The History of China - #227 - Ming 17: The Cao Qin Rebellion

Episode Date: November 28, 2021

Emperor Yingzong is back on his throne thanks to the conspirators loyal to him. Only they turn out to be not so much loyal to "him," as they are to the idea that they should have more and more power. It all culminates with yet another coup d'etat..真讨厌... Time Period Covered: 1457-1464 CE Major Historical Figures: Emperor Yingzong (Zhu Qizhen) [r. 1435-1449, 1457-1464] Crown Prince Zhu Jianshen [b. 1448] Yu Qian, Minister of War [d. 1457] Xu Yuzhen, Earl of Wugong [?] Shi Heng, Duke of Zhongguo [d. 1459] Cao Zhixiang, Director of Ceremonies [d. 1461] Grand Secretary Li Xian Imperial Guard Commander Lu Gao [d. 1461] General Cao Qin [d. 1461] General Shi Biao [?] General Sun Tang General Ma Ang General Wu Jin General Wu Cong Commander Ma Liang Commissioner Wanzhe Tuliang Vice Commissioner-in-Chief Esen Temur Works Cited: Qi, Dongfang. “Funerary Perception and Ritual Institution of Imperial Tang” in Kaogu Xuebao (tr. Lee Yun-kuen). Robinson, David M. “Politics, Force and Ethnicity in Ming China: Mongols and the Abortive Coup of 1461” in The Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 59, No. 1. Stutton, Donald S. “Death Rites and Chinese Culture: Standardization and Variation in Ming and Qing Times” in Modern China, Vol. 33, No. 1. Twitchett, Denis & Tilemann Grimm. "The Cheng-t'ung, Ching-t'ai, and T'ien-shun reigns, 1436-1464" in The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 7: The Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644, Part I. Waldron, Arthur. The Great Wall of China: From History to Myth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. 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. Hello and welcome to the History of China.

Episode 227, The Cao Qin Rebellion Last time, we went over the captivity of Emperor Yingzong by the Mongols of Esen-Tai-Shi, and his hurried replacement on the Ming throne by his half-brother, the Jingtai Emperor. This had been followed by Yingzong's return to China, Jingtai's refusal to return the throne, and finally, a cabal of disaffected palace ministers launching a successful coup d'etat and reseating the very surprised Yingzong atop of it as of mid-March, 1457. Jingtai was sent to a farm upstate, where he could run and play all day long with the other deposed emperors. Today, then, we launch into the second half of Emperor Yingzong's twin reigns,

a seven-year stint known as the Tianshun Era. Dennis Twitchett begins his section on the Tianshun period as such, quote, The events of few reign periods can have so utterly belied their name as those of the Tianshun, literally, obedient to heaven. Having begun with a well-planned and expeditious coup d'etat, the first order of business was settling old scores. Revenge and hatred seemed to have been with the leadership of the Jingtai era was liable to be targeted for purge, removal, and likely execution for their years of legal service to the throne and realm amidst the greatest crisis the dynasty had yet faced. But chief among those targeted by the agents of the Qianshun usurpation, and most infamously, was the man who is rightly held

up by historians both old and modern as the savior of the Ming at its darkest hour. I refer to Yu Qian, who had been promoted to minister of war in 1449, as Essen's armies had rode just outside the walls of Beijing itself and then successfully conducted the defense of the capital. Yet in 1457, false charges of high treason were leveled against the minister, quote, an unjust accusation embodying the hatred and fears of his enemies, end quote. They, in fact, urged that Yu Qian face one of the most truly horrific punishments for those who had committed high crimes against the state, ling shi, or slow slicing, that is, death by a thousand cuts. At the eleventh hour, though,

the emperor intervened on Yu Qian's behalf, reducing the sentence to the relative mercy of mere decapitation. As such, on a frigid morning in mid-February 1458, Yu Qian was led along with the now-former Grand Secretary and four chief eunuchs, to Beijing's Public Execution Square, where their sentences were swiftly carried out, leaving their lifeblood to freeze in the icy streets. But the purge was nowhere near concluded. The senior Grand Secretary, the Minister of Justice, Minister of Works, two other Grand Secretaries, and others were summarily stripped of office and title with prejudice, and some banished to military service posts along the frontier. For the remainder of Yingzong's tenure in office, these men's names, living and especially dead, were synonymous with mud. Yet even at the time, it was widely understood,

and aroused significant dismay, that one so heroic and eminent as Yu Qian had been done so dirty. Just nine years after his execution, and two years after the death of Yingzong, his imperial successor, the Chenghua Emperor, would authorize the full rehabilitation of Yu Qian's name and record, with his titles and honors posthumously restored. Puchit writes, quote, Centuries later, students entered for the metropolitan examinations would go to the shrine built in the eastern part of Beijing imperial court was either dead or gone, it must surely be time for everyone else's favorite game, the career promotional merry-go-round.

