The History of China - #231 - Ming 20: Liu Jin & the Eight Tigers

Episode Date: February 21, 2022

The adolescent Zhengde Emperor sits the throne, but everyone in the know knows that it is the eunuch-lord Liu Jin who truly controls Great Ming. Not everyone's exactly thrilled with this situation, and they're gonna get Liu Jin got... or die trying. Time Period Covered: 1506-1510 CE Major Historical Figures: The Zhengde Emperor (Zhu Houzhao) [r. 1506-1521] Liu Jin, Director of the Ceremonial [1451-1510] The Prince of Anhua (Zhu Zhifan) [d. 1510] Commander Qiu Yue General Yan Yiqing Inspector-in-Chief Zhang Yong Major Works Cited: Bourgon, Jérôme, Muriel Detrie, & Regis Poulet."Execution in Canton" in Chinese Torture – Supplices Chinois. Brook, Timothy. The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties. Geiss, James. “The Cheng-te reign, 1506-1521” in The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 7: The Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644, Part I.” Meadows, Thomas Taylor. The Chinese and Their Rebellions Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. 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 and Reconstruction wherever you find your podcasts. Hello and welcome to the History of China. Episode 231, Liu Jin and the Eight Tigers You the Great said, Oh, think of these things, O Emperor. Virtue is seen in the goodness of government, and the government is tested by its nourishing of the people. There are water, fire, metal, wood, earth, and grain.

These must be duly regulated. There are the rectification of the people's virtue, the conveniences of life, and the securing of abundant means of sustenation. These must be harmoniously attended to. From the Councils of the Great Yu in the Book of Documents, or Shujing, circa the 5th century BCE. It is nighttime in the capital.

It is the 27th of October, 1506, and the increasing chill of autumn grips the imperial palace grounds just as it does Beijing as a whole. Evening temperatures routinely plunge to not quite freezing just yet, but certainly close enough, the low single digits Celsius, enough to make everyone bundle up and huddle close to their evening fires. It is here, in the gloomy cold of the Forbidden City, that we find Liu Jin, surely doing his best to keep warm against the encroaching

night in his chamber within the inner courtyard of the eastern wing of the palace complex. He lives here, as he has almost his entire life, probably since adolescence, because he is one of the very few allowed such a place of honor. Liu Jin is one of the imperial eunuchs, and no common one beside. He is a favorite of the young emperor, the 13-year-old newly enthroned Zhengde Emperor, having been a member of the till-recently crowned prince's personal retinue since his childhood, and had subsequently been transferred to the new monarch's personal staff, a once-in-a-lifetime career boon. For Liu Jin himself, that had begun with a promotion to being put in charge of the palace music, which meant, in effect, that he was the ringmaster for all of the

entertainments that might be found and put on display within the Forbidden City. This included musicians, of course, but also dancers, sports and gaming events such as wrestling, finding and procuring any and all sorts of exotic and rare animals for the imperial menagerie, as well as entertainments for the young emperor of a more surreptitious nature. The histories intone that it was Liu Jin himself who first put the idea into the young emperor's head that it might be a very fun adventure indeed to dress himself as a commoner and then slip out of the palace to roam the streets of the wider capital and walk amongst the peasantry like he was one of them. The Zhengde emperor became so fond of this little game

that he's said to have done so frequently thereafter. By mid-year, Liu Jin was promoted yet again, this time being put in charge of the imperial household and given a commission to inspect and supervise the capital garrisons. And it was for this sudden and quite out-of-order double promotion that we find Leogene in his quarters on October 27th, 1506, receiving a message, whether in person or via writing is not exactly clear,

from his man on the inside, detailing a quite disturbing revelation. The Imperial Grand Secretaries, along with the uppermost echelons of the eunuch corps itself, was the very next morning planning to roll out a plot to frame him and seven of his fellow eunuch servants, all favorites of the Emperor, and demand their execution. Most troubling indeed. It should come as no great shock that within the walls of the Imperial capital, the civil officials of the outer court and the eunuch servants of the inner court had long had a fraught relationship with one another.

The officialdom saw the eunuchs as conniving, duplicitous, and immoral lickspittles without any clearly defined role, and yet able to go wherever they pleased and speak to those in power with an intimacy that they of the outer court never could, and in essence lived in contravention of the very rule of law and of Confucian virtue itself. The eunuchs, in turn, often saw the civil officials as stiff, unyielding curmudgeons, who were so moralistically pompous that they would rather watch their realm fall apart from within than adapt to changing circumstances, and yet at the same time could conveniently forget their vaunted ethics when it personally benefited them. In other words, sanctimonious, stodgy, and corrupt hypocrites.

