The History of China - #223 - Ming 14: Maybe The Real Treasure Was The Friends We Made Along The Way

Episode Date: September 5, 2021

While dying emperors, shifting policies, and vindictive princes keep the capital busy, Admiral Zheng He will manage to sneak in on last joy-ride into the sunset aboard his beloved Treasure Fleet... Time Period Covered: 1424-1435 CE Major Historical Figures: The Hongxi Emperor (Zhu Gaochi) [r. 1424-1425] The Xuande Emperor (Zhu Zhanji) [r. 1425-1435] Zhu Gaoxu, the Prince of Han [1380-1426] Zhu Gaosui, the Prince of Zhao [1383-1431] Grand Admiral Zheng He [1371-1433] 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

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Maybe the real treasure was the friends we made along the way. Jade and fabrics from every corner meet like winds and clouds. Mountains and rivers come together, and the sun and moon shine brightly. From a du-she couplet composed by Zhu Di, the Yongle Emperor, and his grandson, Zhu Zhanji, the eventual Shenda Emperor, while waiting for a foreign delegation to arrive on March 13th, 1413. Last time, we left off with Zhu Di, the Yongle Emperor's death in 1424, again, and his majestic, elaborate state funeral and internment, complete with human sacrifices. Today, we journey back those 20 miles from Yongle's Palace of the

Dead beneath the foot of the Tianshou Mountains, and back to the Palace of the Living ensconced within Beijing, the Forbidden City. There, of course, we'd left Judy's eldest son and successor, Zhu Gaoshi, who'd just been enthroned as the fourth Ming sovereign, the Hongxi Emperor, of the era of vast glorious brightness. Zhu Gaoxi had been born in mid-August 1378 to the then 18-year-old Prince of Yan's principal wife, Consort Xu. This made him the natural heir to whatever position his father wound up leaving to him, which, as luck would have it, would wind up being the entire empire.

Growing up, the young prince, Gao Che, received the standard education of a scion of the imperial house of Zhu, primarily centered on the physical rigors of martial arts, by which of course we mean archery, horsemanship, and some degree of skill with a blade and later on battlefield tactics and strategy, as well as the rigors of the mind, meaning Confucian thought and the study of the classics. Apparently, though, he developed some level of competence at archery. Markedly unlike his father and grandfather before him, he held little interest in other militaristic endeavors. Rather, much to the delight of his tutors, the boy had a natural aptitude for literature and philosophy. It's stated repeatedly that his natural bookishness was a large contributor to his overall poor health and weight problems throughout his life. One rather telling story of the young

prince was that when being tasked with a dawn review of a group of troops, Duke Auxer reported back surprisingly quickly to the palace interior, informing his grandfather, much to the emperor's bemusement, that it was too cold to conduct a review, and he'd opted to wait until the troops had finished their breakfast. The reaction to this princely scion being a bookworm rather than a battlefield genius is, well, actually pretty unsurprising. Think back, if you will, to who Zhu Yuanzhang had actually chosen to be his successor. Yeah, that's right, not Zhu Di, the warlord supreme, but instead Zhu Yunwan, the gentle, diplomatic, virtuous bookworm. Suffice it to say, Granddad Hongwu was very happy indeed that one of his grandsons had the same degree of love for the more civil aspects of education, versus most of his other progeny that were very all about that stabby life.

And by all accounts, he was quite good at administrative tasks as well as literary tasks. Another tale that delighted Hongwu was A Signing of the Young Prince with the examination of a large stack of official memorials to the throne. When the boy reported back, he had, quote, meticulously separated the military ones from the civilian. His grandfather was reportedly impressed, end quote. His father, Zhu Di, however, was very much another story. Hak Lam Chan writes, quote, being himself a seasoned military commander, the Yongle Emperor preferred his two younger, more military sons, Zhu Gaoshui and Zhu Gaoshu, and often took them along on campaigns. End quote. Though this seems to have been meant as something of a fatherly snub,

it was actually a-okay with Prince Gao Shi, since that just allowed him more time to study his books and listen to the lessons of his Confucian tutors, a farsight better, in his estimation, than the drudgery of hunts, battles, and military tents. This is not to say that Zhu Gaozhi was some sort of buffoon when it came to military and command. Quite the contrary, during his father's rebellion against his uncle between 1399 and 1402, Gao Xiao was left in charge of the family HQ at Beiping. With just a skeleton garrison of some 10,000 left to his charge, in November of 1399, the prince availed himself and his command abilities bravely by driving back a concerted assault by the forces under the Jianwen loyalist general Li Jinglong. This changed the opinion of many about the then 21-year-old prince, including his father. Prince Gaochi wasn't bad at military. He wasn't some, like, wunderkind either, like his grandfather or anything. But he was competent. He wasn't going to embarrass himself

