The History of China - #233 - Ming 23: General Zhu Shou's Ultimate Party Yacht River Cruise

Episode Date: April 6, 2022

There's trouble brewing in the south. A minor prince with delusions of grandeur gets a bit too big for his britches. Portuguese Pirates plunder peninsular ports before coming to call on Canton. This sounds like a job for the great General Zhu Shou, Heroic Defender of the Realm and Ultimate Party-Boat Enjoyer. Time Period Covered: ~1514-1521 CE Major Historical Figures: The Zhengde Emperor (Zhu Houzhao) [r. 1505-1521] The Prince of Ning (Zhu Chenhao) [1477-1520] Jiang Bin Qian Ning [d. 1520] Grand Secretary Fei Heng Sun Sui, Governor of Jiangxi [d. 1519] General Wang Yangming [1472-1529] General Zhu Shou, Heroic Defender of the Realm, Duke of Zhenguo [?? -??] Tomé Pires, Portuguese explorer and ambassador [c. 1465-1524? or 40?] Major Works Cited: 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.” Keevak, Michael. Becoming Yellow: A Short History of Racial Thinking. Pires, Tomé, Armando Cortesão & Francisco Rodrigues. The Suma oriental of Tome Pires; and account of the East, from the Red Sea to China, written in Malacca and India in 1512-1515; and, The book of Franciso Rodrigues: Pilot-Major of the armada that discovered Banda and the Moluccas: rutter of a voyage in the red sea, nautical rules, almanack, vol. 1. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. 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. From a revolution of hope and liberty to the infamous Reign of Terror. You can't understand the modern world without understanding the French Revolution. So search for the French Revolution today. Once upon a time it was roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. Now it's fish and chips, new national dish. We are the things that made England and we talk about things that made England. And we talk about things that made England.

Our episode release schedule could be described as somewhat sporadic, but they are great fun when they eventually get there. What you're saying is that curry is a posh food. So maybe give it a whirl?

I mean, you do make educated guesses which are wrong like the british uh the royal navy of course well that's an informed and studied opinion david on my part Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 233, The Great General Jusho's Ultimate Party Yacht River Cruise. The Chinese are white like us, the greater part of them dressing in cotton cloth and silk. Tomé Pires, Portuguese Apothecary, circa 1512. They are great merchants, white men and well-made.

Their women are very beautiful, but both the men and women have small eyes, and the men's beards contain only three or four hairs and no more. Duarte Barbosa, Portuguese Scrivener and Pastor, circa 1512. They are white men, dressed after a fashion like Germans, with French boots and shoes. Giovanni da Empoli, Italian Navigator, 1514. Long-bearded and large-eyed men are strictly forbidden entrants. Imperial edict posted on the main gate of Canton circa 1519. These are petty sea pirates, sent by the great robber falsely.

They come to spy out our country, let them die in pillories as bandits. Sentencing board hung around the heads of captured Portuguese sailors, 1522. In October of 1518, an imperial edict was promulgated, stipulating that the heroic General Zhu Shou, on account of his valorous services to the Ming Empire during the campaigns against the Mongol warlord Batu Monca, was to be granted the high rank of duke and a stipend of 5,000 tan, or about 300,000 kilograms of grain per year, which he could then

resell or store away at his pleasure. Though the court's grand secretaries were exasperated at this order of promotion, they were unable to deter the will of the Zhengda emperor, who insisted. And thus, it was carried out. General Zhu Shou was created the Duke of Zhengguo, and his annual rewards summarily approved. The high officials of the imperial court in Beijing were so displeased at this, not because Zhu Shou had not fought against Batu Mongke, nor that he had not at least nominally succeeded against the Mongol menace more substantively than any commander in living memory. Rather, they rolled their eyes at this awarding of a duchy upon the great general, because Zhu Shou quite simply did not exist.

The heroic general, defender of the realm, who just so happened to bear the imperial surname Zhu, and the given name Shou, meaning long-lived, was in fact the alter ego of the Zhengde emperor himself, who in all of his 27 years seemed to love little more than playing a rousing game of make-believe. That September, Zhengde returned to his epic party pad at Xuanfu, which he'd begun notably referring to as his home, much, again, to the feudal consternation of his ministers. Late that month, he set out yet again on a quote-unquote inspection tour along the northwest frontier, taking him more than 400 miles from the capital. Geis writes, quote, The Grand Secretaries no longer knew whether he even saw the court documents sent to his

headquarters, or who issued Juxiu's orders. Was it the Emperor, or Jianping, the second-in-command? End quote. In any event, the Emperor remained at the Yulin garrison along the Ming-Mongol frontier from November until January of 1519, outright refusing to return to the capital in spite of numerous pleading exhortations that he do so, nor even deigning to select the animals for the upcoming sacrifice to heaven set for the new year. Orders that he issued were uniformly in the style of using the military seals of General Zhu Shou, as he still flatly refused to utilize his imperial titles or offices. The capital was flabbergasted. This had, quite literally, never happened before.

It was, to put it bluntly, inconceivable. Inconceivable! In all, the sacrifice to heaven, scheduled at dawn on the first day of the new year, February 11th, 1519, had to be delayed by more than a month as the emperor and his retinue slowly made his way back toward Beijing, all the while stopping to hunt, party, and, yes, that's right, pick up hot chicks. When he finally arrived at the altar just outside the capital walls, he rode up with his cavalry escort, performed the ritual in military

attire, and then immediately turned around and went on a hunt in the Nanhaiza Imperial Park just south of the city. You can just see him rolling his 27-year-old eyes at the sheer inconvenience and lameness of it all, all these old geezers making him do this boring thing. Well, his time back at the capital would be, surprise, surprise, very brief yet again. After just 20 days, he was making preparations to go on yet another imperial inspection tour, this time to the south. He wanted to go first to Shandong and then Nanjing. Quote, the grand secretaries objected, the minister of rights protested, court secretaries and censors petitioned him to abandon the idea. He ignored all of this and still planned to leave on 18 April.

