4 / The Years of Successional Struggle, 1398–1402

When the Prince of Jin died, Emperor Hongwu was already seventy and was at war not only with the enemies beyond the Great Wall but also with his own mortality. Within only a month, he fell ill. A few weeks later, on June 24, 1398, the Ming patriarch followed his third son to the grave. Six days later, after Hongwu was properly buried at Filial Piety Tomb next to Empress Ma, Zhu Yunwen, who was barely twenty-one and still not quite a mature adult, assumed the throne as Emperor Jianwen.¹ Unfortunately, his court was, for the most part, dominated by scholarly advisors who did not always exert wise judgment. The new emperor relied heavily upon the advice of Qi Tai (d. 1402), the minister of war and a doctoral degree holder of 1385, and Huang Zicheng (1352–1402), the chancellor of the Hanlin Academy. Greatly concerned about a possible show of force or even an insurrection against him, the young Emperor Jianwen immediately announced the provisions of the will of his deceased grandfather and ordered his twenty-one surviving uncles not to attend the funeral service of Emperor Hongwu in Nanjing. According to Hongwu’s will, which was believed to have been drafted by Qi Tai, all of the officials and civilians within the princedoms would henceforth be under the direct administration of the court. The signal was abundantly clear that the semiautonomous princes represented potential threats to the throne unless they could be brought under control.

While thirty-eight of Hongwu’s forty concubines gave up their lives in accord with Mongol immolation customs and codes of honor instituted in the Yuan dynasty, and while courtiers of all ranks mourned the death of the dynasty’s founder for three days in Nanjing, the Prince of Yan defied the “spurious will” and led his princely guard units southward, intending to bid farewell to his father at the funeral service.² The prince’s move was read in Nanjing as an unnerving display of his growing arrogance, and Emperor Jianwen immediately deployed a huge army north of the Yangzi River. The prince went only as far as the canal port of Huaian before being forced to return home in humiliation and anger. He did, however, manage to send his three sons—Zhu Gaozhi, Zhu Gaoxu, and Zhu Gaosui (d. 1431)—to attend the funeral service on his behalf, without fearing that they might become Emperor Jianwen’s hostages. During the following winter, the indignant Prince of Yan attempted to visit his father’s Filial Piety Tomb in the southern foothills of Mount Zhong, but his request was once again denied.³ In his later writings there are moments when he appears to resent his father, when love and hate run close in his angered mind. The bitter memories that chained him were a powerful motivation for a man who seemed able to tap all his princely resources to turn adversity into good fortune. From then on, everything the Prince of Yan did was to prove that his father had made the wrong choice and that he was the only heir who could preserve his father’s empire. The Prince of Yan wadded the pain and anger into a tight ball and stuffed it into his soul. But he was the kind of man who would not be pushed around for too long.

A new political spectrum had suddenly emerged. Clearly, the new emperor and his close advisors were taking steps to reduce the princedoms and to remove any threats, real or perceived, that might jeopardize the new regime. Because of his seniority within the imperial family and his proven ability as a commander in the north, the Prince of Yan had become the biggest threat to the new court. All of a sudden, Nanjing launched an offensive on the prince’s sense of personal identity by unleashing a torrent of speculations about his birth mother. For many years, the maternity of the Prince of Yan had been the fodder of gossip, but it now became a serious political issue. If indeed his mother was not Empress Ma but instead a lesser consort, then, according to the dynasty’s established rule (which was patrilineal in its succession but also limited to sons of the empress), his accession to the throne would have constituted usurpation. Moreover, since the prince had so many half-brothers, had he not been born of Empress Ma, he would not have been able to claim seniority among his clan and to possess superior authority to manage intra-clan royal affairs.⁴ Indeed, the identity-politics continued even after the prince became emperor, as his loyal historiographers made sure that passages in the Ming Veritable Records (Ming Shilu) showed not only that his mother was the empress but that his father had placed a special trust in him. Such passages go on to say that a few days before his death, Emperor Hongwu said to the Prince of Yan, “You are the most talented of all my sons and the most capable of bearing responsibility.… Both Qin and Jin have died, and you are now senior. To fight abroad and keep peace at home—who is there but you?”⁵

During the years of successional struggle, the Prince of Yan would let the whole world know that he was indeed the most senior of all the imperial princes who had survived the dynastic founder and that Jianwen was actually the second son of Zhu Biao, borne by a concubine with the surname Lü. Who then should have been the first in line to succeed Emperor Hongwu? The prince’s mouthpieces, the likes of the monk Dao Yan, further pilloried Jianwen as indecisive, weak, and persnickety—qualities that had caused the aging Hongwu to doubt his grandson’s toughness. According to the tropes recorded in official Ming history, such doubts had resurfaced when the fourteen-year-old Jianwen was mourning over the death of his father. Jianwen became so distraught that his health was almost ruined. Such self-styled mortification ultimately alarmed his grandfather, who said to the young heir apparent, “Your filial piety is genuine and sincere, but do you not also care about me?”⁶ Nevertheless, after designating Jianwen heir apparent on September 28, 1392, Hongwu had carefully nurtured his grandson and meticulously prepared him for the emperorship. Naturally, the Prince of Yan resented Jianwen’s ascension, but he was convinced that the regime under his nephew would amount to nothing but a watery Caesarism. Biding his time, he diligently grew his whiskers.