or his family on the field if it came down to it, it just wasn't particularly his cup of tea. Probably directly as a result of this defining moment, in 1404, his father, the still freshly self-installed Yongle Emperor, officially declared his eldest son as the heir and crowned prince. From then on, Zhu Gaozhi resided opposite his father. What I mean by that is that if Yongle was in Nanjing, the crown prince made his home in Beijing. When Yongle quit the south and made the north his capital, Gaozhi took up residence in the former imperial seat, acting as regent. In his years of performing his role, he gained invaluable practical experience in the administration of the imperial government, as well as the widespread acclaim and respect of those high imperial officials

who guided and tutored the young Sion. The years between his installment as crown prince in 4104 and his assumption of the throne two decades later are marked by numerous plots by the supporters of his younger brothers, who still sought to replace him with their own favorite candidate. Even so, they're not really worth getting into all that much just yet, because they were, in what might be a history of China first, one and all stopped dead in their tracks, and would even result in one of the little brothers, Zhu Gaoshu, being exiled from the capital by Yongle in 1417. Upon the death of the Yongle emperor, while on his fifth anti-Mongol campaign in the Northlands, news of his passing was kept secret to all until his body could be

returned physically to the capital. That included the crown prince, who didn't receive word of his father's passing until August 25th, when the imperial emissaries arrived at his quarters in Nanjing, bearing the succession documents. Once he had arrived in Beijing, he appointed his own provisional court, and that same day, Zhu Gaozhi, acting on the advice of the just-recently-released from prison former revenue minister Xia Yuanzhi, abolished the tea and horse trade along the frontiers, the gold and pearl missions to Yunnan and Vietnam, and, most notably, cancelled Zheng He's scheduled treasure fleet voyages for 1424-25, instead reassigning its ships and crews to the Nanjing Naval Garrison. The year that would follow the accession of the Ming's fourth emperor was a veritable whirlwind

of reforms and fundamental changes to the way the realm was to be governed going forward. The Hongxi Emperor, at 45 years old, had had plenty of time and experience in the affairs of governance by the long apprenticeship under his father, that he had a very solid idea of what worked, what did not, and how he envisioned changing it for the better. And it was going to be a series of policy shifts that, if his father Yongle had known about them, would have almost certainly sent him spinning inside his sealed tomb at the base of the Tianshou Mountains. First and foremost, all officials who had been jailed for offending the former emperor were now ordered immediately free. These men of learning, overwhelmingly of deeply Confucian bent, would go on to serve the new emperor in an advisory

role the likes of which hadn't existed in the empire since the Hongwu emperor had cast his high officials aside and adopted his signature go-it-alone approach to, well, everything. Again from Chan, quote, Because of his background, the emperor had a close relationship with those senior court officials. Unlike his successors, he frequently summoned them to regular meetings and asked them to submit their opinions or recommendations in sealed memorials before he made decisions on important matters.

In this way, the Grand Secretariat ceased to be a perfunctory advisory body, as it had been under earlier Ming rulers, and the Grand Secretaries became intimately involved in decision-making. The collective leadership was vital to the emperor's efforts to dismantle his father's unpopular programs and to establish a regular civil government throughout the empire." In theory, outlook, and demeanor, it seemed that Hongxi had all the makings of being a second Tianwen emperor, but one without the threat of overpowered regional princely uncles breathing down his neck. And man, oh man, was he going to be making some changes. First off, enough with that whole arbitrary tyrannical abuse of power against those seeking to suggest reforms or report malfeasance to the throne. The Grand Secretaries themselves were each given a

silver seal inscribed with the motto, Sheng Yan Jiu Miao, meaning rectify faults and shortcomings. These seals were to be used to submit secret memorials regarding cases of impropriety or misconduct by their peers or even the imperial family itself without fear of reprisal. Likewise, Hongxi exhorted his other ministers repeatedly that they should speak up without fear of punishment from the emperor, a promise which he would mostly keep, and on the few occasions where his temper got the better of him, he was usually quick to relent and even apologize to the minister in question. An ardent Confucian himself, and now surrounded by a staff of equally ardent Confucians, Hongxi quickly set about implementing policy reforms that unmade or

defunded the more onerous and costly aspects of the state. Expansionism as a whole was indefinitely suspended, as was, as mentioned before, the insane expenditures of the treasure fleet voyages. The philosophy undergirding this tremendous policy reversal was laid out in the emperor's very first edict, which read, quote, All voyages of the treasure ships are to be stopped. All ships moored at Taichung near the mouth of the Yangtze River are ordered back to Nanjing, and all goods on the ships are to be turned over to the Department of Internal Affairs and stored. If there are any foreign envoys wishing to return home, they will be provided with a small escort. Those officials who are currently abroad