End quote. Still more officials submitted petition after petition for him to not go, more than a hundred in all in the five days between April 13th and 18th alone. So Zhengde had the ringleaders of the protests arrested, and then ordered more than a hundred other meddlesome and annoying officials to kneel in front of the Wu Gate of the palace for five days straight, from dawn until dusk. When even that did not stop the protests from pouring in, he had the additional officials arrested and joined the first batch in the kneeling penance. When even that did not stop the whining, he had every single Killjoy official involved in the protests publicly flogged. Why were the ministers so insistent that he not leave the capital?

Were they really just a bunch of joyless olds who hated fun? Was stodgy old ritual propriety really that important to all of them? Well, yeah, but in this case, no. They actually had a very, very good reason to insist, even at the risk of their own bodies, that their sovereigns stay put. They were about 99.9% sure that the Prince of Ning was just waiting for their emperor to head south so that he could launch a coup d'etat and assassinate him. And as it turned out, they were absolutely right.

Okay, so who in the heck is this Prince of Ning? Let's get into it. Zhu Chenhao was, in 1519, the 42-year-old, fifth-generation descendant of the 17th son of the Hongwu Emperor, which is all to say that calling his a cadet branch of the imperial family is really being nice. Like most schlubby, fail-son man-children born into wealth and privilege they in no way earned or appreciated, Chenhao was good at two things, narcissistic hedonism and being absolutely 150% certain that he deserved more from life and the system. He was not a military man, but rather a sometime literary wannabe and otherwise just kind of a dandy boy who wanted

everything life owed him right now. Since at least his inheriting the title of the Prince of Ning in 1499, he'd had it out of the Prince of Ning in 1499, he'd had it out for what was of course the ultimate prize, the dragon throne itself. That some jerk kid now sat it had really irked him for more than a decade at this point, because obviously it should be him, because he deserved it. Obviously. Given that he had zero military connections, and his very limited skills and much else, his plot, such as it was, proceeded rather slowly. In the end, it would rely much more on deceit and conspiracy than on military force.

And as we'll come to see, even his capacity for that deceit and conspiracy was pretty much totally predicated on his target being just as much of an oblivious frat boy as he was. We're not dealing with the Imperial Jew clan's best or brightest here, people. Not on either side. Well, first things first, he would need something in the way of military support, and that meant that he'd need to go get his princely bodyguard unit restored to him. So, in 1507, he sent a eunuch to Beijing with a massive bribe for Liu Jin, and a note saying, pretty please give me a bodyguard unit and funds to support it. Liu Jin had agreed and pocketed the cash, but it turned out to have been some pretty bad timing, because within about three years, the eunuch lord had been arrested and then executed.

The bodyguards, who had been oh-so-briefly deployed to the Prince of Ning's retinue, were recalled to Beijing the day before Liu's execution in 1510. Ah well, no matter. If at first you don't succeed... The prince's next attempt was in 1514, this time going through the newly installed minister of war, who owed Ning a favor, and now the prince was cashing in that ship. The minister agreed, but it was easier said than done. One of the Grand Secretaries, named Fei Hung, took one look at this weird order coming in from the Ministry of War to give this minor prince a military guard unit for no discernible reason, and pretty much immediately figured out the broad

strokes of what Ning was up to. Fei Hung flatly refused the order, thus earning the Grand Secretary the prince's eternal enmity. As it would happen, this time, Ning had a workaround. He had inroads with the emperor's former favorite companion, Qian Ning, who was still pouting over having been sidelined by sultry soldier guy Jiang Pin, the emperor's favorite musician, Cang Xian, and several palace eunuchs with axes to grind. Together, they devised a plan to get around pesky old Secretary Fei's refusal. Quote, they knew that on 9 April 1514, Fei Hung would have to be absent from the Grand Secretariat in order to grade papers from the palace examination and to prepare the final list of successful candidates. It had been arranged that the prince's request for the restoration of

his bodyguards would be presented that day and forwarded directly to the Directorate of Ceremonial. In this way, the Grand Secretaries would not even see the document until after the edict had been issued, end quote. And just as an aside here, I don't know, this seems really like one of those weird loopholes that really ought to have been closed a long time ago. Sort of like the concept of the pocket veto or the filibuster. It was obviously never intended to work that way, and yet here we are. The scheme, as it happens, went off without a hitch. By which I mean it immediately triggered dozens of red flags up and down the ministries and objections were raised to the emperor. But Zhengde just waved them all off as being nothing more than mean rumors against the prince, good old cousin what's-his-face. Now, to be clear,

the capital officials raising eyebrows and concerns about the intentions of the Prince of Ning were by no means solitary. By this point, even the local officials way down south in the prince's home base of sleepy pastoral Jiangxi, well, they had also been positively lighting up the official channels with charge after charge leveled against the obviously treasonous conspiracies that the Prince of Ning was oh-so-slowly pushing into place. This was combined with other, more personal charges of his abuse of office, such as illegal seizures of some of the best lands, overtaxation of households, and terrorizing and cowing the local authorities into submission. Geist writes, quote, The censor wanted to issue a proclamation to the people of Jiangxi.

All property seized by the prince was to be returned. Any disturbances caused by his agents were punishable by the civil authorities. Local officials were not to consort with the prince. There was no response to this request. The complaints went on. In April of 1514, an official charged by the throne with suppression of banditry in Jiangxi reported to the capital that such lawlessness remained a problem throughout the region because such brigands were being given umbrage and support by the prince himself.

