which forbade taking a prince’s sons as hostages—and release his three cousins over Qi Tai’s strong opposition.16
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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 sta¤. 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 feng-tian.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; fur-thermore, he himself often consulted with eunuchs and monks before mak-63
the years of successional struggle
ing 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 defend-ing 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 o‹cial 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 o‹cer 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 sur-vivors 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, e¤ectively 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 64
the years of successional struggle
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 brav-ery 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 an
d 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 65
the years of successional struggle
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 o¤ensive 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 o¤. Despite the fact that Li Jinglong was the kind of field marshal who did not seem to commiserate with his troops, Emperor Jianwen con-66
the years of successional struggle
tinued to depend upon him to put down the rebellion.27 Cicero’s remark that
“large a¤airs 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 coun-terattack. 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 o‹ce. 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 con-jure 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 su¤ered 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 67
BEIJING
Baoding
Bohai
Bay
Zhending
Changzhou
Dezhou
Laizhou
Wan
Lingqing
Jinan
▲
Dongchang
Mt. Tai
Donga
River
Qufu
Yellow
Peixian
Kaifeng
Xuzhou
Sizhou
Mengcheng
Huai
River
Yangzhou
Zhenjiang
Nanjing
Great Wall
iver
R
Route
Yangzi
map 3. Ending the Civil War, 1402
the years of successional struggle
though the loyalist troops are more numerous, they are weaker and continue to su¤er 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, bypass-ing the Dezhou and Jinan strongholds, both of which were well-defended by loyalist troops. He encountered little or no di‹culty 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 sti¤er 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.
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