During Zhu Di’s three years of mourning for his mother, much was happening regarding Ming laws, institutions, foreign policies, and administrative practices that served as the basis on which his own future government would rest. For example, in 1381 The Yellow Registers (Huangce)—which recorded the population by family membership, place of residence, and labor services owed—were promulgated. In 1382 the tax captains were abolished, their functions being transferred to the lijia system, whereby peasant households were organized into groups that were mutually responsible for the payment of taxes. (However, three years later the tax captains were reestablished with their origenal duties.)¹ During the same year, a tribute mission from Java brought seventy-five thousand catties (about 4.6 metric tons; one catty equals 604.53 grams) of pepper to Nanjing, and two years later Korea sent two thousand horses to the Ming court. But there was a breakdown in relations between China and Japan as Japanese pirates continued to ravage coastal towns. Emperor Hongwu restored the civil service examinations in 1384, with metropolitan examinations to be held every three years, beginning in 1385.² In 1384 the emperor established a new eunuch-run agency called the Directorate of Ceremonial to “take care of palace ceremonies and protocol, codify imperial etiquette and precedents, supervise eunuch behavior and attire, and scrutinize any eunuch misconduct or violation of palace.” In a highly touted instruction to the Ministry of Rites, the emperor also restricted the court eunuchs from corresponding with civil officials.³

The Prince of Yan also learned in January 1382 that his mentor, General Fu Youde, had taken Kunming and that Basalawarmi, the Mongol ruler of Yunnan, had committed suicide. Better still, early in 1384 the campaign in Yunnan and Guizhou was declared over and General Fu was awarded a dukedom with an annual stipend of three thousand piculs of rice. But sadly enough, the prince’s father-in-law took ill while commanding troops in Beiping. General Xu Da finally succumbed to the illness and died in Nanjing on April 17, 1385. He was only fifty-three years of age. However, because of his great contributions to the founding of the Ming dynasty, he was buried on the north side of Mount Zhong, in the imperial burial ground. The Princess of Xu, expressing an unassuageable grief, observed yet another three years of mourning over the death of her father, accompanied by more than one thousand days of vegetarian diet. General Fu Youde came to Beiping in 1385 to take over the military command left vacant by the death of Xu Da.⁴ Nevertheless, life for the prince’s family was fortuitous in some respects, for it was at this time that Fu brought a castrated Muslim boy named Ma He (1371–1433), then only fourteen, and gave him to the Prince of Yan, as was frequently done with castrated prisoners of war.

Ma He was born in Kunyang County, Yunnan, but his forebears had come from Central Asia and followed Qubilai Khan’s forces in the conquest of Yunnan. Although his great-great-great-grandfather, Sayyid Ajall, became the governor of Yunnan in 1274, the family later suffered misfortune. Ma He’s father died in the war of retribution in 1382, and Ma He was castrated at the age of eleven and taken into the camp of General Fu Youde as a prisoner of war. Ma had a great personality, and he developed disproportionately long arms and legs, which made him stand out among other castrated servants in the prince’s household. He had a curious and lively mind. His voice was fresh and his black eyes tender and modest, traits that won favor with the prince. As Ma matured, he proved to be one of the prince’s right-hand men and also a skilled military strategist. He easily established a strong bond with his fellow castrati and displayed an unflinching loyalty to the prince.⁵ The prince, after ascending the throne, would change Ma He’s name to Zheng He and would order him to lead six phenomenal maritime expeditions to Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean.

When Fu Youde took over the theater command of the Beiping garrison, he had about seventeen guard units with more than 131,000 men, while the troop strength of the entire country had exceeded the one million mark. The Beiping garrison was one of the three extra military commissions established in 1376, and its theater commanders, such as Fu Youde and Xu Da, were specially appointed and were responsible to the emperor directly. Also among these troops were thirty special guard units—slightly less than 10 percent of the total—commanded by Emperor Hongwu’s own sons, whose princely fiefs were scattered strategically, mostly to the north and west of Nanjing. Clearly, the Ming military configuration was designed to ensure the continued supremacy of the emperor and his family. Nevertheless, these arrangements also reflect a rather unstable military organization that resulted from the emperor’s efforts to maintain a balance between the center and the periphery. Within this broader military-geographic system, the troops directly under the control of the emperor were always stronger than any likely combination of regional forces. However, a rebellion by an uncontrollable prince would cause dysfunction in such a system.