He employed them as his agents and hired muscle, and drove countless more into de facto criminality by confiscating their property and interfering with trade. These charges were dismissed as false allegations. The Prince of Ning received his imperial bodyguard in June 1514, and quickly thereafter, official seals giving him command over the province's military commands and guard units. He also hired on about a hundred criminal mooks to be his personal henchmen. That August, he asked for permission to personally try and punish imperial clansmen under his jurisdiction. The emperor responded that he was pleased that the prince was taking such an active interest in the administration of law and justice in his area,

and granted the request. Objections to this were utterly ignored. By this point, the prince of Ning had begun referring to himself as a ruler, his bodyguard as his imperial attendants, and his orders as imperial edicts. On one occasion, he actually ordered that his civil officials should attend his summons in their formal courtly robes, as though he were the emperor. It was only when the governor slapped him down by telling him that that would be absolutely improper and refused to do it that he pulled back on that last one. Reports of this egregious, outlandish, absolutely treasonous behavior were promptly dispatched to Beijing. No action was taken. James Geis is just as flabbergasted and dumbfounded at the sheer monumental incompetence of the Zhengde emperor as basically everybody else who reads and writes about him, and it shows. He writes,

quote, for some reason, the Prince of Ning remained above suspicion. What was deemed treasonable behavior in other princes was overlooked in him. Late in 1514, the grandson of the Prince of Lu, who was an accomplished archer, was falsely implicated in a case of treason, convicted, and made a commoner. His crime was skill in archery and talent as a field commander. Yet the Prince of Ning, who was issuing orders as imperial edicts, remained untouched. End quote. There is no explaining any of it, because it is utterly inexplicable.

Also in 1514, he very nearly exacted his revenge on the Grand Secretary who had denied his earlier bodyguard request, Fei Hung. Fei managed to narrowly avoid assassination while on his way back to his home in Jiangxi. A judicial intendant who reported the prince's treason to Beijing in 1515 was nearly poisoned and then kidnapped and tortured near to death by the prince's agents for his transgression and loose lips. Through all this, the Prince of Ning continued to build up his military forces in anticipation of eventually leading a military campaign to unseat the Zhengde Emperor. Even so, he also continued to attempt to secure the throne by non-violent means. Namely, he hoped to wheedle

his own son in as the de facto heir apparent, given that the Emperor had no living progeny of his own and seemed in rather less than a rush to produce any more. He sent bribes to Qianning in 1516 with a request to this effect, but it, along with his proposal to move into the Forbidden City, was stopped by provincial officials. More reports were made, yet the throne remained utterly unresponsive. Still, the prince was realizing that, sooner or later, one of these charges was probably going to wind up sticking, and then it was all over for him. His only hope was to make a move before that happened.

In the fall of 1517, he sent spies to Beijing to report back to him on conditions in the city, while continuing to quietly marshal his forces. His trusted advisors urged him to be patient and cautious. He could not afford to look like he was preparing for a rebellion at this stage. Instead, they urged, he should simply wait for the emperor to die, and then, when the capital was in confusion, waltz in and declare himself the new emperor. I mean, after all, the emperor is barely even in the capital, and he's constantly exposing himself to all kinds of crazy dangers. One of these days, probably pretty soon, he's definitely going to bite it. And that seemed like a pretty good bet.

But you know what was better than a pretty good bet? A sure bet. What if we don't just wait around for the emperor to adventure himself into an early grave? What if we were to help him along? First, though, a little well-earned revenge. In October of 1518, the bandit troops under Ning's command commenced with a murderous raid against the district city in eastern Jiangxi, where Fei Hung had retired with his family. Quote, the members of the Fei clan took refuge from one of Ning's bandit armies in the district seat, but the bandits broke down the

city gates, looted the city, and dismembered many of Fei Heng's relatives. Fei Heng barely escaped. No official inquiry was made into the incident, end quote. It took Fei himself making a direct plea to the court to finally prompt Beijing to dispatch an official to investigate. That official, named Sun Sui, was appointed as the new governor of Jiangxi, and charged with getting to the bottom of and rooting out this lawless banditry, but also to prepare for the possibility of an uprising. Because again, even though the emperor refused to see or hear what his eyes and ears were telling him about the Prince of Ning, the rest of the court wasn't nearly so blind or deaf.

By the spring of 1519, Governor Sun had sent no fewer than seven reports back to the capital, informing the imperial courts of the Prince of Ning's blatant treason, and repeating over and over again that he was definitely going to rebel, and soon. To which Zhengde once again stuck his fingers in his ears and said, I can't hear you, la la la la la la. And so, here we are again, back in 1519, with the emperor wanting to go on a tour of the south, and his ministers getting beaten to death, protesting that he shouldn't,

because that horrible Prince of Ning is definitely waiting for you to do that, so he can totally murder you, why can't you see this? What would it possibly take to break Zhengda out of his fantasyland bubble? Evidently, it would take his BFF. That's right, smoldering soldier boy, Jiang Pin, realizing that his arch-rival, Chen Ning, was totally in on the Prince of That's right, smoldering soldier boy Jiang Pin, realizing that his arch-rival Chen Ning was totally in on the Prince of Ning's plot, and that by exposing it to his bestie, the Emperor, he could totally get rid of his nemesis forever and have Zhengde all to himself.

