Early years
As the nephew of the Hongzhi Emperor, Jiaqing was not brought up to succeed to the throne. However, the throne became vacant in 1521 with the sudden death of the Hongzhi Emperor's son, Emperor Zhengde, who did not leave an heir. The 14 year old Jiajing was chosen to become emperor, and so relocated from his father's fief to Beijing.
Reign as Emperor
Custom dictated that an emperor who was not an immediate descendant of the previous one should be adopted by the previous one, to maintain an unbroken line. Such a posthumous adoption of Zhu Houcong by Emperor Zhengde was proposed, but he resisted, preferring instead to have his father declared emperor posthumously. This conflict is known as "." The Jiajing Emperor prevailed, and several of his opponents were banished or executed. Among the banished was the great Ming poet Yang Shen.
The Jiajing Emperor was known to be a cruel and self-aggrandizing emperor and he also chose to reside outside of the Forbidden city in Beijing so he could live in isolation. Ignoring state affairs, Jiajing employed incapable individuals such as Zhang Cong and , on whom he thoroughly relied to handle affairs of state. In time Yan Song and his son Yan Shifan - who gained power only as a result of his father's political influence - came to dominate the whole government even being called the "First and Second Prime Minister". Loyal individuals such as Hai Rui and Yang Xusheng challenged and even chastised Yan Song and his son but were thoroughly ignored by the emperor. Hai Rui and many loyal ministers were eventually dismissed or executed. Jiajing also abandoned the practice of seeing his ministers altogether from 1539 onwards and for a period of almost 25 years refused to give official audiences, choosing instead to relay his wishes through eunuchs and officials. Only Yan Song, a few handful of eunuchs and Daoist priests ever saw Jiajing. This eventually led to corruption at all levels of the Ming government.
Jiajing's ruthlessness also led to an internal plot by his concubines to assassinate him in October, 1542 by strangling him while he slept. A group of palace girls who had had enough of Jiajing's cruelty decided to band together to murder the emperor. The lead palace girl tried to strangle the emperor with ribbons from her hair while the others held down the emperor's arms and legs but made a fatal mistake by tying a knot around the emperor's neck which would not tighten. Meanwhile some of the young girls involved began to panic and one ran to the empress. The plot was exposed. All of the girls involved, including the emperor's favourite concubine, were summarily executed on the orders of the empress.
The Ming dynasty had enjoyed a long period of peace, but in 1542 the Mongol leader Altan Khan began to harass China along the northern border. In 1550 he even reached the suburbs of Beijing. Eventually the empire appeased him by granting special trading rights. The empire also had to deal with attacking the southeastern coastline; general Qi Jiguang was instrumental in defeating these pirates.
Starting in 1550, Beijing was enlarged by adding the .
The deadliest earthquake of all times, the of 1556 that killed over 800,000 people, occurred during the Jiajing Emperor's reign.
Taoist pursuits
He was a devoted follower of Taoism and attempted to suppress Buddhism. After the assassination attempt in 1542, Jiajing began to pay excessive attention to his Taoist pursuits while ignoring his imperial duties. He built the three Taoist temples Temple of Sun, Temple of Earth and Temple of Moon and extended the Temple of Heaven by adding the ''Earthly Mount''. Over the years, Jiaqing's devotion to Taoism was to become a heavy financial burden for the empire and create dissent across the country.
Particularly during his later years, Jiajing was known for spending a great deal of time on alchemy in hopes of finding medicines to prolong his life. He would forcibly recruit young girls in their early teens and engaged in sexual activities in hopes of empowering himself, along with the consumption of potent . He employed Taoist priests to collect rare minerals from all over the country to create elixirs, including elixirs containing mercury, which inevitably posed health problems at high doses.
Legacy and death
After 45 years on the throne , Emperor Jiajing died in 1567 -– possibly due to mercury overdose – and was succeeded by his son, the Longqing Emperor. Though his long rule gave the dynasty an era of stability, Jiajing's neglect of his official duties resulted in the decline of the dynasty at the end of the 16th century. His style of governing or for that matter the lack thereof would be emulated by his later in the century.
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