on business are ordered back to the capital immediately, and all those who had been called to go on future voyages are ordered back to their homes. Moreover, the building and repair of all treasure ships is to be stopped immediately. The collection of the hardwood, Tie Limu, is to be done as it was in the time of the Hongwu Emperor. Additional harvesting should be stopped immediately. The collection of the hardwood, Tie Limu, is to be done as it was in the time of the Hongwu Emperor. Additional harvesting should be stopped. All official procurement for going abroad, with the exception of items already delivered at official depots, and the making of copper coins, buying of musk, raw copper, and raw silk must also be stopped, and all those involved in the purchasing should return to the capital.

It's very much worth asking just how exactly this played into those Confucian principles. And the answer is twofold. First, it fits into the idea of frugality rather than opulent excess being the progenitor of all social good. Fewer state expenses meant less of a tax burden on the populace, which put them on a much better footing to live good and upstanding lives. The second facet of Confucian thought going on here is the idea that the empire, its past, present, and future, lay in the land of China itself and not somewhere beyond the sea. As the land tax ought to be the basis of governmental revenues, rather than relying on the trading of goods from abroad, so too would the empire be more secure within the metaphorical boundaries of the Great Wall, rather than stretching out across open waters to who knew what. The duty of the government was to

protect its people, from barbarian hordes and hunger alike, not to seek out the strange baubles and jewels from all across the world. Why should so many suffer under onerous tax burdens just so that a few might delight in the spoils of such global trade? Hongxi himself responded forcefully when questioned by a minister who wasn't quite so gung-ho about closing the whole operation down. He said, quote, relieving the people's poverty ought to be handled as though one were rescuing them from fire or saving them from drowning. One cannot hesitate. End quote. In terms of judicial policy too, Hongxi adopted an aggressively reformist stance against the excesses and abuses of his father's reign. Out of a very justifiable concern that many of the prisoners sitting in Beijing's death row might have been victims of trumped-up charges and

judicial chicanery, Hongxi ordered his new grand secretaries to join the judicial officials and review any and all such cases that might have irregularities or reasons for suspicions of the verdict that had been meted out. This was even extended to include trial verdicts that had taken place in the course of his own reign, if it was suspected that the sentence was in contravention of the facts. Even further, in his first year, he twice pardoned families of previously executed officials who had been so punished all the way back in 1402 for having remained loyal to the deposed Jianwen Emperor even after Yongle had taken over. This was actually more than symbolic, since part of the punishment for these families had been enslavement and the confiscation of all

their properties and lands. They were now at last freed and their property returned. In addition, he forbade arbitrary corporal punishments of convicts and the inclusion of criminals' relatives in their punishments, except in the case of high treason. These practices, he asserted, were in gross violation of the Confucian principle of benevolence and the ethics of filial piety. In April 1425, just eight months into his reign, the Hongxi Emperor declared his biggest policy break with Yongle yet, and this one was a real doozy. He announced that the Ming capital was to be removed from Beijing and brought back to the south, specifically back to Nanjing. He'd already taken several steps which strongly hinted that he'd been

planning this sort of thing since at least the time of his enthronement, probably the most notable being to create the position of Grand Defender of Nanjing and then appoint none other than Zheng He as its premier occupant. Zheng took the role with evident delight, as he'd himself long been a resident of Nanjing and had deep ties with its Muslim population, estimated to possibly be more than 100,000 in the 1420s. And he would find his rewards to be vast almost beyond his reckoning. Quote, Zheng He's house was supposed to have 72 rooms and a door so large that the sound of it closing resonated throughout the house. He also owned land around the shipyard and outside the walls of the city, which he gave to his adopted nephew, Zheng Haozhao. The boy could

not inherit Zheng's rank, but with the land, he and his descendants had a means of providing for themselves. Much as his father had been a northerner through and through, Zhu Gaozhou was at his heart a southerner. He did not like Beijing, and he seemed to scarcely need the urgings of his advisors, which they were sure to offer regardless, that the northern frontier and its military adventures against the Mongols were nothing more than costly wastes of time. As he had been something of Yongle's regential mirror image, and the former emperor had spent virtually the whole of his last decade in the north, Zhugezhe had grown very comfortable in the south. There was also, of course, the question of cost. Beijing had already cost the empire an astronomical

