The History of China - #226 – Ming 16: Forcing the Palace Gate

Episode Date: November 6, 2021

Following the events at the Tumu Fort, Emperor Yingzong takes an unscheduled sabbatical in Mongolia, the Mongol warlord Esen Taishi attempts to return something lost for a price, Beijing battens down the hatches in preparation for Genghis Khan come anew, and brotherly love reaches its breaking point. Time Period Covered: 1449-1457 CE Major Historical Figures: Ming Dynasty: Zhu Qizhen (Emperor Yingzong) [r. Zhengtong Era: 1435-1449, Tianshun Era: 1457-1464] Zhu Qiyu (the Jingtai Emperor) [r. 1449-1457] Crown Prince Zhu Jianshen [b. 1447] Crown Prince Zhu Jianzhi [1448-1453] Minister Xu Yuzhen Xing An, Head Imperial Eunuch Yu Qian, Minister of War [1398-1457] Northern Yuan/Oirat Mongols: Esen Taishi [1407-1455, (r. as Khaghan of N. Yuan, 1453-1455)] Toghto Bukha (Taisun Khaghan) [r. 1433-1453] Xi Ning, turncoat eunuch [d. 1450] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. 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. Hello and welcome to the History of China. Episode 226, Forcing the Palace Gate. When last we spoke, we left our good friend Emperor Yingzong in one heck of a pickle. Yes, that's right, he'd been taken captive in the year 1449, with his army utterly annihilated at the Tumu Fort by the Oirat Mongol leader, Essen. This also meant, naturally, that the crown jewel of the Ming Empire, Beijing itself, along with its primary defensive garrisons at Xuanfu and Datong,

suddenly found themselves standing naked and all but defenseless against this seemingly out-of-nowhere Mongol explosion. If Essen pressed the attack, and if Beijing were to fall, it could well be a repeat of the whole Liao dynasty falling to Genghis Khan two centuries prior, precipitating the collapse of the entire north. Very fortunately for the Ming regime, Essen's vision wasn't nearly so wildly vast as his ancient forebear. This situation was, after all, as much a shock to him as it was to the Chinese. He hadn't been anticipating any grand

conquest, things that all just kind of played out rather chaotically, hadn't they? For that matter, he wasn't even quite sure what to do, what he even could do, with his newly acquired kingpiece, Yingzong. It was all rather sudden and unexpected for everyone involved. For his own part, it appears that Yingzong was quite willing to entertain the proposal of an inter-dynastic marriage between Essen and a member of his own house, thereby cementing the Mongols' status and prestige within the Ming hierarchy. However, he wisely stated that any such wedding would need to wait until he was safely re-ensconced back in Beijing. Meanwhile, it appears that the emperor's eunuch aide, a man named Xi Ming, went native,

committing fully to Essen's cause and thereafter advising him in all matters of politics and strategy. Within the capital itself, of course, the court had been thrown into utter disarray when news had arrived of the emperor's capture. Both the empress, Qian, and Empress Dowager, Yingzong's mother, Lady Sun, raised a huge ransom of jewels, which were sent north to try to secure the sovereign's release. At this, however, Essen balked, for he had determined to hold on to his valuable guest for something even more valuable than glittering gems. At least, once he figured out what exactly that might specifically be. In terms of defensive strategy, the court was likewise on shore. Initially, a majority of the officials backed the idea set forth by Minister Xu Yuzhen, widely known and respected for his

knowledge of strategy. Xu urged that since the northern garrisons had already been badly defeated and now stood at less than 100,000 strong, the imperial court itself should quit the capital and retreat south to Kaifeng. He backed his argument, quote, with powerful astrological reasons for retreat. Some officials had already begun to evacuate their families and belongings to the south, end quote. To this sort of panic defeatism, others spoke up, in particular the vice minister of war, Yu Qian, who argued that anyone clamoring for a southward retreat ought to be executed.