You get a promotion. You get a promotion. Everyone gets a promotion. Xu Yuzhen, the ringleader of the coup, of course, now scored the top job, being appointed concurrently as head of the Grand Secretariat, the Minister of War, and even ennobled as the Earl of Wugong. Leading general, Shi Heng, was made the Duke of Zhongguo, meaning as it were loyalty to the state, not China. Simultaneously, his nephew, the General Shi Biao, a notoriously corrupt figure, was made a Marquis. Cao Zhexiang, the eunuch general, was made Director of Ceremonies, the most powerful role within the eunuch corps, as well as commander-in-chief of the capital's defensive garrisons. His adoptive son, Cao Qin, was made an earl,

and several of his nephews given prestigious military commands as well. These were just a smattering of the rewards ladled out by the restored Emperor Yingzong upon those who had quite literally carried him back into power. Yet, given the spirit of avarice and self-aggrandizement that had motivated many, perhaps most, of the conspirators behind the forcing of the palace gate, it's hardly surprising that their promotions only served to increase their desire for power rather than sate it. As such, it wasn't long before they began to overreach themselves, to often fatal effect. A mere four months after the coup, in fact, the new Grand Secretary, Earl of Wugong, Xu Yuzhen, was himself arrested in late June on charges of improper assumption of authority.

Found guilty at his trial, he was demoted and ultimately exiled, largely thanks to the behind-the-scenes machinations of his own erstwhile co-conspirators. What did you expect, said the scorpion as it stung the frog halfway across the river? It's just my nature. Not that, it would turn out, any of the others were very long for the world either. Some three years later, the Duke of Zhongguo, General Shi Heng, found himself facing down damning charges of personal extravagance in contravention of sumptuary laws that strictly limited the amount of conspicuous wealth public officials could display. Instead, Shi Heng had constructed a vast and opulent, one might even say garishly classless, mansion for himself, and otherwise sounds like he absolutely lived it up, much to the consternation of the court and throne. Making matters even worse, he seems to have come to think of himself as essentially

equal to the emperor himself, publicly disagreeing with imperial pronouncements and rulings, and frequently making more and more excessive demands of Yingzong personally. Ultimately, the emperor decided that he was exhausted by Shi's insufferable attitude and withdrew his support from him. This, of course, opened him up to the many, many enemies he now had throughout the court to legally tear him to shreds. Though initially only ordered to retire in the face of allegations against him, as the charges stacked up one atop the next, he was at last arrested and held for a formal trial. He would, however, never reach the courtroom, and would die in prison as of March 8th, 1460, ostensibly due to an illness, though it's widely believed that such a description was a euphemism for suicide, forced or otherwise. This brings us to the third major case set of just desserts in the Tianshen era,

the curious case of the eunuch lord Cao Zixiang and his adopted son Cao Qin. Noticing, as how could he not, that his one-time fellow co-conspirators were dropping rather like flies all around him, the Caos had begun to sweat about their own future in the court. After all, it wasn't as though they'd exactly been keeping their noses clean since their promotions to the Director of Ceremonies. Indeed, Cao Zixiang had only barely managed to dodge getting swept up in the prosecutorial dragnet during the case against Shi Heng as of 1457. And as we've learned time and again when it comes to imperial prosecutions, you might wiggle out of an investigation once, but coming up for our

second review was almost always damning in and of itself. This was made all the more dire by the fact that the investigation was being led by one Liu Gao, the commander of the powerful imperial bodyguard, who had become a formidable rival to Cao and his machinations, and appeared dead set on making charges stick against the eunuch. As such, Cao Zhexiang, his son, and his nephews all did what was, at least by their own estimations, the only logical thing to do. Using their collective control over the entire defense garrison system of Beijing, they plotted a coup d'etat of their own. But wait, because here we actually must take a step back and once more talk about, wait for it, the Mongols. Because as it turns out, they're a pretty critical element in this

upcoming coup of 1461. Which, I know, sounds weird. Which is exactly why it's worth examining. In researching and reading about this topic, it became starkly clear that this coup of 1461 was curiously under-discussed in most sources. Even in the Cambridge history of China, the narrative just sort of peters out with little more than a passing reference. This is, to at least some extent, justifiable because the actual coup attempt is over very quickly, within a day, and it is, in the end, defeated by the powers that be of the Ming court. Nevertheless, it serves as something of a capstone on the entire Tianshun era,