As such, in February 1519, Jiang Pin realized that the time to act was nigh. Chen Ning had pulled a bamboozle on the Emperor by convincing him to approve the Prince of Ning's request to allow his eldest son to take part in the sacrifices at the ancestral temple, Qian Ning had pulled a bamboozle on the emperor by convincing him to approve the Prince of Ning's request to allow his eldest son to take part in the sacrifices at the ancestral temple, and to have that order written out on special colored dragon paper. This special paper was super special, because it was only supposed to be for communications with the protector of the state. Now, the protector of the state, or Jianguo,

was charged with acting in the emperor's stead if he were incapacitated for any reason. Ipso facto, if the emperor were to find himself coming down with a sudden case of mortality, the prince of Ning would be duty-bound to skip on up to Beijing and take charge, you know, because of the special paper. Well, Jiangping had figured all this out. It wasn't hard for anyone, except the emperor himself, and figured that he could short-circuit this conspiracy of Dunce's by forcing the prince's hand into moving early. First, he, along with his partner, court eunuch Zhang Yong, raised doubts with the emperor about Qian Ning's motives in all this. Why was he so

obsessed with the prince of Ning? Praising him all the time, real super obviously saying how devoted and faithful he was all the time? It was like, pretty weird, right? I mean, obviously you already knew all that because you're the Emperor, so why is he always saying it? It kind of seems like he's mocking you, doesn't it? Is he calling you stupid? I think he might be. Why in the world would he dare mock you and think that he could get away with it, your majesty? Zhengde did not like the idea of being mocked. And pretty much as soon as the idea was incepted into his brain that he was,

he did a total 180 on his favoritism of the Prince of Ning. The prince's main ally at court, the eunuch Zhang Rui, quickly saw which direction the wind was suddenly blowing and totally flipped. I mean, he spilled just all the beans on Ning to a certain censor who knew a guy who knew a guy who knew the emperor. This time, finally, finally, the document couldn't be suppressed or lost by Qian Ning, and it found its way directly into the hands of Zhengde. From Fort Sumter to the Battle of Gettysburg. From the Emancipation Proclamation to Appomattox Courthouse. From the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Compromise of 1877. From Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman.

To Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. The Civil War and Reconstruction was a pivotal era in American history. I'm Rich. And I'm Tracy. And we're the hosts of a podcast that takes a deep dive into that era, 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. Look for The Civil War and Reconstruction

wherever you find your podcasts. Qian tried desperately to gaslight his way out of the situation when confronted by Zhengde, claiming that the censor who presented the evidence was clearly just trying to stir up drama within the imperial family. But Zhengde was finally having none of it, and gosh darn it, he was going to get to the bottom of this situation, or his name wasn't General Zhu Shou, Heroic Defender of the Realm. So Zhengde sent a report to his grand secretaries, asking them to look into this matter and advise him on what he should do about it. They, in turn, and probably in record time, reported back that he should use a precedent set by the Shenda Emperor nearly a century before,

which was, in effect, to send some officials down to the Prince of Ning's headquarters, waggle a finger at him, take away his bodyguard, and tell him not to do it again, you rascal, you. No, seriously, that was it. It was such an unbelievably mild rebuke at Ning's all-but-open rebellion that, lo and behold, when he heard it, the Prince of Ning didn't even believe it. On July 9th, 1519, while Ning was hosting a banquet in honor of his birthday, a spy reported in from Beijing, telling him that the, uh, word on the street was that the emperor had finally gotten wise to his plot and was totally sending officials down to arrest him. Because, of course, that's what people thought was going to happen.

Because that's the obvious, logical response to treason and rebellion. Operating on that very reasonable assumption, Ning excused himself from the birthday feast and convened an emergency meeting with his cronies. Everyone agreed that he was definitely about to get arrested, and so they needed to act now. So it was decided that tomorrow, when all his officials gathered to formally thank him for the banquet, he'd announce his plans to rise against the Zhengde Emperor and then see who supported him, and anyone who didn't could be very conveniently killed then and there. The next day came, and the officials gathered, surrounded rather conspicuously and ominously,

by several hundred of Ning's personal guardsmen. He then made a truly shocking announcement, that actually, the Zhengde Emperor was a fraud, a phony, not of the imperial line at all. You see, that dastardly eunuch trickster Li Guang had, way back in the day, tricked the Hongze Emperor into thinking that Zhengde was his son, when he was actually no more than a commoner. So, see, he's not really the emperor, but hey, don't take my word for it, he went on. Have you seen the Empress's edict that she totally sent out that ordered Ning to punish the fraudster emperor? Have you seen it? Well, I totally have. Gentlemen, I have in my hand this list of names.

Well, Governor Sun Tzu was having none of this obvious chicanery and asked Point Blank to see the supposed edict. Well, I mean, I don't have it literally with me right now. Can't you just take my word for it? At which point, Sun accused the Prince of Treason, at which point the Prince's bodyguards moved in and dispatched him and anyone else who didn't immediately agree that they had totally seen the imperial orders from the Empress. Yep, I saw it. Didn't you see it? I saw it twice. The rebellion of the Prince of Ning was totally on. But things didn't exactly start out on the right foot. For one, the next day when he went to make an offering for the success of his campaign, the altar table cracked and broke

in half right in the middle of the ceremony, and the sacrifice fell onto the ground. Yikes, that doesn't seem to bode very well. Moving on. When his army reached his first major test, the city of Anqing, they put it under siege for ten days, then tried to storm it, miserably failed, and called the siege off. Well now, this wasn't going nearly as easily as he'd thought it would. If they couldn't even manage this, then just how in the heck were they going to take on something bigger and better defended, like the southern capital Nanjing? Meanwhile, the imperial governor of Jiangxi, the eminent statesman, noted general, and respected Neo-Confucian philosopher Wang Yongming, had been rallying his banners and assembling a loyalist force to deal with this would-be usurper. He'd actually managed to successfully trick the Prince of Ning's forces into substantially delaying their offensive toward the southern capital by circulating rumors that a massive imperial army straight from Beijing was marching on the prince's headquarters, Nantang.

