Almost simultaneously, bloody purges were renewed in 1390 against such notables as the retired chancellor Li Shanchang. From then on, both General Feng Sheng and General Fu Youde served under the Prince of Yan. By 1395 Hongwu’s sons had one after another filled the military and political vacuum.
Other potentially troublesome areas in which the enemies could make a comeback were in Gansu and Shaanxi. In January 1390 Emperor Hongwu for the first time ordered his three adult sons—the Princes of Jin, Yan, and Qi—
to lead a punitive expedition against the troops of Nayur Buqa and Alu Temur. From his fief in Taiyuan, the Prince of Jin took over the Shanxi regional command of General Wang Bi, plus 6,200 men and 4,470 horses from Henan.
The Prince of Yan commanded the troops trained by Fu Youde, Zhao Yun, and Cao Xin in the Beiping region, while the Prince of Qi led his own troops plus two cavalry guard units from Shandong.23 During this campaign, the Prince of Yan demonstrated his superior leadership as a general and proved to be a consummate theater commander. His troops were in awe of him because of the courage and e¤ectiveness demonstrated in such events as his battle with Nayur Buqa during a heavy snowfall along the treacherous pass at Gubeikou, which culminated in the capture of Nayur Buqa and the lesser Mongol commander Alu Temur. Both of the Mongol commanders and most of their Mongol 48
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troops would later serve under the Prince of Yan, greatly bolstering his position vis-à-vis other princes.
The performance of the Prince of Yan elicited praise from his father, who said that he “is the person who clears the desert. From now on, I have no more worries about the northern frontier.”24 On the other hand, the emperor was clearly disappointed with the puppylike conduct of the Prince of Jin. In the postmortem awards, the Prince of Yan received, among other gifts, one hundred thousand taels of silver plus five thousand bolts of silk fabric, whereas the Prince of Jin received only fifty thousand taels of silver plus two thousand bolts of silk fabric. Moreover, each of the fifty-nine thousand troops from Beiping were awarded various kinds of clothing and cotton fabric, but there was none for the troops from Shanxi.25 At this point, the Prince of Yan was no longer reticent about his capacities and was eager for more important military tasks. Late in the spring of 1391, he was successful, again with the assistance of Fu Youde, in crushing the forces of another barbarian chief, Ashili.26 In the meantime Crown Prince Zhu Biao was preparing to make a tour of inspection in Shaanxi and Henan, with the idea of considering the transfer of the capital from Nanjing to either Xi’an or Luoyang.
The crown prince spent about one hundred days, from September to December of 1391, inspecting and studying the middle section of the Yellow River valley and was able to visit with his younger brother the Prince of Jin in Taiyuan. With his genteel and loving disposition, the crown prince told the Prince of Jin that his previous performance on the battlefield had not lost him the emperor’s respect. On the contrary, he should expect to receive more important assignments in the future so as to counter the growing power of the Prince of Yan.27 Unfortunately, this tour proved to be a grimly demanding adventure for the crown prince, who fell ill soon after his return to Nanjing.
After a long period of su¤ering, he died at the age of thirty-seven on May 17, 1392. Almost immediately, the Ming court was paralyzed as the aging emperor deeply grieved the passing of his eldest son and, for the next four months, worried about the problem of imperial succession. It is di‹cult to ascertain what went through the emperor’s mind, because there are scant documents to account for court events during this mourning period. During the summer of 1392, the Prince of Yan came to Nanjing to pay homage to his father and to find political endorsement. All of a sudden, the Ming court was filled with a tense and extremely uneasy air while the capital was mired in a torrent of stories—some rumors, some not. Would the unpredictable emperor choose his fourth son, the accomplished Prince of Yan, to be his heir apparent, or would the extremely calculating founder of the dynasty abide by the tradi-49
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tion of primogeniture and designate Zhu Biao’s teenage son, Zhu Yunwen, to be his successor?