That latter bit was deemed a little too far, but the broader point about staying and defending the north carried weight where it counted, and in the end, it was decided by the Empress Dowager. There would be no southward flight. They would stand and defend Beijing to the last. That decision made, the next pressing question was what to do about this whole captured emperor situation. Talk about awkward. The realm needed a leader, and one who wasn't, you know, captured. This wasn't

simply a logistical question, but also one of morale and standing. From Dennis Twitchett, quote, a new emperor had to be enthroned as an embodiment of the Ming Dynasty's heavenly mandate to provide stability and give courage to army and population alike. End quote. A silent guardian, a watchful protector, a son of heaven. Emperor Yingzong's progeny was, in this case, out of the question. The heir presumptive was still but an infant, and everyone could agree that a baby on the throne would only exacerbate problems right now, not solve them. As such, it was agreed that the alternative would be Yingzong's younger half-brother, the Prince of Cheng, Zhu Qiyu, who would temporarily take charge as regent, with the baby prince formally installed as the crown

prince and heir. Pretty much immediately upon taking up this ad hoc position, the 21-year-old Prince of Cheng was made acutely aware that a mere regency simply wasn't going to cut it, and that a more drastic measure would need to be taken. When he initially waffled at a denunciation of those in the court who had supported the late Wang Zhen's disastrous advocacy for this last failed northern campaign, the entire imperial court broke out in a full-blown riot, with some of the members beating others to death in their furor. What was more, reports were coming in, signed with the name of the captive Yingzong, dictating that in all future negotiations, quote, only the nation was to be

considered important, end quote, and that any orders issued in the name of the emperor were to be rejected. Mongol writers delivered messages of their own, informing Beijing that Essen now planned to marry his sister to the emperor Yingzong and then escort him back to Beijing for reinstallation. So long as the throne sat vacant, it would be an undeniably tempting target. As such, only one course of action was deemed appropriate. As of September 15th, 1449, upon the Empress Dowager's ascent, the Prince of Cheng was formally urged to ascend the throne himself, as the only person capable of ruling the realm in this time of crisis. As ever, Du Qiyu at first refused the offer, stating that this would confuse

the dynastic line of accession. But with the go-ahead of the Empress Dowager, and upon being reminded what dire straits Great Ming was in, he at last gave in and accepted the top job. Though there was at least one scholar who spoke against the move, stating that the prince should instead take up the title of jian guo, or protector of the realm, this was deemed insufficient, since inaugurating a new emperor would immediately devalue Yingzong as a hostage. So it was that on September 23rd, 1449, just three weeks after Yingzong's capture, his little brother, Zhu Qiyu, was enthroned with a minimal ceremony as a Jingtai emperor of the Era of Exalted Luminosity, which would begin the subsequent year of 1450.

As for Yingzong, he was promoted in absentium to the ceremonial post of Taishang Huangdi, or Retired Emperor. The brief ceremony was accompanied by a likewise brief promulgation, explaining that this move was, in fact, in line with the law, and claiming that the Retired Emperor had himself encouraged the handover. Which was kind of true-ish, if you squinted hard enough at least. One of the courtiers present at the reading spoke up in protest, but only the one, and for his trouble he was summarily executed on the spot. Orders were then drafted and sent to all northern garrisons that any orders coming from the Mongols in the name of the retired emperor were to be

disregarded, and envoys were sent to Essen's encampment in order to inform Yingzong what had taken place. Once told, he gave his assent, as if he'd been asked, and managed to tell the emissaries of Essen's intention to renew his offensive against the Ming holdings. This handover of the throne, unprecedented and impromptu as it was, was successful in its primary goals of lowering the value of Yingzong to the Mongols as a hostage, and thereby giving the Ming high command a freer hand against them. It managed to turn a truly dire loss into something, while still definitely not great, but far more manageable, and to wrong-foot essence plans in the process. As for its longer-term effects, well, as we'll see, those would wind up being rather less than glowing. From Twitchit,

quote, End quote. This was exacerbated by the fact that Yingzong remained, rather inconveniently, alive. Necessary though this decision was, it would wind up being, in its very nature, a poison pill for the imperial court in the decade to follow The nature of the Jingtai regime was, out of sheer necessity, overtly militaristic The vice-minister of war, Yu Qian, was now promoted and given full authority over all civil and military officials First and foremost was the pressing question of reinforcing the capital against what was assumed to be an imminent Mongol attack. Some 80,000 troops were therefore transferred from Xuanfu garrison to Beijing, and others from Liaodong. In order to get its numbers back up to pre-Tumu levels in a hurry, soldiers were pulled from the training corps, coastal guards, and transport units,

