The History of China - #222 - Ming 13: Trouble In Paradise

Episode Date: August 21, 2021

Zheng He's Treasure Fleet finally arrives on the African coast, and the Yongle Emperor celebrates the apex of his reign with the grand opening of Beijing and the Forbidden City. But dark clouds continue to build, but in the emperor's aged, troubled mind, and literally on the horizon... a storm is coming... Time Period Covered: 1416-1424 CE Major Historical Figures: The Yongle Emperor (Zhu Di) [r. 1402-1424] The Noble Consort Zhaoxian, née Wang [d. ca. 1420] Grand Admiral Zheng He [1371-1435] Mirza Sharukh, Sultan of the Timurid Dynasty [r. 1405-1447] Major Works Cited: Chan, Hok-lam. “The Yung-lo reign” in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 7: The Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644, Pt. I. Dreyer, Edward L. Zheng He: China and the Oceans in the Early Ming Dynasty, 1405-1433. Levathes, Louise. When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405-1433. 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 the British Empire by listening to Pax Britannica everywhere you find your podcasts. Or go to pod.link slash pax.

With the Twilight Histories podcast, you can travel anywhere in the multiverse. Some worlds are familiar. Others are totally exotic. An Egypt ravaged by an ice age. a Carthaginian colony on Mars, a Rome that never fell. If you enjoy history, you'll love these immersive stories that pull you into different worlds. So step on the platform and let's get you on your way. Step into the Twilight Histories Podcast. Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 222, Trouble in Paradise.

Mountain ridges into endless layers, trees luxuriantly dark. A radiance shimmers on dark green mountains, arrayed to face the sun. Standing tall in the blue clouds, they nearly reach the North Star. Covering a vast distance, they link the Great Wall and East Ocean. Their roads penetrate the remotest lands to bring foreign emissaries. Heaven created this deep pass to fortify the imperial capital. The empire is unified with standardized measurements and script. We might well make a rubbing from a cliff inscription to send to the emperor.

A poem in praise of the Yongle Emperor and the virtues of Beijing as the new imperial capital by Wang Fu, circa 1416. When last we left Admiral Zheng He, he'd plied the waves of the southern seas all the way to the east coastline of Africa, and had brought back to his emperor gifts most delightful and auspicious, including a giraffe. The year 1416 would therefore stand as a sort of high-water mark in both the reign of Yongle himself and the Ming as a whole, for two reasons. First, as mentioned, it would stand as the apogee of the treasure fleet projecting Chinese power and prestige abroad. And second, it would mark the year that formal construction would begin on that other most lasting of Ming magnificence, the imperial palace at Beijing, aka the Forbidden City.

Now I've already talked at length about the construction of the staggeringly massive complex, so we won't spend much time in the rehashing of that. I bring it up only to draw your attention to the overlap going on. There is a lot going on in the second decade of the 15th century. The major construction of the Forbidden City would last for the subsequent three years, from 1417 to 1420, and it's estimated that as much as 2% of Ming China's total population, of around 60 million, which would make that 2% about 1.2 million, took part in some phase of its construction. It's truly mind-boggling. But then again, at the same time, pretty par for the course when it comes to Chinese megaprojects.

Regardless, in the meantime, Yongle's residence remained in Nanjing, and thus it was from there that he would once again dispatch his Grand Admiral on his fifth voyage. After holding all the appropriate feasts, ceremonies, and ladening his many ambassadors down with gifts and treasures to return to their homelands and monarchs, Yongle ordered Zheng He to safely escort the 19 ambassadorial parties back to their respective home nations. The admiral was issued robes, silks, and brocades by the emperor, not for himself, but as parting gifts from the imperial court for each of the diplomats as they disembarked. Zheng was also entrusted with an imperial seal of enfiefment for the king of Cochin, a city-state on India's west coast and rival of Calicut, and a new addition

to Great Ming's constellation of tributary states. While this both-sizing of the Indian rivalry may have raised some eyebrows in Calicut, it was firmly in keeping with Yongle's policy of international relations, much like his father's before him. He expressed his vision, as such, in the text of the Cochin Tablet, said to have been written in his own hand, quote, The law of the emperor is linked to both said to have been written in his own hand, quote, The law of the emperor is linked to both heaven and earth and encompasses all people everywhere. Under heaven, there is only one law, and all people have the same concerns. How can the same feelings of sorrow, grief, joy, and pleasure, and the same desires for peace, ease, satiety, and warmth not be shared among all?