a reign period all but bookended by palace coups. Back to the Mongols, though. Given their oh-so-recent starring role under Essen as the fearsome barbarian enemy force trying to wheel and deal, and then beat down the gates once that failed, while the Oirats and their step-kensmen had, following Essen's ill-fated declaration of condom and subsequent death, been reshattered into their primal tribal elements, that by no means meant that they were any less troublesome to the Ming for it. Much to the contrary, their internecine struggles had only served to increase the steppe riders' need for border raiding and pillaging from the rich and fertile south. From Arthur Waldron, quote, The Ming court of Tianshun could not agree about how to treat the Mongols who had succeeded Essen,

and who were increasingly based in the Ordos. A certain amount of trade and tribute was permitted, but not enough to end raiding." All in all, the Ming Empire's response to Mongol pressure from the north across the entire Tianshun era was absolutely self-sabotaging in its hot-cold inconsistency toward their northern neighbors. But that is a tale much more suited for a future episode. Meanwhile, it's easy to forget that those Mongols of the steppes, they that still referred to themselves in an increasingly deluded manner as the Northern Yuan Dynasty, were by no means the only Mongols out there anymore. Not only had the near-century of direct Mongol rule of the Yuan Dynasty ineffably and permanently altered Chinese society and government, both for the better and for the worse, it had also ended with a vast number of ethnic Mongols and

semi-Mongols deciding upon the final flight of the Yuan royal court from Daidu, back north of the Gobi Desert, that they would much rather stay in China as servants and citizens of the new Ming regime than retreat with their fleeing Kion to a life of privation and perpetual uncertainty. Given the Mongols' propensity for military ventures, this had meant during the transition from Yuan to Ming, as we've obliquely discussed already, that significant and perhaps even decisive elements and percentages of the Ming military high command were ethnically Mongol from the time of the Hongwu Emperor onward. Certainly, you'll remember how very reliant and trusting Prince Zhu Di, the eventual Yongle Emperor, had been about his northern and largely Mongol legions and first the taking and then

expansion of the empire in his own name. David M. Robinson writes, quote, Ming Mongols fought throughout the 15th century in virtually every important military theater Their participation in the 1461 coup notwithstanding, the Mongols continued to be deployed by the state in the next century. But Mongol conceptions and influence were not confined to mere military matters. Continuing from Robinson, quote, UN Mongol attitudes and practices shaped Ming China. Chinese conceptions about China's proper place in Asia, the Son of Heaven's appropriate role in the realm, political institutions, social customs, dress, and language were all deeply influenced by the UN Mongols, end quote. So why did so many of the Ming Mongols in positions of military command opt to side

against the throne and with the rebel Cao Qin? Because, understandably, the Timu Crisis and the renewal of open hostilities between China and Mongolia itself once more tore open the never quite healed wounds between the Han majority and the Mongols residing among them. More than probably any other ethnic minority across the realm, the fortunes of the Mongols residing among them. More than probably any other ethnic minority across the realm, the fortunes of the Mongols within China were acutely sensitive to the ever-shifting political winds of the imperial court. The downfall of Shi Heng and his nephew, Shi Biao, had served as startling notice to the Mongols of North China that those political winds were indeed shifting very much against them. The military command that relied

on and protected them was now being eliminated from power. The client Mongols who rallied behind their patrons probably did so for fear that the Tsao's fall would lead to their own ruin as well. This was all made all the worse by the string of horrific weather and climatological disasters that swept across the north in the late 1450s and early 1460s. From 1458 onward, a series of severe droughts devastated the northern provinces, to the point that reports were coming in from Shandong claiming that some 60,000 households had effectively vanished, having either starved to death or fled from ecological ruin. By late summer, conditions had become so dire that it's noted that the water levels of the Grand Canal itself had fallen to the point where ship travel had become difficult.

Of course, climate conditions do not stop at national borders. As such, the steppes were likewise facing horrid, near-unsurvivable conditions. Many Mongols across the Trans-Ordos regions opted simply to give up the ghost and surrender to the Ming in hopes of receiving state support that would ensure their survival. It's logged that in August of 1457, for instance, the chief military officer of Piantou Pass recorded 500 Mongol family units surrendering to his forces for resettlement, mostly in Beijing, where they received stipends and housing. Among those who did not wish to surrender their lifestyle, though, the rolling climate disaster forced them to yet more desperate methods, often upping the frequency and ferocity of their raids against outlying Chinese border settlements.