In anointing his grandson to take over the helm, Emperor Hongwu selected the most trustworthy tutors to teach him literature, leadership arts, and Confucian morals. They took turns lecturing him on political and military institutions as well as on legal, economic, and social systems. From time to time Emperor Hongwu asked the crown prince to make decisions on his behalf, such as judgments on criminal cases. In almost every such case, the punishment pronounced by the young prince was lighter than that required by law. Whether the emperor appreciated his grandson’s lenient yardstick on criminal punishment or was worried that he might be too soft and easygoing, no one could tell. But one thing was certain: the balance between center and periphery was soon to be tipped.⁷

One of the luminary Confucian scholars who exerted an enormous influence on the young Emperor Jianwen was Fang Xiaoru (1357–1402), a native of Ninghai, Zhejiang, and a disciple of the eminent scholar Song Lian. Known for his literary talents and ethical awareness, Fang, then forty-one, quickly became Jianwen’s mentor and urged him to establish a model Confucian state. Fang harbored profound respect for antiquity and quickly introduced the young ruler to the political wisdom of The Rites of the Zhou (Zhouli), also known as The Officials of the Zhou (Zhouguan). This work, which has long been regarded by many scholars as suspect and of late composition, provides a detailed, systematic blueprint of Zhou dynasty (1122–256 B.C.E.) administration and divides all the official posts among officials of heaven, earth, and the four seasons. Jianwen, apparently persuaded by its cosmogonic theories and its notion of the sage-king, reinstituted archaic place names and official titles and turned back the clock on the legal code. But as the young emperor was preoccupied with titillating details of ancient rituals and institutions, his hasty reforms turned out to be both confusing and ineffective.⁸ Consequently, they alarmed many magnates who still bore the resentment of not having been allowed to attend Hongwu’s funeral and who viewed these changes as seriously undermining the foundations of the Ming empire. They quickly found a loophole in “The Ancestor’s Instructions” that gave them both the right and the responsibility to intervene with force in the affairs of the court in the event that an immature or disabled emperor was under the evil spell of treacherous advisors.⁹

Worse still, Jianwen took advice from Qi Tai and Huang Zicheng, both of whom were given powers to formulate political and military policies. Qi was reported to be able to declaim from Confucian classics from memory. Once, in front of Emperor Hongwu, he gave the correct names of each commander of the frontier defense and showed detailed knowledge of military stratagems, maps, charts, and routes. While Qi was considered knowledgeable about some defense issues, he had no experience with management—a crucial skill in a bureaucracy the size of the Ministry of War. Huang Zicheng, on the other hand, had never been one to shrink from a decision. He was ambitious, he monopolized conversations, he was often arrogant, and he bellowed. However, this egotist was also naive. He was so preoccupied with the ancient history of the rebellion of the seven princes against Han emperor Jingdi (r. 157–141 B.C.E.) that time and again he urged the young Jianwen to act before it was too late. Of the seven Han princes, the Prince of Wu, whose fief lay in what is now Jiangsu, was the strongest. But instead of striking directly against the Prince of Wu and removing him with one blow, the Han emperor decided to move against lesser princedoms, such as Chu and Zhao, finally provoking the Prince of Wu into rebellion. By 154 B.C.E. the Han Emperor had defeated all seven princes, once again asserting the authority of central power over the periphery.¹⁰

Such history lessons sounded ideal, but the eccentric Huang Zicheng had not digested them well enough, for when he advised his young master to copy the Han strategy, he neglected the fact that the time, the persons involved, and the circumstances were entirely different. Besides, the court had only speculation and conjecture to go on, no hard evidence of the Prince of Yan’s treasonous intentions. Other ministers had expressed different opinions and offered all kinds of solutions to the emperor’s problem, such as reassigning the prince to Nanchang, Jiangxi, a strategically less important area in the south.¹¹ Nonetheless, Emperor Jianwen agreed to follow Huang’s formula and send a pointed message to all of his uncles—that is, instead of directly confronting the powerful Prince of Yan, who had thus far committed no offense, he decided to first abolish such lesser princedoms as Zhou, Xiang, Qi, and Dai, hoping to substantially reduce the prince’s support and provoke him into rebellion. By late in the summer of 1398, the young monarch had begun the process of “reducing the feudatories” (xiaofan). The first target was the Prince of Zhou (Zhu Su), since he and the Prince of Yan had been brought up together intimately and since the princedom of Zhou at Kaifeng functioned as a buffer zone between Nanjing and Beijing. Early in the autumn of 1398, Emperor Jianwen dispatched General Li Jinglong to take over Kaifeng and convicted the Prince of Zhou on trumped-up charges. He then stripped the prince of his title and sent him into exile in Yunnan.¹²

Before the Prince of Zhou could settle at Monghua, Yunnan, Huang Zicheng designed another clever scheme to divide Jianwen’s uncles. The Prince of Zhou was brought back to Nanjing to testify against his brothers—in particular, the Princes of Dai (Zhu Gui), Xiang (Zhu Bo, 1371–99), and Min (Zhu Bian, 1379–1450), who had allegedly committed various forms of malfeasance. The Prince of Zhou’s coerced testimony amplified the charges of the princely conspiracy and resulted in the house arrest of the Prince of Dai in Datong in February 1399. It also caused the Prince of Xiang to set fire to his own palace in Jingzhou, Huguang Province, burning himself and his family to death on June 1, 1399. During the next two months, the court also abrogated the titles of the Princes of Qi (Zhu Fu) and Min, who were no more secure than the Prince of Zhou after running afoul of imperial power.¹³ By this time, Nanjing was a place where falsehood was often more believable than truth, and a pall hung over the gateway of every princedom, five of the senior and more strategically located of which had been brought under imperial control. In the wake of these bold measures, the court in Nanjing simultaneously took cautious steps to deal with the Prince of Yan, Jianwen’s most feared uncle. It first named Zhang Bing governor of Beiping and appointed Xie Gui and Zhang Xin the military commissioners of the region. In April 1399 it sent the censor Bao Zhao to Beiping to begin gathering evidence against the Prince of Yan.¹⁴