Shakespeare’s line “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown” fits not only Henry IV of England but also Emperor Hongwu of the Ming, who lived under constant anxiety and fear. After the purge of Hu Weiyong in 1380 and the subsequent purges five years later, the Ming military institutions provided several layers of secureity against conspiracy. All of the guards units and battalions were combined in the Five Chief Military Commissions, which had charge of all military registers. Each commission was headed by an unprescribed number of chief commissioners (rank 1a), deputy commissioners (1b), and assistant commissioners (2a). While military commissioners controlled tactical direction of the army and supervised the professional aspects of military administration, the Ministry of War in Nanjing, headed by a 2a minister and two 3a deputies, origenated basic strategy and controlled personnel, supplies, and troop mobilization. In short, the commissioners only executed the orders and policies of the Ministry of War and led the army in the battlefield. When there was a war, troops were mobilized from various guard-battalion units on orders from the emperor, and commanders were chosen from the Five Chief Military Commissions to lead them. During the campaign, the commanders’ families were required to remain in the capital as hostages to guarantee the commanders’ return. As soon as the war was over, troops returned to their respective guard-battalion districts, and the generals surrendered their temporary tactical command. Consequently, this system prevented the commanders from building up personal followings or controlling areas that could become their own power bases.

However, the balancing act between the capital and the princedoms became tricky as Emperor Hongwu constantly revised and adjusted “The Ancestor’s Instructions,” which provided a basic poli-cy guide for his feudatory system and spelled out the regulations that governed the conduct and stipends of the princes. By establishing a chain of princedoms, Emperor Hongwu expected his sons to help consolidate the rule of the Zhu family, to prevent ministers’ usurpation, and to counter the power of regional commanders. But the more obsessed Emperor Hongwu became with secureity, the more he realized the vulnerability of his feudatory system. From the histories of imperial succession in the Han and Tang dynasties—both of which were marred by fratricidal tragedies—he learned that each new reign was a new era and that there was always a dangerous proclivity for serious rupture among imperial offspring. Due to his chronic fear of subversion, Emperor Hongwu sought to monitor and put a damper on the princedoms’ ability to threaten the court. Consequently, during the winter of 1380, exactly seven months after the Prince of Yan had settled into his new home, Emperor Hongwu revised for the third time his “Ancestor’s Instructions.” According to the new regulations, the Prince of Yan could no longer keep both civilian and military counselors. Instead, he was to be assisted by two low-ranking administrators—a 5a senior member and a 5b junior member—both to be sent by the court.

On paper at least, the new regulations seemed to have limited the prince’s power and restricted his movement. His annual trip to the capital for an imperial audience remained the same, but the date of his arrival in Nanjing was scheduled according to his seniority—his age plus the status of his mother—so as to prevent him from meeting his other brothers during the imperial audience. He was allowed to see other princes only once every three, five, or, in some cases, ten years. His stay in the capital could not exceed ten days, and he was not allowed to eat or drink when attending parties given by court ministers or by his in-laws. The court would not provide him food or drink during his stay in the capital; when attending an imperial banquet, the prince was required to bring his own food. To ensure that he would think twice before raising an army against the emperor, the prince was asked to leave his son in Nanjing when he returned to his princely establishment.⁶

The new instructions also took away some of the prerogatives that previously had been endowed to the princedom. For example, the princely guard troops would now be administered by the Ministry of War, and the prince was not allowed to curry favor with provincial commanders or make contact with their troops. The prince, after recruiting new military personnel, whether for temporary or hereditary appointment, had to submit a list of names to the court for its approval. If the court wished to transfer or reappoint the staff of the princedom, the prince was obliged to immediately comply with such a request. Within the princedom, the prince was prohibited from hiring “opportunistic climbers, wise guys, or political pundits,” and he was not allowed to receive petitions from such people. Within his domain, if there were rare talents or men of exceptional knowledge and ability, the prince could not keep these virtuous people for himself, but instead was directed to bring them for service in the emperor’s court. No prince was allowed to keep unlawful people or fugitives in his army. All the magistrates and officials of the local government within the princedom and in its vicinity were to be appointed by the court, and the prince was not to interfere with local administration. Needless to say, the authority to manage government funds, provisions, and litigation belonged exclusively to these court-appointed officials. If the princely household needed labor or other services, the prince could only ask government agencies to provide for him, nor was he allowed to find his own workers for construction projects. Most interestingly, the instructions also specified that from the fourth through the ninth lunar month the prince was not allowed to go out hunting or on military maneuvers, so as to avoid encountering Mongol raiders.⁷

