The History of China - #234 - Ming 24: The Grand Rites Controversy

Episode Date: April 28, 2022

With the Zhengde Emperor dead without an heir, the succession is in question and rebellion brewing. Fortunately, Grand Secretary Yang Tinghe has planned for this and calls in his backup - the 13-year-old Prince of Xing, Zhengde's younger cousin. He'll come to power as the Jiajing Emperor... but Secretary Yang will very quickly find out that, though young, Jiajing is a spitfire who's here to play the game, not be played. Time Period Covered: 1519-1524 CE Major Historical Figures: Zhu Houcong (The Jiajing Emperor) [r. 1521-1567] Grand Secretary Yang Tinghe [1459-1529] Empress Dowager Zhang [1471-1541] Lady/Empress Dowager Jiang Major Works Cited: Geiss, James. “The Cheng-te reign, 1506-1521” in The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 7: The Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644, Part I.” Legge, James. The Chinese Classics, Vol. III. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. Four hundred 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 China. Episode 234. The Grand Rights Controversy. The Duke of Zhou said,

Oh, the superior man rests in this, that he will have no luxurious ease. He first understands the painful toil of sowing and reaping, how it conducts to ease, and thus he understands the law of the inferior people, that when the parents have diligently labored in sowing and reaping, their sons often do not understand this painful toil, and abandon themselves to ease, and to village slang, and become quite disorderly. Or where they do not do so, they throw contempt on their parents, saying, those old people have heard nothing, and know nothing. If we come to the time of Gaozong, he toiled at first away from the court, and was among the inferior people. When he came to the throne, it may be said that while he was in the mourning shed for three years, he did not

speak. Afterwards, he was still inclined not to speak. But when he did speak, his words were full of harmonious wisdom. He did not dare indulge in useless and easy ways, but admirably and tranquilly presided over the empire of Yin, till in all of its states, great and small, there was not a single murmur. It was thus that Gaozong enjoyed the throne for fifty and nine years. From An Admonition Against Luxurious Ease, in the Book of Documents. Zhu Houcong was born on September 16th, 1507, on his family's estate in Anlu, Huguang province, today Zhongxiangxian in Hubei. According to the histories of the period, at least, his birth was accompanied by a panoply of auspicious and miraculous events. It is written, for instance, that upon the little princeling's birth, the ever-merky Yellow River flowed clear as crystal for 45 days,

and that all across the empire the sky was filled day after day with rose-gold clouds. Why were there such extraordinary events attributed to the birth of this baby boy? Well, we'll get to that. His father, the Prince of Xing, was the fourth son of the Chenghua Emperor, and the eldest of three total sons with his concubine, Lady Xiao. As a cadet branch of the royal family, therefore, young Zhu Houchong could look forward to a life of local wealth, comfort, and power, but national irrelevance. He was a cousin to the primary imperial line, and therefore so far out of any kind of prospects in the successional order

that it was ludicrous to even contemplate. His mother, Lady Jiang, was the daughter of an officer in the Capital Guard Corps, who had wed the Prince of Xing in 1492, and then accompanied her husband to his estate in Anlu two years later in 1494. Growing up, Ho-Sung was fond of both poetry and calligraphy, largely ignoring other leisurely pursuits with his peers and focusing on his literary artistry. In terms of aptitude, he was, quote, considered remarkable. When he was

very young, his father taught him to recite Tang Dynasty poetry, and he could often repeat the poems accurately after several attempts, end quote. He was taught primarily under his father's direct tutelage, and was described as an apt pupil. Part and parcel to this education was the Prince of Xing instructing and preparing his only son to one day take over the title and duties of the family. From a young age, therefore, his father had Ho-Sung participating in all customary rituals and ceremonies within his own princely court, and even had the boy accompany him to Beijing when occasional loud in order to observe when the prince was summoned to pay his obeisance to the throne. As a result, this bright, studious boy