There was very little love lost between the two groups, and doubly so whenever one felt that the other might be trying to overstep its role into the territory of the other. It's easy enough, then, to understand why the imperial secretaries might look for just about any reason they could to get rid of a cabal of eunuchs who quite evidently had the new Emperor's ear bent firmly their direction and well beyond their proper station. What is less immediately clear is why the head of the eunuch corps would agree to go along with any such plan. Well, actually, they're the ones who initiated it. Just as the civil officials jealously guarded their

power and positions, so too did the senior leadership of the eunuchs, who very much did not appreciate this gang of eight, or as they would come to be known, these eight tigers, to usurp their own place of primacy and influence within the inner palace by being upjumped over their heads via personal connection to the sovereign. As the eunuchs saw it, the eight tigers were too bold by half and needed to be taught a lesson about their place in the natural over their heads via personal connection to the Sovereign. As the eunuchs saw it, the eight tigers were too bold by half, and needed to be taught a lesson about their place in the natural order of things. In the minds of the head eunuchs, a lesson is what it was supposed to be, as in non-fatal. They wanted Liu Jin and the other tigers stripped of their posts and then banished to Nanjing.

A temporary measure, perhaps only for a couple of years, really just to teach them that they weren't the masters of the universe that they very clearly seemed to think that they were. And after that, who knows, maybe they'd come back, chastened and ready to follow the rules. But the officials? Not so much on board with the whole leniency thing. They pressed, nay, demanded that the whole lot of the eight tigers be put to death. Now, the head eunuchs pushed back on that, you know, us all demanding that the emperor execute all eight of his very favorite, closest, most trusted servants, and that was pretty much not going to fly, and had an outsized risk of totally backfiring and blowing up in their own faces.

At last, begrudgingly, the officials relented and saw the reason behind the eunuch's exhortations to slow their roll a bit. Okay, fine, so we'll only demand that Liu Jin himself be put to death and the other seven we will banish. See? Compromise. Teamwork makes the dream work. And so it was agreed that the Grand Secretaries and senior officials would draft the petition for the execution of Liu Jin and the banishment of the other seven, and then the senior eunuchs would deliver the signed sealed document to the emperor and urge him to act on it. Except, psych! It turns out that maybe the eunuchs should have insisted on being able to read the petition

before delivering it, because upon delivering it to the emperor and him opening it up, the eunuchs only then discovered that, surprise, the officials had actually went ahead and wrote down that all eight tigers should be executed anyways. Ah, curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal. Now, really truly in a bind, because they'd look like incompetent morons if they now tried to disavow the petition they'd just hand-delivered after all, they had eunuchs reluctantly told the emperor that he should adopt the proposal. The Zhengde emperor, of course, was not at all happy about this idea, yet with the backing of the senior eunuchs, he agreed that he would, at least, hear the officials out.

There would be issued a special audience on the morning of the 28th in order to convince him of their reasons behind urging for such a rash action. And so, here we are, back once again at the night of October 27th, as Leogene has delivered the rather bad news that he's quite literally on the chopping block as of tomorrow morning. Obviously, there wasn't a moment to lose. Leo sprung into action, rounding up the other seven of the eight tigers and immediately making for the emperor's residence. They presented themselves before him, falling to their knees and begging for mercy. Liu Jin explained that they had been framed. Framed, I say! And, quote, told the boy that the entire affair was a conspiracy designed to curtail his movements

and that the senior eunuchs, the director of the Directorate of Ceremonial, was cooperating with the Grand Secretaries in this scheme. End quote. Zheng De had known these eight guys for a long time. He liked them and trusted them, and he was also reeling from this recent presentation of charges against them Zhengde had known these eight guys for a long time. He liked them and trusted them, and he was also reeling from this recent presentation of charges against them and demands for their summary deaths. He was also, again, 13 years old,

and probably at least partially drunk at this point in the evening. Zhengde was rather infamous for hitting the bottle pretty hard, even early on in his reign. He'd already had deep doubts and reservations about this most troubling of cases, and now this sealed it. Obviously, his friendly neighborhood eunuchs now begging him for their very lives and insisting that it was a conspiracy by those mean old Confucian curmudgeons and those other eunuchs who just didn't, like, you know, get him, man. Not like the tigers did. He bought their side of the story hook, line, and sinker, and he was furious about being taken advantage of. And now, to complete the judo reversal. As a chilly dawn light broke over