Willfulness, after all, is one of the privileges and weapons of old age. To the chagrin and profound disappointment of the Prince of Yan, the old man listened to such eminent Hanlin scholars as Liu Sanwu, who, together with the vast majority of the bureaucrats, considered the inheritance of the throne to be a constitutional issue and vigorously defended the principle of primogeniture. After a long and agonizing period of consideration, the dynasty’s patriarch passed up a son who had displayed his strong credentials on his sleeve, and, instead, chose his grandson Zhu Yunwen, an unknown quantity, to be the next ruler of China.28 Worse still, Emperor Hongwu also appointed Lan Yu the grand tutor of the young heir apparent, and Feng Sheng and Fu Youde the grand preceptors of the new crown prince.29 Certainly, no one could describe the prince’s frame of mind at this point in time, but from then on he was obsessed with a‹rming his identity—that is, with learning whether Empress Ma was indeed his biological mother. This obsession went hand in hand with the conviction that he was a legitimate heir to the Zhu family and that he was entitled to play a leading role after the death of the dynasty’s patriarch.
The Prince of Yan realized that he was now pitted in a trial of strength against his real rivals, namely Lan Yu and Feng Sheng. He managed to maintain his obeisance to his father while trying to play the trust game. He was certain that his paranoid father was growing ever edgy over the security of the Zhu family and that, when push came to shove, the emperor would stand with his own sons while throwing the military nobles overboard. Besides, stirring up hatred in the name of loyalty was not a crime. The Prince of Yan in particular did not trust Lan Yu, who was too close to the young crown prince and who was indeed the step-grand-uncle of Zhu Yunwen. (Lan Yu’s niece, who had died in the winter of 1378, was the first consort of Zhu Biao. Zhu Yunwen’s mother was a lesser consort with the surname Lü.) However, Lan Yu overestimated his own importance and misjudged the political situation, and would ultimately pay for his overconfidence with his life.
Earlier in 1388, after suppressing the Uriyangqad Mongols in Manchuria, Lan Yu presented several rare steeds to the Prince of Yan, but the prince deftly turned him down by saying, “The booty horses have not yet been presented to the emperor. If I receive them first, how can I claim that I respect my lord and my father?” Lan Yu later penetrated into northern Mongolia without disaster, and that won him a dukedom but also led him to become increasingly arrogant and flippant in his conduct. As the Prince of Yan mused about the inevitable power struggle, Lan Yu suddenly became his biggest obstacle. It is 50
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very likely that it was upon the recommendation of the Prince of Yan that Emperor Hongwu sicced his spies on such veteran generals as Lan Yu, Feng Sheng, and Fu Youde. According to Wang Shizhen (1526–90), a prominent Ming scholar and a doctoral degree holder of 1547, the Prince of Yan was chiefly responsible for the execution of Lan Yu, on charge of treason, on March 22, 1393. During this particular purge, some twenty thousand other civil and military o‹cials who were associated with Lan Yu either met their maker or went into banishment. In addition, both Feng Sheng and Fu Youde were summoned to the capital to witness the execution of Lan Yu. The Prince of Yan had by now learned very well the game of ruthless politics, as he allegedly had something to do with the mysterious deaths of both Fu Youde on December 20, 1394, and Feng Sheng on February 22, 1395.30 Modern Ming historians tend to believe that 1393 marks the end of military rule in the Ming court and that—because so many prominent commanders, mostly southerners, had perished during the two bloody purges—there was a real shortage of military talent at the turn of the fifteenth century. This was a critically important reason why the Prince of Yan, who retained the service of military leaders from the north, ultimately won the civil war against his nephew, who could not find truly gifted theater commanders to deal
with his uncle.31
After the deaths of Lan Yu, Feng Sheng, and Fu Youde, there were only a few military notables left who were qualified to be theater commanders, such as Duke Xu Huizu (1368–1407), eldest son of Xu Da and brother-in-law of the Prince of Yan; Duke Li Jinglong, son of Li Wenzhong; Marquis Guo Ying (1335–1403); and Marquis Geng Bingwen (1335–1404). Likewise, Emperor Hongwu began to give even more responsibility for defense to his own sons, ultimately granting them power to ensure control of the frontiers. By the spring of 1393, the Prince of Jin was given the command of all the o‹cers, troops, and horses in Shanxi, and the Prince of Yan took over the command of the war machinery in Beiping. Moreover, these princes were granted permission to use their own discretion in all but the most important military decisions in their respective provinces. For instance, they could award and punish their generals right in their domains, without first requesting the court’s permission.