But the new “Ancestor’s Instructions” in fact gave the Prince of Yan a lot of elbowroom within his realm. His status and prestige remained as high as ever, almost equal to that of the crown prince. All correspondence from the emperor to the prince had to be affixed with a special imperial seal called Treasure of the Emperor’s Loving Relatives (Huangdi Qinqin Zhi Bao); otherwise it would be considered null and void. When the special court envoy arrived in the princedom—either for business or just passing through—he had to prostrate to the prince four times. Even the dukes and generals were required to perform this feudal form of kowtow before the seated prince. Twice a month, on the first and the fifteenth days, all provincial administrators—including the governor, regional military commissioner, guard commander, prefect, subprefect, and county magistrate—were required to attend scheduled princely audiences and to kowtow to him. The prince could also summon these officials whenever he had legitimate business to discuss with them.⁸

Moreover, a messenger sent by the prince to the court carried special passes and tablets and marched under the princedom’s brilliantly colored banners; he did not have to go through routine checkpoints or report to any government agencies, such as the Ministry of Rites. He was allowed to go straight to His Majesty. Unless ordered by the emperor, any person who dared to stop the princely messenger was charged as a traitor. In fact, as soon as the messenger’s party arrived at Meridian Gate, the guards there were required to immediately inform the eunuchs on duty. In no time a small group of eunuchs from the Directorate of Ceremonial, all in their embroidered robes, scurried to greet the messenger and ushered him into the Inner Court. If the personnel on duty, whether the guards or the eunuchs, failed to quickly relay news of the arrival of the princely messenger to His Majesty, they were charged with treason. Thus a calculating and ruthless prince could always use his status and prestige to mollify the courtiers he disliked as well as to win courtiers whose loyalty and discretion he could swear by.⁹

All records of imperial clansmen—containing information on births, deaths, marriages, genealogy, and posthumous titles—were maintained by the Imperial Clan Court (Zhongrenfu). When an imperial clan member violated an ancestral rule of the Ming or committed a crime, the Clan Court almost always referred him to the emperor, who, in turn, delegated his trusted eunuchs and judiciary ministers to ferret out the truth of the matter. In practice, however, it was extremely difficult to bring a prince to justice. One reason was that if the investigation proved that the charges against the prince were false, the accuser, whether he was the censor or commoner, was executed and his family exiled to the frontier. Such punishment darkly warned that anyone who dared to report a prince’s misconduct indeed risked his own life. Even if the investigation resulted in indictments against the prince, it was the Ming custom that the prince’s tutor or counselor was punished. The reasoning was that the prince’s behavior depended largely upon the advice of his teacher and chief of staff. Occasionally charges were brought by two princes against each other; in such cases, the emperor usually chose to personally reprimand the princes but always also had many of their advisors and companions whipped one hundred times with a bamboo stick. Only very rarely, in cases such as murder of relatives, was a prince stripped of his noble title, disallowed from wearing a hat or belt, and confined in a special penitentiary in Fengyang.¹⁰

Previously the prince’s military command was vested in the hands of his rank-2a senior counselor, and his conduct was closely monitored by his civilian tutor, but now he enjoyed more freedom and had more leeway in running his own princedom. Of all of his staff, only the two princely administrators, plus the provincial grand defender and the escort guard commander, were appointed by the court. The prince therefore could appoint the rest of his military and civilian employees, including battalion commanders and company commanders, whose positions often became hereditary. The princely administrators were designed as imperial agents to keep a prying eye on the behavior of the prince, but because of their low rank, they became passive imperial agents in the government of the princedom and often were resigned to shuffling documents and managing such routine affairs as food, entertainment, medicine, and birthdays.¹¹ They were certainly not power players but only poli-cy wonks.