End quote. Yongle therefore wished that, quote, all distant countries and foreign domains each achieve its proper place under heaven. End quote. And you might think he'd just leave it there at that, but no, Yongle was only just warming up. He went on to just go ahead and fill in what he thought the king of Cochin would certainly have to say as thanks for his magnanimity. again quoting, How fortunate we are that the teachings of the sages of China have benefited us. For several years now, we have had abundant harvests in our country, and our people have had houses to live in, have had the bounty of the sea to eat their fill of, and enough fabrics for

clothes. Our old are kind to the young, and our juniors respect our seniors. All lead happy lives in harmony, without oppression and contention for dominance. The mountains lack ferocious beasts, End quote. Corrential rains have not fallen, pestilence has ceased, and there have been no disaster or calamities. End quote. Now, just to reiterate, that was not the king of Cochin actually speaking. That was the Yongle emperor imagineering what he felt the king was probably thinking about all this. Seemingly, all while humming along to the tune of What Can I Say Except You're Welcome from Moana. He had portrayed himself as the all-father to the benighted barbarian peoples who had, ever so wisely, placed themselves under his protective wing. It struck at a markedly different ideation of empire, or even of conquest,

than was so familiar in the Western world. In essence, hey, we're the bomb, and anyone with a lick of sense will seek us out, because they'll recognize our innate awesomeness. So why in the world should we do anything more than just advertise that we're awesome and let the tributes roll in? In all of the Ming's dealings with these foreign states, even the most distant and exotic, they'd never really encountered anything that had stood out as a culture or civilization that was much beyond a bear riding a unicycle wearing a bowtie. Fascinating, yes, sometimes even with genius little contraptions here and there, but nothing approaching the true font of civilization. Quote, if one owned everything, what was the point of going out and conquering it?

The European concept of militant crusading colonialism, beyond the necessity of creating a favorable climate for east-west trade, demeaned the Chinese ideal of an all-powerful, semi-divine emperor, and thus never occurred to Zhu Di. Prosperity was the reward for allegiance to the dragon throne. It would instill greater loyalty in barbarian people than could be mustered with garrisons and foot soldiers." In that sense, at least, it seems that Yongle had already reached past the point of peak interest in his grand oceanic project. There was only so much value to be had from such a grand and costly endeavor. And once that had been reached, the plug could conceivably be pulled with very few tears shed. That point, however, had not yet been reached.

It was now time in 1417 for the treasure fleet's fifth voyage to set out. After the usual ceremonial rigmarole, the fleet set out, southbound and down, with their first stop once again at Quanzhou in Fujian province. There, they unloaded locally made porcelains made in the distinctive blue and white idiom that would come to so define the enamelware of the period. Here as well were taken aboard for trade teas, silks, and cloth for trade abroad. The fleet's stay at Quanzhou lasted for several months, during which it's recorded that Zheng He made regular use of the Tumun Street Mosque, which was the main house of worship for the port city's sizable Muslim

population. Levithes is careful to note that, even taking into account Zheng's clearly heartfelt veneration for Tianfei, the sea goddess, and the Buddhist rituals and precepts that were far more common across Ming China, that never came to eclipse his own inborn Muslim faith, and he would continue to faithfully pray to both Allah and honor his prophets throughout his life. In fact, it seems at least in part due to Zheng He's own high-favored status as the Grand Admiral and his ongoing devotion to Islam that caused the Yongle Emperor, as of June 16th, 1417, dedicated a tablet with his seal and signature in a garden just outside of the Ash'ab Mosque, or in Chinese, the Qingjing Mosque, describing the followers of Islam as sincere, good, and loyal subjects, most deserving of commendation.

Yongle ordered that mosques across the empire be protected, as well as their Muslim congregants, such that, quote, official, military, and civilian households and other categories of people shall not maltreat, insult, or bully Muslims, and whosoever dares to knowingly disobey our command shall be punished according to the crime, end quote. This was actually quite the about-face for the situation facing Muslims in China at the time. They had, since the fall of the Yuan Dynasty, faced considerable persecution, in large part for their role, perceived and actual, as the petty officials and especially tax collectors for the Mongol regime. An estimated 40,000 Muslims lived in Quanzhou at this time, and it had at one point boasted as many as seven mosques.