quickly became adept with ritual and ceremonial behaviors and expectations, knowledge that would serve him very well indeed only a few years later. In July of 1519, Ho-Sung's father furthered the proud Zhu clan tradition of dying very young, after taking terminally ill at about age 43. This meant, of course, that Zhu Ho-ouchong took over as the head of the household, assuming most of the duties of his father with the assistance of his palace chamberlain. Foremost among these duties was to observe the customary mourning period of three years for his late father. Thus did the 11-year-old settle in for a period of solemn offerings and quiet contemplation. All of that would be cut

abruptly short, however, with the drunken near-drowning leading to terminal sickness of Party Boy Supreme, the Zhengde Emperor, in October of 1520. As we noted last time, even though he had a solid six months to come to terms with his pretty obviously losing battle with mortality, Zhengde never did manage to get around to appointing or indicating any kind of an heir whatsoever. Rather, in an almost Alexander of Macedon fashion, he pretty much said, you guys figure it out, I'm out of here,

and died the following April 19th. Everything was left, as per his final testament, in the hands of his grand secretaries. His grand secretaries, as it so happened, had long since figured out that Zhengde wasn't going to get around to naming an heir, and so already had a contingency plan set up. Five days before the emperor's death, they started that ball rolling. A special edict was issued by the chief grand secretary, Yang Tinghe, in the emperor's name, ordering the royal cousin Zhu Houchong to cut short his filial mourning period and at once assume his father's title as the new Prince of Xing.

Once Zhengde had breathed his last, Yang instructed the eunuch heads of the Directorate of Ceremonies to request an edict from the Empress Dowager naming the 13-year-old Prince of Xing as the legitimate successor to the late Zhengde Emperor. Yang cited his rationale for this unorthodox decision as stemming from no less than the ancestral injunctions penned by the Hongwu Emperor himself on how to manage the affairs of the Ming state. As Yang explained it, the injunction stated that, quote,

when the elder brother dies, the younger brother shall succeed him, end quote. the injunction stated that, quote, And, well, since Zhengde had no living brothers, his closest blood relative was the Prince of Xing, who was the only son of the Hongzhe Emperor's youngest brother and Zhengde's first cousin. So, you know, practically brothers. It was an open-and-shut case, Yang Tinghe said, perfectly clear. Granted, he had sort of creatively interpreted the actual passage from the ancestral injunction. It was an open-and-shut case, Yang Tinghe said, perfectly clear. Granted, he had sort of creatively interpreted the actual passage from the Ancestral Injunctions,

which is as follows, quote, a principal consort or empress, must be installed. One born of a mother other than the legitimate one, a secondary consort, even though he be the eldest, cannot be installed. Should a treacherous minister reject the legitimate one to install one who is not legitimate, the one who is not the legitimate son must keep his place and not respond. He must send a message saying that the legitimate one should be installed, and work to bring the legitimate ruler to the throne. The court shall behead the treacherous minister at once. The princes shall then visit the court every third year, as prescribed above. End quote.

So, a couple of things of note here. First, that Hongwu could scarcely have been more clear that when he talked about brothers, he meant brothers. Full-blooded brothers with, you know, the same mom and the same dad. Not half-brothers, and certainly not cousins. And, oh yeah, then there was that itty-bitty part about any minister trying to fiddle with this successional law getting their head immediately cut off. You can bet that Yang Tinghe did not bring up either of those parts of the passage when he cited it to the eunuchs. Besides, creative reinterpretation of the will of Hongwu was practically a pastime as old as the Yongle Emperor creatively reinterpreting his rescue of

the Jianwen Emperor. Or as Geist puts it, quote, Yang wanted to put this young boy on the throne, and so he found a way to do it, end quote. It was a very tense time, not only within the palace, but also across the wider capital. It was widely known that the late emperor's favorite general, okay, second favorite general, Jiang Bin, had been angling to be the one at Zheng De's side when he died, so that he could be the one to name his own chosen successor. Jiang had a contingent of battle-hardened border troops under his command already in the capital, and word on the street was that if he didn't get his way peacefully, then he was going to start a coup to get his way forcefully. The entire imperial court was packed with self-serving men