This had allowed Governor Wang additional time to assemble more troops to face off against the rebel prince. As the Prince of Ning wailed futilely against the outer walls of Anqing, General Wang composed a plan and launched into action against the rebel lord. He would strike directly at Ning's command center, Nanchang, which he had learned was only lightly defended thanks to the prince taking the vast majority of his forces with him on this campaign. Thus, Wang planned to storm Nanchang and then, with that under his control, press northward to the Yangtze River. Quote, And the plan was super effective.

From Geis, yeah, problem solved, right? Well, see, the thing was, the Zhengde Emperor had finally been alerted to this southern rebellion less than two weeks earlier on August 7th, and he did, well, he did what he of course did. He launched into action. By which I mean, obviously, that he drafted an edict ordering General Zhu Shou, heroic defender of the realm and duke of Zhengguo, to, quote, bring together the border armies and suppress the Prince of Ning, end quote. Once again, the Grand Secretaries, the Minister of War, and nearly the entire rest of the court rose in objection. But Zhengde was having none of it, and shut them all up good and proper when he threatened that anyone who spoke against his order to the general would pay with their lives. In his guise as the great general, he departed the capital a week later, on the 15th.

Yet scarcely had he advanced southward to boldly defend the empire against this rebellious prince's treasonous uprising, then the very next day word reached the imperial camp from General Wang, informing his imperial highness that actually the situation was totally under control, and the Prince of Ning had already been taken captive. Now, if you've been jotting the dates down up to this point, you may have noticed a sort of weird dating discrepancy. Namely, that Zhengde is receiving General Wang's assurance that the prince is totally captured about five days before it apparently actually happened. It's a bit of a head-scratcher, but near as I can tell, Wang Yongming had by that point already determined that the prince was already spent and all but in his grasp. He therefore, out of legitimate concern for the emperor's well-being, fudged the timeline a little bit

to convince his highness to turn back around and return to Beijing. He knew, after all, that the Prince of Ning had been counting on Zhengde personally heading southward to face off with him, and had most assuredly placed multiple assassins along the Northern Army's likely routes to try to take him out. Therefore, Huang reasoned, Zhengde was still in danger so long as he was outside Beijing. As it would turn out, that was an incorrect assumption. Not that Zheng Dao wasn't in danger, but that he would have been any safer back in Beijing. And the emperor, in this case, actually knew best. From Geis, quote, He kept Wang's report secret and continued south, already aware that he was in danger. In August 1519, before he left Beijing, he had arranged for Zhang Pin to oversee the activities

of Qian Ning and the eunuch Zhang Rui, both of whom he now suspected of complicity in the prince's treason. Under the circumstances, he was in fact no safer in Beijing than he was anywhere else. End quote. For his part, Zheng De didn't particularly care, and he certainly wasn't about to be turned back for the capital by little things like assassins laying in wait, or that minor detail of the war already being over. And so he just pocketed the report and kept it a secret, while continuing onward toward greater fame and glory. Later that September, the imperial entourage arrived at the Grand Canal port city of Linqing, about 175 miles south of the capital, and there it would be forced to stop for nearly a

month. You see, Zheng De had planned to take with him on campaign his favorite concubine, Lady Liu, but she had shortly before the scheduled departure date taken rather ill and couldn't travel. As such, she sent the emperor off with her personal hairpin for him to give to his messengers when the time came for her to ride out and join him. Yet when that time came in Linqing, Zhengde discovered that somewhere along the way he had lost Lady Liu's hairpin. As such, when he dispatched his messengers to collect her, she had refused to go with them, and they were forced to return to him empty-handed. Seeing no other option, Zhengde stole away in secret from his army and entourage, with only a small cavalry escort to personally go back to Beijing and collect his lover. Several days passed, in fact, before his retinue even noticed that the emperor was missing, and it was by then far too late to stop him.

Nevertheless, perhaps belying his attendant's fears of danger lurking around every corner, he went, fetched Lady Liu, and returned to Linqing without incident. Back together at last, the imperial retinue must surely have breathed a collective sigh of relief that they had only temporarily lost his highness, and they shortly set out again southward toward Yangzhou, and then Shuzhou thereafter. Quote, From Shuzhou, he traveled by water at a leisurely pace, stopping on the way to hunt, fish, and visit with retired officials and eunuchs.

He was in the habit of giving the spoils of the hunt to various officials and followers, but for even a feather or a piece of meat, he expected a handsome gift of silver or silk in return, end quote. We must never forget, after all, that above all else, Zengda really, really liked getting money. The leisurely trip down the Grand Canal would see the imperial retinue finally arrive at the great southern capital of Nanjing in January 1520. By this point, he had grown so addicted to alcohol, a habit from his very first days in office, that one of his servants' full-time jobs was to follow the emperor around with a large jug of hot wine and a ladle, so Zhengde could have himself a drink whenever and wherever he wanted. Unlike some other emperors and warlords, whose head for a drink made them get all

murdery, excessive alcohol consumption was one of Zhengde's more harmless habits. At most, he'd sometimes order his officials to get drunk with him and then to amuse him. Far more consequential were his ridiculous orders and outrageous extortion schemes that were compounding one atop the other, seemingly day after day. One such incident was his sudden insistence, just before reaching Nanjing, that the raising and killing of pigs was to be outlawed. As to why he decided upon this, there are a few theories. Ostensibly, it was because he'd come to believe that pigs were unclean and carriers of disease,

an understanding he may have picked up from the Muslim populations of northwestern China, where he'd recently been living and traveling. One of the more out-there but entirely plausible explanations, though, is that, as the word for pig in Chinese is zhu, which is an exact homophone for the imperial surname, zhu, as such, saying kill a pig, shazhu, sounds exactly the same as kill the person surnamed Zhu. Regardless of the specific rationale, to say that the ban on pork was a rather unpopular edict is putting it mildly. Then and now, pork is one of the most popular

ingredients throughout central and southern China. Heck, we could just say China overall. Indeed, as Geist puts it, quote, in the Yangtze Delta, meat was pork. Everyone raised pigs. Pork was the principal offering in most imperial sacrifices, as well as the principal ingredient in most meat dishes, end quote. Yet, when faced with the prospect of permanent banishment to the very outer edges of the empire, where they caught in contravention of this anti-pork edict, most of the population, however grudgingly, complied with the order. This is certainly not to say that Zhengde had gone vegetarian. Nothing of the sort.

