The History of China - #244 - Ming 30: A Last Luminous Gloaming

Episode Date: November 26, 2022

At 29, the weak and ineffectual Longqing Emperor take the Dragon Throne in 1567. But it won't be long before the curse of the House of Zhu strikes him down, leaving Great Ming to his 9-year-old son, Wanli. That means - of course - the government is in the hands of the court ministers and its all-powerful Grand Secretary, the ruthlessly conniving Zhang Juzheng. Time Period Covered: 1567-1582 CE Major Historical Figures: The Longqing Emperor (Zhu Zaihou) [r. 1567-1572] The Wanli Emperor (Zhu Yijun) [r. 1567-1620] Grand Secretary Xu Jie [1503-1583] Grand Secretary Gao Gong [1513-1578] Senior Grand Secretary Zhang Juzheng [1525-1582] Sources Cited: Huang, Ray. 1587, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty In Decline. Huang, Ray. “Lung-ch’ing and Wan-li Reigns” in The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 7: The Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644, Part 1. Melvin, Shelia. “China’s Reluctant Emperor” in The New York Times (11/07/2011). Miller, H. State Versus Gentry In Late Ming Dynasty China, 1572-1644. 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 244, A Last Luminous Gloaming I gave Yin Zhen Mao one million tails of silver. He might have pocketed half of it, but he got the job done.

Grand Secretary Gao Gong. Those who enriched themselves through trade became the majority, and those who enriched themselves through agriculture were few. The rich became richer, and the poor poorer. Those who rose took over, and those who fell were forced to flee. It was capital that brought power. Trade proliferated, and the tiniest scrap of profit was counted up. Corrupt magnates sowed disorder, and wealthy shysters prayed. Purity was completely swept away. Zhang Tao, She County Magistrate, circa 1609. From now on, you will be pure in your hearts and scrupulous in your work. You will not harbor private designs and deceive your sovereign. You will not complicate debates and disconcert the government. From the Wanli Emperor's Tieyu, or Warning Edict, composed by Composed by Zhang Zhuzheng, 1572.

We ended off last time, in the year 1567, which, not coincidentally, brought an end to both the initial era of pirate controversy along the South China coasts, but also the reign era of the Jia Jing emperor altogether. Jia Jing had died at the age of 59, and after ruling over the Ming dynasty for almost 45 years, albeit for the second half in a self-imposed isolation and willful neglect of his duties as sovereign, a trend that we're going to see quite a bit more of going forward. It would therefore be Jia Jing's eldest son, Crown Prince Zhu Zaihou, who would ascend the throne in early February, about half a month after his father's death. And while this sounds perfectly normal, it had actually long been kept strangely up in the air by none other than Jia Jing himself. Prince Zaihou, born in 1537 to Jia Jing's consort Kang, was the emperor's third son.

This meant that while he was brought up in a courtly Confucian education as befitting his rank and station, no one had expected him to ever need to learn how to actually rule, and thus ever much bothered to include him in such lessons. Yet such were the whims of fate that the judging emperor had lost his first son in infancy in 1533, and then his second son, the crown prince Zhu Zairui, at the age of 13 to unknown causes in 1549. As such, it would fall to Zhu Zaihou, at age 12, to become the next heir apparent. It's pretty clear, though, that this is not what his father wanted. In fact, Jiajing would continually insist that Prince Zaihou and his fourth son, Zhu Zaizhen, the Prince of Jing,

who was born less than a month after Zaihou, and obviously to another mother, Consort Jing of the Lu clan, would both be treated as identical twins. This broke with precedent and procedures, of course, but Jia Jing insisted, and his ministers had long since learned that trying to argue with this particular emperor on matters of family and ceremony was a definitely losing proposition. Rui Hong writes on this breach of etiquette, quote, And not at all subtle, either. Prince Zai Ho would exist under this pall of dad might send assassins to off me any day now and promote my little brother instead

for a full 16 years of neglect, passive-aggressive hostility, and constant paranoid insecurity before dear old dad finally died and Zaihou was, seemingly against all odds and intentions, actually enthroned as the sovereign of Great Ming. Not that this managed to improve much for the heir-turned-sovereign. As you'll surely remember, the back half of dear old dad Jia Jing's reign had been 20 years of the emperor steadfastly refusing to run his own government in protest of his ministers. And that sounds just fine on paper, but in reality that meant 20 years of those very same ministers largely having their way in just about every decision. That vicarious rule had been headed by Secretary Yan Song, who had made his name and cemented his