According to Islamic texts, however, all seven of them had been burned down in the wake of the Ming takeover. Though it remains unconfirmed, it seems likely that Zheng He's personal faith may have had a significant effect on the overall turnaround of official policy regarding Muslim denizens of the empire in the second decade of the 15th century. After at last departing Fujian, the treasure fleet continued on across the southern waters, reaching many of the foreign ports now rather familiar to the ship's crews. Champa, Java, Palembang, Semidora, and Sumatra. Pahang and Malacca in Malaysia. The Maldives, Ceylon, Cochin, and Calicut along the Indian coasts. And then it was onward to the less well-charted straits. Venturing beyond Hormuz, the fleet sailed on to Aden for the first time. The port on the southern coast of the Arabian Sea and the entrance to the Red Sea beyond, and traditionally one of the main mustering points for Western traders to assemble

before making for India and the Far East with their wares. At this time, it was ruled by the Rasulid dynasty, whose capital was at Taiz. The Rasulids ruled all of southwestern Arabia, as far north as Mecca. Ma Juan reported that Aden had 7,000 or 8,000, quote, well-drilled horsemen and foot soldiers, end quote. By other counts, it was 20,000. And that such an army was intimidating to Aden's neighbors, end quote. Aden was, by every account, absolutely the nexus of world trade and commerce that it was made out to be. The women were noted as lavishly decorating themselves in jewelry and finery, four pairs of gold earrings inlaid with gems, strands of pearls and gemstones,

bracelets, armbands, and rings on their fingers and toes. And of course, lucrative trading partners and perhaps allies, such as what the mighty Ming fleet brought to bear and represented, warranted no less than the finest Aden had on offer. The Sultan himself was there to greet and host Zheng He and his command staff, and probably seeing the possibility of an ally against the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt, against which Aden was an intractable rival, especially over control of the holy Islamic cities of Mecca and Medina, he truly rolled out the red carpet. From the Chinese Muslim chronicler Ma Huan, quote, At the king's palace they rendered a ceremonial salutation with great reverence and humility. The sultan decreed that, so great and so important were these Chinese visitors to his city, that none but the very best could be brought before them to trade,

and they were indeed brought forth. Again quoting, opalescent stones and rare gems, large pearls, pieces of coral over two feet high, amber and rose water. Lions, zebras, leopards, ostriches, white pigeons, and a giraffe were given in tribute by the sultan for the Yongle emperor. In addition, the sultan gave Zheng He two gold belts inlaid with jewels, a gold hat with pearls and precious stones, two horns, and a special memorial to the dragon throne engraved in gold leaf, end quote. In return, the traders of the Ming fleet bartered with their stores of gold and silver, porcelains, sandalwood, and peppers. Once their mission to Aden was successfully concluded, the fleet sailed on, on to the coasts of Africa for the very first time, in order to make good the return of the ambassadors they'd ferried to their homes in Mogadishu, Brawa, and Malindi,

which is modern Somalia and Kenya, respectively. These coastal, or Swahili, derived from the Arabic, peoples considered themselves civilized as opposed to the uncivilized, or as they called them, Ushensi, peoples of the hinterlands further inland. These African city-states were interconnected primarily via trade and religion, having been rather thoroughly colonized and intermixed with by Arab traders, and ultimately nobility, in the prior centuries. Politically, however, they were anything but unified, and instead each was ruled by an Arab sheikh lording over a domain unto himself. Quote, The Swahili towns had pristine three-story houses of coral rag and lime mortar,

with lush gardens of citrus trees and vegetables. End quote. Yet in spite of the likely overwhelming appearance of the Ming treasure fleet, which absolutely dwarfs the main Arabic-style ship of the era, the Dao, which maxed out, much like the galleon, at less than a quarter the length of the largest Ming ships. There appears to have been some tension, and perhaps even some good old-fashioned gunboat diplomacy, between the Chinese and at least a few of these Swahili cities. Levithes writes, quote, Feixian reported that the inhabitants of Mogadishu were quarrelsome. Luo Maodeng's 1597 novel about

the voyages of Zheng He, which is believed to have some historic reliability, states specifically that Zheng He used gunpowder explosives against a walled town called Lhasa, thought to be near Mogadishu in Somalia, end quote. Apparently, the leader of Lhasa, fearing that the Chinese must surely be seeking conquest, seriously considered mounting a sterner defense, but called it off after realizing the sheer force differential between his defenders and the armada assembled just off his coast. If they were here for Conquest, there wasn't anything the Somalis were going to be able to do about it.

