Yongle

Yongle (born May 2, 1360, Yingtian [now Nanjing], Jiangsu province, China—died August 5, 1424, Yumuchuan [now in Inner Mongolia], en route to Beijing) was the reign name (nianhao) of the third emperor (1402–24) of China’s Ming dynasty (1368–1644), which he raised to its greatest power. He moved the capital from Nanjing to Beijing, which was rebuilt with the Forbidden City.

Youth and early career

Zhu Di’s father, the Hongwu emperor, had rapidly risen from a poor orphan of peasant origin through stages as a mendicant Buddhist monk and then a subaltern in a popular rebellion against the Mongol rulers of the Yuan dynasty to become a virtually independent satrap in part of the rich eastern Yangtze River (Chang Jiang) valley, with his headquarters at Yingtian (Nanjing). There Zhu Di was born fourth in a brood that ultimately numbered 26 princes. Modern scholarship has suggested that Zhu Di was probably borne by a secondary consort of Korean origin, although in traditional Chinese fashion he always treated his father’s principal consort, the revered and influential empress Ma, as his “legal” mother.

In 1360 Hongwu was struggling with other contenders for supremacy in the Yangtze valley, while the Yuan government at Dadu (Beijing) was all but immobilized by court factionalism. In the next seven years the Hongwu emperor’s armies swept central and eastern China clear of opposition, and in 1368 he inaugurated the new Ming dynasty, with its capital at Nanjing. He drove the last Mongol emperor out of Beijing and then beyond the Great Wall and the Gobi.

At the age of 10, in 1370, Zhu Di was designated prince of Yan (an ancient name for the Beijing region). As he grew to manhood during the next decade, the new Ming empire was stabilized, an elaborate governmental apparatus was erected, and a new socioeconomic order characterized by authoritarian reconstruction in many fields was instituted. The boy grew up in the mold of his remarkable father—robust, vigorous, and temperamental—and he became his father’s favourite. His natural leadership qualities clearly outshone those of his many brothers.

In 1380, at the age of 20, the prince of Yan took up residence at Beijing. The early Ming governmental system provided that the imperial princes other than the eldest son, who remained at Nanjing as heir apparent, be enfeoffed in strategic areas as regional viceroys. Through the 1380s the prince of Yan gained experience in patrolling and skirmishing along the northern frontier under the tutelage of the greatest generals of the age. In 1390 he and his older half brother the prince of Jin (enfeoffed in adjacent Shanxi province to the west) were given joint command of a patrolling expedition beyond the Great Wall, and in 1393 they assumed full supervisory control over defense forces of the whole central sector of the northern frontier. Thereafter, the prince of Yan campaigned almost annually to keep the fragmented and disorganized Mongols off balance and on the defensive.

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Meanwhile, in 1392, the heir apparent died. Some historians believe that the aging Hongwu emperor seriously considered naming the prince of Yan his new heir, in violation of tradition and the household rules he had himself promulgated. The emperor did hesitate for almost half a year before designating his successor, but then he complied with tradition by investing the dead crown prince’s son Zhu Yunwen, then only 15 years old. From this time forward, and especially after the deaths of his two remaining seniors in 1395 and in 1398, respectively, the prince of Yan became increasingly arrogant and imperious; when the old emperor died in the summer of 1398 the prince of Yan, in full vigour at the age of 38, considered himself the de facto head of the imperial clan and expected to be treated deferentially by his nephew.

The young new emperor Zhu Yunwen (the Jianwen emperor) had other intentions. Influenced by Confucian scholar-officials, he instituted a series of reforms unsettling to the newly stabilized government. One of his major goals was to take regional power away from the princes, and in 1398–99 one prince after another was imprisoned, exiled, or driven to suicide. Thus the prince of Yan found himself steadily more isolated and endangered, and in August 1399 he rose in rebellion, declaring it his avuncular duty to rescue the inexperienced emperor from his malicious advisers.

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The rebellion lasted from 1399 into 1402 and devastated much of western Shandong province and the northern part of the Huai River basin. The central government at Nanjing seems to have underestimated the prince of Yan’s strength and failed to muster its manpower and matériel effectively; the war was a long stalemate. In early 1402 the prince of Yan’s forces broke through the imperial armies in the north, sped almost unopposed southward along the Grand Canal, accepted surrender of the imperial fleet on the Yangtze River, and were admitted into the walled capital by court defectors in July 1402. Four days after the fall of Nanjing, the prince of Yan took the throne himself, although he did not formally begin his rule until 1403; he took the reign name Yongle (“Perpetual Happiness”). The Jianwen emperor had disappeared. Whether he died in a palace fire (as was officially announced) or escaped in disguise to live many more years as a recluse is a puzzle that troubled Zhu Di until his own death and has been a subject of conjecture by Chinese historians ever since.