power through ruthlessly seeking out and purging his political rivals and enemies, and backstabbing anyone who got in his way. And lo and behold, after Secretary Yan's death, the situation did not miraculously improve. Quote, "...the counsellors of the judging emperor's successors continued to imitate his style of government by betrayal and even by treachery, although to a lesser degree, end quote. As emperor, Long Qing is something of a mystery, or maybe more of a tabula rasa. You can put onto him almost whatever you wish.

His reign is so short and ineffectual that reports about what even happened in the less-than-five-year reign era are rather vague and contradictory. Again, from Huang, quote, He took no part in court politics, but his authority over the bureaucracy was still nominal. The imperial historian's laudatory accounts of his frugality and kindness have been proved untrue or without substance. More damaging reports of his character and personality can actually be verified, end quote. He never once made an important policy decision, and thus managed to muddle through his half-decade on the throne without stirring up controversy, likely leading to contemporary historians to look back on his period of rule fondishly. Even so, the Grand Secretary, Gao Gong, would pin in his own memoirs that the Longqing Emperor,

quote, Though there's no conclusive evidence that Longqing was, in fact, mentally disturbed or deficient, it is a matter of record that he was utterly incapable of speaking in public about even those most benign and stylized of topics, instead relying on his secretaries to speak on his behalf on all matters, a habit which, according again to Gaogong, impaired public confidence. Most likely, this is probably due to an actual speech impediment that he had, not a mental deficiency. But even so, those can severely impair one's ability to function in public.

What does appear to be certain, as a matter of several instances of public record attest, was that in his relatively brief time on the throne, the Longting Emperor was, quote, devoid of personal character and strength, and showed no interest or even curiosity about state affairs, end quote. Instead, he very quickly became a full-time devotee of pursuing his own personal pleasure, especially with the introduction in his inner court of a beautiful Turkish dancing girl who we know only as Nyar Hoha, and who captivated his total attention for seemingly the rest of his reign. It's very fortunate for the empire then that his five years on the throne were equally marked by a distinct lack of major political crises or decisions of any real lasting importance. Instead, they were years of tranquility and relative prosperity in which the Longqing

emperor was only too happy to fully partake while his government coasted on the directives of its officiant operators. That was at least for the short term. Long term, his reign would prove rather less than so blandly benign. Again from Huang, quote, But the damage he did was institutional and long-term in effect, for he needed a chief executive whose decisions were emphatically backed up by the throne. Some form of pretense was required, for the delegation of imperial authority was against the dynasty's tradition. Since the emperor could not perform the essential tasks of governing, the contest for power within the Grand Secretariat intensified.

Long Qing's actual reign is so dull that I've actually had a considerably tough time even finding out how or under what conditions he ultimately died after just five and a half years on the throne on July 5th, 1572, at age 35. He apparently died as he lived, in an exceptionally uninteresting manner, barely worthy of even committing to paper. So instead of focusing directly on him, we're today going to look at the real movers and shakers of this era, the Ming Imperial Court, of course. This decade between 1572 and 1582, in which the court was presided over by the Grand Secretary Zhang Juzheng, is referred to by

historians like Rui Huang as, quote, the last radiant glow in the twilight of the Ming Dynasty, end quote. As ever, we'll have to backpedal a bit to put this into context, namely back those five and a half extra years to the beginning of the Longting Emperor's unremarkable reign. Immediately upon the death of the Jiajing Emperor early in 1567, a power struggle erupted within the Ming imperial court over who would be the next de facto helmsman of this ship of state. It seems that it was clear, even in those early days, that no one at all expected Long Qing to actually do it himself. In that brief interregnum between the death of the father and the enthronement of the son, the then senior grand secretary, Xu Jie, had, on his own initiative