the horizon on the morning of the 28th, the officials assembled at the palace gate in preparation for their audience with the emperor to get his sign off on executing those troublesome eight tigers. They realized pretty quickly, though, that something was a little off about this audience about to go down. It wasn't just the senior officials and grand secretaries who'd been brought in for this tête-à-tête, but the entire capital officialdom altogether. They were let inside, and shortly thereafter, who should appear but, what's this now? Not the emperor, as they'd been told, but one of his senior eunuchs in his stead. The servant read a curt message that stated that his Imperial Majesty had decided to take the case of the eight eunuchs under his personal consideration, and would alone decide their

fates at his leisure. The message was clear. They had, one and all, been utterly outmaneuvered. Realizing that they'd lost, not just this fight, but their very ability to influence imperial policy in any capacity in the conceivable future, all but one of the Grand Secretaries immediately offered their resignations. And at this point, the story goes, who should appear but Liujian himself, freshly installed the night before as the brand spanking new Director of Ceremonies. Oh yes, those senior eunuchs who'd delivered the official's petition to the throne had instantly found themselves out of a job, replaced one and all with the eight tigers into their prestigious positions, and with Leo at their head. Leogene was only too willing to ever so gracefully accept their proffered mass resignations on behalf of the

dragon throne. The senior eunuchs, well, now former senior eunuchs, found themselves facing the same fate as the one they had suggested for the tigers. They were all dismissed from office, and then banished from the capital, exiled to Nanjing. And then, for good measure, they were all assassinated while en route to the southern capital. Liu Jin's guy on the inside, who'd secretly informed the eunuch of the plot against him, named Jiao Fang, was, on the advice and hearty recommendation of this new director of ceremonies, made one of the palace's new grand secretaries four days later, in light of that regrettable mass resignation. And now, with all the levers of power at his personal disposal, Liu and the tigers turned and began immediately meeting out some good old-fashioned court justice on those officials who'd stood against their meteoric rise and were stupid enough to still be thinking they were about to keep their jobs. Just six weeks after his promotion, on

December 13, 1506, Director Liu successfully charged the drafter of the petition against him, the Minister of Revenue, Han Wen, with malfeasance and fraud. In February of 1507, 21 more officials, those who'd protested the acceptance of the former Grand Secretary's resignations, were publicly flogged and then reduced to commoners. From Geis, quote, officials who spoke out against Liu Jin were now routinely beaten, tortured, and dismissed. In March 1507, he began to put high officials who did not defer to him into heavy kangs for the most trivial offenses, for riding in a sedan chair without permission, for example.

The kang previously had been reserved for serious offenses and was by custom never used on officials. However, Liu Jin now used it whenever he wished, for any offense, end quote. It was also that March that Liu managed to push through a new edict that, in effect, made the eunuch intendants equal in rank and authority to the highest civil officials in the provinces, and gave these intendants the right to investigate any administrative or judicial matter. By that summer, in just a year and a half since he'd been in charge of nothing more than the musicians and dancers of the palace, Liu Jin had de facto total power over the imperial capital, and by extension Great Ming itself. All documents of any great

importance were all routed directly to him first, and only those that he approved of were then forwarded on to the grand secretaries or the ministries. By that summer, he'd effectively made himself the single conduit through which all power and information flowed. For all this, Liu Jin's primary task as the font of imperial power was to raise revenue for the emperor, who had very quickly decided that his primary job as sovereign was to spend as lavishly and frivolously as he possibly could on any and everything that he desired. In September of 1507, for instance, Zhengde reviews from the Taicang Imperial Treasury some 350,000 ounces, which is to say 9,922 kilograms, or nearly 10 tons, of silver in order to purchase some unearthly amount of lanterns for the Mid-Autumn Lantern Festival.

Now, to be perfectly clear, any direct comparison between modern and pre-modern valuations are ludicrous and should be used for illustrative purposes only. But for illustrative purposes only, 350,000 ounces of silver today would run you a cool $8 million. For lanterns. And that was just one purchase. Zhengde also ordered the restoration of several buildings in the Imperial Park just outside the capital, and even the construction of a brand new palace outside the Forbidden City, which was to be called the Leopard Quarter, and would serve as his new personal residence. All these projects would remain ongoing for years on end, and it was up to Liu Jin to ensure that the treasury continued to have income sufficient to pay for such projects year in and year out by any means necessary. Taxes were raised and re-raised across

the provinces. Black market sales of salt and contravention of the imperial salt monopoly were conducted at scale by Leo's agents. Ranks of military officers' commissions were offered to those who would deliver grain to regions in need for less than the market price. In the summer of 1508, Leo began to assess heavy fines against officials who displeased him whatsoever, driving many to ruin and poverty in a stroke. In short order, officials, both military and civil, were practically lining up to pay Leo bribes in order to avoid being placed on his ruinous, naughty list. As one might expect, it wasn't long before discontent grew, and became whispers, and then low grumbles, and then not-so-low growls. On the morning of July 23rd, 1508, a memorandum was dropped by an unseen hand onto the imperial causeway as the morning audience convened.