In 1461, Eastern Mongol forces had encamped along the northern bank of the Yellow River in such numbers, raiding and pillaging as they pleased, that by mid-July, the Minister of War himself, Ma Ang, and a high-ranking official, Sun Tang, were tasked with leading a force of 15,000 elite cavalry from Beijing to the border defense regions of Shanxi to guard against further barbarian incursion. In all, this precipitous breakdown in Sino-Mongolian relations over the course of the First Tumu Crisis, and thereafter the 1450s as a whole convinced many of the Mongol warriors within the Ming military system that they were in an extremely precarious state and needed to decisively act before they were acted against. As such,

several hundred high-ranking Ming officers of Mongol blood would throw their lot in behind Cao Zhexiang and Cao Qin in their attempt to overthrow Emperor Yingzong and replace him with a candidate of their own choosing. So, with that preamble out of the way, let's get to the coup of 1461 itself. The spark that lit the fuse of this rebellion, on its own, seems like a very strange thing to trigger such an uprising. On August 6, 1461, Emperor Yingzong issued an edict that warned all hereditary nobles, husbands of imperial princesses, and military commissioners that they must remain loyal to the throne and not violate any laws. Though worded in such a bland

and seemingly innocuous way, it was actually a very specific veiled threat against a single person, Cao Qin, and his rather shady business dealings. From Robinson, quote, One retainer was a centurion of the Imperial Guard, who had acted as Cao's agent in illegal foreign transactions. Afraid that the centurion could not be trusted to keep his own affairs secret, Cao ordered the man's wife to tell authorities that her husband had gone mad and fled. End quote. This,

he thought, would make it seem as though the guardsmen had disappeared and would therefore not be questioned by the authorities. However, this only served to make the palace authorities organize a search for the AWOL guardsmen, leading Tao to order his henchmen to beat the man to death before he could be taken into custody. Imperial officials got word back to the throne of this, uh, oh, what's it called? Oh yeah, murder, and Yingzong issued the declaration. Again from Robinson, quote, While accusations lodged against highly placed officials and imperial in-laws for putting underlings to death were not unusual, for Cao, this reprimand by the Son of Heaven was not perfunctory.

A similar edict had immediately preceded the demise in November 1459 of the influential general Shi Heng. Convinced that his own ruin was imminent, Cao resolved to take up arms. First things first, he consulted with a fortune teller, who informed him that the pre-dawn hours of the first day of the seventh month, that is, August 7th, would be the ideal moment to strike against Yingzong. Specifics of the precise details of the coup's plan are hazy, at best, but it appears that the August 7th date, the very next morning as it were, was hastily agreed upon by all the conspiracy's leaders because they saw an opportunity to quickly dethrone the emperor in the absence of the powerful generals Sun Tang and Ma Ang and their 15,000 elite troops who were scheduled to pretty much immediately head out. Some recountings

of the plot have the Cao brothers planning to assassinate the two generals outright and then assume command of their forces, though the majority state that they merely intended to use their convenient absence from the capital to act with impunity. In any event, they hoped to seize control of the capital garrisons and the imperial guard commanded by Cao Xun's own father, Cao Zixiang, and then march on the imperial palace itself to unseat Yingzong. They would replace him with the heir apparent, the then 13-year-old Crown Prince Zhu Jianshen, and then re-promote Yingzong to his previous position as powerless retired emperor, which he'd been during his half-brother Jingtai's reign. Now, as usual, when I start throwing a lot of names around,

it gets very complicated and very difficult to follow very quickly, so if this is all a bit much for you, I totally understand, and I tell you, just don't worry about it too much because it's ultimately not going to matter. On the eve of the coup, August 6th, Cao Qin hosted a feast for the host of Mongol generals and other trusted military officers in his employ. These were among the many officers who had directly benefited from Ying Zong's return to power as of 1457 and the subsequent round of purges and the subsequent round of purges from the government, so they pretty much all felt a great deal of loyalty to the guy behind that whole plot, Cao Zixiang, and of course his son, Cao Qin, and brothers. Now it was time,

therefore, to get the band back together and make another run at regime change. Among the Mongol generals especially, loyalty to the Cao family was considerable, as they had made a habit of politically shielding the Mongol officers from punitive actions by the Ming court. Once gathered at the feast, Cao Qian made a show of presenting the assembled officers with generous gifts. After this, in return, the officers swore additional oaths of loyalty to Cao directly. Yet in the midst of all this gift-giving and toasting and oath-swearing, two of the Mongol officers looked over at one another and, uh, had a bad feeling about this.

They were Commander Ma Liang and Regional Commissioner Wanja Tulian, and as the revelry continued into the night, they managed to slip out. Immediately, the pair made their way to one of the waiting rooms beneath the southern wall of the imperial city, where two high-ranking Ming generals, also of Mongol descent, Wu Jin and Wu Cong, waited. The pair of officers reached the generals during the second watch of the night, which is to say somewhere between 1 and 3 a.m. And, upon learning of the Cao's intentions, roused General Sun Tang at once, who was resting in an adjacent antechamber in preparation to ride out with his cavalry troops to Shanxi the next morning.