and without orders, drafted a last-will and testament of the Jiajing emperor, and then secretly submitted it to the soon-to-be Longqing Emperor for his stamp of approval. Quote, the paper expressed the deceased emperor's regret over the harsh punishments meted out to remonstrating officials for various reasons during his reign. He ordered his successor to make amends, end quote. Now, no one could actually question the authenticity of this imperial order. Xu Jie had been crafty enough to make sure that all the right steps had been taken. Nevertheless, his intentions were criticized by his opponents among the other ministers. It was a pretty nakedly self-serving maneuver. By seizing the initiative and getting out ahead of everyone else with such proposals, Xu Jie had effectively distanced himself from the most unpopular policies of the Jiajing era,

which had seen so many courtiers banished by imperial whim, but also become the patron and protector of those officials who this new policy would indemnify and recall to office. In a stroke, Xu had built for himself a considerable power base within the government. The chief critic of this maneuver was one of Xu Jie's fellow secretaries, named Gao Gong. Gao had a well-earned reputation for despising the over-stylized and indirect methods that formed the way things were done in the imperial court. Instead, he preferred to more directly go straight after his aims, pro forma ritual and courtly doublespeak be damned. Quote, in carrying out a policy, when a method would work, Gao Gong was willing to cut red tape.

He was not even worried if, strictly speaking, his methods contradicted the letter of the law, end quote. In other words, he was a classic maverick, a Riggs, an Axel Foley of the late Ming court. And in classic fashion, Gao was therefore the natural enemy of the icemen and mirtas of the court, the censorial supervising personnel. For his own part, Gao Gong saw such hall monitors as, quote, petty and obstructive, each holding his position to protect the interests of some group, often utilizing the impeachment proceedings to retaliate against those who threatened their interests, end quote. Gao's background as the tutor of the heir apparent, now emperor, was able to shield him from the majority of such attempts to impugn him, though not completely. As such, in the spring of 1567, apparently at the urging of Secretary

Xu Jie, several of the censors submitted impeachment proceedings against Gao Gong, accusing him of having obstructed the designation of the Longqing Emperor as heir apparent when he was serving as the advisor to the Jiaqing Emperor. Though Gao was able to skate on the charges that would have demanded his execution, the sheer volume of charges set against him, 28 impeachments all told, did cloud his professional reputation enough that by June of 1567, he was forced to retire from the secretariat. He, correctly, blamed Xu Jie for this, and spent the subsequent year working up a plan for his revenge. And it's here that we must introduce our third main character for today, Zhang Zhuzheng. Zhang was serving as an associate secretary, and had been a close friend of Gao Gong for many years.

The two had long shared a very similar, almost parallel career path, and were like-minded in their ideas about imperial policy. The major difference between the pair seems to have been that while Gao Gong was impatient and loudmouthed, Zhang Zhezhang was far more calculating and deliberative. He was willing to bide his time. Gao's opportunity for payback came in the summer of 1568, when Xu Jie came under official censure by a supervising secretary. From Huang, quote, the main charge dealt with frontier defense, but the judging emperor's testament was also brought up. Xu Jie was accused of using the testament to expose the shortcomings of the deceased emperor, end quote. Xu Jie, understanding of using the testament to expose the shortcomings of the deceased emperor.

Xu Jie, understanding that the charge had been leveled by an official with a personal grudge against him, expected the throne to intervene on his behalf and dismiss the case. He petitioned the throne to do as much, and, as was custom, tendered his resignation, fully expecting that the emperor would reject the offer and have him remain on as secretary. He was astonished, then, when his resignation was accepted. Unbeknownst to him, this had happened because Zhang Zhuzheng had privately instructed the official drafting the presentation copy of the throne's formal reply to do so. And just like that, Xu Jie was forced out of office. With that, Zhang did what he did best, went back to quietly biding his time

and waiting for the next best opportunity to advance his and Gaogong's plan. That would come about a year and a half later, when, in early 1570, the replacement secretary was forced out of office via yet another controversy. Quote, Zhang conferred with the eunuchs close to the emperor and arranged to recall Gaogong as an associate grand secretary, an extraordinary procedure, end quote. With Gaogong back at the post of Grand Secretary, he ably demonstrated his efficacy in the office when it came to selecting capable men for key military and regional posts. It was during his tenure, for instance, that the Ming government of Longqing produced one of its few notable successes, at long last concluding something of a stable peace with the eastern Mongols under Altan Khan. It was in the midst of this constant high-level feuding and bickering that in early July of 1572,