It was picked up by a passing censor, and brought before the Emperor himself. Unsealed and read, the unsigned letter detailed many of the abuses and crimes that Leogene had purportedly committed against the officials of the court and the people of the Empire. When Leo heard of this, his mood darkened in rage. Who dared make accusations against him or complain about his conduct? He resolved at once to get to the bottom of this whodunit, and therefore, later that morning, ordered all of the court officials to assemble in front of the audience hall, and once there, to kneel on the ground before him. One of these ministers had penned the letter, he was sure of it, and until he found out, all of them were going to suffer. Hours passed, and the officials all

maintained their increasingly uncomfortable kneeling positions, until, at their insistence, he finally allowed the highest-ranking ministers to withdraw. The academicians of the Hanlin Academy, seeing these senior officials walking off the field, immediately also piped up, saying that never before had men of their stature been so abused by a eunuch. Fine. You're excused, too. A censor called out, declaring that this kind of abusive treatment was a flagrant disregard for the laws of the empire. Quote, Leogene retorted that it was he and his kind who'd mismanaged the affairs of the empire, and that he had no idea what the laws of the dynastic founding in fact were. End quote. But he finally relented with this stress position gambit,

as it clearly wasn't working. Instead, he now ordered that everyone should assemble as they had at the morning audience, and he'd see who was close to where the letter had been dropped on the floor. That would surely narrow things down. But as most of the officials got up and stretched and began to mill about in order to take up their positions, one of the unit directors noted that, um, actually, that won't work at all because the officials below the fourth degree don't assemble in any particular order, and who would be dumb enough to actually go back to a spot that would incriminate them? Well, crud. Clearly frustrated, Leo ordered the whole lot to kneel again, no doubt to the

pained moans of all assembled, and then sent for guards in order to have them search through all the houses for a draft copy of the letter against him. To this, however, the same eunuch director again chirped up that, um, actually, you can't really expect someone to have been so dumb as to have left a draft of such a letter in their own house, can you? By this point, the sun was high in the sky, and noon approached. It was a near-cloudless, hot day with no wind, and by this point, several of the court officials, many of them rather frail old men, had slumped over and passed out from stress and heat exhaustion, and had to have been dragged away from the square to be revived and recover. Two of the unit directors of the ceremonial took pity on

the rest and had Iced Melon, a particular favorite of the capital during summer, passed out to them. When Leogene learned of this, he flew into a rage and immediately had an imperial edict forged that forced the two into early retirement. By mid-afternoon, with no one having confessed or having seen anything, Leo had grown sick of his game, and instead ordered the entirety of the imperial court to be taken down to the dungeons and locked up for the night. Maybe a night or two in the cells would loosen lips, as hours of kneeling in the hot sun had not. The next day, it was finally discovered that it had not been one of the court officials at all, but instead one of the eunuchs who had drafted the letter against Leo,

and he at last agreed to let all the officials go. No hard feelings, guys, right? Right? Right. And yet, Liu Jin's reign of terror continued unabated. That September, he ordered a new security agency to police and investigate the palace eunuchs, dozens of whom were subsequently banished to Nanjing for alleged offenses. The empire's granaries and treasuries were put under regular audit, and their overseeing officials held strictly responsible for any, and I do mean any, irregularities. Geist writes, quote, The high officials who had been responsible for them were fined if even the slightest amount of spoilage was discovered or if the count was off by even a fraction.

Liujian argued that it was neither fitting nor practical to punish the commoners and And as a brief aside, that's one aspect of the imperial bureaucracy, since the Qin at least, that I've come to rather admire. When it comes to official responsibility, it tends to be those in high positions who ultimately face the music when it comes to mistakes, rather than those lower on the totem poles. Positions of power in imperial China, far from insulating individuals from consequences, tend to place one precariously far out on the limb and exposed to the ramifications of one's disastrous decisions. Only rarely has there been golden parachutes for the elite when they fall. Of course, such a system is not all rainbows and unicorns. Not at all. Because, faced with massive fines if they did not meet ever-rising quotas, what would such officials do? Why,

make onerous demands on the people beneath them, of course. And how better to avoid the chopping block than by extracting even more than demanded by the central government? In mid-1509, Liu Jin dispatched imperial agents to Shanxi, Huguang, Liaodong, and Ningxia to raise more local revenues for the local garrisons of those regions. Quote, his agents first raised tax quotas and then used other irregular methods of extraction to generate needed revenues, end quote. Unsurprisingly, this rather irked the local populace and officialdom. That August, two of the Liaodong garrisons revolted in protest at the onerous measures amidst wider popular unrest, which were quelled only by buying the troops off by distributing 2,500 ounces of silver among them. 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. The Far West especially was very loosely held by the central authority, and any deviation from the status quo was liable to lead to unrest, resistance, and uprising.