It is to be noted that at this point the Prince of Yan remained unscathed, since the court had not yet officially accused him of any illegal or seditious acts. In fact, the channels of communication between Emperor Jianwen and the Prince of Yan remained open as the prince petitioned the emperor to pardon the Prince of Zhou and begged him to repair their tattered relations. Jianwen, who preferred a more sober approach to reducing the power of his uncles, is said to have been moved by the visceral petition. But while Minister of War Qi Tai appreciated the emperor’s feelings and strong sense of familial piety, Huang Zicheng insisted that familial relations had gone past the point of no return and that the fray had to continue until the Princedom of Yan was eliminated. The inept Jianwen clearly vacillated between confronting the strong-willed Prince of Yan and soft-pedaling to resolve disputes with his most senior uncle. Over the course of the next four arduous months, he ordered Commissioner-in-Chief Song Zhong to take over the command of the three escort guard units (about fifteen thousand men) of the Yan princedom and moved Yan’s troops to the Kaiping agro-military station. Military personnel on the staff of the Prince of Yan, including Guan Dong, an escort-guard-unit commander of the Yuan army, were recalled. The Left Guard and Right Guard at Yongqing, both of which had close ties to the Prince of Yan, were redeployed far away from the Yan influence, at Zhangde and Xunde respectively. Furthermore, the loyalist general Xu Kai was assigned to guard the canal port of Linqing, and another trusted commander, Geng Huan, was stationed at the important Great Wall pass of Shanhai. By mid-summer of 1399 the princedom of Yan was totally surrounded by loyalist forces and, according to a widely publicized report, the Prince of Yan had gone mad.¹⁵ But the Nanjing authority was still uneasy because the shadow of the prince—although seemingly waning—continued to hang over the empire.

There is no question that this was a gut-wrenching ordeal for the Prince of Yan at this sad, low point in his life. When he stared into the mirror he watched his face grow fainter and fainter as if the glass were consuming it. His madness, however, was feigned, and his publicized acts of dissipation were staged; he was actually buying time (and waiting for his whiskers to touch his navel) before he made his move. While trying to toughen his resolve, he remembered that his mother had taught him to not act hastily, and resisted knee-jerk reactions to the court’s provocations. In the meantime, he petitioned the court to send his three sons home from Nanjing, where they had represented him in the traditional mourning ceremony for the dynasty’s founder. There was a heated debate between Qi Tai and Huang Zicheng about the release of the prince’s sons. Qi, who had previously visited Beiping and knew that the Prince of Yan was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, advised Jianwen to keep the prince’s three sons as hostages. Unexpectedly, it was the eccentric Huang Zicheng who advised Jianwen to release them so as to allay the prince’s suspicions. After consulting with Xu Zengshou, General Xu Da’s younger son and the uncle of the three Yan princes, the emperor decided to abide by “The Ancestor’s Instructions”—which forbade taking a prince’s sons as hostages—and release his three cousins over Qi Tai’s strong opposition.¹⁶

This proved to be a fatal mistake. The crisis threatening to precipitate a civil war was festering rather than healing. No sooner had the three princes from Yan left Nanjing than Ni Liang, a battalion commander in the Yan princedom, secretly reported to the court that the Prince of Yan was plotting a rebellion. Later, after war had erupted and was not going well for Jianwen, he, looking for a scapegoat to bear the blame for his own follies, slew Xu Zengshou with his own hands in the palace. As the three princes fled northward just prior to the outbreak of the civil war, they were almost stopped by another uncle, Xu Huizu. It was now late July and the situation was growing extremely tense—any slight upset might bring the two camps into hostilities. The fatal touch finally came on August 6, 1399, when imperial messengers Zhang Bing and Xie Gui attempted to enter the palace in Yan and arrest several members of the prince’s staff. Clearly, the court was tightening its net about the prince, but since he had already set up a network of spies to gather intelligence, he soon found an escape route. As a result of the tips and assistance of Li Youzhi (the Beiping surveillance commissioner) and Zhang Xin (the Beiping regional military commissioner), the prince was able to quickly recruit some eight hundred bodyguards, bringing them into his palace and subsequently ambushing and killing the imperial messengers at Duanli Gate. His men then seized all nine gates of Beiping, and with the defection of Zhang Xin, other commanders in the vicinity also joined his camp. Alas, the civil war that would last until July of 1402 was finally on.¹⁷

The Prince of Yan then issued a manifesto in which he cited his casus belli for armed insurrection from “The Ancestor’s Instructions,” which permitted a prince or princes to bring forces to Nanjing to “suppress troubles” caused by deceitful ministers. In this case, he told his countrymen that Emperor Jianwen was a perverse and unfilial nephew who was being deceived by the evil ministers Qi Tai and Huang Zicheng and ill-advised by dishonest eunuchs and monks. He went on to declare that, in order to remove these treacherous people from the court and to save the dynasty, he had to exercise his traditional rights and obligations as a prince. He was merely following the will of heaven, or fengtian.¹⁸ However, the prince’s manifesto was artful because “The Ancestor’s Instructions” also stated that a prince could come to the court only after he had received a secret decree from His Majesty; that as soon as the troubles were suppressed, the prince should withdraw his troops to the barracks and personally report the situation to His Majesty; and that, after staying for five days, he had to return to his own princedom.¹⁹

Of course the Prince of Yan did not comply with any of these rules; furthermore, he himself often consulted with eunuchs and monks before making decisions. On the other hand, reasoning that his domain was under attack and that his life was at stake, he was within his heaven-given rights in defending himself. Later in his own reminiscences, he would claim that he never liked to see slaughter, but when backed in to the corner and forced into impossible circumstances, he had to fight back.²⁰ It is certain that long after the civil war ended, the war of words continued, as his mouthpieces besmirched Emperor Jianwen and demonized Jianwen’s advisors. Scholars of Ming history are usually skeptical of the official civil war documents, which tend to foist blame on the losers and clean up the image of the winners so as to justify perpetuation of the latter’s rule.

