nanjing, the civil officialdom had unsurprisingly been thrown once again into chaos.

But markedly unlike his father, Yongle keenly realized the need for a bureaucracy trusted and empowered enough to actually perform the tasks of government that no monarch, or at least a sane monarch, could or even should want to do for themselves. As such, while he paid generous lip service to the idea of getting back to the policies and ideals of father, in fact, as we'll repeatedly see, the Yongle Emperor was more than willing to throw off the shackles of Hongwu's stifling and supposedly unbreakable ancestral injunctions that stated that not even one word should ever be altered. Whenever it damn well suited him. What was Hongwu gonna do, huh? Spin in his grave? Well, let him spin. Who cares? The re-establishment and imperial backing of the officialdom was more than just a good governmental maneuver, though. It was also a good political move. Quote, by reconstituting the imperial bureaucracy, he gained support among

scholar officials, some of whom had served during the previous reign, and many of whom still resented him as a usurper. End quote. I mean, it'd be pretty easy to write scathing criticisms as jobless scholars booted from the capital by a fratricidal usurper. It's quite a lot harder if you're living under his roof and he's signing your paychecks. Foremost among these institutional changes that would go directly against the ancestral injunctions was the overt reconstitution of the outer court's secretariat, which had been formally abolished for 22 years since 1380. Not even Jianwen had dared violate that founding stipulation. Though, to be fair, he might have gotten around to it if he'd been given more time. And yet, Yongle apparently thought nothing of unmaking that widely unpopular little rule from the days

of the deaths of his father's madness. With the secretariat, of course, came the reformation of the position of grand Secretariat itself, who would quickly come to dominate the overall court bureaucracy and function once again as the chief executive officer of the entire civil government. Yongle certainly intended to rule as he saw fit, but that didn't mean that he had to be the same micromanaging control freak jerk as his dad. In order to better facilitate the carrying out of the duties of the Secretariat, Yongle appointed a group of seven of the top Hanlin academicians,

all carefully selected, young, as in in their late 30s to early to mid 40s, and yet with excellent records and experience, and one and all from the south and southeast. They also, almost all, served in the court of the Tiananmen emperor before him. These seem to have been important and very cogent factors in the decision-making process, to put on full display, as it were, the fact that Yongle did not begrudge the southerners, nor even those who had served as nephew, nor was he seeking to elevate northerners to positions they didn't belong. The best people for the job would be appointed, full stop. History isn't black and white, yet too often it's presented as such. Grey History, The French Revolution is a long-form history podcast

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The French Revolution today. Or simply search for The French Revolution. In due time, the scholars of the Hanlin Academy would find their role in the service of the Ming Secretariat expanded even further. Quote, advisors and as liaisons between the throne and the bureaucracy. During the Hongwu era, grand secretaries had mainly been assigned to clerical duties in the inner court. These new Hanlin scholars enjoyed personal contact with the emperor, made decisions on state matters, and took part in the formation of policy. They often had joint meetings with the heads of the six ministries for deliberation on state affairs, but they gradually came to dominate the ministries of the outer courts by virtue of their easy access to the emperor. The emperor generally kept his grand secretaries close at hand wherever he maintained his residence, at Nanjing from 1402 to 1409, between Nanjing and Beijing from 1409 to 1417, and at Beijing thereafter." Yongle would even have several of his grand secretaries accompany

him on campaign against the Mongols, beginning in 1410 and continuing on until his own eventual death a decade and a half later. Yongle made similar choices in appointing the heads of his various ministries. Young men of impeccable renown and tutelage, most of whom would serve with distinction until, or in some cases even beyond, the emperor's own eventual demise. These included figures such as Jianyi as Minister of Personnel from 1402 to 1424, Xia Yuanzhi as Minister of Revenue from 1402 to 1421, Lv Zhen as the Minister of Rights from 1409-1424, Jin Zhong as the Minister of War from 1404-1415, who served concurrently and then was eventually replaced by Fang Bin from 1409-1421, and Song Li, who acted as Minister of Works from 1405-1422. Though there was the occasional bump in the road, such as an odd corruption charge here