Such was the uneasy environment in which Zhu Zhifan, the Prince of Anhua, decided to launch a rebellion in mid-May, 1510. The Prince of Anhua was the young Zhengde Emperor's great-great-uncle of a cadet line of the Zhu clan of relatively little importance. Even so, he had long held himself to be a suitable candidate for the throne itself, far more worthy than his drunken, dullard great-grandnephew. A viewpoint encouraged and stoked by the motley circle of confidants he'd surrounded himself with, including several military officers, a student, a female shaman, and a handful of ordinary troops of the line.

For almost 20 years, he'd quietly held to his imperial aspirations, but made little progress in seeing them forwarded. That was until the tumult of 1510 gave him what seemed a golden opportunity. The official dispatched to Shanxi by Liu Jin had been issued orders to round up the tax delinquents of the region, naturally nearly all soldiers, and have them publicly flogged. The soldiers as a whole were understandably pretty miffed at the idea of members of their cohort being so publicly humiliated, and especially over such an unreasonable and unaffordable tax hike. They were itching for a fight, and so it was that the Prince of Anhui decided to give them one. He invited all the high officials from all over Shanxi to a grand banquet at his residence on the evening of May 12, 1510. Many, of course, RSVP'd their intent to attend, while others

offered excuses as to why they couldn't make it. On the day in question, as the honored guests arrived, preparations were made to accommodate them, one and all. The feast commenced with revelry and drinking to excess, until, at some hidden signal, troops loyal to the Prince of Anhua were ushered into the dining hall, and, one must imagine after some Bond villain-esque monologue, they slaughtered the assembled guests and their attendants as they sat in their chairs. A contingent of other rebel troops were likewise dispatched to the residences of the lords who had refused the invitation, and they were murdered the following day, with the troops thereafter looting and burning their palaces and homes. The prince of Anhua then issued a proclamation,

declaring that he was raising an army to rid the imperial court of the evil eunuch Liu Jin and restore honor to the throne, then going on to list a point-by-point indictment of the crimes the eunuch lord had committed against the empire and the people. This proclamation was sent via dispatch to the various regional commanders, hoping that they would agree with Anhua and join his rebellion. Instead, fearing the seemingly limitless power of Liu Jin, at least one of the regional commanders, hoping that they would agree with An Hua and join his rebellion. Instead, fearing the seemingly limitless power of Liu Jin, at least one of the regional commanders reported the proclamation of the rebellion to the court itself, which is to say pretty much directly to Liu Jin. The eunuch lord immediately squelched the contents of the missive, ensuring

that at least the emperor never read about his alleged crimes. Yet he could not suppress the news of the rebellion. Liu ordered an imperial army be raised to put this rebellion down, installing a formerly purged official as its commander-in-chief and prepared to move against the renegade western stronghold in force. As it would turn out, though, they would never get the chance. The first, and last, battle of the rebellion of the Prince of Anhui would occur just nine days after Zhu Zifan's bloody declaration. A military officer named Qiu Yue had joined up with the rebellion as he feared the consequences of refusing for his family who'd lived in Ningxia,

which was well within Anhui's ability to strike at in vengeance. So it was that while offering his troops to Anhua, but himself claiming illness in order to avoid directly assisting the rebel prince. Chiu assembled a cadre of imperial loyalist soldiers and waited for their moment to strike. The moment came on May 21st, as a group of rebels attempted to ferry boats full of supplies to An Hua's headquarters. With about 200 troops and archers, Chiu Yue engaged the rebel convoy, killing its guards and capturing the caches of weapons and supplies. Qiu's forces then proceeded to mop up the rebel leaders one by one, typically taking them by ruse of still being loyal to the rebel cause before springing upon them in ambush. It was in this way that the prince himself was finally captured on May 30th, just 19 days after declaring his rebellion. And so, when the Imperial Army finally arrived in Shaanxi to kick butt and chew bubblegum, they discovered that there were no more butts to

kick. All the main commander could do was to take custody of the arrested rebel prince and escort him back to Beijing to meet his fate. Yet, on the way there, something rather curious happened. The commander, General Yang Yiching, and his eunuch inspector-in-chief Zhang Yong, got around to discussing their captive, why he'd rebelled, and their effective boss, Liu Jin. General Yang wound up convincing Inspector Zhang that Liu Jin was definitely planning to rebel against the throne soon and to seize total power for himself, and that Zhang was in extreme mortal danger when that happened, which it definitely would. General Yang urged Inspector Zhang, therefore, that his only way of saving himself would be to

tell the Emperor that it had been none other than Liu Jin who was to blame for this rebellion in Shanxi, and request that the eunuch lord be executed for treason. Zhang wasn't quite so sure about this. What if, he asked, such a plan didn't work? What if the emperor refused? Then it would be his neck on the chopping block. General Yang soothed the reluctant eunuch that, bro, trust me, it'll totally work. Plus, when the emperor authorized the death sentence for Liu Jin,