who owed their positions to little more than the capricious favoritism of the Zhengde emperor rather than any real professional competence, and they above all would back whoever seemed most likely to preserve their lofty positions. In the midst of all this nervous pre-revolution energy, surely the specific wording of the edict declaring the succession and summoning that successor to the capital for enthronement wouldn't be a huge deal. And so, Yang Tinghe quickly wrote it out with little apparent thought and had it sent. He had much bigger fish to fry than whether he'd crossed every T and dotted every I. As such, the edict put it simply, that the Prince of Xing was, quote, to come to the capital and succeed to the imperial throne, end quote. A wording so innocuous, so completely unable to provoke misunderstanding,

that it was repeated verbatim in the Empress Dowager's own edict to the same effect. No details of arrangement were put forth, because it was just so completely obvious that there was only one possible arrangement to be had. I mean, it's also perfectly clear that I don't even have to spell it out for you, who I know are already rolling your eyes and telling me to get on with it already. But I'm paid by the word, and so I'm going to briefly spell it out anyway. Neither the boy nor anyone in his immediate family had any claim to the throne, you see. His father had been the son of a secondary imperial

concubine, not a consort, and the progeny of such concubines could not carry the imperial line in their own right. The imperial court was rather particularly high-strung on this particular point at this particular time and place because, you may recall, the Prince of Ning's horrid little faceplant of a rebellion that had, in a roundabout way, led to the Emperor dying here and now. Ning had also been of an ancillary line to the Royal Zhu clan, albeit a much more distant line than Yang Zhu Hou Cong. But the principle was still sitting foremost in everyone's mind. Geist writes, quote, Consequentially, Yang assumed that as Emperor, the boy would continue the line in the role of the deceased emperor's adoptive younger brother, that he would thus, for ceremonial and ritual purposes,

treat his deceased uncle, the Hongzhe emperor, and his aunt, the Empress Dowager Zhang, as his father and mother, and that he would likewise treat his natural father and mother as his aunt and uncle, end quote. This sort of family switcheroo, you must understand, was a very common and perfectly acceptable thing to do when it came to families and adoptions. At the imperial level, we need look no further than the Song dynasty and its long-standing spate of non-procreative emperors. It had been almost regularized for the reigning emperors to adopt a nephew or two from a cadet line of the family,

just in case they couldn't produce an heir of their own. But it was also common practice among commoners as well. When it came to inheritance and property, it was something of an all-or-nothing situation as to whether or not your family had been able to have a son, or rather, one that survived to inherit. If that proved impossible, it was typical enough for an intra-family adoption to take place from a brother or sister who had more than one son and could therefore afford to become that kid's aunt instead of mother. It's pretty bizarre to us moderns, but it was just part of life for those at the time. Even so, in spite of this ritual adoption being standard boilerplate procedure,

there was one minor hitch in this otherwise grand little scheme. No one had bothered to inform Zhu Ho-Tong or his mother about the whole adoption thing. They'd just assumed that it was so obvious that, well, it was obvious. But we all know what happens when you assume. To the young Prince of Xing, and just as importantly, if not more so, his mother, the edict was likewise perfectly simple and straightforward. Ho-Sung had been ordered to ascend the throne and carry on the succession of the royal family line. Period. There was nothing at all stated about adoption or ritual obligations to a long-dead monarch uncle that neither of them had done more than see from afar.

They'd come to a perfectly sensible conclusion. Just one that happened to be completely at odds with the intentions of Grand Secretary Yang. Two days after the death of the Zhengda Emperor, on April 21st, 1521, a delegation comprised of palace eunuchs from the Directorate of Ceremonies, nobility, the imperial family, the Grand Secretariat, and the imperial court departed Beijing for Anlu and the Prince of Xing's palace, some 1,200 kilometers to the south. This journey would have likely taken about two weeks at a moderate pace afoot, which we would expect from a heavily laden imperial delegation. That also lines up roughly with the company's departure day on or around May 7th, probably

after a couple of days of rest. The young prince met the delegation upon arrival, and personally accepted the Empress Dowager's edict confirming him as the legitimate heir to the throne. He then ascended his throne in Anlu and held his first audience as Ming Emperor, receiving appropriate homage as such from all officials in attendance. On May 7th, the now imperial retinue, consisting of about 40 people, including the new emperor, set out for their return journey from Anlu back to Beijing. Zhu Hocong's mother did not accompany this delegation, but was to follow shortly thereafter. This trip's progress was significantly slower, no doubt because of the precious cargo now aboard, and took 20 full days of travel to arrive outside the gates of the imperial city.