or protesting an imperial measure leading to arrest and suicide there, in fact, and markedly unlike many other imperial eras, especially Hongwu's, they were the strange exception rather than the rule. As such, it's truly noteworthy that four of the six ministries during the Yongle period—personnel, revenue, rights, and works—were controlled by a single minister for most or all of the reign period. Quote, This remarkable stability among the principal ministers throughout the 15th century reversed the pattern of fragmented authority and short tenures in office that had characterized the Honglu reign. It assured the administrative continuity of civil government through and beyond the Yonglu reign, end quote. This stability wasn't only at the top, but actually extended to the lower levels of the civil administration as well. Needless to say, this was kept up only through the maintenance

of a pool of talented literati selected, how else, through rigorous examinations. The imperial civil service examination was reinstated at long last, just two years into the Yongle era in 1404, and was held again in 1406. Thereafter, for a period of about five years until 1411, the top-tier palace examination was suspended as the emperor was largely absent from the capital, instead away on one of his many campaigns against the Mongols. The lower-level exams, however, continued to run. Normal testing at all levels resumed in 1412 and ran without interruption thereafter for the remaining decade of the Yongle Reign. In all, 1,833 metropolitan degrees were conferred in this period, with the preponderance

of the substantive offices conferred going to such graduates. Quote, by 1424, there were enough metropolitan graduates to fill most of the responsible posts of civil administrations down to the level of county magistrate, end quote. Success in the civil exams became virtually the sole means by which a political aspirant could hope to get a foot in the door and start down the path toward eventual high office. And gradually, the regulations on appointments, promotions, demotions, and assessment of performance in office were tightened. This once again stood in stark contrast to the Hongwu-era policy of choosing officiants on an ad hoc basis, and, who wouldn't you know it, turned out to be a whole lot better. Quote, Many of the graduates turned out to be talented administrators, and they played a major part in the overall quality and stability of the civil administration during the Yongle, and later, reigns. End quote. It turns out that having and then utilizing a full system of rigorous examination of qualities deemed important for high office will, in the long haul, tend to do better than selecting officials based on who you're not mad at today.

I mean, who knew, right? So let's now turn to those who wouldn't govern the realm, but who would instead guard those who did, and the interests of the throne itself. Neither as the Prince of Yen, nor now as the Yongle Emperor, could Judy really be portrayed as a paranoiac. Certainly not anything like his late father in any case. He was, however, acutely aware of just how precarious a position the perch atop the dragon throne really was, being the guy who burned the last guy off of it. And also how information and its sources had been absolutely key to that victory. Coin was great, sure. It's what greased the gears of the economy. But what made or broke the reins,

the very lives of those within the halls of power, was the currency of secrets and whispers. Those in the know held all the chips, while those not, regardless of their wealth or status or title, would never realize what they were missing out on until the blade was already plunged into their back. It wasn't paranoia. It wasn't personal. It's strictly business, sonny. As the rebellious prince, Judy had relied as his eyes and ears within the Imperial Palace on the eunuch officials therein. They served, as ever, as an absolutely essential intelligence-gathering cadre, since they alone among the palace staff had the freedom of motion between the outer courts of the officials

and ministers and the inner court of the royal family itself. They served for life as personal assistants of the emperor, swearing absolute fealty and devotion to him and bonded to carry out any and every service asked of them. Yongle placed more trust in the eunuch cadre of his era than most emperors, and with good reason. Not only had they faithfully discharged their duties with special services during the preceding reigns, but they'd already proved their personal loyalty to Zhu Di by leaking critical palace information to him both in the lead-up to and during the civil war that had ultimately brought him to power. Quote, As a result, the emperor took many of the eunuchs who had served the Jianwen emperor into his confidence,

including several of Mongol, Central Asian, Zhechen, or Korean origin, and made constant use of them. End quote. Several of the more prominent ones were Li Da, Hou Xian, and Yixi Ha, all of whom served as official envoys to various foreign kingdoms throughout the Yongle Reign. But, and of course, you all knew this was coming. The most well-known, highest-ranking, and best-regarded eunuch official of the age was, without doubt or question, Admiral Zheng He, he who would conduct the six glorious missions of trade, exchange,

and exploration all across the southern seas, all the way to the coasts of Africa itself. Yeah, that's right, get hype. But save it up, because we're going to circle back to Zheng in another episode. Apart from these titans among the unit cadre, many other lesser-known Kastradi served loyally under Yongle. Their duties were multivarious, but given their unique penchant for having access to the otherwise inaccessible, thanks to their specific social circumstance, they were frequently employed as, well, spies.