General Sun wrote the warning of the coup plot down and made for the western Chang'an gate of the imperial palace, slipping the missive through the gap between the sealed gate doors to the night watchman on the other side and growling a warning that if for any reason his message did not immediately make it into the hands of the emperor himself, Suntong would personally find and kill the watchman. The palace guard did exactly as he was told, and in likely record time the note was being read by candlelight by Yingzong himself. The emperor took this as seriously as it deserved, and immediately ordered that Cao Jixiang, who was the commander of the imperial guard, already within the palace itself, be placed under immediate arrest. Once this was done, it was imperative that the palace defenses be roused and placed on the highest possible alert. Orders went out that both the nine gates of the capital city and the four gates of the forbidden city be checked and rechecked that they were all sealed,

and that none should under any circumstance be opened. Blocks of stone were then torn up from the imperial causeway and used to reinforce the palace gates. At last, a reply was drafted in the emperor's own hand and delivered to the awaiting general, Sun Tang, ordering him to destroy the rebels for me. Sun was only too pleased to obey. In all human history, there are few stories like that of ancient Egypt. On the banks of the Nile, these people created one of the most enduring and significant cultures. Their tale comes to life in the History of Egypt podcast. Every week, we explore the tales of this amazing culture, from the legendary days of creation and the gods,

all the way to Cleopatra, and everything in between. The History of Egypt podcast is written and produced by a trained Egyptologist. We go much deeper than your average documentary or magazine article, to uncover tales of life, great endeavours, and the amazing arc of a mighty kingdom. The History of Egypt podcast is available on all podcasting platforms, apps, and websites. Come, visit ancient Egypt, and experience a legendary culture. Sun Tong now rounded up his sons, likewise members of the military service, and ordered them to muster and assemble all the soldiers they could from among the expeditionary force that had been preparing to depart to Shanxi.

In this, though, Sun and sons realized they'd have to play it pretty close to the chest. Who knew, after all, where all the soldiers' loyalties might lie about such an issue? Some might wish to warn the rebels that their plot had been found out. So they decided to tell a little white lie, rousing the soldiers and informing them that some bandits had rioted in the prison at the Ministry of Justice, and that any soldier who reported for duty and captured a rioter would be rewarded. Yet even this inducement proved rather remarkably ineffective at getting the soldiers to climb out of their beds, as of about the 15,000 or so troops asked to report, only around 2,000 bothered to do so. Only once they'd arrived before General Sun did he reveal the true nature of the threat.

Can't you see that the western Chang'an gate is on fire? He started. Cao Qin has rebelled. He doesn't have many men. Muster up your courage and kill them. The emperor will certainly not begrudge promotions and rewards. Duly motivated now, the defenders of the Forbidden City mobilized and prepared for battle. Meanwhile, Cao Qin had by this point realized that two of his Mongol officers had up and vanished and he had a bad feeling about this. Suspecting the worst, that his plans had been leaked, by the night's fourth watch, which is 5-7 a.m., he assembled a force of some 500 cavalrymen to ride forth to the gates of the Forbidden City as the night sky gradually began to lighten with dawn's approach. He ordered the force to break

into four companies and take up positions outside each of the palace compound's outer gates. Cao himself, along with his brothers and the Mongol generals in tow, headed straight for the eastern Chang'an gate. Upon approaching, he signaled the gatekeepers to open up, and realized when the gate didn't so much as budge that his worst fears had been realized. He'd been found out. Deciding that at the very least, he could take the opportunity to enact a little personal revenge before whatever was going to happen happened, Cao wheeled his men about and made straight for the home of his bitterest rival, the head of the Imperial Guard, Liu Gao himself. Commander Liu, having long suspected the ill

dealings of the Cao family, had not so privately been investigating them for quite a while now. And now, Cao Qin decided it was payback time. The combined Chinese and Mongol force burst through the Liu family's outer gate, and Cao personally cut down his foe in his own home, then decapitated and dismembered Lugao's corpse. In the midst of all this grisly carnage, the morning activity of the capital city was beginning to pick up. In particular, court officials were riding in and stopping at the

many antechambers and waiting areas outside of the Forbidden City's walls to await the opening of the gates and the resumption of business as usual for the day, all at this point totally unaware that anything was amiss. Initially thinking that the clamor of hoofbeats signaled the departure of the expeditionary force to its post in Shanxi, and that perhaps hope yet remained for his plot, Cao Qian rushed out of the Lu estate just in time to see the approach of the Imperial Grand Secretary, Li Xian. He ordered his men to stop the officials and bring them before him, at which point, in the midst of this ongoing confusion and chaos, two of his soldiers approached the Grand Secretary from behind and clocked him in the back of the head with the hilt of a sword. Cao intervened at once and led the dazed and confused Li Xian away from all this bedlam, telling the Sun Minister not to fear. Finding a quieter spot than the