General Yang would be there to immediately carry out the sentence himself and not give the conniving Liu Jin any chance to weasel his way out of it. Yang also pointed out that Zhang had a lot to gain from accusing Liu Jin of treason. Think of the promotion you'll get. This set a sparkle in Zhang Yong's eyes, and he finally agreed, riding out ahead of the prisoner convoy to reach the capital first and make ready preparations to submit his accusation to the throne. Now, here there's something of a strange months-long gap in the story. We leave off in mid-May, and yet it picks up only in September. To explain this, I'm forced to assume that the Imperial Army

just took its good sweet time in first arriving to Shanxi, and then an even sweeter amount of time returning to Beijing, because let's be honest, it's not that far. Regardless, the action picks back up in mid-September 1510, as the Ming army and its prisoner convoy arrive back at the capital. Zhang Yong formally requested of the throne that he be allowed to present the shackled Prince of Anhua to the Emperor on the 17th, only to be curiously put off by Liu Jin. Not that day, came the reply. We'll reschedule it for later. Well, that was weird. Really weird.

Why wouldn't the throne formally deal with this criminal at the earliest possible date unless... Perhaps Leo Jin already had a rather climactic event of his own scheduled for that day? Spidey-sense tingling, Zhang Yong decided to disregard Leo's instructions and boldly forged ahead, entering the capital and presenting the rebel prince and the other prisoners to the emperor on the morning of the 13th. The emperor himself was, of course, delighted. Well done, congratulations, and this great victory, of course, calls for a grand feast in your honor. The imperial banquet was immediately scheduled for that evening. As the festivities went on, in due course, Leogian politely excused himself from the hall and retired for that evening. As the festivities went on, in due course, Liu Jian politely excused

himself from the hall and retired for the evening, leaving the others to continue their celebration. Once he departed, however, Zhong Yong approached the emperor and informed him that he was pretty sure that Liu Jian was preparing to assassinate Zheng De, and like, really soon, as in, in about five days on the 17th. Zhengde was, no surprise here, super drunk by this point, and rather disinclined to believe such an accusation. Liu Jin was his favorite eunuch ever, and he's a really good guy, and I totally trust him. At this, Zhang Yong and four of the other eunuchs present were compelled to press him that he really, really needed to either immediately act or else

lose everything. All right, all right, fine. So the emperor agreed that he would send some guardsmen down to Leogene's quarters and take him into protective custody and then seize his property to look through any evidence that might speak to alleged wrongdoing. And then you guys are going to be so embarrassed when he just turns out to be the great guy that I know he is. I just, I'm looking forward to seeing your faces. I can't wait to see the look on your faces when he's totally innocent, man. You're going to be so embarrassed. So up to this point, this all sounds just like a rumor run amok and propagated by individuals grasping for any straw they could to take this guy down that they just didn't like. And the imperial throne

tended to have a really ready-fire-aim approach to accusations leveled against high officials. Unless you could prove immediately and conclusively that you were absolutely innocent of the charges leveled against you, the throne tended to punish first and investigate later. Better, I guess, to be over-punitive than under-punitive. So at least in this case, the next day Zhengde presented his grand secretaries with the indictment of Liu Jin by Zhang Yong, and then ordered them to draft an edict that would banish Liu to Nanjing. Such a measure could, if he was found to be innocent, be easily altered or cancelled, or else he could later be recalled from his exile. So all in all, not the end of the world in terms of punishments.