Fight back he did. The prince also began to grant ranks and titles to the commanders who had joined his campaign. On August 9 the prince’s forces took Jizhou, then moved on to Juyong Pass along the Great Wall. The loyalist general Song Zhong led his troops southward from Kaiping, attempting to retake Juyong Pass, but was defeated and killed at Huailai by the prince’s army on August 17. Most of Song Zhong’s troops originally had been trained by the prince and were happy to return to the banner of Yan. Then Guo Liang, the last senior officer in the Beiping command structure, surrendered Yongping (today’s Lulong) to the prince, and within only twenty days after the first blood was drawn, more than nineteen guard units of the northern army, numbering over one hundred thousand troops, had come over to join his so-called Trouble-Suppressing (Jinnan) Army.²¹ Clearly, Huang Zicheng’s strategy to gradually isolate and strangle the Prince of Yan had backfired, and the court was now faced with a large-scale civil war. At this juncture, Emperor Jianwen appointed Marquis Geng Bingwen commander-in-chief of a grand army of three hundred thousand to put down the rebellion.

Geng Bingwen, a veteran of numerous campaigns and one of the few survivors of Emperor Hongwu’s “Fengyang mafia,” was nearly sixty-five years old when he was charged with this mission. On September 24 his approximately 130,000 men battled the Yan army along the northern bank of the Hutuo River, which flows to Tianjin and out into the Bohai Bay. The Prince of Yan, who knew the terrain’s accessibility, effectively utilized a strategy of entrapment and constriction and scored an impressive victory. He forced Geng’s shattered army to retreat to Zhending, south of Beiping; the prince assaulted the well-fortified city for three days but finally had to withdraw. During this campaign, he enlisted a cavalry guard unit made up of surrendered Mongol households. This special guard was commanded by a distinguished Mongol named Qoryocin (1349–1409), who, in September 1381, had surrendered with a sizable group of his people to the Prince of Yan. Qoryocin had since become one of the prince’s right-hand men and served as a commander in the military garrisons of Beiping. At the battle of Zhending, Qoryocin’s Mongol contingent twice defeated Geng Bingwen’s imperial forces.²² Even though Geng was a field marshal of known quality and still had some hundred thousand good men to contain the Yan rebels, the nervous Huang Zicheng felt the rumblings of an earthquake and urged the equally shaken Emperor Jianwen to dismiss Geng. The Prince of Yan was smug, as he had successfully frustrated his enemy’s plan and had caused conflict between superiors and subordinates. The person Jianwen chose to replace Geng Bingwen was Li Jinglong, son of Duke Li Wenzhong and, based upon Chinese genealogical reckoning, also the nephew of the Prince of Yan.²³ But Li was no Geng Bingwen, mainly because, although he had inherited his father’s privileges and position, he had never been tested against truly tough enemies.

In a war like this one, timing was everything, but Li Jinglong was not even aware of its critical importance. His priority was to recruit between five hundred thousand and six hundred thousand men so that he could utilize numerical superiority to defeat the Prince of Yan. This strategy made the prince laugh because during this recruitment, Li wasted crucial time. It was well known that the prince generally despised Li’s character and that Li had even become a subject of black humor in the prince’s camp. The prince was obviously a good student of Sun Zi’s sixth-century B.C.E. text The Art of War (Sunzi bingfa), which teaches that battles are normally won through wisdom and guile rather than through sheer military might, and that strategy is far more important than bravery and skill with swords and bows. It was while Li was still assembling his troops that the prince left Beiping to secure his rear and to forge alliances with some of his former enemies beyond the Great Wall. In so doing, he left the defense of the Beiping base to his eldest son, Zhu Gaozhi. The young prince had grown up fat, sickly, and clumsy and was known for his lack of interest in salutary physical training. Nevertheless, during his father’s absence, Zhu Gaozhi, the future Emperor Hongxi (r. 1424–25), demonstrated the fortitude to see through an awesome assignment. He surprised Li Jinglong and everyone else by distinguishing himself not only in administration but also in battle.

By this time, the Prince of Yan knew his army’s capabilities inside and out and structured his battle plans and decisions accordingly. His strategy was to use the elements of surprise and deception, and his primary target was the mind of General Li. He first went to relieve Yongping, which was being attacked by the Wugao people from Liaodong, while cultivating the goodwill of the Koreans in the region. He then marched to Daning (in what is now Jehol) beyond the Great Wall and captured the Prince of Ning (Zhu Quan). Together with the escort guard units from the Ning princedom and three additional guards from his Mongol allies, totaling some eighty thousand troops and six thousand carts, the Prince of Yan marched back to Beiping to face Li Jinglong, who had besieged the city.²⁴ In the meantime, the cavalry guard commanded by Qoryocin had arrived to give the Yan army additional strength. During the siege of Beiping, the Prince of Yan’s wife mobilized the army wives to assist her son’s defense. They threw stones at Li Jinglong’s troops, who were attacking Lizheng (later changed to Zhengyang) Gate. Years later, whenever Zhu Di commemorated this particular event, he chortled over the performance of his wife, concubines, daughters, and daughters-in-law and the fearless army wives.²⁵

At this critical stage some of the eunuchs, who had been personally trained by the prince, also began to repeatedly distinguish themselves as battle leaders. Among them was Ma He (the future Admiral Zheng He), who dug in around a Beiping water reservoir, the Zheng Village Dike. Ma was able to stall the enemies’ advance and bought enough time for the prince to dispatch relief troops.²⁶ On December 2, 1399, the relief cavalry of Yan attacked the camp of Li’s besieging army from without while Zhu Gaozhi opened the gates of Beiping and started the offensive from within. The surprise attack and confusion caused the imperial army to scatter all over the battleground, give up the city of Zhending, and finally to retreat all the way to Dezhou, Shandong. The prince asked immediately for negotiation yet insisted that Emperor Jianwen dismiss his advisors, who were using him insidiously. In order to extricate himself from the mess caused by the initial misjudgment of others beneath him, Emperor Jianwen did dismiss Qi Tai and Huang Zicheng following Li Jinglong’s defeat. But Qi was reappointed minister of war in January 1401 after the victories of Sheng Yong (d. 1403), a veteran warrior who had served and learned from General Geng Bingwen for years.