and all redesignated as frontline combat soldiers and then rigorously trained once they reached the capital. Reserve units from Beijing, Shanxi, Shandong, and Henan were likewise called up. It was a monumental and marvelously successful rally after such a horrific setback, one that few regimes across time and space have been able of accomplishing. Yet by the time the Mongol foe made its approach on the capital that October, the losses of Timu had largely been filled in and the Beijing garrison stood once again at approximately 220,000 men strong. Simultaneously, the civil side of things had kicked into overdrive to accommodate the needs of the army. Weapons manufacture increased drastically, and grain supplies were moved either into the city or else kept under heavy guard at a huge imperial granary at Tongzhou.

A multitude of reforms were proposed to the throne, and the revenue and tax offices worked in near tandem to ensure adequate financing for all of these necessary operations. There was a high level of common concern, confidence, and excellent morale throughout the city, writes Twitchit. It was perhaps Beijing's finest hour. In terms of military affairs, the civil officers were largely left in charge of the forces manning the defensive walls themselves, while the military staff commanded the shock troops outside the city. The command structure was reorganized to be more effective and responsive.

Based on the various city gates, each force was in charge of securing. General Shi Heng was named as the supreme commander and led his troops from the northwestern Desheng Gate. He and War Minister Yu Tian both commanded the capital's elite shock troops under seasoned generals, who would serve as the tip of the spear in confronting the enemy outside the capital's walls. Meanwhile, Essen had assembled his Mongol chieftains and together pledged to restore Emperor Yingzong to his rightful throne, a legal service for which they would, of course, be handsomely rewarded with appropriate titles, honors, and positions within the court. With their step-riders and

infantry massed, their initial target was Datong, which would be the first to feel the brunt of the Mongol assault. Yingzong was personally brought before the outer gate, and it was explained that Essen's aim was to restore the Ming emperor to his rightful throne, and asked that they open up and join them in their righteous cause. At this, however, the defenders balked. Their refusal was apparently encouraged by the timely arrival of a secret envoy from Mingzong, urging them not to give in to the ever-treacherous Mongols' assurances. Unable to force the gate or to cajole its defenders into surrendering, Essen's force finally moved on, trying a similar tactic next at Yanghe, where they were again rebuffed. Now twice frustrated, Essen opted to switch up his initial plan, which had involved proceeding through the Zhiyong Pass at Beijing directly,

and now decided to strike southeast, taking the alternative pass at Zijing, thereby emerging southwest of the capital. The defenders within the pass put up a ferocious resistance to the Mongols' advance, stalling them for several days from their mountain redoubts, but were eventually overwhelmed. So it was that by October 27th, the Mongol army had arrived before the walls of Beijing. Once again, Essen attempted his diplomatic approach of claiming to wish to merely restore Yingzong, but the envoys he sent forth were summarily attacked by the Ming forces before they could deliver any message whatsoever. So it would be the Path of Blood. When Essen's initial assault was rebuffed, at the urging of the turncoat eunuch Xi Ning, whom you remember had been captured along with Yingzong at Tumou, the Mongol Taisha

sent an invitation to the Chinese, asking them to send forth high-ranking officials of the court in order to escort Emperor Yingzong back into the capital themselves. In truth, the ruse was to lure high-ranking officials into the Mongols' clutches and thereby gain additional negotiating leverage. Instead, the Ming commanders only sent forth a pair of low-ranking, politically worthless officials, who did their job in immediately confirming that it was a trap. For the subsequent five days, battle raged back and forth outside and from atop the walls of Beijing. This was tremendous in scale, and involved firearms and artillery, as well as the traditional cavalry, infantry, and archery units. But on the eve of the sixth day of the siege, Essen, whose army of perhaps 70,000 was utterly dwarfed by at least three to one by

the Ming defenders, was informed that his entire eastern column had been successfully blocked from reinforcing him by the defenders at Duyong Pass. He then realized that there was no victory possible and withdrew his troops, being sure to pillage and loot the countryside as they went, as a matter of course. In short order, the Ming armies fanned out and swiftly mopped up the remaining Mongol military presence all across northern China. For the Chinese, the crisis had been successfully averted. For S. and Taisha, on the other hand, it would ultimately prove to precipitate his downfall. Quote, he had been egged on by Xining to such grandiose aims as conquering at least part of northern China and installing a puppet emperor in Beijing. However, as soon as his failure was apparent, his control over the always-restive Mongol tribes