Geist writes of Zhu Hocong's exemplary behavior over the course of the travel, quote, During the progress to Beijing, the young emperor behaved admirably, refusing the gifts of officials and nobles, living and eating frugally, and overlooking the discomforts of his journey, end quote. It was only upon the new emperor's arrival outside Beijing that, at last, the two very different understandings of the contents of the edict that had summoned Zhu Housong to Beijing at all came to light. Grand Secretary Yang had spent the month and a half of the delegation going and fetching the soon-to-be emperor, busily making preparations to receive him in the ceremonially correct way. That was, obviously, to greet him with all the honors and rituals due to an imperial crown prince,

one who had been named as heir, but not yet enthroned. Word arrived at Zhu Ho-tong's party on May 25th or 26th at Liangxiang, just southwest of Beijing itself, and the young emperor was nonplussed at what he heard. What was this Yang guy talking about? He'd been ordered to become the emperor, and so he had become the emperor. That had happened weeks ago. What was this bizarre talk of greeting him as not the emperor? Ho Tsong's chamberlain advised him to just ignore the grand secretary, disregard his instructions, and enter the city via the main ceremonial gates as a

proper emperor would. He could then proceed directly to the imperial city, ascend the dragon throne in the main audience palace, and thereupon receive the formal respects of the full imperial court. None of this other dithering around. Ho-Sung agreed with this, and the retinue proceeded onward toward the capital, arriving just outside the gates of Beijing on the evening of May 26th. The young emperor then issued his own protocols for the enthronement that would proceed bright and early the following morning. And that's exactly how it went down. Zhu Housong entered first Beijing and then the imperial palace via the main gates in the pre-dawn of May 27th as an emperor would, and then accepted the congratulations of

his court from the dragon throne as the sun rose. Quote, the new emperor had won his contest with the grand secretaries, the first in a long struggle for power, authority, and legitimacy. End quote. 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. Over at the Grand Secretariat office, if there had been alarm klaxons and spinning red emergency lights, they would have all been going at full volume. This was not how this was supposed to be going. Secretary Young had chosen this boy, this nobody from nowheresville, Hubei, on the understanding that he,

an august, professional, adult politician, should be able to run circles around this yokel pre-teenager. And yet, in their very first and arguably most critical sortie, Yang had been not only defeated, but positively dunked on by this adolescent monarch. And much to Yang's chagrin, it wasn't just some one-off. As it would turn out, the battle for power between the secretaries and the throne was only just beginning. Five days after his formal enthronement, on the 1st of June, the young emperor issued an order to the Ministry of Rights. Ah, but before I get into the details of that, this is the part where I tell you that I'm going to start referring to him by his era name, which is the Jiajing Emperor. This should not be confused with the similar sounding Jiaqing Emperor, the 6th Manchu Qing Sovereign, who will come to power about 300 years from now. No, our emperor here today is Jiajing, which means admirable tranquility. It comes from

the classic text, the Book of Documents, quoted at the top of this episode, in which the Duke of Zhou compares the rule of King Wuding of Shang, aka Gaozong of Yin, the supposedly 21st Shang monarch, though the first historical Chinese figure we actually have solid evidence for,

to that of his son, Zu Jia, that the father had that admirable tranquility that caused his reign to prosper, whereas his son did not. So, yeah, the Jiajing Emperor. Jiajing ordered his Ministry of Rights to recommend for him the proper rituals and titles to confer upon his dear departed father. Cue alarm bells in the office of Yang Tinghe, because remember, as he understood it, and was still under the assumption that everyone else also understood it, the new emperor had accepted the imperial adoption by taking up the throne, and therefore his father was the deceased Changhua emperor, his mother the still-living Empress Dowager, and his birth parents were now his aunt and uncle.