Nor did they have to report routine a¤airs to the court.32 Under the circumstances, even the once-disgraced Prince of Qin was sent back to his fief in Xi’an and given the command of Shaanxi troops to crush a frontier group. Along the northwest frontier, where large herds of animals were the most important property in the pastoral economy, lived a nomadic people of Himalayan origin called the Qiang or Tangut. In caring for their herds, they looked constantly for water and grass, consequently extending their foray into the lands of the 51
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settled agricultural community at Taozhou, in what is now Gansu. The emperor was delighted that the Prince of Qin had finally accomplished something significant as he crushed the raiders and accepted the surrender of the Tangut chieftain in early 1395. However, on the heels of this good news, the Prince of Qin died, leaving the Prince of Jin and the Prince of Yan as the two pillars in the Ming’s northern defense.33
Smarting from the deaths of his first and second sons within a three-year period and worrying about the delicate relationship between the young heir apparent and his many powerful uncles, Emperor Hongwu decided to revise (for the fourth time) “The Ancestor’s Instructions,” which he had personally drafted in 1380. By early in the autumn of 1395, the rules and guidelines for governing all of the princedoms were promulgated in a new document called
“Ancestor’s Instructions from the Ming Emperor” (Huang Ming zuxun). The new instructions provided rules for carrying out o‹cial business between the heir apparent and the princes as well as outlining decorum for conducting family a¤airs between Zhu Yunwen and his many uncles. Designed to curb the power of the princes as well as to make the giant amalgam of princedom more accountable, the new instructions di¤ered in several respects from the 1380s edition of
“The Ancestor’s Instructions.” Previously, the prince had been allowed to visit his brothers once every three or five years, but now such visits were forbidden.
The old regulations permitted the prince to hire his own civil and military o‹cials—with the exception of a few who were appointed by the court—within his own domain and to exercise princely power over the life and death of his own sta¤; the new rules required that all of the civil o‹cials of the princedom be appointed by the emperor and that if the sta¤ members of the princely establishment were charged with crimes, the prince had to follow the laws in making a judgment.34
The new instructions also called for the prince to tolerate admonition and criticism from able and virtuous o‹cials, and not to insult or intimidate those who tried to help protect the princely establishment. If civilians committed crimes, they were to be punished according to their o¤enses but not be forced to drink poison. Previously, if a civilian insulted the prince, the prince had the authority to punish the alleged o¤ender right on the spot, but the new guidelines stated that such cases had first to be referred to the court in Nanjing and then, if warranted, handled by the government judiciary. This new rule clearly was designed to allay the growing fears of the common people, who complained about abuses by the royal family members. The old document provided rules for the prince’s payment for labor services and construction costs, but the new document said nothing about such matters. Finally, the annual stipend for each 52
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prince was reduced from the previous fifty thousand piculs of rice to only ten thousand piculs, so as to lighten the financial burden of the central government.35 Nevertheless, the princes would continue to enjoy their military prerogatives and play the leading role in frontier defense.