city's main thoroughfare, Cao then sought to convince the Grand Secretary that he was, in fact, the loyal one to the Emperor and that there was a big mistake in the works here. There was no way that he was in rebellion against Yingzong. After all, he was the guy who had restored the Emperor in the first place. I mean, he wasn't the kind of person who'd just go and overthrow a sitting Emperor for personal and political gain. Think about it. But on second thought, don't think about it too hard, actually. At this point, with dramatic flourish, he produced the severed head of Lu Gao, insisting that he'd been driven to this situation by Lu, and it was all his fault, and look, I've got his head now, so it's all solved. Problem over. You're on my side on this, right? Right? Say you're

on my side. Having largely recovered from his blow to the head, Li Xian replied with all the carefully worded strategic ambiguity of a truly professional politician. Liu did verily provoke trouble, he said, and those who resent and hate him are legion. Since you've already done away with him, you should beg pardon from the throne. Tao agreed, and began urging Li that since they both understood the situation so well and Li was definitely on Tao's side, wouldn't the Grand Secretary be so kind as to draft a memorial to the throne himself that would explain to the Emperor this whole crazy mixed up situation and how it totally wasn't what it probably definitely looked like. memorial to the throne himself that would explain to the Emperor this whole crazy mixed-up situation

and how it totally wasn't what it probably definitely looked like. It's all just one big kooky misunderstanding that I'm sure we'll all be laughing about together just a little bit later. I mean, I'm laughing already. Aren't you, Your Majesty? Good times. Good times. Yeah. By this point, Cao Zemin had managed to round up and capture several other officers from the various antechambers and offices outside the palace gate, as well as some papers and brushes from the office of the Minister of Personnel. As such, Li Xian dutifully composed his memorial, the contents of which sadly remain unknown to us, and it was slipped

through the eastern Chang'an gate. When, inconceivably, that still somehow didn't get the gatekeepers to open the gates, Cao Qian grew frustrated enough that he began to think out loud that, well, if Li Xian wasn't going to be useful in terms of getting him into the Forbidden City, then maybe he ought to just kill him here and now. He was dissuaded from this, however, by two other ministers who argued that, hey, whoa, hey, hey, remember how Li had been the guy who drafted the funeral inscription for your father? I mean, have a little respect, my man.

This managed to calm Tao down enough that he agreed, uh, alright, fine, he wouldn't slaughter the Grand Secretary here and now, I guess. It was now obvious to all parties outside each of the palace gates that their neat little plan had gone rather irrevocably sideways. Seeing few other options, they now resolved that if the guards inside weren't going to let them come in, then they'd simply have to try to huff and puff and blow the gates in, by which, of course, I mean burn them down. The eastern and western palace gates were successfully set ablaze, and would continue to burn until a timely rainstorm put them out later that day.

Back inside the palace, in spite of Generals Sun Tong and Ma Ang's orders to eradicate the rebels ASAP, the imperial defenders were still proving rather slow to rouse and organize. Still, a force did in time coalesce and a plan to launch a counterattack against the rebel besiegers put into place. General Sun, along with two of his sons, would lead a vanguard of imperial troops out of the Dong'an Gate in the palace's eastern wall and engage Cao's rebel forces. General Ma, meanwhile, would follow behind with a force of elite shock troops to reinforce and clean up any stragglers. Sun's vanguard troops proved themselves, quote, steadfast and well-disciplined. Anyone who attempted to flee was executed on the spot, End quote.

Contact with the imperial troops started off badly for Cao and his rebels, and only continued to get worse from there. He was quickly forced to withdraw from the Dong'an Gate itself and set up a hasty defensive balustrade nearby. As the forces continued to clash all throughout the morning and into midday, one of Cao's brothers was cut down, and Cao Qin himself severely injured by a stray arrow. Fighting on, his battered forces withdrew still further, to the great eastern marketplace, harried all the while by the imperial forces. Meanwhile, as mentioned before, the weather turned and a

rain squall opened up over the capital, extinguishing the palace gate fires and soaking the warriors on both sides as they battled on into the afternoon and early evening. Another of Cao's brothers led a trio of charges against the imperial formations, with a hundred cavalrymen seeking to break through their lines. Yet during the final attempt, he too was struck dead, this time by none other than the hands of General Sun Tang himself, who loosed the fatal crossbow bolt at the rebel commander. The rebel forces continued to withdraw and kept remarkably good order, even as their morale surely pitched toward despair. Just northeast of the Dong'an Gate, at the Lantern Market, Cao Qin suffered two further injuries to each of his arms. Yet in spite of this, apparently even at this