Geist puts it, quote, The debate at the Ming court focused on the distinction between tong, legitimate succession in the dynastic line, and shu, bloodline succession or succession by adoption in clan law. The position advanced by the grand secretaries held that he who succeeds a man should be a son to him, a fundamental tenet of clan law. Thus, the young Jiajing Emperor was urged to treat his aunt and uncle as his mother and father, and vice versa. However, the opposition pointed out that in this case, the Emperor had never been adopted or installed as heir apparent by his predecessor, and that there was a clear distinction between legitimate succession in a ruling dynasty

and the conventional practices of clan law which had never in the past regulated the order and terms of imperial succession, end quote. So, Yang instructed the Ministry of Rights to reply back to the emperor to that effect, and to base its reply on two legal precedents handpicked by Yang Tinghe himself, the successions of the Prince of Dingtao during the Han Dynasty and that of the Prince of Pu in the Song Dynasty. Yang then tacked on that anyone who disagreed with him was a traitor and should be executed, which seems a little harsh, but whatever. Yang's selection of these two cases in particular is bizarre. I really don't understand what he thought he was doing here.

So, in the case of the Prince of Dingtao, Emperor Cheng of Han, lacking in air, had selected his nephew, the Prince of Dingtao, to succeed him. Dingtao had done so two years later upon Cheng's death in 7 BCE. But as soon as the boy came to power, he began conferring all sorts of titles, stipends, favors, and other boons upon his own family, all over the objections of the late Emperor Cheng's family. In spite of the continued whining, he just kept on promoting his family and friends, and various special friends, for the next seven years of his reign. And yes, by the way, for those of you keeping track, the monarch formerly known as Ding Tao is, in fact, Emperor Ai of Han, one of the most infamous Han Dynasty rulers, who was flamboyantly gay and not only didn't care who knew it, but tried to give the whole empire to his boyfriend, Dong Xian, upon his death, thereby triggering the collapse of Western Han and the usurpation of Wang Mang. All of this to say, it was a really weird choice of precedent,

not only because Yang Tinghe was essentially saying, learn from this guy, one of the most controversial, infamous rulers of all time, but also because the central lesson to be learned there was, basically, the emperor gets his way no matter how much complaining the ministers do. Did Secretary Yang somehow get his successions mixed up? Surely there must have been some mistake here, right? No, no mistake, as evidenced by his other choice of precedent, the case of the Song Prince of Pu. Once again, a distant relation of the emperor was tapped for the throne because the monarch had no male heir. When the boy came to the throne in 1064 as Emperor Yingzong, he, say it with me now, demanded that his parents were to

be acknowledged as his parents and he should make sacrifices to them, not his adoptive imperial family. And Yingzong, like Ai of Han, totally won and completely got his way, because of course he did. He's the emperor. At this point, you may be clasping your hand over your brow and wondering just what exactly Yang Tinghe thought he was, uh, doing here. Well, fear not, because later on in the Song Dynasty, some other philosophers dug up this case and strongly objected to what had happened far, far ex post facto. One of these guys in particular was Teng Yi, who drafted the most contrarian opinion, again from the safety of decades after the fact, writing in a tone that most internet well-actually reply guys can only dream of. Quote, However, the attitude towards those who gave life should be most respectful and magnanimous.

It is fitting to establish for them separate titles like Imperial Uncle Father, Prince of such and such. Then the legitimate line of succession is clear, and those who gave life are honored in the highest degree. End quote. Send tweet smirk. Yang Tinghe was sure to append Cheng Yi's well-actually rebuttal to the two cases for the emperor's consideration. For all that, however, it was already a moot point. Not only was Yang flying squarely in the face of the long-standing precedence for imperial succession, not only had he chosen perhaps the two worst possible cases to cite as precedent in the history of the Chinese empire,

but he was arguing his case while being fully and completely over a barrel. The Emperor had ascended the throne, and been not only accepted by the court ministers, but heartily so, and with absolutely no appetite to either attempt to depose him or even accept his abdication if offered over what was, in the end, a quibble over ritual propriety of a deeply personal nature. As for the Grand Secretaries themselves, they could sputter and moan until the cows came home, but that was about all. Because, after all, installing Jiajing had been their idea in the first place. They could hardly now be seen trying to raise doubts about the suitability or legitimacy of their own winning candidate. Not that such facts would ever deter