In fact, he extensively hunted across these regions, through the cultivated farmlands, along with, of course, his extensive retinue. You can probably imagine the sheer scale of the damage and destruction done to the various properties as the hunting parties galloped through them in pursuit of whatever game was their quarry that day. Ultimately, these hunts were seriously scaled back when Lady Leo took issue with them, seemingly coming to realize the damage they were causing, though by that point, much of the region surrounding the southern capital had been effectively laid to waste, causing large-scale unrest among the prowl. Much as he'd done during his time in the northwestern borderlands, the emperor once again took up his longtime hobby of bursting into people's homes and absconding with their comely daughters to join his harem. From Geist, quote, seizing women had two purposes. First, they might in fact be taken into his harem. And second, if they were not, their families could

try to redeem them for a price. Many wealthy households began to bribe his companions in order to avoid this special mark of imperial favor, end quote. Now, kidnapping people is obviously very bad on its face, but at least as it's commonly told, there seems to be something almost kind of like fun and games about the bursting into people's houses and stealing women sort of bit, at least from the perspective of the imperial retinue. Eh, teehee, got your daughter. But hold on, because it gets worse the longer you look at it. Oh man, does it get worse. join Zhengde's harem outright, but whose families were too poor to pay the exorbitant fees to ransom them back, were ultimately shipped back to Beijing to serve in the imperial laundry and await the

emperor's return. By the hundreds they were sent, until by early 1520, complaints began to be lodged by the administrators and caretakers of the laundry and palace that there was neither sufficient space nor supplies to take care of all these women, and several had already starved to death. The casual throwaway cruelty of it all is rather stunning, but Zengda didn't care. He probably didn't even notice. He was too busy playing the conquering war hero, but we'll get back to that in a few minutes. Right now, I'm going to finally make good on my promise from three episodes ago that we're going to, at last, detour way on down to Canton and meet these strangers from a strange land who've been waiting there all this time.

Tomé Pires of Portugal had been born the son of a Lisbon apothecary. He'd effectively navigated the churning political systems of his own maritime kingdom and effectively risen above his station, being appointed in 1516 at the age of 48 as Portugal's first ambassador to distant China, being sent off by King Manuel I with a letter to the Cathayan Emperor and arriving at the Canton port in late 1517. His mission was the first European expedition to meet with the Ming Chinese government, and effectively the first since the court of Kublai Khan had hosted Marco Polo nearly 250 years prior. Just one little hiccup for Pires and his mission of diplomacy and friendship to the Middle Kingdom, they had kinda sorta made a bit of a mess of things down in Malacca on their way over,

by which I mean they had effectively pillaged and looted the peninsular kingdom, resulting in the melee sultan, a Leo Vassal of the Ming Emperor with an official seal and everything, sending emissaries to Beijing before he was forced to flee, complaining that they were under attack by these strange-looking pirates with great big bushy beards, aquiline noses, and strangely huge rounded eyes. So suffice it to say that when the Portuguese turned up in Ming waters, they were to face a rather less than friendly welcome. The city officialdom out of Canton considered them pirates of the lowest order and requested permission to assemble a self-defense

fleet to drive them off or destroy them. It wasn't even clearly known where these strangers had come from. They were obviously some type of new and different people, their clothing and facial features said that much clearly enough, but their point of origin was not, and frankly could not, be immediately known. It had been the Portuguese, after all, who had only recently made the genuine discovery that one could sail south down the coast of Africa long enough to arrive at the Cape of Good Hope, round it, and then continue on to Asia via a sea route. No one had known that prior. To both Europeans and the Chinese, prior to this collision of worlds, it was assumed that the one method of reaching China from Europe or vice versa

was the dangerous, bandit and barbarian-infested Silk Road crisscrossing Central Asia. As such, there was simply no concept among the Chinese that these strangers could possibly be coming from the same distant land of Europa told in ancient stories from the Yuan Dynasty centuries ago. Instead, and far more logically, they simply assumed that these bearded pirates had come from some other terra incognita, an island kingdom or the like somewhere further south of Indonesia or Java than the late Great Admiral Zheng He had been able to sail. For their part, as we saw from the quotes at the very beginning of this episode, the Portuguese initial impressions of the Chinese were very positive.

