The Succession Crisis of the Wanli Emperor: What Really Happened

In 1601, Wanli, after fourteen years of struggle with the Grand Secretaries and Hanlin academicians,
angrily caved in to their demands and named Changluo (#1 son) as his successor. Changluo was now 19.
Yet rumors persisted that Wanli disliked Changluo and wanted to replace him with Changxun, the #3 son
by Lady Zheng (Zheng Guifei). The dispute continued; Wanli now refused to meet with or see anyone in
the Grand Secretariat or even outside of his palace. His seclusion lasted well over a decade.

In 1604 Confucian radicals, who had first formed a discussion group at the "eastern grove" at Wuxi in
1587, established the Donglin secret society. They criticized the Wanli emperor and his palace eunuchs
for neglecting Confucian principles and rites. By 1611 the movement was well-established and rumors
abounded that Changluo (#1) was a member of the Donglin.

To mollify the critics, in 1614 Wanli sent Changxun (#3) to a new palace outside of the Forbidden City.
Then came the first of three Palace Cases that convulsed China. All related to the succession dispute that
originated in 1587.

In 1615, a lone man armed with a stick somehow sneaked into the Forbidden City and through the gates
of the Ciqing palace, where Changluo (#1) lived. The intruder knocked down an elderly eunuch and
made his way up the steps to the sleeping quarters, but he was apprehended. Under torture, the
intruder gave differing accounts of his motives. The first interrogators concluded that he was insane, or
that he had a grievance over imperial taxing policies. But the Donglin adherents suspected that the
intruder had meant to assassinate Changluo (#1). Under questioning (torture?) from academicians with
Donglin leanings, the intruder changed his story and said that he was part of a group, organized by
palace eunuchs, that had been urged to attack Changluo! Then a senior academician accused Wanli of
failing to protect or care for his heir: “The realm suspects you of having long mistreated the heir
designate.”

Several days later Wanli, who had not been seen since 1602, summoned most of the bureaucrats of the
Forbidden City to come to a general meeting at the palace. Next to him was Changluo. Wanli berated
those assembled before him: “You all have fathers and sons, so why are you trying to split me from
mine?” He took the hand of Changluo (#1), patted him on the head, and declared: “This boy is
completely filial. I love him very much. . . . Wouldn't I have deposed him long ago, if I'd wanted to? Why
are you so suspicious, seeing that he's grown up? Changxun [#3 son] is thousands of li [a unit of
distance, roughly 500 meters] away, and do you think he has wings and can fly here?” Changluo then
declared: “I and my father are very close and affectionate.” The next day, the intruder was executed.
Officials who had claimed that he was an assassin (most of them Donglin) were removed from office.

During the next few years, lavish palace expenditures and the cost of defending the borders exhausted
the Ming treasury. Increased contact with Europeans, especially Portuguese traders, led to various
epidemics. Many communities lost half their inhabitants. To the north, the Manchus became stronger.
In 1619, they breached the Great Wall near Peking; raiders also made inroads to the southeast.

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In the summer of 1620, Wanli fell mortally ill. On his deathbed, he asked that Lady Zheng (Zheng Guifei)
be promoted to empress. The Donglin academicians blocked this action. On August 18 he died. The next
day Changluo (#1) became Taichang emperor. He immediately released 1 million taels of the family
fortune for northern defenses. On August 20 he fired the eunuch tax collectors and recalled many of the
Donglin who had been removed five years earlier. He appointed two Donglin members to the Hanlin
academy and three more to crucial bureaucratic positions.

But thirty-eight-year-old Changluo (#1), though he had appeared healthy on the day of his father's
death, became seriously ill within a week of assuming the imperial throne. He had a severe bout of
diarrhea and complained of dizziness. After his doctors' remedies had failed, someone mentioned a red
pill that was thought to be efficacious in such cases. The emperor demanded the pill, took it, and died
several days later. His rule lasted 38 days. His oldest son, the Wanli's grandson, became Tianqi emperor.

The Donglin, many of whom had recently been named to high posts, demanded an investigation. Several
Donglin officials presented memorials claiming that Lady Zheng, who had visited Changluo (#1) during
his illness, had arranged to give him the mysterious red pills that resulted in his death. More memorials
asserted that Changluo's favorite concubine was an ally of Lady Zheng, and that the two planned to
dominate the new emperor, Tianqi.

Tianqi, fourteen, was out of his depth. Dim-witted and lazy, he had no patience with the Hanlin
academicians. He turned to the palace eunuchs to handle administrative matters. While the Donglin
academicians were seeking to restaff the officialdom with like-minded scholars, Tianqi began to break
with traditions. In 1623, he chose for the Grand Secretariat not the four highest scorers on the
Metropolitan Exams, but four of the top ten scorers, passing over the two top scorers. This was
unprecedented. Donglin officials registered sharp protests, complaining especially about the influence of
the chief eunuch. In 1625, a Donglin member of the Grand Secretariat issued an astonishing memorial
accusing the eunuch of “Twenty-Four Crimes,” including usurping the powers of the emperor and Grand
Secretariat and committing multiple murders. The palace issued an order forbidding others to make
such assertions. But shortly thereafter, seventy more academicians, most of them Donglin, issued similar
memorials impeaching the chief palace eunuch.

Tianqi, no doubt acting under the advice of the chief eunuch, ordered the arrest and executions of many
of the Donglin scholars. What followed was a bloody purge of the Donglin from the governmental
bureaucracy. The arrest of such officials caused riots. The arrested scholars were not taken to the
Ministry of Justice, an investigative agency run by the bureaucrats, but to the Decree Prison, run by the
Palace. There the officials were tortured until they confessed, and then either died or were executed.
During 1626, hundreds more Donglin officials were removed, and a dozen more high-ranking officials
were tortured and killed. The Donglin academy in Wuxi was demolished.

In 1627 the Tianqi emperor, age 21, died. Rumors abounded that the palace eunuch would usurp the
throne, but the new emperor—the last emperor of the Ming dynasty—expelled the eunuch. Hundreds
of memorials impeaching the eunuch flooded the palace and the emperor ordered his arrest. The

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eunuch committed suicide, but his corpse was exhumed for posthumous execution by slicing. Officials
responsible for the arrest and torture of the Donglin associates were themselves tortured and executed.

Through it all, the Ming dynasty crumbled. A failure in tax collection was compounded by the
abandonment of irrigation and flood-control projects. Soldiers, unpaid, became rebels. In 1644, one
rebellious Ming general moved toward Beijing. The emperor ordered his main army from Beijing to stop
the rebel general; but the Manchus took advantage of this to seize Beijing. The emperor, the Wanli's
grandson, hanged himself in a garden. The Manchus eventually mopped up the remnants of the Ming
dynasty and established the Manchu Qing dynasty. They initially ruled China through military
feudatories, but eventually found it necessary to recruit Confucian literati to rule as in the past. The Qing
dynasty became thoroughly sinicized.

Who, historically, won the game? Not Wanli, who eventually capitulated to his critics on the matter of
succession. Nor the Confucian purists, who were stymied by the Wanli's passive resistance and the hasty
demise of their beloved #1 son. Nor the proponents of the Ming dynasty, which soon collapsed. If there
was any victor, it was the Confucian martyr, Hai Rui. For centuries his name persisted in Chinese myth
and legend, as the embodiment of official rectitude and courage.

One of the most famous Chinese historians of the 20th century was Wu Han. In 1949, when Mao Zedong
and the communists won the Civil War, Wu Han was recruited to their cause. Wu Han wrote texts that
tended to be supportive of Mao. But during the forced collectivization of the late 1950s, when tens of
millions of Chinese died in the resultant famine, Wu Han broke with Mao. In 1963 he wrote a play, The
Dismissal of Hai Rui from Office, which recounted the early career of the Ming Confucian martyr. In the
play, Hai Rui is mercilessly beaten for his opposition to entrenched power. Commoners call upon the
corrupt gentry and officials: “Give us back our land,” a barely veiled attack on Mao and the
collectivization scheme. The Dismissal of Hai Rui from Office became a rallying cry for resistance to Mao.
In response, Mao and his cohorts now launched the devastating Cultural Revolution, a crackdown that
had overtones of the repression of the Donglin in the 1620s. By the twentieth century Hai Rui had
attained an unimaginable posthumous celebrity.