gradually began to slip away. End quote. Within two days of Essen's departure from Beijing, his nominal warlord, Togto Buka Khan, dispatched a tribute mission to the Ming court by way of apology. For the remainder of 1449, Xining continued to pitch impractical, impossible schemes to his master, Essen, attacked down south to take Nanjing and set up Yingzong as some kind of rival emperor in the Southlands, just to name one. Maybe it was just to get a bit of peace and quiet from the eunuch's incessant scheming, therefore, that in early 1450, Essen sent Xining as an envoy to the Ming court. Once having arrived, the door was promptly shut behind the traitorous eunuch,

and he was arrested, tried, and then executed. Surely, Essen must have understood, at least to some level, that sending a traitorous defector in, even with the status of Mongol envoy, was very likely to result in him never being seen again. Could it have been that Essen had grown tired of Xining's conniving and just wanted to get rid of him? If that was the case, it proved very short-sighted. Now deprived of his resident expert in Chinese affairs, Essen had little choice but to at last retire to the steppes, leaving behind him only sporadic

warfare along the northern frontier. Back in Beijing, with baseline survival now assured, at least for the time being, the imperial court was able to turn and address other less pressing but still important matters. Matters such as what they should do about the still-captive Yingzong and his potential future. The retired emperor was now living in, quote, considerable hardship, his remaining entourage having mostly deserted him during the attack on Beijing, end quote. Time and again, the Mongols sought to reopen channels of negotiation for the emperor's return, but they were turned away out of hand by the court. This was because the Ming suspected, likely correctly, that any such engagement would be used as a

pretext by Essen for another offensive. Moreover, the new emperor, Jingtai, was gradually, but not that gradually, settling into his seat atop the dragon throne, and finding it rather comfortable, thank you very much. He'd gotten around to quote-unquote promoting Yingzong's mother from her powerful post as Empress Dowager to the exalted but politically toothless position of Grand Empress Dowager, replacing her with his own mother and his wife as Empress. Though initially he had reluctantly accepted the throne and proved so indecisive in his first days, he was now determined to retain his power, and the return of his predecessor loomed more and more as a potential embarrassment. When a delegation was eventually dispatched to the main Mongol encampment in August

of 1450, its leader, Vice Minister of Rights Li Shi, was shocked to discover upon arrival that the letters and documents he'd been entrusted to deliver to the Mongol princes made no mention whatsoever of the captive Emperor Yingzong or of securing his release. So much for brotherly love. Li Shi wasn't nearly as cold-hearted as his lord, however, and upon finding that the former emperor's living conditions were very poor indeed, and that he deeply wished to return to China, quote, even as a commoner or as a keeper of the imperial tombs, end quote, Li advised Yingzong to send a letter to his brother, quote, expressing his repentance for his former policies and guaranteeing that he would not lay any claim

to the throne, end quote. With little more he could do for the poor man then, Li Xia departed for the south to make his report, and presumably deliver Yingzong's apology and plea to be allowed to return home. A second ambassador was sent to Essen's camp soon thereafter, named Yangshan. Once again, no mention was made of the former emperor, or order to negotiate his return was included in his documents. By this point, though, Essen seemed to have given up the ghost of holding the former emperor as a valuable hostage to be traded, since it had been by this point made abundantly clear that the imperial court of Jingtai was having none of it. Taking pity on the truly miserable Yingzong, Yangshan took it upon himself to buy the former emperor's freedom

from the Mongol warlord. Yang therefore purchased from his own pocket all that he could afford and presented the gifts to the Taisha. Though the ransom was in truth insultingly meager, Essen decided to cash his chip in and agreed to release Xingzong on the condition that the tribute relations were re-established between his people and the Ming as soon as possible. After arranging a quote-unquote splendid farewell for his hostage, although one can only imagine that what counted as splendid for one such as Essen would have been considered little more than a beggar's banquet to an imperial Chinese palate, Yangshan and Yingzong were allowed to depart and make their way back to the Chinese border, all while under the close guard of an oirat honor guard. Word was sent ahead to Beijing that, hey, your highness, I'm finally bringing your older