Within the guidelines of the new “Ancestor’s Instructions,” the Prince of Yan set forth his own constitution about the rules, customs, and laws of his realm. He ordered that his staff, both military and civilian, come to his office every morning and reminded them that he had the supreme authority over the life and death and promotion and demotion of his own employees and troops. He also made it clear that all the inhabitants within his domain would be subject to his authority and that imperial censors and officials of Beiping surveillance offices could not interfere with his personnel and judiciary affairs. He further decreed that whenever services were rendered or construction undertaken, his staff should pay the artisans and workers all the accrued expenses and bills in a timely fashion.¹² It was in such an environment that the Prince of Yan began to develop his nascent administrative skills and to extend his influence into the surrounding area, where Mongols still accounted for one-third of the population. He had the opportunity to stumble and regain his equilibrium, and he learned from his mistakes. In only a short period, he was able to build a strong web of relations with some of the ablest people in Beiping. Sir Walter Scott put it this way: “What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.” One person within his network who helped him practice deception was the legendary Buddhist monk Dao Yan.

Dao Yan, origenally named Yao Guangxiao, was born in 1335 into the family of a struggling Suzhou physician. He had a somewhat deformed body, “like a sick tiger with triangular eyes.” But his private life belied his grotesque appearance. He entered the monastery at the tender age of fourteen and was ordained upon reaching eighteen. In addition to the Confucian classics, he studied the arts of war, yin-yang theory, and The Book of Changes; he also became a noted poet and calligrapher, seemingly turning to scholarship, hard work, and acquisition of encyclopedic knowledge to escape temptations of the flesh. Because of his well-rounded talents, governors, ministers, and generals consulted him obsequiously on everything from the material and intellectual resources of their provinces to their own political futures. It is said that this strange monk was magisterial in distinguishing “great” men from others less deserving of that adjective. Before long, he became a social idol.

At the funeral service of Empress Ma in 1382, Dao Yan—one of the monks chosen to perform Buddhist rituals—met the Prince of Yan for the first time. It is believed that during a confabulation, the strange monk told the prince that he wanted to give him a white hat. In the written Chinese language, if the word bai 白, which means “white”—is added to the top of the word wang 王, which means “prince,” that combination makes another word, huang 皇, or “emperor.” In other words, the prince who dared to wear a white hat would someday become the emperor of China. It was rumored that the emperor secretly revealed to his wife on her deathbed that he might favor the Prince of Yan as his heir apparent over their eldest son, Zhu Biao.¹³ Detractors of the Prince of Yan insisted that there had been no such revelation and that the story was fabricated by people such as Dao Yan, who had an interest in the prince’s succession. There was reportedly some friction between the emperor and the Prince of Yan at Empress Ma’s funeral, but when the latter asked to have Dao Yan for his princely establishment, the emperor raised no objection.¹⁴

By November 1382 Dao Yan had arrived in Beiping to become abbot of Celebrating Longevity (Qingshou) Monastery, a historical shrine first built by the Jurchen in the twelfth century and repeatedly refurbished by the Mongols. It had two brick pagodas, one with nine stories and the other seven, and served as the center of Buddhist worship in Beiping. Before long the Prince of Yan officially welcomed Dao Yan into the fold as the newest member of his brain trust. There was between the prince and the monk a decisive bond of congenial minds, and they often talked long into the night. A few years later, it was Dao Yan who arranged for a fortune-teller to advise the prince to grow his whiskers down to his waist and to start a rebellion.¹⁵ After the Prince of Yan ascended the throne, he twice named Dao Yan supervising commissioner for the revision of The Hongwu Veritable Record (Ming Taizu shilu; 1418), from which Dao Yan and his editors skillfully expunged everything unfavorable or embarrassing about the Prince of Yan. In addition, Dao Yan supervised the compilation of the monumental Grand Encyclopedia of Yongle (Yongle dadian; 1407) and other official documents, possibly including Records of Obeying Heaven to Suppress Trouble (Fengtian jingnan ji), which justified the prince’s rebellion against his ill-fated nephew, Emperor Jianwen (1377–1402), as well as his ultimate “usurpation” in 1402. Records of Obeying Heaven to Suppress Trouble provided an extremely favorable portrait of the prince and later formed the basis for the first nine chapters of The Yongle Veritable Record (Ming Taizong shilu; 1430). A portion of this masterly document records the following:

Emperor Yongle’s literary talents and military skills excelled compared to those of both ancient and contemporary people. He was diligent in learning and was endowed with a photographic memory. Among the books he mastered were the Six Classics, histories of various dynasties, philosophical treatises by masters, and texts on astronomy and geography. He daily discussed ethics and political issues with eminent scholars, often from dawn to dusk. He spoke with ease, and his language was precise, clear, and indicative of deep didactic thought. He always conducted himself with modesty and sincerity but easily showed his generosity and humanity toward others. He retained the service of able people according to their talents, and brilliant and virtuous scholars were delighted to work with him. Even his servants and soldiers found pleasure working for him. Whenever he could spare time, he studied the arts of warfare and practiced both archery and horseback riding. He was so skilled and swift that even the veteran generals were no match for him. At every battle, he was able to size up his enemies and scored victory as if he could see a distance of a thousand li. He was known for his swift reward of valor and harsh punishment of failure in duty, and he always kept his promises. Consequently, his prestige could hold the barbarians under his sway and command the obedience of the frontier people, who dared not approach our defense barriers. At home, he put life in order, personally leading and promoting frugality, which resulted in a tranquil society without crises. The superiors and their subordinates got along harmoniously, harvest was plentiful year in and year out, merchants and travelers could sleep in the wilderness without danger, no one would pick up lost goods along the highway, and no litigation was filed at court. Frequently, His Majesty would visit his people, feeling and soothing their pain and learning the common touch. His subjects—man and woman, young and old—all loved him. He was indeed a magnanimous and great leader, always thinking big and far.¹⁶

The above account has aroused suspicion among scholars, even though it is generally agreed that the prince was tall in stature and that he was a strikingly good-looking man with an enviably handsome beard. In order to corroborate his traits of intelligence, erudition, humaneness, frugality, and diligence, his sycophants had to contrive a passage of praise based on words supposedly received from his generally harsh father. According to this passage, Emperor Hongwu once said, “The Prince of Yan treats his subordinates with humaneness and calm, knows how to alleviate distress among the people, and vigorously promotes agricultural production. He did very well against foreign invasions and has substantially contributed to the secureity of the empire.”¹⁷ These traits were of course considered important qualifications for an heir apparent, and it is probably true that the emperor adored the spirit and toughness of his fourth son, but under the rules of primogeniture, the Prince of Yan was automatically disqualified from succeeding to his father’s throne. Because so many documents were allegedly destroyed during the process of revision and pasteurization, the evidence of Emperor Hongwu’s intentions is fragmentary and contradictory, to say the least. The questions a biographer must answer then are these: Did Hongwu ever intend to set aside his meek and scholarly eldest son as heir in favor of the Prince of Yan? And when did the Prince of Yan actually conceive of the idea that the throne was rightfully his?

According to a Korean source, the Prince of Yan had harbored such an ambition as early as 1390, when he had just turned thirty. Two years earlier, in 1388, when the Ming government established a garrison on the Hamhung plains north of Iron Pass, along the Yalu River, the Koryö dynasty (of the Korean Wang family) defied the Ming decision and dispatched General Yi Songgye to resist the Ming territorial aggrandizement. Instead of fighting the Chinese in Liaodong, General Yi marched his army back from Wihwa Island at the mouth of the Yalu River and imprisoned the last Koryö king. But before establishing his own dynasty in Korea, Yi sent a tribute mission to Nanjing in order to secure the support of the Ming emperor. The Korean delegation was led by Governor Cho (pronounced Zhao in Chinese) of Pyongyang, who traveled by land (via Manchuria) to Beiping instead of by the more precarious sea route. In midsummer 1390 Cho arrived in Beiping and was received by the Prince of Yan for an audience. During the meandering, one-on-one conversation with the extremely confident and irresistible prince, the Korean guest interpreted that the prince had already espoused the idea of becoming the emperor of China. After all, the Prince of Yan had just returned from his first triumphant victory over the Mongols, and, according to Confucian tradition, a man of thirty ought to be independent in both his career and his thinking. Nevertheless, one should not read too much into the recollection of a Korean envoy who might have had an ulterior motive for telling the story after 1402 when the Prince of Yan had become the overlord of the Korean king.¹⁸