the Longqing emperor quite unexpectedly died at the age of 35. His chosen successor was his third son and eldest surviving, the then eight- or nine-year-old Prince Zhu Yijun, chosen several months before his own father's death and formally designated as the crown prince through the ritual of capping. Huang writes of this ceremony, quote, That winter day, he was led to a screened cubicle, temporarily elected in the courtyard, from which he emerged three times, always clad in a new set of garments. Each time he was crowned with a different hat. The assortment of headgear and robes was the regalia designated for various ceremonial functions in which he, as their apparent, must be initiated. Between the changes in wardrobe, he was instructed to kneel down,

stand up, turn around, hold a scepter, and drink wine from a special cup, all to the accompaniment of music and the chanting of ceremonial officials. The proceedings took the whole morning, end quote. He would be formally enthroned the following year, taking the reign era of Wanli, meaning 10,000 calendars. Quote, as heir-designate, he met the imperial court in mourning. The assembly of officials had prepared polished pieces of literature, declaiming the urgent reasons why he must take over the vacant throne. Twice, Wan Li, who had been carefully coached, declined on the grounds that he was too grief-stricken. Only to the third round of persuasion did he give his assent.

From that moment on, ceremonies became inseparable from his life, end quote. Only one court official had, or at least was impertinent enough to give voice to, doubts as to this new child emperor's suitability for the office that he had inherited. Who else but the ever-brash Secretary Gao Gong. The tale goes that when approached by one of the palace eunuchs with a message, apparently from the newly enthroned Wanli, Gao reacted with the retort, quote, How can a boy of ten years manage all the affairs under heaven?

End quote. If it was, as Gao would claim, merely a reflection of his skepticism regarding the authority of the royal order as given orally by the eunuch, then it was a particularly poor choice of wording, because it could also fairly easily be interpreted as a slight against the emperor himself. Word of this faux pas quickly made its way to Zhang Zhezheng, and together with a eunuch ally in charge of the directorate of ceremonial, charges were leveled at Secretary Gao, exaggerating his disrespectful tone into accusations of sedition or even treason. These charges were delivered to the Empress and to Wanli's natural mother, both of whom were about to become the Empress's dowager, and Gaogong was

quickly dragged before a full court inquiry at the palace gate. Quote, Gaogong was accused of obstructing the sovereign from exercising his rights and intimidating the imperial family. He was stripped of his rank and position in order to return to his home district, where he was placed under the surveillance of the local magistrate for life, end quote. So it was that at the age of 47, Zhang Zhezhen became the first senior grand secretary of the Imperial Ming court, and chief tutor and caretaker of its emperor for the subsequent decade, all of which would be under his personal administration. This made him undoubtedly the most powerful man in all of China and momentous enough to warrant its own special phrase in Chinese historiography

Jiangling Bingzheng meaning essentially Zhang Zhuzheng's administration. History isn't black and white yet too often it's presented as such. Grey History The French Revolution is a long-form history podcast dedicated to exploring the ambiguities and nuances of the past. By contrasting both the experiences of contemporaries

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So if you're looking for your next long-form, binge-worthy history podcast, one recommended by universities and loved by enthusiasts, then check out Grey History, The French Revolution today. Or simply search for The French Revolution. Zhang's administration is now often referred to

as a sort of neo-legalism, though Zhang himself was always insistent that he was following a purely Confucian ethos. The efficacy of his decade in power is made obvious by the sheer physical results that his administration was able to report. By the end of the decade, for instance, the capital granaries reportedly held enough reserve grain to meet the needs of the subsequent nine years. It was a boom time for the treasuries as well. The treasury of the Taichang Si, or the Court of Imperial Sacrifice, which was the throne's emergency-only reserve, reported more than six million tails of silver, while the Taipusi,

or the Court of the Imperial Stud, held another four million tails. The vaults of the southern capital, Nanjing, held another 2.5 million in reserve, and the provincial treasuries in Guangxi, Zhejiang, and Sichuan reported between 150,000 to 800,000 tails in deposits over this period. Keep in mind that the Ming economy of the 16th century, right up until Zhang Zhejiang's administration, was absolutely chaotic, in a permanent tailspin, and frequently running in the red, bottoming out with no reserves whatsoever. What was more, in his position as Grand Secretary, Zhang was forced to do all this without any power to enact structural reforms of the imperial government. Heck, he couldn't even personally introduce proposals to the court. Not that he ever let such trivialities stop him. Instead,