Not only did they intone that this was a kingdom of white people like themselves, but that they even dressed and behaved in similar fashion to them. It was likewise noted that they were excellent tradesmen, and their women of particular beauty. Though this white-like-us observation would be heavily amended over the subsequent century, culminating by the 17th century with the wholesale creation of yellowness, quite possibly out of a lazy mistranslation of Spanish to English. Briefly put, in his book Becoming Yellow, Michael Kivak laid out a very compelling case that the appellation of yellowness to Chinese and East Asians generally traces largely back to a particular scribe in England eliding the meanings of rubio, meaning fair or blonde, and ruby, meaning ruby red. Further, he then translated blanco, means white, and rubio, both as yellow for some incomprehensible reason. Thus, Spanish descriptions

of the northern Chinese as being fair white people was in a stroke rendered as yellow and red people. The actual translated line put it that the Cantonese were brown people, while northern Chinese were more, quote, yellow, like unto the almonds, or Germans, yellow and red color, end quote. All this apparently because someone skipped Colors Day in his Spanish class. When presented with Pires' request for an audience with the emperor, the Ming officials looked through their records and confirmed that they had no record of any such people having offered tribute to Great Ming at any point in the past. As such, they had no right to petition the throne, and the Ministry of Rights refused

to receive the embassy. In early 1518, the ministry recommended that Pires and his pirate fleet be ordered, and then if necessary compelled, to leave Canton and vacate Chinese waters. Napoleon Bonaparte rose from obscurity to become the most powerful and significant figure in modern history. Over 200 years after his death, people are still debating his legacy. He was a man of contradictions, a tyrant and a reformer, a liberator and an oppressor, a revolutionary and a reactionary. His biography reads like a novel, and his influence is almost beyond measure. I'm Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast, and every month I delve into the turbulent life and times of one of the greatest characters

in history, and explore the world that shaped him in all its glory and tragedy. It's a story of great battles and campaigns, political intrigue, and massive social and economic change, but it's also a story about people, populated with remarkable characters. I hope you'll join me as I examine this fascinating era of history. Find The Age of Napoleon wherever you get your podcasts. In the meantime, probably correctly intuiting that the sizable delay in getting an affirmative response to his request for an audience, combined with the hard stares from everyone in the city, likely didn't add up to anything good being about to happen, Tomé Pires enacted Plan B.

B, of course, standing for bribery. Quote, Someone had bribed the eunuch in charge of Canton's maritime affairs and secured permission for the embassy to proceed north. End quote. Hmm, I wonder who that someone could be. In May of 1520, the party reached Nanjing, where Zhengde currently sat and enjoyed the

spoils of his glorious victory over the Prince of Ning. Somehow or another, and knowing Zhengde, it was probably once again had quite to do with a fair amount of money changing hands, with the most likely culprits being Pires' Muslim merchant companion Hoja Asan slipping the proper monetary lubricant to Jiang Pin to arrange a formal imperial introduction. Pira secured permission for his group to continue northward to Beijing, where they would await the emperor's return and then be able to formally meet with him. And so, off they went. Okay, now that we're back at Nanjing and in the presence of Zhengde, let's finish him, I mean it, off. The emperor remained in the southern capital over

the spring and summer of 1520, largely waiting for the border armies to return from Jiangxi and be able to participate in what was to come next. Now, you will surely recall that I just said that the Prince of Ning had already been taken captive by General Wang Yangming after just 43 days of rebellion, right? The general had of course requested that he be able to present his captive in person to face imperial justice. To this, however, Zhengde said, whoa, hold on now, slow your roll. I came all the way down here for a military campaign, so that's what I'm going to get. Instead, Zhengde and Jiangping came up with this cockamamie plan to have General Wang take the captive Prince

of Ning over to Jiangxi and set him up there at Lake Poyang. Yes, the same Lake Poyang that Zhu Yuanzhang had flipped the script and turned the tide of his whole southern campaign in the biggest naval battle ever back at the birth of the dynasty. Then, Jiangping would lead the charge and heroically capture the prince himself in the course of a mock battle, after which he and his favorites would be lavishly rewarded for their bravery and heroic service to the realm. To this whole thing, Wang Yongming rolled his eyes and said, So you want me to just wait there and then give up my prize to this dandy pretty boy? Yeah, no, screw all that. He left Jiangshi with the prince and headed toward Nanjing,

where he intended to hand the prince over to the emperor in person. He trusted neither the provincial officials nor the emperor's favorites, and suspected there was still a plot to free the prince and kill the emperor. His plans of heroic heroism foiled. Jiangping reacted by slandering Wang to the emperor, suggesting that he was actually in league with the traitorous prince. These accusations were dismissed quickly enough, after several eminent and high-ranking officials told the court that such accusations were quite frankly ludicrous. In the end, custody of the

prince of Ning was transferred to an ally of Wang Yongming's, who the general felt that he could trust, and then he accepted an imperial order that he returned to Jiangxi as its governor. In September 1520, Wang was ordered by the emperor to submit a new report on the campaign against the Prince of Ning, this time specifying that the report had better accurately reflect the credit that Jiangping and his buddies totally deserved. On this, the emperor was adamant that his besties be given the full credit that they wanted, and refused to acknowledge that the Prince of Ning had even been taken captive until he got his way, going so far as to leave all the captive prisoners stranded on the Yangtze in barges until he got the report that he desired.

And I mean, what are you going to do? Eventually, Wang Yongming just whatevered the situation and submitted the revised report that the Emperor demanded. He was far too old to be playing bratty child games like this, so just whatever. And with that, Zhengde at last received the prisoners and began preparations to return to Beijing. The imperial retinue, Prince of Ning and his arrested followers in tow, set out northward on September 23rd, 1520, by ship along the Grand Canal. As with the initial southward journey, the emperor took his sweet time in making the trip,

stopping frequently to fish, visit with retired officials, and overall just have a nice, enjoyable time. As always, his strong wine always close at hand. This languid, carefree riverboat cruise came to an abrupt end just a month or so in, on October 25th. While drunkenly fishing in a small dinghy, his boat overturned and he went spilling into the brackish canal waters. Pulled down by his layers of clothing and other accoutrements, his drunken state, and likely, as well, a minimal, if any, competence in swimming, by the time his panicked companions had reached him and dragged him out of the water, he'd very nearly drowned. His health was already tenuous, and this incident pushed his overtaxed body past its limits and he became seriously ill.

