Jianwen Emperor

Zhu Yunwen (朱允炆, 1377–1402?), the Jianwen Emperor, was the second emperor of the Ming dynasty. A grandson of the founder, the Hongwu Emperor, he came to the throne in 1398 and reigned for four years under the era name Jianwen (建文), "establishing civility".

He set out to soften his grandfather's harsh rule and to curb the power of his uncles, the imperial princes. The second aim provoked a civil war. In 1402 his uncle Zhu Di, Prince of Yan, took Nanjing, the palace went up in flames, and the young emperor was never seen again.

The victor, who reigned as the Yongle Emperor, then struck the Jianwen reign from the official record. Much of what we know about Zhu Yunwen was written by his enemies, and his fate has been debated for six centuries.

Enthronement of the Jianwen Emperor

The Hongwu Emperor had carefully prepared his eldest son, Zhu Biao, for the throne, but the crown prince died in 1392. Hongwu had many other adult sons, several of them experienced commanders, and he considered choosing one of them. In the end he held to the rule of succession through the eldest line that he had laid down for the dynasty, and named Zhu Biao's son Zhu Yunwen as his heir.

Zhu Yunwen was a studious young man, raised among Confucian tutors. When Hongwu died in 1398 he succeeded him at about the age of twenty.

Reign of the Jianwen Emperor

The new emperor relied on Confucian scholar-officials, above all Huang Zicheng, Qi Tai and the eminent scholar Fang Xiaoru. Under their guidance he eased some of the severe laws and punishments of his grandfather's reign, reduced the heavy land tax that Hongwu had imposed on parts of the Yangzi delta, and kept the palace eunuchs under the strict control Hongwu had prescribed.

Curbing the Princes

Hongwu had installed his sons as princes in strategic cities, many of them with their own guards and considerable military power. To the new emperor's advisers they were the greatest threat to the throne. Within little more than a year several were stripped of their titles and imprisoned or reduced to commoners, among them the Princes of Zhou, Qi, Dai and Min. The Prince of Xiang, faced with arrest, set fire to his palace and died in the flames.

The most powerful of the uncles was Zhu Di, Prince of Yan, who commanded the frontier armies at Beiping (modern Beijing).

The Jingnan Campaign

Zhu Di knew that he would be next. To buy time he feigned illness and even madness, and he persuaded the court to send home his three sons, who had been in Nanjing for their grandfather's funeral and could have served as hostages.

In the summer of 1399, when officials in Beiping moved to arrest members of his household, Zhu Di rose in revolt. He called his campaign Jingnan, "clearing away the troubles", and claimed to be rescuing the emperor from evil ministers rather than rebelling against him. Soon afterwards he seized the garrison of his brother Zhu Quan, Prince of Ning, at Daning, adding its Mongol cavalry to his own forces.

The war lasted three years. The imperial armies were larger, but they were badly led, and the young emperor is said to have forbidden his generals to kill his uncle. Zhu Di won a series of battles in the north but could not hold the territory he took. In 1402 he changed strategy, bypassed the fortified cities of Shandong and struck directly for the Yangzi.

End of the Reign

In July 1402 Zhu Di's army reached Nanjing, and the gates were opened to him by the imperial commander Li Jinglong and Zhu Di's brother, the Prince of Gu. The palace was set on fire. Zhu Di announced that the emperor, the empress and their eldest son had died in the flames and that the burned remains had been found, and he took the throne as the Yongle Emperor.

The Jianwen Emperor's loyal ministers paid heavily. Fang Xiaoru refused to draft the new emperor's accession proclamation and was executed, together with a very large number of his relatives and followers.

The Disappearance

Rumours that the emperor had escaped began at once. The best-known legend says he left the burning palace by a secret way disguised as a Buddhist monk and lived for many years in obscurity in the south-west under a religious name, Yingwen. A later story tells of an old monk who came forward in the 1440s claiming to be the former emperor and was brought to the palace in Beijing.

The Yongle Emperor himself seems to have had doubts. The official Ming History records that in 1407 he sent the official Hu Ying on a long journey through the empire, ostensibly to find the Daoist immortal Zhang Sanfeng, but in fact to search for Zhu Yunwen. When Hu Ying returned in 1423 he reported to the emperor in a private audience late at night, after which, the history says, the emperor's suspicions were laid to rest. The same history suggests that one motive for Zheng He's voyages was to look for the missing emperor overseas.

None of these accounts can be proved, and many historians accept that Zhu Yunwen died in the fire.

Erased from the Record

Yongle abolished the Jianwen era and ordered that its years be counted as the 32nd to 35th years of Hongwu, as though his father had reigned until 1402. The records of the reign were revised or destroyed.

The Jianwen era was restored to the historical record only in 1595, under the Wanli Emperor. The temple name Huizong (惠宗) was conferred in 1644 by the Southern Ming court, and later tradition came to remember Zhu Yunwen as a gentle ruler overthrown by a usurper.

A Note for Collectors

No porcelain bearing a Jianwen reign mark is known, and a piece that carries one should be regarded with suspicion. Imperial porcelain was not yet regularly marked, the reign lasted only four years, and its records were deliberately destroyed. Wares made at Jingdezhen in these years continued the late Hongwu style, with blue and white and underglaze copper-red decoration, and cannot be separated from it with any confidence. For the period as a whole, see our guide to the early Ming dynasty.