Yang Ting-he in his tireless quest to make the emperor call his dad uncle and his uncle dad. For the entirety of his remaining tenure in office, until he was forced into retirement three years later, gee, I wonder why, quote, Grand Secretary Yang used every means at his disposal to press his views on both the court and the emperor, but in this boy and his mother, the Grand Secretary had met his match, end quote. That part about not accepting Jiajing's abdication was not hypothetical, by the way. The issue came up about six months after his accession, when his mother at last arrived outside Beijing on October 4th. She sent word to her son informing him that she had been told that her baby boy was being pressured by those mean old secretaries to call her his own mother, aunt, and that she was going to be received as just a princess rather than an empress.

Under such an insulting set of circumstances, she simply refused to enter the capital, and threatened to turn right around and head back to Anlu rather than suffer the indignity of it a moment longer. When judging her this, well, that was that, wasn't it? He let his aunt and adoptive mother, Empress Dowager Zhang, know that he was going to abdicate right now and go back to Anlu with her. Wait, wait, cried the Grand Secretaries, utterly outplayed yet again by a thirteen-year-old. Going? You can't be going, you only just got here. We didn't mean it. Let's compromise. How about this? You agree to not quit and stay the emperor, and we'll agree

to give you exactly what you want, exactly as you want it. And so it was that a new special edict was issued from the Empress Dowager conferring imperial titles on the emperor's father, mother, and grandmother. As his mother entered the capital, moreover, protocols would stipulate that she be given the highest marks of honor and deference. Only then would she consent to enter the capital. Even after this concession, though, the Empress Dowager continued to treat Jiajing's mother as lesser than herself, as a lowly imperial princess rather than full-on empress in her own right. Quote, this behavior infuriated the emperor no less so than it did his mother.

Henceforth, he used every means at his disposal to humiliate and intimidate the dowager and her family. End quote. Yet, the back and forth continued. In February 1522, on the day of the annual sacrifice to heaven, a mysterious fire erupted in the section of the palace that the Emperor's mother resided in. The fire, it was long understood, was the element of ritual, and as such, Grand Secretary Yang interpreted this as a dire omen that the Imperial ancestors were displeased with the sacrificial arrangements, and in particular, the new imperial titles. He was able to thereby force the emperor to rescind his parents' imperial titles, at least temporarily. That lasted all of a year and a half, during the entire course of which the Jiajing emperor was pointedly quite mad at his secretaries.

But finally, on June 30th, 1522, the emperor ordered his grand secretaries to appear before him at a private audience. Once assembled, he instructed them that they were to immediately restore the imperial honorifics to his family members. While in the imperial presence directly, none of the grand secretaries, not even Yangtinghe, could muster up the courage to refuse his command. And yet, the instant that they were outside of the imperial eyeline, they started right in with each other, how they had no intention of actually carrying the order out, and then drafted a formal protest, closing with the question, quote, how can you continue to avoid what is right and proper just to indulge your own

feelings, end quote. Geist notes that in so doing, these secretaries were behaving far more like prime ministers in that they were dictating policy to the throne rather than following its commands. If this could be called a victory for the grand secretaries, it would prove to be a fleeting one. All the secretaries, and Young in particular as the head of the organization, had been making no friends in their near single-minded pursuit of bending the emperor to this specific ritual will of theirs. They consolidated their power within the court and demanded support for their position, threatening and even outright eliminating anyone who crossed them, having them cashiered, imprisoned, and even banished nearly at will. This sort of arbitrary, tyrannical punishment