Part and parcel to this edict, though, was the accompanying recall of all of Leo's inspectors, the abolition of his quota system, as well as all the other changes that he'd made to the imperial government. So, not great, not terrible. And yet, as happens from time to time, the swirl and smoke and mirrors of the imperial rumor mill this time turned out to be true. The imperial guards who had seized the Odeon's property shortly called the emperor over to the eunuch's estate to see with his own eyes. Laid out for everyone to witness was a vast cache of gold, silver, and jewels,

weapons, armor, and passes of admittance through the Forbidden City's gates, and perhaps most damningly of all, a set of small daggers cleverly concealed in the tines of Liu Jin's favorite fan. Blades presumably intended for Zheng De himself. The story, as it's told, alleges that Liu's coup d'etat was to take place on that initial date that Zhang Yong had asked to present his prisoners, September 17th. Liu's elder brother had just died, and his funeral had been scheduled for that date. It would be at that somber event, when all the palace notables were gathered to pay their respects, that he would

have soldiers loyal to him enter the palace and either kill or capture them all in one fell swoop. Then, with the Zhengde emperor gone, he would install his own grandnephew on the throne, with himself, of course, as the true power behind it. And he would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for that meddling Zhang Yong. Seeing the evidence laid out before his very eyes, Zhengde did indeed amend Liu Jin's sentence. To death. Yet before such a sentence was carried out, he ordered that the eunuch lord be escorted to the Wu Gate of the Forbidden City, the main gate, for further questioning in front of the entire imperial court. When Liu appeared, rather than appearing meek or guilty, he instead cast his gaze about defiantly, demanding of the assembled ministers and lords who amongst them could honestly say they owed him nothing, who amongst them would dare question his word or order.

At this, the assembled nobleman drew back and remained silent, castigated. Leo surely must have sensed that he could, by the power of his own personality and quickness of tongue, yet pull a victory out of these jaws of defeat, when all of a sudden a high voice replied to his challenge, none other than one of the imperial consorts. If you claim innocence, then why do you have such armor and weaponry? If you wish to claim it for the protection of the emperor, why was it hidden away in your residence? Liu Jin fell silent at this unanswerable challenge. Damned by this woman, the Zhengde emperor was satisfied that Liu Jin was indeed guilty of the crime of which he'd been accused. High treason. And the case was closed. The actual sentence for his crimes was meted out swiftly. Well, maybe that's not the best choice of words, but in any case,

it was begun swiftly, just 11 days after his conviction at the Wu Gate on September 27th, 1510. Convicted as he was of the highest possible crime, he would face one of the worst possible punishments the imperial justice system could mete out, lingchi, meaning slow slicing, but better known in the West as death by a thousand cuts. According to the records of Liu Jin's execution, his torment was set to last for three entire days, with his body bound to a pole in the public square. The process itself was only vaguely described, and with little detail, and much variance. This likely means that there was no standard methodology to such a punishment, and it depended on quite a few different factors. If the crime had been a lesser offense, one of the very first cuts is said to have been to the throat, leading to the

near-immediate death of the condemned and with the subsequent mutilations occurring post-mortem. Here is an excerpt from Thomas Taylor Meadows, a 19th century British sinologist, who witnessed one such event himself in Canton in 1851, and by his own word, wished to have never seen another of its like. Beginning with the more merciful decapitation of 33 convicts, and yeah, graphic content warning incoming, so be advised. Quote, The executioner was going on rapidly with his terrible task. quote, I think he cut off thirty-three heads in somewhat less than three minutes, all but the first completely severed. As soon as the thirty-three were decapitated, the same executioner proceeded, with a single-edged dagger or knife, to cut of the man on the cross, whose sole clothing consisted of his wide trousers,

rolled down to his hips and up to his buttocks. He was a strongly made man, above the middle size, and apparently about forty years of age. The authorities got him by seizing his parents and wife, when he surrendered, as well as to save them from torture as to secure them with seven thousand cash offered for his apprehension. The Mandarins, having future cases in mind mind rarely break faith on such occasions. As the man was at a distance of twenty-five yards, with his side towards us, though we observed the first two cuts across the forehead, the cutting off of his left breast, and slicing of the flesh from the front of his thighs, we could not see all the horrible operation. From the first stroke of the knife, to the moment the body was cut down from the cross and decapitated,

about four or five minutes had elapsed. End quote. In the Chinese judicial system, such horrible punishments typically served a triple purpose. The first two are immediately understandable by pretty much everyone. First is to inflict pain and death on the condemned for their crime, and the second being to act as a public warning to all of the consequences of such criminal acts. The third reason, though, is worth a bit more explanation, and it has to do with Confucianism. Under the Confucian principle of xiao, or filial piety, that is respect and obedience to one's parents and ancestors, one's own body, from hair to toenails, is considered a gift from one's parents.

Thus, to alter or cut it in any way is an insult against one's entire family line. That's why, for instance, it was essentially unheard of for a Chinese person of any station to ever cut their hair under any circumstance, and why those of a means and position to do so also did not cut their fingernails. Thus, to dismember a body was the ultimate expression of contempt. Essentially, one would be forced to show up at the afterlife looking all mangled and ruined, with all of your ancestors looking down at you, slowly shaking their heads, and your own father gravely atoning, Son, I am disappointed.