In the meantime the Prince of Yan, who had mastered both combat and scheming, had decided to fool Li Jinglong one more time. In early 1400 the prince personally led his cavalry into northern Shanxi and pretended he was about to attack Datong. Scarcely had Li learned of the surrender of two small garrisons to the prince than he marched his troops, most of whom were Southerners and not accustomed to the severe cold weather, to rescue Datong. However, by the time the imperial army reached Datong in March, the prince’s forces had disappeared. The round trip between Dezhou and Datong was a costly one for Li, as countless imperial soldiers died of cold and exhaustion. Once again, feints and false retreats that the prince had learned from Sun Zi’s Art of War had paid off. Despite the fact that Li Jinglong was the kind of field marshal who did not seem to commiserate with his troops, Emperor Jianwen continued to depend upon him to put down the rebellion.²⁷ Cicero’s remark that “large affairs are not performed by muscle, speed, or nimbleness, but by reflection, character, and judgment” is applicable to the situation of Jianwen, whose reflection, character, and judgment were inadequate for managing the civil war.

In May 1400 the imperial army engaged the Yan troops along the Baigou River in Zhuozhou (in what is now Hebei). Once again, Li was outwitted, his army was routed, and the Yan troops tittered. Li lost over one million piculs of provisions—upon which his troops depended heavily for their sustenance—to the Yan and retreated all the way to Jinan, the capital of Shandong. Fortunately for the imperial army, Shandong governor Tie Xuan (1366–1402; probably a Turk or Mongol) and the veteran commander Sheng Yong not only were able to hold the Yan troops for three months but also launched a successful counterattack. For their victories, Sheng was promoted to the position of marquis and replaced Li Jinglong, who had by this time totally sullied his reputation as the commander-in-chief of the imperial army. Tie Xuan was made minister of war. The momentum seemed to have shifted in favor of Nanjing as Sheng Yong’s troops defeated the Yan army on January 1 and 2, 1401, at Dongchang, Shandong. Following this victory, an air of confidence returned to Nanjing as Jianwen reappointed Qi Tai and Huang Zicheng to office. Three months later Sheng broke the Yan army and scattered them around Baoding, leaving the prince with only a few bodyguards. For one fleeting moment, Sheng thought he could capture the Prince of Yan alive. Then on April 6, 1401, when the two armies were engaged in hand-to-hand combat, the Yan forces in the northeast against Sheng in the southwest, all of a sudden there came a violent storm from the northeast, blinding Sheng’s soldiers and forcing Sheng to withdraw back to Dezhou.²⁸ Popular accounts claimed that the prince used sorcery to conjure up the unseasonable weather and that his Daoist advisors countered the spells of General Sheng with magic. The truth is that it was his incredible nerve and probably a blessing from heaven, or, perhaps, the cunning of history.

Two months later, the Yan general Li Yuan led his troops, disguised as imperial army forces, through Shandong all the way to Jiangsu and burned the government rice barges. For the rest of 1401, the Yan army engaged the imperial army in several locations, including Datong and Yongping. Although during the previous three years the prince had scored more victories than he had suffered defeats, he seemed content to stay near Beiping, not attempting to occupy the territories he conquered. But the situation was clearly in his favor, as a Korean envoy who visited China from fall 1401 through spring 1402 observed: “The Yan troops are strong and fighting with momentum. Even though the loyalist troops are more numerous, they are weaker and continue to suffer defeats. Moreover, the Tartars take advantage of the civil war and occupy the territory in Liaodong. China is uneasy.”²⁹ During the stalemate, both sides used spies and counterintelligence. After receiving a first-hand intelligence report on the conditions in Nanjing from a eunuch defector, the Prince of Yan first consulted with his monk advisor Dao Yan, then decided to take the poorly defended capital city by surprise.

On January 15, 1402, the prince led his army straight toward Nanjing, bypassing the Dezhou and Jinan strongholds, both of which were well-defended by loyalist troops. He encountered little or no difficulty during his initial southern march as his troops took Dongchang and Donga and entered southern Shandong within days. In less than a month he reached the suburb of Qufu, the birthplace of Confucius. He showed his utmost respect for the sacred city by ordering his soldiers not to hurt even a blade of grass or a tree. On February 28 the Yan troops overran Peixian’s seven legendary fortresses, and four days later, on March 3, surrounded the important canal city of Xuzhou. However, during the next three months, the Prince of Yan encountered several problems—including a notably stiffer enemy resistance, a dwindling supply of provisions, and a lack of marines to engage in river and lake warfare—and held a war council. Once again feeling the magnetism of his leadership, his commanders vowed to cross the Yangzi at all costs.

In the meantime, Sheng Yong ordered the retreat of the imperial army all the way to the Huai River but was soundly defeated by the prince on June 9. The battleground was now centered along the lower Yangzi, and more and more imperial commanders who had lost confidence in Emperor Jianwen defected to the prince.³⁰ Loyalty was passing, replaced by pragmatism and survival instinct. Chen Xuan (1365–1433), an assistant chief commissioner, surrendered to the prince and provided him with a river fleet that crossed the Yangzi on July 3. But the Prince of Yan was in no hurry to take Nanjing, which still had some two hundred thousand troops in its vicinity. Instead, he first seized Zhenjiang, ninety kilometers east of Nanjing and a point where the Yangzi meets the Grand Canal.³¹ After replenishing his warriors with the rich products of the Yangzi delta, he moved slowly westward while pondering how best to attack the supposedly impregnable capital city of Nanjing.