when challenged about the changes he was making to the government, he used as his claim to legitimacy that he was merely restoring the institutional arrangements of the dynastic founders, Hongwu and Yongle, which had been disregarded for far too long, leading to the current deplorable state of the economy and government. And never you mind if that was anything close to what he was actually doing. No, he was bringing sexy back, so just go with it. No wonder, then, that historians both contemporary and modern alike tend to laud his results while criticizing his methods. But more on that in a little bit. Secretary Zhang had on his side a nigh-on unbeatable combination of court allies, including the eunuch director Feng Bao and the emperor's natural mother,

Empress Dowager Zi Sheng, meaning that he had near 24-7 access to the young emperor and zero difficulty in getting him to sign off on any and all of his programs whenever needed. He also exercised unofficial control over the hiring and firing of just about anyone he wanted to in government, since the chief ministers of the Ministries of Personnel and the Censorate were his personal yes-men. The Censor-in-Chief, in fact, in his whole six-year term in office, managed to successfully impeach just one single provincial official, a guy who had offended Zhang Juzheng by failing to present himself before the Grand Secretary when he'd made a trip through his home district. As I mentioned before, as Grand Secretary,

Zhang had no power to initiate imperial policy or directly give orders. Well, that's no problem. Quote, he circumvented this constraint through private contacts. The Grand Secretary wrote long letters to his lieutenants, who occupied key positions in the imperial administration, urging them to put forth proposals that he favored. Then, as chief counselor to the throne, he drafted rescripts on the emperor's behalf, approving the very policies that he had proposed. In his letters, he used cajolery, exhortation, complaint, and mild reprimands to effect his will. At times, he gave advance notice of a recipient's next assignment or promotion to make it clear that he was responsible for the person's advancement. End quote.

And make no mistake, Zhang didn't just do this for high-level, big-picture stuff. He did it for everything. Tribal leaders and their individual personalities, copper supplies for coin minting, the timing of grain shipments up the Grand Canal, the design and location of watchtowers

to be built along the northern walls. I mean, you name it, Zhang Zhuzheng had his hands in it, no matter how big or seemingly trivial. It was, in fact, just about the only way to get the Ming system to function properly as it was designed. Much like all the way back at the beginning of the dynasty, it depended solely on someone with the indefatigable motivation of the Hongwu Emperor, or in this case Zhang Zhezheng, to personally oversee all aspects of getting things done. Quote, there was no provision in the bureaucratic system for independent initiatives at lower levels. New problems had to be passed along to the top for a solution. Thus, the brilliant man on the top had to handle all the petty details of administration himself, end quote. Needless to say, that was if indeed there was a

brilliant man at the top. If that were the case, then yeah, it could work, at least for as long as his personal willpower held out. But as a system, as we've seen many, many times now, it was an absolute mess that would begin falling apart the minute that singular ubermensch was out of the picture. Not exactly the basis for long-term stability. Since he could not institutionally change any of these imperial systems, of course, he had to work within them, at least nominally. In terms of the imperial finances, which was far and away Zhang's top priority to get an order, since they were so terribly chaotic leading up to this period, he could not restructure the fiscal resources or its structure, and so had to go about improving the treasury situation via auditing accounts and carrying out a stringent

fiscal retrenchment that affected all offices of the government. In other words, it was time for some major governmental belt-tightening, and everyone's favorite emergency measure, austerity. At the Grand Secretary's discretion, quote, all unnecessary and unimportant government operations were either suspended or postponed. The number of students on government stipends were reduced. Provincial officials were ordered to cut down their labor service requirements in general to one-third of the existing level, the hostel service provided by the imperial postal system was likewise cut to a minimum, end quote. And so, with all these painful cost-cutting measures in place, saving cash, was that extra money reinvested into the citizenry? Were their general taxation levels correspondingly reduced?