Conquest was, of course, not on the menu for the Treasure Fleet. Ultimately they came, they traded, then they sailed on. The Treasure Fleet returned triumphantly to China on July 15th, 1419, to yet more richly deserved imperial accolades and rewards. The African envoys paraded their curious animals, and court officials craning their necks looked on with pleasure and stamping their feet when they were scared and startled, thinking that these were things that were rarely heard of in the world and that China had never seen their likeness. And of course, the second giraffe, I mean Qilin, was treated with equal reverence and celebrity as the first,

including a commemorative song-slash-poem by Jin Youzi. It went, quote, There is no darkness but is brightened. There is no distance but is illuminated. From where the water father and the clouds assemble, bowing their heads and bearing gifts, thus many auspicious signs are collected, arriving one after another in pairs. How did this come about? Only through the perfect virtue of the emperor. End quote. These African ambassadors would enjoy the hosting of the Nanjing Palace for nearly two years, until at last it was determined in the spring of 1421 that they should be taken home. Thus was instigated the

mysterious short sixth voyage of the treasure fleet. It is written in starkly different terms than its predecessors, much more as a voyage of pure discovery than one of profit motive. This, of course, should absolutely not be taken to indicate that profit was not a motive. It still totally was. Africa was viewed in this period as something of China's El Dorado, a, quote, land of rare and precious things, mysterious and unfathomable, end quote. In spite of that, such precious things accounted for very little of what they recorded, instead focusing on how hot, arid, and markedly unlike China Mogadishu was. Fei Xin, for instance, would write, quote, since there is no cultivated soil, the people live

on fishing. Because of the torrid weather, only a few plants can grow. And if anyone wandered over this country, he would only have met with sad glances. An entire land having nothing but sand. End quote. During this sixth voyage, it seems that, as before, the treasure fleet was split in two, likely at Sumatra. While the main portion of the fleet was entrusted to the command of Zhou Man, one of Zheng He's eunuch lieutenants, the Grand Admiral himself seems to have returned to China, with records indicating that he was back in the capital by November of 1421, while the rest of the fleet was gone for another year. Levithes posits that this was likely to do, with Zheng feeling obliged

to join the festivities honoring the formal completion of the new Ming Imperial Palace, the Forbidden City, up north in the newly redesignated main capital, Beijing. And oh, what a celebration it was. On that day of the Lunar New Year, following that year on February 2nd, the Fengtian Gate had been filled with thousands of foreign envoys, imperial officials, and military officers. One and all gathered to congratulate and celebrate the emperor's achievement on completing this newest great marvel of not only his reign, but Ming China as a whole and the wide world beyond. Quote, In unison, the officials bowed and kowtowed to the emperor nine times.

Then, a representative of each of the nine ranks of both civil and military officials presented a tribute to the emperor, wishing him long life and a reign of 10,000 years. A scroll celebrating the occasion was lowered to people below the Wumeng Gate and copied for wide distribution. Chimes sounded when the emperor rose and moved inside the Huagai, or splendid parasol hall, and then on to his living quarters. The north side of the Forbidden City consisted of living areas for him, the Empress, and his scores of concubines, as well as the Imperial Gardens and a Taoist temple for the personal use of the Imperial family. Beyond the moat and high walls of the palace was a man-made mountain, the highest point in Beijing, from which the Emperor,

if he wished, could survey his residence. End quote. The gifts presented were, obviously, exactly to the So the sovereign's tastes. Zhu Di had long had an interest in the arts, and in particular the ethereal beauty and delicacy of porcelain. His favorite style was a creamy white that would come to be known as Tian Bai, meaning sweet white. It's described as minute bubbles in the glaze scattering the light, giving the porcelain an unusual softness. From the furthest edges of the known world were paraded all varieties of curious beasts, and, obviously, the variety of highly auspicious Chileans that had appeared for the first time in known history, all during his reign.