At this juncture Emperor Jianwen became anxious to cauterize the self-inflicted wounds resulting from his political naivete. He despairingly sent feelers, including a princess and General Li Jinglong, to make peace with the Prince of Yan and even to offer him the northern half of the empire. In the meantime, the distressed Jianwen dispatched officials to recruit and organize the training of local militia that could be called upon should the civil war continue. The Prince of Yan regarded Jianwen’s olive branch as a hollow gesture and pressed on with his attack. On July 13, when his troops appeared before the northern walls of Nanjing, the then-disgraced General Li Jinglong and the Prince of Gu (Zhu Hui) opened the Gold River Gate (Jinchuanmen) and permitted the Yan soldiers to enter the capital. But when the Prince of Yan was passing through the gate, the censor Lian Ying stopped the prince’s steed while pulling a dagger from his robe. Lian’s attempted assassination failed as he was killed at the spot.³² Meanwhile, some 460 of Jianwen’s officials had fled the capital. In the midst of the confusion and panic, the imperial palace enclosure within the city walls caught fire, and Jianwen disappeared. He and his wife were likely burned to death, although legend has it that he escaped via a secret tunnel with the assistance of some twenty people in various disguises and later became a Buddhist monk, hiding outside Suzhou. Other rumors suggested that Jianwen fled overseas and prepared for a comeback.³³ Qi Tai painted his horse black with ink and managed to flee undetected for some time. But the ink eventually wore off with the horse’s perspiration, and Qi was recognized and caught. Huang Zicheng attempted to organize a resistance in Suzhou but was quickly crushed by the Yan troops.³⁴ The years of struggle were finally over: on July 17, 1402, the Prince of Yan “reluctantly” accepted the petitions of his court and ascended the dragon throne, hence beginning a new reign with the title Yongle, “Perpetual Happiness.”

During the second half of 1402, Emperor Yongle callously but methodically purged Jianwen’s supporters in the ranks of both the civil service and the military while consolidating his newly acquired powers. Between nine hundred and one thousand officials were branded “evil” or “treacherous,” and hundreds of thousands of their kinsmen, neighbors, teachers, students, servants, and friends were rounded up, imprisoned, banished to the frontier, or put to death. Historian Gu Yingtai of the Qing dynasty called such people the “collateral victims” of the civil war and recorded that 870 associates of the neo-Confucian thinker Fang Xiaoru, who repeatedly gave Jianwen bad advice, were put to death during this ruthless purge. In the case of Zhou Jin, a councilor in the Court of Judicial Review, 440 associates were executed. During the trial of Censor-in-Chief Lian Zining, 150 persons met their maker. Minister of Rites Chen Di and his two sons were beheaded, his wife hanged, and 180 members of his household and kinsmen were whipped before being exiled to the frontier. When Yan Ya was detained in jail, more than 80 of his associates died because they refused to give testimony. In the case of Hu Run, all 217 members of his household were victimized. The arrest of Censor Tong Yong caused 230 of Tong’s kinsmen, ranging from first to fifth degrees of kinship, to die or be banished. The purge of 1402 was among the most brutal and barbarous political acts in Chinese history, but it also included many heroic and revelatory stories.³⁵

Was Yongle a murderous monster like his father, or was he a sagacious, generous, forgiving, and humane ruler, as hailed by his courtiers? One thing is sure: no other purge would take place during his reign. Perhaps the political culture and the deep-rooted Confucian ideology of the time required that Jianwen’s officials recognize no other Son of Heaven and serve no other masters. Such emphasis on loyalty and fidelity dictated that a man could serve only one master and a woman could marry only one man; an official could no more transfer his allegiance to another sovereign than could a widow remarry. Jianwen’s loyalists were also concerned with the mystique of the throne; if emperors could be made and unmade, the constitution would be undermined and the principle of primogeniture destroyed, and no one could predict the future. The death of Fang Xiaoru exemplified such moral and ideological standards. It is reported that before the Prince of Yan had left Beiping, Dao Yan made him promise never to harm Fang. Soon after the prince seized Nanjing, he summoned Fang and asked the latter to continue to serve the dynasty as if nothing had changed. But Zhu Di got an earful from Fang about Confucian virtues and about the safety of his master Jianwen. When Fang learned that Jianwen had been killed in the fire, he decided that his life was no longer useful. The forty-five-year-old Fang then insisted that Jianwen’s son be installed as the new emperor. This bold request greatly irritated the victorious prince, who said that the successional issue was his family affair and that no outsider could decide the matter. When Yongle reportedly commanded Fang to draft the rescript announcing his imperial succession, Fang threw the brush and paper to the ground, declaring that he would rather die than serve the “usurper.”³⁶ Fang’s career and martyrdom have stood ever since as stellar examples of fidelity. The foundation of Chinese civilization rests on a few simple ideas as old as Mount Zhong in Nanjing; preeminent among these is that of fidelity.³⁷

Another vassal of Jianwen, by the name of Liu Jing (1340–1402), also confronted the issue of legitimacy and faced a difficult choice between life and fidelity. A brilliant, resolute, and loyal man like his father, Liu Ji (1311–1375), Emperor Hongwu’s most trusted advisor at the onset of the Ming dynasty, Liu had served as an administrator for seven different princes. He often visited Beiping and played chess with the Prince of Yan. At the outset of the civil war, Liu hurried back to Nanjing and presented sixteen “must” and “mustn’t” tactics to Emperor Jianwen but to no avail. In 1400 Liu disregarded his own poor health and once again asked for the audience of Jianwen, to whom he submitted a long written litany of advice, only to have the young emperor order him to go home and rest. When the Prince of Yan seized Nanjing, Liu Jing refused to pay his courtesy call by claiming poor health. He was blacklisted as an evil official and brought to the court by force. When Liu saw the Prince of Yan, he said, “Even after one hundred generations, Your Highness [instead of ‘Your Majesty’] will not be able to get away from the word ‘usurpation.’”³⁸ Soon after Liu was thrown in jail, he hanged himself.