Spies targeting anyone, officially or unofficially, of interest to the throne. Be they imperial officials, members of the imperial clan, or even commoners who maybe were stirring things up out in the boonies a little bit too much. Others were tasked as the officials in charge of imperial procurement, and were as such empowered to seek out and acquire whatever the emperor and his household might desire, no matter where it might be, or by what means it might be necessary. So, too, were they regularly dispatched as the eyes and ears of the throne on just about every mission of significance, both military and diplomatic. For a great pop culture example of this last in action, we need look no further than the

1998 Disney classic Mulan, and specifically, the semi-comedic side character, Imperial Advisor Chifu, who is sent first on the recruitment assignment and then on campaign with Li Shang's unit. Though never explicitly said to be a eunuch, per se, as direct advisor to the Emperor, unmarried, as in, in a girl worth fighting for he sings only about his mother, he fits the bill to a T, and especially the more unfairly negative stereotypes of the eunuch caste as a whole. But if Chifu's physique and affectations were the subject of ridicule amongst the fighting soldiers, it must also be remembered that his

authority was taken very seriously, and he held wide latitude in meeting out summary judgments. This is very much in keeping with the powers of the court eunuchs of the Yongle Era and well beyond, who quickly became infamous not only for their spycraft, but even more their work as the Ming throne's dreaded and ruthless secret police force. Again, from Chang, The eunuchs were given absolute authority both to investigate and to carry out sentences. And while they certainly exposed some corrupt and treacherous officials, they also frequently trumped up accusations and exceeded their authority,

often with tragic consequences. At the beginning of his reign, Yongle had inherited the intelligence and policing mechanisms that had been created under his father, the Jianyi Wei, or the brocade-clad guardsman. In addition to serving as the imperial bodyguard, they also went on assignment undercover to root out any potential threats against the throne, largely unencumbered by the usual court politicking or oversight, quote, to silence political opponents of the emperor and to stop vicious rumors, end quote. In spite of this, as time went by, the Yongle Emperor began to have less and less regard for the Geni Wei's intelligence services, and instead came to rely on another, and at least in the popular imagination, at least in the popular

perception, even darker policing apparatus. In 1420, the emperor more clearly formalized the secret police force in an agency known by the rather innocuous sounding name Dongtang, or Eastern Depot. It was so named because its main compound sat just east of the imperial palace, just to the north of the Dongan Gate. In spite of the anodyne name, it was rightly feared all across the empire as the place you never, ever wanted to find yourself. Because guests of the Easter Depot had the disturbing habit of never being seen again. By the testimony of Liu Ruoyi, a contemporary eunuch who had personal knowledge of the agency, probably from being an agent of it, quote,

It had a grotesque, intimidating physical layout. Its main buildings, in addition to a well, included an outside depot, an inside depot, and two detention centers, commonly called zhenfu si, or torture chambers, end quote. The outer depot serves as a kind of minimum security holding area for those charged with lesser offenses, while the inner depot was the maximum security facility for the most serious offenders and dangerous criminals. while the inner depot was the maximum security facility for the most serious offenders and dangerous criminals. At the eastern depot's entrance hung a large sign that read, 朝廷心腹, meaning the imperial court's heart and bowels. A fitting description, as that is where the court's enemies, criminal and political alike, often were processed,

digested, and then disposed of. Just within the main hall hung a portrait of the great hero of the realm and this podcast, wink wink, General UFA, by this point long canonized for his loyalty to the state and his ultimate martyrdom for the cause. Quote, it became infamous as a security prison and tales of unjust incarceration, torture, and unexplained deaths of this depot circulated among the public Quote, End quote. The eunuchs who ran the depot, and the operatives who worked under them, some very likely eunuch, though many were still members of the Jianyi Wei who'd been rolled into the broader depot apparatus and likely were not eunuch servants,

existed apart from the court's normal ministerial or oversight mechanisms. They had a largely free hand to do whatever they wished to whomever they wished, all in the name of what we might call national security. From Shishan Henry Tai, quote, the Eastern Depot was theoretically under the direct control of the emperor, but like everything else in the main court, the Emperor once again chose his trusted castrati to supervise the agency. Initially, the Eastern Depot was charged to investigate only treasonable offenses and carry out espionage on behalf of the Emperor. However, throughout the years, its power grew like a giant octopus, extending to every corner of the Empire and becoming the diabolical force behind the throne. End quote.