point, Cao Qin held to the hope that he would somehow be able to turn this whole thing around, get inside the palace grounds itself, and take the emperor hostage. Hope springs eternal, I guess. That was until Sun Tong decided to up the ante against his enemy by bringing up his heavy artillery units, along with further reinforcements from the capital's nearby garrisons, to rain hell down upon the already beleaguered rebels. It was at this point that Cao Qin truly, finally, seemed to have realized that victory was no longer an option, and that only survival still even might remain open to him and his men. To the ends of that already very much fading hope, therefore, he led a hundred of his men in an attempt to break out of Beijing entirely through one of the city wall's eastern gates,

the Chaoyang Gate. This attempt failed, however, resulting in the death of Cao's third and final brother. In a desperate final bid for freedom, Cao and his remaining battle-fatigued men mounted up one last time and rode through the driving rain to the two northeasternmost city gates, the Anding and Dongzhe gates, respectively. Finding both sealed and manned against him, they wheeled about back to the Chaoyang Gate once more, but it too remained

sealed to them. Flight was no longer an option, and so, backs now truly up against the wall, it was decided that they should at least make one grand last stand from within the most fortified place they could come up with in the moment, Cao Qian's own capital residence compound. They made their way inside and shut the gates, and then could do little but prepare themselves and wait for the inevitable assault to be launched by Sun and the imperial forces. Facing an enemy that had already shown themselves to be formidable in open combat against a numerically superior force, the imperial troops were justifiably hesitant to launch any direct offensive against the rebels now holed up within a fortified mansion compound. No one wanted to be in that first wave that would breach the gates.

It was deemed necessary, therefore, that the pot be sweetened. We often think of military units such as this motivated primarily by fear of punishment for failure to perform their duties. And that's true, but it's only part of the truth. Especially when it came to inducing soldiers to put their lives on the line in an offensive action such as this, the carrot tended to be far more effective than the stick. I mean, what are you going to do, kill me twice? Grand Secretary Li Xian suggested that Emperor Yingzong issue a decree that any soldier that captured a rebel would be rewarded with a rank equal to the man he captured. General Sun, meanwhile, promises men that anyone who killed a rebel would be allowed to seize and keep his

entire property. The promise of plunder, now glistening very much in their eyes, the imperial troops at last enthusiastically roared their ascent to attack and commenced with the assault. It would prove to be a very brief engagement indeed. In order to avoid the humiliation and pain of inevitable capture, torture, and execution, Tao Chin decided to throw himself down one of his house's wells to drown. With that, the fire of resistance went out in the remaining rebels, and the imperial troops quickly, and bloodily, seized the compound with little delay. The men and women of Cao's inner circle were butchered to a man, while the others were taken

captive. His estate was thoroughly plundered by the troops, who also, for good measure, fished Cao Qian's corpse out of the well and then decapitated him. Several of the Mongol officers managed to scale the compound walls and make an escape all on their own, though they were one and all found, and usually quite quickly, and then met their fates. Probably the officer who came closest to actually getting away with it was the Vice Commissioner-in-Chief Esen Temur, who managed to get out of Beijing entirely and made it as far as neighboring Tongzhou, about 20 kilometers east of the palace, before he was found and taken sneak through a local farmer's melon patch who confronted the exhausted and terrified Essen Temur. Threatening the Mongol with a beating of a lifetime if he didn't come clean about who he was and why in the hell was he in the melon patch, Essen confessed everything about his role in the rebellion, and he at last allowed himself to be taken prisoner by the

farmers who had now assembled and gathered about him. Brought before the Grand Defender of Tianjin, he was quickly thrown aboard a prisoner cart in shackles and sent on his way back to Beijing. Perhaps it was his uncommon tenacity that was a factor in his salvation, for although the judicial office recommended the prescribed sentence for traitors, that of ling che, or lingering death, that is, the death by a thousand cuts, Ying Zhong intervened and reduced Sintemer's sentence to mere life imprisonment. The same mercy would not prove forthcoming for any of the other captives, however, who over the days and weeks to come had their sentences of excruciating public execution carried out one after the next.

In an audience with his ministers at the Median Gate on the evening of August 7th, Yingzong announced that the rebel brother's father, Cao Jixiang, and Mongol commander, Bayan Esen, were to be sliced to death on the following day. On 10 August, the corpses of Cao Qin and his brothers were dismembered and left exposed to the elements. Their properties were confiscated and used to reward the imperial troops. A number of people related by marriage to Cao Qin were also executed. Only Cao's father-in-law was spared, since he had refused to have any social intercourse with Cao during his ascendancy, and had gone so far as to refuse an official post that Cao had offered him.