brother back. Isn't that great? One can just imagine the gritted teeth and icy reply of, oh yes, how splendid, brother Qizhen is back, I'm just ecstatic. Delays in transit, combined with the rather churlish emperor finagling over the details of the ritual reception of the returning retired emperor, resulted in Yingzong finally arriving back at his long-lost capital on September 19th, 1450, one year and 18 days after his capture at the Tumu Fortress, having first lost and then officially renounced all claim to the throne that had so recently been his. After an official welcome by the Jingtai emperor, Yingzong was quickly escorted to his new cell, um, I mean home, in the precincts of a southern palace south of Beijing, where the

new guards showed him inside, stepped out, and then all but bolted the gates behind him. Yingzong had certainly traded up in terms of his confinement, but there could be little mistaking that it was still confinement, albeit far more comfortable than his northern captivity. Three days later, his oh-so-happy return was officially announced to the public from the Imperial Ancestral Temple, alongside an imperial edict affirming that Yingzong was still the Taishang Huangdi, the retired emperor, and that Jingtai was still very, very much the actual reigning emperor in a very real and legally binding sense. History isn't black and white, yet too often it's presented as such. Grey History, the French Revolution is a long-form history podcast dedicated to exploring the ambiguities

and nuances of the past. By contrasting both the experiences of contemporaries and the conclusions of historians, Grey History dives into the detail, and unpacks one of the most important and disputed events in human history. From a revolution based on hope and liberty, to its descent into the infamous Reign of Terror, there's plenty to discuss, and plenty of grey to explore. One can't understand the modern world without understanding the French Revolution. So if you're looking for your next long-form, binge-worthy history podcast, one recommended by universities and loved by enthusiasts, then check out Grey History, The French Revolution today. Or simply search for the French Revolution.

To anyone on the outside looking in, at least, the Tumu fiasco had at long last come to a happy resolution. Before moving along, it's worth exploring the consequences of the Tumu crisis for both the Ming and the Mongols. In Chinese, the incident is typically rendered as tūmū bāojí bián, wherein the bián that we've been translating into crisis or fiasco is actually the word for turn, change, or transformation, which it notes that the specific term, quote, designates some important turn of events in China's history, be it a coup d'etat in the central sphere, a dramatic outburst of peasant unrest with national consequences, or a major foreign invasion, end quote. By that definition, Tumu is batting two out of three.

We've got a major foreign invasion, followed up by the hot-swapping of one imperial brother for another mid-war. Yet interestingly, and as we'll come to see here in a minute, in another sense, the events of Tumu Fort and its aftermath would not ultimately result in a vast sweeping change or transformation of the Ming regime that we might expect from such a crisis. Faced with the horrific prospect of being swept completely out of northern China like the northern song of old, the Ming regime, by that point actually rather tottering in the face of multiple foreign wars and internal rebellions, instead decided to firmly plant its feet and rally, galvanizing itself in the heat of battle to drive off the invaders

and maintain their position as masters of the North China Plains and the empire as a whole. Quote, The multiple crises seem to have worked as a stimulant on Ming China's institutions and on political morale. Firm, determined political and military leadership emerged. End quote. In fact, one could trace the Ming's large-scale stability over the latter half of the 15th century back to this very moment, when the imperial court was shocked out of its torpor by a near-death experience, and thereafter resolved to live its best life.

It must also be observed that it wasn't solely the Ming's steadfastness that saved it from total defeat and perhaps destruction. The Mongols they faced in the 15th century were, though still terrifying in their own right, little more than a shadow of the force they'd once been. Again from Tuchet, quote, Essen was no Genghis Khan, and the Oirat did not represent a threat in any way comparable to that of the Mongols of the early 13th century. The real interest of the Mongols in Essen's time was not territorial conquest, but the maintenance of close and economically favorable relations with the Chinese empire, end quote. And both Essen and his fellow Mongols were well aware of that tenuous situation, as demonstrated by the fact that they didn't

ever really actually seek to take Beijing, at best half-heartedly besieging it on the premise of giving the Chinese back their emperor before giving up after less than a week, as well as Essen maintaining generally pretty friendly relationships with his Chinese counterparts even throughout this whole period. This was both in part from his own military relative weakness compared to Ming China, but also the insecurity of his own position within the fractious Mongol social order. He was no Khan after all, nor of the blood of the royal Borjigins in any sense. He was merely a Taishih, a chancellor, as it were, albeit a phenomenally powerful one. As such, when he later