amount to construct, and required yet more year after year in order to maintain, and lest we forget, in the case of a goodly portion of the Forbidden City, eventually rebuild entirely after that terrible lightning storm of 421. As such, on April 16th, Hongxi officially declared that all government offices in Beijing were henceforth xingcai, that is, temporary. Two weeks later, he sent his heir, the young crown prince Zhu Zhanji, in order to pay homage to the tomb of the dynastic founder, and then remain there in charge. The message could not have been more clear. The emperor was preparing to move himself and his entire court back down to the south for good. As such, the stage was set for a sweeping reset of nearly the whole Ming imperial apparatus. Here was the emperor, in form and function, that Hongwu had

always wanted to succeed his own reign in the first place. A man of learning, principle, and virtue, humble, thoughtful, and truly caring about the welfare of his people, rather than his own aggrandizement. It was truly going to be an era of great renewal, a golden age for all of China. And then, just three weeks later, on May 29th, the Hongxi Emperor dropped dead at the age of 46, after just eight months on the throne. How could this have happened? As usual, little is known for certain. As with any high-profile death so young, the Emperor's sudden passing led to some speculation of assassination via poison. Yet the reports we have from the time by those who inspected the emperor's body prior to his funeral suggest otherwise. A palace eunuch named Lei wrote that the emperor's death was the result of, quote, some imbalance in his yin-yang system,

perhaps heart failure, end quote. It was well documented that Hongxi had never given his physical state much care, preferring study to rigorous activity. More, on the day he died, he's said to have taken ill and seemed to know that he wouldn't likely recover. Before passing, it's written that he told those attending him, quote, I have reigned a very short time. I have not been able to bring any benefits to my people. I cannot bear the idea that they should be burdened with heavy work. Whether those words actually pass the dying emperor's lips is unknown, but the sentiment does fill with what we know of the man. His tomb complex was constructed in only three months, a comparative blink of the eye next to the massive subterranean palace of his father in the same area,

and made in an austere, simple fashion to match the style of his rule. And so it was that in less than a year, Great Ming had lost two rulers. Fortunately for the empire, one of the acts Hongxi had first completed in the court of his brief tenure had been to officially secure his line of succession. Even in his greatly abbreviated life, he'd carried on the Zhu clan tradition of having just oodles of children, ten sons and seven daughters, nine and four of whom lived to maturity, respectively. Since Zhu Gaozhi was as staunchly Confucian as they came,

there was never any doubt as to which son would inherit the family legacy. There could be only one choice, the eldest, Zhu Zhanji, who at 25 had become the crown prince, and then just a month after his 26th birthday, would be enthroned as the fifth emperor of Ming, presiding over the Xuan De era, meaning the era of propagating virtue. Zhu Zhanji had, like his father with Hongwu, been a particular favorite of his own grandfather, Yongle. From an early age, about 15 or so, the young prince had accompanied his imperial grandfather on his northern expeditions to both inspect the rising skyline of Beijing as it was built, and also to hunt down those ever-pesky Mongol rebels.

As a result, markedly unlike his father, Zhanji acquired Zhu Di's great love of riding and hunting, and a lifelong fondness for the stark, harsh beauty of the northern steppes, and a physical vigor and robustness that his father terminally lacked. We are not, however, about to swing into the mid-to-late Yuan Dynasty seesawing pattern of successional extremes, because even though Zhu Zhanji came to appreciate much of his grandfather's pleasures and aesthetics, he was in many other ways still very much his father's son. Like the Hongxi Emperor, the new Xuanda Emperor was staunchly Confucian and trusted his Confucian advisors, whereas Yongle had always much preferred and trusted his staunchly loyal unicorn.

So too was Xuanda like Hongxi in that he was, in spite of his appreciation of the manly and martial arts, also very much a man of letters and learning, a great patron of the arts, and his reign would come to be distinguished for its political and cultural achievements. Napoleon Bonaparte rose from obscurity to become the most powerful and significant figure in modern history. Over 200 years after his death, people are still debating his legacy. He was a man of contradictions, a tyrant and a reformer, a liberator and an oppressor, a revolutionary and a reactionary. His biography reads like a novel, and his influence is almost beyond measure. I'm Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast, and every month I delve

into the turbulent life and times of one of the greatest characters in history, and explore the world that shaped him in all its glory and tragedy. It's a story of great battles and campaigns, political intrigue, and massive social and economic change, but it's also a story about people, populated with remarkable characters. I hope you'll join me as I examine this fascinating era of history. Find The Age of Napoleon wherever you get your podcasts. Though as heir apparent, Zhang Ji had been sent to Nanjing to prepare for the imminent removal of the imperial capital back to the south, when his father's health declined in late May, he was immediately summoned back to the north. He arrived to find that his father was already dead, and he was to be coronated as soon as the month of official mourning was completed. As such, he would quickly take the throne at Beijing, which was much to his