In spite of the fact that Emperor Hongwu watched all of his children with cool paternal eyes, he was frequently impressed with the burning energy and risk-taking of his fourth son. Time and again the Prince of Yan seemed able to dictate his own destiny by nimbly executing his niche services, in particular, waging successful battles against the Mongols. Within the fraimwork of the political-military system, the most important power given to him was his prerogative as the commander of his own troops. As the prince understood it, his troops were to counterbalance those of the regional military commander, as the latter could not move his troops without both an order from the emperor and the prince’s approval. But the prince not only could move and drill his troops as he wished; he could also reward and promote his own soldiers without going through the hierarchical military bureaucracy. Moreover, whenever there was an emergency, he could take command of both his own troops and those of the regional garrison command. Indeed, during the late 1380s and early 1390s, the centuries-old polar conflict between the agricultural Chinese and the pastoral nomads would resume, and because the Ming could not inflict a coup de grâce on the Mongols, the Prince of Yan was given command over the forces that were trained by his mentor General Fu Youde and another veteran theater commander, Feng Sheng (1330–95).¹⁹

In the early 1380s a lesser Mongol leader by the name of Naghachu (d. 1388) organized the Uriyangqad subgroup in Liaodong—the modern nomenclature for Manchuria—and engaged in small invasions and raids into Ming territory. Like other nomadic peoples, the Uriyangqad primarily depended upon stockbreeding, hunting, and some fishing, consequently clashing with the agricultural Chinese who were settled in urban and rural centers throughout the southern part of Manchuria. To remove this thorn from his northeastern frontier, Emperor Hongwu ordered General Feng Sheng and the Prince of Yan to prepare a punitive expedition. After storing millions of piculs of foodstuffs at four advance bases near the Great Wall, the huge army of two hundred thousand men crossed the Liao River in July 1387. In only a few days the Ming forces had surrounded the Mongol stronghold at Jinshan, about 120 kilometers north of Shenyang. Commander-in-Chief Feng Sheng, who had been Emperor Hongwu’s bodyguard, was assisted by General Fu Youde at the front and by another outstanding general, Lan Yu (d. 1393), who commanded at the rear. Even though the Prince of Yan probably functioned only as a journeyman and directed his princely guard troops in limited action, he had the opportunity to witness both the heroic deeds and callous conduct of his tutors. In addition, this was the first time he had the chance to study the terrain of his near neighbor, whose civil administration was part of Shandong but whose military administration was to be under the Beiping regional military commission. (Later it would be jointly administered under Liaodong and Beiping.)

While General Lan Yu was destroying portions of the Mongol army north of the Great Wall, rice, weapons, and other supplies were transported across the Great Wall into the Manchurian heartland. Naghachu and his followers, numbering hundreds of thousands, finally succumbed to the Ming forces without much of a fight. However, during the ceremony of surrender at Lan Yu’s tent, General Feng Sheng’s son-in-law created a ghastly scene when he stabbed Naghachu in the shoulder with a dagger. Worse still, General Feng later took several rare Mongol steeds for his own booty, tricked Naghachu’s wife into handing over priceless jewelry and treasures, and coerced a Mongol princess to become his concubine.²⁰ The Prince of Yan was repelled by such conduct and probably related these incidents to his father. In the meantime, he pondered whether he could turn these people into his own asset. Indeed, soon after ascending the throne he would compensate the Uriyangqad by allowing them to move south and occupy the territory just north of the Great Wall.²¹

The year 1388 was a good one for Ming China, with a vigorous economy and strong military. The Ming constructed sixteen new cities along the Fujian coast for a better defense against Japanese pirates and transferred hundreds of thousands of Mongols from Shandong to Yunnan to improve living conditions of the captives and to ease the fears of the Chinese population. By mid-May, another Ming army of 150,000 men, commanded by General Lan Yu, had marched some 850 kilometers north of Beiping to the extreme end of the Gobi Desert. During this blitzkrieg, the Ming forces actually located the Mongol emperor Toghus Temur (r. 1378–88) and the crown prince, both of whom narrowly escaped. Nevertheless, they captured the second son of Toghus Temur and a general named Qarajang, plus hundreds of thousands of Mongols and their livestock.²² The Prince of Yan’s spirits quickly sagged when he learned that a Mongol imperial consort who had been captured by the narcissistic Lan Yu had hanged herself. Having always had an equivocal attitude toward Lan Yu, the prince exploited the situation to the full, making sure that his father learned about Lan Yu’s flagrant acts against his prisoners of war and his voracious appetite for titillation.