In that moment, there must surely have seemed to be no bounds and no end to the voyages and increasingly fantastic treasures they produced for the Son of Heaven and the Empire as a whole. And then, it went quite literally up in smoke. In the confusion ordering of the universe, virtue and merit sit on the side of order and harmony, while rapacity and discord are the seeds of chaos and doom. When all is in harmony, the land bursts forth its bounty, the seas spill forth their fruits, the forests their fine woods, and happiness and prosperity spread to all across the realm. But when the heavens are displeased, and the universe is thrown out of balance, flood, droughts, and famine ravage the lands. Plague and pestilence consume the great and meek alike, and sorrow reaches into the hearts of all, both the mighty and the small.

And all blame needs must lay on the one and only being who served as the living bridge and arbiter between the realm of the spirit and the physical, the son of heaven and no other. In the words of the ancient sage Confucius himself, quote, he who offends against heaven has none to whom he can pray, end quote. 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 ten 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. In the months that followed the joyous occasion of the Forbidden City's dedication ceremony, months that by rights ought to have been full of boundless joy, instead, trouble festered like an infected wound. The first sign of trouble in paradise was when Yongle's favorite concubine, Lady Wang, suddenly died circa 1420. Yongle's beloved Empress Xu, daughter of one of Zhu Yuanzhang's most trusted generals, Xu Da, to more closely bind the two families all the way back in 1376, had died back in 1407, much to the heartbreak of her imperial husband, who, by all records, loved her very dearly. Thereafter, to honor her, Zhu Di had taken no other as

empress, but had come to rely on, in all things family and personal on the noble consort Zhao Xian, surnamed Wang, or in Chinese, Zhao Xian Guifei Wang Shi, which is as close to a name, unfortunately, as we will ever get. Lady Wang seems to have had the unique ability to get her notoriously moody husband to calm down and listen to other members of his family when he got angry or offended, a state of affairs that had become increasingly common as the Ming Emperor continued to age and get more, well, how do you put this nicely, crotchety. The palace staff, and his extended family beside for that matter, had come to walk on

eggshells around the Yongle Emperor for fear of touching off his wrath, and had for more than a decade relied on Lady Wang to shield them from its worst effects and help the imperial storm clouds blow over. But now she was gone, and only stormy, dark, 60-year-old Zhu Di remained. In her absence, it seemed, quite a bit more of Zhu Di's father's infamous personality traits began to assert themselves in the sun. Quote, his ill humor turned to cruelty, and scores of palace attendants were summarily executed for causing the emperor even the slightest displeasure. End quote. In the spring of 1421, two concubines were discovered having an illicit affair with one of the palace eunuchs. Now, here's the thing. This was not an unusual

occurrence. It was probably not talked about very much, if ever, but to be real, a major part of the reason you have eunuchs as the personal attendants and guardians of your imperial consorts and such is that you don't have to worry if they take up some of their pent-up sexuality out on them. The whole point is that it's never going to produce any unwanted consequence. So all that being said, this incident turned unusual because both of the women killed themselves after being discovered, possibly because the pair were also having a far more scandalous love affair with one another. Women playing around with eunuchs might be one thing, but playing around with each other? No, no, no.

That's something else entirely. One of these consorts was rather favored by Yongle. He was furious when he was informed of their suicides, and immediately ordered an official inquiry because surely there must be some deviousness behind it, and it could not possibly just be a terrible tragedy in itself. Instead, it was about to become a much, much larger tragedy. The palace servants, very justifiably fearing for their own safety and lives if they failed to answer the emperor's agents in ways that they found pleasing, were quick to lob accusations on the dead consorts in order to save their own skins. They'd actually been caught, it was alleged, in a plot to kill the emperor. That's why they killed themselves. You can, no doubt, see exactly where this is going from here. Accusation piled atop accusation, name atop name, until by the end of the

investigation, more than 2,800 concubines and eunuchs had been implicated in the, um, conspiracy. It's reported that the Yongle Emperor personally executed many of the accused, and that many of the palace women cursed him to his face before they were dispatched by his own hand. They cried, quote, you are losing your young masculine energy, and that is why your concubines had a relationship with a young eunuch. We are innocent, end quote. Such pleas did little to stem the emperor's wrath, and though surely some of the 2800 were eventually let off, for probably the vast majority it would prove to be a confusing, unfair, and thoroughly terrifying end at the hand of the man they thought was their lover