The political culture of the time and the question of legitimacy prevented several other of Jianwen’s vassals from working for the new monarch. Yongle was extremely sensitive to being branded a usurper and compared to Wang Mang (r. C.E. 9–23) of the Han dynasty. After Huang Zicheng was arrested and brought to see Yongle, the latter complimented Huang’s erudition and polished calligraphy and told him not to emulate Fang Xiaoru’s obstinacy. Huang calmly replied, “If Your Highness desired my service, you’d have to apply cardinal principles to rule the world. Since Your Highness has violated such cardinal principles, I am afraid the future generations will learn that from you.” Huang then elaborated his concept of the mandate of heaven and boldly criticized Yongle. Yongle asked, “I know you’d never work for me, but what crime should I charge you with?” Huang replied without hesitation, “Why don’t you charge me as a close advisor to the deceased emperor who failed to advise him to deprive you of your princely powers early enough, consequently allowing you to become so fierce and cruel.” Upon hearing these sharp, insulting words, Yongle, clearly in a rage, instantaneously ordered Huang’s “death by one thousand cuts” for committing high treason. Incisions were made on Huang’s chest, abdomen, arms, legs, and back, causing him to bleed to death slowly and agonizingly.³⁹

While conducting a vindictive revenge against his political enemies of the previous two decades, Yongle also wanted to cultivate the image of a sage-king, hoping to mute critics from talking about his brutality. He thus needed a hatchet man to carry out his political vendettas and to skillfully and readily trump up crimes against his enemies, some of whom were completely innocent but were nevertheless guilty by association. Such a person was Chen Ying (d. 1411), a hyena of a man who also harbored a deep hatred for the Jianwen regime. Chen had started his career as a scholar at the National University in Nanjing and was soon promoted by Emperor Hongwu to the position of surveillance commissioner in Shandong. In 1399 he was transferred to Beiping, where he continued his censorial work and became well acquainted with the Prince of Yan. Chen was later demoted to a post in Guangxi by Emperor Jianwen and henceforth began to support the political agenda of the Prince of Yan, keeping in close contact with the prince’s inner circle. One month after Yongle had ascended the throne, the brassily clever Chen Ying received an order to return to Nanjing and became the senior censor-in-chief in the Censorate. According to the structure of Ming officialdom, Chen’s job was supposed to be confined to the impeachment of wayward officials. However, he was to exercise a much broader scope of power, including the ability to institute preventive, corrective, and punitive measures whenever he deemed them warranted.

Soon after Chen Ying took up his new post, he submitted a memorial to Yongle, part of which said,

Your Majesty responds to the heavens and obeys the general will of the populace, and the entire nation follows your order. Nevertheless, there are a handful of courtiers who remain loyal to Jianwen and refuse to accept the new mandate. They include Vice Minister Huang Guan, Vice Minister Liao Sheng, Hanlin Academy Compiler Wang Shuying, Surveillance Commissioner Wang Liang, County Magistrate Yan Bowei, and others. These people harbor rebellion and conspiracy, and I recommend that they be executed.

The emperor responded by saying that he wanted to punish and execute only a very few treacherous ministers (such as Qi Tai and Huang Zicheng) and to pardon some of those among the last twenty-nine persons on the indicted list (such as Zhang Dan, Wang Dun, Zheng Ci, Huang Fu, and Yin Changlong) and retain their services for the dynasty. Yongle made it very clear that in his court, he alone possessed the imperial prerogative and that no ministers would be permitted to exercise that power on his behalf.⁴⁰ Nevertheless, Chen Ying seemed to be able to read Yongle’s mind and knew exactly how far he could go in the blood-curdling witch hunt. Indeed, it was Chen who read Fang Xiaoru’s deposition and who filed charges against the major political figures of Jianwen’s regime and several hundred of their kinsmen. Even though Yongle instructed him to exercise restraint in indicting innocent people, Chen continued to persecute Jianwen’s officials. The purge would not subside.⁴¹

Of the twenty-nine persons Yongle said he would pardon and retain, none would stay in government long and most perished in the end. Zhang Dan, formerly minister of personnel, was allowed to retain his post until one morning when the moody Yongle started criticizing Jianwen’s decision to restructure Ming governmental organization, for which the emperor felt that Zhang was also responsible. After his dismissal by Yongle, Zhang hanged himself in the rear hall of the Ministry of Personnel and his wife and children jumped into a pond and drowned. After Zhang’s suicide only one of his former subordinates dared to look at his corpse and take care of his funeral service. Another casualty was Wang Dun, who was serving as Jianwen’s minister of revenue when Yongle’s troops entered the capital city. Wang jumped over the city wall but was captured by Yongle’s soldiers. After briefly retaining his post, Wang was reassigned to coordinate and supervise farms and grain distribution in north China. In 1404 he was made an administration commissioner and was responsible for routine management of provincial business but apparently was not happy with his job. Wang died in depression and despair.

Zheng Ci, formerly minister of public works, had had a good working relationship with the Prince of Yan when Zheng was an assistant administration commissioner in Beiping. Indeed, when he became emperor, Yongle appointed Zheng to be his new minister of rites, but during the summer of 1408 Zheng was investigated for condoning a criminal act committed by a subordinate in his ministry. He soon died of fear and distress. Yin Changlong was able to escape immediate execution and, as promised by Yongle, was given a job working in the princely establishment in Beiping. However, Yin too was later tortured by the Embroidered-Uniform Guard before being put to death. Many of his kinsmen suffered the same fate. The only exception was Huang Fu, who had been Jianwen’s vice-minister of public works. Yongle actually promoted him to the position of minister, but Huang was soon impeached by Chen Ying and was transferred to Beiping as a branch minister. He was then arrested and, after serving a brief jail term, was assigned to manage civil affairs for the Ming colonial government in Annam. Huang would stay in Annam for nineteen years, helping to pacify the Ming’s southernmost colony. However, when he died of natural causes in 1440, he received no posthumous title from the court. It could be that Yongle’s grudge toward Huang was so deep that even Yongle’s successors dared not erase Huang’s name from the list of “evil and treacherous officials.”⁴²