claimed the mantle of a Khan for himself in 1453, his kinsmen swiftly turned on him and each other, leading to his death just two years later. In any event, we turn now to the Jingtai era, which would last from the new emperor's emergency accession in 1449 until 1457. Jingtai's period of rule is, on the whole, held to be a period of renewed stability, effective government, reasonable reforms, and adequate defense policies. This has frequently, and especially in traditional histories, been compared favorably to the decades that came before as a welcome restoration of the competent officialdom's powers and a shift away from the onerous control of the ever-corrupting influence of the scary eunuchs. This makes a good tale for the Confucian chroniclers and their undying

loathing of the palace eunuch caste, yet it doesn't bear itself out wholly to any kind of scrutiny. For the first several years of the Jingtai era, at least, the new reforms and policies were enthusiastically supported by the high-ranking eunuchs of the palace, led as they were now by Xing'an. As Twitchit puts it, quote, "...the strength of the new regime must be seen rather as a consequence of the national awakening, the general consciousness of a need for thorough renewal that followed the Tumu disaster, end quote. Moreover, even though the eunuch supreme of the era, Wang Zhen, had found himself humiliated and then killed at Tumu, his failure did not actually amount to a subsiding of eunuch power

within the court. The real hero of this age, again, Yu Qian, made famous by his commanding role in the defense of Beijing, counted among his most important supporters the chief eunuchs Jin Ying and Xing An in his effort to rally defenders of the capital against Essen's Mongol horde. It was Xing An who, following Jin's imprisonment on what effectively amounted to sedition charges by speaking out a bit too vociferously for the return of the retired emperor Ying Zong from his Mongolian vacation, had become the unquestioned head of the Forbidden City's eunuch establishment, and who would subsequently play a major role in the negotiations for the retired emperor's release, as well as the appointment of the next heir apparent in May 1452.

Eunuch power also remained strong across the Ming's military establishment, with several heroic and leading military commanders, chief among them Cao Zhexiang and Liu Yongcheng, who would prove instrumental in spearheading badly needed reforms to the army's organizational structure across the 1450s. The realization of this necessity had stemmed from the obvious and cataclysmic confusion during the Tumu debacle, which had led to the utter collapse of the military apparatus in the face of a radically inferior force. Prior to 1449, the Beijing defenses had been drawn from garrisons all

across the empire, and then divided into three distinct camps, one for infantry, one for cavalry, and a third for artillery. Moreover, these had been further subdivided between commands led by nobles and those led by eunuchs, such that, quote, each camp in the garrison was completely autonomous, separately trained, and under the command of its own field marshal." What this amounted to in actual battle, then, was not a cohesive force of a half-million Ming soldiers facing down a minute force of Mongol cavalry archers as a single cohesive army, but rather a multitude of independently acting, non-communicative Chinese forces each facing off independently against an equal or superior Mongol force.

And that, you will surely understand, is exactly the sort of recipe that leads to total systemic failure and the deeply embarrassing capture of a sitting emperor. That egregiously stupid oversight would now be addressed. Twitchit writes, quote, Under Yu Qian's plan, each drill unit was placed under a field commander, and the entire garrison was then placed under the control of a field marshal selected from among the commanders. Supervision of the garrison, which had hitherto been the exclusive responsibility of eunuchs, was extended to the

capital bureaucracy. In sum, he created a unified command and increased the role of the capital officers in oversight of the garrisons." Truly, teamwork makes the dream work. Unfortunately, this initial sense of unity in the Jingtai government was short-lived. As the emperor himself had obviously feared, the mere existence of the retired emperor, locked away even as he was under house arrest in the southern palace, constantly managed to overshadow his efforts to consolidate and solidify his power base among the court. This was combined with the ongoing series of empire-wide natural disasters across the 1450s that tended to paint the regime in a rather negative light. This is, it should be noted, a deeply unfair portrayal of the Jingtai