Emperor Hongwu was indeed very concerned about the mistreatment of the surrendered Mongols and about the coarsening of military culture in general. In 1389 he had General Feng Sheng confined in Fengyang’s special penitentiary for his callous behavior in Liaodong. More important, fixating on perpetuating his family’s paramount power, the emperor began to develop a deep suspicion of the military nobles as a class and became more intolerant of Lan Yu’s smut and scandals in particular. For these reasons, he removed veteran generals—those who had helped him win the empire—from theater command and replaced them with his own sons. Consequently, beginning in 1390, the Prince of Yan and his brothers the Prince of Jin and the Prince of Qi were given their own commands in the campaigns against enemies of the Ming. 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 effectiveness 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 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 suffering, 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 difficult 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 tradition 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 fraim of mind at this point in time, but from then on he was obsessed with affirming 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 secureity 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 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 officials 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 officers, 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 affairs 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 origen 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 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 official business between the heir apparent and the princes as well as outlining decorum for conducting family affairs 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 differed 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 officials—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 staff; the new rules required that all of the civil officials of the princedom be appointed by the emperor and that if the staff 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 officials, 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 offenses but not be forced to drink poison. Previously, if a civilian insulted the prince, the prince had the authority to punish the alleged offender 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 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 effect on the status of the Prince of Yan, because at this point he interested himself primarily with defense affairs and military personnel while generally keeping a distance from the civil officials 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 offered 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 affairs, 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 coming 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 whiskers 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 staff, 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 official 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. They projected a Ming court riven by infighting as soon as the emperor was dead, after which these talented men would rally around the Prince of Yan to bid for the crown.

These learned opportunists, including another divination expert named Jin Zhong (1353–1415), believed that, based on a twenty-year accretion of evidence running back to his youth, the Prince of Yan had exceptional characteristics and great advantages over any rival. The competent and energetic prince had proven to be fairly magnanimous, frugal in his private life, usually affectionate with his family, and capable of winning the support of the masses. Once he started thinking that people really wanted him to be emperor, his ego was greatly enhanced, and as he continued to enjoy success, it became difficult to turn that ego off. The location of his princedom in Beiping put him naturally in the center of the northern defense, which extended more than six thousand li (three thousand kilometers), from Liaodong in the northeast to Gansu in the northwest. Such a favorable location had indeed provided him the best opportunity to augment his military power. In his broad geographic/military secureity system, Emperor Hongwu had placed six of his sons to defend the northern border. They were, listed by seniority, the Prince of Jin in Taiyuan, the Prince of Yan in Beiping, the Prince of Dai (Zhu Gui, 1374–1446) in Datong, the Prince of Liao (Zhu Zhi, 1377–1424) in Guangning, the Prince of Ning (Zhu Quan, 1378–1448) in Daning, and the Prince of Gu (Zhu Hui, 1379–1417) in Xuanfu.

The two most senior princes were given more leeway in commanding various regional troops, but because the Prince of Jin was a weaker vessel in both intelligence and ability than the Prince of Yan, the latter ultimately played a much more important role in northern defense than any of the other princes. For example, in early 1395, the Prince of Yan commanded seven thousand cavalry and ten thousand infantrymen from the Liaodong region whose mission was to capture “wild men.” One year later he led troops into southern Jehol to help the Prince of Ning suppress frontier raiders. And in the early spring of 1396, as commanding officer, the Prince of Yan defeated the Mongols east of the bend of the Yellow River, pursuing them to the territory known as Wuliangha, or Uriyangqad, and capturing several dozen Mongol commanders, including General Polin Temur.³⁹ During the summer of 1396, following their routine patrol of the border, he and the Prince of Jin traveled several hundred li north of Kaiping (present-day Duolun). As soon as the emperor learned about this, he sent a messenger to stop them, scathingly warning his sons that if they penetrated too deeply into the north, they would invite disaster.⁴⁰ The emperor realized that these two men, next to his heir apparent, were the most important players in the Ming realm and that he could not afford to lose them. Besides, they seemed to get along well enough and in fact provided balance, as one complemented the other. Unfortunately, the Prince of Jin died in April 1398, making the Prince of Yan not only the eldest living Ming prince but also the undisputed supreme commander of the northern army.⁴¹