The History of China - #215 - Ming 9: The Good Times Are Killing Me

Episode Date: May 9, 2021

The Yongle Emperor decides to build a new capital. It goes well! He also decides to invade both Mongolia and Vietnam. It goes not so well. Time Period: 1402-1424 CE Major Historical Figures: Ming: The Yongle Emperor (Zhu Di) [r. 1402-1424] General Zhang Fu [1375-1449] Gen. Mu Sheng [1368-1439] Mongol Khanates: Bunyashiri of the Eastern Tribes [d. 1412] Mahmud of the Oirat [d. 1416] Arughtai of the Oirat [d. 1434] Dai Viet: Ho Qui Ly [1336- ca. 1407] Tran Thien-binh [d. 1406] Tran Nguy [?-?] Tran Qui-khoang (Trung Quang Emperor) [d. 1414] Le Loi [1384-1433] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. Four hundred 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 China. Episode 215, The Good Times Are Killin' Me. You inquire about the state of affairs in Annam.

Annam's customs are simple and pure. Moreover, the official clothing is according to the Tang system. The rites and music that control intercourse between the ruler and the officials are those of the Han. The jade brush unfolds new laws. The gold sword slices the scales of armor. Every year in the second or third month, plum and peaf seeds are planted in spring. Pagui Li to the Ming ambassador, circa 1400. Last time, we went through the Yongle Emperor's domestic policies and style of rule over the course of his two decades in power. Today then, we'll begin to look outward, first toward Ming China's immediate neighbors

in every direction, and after that, even further still. Zhu Di, formerly the Prince of Yan and now the Yongle Emperor, wished above all else to not just follow in his father's footsteps, that titan among men, the vastly martial Hongwu Emperor, but to in fact eclipse him in both glory and accomplishment. And honestly, who better for such an undertaking? Zhu Yuanzhang had been a self-made man, yes, raising himself up from the muck and mire of the chaos of the late Yuan period to forge a new world order. But Zhu Di could, thanks to dear old dad, do the old man one better. He'd been trained since birth to be an even more effective leader of men and armies, and ultimately of nations.

Why shouldn't he outshine the founder? After all, shouldn't the son ultimately not just inherit, but expand upon his father's legacy? This would mean, it turned out, rather starkly ignoring many of the more stringent taboos and laws that had been set forth by Hongwu in his ancestral injunctions, which had sought to strictly hem in the powers and prerogatives of his successors. But the thing about laws written by dead men is that they're not ever really around to complain when they're altered or broken. Times change, Dad. Deal with it. So, all that stuff about the Ming Empire being at perpetual peace with all of its neighbors and totally not expanding or conquering, and everyone being content on their own little parcels of land forever and ever?

Nah, just kidding. It's time to go on campaign. The easiest of these campaigns to justify was, unsurprisingly, the one neighbor that Hongwu hadn't specifically designated an end to hostilities with. That's right. Wait for it. The Mongols. Still riding around beyond the Gobi wastelands. They still clung, irrationally and insufferably, to the notion that they were somehow going to turn everything around from their nothing-tense-in-the-middle-of-nowhere, and reclaim the empire that they'd lost fair and square.

Now, this is not to say that all of the Mongol tribes and peoples were so designated as enemies by the Ming regime. Indeed, we'll recall that well before his accession as the Ming emperor, Zhu Di had, as the Prince of Yan, incorporated quite a few Mongol tribes and even high princes into his forces, and promoted several to positions of high lordship for their loyal service to his cause. This speaks first and foremost to the inherently fractious nature of the Mongol coalition, as it had ever been. Without a central, strong, guiding leader to cement all the tribal elements into their respective places, naturally some were beginning to peel off and seek out a better deal with what was increasingly obviously the rising star of the new age, while the getting was still good.

This natural trend was further accelerated by the fact that, on the step to the north and west of China, Genghisid pretenders to the Mongol imperial overlordship had largely been displaced by tribal leaders who were not descended from Genghis Khan. The line of Khans, as it were, had been broken, and the Mongol forces that yet raided from the north increasingly fought one another as much as they fought against Ming incursions into their territories. This is certainly not to say that subduing them was going to be some simple or easy task. Hongwu would, in fact, spend the rest of his reign trying to finish the job, and failing. As would all of his successors, and, oh yeah, the subsequent dynasty. Yeah,

spoiler alert, but the threat from the steppes will actually never be subdued completely until the invention of the automobile, airplane, and machine gun. Anyways, back to the events at hand, several of the Mongol tribes from northwestern Manchuria, specifically those of the Uriankad clan, had surrendered to the Ming and were thereafter incorporated by the Yongle Emperor into three military commanderies, which are typically called by either of two exceptionally creative names, either the Uriankad commanderies or the... three commanderies. Yeah, great job, historian-namer guys. Almost as good as the Great Bath. So these three commanderies would remain loyal to the Ming without incident and serve largely as the launchpad for many of the expeditions to come.

In fact, Yongle came to rely on these loyalist Mongol-held commanderies so much that he'd actually order his own Han forces to pull back behind the Great Wall ever after, leaving the outer frontier regions to be held by the barbarian auxiliary forces, which has always been a great idea that has never had any downsides at all. I mean, just look at the great job that An Lushan did with... Oh. Oh. Right.

From Hak Lam Chan, quote, With the exception of the guard units set up in Jurchen settlements in Manchuria, no regular Chinese garrisons, or Wei, were ever again stationed beyond the Great Wall line. These new measures, while not without merit at the time, were based on the short-sighted assumptions that these Mongol tribes would remain forever loyal. But the changes in the defense strategy had a deleterious effect on the defenses of the northern frontier in later times, end quote. Meanwhile, to the far west, Yongle pursued and cultivated friendly relations with the Muslim oasis states and townships across the Silk Road

leading through Gansu and dotting the borders of the ever-deadly Taklamakan Desert, places like Hami and Turfan in Turkestan, and even as far west as Samarkand and Herat in the Persian regions, which were at this point controlled by the burgeoning power of the Timurid Empire in Central Asia. Yeah, that's right everyone, Tamerlane. Diplomatic embassies from the Ming court offered the rulers of these states and cities gifts and titles and invited them to trade with China as tributaries. Many of the states responded positively. As one might well imagine, that turned out to not sit quite so well with the overlord of the Timurids. You know, Timur the Lame, Tamerlane.

He now, quote, remained the Yongle Emperor's only adversary in the far west. Timur, who had never liked the Chinese, had executed the Ming envoys sent by both the Hongwu and Yongle Emperors. In December 1404, he launched a full-scale invasion against China, end quote. Oh man, it's about to be on. Continuing the quote, But fortunately for China, he died en route in February 1405, hundreds of miles from the nearest Ming outpost, thus obviating a bloody military confrontation,

end quote. But don't worry, everyone, there's going to be plenty of conflict to come. Even without Tamerlane as a focal point to rally around, the Mongols yet remained the preeminent military threat to the Ming. Not only did they consistently refuse to acknowledge Chinese authority, but they formed a very threatening crescent moon around the empire all the way from the Ming's far western frontier to the northeastern border. Spooky stuff. Probably one of the most frustrating things about the Mongol tribes to the Ming bureaucracy must have surely been the fact that they seemed unable to resolutely make up their damn minds about whether or not they were going to submit. Now, from our perspective,

it's easy enough to explain and understand this as the fact that this was a fractious confederation of very headstrong tribal and even clan and family leaders who could and very did violently differ with one another about such decisions. But to the Ming bureaucracy, this proved to be an intractable headache, an unsolvable puzzle. Even such tribes as had ostensibly acknowledged and submitted to Ming caesareanty, such as the Oirats in the northwest, could nevertheless, time and again, when a new leader arose, or even circumstances changed just so, pull the psych card and start raiding and attacking Ming outposts yet again. This already obnoxious situation was made all the worse, though,

when the charismatic and ambitious leader, Mahmud, sought to rally his fellow tribesmen to his banner against the Ming. Though only partially successful, and often as much at war with his fellow Mongols as anyone else, he nevertheless managed to raid the Ming borders enough to effectively put himself on the radar of the Yongle Emperor's court as a nuisance to be dealt with. Thus it was into this maelstrom of socio-political complexities that the Yongle Emperor would launch the first of his five campaigns against both the Eastern and Oirat Mongol tribes, beginning in 1410 and lasting until just before his death 14 years later in 1424. The first such punitive expedition was launched approximately in retaliation for the

summary execution of a Ming envoy sent to the Khan of the Eastern Mongols, known as Bunyuashiri, but also as a delayed retaliation for the prior defeat of the Ming general Qiu Fu that September on the banks of the Keralan River, a route in the course of which the entire Ming command staff was killed. Quote, after careful planning, in March 1410, the emperor led a large campaign army, supposedly in excess of 300,000 men, from Beijing. Though as a side note here, it should be noted that, like many of these numbers, this may be, well, a bit of an exaggeration.

Though the Ming she alleges 500,000, Purdue posits it was probably north of 100,000 soldiers with a supply train of about 30,000 carts, which, given the foraging constraints of the region, certainly seems more feasible than a half million soldiers marching through the steppes at length. Anyways, back to the quote. Marching through Shuanfu Gate, north to Xinghe, and up the Carolyn River, Yongle caught up with Prince Bunyashiri's horde on the banks of the Onon River, and according to Chinese records, on 15 June he decimated it,

but the prince survived this defeat and fled west, end quote. The following month, at the height of summer, Yongle's army pursued and engaged the prince's chancellor, Arugtai, at the foot of the Kingan Mountains, which separate Mongolia from Manchuria, once more defeating the steppe force in a pitched battle. Yet again, however, the Ming forces proved unable to completely subdue the Mongol forces, and after a time, Yongle finally relented. He called an end to the campaign in mid-August, pulling his forces back south to Nanjing, and proclaiming it a glorious victory for the Ming. So, great success? Not so much. In spite of the surely great celebrations and honors and medals and such handed out, it was a job very much still undone, having failed to, you know, secure the northern borders. And a quick aside here, but one does have to feel for anyone striving to

quote-unquote secure the northern borders, because, I mean, literally how? They just go on and on and on until you hit permafrost. It's at least as much of a problem as the Romans had against the Germanic tribes or the Byzantines against the Bulgars. There's just no end to the indefensible territory and no way to really rectify the problem. Regardless, it would turn out that the Oirat leader, Mahmud, would turn on his own kinsman, Prince Bunyashiri, and kill him in 1412, apparently ambushing him in the course of his flight from the Ming expedition. Mahmud then set up a puppet ruler at Karakorum, and then began to push east against another chieftain, Arukhtai, with the obvious intention of uniting the Mongol tribes under his own leadership.

The Ming court now attempted to play these two sides against one another, granting the eastern warlord Arukhtai a princely title in July of 1413, and setting him up against the encroaching forces of Mahmud. Prince Aruktai duly informed his new lords that their mutual foe had crossed the Keralan river late that same year, resulting in the second Ming campaign against the Mongol holdings. This expedition would begin the April of 1414, after several months of preparation and mobilization. This time, the campaign's goal would be to crush the Western Mongols' power base and stymie their push into eastern Mongolia once and for all, thereby obviating any threat of the tribes reuniting.

The Ming expedition would encounter Mahmud's forces along the upper reaches of the Tula River. In the ensuing battle, the Ming troops used cannon against the Oirat. Although they suffered heavy losses, the imperial armies against the Oirat. Although they suffered heavy losses, the imperial armies forced the Oirat to retreat, and Mahmud fled with his ranks greatly reduced. In less than five months' time, the campaign was again declared concluded in August, once again victorious and a much-pompered circumstance when Yongle returned in triumph back to Beijing. To this celebration, the emperor invited the eastern Mongol chieftain, Arugtai, on account of it having been his rule who Yangle had ostensibly saved. But probably wisely, Arugtai feigned illness and begged off coming to the event. Nevertheless, the eastern chieftain would duly send annual

tribute to the Ming without fail for the next several years. Ultimately, what would undo the schemes of Mahmud of the Oirat was neither military defeat nor nefarious plot from within, but apparently at least just the vicissitudes of time and health. He would die of unknown causes, likely disease, that same year, 1416. With him, so too went much of the gathering energy of a renewed pan-Mongol confederation to push back against the Ming. The consequent dispersal of his hordes temporarily ended the threat from the much less well-controlled Uyghur Mongols in the Ming. The consequent dispersal of his hordes temporarily ended the threat from the much less well-controlled Oirat Mongols in the west. This allowed the emperor to turn his attention to the construction of his new capital at Beijing. Alright, so here it is, the big project of the

era. It's time to build a whole new capital, and it's going to be just the best capital ever! The only emperor's push to relocate the capital back to the north had certainly not been his alone. Even Hongmu had been in the years and decades before his own demise, launching exploratory committees regarding how best to return the empire's capital to its quote-unquote proper place in the Yellow River Valley. It's just, you know, the way things were supposed to be. They'd never not been that way until now, and so we should probably try to get them back to the way they'd been before, more or less. You know, for reasons and stuff. The re-re-re-re-reconstruction of the city that had once been Ji, and then Youzhou, and then Yan, and then Nanjing, and then Zhongdu, and then Dadu, and then Beiping,

would officially be renamed Beijing in 1403, but with the actual reconstruction kicking off circa 1406, and with major projects finally declared complete around 1420. At the heart of this eminently Chinese-style city was, we all surely know, the Imperial Palace Complex, with design and construction overseen by Imperial Chief Architects Cai Xin, Quai Xiang, Lu Xiang, and Vietnamese eunuch Nguyen An. It's a truly awe-inspiring construction, and absolutely earns its name as a city in itself. It consists of some 980 buildings, within which there were reportedly 8,886 rooms, although some tellings bump the

number up to the even luckier 8,888, covering a total area of 720,000 square meters, which is the same amount of space as 101 regulation U.S. football fields. So when you go, bring your walking shoes. The vast construction project required more than 100,000 skilled artisans over the course of 14 years to complete, along with over a million menial laborers. After all, if it's something worth doing in China, it's worth getting at least a million people to do it. The craftsmanship put on display in its construction is virtually unmatched, even to this day. Amazingly, neither nails nor glue was used in the construction of its hundreds of structures. Instead, the architects and carpenters used an ingenious technique called dougong, or block and bracket, to expertly fit and

interlock the pieces of the pavilions and structures together, almost like a lego set. The result is astonishingly lightweight and yet incredibly durable, even able to resist earthquakes. The materials used were likewise up to the task of being a truly imperial palace. The wood for the buildings was of no local variety, but rather imported all the way from the jungles of the deep southwest, a type of especially durable softwood called nanmu, which was and still is deemed especially precious, and is in fact, as of this recording, though officially a protected species, it's nevertheless been cut almost to extinction. Such a feat was the importation of this non-mu wood, that in subsequent renovations and

reconstructions of the palace during the later Qing dynasty, it would be swapped out for the far easier-to-come-by Pines of the North. As such, much like the vaunted ship of Theseus, not a plank of the original is left, but the structures themselves remain. Hi everyone, this is Scott. If you want to learn about the world's oldest civilization, of the original World Podcast, available on all podcasting platforms, or go to ancientworldpodcast.com. That's the Ancient World Podcast. The floors of the palace and its exteriors were likewise constructed of special materials. Huge single blocks of stone were dug from local quarries and dragged to the

palace for placement and carving by, get this, waiting until midwinter and then pouring water pulled up from wells across the roads and then sliding the stones across the ice once it froze. Within the halls, a different type of material was used. Not stone here, but instead a type of baked clay called jinzuan, or golden brick. Specially made in the seven prefectures of Suzhou, each batch purportedly required months to properly prepare. And the result was worth it. They were smooth as glass, and when walked upon rang with a metallic sound. Thankfully, unlike the wooden pieces of the palace, the stone and brickwork remains largely intact as the 14th century original. At the back of the palace, that is to say the north, as the main entrance from Tiananmen Square faces due south in classic imperial fashion, there is Jinshan Hill, built out of the accumulated

excavations for the palace complex itself. It would ultimately be there, on its slopes some two centuries later, that Yongle's great times eight grandson, the Chongzhen Emperor, would hang himself from a tree to avoid capture by the victorious rebel armies of Li Zicheng. But that's a story for another time. Back to the Mongol issue, though. With the Yongle Emperor having pulled back in his so-called victory and focused on his palace-building project, that had allowed a new contender for power in the north to begin gathering strength. As is so often the case in steppe politics, this new contender wasn't actually new at all, but rather good old Prince Arghtai, who in 1421 had quit sending tribute missions to Beijing and began launching small-scale raids along the north Ming border while building up broader

support for his own power base. Now that simply would not do. No, it just wouldn't do at all. Yongle began gathering up a third punitive campaign to castigate this wayward vassal, and yet this time he found his effort strongly opposed by his own Minister of Finance, Xia Yuanzhi, and his deputy ministers, on, no surprise here, grounds of such a campaign's exorbitant cost. It will surprise exactly nobody, though, that it was the Yongle Emperor who prevailed in this tug-of-war over whether or not he would get to go fight the barbarians again. I mean, of course he did. And for all their effort, high-minded and cost-effective though it may have been, Xian and his deputies faced imprisonment or forced suicide, because

that's just how it rolls in the Ming Empire. The imperial army departed Beijing for the north in April of 1422 in pursuit of Arugtai. The Mongol prince, quote, had already captured the fortress of Xinghe, north of the Kalgan River, and had subdued the Uriankad of the three commanderies that protected the Ming northeastern frontier. He planned to keep the Chinese army near the Great Wall, liking away from his base, end quote. Rather than falling for Aragtai's trap, however, Yongle detached a force of 20,000 to take on the Uriankad territories, while he personally led the main host of the imperial army directly against Aragtai's headquarters near Dolonur, in modern southern Inner Mongolia. The 20,000-man detachment made rather short work of the captured Uriankad

commanderies, retaking them by that July. The main Ming force, however, arrived at Dolonur only to find that Aragtai had apparently gotten word of their advance against him and fled further north into Mongolia proper. Rather than committing to an extended and even more costly chase through the wastelands, Yongle once again called off the campaign that September before the seasons turned against him, and once more retired back to Beijing. The fourth of Yongle's anti-Mongol campaigns would commence the following year, 1423. It was, however, a small affair and of little note or consequence. It waited until mid-August to even set out from Beijing, and after two months of marching around, vainly in search of an enemy force to fight, the emperor received word that it was all for nothing. Arakutai had already been

defeated by the Oirats and his forces dispersed. Dejected, he returned to Beijing that October. Yongle was not quite done with his Mongol adventures, though. Though nearing 64 and with his health declining, he would nevertheless insist on personally responding, quote, to reports that Aragtai's followers had intruded into Kaiping and were pressing south toward Datong, end quote. As such, the Emperor amassed a large contingent of troops at Beijing and Xuanfu. Early inong, end quote. As such, the emperor amassed a large contingent of troops at Beijing and Xuanfu. Early in April, after inspecting his army, he left the capital at the head of the expeditionary force for the last time. During the next two months, the Ming army marched through Tumu and north to Kaiping, but again failed to meet Aragtai's horde.

Some of the commanders wanted a month's provisions to strike deep into enemy territory, but the emperor, worried that he'd already overextended himself, refused and pulled his armies back. This latest, and what would prove last, of such disappointments seemed to have been the straw that broke the camel's back. Yongle fell into a deep and brooding depression, soon followed by an escalating series of sicknesses, possibly including a series of minor strokes, while his forces ploddingly made their way back toward the capital. At last, while encamped at Yumuchuan, north of Dolonor in northeastern Inner Mongolia,

on the 12th of August, the Yongle Emperor breathed his last, leaving the Mongol problem as unsettled as it had been at the beginning of his reign. After five costly, arduous campaigns against the northern menace over more than a decade, Yongle had achieved next to nothing in terms of concrete results. Moreover, he had abandoned his father's long-time strategy of stationing Chinese garrisons north of the Great Wall, and instead pulled his own forces back to the static defense line while entrusting the defense of the outer regions to the dubious loyalties of allied Mongol princes and chieftains. Quote, Yet when the emperor took the initiative and searched out the enemy whenever he could find

them, leading the punitive expeditions in person, and when he pursued a policy of divide and conquer, pitting one rival Mongol leader against another, his plans also came to naught. It was difficult to track down and engage the mobile Mongol hordes, and the policy of divide and rule, in the end, alienated all parties among the Mongols. These indecisive campaigns also severely strained the economy of the empire and damaged the morale of the army.

Ultimately, the Yongle Emperor's northern policies did little more than permanently weaken the Ming's military situation along the borderlands, and at no gain for itself. But even if we must be forced to conclude that the Yongle Emperor's Mongol policies were ultimately detrimental in their own strategic goals to the north, it remains inarguable that the northern frontier was a pressing concern for the empire, and needed to be dealt with somehow. The situation that unfolded in the far south, on the other hand, can claim no such justification. We venture now all the way back down to Annam, that is to say, northern Vietnam, at this point the vassalized kingdom of Dai Viet. The Hongwu Emperor had pointedly included the southern kingdom within his ancestral injunctions as one of the states that Great Ming should always refrain from invading. But by this point, we know the Yongle Emperor well

enough to know that he's not going to let a trifling thing like dad's little rules get in the way of his pursuit of greater glory. Hak Lam Chan writes, quote, The Yongle Emperor disregarded this injunction in the misguided belief that the internal affairs of Annam threatened the Ming Empire's security, and he attempted to incorporate Annam into the empire. This decision led to the worst political and military disaster in the early Ming period, end quote. Welcome to the club, Ming, you fool. You've just committed one of the classic blunders. Okay, so a bit of background in the internal politics of Vietnam at the time. And another side note here, I'm going to do my level best with these Vietnamese names,

but they are, as ever, pretty much above my pay grade, so please bear with me. Back in the 1390s, the Tran dynasty had been gradually taken over by the court minister called Lê Quỷ Lý, who in 1400 overthrew the Chans and took control himself. In 1403, after changing his name to He Guili, he sent, via his son who was also acting as co-king, envoys to the Ming court to inform the Chinese that the Chan family had died out and that the young He King was a royal nephew in line for the throne, and therefore requesting formal investiture as Dai Viet's new recognized lords. Not knowing the specifics of the actually pretty grisly details, the emperor granted the request. Then, in October of 1404, a refugee arrived at the gates of Nanjing,

claiming to be named Tran Tien Bien, a prince of the royal Tran house. He recounted the treachery and usurpation of Lei Guili and begged the Yongle emperor to assist him in restoring the house of Tran to the Viet throne. Though the emperor did wait until the following year for confirmation of these charges, once they had been verified, Yongle issued a formal edict condemning the usurper and demanding the restoration of the Tran Sion to the throne. He Guili doubted the pretender's claims of him actually being of the house of Tran, but publicly accepted the throne. He Guili doubted the pretender's claims of him actually being of the House of Tran, but publicly accepted the Ming court's demands, sending a mission to Nanjing to

confess of his crimes and agreeing to receive the new king. In early 1406, the Tran pretender was sent back to Annam with a military escort. On April 4th, as the party had just crossed the border at a town called Lamsun, an ambush was launched against the unsuspecting group by Annamese soldiers, loyal to the He regime. The Chan prince and almost all of the Chinese guards were slaughtered in the course of the ambush, putting an end to that particular problem, but of course opening up a whole new can of worms. News of this latest betrayal arrived in Nanjing,

where Yong Le, already incensed at continued Annamese aggressions against Yunnan, Guangxi, and the southern Vietnamese cliat state of Champa, decided that enough was finally enough, and it was time to put an end to this troublesome usurper once and for all. Yongle appointed to lead the campaign the Duke of Chengguo, a clansman named Juneng, alongside the veteran generals Zhangfu and Musheng. The Duke wasn't long for the world, and died suddenly before even reaching Annam. Pressing onward without him, General Zhang duly took command of the operation and its 215,000

soldiers. At the border, Zhang and Mu divided their force and launched a pincer attack against Annam from both Yunnan and Guangxi, to swift and decisive success. On 19 November, the Chinese forces captured two Annamese capitals and several other major towns Quote, End quote. Well, that sure was easy. So easy, in fact, that, you know what, why don't we just stick around? Forever? Yongle thus made a disastrous decision. That's right, he decided to annex Vietnam. On July 5th, 1407, the proclamation was promulgated that, actually, you're now a part of the Ming, Dai Viet. And also, you're now going to be called the province of Jiaozhi, just like you were back during the Tang Dynasty conquest. Now, Jiaozhi is a name of rather

disputed origin and meaning. It's possibly a transliteration of a local ethnic name of the region. It literally means cross-toe, and nevertheless came to be a slightly derogatory catch-all term for the peoples of the far south by northerners. Anyways, military commissioners were appointed to govern this newly formed province, and General Jong-Fu settled in to oversee Zhaoja's pacification for the next year. It turned out, though, that guess what? The Vietnamese weren't really in the market for a new conquest dynasty. And so the Vietnamese did what the Vietnamese do whenever someone overstays their welcome. They rapidly formed pockets of intractable, vicious resistance all across the region. In September 1408, the first official flag of rebellion was raised by Tran Nguyet,

a former official of the Tran dynasty. He declared the reformation of Dai Viet, and then captured the prefectural city of Nguyen An and its surrounding townships. In response, General Mu Xiong was dispatched with his troops from Yunnan to quell this uprising. But Tran Nui and his forces not only knew the terrain very well, but also enjoyed wide local support, because of course they did. As such, they were able to deal Mu Xiong's army multiple defeats before disappearing back into the forests. Early in 1409, Zhang Fu decided to personally intervene and salvage the spiraling situation. In a well-planned and executed offensive, Zhang was able to hem