Don't be ridiculous. Of course not. Tax levels remained fixed, and all the extra money was simply deposited into the imperial treasuries, which made them look impressively full. Moreover, fines, confiscations, and commutations of punishments were subjected to stringent auditing programs to make sure no one underpaid what they might owe. Tax delinquents were gone after with a gusto, seldom seen by the administration, and those behind in their payments were not so gently reminded that they'd better pay up right quick. And what Ming cost-saving measure would be complete without it also extending to the Imperial Corps' eternally favorite whipping boy, the military. Peace, after all, had been concluded with the Mongols,

so who needed a strong northern military anymore? Frontier guards and border patrols across the north were substantively reduced, with those now redundant soldiers sent to go work on the Tuntian military farms to, that's right, gin up more revenue for the government. Overall, the governor-generals in the frontier regions were expected to reduce their costs by as much as 20% of their normal annual operations. That definitely won't come around to bite us in the backside in a couple of decades or anything. Ha ha ha ha ha. In spite of the questionable wisdom of slashing the military budgets, all in all, the results of Zhang Zhejiang's administration from 1572 to 1582 speak very

much for themselves. Huang puts it, quote, The efficiency of the imperial bureaucracy reached its zenith. This high point also marked the limit of what it was humanly possible to achieve under the binding political traditions of Chinese society at the time. Without resorting to repression, Zhang Zhejiang's administration was able to match the kind of material splendor usually known only immediately after the establishment of a new dynasty, end quote. Of course, forcing a bureaucratic structure to function in a heightened state, and in a way it was fundamentally not designed to operate, is typically not very maintainable. Like putting a nitrous system into a Kia Rio. Yeah, you might get some extra acceleration in the short term, but the pistons are probably going to crack because of the stress,

and likely sooner than later. And at the end of the day, it's still a budget subcompact sedan, and it's not going to win any street races, so what are you even doing? Zhang's application of pressure horizontally on all units undoubtedly resulted in hardships in many quarters. For instance, forced reductions in expenditures created more inefficiency in some offices than others. Tax quotas were far more difficult to meet in some districts than others. And again, it was all being run and operated, ultimately, by just one exceptionally motivated workaholic guy. That could not possibly last forever. The hubcaps started falling off in 1577, when Zhang's father died. Imperial law and social norms stipulated that Zhu Zhang was required to retire from his position, return to his home, and observe a 27 month long period of ritual mourning. Word around the court was that the top contender to be his

replacement was none other than his hated rival, Xu Jie, and that simply would not do. So it was that Secretary Zhang got his cronies and underlings together and told them to bend the emperor's ear, the emperor being all of 14 at the time, about a request that Zhang had managed to slip into the official pile asking that he be granted an official exemption from the mourning period, because he was just so incredibly indispensable for court business. And, I mean, he's kind of not wrong, but, I mean, also, come on, man, it's your dad. Show a little respect. The boy monarch, with little real choice in the matter, granted the request, which of course produced an uproar across the court. This was outrageous. Who does Zhang think he is?

Things got so wild, in fact, that a group of especially angry officials of the literary educational branch all got together and stormed over to Zhang's private residence to shout at him about this terrible breach of etiquette and ethics. Things, you might say, got heated. So much so that in response, Zhang went and told on this gaggle of lit teachers to the emperor and got Wang Li to have several of them publicly beaten and told to shut up. Even so, Zhang's reputation would never manage to recover from this incident. He desperately tried to wrest back control of the situation by announcing that there was going to be a surprise year-end personnel evaluation in which all top-level officials would be required to submit self-evaluations. Secretary Zhang was thereby

able to use this to get rid of his political enemies, which may have seemed useful in the moment, but would go on to be yet another poison pill introduced to the late Ming bureaucracy, in that it transformed the official review process into an instrument of partisan politics and petty revenge, something that would thereafter continue to plague the Ming imperial court unto its dying days. All in all, the greatest weakness of Zhang Zhejiang's reform efforts lay in the fact that they were all inextricably tied to him as an individual force of nature to make it function. None of his changes were, or even could be, systematized or adapted for others to take over.