regime and its efforts to stem the tide, in many cases literally, of such disasters. One of the court's major achievements, in fact, during this period was its major successes in bringing the ever-unruly Yellow River back under control. As of 1448, flooding had caused the mighty river to break its constraints once again and divide into two paths along its lower course, with the larger stream flowing out to the Yellow Sea through the Ying River and into the Huai to the southern coast of Shandong, while the lesser northerly course now flowed into the Grand Canal in western Shandong. This had wrought incalculable destruction to the farmlands of the region, but even more importantly had effectively stopped up the Grand Canal, which was so vital to maintaining supply lines to the

capital. Initial efforts to repair the damage and bring the river back under control had proved fruitless. It wasn't until an official then on the outs, Xu Yujun, who had lost favor after advocating the court retreat from Beijing ahead of the Mongol threat, you may recall, put forward a very bold plan, that the river would be brought, with extreme effort, back under heel. It was an extremely complex plan, with multiple steps and schedules all interlocking together that frankly we don't have time to get into in any detail. Once approved, it would ultimately employ some 58,000 laborers working for more than 500 days without stopping. But it proved well worth it.

Not only would the river dykes be repaired, but an entirely new canal of almost 100 miles long was dug in order to lead the Yellow River's water safely to the Daqing River and then into the sea. To restore the vital Grand Canal, a series of lakes were dug and interlaked with a system of modern locks to maintain a regular and controllable supply of water. In addition, a comprehensive irrigation system was constructed that would effectively water more than 2 million acres of invaluable farmland in northern Shandong. The whole scheme was finished in 1455, and it was completely successful. It proved able to survive a disastrous flood in 1456 and lasted a total of 34 more years. Xu Yuzheng was richly rewarded and made vice censor-in-chief in 1457.

In spite of such truly and inarguably monumental successes, the Jingtai era nevertheless found itself plagued by problems arising in large part from the sitting emperor's irregular succession. In itself, it was already a difficult enough situation to hand-wave away, but it was swiftly made all the worse by Jingtai's obvious foot-dragging when negotiating the return of his elder brother from Mongolia, and the clearly icy attitude he had toward Yingzong upon his return to China. Jingtai made himself look all the more petty when he pulled off stuff like refusing Yingzong permission to celebrate his own birthday, or to receive envoys from his former capital, the Oirat, many of whom, in spite of the awkward circumstances, he'd actually gone and befriended

during his time there, or even to like participate in New Year's celebrations. Just really schoolyard, picayune stuff. It was, to steal a term from the kids, not a good look. This was all compounded when the question of the line of succession came up once again. Now, you remember back that when Jingtai had assumed the throne, it had been implicit to the whole arrangement that Yingzong's eldest son, the child prince Zhu Jianshun, was to be proclaimed the heir apparent, thus assuring the succession of the primary family line in accordance with those good old Confucian principles. The Jingtai emperor, however, was not about that life, and quickly began engineering a means to have his own progeny succeed him to the throne, propriety be damned. So it was that on May 20th, 1452, the emperor accepted a memorial suggesting that he appointed new heir. This in spite of the

strong and unanimous opposition of his grand secretaries to any such motion, all of whom were subsequently promoted to shut them up. The crown prince was thereafter demoted to becoming the Prince of Yi, with Jingtai's sole heir, the pre-adolescent Zhu Jianzhi, taking up his role as imperial heir apparent. Needless to say, such a blatantly self-interested move won the emperor no friends in the court or popularity among the populace. Yet one can understand why all that would seem of very little importance next to securing your own family line as the head of the imperial order in perpetuity.

Any such calculation, however, crashed and burned little more than a year later when the newly installed crown prince abruptly took ill and died, shortly to be followed into the grave by his mother, the likewise new empress. When the Jingtai emperor, his one and only heir now gone, made no move to name another successor, several court officials suggested that he reappoint the former heir, the now Prince of Yi, as the Crown Prince yet again. For this, they were all jailed and brutally beaten, with several being flogged to death. It's likely that this needless brutality, on top of the Emperor's naked power-mongering, was the catalyst that erased any

vestiges of goodwill from the court officials and transformed mere dissatisfaction with the throne into outright opposition and, eventually, active conspiracy against Jingtai's reign. This is certainly not to say that such conspirators were solely or even primarily motivated by some sort of high-minded idealism about imperial conduct. To the contrary, such courtiers, officials, and generals who began their scheming against Jingtai as of 1452 were as self-interested, vengeful, and power-hungry as they came, and all saw themselves emerging from an imperial succession crisis as effective king of the hill, and at last given free hand to punish their political and personal enemies without consequence. For several years, these would-be conspirators stewed in their own juices,