For what seems to have been the better part of a month, the Imperial retinue made no progress, and focused on trying to nurse Zhengde back to health, with some success. Within a few weeks' time, he did recover enough strength to set out again, and the party now made directly for the capital at top speed without stops, arriving in Tongzhou just east of Beijing proper by that December. Once in Tongzhou, Zhengde decided to try the Prince of Ning himself then and there. On the advice of Zhang Pin, the Emperor initiated a wide purge of any and everyone who had associated with the Prince, an act anticipated by Wang Yong Ming back in 1519, whereupon the wily old general had destroyed almost all the evidence of such dealings when he'd taken Ning's headquarters at Nanchang. As such, there was only sufficient

evidence left by the time the court authorities arrived to implicate the principal conspirators, meaning that, thanks to Wang Yong Ming, hundreds and possibly thousands of people whose only crime had been to know the guy had their positions, fortunes, and in many cases their very lives spared. Among those who were provably involved was the emperor's former BFF, Jian Ning, already arrested by 1519, the minister of personnel, Lu Wan, and a number of eunuchs and officers in the Imperial Guard. Geist writes, At this point, the emperor was bent on revenge. He particularly hated Jianning and Lu Wan for betraying his trust and for repaying his beneficence with treason. He ordered them both stripped, bound back to back, and put out in front of the prisoners that were to be marched to Beijing for his triumphal entry into the city. They, and the rest of the conspirators, were to suffer the penalty for treason, death by slicing.

End quote. As for the Prince of Ning himself, owing to his status as a member of the imperial clan, minor though it was, he was given an out. On January 13th, 1521, he was allowed to take his own life, after which his body was burned. Thus concluded the treason of the Prince of Ning, and it was time to turn to more pressing affairs. Though Zhengde had recovered enough strength to complete his return to the capital, he was still far from healthy. It was clear to all who saw him that he was seriously ill and could die very soon. Most troublingly, he had made no provision for his succession. As he had produced no children of his body who had survived childhood, nor formally adopted any member of the imperial clan, the question was really an open one. Multiple groups independently came to the realization that whoever was able to be the one at the emperor's side when, if, he died, would hold the succession

and the fate of the dynasty in their hands alone. Jiang Pin, of course, wanted the emperor to return to his party pad up in Xuanzhu, a desire shared by Zhengde himself, who considered the northern garrison his true home. For Jiang, this would put him in the perfect position of being the guy who got to decide the next emperor. That plan was unmade, however, when Zhengde's strength failed him again, and he agreed at last to stay in Beijing for a while to recuperate before he traveled again. Thus, the emperor left Tongzhou on January 18th, 1521, and rode into the imperial capital for the first time in years, and what would be the last time. On each side of the road, thousands of bound captives lined his approach to the main gate, each flying a banner displaying who they were and what their crime was. The emperor

himself rode in his favorite style, as the great general Zhu Shou, in full military triumph through the city before at last entering the imperial palace complex. It would be his last hurrah. Three days later, he collapsed while performing the sacrifice to the altar of heaven and had to be carried back into the palace. Though he clung on to life through the spring of 1521, his health never recovered, and he was unable to convene the court or officiate sacrifices. Nevertheless, he still made no provisions for the succession. Jiang Pin planned to remain at the emperor's side night and day, and then, when the time came, use the emperor's death to install his own choice, the Prince of Tai, as a successor. And he came very close to succeeding, even forging a decree that gave him direct command over the border

troops currently stationed within Beijing. But as luck or fate would have it, he was not present when the Zhengde Emperor slipped away on the night of April 19, 1521, at the age of 29. The only people present were two eunuchs from the Directorate of Ceremonies, who wrote his last words, quote, I am afraid I won't get over this sickness. You two and Zhengrei, tell the directors of the Directorate of Ceremonies to come and see me. Whatever happens, report to Her Ladyship, Empress Dowager Zhang, that she should work out pressing matters of state with the Grand Secretaries. This is important.

None of you eunuchs is at fault. I am the one who ruined the affairs of the Empire. End quote. By the time the directors arrived at Zhengde's chambers, he'd already died. Chief Grand Secretary Yang Tinghe was among the first to learn of the emperor's passing, and he had also made plans for such an eventuality. On the morning of April 20th, he was ready to act. Quote, on his deathbed, the emperor had entrusted everything to his grand secretaries,

but had not actually named a successor. Yang had had a candidate in mind for some time, the emperor's younger cousin, the 13-year-old son of the Prince of Xing. He drafted a posthumous edict in which he named the boy his legitimate successor and told the eunuchs from the Directorate of Ceremonial to give it to the Empress Dowager for her approval. By midday, the matter had been settled, although not to everyone's liking. End quote. The emperor is dead. At just 29. And after 16 years on the throne, although it sure feels like a lot longer, doesn't it?

Next time, we move on to the Jiajing era, where we will once again seat a 13-year-old on the throne, because that has worked out just so great so far, hasn't it? Oh yes, one other thing. Of course, of course, those Portuguese standing over there in the corner looking confused and nervous. The ones who've been here since last year, Tomé Pires and the boys. Yeah, the emperor they were waiting to meet isn't here anymore and uh really they shouldn't be either. Expel them from the capital. And so they were, the day after Zhengde's death. Some tellings have it that Pires died in 1524 from disease, while others intone that he lived until 1540 in Jiangsu, but never receiving permission to leave

China and return home. I guess you should be careful what you wish for. Thanks for listening. admired the delicate features of Queen Nefertiti. If you have, you'll probably like the History of Egypt podcast. Every week, we explore tales of this ancient culture. The History of Egypt is available wherever you get your podcasting fix. Come, let me introduce you to the world of Ancient Egypt.