preference, as it would turn out. Quickly after his enthronement, he officially abandoned his father's plan of abandoning the northern capital, and instead declared that it would remain his, and the empire's, seat of power. Though he shared Judy's love of the north, and his concern over the affairs and raids of the Mongols across the frontier, as emperor, Zhang Ji would chart a course much more in keeping with his conservative Confucian father than his expansionistic warlike grandfather. On the advice of his like-minded officials and secretaries, he would finally bring an end to Ming China's 20-year-long boondoggle in Vietnam, more or less by agreeing to simply stop fighting. The Xuanda government at last recognized the rebel leader, Le Loi, as the de facto administrator of An Nam, and shortly thereafter, upon the rebel lord's death, formally recognized Le Loi's son as the king of An Nam, and then walked away. Quote, the withdrawal from An Nam grew out of a realistic assessment of the national

interest in the face of a policy that had proved disastrous. The Ming government had suffered both military and diplomatic humiliation at the hands of a much smaller neighbor. To the Chinese, wounded national pride was offset by the removal of the serious financial and military burden these feudal operations had imposed on the empire. End quote. A lesson in the folly of believing in the sunk cost fallacy, or throwing good money after bad, in vain pursuit of saving face, in a foreign conflict with no clear objective, endpoint, or victory condition. You really can just decide that it was a bad decision in the first place, cut your losses, and walk away. A lesson that no one would ever forget, or repeat such a farcical, tragic mistake ever, anywhere, forever. This is not to say that

the new emperor's proclivity to live and let live didn't sometimes go a bit too far. Sometimes so far that even his most Confucianist of advisors would find themselves pulling their hair out and nearly shouting, sire, I can't believe I'm the one saying this, but now is the time to act. This would come in the form of that most Ming of crises. That's right, a good old-fashioned princely rebellion led by an angry, disaffected uncle. The uncle in question here was none other than the Prince of Han, Zhu Gaoshu. In many, and I mean like, weirdly many, respects, this whole affair had all the hallmarks of the last uncle rebellion,

that is, Zhu Di against his brother, the Jianwan Emperor, two decades before. So the Prince of Han was the second son of the Yongle Emperor, and actually greatly favored over his eldest brother as he shared his father's sensibilities and aptitude for martial prowess and military success, while the heir, as we've said, wasn't at all about that life. Much like Judy before him, Prince Gaoshu was bitterly disappointed when his father's favor wasn't enough to suspend the line of succession in his favor, and so would spend the rest of his life carrying a chip on his shoulder the size of Mount Penglai. The Prince of Han took it so far that he repeatedly disobeyed his father's instructions, especially regarding paying

correct homage to his elder brother and eventual sovereign, and he repeatedly disobeyed his father's instructions, especially regarding paying correct homage to his elder brother and eventual sovereign, and he repeatedly organized schemes and plots to oust his brother from the line of succession and take it for himself, all of which failed and were eventually, inevitably, found out by the relevant authorities. As a result, in 1417, Yongle's patience with his wayward son finally snapped, and he wrathfully banished him to a tiny fiefdom in the hinterlands of Shandong. Upon the death of Yongle in 1424 and the accession of the Hongxi Emperor, the Prince of Han was one of the many granted clemency by the new sovereign, who sought to essentially hug it out with all his father's imprisoned or banished

vassals, which certainly included his little brother. We can surmise that the filial feelings were in no way reciprocated by Zhu Gaoshu, though the swift demise of his eldest brother less than a year later precluded any overt action against the throne just yet. Enter stage left, the newly enthroned Xuanda Emperor, some twenty years the prince of Hans Jr., and looking to be, perhaps, the same kind of namby-pamby weakling his father had been. Plus, he'd already been arranging and bringing together his latest scheme to overthrow the emperor and take his place all these months, so it would be a shame to just let it go to waste. As such, on September 2nd, 1425, just a little more than two months after Schwenda's enthronement, the Prince of Han launched his campaign against his nephew by

establishing his army with imperial-style designations and official titles. Five days later, he sent a messenger to the imperial court bearing a list of charges against the new emperor that served as Cesus Belai. Quote, He charged the emperor with violating the rules of the Yongle and Hongxi emperors by investing civil officials with titles of nobility. He also blamed the emperor for poor judgment in the selection of officials. End quote. This list of accusations seems to have been lifted almost word for word from the justifications used by Zhu Di against the Jianwan emperor in launching his Jingnan rebellion 23 years before. For all that, this is where the striking similarity to Zhu Di's ultimately successful

campaign against his nephew come to an end. For though the new emperor at first hesitated when informed of his uncle declaring against him, within just a day or two of the official declaration of war on September 9th, at the strong urgings of his top advisors, the Xuanda emperor donned his battle armor, mounted up, and resolved to personally lead the imperial punitive expedition to crush his uncle. Because Zhu Zhanji was no Jianwan emperor. Sure, he loved poetry and books, but he'd been personally instructed in the ways of warfare by Yongle himself, and had taken a real shine to it.