In addition to cleansing the ranking civil officials, Yongle took various measures—primarily assassination or other foul play—to deal with top military officers who had fought against him at one time or another during the civil war. Commander Tie Xuan was arrested but refused to acknowledge Yongle as his new overlord. It was reported that the thirty-six-year-old Tie screamed and cursed at Yongle at the moment of his gruesome execution. General Sheng Yong surrendered his remaining troops and was appointed a commandant at Huaian, but within one year he was censored. Sheng took his own life. General Geng Bingwen continued to hold the position of marquis, but later he, too, committed suicide when he was charged with treasonable conduct. General Li Jinglong, who had opened the palace gate in Nanjing for the Yan troops and facilitated the transition of power from Jianwen to Yongle, was made a duke and received four thousand piculs of rice annually. However, two years later, he was stripped of his rank; his property, together with that of his brother and brother-in-law, was confiscated, and he was imprisoned. Although on several occasions he attempted to fast to death, Li would survive until 1421.⁴³

During the purge, Yongle also had to deal harshly with some of his own relatives. In doing so, he may have troubled his soul and damaged his mental wellbeing. Xu Huizu, the eldest brother of his wife but a Jianwen loyalist, was a case in point. When the Prince of Yan had entered Nanjing, Xu went to his father Xu Da’s tomb at Mount Zhong, refusing to welcome the victorious prince. As emperor, Yongle ordered his staff to prepare a death warrant for Xu, but the latter declared that he was immune from any death penalty because his father, Xu Da, was a founding father of the dynasty and because Emperor Hongwu had guaranteed in a written certificate that Xu Da’s children would never be subject to capital punishment. The angry Yongle stripped Xu of his ducal rank and put him under house arrest. Xu, who had played games with Yongle when they were both young and carefree, would spend more than five stressful years confined in his own house. In 1407, a few months after Xu died of natural causes, Yongle decreed, “In spite of the fact that Xu Huizu joined Qi Tai and Huang Zicheng in undermining the welfare of the state, I want to pardon his crimes, mainly because of the great contributions of his father Xu Da. The house of Xu needs to have an heir.” Consequently, Xu Huizu’s eldest son and Yongle’s nephew, Xu Qin (d. 1424), was invested as Duke of Zhongshan. However, when Yongle received him in audience in 1421, Xu Qin abruptly left the court. This act incurred the wrath of Yongle, who at once took every noble privilege away from Xu Qin and made him a commoner.⁴⁴

Yongle also made a savage attack on the husband of his favorite sister, Princess Ningguo (1364–1434). Princess Ningguo was Empress Ma’s eldest daughter and was married to Mei Yin (d. 1405), who was known for his knowledge of history, classics, and the art of war. Of all his sons-in-law, Emperor Hongwu had loved and trusted Mei the most and, because of that, time and again instructed Mei to assist the young sovereign Jianwen. During the civil war, Mei was a regional commander at Huaian and put up a meticulous defense against the Prince of Yan. When the prince asked Mei to let his troops pass through Huaian, Mei cut off the nose and ears of Yongle’s messenger in reply. Even after Yongle had ascended the throne, Mei continued to command his troops along the Huai River, refusing to take orders from the new emperor. Yongle then pressured his younger sister to write a letter begging her husband to surrender. When Mei read the letter from Princess Ningguo, which was sealed with her own blood, he broke down and wailed. The calculating Yongle, who was good at absorbing pain and humiliation but never forgot to keep score, finally showed his cunning in the winter of 1404, when Senior Censor-in-Chief Chen Ying impeached Mei Yin for harboring fugitives and practicing witchcraft. Mei’s entire family was exiled to Liaodong, and one year later, when Mei arrived in the capital under orders to come to the court, he was pushed from a Nanjing bridge by two junior military commanders. Mei’s obituary stated that he had committed suicide. The heart-broken Princess Ningguo was then forty-one years old. Even though Yongle would later reward her regularly and handsomely, she had to endure her widowhood for twenty-nine long years.⁴⁵

It is obvious that in order to begin with a clean slate and to concentrate all power in his own hands, the new emperor wanted to wipe out the old princely guard units one by one. He realized that he needed to first eliminate the most politically volatile elements by transferring many of the northern princedoms to central and south China. As a result, the Prince of Gu (Zhu Hui) was transferred from Xuanfu to Changsha, the Prince of Ning (Zhu Quan) from Daning to Nanchang, and so on. For a while he allowed the Prince of Dai (Zhu Gui) to stay at Datong, the Prince of Liao (Zhu Zhi) at Liaodong, and the Prince of Shu (Zhu Chun, 1371–1423) at Chengdu, but later on Yongle took away their troop commands altogether. And in spite of the fact that he restored the titles and properties to the Prince of Zhou (Zhu Su), the Prince of Qi (Zhu Fu), and the Prince of Min (Zhu Bian), they became essentially ornamental symbols with ceremonial functions as Yongle brought the princely establishments firmly under his personal control.⁴⁶ In the meantime, Yongle rescinded the nomenclatural changes made by Jianwen and reappointed the officials dismissed or demoted by his predecessor. He reestablished his father’s oppressive ruler-minister imbalance, secured control over the civil bureaucracy and the military establishment, and delivered both into the hands of administrators appointed by and answerable to himself. He started using eunuchs to manage espionage and internal security and to conduct military and foreign affairs, and thus unwittingly created a fully developed third administrative branch that participated in all of the most essential matters of the dynasty. Years before, when he was still a teenager, Zhu Di had admired the rulership of his father. The years of waiting were at an end, and a new era of “Perpetual Happiness” (Yongle) was about to begin. He was now most anxious to establish a brilliant and dynamic reign that would truly justify the violent turmoil of the past three years. To achieve that goal, he would have to play the roles of both savior (rescuing his father’s troubled empire) and redeemer (making up for the destruction and death brought by the civil war).