End quote. On the other hand, those imperial officials and soldiers who had given their lives on behalf of the dynasty were granted official plaques of remembrance, proclaiming to the realm entire their merit and sacrifice. So ended the coup of 1461, that sought to oust Emperor Yingzong and yet failed within a day. As a move-by-move accounting, I hope you'll agree it's fascinating to look at just how a plot like this could play out on an hour-to-hour basis. Yet it gets remarkably little play by many modern historians. As I mentioned before, it's little more than a footnote or blurb in many accounts of the Tianshun era. This is because, of course, historically speaking, it does turn out to be little more than a speed bump for the Ming,

and in terms of comparing it to, say, the Tumu fiasco, it really doesn't measure up at all. Yet, to those at the time who did not have the benefit of historical hindsight, it was a deeply troubling incident, and its possible consequences for the whole Ming regime produced more than its fair share of official hand-wringing. There were immediate calls for the citizens of the realm to assist authorities in rounding up and delivering suspected rebels who may have managed to slip the net of August 6th. Yet that, too, had to be swiftly backpedaled when people began starting to use the edict as an opportunity to exact a little legally-sanctioned revenge against those they bore personal grudges against, by denouncing them as rebels in order to lay claim to their properties or settle old scores. In response, Yingzong ultimately had several dozen looters and false accusers marched out into public and then beaten severely.

News of the failed overthrow traveled far and wide, reaching the royal court of the Joseon Kingdom little more than a month later, on September 9th. The report was logged by a Korean official, who'd been then tasked with transporting Ming citizens back to China. He would file with the Joseon court that some 8,000 Mongols had joined Cao Qin, along with some 800, quote, dukes, marquises, earls, commissioners-in-chief, and eunuchs in the cabal were executed by slicing, and that tens of thousands were killed in the fighting. Summing up the supposed gore of the whole incident, he noted that with three straight days of rain after the failed coup, quote, the water and blood from the fighting flooded the Forbidden Palace, end quote. While obviously heavily exaggerated, Robinson notes here

that, quote, the Korean report may well accurately reflect what many inhabitants of the capital and elsewhere thought had occurred during the dawn hours of 7 August. End quote. What would have seemed more likely, after all, to a Chinese or Korean subject in the six months that followed, still able to see with their own eyes the charred ruins of the Dongan Gate and two other imperial gates of the Imperial Palace before they were finally replaced? What was more likely? That thousands had risen up against the emperor in a massive surprise attack, allowing Cao Qin to come within a hair's breadth of realizing his goal?

Or that such a scope and scale of destruction had all been the handiwork of a few hundred dedicated and fearless rebels? Well, I know which one I would pick. In the aftermath of this failed coup d'etat of 1461, Ying Zong's ruthless actions against the conspirators stood as a by this point typical hallmark of the particular style of justice common to the egocentric willfulness of the ruling imperial Zhu clan. Beyond that, though, it isn't as though he didn't have good reason to react with particular force and ferocity. Quote, he had, after all, come to the throne as a child and lived through

captivity, dethronement, and the death and subsequent denigration of his mentor. He had then suffered the shame of exclusion from public life under his brother. It is not surprising that he took strong measures to ensure the stability of his own authority. End quote. He had rewarded those who had betrayed his brother and restored him to power with offices of authority, but had in turn shown no compunction about ousting and exterminating them once they had exceeded their allotted authority or otherwise displayed renewed hints of disloyalty toward him. It's nothing personal. It's nothing personal.

It's strictly business. For the remaining three years of his reign, Emperor Yingzong's court functioned about as smoothly and uneventfully as could be asked. Yet, on February 23rd, 1464, just a month shy of his 35th birthday, for largely unclear reasons, he breathed his last, thus taking his place among the 11 out of 16 emperors in the 276 years of the Ming dynasty who did not even live to see their 40th birthdays. Thus speculative, it is strongly possible that his premature death was a result of that perennial pastime of Chinese sovereigns across all ages,

the ever-ironic pursuit of eternal life via highly poisonous alchemical immortality elixirs. Notably, and much to his credit, before he died, Yingzong officially ended the practice of burying concubines and palace maids alive upon the death of the emperor, that they may follow him into the afterlife to continue their service, a practice that seems likely to have been carried over from the proclivities of the Mongol Yuan dynasty, as that had not been the case during the preceding Song or Tang periods. Yingzong was interred, as per custom, within the Ming imperial tombs at the foot of the Yuling Mountains. Next time, we'll begin the reign period of Yingzong's son and heir,

till now the crown prince Zhu Jianshen. But as of February 28th, 1464, he will be enthroned as the ninth sovereign of Great Ming, overseeing a two-decade period of rule known thereafter as the Era of Accomplished Transformation, the Chenghua Era. Thanks for listening. 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.