While the Prince of Han had been grinding his axe, first in Yunnan and then Shandong, Zhanji had been chasing Mongols across the steppes. So, bring it on, mine uncle. As with any good military commander, one of the most important decisions Xuanda could make was who would serve as his field commander. The young monarch chose well. He tapped the veteran general, Xue Lu, to lead the imperial vanguard, a force of 20,000,

and directly attack the Prince of Han's primary base of operations at Le'an Shandong. General Xue put the city to siege little more than a week later, on the 21st. When the rebels failed to immediately surrender, General Shui proceeded to storm Le on the following day, bringing about a near-immediate end to the Prince of Han's ill-conceived rebellion. Zhu Gaoshu surrendered and was taken prisoner back to the capital to face the consequences of his actions. Facing the emperor he had so recently declared against, Gaoshu was stripped of his titles and offices and reduced to the status of commoner, before being locked back into a heavily guarded wing of the imperial palace that served as his prison.

More than 600 civil and military officials who had aided and abetted Zhu Gaoshu's insurrection were summarily put to death, and another 2,200 banished to the frontier. Yet, at least for the time being, Gaoshu's own life was, rather unexpectedly, spared. It seems that the Xuanda Emperor's inclination towards mercy stayed his hand. What happens next, however, remains unclear, at least in its specifics. At least one telling puts it that during a visit to his uncle, the Xuanda Emperor was tripped by the ever-spiteful Gao Shu, a slight that finally broke through Xuanda's fence-mending disposition and sealed

Gao Shu and his family's fate. After all, all are wise to fear the anger of a gentle man, and truly Zhu Gao Shu's wisdom had fled him with that final slight against his nephew. It was ordered that the ex-prince be placed beneath a large copper vat, and then the whole thing be melted over him. In addition, all of his sons were put to death as well, albeit not in nearly as horrifically torturous a manner, for whatever that may be worth. It quickly came to light that there was yet further rot in the imperial clan, for evidence was presented that the Prince of Han had been joined in his conspiracy against the throne by none other than the Prince of Zhao, the third of Yongle's sons, Zhu Gaoshui, as well as at least one other Prince of the Blood. This had all the makings of a grand-scale imperial purge from top to bottom, an orgy of bloodletting that would make Grandpa and Great-Grandpa proud. Yet, Xuanda instead ordered a halt to further prosecutions, apparently more concerned

with the continued stability of the dynasty than with enacting righteous vengeance, and comfortable in the knowledge that his absolute squashing of the Prince of Han's rebellion had proved that he was not some weakling to be trifled with. He let the plotting uncles go about their business with little more than a knowing look and the certitude that such an act of clemency would not be extended a second time. Chan puts it, quote, the dismal failure of the rebellion showed the level to which the power of the imperial princes had sunk, end quote. Levithes writes, quote, Zhu Zhanji was thus a combination of his father and grandfather. Some would say the balance he achieved between the blind expansionist policies of Zhu Di and the rigid Confucianism of Zhu Gaozhi was the finest hour of the Ming,

a time of peace, prosperity, and good government. And all that's great, if you're planning to live in that decade of the 15th century. No further major internal or external crises would develop in the decade of Xuandao's rule. A peaceful land, a quiet people. But a riveting conclusion to a podcast episode it does not make. Fortunately for us, we're in luck, because all those renewed good times would mean that there was to be the imperial will to roll out the treasure fleet for one last glorious trip beyond the sunset. The rationale behind this seventh, and what would prove final, reactivation of the treasure

fleet's expeditions remains rather loosely understood. As is so often the case, it's unlikely that any single reason was the driving factor, but instead a combination of several that made it all possible. For one, there was the timely death of the Grand Secretariat Yang Shixi, one of the cabal of Arch-Confucian high ministers known as the Three Yangs that we'll probably get into further next episode or so. Yang had been one of the driving forces behind the suspension of the voyages in the first place, and so his death opened up a window of opportunity that the fleet could just sail right on through. It's clear that even without Yang to spearhead it, opposition to the continued costs of the expeditions remained high throughout

the imperial court, and it was only the Xuanda emperors' disregarding of their grousing that got the voyage greenlit. Why was Xuanda so forceful about this? It was likely somewhat of a delayed effort to stem the bleeding of Chinese international prestige from its recent embarrassing pullout from Vietnam. This had resulted in a notable decline in the amount and frequency of foreign tribute missions arriving at the Ming court, a trend which, quite understandably, troubled the emperor. He therefore publicly vowed to once again make 10,000 countries our guests. So it was that on June 29, 1430, he promulgated the following edict. Quote,