Quote, he accumulated great quantities of silver bullion in imperial treasuries, yet he found no way to invest it, not even ways to utilize it as capital to create an imperial bank for managing public finance. He placed the different branches of the government under his personal control, yet his authority remained tied to personal politics. Under the Ming system, he had no publicly acknowledged authority to make policy or to govern. With Zhang's, strictly speaking, illicit improvisations, the Hongwu Emperor's model of government, which featured numerous, functionally isolated administrative pockets, once again had been made workable. But the entire

enterprise ceased to exist as soon as its coordinator, the Grand Secretary, left office. Zhang died in early July of 1582, of unspecified but presumably natural causes, after a full decade as the leader of Ming China in all but name. And yet for all that power, his efforts would scarcely outlive the man. This was in part due to the resistance to his reforms from the bureaucracy as a whole, but his own decisions would also come to play a prominent role in seeing his works quickly undone. As one of the primary caretakers, tutors, and acting regent of the young Wanli Emperor, Zhang had essentially stuffed the boy king into a box and done everything in

his power to keep him contained within while he actually ran the show. Quote, stories about Wanli's adolescent years depict a restless youth whose creative energies were frustrated at every turn, end quote. The boy was criticized for just about anything he did, getting drunk with his palace eunuchs at night, practicing calligraphy too often, enjoying horseback riding, or even watching archery contests, all of which were deemed pursuits incompatible with his role as emperor. Grand Secretary Zhang, in particular, ceaselessly demanded that the emperor embody the Confucian idea of a paragon of virtue and of wu-wei, or non-motion, imposing rigid standards of personal conduct and frugal living, restrictions that Wan

Li would find deeply humiliating and would never forget. An incident of particular note was the very first year of Wan Li's reign, November 1572, when a brilliant new star appeared in the sky. This Stella Nova is generally acknowledged to be the same star observed all around the world, most famously by the 26-year-old Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, which we now know to have been one of eight recorded supernovas visible to the naked eye, from the star SN 1572, some 8,000 light-years away. By the understandings of Ming astrologers, though, any change to the order of heaven was an ill omen that foretold strife and tribulation for the

dynasty. As such, Secretary Zhang had sternly rebuked the nine-year-old Wanli that this ill omen in the heavens was essentially a result of his personal and moral failings, and that he must consider and turn away from his misbehaviors. And you can bet that being told by your teacher that you, personally, were to blame for the heavens themselves shifting to show their displeasure is the kind of thing that might tend to permanently weigh on the developing mind of a nine-year-old. Imagine the emperor's surprise then in 1582, when he, now 19 or 20 years old, just a few months after the Grand Secretary's death, learned of reports and complaints that started pouring in about him, and particularly about his lifestyle. flunkies into key government positions, abusing his power, conspiracy with eunuchs, abusing his position to get his sons through the civil service exam and into the Hanlin Academy,

silencing public opinions, deceiving the emperor, and even conspiring to usurp the throne. Now, Wanli was long considered a rather gentle, even lenient ruler, largely owing to his mother's devout Buddhist faith and moral aversion to the death penalty. But he could certainly be wrathful, and especially when he felt slighted, hurt, or humiliated. And this definitely qualified as one of those times. For some time thereafter, he contemplated how best he could get his revenge on the now dead and buried Zhang Zhuzheng. Because none of the things that he'd been accused of were themselves actionable, or at least provable per se, no matter how much it might have hurt the emperor's feelings. Instead, for the time being, his political enemies satisfied themselves by using such

allegations to rip down and undo the majority of his ministerial reform measures. However, the opportunity finally arose two years after Zhang's death, when one of the imperial princesses raised accusations against the late Grand Secretary of him having illegally seized her family's estate. Wanli jumped on the opportunity, ordering the confiscation of all the Zhang family's properties and exiling his sons to service on the frontiers. He simultaneously issued an edict formally denouncing Zhang Zhezheng for his crimes. His works were then completely undone. All of his works, that is, except for the psychological hit job he'd worked over on the Wanli Emperor himself. Again from Huang, quote, Perceiving the double standard of his high officials, he became cynical. Also, he himself became a hoarder of worldly goods.

The crass greed displayed by this son of heaven remained an embarrassment until the end of his reign. And that is where we'll leave off today, as the Wanli Emperor takes control over his own government for the first time at the age of 20. Or at least, as he attempts to. But we're only getting started into the Wanli era, the longest reign period of the entire Ming dynasty, and Wanli will soon have his cynical worldview confirmed, just like his grandfather judging before him, that his ministers really were out to get him, to stop him from doing what he wanted, how he wanted, and that maybe, just maybe, he would take his imperial ball and go home.

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 Ancient Egypt.