and protector. That same spring, there would be the issue of the tribute horse. Ambassadors of the Timurid king, Mirza Shahrukh, arrived to pay tribute to the dragon throne. Among the gifts brought of particular note was a horse, the former steed of the great Timur, or Tamerlane, himself. Yungla, ever the rider and huntsman, wanted to try this kingly steed out at once, and together with the ambassadors went on a hunting trip outside the capital. But in the course of this adventure, the steed bucked and threw the 60-year-old emperor, badly bruising his hand and wrist. This, of course, caused him to grow terribly wroth, and he ordered the Timurid ambassadors to be shackled and thereafter sent to the northern

frontier as slave soldiers in the garrison. Yongle's counselors pleaded with him to restrain himself and allow calm to prevail, to sleep on it, and to revisit the issue in the light of a fresh day. The following day came, and Yongle was indeed in a considerably better mood, and sent for the arrested ambassadors. When they arrived before his tent, they spoke not a word, but simply collapsed to the ground in trembling frustration. It was, after all, probably the wisest action they could have possibly done. After several tense moments, Yongle bade them rise and accompany him on a ride, on a different horse this time, to be sure. As a small group rode, the emperor brought up his fall the previous day. Quote, if one wishes good relations between two countries and selects a horse or some other precious object,

one must select the best one. He began, wearing his red riding mantle, brocaded with gold, and to which was stitched a black satin pouch to contain his long beard. Continuing the quote, Yesterday we rode the horse you gave us. It was already too old. In the end it threw us to the ground. My hand was injured and turned black and blue. To this, the chief ambassador at last broke his silence, replying, The horse in question was formerly that of Lord Temur. His son, King Shahrukh, presented it to your majesty to show the greatest respect to you. The king said your country must have this horse as a treasure among horses.

And then according to the Persian account of this incident from Hafiz i Abru, here another person, this time a Chinese official, spoke up, counseling the emperor would spread here. The whole world would say that the emperor of China had acted contrary to all convention by imprisoning the envoys after so many years of absence from their home and punishing them. End quote. Whether it was the assurance that the horse really was meant as the highest of honors, or the more real politic advice of his own counselor, Judy's sour mood quickly about-faced, and all at once he declared his delight that he now possessed the very steed of his former enemy, Timur. The envoys, rather than face punishment, would be lavishly rewarded.

Even so, the ill omens just kept on coming. Not long after the tribute horse incident, on May 9th, a spring storm blew over Beijing, and no fewer than three bolts of lightning struck the three great ceremonial halls of the newly completed Forbidden City, setting them all instantly ablaze. The halls, intricately designed and constructed and wrought as they were,

with the finest imported woods and lacquered to a brilliant shimmer, all went up like giant tiki torches. The heavy gold-colored tiled roofs that rose nearly a hundred feet all caved in, while voluminous silk canopies and curtains and the emperor's carved wooden thrones were quickly reduced to ashes. A Persian emissary who witnessed the event described it as if a hundred thousand torches had been lit at once.

The flames spread with terrifying speed to the apartments of the concubines and offices of courtiers, leaping from one to the next over the course of that entire night and into late the following afternoon, before the last of the fires finally snuffed themselves out. Ultimately, this disaster consumed 250 quarters and a large number of men and women. As if that weren't bad enough, no sooner had the embers cooled than whispers began spreading throughout the capital that the disaster had been foretold, a sign of heaven's displeasure.

It was the master of the water clock, Hu, who had predicted this calamitous event. The rumors went that clockmaster Hu had tried to warn the emperor, but Yongle had flown into a rage and ordered him arrested and to be executed at the exact hour he had predicted the calamity if nothing should happen.