The new reign of Shrenda is commenced, and everything shall begin anew. But distant lands beyond the seas have not yet been informed. I send eunuchs Zheng He and Wang Jinghong with this imperial order to instruct those countries to follow the way of heaven with reverence and to watch over their people so that all might enjoy the good fortune of lasting peace." As of a turnout, prep time for this seventh voyage would take longer than usual. After all, everyone was about seven years out of practice at this whole thing. It would also be the largest ever, outstripping even the first voyages, and boasting more than 300 ships and nearly 28,000 crewmen.

The ships themselves were given names that reflected the peaceful, magnanimous nature of the expedition, names that wouldn't sound out of place whatsoever if they were attached to covenant battleships in the Halo universe, like Pure Harmony, Lasting Tranquility, and Kind Repose, just to name a few. As for the Grand Admiral himself at 60 or 61, Zheng He knew that this would most certainly be his last voyage, and so resolved to make it one for the ages. Quote, he took pains to document the achievements of his previous expeditions by erecting two stone tablets. One, dated March 14, 1431, was emplaced on an anchorage near the mouth of the Yangtze River. The other dated the second winter month of the sixth year of Xuande, and what is now Changle at the mouth of the Min River on

the Fujian coast. End quote. Though at least ostensibly raised in thanks for the help and guidance of the great sea goddess Tianfei, it's clear that Zheng He had his eye much more on history and his place in it than any real divine worship. Quote, The tablets carefully documented the achievements of each voyage. No doubt has Zheng He surely wished them to be remembered. But familiar as he was by now with the court's strong opposition to the voyages, he may have been unsure how the official chroniclers would

record the expeditions, end quote. And if the spottiness of the official records are anything to go by, it was a very prescient move by Zheng to make his own enduring record of his life's work, rather than leave it to the ever-fussing bureaucrats up in Beijing who were hostile to the whole enterprise. And for us, far better that we have even a biased account to refer to than none at all. Zheng was obviously very proud of his voyages, and his part in the grand sweep of history. He makes that crystal clear in his Chang'e Stele, upon which he inscribes that his expeditions in unifying the seas and continents far surpassed any prior maritime achievement of any previous dynasty, end quote. He goes on, quote, the countries beyond the horizon from the ends of the earth have all

become subjects, bearing precious objects and presents to the main court, end quote. Further, the voyages had vastly expanded China's knowledge of the world, its distances, peoples, and places. The distances and routes between distant lands may be calculated, he wrote. And in arriving on all those foreign shores and bearing China's gifts and well-wishes to those foreign people, Zheng was positive that he'd played a major role in spreading the fruits of Chinese civilization and culture far and wide. Or as he put it, the fleet had made, quote, manifest the transforming power of imperial virtue, end quote. The treasure fleet finally set sail from its mooring in Nanjing's harbor on January 19th, 1431, making stops on its way out of imperial waters at first Jiangsu and then Fujian to take on additional supplies and trade goods.

It would depart its last Chinese outpost nearly a year later on January 12, 1432, sailing south to Quy Nhon in southern Vietnam, then on to northern Java, Palembang, Malacca, Samudera on the northern tip of Sumatra, then Ceylon, and finally arriving at the great Indian port of Calicut 11 months later on December 10, 1432. Though this was Zheng He's and the Treasure Fleet's seventh trip to India, it remained rather comical just how many basic errors they were still making in regards to understanding, well, a lot. Specifically, in terms of culture and religion, the Ming sailors seemed to have still been under the impression that India was the origin of not only Buddhism, but also Christianity and Islam. This appears to have been a rather fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of foreign borders, and the Chinese had just sort of assumed that

