He was the Prince of Yan , possessing a heavy military base in Beijing. He became known as Chengzu of Ming Dynasty after becoming emperor following a civil war. His usurpation of the throne is now sometimes called the "Second Founding" of the Ming.
He moved the capital from Nanjing to Beijing, and constructed the Forbidden City there. After its dilapidation and disuse during the Yuan Dynasty and , the Yongle Emperor had the Grand Canal of China repaired and reopened in order to supply the new capital of Beijing in the north with a steady flow of goods and southern foodstuffs. He commissioned most of the exploratory sea voyages of Zheng He. During his reign the monumental ''Yongle Encyclopedia'' was completed. Although his father Zhu Yuanzhang was reluctant to do so when he was emperor, Yongle upheld the for drafting instead of using simple recommendation and appointment.
The Yongle Emperor is buried in the Changling tomb, the central and largest mausoleum of the Ming Dynasty Tombs.
Early years
The Yongle Emperor was born Zhu Di on May 2, 1360 as the fourth son of the new leader of the central , Zhu Yuanzhang, who would later rise to become the Hongwu Emperor, the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty. Although Zhu Di would always claim that his mother was the Empress Ma this is almost certainly not true. His real mother is now thought to have been a secondary wife of Korean origin. Zhu Di grew up as a prince in a loving, caring environment. His father supplied nothing but the best education for his sons and eventually gave them their own princedoms. Zhu Di was entitled as the Prince of Yan, the area around Beijing.
When Zhu Di moved to Beijing, the city had been devastated by famine and disease and was under threat of invasion from Mongolians from the north. Zhu Di, with help from his father-in-law, General Xu Da, secured the northern borders.
Zhu Di had been very successful against the Mongols and impressed his father with his energy, risk-taking ability and leadership. Even Zhu Di's troops praised his effectiveness, especially when Emperor Hongwu rewarded them for their service. But Zhu Di was not the oldest brother, forcing his father to name the Prince of Jin the crown prince. When the Prince of Jin died of illness in 1392, worries of imperial succession ensued.
Journey to power
Hongwu died on June 24, 1398, and was crowned as . Almost immediately Zhu Di and Jianwen began their deadly feud. When Zhu Di traveled with his guard unit to pay tribute to his father, Jianwen took his actions as a threat and sent forces to turn him around. Zhu Di was forced to leave in humiliation. Jianwen persisted in refusing to let Zhu Di see his father's tomb and Zhu Di challenged the emperor's judgment. Zhu Di quickly became the biggest threat to the imperial court. Jianwen's policy tried to avoid direct contact as much as possible. To achieve this, he abolished the lesser princedoms to undermine Zhu Di's power and create room in which to plant his own loyal generals. Zhu Di was soon surrounded by Jianwen's generals, and cautiously reacted to the political gridlock in which he found himself. His rebellion slowly began to take shape.
Zhu Di's leading rebellion slogan was self defense and was enough to earn him strong support from the populace and many supporting generals. He was a great military commander and studied Sun Tzu's '''' extensively. He used surprise, deception, and caution and even questionable tactics such as enlisting several Mongolian regiments to aid him in fighting Jianwen. He defeated Li Jinglong, a loyalist general, several times, deceiving him and overwhelming him in many decisive battles. On January 15, 1402 Zhu Di made the bold decision to march his army straight to Nanjing, encountering stiff resistance. But his decision proved successful, forcing an imperial retreat to defend the defenseless residence of Jianwen. When Zhu Di reached the capital city, the frustrated and disgraced General Li Jinglong opened the doors and permitted Zhu Di's army to freely enter. In the wide spread panic caused by the sudden entry, the emperor's palace caught fire and Jianwen and his wife disappeared, most likely falling victim to the fire.
Zhu Di had ended Jianwen's reign. Zhu Di and his administration spent the latter part of 1402 brutally purging China of Jianwen's supporters. Such an action was believed to be required to pacify China and maintain his rule. He ordered all records of the four-year-reign of Jianwen Emperor to be dated as year 32 through year 35 of the Hongwu Emperor, in order to establish himself as the legitimate successor of the Hongwu Emperor.
Zhu Di has been credited with ordering perhaps the only case of "extermination of the ten agnates" in the history of China. For nearly 1500 years of feudal China, the "extermination of nine agnates" is considered one of the most severe punishments found in traditional Chinese law enforced until the end of . The practice of exterminating the kins had been established since when Emperor Qin Shi Huang declared "Those who criticize the present with that of the past: ''Zu''" . ''Zu'' referred to the "extermination of three agnates" : father, son and grandson. The extermination was to ensure the elimination of challenges to the throne and political enemies. extended it to the nine agnates. The nine agnates are the four senior generations to the great-great-grandfather and four junior generations to the great-great-grandson. The definition also included siblings and cousins related to each of the nine agnates.
Just before the accession of Emperor Yongle, prominent historian Fang Xiaoru elicited the offense worthy of the "extermination of nine agnates" for refusing to write the and for insulting the Emperor. He was recorded as saying in defiance to the would-be Emperor: "莫說九族，十族何妨！" . Thus he was granted his wish with perhaps the only and infamous case of "extermination of ten agnates" in the history of China. In addition to the blood relations from his nine-agnates family hierarchy, his students and peers were added to be the 10th group.
Regardless, on July 17, 1402, after a brief visit to his father's tomb, Zhu Di was crowned Emperor Yongle at the age of 42. He would spend most of his early years suppressing rumors, stopping bandits, and healing the wounds of the land scarred by rebellion.
Reign
Yongle followed traditional rituals closely and remained superstitious. He did not overindulge in the luxuries of palace life, but still used Buddhism and Buddhist festivals to overcome some of the backwardness of the Chinese frontier and to help calm civil unrest. He stopped the warring between the various Chinese tribes and reorganized the provinces to best provide peace within China.
Due to the stress and overwhelming amount of thinking involved in running a post-rebellion empire, Yongle searched for scholars to join his staff. He had many of the best scholars chosen as candidates and took great care in choosing them, even creating terms by which he hired people. He was also concerned about the degeneration of Buddhism in China.
In 1403, inviting Deshin Shekpa, the fifth Gyalwa Karmapa of the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism, to visit China—apparently after having a vision of Avalokitesvara. After a long journey, Deshin Shekpa arrived in Nanjing on April 10, 1407 riding on an elephant towards the imperial palace, where tens of thousands of monks greeted him.
He convinced the emperor that there were different religions for different people and that does not mean that one is better than the other. The Karmapa was very well received in China and a number of miraculous occurrences are reported he also performed ceremonies for the emperor's family. The emperor presented him with 700 measures of silver objects and bestowed the title of 'Precious Religious King, Great Loving One of the West, Mighty Buddha of Peace'.
Aside from the religious matters, the Emperor wished to establish an alliance with the Karmapa similar to the one the Yuan rulers had established with the Sakyapa. He apparently offered to send armies to unify Tibet under the Karmapa but Deshin Shekpa refused this rather un-Buddhist offer.
Deshin left Nanjing on 17th May, 1408. In 1410 he returned to where he had his monastery rebuilt which had been severely damaged by an earthquake.
When it was time for him to choose an heir, Yongle very much wanted to choose his second son, Gaoxu. Gaoxu was an athletic warrior type that contrasted sharply with his older brother's intellectual and humanitarian nature. Despite much counsel from his advisors, Yongle chose his older son, Gaozhi , as his heir apparent mainly due to advising from Xie Jin. As a result, Gaoxu became infuriated and refused to give up jockeying for his father's favor and refusing to move to Yunnan province . He even went so far as to undermine Xie Jin's council and eventually killed him.
After Yongle's overthrow of Jianwen, China's countryside was devastated. The fragile new economy had to deal with low production and depopulation. Yongle laid out a long and extensive plan to strengthen and stabilize the new economy, but first he had to silence dissension. He created an elaborate system of censors to remove corrupt officials from office that spread such rumors. Yongle dispatched some of his most trusted officers to reveal or destroy secret societies, Jianwen loyalists, and even bandits. To strengthen the economy, he was forced to fight population decline by reclaiming land, utilizing the most he could from the Chinese people, and maximizing textile and agricultural production.
Yongle also worked to reclaim production rich regions such as the Lower and called for a massive rebuilding of the Grand Canal of China. During his reign, the Grand Canal was almost completely rebuilt and was eventually moving imported goods from all over the world. Yongle's short-term goal was to revitalize northern urban centers, especially his new capital at Beijing. Before the Grand Canal was reinstated grain was transferred to Beijing in two ways; one route was simply via the East China Sea; the other was a far more laborious process of transferring the grain from large to small shallow barges , then transferred back to large river barges on the Yellow River before finally reaching Beijing. With the necessary tribute grain shipments of 4 million ''shi'' to the north each year, both processes became incredibly inefficient.
Yongle ambitiously planned to move China's capital to Beijing. According to a popular legend, the capital was moved when the emperor's advisors brought the emperor to the hills surrounding Nanjing and pointed out the emperor's palace showing the vulnerability of the palace to artillery attack.
He planned to build a massive network of structures in Beijing in which government offices, officials, and the imperial family itself resided. After a painfully long construction time, the Forbidden City was finally completed and became the political capital of China for the next 500 years.
Yongle sponsored and created many cultural traditions in China. He promoted Confucianism and kept traditional ritual ceremonies with a rich cultural theme. His respect for Chinese culture was apparent. He commissioned his grand secretary, Xie Jin, to write a compilation of every subject and every known book of the Chinese. The massive project's goal was to preserve Chinese culture and literature in writing. The initial copy took 17 months to transcribe and another copy was transcribed in 1557. The book, named the Yongle Encyclopedia, is still considered one of the most marvelous human achievements in history, despite it being lost by time.
Yongle's tolerance of Chinese ideas that did not agree with his own philosophies was well-known. He treated Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism equally . Strict Confucianists considered him hypocritical, but his even handed approach helped him win the support of the people and unify China. His love for sparked a sincere hatred for culture. He considered it rotten and forbade the use of popular Mongolian names, habits, language, and clothing. Great lengths were taken by Yongle to eradicate Mongolian culture from China.
Military accomplishments
Mongol invaders were still causing many problems for the Ming Dynasty. Traditionally, Han Chinese dynasties rarely went on the offensive against the Mongols. But Yongle prepared to change this less-than-proud tradition. He mounted five military expeditions into Mongolia and crushed the remnants of the Yuan Dynasty that had fled north after being defeated by Emperor Hongwu. He repaired the northern defenses and forged buffer alliances to keep the Mongols at bay in order to build an army. His strategy was to force the Mongols into economic dependence on the Chinese, gather national support against them, and to launch periodic initiatives into Mongolia to cripple their offensive power. He attempted to compel Mongolia to become a Chinese tributary, with all the tribes submitting and proclaiming themselves vassals of the Ming, and wanted to contain and isolate the Mongols. Through fighting, Yongle learned to appreciate the importance of cavalry in battle and eventually began spending much of his resources to keep horses in good supply. Yongle spent his entire life fighting the Mongols. Failures and successes came and went, but it should be noted that after Yongle's second personal campaign against the Mongols, the Northern Ming Dynasty was at peace for over seven years.
Vietnam was a significant source of difficulties during Yongle's reign. In 1406, The Yongle Emperor responded to several formal petitions from members of the Tran Dynasty, however on arrival to Vietnam, both the Tran prince and the accompanying Chinese ambassador were ambushed and killed. In response to this insult the Yongle Emperor sent a huge army of 500,000 south to conquer Vietnam. As the royal family were all executed by the Ho monarchs Vietnam was integrated as a province of China, just as it had been up until 939. With the Ho monarch defeated in 1407 the Chinese began a serious and sustained effort to Sinicize the population. Unfortunately for the Chinese, their efforts to make Vietnam into a ''normal'' province met with a significant resistance from the local population. Several revolts started against the Chinese rulers. In early 1418 a major revolt was begun by Le Loi, the future founder of the Le Dynasty. By the time the Yongle Emperor died in 1424 the Vietnamese rebels under Le Loi's leadership had captured nearly the entire province. By 1427 the Xuande Emperor gave up the effort started by his grandfather and formally acknowledged Vietnam's independence.
Exploration of the World
As part of his desire to expand Chinese influence, Emperor Yongle sponsored the massive and long term Zheng He expeditions. These were China's only major sea-going explorations of the world . The first expedition launched in 1405 . The expeditions were all under the command of China's greatest admiral, Zheng He. At least seven expeditions were launched, each bigger and more expensive than the last. Some of the boats used were apparently the largest sail-powered boats in human history .
The Zheng He expeditions were a remarkable technical and logistical achievement. It is very likely that the last expedition reached as far as Madagascar, thousands of miles from where it started. Zhu Di's successors, the Hongxi Emperor and the Xuande Emperor, felt the expeditions were harmful to the Chinese state. The Hongxi Emperor ended further expeditions and the Xuande Emperor suppressed much of the information about the Zheng He voyages.
Death
On April 1, 1424, Yongle launched a large campaign into the Gobi Desert to chase a nuisance army of fleeting Tartars. Yongle became frustrated at his inability to catch up with his swift opponents and fell into a deep depression and then into illness . On August 12, 1424, the Yongle Emperor died. He was entombed in Chang-Ling , a location northwest of Beijing. The coordinate of his mausoleum is 40.301368 north, 116.243189 east.
Legacy
Many have seen Yongle as in a life-long pursuit of power, prestige, and glory. He respected and worked hard to preserve , by designing monuments such as the Porcelain Tower of Nanjing, while undermining and cleansing Chinese society of foreign cultures. He deeply admired and wished to save his father's accomplishments and spent a lot of time proving his claim to the throne. His military accomplishments and leadership are rivaled by only a handful of people in world history. His reign was a mixed blessing for the Chinese populace. Yongle's economic, educational, and military reforms provided unprecedented benefits for the people, but his style of government gave them no room to breathe. In addition, he executed many of his own generals and advisors for the sake of centralizing his power. This atrocity may also due to his suspicion of potential coup. Despite these negatives, he is considered the main architect and keeper of Chinese culture, history, and statecraft and one of the most influential rulers in Chinese history.
He is remembered very much for his cruelty, just like his father. There was an incident that he put thousands of ladies-in-waiting to death because of one of his concubines. However, unlike his father, he entrusted power to eunuchs like Zheng He, with serious consequences for subsequent Ming emperors. It is an irony that he chose the reign name "Yongle" which means "perpetual happiness".
Further reading
* Tsai, Shih-Shan Henry, ''Perpetual Happiness: The Ming Emperor Yongle'', University of Washington Press, ISBN 0-295-98124-5
* Louise Levathes, ''When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405-1433'', Oxford University Press, 1997, trade paperback, ISBN 0-19-511207-5
No comments:
Post a Comment