While in prison, Hu had decided to take the easy way out and swallowed a draught of poison he'd secreted into the prison just an hour before the lightning struck. Suffice it to say, Zhu Di was, in the parlance of the youth today, shook. And he immediately made for the palace temple to pray and seek answers. The God of heaven is angry with me, he is reported to have said, and therefore burnt my palace. Although I have done no evil act, I have neither offended my father, nor my mother, nor have I acted tyrannically. And I pause here for the very necessary, gigantic, ironic beat. Uh-huh. He then turned to his ministers and asked,

Uh, Hans? Are we the baddies? And his ministers, no doubt extremely aware of just how very thin the ice beneath their collective feet was at this moment, played the safest card they possibly could and replied by citing Confucius. Quote,

If a ruler's words be good, is it not also good that no one oppose them? But if they are not good, and no one opposes them, may there not be expected from this one sentence the ruin of his country? End quote. Sort of a magic 8-ball reply, but it seemed to get the job done, since soon thereafter, Yongle had issued an apparently quite sincere and emotional edict to his court. It went, My heart is full of trepidation. I do not know how to handle it. It seems that there has been some laxness in the rituals of honoring heaven and serving the spirits. Perhaps there has been some transgression of the ancestral law or some perversion of governmental affairs. Perhaps mean men hold rank while good

men flee and hide themselves, and the good and evil are not distinguished? Perhaps punishments and jailing have been excessive and unjustly applied to the innocent, and the straight and crooked are not discriminated? Is this what brought about those fires? Harshness to the people below and above going against heaven. I cannot find the reason in my confusion. If our actions have in To begin with, he ordered an immediate halt to the production of copper coins and the purchase of copper ore, silks, and horses in the Northwest. In order to ease the burden of the people and eliminate those things not essential to the running of government, he lifted all grain taxes on areas that had suffered calamities in the prior year, as well as temporarily suspending all future treasure fleet voyages.

Eventually, someone was brave enough to put forward a suggestion of their own, that maybe, just maybe, that whole build an entire palace and move the capital to Beijing thingy had been rather rough on the population, and maybe that might have something to do with having been rather less than pleased with Zhu Di. Quote, Surpluses of the imperial treasury had by now disappeared,

due to not only the emperor's expansionist foreign policy, but also to severe famines in Shandong and Hunan and epidemics in Fujian, which claimed 253,000 lives. In some areas, people were forced to eat wild plants to survive, and many died of starvation. There were now so few able-bodied men that people were left unburied in the fields and roads where they had died. Might that not have something to do with heaven being a little bit ticked off? That seemed to open the floodgate, and following this critique, yet more came pouring in from the officials, like 100 nitpicking flowers all blooming at once, and soon enough, predictably enough, the emperor grew tired of all the kvetching, and the imperial scythe came swinging down atop the blossoms. As the Hanlin academician Li Shimian read his missive to the emperor that, in his opinion, Beijing was simply not a suitable place to receive foreign envoys, Yongle boomed out, SILENDRERS! Silencing all present. One by one, the critics were banished,

or imprisoned, for their daring to speak out against the emperor, as he had invited them to do. When the imprisonments began to give way to death sentences, finally the Minister of Revenue, sensing the dark turn that this was all taking, stepped forward and declared, quote, Those who responded to your edicts are blameless. It is only we in high offices who have not been able to assist you with the grand plan. The fault is ours." And with that, slowly, gradually, the crisis blew over. All discussion of the palace fires and the burdens of its construction that it had impressed upon the empire's population was silenced. As for the palace itself, it would stand as a silent testament to heaven's displeasure, with no effort to rebuild the ruined portions of the Forbidden City until the mid-century by his grandson Zhu Qizhen, the Zhentong Emperor. Regardless, it's here that we more or less have circled back around to meeting up with old episode 215 in terms of the timeline.

There's very little left to do but kill Yongle one more time. You'll remember that, through all this, the emperor had taken up military campaign after campaign in increasingly quixotic efforts to hunt down and capture the remaining Mongol Yuan leadership, and finally put down their claim of legitimacy for good. In all, he would command five campaigns to the northern steppes, with pretty much all of them netting him nothing but air and sorrow. The campaigns of 1422 and 1423 were so uneventful that they barely warrant mention, and by 1424, at age 64 and with his health in steep decline, he would insist on searching the endless, rolling grasslands for his archenemy, the Prince Aruktai, for what would be the last