India went on to include the whole of the Middle East as well. One such misinformed account in the Ming Tong Dian declared that India was divided into five parts, central, east, west, south, and north, naturally. Central India was the country of Buddha. 600 years after the time of Buddha, quote, Jesus of Western India appeared. This was the religion of the Lord of Heaven. As we've noted before in such accountings, it's the sort of journal entry that kind of gets the broad strokes sort of right, but it's like looking through a carnival mirror or the mutant phrase that comes out at the very end of a long game of telephone. What's this place? Um, it's all India? Yeah, sure, why not? Anyways, having arrived at Calicut, Zheng divided the fleet. The unique lieutenant, Hongbao, would take the largest portion of the force and sail on to Hormuz and other Arabian city-states,

before heading over to the Swahili coast of Africa once more. Arriving at Hormuz, the Chinese fleet was dismayed to be informed that they were being turned away on account of local political instability in the region making it unsafe. Instead, they made for the Egyptian-held port of Jeddah. There, they were welcomed by orders of the Sultan of Cairo, and traded for many herbal medicines and curatives, including frankincense, aloe, myrrh, benzoin, storax, and mamortica seeds. This focus on Arab medicines was at a particularly high point, as Chinese scholars had only recently translated an Arab medical text, which they called the hui yao fang, or the pharmaceutical prescriptions of the Muslims.

As for Zheng He himself, though he surely would have dearly wished to visit such places as Mecca and Medina, both of which were stops on the journey of Hongbao's voyage, and thereby completed the religious imperative of the pilgrimage to Islam's holiest sites, as his father and grandfather had each done, it seems that his advanced age and commensurate failing health halted his progress at Calicut. There he would remain, waiting for his fleet to return, and eventually return at wood. However, accounts put it that the Grand Admiral was showing the ravages of time, and a long and hard life had taken its toll. At some point during the voyage home, he took ill and died.

A life at sea ended at sea. According to Muslim tradition, his body would have been ceremonially washed and cleansed, and then wrapped in white cloth. Then positioning his head towards Mecca, the Muslim sailors would have together chanted three times, Allah is great, before committing his body to the waters to which he had devoted his life. His shoes and a braid of his hair, at his request, were thought to have been brought back to Nanjing and buried near Buddhist caves outside the city. So it was that in July of 1433, the Ming treasure fleet, minus its admiral, returned to the mouth of the Yangtze to great acclaim, albeit somewhat tempered by the loss of its greatest commander. The Shunda emperor bestowed the sailors of the fleet with vestments of honor and paper money for their heroic journey. Once again, the Ming court hosted ambassadors from across the known world, who paid great tribute to the might and majesty of imperial China, complete with the by now expected parade of exotic animals from abroad, Arabian horses, elephants, and of course, yet another long-necked, spotted, and gracefully gentle Chilin that stayed curiously silent but munched contentedly on leaves by the tongue with his bizarrely long black tongue. As before, officials

memorialize the throne, begging that the emperor take this gift of an auspicious beast as a sign from heaven of his righteous rule, and hold an official celebration. But again, as before, and taking a page from his grandfather's playbook, Shrenda demurred. Quote, I do not care for foreign things. I accept them because they come from afar and show the sincerity of distant peoples, but we should not celebrate this. End quote. One wonders if the still looming burned out ruins of the palace complex might have played into that decision at all. That autumn, four more ambassadorial missions arrived from the South Seas, each bearing with them yet more exotic and auspicious beasts for the imperial menagerie.

Late in the year as it was, Shrenda invited them to overwinter at the capital, and gifted them all heavy winter clothes. Nevertheless, Beijing's severe winter would turn out to be too much for at least one of the ambassadors, the younger brother of the King of Sumatra, who succumbed to the cold before spring arrived. He was buried with all due honors, and a representative was dispatched to the king to personally express the court's sympathy for the tragic loss. As luck would have it, though, the emissary, a eunuch named Wang Jinghong, would encounter some sort of fateful difficulty off the coast of Java, resulting in the sinking of a ship with the loss of all hands, having never delivered the emperor's regrets. The following year, 1435, would bring even further tragedy when, after a brief bout of illness, the Xuanda emperor himself died at age 36,

after just a decade on the throne. Though none could know it at the time, this unexpected loss was down the final death knell for China's overseas adventures as well. When his own father had died, Xuanda had at least been a grown man of 25, able to take up the reins of state himself. On his own deathbed a decade later, Shrenda had no choice of heir except his own eldest of two sons, a boy of just eight named Zhu Qizhen. And so next time, it will be little Zhu Qizhen who would be enthroned in early February as the Zhengtong Emperor. But like any child monarch, he would reign, but not rule. A regency would be put in place,

and one controlled by those Confucian ministers who had long detested the expansionist and prohibitively expensive voyages. And together, they'll make sure that the flame of the treasure fleet voyages would be snuffed out forever. Thanks for listening. features of Queen Nefertiti. If you have, you'll probably like the History of Egypt podcast. Every week, we explore tales of this ancient culture. The History of Egypt is available wherever you get your podcasting fix. Come, let me introduce you to the world of Ancient Egypt.