was applied to hundreds of officials across 1521 and beyond. Suffice it to say, there was a more than healthy dose of anti-Yang Ting He sentiment swirling all around the empire by the end of 1523. As such, when the new year of 1524 dawned, little by little, officials here and there across the empire began publicly coming out in favor of the emperor's position regarding the family rights and against Yang Tinghe's. Such messages were collected and compiled and then presented en masse to the throne. They, quote, attacked the grand secretaries, criticized the court for so readily accepting their directives, and fully supported the Emperor's position, end quote. This opened the floodgates. With opposition to him and his policies now out in the open, public and formal, Yang lost any shred of influence he

had left, and by March retired from office in disgrace. The subsequent five months were full of bitter factional feuds, which nearly all resolved with the faction in support of the Grand Secretaries being ousted from office and replaced by those supportive of the Emperor and his policies. Protests and complaints about this were ignored. That August, the Jiajing Emperor ordered the Ministry of Rights to reinstate his mother's titles and patents forthwith. The Hanlin Academy rose in opposition and railed against this, as they'd done before when Yang was in charge. But Yang wasn't here anymore, and this time the Emperor ordered the Imperial Bodyguard to arrest and imprison the leaders of the protest movement. The remaining

three Grand Secretaries were then dragged before the Emperor and roundly castigated for obstructing his wishes yet again. It was all too much for the Secretaries, and they agreed that the imperial titles and honors would indeed be reconferred as demanded within four days. Three days later, though, a group of some 200 ministers refused to disperse after the morning audience on August 14th, remaining prostrate before the throne in protest of the emperor's order. When Jiajing became aware of this promotion, he at first just sent his eunuchs in to break up the officials. They, however, said that they refused to leave without a written order from the emperor. When one was produced, they still refused to go. And so, with

that, playtime was over. Just before noon, the emperor demanded a list of all the ministers protesting, and then had the ringleaders thrown in jail. The remainder, rather than taking the hint and heading home, decided that they'd play hardball too, and started shouting and beating at the doors of the audience hall. The emperor's ball, however, was much, much harder. He now had all the low-ranking officials dragged off to prison, and the rest informed that they were to await sentencing for their crimes. Five days later, more than 180 of the protesting officials were publicly beaten at court, resulting in 17 deaths. The survivors were then banished from the capital. The following day, Zhao Jing set up his father's spirit tablet in the imperial ancestral temple and conferred

upon him his imperial title. All in all, what had started as a simple misunderstanding had, in the course of these three years, spiraled into a massive struggle for control over the levers of the Ming government itself. Was the emperor the brains of the operation and the court merely his tool for carrying the imperial will out? Or was the court itself in charge and only ritually deferential to a monarch who reigned but did not rule? In the struggle between these two poles, the professional, and in some cases life andand-death fates of hundreds of individuals became entwined. And by its end, a definitive answer had been determined. As Grand Secretary Mao Zedong sadly intoned in his letter of resignation to the Emperor from his post in August 1524,

quote, Recently, during the debates on imperial ritual, we have been summoned to private audiences and given orders from the Directorate of Ceremonial. None of this bears any semblance of consultation. Everything is by imperial decree, without any advice requested. Who can approve or disapprove? As for flogging court officials by the hundreds, such a thing has never occurred in the history of the dynasty. And all this takes place by your command. Your officials play no part in it." If Secretary Mao had been expecting a pity party, he would have done well to word his lamentation a bit more carefully. Because everyone knew that he was totally full of it when he wrote that flogging had never happened before. That had happened repeatedly, frequently even, and that was just

under the last guy, Zeng De, whenever he didn't get his way. The early Ming emperors had done way worse to those who didn't agree with him. I mean, remember Hongwu? He liked to have his ministers beaten just to remind him that he could, and those were the ones that he liked. In any event, the Jiajing emperor, by this point about 16, had found the style of rule that best suited him, the brutal and despotic style of his cousin Zheng De. He overrode all counsel and precedent to get what he wanted. He tolerated no interference, no criticism of his person or his policies. His officials retained their positions so long as they carried out his will without question and quickly lost them when they did not or could not.

And markedly unlike just about every other Ming emperor, Dajing is going to be around for a long, long time to come. Thanks for listening. Have you ever gazed in wonder at the Great Pyramid? Have you marvelled at the golden face of Tutankhamun? Or 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

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