until at last the opportunity presented itself in early 1457. The Jingtai Emperor, himself now just 28 years old, fell severely ill, so much so that he was unable to hold court and his New Year's celebrations were cancelled. Though the unit corps under Xing'an valiantly tried to conceal the severity of the emperor's condition, word inevitably leaked out of the palace and reached the conspirators. Thus, on February 11th of 1457, the anti-Jingtai cabal, led by Generals Shi Heng, Zhang Yue, and Cao Zhehang, and censorate heads Xu Yuzhen and Yang Shan, gathered 400 imperial guardsmen to their side and rushed to the retired Emperor Yingzong's residence in the southern palace. Having been kept very much in the dark about all this for the past several years of his

housebound imprisonment, Yingzong was stunned as the guardsmen, military officers, and imperial censors loaded him up into a sedan chair and carried him over to the main palace. Upon arrival, they burst open the palace gate of the Forbidden City, effectively yeeting Jingtai as he lay bedridden, and sat Yingzong once again atop the dragon throne. This stunning act, known forever after in Chinese as pōmen, or forcing the palace gate, was to become the coup d'etat par excellence of Ming history.

But far from being remembered as some celebrated moment of restoration, it would come to be widely considered as a grave violation of ritual propriety, far worse even than the enthronement of Jingtai in 1449. That, after all, had been an action necessitated by the most dire of circumstances. The overthrow of 1457, on the other hand, could be understood as nothing more than a straight-up coup d'etat for the personal political gain of those leading it. It, quote, unleashed a flood of profiteering and office-seeking. Thousands of civil and military officials benefited by promotion, and the chief among them would provide the ruling clique of the next reign, end quote.

As for the suddenly former emperor, Jingtai would not be named Taishang Huangdi as he'd done with his own brother, but instead outright demoted back to the Prince of Cheng and then locked away. A month later, he would turn up dead under cloudy circumstances, with heavy suspicions that he'd been strangled by one of the court eunuchs on orders from his big brother, Yingzong. So much for brotherly love. If he had learned anything during his time of captivity, it was that there was no room in the palace for a still-living former emperor. Ying Zong himself would resume his duties as sovereign of Ming, taking up a new era name, Tian Shun, meaning obedience to heaven. Apparently chosen with absolutely no thought given to the

sheer irony of such a title, given the shady circumstances of his retaking the throne. The coup d'etat, though at first proudly called the forcing of the gate, even by the conspirators themselves, was within a couple of years quietly changed to being officially referred to as or restoration of the throne. But for most, such an attempt at rebranding was far too little, too late. And so we stand, here on the very Ides of March, 1457. And here is where we'll leave off today. Yingzong has, by hook or by crook, crawled his way back from captivity and been restored to

the throne after eight of the most awkwardly embarrassing years in all of Chinese history. The Tu Mu Crisis, the subsequent Jingtai Reign, and the Forcing of the Gate stand apart as, almost inarguably, the single greatest humiliation of the entire Ming Dynasty, surpassing even its eventual fall to a combination of southern rebels and northern barbarians two centuries later. An army of a half million had been eradicated by a force of as little as 20,000 to 70,000. The emperor himself had been allowed to be taken hostage, and all to be capped off by the most naked power grab of a coup d'etat in living memory, without even the good grace to offer a fig leaf of it being for the good of the realm or whatever. Next time, we'll get into quite possibly the most ironically named

reign era of all in Chinese history, a seven-year stretch of hatred, revenge, and score-settling known as the Era of Obedience to Heaven. Before going, however, I'd like to take a moment to say that it's swiftly coming up on THOC's eighth birthday, and that means it's high past time that I open the lines to once again put together a Q&A episode. So if you've got burning questions about the show or Chinese history, send them my way, and they just might be featured on an upcoming episode. Email them to THOCpodcast at gmail.com, or to the Twitter handle at THOCpodcast, or to our Facebook page, facebook.com slash thehistoryofchina.

Looking forward to hearing from you all and kicking off the show's ninth year. And as ever, 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.