Of course, in the case of eunuchs, that was a bit more of a complicated issue. After all, they had already had a rather significant piece of themselves removed, and doubly unfilial, it was the piece that ensured that they would never have children of their own, thereby forever ending that particular branch of the family line. The ancestors were already going to be disappointed. As it were, most eunuchs of the Ming and Qing had their bits preserved in either ether or alcohol, and then carried them around their whole lives as something of a talisman, with the general notion being that they would be buried altogether, and thereby being pretty much complete in the afterlife. Okay, sidebar over, back to the execution. It's thought that in many such cases of death by mutilation, there would have been a secret, or maybe at times not so secret, mercy killing before

the majority of the public punishment was applied. In any event, that does not appear to have been the case for Liu Jin. His death, according to the records, was to last for three whole days. On the night of the first, he was taken down from his rack, apparently not only still alive, but with sufficient will and strength to still eat the rice porridge offered him by the guards. Yet during the course of his torment, on the second day, he finally expired from shock and blood loss. In all, it's written that he received three to four hundred cuts before death, with a full sentence being enacted over the course of the second and third days, in all totaling more than three thousand three hundred cuts. The flesh of his body, so the story goes, and with sufficient reason to be believed,

as we will hear similarly in Meadows' account in just a minute, was divided up by the gathered crowd and sold for one chian coin apiece, to be consumed with rice wine. Meadows' account of a similarly appalling cannibalistic spectacle in 1851 goes, quote, Immediately after the first fell, I observed a man putting himself in a sitting posture by the neck, and, with a businesslike air, commenced dipping in the blood a bunch of rush pith. When it was well saturated, he put it carefully by on a pile of the adjacent pottery, and then proceeded to saturate another bunch. This so-saturated rush pith

is used by the Chinese as a medicine. End quote. So, taking an appropriately large step away from the gruesome imagery, once Leogian's execution had been carried out, an illustrated account of his crimes and misdeeds was published and circulated throughout the Empire, and all of his reforms and programs undone within a month. Most of his partisans and confederates were either exiled or executed by October, and the totality of his property was delivered to the emperor's personal treasury, where, as Geist puts it, quote, it temporarily eased the monarch's need for revenue,

end quote. So, that's nice. Yet, looking back at the whole affair, certain questions linger, and certain holes in the story remain. Aside from the brief interrogation at the Wu Gate, there was no further inquisition of Liu Jin. Evidence presented was circumstantial, at best, and Liu never offered a confession of guilt, a step, then and now, typically required in such capital cases, by hook or by crook. The unusual speed of the sentence being carried out likewise casts a pall on the proceedings, as it denied the eunuch any chance to appeal his case or a review of the verdict. Was Leo framed? Had he just made enough people in high places angry enough at him that they were looking for an excuse, any excuse, even one based on spurious rumor and perhaps with planted evidence,

to remove him from the picture permanently? We will never know for sure. What we do know is that with his death by a thousand cuts, or rather 3,300 cuts, any significant attempt to reorganize and streamline the imperial administrative apparatus and to render imperial eunuchs to be on par with their civil officiant peers was brought to a screeching halt and then utterly rewound. Next time, the Zhengda era wends onward, but without Liu Jian's guidance or vision. Yet there are still powerful eunuchs in the Emperor's inner circle. He still has the other seven tigers ringing him about. And as for the Emperor himself,

well, he's never been particularly interested in ruling anyway, and he really won't get any more so in the decade yet to come. What he will get very interested in is playing dress-up and forcing all of his officials to do likewise, before he decides that he'd like to play a different game as the Great War Hero, and demands to lead a great northern campaign. And, what's this? Oh yeah, then from the southern port of Guangzhou, there will come reports of a strange new group of foreign barbarians from way, way, super far away to the west, apparently called the Faranka or the

Putalya or something like that, sailing in on almost comically small sailboats and asking for trade. But I'm sure that's going to be just some passing little tribe and we'll just breeze right over it. It's definitely not going to fundamentally affect the next 500 years of Chinese history or anything. Definitely not. Thanks for listening. 400 years ago, a trio of tiny kingdoms were perched on some damp islands off the coast of Europe. Within three short centuries, these islands would become the centre of an empire which ruled a quarter of the globe and on which the sun never set. I'm Samuel Hume, a historian of the British Empire,

and my podcast Pax Britannica follows the people and events that built that empire into a global superpower. Learn the history of the British Empire by listening to Pax Britannica everywhere you find your podcasts, or go to pod.link slash pax.