Notwithstanding the reduction of his income and judiciary powers, the new rules and guidelines had only a slight e¤ect on the status of the Prince of Yan, because at this point he interested himself primarily with defense a¤airs and military personnel while generally keeping a distance from the civil o‹cials sent to him from the capital. Unlike some of his embattled brothers, such as the Princes of Qin and Zhou, he was always extremely cautious not to draw disapproval from his father, who lionized him. In early 1393, for example, Emperor Hongwu received secret information that the surrendered and rehabilitated Mongol generals Nayur Buqa and Alu Temur were conspiring against the Ming dynasty. Both men were then serving as guard commanders directly under the Prince of Yan, but the emperor wanted to bring them to Nanjing for execution. He then dispatched Duke Xu Huizu to Beiping, asking the Prince of Yan to hand over his two Mongol subordinates. In this particular flap, the prince o¤ered no defense for his generals, and carried out the order. The Mongol generals were put to death two months later, but the prince was not even reprimanded, nor was there any emotional rupture between him and his father.36
In handling diplomatic a¤airs, the Prince of Yan was equally cautious not to overstep into the emperor’s territory or to infringe upon central authority.
Whenever Korean dignitaries presented him with gifts or horses, he duly sent an itemized report to the emperor, expressing beyond any shadow of doubt that he had no intention of courting the Koreans for his own benefit. In 1394
and 1395 various Korean tribute missions, some headed by the heir apparent of the kingdom of Korea, would make a stop in Beiping, and while the Prince of Yan customarily played host to his guests, he always followed the established protocol. Even the Korean spies found nothing unusual in the princely establishment of Yan that they could divulge to their overlord in Nanjing.37 For that matter, even his older brother, the Prince of Jin, whose fief neighbored Beiping, could not find any unlawful behavior on the part of his pugnacious brother.
Perhaps it was the following dramatic moment in 1395 that rekindled the fire in the prince’s belly to win the dragon throne for himself.
According to a popular Ming account, the Prince of Yan dressed like a common soldier one day and went to a tavern for a drink with nine guards. A sixty-one-year-old prescient man by the name of Yuan Gong came to the prince’s table and murmured, “Your Majesty, how could you slight yourself by com-53
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ing here?” The prince pretended to hear nothing and continued to act like just another soldier. However, as soon as he returned home, he sent for Yuan Gong, who, before going to the prince’s palace, bathed, purified himself, and loosened his gray-flecked hair. When the soothsayer arrived at the palace, he respectfully stood in front of the prince, thought deeply and concentrated for a while, and checked and examined the top, bottom, left, and right of the prince’s body, concluding by looking at his face. Yuan Gong bowed and prostrated a number of times, then spoke with a bracing bluntness:
Your Majesty is the true Son of Heaven for [a period of] great peace. You have the dragon image and phoenix gesture, and they are as broad as heaven and as wide as earth. Your face is like a bright sun shining from the center of the sky, and you have overlapped eyeballs and a dragon beard. . . . You walk like a dragon and stroll like a tiger, and your voice is as loud as that from a solid bell. There is no question whatsoever that you are the real lord of humankind and the Son of Heaven for the great peace. Wait until you turn forty sui, and when your w
hiskers have grown below your navel, you will ascend the throne.38
Afterward, Yuan Gong also told the fortunes of several members of the prince’s sta¤, predicting that most of them would become nobles, generals, and ministers. To be sure, the prince had by this time not only recruited a group of determined, ambitious men, but also enjoyed a groundswell of support from his troops. If there was one striking quality of his leadership, it was his ability to keep the loyalty of his people, who never lost faith in him. The o‹cial Ming history confirms that Yuan was not a charlatan but an erudite and highly respected master of divination. Nevertheless, it is likely that the monk Dao Yan revealed to the soothsayer the identity of the prince in the tavern in the first place and that he, in complicity with Yuan Gong, made up this hyperbolic flattery to encourage the popular, headstrong, and ambitious prince to pursue his political fortune. They probably realized that before the Prince of Yan made his move, he wanted to be reassured by signs from the supernatural world of amulets, charms, and zodiacal light. After all, well-learned men like Dao Yan and Yuan Gong had little or no problem surveying the political landscape of the time. The crown prince Zhu Biao had recently passed away, the days of the emperor were numbered, and the young Zhu Yunwen was too inexperienced and weak to withstand the assaults by his many uncles.
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