While the Jin-Yu Wei agents did the vast majority of the actual fieldwork, spying on suspicious imperial clansmen, over-ambitious army commanders, overly moralistic and therefore troublesome literati, mysterious and potentially dangerous religious quacks and cult leaders, and the landlords whose avarice threatened to supersede their good sense, the depot's eunuch overseers remained largely insular and as passive observers of operations. The director, always a eunuch, reported directly to the emperor with any unusual or interesting activity his little birds all across the empire might have tweeted into his ear most recently.

Quote, he kept the emperor informed of any unusual traffic observed at the city gates, fires, and other incidents in Beijing and Nanjing, or the overheard conversations that were regarded as treasonable offenses with the potential of instigating public sentiments against the throne. End quote. The public, of course, utterly despised the Eastern Depot. They saw it, correctly as it were, as an unaccountable, lawless, and horribly corrupt institution that sowed terror and suspicion among the people,

demanded usurious bribes from those who fell even under a whiff of their suspicion, and, if the accused were either unwilling or, far more often, unable to pay their ruinous demands, beatings and torture were the inevitable result. Again, from Tsai, quote, severe physical abuse. Once a written confession was signed by the arrested party, the Ministry of Punishment would then pass the appropriate sentence. Needless to say, there was no such thing as due process or civil rights protection under the system, and the guard officers, in collusion with their eunuch boss, repeatedly made a travesty out of Ming judiciary principles. Scholars who are critical of Ming despotism often conclude that because of the brutal and terrorist handiwork provided by the depot, the Ming emperor and his family could live in a soft cocoon of extravagant luxury,

and the regime founded by the Zhu family in 1368 was able to last until 1644. End quote. Even so, it must be recognized that by so empowering this single agency of the Eastern Depot with such vast extrajudicial powers against everyone but the Emperor himself, Yongle had created something of a monster. The agents and eunuchs of the Depot provided an indispensable backstop and security for the throne, yes, but that only worked in that role so long as they were kept on a very short and tight imperial leash at all times.

Though Yongle himself would prove to, for the most part at least, have the capacity to keep the Eastern Depot firmly in check and in line with the throne. If we've learned anything at all from the course of this show, it should be that any system relying on a consistently strong, wise, fair, and balanced absolutist ruler to keep the other government systems from spinning wildly out of control. Well, that's like playing hot potato with a live grenade. Where we'll finish out today, though, is with a brief foray into the Yongle Emperor's efforts to both legitimate his own claim to imperial authority and to establish his own revised

system of orthodox ideology. Or to put it another way, how Yongle would do his level best to both justify his own ascent up the ladder of power, and then also pull it up after him to make sure that nobody else could follow his example. As the Prince of Yan, after all, he'd risen to supreme authority via the most dangerous and destructive of avenues, armed rebellion, and against his own nephew, the Honglu Emperor's established heir at that. How would one square that circle, while also insisting that no other circles could ever be squared again? Well, for one thing, there was the inconvenient detail of his own birth

records and the pretty darn clear laws put down in the ancestral injunctions that stated that only, only, only sons of the ruler born to his primary interest could be eligible for the throne. The fact that Judy's own dear mother had not been Hongwu's empress was proving to be rather inconvenient indeed when it came to him trying to explain how his own takeover was actually perfectly legal. But as we all know, history is often written by the winners, and Yongle was nothing if not a winner. And literally all of the historians were paid by him. So the good news was that ipso facto,

he got to perform a whole series of selective edits on his personal history and biography. Over the course of his first decade in office, Yongle and his advisors judiciously applied the metaphorical white-out to the family tree in historical records, blotting out those nasty words like usurpation and illegitimate, and replacing them with much nicer-sounding verbiage such as clearing away disorders, punishing wicked officials, and all perfectly legitimate, nothing to see here, move along. From Chan, quote, the first of these works compiled to bolster the emperor's claim to legitimacy was the Fengtianjingnanzhi, the

official account of the Jianwen court. The court historians who wrote it introduced into their account of events allegations and falsehoods designed to defame the Zhenyuan Emperor. These included accusations that he had been a depraved and immoral ruler, that he had employed wicked ministers, that he had committed treason by repealing his grandfather's laws and institutions, and that he had persecuted the feudal princes by abolishing their fiefs. It falsely claimed that the Yongle Emperor was born to Empress Ma, and that, as her eldest surviving son, he would have been designated the heir apparent in 1392, but for the intervention of certain Confucian advisors. It also claimed that he had reluctantly taken punitive action against the Jianwan court

not to seize the throne, but to carry out the duty enjoined upon him by the ancestral injunctions. Going even further, these Yongle court historians claimed that the death of Jianwen had been nothing more than a tragic accident. But also, while we're on the subject of Jianwen, did you know that he wasn't actually a legitimate emperor at all? The entire Jianwen reign had been an illegitimate eteregnum the whole time. Quote, this argument was important, for although the Jianwen emperor was dead, his heirs survived, and the eldest survivor among his sons should, by rights, have become the next emperor. End quote. Thus, only by delegitimizing the entire reign altogether could Yongle assert his own claim to legitimate power.

As for the sources that contradicted this fanciful reimagining of events, I don't know what you mean. What other sources? They'd been systematically destroyed. Or, that is to say, had never existed at all. Again, I don't know what you're talking about. And if anyone had their own doubts, skepticisms, or second thoughts about this very official, very legitimate, exceedingly true official history, they were smart enough to keep it very much to themselves,

because it was tacitly understood that to give such doubts voice was to court death itself. As memories faded over time, these falsifications came to be generally accepted as evidence in support of Yongle's legitimacy. So that took care of the whole bloodline and historic justification for his takeover. Now it was time to pull the ladder up after him and establish that, though he had been absolutely right and just in his completely legal and legitimate seizure of power, no one else was ever, ever, ever allowed to do so again. In 1409, he published his first attempt at this, a work called the Shengshui Xianfa,

meaning the System of Sagely Teachings of the Heart and Mind. Confusion in nature, it's just basically out and out copied extensively from other earlier works such as the 11th century Di Xue and the 12th century Da Xue Yan Yi, both of which provided direct guidance on the nature of governance and advice for wise rulers. For his own work, though, Yongle sought to extend the teaching out beyond just the ruler and to the citizenry as a whole. Quote, All of the main stress was on the way of the ruler. His precepts were intended for the guidance of all his subjects. The first section treats of those with moral virtues and principles that a ruler

should exemplify, such as conformity to principle, restraint of selfish desires, and practice of reverence and the rectification of the mind. The second section deals with the education of an emperor and emphasizes the same virtues and obligation to cultivate them by study, practice, and self-discipline. The emperor enjoined his subjects to reverence and obey heaven, but also stressed the role of the individual's own conscience, which suggests that although he professed to restore the ancestral tradition, he never felt himself bound by such limitations. End quote.

And so, unbound by any such limitations ourselves, that is where we're going to leave off for today. Next time, we'll get into the Ming's interventions, invasions, and military adventurism under the Yongle Emperor. This is going to be one of his real strong suits. He is, after all, first and foremost a military-minded man, and so will follow the diplomats and armies of Great Ming as they range far and wide, from Mongolia to Vietnam to the far western outposts bordering the shifting sands of the mighty Taklamakan Desert, spreading the

word that China is back in a big way, and anyone who's got a problem with that better get ready to deal with the consequences. Thanks for listening. Hi everyone, this is Scott. If you want to learn about the world's oldest civilizations, find out how they were rediscovered, follow the story of Mark Antony and Cleopatra's descendants over 10 generations, or take a deep dive into the Iron Age or the Hellenistic era, then check out the Ancient World Podcast. Available on all podcasting platforms or go to ancientworldpodcast.com. That's the Ancient World Podcast.