time. Levithes puts it, quote, even as a young man, he had suffered from intestinal parasites, and after the 1414 Mongolian campaign, he was afflicted with a malady called feng shi, or damp wind, a rheumatic disorder. Some histories say that the emperor was also partially paralyzed and took Taoist elixirs laced with arsenic as a stimulant. In his later years, therefore, he may have been slowly dying of arsenic poisoning. Regardless, just two months into his fifth anti-Mongol campaign, he succumbed to an illness at Yumutuan in the heat of the inner Mongolian summer. His army took to melting down their tin cooking utensils in order to construct for the emperor a coffin summer. His army took to melting down their tin cooking utensils

in order to construct for the emperor a coffin to carry his body back to Beijing. In a scene rather strangely reminiscent of the first emperor, Chen Shi Huang's almost comical death, it was decided by the senior military officers and the imperial eunuchs that it would be best to keep the news of the emperor's death a secret until his body had actually been returned to the capital for his funeral rites. There seems to not have been the farcical carrying of rotted fish before the palanquin involved this time at least, as by now they'd figured out the finer points of post-mortem preservation, no doubt aided by the arid conditions of the Gobi. Once the corpse was delivered to

Beijing without incident, it was transferred from its makeshift metal casket into a much finer, thicker imperial casket of the finest imported Nanmu wood, the same as which the palace had been built, and was placed in repose within the Forbidden City for 100 days. For the duration of this period of official state mourning, all playing of music and religious ceremonies were forbidden, as were weddings. Temples were instructed to ring their bells 30,000 times. The site of his tomb had been preselected years before, all the way back in 1411, at the base of the Tianshou Mountains, some 40 miles northwest of the capital. Much like his father's grand tomb at the Purple Mountain of Nanjing, Judy's burial mound had been raised between a mountain and a river

in order to prevent the soul from wandering. Ultimately, it would be Yongle's tomb that would be the go-to burial site for Ming emperors, with a total of 13 sovereigns entombed therein. On the day of the funeral, Zhu Di's earthly remains were carried out of the imperial palace via the Meridian Gate, with an honor guard of 10,000 military and civil officials to mark the occasion. His eldest son and heir, Zhu Gaoshi, the newly enthroned Hongxi Emperor, stayed behind with the rest of the living within the palace walls, watching his father take his final trip. The procession proceeded slowly toward the burial site, in diagonal zigzag patterns, thought to confuse any evil spirits that might attempt to pursue the late monarch, as they were understood to

travel only in straight lines. All in all, the 20-mile journey took two days to arrive at the grave site. There, the body of the Yongle Emperor was joined by 16 of his concubines, who had either been killed or forced to commit suicide, within the Underground Palace Complex, or Zhuangong. It consisted of four chambers about 80 feet below ground. A host of skinned and boiled animals were presented as sacrifices to appease the gods, and then buried with the emperor. Within the coffin, Judy's favorite clothes, ornaments, utensils, and other favorite things from his daily life were arranged with utmost care around the body.

Far above this, at ground level, a large sacrificial hall and altar had been constructed, with three connecting courtyards for the ceremonies that would be conducted twice a year thereafter to honor his spirit and memory. Quote, and for eternity, the tomb of the Yongle Emperor was guarded by a mile-long row of stone officials, warriors, and animals, each carved from a single large block of granite. Solemn-faced statues of imperial counselors, dressed in long robes with the square-shaped hats of their office, held hu, or rank tablets, waiting for the next instruction from their emperor. End quote. For all this, Zheng He himself was not present. Even though future expeditions had been put on indefinite pause by Yongle's own command, the Grand Admiral had been dispatched once again with a small fleet to settle a dispute abroad. As such, he would return, as we will next time,

to find that his lifelong friend was dead and a new emperor sat the imperial throne. The studious, listless, 46-year-old prince, who, in an almost karmic twist of fate, reminded anyone who dared remember, far more of his long dead cousin, the oh-so-brief Genwan emperor, than that of his own father. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony. Thanks for listening. The Civil War and Reconstruction was a pivotal era in American history. When a war was fought to save the Union and to free the slaves. And when the work to rebuild the nation after that war was over turned into a struggle to guarantee liberty and justice for all Americans. I'm Tracy. And I'm Rich. And we want to invite

you to join us as we take an in-depth look at this pivotal era in American history. Look for The Civil War and Reconstruction wherever you find your podcasts.