Chuangwei's armies in, finally defeating and capturing him that December. Early the following year, on account of his battlefield successes, Zhang Fu was recalled to Nanjing in order to take part in the emperor's own northern offensive against Aruc Thai, thus leaving the Annam situation in the hands of the rather less capable Mu Sheng. Meanwhile, Chuan Ngui's nephew, named Chuan Gui Kuang, stepped forward and claimed the Chuan throne and battle standard of Vietnamese resistance. The Ming court, now preoccupied with northern affairs, tried to buy Chuan off by offering him title and position as the administrative commissioner of Zhaozhi. But Tron refused, and the war continued.

Musheng, though competent enough, proved yet again that he just wasn't up to the task of dealing with this level of insurgency, and made little progress against the Tron rebels. By 1411, Zhang Fu was forced to go all the way back to Annan at the head of 24,000 troops to once again bail his subordinate out. And I mean, talk about some mileage. Nanjing to Hanoi is about 1,100 miles, and Nanjing to Beijing to Dolinor is another 900, and he was going back and forth. So between 1407 and 1416, when Zhang Fu is finally replaced as the military lead in Annan, by my calculations, he racked up in transit alone between the three locations more than 8,400 miles, which, fun fact,

is just about the exact distance between Mexico City and Hong Kong. So I sure hope he got some frequent rider miles. In any case, Zhang Fu was able to retake the rebel capital of Nguyen An, for whatever that was worth. The rebels, as guerrillas tend to do, simply disappeared into fallback positions and continued to avoid pitched battles. The rebellion continued on as such, frustratingly and bloodily, for a further three years, until Tran Quy Quang was at last captured and imprisoned on March 30th, 1414. Thinking that the worst must surely now be over, Zhang was again recalled to Nanjing, only to be re-dispatched again back to Vietnam to put down even more insurrections. By this point,

however, it was a relatively minor job, and by the end of 1416, he was at last allowed to leave Annam behind once and for all. The forcible peace he had spent so long establishing, however, did not long survive his final departure. By the time his replacement, Li Bin, arrived in Annam in February of 1417, the situation had already deteriorated once again. This was due in no small part thanks to the onerous demands by the eunuch official, Ma Qi, who'd been dispatched to oversee the collection of that oh-so-precious non-mu wood from Annam in order to construct the Forbidden City up in Beijing, which he demanded the local populace slave away in harvesting. Uprisings were quick to reignite, rallying by 1418 behind a formidable warrior from Tanhua named Leiloi, a former follower of Chuanggui Kuang, who now proclaimed himself the King of Dai Viet. Leiloi's forces classed directly with the Ming occupation force twice between 1419 and 1420,

losing each encounter, but learning the valuable lesson that there were more effective ways to fight the enemy than on their own terms. Le Loi thereafter retreated back to the jungles and mountains and engaged in a persistent guerrilla campaign against the Ming, winning the hearts and loyalty of the Viet population and becoming a potent symbol of resistance and something of an enduring folk hero. The Annamese quagmire continued to mire the Ming, which despite a continuous impouring of massive amounts of troops and resources, seemed by the close of the second decade of the 1400s no closer to pacifying the southern kingdom into a Chinese province than it had been in 1406.

And man, doesn't this all just sound so very familiar? In fact, by the end of the Yongle Emperor's reign, it would still be nowhere near resolved, and will go on to prove a serious problem for his successors, who would at last, in 1427, finally acknowledge the failure of the Annam policy and permanently withdraw, abandoning its two-decade-long boondoggle of expansionary effort. It turned out that Daddy Hong Wu had been right all along. For the love of God, stay the hell out of Vietnam. Just leave it alone. That's where we're going to leave off this time. But don't worry, we're not quite done with our look at the Yongle Era, because we've still got one final facet to examine. The fantastic,

far-reaching, sometimes fictionalized, voyages of the greatest admiral to ever ply the southern seas. That's right, it's time for the shipmaster who's extremely ballsy for someone without any of his own. Zheng He. Thanks for listening. 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.