Taichang Emperor

The Taichang Emperor, born Zhu Changluo (朱常洛, 1582–1620), was the fourteenth emperor of the Ming dynasty and the eldest son of the Wanli Emperor. He succeeded his father in August 1620 and died after only a month on the throne, the shortest reign of the dynasty. His era name, Taichang (泰昌), means ‘great prosperity’, and his temple name is Guangzong (光宗).

His sudden death, after taking red pills prescribed by a minor court official, became one of the great mysteries of the late Ming. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Zhu Youjiao, who reigned as the Tianqi Emperor.

A Neglected Heir

Zhu Changluo was born in 1582, the tenth year of the Wanli reign. His mother, Lady Wang, was a palace maid in the service of the emperor's mother, the Empress Dowager Li. Wanli was reluctant to acknowledge the child, but the empress dowager insisted, and Lady Wang was raised to the rank of Consort Gong. She never won the emperor's affection, and her son grew up largely ignored by his father.

Wanli's empress had borne him only a daughter, Princess Rongchang, so under Ming rules of succession Zhu Changluo, as the eldest son, should have been named heir. The emperor's favourite, however, was Noble Consort Zheng, and he wanted her son, Zhu Changxun, born in 1586, to succeed him. The senior officials, holding to Confucian principle and dynastic law, refused to accept this.

The result was a struggle of some fifteen years, known as the dispute over ‘the root of the state’. Wanli delayed naming an heir, dismissed and punished officials who pressed him, and even held back his eldest son's education, which did not formally begin until 1594. He finally gave way in 1601, when Zhu Changluo was named crown prince. Zhu Changxun was made Prince of Fu; his son would later reign briefly as the first emperor of the Southern Ming, and is covered on our Prince of Fu page.

The Palace Attack of 1615

In 1615 a man named Zhang Chai, armed only with a wooden club, got past the guards and broke into the Ciqing Palace, the crown prince's residence, before he was overpowered. The first officials to question him declared him mad. A further investigation by the official Wang Zhicai drew a confession that two eunuchs had brought him to the palace and promised him a reward, and both eunuchs served Noble Consort Zheng.

The suspicion that Lady Zheng was behind an attempt on the heir's life was politically explosive. Wanli took the case into his own hands to protect her. Zhang Chai was executed, and the two eunuchs were put to death inside the palace, which ended the inquiry. The episode became known as the Case of the Attack with the Club.

The Month-Long Reign

The Wanli Emperor died in August 1620, and Zhu Changluo was enthroned about ten days later. His first acts were widely welcomed. He released large sums of silver from the palace treasury to pay the armies on the frontier, where the Manchu threat was growing, abolished the hated mining and commercial tax commissioners of his father's reign, and began to fill the many official posts that Wanli had left vacant for years.

Within days of his enthronement, however, the new emperor fell seriously ill.

The Case of the Red Pills

Unofficial accounts blamed the illness on excess, saying that Noble Consort Zheng had presented the new emperor with a group of beautiful women. Whatever its cause, the illness grew worse after the eunuch Cui Wensheng, who was in charge of the palace dispensary and had once served Lady Zheng, gave him a strong purgative, and the emperor was weakened by severe diarrhoea.

At the end of September Li Kezhuo, a minor official of the Court of State Ceremonial, offered the emperor a red pill of his own preparation. According to the official history, the emperor felt better after taking it and praised Li as a loyal subject. He took a second pill that afternoon and was dead by the following morning, twenty-nine days after his enthronement.

The death of an emperor who had seemed to be recovering shocked the court and set off a flood of rumours. Whether the pills were poison, a quack remedy or simply unable to save a dying man has never been settled. The affair became known as the Case of the Red Pills.

The Three Great Cases

Within days a third crisis followed. Lady Li, a consort of the late emperor who had been caring for his son, refused to leave the Qianqing Palace, the emperor's residence, and was suspected of trying to control the young heir. Officials forced her to move out, and Zhu Youjiao was enthroned. The Palace Attack, the Red Pills and this Palace Removal became known as the Three Great Cases of the late Ming. They were fought over for years between the Donglin officials and their enemies, and the feud helped to paralyse government in the dynasty's last decades.

The Taichang Era and Porcelain

Because Taichang died so soon, the court decided that the Wanli era would run until his accession, the Taichang era would cover the rest of 1620, and the Tianqi era would begin in 1621. The reign was far too short for Jingdezhen to produce porcelain with his reign mark, and genuine Taichang-marked pieces are not recorded.

By this time imperial orders to Jingdezhen had fallen sharply, and the potters increasingly worked for private and overseas buyers. The years that followed saw the start of what collectors call the Transitional period, with freer painting and new subjects. Our Late Ming Dynasty page describes the wider period, and our guide to Transitional porcelain covers the wares themselves.