Chongzhen Emperor

Zhu Youjian (朱由檢, 1611–1644), known by his era name Chongzhen ("lofty and auspicious") and the temple name Sizong, reigned from 1627 to 1644. He was the last emperor of the Ming dynasty to rule from Beijing.

Chongzhen was hard-working, frugal and deeply conscientious, but he was also suspicious, impatient and quick to blame his ministers. He inherited a state already close to collapse, with an empty treasury, a factional court, a Manchu threat in the northeast and famine in the northwest, and none of his efforts could reverse it. When rebel armies took Beijing in 1644, he took his own life.

Early Life

Zhu Youjian was a son of the future Taichang Emperor by a low-ranking concubine, Lady Liu, and a younger half-brother of the Tianqi Emperor, whom he would succeed.

When he was four, his mother offended his father and died as a result of the punishment he ordered. She was buried quietly, and the matter was kept out of sight. The boy was raised first by one of his father's consorts, Consort Kang, and then, when she took charge of his elder brother Zhu Youjiao, by another, Consort Zhuang.

Of Taichang's sons, only Zhu Youjiao and Zhu Youjian lived to adulthood, and the younger prince grew up in quiet and rather lonely circumstances. After their father's death in 1620, Zhu Youjiao became the Tianqi Emperor. He made his brother Prince of Xin and posthumously honoured Lady Liu as Consort Xian.

Accession

The Tianqi Emperor died in 1627 without a surviving son. His last heir, an infant crown prince, had died in 1626, reportedly from the shock of the great explosion at the Wanggongchang arsenal in Beijing. On his deathbed Tianqi named his sixteen-year-old brother as his successor.

Zhu Youjian had no experience of government and no following at court, and he is said to have been reluctant to accept. Tianqi's widow, Empress Zhang, a determined opponent of the powerful eunuch Wei Zhongxian, urged him to take the throne, fearing that otherwise Wei would find a child to rule through. He agreed, and he became emperor in the autumn of 1627.

The Reign

Wei Zhongxian had dominated the government under Tianqi, and the new emperor moved carefully. According to later accounts, in his first days in the Forbidden City he ate only food brought from his own household and kept a sword by him at night. In public he treated Wei with courtesy while he assessed the loyalty of the officials around him.

Within three months he struck. Wei's allies were removed, and Wei himself was banished to Fengyang; he took his own life on the way. The eunuch faction was purged from the government.

Chongzhen then set about reform at the top of the civil and military establishment, but corruption, factional feuding and an empty treasury defeated him. He found it almost impossible to keep capable ministers: he changed his grand secretaries some fifty times in seventeen years, and many officials were dismissed, imprisoned or executed.

His distrust fell hardest on his commanders. The most notable case was Yuan Chonghuan, who had held the northeastern frontier against the Manchus. After a Manchu army raided the region around Beijing in 1629, Yuan was accused of treason and executed in 1630, a loss the Ming defences never made good.

A Dynasty in Crisis

Chongzhen had inherited a state in deep trouble, and each problem worsened the others. Factional strife divided both the bureaucracy and the army, and generals were often more concerned with their rivals than with the rebels in the interior or the Manchus on the northeastern border.

The treasury could not pay or supply the troops, and unpaid soldiers deserted or joined the rebels. Drought and famine struck the northwest in the late 1620s and 1630s. To pay for the war, the court raised new taxes and levies on a population already under great strain, and more and more people joined the rebel armies of Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong.