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Chapter One

Laying the Foundations Taizu, r. 1368–98

Censor Liu Ji, a laconic memoirist of middling rank, described the Mongol Yuan dynasty’s last day in China and its sad retreat to the same steppes from which it had emerged over a century before. The world empire of Chinggis- khan, and the China-based regime of Khubilai-khan, were no more. In China, a new actor, the ex-peasant Zhu Yuanzhang, posthumously known as Taizu, founder of the Ming dynasty, after seventeen years of civil war, finally forced the Yuan court to evacuate its capital city, Dadu, nowadays known as Beijing.

The day was September 10, 1368. The Yuan emperor, Toghon Temur, called a last meeting of his officials. He told them they all had to flee Dadu immediately and relocate to the summer capital, Shangdu, in the steppes two hundred miles directly north. No one said a word until an officer in the Bureau of Military Affairs, one Kharajang, thought they should stay and defend to the death until help came. No, said the emperor; Koko Temur is too far away to help. So around midnight, the emperor, the palace ladies, the heir apparent, and around one hundred civil and military officials plus some troops exited the walled city on horseback. Many were left behind. There were persistent rains that soaked everyone, and it was cold enough that some men froze to death.

On September 17, the court learned that Dadu had fallen to the “bandits,” that is, the Ming. Ten days later, the court reached Shangdu, only to find that it had been wrecked during the civil wars and was scarcely habitable. The emperor managed to confer with messengers from some semi-independent Yuan warlords—Koko Temur in Shanxi and Naghachu in Manchuria. He hoped to get help from Korea. The court discussed how they might all re-

Dardess, John W.. More Than the Great Wall : The Northern Frontier and Ming National Security, 1368–1644, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucsc/detail.action?docID=5965185. Created from ucsc on 2021-03-26 15:42:19.

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Chapter 12

group and fight their way back into China. But morale was low. There were snowstorms on top of dust storms. Korea and Naghachu were of no help; they were fighting each other. In March 1369, a Yuan commander raided Tongzhou, twenty miles east of Dadu, but he couldn’t take it. The “bandit” general Chang Yuchun launched an attack on the fugitive Yuan court during the spring and summer and beat an opposing Yuan force on July 8. The court decided that it wasn’t safe; they’d have to escape six hundred miles farther, northwest to Kharakhorum, and regroup and plan the reconquest of China from there. On July 20, the Ming army occupied Shangdu. On September 5, Chang gave up the chase of the Yuan court, but he did capture ten thousand troops, ten thousand carts, three thousand horses, and fifty thousand head of cattle—a huge loss for the Yuan if the numbers were honestly reported.

Liu Ji ended his memoir on February 7, 1370. 1 For some years, the Yuan court in exile thought it had been illegitimately deprived of its rightful pos- session of China. Its rulers continued to think they might one day recover it from the bandits who had ousted them.

* * *

Taken altogether, the Ming had some seven thousand miles of frontier to defend, including Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean. It wasn’t just the north. 2 But the north, it’s fair to say, absorbed the lion’s share of China’s manpower, resources, and attention every day of every year. Forming an immense arc, the northern borderlands stretched some 1,700 miles from around Songpan on the Sichuan-Tibet frontier as far as, say, Shanhaiguan on the Gulf of Bohai and reaching out into Manchuria. It crossed sharp and unglaciated mountains, rounded hills formed of windblown soil, deserts, desert-steppes, grasslands, and forests. Beyond the arc lived non-Chinese mainly, people the Ming variously and vaguely identified as Fan (Tibetans and the like), Muslims (Hui), Monguors (Tuda), Oirat Mongols (Wala), Ta- tars (Da, Dadan; the label “Mongol” was virtually never used), and Jurchens (Nüzhen), just to name some. These posed a security challenge to the realm much more closely and immediately threatening than what the United States in 2019 is facing along its 1,300-mile border with Mexico, or indeed what the United States faced driving away the Indian resistance in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. While the United States pushed its western frontier ever farther west, the Ming infantry, cavalry, and artillery were placed in walled forts, usually not in order to march forth and annex, but to remain in place and protect China’s heartlands (the fuli, “stomach and innards”) from disor- der, raids, and invasions. And somehow, for 276 years, despite many serious lapses and several horrendous breakdowns, the system worked. The imperial government held the line. This book tries to explain how it ever managed to do that.

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Laying the Foundations: Taizu, r. 1368–98 3

* * *

As one traveled west to east along that northern frontier, one encountered at least three ecologically and ethnically distinct regions. The most complex of them lay in the west. There, Chinese settlers lived intermixed with Tibetans and their nomad communities and sectarian Buddhist temples; with the Mon- guors, a Mongol subgroup; with Uighur Turks; with Oirats; and with both Chinese and Central Asian Muslims. This mixture was volatile. Violence was common. Along the middle stretch, the Tatars (i.e., Mongols) predominated. They were an aristocratic nomad society, dominated either actually or nomi- nally by the Borjigin descendants of Chinggis-khan and Khubilai. The Tatars were Ming China’s greatest threat until the rise of the Manchus in the seven- teenth century. The eastern region consisted of Manchuria, whose rivalrous Jurchen communities and states (guo) were, advantageously for China, wedged between Korea to the south and the Tatars to the west and north, whom they could ally with or fight, however their internecine struggles might sway them. They were a manageable worry for the Ming, until the dynasty neared its end.

One can begin the story in the west. How did Ming China, under the personal control of one of the most powerful dictators world history had ever seen (his contemporary, Tamerlane, lacked his rootedness and aptitude for organization), develop its militarized face upon the outside world there to the northwest?

THE NORTHWEST: TIBET AND THE SILK ROAD

The Ming march west set forth from Dadu, renamed Beiping, nowadays Beijing, in December 1368. It was led by Xu Da. Like all of Taizu’s com- manders, Xu Da was a peasant and a regional compatriot of the founder’s, and ever since the onset of the civil wars in 1353, his favorite fighter. 3 At Datong, stiff Yuan resistance was led by the controversial and headstrong Koko Temur, actually a Chinese adopted as a boy by a Mongol family. By this time, he was a powerful warlord, long in and out of favor with the Yuan court. Caught by surprise one night, Koko Temur and a dozen of his horse- men barely escaped from their tents. They galloped west toward Gansu. Xu Da captured forty thousand of his leaderless troops and some forty thousand horses. 4

In May 1369, Xu Da convened a conference of commanders. They were in interior Shaanxi Province, needing to decide what to do next. Various ideas were floated, but only Xu Da’s opinion counted. It was to head for Lintao and the Tibetan frontier, still under Yuan control. If we take it, he said, we can absorb the Yuan forces into ours. Their farms can supply us. All the other cities will fall like ripe fruit. 5 The Yuan commander at Lintao was

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Chapter 14

an ethnic Chinese named Li Siqi. Xu, who was probably illiterate, had his headquarters send Li an interesting letter, which I paraphrase: Either you can surrender and save lives, or you can flee into the steppes. The barbarians may obey you for a while, but they are not our kind. Their minds lie elsewhere. Your men are from the central plains of China. They see the steppes as bleak and desolate; they won’t like living there and will probably rebel. You’ll be alone, unable to protect your own family. Back home you’re a hero, and your ancestors’ graves are there; have you ever thought about that? You should leave the foreigners and come back to China.

For a short while, Li hoped to join his foster son, Zhao Qi, and find refuge with the Tibetans. Zhao Qi, also known as Toghto Temur, was a non-Chinese borderland native. In the end, however, both he and Li surrendered. Lintao fell to the Ming. 6

Xu Da marched on to Huizhou, one hundred miles northeast, where he declined to requisition the local people’s horses and livestock. “We’re not conducting a punitive expedition,” he said. “The people of the northwest have always herded for a living. If we confiscate their animals, how will they live?” In June, the city of Qingyang (150 miles northwest of the Shaanxi provincial capital of Xi’an) surrendered, then rebelled, showing that the Ming juggernaut could on occasion be slowed. 7 Back in China, meanwhile, Taizu directed an edict announcing the Ming founding to the ruler of “Tibet” (Tubo), whoever he thought that might be. No one responded to it. 8

Qingyang fell to the Ming on July 31, but it didn’t fall quietly. 9 Its defender, a pro-Yuan fighter named Zhang Liangchen, thought he had an advantage in his seven foster sons who were all eager to do battle. Koko Temur was out there somewhere, and he might be able to help. Zhang’s own brother, Zhang Sidao, was at Ningxia, two hundred miles northwest, too far away. The Ming decided to starve the city into submission. That worked. Zhang Liangchen committed suicide. The Ming put to death two hundred of his men. 10 Taizu sent a letter to Koko Temur. He offered him and his men, most of whom he said were Chinese, a chance to return home and take positions with the Ming. No response to that is on record. 11

But while the siege was unfolding, Xu Da signaled Taizu that he needed help. The emperor ordered his nephew and adopted son, Li Wenzhong, to take forces from Beiping and go to Xu’s aid. Li reached Taiyuan in northern Shanxi, some three hundred miles short of his goal, when messengers in- formed him that Datong, 150 miles north, had fallen. This, as things turned out, was the last attempt by the Yuan emperor, far away in the steppes, to force a reentry into China. On his own authority, Li stopped his march and turned to Datong. Like most Yuan-era cities, it was unwalled. The Yuan commander, Torebeg, came out to fight. A furious clash lasted some six hours. Li’s superior numbers won the day, and Torebeg was captured. No

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Laying the Foundations: Taizu, r. 1368–98 5

hard feelings; Li untied his fetters and invited him to a banquet. Torebeg later entered Ming service. 12

What does all this show thus far? Judging just from the events, Xu Da’s army was large, well run, experienced, and very effective. For the first time, they’d entered into a very complicated frontier environment. Chinese and non-Chinese officials and generals put up a token defense, but their loyalties to the Yuan were thin. They could be talked into surrender. But the ethnic mix out in the northwest, and the livelihood mix of herding and farming, would forever make a difficult environment for the maintenance of Ming security. And at Lintao, Xu Da was operating some seven hundred miles away from Beiping (Beijing). Yet the supreme command over everything and everyone, Xu Da included, remained firmly in the hands of Taizu in his capital at Nanjing. The emerging Ming machine was colossal in scale and absolutely centrally directed.

In September, Taizu sent out detailed instructions to Xu Da telling him how he wanted things arranged in the newly captured cities of Lintao, Lan- zhou, Qingyang, and Taiyuan. Then he ordered Xu back to Nanjing for consultation on future border actions. 13

* * *

Lintao, conquered in May 1369, came under some sort of Tibetan (Tubo) threat five months later. As the Ming defenders hoped, ice formed on the river that lay between them. The Ming army crossed and surprised the Tibe- tans, who flung down their arms and surrendered. Their leaders were treated nicely—given coats and caps and sent back to rally their people (buluo) to the Ming side. 14 Few seem to have responded. In January 1370, Taizu issued an edict to those “hiding in the mountains,” telling them that amnesties and rewards were on offer if they came out and surrendered. 15 For as long as the Ming lasted, the Tibetans (no longer called Tubo, but Fan) would at times cooperate in the tea-horse exchange, and at times menace or raid Lintao and the other hybrid border cities, like Hezhou and Taozhou.

In June 1370, Ming commander Deng Yu marched fifty miles west to Hezhou, on the edge of eastern Tibet. The ruler ordered that a guard commu- nity (wei) be set up at or near Hezhou, a mixed Sino-Tibetan city. The city was empty. Corpses were strewn everywhere. The soldiers had wanted to abandon it, but their commander made them rebuild it as a defense fixture against the Tibetans. Some months later, eighteen or more Tibetan lineages (zu) came and offered their submission. The Ming authorities wanted yet more submissions, so they sent an interpreter, a soldier with a Tibetan name, out to make the contacts. In January 1371, Hezhou was incorporated into Ming China as a hybrid frontier city, Ming in its organization, Tibetan and Mongol in its ethnic makeup. A Tibetan was made a hereditary vice com- mander of the guard, with two other ethnics, probably Mongols, as assistant

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Chapter 16

commanders. Then the larger region of which Hezhou was a part was inocu- lated with military strongpoints, eight battalions at Minzhou and other places and one tribal battalion at Taozhou, plus eight squadrons. 16 In June 1371, a leader with a Chinese name, having come to Nanjing with tribute, was ap- pointed vice commander of the Wenzhou Han-Bo (Sino-Tibetan) Brigade—a fort on the extreme southern edge of today’s Gansu Province, near Sichuan, on the north bank of the Baishui River, a beautifully scenic place, forested and mountainous. 17 Six months later, Hezhou was reconfigured, as a large delegation had arrived in Nanjing with a stunning tribute offering consisting of horses, iron armor, swords, arrows, and other goods. Taizu realized Nan- jing’s July heat was hard on the men, who were used to a cooler climate, so he praised their goodwill, gave them all gifts, and appointed a whole new cadre of officers for Hezhou. The new officers included, judging from their names, a mix of Chinese, Mongols, and Tibetans. 18 In March 1372, two commanders with Mongol names came to Nanjing with tribute and were given gifts. 19

The hybrid character of Hezhou as a frontier city is clear. It was in part an incorporated element of the Ming military, but at the same time it was like a little non-Han foreign country, part of Ming China’s international relations system. And one of the Mongols at Hezhou was treated with unusual respect by Taizu. Thus when in 1370 a commander named Bunala surrendered to the Ming at Hezhou and the ruler was informed that Bunala was a descendant of Khubilai-khan’s seventh son, Taizu was deeply impressed by that and made his position hereditary; and when he died three years later, Taizu granted him a short obituary and burial at government expense. 20 In 1388 a local Fan monk with a Tibetan name arrived in Nanjing with a tribute offering of horses and was rewarded with Ming money. 21 In 1393, Taizu set up two Buddhist registries in the Hezhou Guard city, one for the Han Chinese, the other for the Fan, both headed by clerics. 22 These data are testimony to the ethnic hybridity of Hezhou.

Hezhou soon became a center for the Ming acquisition of quality Tibetan horses, desirable as mounts for China’s northwestern frontier cavalry. In October 1380, the Ministry of War reported getting 2,050 horses for 58,892 catties of brick tea, produced by the tea monopolies in Sichuan and Shaanxi Provinces. One catty was equivalent to 20.7 ounces, so the total came to some thirty-eight tons of tea. 23 The Ming government dictated the prices: thus in 1383, forty catties of tea for a grade-A horse, thirty for grade B, and twenty for grade C. Taizu himself endorsed those rates. 24

Border trade was fraught with complexities. Should government control all of it? Not totally. In 1394, Taizu moved to protect the private economy along the China-Tibet frontier. He’d been informed that local officials were banning all but government transactions in horses and livestock. That was wrong. The western people, he said, depended on horses, oxen, and sheep for

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Laying the Foundations: Taizu, r. 1368–98 7

their livelihood. Soldiers and civilians should not be forbidden to buy those animals, provided they were unbranded and not government property. He ordered placards to be posted on the frontier to inform everyone of official policy on this matter. 25 Easy possibilities for corruption were a perpetual temptation for local border officials. In 1393, the ruler sent envoys out to Hezhou and elsewhere, wherever Ming China dealt with the Fan lineages, to issue tallies to the lineages so that they needn’t yield to the demand of any but official emissaries who held the other halves of the tallies. 26

Corruption in the official tea-horse exchange was by no means small scale and local only. In July 1397, no less a dignitary than one of the ruler’s own sons-in-law, Ouyang Lun, was executed for smuggling tea. He’d sent housemen out to Shaanxi Province to buy tea; he used intimidation tactics to commandeer carts and force their way through the police checkpoints, and at Hezhou sell the tea at a lower rate than what the Ming government was offering. 27

Taizu saw tea smuggling as not just an economic crime, but as a threat to China’s very security. The greed of barbarians, he noted in 1397, was by definition insatiable. Unless they’re restrained, barbarians encroach on us and humiliate us. But tea smuggling by Chinese from the China side makes tea cheaper and horses more expensive, which increases the barbarians’ ten- dency to toy with us. So the ruler put two of his sons, the armed princes of Qin and Shu, to work patrolling the whole frontier from Songpan up to Hezhou and Lintao, two hundred rugged miles, to stop the contraband. He said that the aim of this policy was not to profit the state; it was to control the barbarians. 28 The damage caused by smuggling, he said, was exacerbated by low-level border officials who tried to force their Fan trading counterparts to accept government tea at a price above the going private rate. 29

* * *

Furthermore, Hezhou was a gateway to the vast hinterlands of Tibet proper. A special brigade led by non-Han officers was set up under Hezhou supervi- sion, tasked with relations to the west. Between that brigade and the deep Tibetan interior at dBus-gTsang, there lay Tibetan groups with larceny in mind. A 1373 tribute mission from a Tibetan Buddhist hierarch, the Namkha dpal-bzang-po, managed to make it to Nanjing, although along the way he complained that “Tubo” bandits had looted their baggage. Taizu ordered up an expedition under Deng Yu to go after them. 30

China understood outermost Tibet to be a center of civilization, not bar- barism. Thus in February 1373, a large delegation bearing Buddhist statues, holy books, and relics led to Taizu’s authorizing a temple to house all this. 31 And more. He ordered up a grand Tibetan guard unit, the dBus-gTsang mDo- khams Military Command, with sixty local officers and a Buddhist preceptor of state. The ruler ordered them all to obey Ming law, keep the peace among

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Chapter 18

their people, and have the lamas teach the people to do good. He assigned a judge from the Hezhou Guard to accompany the return mission and to call on all the Tibetan chiefs who hadn’t yet submitted to do so. 32 The ruler also set up at Taozhou, some hundred miles south of Hezhou, headquarters for six brigades, nine squadrons, with seventeen officers to supervise eighteen line- ages (zu) of non-Han border people. Thus the whole of Tibet, out as far as the Himalayas, came under the Ming embrace. But it was all symbolic. Nanjing never posted any Chinese troops or personnel out there.

Despite all these new arrangements, violence broke out here and there in the China-Tibet borderlands. March 1373 saw a raid by the Fan (the new term for the Tibetans) on Longde County in the Liupan Mountains, seventy- five miles southwest of Qingyang. A commander of the Pingliang Guard marched fifty miles west, captured or killed seventy men, and drove the raiders’ horses, mules, and oxen back to Pingliang. In August, Hezhou suf- fered a night raid. A brigade commander got killed. Marquis Chen De drove the raiders away. In September, Chen De moved his forces out to a place called Dalahaizi Pass and imposed a horrendous defeat upon the “Hu” there, Mongols perhaps, killing six hundred, capturing seven hundred including their leader, and seizing a thousand head of horses, camels, sheep, and oxen. 33

There was yet more to the China-Tibet interface. In February 1373, Taizu thrust a new salient into the borderlands, establishing a guard community at Xining, near the edge of today’s Qinghai Province. Yuan officials still held it. They were divided on the question whether they should submit to Ming authority. Dorji-shige, a Mongol and a mid-level provincial official, opted to join the Ming. He and Ming commander Feng Sheng attacked his colleague, Dorjibal (Yuan prince of Qi). They seized his brother, his seals, his troops, and his horses and sent them all on to Nanjing. So Taizu appointed a Chinese as commander and made Dorji-shige himself assistant commander of the new guards. 34 That wasn’t quite the end of the story. In August 1373, some non- Han officers set out from Taozhou on a hunting expedition. They chanced upon Dorjibal. They all got up a plan to raid Hezhou and Lanzhou. Com- manders from the Xining Guard had some success beating the raiders off. 35

Xining remained important as a Ming presence on the edge of the Tibetan world. Troops came and enlarged its wall in 1387. Its function was military for the Ming, religious for the Tibetans. Taizu was pleased to confer a name upon one of its lamaist temples in 1393, when he also authorized the creation of a Buddhist registry (Senggangsi) there, run by native clerics, with admin- istrative jurisdiction over all local temples and monks. 36

The Tibetan world was vast, remote, and fractured. 37 Lhasa was some 1,500 straight-line miles from Nanjing. Closer in was the region known as mDo-khams (i.e., Amdo and parts south), highland country in what is now Qinghai and western Sichuan Provinces. The Yuan had connections to these

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Laying the Foundations: Taizu, r. 1368–98 9

places, and Taizu hoped to resume those connections. In October 1373, there arrived in Nanjing a delegation of Buddhist hierarchs from mDo-khams with a petition asking permission to do for the Ming what they’d done for the Yuan and act as frontier guardians in return for certain privileges. One of the prelates had to listen to a lecture from Taizu. The ruler told him that Bud- dhism originated in the west a thousand years ago and came to China. Wise monks spoke of Heaven, man, and wonderful karma. Intelligent people be- lieved them, and everyone was enlightened. That’s how powerful the Buddha was, said Taizu, a Buddhist mendicant himself when he was a teenager. Taizu advised the lama to keep up his meditations. The Ming state would enforce his teachings and punish any misbehavior among the laity. But Taizu denied the delegation’s request to gather in “scattered and lost people.” Ming forces would do that themselves. 38

So mDo-khams voluntarily accepted a token Ming suzerainty. During the fifteenth century, its name would fade, and its component groups and local- ities would be dealt with piecemeal by the Ming. But in January 1375, the Ming established out there a pacification office with six commissions, four chiliarchies, and seventeen battalions. This followed the Yuan pattern. How- ever, none of the appointees to offices there were Chinese, and the militariza- tion implied by the Ming nomenclature was rather a veneer over a herding society in fact run by Buddhist clerics, based in their lamaseries. A few months later, after Ming envoys contacted them, a similar regime was created for dBus-gTsang and Mna-ris in far Tibet. During the whole of his reign, Taizu welcomed their occasional missions, bringing tribute in the form of horses, Buddhist texts, and other goods. 39

Generally speaking, the Ming under Taizu dealt effectively with the Tibe- tan world. The ruler liked dealing with their Buddhist prelates, and distant Tibetans were, with some exceptions, willing to accept a sort of pro forma tributary integration into the Ming realm and exchange their religious goods plus horses for tea, silk, salt, or cash. Neighboring Tibetans in frontier cities like Hezhou and Xining lived alongside Chinese settlers, but much the same expectations were laid upon them. However, south from Hezhou, along the foothills of the Tibetan massif down to Songpan, things were much more violent.

TROUBLES ALONG THE SILK ROAD

Not far northeast of the semi-Tibetan world of Hezhou, Taozhou, and Min- zhou lay a troubled war zone—nowadays Gansu Province and the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, but in the Ming both were part of Shaanxi. Here the founders faced a more complex security problem. Out along the Silk Road lived a volatile mix of Chinese soldiers and civilians, Tibetans, Turks,

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Chapter 110

Mongols, Oirats, Monguors, and the people called Hui, defined by their religion (Islam) rather than by their ethnicity, which could be either Chinese or Turkic or Mongol. Some ethnics farmed, others herded sheep and oxen, others were traders, and many found careers raiding their neighbors for slaves and livestock. Through the long, dangerous gauntlet called the Gansu Corridor came a steady stream of caravans from the city-states of eastern Turkestan and the Middle East. Misunderstandings, flare-ups, and serious security crises were a constant occurrence.

The geographical profile of extreme western Shaanxi, where it juts into what is now Gansu Province, looked something like a syringe. In the bulb of the syringe sat a handful of interior prefectures, places like Pingliang, Gong- chang, Lintao, Lanzhou, and Qingyang, which were under civilian adminis- tration but were often involved in war. In the long, thin tube of the syringe, heading west along the Silk Road, sat Zhuanglang, Liangzhou, Yongchang, Ganzhou, and Suzhou, which were military command centers (zhen), or as Hucker renders it, defense commands, managed by a regional commander, not a civilian but a member of the Ming armed forces. From Zhuanglang it was some three hundred miles west to Suzhou. At the far end, the citadel of Jiayuguan marked Ming China’s terminus, where embassies from the west had to halt for customs inspections. 40

Beyond Jiayuguan lay eastern Turkestan and its famous oasis cities: Hami (Qamil, Qomul), three hundred miles west; then Turfan, three hundred miles beyond Hami; and then Beshbalik, yet another three hundred miles out. On the other side of the Pamirs, three thousand straight-line miles from Nanjing, lay Samarkand, capital of another empire builder, Tamerlane, known to Tai- zu as Temur, the son-in-law who married into the house of Chinggis-khan and through it ruled the Ulus Chaghatai. Beginning in 1387, Tamerlane sent yearly missions to Nanjing, each bearing amicable donations of horses and camels. More horses came each time: 15 at the outset, to 1,095 in 1396. None of these missions was ever disturbed by robbers. Apparently Tamerlane was just that powerful. 41

An unfamiliar embassy arrived in Nanjing in the summer of 1374, with gifts of armor and swords. They were Sarigh Uighurs. They took pains to explain that they were a branch of the Tatars; that their large territory lay 1,500 li (500 miles) west of Ganzhou and Suzhou; that their settlements were unwalled; that many of them lived in felt tents and herded camels, horses, oxen, and sheep; and that their king’s name was Buyan Temur. 42 It appears the king hoped to strengthen his rule by accepting seals and other badges of Ming authority that would allow him to parcel out some settlements as nomi- nal Ming guard units (wei) under appointees of his. But there soon followed a bloodletting in which the king and then his killers were killed, one after the other. Nothing more was heard of these people until 1391, when a mission arrived from Azhen, one of the Sarigh Uighur wei set up in 1374. 43

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Laying the Foundations: Taizu, r. 1368–98 11

A few months later, a mission from Kheidir Khoja, king of Beshbalik, arrived in Nanjing bearing gifts of eleven horses and some hunting falcons. Actually, the mission was Chinese. It had to be explained that when Lan Yu fought the Tatar-Mongols at Buyur Lake in Mongolia in 1388 (of which more later), he caught several hundred Samarkand merchants, whom he sent back home under escort. The escort, on its return to China, passed through Beshbalik, where the king took advantage of their protection to attach his own envoys. 44

The mission was delayed for a long time at Hami. The king of Hami, Unashiri, a descendant of the Mongol house of Chaghatai, was blocking and looting the Uighur tribute missions. This behavior Taizu could not tolerate. Although the core issue was rivalry between the two states of Turkestan and had nothing to do with Ming China directly, the effect was to cede to Hami the power to decide who could and could not engage with Nanjing. Ming preeminence was challenged, with who knows what larger reverberations on China’s place in the world if the challenge weren’t met. So, in September 1391, Taizu launched a surprise campaign on Hami. An army of unstated size surrounded Hami in a nighttime maneuver. King Unashiri and his family escaped, but the result was an utter rout. Hami fell to the Ming. 45

Taizu followed that with an embassy to Beshbalik, bearing a letter for King Kheidir Khoja. In it, the emperor outlined China’s approach to the world. I paraphrase: Heaven and earth support many rulers, he said. Separat- ed as they are by mountains and seas and customs, they all share a common proclivity to love and hate, and they all share a common endowment of blood and vital energy. I regard all of them with equal benevolence, so as to ensure that the common people of all guo (states, nations) large and small, whatever their species, will prosper. Their duty, in turn, is to “serve the great.” So it was indeed praiseworthy when our escort taking the Samarkand merchants home returned through your territory, and you joined them, and thereby showed your correct decision to “serve the great.” 46 This was serious propa- ganda. The ruler meant every word of it.

In 1391, Lan Yu—winner in the 1388 battle at Buyur Lake, and in Tai- zu’s effusive rejoicing the greatest steppe fighter in all history—was sent out with an army to eastern Turkestan to dispose of certain troublemakers. By May 1392, they’d not had much success. Lan Yu’s officers wanted to call off the fighting and negotiate. Lan Yu vetoed that and pressed ahead into Sarigh Uighur territory. The enemy eluded him. Then came orders from Taizu to exit Turkestan and undertake a long march of easily a thousand miles down to Jianchang, a zhen (defense command) 350 miles south of Songpan, 225 miles south of Chengdu, on the Sichuan-Tibet frontier, where a big-time rebel named Orug Temur was creating a major disturbance. Lan Yu insisted on taking a perilous route that hugged the edge of the Tibetan highlands. He drove his men across rain-swollen rivers. Many of the men knew Taizu

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Chapter 112

wouldn’t have wanted that, and they deserted. So Lan Yu had to take an easier route.

By June 1392, with Lan Yu still on the march, Regional Military Com- missioner Qu Neng brought Orug Temur to terms. The foe offered to surren- der. Many thought the offer false. It was a delaying tactic. Qu disagreed. And Orug Temur successfully made an escape. 47

Taizu learned about all this and decided that a major effort was needed to secure that part of the Ming frontier. He set up two tribal civil and military commands (junmin zhihuisi) plus a chiliarchy and sent out fifteen thousand troops from Nanjing and Shaanxi, all in response to the threat posed by Orug Temur. The ruler’s orders to the commanders stated that many ethnic groups—Bo, Baiyi, Lolo, Moso, and western Fan—had deserted Orug Temur (who was apparently a Mongol) and had gone home to their native villages. The commanders were asked to identify their households and assign one man from each of them to military duty and live intermixed with the Chinese in the garrisons, but under their own leaders. They were to farm or herd live- stock if they weren’t fighting. A bounty of 1,000 taels silver was on offer for Orug Temur’s capture, and 250 for his head.

During July, Qu Neng battered the enemy in some fierce mountain bat- tles, but Orug Temur still eluded him. During August, detailed plans were approved to build a highway closely hugging the Tibetan side of Shaanxi and Sichuan, which route Lan Yu had been forced to abandon earlier. This was a hard task, involving bridges, cantilevered plank roads, and post stations above the reach of the malaria-bearing mosquitoes at lower elevations. 48

By October 1392, Lan Yu reached Jianchang. Taizu sent him precise instructions. Orug Temur, he said, was a villainous ignoramus who cared nothing about spilling blood. His two chief aides were Yang Bashi and a Tatar chiliarch. He’s likely to send one of them to any parley. If so, arrest him. Don’t believe any peace overtures. Mobilize the native soldiers. Kill all turncoat leaders, but pardon their followers and put them to work farming or herding. 49

The end came in December. Lan Yu’s men tricked and caught Orug Temur, whom they sent to Nanjing for execution. 50

Lan Yu submitted an extended review of the whole frontier problem. China’s defenses were too thin, he argued. Taizu ordered the ministries to discuss Lan Yu’s ideas about all the new guard units he thought were neces- sary. Lan also insisted that an all-out war had to be waged against all the ethnic minorities of the borders who up to now were beyond Ming control. To accomplish this, militias had to be raised from among the Chinese popula- tion of Sichuan. Taizu firmly vetoed this idea. The civilians, he said, were already suffering from the demands on them for grain hauling. And it would take four hundred thousand men to wage such a war. So no. Lan Yu and Qu Neng were ordered to return to Nanjing. 51

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The whole western flank of Ming China would remain forever troubled and violent. One especially difficult and turbulent node along that frontier was Songpan. It lay at a fairly high elevation and was very hard to reach and supply, but it was a key to controlling a vast craggy hinterland populated mainly by Qiang (Tanguts, Minyag), whose religion was not Buddhist but the older Tibetan Bön. Taizu’s reign saw constant administrative readjust- ments, bandit outbreaks, and ethnic risings; tea-horse exchanges; and small- scale warfare in as beautiful a landscape of mountains and forests as can be imagined. 52

* * *

In Turkestan, meanwhile, King Unashiri managed somehow to return to Taizu’s good graces. His embassy of January 1393 was duly received in Nanjing, where he presented the court with forty-six horses and sixteen mules. 53

In May 1396, Taizu sent a young messenger (Chen Cheng, of future fame as a Ming envoy to Samarkand and Herat) out to Turkestan to reorganize the Sarigh Uighur as the Anding Guard military command. On the face of it, this would appear to be a blatant annexation, a direct takeover by Ming adminis- tration, and the effacement of Beshbalik’s Turkic identity. In fact, the changeover came at the request of the would-be ruler, desperate to impose control after the murders of Buyan Temur and others and the internecine fights that followed upon Lan Yu’s aborted campaign. The prince of Su, Taizu’s fourteenth son, based at Suzhou in the Gansu Corridor, was asked to extend his good offices, which he did. So Taizu sent Chen Cheng with fifty- eight bronze seals for distribution to all the officers of the new guards. And in November 1396, the new guard chief, Tasun Khudlugh, accompanied Chen Cheng back to Nanjing with a gift of forty horses. 54 So this move, accom- plished in order to enhance Ming security, was no annexation but rather an outsourcing of Ming organizational power and prestige to a foreign society in order to strengthen that society’s mechanisms of internal control.

Anding remained quite independent of far-off Nanjing, as it showed in February 1397, when King Kheidir Khoja of Beshbalik detained for some reason Taizu’s embassy, which was on its way to Samarkand. Taizu wrote the king in a tone of hurt. We’ve always dealt kindly with merchants from the Western Regions, he said. Recall how we escorted back all those Samarkand merchants we came across in Mongolia. So why are you detaining our em- bassy? In retaliation, I did detain your Muslim (Huihui) embassy here, pend- ing your release of ours. But those men so ached to see their parents, wives, and children that I’ve let them accompany another westbound embassy of ours. Don’t block them and start a war with us, he warned. 55

* * *

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Developments along the hundreds of miles of frontier from Gansu on east during Taizu’s reign show just how complex and demanding a task it was to keep China safe. Unlike elsewhere, the scuffles here were mostly local and small scale. The emperor didn’t often intervene personally, but he was by no means unaware of the threats there.

Out through the Gansu Corridor and beyond Jiayuguan lay Shazhou, the famous Buddhist town now known once again as Dunhuang. It was three hundred miles west of Suzhou and not a part of Ming China. The farther west one traveled, the thinner and poorer the population of Chinese, and the thick- er the presence of Turks, Tibetans, Mongols, and others, the more tenuous the administrative links to China proper and the greater the likelihood of local turmoil.

One positive sign was that the civil prefectures of Pingliang, Qingyang, and Guangchang at the outer edge of the Ming interior had by the mid-1370s grown in population and productivity and could now provide more tax grain for the armies in the corridor to the west. 56

In and around the corridor, continuing campaigns and defensive buildups by the Ming met continuing raids by ex-Yuan troops and local ethnics. In December 1376, a new guard community was set up in Liangzhou. In March 1378, these guards reported the capture of 25 ex-Yuan officers and 1,960 local people. Taizu took note and ordered that they all be given relief and be taken to Pingliang prefecture for resettlement “so that they can learn to respect the teachings of the sages of our China, gradually absorb decorum and righteousness, and shed their old customs.” 57

There are two things to point up here. One is that it seems to have been Taizu’s policy more generally to remove civilian populations away from the frontier war zones and put those places under fully military occupation and administration. More will be said about that later. The second thing is that the people being moved away from Liangzhou were in all likelihood not ethnics but rather Chinese who’d been partly assimilated into the culture of their non-Chinese neighbors. It was never Ming policy to convert to Confucianism foreign peoples living outside China. It was fear of such cultural deracination and the spread of illiteracy that prompted the Ming to establish Confucian schools in the frontier guards (wei) and make the sons of military families eligible for the civil service examinations. 58

In 1379, the Shaanxi branch military commission was moved from Zhuanglang west to Ganzhou, the midway point along the corridor. 59 From there, Ming forces fanned out to Lingzhou and Etzina; a campaign was readied to secure the road out to Hami so that embassies and merchant caravans might use it safely. These moves were quite successful. Several ex- Yuan leaders were seized and their people and horses taken. 60 Post stations were installed, each with ten horses obtained at Hezhou in exchange for tea. Eleven or twelve men manned each station to care for the horses and farm on

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the side. Tea smugglers and Tibetan bandits were suppressed: in 1387, Re- gional Military Commissioner Nie Wei beheaded 472 such bandits and seized 1,440 of their horses plus 6,890 oxen and sheep. 61 The training and subsequent shunting of troops from one base to another proceeded apace. Also, in September 1392, twenty-nine post stations were placed at twenty- mile intervals from Gongchang and Liangzhou out to the corridor, each with thirty Tibetan horses obtained at Qinzhou and Hezhou. Local people were made to supply the grooms. 62 The regularity of Hu-Lu (Mongol?) raids prompted Nanjing to order crack cavalry to go on patrol, especially at plant- ing and harvest times. 63 In 1396, Nanjing was told that Suzhou, at the far end of the corridor, was dependent on grain shipped from Liangzhou, a round trip of two thousand li (some seven hundred miles), and that instead Ganzhou should supply the grain, as long as merchants could ship grain there in return for government monopoly salt vouchers. It was further explained that all the post stations and transport offices from Liangzhou out to Suzhou were staffed by convicts from interior China who were badly abused, underfed, and dressed in rags, and that their families couldn’t help them because their properties had been confiscated, forcing them to run away. Taizu ordered that these men be issued clothing and three dou (three-tenths of a picul) of grain monthly. 64 Random data like these give a true if fragmentary picture of life on China’s northwestern frontier in the early Ming years.

To help manage the northwestern frontier with all its problems, Taizu posted an old comrade-in-arms, Geng Bingwen, to the Shaanxi provincial capital of Xi’an as a kind of viceroy, a position he held from 1369 to 1390, and again in 1391 and 1397. At Xi’an, he commanded developments both in the interior as well as on the frontier. Unlike Lan Yu, he was low key and subservient, more a military administrator than a fighting general. 65 From the huge jumble of data from the northwest that Nanjing received over the years, it’s hard to escape the impression that the whole region was hopelessly violent, corrupt, and impoverished, but that can’t be wholly correct. After all, it was the job of the Ming government to take on and remedy each problem as it arose. Thus it was predominantly problems that crossed the desk of the emperor and his advisers. So we read about a raid here, a supply shortfall there, a lapse over yonder, and neglect in the larger picture, which would surely depict a protective shield that was effective much of the time, and not at the price of unrelieved misery for everyone involved.

* * *

Northeast of the Gansu Corridor, one comes upon Ningxia (nowadays Yin- chuan in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region). Ningxia lay about four hundred miles north of Xi’an on the west shore of the Yellow River. In April 1373, an assistant minister of the Court of the Imperial Stud, one Liang Esen Temur (whose hybrid name suggests he may have been a native of the area)

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Chapter 116

sent up a proposal to redevelop Ningxia, laid waste during the Yuan-to-Ming civil wars. He said it was extensive, fertile, and accessible to boats and that refugees ought to be moved there to farm it. A top-grade military man should take charge. Taizu approved. Ningxia’s revival got underway. 66

THE CENTER: MONGOLIA

With the northbound flight of the Yuan court in September 1368, all of the people and resources of north China fell under Ming control and had to be sorted out and reorganized. It was entirely likely that the dynasty in exile would try to reinvade the north in an effort to reclaim their heritage. And that was why in July 1369 Taizu launched a major expedition into the steppes to capture Toghon Temur, who was at the time at Shangdu. The intrepid young Chang Yuchun led the expedition. He headed a force of some ten thousand cavalry and eighty thousand infantry. The Yuan ruler escaped. The Ming chased but failed to catch him. But they did capture ten thousand troops, ten thousand carts, and fifty thousand head of cattle. Chang died of some illness shortly after his return to China. 67 In November, Taizu sent the Yuan emper- or a letter, advising him that come next spring when the grass was green he could expect an attack that would last until the frost and snow of winter. 68

The Beiping area, meanwhile, was swarming with steppe refugees. Taizu directed that the strong ones be inducted into the Ming army and issued monthly rations. The rest were to be resettled somewhere in south China. 69 It worried Taizu that imperial social control was under threat from people muddling their ethnic and genealogical identities. So in May 1370 he forbade Mongols and semu (Central Asians) from taking Chinese names. He’d been told that many men in civil and military positions were doing that. They should remember that they all are the ruler’s “children” (chizi) and must not put their descendants in danger of forgetting their origins and their blood- lines. 70 Later history, however, showed that this injunction was completely ignored.

Late in January 1370, Taizu made good on his threat to attack the Yuan court. He directed Xu Da to march west to Shaanxi and take on Koko Temur. Li Wenzhong would meanwhile march directly north to fight Toghon Temur, who wouldn’t be expecting as deep a raid as they were going to conduct. 71

By February, reports came in that Koko Temur, having been repulsed at Lanzhou, was now based about seventy-five miles to the southeast, where he’d unleashed his men to go raiding all over. 72 Probably that was the only way he could supply them. In March, Nanjing heard that Li Wenzhong had so far advanced to a place in the steppes called Chaghan Naur (White Lake). 73

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In April, word came that Xu Da had reached Gansu and advanced to Shen’er yu, some twenty miles north of the city of Dingxi, and was attacking Koko Temur. Taizu warned Xu Da to be alert for Koko Temur’s feints and Mother Nature’s spring floods. 74 And at Shen’er yu, in a long-remembered battle, Xu Da inflicted a major defeat on the Yuan dynasty’s principal com- mander. Between the two opposing armies lay a deep ravine. At first Koko’s horsemen crossed it, panicking some of Xu’s officers. Xu beheaded the cow- ards and spurred the others into a counterthrust inside the ravine. That proved unexpectedly successful. It’s not clear why Koko’s men performed so poorly. Were many of them Chinese, uprooted from a sedentary life and tired of nomadic wandering? Did they not wish to die for the lost cause of the Yuan? Whatever the reasons, beaten they were. 75 The Ming captured two Yuan princes of the blood, plus some 1,800 other officers, 84,500 troops, and 15,280 horses, plus camels, mules, and various other livestock. Xu Da later marched many of the captured soldiers off to Sichuan for resettlement. Koko Temur, his wife and children, and a few others escaped north, crossed the Yellow River by clinging to driftwood, and ended up at Kharakhorum in northern Mongolia, where the remnants of the Yuan court welcomed them. 76

Li Wenzhong’s expedition, meanwhile, fought its way to Shangdu by early June. Four officers with Mongol names surrendered. It wasn’t all smooth sailing: two Ming commanders were killed in action. 77

Taizu sent two Tatar captives back to Mongolia with a letter for the Yuan ruler. Two earlier envoys of mine haven’t yet returned, he wrote. Was that because I was once a commoner and it’s beneath the Yuan ruler’s dignity to reply to me? It’s thanks to the Mandate of Heaven, and not to my own doing, that I rule China. You and I should exchange envoys amicably. You and your people should feel free to pasture near the China border, but you’d better not raid. 78 The Ming founder, always in awe of men of aristocratic descent, showed here that he was keenly aware of his own lowly social origins. China’s meritocratic preferences looked a bit shabby compared to the Tatar- Mongol insistence on inherited nobility.

While that letter was on its way, Li Wenzhong reported some stunning news. He’d advanced to a point below Yingchang, two hundred miles direct- ly north of Beiping, when a captured horseman told him that on May 23, 1370, the Yuan emperor Toghon Temur had died there. The horseman was on his way south to tell people at Shangdu. So Li proceeded north, sur- rounded Yingchang, and on June 10 took it. Since Yingchang was the Yuan capital of the moment, Li’s haul was huge. It included Toghon Temur’s little grandson Maidiribala and a number of palace ladies, plus officials, soldiers, seals, horses, and livestock. Two generals with Chinese names surrendered 36,900 and 16,000 men respectively. The new Yuan ruler, Ayushiridara, and a small party escaped north to Kharakhorum. There, Koko Temur, having escaped his own disaster at Shen’er yu, joined him. 79

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Military action was taking place on several fronts all at the same time. As Li Wenzhong continued his march north, Xu Da’s lieutenant Deng Yu led forces from Lintao and seized Hezhou, some fifty miles farther west. 80 And on the Mongolia-Manchuria border sat Naghachu, a semi-independent Yuan warlord. Taizu wrote him a letter, reminding him how years earlier during the civil wars inside China he’d captured and released him. But that doesn’t mean, Taizu warned, that you are now safely beyond the reach of the Ming forces. If you surrender, however, rest assured that you’ll be well treated. 81

In early July, after a thousand-mile journey, Li’s report of his victory at Yingchang finally reached Nanjing. Taizu gave Toghon Temur a posthu- mous name: Shundi, the “compliant” last emperor. He complied with the will of Heaven when he fled China. Taizu also ordered that placards be posted forbidding anyone who had once served the Yuan in any official capacity from celebrating. He didn’t like the government’s draft of a public victory announcement. It was too boastful. China’s literati would say nothing, but inwardly they’d reject it. The Yuan rise and fall were due entirely to the forces of destiny (qiyun). Taizu himself didn’t will it. So the draft was toned down. The Yuan ruler’s grandson, a child, accompanied the messengers bringing Li’s report. Taizu refused to present him as a trophy at the imperial ancestral temple. He let him keep wearing Mongol clothing. He assigned him a mansion and a stipend. His court ladies were given Chinese dresses. If his consort found Nanjing’s heat too much and needed her usual diet of meat and koumiss, she was free to return to Mongolia. 82

Taizu then sent out a general edict to all the Yuan rulers, officials, and people. He promised Ayushiridara good treatment if he surrendered. Offi- cials who once served the Yuan could expect Ming appointments if they came over. Leaders without such experience would be given seals and offi- cial titles. The Ming needed nothing from Mongolia and would impose no demands there. 83

There was really no unified Yuan government anymore. There were two princes of the blood, known only as the “Third Big King” and his brother the “Fourth Big King,” who gathered people in the mountains of northern Shanxi, where they built a stockade and raided Datong and other places. In July 1370, the Ming drove them off. The Fourth Big King escaped, but the Third was caught and sent to Nanjing, where Taizu gave him and some other Tatars, princesses included, stipends. The Fourth, based now in the Taihang Mountains, kept raiding for years. In 1376, Taizu read the stars and predicted another raid on Shanxi. He wrote Xu Da about that. He said the ex-Yuan Fourth Big King has now less than two hundred men, yet we can’t catch him. He had no horses, but now he has fifteen of them; where did he steal them? Surround and catch him. 84 In the summer of 1377, commoners accusing each other of following the king in banditry were brought to Nanjing for prosecu- tion. Taizu said that the king was a remnant bad element from the Yuan. He

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hides in the mountains, gathers runaways, and harms and plunders people, who are compelled to follow him. They’re not real bandits. These mutual accusations are likely to spread, leading to the forming of gangs. So we’ll release them all, give them travel funds, and send them back to their vil- lages. 85 Only in April 1388, after twenty years of raiding, did the Fourth Big King surrender to the Ming prince of Jin. Escorted to Nanjing, Taizu par- doned him and gave him gifts in recognition of his imperial descent. Then he was packed off south to Yunnan. Taizu explained that it was never his plan to attack him, as that would just strengthen his will to resist. The bandits he led would in time get homesick for their wives and children and just drift away, leaving the king isolated. 86 The plan worked, apparently.

In October 1370, their campaigning done for now, Taizu called Xu Da and Li Wenzhong back to Nanjing. He sent several letters to Ayushiridara, reminding him of Koko Temur’s defeat at Shen’er yu and suggesting that if he submitted formally to the Ming, he could use Ming titles to enhance his authority over the hordes. He promised retaliation if border raiding contin- ued. 87

Ayushiridara’s writ was probably too feeble to control raiding. In a letter to a Yuan commander probably located somewhere near the frontier, Taizu urged him to surrender on the grounds that Ayushiridara was far away and weak, while his own troops were few and suffering. 88 The outcome of that isn’t stated, but in February 1371 the Yuan defenders of Dongsheng, a key garrison town atop the big loop of the Yellow River, in the northeast corner of the Ordos, surrendered. Three Ming battalions and twenty-eight squadrons were created for them. They probably remained in place, as an interpreter was sent from Nanjing to pass out seals and gifts for forty-three of their leaders. 89 But this new order in Dongsheng was shaky. Fourteen officers and a thousand men straggled to Datong and, in effect, asked for asylum. And again, in November 1372, five thousand more Tatars came over. Taizu set- tled them in interior north China, with allotments of monthly rice and fuel. And the inhabitants of several small cities lying well beyond what would later become the Great Wall line were, on Xu Da’s recommendation, forcibly moved and resettled in the greater Beiping area. The count was 17,274 households and 93,878 individuals. That of course created a barren zone, depriving the Tatars of plunder, or of using them as allies. 90

Indeed, in the summer of 1371, Xu Da conducted a major removal of the population from the far north. In Yuan times, the steppes of Mongolia were an integral part of the Yuan state, so the frontier between steppe and sown was undefined, and settlements of Chinese extended many miles out into favorable spots in the steppes. Another forced removal brought 35,800 households and 197,027 individuals down to the Beiping area. Grain was issued to the soldiers. For the civilians, 264 farming villages (tun) were marked off and distributed to 32,550 households. In December, 5,700 newly

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surrendered Tatars at Beiping were issued cotton cloth and, of all things, sapanwood (a medicine and dye of Southeast Asian origin). 91

* * *

In February 1372, Taizu and his top commanders set to work planning an- other invasion of Mongolia. Koko Temur was their agreed-upon target. Xu Da thought 100,000 men would suffice. Taizu overruled him. They’d need 150,000 in three columns: Xu Da to lead the center column, Li Wenzhong the east, and Feng Sheng the west. Troops were issued uniforms, shoes, and caps; monthly rations were authorized to feed their families back home. 92 A Tatar soldier said there were many former subjects of a Yuan prince living at a place called Kharachi Lake and that he’d be happy to gather them in and join the northern expedition. Taizu agreed to that. 93

Several days later, the ruler issued his marching orders. Xu Da would exit China at the Yanmen Pass in northern Shanxi. Li Wenzhong would exit directly north via Juyong Pass. Feng Sheng would lead a diversionary thrust from Gansu in the far west. Just before he reached Kharakhorum, Xu Da was instructed to announce his presence openly so as to bring out Koko Temur’s forces on the double, thus making them easier to defeat. 94

In April, Taizu mobilized twenty thousand men from the various guards of Henan Province for Feng Sheng. Each man was given two bolts of cotton for making tents. He raised twenty-eight thousand infantry and cavalry from Shandong for Li’s army. He issued 160,000 battle coats to the guard troops of Beiping, Shanxi, and Shaanxi—Li and Xu’s men, probably. By April 3, Xu Da made his exit and defeated some enemy nearby. On April 23, some of Xu’s detachments reached the Tula River in present-day northern Mongolia, about seven hundred miles north of Beiping. There they skirmished with some of Koko Temur’s horsemen. But on June 7, Koko inflicted a serious defeat upon Xu Da, who at once beat a retreat back to the China border. 95 Taizu’s suggested tactic must have failed.

In July 1372, Feng Sheng’s army reported nothing but success after suc- cess out west. From Lanzhou they went northwest along the Gansu Corridor, their cavalry inflicting defeat after defeat on the Yuan forces and accepting surrender after surrender. A detachment reached as far as Etzina, a good five hundred miles northwest of Lanzhou, and brought that isolated desert settle- ment to surrender. The spoils were huge: 120,000 horses, oxen, sheep, and camels. 96

Late in July came a report of Li Wenzhong’s experiences. Li scored a series of wins at places in the steppes, whose names were no doubt supplied by Tatar informants. At the Luqu (Meat Strips) River, that is, the Kerulen, a major stream east of Kharakhorum, Li left his baggage under guard and proceeded west at double time with light cavalry and twenty days’ rations to the Tula River, where he engaged in some bloody clashes that are fairly well

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described—fighting on the Orhon River to the northwest; a decoy set by Li that deterred the foe; then a Tatar counterthrust; Li driven back, unsure of his whereabouts; food supply exhausted and no water until a horse uncovered a hidden spring with its hoof. Four of Li’s commanders perished. Li headed back to China, accompanied by 1,840 Yuan officials and soldiers with their families. 97 Was this campaign a success? Probably not. Koko Temur, their target, was left unmolested.

When Li and his captives arrived in Nanjing in August, Taizu appointed a commander for them and directed that the officials’ sons be tested for em- ployability. Their dependents were assigned to a Nanjing Guard unit. Feng Sheng’s western expeditionary forces returned to Nanjing in November. 98

In January 1373, Taizu pondered the Mongolia situation and what his next move should be, given the poor results of the 1372 campaign. He had an ace in the hole: Ayushiridara’s son Maidiribala, captured by Li in 1370, was still in Nanjing as his hostage. Taizu wrote a letter to Ayushiridara. In it, the Ming ruler offered a potted history of recent China-Mongolia relations, then he turned to the question of family. “The custom of your country is not to use surnames,” the emperor lectured. “Your lineages esteem descendants by reg- ular wives, and demean those born of concubines. . . . Your son came to my capital three years ago. I’ve treated him very generously. So why haven’t you sent an envoy to reclaim him?” Letters to two Chinese officials still serving the Yuan court in exile demanded that they remind Ayushiridara of the unbreakable bonds linking fathers and sons. 99

In February, he ordered Xu and Li to train troops and go guard the Shanxi and Beiping frontiers. In a new resettlement policy, he sent some thousand surrendered troops and their Tatar commanders down to garrisons in south China’s Zhejiang Province, instead of placing them in north China as be- fore. 100 Indeed, an unstated Ming policy, evident from the reported facts, was to drain Mongolia of commanders and troops and captives, giving all these people homes in China and posts in the Ming military, plus food relief, clothing, and household goods. Many thousands who might have helped the Yuan recover China instead joined the Ming under the rather liberal dispen- sations that the ruler himself mandated.

But the prize captive, the heir presumptive to the Yuan throne, the child Maidiribala, Taizu sent back to the steppes in October 1374 so that he might rejoin his father. After five years in China, the boy was now old enough to travel and was surely homesick. So Taizu arranged an escort led by one Chinese and one Tatar eunuch. He addressed a provocative letter to Ayushiri- dara. He told the Yuan ruler that he was delusional if he thought he had any chance of reconquering China. He reminded the Yuan ruler that he’d been forced out of China and that the eight thousand or so horsemen that he now had were no match for the Ming. He said he’d treated Maidiribala very well for five years, and he was now sending him back so that the family line might

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continue. He said he’d heard Ayushiridara’s camp (a’uruγ) was somewhere near Quanning (in present-day Inner Mongolia, 350 miles northeast of Bei- jing).

Yuan disintegration continued. Their top commander, Koko Temur, died in 1375. Ayushiridara died in 1378. News of his death prompted Taizu to convey some thoughts to the Ministry of Rites. When the Yuan cycle ended, he said, its last ruler complied with the will of Heaven and fled to the steppes. Now his son has died, and we should send an embassy to express our condo- lences and conduct a sacrifice. The ministry argued that it was too arduous a journey, that Ayushiridara’s long absence from China would surely have led him to forget China’s customs. A canonical funerary ritual would be out of place. No, countered Taizu. As emperor, I take all under Heaven as family. Ayushiridara never left our embrace. So what if he’s far away? Their cus- toms may have changed, but their basic likes and dislikes remain. Their officers will be pleased if we respect their ruler. No one will defy virtue and reject our rites. So the mission was launched. 101

Taizu himself composed an elegy dedicated to the ghost of the dead ruler. In it, he reaffirmed the Ming possession of the Mandate of Heaven. It was Heaven that allowed your ancestors to enter our China, ride roughshod over the realm, and gather in all the barbarians. It was the same Heaven that mandated your collapse and let me emerge. You ruled the steppes while I rule China. Your death aggrieves me, despite your raids on our borders. 102

Taizu’s pen was restless. He also wrote a funerary message to the soul of the dead Ayushiridara. This can be quoted directly, as it comes from the ruler’s own collected works, not from the Veritable Records.

Life and death, and rise and fall, aren’t accidental. They’re fates fixed by Heaven and earth. When a great and worthy sage encounters these, he knows it’s been ordained and he doesn’t complain . . . and in death he has no regrets. Your ancestor [Chinggis-khan] rose from poverty and obscurity in the steppes at a time when all under Heaven was rich, and the ruler of men held a big territory with strong troops. But it wasn’t that man [the Song ruler] who allowed him to use his weapons and ride roughshod over all under Heaven and bring all the barbarians under his control. This the Mandate of Heaven did. You and your father should have been able to relax and enjoy the blessings of peace. But out of nowhere bandits arose in Henan and among the Chinese warlords emerged. Your father and you lost control of it. Was this caused by men, or by the Way of Heaven? I arose from poverty and obscurity. I had to become a Buddhist mendicant, with only my shadow for company. How did I ever come into command of an army big enough to overpower all under Heaven? How could I ever have guessed that I would hold Heaven’s Mandate, that crowds would follow me, and that I would supplant your family and rule all the people? So you ruled the steppes, and I rule China. [But] you and your ministers stubbornly refused to yield the Mandate of Heaven. You insisted that you retained it, and I did not, so we could never cultivate a friendly relation-

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ship. I didn’t venture to bring us closer. Now I hear you’ve passed away. I condole with your successor, and I must mourn you. My envoy bears the sacrificial goods; may your soul accept these. 103

This was a brilliant statement by an ex-peasant autodidact and Ming dynasty founder about power and legitimacy and the fate of empires. He and Chinggis-khan shared a similar career trajectory: from poverty to power not by their own efforts, but by gliding on the wings of fate and circumstance. The core of Taizu’s difficulty with Ayushiridara and his court was their refusal to concede and yield Heaven’s Mandate to him. The Yuan was still not totally disabused of the belief that, calamity notwithstanding, it and not the Ming was the legitimate ruler of China. (Perhaps that was due to the need to sustain morale and maintain internal control.)

How this statement was received by the Yuan court in exile isn’t known. Nor how Ayushiridara’s successor, not Maidiribala but Toghus Temur, re- ceived the two personal letters Taizu wrote to him:

I, the emperor, especially ask after you, the young Yuan ruler. Ever since your father and his family fled north, people have come to say that you wander here and there in fear and suffer from a lack of clothing and food. I can’t say if that’s true or not. If it’s true, then unlike one who knows fate and preserves himself, you rush to fight in one place while losing your people in another. You lose men and horses going after unattainable lucre. That’s no way to preserve yourself. If you don’t believe me, then remember when you were at Kharakhorum. I sent a huge army three thousand li to fight you, and did you win that? You should take that as a lesson and think about how to preserve yourself. You and I are enemies. What can this letter tell you that doesn’t sound like deceit?

Taizu had more to say. He’d earlier sent a letter along similar lines to Ayushiridara. This one too is undated. It reads:

A statement of the Great Ming emperor to the young Yuan ruler: Those who submit to Heaven prosper. Those who defy it perish. This is no newly con- cocted idea; it’s always been true. There’s never been a thousand-year dynasty. That too is a constant principle. When you, father and son, ruled China, you had many troops and generals but they couldn’t maintain their power. The high-ranking ones were crude and effete. The middle-ranking ones were arro- gant and cared nothing for the people. The bottom grade submitted here and defected there, and gouged the people to pay off their superiors. Did either of you ever do anything about that? And now you’re as befuddled as a drunk, as unaware as a man in a coma. Why don’t you sober up? Back before 1368 when you left China, you couldn’t control all your armies. They [e.g., Koko Temur] controlled you instead. Now you have fewer than twenty thousand troops, some weak, some strong. They wander about the frontier, perhaps figuring out some way to restore you to power, I don’t know. But you can calculate for

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yourself how much power you have, compared to what you had before 1368. There’s no comparison! You have but eight to ten thousand cavalry, and yet you want to vie with all the men we can mobilize? I don’t know how you’re weighing that. But I’d guess you’re rational enough to grasp what I’m saying. You can survive out in the steppes with your lineage and perhaps come to a good end. As I see it, your ancestors ruled all under Heaven for over a century. Things flourished. It shouldn’t have ended, except that the norm of heavenly principle dictated that it should. If you don’t understand that, I’ll attack you one day, with what result, we don’t know. 104

We’re in the dark about how these letters were aired at the Yuan court. They kept no records. But Taizu’s letters open up to us what his thinking was like. He gives us a mix of logic, blandishments, and threats. Thousands of Yuan leaders and followers were defecting to the Ming, but the Yuan court remained obdurate.

Thus perhaps a high official could also be persuaded to peel away and come over to China. Taizu sent two letters to one Tughlugh, evidently some- one high in what remained of the Yuan government and who’d changed his mind about defecting:

The Great Ming emperor asks after the Yuan minister Tughlugh. There have been many cases of rise and fall in rule over the ages. When Yuan control lapsed, bandits burst forth. Your emperor was ineffective, and his ministers for all their power failed to suppress them. But I suppressed them. And it’s been seven years since I supplanted the Yuan and ruled the people. China is at peace. I’ve placed troops on the northern border and I’ve appointed generals to keep order there. I never expected that Commander Geng would wantonly kill and engage in corruption. That created a rift. So Little Sechen braves death and goes north to you. This was all my fault for appointing the wrong sort of men. You’re entirely blameless, because you wanted to defect to us. Commander Geng has been arrested and the case against him is still ongoing. Do you and your people know that? You can see clearly what my situation is. Long ago I was forced by [White Lotus] sectarians to become a rebel in the wilds. I had but a horse and a spear. I was not in command of millions, as I am now. Now foreigners everywhere are our tributaries. I control the wealth of China. I have a million garrison troops. My soldiers and civilians obey me gladly. Could I have achieved all this through insincerity? You’re intelligent enough to know that I couldn’t.

Tughlugh apparently didn’t trust what the Ming ruler had to say. Taizu wrote him again, with stronger language and a compelling logic:

Shengbao has returned from your camp, and he says you don’t intend to bend and comply with us. You’re going to cleave to the central way and be a good [Yuan] minister. If that’s so, there are four reasons why you’ll soon die a failure. First, you’re a Yuan minister; you did a lot for the dynasty, but three years ago you and your ruler had a falling out. You didn’t stay by him. You

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deserted him and went off on your own. Is that loyal behavior? Second, the Yuan mandate has ended. The young ruler is ignorant, and who knows if he’s a good man or not? If you’d stayed by his side, you wouldn’t have suffered such obloquy, and now you’ll never be able to escape your exile. Third, you’re isolated out in the steppes with fewer than ten thousand infantry and cavalry. Your men have no food for their stomachs or warm clothes for the winter. They’ll scatter, and you won’t survive alone. Fourth, if you impose harsh discipline on your men while they starve and freeze, it’s likely they’ll kill you. If I’m right, you’re in for an early death. On what stone of honor will your name be etched? In what history book will you be featured? Your loyalty and compliance with the Yuan court will gain you nothing. Are you a hero? Or a deluded rogue? If you agree with me, you have no option but to come to me wholeheartedly. Of course I’ll treat you as the meritorious man you are. 105

This is vintage Taizu. The language reflects his peasant origins. It is forthright, and bears none of the subtle refinement one would expect in a letter written by a man of education. The Ming emperor’s game was to try to pry apart the Yuan leadership and cause its collapse without having to go to war. He also tried to reach Nayir Bukha. Here is that letter:

The Great Ming emperor asks after Yuan minister Nayir Bukha. You sent a man to Datong to say you want to camp on the flats, and that your intent is to submit to us. But you’re afraid your earlier raids on our border people means we can’t accept you. That’s nonsense. We all know the ruler of all under Heaven thinks only of security for the people. Such a man will never cause harm for the sake of personal vengeance. And you all are Yuan ministers, with some lingering loyalty for your young ruler who wanders in the steppes, and of course you’ve obeyed him. You rallied the border in his behalf. Don’t worry about that. This is your time to decide. People enter our country to see the sights, and maybe they’re sincere, and maybe they’re not. But when messages like this one arrive, those who know the cycle of history will look up to Heaven for the signs, and down to earth for men’s dispositions, and will make whichever choice avoids calamity and promises success. That’s a fine thing. And the choice is up to you. 106

All these letters date to September 1374. Tughlugh remained defiant. Nayir Bukha seems to have made a temporary submission. According to report, a vice commander of the Guanshan Guard whose name was Nayir Bukha (Our Man?) rebelled and reentered the steppes. Given chase, his bag- gage was captured, but the man himself escaped. This was in May 1376. 107 Nayir Bukha remained a major adversary of the Ming until 1390. His story will be resumed in a bit.

Taizu’s communications with the Yuan court, meanwhile, were bearing no fruit. He sent out envoy after envoy. No response. So in the fall of 1378, he arranged yet another mission, this one involving the return under escort of a high-ranking Yuan official named Oljei Bukha, together with a letter to one

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Lu’er, one of a consortium of officials in charge of things in the temporary absence of a successor to Ayushiridara (Maidiribala never got enthroned). “This year,” complained Taizu, “I’ve thrice sent envoys to you. They haven’t returned. I don’t know if they’re alive or dead. I was angered that my border commanders captured Oljei Bukha just as I was sending an envoy on a friendly mission to you. So I’m sending the captive back under eunuch escort to your camp, and you may do with him as you like.” 108

An undated edict to this Lu’er bears translation.

The Way of Heaven is to hate self-satisfaction and prefer modesty. Its virtue is to prefer life and abhor death. This is no newly invented statement; it’s been true since ancient times. I say this because you all, ever since Heaven changed its mandate eleven years ago, have led cavalry and infantry and have remained steadfastly loyal and upright, putting up resistance on the frontiers. I’ve sent envoys to you, but they’ve never returned. Now I’m sending another mission, with a small gift of winter clothing for you. You can accept this. Don’t kill anyone, but cultivate virtue for your successor-ruler. That will show you’re a wise man. I hope you’ll accept what I say as wise words. Don’t be deluded by unfounded talk. The Book of Documents says: “those who do good get a hundred blessings; those who don’t, suffer as many griefs.” Reasonableness brings good results. That’s all I have to say to you. 109

That was followed in January 1379 by a letter to Lu’er, Kharajang, Man- zi, and Naghachu, the Yuan ruling committee as it were, reminding them that they needed to choose a ruler. Ritual required that the ruler must be the eldest of Ayushiridara’s sons, that is, Maidiribala, a young fellow used to China’s ways and compliantly submissive to Taizu, even though he might not be the ablest of Ayushiridara’s progeny. Backing a wrong choice might be fatal for you, he warned. 110

The Ming founder persisted. In another letter to Lu’er, sent in the summer of 1379, he said he’d heard from someone who’d come from the Tula River (in northern Mongolia) that Lu’er was unwell. So he was sending him medi- cine, which he should take in good faith and not suspect it of being poison. 111 Again he wrote:

For Yuan minister Lu’er: During the third month, Khan Temur Khoja came and said you were at Changyu. Then you decamped for the northeast. But if a commander like you can devote his life to his young ruler, that’s a fine thing. It’s the Way of the loyal minister, cherished alike by gods and men. But I fear you’re in danger. What if you fall into someone’s trap? What then? You won’t be able to show your loyalty. You’ll get an unjust reputation for evil. That would be awful. And the territory you’re defending now is within the range of our troops. They’re not far away. If you refuse to allow an envoy through, it will go badly for you some day. You’ll be a man without a plan. If you do let our envoys go through, you’ll enjoy happiness forever. Otherwise, if one day your young ruler dies or goes astray, then among you a strong man will

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emerge, weaker men will follow him, and what will it do to your fine reputa- tion if you submit to him? If you don’t submit to the strong one, he’ll attack you, you’ll lose, and he’ll take your troops. Lives will be lost. Wives and children will be scattered. You’ll lie dead in the steppes. I’m sure you’ll agree it would be best if you just let our envoy go through. If you trust me, I’ll back you up. You can rely on me later if you get into trouble. It’s time for you to decide what to do. 112

All this letter writing failed. Taizu could not bring off the affection, trust, and pro forma submission of the Yuan court in the steppes. It turned out that Ayushiridara’s successor was not Taizu’s choice, Maidiribala, but Toghus Temur. The outlook for a smooth accommodation of Mongolia under Ming China’s wing turned from unlikely to wholly impossible. War resumed. In April 1380, Ming forces under Mu Ying undertook a major search-and- capture mission. Scouts reported a horde under a leader named Toghochi camped near Etzina (now Gaxun Nur), a remote desert lake, seven hundred miles northwest of the Shaanxi provincial capital, Xi’an. The Ming army crossed the Yellow River and the Helan Mountains and for seven days tramped over the “flowing sands.” Twenty miles from Toghochi’s camp, they divided into four groups, put on gags, silently encircled the prey, and took the enemy by surprise. Then they all marched back to China. It was, if nothing else, a demonstration of China’s ability to probe deep into foreign territory. 113 More such reverses for the Tatars followed over the next several years. Perhaps it was pride that determined the Yuan position not to become a Ming tributary. If so, they paid a steep price for their independence.

In December 1387 came word that Nayir Bukha and Yuan prime minister Kharajang were at Kharakhorum. Lan Yu, who’d risen on his merits to become the top Ming commander, got Taizu’s permission to mount a major campaign against them. Taizu’s patience with diplomacy had worn out. Lan Yu was to “sweep away the remnant Lu (raiders, a common name now for the Tatar-Mongols) so that the court would have no more worries at the north.” 114 In April 1388, Taizu conveyed to Lan Yu the latest intelligence, that the Lu were in a state of disorder, military discipline had broken down, and they were therefore vulnerable. Lan Yu must march on them at double time and seize their camp. If they surrender, treat them kindly as you bring them all south. 115

So Lan Yu advanced with an army of 150,000 from Daning. They marched northeast to Qingzhou, three hundred miles from Beijing, where they learned that the Yuan ruler was at Buyur Lake, some five hundred miles north from where they were. So off they went. Midway, they crossed a stretch of land devoid of grass or water. The whole campaign was about to founder in thirst and famished animals. Then as if by a miracle they heard the sound of water bubbling from a nearby hill. They were saved! The crowd

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shouted paeans to the court and to Heaven for their blessings and aid. It was said Taizu had earlier dreamed of just such a miraculous rescue. 116

Lan Yu marched ahead and pounced on Kharajang’s camp. He was able to corral 15,803 households of troops and 48,150 horses and camels. These were horrendous losses for the Yuan. A messenger with news of these astounding victories reached Nanjing in June. Taizu raved about it to his officials. He said foreign rule had historically been a shameful disaster for China, but now the pacification of the steppes is a blessing for our regime and our people. To Lan Yu, the ruler stressed the extraordinary thing he’d done. Not even in antiquity was such a feat ever accomplished. Even the successes of the Han and Tang were ephemeral. The Song cowered under Liao and Jin pressure and let the sacred regalia of dynastic rule fall to barbar- ians, whose stench suffused China, until I took to arms. Then recently the Hu crowd (Hu meaning Tatar-Mongols) regathered, set up a royal court, and planned to inflict violence. I’m growing old, and time is running out, and something had to be done soon to end that. Lan Yu is the greatest commander of steppe warfare China has ever known, having earlier captured Naghachu, and now this. 117 (So thick was the praise; but, five years later, Lan Yu’s execution was the highlight of Taizu’s massive and bloody purge of the whole Ming officer corps.)

In August 1388, there arrived at Nanjing under escort the Lu ruler’s second son, Dibaonu, together with his empress and concubines and prin- cesses. They surrendered their gold seals and silver badges. They were given cash, food, and housing in Nanjing. Then came word that Lan Yu had raped one of the concubines. Taizu wasn’t pleased. The concubine committed sui- cide. Dibaonu said some ugly things. That behavior Taizu couldn’t tolerate, and so he deported the young man to the Ryukyu Islands. 118

Things went from bad to worse for what was left of the Yuan regime in the steppes. Toghus Temur and his immediate entourage escaped from Lan Yu’s raid on Buyur Nur. They tried to regroup at Kharakhorum, some seven hundred miles directly west. They didn’t make it. At the Tula River, fifty miles short of their goal, there was a mutiny. A heavy November snowstorm blocked help from outside. A distant kinsman named Yesuder strangled the hapless Toghus Temur with a bowstring. The heir apparent, Tianbaonu, was murdered as well. A big rival of Yesuder’s defected to the Ming rather than serve him. Taizu treated him and all other defectors very liberally. 119

The demise of the Yuan court in exile left in its wake independent war- lords who were ready to fend for themselves by raiding China. Among them was Nayir Bukha, whom Taizu had failed to coax into surrender sixteen years before. Some steppe warriors Taizu admired, Koko Temur and Nagha- chu, for example, and Nayir Bukha seems to have been a third. In 1390, Nayir Bukha and several others were readying an assault on China. Taizu put Fu Youde in charge of a campaign against them. Two Ming princes, newly

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militarized, were ordered to join in. 120 Taizu sent messages to Nayir Bukha and the others in February 1390. He said that in the two years since Toghus Temur’s assassination, he’d had no news of what was going on, so he’d sent out scouts to find out. Having learned where you all were, I’m sending you a surrendered Yuan officer with the message that the Yuan mandate is over, that you all lead its scattered shards, you have nowhere to turn, and life is hard for you. Instead of submitting, you raid our border. You doubt us, but look at Naghachu. He killed twenty thousand of our men, yet I enfeoffed him and rewarded his officers. I didn’t consider them as enemies. My interest lies in pacifying the borders and giving the people security. So if you lead your people and submit, I’ll assign you a good place to live and be nomads. But if you resist, our main army will come after you. 121

Having fired off that warning, Taizu relayed to his army on the border information he’d received from several Tatar defectors, that Nayir Bukha and the others had but five thousand horsemen, ten thousand family members, and only one horse per warrior. They live as nomads, and their baggage is heavy and cumbersome. Their crowd is of two minds. Most want to submit to us. A minority refuses. So Taizu had grain prepositioned in two places deep in steppe country. As soon as we find out where the enemy are, we’ll at- tack. 122

In April, the deed was done. The prince of Yan, later the Yongle emperor, took part, but the top commander was actually Fu Youde. The Ming forces advanced north through heavy snow. When they located their quarry, they sent an old friend of Nayir Bukha’s on ahead to greet him. The friends hugged each other and cried for joy. Nayir Bukha was talked out of fleeing. Without bloodshed, the whole crowd surrendered themselves, their horses, camels, oxen, and sheep and everything else. It was a sensational coup for the Ming. 123

These onetime enemy raiders were treated lavishly. Fu Youde escorted them all south and into Ming territory. The warriors were issued battle coats. Soon the Ministry of Works sent up to Beiping 18,473 suits of summer clothes for 4,786 men and their families. The officers were sent on to Nan- jing, where they surrendered their seals and in turn received gifts and ap- pointments to Ming military positions. Among the gifts were 13,600 taels silver, 12,600 ding (ingots) of cash, 1,010 bolts of various types of silk, and 550 suits of lightweight silk. The officers’ 707 households followed their men to Nanjing and got gifts as well. Nayir Bukha and a colleague, Arugh Temur, were made commanders, high-ranking officers in the Ming armed forces. 124

Taizu took a moment to describe for his generals the Ming border situa- tion as of May 1391. He said that not long ago, the enemy was on the northern border, and China lay defenseless before it. So he created guard communities (wei) and placed defenders at all the passes leading into China.

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As a result, the Lu have all moved far away. The whole zone beyond our frontier is purified and at peace. There’s a regional military commission at Daning (deep in the steppes, 150 miles northeast of Beiping) and a guard community at Guangning (300 miles east of Beiping, overlooking Manchu- ria). These are adequate for China’s security needs. So except for Shanhai- guan, we can withdraw our troops from all the passes, just leaving a few men to arrest any runaways heading north. The troops we pull back will be put to use farming and raising horses. 125

This looked to be as close to a perfect security situation as China was ever likely to achieve. But not quite. In the spring of 1392, Taizu repurposed all of Nayir Bukha’s surrendered forces that were still at Beiping into a police force on the nearby steppes, useful because they knew the topography. Tatar forces posted in central and south China were to move up to replace them. There were still remnant warriors lurking about, and they must be captured. So during the spring and summer of 1392, there was launched one final thrust into northern Mongolia, this one under a commander named Zhou Xing. The expedition was successful, but it didn’t yield much. It picked up one hundred empty carts in one place and abandoned baggage in another. They defeated the foe at a place called Flower Mountain, taking five hundred captives plus horses, livestock, a silver seal, maps, and an iron badge with a silver inscrip- tion. All this they sent south to Nanjing. Taizu picked two of the captives to go back north and call over a Lu commander named Ajashiri. 126

But five years later, twenty-one years after they left China, and after that many years of catastrophic losses, the once-proud warriors of the Mongolian steppes, battered inheritors of what little was left of the global empire of Chinggis-khan, appeared to the aging emperor of China to be rising once again as a serious threat to the realm. In the spring and summer of 1397, the old dictator warned his six princely sons who were guarding the northern frontier that some surrendered Hu that had been living in Shanxi had de- fected back to northern Mongolia and were in a good position to tell their bloodthirsty brethren all about the weaknesses in China’s defenses. He was also reading portents. The portents told of a big nomad invasion soon to come. Taizu said he was old and wearing down, and he was passing along advice in the form of tentative plans for the next two or three years. You’re likely to be facing one hundred thousand with only ten to twenty thousand men. So the thing to do is to let them come in and loot. Meanwhile place ambushes in the mountain passes. When the Hu enter, they’ll split into raid- ing parties; they’ll get arrogant and careless and their discipline will be gone, so they can be annihilated when they straggle back into their homeland. 127

In July 1397, a year before he died, Taizu issued his final warnings and had his last say on the whole situation. He told the princes of Jin and Yan, who were on an excursion some hundred miles out into the steppes, that “you boys” (the Jin prince was thirty-nine, the Yan prince thirty-seven) need to be

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very careful, as a big nomad force could very well coalesce, hide by day in the willows and reeds, march by night, and take you by surprise. You’ll have to retreat. How will you keep your men together? Given our horse shortage, it’s much better for us to venture no more than twenty to thirty li (seven to ten miles) beyond a fortified point and put out patrols, beacons, and signal cannon. It’ll be pure luck if you don’t come to grief, as far out in the steppes as you are.

(That was a counsel of caution. After he seized the Ming throne in 1404, the prince of Yan (the Yongle emperor) totally ignored it. But Taizu’s words prefigured Ming security strategy from 1449 down to the end of the dynasty.)

Then Taizu recounted for his two warrior sons highlights from his own career, how he’d fought to reunify China and then, after 1368, gone on to create a frontier for the dynasty. He said his plan was to keep his forces in fighting trim and keep a watchful eye on the Hu. Invading the steppes was not his idea at all. It was his generals (Xu Da, Li Wenzhong, Lan Yu, et al.) who clamored to do that. All they did was reach Kharakhorum, at the cost of totally exhausting the army physically. Taizu now accepted blame for letting them have their way. China has had, after all, to confront the world of the Hu-Lu (foreign raiders) since ancient times, and the history of that shows they can’t be conquered, but they can be outsmarted and outmaneuvered. Caution was the key. 128

That was an extraordinary statement for the old autocrat to make. It does seem to ring sincere. As tightly as he ran everything in China; as adept as he was at handling the whole complicated issue of China’s relations with the Tatar-Mongols, who had been forced back into their native steppes; and as successful as, on balance, his raids into Mongolia seem to have been in reducing the rump Yuan regime to splinters and erasing the likelihood of their ever restoring their rule in China, the old man’s final assessment was that it had all been an unnecessary and wasteful enterprise, that Ming man- power and resources would have been better spent on a solid border defense infrastructure.

THE NORTHEAST: MANCHURIA

In the center, China met Mongolia head-on. In the northwest and northeast, China shaded by degrees into non-China. 129 As one proceeded outward, the prefectures and counties of civil administration first gave way to Chinese and ethnically mixed guard communities, then to the Uighur, Hui, and Tibetan settlements in the northwest, or the Tatar, Jurchen, and Korean communities and states (guo) of the northeast. If in the northwest organized political communities like Hami and Beshbalik complicated the security picture, in Liaodong (the lands east of the Liao River, i.e., Manchuria) it was Korea and

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the Yuan warlord Naghachu that in Taizu’s time were especially trouble- some. Indeed, the two formed a short-lived anti-Ming alliance.

In May 1369, Taizu took special notice of that combination. Naghachu, based north of Shenyang, controlled a huge region populated mainly by nomads. When he tried to ally with Korea, Taizu urged Korea to ally with the Ming instead. He wrote the Yuan emperor Toghon Temur, threatening an attack on him unless he reined in Naghachu. At the same time, he wrote Naghachu, reminding him how fifteen years earlier they’d confronted each other during the civil wars in China and remarking that he was glad to hear that he was doing well. He asked that Naghachu grant free transit for his envoys trying to reach Toghon Temur. 130

Liaodong had been administered in Yuan times as a civilian province. In March 1371, its provincial administrator, Liu Yi, sent two officials by sea to Nanjing with maps, registers of troops, horses, grain, and cash. Taizu was delighted. He appointed Liu Yi vice commander of the Liaodong Guard. Liaodong was to be civilian run no longer. 131 But radical loyalty shifts like this can create extreme anger, and in Liu Yi’s case it did. Three ex-Yuan colleagues of his murdered him in June. (Only in 1397 did Taizu say why he was murdered: it was because he was about to commit treason against China and submit to Korea.) 132

Then in August 1371, trouble erupted. A delegation of civil officials reached Nanjing from Liaodong with a gift of horses and two of Liu Yi’s murderers. They said one of the killers had fled to Jinshan (Gold Mountain; a large area abutting eastern Mongolia) where he joined Naghachu. They said Naghachu was allied with four other ex-Yuan commanders in various places, and they expected an attack. 133

Taizu wrote Naghachu about this. It was quite a letter. It contained a compelling history lesson. Long ago, argued the emperor, Chinggis-khan and Khubilai lived and acted in circumstances very different from the present. China’s Song dynasty was weak. Heaven intended that the Mongols should conquer it. Human effort could never have forced that result. The Yuan built a big empire, only to have it collapse in the wake of China’s Red Turban rebellions. Then Taizu himself, a mere commoner, rose and quelled all the disorder, eliminating four rebel rulers and one king. Taizu again reminded Naghachu that early in the course of the Ming foundation, he’d captured him. “I treated you extremely well, better than any other prisoner. And I knew you were the scion of a famous house, and so I let you return north. That was seventeen years ago.” (Naghachu was a probable descendant of Mukhali, one of Chinggis’s top generals.) Taizu asked for an exchange of envoys and a rendering of tribute; and if Naghachu ceased raiding Ming territory, he could preserve himself. Otherwise, there’d be consequences. 134

Around the time he sent this letter, Taizu set up a new command center, the Dingliao chief military command, in the lowlands at Liaoyang, six hun-

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dred miles northeast of Beiping and some four hundred miles southeast of Naghachu’s base area. Six officers were assigned to run it. Its job was to supervise all the guards in Liaodong and ensure that walls and moats were built around each. 135

Out on Gold Mountain, Naghachu remained a threat. At some point, Taizu contemplated removing him by force. To that end, he ordered the Ministry of Revenue in June 1372 to arrange for private merchants to ship rice to Yahong Bridge, a hub about fifty miles east of Beiping, to feed a future expedition. In order to get the merchants to cooperate, the ministry would offer payment in the form of salt vouchers, the vouchers redeemable at the various government-run salt yards. (This was an analog to the tea-horse exchange being developed on the Tibetan frontier.) 136

In July, Taizu sent a messenger to Qiu Cheng, assistant commissioner-in- chief at Liaodong, with a letter laying out his view of the current state of affairs. He wrote that there’d been fighting going on in Liaoyang for some years and that while the troops could do some farming themselves, he had to supplement their output with shipments of rice by sea. He’d been told that Naghachu was recently on the prowl. Whenever the weather starts to heat up, the enemy mount their horses and come south, and that’s what’s occurring now. And Qiu needed to watch for the arrival of the rice shipments. 137

Then came December. Qiu apparently didn’t expect a raid out of season and was caught unprepared. Naghachu’s raiders descended on Liaodong and looted Liujiazhuang, ninety-five miles southwest of Shenyang, fifty miles from the sea. They set fire to one hundred thousand piculs of stored grain and killed five thousand Ming troops. Qiu was demoted for this. 138

In 1384, a Yuan defector with a Chinese name tried to convince Taizu to attack Naghachu. He argued that while Naghachu was nominally under Yuan suzerainty, the Yuan emperor (Tegus Temur) was too weak to control him. Plus his subordinates don’t get along. One action should be enough to defeat them all. No, thought Taizu. He said he knew Naghachu very well. He uses his hereditary Yuan office to overawe his people, but his people are disaf- fected, and he won’t last much longer. An attack might not be needed. If he keeps doing wrong, he’ll destroy himself. 139

Two years later, Taizu decided an attack would be needed after all. An undated edict directed to Naghachu shows what the emperor was thinking:

A man becomes a hero when he acts rightly in critical situations. The adage has it that he who saves a thousand lives will surely get enfeoffed. You’re a Yuan minister, and loyal enough, so why do you defy your people and lose virtue as you do? When earlier I captured you on the Yangzi, I especially let you go. This is what people were hoping I’d do. Anyone who falls into trouble wants to escape it safely. Who wants to die in captivity? Think about that. When you fight a weaker force, you kill all the captives you take. If you’d reflected on your own experience of captivity, and thought about those you

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Chapter 134

took captive, you’d have created blessings for yourself and your posterity. But last winter when you raided our Liao, we protected all the captives we took. I never wantonly killed anyone. A short time ago the myriarch Huang Chou carried my directive to your place. That wasn’t his idea; it was his duty. He bore you no ill will. Yet you deliberately killed him. . . . Heaven and the gods will avenge that. Right now our two forces stand in each other’s line of sight. Twice you’ve beaten us. You’ve killed eight thousand of us. We won’t lay blame for past events, but what of the future? If you’ll accept another envoy of ours, then our enmity will dissolve. If when you get this edict you reject what I say, you’ll have no alibi to make to me when one day you face me again as my prisoner. Think that over. 140

Naghachu made no known reply to that. So over the winter of 1386–87, Taizu told Feng Sheng that Naghachu’s aggressive assaults on Liaodong required that the Ming gear up for an all-out attack on the base in Gold Mountain. Defenses needed to be installed at Daning and other entry points. The ruler ordered the Ministry of Revenue to issue 1,857,500 ding cash to recruit two hundred thousand porters from north China to carry 1,230,000 piculs of grain to four different launching sites for troop rations. The rate for the porters was six ding cash for each picul they carried. 141 One picul weighed about 155 pounds.

In the early months of 1387, Feng Sheng assembled two hundred thou- sand men near Beiping and began operations with light cavalry probes on scattered enemy groups. In a February snowstorm, Lan Yu surprised some Tatars camped at Qingzhou, three hundred miles northeast, killing the com- mander and his son and seizing their men and horses.

Taizu sent two envoys plus a long-held Tatar prisoner named Nayilaghu, with yet another letter for Naghachu. In this one, he told Naghachu he was allowing that captive to reunite with his family and hoped the two envoys might make it back safely. 142

In March, Feng Sheng set up four fortified places and made camp at one of them, Daning. He left fifty thousand men there, then moved off toward Gold Mountain. Taizu informed him that captives taken at Qingzhou said the Hu had gone north. Then another intelligence report said Naghachu had left Gold Mountain and was now near a place called Xintaizhou, 1,800 li from Liaoyang. Having read some omens, Taizu wrote Feng that the foe was probably not far from Gold Mountain, ripe for the taking. He said the Hu ruler (the Yuan court) thinks we’ve achieved our aims and won’t march so far into the wilds. 143

In July, it seems to have become clear that Taizu’s idea to send Nayilaghu back to his people had paid off handsomely. The ex-prisoner spoke so highly of the way the Ming had treated him that many Tatars began to consider defecting. 144 Naghachu himself was persuaded by the huge Ming army massed in front of him.

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In a piece of high drama, Naghachu surrendered in that same month. He was directed to Lan Yu’s tent. Lan Yu poured out wine. Naghachu drank, then poured a cup for Lan Yu. Lan took off his coat and tried to put it on Naghachu. Naghachu didn’t like that. There followed an argument. Nagha- chu emptied his cup on the ground and muttered something in Mongolian to an aide, but a bilingual Ming officer overheard him to say he was going for his horse and leaving, so Duke Chang Mao slashed his arm with a sword. Naghachu was then hustled off to see Feng Sheng. In the end, Naghachu and his people—forty thousand men, two hundred thousand people in all, plus sheep, horses, camels, and baggage—made a sad column thirty miles long as off they all trudged south to China. 145

Feng Sheng gathered up a further 44,963 carts and several thousand horses left behind by the Tatars (Dadan) and by August returned to Nanjing. What to do with all these surrendered people? Taizu ordered to let many stay in Gold Mountain. Others should settle in Liaodong, and yet others should live somewhere in the greater Beiping region and farm or herd as they liked. Generous rewards were given the various commanders. For those staying in north China, the ruler ordered up 176,716 bolts of cloth, 27,552 silk coats, 5,353 leather coats, and 32,240 sets of winter clothes, plus five hundred piculs of grain for all the 44,179 Tatar leaders, soldiers, males, and females who’d just arrived there. 146

This was a colossal victory for the Ming. An entire flank of an enfeebled adversary was lopped off. Taizu reviewed the whole situation in a congratu- latory message he sent to Feng Sheng. He said that since ancient times, violence had characterized China’s relations with the “Hu.” But now, with Heaven’s extinction of the Yuan mandate and Xu Da and Chang Yuchun’s invasions of the steppes, the Yuan was done for, except for remnants who raided our frontiers, until now, when you, Feng Sheng, advanced and sub- dued one big horde of theirs without a battle. Except for your sincerity that moved Heaven and your loyalty and righteousness that touched the hearts of men, such a feat could never have been accomplished. But be careful, he warned. Naghachu’s people must not be terrorized or victimized. The raiders have only nomadic herding to subsist on. Bullying them in the slightest will swiftly turn them against us. You must treat them well, as Xu Da and Chang Yuchun did in their day. 147

Unfortunately, it soon became clear that something hadn’t gone right, and Feng Sheng was not quite the paragon of virtue Taizu had made him out to be. Taizu was shocked. He excoriated Feng and several other commanders for wanton killing and for forcing Tatar widows in mourning for their fallen husbands into marriage against their will. This is exactly what not to do. This is what will turn them all against us. Feng and the others must mend their behavior, he said. In October of the same year, 1387, Taizu learned that Feng Sheng’s staff had been stealing horses from their defenseless captives. Again,

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Chapter 136

the ruler warned that unchecked greed of this sort threatened to ruin the whole enterprise. 148

For his own part, as if to compensate for the misbehavior of his men, Taizu treated Naghachu and his surrendered people with extraordinary gene- rosity. In a proclamation to all the people streaming south, the ruler ex- plained that he hadn’t intended to force them all into making such a long trek with all their livestock, but his order to let them stay at Gold Mountain had arrived too late. So for now he was going to let them stay somewhere in northeast China, where 170,000 bolts of cloth would be handed out to them and where their damaged carts could be repaired. 149

Meanwhile, 3,235 of Naghachu’s surrendered officers, having arrived in Nanjing, handed over their seals and other emblems of Yuan authority. Many, if not all, found employment somewhere in Ming military service. Naghachu himself received robes of the very highest rank, enfeoffment as Marquis of Haixi (with hereditary privilege), and a salary of two thousand piculs of grain. Clothing, shoes, and cash were doled out to him and his officers. Their riding horses, thin after their long journey, were put in govern- ment stables to recuperate. Naghachu was sent off to take part in an expedi- tion into Yunnan—which, like Manchuria, was a big fragment of the defunct Yuan dynasty the Ming was determined to absorb. But he never arrived. In August 1388, Naghachu died in a boat at Wuchang on the Yangzi, of alco- holism and the oppressive heat. His son succeeded to the marquisate. 150

* * *

Meanwhile, the buildup of Ming dominance in Manchuria proceeded apace. Suffice it to say that astounding and ever-rising quantities of bulk cotton, cloth, clothing, shoes, winter coats, and rice were shipped in to support all the new guard units being established there. 151

The Ming economy was preindustrial and labor intensive to a degree almost impossible to imagine in the twenty-first century. How many man- hours involving how many peasants did it take to grow seven hundred thou- sand piculs, or about fifty-four thousand tons, of rice? How many carts, haulers, and oxen to move all those tons to seaside granaries? And how many coast-hugging small craft to ship all that up to the Liaodong peninsula? And then how many men to offload and distribute all that grain to the various scattered guard centers? And how many cotton planters and pickers and weavers to provide all that commodity? And how many growers and weavers of silk? Defending Ming China wasn’t purely a military matter, obviously. It demanded mobilizing an enormous civilian workforce, month after month, year after year, to keep supplying all the men serving on the frontiers. No wonder Taizu insisted that the frontier troops and their families supply their own food, at least insofar as conditions allowed.

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Ming strategy with respect to the Jurchen of the Liaodong hinterland mirrored fairly closely their approach on the Tibetan frontier. It was to “call and soothe,” and if that didn’t work, to conduct military operations. As in the case of the Tibetan world, the Jurchen had already been under Yuan military administration, so it was only necessary to get their commanders to switch their loyalties. This wasn’t so easy, however. The Ming were aware that both the northwest and the northeast had produced strong dynastic states in the past: in the west the Di and Qiang states of the fourth century, the Tibetan empire of the eighth and ninth centuries, and the Tangut Xixia dynasty of 982–1227; and in the east the Murong Xianbi of the fourth century, the Khitan Liao of 927–1115, and the Jurchen Jin of 1115–1234. The Ming did all they could to discourage the rise of any more such.

Taizu was curious about “Liaodong customs and famous lineages.” Some unnamed Ming commander gave him a description of what it appears he wanted to hear. He said Liaodong was far away, and people lived mainly from hunting, secondarily from farming. They’re ignorant of the Confucian classics, yet they adhere to the teaching of the rites. A son who buries his father, or a wife her husband, will bow, weep, and offer drink to the deceased for a hundred days and abstain for three years from wine, meat, hunting, and hair combing. Neighbors will criticize any who violate that regimen. He went on to relate a heart-rending story of an extended family of Chinese origin whose men were killed in the wars of the late 1350s, one of whose brave wives saved her young sons, while three other wives, one a Korean, strangled themselves after their husbands got killed. Another wife was abducted and killed. Five righteous women in one extended family! And then there was a Ming soldier who died of disease; his wife née Li was a Jurchen, yet she cried day and night over the coffin for two years, then upon his burial com- mitted suicide and was buried with him. The informant insisted that these stories were all true. Taizu was moved to sighs of admiration and ordered honors for the families. 152

The fervor some inhabitants of Manchuria showed for Chinese-style fam- ily ritual mirrored in a way the adherence of Tibetan communities to their various Buddhist sects, which Taizu also much favored. The Liaodong love for ritual probably helped encourage the establishment of Confucian schools for the soldiers’ families in the guards at Liaoyang, Jinzhou, Fuzhou, Gai- zhou, and Haizhou in the 1380s, each with a state-appointed head teacher and four assistants. 153 Discernible through these and other stories was the re- gime’s eagerness to ground the legitimacy of its occupation of ethnically mixed southern Manchuria in an emotional commitment to extreme ritual correctness focusing on women, a sort of quasi-religion that soldiers and natives, Chinese, Koreans, and Jurchen could all share.

The Jurchen were poor. In October 1385, three low-ranking Yuan offi- cials of Jurchen ethnicity came to the gate of the Liaodong regional military

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Chapter 138

commission in Liaoyang. They said they’d been enslaved by the Yeren, backcountry Jurchen. They said Liaodong was like paradise, and they wanted to come settle here. They asked that the Ming give them glass beads, bow- strings, and pewter to buy the freedom of eight hundred families from the Yeren. The court granted them clothes, ten bowstrings, five hundred strings of glass beads, and five catties of tin to redeem the families. 154

The Ming didn’t like to leave the Yeren or Haixi Jurchen in a state of total independence. An excursion of 1387 out in their direction seemed to yield nothing. A Liaodong officer went out to Haixi to “call and soothe” those people with gifts of clothing. That approach failed too. So in 1395, Taizu authorized a big campaign on them. The princes of Yan and Ning and three generals mobilized seven thousand crack cavalry from Beiping together with troops from the Sanwan Guard (one hundred miles northeast of Liaoyang). During the summer, these men fanned out and made war on the Yeren, who lived several hundred miles farther northeast on the Sungari River. They chased their leader, Xiyangha, but lost him in the rain and darkness. They captured one officer plus 650 men and women and four hundred horses. The Sanwan Guard, it was noted, included many Koreans and Jurchens who used hunting as an excuse to raise trouble. Taizu made them all move west to open military farms. The situation among the Jurchen in Manchuria remained unstable as of Taizu’s death in 1398. 155

Korea was a big reason for that instability. It was itself disordered and convulsed. Yuan suzerainty over Korea lapsed during the calamitous 1350s, and the Korean throne could find no satisfactory new policy choice. Should it retain ties to Koko Temur or Naghachu? How should it deal with all the unknowns regarding China’s new Ming dynasty? Should it intervene in Man- churia, cooperate with the Jurchen, and occupy territory there for the sake of its own security? 156 It tried all three.

Ming relations with Korea were funneled through the Liaodong Guard at Liaoyang. In July 1379, Taizu told Commanders Pan Jing and Ye Wang that he’d received their message that a Korean had led men and women to Liao- yang to surrender themselves. Do they understand what those Koreans are actually up to? Korea sits in a corner of the sea. It’s their custom to prize falsity. They’re perverse by nature. Just think. Why would anyone desert home and homeland and move to foreign territory? It’s a ruse, surely, a false show of weakness, masking a future mass migration and a threat to swamp us. You must send them all back to Korea. And don’t start some small incident which will just give them a pretext to start who knows what. 157

In the summer of 1380, Taizu told the Liaodong regional military com- mission just what he thought of Korea. They weren’t following the rules; they were not “serving the great.” He recalled that the last Yuan emperor had abandoned his Korean palace ladies when he fled China, and we had eunuchs escort them all home, and where was the Korean gratitude for that? Taizu

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would treat only with a single envoy, not a team of them, because they’d simply be along for spying purposes. 158

In winter 1381, the ruler commended Regional Military Commissioner Pan Jing for doing a good job monitoring the Koreans and restricting their movements. He noted that the Korean king had been assassinated (in 1374) and that his successor was illegitimate and had been surviving only by instill- ing fear. Historically, he said, China has wavered between threat and amity in dealing with that country. Taizu’s recipe was to allow tribute but to hold them to the strictest accountability. 159

But when a Korean embassy reached Liaodong in 1384 with a tribute of two thousand horses, they said they couldn’t satisfy the stipulation for gold because they didn’t produce any, and so they made up the deficiency with extra horses. Taizu accepted that. But soon after this mission reached Nan- jing, Taizu flew into a rage over their behavior. They intended to deal bribes to the capital officials. In Liaodong, an envoy was found to be carrying a list tailoring the size of the bribe to the bureaucratic rank of the intended recipi- ent. Taizu excoriated the Koreans and praised Liaodong for the alert job they were doing guarding the territory between the Yalu River and the wilds of the north. 160

It was unclear where Korea ended and Ming-controlled Manchuria began. Early in 1388, Taizu told the Ministry of Revenue to tell the Korean king that in the area east, north, and west of Tieling (seventy-five miles northeast of Liaoyang), China was to have control over all soldiers and commoners of Jurchen, Tatar, and Korean ancestry, but that south of Tieling, in land once held by Korea, these non-Chinese would come under Korea’s control. When- ever the territorial issue was solved, that should reduce the likelihood of conflict. 161 The emperor seems to have had in mind an eventual population transfer. In May, the Korean king, beneficiary of the assassination of 1374, whom Taizu had earlier declined to deal with, notified the Ming court that several Manchurian towns near Korea had once been Korean and that the Tieling area had once been Korea’s as well. The king asked Taizu to ac- quiesce in their resumption of control over those territories. In reply, Taizu conceded that perhaps Korea had a point. 162 But now both reason and circumstance override that claim, argued Taizu. Those territories had come under Yuan administration, and now they’re under our Liaodong. And we’ve set up guards in Tieling; our troops are posted there. And the commoners are administered by us. The ruler told the Ministry of Rites (whose portfolio included the conduct of foreign relations) to tell the king that the proper boundary between China and Korea was the Yalu River, that Korea was just using Tieling as an excuse to start trouble, and that for the sake of peace the king should back off and not press the case. 163 The Liaodong authorities were told to confine all border markets to the Korean side of the Yalu, not our side. 164

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Meanwhile, Korea enacted a remarkable policy turnabout, details of which Nanjing knew little. As Taizu was unwilling to cede peacefully, the Korean court was determined to recapture Liaodong by force of arms. In the summer of 1388, Korea invaded. Then, soon after the army crossed the Yalu, one of its top commanders, the battle-hardened Yi Song-gye, acting on his belief that the operation was sure to fail in the end, turned his men around, marched on the capital, overthrew the government, and in 1392 made himself founder of a new dynasty, the Yi, or Choson. 165

Usurpations in states tributary to China always raised difficult problems and at times prompted military interventions. In this case, much as Taizu deplored Korea’s behavior, he could scarcely intervene in behalf of a govern- ment that had invaded his territory and oust a man, usurper though he was, who’d stopped that invasion.

Yi Song-gye made the self-diminishing gestures that sadae (shida, “serv- ing the great”) required. He sent a tribute embassy with an offering of horses. He thanked Taizu for renaming his country—earlier Koryo, it was henceforth to be called Choson. He asked permission to change his own name to Yi Tan. Taizu gave his assent. 166 Did that end the hostilities?

No. In the summer of 1393, Liaodong reported that Choson had secretly sent officers to lure five hundred trans-Yalu Jurchen into their service in preparation for a raid. Taizu flung his hands in the air. Yi Tan had just come with tribute, and now he wants to raid our frontier? He sent the king a long screed. He reminded the king of how he, Taizu, had defeated the regional warlords and reunified China, pacifying all the foreign nations, turning war into peace everywhere except Korea, where for some reason you all keep harboring a restless enmity. You despise us, you start incidents, and you use the sea lanes to lure our common people. When we marched on Liaodong, you lured the people there with bribes of gold and silk. Your king was assassinated. You killed an envoy of ours. Now you submit to our court, and at the same time you have your border commanders lure the Jurchen. Just what is in your mind? Taizu recapped the long history of China-Korea rela- tions, laying full blame for every occasion of war and bloodshed upon Ko- rea’s misbehavior. He professed an inability to understand why Yi Tan was continuing to follow this stupid heritage. Taizu said he’d acquiesced in Yi Tan’s seizure of power because the Korean people seemed to agree to it. But why was Yi Tan so ignorant of the international status hierarchy that he first sent envoys to the princes of Liao and Ning, and only after that to the court at Nanjing? Is this how sadae should be practiced? The Ming combination of cavalry and navy put Korea under greater threat than it had ever been before. If need be, Taizu could destroy Korea in an instant, but he preferred peace. As ruler of all, I regard every human being as if he were a child of my own. If Yi Tan repatriates the Jurchens he lured away and repents, Taizu will tolerate his autonomy because of his ability to pacify his people. 167

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Meanwhile, Liaodong was told to block all Korean envoys, enhance se- curity all along their land route to China, and have cavalry patrol the north bank of the Yalu. Korea responded by rounding up 122 households of mili- tary and civilian escapees from China, 388 people, plus one hundred horses and oxen, delivering them to Liaodong. 168

War with Korea was not impossible. In April 1395, Taizu ordered a halt to the construction of a palace for the prince of Liao at Guangning (seventy- five miles northeast of Liaoyang). The laborers were well-trained troops, angry at what they were being made to do and on the verge of mutiny. Many had already absconded to the wilds and had turned to raiding. Taizu also noted that Korea had stockpiled grain in depots from the center of their country up to the Yalu and were in a good position to send their Jurchen out to entice our runaway soldiers. Should Korea attack us with a big army, we won’t be able to resist. The prince will stay in his camp quarters for now. 169 Finally, in June 1397, the prince’s palace was finished, but Taizu directed that in case Korea invaded, the prince should retreat to Shanhaiguan. We’ll need one hundred thousand men to beat them back, he said. 170

* * *

Zhu Yuanzhang received the posthumous name Taizu (Grand Ancestor), an honor he surely deserved. He was truly a promethean figure, perhaps even a totalitarian tyrant—a founder-organizer with few rivals in the history of our planet. He tried to remold all China along the lines of a resuscitated ethical ideal originating in the remote golden age of antiquity. He was not a warrior primarily. He was a Son of Heaven, in control of the earth’s most powerful state, a state that radiated benevolence and justice and served as a civilized beacon light for the entire world. He was most of all an engineer of human systems, and a hands-on director and keen-eyed monitor of the uses to which the systems were put. 171

This chapter has so far focused on Taizu’s role as director. His role as engineer deserves at least a quick look. His main achievement was his crea- tion of the Ming weisuo, the “guards and battalions” system of self-renewing military recruitment, a legacy that lasted until the end of the Ming. 172 The system was made up of three tiers. The base consisted of some million designated hereditary households, whose obligation was to ensure that at least one male member (and his family) was always in actual service. The next tier were the guards and battalions, military cities or towns, usually walled, where those soldiers and their families were sent to live. The last tier were the front lines of forts, camps, and signal towers to which the weisuo dwellers were periodically rotated for duty. Off-duty personnel could be mobilized for construction projects, to haul grain, or to work on farms. As standardized in 1374, each guard was to number 5,600 men, divided into ten battalions, each of these divided into ten companies, each company led by

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two platoon commanders, and under each of them five squad leaders in charge of ten-man squads. 173

The central hub of the northern frontier defenses was Beiping, site of the old Yuan capital, rebuilt over the years 1404 to 1424 and renamed Beijing. 174 Beyond Beiping lay a landscape of forested mountains of no great height with their many passes (guan) and gaps (kou), all of which had to be manned. In 1373, Taizu was told there were 121 gaps (yaikou) spread over 2,200 li (700 miles), each of which had to be held by a battalion, at least. In August 1376, four passes (guan) and gaps were singled out as especially important: Gubeikou, Juyongguan, Xifengkou, and Songtingguan. These made for an outer perimeter north and east above Beijing at a distance of thirty to one hundred miles, interlinked by a system of mutually visible beacons. They were manned by 6,384 troops at the outset, but by many more as the years went by. 175

The Beiping region was a launching pad for Taizu’s Mongolian expedi- tions, so it became a collection point for the prodigious quantities of supplies that were shipped up from the south. 176 Reports of grain are for some reason few. But in 1385, it came to the ruler’s attention that although the transport office required three oxen for hauling heavy, grain-laden carts, it was very hard going through deep snow, such that if one ox died, the cart was stuck, and the teamsters had to raid nearby villages for a replacement. Taizu was upset to hear this, and he ordered that each cart henceforth bring along a spare ox for just such emergencies. 177 In 1390, Beiping reported that 488,510 piculs of grain were on hand at Xifengkou and Luanyang, so from just that statistic one can imagine the massive quantities of grain that were shipped up, either overland or by sea, as the Grand Canal wasn’t yet operative in Taizu’s time. 178 It’s easy to understand from that why Taizu was eager to ease burdens on civilians and develop military farms in the north. In 1396, Beiping reported that seventeen guard centers had put 14,362 soldiers to work farming and that they’d been able to contribute 103,440 piculs to the cause. 179 That was helpful but far short of the total needed. What could have been the total cost of defense in the greater Beiping region in Taizu’s time? It could only have been colossal.

The final feature to note about the greater Beiping region was Taizu’s buildup of military centers in Inner Mongolia, whose purpose could be either defensive, as advanced outposts, or offensive, as launching sites for cam- paigns deep into the steppes. This was done in conjunction with the ill- advised creation of armed frontier princedoms under the command of Taizu’s sons. After the 1393 execution of Lan Yu and the Stalinesque destruction of the Ming officer corps (Taizu’s old comrades-in-arms, who’d won him the empire), these princedoms assumed the main responsibility for China’s northern defenses. Taizu’s talent for human engineering, sound earlier in his career, failed him in his old age. Starring roles were given to his second son,

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the prince of Jin, at Taiyuan; his fourth, prince of Yan, at Beiping; his thirteenth, prince of Dai, at Datong; his fourteenth, prince of Su, at Ganzhou then at Lanzhou; his fifteenth, prince of Liao, at Guangning; his sixteenth, prince of Qing, at Weizhou then at Ningxia; his seventeenth, prince of Ning, at Daning; and his nineteenth, prince of Gu, at Xuanfu. 180

The outermost line of guard settlements consisted of Dongsheng on the northeast edge of the Ordos; Kaiping, 250 miles directly north of Beiping; and Daning, 250 miles northeast of Beiping. Taizu enlarged these places and developed military farms there: four farms at Kaiping in 1396, with five battalions of troops moved up there from Shanhaiguan in 1397 specifically to farm. He ordered Kaiping to be walled. The expense of shipping grain there from Beiping was to be met by paying private merchant shippers in salt vouchers. 181 In March 1397, the ruler sent up 5,210 sets of leather coats, felt hats, and leather pants for the troops at Kaiping. 182

The biggest Ming city in the steppes was Daning. In October 1387 it was designated a wei, or guard, manned in part by criminals and convicts from China proper and also by 21,780 regular soldiers from other north China wei, rotating in and replacing soldiers sent there earlier from nine Shanxi guards. Later in the same month, Daning was raised to the status of regional military commission, in charge of center, left, and right guards. In November, com- moners’ households in north China were put to work manufacturing two hundred thousand battle coats for the Daning troops. 183

In 1389, Daning got involved in frontier diplomacy when a former Yuan official named Nekelei and his men came begging for food. Taizu told the Ministry of Revenue to tell Nekelei to get his carts ready and come to Daning to get it. Nekelei did so and was issued a seal appointing him commander of the guard at Quanning, two hundred miles to the northeast. But one of Neke- lei’s officers, a dignitary named Shiremun, refused to accept one of the lower-ranking Ming appointments that was offered to him. What to do? Taizu told the Ministry of Rites that Shiremun could do as he chose, as he was in a personal dilemma, whether to win fame by sacrificing himself and his family for the Yuan cause or submit to the Ming and preserve himself and his family. Shiremun chose fame. His assault on Nekelei failed, he was killed, and his men went to get fed at Daning and then were sent back to Quanning to live on as nomads.

Daning grew and grew. Soldiers and their families must have boosted the population well above one hundred thousand because in March 1390, 67,500 men there were issued 274,400 bolts of brocade and 102,200 catties of bulk cotton. In October 1390, a Confucian school with one state-appointed in- structor and two assistants was set up to educate the sons and younger broth- ers of the military. A man who knew “Tatar script” (Dada zi) was recruited to teach that. And in December 1392, the seven guards out there harvested

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840,570 piculs from their military farms. (In 1403, nonetheless, the Yongle emperor voluntarily abandoned Daning to the Uriyangkhad Mongols.) 184

* * *

So how best to judge this founder of a dynasty that lasted 276 years? He was certainly not a pleasant character, but the huge and unrelenting task he set himself gave him no time for humor or pleasure. When he was engineering and directing things, he was compellingly rational on the whole, but as su- preme monitor he was short tempered, suspicious, and distrustful, always watchful for a coup, and given to murderous and bloody purges of personnel he thought corrupt, contumacious, or treasonous. He was usually compas- sionate toward the lowly and unfortunate, but quite often extremely harsh and demanding when dealing with civilian elites and military officers. A peasant orphan who never went to school, he was in his early years an avid learner and quick absorber of the best advice the realm had to offer, and he often used that advice to good effect in reunifying and reconstructing China. He was a workaholic. After he abolished the prime minister’s office in 1380, he let no one vet the huge pile of documents that came in daily, and so he read and replied to all the reports and raw intelligence and pleas and sugges- tions by himself. He wrote many of his own directives and edicts and letters to foreign rulers. In the end, however, a later Ming generation made the case that his legacy had to be radically revised in some ways, in particular with respect to the arrangements he’d made to defend the northern frontiers. The prince of Yan, who usurped the throne in 1402, was posthumously promoted from successor (as Taizong) to cofounder (Chengzu) in symbolic recognition of that.

On the whole, however, Taizu’s frontier policies were foundational, at least in the broad sense. He had a grip on China’s long history, most likely from access to Sima Guang’s Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government). From it he probably learned that China was the moral center of the universe, extending when it could a fist of authority and a hand of patronage over peoples and states everywhere. The terms were en (grace) and wei (power). History also suggested fundamental guidelines for frontier con- trol—depending on the situation, between “calling and soothing” (zhaofu) and punitive campaigns (zhengtao). A refusal to submit to calling and sooth- ing must be met with a retributive action of some sort, else a failure to back up China’s claim to world suzerainty would surely invite challenges every- where. This logic guided Taizu.

As to “calling and soothing,” Taizu handled the difficulties in that ap- proach fairly well. While he had trouble with the Yuan court in exile and with Korea, he was always a generous host to Yuan refugees. Henry Serruys has culled from the sources every known instance of Tatar-Mongols accom- modated into Ming China through the rulers’ lenience and generosity. 185

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Laying the Foundations: Taizu, r. 1368–98 45

Untold thousands of them were taken as refugees into Ming military service and deployed in guard units everywhere, usually under their own officers. The creation of hybrid cities, like Hezhou on the edge of mDo-khams, has to be scored a plus for Ming policy as well. The foundations Taizu laid for the control and management of China’s northern frontiers, though modified and strengthened by his successors, served the Ming well for two and a half centuries.

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Chapter Two

Defensive Buildup, Offensive Thrust Yongle, r. 1403–24

Between Taizu’s death in 1398 and the triumphant march of his fourth son, the prince of Yan, into Nanjing in 1402, Ming China was engulfed in civil war. 1 Central oversight on the frontiers lapsed. When the dust cleared, Yon- gle faced defensive challenges all along the frontier, from the Tibetan regions in the west to the Liaodong region in Manchuria. He responded with an institutional innovation: he replaced the now disarmed princedoms with re- gional commanders (zongbingguan) at five centers: Shaanxi-Gansu, Ningxia, Datong, Xuanfu, and Liaodong. Beijing he designated to become the new capital of China, in place of Nanjing. Beijing would be his own posting.

Taizu never ran things this way. His top commanders were assigned when and where needed. None was given a steady frontier posting. Taizu would deal individually with the leaders of the guards and battalions in their various garrison communities. What Yongle did, soon after he took power, was to impose a military-administrative layer with oversight over all the garrisons. It was an early sign, and not the last, of a shift toward defense, and it is a bit ironic that Yongle simultaneously sent offensive thrusts in every direction of the compass. There was some continuity from Taizu’s time, in that the re- gional administrators, almost to a man, were second-generation warriors from Taizu’s home region of central China. Several of them inherited officer status from fathers who’d played prominent roles in the Ming founding. In the Yongle era, they were something of a closed regional military clique.

Yongle considered it essential to his job to keep an eye on the entirety of the northern frontier. He constantly corresponded with the commanders about the need to be on alert, to avoid mindless chases of raiders into the

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steppes, to build and repair fortifications, and to maintain line-of-sight warn- ing beacons.

Yongle also thought China must start rearing its own horses. Tibet, Mon- golia, and Korea weren’t sending enough of the animals. In 1406, he ordered Song Sheng and He Fu (regional commanders at Gansu and Ningxia) to organize pasturage offices (yuanmasi). Each office was put in charge of six directorates (jian), and each directorate was to control four pastures. The pastures were graded. An A-grade pasture was to hold forty thousand horses; a B-grade, seventy thousand; and a C-grade, four thousand. Pastures were to assign each chief herdsman fifty herders, with each herder responsible for ten horses. Four ranked bureaucrats were to manage each office; four more of lesser status were to run each of the directorates. Yongle wanted Song Sheng and He Fu to go out in person and measure out the pastures. Let the horses range freely in spring and summer; bring them in for feeding when the grass dies. Stock the pastures with select mares from the herds the Tatar and Muslim caravans bring in. Scout out places with good water and grass. The ruler wanted a detailed report from them, as the matter was vital to China’s security. 2 Yongle soon issued similar orders to set up pasturage offices in the Beijing area and in Liaodong. Yongle thought the Chinese of the Beijing area didn’t know how to take care of horses, so he had Tatar officers go out and teach them. 3 Datong regional commander Wu Gao submitted a map, which Yongle liked, showing an extensive area to the west that would be good for horse raising. 4 Horse matters piled high on Yongle’s desk during the early years, but it would take us very far afield to try to sort them all through.

A different matter was thrashed out between Yongle and He Fu out in Gansu in 1408. He Fu was having a hard time handling the Tatar (Da) troops in Ming service, and he asked Yongle to send him a talented and capable Tatar officer who could come out to the frontier to command them. Yongle turned him down and hastened to explain why. He said any Tatar officer he might send might know the terrain, but he’d be a stranger to the troops, and the troops to him, and any action involving them would fail, as discipline would surely break down. He Fu certainly knows that, so why, given his long experience leading Han and Fan soldiers (“Fan” is vague, though it often means Tibetans), would he make such a request? Perhaps he was talked into it. And here Yongle made an extraordinary statement, firmly distancing him- self from the lethal paranoia of his father, Taizu. I rule the realm, said Yongle; I give and take, and I reward and punish. In so doing, I’ve never punished anyone on the basis of unfounded rumor. You’re an old general whom I’ve long known. I’ve trusted you, and when I disagree with you I explain why. I’ve never held you under the slightest suspicion. You’re an old comrade-in-arms of my father, and surely you don’t think I suspect you because of your request for a Tatar officer. Act faithfully as always, and don’t worry. 5

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In the early 1400s, Ming China’s main concern along the frontiers was to assimilate somehow the many fragmented remnants of the Yuan armies plus many small ethnic groups that were unsure whether to submit to the Ming, to sustain their independence by raiding, or to cast their lot with the Oirats or the Yuan survivalists in Mongolia, or, in the case of the Jurchen, whether to join with Korea. Yongle tried to make the Ming option attractive to them. Already in 1402, he sent out envoys to inform the leaders of the Uriyang- khad, Tatar, and Jurchen groups that he considered the realm one big family; that our border commanders say you’re sincere in coming over to us, so you may occupy territory along our borders peacefully, have commercial ex- changes with us, and if you want to visit our court, then accompany my envoys when they return. 6 Out in Ningxia, Regional Commander He Fu proposed to give chase to a party of raiders who’d earlier submitted but then defected. Yongle stopped him. He said foreign raiders (Yi Lu) were by nature unreliable. We treat them sincerely. If they come submissively, we receive them. If they rebel, just let them go. Their coming doesn’t benefit us, so why should we care if they go? They have many allies of the same species (tonglei); they have marriage ties to some of them, so if we attack them, it will surely raise suspicions among those who haven’t rebelled. So it’s best just to let them go. Rash actions are never a good idea. Just be on guard and show strength. 7 That seemed like sound advice.

The Liaodong hinterland, inhabited by Jurchen groups called Yeren (“wild people”), came over to the Ming in a slow, steady stream through all of Yongle’s reign. Usually they’d receive a guard designation, with Ming military ranks for their leaders. Altogether, some 384 guards and twenty-four chiliarchies were created. Most of these were ephemeral, and once created, they were seldom heard from again. 8 Some Jurchen moved into China. In 1408, Yongle told the Ministry of War that many Jurchen tribute envoys want to stay in Nanjing, but the climate is too hot for them. So he ordered that two walled settlements at the Kaiyuan Guard be built for them. One was to be called “Joyful” (Kuaihuo) and the other “As-You-Please” (Zizai). They were designated as civil subprefectures (zhou), each with a vice magistrate and an assistant. The Jurchen had to get Ming permission to settle there with their followers, but they could pursue any livelihood they preferred. If any grew homesick, they were free to leave. 9 These towns were soon joined by a third, named “Peaceful and Happy” (Anle).

These were hybrid locales, absorbing Ming forms; perhaps they were targets of Chinese acculturation, but as foreigners they sent tribute. In 1411, some Jianzhou battalion commanders were granted their wish to live in “Kuaihuo city.” In 1418, a few details of the privileged existence lived by the Tatars and Jurchen Yeren at Anle and Zizai were divulged: they were exempt from a general ban on people exiting China’s territory to trade. In 1421,

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however, soldiers from Anle and Zizai were drafted to take part in one of Yongle’s Mongolian expeditions. 10

Simply judging from the face of it, Yongle’s purpose in favoring these outsiders, who weren’t much of a border menace, was to wean them away from Korea’s orbit and discourage their becoming too strong. Only in 1411 did Yongle articulate a policy. He said he had no desire to annex their territory, but those people are greedy and a border nuisance. Right now they submit out of fear, and we treat them generously, giving them the offices and gifts they want. We make these small payments to avoid a big disaster. We have no other option. 11

* * *

The most troubled sector of the Ming frontier in Yongle’s time wasn’t Liao- dong, however. It was Gansu and Ningxia in the far west. Besides the Chi- nese, the western Fan (Tibetans), and the Tuda (Monguors) who were already there, a sizeable population of surrendered Tatars gradually moved in and settled, mostly around the garrison town of Liangzhou. The ethnic mix could be troublesome. Could non-Chinese be trusted? A lowly battalion judge at Taozhou thought not. He wrote Yongle, cautioning him about admitting non- Chinese into his personal imperial guard. Yongle answered him. He said Heaven creates talent everywhere. The ruler just needs to ensure that he taps the worthy ones, Chinese or not. That was, no doubt about it, a good attitude, free of a priori ethnic bias, for an autocrat to display in handling disturbances out in Gansu. The Yuan policy of privileging Mongols over Chinese was a disaster. The judge meant well, however, and shouldn’t be indicted for what he said. 12

In 1404, a Tatar officer named Tarni came over to the Ming with five hundred males and females and was rewarded by the creation of the Chigil- Menggu battalion, with himself as commander. 13 Nearby, in 1405, Yongle created the Shazhou Guard (nowadays Dunhuang). A surrendered chief named Kunjilai was made commander of it. 14

In 1409, some nine Tatar officers, two of them with princely titles, of- fered to surrender, but they were still far off in Etzina, and if they lingered there too long, they might change their minds and rebel. They’d shown signs of uneasiness earlier about Ming intentions. Yongle told Gansu regional commander He Fu that all distant people who come over should be assuaged. Never hold a grudge. The people at Etzina should be left to choose whether to enter China or stay where they were. Treat them well if they do come over. 15

In 1410, trouble did break out at Liangzhou. Two Tatar battalion com- manders—Hubao and Zhang Boroldai, plus a Yongchang Guard commander named Irinjibal, led some Tuda soldiers on a rampage, killing and looting, seizing horses and livestock, and then camping on the communications route.

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Yongle was off campaigning in Mongolia at the time, so it was his competent son and stand-in, the future short-lived Hongxi emperor, who was left to direct the suppression.

Why had things gone awry out in Liangzhou? Everything was quiet there, when a rumor circulated that Hubao and the others were going to be uprooted and moved to some other guard community. That sparked their rampage. Other surrendered Tatar commanders and troops were rallied to put this down. They caught and imprisoned fifty-four men. When the prisoners’ friends threatened to enter Liangzhou and liberate them, all fifty-four were beheaded. News of the disturbance reached Yongle a month and a half later; he ordered a major buildup of forces at Liangzhou and an extermination of the Tuda and others who were still in rebellion. 16

Then another Gansu rebellion broke out, this one in Suzhou a few weeks later. A Muslim sojourner led this one. The rebels killed the regional military commissioner, Liu Bingqian, and seized the city, which was undefended because most of the troops were out on patrol at the time. Immediate calls for help went out to Chigil, Shazhou, and Hami. The troops on patrol doubled back. Several bloody clashes took place inside the city. Troops from Chigil arrived. Reportedly they scolded the rebels: “You’ve accepted the generosity of the great Ming emperor, so how can you do this unrighteous act? Thanks to Ming government, we’ve all been given tools and seed, and irrigation channels have been dug for us; on what excuse then can anyone turn against the Ming?” A thousand Shazhou troops soon arrived as well, and the rebels were quelled. 17

Later that same year, it became clear that the Liangzhou revolt could have been catastrophic. A report concluded that the Tatar officers had rebelled because of false rumors, not because it was their original intent to do so. Some twelve thousand individuals, wives and children included, many of them Tuda, had fled to the wilds. They were called back on Yongle’s prom- ise of a full pardon. 18

There were rumblings of rebellion in and around Ningxia as well. In 1412, Yongle was told that certain Tatar groups living in Ningxia were of two minds, but he declined to take any action. He said it wasn’t his policy to treat surrendered Tatars with suspicion but with sincerity. Had he acted rash- ly, he said, many deaths would have been the result. He hoped that kind treatment would soften their wolfish minds. But some did rebel, and their bloody suppression was the unavoidable result. 19

There were small-scale outbreaks of Tuda banditry out in the Handong Guard. They also raided three hundred households in Anding. Then they recruited Tibetans, blocked the passes, and went out looting all over. There was no way to stop them. An offer went out that if they turned over all that they had looted, they’d be pardoned. That was the best option Yongle could think of. But he did order the beheading of Chaghandai, a Tatar caught by

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Ningxia regional commander Liu Sheng and sent on by him to the capital. Chaghandai had been a squad commander in one of the Qing prince’s guard units in Ningxia. He made himself leader of a bandit gang that preyed on commoners until government forces suppressed him early in 1412. They captured his horses, mules, and baggage and killed nineteen of his men. The others scattered. 20

Restlessness among the Tuda persisted. Yongle thought both their sol- diers and their civilians were harboring sedition. Was it because they were short of food? If so, they should go to Lan County and get grain there. He ordered that contingents of Ningxia cavalry be deployed to Liangzhou. Tibe- tan troops from the Xining Guard should be brought in to handle any bandit- ry. 21

These were the same Tuda to whom Yongle had offered amnesty two years earlier. Now led by a certain Laodisha, they rebelled nonetheless. Xin- ing Guard commander Li Ying, himself a Tuda, led the capture of nine hundred males and females and the beheading of three hundred rebels at Taolaichuan (Rabbit River). He captured sixty. The rest were chased down during a nighttime snowfall. The leader, Laodisha, and a handful of others escaped to the Chigil Guard. There the commander Tarni took them in. It was midwinter, and shipping food for the troops was impossible. Plus the troops would probably kill innocents, so Yongle called off the chase. He sent a message to Tarni: Ever since you surrendered to us, you’ve behaved flaw- lessly, but now you’ve done a bad thing, giving protection to the rebel bandit Laodisha. I treated that bandit well, but he betrayed me. How can you toler- ate him? If you arrest and send him here, you’ll be rewarded. Otherwise we’ll campaign, and that will be bad for Chigil. 22

Early in 1413, a large party of captured Tuda and their families arrived in the capital where execution awaited them. But Yongle took pity. They were just naive common people. He sent all eight hundred of them into military exile on the coast of Guangdong. But when three hundred of the exiles reached southern Jiangxi, they somehow armed themselves with crossbows and mutinied, raided villages, and escaped into the mountains, where they caught malaria, ran out of food, and died. The other five hundred did reach their destination.

Tarni, commander of the Chigil Guard, duly arrested Laodisha and sent him off to the capital. He and others were rewarded for their compliance. Things then calmed down considerably in Gansu and Ningxia. Or perhaps affairs there stopped being fully reported. 23

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Something resembling peace and quiet descended along all the frontiers, and so it became feasible for the Ming to gear up for five big campaigns into the vast steppes of Mongolia over the years 1409–24, four of them led personally

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by the emperor himself. We can ask ourselves what the purpose of these campaigns might have been. To what extent were they a continuation of Taizu’s steppe campaigns, which he later regretted having allowed? Did they enhance Ming security? Or were they just for show?

A few things need to be noted at the outset. For one thing, Yongle came of age as a sort of frontiersman of privilege. When he was ten years old, Taizu made him prince of Yan, and when he was twenty, he took up resi- dence in Beiping. He benefited from the tutelage of Taizu’s top generals— Xu Da, whose daughter he married, and Fu Youde. He took part in the latter’s 1381 campaign against Nayir Bukha. In 1387 he participated in the big operation against Naghachu and in further steppe operations in 1390 and 1396. These went well on the whole, and Yongle much enjoyed his life as a steppe warrior.

Another matter is this: we have to tell the Mongolia story as China’s story. The Tatars kept no archives, so their understanding of events is mute.

A final note is this: China’s warring in Mongolia was not so much a life- or-death security matter as it was a symbolic expression of Ming pretensions to a global moral and political hegemony. Any state or state-like entity that declined to acknowledge respectfully China’s preeminent position as the world’s sole superpower posed, intentionally or not, a challenge and a threat to that dominance. In the early Ming, such behavior provoked military retali- ation. Apparently the reason a Tatar power in the steppes might refuse to accept even a symbolic Ming suzerainty was because the inheritors of the throne of Chinggis-khan still clung to a Mandate of Heaven claim of its own. Taizu feared a possible restoration of Yuan rule in China, and his campaigns into Mongolia had in part the aim of disabusing the Mongols (Tatars) of any such idea. That threat had surely receded by 1400, so for Yongle the cam- paigns were less about security and more about symbolism. (From Ming records, it seems the Tatars themselves often disagreed violently on the ques- tion of whether submission to the Ming was appropriate.)

It was very hard for the Ming to get accurate information about what any of the various Tatar groups and factions were up to. The camp of the descen- dants of the Yuan emperors featured an iconic qaγan (khan) and a power behind the throne, an officer named Arughtai, who would submit one day and change his mind the next. 24 The Yuan group was involved in a struggle for steppe mastery, not with China but with another Tatar-Mongol group called the Oirats (Oyirad). The Ming knew too little of the facts of that situation to play these rivals off against each other effectively. So Yongle took a loftier approach and lavished rewards, titles, and emoluments on any group that submitted. Permanent peace under the Ming aegis was the objec- tive.

In 1403, Yongle got off a letter introducing himself to the khan, Guilichi. He reminded Guilichi that whoever possesses the realm must have Heaven’s

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Mandate, which cycles between rise and fall, success and failure, loyalty and disaffection. Wisdom and strength avail nothing. As between reality and illusion, reality has the controlling hand. When the Song lost its mandate, Khubilai took over, and he and his progeny ruled China with the mandate for nearly a century. Then they lost it. There was rebellion, and the Yuan col- lapsed. Heaven then mandated my father to suppress the disorder, rule Chi- nese and non-Chinese alike, set up governing institutions, and revive the ancient rites and music. I succeeded him, and I sent an envoy to tell you that. As emperor, I take the realm to be a family. You, the khan, are far off in the steppes, yet you must know how the mandate rises and falls. We should send friendly envoys back and forth. But I hear you’re covetous and start inci- dents. That’s bad, as such behavior defies the Mandate of Heaven. You, the khan, surely know that those who conform to Heaven flourish, while those who defy it perish. So I’m sending another envoy with this letter and gifts for you: two outfits of patterned silk, and one each for sixteen or so of your subordinates, among them Arughtai. (Arughtai was listed fourth.) How the khan reacted to this letter isn’t known. 25

A few months later, one of the Ming envoys sent to Guilichi stole a horse, escaped from arrest out somewhere in parts west, and reported that the khan and Arughtai had recently inflicted a terrible defeat upon the Oirat chieftain Mahmud. Yongle got the report, and guessed that the China border might be Guilichi’s next victim. He ordered a general alert. 26

Then in August 1404, Yongle passed on to Gansu regional commander Song Sheng some news he’d just heard: the Uriyangkhad (eastern Tatars) had come and said that Arughtai and two other chiefs were at odds with each other and that this spring the Oirats had beaten Guilichi, whose horde had moved north. Yongle said this could well be disinformation designed to make our border defenders complacent. If the raiders come near you, said Yongle, have all the military villages brew a poisoned wine to kill them off. Try this out. Or maybe you have a better stratagem. Meantime, he put Xuan- fu and Kaiping on alert. 27 Such was the poor quality of information coming from the steppes.

Early in 1405, a subordinate of Arughtai’s defected to the Ming and said that Guilichi was pondering his contacts with the Ming court, the oasis city of Hami, and the Uriyangkhads and might be developing some sort of broad- based threat and had sent men to come south and reconnoiter. Yongle thought this was just a predictable instance of Lu fabrication. We just need to be on guard. So he put the border commanders everywhere on alert. 28

A few months later, a Tatar defector gave information about Guilichi’s whereabouts. Yongle seems to have thought this report genuine. There were reports of campfires in the steppes north of Shanxi. These could be Guilichi’s men reconnoitering. He ordered cavalry patrols out to see what was going on. If they come and raid Kaiping, set ambushes. 29

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Early in 1406, Yongle told Song Sheng out in Gansu that he’d heard Guilichi and his top commanders Arughtai and Yesuntei had led their men southeast, then turned north, then south again. This pattern of action sug- gested they had looting in mind. So train your men, ordered the emperor, and strengthen all the city walls and moats. 30

In the spring of 1406, Yongle sent another letter to the Tatar (Dadan) khan Guilichi. It was at once artful and threatening. Yongle said his hope was that people everywhere should find their proper niches. Foreign states have submitted to us and they enjoy peace. I’ve sent several missions to you, the khan, so that we might establish an amicable relationship, like members of one family. But you are unreceptive. You detain my envoys, loot my border, and spurn my words. Ever since Ayushiridara fled China in 1368, you’ve had seven different rulers, and did any of them increase your land and people in the slightest? Your crowd, outfitted with armor, bows, and swords, is in constant motion east and west. The older men die before their time, and the young have no secure habitat. For years it has been like this, and whose fault is that? Surely you, the khan, know you must respect Heaven’s Mandate, assuage your people, and release my envoys and all the border people you’ve abducted. We need a friendly relationship. You need to rest your crowd and enjoy the blessings of peace. If you continue your stubborn resistance to us, I won’t sit still. Our troops are strong, and you won’t be able to survive a long expedition if we send one. May the khan think about that. (Yongle sent along more outfits of patterned silk.) 31

One can only speculate as to the reason or reasons for Guilichi’s hostility to the Ming, but if Yongle was accurate in his characterization of Guilichi’s behavior, the core of the dispute lay in the symbolism of the Mandate of Heaven and Guilichi’s refusal, as a Chinggis-khan descendant, to concede any legitimacy to the Ming claim to it. That was a pretty serious challenge.

Maybe Yongle could peel off a key supporter of Guilichi’s. A few weeks after sending the above letter, Yongle sent a message to Arughtai. Envoys had told him that Arughtai was intelligent, that he knew where the Mandate of Heaven lay, and that both he and his mother were sincere in their current leaning toward China. If Arughtai were to respond in a positive way, Yongle promised to assign him a secure habitat and accord him a hereditary royal title. Now was the time to decide: security and good fortune, or danger and disaster? Yongle bolstered his message with two outfits of gold-weave pat- terned silk. 32

That fall, Yongle had to assess some doubtful intelligence about the foe. A low-level Ming officer returning from Uriyangkhad territory reported that one of Guilichi’s commanders, Yesuntei, had been murdered; that another, Mar Haza, had defected to the Oirats; and that Arughtai was camping in the Hailar River area. Yongle was suspicious. Likely the officer had been bribed

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to state this to make us relax our guard. And so he ordered a full frontier alert at Gansu, Ningxia, Kaiping, Xinghe, and Datong. 33

In June 1407, Yongle sent an embassy out to the Oirats. Defectors had said Guilichi was deposed by his horde, who preferred another Chinggisid claimant to the Yuan throne, Bunyashiri. Yongle hoped to establish friendly relations with the Oirats. He sent along gold-weave patterned silk outfits in token of that. 34

Apparently the news coming out of the Inner Asian steppes was confused, or the reports reflected an actual state of confusion. It appears Guilichi, if indeed dethroned, was still active. Yongle had it from Uriyangkhad sources that the horde of one Prince Oljeitu, having joined forces with the Turkish oasis city of Beshbalik, went on a looting expedition against the hordes to the northeast, which panicked the Uriyangkhad, who now begged the Ming for help. Yongle carefully weighed this news. Oljeitu, he said, was a Yuan scion and as prominent a figure as Bunyashiri. The story of a linkup with Beshbalik rang false. It was likely that the frightening news the Uriyangkhad received was a lie purposely concocted by Guilichi. He counseled the three Uriyangk- had guards to be on the watch and ignore all such rumors.

Arughtai, however, was still sweet. In January 1408, he sent an envoy with a request for medicine. Yongle was happy to tell the Imperial Academy of Medicine to supply him. 35

Then some rumblings from out in the vast sweeps of Inner Asia hinted at a major upheaval brewing among the Tatars, which was not good news for China. Ming envoys returning from parts west reported that Bunyashiri had fled Samarkand and had arrived at Beshbalik, where the Lu welcomed him. Ming border commanders said that if the Lu do put up Bunyashiri as khan, they’ll first raid our frontier, then head out to Mongolia. They suggested that the Ming cavalry should launch a preemptive attack on them. Yongle thought that if the Lu did set up Bunyashiri, they wouldn’t be in a position to be aggressive. So he sent eunuch Wang An to Beshbalik to reconnoiter and ordered Regional Commander He Fu to send men to Hami to buy horses and see what Bunyashiri was up to. The missions to Beshbalik and Hami needed to be coordinated and escorted by government troops. 36

It was time for Yongle to write Bunyashiri, The letter was the usual mix of lures and threats. It went out on April 4, 1408. Yongle said he’d been told that Bunyashiri had escaped Samarkand and was living in Beshbalik and that Guilichi had invited him to come to Mongolia. He said he’d also heard that Guilichi and his commander Yesuntei were very close kin to each other, and it was not likely that Yesuntei would abandon him for someone more distant- ly related. Even though some of Guilichi’s men have submitted to you, his power is still formidable, so the rest won’t rebel. You and Guilichi cannot coexist. And the Yuan cycle is over. Seven khans have ruled in Mongolia in the forty years since 1368. None came to a good end. If you do go to

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Mongolia, you’ll have a hard time there. So you must decide whether or not to go. Everyone knows China’s practice is to honor the descendants of de- funct ruling families with titles of honor, generous emoluments, and permis- sion to continue the ancestral rites. Surely you know that our Taizu made such an offer to Toghus Temur. You Yuan descendants need to think about all of this. If you submit to us, you’ll get an enfeoffment and license to nomadize near our frontier. If instead your inferiors mislead you into making a bid for the empty fame of Yuan enthronement, disaster awaits you. Yongle, as usual, sent a gift of two outfits of gold-weave patterned silk and four bolts of colored silk. 37

Bunyashiri paid no heed. Three months later, Wang An reported that Bunyashiri left Beshbalik, bypassed Hami, and headed for Mongolia. Eight- een Tatars, adherents of his at Hami, had been captured while reconnoitering for him. Yongle ordered the Hami king to turn the captives over to He Fu for debriefing. The Oirats, meanwhile, asked Yongle for official Ming seals and patents. Yongle was happy to comply. 38 Three Oirat leaders got royal titles: Shunning king Mahmud, Xianyi king Taiping, and Anle king Batu Bolod. 39

Then in January 1409, a clamor for offensive action arose from among the Ming commanders out in Gansu and Ningxia. Several of them were ethnic Tatars and Tuda eager to recompense the Ming court’s generous treatment and itching to give visceral evidence of their loyalty and valor. Yongle endorsed their appeal. It was noted at the time that Guilichi had been assassi- nated, that Bunyashiri had been welcomed in to replace him as khan, and that dissenters had fled the scene. A few months later, captive Tatars confirmed the assassination and Bunyashiri’s enthronement. So in April 1409, Yongle sent the new ruler a letter. It was very conciliatory. He said we need to exchange friendly envoys and lay the foundation for a permanent peace. In token of his sincerity, Yongle was sending back twenty-two captives, men who all have parents, wives, and children whom they surely miss. And he made a present of more silks, including some for Arughtai. In case Bunyashi- ri reciprocated with a return mission, Yongle instructed Gansu regional com- mander He Fu and Marquis Wu Gao at Datong to make sure the envoys weren’t arrested by mistake, as that might ruin everything. 40

Then some scouts returning “from among the Lu” had some disturbing news to relate. Bunyashiri had killed one of Yongle’s friendly envoys. They also said Bunyashiri and Arughtai, beaten in a clash with the Oirats, were now on the Kerulen River, where they were planning an assault on the Uriyangkhad and then a raid on the Ming frontier. Yongle was outraged. I treated Bunyashiri with complete sincerity, he said, and what does he do? He kills my envoy and plans to come raid! He’s a rebel and he must be extermi- nated. 41

* * *

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That was the casus belli. The Ming had been handed the gift of the moral high ground. It now had a good reason to gear up for war on Bunyashiri. Yongle explained to his border commanders that while the Hu cycle is over and done with, their thievish rat-and-dog natures live on, which is why we must have stout walls, deep ditches, sleepless watches, assiduous patrols, and all necessary repairs made and the troops in fighting trim. On August 13, 1409, he put Qiu Fu in charge of a grand expedition into Mongolia. The emperor’s instructions to the expedition highlighted Bunyashiri’s defiance of the Way of Heaven and his killing of our envoy. Yongle counseled caution. Beyond Kaiping, he said, you may see no enemy, but you must nevertheless keep the ranks in order. When you do meet the foe, devise appropriate stratagems on the spot. Don’t mindlessly fall for the enemy’s lures. Don’t be pigheaded. You are all experienced commanders. And the ruler sent them off with gifts of silk and fine horses. At the same time, Yongle sent a message to Bunyashiri warning him of what was coming: a punitive expedition to find out why you killed the envoy and rejected the ruler’s amicable gestures. Next year, threatened Yongle, I’ll lead a campaign against you myself if I have to. 42

Qiu Fu was not a good choice to serve as the supreme commander. Like most of the officer caste, he was a native of Taizu’s home region of north central China. He had risen through the ranks in Yongle’s personal service. He proved to be an effective risk-taking battler for Yongle during the civil war of 1399–1402, and that made him a special favorite. Yongle made him a duke. But Qiu Fu’s impetuousness drowned out his reasoning powers. He and an advanced detachment reached the Kerulen River in northern Mongo- lia, six hundred miles north of Beijing, in mid-September 1409. Early skir- mishes seemed to go well. A captured officer said Bunyashiri had fled some ten miles north. Against the urgent advice of his top leaders, Qiu Fu decided not to wait for the rest of the expedition to arrive but to go after Bunyashiri at once. He threatened to execute for insubordination anyone unwilling to take part in the chase. Feigning weakness, the Tatars lured Qiu into a fatal trap. On September 21, Bunyashiri’s men suddenly created a thick circle around Qiu’s isolated detachment and proceeded to kill Qiu as well as four of his top commanders, including those who’d earlier argued against such a foolhardy pursuit. 43

This was a shattering reverse. It had serious repercussions on the whole question of the viability of the Ming as a global superpower. It must be said that Yongle handled the bad news well. He blamed himself for choosing Qiu Fu as leader, but he condemned Qiu posthumously for his rash behavior and exiled his family to Hainan Island. The other commanders, victims of Qiu’s folly, got posthumous honors. The rest of the expedition, one hundred thou- sand cavalry, and the families of the fallen were to be assuaged. He warned He Fu and Chen Mou at Gansu and Ningxia that news of the fiasco was

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likely to turn the minds of all newly surrendered Tatars away from us, and Lu raids on the frontiers were now extremely likely. Yongle explained to the heir apparent that Qiu Fu’s avoidable failure had so humiliated China that we must now organize another campaign and destroy the foe, else the Lu power, enhanced as it now is, will become an unending frontier menace. A spring offensive led by Yongle himself would now be launched, so the heir apparent would have to manage the realm while his father was away. In a message to the Oirats, Yongle acknowledged Qiu Fu’s failure, warning that Bunyashiri was now in possession of Ming armor and battle flags and might well imper- sonate Ming forces in an attack. And he announced his own upcoming spring offensive. 44

By late fall 1409, Yongle’s plans were well advanced. He told his com- manders that the latest news indicated that Bunyashiri was arrogantly assum- ing we’d never attempt another such campaign, and that he could now have either of two aims in mind—either to winter in the southeast near our frontier or to move west for an attack on the Oirats. So we can’t wait for the grass to turn green. We’ll have to move out very early in the spring, when the Lu horses are weak for want of grass, but we can solve that problem by feeding our horses beans. This horse-provisioning plan called for building silos or blockhouses at ten-day intervals north of Xuanfu, where we can preposition a total of two hundred thousand piculs hauled by thirty thousand carts. 45

A formal public announcement was issued March 9, 1410. It proclaimed how everywhere even the most distant foreign entities had submitted, with the sole exception of the northern Lu, whose evil remnants in the steppes have killed our envoy and spurned our virtuous generosity. Their minds are wolfish, greedy, violent, thuggish, and cruel. They hope for a revival, but they enjoy neither Heaven’s favor nor the approval of their people. I’m leading a campaign on them to put our might on display and carry out Heaven’s suppression. There are five reasons why our victory is certain. We outnumber them; we don’t defy Heaven as they do; we stand for order, not chaos; we’re not as hard pressed as they are; and our compassion trumps their hatred. We’ll sweep the steppes clear of them. We’ll assuage their people and bring peace to their lands. Then the commoners who did all the hauling can go home, and all our troops can rest. I so notify all in the realm. 46

The ruler then made a speech to his army. It’s unknown how many might have heard him clearly; perhaps eunuchs relayed his remarks to those beyond earshot. It was a good speech. Some of you men, he said, followed Taizu and pacified the realm, and some of you followed me in the civil war (“putting down the internal trouble”). Some of you inherited your positions from your grandfathers and fathers; others of you obeyed Heaven and came to us to surrender. You older men are still functional, and the younger are in good shape. All the foreign countries have submitted to us, except for these rem- nant Lu, who in their arrogance defy us and raid our frontiers. You all must

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cooperate and drive them off so that Taizu’s great enterprise and your own descendants will enjoy a myriad years of security. We will surely win. The great Chinese fighters of the past are still remembered to this day, and you can be like them. The speech was followed by drinks and food. 47

The campaign was on. On April 13, Yongle, on horseback surely, scaled a prominence called Lingxiao feng (Reach-the-Clouds Ridge). There he chat- ted with his academicians as he gazed out over the landscape. He said that when the Yuan was at its height, many common people made their homes out here. Now it’s desolate, nothing but wind and dust and sand and grass. That shows how low the Yuan power has plummeted. Yet they still resist! Why? The academicians preferred to avoid answering that. Yongle bristled. I want your advice, he said. Since when have I ever been a dictator?

According to diarist Jin Youzi, Yongle remarked that men who’d never come north of the border could scarcely imagine such an endless vista as that spread before them. And then they all came down the ridge. The ruler pointed out two paths made apparently by horses, but he identified one as made by gazelles and the other by wild horses. They made camp below the ridge. No water was at hand. Ready-to-cook parched grain couldn’t be cooked. Elite diners made do with bean porridge, goose and gazelle meat, and melons and vegetables in soy sauce. Most of the troops went hungry. Was Heaven watching? Overnight a foot of snow fell, and next morning cooking could finally be done. 48

The expedition reached the Kerulen River in northeastern Mongolia on June 3. This in Chinese was the Meat-Strip River, now renamed by the expedition as the Water-the-Horses River. Jin Youzi found the current swift, the water full of fish, the banks covered by elm and willow, the islets in the river full of reeds and foot-high grass. 49 On June 10, at long last, they made contact with the foe. A raider (Lu), captured and questioned, said Bunyashiri had no intention of fighting Yongle and had hoped to join Arughtai and flee west to the Oirats, but Arughtai had refused and went east instead. Factions fell to fighting each other. Bunyashiri could be found in the area of the Ugurja River (probably the Ulja, a small stream parallel to the Onan and Kerulen). 50 He was ready to flee west to the Oirats. Normally skeptical of such revelations, Yongle took this to be accurate, and he organized a chase. On June 14, he and some horsemen reached the Ugurja, but Bunyashiri wasn’t there. So he renamed the river the “Clear Dust River” (Qingchenhe) and returned double-time to camp. The next day, the pursuers caught up with Bunyashiri on the Onan River. There was a skirmish. Yongle climbed a hill to supervise operations. The Ming fighters let out a yell. Bunyashiri and seven of his cavalry escaped across the river. Yongle, mindful of what hap- pened to Qiu Fu, let him go after a token chase. 51

The damage, moral and material, that the Ming expedition inflicted on Bunyashiri’s Tatars was considerable. There were large roundups of defense-

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less nomads and their livestock. Yongle’s orders were to soothe and feed them. A hundred or so of Bunyashiri’s people, male and female, fell captive to the Ming on the Onan. Yongle said he would punish evil leaders only, those bandits who put those innocent children (chizi) of mine in trouble. He released the innocent ones, saw that they were fed, and returned their horses and sheep to them. Troops were forbidden to harass them. More fighters came in to surrender voluntarily. Yongle sent them away. They all have parents, wives, and children, he said, and surely they’d prefer not to be detained by us. 52

So that was the end of the campaign. Was it a success? What did it show about Ming strategy in Mongolia, home to those who posed the most serious threat to Ming pretensions to world mastery and to China’s frontier security? Calling Tatar-Mongol nomads his “innocent babes” was as good a claim to universal suzerainty as any.

Yongle certainly acclaimed the campaign a success. He explained why to his academicians while they were beginning their return to China. The Veri- table Records have him say, “I had no choice but to undertake this campaign for the sake of the dynasty and the common people. I hoped for a decisive win. The big evildoers have fled, but their crowd is beaten and scattered. Now it’s time to turn the army around, rest the troops, and ease up on the commoners [suppliers and haulers of grain], ready the defenses, give atten- tion to the military farms, and secure the borders so that the Lu are foiled.” He further described his success in a detailed letter to his heir apparent. In it, he laid full blame on the irrationality (qixing) of the evil Tatar leaders, impervious to his every gesture of kindness and friendship. Bunyashiri him- self escaped with but seven cavalry, but we destroyed his forces and fumigat- ed a myriad li of stench. So I inform you of our all-encompassing success. 53

Still, there was violence on the homeward march. Various Tatar groups were by now aware of Yongle’s presence. Surprise! On July 10, Arughtai sent messengers to Yongle’s tent with an offer to surrender to the Ming. Yongle was skeptical. This could be a ruse. But he sent notice to Arughtai that if he did indeed submit, he could expect the highest of hereditary honors and would be allowed to continue to lead his crowd. Yongle’s own envoys accompanied the messengers back to Arughtai’s camp. According to them, Arughtai was himself agreeable, but his top men opposed him and demanded war. Yongle’s men also pressed for a fight. So there took place a big cavalry clash involving several thousand on either side. Jin Youzi heard gunfire. Arughtai got the worst of it and fled with his family, while what was left of his crowd scattered. The weather was very hot and the Ming troops were thirsty, so Yongle disengaged. 54

On July 15, Yongle became aware that Lu horsemen were tracking his departing army, so he arranged an ambush. After the main army marched off, he hid a detachment of several hundred cavalry in a willow grove at a bend in

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the river, probably the Kerulen. He had ten infantry stuff grass in sacks on their backs and march in plain sight. The Lu thought the sacks contained valuables and fell for the deception. The infantry then fired their guns, the signal for the cavalry ambush to spring into action. The Lu scattered in helpless panic, their horses slipping and floundering in the mud. Many died. Some captives turned out to be Uriyangkhads who’d earlier submitted to the Ming and later deserted and joined Arughtai. Yongle scolded them for their perfidy and had all their leaders executed. 55

For all of Yongle’s ignoring of ethnic distinctions, there did exist a persis- tent if subdued chafing among the various peoples that constituted the fight- ing forces on either side of the great steppe campaigns. Tatar, Tuda, and Jurchen units under their own leaders made up some considerable if un- known portion of Yongle’s Ming army. Jin Youzi noted in his diary of June 30 the friendly help of one Pei Yash Temur, commander of the Dongning Guard, an ethnic Jurchen, who along with a hundred of his men had been asked to take part in the campaign. Pei had his men build a raft so that Jin and his colleagues, who were stranded, could cross the rain-swollen Kerulen, and he also provided them with fresh-caught fish. Jin thought Pei’s righteousness and selflessness put him in a category of his own, “a myriad times better than anyone else.” He went on to remark that most Tatar officers and nobles on the Ming side would self-segregate, laugh and talk together, vaunt their superiority, and look on the rest of us as though they didn’t know who we were. Commander Pei was not at all like that. 56

On August 17, Yongle entered Beijing. The campaign had lasted almost exactly five months. Jin’s daily log is full mainly of his own personal experi- ences and has very little to say about the larger military and strategic issues, but three striking features of his log bear mention. The first is that while we are used to thinking of Mongolia as semiarid, in 1410 it was very wet. Spring snowstorms and heavy squalls of rain were constantly met with. Rivers in flood stage, camps deluged, deep mud on the trail, and horses stumbling in the mud made the campaign unusually hazardous and exhausting. The sec- ond is Jin’s portrait of Yongle as a competent and compassionate supreme commander who much enjoyed the outdoor life—an obsequious portrait, no doubt, but not necessarily a false one. The third is copious evidence that the campaign was not just a military exercise. It was also a learned traveling seminar in steppe topography and ecology. Wild plants, edible ones especial- ly, were carefully described. Steppe fauna, such as marmots, gazelles, geese, and the like, were observed too, as were various minerals, salt ponds and deposits, and stones of various colors. Every prominent hill, every stream, every campsite was given a Chinese name, and any suitable rock face was in danger of being engraved with a short Chinese poem. Yongle was intently interested in all of this and himself composed a poem or two, such as “Moon and sun are bright / As eternal as Heaven and earth / This engraving on the

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dark rock / Will last just as long.” 57 It was a bit like dogs going about a strange landscape marking trees. The Ming didn’t claim outright annexation of the steppes in a military or bureaucratic sense, but Yongle and his accom- panying academicians definitely formed an esthetic bond with the steppes, everywhere renaming places with Chinese names, and in that attenuated sense annexing Mongolia into the overpowering literary domain of China.

* * *

For all the triumphalism about Yongle’s 1410 campaign, the steppe situation remained fluid, as Oirat and ex-Yuan factions went for each other’s throats, with the Ming in no position to intercede and dictate peace. Indeed, the initiative lay with the Lu contenders, who submitted to Ming suzerainty only when they saw some use for China’s support in the continuing struggle among themselves for steppe dominance.

The first such supplicant was Arughtai. In January 1411, half a year after Yongle defeated him, Arughtai sent an envoy to Beijing acknowledging the end of Yuan rule and expressing a wish to lead his people and submit to the Ming. The envoy also denigrated the Oirats, with whom the Ming were friendly. He said the Oirats weren’t sincere in their loyalty to the Ming because they didn’t hand over the chuanguo bao, a talismanic seal that leg- end said one Chinese dynasty hands over to its successor whenever the Mandate of Heaven changes. Yongle disbelieved the authenticity of such a seal. The real seal of legitimacy, he said, consisted of virtue, not some bau- ble. Why, if the Yuan had possessed it, did the Yuan collapse? It should have ruled forever. Yongle sent a return mission with a gift of colored silk for Arughtai and a message that he understood his onetime adversary’s state of mind but that his own policy was to ensure that everyone under Heaven found his proper place and that all who submitted were soothed and rewarded without discrimination. 58

There was another mission exchange in July 1411. Yongle sent Arughtai twenty outfits of colored silk, plus eight more for his mother. In December, the emperor sent Arughtai a gold-weave outfit, along with Arughtai’s elder brother and younger sister, whom the Ming had captured in the Buyur Lake battle of 1388. They were to be reunited at long last with their natal family in a Ming gesture of goodwill. 59

The Oirats, meanwhile, made a clumsy attempt in June 1412 to retain Yongle’s favor. King Mahmud (his title Ming-conferred) said he’d killed Bunyashiri, who’d fled west in 1410, and got his magic seal, the chuanguo bao, which he would like to deliver to Yongle; but Arughtai wanted it too, so Mahmud was asking for Ming military aid and Ming weaponry to use against Arughtai, and also for rewards for his meritorious officers. Yongle was unim- pressed. He said these Lu were showing arrogance, but there was no point in arguing with foxes and rats. He ordered the Ministry of Rites to provide a

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banquet for Mahmud’s envoys. He prepared a message for the Oirat trium- virs, contents not disclosed. 60

Then it seemed Yongle’s embrace of Arughtai hit some sort of snag. In February 1413, Yongle told Arughtai that while he appreciated the horse tribute, the Tatar leader’s mind seemed to harbor some doubts. Why? Was he somehow thinking of the disastrous Qiu Fu expedition of 1409? Everyone has his suzerain, and what did I ever do to you? (Yongle probably had reason not to mention his 1410 battle with Arughtai.) The emperor insisted on his total sincerity. He promised to treat Arughtai much more generously than the Han and Tang rulers had ever treated the famous steppe warriors who’d come over to them in ages past. Meanwhile he sent Arughtai twenty-five bolts of gold-weave patterned silk and twelve more for his mother, plus thirty bolts of colored silk gauze. 61

This was as close to an abject pleading as a proud Ming ruler was ever likely to enunciate. Yongle was at his wits’ end. Arughtai was coy. And it was Arughtai, not Yongle, who sat in the driver’s seat with the ultimate decision-making power in hand. Meanwhile, Yongle’s relationship with the Oirats was continuing to deteriorate. Mahmud’s communiqué of February 1413 sounded demanding and disrespectful, and he was preventing the return of a Ming envoy. Yongle sent him a return message listing his offenses but offering continued friendly relations in return for an apology. If he refused, he could expect a punitive Ming campaign against him. 62 That was not an idle threat.

And Arughtai was ready for war on the Oirats. In June 1413, he told Yongle that Mahmud had killed his ruler Bunyashiri, seized the chuanguo bao, and on his own authority put up the Chinggisid Daliba as his sovereign. Arughtai urged a punitive expedition. He offered to put his own men in the vanguard. Anti-Oirat war fever built up among China’s civil and military officials, too. Yongle chimed in. Those Oirats are wolves, he declared. If by this fall they don’t apologize, we’ll mount a spring campaign against them. 63

Yongle and Arughtai were ready now for a deeper tie. On July 28, 1413, Arughtai agreed to accept Ming suzerainty and receive enfeoffment as Hen- ing king (Hening, “harmonious and peaceful,” was also a Chinese name for Kharakhorum). There were also titles for his mother and wife, gold seals, caps, robes, a gold helmet, saddle horses, twenty bolts of gold-weave pat- terned silk, and two bolts of embroidered velvet. Yongle told Arughtai that he viewed him as a remnant Yuan minister who was bowing to the Way of Heaven like a sailboat blown by the wind. Arughtai was given leave to rule his troops and people and possess his lands forever. In November, Arughtai sent a mission of thanks. 64

The Ming began mobilization. A call-up of troops from Gansu all the way across to Liaodong was begun. In late November, Marquis Guo Liang from his base at Kaiping reported that he’d caught an Oirat spy and learned from

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him that Mahmud’s men had invaded the Kerulen River area and were about to attack Arughtai as well as the Chinese frontier. Arughtai reported much the same news. The Oirats had crossed the Kerulen and were aiming at him and at Kaiping, Xinghe, and Datong as well. On December 29, Yongle issued a formal declaration of war to his commanders. He said “the remnant Oirat Lu” killed their ruler (i.e., Bunyashiri), they detained and killed our envoy, and they’re raiding our border. They defy Heaven and mankind and must be chastised. We’ll win. Be resolute. Just obey orders and keep discipline. 65

We simply don’t know the reasons for the Oirat hostility. One can only speculate. But if the Oirat game was to rule the whole steppe world, as their election of a Chinggis-khan descendant as nominal overlord would suggest, then hostility to the Ming made some sense. If the Oirats were determined to be pro-Ming at the same time that Arughtai was also pro-Ming, then what? Yongle would be in a position to intervene and dictate terms, and that would end the Oirat bid for mastery. For his part, Yongle didn’t openly seek to master the steppes or play balance-of-power politics. His aim was to estab- lish amicable relations with all the hordes out there, meaning the symbolic submission of each of them to Ming hegemony, which demanded punish- ment for any determined defiance. He was more than willing to forgive and forget if an Oirat apology were forthcoming. None was.

The three Oirat leaders had accepted Ming hegemony some years before. Arughtai deferred committing himself in like manner until the Oirats reached his front yard and he felt himself in danger. The Ming rewards were consid- erable—not just for him and his mother, but for large numbers of his men: 2,962 of them given Ming military appointments, and 129 more shortly after- ward. 66

With mobilization completed, a half million infantry and cavalry departed Beijing on April 6, 1414. Their target: the three Oirat leaders, Mahmud, Taiping, and Batu Bolod, and their iconic sovereign Daliba. They took the same route north to the Kerulen that they’d taken in 1410, only this time the weather was much drier. This time there were no ecology seminars either. Instead, Yongle conducted a leadership classroom on the side for the benefit of his thirteen-year-old grandson, heir apparent to his father who was again running things back in Beijing in Yongle’s absence, and would one day, Yongle was confident, become emperor himself. He was the ruler’s favorite. He would tell everyone how bright and brave the boy was. He was showing him how to lead an army and how hard a campaign was on the troops in the ranks. He had the academicians keep tutoring the boy in the classics and histories meanwhile, which is probably why Jin Youzi’s log of this campaign is so terse. 67

Out in the steppes on May 13, Yongle and his grandson rode side by side. The ruler pointed out the landscape and the marching army. “Do you know why I’m doing this?” asked the ruler rhetorically. “Surely not because you

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want their land or their herds,” replied the future Xuande emperor. “But these Lu have bestial natures. Though you extend to them the beneficence of Heaven and earth, they don’t show gratitude. They submit for a while, then rebel. Unless exterminated, they become unmanageable. The ancient rulers Yao and King Wen had to do this. They drove the Lu far away so they didn’t dare come near the frontiers, so that our people and their families could enjoy generations of peace and security.” That was pure boilerplate. Yongle thought it was exactly the right answer. 68

On May 19, Yongle had another lesson for his grandson. He said that in China’s past, rulers grew up deep in the palace, spoiled by privilege, idle, and so ignorant of history that they had no compassion for the hardships of the common people and no grasp of the demands of administration, and so they brought on catastrophe. One day you’ll inherit the throne. You need to study hard, you need to know everything about the realm’s affairs, and you need to experience hardship. Then you’ll be able to handle crises. You’ll be able to measure up to the ancestors and benefit the people. That was good advice.

The boy pleased his grandfather by showing some physical prowess. On April 16, he shot and skewered with an arrow a rabbit that the horses had flushed from the grass. Soldiers nearby whooped for joy at the kill. Nothing wasted, a eunuch took the dead rabbit to the camp kitchen. 69

The army reached the Kerulen on June 10. The logistics were well han- dled. Grain was at hand in protected silos. The eunuch-run palace armory sent up two hundred firearms, helmets, sets of horse armor, and a thousand sets of regular armor at double speed. A long and elaborate schedule for awarding battle merits was prepared ahead of any clash. There was time out along the way to tend to sick soldiers. Yongle had the Imperial Academy of Medicine treat them. Those who failed to recover were sent back to Wanquan on the frontier to recuperate. The ruler reminded Marquis Liu Sheng that the soldiers are our hands and feet, and commanders who don’t win their affec- tion won’t get their full effort in a crisis. 70

Where was the foe? They were very hard to locate. On May 22, Yongle told Liu Jiang, leader of the vanguard, that if the scouts should see raiders heading east, they’d be Oirats, and if westbound, they’d be Arughtai’s fight- ers. In either case, capture a few of them, because the Lu nature is fickle, and we always have to be alert for perfidy. 71

On June 9, Commander Zhu Rong sighted several thousand Lu bandits heading east. Yongle concluded they must be Oirats, and he picked out a direct route from the Kerulen to the Tula River that had good water and grass. Cut them off if indeed they are eastbound. Yongle would stay with the main army on the Kerulen. Commander Liu Jiang reported Lu tracks going east. Yongle said they’d be encumbered by baggage and could be easily defeated and assigned him a thousand more cavalry. Yongle told the whole army that they were to behead all leaders and die-hard fighters, but they were

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forbidden to steal, rape their women, mistreat their children and elders, or kill any who surrender. Violators could expect execution for disobeying these orders. 72

The first clash with the Oirats came on June 19. It was inconclusive, but Yongle ordered all camps to be aware that there were Chinese speakers among the Lu who might raid us by night. The next day a captured spy said Mahmud and Taiping’s forces were one hundred li (some thirty miles) away. Yongle was glad to hear they were as close as that. The next day, June 21, Commander Liu Jiang rushed a report that he’d spotted the enemy, and Yongle then led a unit at double time to meet them. His grandson and a guard of five hundred iron cavalry came along too. 73

The big showdown with the Oirats came on June 23. The Oirat triumvirs and Daliba saw that the Ming were in good order and got out of harm’s way. Yongle surveyed the scene from a hilltop. He had several iron cavalry pro- voke them. The Oirats responded with a charge. Ming gunfire killed several hundred. Yongle and three marquises led a countercharge, and before the day was over, there were several thousand dead Oirats. A chase of the survivors went as far as the Tula River, but Mahmud and Taiping escaped, and as it grew dark, the Ming disengaged. 74 Later, Yongle explained to his grandson that the escaped Oirats hadn’t gone far, and we may need to fight them again tomorrow. The boy disagreed. He replied that he’d seen for himself the Oirat loss of morale, that they were a beaten bunch, that they wouldn’t be resting easy, and that they were in no position to bother us further. They needn’t be chased to the bitter end. It was time now for the Ming forces to regroup. Yongle stood corrected. Indeed, the campaign was over, and the army began its homeward trek on June 25. 75

And where was Arughtai in all this? Apparently his forces took no part. He sent an envoy to Yongle’s camp on the Kerulen on July 5 to announce that he was sick and unable to visit. Yongle gave him some campaign left- overs: 5,100 piculs of rice, 100 donkeys, and 100 sheep. 76

On the march home, Yongle issued an edict to the realm. It trumpeted another Ming victory. He explained how, when he first took the throne, he found the Oirats, evil raiders though they may have been, in a dire situation, beaten down in the steppes, and so he assuaged them with kingly titles, and for some years China got some respite from their raids. Eventually, however, they regrouped, grew arrogant and defiant, killed their ruler, seized our en- voy, and raided our borders, greedy as wolves. I had no choice but to lead the Ming army against them. They were overconfident, so we beat them at Sari ke’er and chased them to the Tula. They broke like sticks. We killed a thousand of them, and the survivors fled. We withdrew to the Kerulen; Arughtai’s crowd came to us, and we assuaged them and had them return to their horde. We wielded Heaven’s might, swept all the stench from that

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faraway region, and cherished those who came over and surrendered to us. The borders are now pacified, and our people are secure. 77

A curious feature of Yongle’s steppe campaigns, as well as those con- ducted in Taizu’s time, was that somehow the top enemy leaders always escaped after their forces suffered a major defeat. The usual excuse was that to chase them risked entrapment, as happened with Qiu Fu in 1409, or that there was simply no pressing need to capture them. One possible but unspok- en explanation for this policy of avoiding a hot pursuit was that there was no protocol for handling foreign potentates who were seized against their will. If they did capture Mahmud or any of the other Oirat chiefs, what would they have done with them? For voluntary surrenders, there were, of course, elab- orate protocols.

* * *

As the returning Ming army neared the China frontier, Yongle issued a warning to all commanders and their troops that the campaign had been conducted for the sake of the common people, whose land they were about to enter, where the harsh climate made life very hard, so any wrecking of fields and crops, or any theft of livestock by Ming soldiers, would be resolutely prosecuted. 78

The question of whether or not this second steppe campaign was a suc- cess, enhancing Ming stature and security, gradually began to tilt toward the negative. Arughtai asked for and received 158 more appointments for his men, along with three thousand piculs of rice. Yongle warned Regional Commander Chen Mou out in Ningxia that Mahmud was gearing up for a raid, as his people were in dire straits. And Arughtai was becoming a bit of a problem. In February 1415, barely four months after Yongle had satisfied his earlier request, Arughtai sent 390 men on a mission to Beijing with a presen- tation of horses and a request for 275 more military offices for his men. That, as well as gifts of cash, cloth, and silk gauze, they got. 79

But a major recalibration of Ming relations with the steppe world was in the offing. On February 14, 1415, an Oirat embassy reached Beijing from the three Oirat kings. (Their khan, Daliba, seems to have died during the 1414 battle with the Ming, alluded to in Ming sources indirectly as the killing of “a noted king,” not by his name.) They presented fifty horses and finally made their long-awaited apology. The kings claimed they’d been misled by belli- cose subordinates, that the Ming had to come and fight, for which dereliction they now acknowledged the deepest guilt and shame. They asked for a par- don so that they might renew themselves and return to the good graces of the imperial court. “The crafty Lu dare make fine words,” Yongle is said to have remarked upon reading a translation of their statement. His advisers chimed in and agreed that the foreigners (Yi-Di) were animals with whom it was pointless to argue, but because the celestial virtue was all inclusive, their

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tribute might be accepted. Yongle assented to that and put up the embassy in the official hostel. Arughtai’s envoys continued to receive lavish treatment meanwhile. 80

So the Ming now had both steppe adversaries under its wing, but what did that mean for the actual situation in steppe country? There, things took on a menacing look. A spy’s report had come in from Liaodong, on the basis of which Yongle warned the commanders at Kaiping that Arughtai had recruit- ed troops from among the Uriyangkhad and that Oirat forces were lingering nearby as well. A day-and-night alert was necessary. 81

Another campaign might be needed. Yongle began laying the ground- work for one. It came up for discussion in December 1415 that the just- completed steppe campaign had exposed some troubling deficiencies. Minis- ter of War Fang Bin complained that some commanders weren’t conscien- tious; that when we mobilized, some able-bodied men feigned illness and escaped duty; that some officers were timid; and that too many weapons were of poor quality. Yongle agreed and ordered censors to check into these things and issue indictments. He ordered all regional commanders to train their forces and bring them to Beijing for review. He wanted Jurchen recruits too, as many as could be mustered; the Liaodong commanders were to bring them to Beijing in the spring to train. On Duanwu, the Dragon Boat Festival day in spring, Yongle went out to the east park to view kick-ball games and archery contests, followed by cash prizes and a banquet. 82

In December 1419, as the slow process of recruiting, mobilizing, and training a new generation of troops ground on, Yongle made a formal address to his commanders. He wanted them to know what was on his mind. He was worried. History showed, he said, that military posture determines the rise and fall of dynasties. The Song in its rise brought peace to the realm through its military power, but it could not in the long run stave off the “ugly Lu,” and the realm split. Under Khubilai, the Yuan was strong militarily, but his successors were derelict, warlords arose, and the dynasty fell. Our Taizu founded the great enterprise of the Ming on military power, and my fear now is that we may be falling into military decline, just as the Song and Yuan did. The fates of all of you are tied to the guojia (the family-state). But you’ve let things slide. The ranks are depleted. Soldiers abscond. You don’t care about casualties. You have corrupt connections to civil officials. Vacancies lie unfilled for years. How will we ever meet a crisis? You care nothing for the soldiers below, and you’re not loyal to the state above. If you don’t reform, indictments await. Assuage the men, replenish the ranks, and ready the weap- ons. 83

Mobilization orders picked up speed during the year 1421, as it had become increasingly clear that the Ming could not sustain a policy of equal treatment of both Arughtai and the Oirats at the same time. Relations with the Oirats grew friendlier, while those with Arughtai soured. For instance, an

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Oirat mission of 1418 bore a tribute of horses plus statements of fealty from kings Taiping and Batu Bolod and a request from Mahmud’s son Toghon that he be allowed to succeed his dead father. The request was granted. An Oirat mission of June 1419 said they’d successfully beaten off an attack by bandits while they were on the way to Beijing; their words won Yongle’s respect and admiration. In February 1421, relations with Arughtai, smooth enough up to that point, hit a snag, the first sign of a turn for the worse. This came about as Arughtai’s tribute envoys decided to raid a merchant caravan on the China border. Yongle was understandably angered. He sent an envoy with an order to Arughtai to punish the malefactors. “From this,” note the Veritable Records, “the Lu grew arrogant, and their tribute missions [eventu- ally] ceased.” 84

A couple of months later, Yongle sent a eunuch on mission to the Oirats with gifts of silk and an edict to the effect that the crimes of border raiding committed by their horde (buluo) in years past were all forgiven and that their people should not fear arrest or attack if they came near our frontiers. And as Oirat relations warmed, those with Arughtai cooled further. In No- vember 1419, the Beijing police reported rowdy behavior by some of Arugh- tai’s envoys in the city market. They arrested one of the offenders. Yongle ordered that the offender be sent in shackles back to the Hening king Arugh- tai for punishment. He warned Arughtai to tell his envoys that they must obey Ming law when they were in China. 85

Weren’t these run-ins too minor to affect China’s place in the world? Apparently not. They were being read as early warning signs of something bad developing. News came in from the Oirats that Arughtai had fought and defeated their Xianyi king Taiping. Yongle criticized Arughtai as a “wily Lu” and scolded Taiping for ignoring his warning to be on guard. But he also consoled Taiping with gifts of colored silk. The Ming dislike of Arughtai was becoming ever clearer. Nonetheless, in February 1420 there arrived from Arughtai and a certain Esen Tugel a tribute of nine hundred horses. Yongle reciprocated with payment for the horses and gifts of cash and patterned silk. 86 What was this all about, and who was this Esen Tugel? His story will emerge later on, but at this juncture he was a wangzi, or khan, a scion of the house of Chinggis-khan. Arughtai had taken him in as a token of legitimacy. Evidently Yongle thought him a very important figure, which is probably why Arughtai’s mission was accepted. The inner politics of the steppe world are poorly documented, but from later developments, it seems Esen Tugel was much more favorably inclined toward the Ming than was Arughtai. So, was a rebalancing of China’s relations with the steppe world about to take place? No.

By July 1421, scouts’ reports had it that Arughtai was menacing the frontier. Yongle began a general mobilization preparatory to another inva- sion of the steppes. Then in late August he canceled it. He’d heard that

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Arughtai had moved his forces north and away from the frontier. 87 Yongle ordered a reassembly of forces at Beijing early the next year. 88

Then in December 1421, at a high-level strategy meeting in Beijing, Yongle was confronted with a consensus opinion that due to a grain shortage, no steppe campaign was going to be possible. Was that really true? Or was it just an excuse to mask a reluctance to go to war at all? Unusual for him, the emperor flew into a rage. He arrested and shackled a long-serving and faith- ful minister of revenue, Xia Yuanji, as well as Minister of Justice Wu Zhong. Minister of War Fang Bin, for many years very close to Yongle, committed suicide. The suicide upset Yongle. It was an inexplicable act of defiance, and he forbade posthumous honors for him. The ministers’ protest against an- other campaign failed utterly. 89

Yongle ordered local officials across north and central China to manufac- ture grain carts and deliver them to Beijing by early the following year, 1422. Apparently that got done. On March 14, 1422, at another high-level meeting, it was decided how grain supply for the upcoming steppe campaign was going to be managed. There would be two main bodies of haulers. Twenty- five officers would conduct the lead component of 340,000 donkeys. Twen- ty-six men would have charge of the rear component of 117,573 carts pulled by 235,146 civilian commoners as part of their service obligation. (That was two men per cart.) They were to backpack or haul a total of 370,000 piculs of grain. A thousand cavalry and five thousand infantry would be assigned to guard the convoys. 90

There came a devastating raid by Arughtai on Xinghe, a Ming battalion center in the steppes north of Xuanfu. The place was destroyed and never rebuilt. That was the trigger for war. Yongle explained to the court on April 9, 1422, his rationale for this fourth invasion of Mongolia, the third led by him personally. He said that after having been beaten by the Oirat Mahmud, Arughtai brought his wife, family, and followers southeast in the direction of our border, sent us horses and camels in tribute, and declared his submission to us. But the Lu nature is crafty and false hearted. That wasn’t his true intent. He only submitted because he was in trouble. We, however, had no choice but to extend to him the benevolence of Heaven and earth. We ac- cepted their tribute, treated their envoys courteously, enfeoffed Arughtai as king of Hening, gave titles to his mother and wife, gave them all gold and silk, and let them live in the northern steppes. For a time our relations were smooth. He even sent his son to court. But now his herds have expanded, his wealth has grown, and his malignant and rebellious mind has resurfaced. His envoys looted us on their return. He treated our envoys rudely. I warned him about this, but he paid no heed. And now he’s raided Xinghe. So I’ve decided to lead a campaign. 91 No objections were raised.

So the campaign began. Arughtai’s men fled Xinghe by night, having heard that the Ming forces were on the march. Some commanders urged an

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immediate pursuit. Yongle turned them down. “The Lu just want to satisfy their wolfish greed,” he is recorded as having said. “They got what they wanted, and they’ve gone. A chase would just tire out our men. We’ll wait until the grass gets green and the horses are fat. Then we’ll go via Kaiping and Yingchang, surprise them in their lair, and smash them. It won’t be too late.” By April 17, 1422, Yongle settled in at Xuanfu. 92

At Xuanfu, there were many details to take care of. The ruler gave special attention this time to medical care for the soldiers. “Soldiers are the claws and teeth of the state,” he said. “They’re going out on campaign, and I’m mindful day and night of their hardships, whether they’re getting enough food, whether they’re adequately clothed. And on a long campaign they get sick from storms, cold, heat, hunger, and overwork. Doctors must be on call in each camp to dispense medicine, not just file reports.” The Imperial Acad- emy of Medicine got busy. 93

The emperor’s first steppe campaign was an occasion for a seminar in landscape appreciation. His second found him intent upon showing his grandson how to command a huge combat army. This time his focus was on preparedness. The march was also going to be a sort of shakedown cruise. Yongle explained that many troops weren’t veterans but new men from all over, and it was urgent that their state of training be reviewed while the march was underway. He also had them go hunting on May 29, as the campaign reached a spot north of Xuanfu. “I don’t like hunting,” he re- marked, “but it’s a chance for the men to race horses, wield weapons, and show a martial spirit. It’s good for their morale.” 94

Yongle sent word ahead to Marquis Guo Liang, in command at Kaiping, that if the Lu came, he was to bring everyone from outlying settlements into the fort and hold fast. Let no one leave, and wait for the main army’s arrival.

On May 31, the ruler held a major review. He remarked to his command- ers that military formations on the march were just like bodies of water flowing over a landscape. The placement of the enemy determines the flow. Just as water has no permanent shape, neither does a body of troops have a constant posture. We have to adjust to any changes made by the foe. Right now we’re making sure the ranks know how to turn this way or that on command so that when they actually meet the enemy they’ll respond as ordered.

There was archery practice the next day, probably involving shooting at a target while at a gallop. One squad leader hit the target three times in three tries. Yongle issued the prize: an ox, a sheep, one hundred ingots of cash, and two silver cups. Big rewards inspire the men, he said. So apparently did singing. The emperor composed three songs about suppressing the Lu and had the soldiers sing these so as to infuse them with a fighting spirit.

Then Yongle made his top commanders all compete in mounted archery while he looked on. Only three of them could consistently hit the target. One

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missed all his shots, so the ruler demoted him. Another failed to show on excuse of illness and was demoted too. Yongle said all commanders must be brave and smart as well as expert marksmen. Bravery means agility and forcefulness in the face of the enemy. Having deep and comprehensive plans is what intelligence is all about. To be brave but stupid isn’t good enough. You must all of you persevere. And troops need to be in good order. No carousing. If a crisis emerges, direct them calmly. No panicky reactions. The enemy may leave behind people, horses, camels, oxen, and sheep. But watch out: it could be bait. On June 5, there was another big review. Yongle said it was vital to do this. 95

The army marched on and stopped to form a twenty-li circle. Fuel gather- ing was forbidden beyond the perimeter. Yongle and his top officials pitched camp in the middle. Inside were infantry, then cavalry, then the gunners furthest out. Inner and outer command posts were set up at left and right. Yongle lectured the officers not to forget that good plans trump bravery. The men must be taught to obey commands, but they must also be cared for. You gain their cooperation by acting like fathers or elder brothers. Have them encourage each other to press on, like oarsmen rowing a boat into a head- wind. On June 10, he sent five thousand mounted scouts under Zhu Rong ahead of the main army, with orders to rush a report whenever they spotted the foe. No combat until the main forces arrive. At another meeting with his commanders, Yongle told them he always thought deeply about any order before he issued it and that they should do the same; and if they think what I’ve ordered is wrong, they should voice the better idea they believe they have. The Veritable Records note that on this trip it was Yongle’s habit to rise daily at five drums (3–5 a.m.) to review troops or formulate plans. Every night he called in the academicians to his tent to discuss the Confucian classics and the histories, and the commanders to discuss the military classics (bingfa). He often forgot to eat or sleep. 96

On June 10, the army reached Kaiping. Yongle had the Ministry of Reve- nue send up twelve thousand piculs of grain and the palace armory five thousand catties of gunpowder. An advance party of five hundred cavalry was to proceed to Yingchang to find out what the Lu were up to. Word came on June 26 that the Lu had attacked Wanquan, a frontier fort some three hundred miles south of where the expedition was. The commanders urged that a detachment go down there and fight them. “No,” said Yongle. That’s just a feint to distract us. There’s not many of them, and they fear our march north. Yongle was right; four days later, word came that the foe had with- drawn from Wanquan.

Toward Yingchang, the terrain flattened, which meant our advance must be in strict order, with the gunners and cavalry up front. No intermixing of units. Another advance unit of three hundred cavalry with two horses per man and twenty days’ grain was ordered to advance by night and hide by day

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and find out what the Lu were up to. Again, Zhu Rong led it. A backup party of one thousand were to follow and assist if necessary.

On July 22, one or more Tatars captured by Zhu Rong reached Yongle’s camp, where they were at once debriefed. Their story was that on hearing of the campaign, many of Arughtai’s men panicked and fled, and when Arugh- tai and his family heard Yongle was leading the army personally, they too took fright and fled, abandoning all their horses and livestock on the banks of Lake Kölen (Dalai Nor, six hundred miles directly north of Beijing). Their report that Arughtai’s mother and wife scolded him for opposing the Ming may have been an ingratiating fib. Yongle was cautious. He said their story might be a show of weakness meant to deceive us. But soon other captives confirmed the story of Arughtai’s nighttime flight. Yongle sent soldiers to round up all the abandoned animals. He burned the abandoned luggage. Then he held a general meeting of civil officials and military officers and told them the campaign was over. He explained that there would be no pursuit of Arughtai. The Lu are a border threat, so driving them off is enough. Our men have come a very long way and they need rest. 97

Then at a later meeting he targeted the Uriyangkhad, those Tatars domi- ciled on the Mongolia-Manchuria border that the Ming normally relied on and mollified for strategic reasons. But they’d recently swung their weight in favor of Arughtai, who’s now limping away in defeat, leaving the Uriyang- khad “bandits” still out there. We must cut them down on the return march, ordered Yongle. The commanders were eager to do just that. Yongle picked twenty thousand infantry and cavalry. They were divided into five groups. Speed was essential.

Calling them “bandits” was surely a deliberate choice of terminology. It absolved the formally recognized three Uriyangkhad guards (Duoyan, Tai- ning, and Fuyu) of blame for deserting the Ming and joining with Arughtai. It was, officially, freebooting bandits who joined purely on their own, not under the direction of the commanders of the Three Guards. Yongle appar- ently saw no need to scare and alienate them. Off they went to exterminate the bandits.

Yongle led the cavalry vanguard. Behind him came the main army. The Uriyangkhad territory lay three hundred miles southeast of Lake Kölen, along the headwaters of several rivers that flow down into the Manchurian lowlands. To make a long story short, the result was a massacre. The Ming cavalry and gunners maneuvered through swamp and forest and shot, hacked, and blasted the bandits in bloody retribution for their alliance with Arughtai. All their people, horses, and livestock fell to the Ming. Many of the people were later released. Their baggage and weapons were gathered and de- stroyed. The “gang” leader, Borke, was chased down and caught. When it was all over, Yongle told his commanders that he had to do this. The com- manders, who by now knew the approved script, replied that it was Heaven’s

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way to bless the good and destroy the evil, and that the ruler did this at Heaven’s behest to protect the common people. It was not a case of overkill. Remnant “bandits” were pursued. One hundred thousand Uriyangkhad live- stock were divided up among the men, presumably to be slaughtered and cooked. 98

The army resumed its homeward march. On September 2, as he neared the China frontier, Yongle issued another triumphal edict to the realm. This time he underlined his own role as a battlefield leader. He said he had no choice but to label the crimes and apply the chastisement. The crimes? Heav- en and earth encompass all; there is nothing outside their embrace. The emperor extends the same kind of benevolence to all. I labor day and night for the sake of the living beings of the realm. The “ugly Lu” Arughtai lurked like a rat in the northern steppes, and when the Oirats troubled him such that he couldn’t protect his wife and children, he led his crowd and submitted to us. I understood his need. I cosseted him, granted him a title, and let him live peacefully in his own land. But his Lu mind harbored deceit, presumption, and arrogance. He defied Heaven, grace, virtue, and the mandate. He killed our envoy and raided our border. So I acted to protect the common people, and I personally led the army and attacked him.

Yongle went on to recount the smashing of Arughtai and his allies, the Uriyangkhad bandits. At dawn on September 23, Yongle reentered Beijing; personally reported his victory to the shrines dedicated to Heaven, earth, and the ancestors; and received the court’s congratulations at the Fengtian Gate. 99

* * *

But Arughtai’s career wasn’t over, not by any means. He was resilient. In August 1423 came news that he was gearing up for another raid on the China border. Yongle called a meeting of his top command. He told them that when those bandits attacked Xinghe last year, I personally led the army and pounded their nest. They fled, and we got all their horses, livestock, and baggage; and then we marched east and smashed the bandit Uriyangkhad gang, and we seized their people and livestock and put them in dire straits. Now, however, they think that because of our victory we won’t come out and campaign again, so they dare act brazenly. Earlier we surprised them, and now we’ll do so again.

This was becoming routine. Everyone knew his role as once again the order of procession was put together. The emperor left Beijing on August 29, ignoring the usual spring departure date. Two days later a large review was held at Tumu—the post station that will be the site of the infamous 1449 disaster. The review went well, and Yongle was pleased, even though he got soaked in the rain. Reports came in that the Lu had gathered just beyond the border farther west and had designs on Datong and Ningxia. Again, Yongle would not divert the campaign; it was up to the local defenders to bring all

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scattered soldiers and common people into the forts for protection and stay on the alert. 100

On September 5, there was another big review at Xuanfu. Lingering storm clouds dissipated, and the parade of flags, banners, arms, and armor glistened in the sun. At the banquet afterward, Yongle said the army looked superb; if the generals are smart, the troops brave, and everyone cooperates, the victory will be ours. At Wanquan on September 16, Yongle insisted to his generals that he was not a militarist, not a war hawk. The entire aim of his campaigns was simply to drive away the bandits and protect the common people. We have the moral edge, Heaven’s aid, and three hundred thousand men, and if you all strive loyally, we’ll prevail over the remnant bandits. 101

Yongle busied himself giving advice and instructions as the expedition proceeded. He reminded Chen Mou as commander of the van that he had to make his own tactical decisions and not refer everything back to the ruler. He told his commanders to train as they go and to remember to place the gunners in front of any cavalry charge.

Important news came in on September 19. From among the Lu, two men bearing titles of Yuan vintage came and surrendered themselves and their wives and children. They said that over the summer the Oirat king Toghon defeated Arughtai, seized nearly all of his people and livestock, and forced his remaining fighters to scatter away leaderless. They said Arughtai would flee as soon as he heard of Yongle’s campaign. Yongle had to caution his commanders that while they might now anticipate a weakened foe in Arugh- tai, the Lu penchant for deception must be borne in mind, and border de- fenses everywhere must be solidified. 102

On November 9 came stunning news. Vanguard commander Chen Mou had gotten as far as the Kerulen River chasing Arughtai when a powerful Tatar-Mongol grandee named Esen Tugel came and surrendered himself, his wife and children, and his personal followers. His statement, translated, read, “I, Esen Tugel, am in straits in the northern steppes, ceaselessly on the run day and night. I saw Arughtai nearly get killed several times. He’s in danger. I see that you embody Heaven’s mind; you’ve won the allegiance of every country; how can I reject your benevolence? I lead my family and come over, and dare to bask in your glory.”

Yongle was at the Tiancheng Guard, in between Datong and Xuanfu, when he got this news. It appeared to be genuine. At once he sent Chen Mou the message that Esen Tugel must be treated with kindness and respect. Allow no taking of livestock from his followers. And give him this message: “You’re wise, you know the Mandate of Heaven, and you’ve come over. If you’re sincere with me, I’ll be sincere with you, and as ruler and subject we’ll enjoy peace together. I’ve ordered Chen Mou to treat you well and escort you here.”

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Esen Tugel was no ordinary Tatar. He was a wangzi, a khan, a descendant of Chinggis-khan, and obviously the legitimizing front man behind whom, or with whom, Arughtai tried to rule Mongolia after he shed the Ming title Hening king. No mere icon was Esen Tugel; he was a feared leader in his own right. And now he’s surrendered to the Ming! Taizu had always been deeply respectful of capable and high-born aristocrats from the steppes whenever they voluntarily came and surrendered, witness his treatment of Naghachu and Nayir Bukha. Almost instinctively, Yongle did the same; long ago as prince of Yan he’d participated in the reception of both.

So with that the campaign ended. On November 24, Chen Mou reached Tiancheng and delivered his honored guest. Esen Tugel was nervous on meeting Yongle. Yongle reassured him. Esen Tugel said he’d long wanted to come submit, but Arughtai prevented that. Yongle arranged a banquet. Yon- gle gave him a title, “Loyal and Brave King,” and a new name: from now on he was Jin Zhong, the two elements meaning “gold” and “loyal.” His wife Yechi was honored, as well as his nephew Badai, who was made a military commissioner-in-chief. His followers all got caps, belts, and gold-weave garments. At the banquet, Jin Zhong sat right in front of Yongle, ahead of all the other Ming commanders. Yongle fed him special delicacies and, when the banquet was over, gave him the gold cups that the banqueters had used. The next day he wrote the heir apparent, informing him of all this. 103

November 30 found Yongle on horseback, with Jin Zhong just behind, as they departed the guards citadel at Wanquan, heading for Beijing. Yongle quizzed him about Lu affairs. An interpreter was at hand, surely. Jin Zhong said that many among the Lu would like to come over, but the evil leader prevents that, so they can’t break free.

On December 6, the southbound imperial entourage transited Juyong- guan, the famous pass thirty miles north of Beijing. The day was bright and clear. Yongle wore his imperial gold-threaded dragon robe as he rode his caparisoned mount, and as the procession slowly edged forward, metal drums sounded and banners waved for several miles. A huge crowd of onlookers— soldiers, civilians, children, elders, and foreign envoys—knelt along the left side of the road. Rolling shouts of wansui! rose when Yongle came into view, his trophy Jin Zhong right behind.

Yongle and his party reached Beijing on December 9. Military ranks were dished out to eighty of Jin Zhong’s followers. The next day, a big consign- ment of seals, robes, belts, gold-weave patterned silk garments, gold and silver taels, cash, hemp clothing, bolts of silk gauze, saddle horses, oxen, sheep, and rice went to Jin Zhong, plus housing, furnishings, dishes, fuel, and fodder and a yearly salary of one thousand piculs. His wife, nephew, and followers all got their share as well. The lowliest recipients, twenty-five men, each got fifteen taels silver, three hundred ingots cash, one gold-weave pat- terned silk garment, three hemp garments, and fifteen bolts of cotton cloth,

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plus saddle horses, oxen, sheep, housing, dishware, fuel, and fodder. To describe all this as lavish would be a bit of an understatement. 104

* * *

Bad news followed almost at once. On February 7, 1422, reports arrived from Datong and Kaiping that the Lu bandit Arughtai’s men had raided both places. Ever since he came over, Jin Zhong had been urging Yongle to mount another campaign against Arughtai, but the emperor was reluctant. Now he changed his mind. He called a big meeting of his high military and civil officials, all of whom clamored for action. So once again Yongle set in motion a mobilization of forces. These came from the regional military com- missions of five different north China provinces.

On May 2, the expedition departed Beijing. While en route to Kaiping, one of Jin Zhong’s men captured a Lu scout, who said that last fall Arughtai had fled north in the face of the Ming armies, but a big winter snow, many feet deep, killed off his livestock and caused his people to scatter. He’d since gone farther away and had sent the scout to see if a Ming campaign were really coming. This was another cold and wet campaign. When the forces reached Kaiping late and soaked to the skin, Yongle made sure the com- manders took as much care of them as they would for their own children. 105

For once, Yongle had one target in mind, and that was the one man, Arughtai. Just driving him away would no longer do. Why? Because he’d killed one overlord, Guilichi; betrayed another, Yongle; and was abandoned by a third, Esen Tugel, and had therefore forfeited all claim to respect and consequently was nothing more than a common bandit. Yongle released some captives and had them make an eloquent appeal to all the Tatars out in the steppes, many of whom were probably contemplating defecting to the Ming. Yongle reminded them how kindly he’d treated Arughtai when he was in deep trouble. Then he turned on me for no reason, raided our frontier, and harmed our people. He forced me to campaign. Had I heeded my command- ers and conducted an all-out war, you all would have perished like snow- flakes on a hot stove. But I espoused Heaven’s benevolence and forbore. I just lopped off some branches, destroyed his belongings, and drove him off into the wilds, hoping he’d change his ways. But he didn’t. Now he’s men- aced our border people yet again. So this expedition is after that one man, Arughtai, and no one else. We’re not after any of his men. If you submit sincerely, we’ll reward you and give you offices and let you live peacefully wherever you like. It’s up to you to decide. Yongle restated this same policy to his commanders. Chinese and non-Chinese are all my children, he said. We’re pursuing one villain, Arughtai. All Tatars who don’t fight us need to be treated well and released. 106

There was a stopover in heavy rain 250 miles north of Beijing at what used to be the Yuan-era town of Yingchang. Banquets were held. A eunuch

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chorus sang uplifting lyrics composed by Taizu long ago. Scouts found no sure trace of Arughtai. The campaign was eager for action, Jin Zhong espe- cially. Scouts reached a place where Arughtai was supposed to be but found no sign of anyone or anything. He must have left some time ago. The scouts fanned out and searched everywhere. Finally, on July 16, Yongle decided to abort the mission. Men and horses were getting tired, he said. It gets cold early in Lu country, and it’s a long way back to China. Finding Arughtai is like trying to find a pebble in the ocean. I can’t overstrain the army. So they formed two main groups and began the trek south to Kaiping. Yongle had a final inscription carved into a rock face: “So posterity will know I cam- paigned here.” 107

On August 8, at another stopover, Yongle leaned on a table in his tent- palace as academicians Jin Youzi and Yang Rong sat or stood by. He seems to have sensed that something was wrong with his health. He asked and was told by a eunuch that the expected arrival time in Beijing was the middle of next month (around September 7). Yongle nodded and said to the academi- cians that when we get back, I’ll hand over all military duties to the heir apparent, who by now has long experience in government, and I’ll spend my last years in retirement. The academicians didn’t protest as they might have been expected to do. Instead they lauded the heir apparent. Yongle was pleased. In his edict to the realm, the ruler recapitulated why the mission had been launched and why it had been necessary to abort it.

On August 10, he didn’t feel well. On August 11, at a place not far northwest of Kaiping, he died. He was sixty-four, by Western reckoning. For security reasons, his death was kept secret until the expedition returned safe- ly to Beijing. 108

* * *

So, were these Mongolian campaigns of Yongle’s worthwhile? Did they enhance China’s stature in the world and its border security? Their whole purpose, according to Yongle, was to allow the common people, the min, of China’s frontier regions to live in peace, free of the danger of raids on their lives and property. It’s possible that in the short run, they did that. The raids of the Oirats and Arughtai on the frontier were few, and each was answered by a colossal retaliatory Ming campaign. It surely appears as though China inflicted much worse damage on the Lu than the Lu did on China. The campaigns were probably too costly in resources and manpower to continue routinely once Yongle departed the scene. And no successor, not even his grandson, the Xuande emperor, was a genuine generalissimo like he was.

One important consequence of the Mongolian campaigns of Taizu and Yongle, though never stated as their purpose, was the draining of Mongolia of some unknown number, surely many thousands, of fighters and their fami- lies and followers by way of encouraging their voluntary defection and reset-

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tlement, usually under their own officers, in military guard cities all over China. Serruys has detailed this phenomenon at great length for Taizu’s reign. 109 China’s willingness to absorb aliens such as these, rather than trying to keep them out at all costs, was surely of some benefit to the security of the guojia.

The Tatar side of the story is difficult to probe. From what the Ming sources say, there was a fierce rivalry going on between the Oirat Tatars and the Tatars of the defunct Yuan dynasty over which of them would dominate the steppes. To the west of both lived the Tuda or Monguors, a Mongolian people living in military cities in Gansu, many of whose commanders led troops in Ming behalf. On the eastern edge of the steppes lived the Uriyang- khad Tatars, their three guard communities wavering between allegiance to China and cooperation with Arughtai. In all of this, the Ming, for all its pretensions as the global great power, was unable to impose its dominance, because it could not, and never tried to, establish a permanent steppe pres- ence, only an intermittent one. Whether the formidable Ming armies entered the steppes at all was mainly up to the steppe powers to decide. The Ming just reacted. The initiative was the enemy’s. Did either steppe competitor want Ming backing? Arughtai did, but only after the Oirats put him in serious trouble in 1411. The Oirats likewise, only after Ming forces, allied with Arughtai, beat them soundly in 1414.

Some key parts of the puzzle are nebulous for lack of documentation. Whether or not to accept Ming suzerainty was a question that we know was hotly contested in steppe leadership circles, but we know little of the details. Nor do we know what prompted the Oirats and Arughtai to detain and kill envoys from the Ming court and initiate raids on the Ming frontiers. And where do frontier raids fit into the picture? Why raid when raiding, like envoy-killing, just provoked Ming retaliation? One can only speculate.

The raids were for plunder only. The raiders never tried to seize and occupy Ming territory. They never voiced a higher purpose, such as using raids to force a change in Ming policy. Perhaps in the absence of a regular system of frontier markets, raiding was the only way to supplement the pastoral economy with needed goods. Perhaps raiding was, like hunting, an enjoyable pastime for the young men, keeping them busy and loyal to their leaders. Perhaps some of the raiding was anarchic freebooting, beyond the control of the top leaders. Ming sources regularly call the raiders not by any other name than “Lu” (meaning raiders) or “bandits,” unconnected to consti- tuted steppe authority. The Ming sources repeatedly blame raiding on the insatiable greed of the beastly Lu soul.

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Chapter Three

A Zenith of Peace? Xuande, r. 1426–35

The frontier was unpredictable. Quiet might erupt into violence at any time. Violence might subside without any clear reason for doing so. The volatility of human passions may help explain it. For much of Taizu’s reign (1368–98) and for the first seven years of Yongle’s, up to 1409 or so, from Songpan all the way around to Liaodong, the frontier was a zone of considerable turbu- lence. Then it quieted down unaccountably, so much so that Yongle could focus his attention on his campaigns into Mongolia. Under his immediate successors—his son, the Hongxi emperor (r. 1425), and his grandson, the Xuande emperor—Beijing’s attention was drawn again to troubles along the frontiers. Hongxi and Xuande were both competent administrators.

Although Xuande kept insisting that China was enjoying an age of peace, he was by no means complacent. He kept a wary eye on everything going on, well aware that inefficiency, idleness, corruption, shortages, mismanage- ment, and unforeseen challenges could easily erode the realm’s defensive barriers and cause untold disasters. His job was to meet these troubles calmly and not overreact, handling bad news rationally and constructively. His desk was crowded with paperwork.

There were routine maintenance, repair, and upgrading tasks he had to authorize. Walls tended to crumble. New installations, like signal towers and forts (chengpu) especially, had to fill the many gaps the latest raids had exposed. Soldiers had to be shifted from guard duty to construction labor and back; they had to be fed, housed, clothed, and provided with armor, weapons, and cavalry horses. They had to be recruited and trained. Food supply was a major headache, as the frontiers were not well suited for agricultural produc- tion. How to organize grain hauling; secure the donkeys, carts, and teamsters,

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often civilians; and ensure that the loads arrived intact after a hundred or more miles of difficult and dangerous terrain leading from the interior to the outermost limits of the realm? Men and animals had to be replaced as they aged, sickened, and died. Modes of procurement and payment had to be devised and constantly readjusted as circumstances changed. All these kinds of things required Xuande’s daily attention as matters came up from com- manders in the field or from the Ministry of War asking for his decision. Xuande was sufficiently competent to initiate his own edicts and commands as well. As a ruler, Xuande was outgoing, communicative, and quite friendly and trusting with the two dozen or so high military officers and civil officials in Beijing and out in the field with whom he regularly worked. He issued a well-articulated scolding and levied fines when he found that officers in the field had been derelict in their duties.

How Xuande handled the eruptions of violence along the frontiers is central to the story of the evolution of the Ming defense system over the long term. But where did the frontier end? It’s clear that the eastern part of the northern frontier ended in Liaodong (Manchuria), where it oversaw a vast hinterland populated by Jurchen and Jurchen “wild people” (Yeren, Udiha), loosely corralled under Ming auspices as guards, mostly situated along the many rivers and streams of upper Manchuria. Where the other end of the northern frontier lay seems to be a matter of choice. The Gansu Corridor is one possibility, a place where the Ming command center at Ganzhou faced a complex mixture of groups and ethnicities and had to protect the embassies traveling to and from the Middle East. Or did it end at Xining in today’s Qinghai Province, whose hinterland extended out as far as the Himalayas, and the wider Tibetan world with which the Ming consistently sought friend- ly ties? Or must one end it at Songpan, on the western edge of Ming China, in the foothills of the Tibetan Massif, roughly 150 miles northwest of Chengdu in Sichuan Province? Songpan sat in an ethnic and religious transition zone, the religions being Tibetan Buddhism and pre-Buddhist Bön, and the eth- nic—to use the Ming shorthand terminology—where the “Fan” (Tibetan or Qiang or Minyag) met the “Man” and “Bo” (non-Chinese peoples of the southwest frontiers). Songpan was reachable by Tatar raids from the north, and in Xuande’s time it was a cockpit of violence in its own right. We will reluctantly have to omit it for reasons of space. It deserves a detailed study of its own.

* * *

Xuande had serious problems with the ambassadors’ highway to the greater Middle East. An ability to protect the highway of course tested the credibility of China’s pretensions to global hegemony. The Ming could not countenance raids on its embassies going west, or attacks on embassies from such distant but friendly courts as those in Himalayan Tibet, Samarkand, Herat, Shiraz, or

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A Zenith of Peace? Xuande, r. 1426–35 83

Isfahan. The raids occurred at some remove from China proper, where Ming rule faded out and reliance had to be placed on non-Chinese commanders and their armies.

Heading west, China proper ended at Suzhou and Jiayuguan at the end of the Gansu Corridor. As the corridor widens and becomes what is now the open expanses of Xinjiang, there were set up in early Ming times a series of satellite guards out as far as the city of Hami (Qomul), roughly four hundred miles to the northwest.

Bad news arrived in October 1424, just after the Hongxi emperor had come to the throne. Fei Huan, regional commander in Gansu, reported that a thousand or more bandits from the Anding, Quxian, Chigil, and Miluo Guards had attacked a Ming embassy. There were casualties. The bandits made off with horses, donkeys, oxen, and silks intended as gifts for poten- tates in far Tibet and Nepal. The scene of the crime was somewhere in the vicinity of Xining. Hongxi instructed Fei to notify the authorities at Chigil and to tell Regional Military Commissioner Li Ying at Xining and Com- mander Kang Shou at Bili (nowadays Guide County, south of Xining) to rally Handong, Quxian, and Anding with a view to identifying who these bandits were, along with their ethnic community (cu) or horde (buluo), and make arrests if possible, or at least report the facts. 1

The answer came back in September 1425, under Hongxi’s son and suc- cessor, Xuande. Li Ying, himself a Tibetan, led his Xining Guard troops plus militia from twelve Tibetan communities to Handong, southeast of Shazhou (nowadays Dunhuang), where he was told that the raiders were from Anding and Quxian. So Li Ying advanced on those places. The Anding bandits scattered west toward the Kunlun Mountains, where Li killed 480 of them, capturing 700 and rounding up 140,000 head of livestock. The Quxian ban- dits got wind of this and fled too far off for Li to chase them. Li thought the king at Anding should come in person to Beijing and apologize.

Xuande noted that Anding was ethnically Uighur and that the Ming had created a guard there and appointed native officers to gather and pacify the people. We treated them generously, he said. But when foreigners (Yi-Di) see profit, they forget righteousness. They brought this calamity on them- selves. We had to suppress them, but if now they sincerely apologize, I’ll treat them liberally. 2

This was how Xuande would manage provocations along the frontiers. He appeared to believe that a great power needn’t overreact, that it was great because it could afford to show lenience and generosity when offenders apologized for their misbehavior, and perhaps also made restitution for the plunder they’d taken.

The suppression of the Anding outlaws had aftereffects. It wasn’t a sim- ple matter.

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Commissioner Liu Zhao at Xining reported later that same month that Li Ying had identified the two leaders of the raid, one from Anding, the other from Quxian, both still at large; he also asked Xuande’s permission to send back to Handong militiamen from that Tibetan community who’d taken part in Li Ying’s campaign and were now living in Xining, afraid to return for fear of Quxian bandit leader Sanjis’s revenge. Xuande told Li to let the Handong refugees stay where they were.

Li Ying came in person to Beijing in October and described the situation. Xuande told him there was no need for a long campaign in pursuit of Sanjis. Li presented Xuande with fifteen captive Anding boys, plus the horses and camels the bandits had abandoned. (The captured oxen and sheep had been given to the local troops earlier.) Xuande pitied the boys, who now had no families, so he placed them in the care of one of the guards at Beijing. The camels and horses were sent to the Directorate of the Imperial Horses. Pro- motions, salary boosts, and lavish gifts went out to the victorious command- ers and their men. 3

In December, an emissary from Handong stated that 1,500 common peo- ple there had fallen into arrears providing tribute horses for Beijing and had fled to the neighboring Chigil Guard in order to avoid the penalty. Now in the wake of Li Ying’s victory, they wanted to return, but they were afraid to. Xuande reacted with his usual magnanimity. He said to the minister of war that the fugitives were violent as a people, but they could be mollified. He ordered Regional Commander Fei Huan to accompany the Handong author- ities and bring them back under amnesty, their horse debts canceled. 4

In November 1426, a joint embassy with tribute horses arrived from Anding and one of the Handong Buddhist communities. They said Li Ying’s campaign had caused panic, sending 2,400 tents and 17,300 men and women into flight, but officers from the Xining Guard had them return, so they were now well enough recovered to present the horses. Generous rewards went out to the officers and to the leaders of the fugitive communities. 5

There was still trouble in the area, however. It may have been related to Li Ying’s campaign. Kang Shou, assistant regional military commissioner at the Bili Guard, said Fan bandits looted one of the Tibetan communities (cu). Xuande ordered Assistant Commissioner-in-Chief Shi Zhao at Xining to join Li Ying in suppressing them. Shi Zhao had stated that the bandits were a very big gang from Xining, Hezhou, and Bili. Xuande cautioned Shi and the others not to overdo it and provoke a general uprising of Fan. 6

There were other molestations of tributary convoys. Tatar outlaws from Shazhou killed and wounded Ili-balik envoys and made off with a hundred horses. Then they descended on a mission from Samarkand and stole bag- gage, horses, and donkeys. This bad news was relayed up to Xuande. In late January 1427, he ordered Fei Huan to go after them. He did so, but he died not long afterward. 7

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In December 1427, the vice military commissioner at Xining reported that he’d called back forty-two thousand tents of Quxian fugitives, who’d fled in fear they’d be blamed for Sanjis’s crimes. The assistant commander who led the group sent tribute of camels and horses to Beijing. Xuande accepted their apology. 8

In January 1431, Shi Zhao updated Xuande on the Quxian situation. He said the main leader of the marauders, Sanjis, was still at large, but he’d captured his lieutenant, Dada Bukha, along with three hundred men and women and 320,000 horses and livestock. The emperor was pleased. In March, Shi himself delivered Dada Bukha in shackles to Beijing. Xuande had Dada Bukha put in the prison of the Embroidered-Uniform Guards. His fate is not known. 9

Shi Zhao brought three further complications to Xuande’s attention. Offi- cers and common people from the Aduan Guard—which was a Tatar (Da- dan) and Uighur group inhabiting a large territory west of Handong and south of Shazhou—were still living among the Quxian outlaws, afraid to return because they’d taken part in the attack on the embassy. Xuande au- thorized Shi to send people to “soothe and instruct” them and call them back. 10 Shi described a similar situation regarding a subgroup from Quxian whose people had also joined Sanjis and had since fled into the territory of the Bili Guard, where they sat on the envoys’ highway to and from Tibet and might conceivably start trouble. Xuande said they were just a remnant horde in desperate circumstances, not worth bothering about. Send someone to forgive their crimes and have them all go home. Third, Shi said that before Assistant Commander Sengge at Anding had joined Handong in the cam- paign on Quxian, the Banna community (cu) in Handong had led a major looting of Anding families, including Sengge’s, and they still held all the animals they’d stolen. Shi said he had visited Banna and learned they were a semi-independent group, and he asked Xuande to authorize a recovery of all the plundered animals they were holding. Xuande complied. He told the Banna chiefs that if they returned all the livestock and the families they’d abducted to Anding, he’d pardon their crime, and if they didn’t, he’d sup- press them. 11

The people of these small, autonomous polities on and beyond the bounds of China proper never give us their own story. Everything we know of them comes through a Chinese filter. And the Ming officials, to whose testimony we’re beholden, weren’t anthropologists. Their concern was national secur- ity, and they used a bureaucratic shorthand whenever they discussed these non-Chinese groups. The Banna story gives but a hint of the real-world complexities. What was it that made them a separate group? What language did they speak? Anding was probably mostly Uighur in ethnic composition and Buddhist in religion, but what of the Banna? Were there other such subgroups in Anding? It’s a mystery. It’s a safe bet, however, that the Ming

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border commanders knew much more about these non-Chinese guards than they conveyed in their memorials to the throne.

In the late spring of 1431 came the news Beijing had long been waiting for. The Quxian Guard vice commander Sanjis, almost seven years after leading the notorious raid on the Ming embassy to Tibet, sent his younger brother, Vice Battalion Commander Jiandu, and three others with tribute horses and an apology in hopes the gesture would atone for his crime. It did. It was noted that Sanjis was in effect the founder of the Quxian Guard, having come to Beijing back in the Yongle era, receiving the necessary authorization, and having been treated very generously. Xuande remarked to the minister of war that small emoluments were enough to bring “distant Yi” to heel and that we should let them go and not quibble with them. Sanjis was forgiven, hostages were returned, and gifts of silk cloth were given out to his embassy. 12

That was not quite the end of it all. A complaint came up from a battalion commander of the Ganzhou Right Guard that he and his men had been out on reconnaissance when the merit awards were given out for the Quxian cam- paign, and so they were wrongly omitted from the list. And some small men got rewards they didn’t deserve. Those left out were very upset. Xuande knew rewards had to be done right; he ordered the regional commander to verify the claim. 13

In January 1432, the Gansu regional commander Liu Guang relayed a plea from Kunjilai, commander at Shazhou, that he needed famine relief, and he asked permission to wall the town because he feared Fan raids from Handong. Xuande wasn’t moved in the least. “Kunjilai lives in Shazhou and raises herds for subsistence,” he said. “And if he’s been kind to his neigh- bors, why should he fear an attack? Why instead does he put a burden on China?” Xuande told Liu to tell Kunjilai that due to a poor harvest, we can’t spare him any relief grain; and as for the wall, he should wait for a good harvest year and then raise the matter again. 14

Rewards continued to be an issue. In February 1432, Assistant Commis- sioner-in-Chief Shi Zhao went to bat for one Goto Bukha, vice commander at Anding. Arguing that he’d been an effective guide during the campaign on Quxian, that he’d taken captives, and that he’d called on the foe to surrender, but since he’d only cut off one head, his merits had been discounted. The minister of war didn’t think he deserved anything, but Xuande disagreed. There was a precedent in Han history, he said. He praised Goto Bukha and promoted him to full commander at Anding. 15

Shi Zhao endorsed another overlooked case relating to the Quxian cam- paign. This one centered on a certain vice commander at Aduan named (in Chinese transcription) Zhenjihan. His father had been an assistant command- er at Aduan and had been forced to join Sanjis in his raid on the Ming embassy. He fled in the face of the retaliatory army and lost his seal. The

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A Zenith of Peace? Xuande, r. 1426–35 87

Ming commanders knew he’d been coerced and sent someone to grant him amnesty. Then at some point he died. His son Zhenjihan then led his people back to their original homes at a place called (in Chinese transcription) Tiergu. Here things got a bit complicated. Zhenjihan himself came with tribute to Beijing in February 1432 and explained that Tiergu was a month’s journey from the “old city” of Aduan, in Muslim (Huihui) territory, making it hard for him to send tribute, apparently because he had to go by way of the “old city.” So he asked to be allowed his own land at Tiergu. It appears as though Aduan consisted of a settled population of Muslims in the “old city” and a population of non-Muslims tending herds in the general vicinity. Xuande accommodated him. He appointed him vice commander, issued him a new seal, and made him a manager at the Aduan Guard, apparently denying him full independence at Tiergu. 16

But for all the difficulties and complications, the northwestern frontier in the Xuande era was on the whole peaceful. Early in 1432, Xuande sent out a eunuch-led mission to Herat and other cities of the Western Regions with the announcement that security threats to the ambassadors’ highway had been eliminated and the road was now open, with promises from Hami, Shazhou, and Chigil to provide military escorts. In his message, Xuande said the Ming welcome mat was out, and he emphasized how important tributary relation- ships were to the peace of the world. 17

So surely that marked the end of the Quxian troubles. But it didn’t. There were loose ends still. Li Ying (since made an earl) put in a word for a Tibetan Buddhist monk who’d taken a meritorious part in the Quxian campaign. Xuande was pleased to reward him with silver, paper cash, colored silk, and a promotion in the church hierarchy. 18

Nor was all well on the ambassadors’ highway. Already in May 1432, Herat envoys, having finally made it to Beijing, complained that at Shazhou a high-ranking officer from the Chigil Guard had robbed them and killed some members of the delegation. The Ministry of War said that a Chigil officer had no business being in Shazhou and that his going there in order to rob was an unforgivable crime. Xuande gave his by now expected reply. These are all non-Chinese involved here, and their claims must be verified. If the officer (Geguzhe, in Chinese transcription) really did that, chase him back but pardon his crime. Tell Kunjilai, the leading officer at Shazhou, not to let them in again if indeed Geguzhe and his men were robbers. Drive them back to their own domain with a warning. 19

In August 1432, the new commander at Quxian, Nanahan, gave notice that when the troops from Anding came to suppress Sanjis, they abducted his own two daughters and his four brothers, plus Commander Sangge, the fami- ly of the lama registrar, and five hundred other people. Sanjis has been pardoned and is living peacefully, but my abducted family members have never returned. A battalion commander of ours fled to Fan territory, and he

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hasn’t returned either. Xuande was solicitous for the missing people. “War always harms the innocent,” he said. “Had [Nanahan] not spoken up, I’d have known nothing about this.” He sent an order to the king at Anding and his officers that they must launch a search for these captives and send them back at once. And he told Nanahan to send his own people to Fan territory to hunt for the missing battalion commander. 20

Security for Ming envoys traveling to and from Tibet was a vexing prob- lem. The Handong Guard, populated largely by Tibetan ethnics, had been set up explicitly to provide this protection, yet it was a Fan bandit from Handong who had descended upon a Ming mission to Tibet. “The guards at Xining and Handong were created by the Ming, and we put officers in charge of them,” remarked Xuande, “but these types have a wild nature that doesn’t conform [to our expectations]. When they see profit, they jump to seize it. That can’t be tolerated.” He ordered Regional Commander Liu Guang to probe the crime thoroughly and make arrests. “Don’t let our national dignity [guoti] suffer humiliation,” he said. 21

There was more highway trouble in 1434. At Shazhou, Kunjilai com- plained that he’d been raided for people and livestock by Tatars and Tibetans from the Handong Guard. They block the roads. We can’t live in peace. He asked permission to move his people to “the old city of Chaghan.” Like a kindly schoolmaster, Xuande talked him out of it. “You’ve been loyal to us a long time, and we have treated you generously,” he is reported as saying. “You’ve been in Shazhou thirty years, your population has grown, and your farming and herding prosper, thanks to our court. Years ago, Hami com- plained that your people raided their territory, so you brought your present distress on yourself. Moving elsewhere will do you no good.” He ordered the Tatars and Fan at Handong to return all the people and livestock they’d taken from Shazhou. 22

But soon there was another eruption. A memorial came up from Liu Guang, regional commander at Gansu, that he’d gotten the Fan bandit Zhar- jia of the cu of Nancuo in Handong to confess that he’d killed and wounded Ming envoys and that he had indeed taken the imperial diplomatic letter plus the gift silks the caravan was taking to parts west. What had happened was that earlier on, when this outrage was reported, Xuande ordered Liu Guang and Commissioner-in-Chief Liu Zhao to go suppress the raiders. The two commanders calculated that Zharjia was likely to flee, and if we go on a long chase and don’t get him, our prestige among the outsiders (Yi) will plummet. So they sent an officer named Qi Xian with a hundred light cavalry and a native guide from a different Handong cu to go find the bandits. It took them a month to locate Zharjia out in the mountains and negotiate a surrender. Zharjia explained that his hatred had been directed at Anding and that his raid on the caravan had been a mistake. He returned the stolen letter along with the other goods and offered to atone by sending a horse tribute mission

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A Zenith of Peace? Xuande, r. 1426–35 89

to Beijing. When told about all this, Xuande decided not to prosecute, despite Zharjia’s obvious lie. He was in distress; he gave up, and that was enough. 23

There was a small matter of a slave trade involving Chinese children. Xuande reminded Liu Guang that foreign envoys from Samarkand or else- where were forbidden to take adults or children out of China for sale. 24

So the serene picture of peace on earth that Xuande was fond of trumpet- ing is hard to credit except in the broadest sense that out in the northwest the difficulties weren’t beyond the capacity of the Ming state to manage in one way or another. Given all the violence at Songpan and the constant security breakdowns along the roads to Tibet and the Middle East, it seems beyond question that even during a time of relative peace, from 1409 or so to 1449 and the Tumu debacle, frontier defense was an exhausting thing to maintain.

* * *

What of the steppes of Mongolia? The Xuande era, 1425–35, found the steppes suffering internecine war and economic hardship, probably climate induced. 25 Recall that the Tatars were in three main groups: Oirats to the northwest, ex-Yuan Chinggisids in the center, and Uriyangkhad to the north- east. Rumors abounded of raids; Ming defenses directly to the north were constantly being reconfigured and enhanced, taking advantage of the relative quiet, as Xuande said; and as Xuande urged over and over, not for a moment could vigilance relax. Defending officers had to be on the alert at all times, day and night.

Xuande sat at the summit of a highly centralized political-military ma- chine, interested in and making all kinds of decisions about the smallest details of frontier defense, and nowhere was this more evident than in his involvement in those parts of the frontier nearest Beijing, directly to the north, mainly at Datong and Xuanfu, where China looked out upon the vast steppes of Mongolia.

One of Xuande’s earliest transactions with the steppe world went well. Fifty-four Oirats came down with their families in 1425 and offered to sur- render to the Ming. Accompanying them was the widow of khan Bunyashiri, whom the Oirats had killed twelve years earlier. Xuande followed the prece- dents set by Taizu and Yongle in cases like these, which was to welcome all refugees from the steppes and provide them at government expense with silk, paper cash, silver, saddle horses, housing, furnishings, oxen, sheep (and pas- ture), and a monthly issue of fuel and rice. Salaried military appointments were made. Ming treatment of onetime Yuan royalty was always especially respectful and generous, so the widow and her mother were given a fine mansion in the capital and a generous five piculs of rice monthly. 26

It was also Ming policy, never articulated as such, to militarize the fron- tier, moving the civilian population into the interior, and also to lighten expenses by abandoning the guards and battalions that were felt to be too far

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off in the steppes and thus too hard to supply and defend—Dongsheng, Xinghe, and even the flourishing city of Daning. In 1426, Regional Com- mander Xue Lu, a onetime common soldier from north China who’d won his spurs in the wars that brought Yongle to the throne, argued in a memorial (probably written by a secretary, as many military officers were illiterate) that it had become too hard to maintain Kaiping as a principal outpost. 27 Kaiping was the old Yuan summer capital of Shangdu, destroyed by Red Turban rebels in 1358. Xue thought the Kaiping Guard should be moved to Dushi, about seventy-five miles southwest. Xuande wasn’t sure it was a good idea to do that. He ordered the Ministry of War to give the matter some thought. 28 In the end, the Kaiping Guard headquarters were moved even farther south to Xuanfu, leaving only a small contingent at Kaiping itself.

In order perhaps to deter corruption in the supply chain, the emperor himself was often petitioned to allow the issuance of military gear. Thus late in October 1426, Lü Xin, vice commander at Yongning, an inner defense citadel fifty miles north of Beijing, complained that he had to supervise troops at forty-seven gaps high up in the mountains, where it grows very cold, and the troops need fur coats and fox hats. Xuande said he knew about the bitter cold, and he ordered the Ministry of Works to rush a delivery of leather coats up to Yongning. 29 A few weeks later, Tang Ming, regional military commissioner at Kaiping, said the soldiers there and at Shanhaiguan were all in rags and asked for help. Xuande replied that he knew border troops had to be cared for, and so he authorized the issue of shoes and padded coats and trousers. Tang followed with a plea that the men’s helmets, body armor, bows, swords, metal drums, and banners were all in bad shape and should be replaced. Xuande explained to the Ministry of Works that Tatars could easily see what things were like at Kaiping, and shiny new equipment was vital both to troop morale as well as to making an impression of strength to the adversary. He ordered that this and all other such requests must be met. 30

It would tax the reader’s patience to continue in this vein. Let’s just say that supplying the frontiers with adequate gear, grain, horses, gunpowder, weapons, and manpower was not something automatic that could easily be done by the book. In later years, the rulers in Beijing farmed out these tasks to lower levels. But early in Ming, supply constantly required the endorse- ment of the highest authorities. Xuande often had to remind everyone that frontier soldiers were China’s fence against invasion and ruin, that their service was a bitter hardship, and that we must all be grateful to them and support them for the crucial job they do.

Kaiping, defended by a thousand men who rotated in and out twice a year while their families stayed back in Dushi (north of Xuanfu), suffered a Tatar raid in August 1427. Kaiping was walled by now, so the raiders got nothing and withdrew. Marquis Xue Lu and Wu Cheng, his vice commander, interro-

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A Zenith of Peace? Xuande, r. 1426–35 91

gated three of the raiders, who said their main crowd was at a place called “Four Arrows” (Dörben Niruu), a hundred miles off. Ignoring long-standing Ming policy against deep chases into the steppes, Xue Lu led a cavalry unit in pursuit. Hiding by day and riding by night, they reached the Tatar camp after three days and in a surprise raid killed dozens and captured twelve men, including their two chief leaders. Then they headed back to China, with 64 males and females, 817 horses, and 4,000 oxen and sheep in tow. It looked like a big win and a prestige builder for China, but Ming propaganda made little of it. 31

But then Xuande himself got into an aggressive mood. In October 1427, he announced to his commanders at Datong on the Shanxi border that recent- ly people had come down from among the Lu and reported that the Tatar bandits were gathered like a swarm of bees on the Kerulen River, getting ready for what looked like an invasion of China. There were also reports of campfires northwest of Datong, perhaps a decoy; we’re not sure what it portends. Xuande demanded full-scale preparedness and promised that he would personally lead a campaign to exterminate the enemy. 32 Nothing came of it; perhaps it was a false alarm.

In February 1428, word came that the Uriyangkhad were grazing their animals along the Luan River, which flows from around Kaiping southeast to the sea. They were too close for comfort. Commanders asked for permission to attack them. Xuande ordered restraint. If they raid us, yes, fight them, but they haven’t done that. He sent the Uriyangkhad a message: “You’ve given your hearts to the court, you’ve given tribute, you come and go pursuing your livelihood; and we’re like one family. That’s been the case for a long time. Now I hear your people are near the Luan River. You pasture your horses on both its banks. Our border generals’ suspicions have been raised, and they’re on guard. I must urge you to restrain your people and don’t let them encroach in the slightest. Send tribute as usual. Then your parents, wives, and children will be safe, and you’ll enjoy the blessings of peace.” 33 Events would show that his words made little impact on the Uriyangkhad.

Then, almost out of the blue, Xuande organized a grand march and parade northward, with himself in personal command. “This is no mere hunting trip,” he said to Duke Zhang Fu. “Our country (guojia) is at peace, but we can’t forget our military and our people’s fear of Lu raids. If we defend rightly, the Lu can do nothing. For the people’s sake, I’m using a hunting trip to review the border situation.” The ruler noted that the tour would take less than a month, but the weather was getting colder, and the marchers would need to be warmly dressed. He ordered the Ministry of Revenue to supply a month’s travel grain and three pints (dou) of dry wheat per soldier as well, plus shoes, socks, and padded coats. Officers at posts along the route were advised not to press people for gifts or make them repair the roads. Just make

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the roads passable. I just put up a temporary bridge over the Luan River, so the marchers can cross.

Xuande next addressed an assembly of commanders. He said they must keep the marchers in order so that they looked to be well drilled. Make sure they look good, with clothes and body armor fresh and bright and their weapons sharp.

The parade departed Beijing on October 6. At the first stop, he told the assembled commanders that the purpose of the tour was to upgrade protec- tion for the common people, about whose safety he worried day and night. He saw that there’d been floods and no harvest. He felt badly for the people whose fields had been washed out. He threatened to kill any soldier who stole anything.

At Jizhou, sixty miles east of Beijing, reached on October 9, there’d been no floods. The ruler gazed at the flatlands, the hills, the streams, and the harvested fields. He told an assembly of local elders they’d been fortunate, and he advised them to teach their juniors the Confucian virtues of decorum, righteousness, modesty, and a sense of shame.

The next day a messenger rushed up with an emergency report. Defenders at Xifengkou, a major transit point between China and the steppes, said ten thousand Uriyangkhad bandits had penetrated China and were on a looting rampage. Xuande, not normally a war hawk, reacted in outrage. He called his commanders together and said the raiders dared to do this because our de- fenses are poor, but they’ll flee in panic when they discover I’m out here. He decided to rush ahead of the slow-moving parade, himself leading three thousand cavalry so as to make a surprise attack. Someone thought three thousand too few. Xuande assured him that if skilled and obedient, three thousand were more than enough. So at Zunhua he selected the three thou- sand, assigned each man two horses, and issued the men ten days’ rations.

Deadly skirmishes followed. On October 14, the emperor and his horse- men exited Xifengkou. At a place called Kuan River, some twenty-five miles out into the steppes, in Uriyangkhad territory, which they reached at dawn, Xuande divided his iron-armored cavalry into two wings and charged the foe. Arrows fell like rain on the Uriyangkhad. The ruler himself took bow and arrow and shot three of the enemy. Then the gunners killed half the enemy’s horses. The foe was routed. Xuande led a chase. Some of the foe saw the emperor’s yellow dragon battle flag and bowed in surrender. All were tied up. Their people, horses, oxen, camels, sheep, and baggage all became Ming possessions. The leaders were beheaded. Xuande ordered the hills and val- leys searched for their main camp. 34

Accompanying Xuande’s expedition was the Zhongyong king Jin Zhong, a Chinggis-khan descendant, formerly known as Esen Tugel. He and his nephew volunteered to lead a unit in pursuit of the remnant Uriyangkhad. An adviser whispered to Xuande not to allow that, because he and his nephew

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might just run away. Here, then, was a chance for Xuande to demonstrate the imperial Ming virtue of ethnic impartiality. He said the two could stay or go as they liked. I won’t tie them up. If they do go, we won’t miss them. “Well, then,” suggested the adviser, “maybe let one go and keep the other as a hostage.” “No,” answered Xuande, “I treat them with sincerity. Keeping one as a hostage will raise suspicions. We’ve fed and tamed them, so like dogs or horses they’ll be gratefully dependent.” And indeed, Jin Zhong came back a few days later with dozens of captives, a hundred horses, and several hun- dred head of livestock. Xuande was delighted and ordered eunuchs to feed him meat snacks from the imperial kitchen. He shared wine with him and gave him the gold cups they’d drunk from. The nephew, Badai, got the same treatment when he showed up a bit later with Uriyangkhad captives and livestock.

The lesson in all this? Xuande preached to his entourage: “Rulers must treat others with sincerity, and not with suspicion,” he said. “Men won’t give their full effort if all they think about is self-protection and avoiding trouble. If I’d listened to the advice I got, I’d have forfeited those two men’s trust.” Someone raised the counterargument that foreigners (“outside Yi”) can’t be trusted. Xuande replied that sometimes they can be trusted. He cited an example from Han history. 35

In 1422, Yongle had fought these same Uriyangkhad, who at the time were allies of Arughtai, and he inflicted a horrendous defeat upon them. And now, in 1428, they once again suffered slaughter and capture. It’s probably a reflection of an unstated but deliberate policy that the Three Guards (Fuyu, Taining, and Duoyan), which in theory were responsible for controlling the Uriyangkhad, were never mentioned in connection with the battles of 1422 and 1428. Though fickle, the guards were potentially useful as pro-Ming tributaries and allies, and the Ming apparently did not want to see them discredited and dismantled. The Ming victories were chastisement enough.

So the tour was over, and the units began the trek back to Beijing. On October 18, Xuande reviewed the affair in a general edict, pulling out all the organ stops in a crescendo of familiar grandiloquence. A paraphrase will do. In revering Heaven and assuaging the common people, he said, there is no difference between Chinese and foreign, between near and far. We pull weeds for the sake of the crops, and kill snakes because they do harm. We love the good and hate evil. In my tour of the frontier, my aim was to inspire the troops and strengthen the defenses, but unexpectedly we came across several myriad Hu bandits conducting a raid, so I personally led three thou- sand cavalry and we smashed them, cutting off a myriad heads, capturing a hundred leaders, and we seized all their people, weapons, horses, livestock, and baggage. We removed the stench and pacified the border, and this day I’ve withdrawn our forces.

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Note that he named neither the Uriyangkhad nor the Three Guards specif- ically. The hundred miles of road from Xifengkou back to Beijing was crowded with local people, soldiers, males, and females, watching the parade of incoming captives, animals, and baggage that stretched for miles with scarcely a break. Everyone leapt and danced for joy, kowtowed, and shouted wansui! when they saw the emperor come by. Preceded and followed by yet more commanders and their captives and livestock, everyone said this was the greatest outcome ever of war in the steppes. 36 It surely rivaled any of Yongle’s triumphant returns.

* * *

What were the aftereffects of the campaign for Ming-Uriyangkhad relations? Xuande told Marquis Xue Lu, regional commander at Jizhou, who’d taken part, that he could expect revenge raids and must be on guard day and night all along the frontier. Later, Xue Lu failed to stop a raid on a village in his jurisdiction, and Xuande had to remind him to be more alert. The raiders, unnamed but surely Uriyangkhad, had carried away people, horses, and oxen. 37

In March 1429, Jurchen neighbors of the Uriyangkhad, doing them a friendly service as intercessors, told the Ming court that their guard officers were living in fear for their safety. Xuande sought to calm them. “It’s the Way of Heaven to bless good and chastise evil,” he explained, “which the ruler of mankind effectuates with his rewards and punishments. There’s nothing personal about it. When the Uriyangkhad are guilty, the court cam- paigns against them. Would we deliberately harm the innocent? The guards should rest easy, obey the law, and enjoy peace and happiness. Why fear?” He sent the Jurchen off with gifts and a message. 38

So on April 4, the leader (toumu) of the Duoyan Guard, Oljei Temur, came to Beijing with a tribute of horses. Xuande “appreciated his sincerity” and forgave all his past transgressions. He appointed Oljei Temur vice com- missioner and released his family members, who’d been captured back in October. “Henceforth you must discipline your people,” counseled Xuande. “Don’t raid, else you make the imperial army come out again. Enjoy eternal peace. If you transgress again, Heaven and mankind will destroy you.” 39

In Ming global hegemony as exercised by Xuande, apologies from vil- lainous foreigners were always welcome. No grudges, no personal sense of unavenged victimhood, lingered in Ming ruling circles.

In March 1430, Xuande reemphasized this policy. An embassy from the Fuyu Guard said that both Taining and Duoyan had raided the China frontier, but we, the Fuyu, wanted no part of that and stayed away. Though you understand that, we still fear guilt by association. Fuyu asked permission to attack the two if they failed to reform. Xuande agreed. Did the Fuyu really attack? It’s not clear. But the emperor’s patience was nearly unlimited.

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Sometimes patience is rewarded. In July 1432, Xuande sent envoys to all three guards, praising their good behavior and sending them all gifts of gold- weave and colored silk. 40

In March 1431, he officially informed the leaders big and small of the Three Guards of the Uriyangkhad that even though raids had continued, their crimes were forgiven. “You got the court’s titles and rewards, but you couldn’t control your inferiors, who kept raiding our border,” he stated. “Our border commanders wanted to march on you, but I didn’t allow that, as I was afraid of harming the innocent. . . . I’ll let you punish the guilty. Send back everything that you looted. Send us tribute horses in atonement. Reform your ways, else when the imperial army comes, your parents, wives, and children will all get killed, and even the insects, grass, and trees will suffer.” 41 So Xuande’s policy here was to ascribe Uriyangkhad assaults on Ming territory not to a hostile and deliberate decision to make war on China, but to incom- petent management inside the Three Guards’ command hierarchies. In the context of time and place, that was a rational path to take.

Finally, in September 1432, report came from Liaodong that the Three Guards had made war on Arughtai and that Arughtai had beaten them and had proceeded to seize their baggage, oxen, horses, and field crops as well as their families. Refugees fled east to Jurchen territory. Other Uriyangkhad stayed put. Some of the refugees said that those who stayed behind had readied their defenses. This was confusing. Xuande gave the news little credit. He just told Wu Kai, the regional military commissioner at Liaodong, to be alert for raids. In December, word came that Arughtai was again on the march east to attack the Uriyangkhad. Xuande said it was normal for barbar- ians (Yi-Di) to fight each other and that either or both might hit our frontiers, and so he ordered a general alert. Some chiefs from both sides defected to China in March 1433, and Xuande accorded them the usual generous treat- ment. 42

It seems safe to say that Uriyangkhad strategy lacked coherence. They were allies of Arughtai when Yongle smashed them in 1422. Then they were enemies of the Ming when Xuande beat them in 1428. Now, four years after that, they turned against Arughtai and suffered yet more thrashing. Future events will show that the Three Guards’ loyalties will continue to waver, being mostly pro-Ming, but sometimes not. Better from the Ming point of view to have them as fair-weather friends rather than as permanent enemies.

* * *

Mongolia bulked largest in Ming strategic concerns. It was close to Beijing, and it was where the Mongol conquerors had once come from. The latter-day Tatars of Mongolia, descendants of Chinggis-khan and the commanders as- sociated with him, leaders like Arughtai, took such a pounding at the hands of Yongle that Arughtai had to downshift from a proud foe of the Ming to a

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humbled tributary, no longer an appointee of the Chinggisid khan’s, but a recipient of the title “king of Hening” from the Ming. In western Mongolia, the Oirats were also Ming tributaries, and it can be argued that this was just how the Ming ideally wanted things arranged in the steppes. As between the Tatars and the Oirats, Xuande favored neither side but sought peaceful rela- tions with both, and of that policy the result was a decade of relative calm and quiet along the China-Mongolia frontier.

In order to see how diplomacy and defense intertwined under Xuande, we need to follow (as usual) the Ming Veritable Records (shilu) and watch developments as they unfold.

Early on, an issue arose about just where the Ming northern defense line should be placed. There was a tendency in the Xuande era to pull back: witness the retreat from Vietnam and the cancellation of the Zheng He voy- ages to Southeast Asia and beyond. Remote steppe outposts were eliminated as well. In the summer of 1426, a common soldier of the Shuozhou Guard in northern Shanxi Province, probably an educated convict, put up a statement that the branch military commission at Datong used to have ten frontier guards under it, but they were pulled back from the far edge of the realm to the interior during the reign of the Jianwen emperor, 1398–1402, and this withdrawal gave the Lu too close an edge on China. He urged restoring those abandoned sites. This suggestion from a lowly soldier reached Xuande him- self. He ordered all the top military and civil officials to discuss it. Xuande thought that now, when things were quiet, was a good time to build up frontier defenses. But he was afraid the soldiers and their families who were living in relative safety might not like being put back in harm’s way. A move was later made, however, to reposition four of these guards back north. 43

These and other withdrawals of remote citadels meant that instead of investing in expensive and vulnerable defenses, security could be obtained by mounting offensive strikes. That was how Yongle had proceeded, and now, during the reign of his grandson, a transition had begun, to downplay offense and focus more on defense. Defenders needed less training than assault forces, for one thing.

That meant moving guards that had been relocated in the south back north to where they had once been. That was not easy to do. Xuande wanted two such moved back to the Xuanfu area. But to suddenly uproot twenty to thirty thousand troops and their families would unsettle them unduly. We must at least prepare camp housing for them, best done in the fall when the alternat- ing replacement units are moving in and out. What this meant was that Yongle’s strategy was to place the permanent guards in the interior, where the soldiers’ families lived, with half the soldiers rotating twice each year to man the outer frontier defenses. Xuande’s idea was to move the families to the frontier and make further rotations unnecessary, in effect doubling the frontier military presence. But Xuande did the opposite in the case of Kai-

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ping, due to the great difficulty of supplying so many people two hundred miles northeast of Xuanfu. He ordered the families moved to Yunzhou fort, seventy miles northeast of Xuanfu, with half the men to be on duty at Kai- ping at any one time. 44

Marquis Xue Lu had a different idea. There were indeed too many people at Kaiping, such that it was hard to get monthly supplies to them. So a walled settlement ought to be built at Felt Hat Mountain in Dushi (north of Xuanfu); then move the Kaiping Guard there, have the families farm and supply them- selves, divide the troops into two thousand-man groups, and have them carry their own rations out to Kaiping for their six-month tours of duty. That firms the defense and eliminates shipping costs. He had more suggestions to make, too. He said Marquis Zhang Heng had over twenty thousand defenders and fighters at Datong, and at Xuanfu, Tan Guang had ten thousand. But the two places are four hundred li (130 miles) apart, too far to be able to come to each other’s aid. So mobile units should patrol the intervening territory. He also pointed out that while the gaps through the cliffs at Xiyanghe and Ximalin were furnished with smoke beacons, they were too remote to send fire signals by night. Both should have three relay beacons for signaling for help. These should be supplied with signal cannon too, with soldiers on permanent round-the-clock watch. All the beacons are in need of repair. Zheng and Tao’s troops should do the work. Xuande ordered high-level discussions of all this. 45

Cold weather was coming on. In view of the likelihood of the Lu coming south to raid, the emperor ordered a general alert. He reminded everyone that security at the gaps and passes wasn’t just to keep raiders out. It was also their job to keep inferior and shiftless people from exiting China to cause trouble out in the steppes. Violators were to be shackled and sent to Beijing for prosecution. 46

Forty marauders entered somewhere between Shanhaiguan and Jizhou in August 1426. A Ming patrol beat them off, killed many, and took their horses. A pleased Xuande said to the minister of war that the Lu like to hide like rats; but if our defenses are ready, we can beat them when they come, and when they flee, we forbear trying to win merit by chasing them. Our policy is simply to protect our territory and give our people security. 47 Here, as often, the ruler declined to hold the elites deep in the steppes accountable for small-scale Lu raids on the Ming border.

One day early in his reign, Xuande expatiated on China’s experiences with its northern tormentors back in the twelfth century. That was when, as history had it, the Northern Song court made a Faustian bargain with the Jurchen in hopes of regaining the sixteen northernmost prefectures long lost to the Khitan Liao. This led to the collapse of the Northern Song and the Jurchen occupation of all of north China. The consensus opinion was that the alliance had been a horrible mistake. Xuande disagreed. No, he said, it

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wasn’t a bad idea at all. The problem was more deeply rooted. It was political corruption that was to blame. 48

Xuande’s relations with the centers of power in Mongolia were satisfacto- ry, as far as China was concerned. Xuande’s dealings with Arughtai were much more frequent than those with the Oirats, however. In December 1428, he was exceptionally generous to Arughtai’s departing embassy, praising Arughtai himself for his sincere “leaning toward civilization.” 49 From a foul enemy in Yongle’s time, Arughtai somehow metamorphosed into a chas- tened friend in Xuande’s.

Xuande’s real enemy on the frontier, as suggested by his reading of Northern Song history, was complacency, corruption, and disobedience among his own personnel. He warned about this in circulars to his officers. He had the kedao (supervising secretaries and censors) tour the frontier at intervals and report any and all malfeasances. In August 1429, a regional inspector turned in a severe indictment of Fang Min, commander of the Kaiping Guard. He showed cowardice in defending Chicheng, a fort about fifty miles northeast of Xuanfu. He neglected troop training. He moved his family south, out of harm’s way. His troops were too demoralized to do anything but sit and watch the raiders plunder Chicheng of people and live- stock. He should be executed. Xuande, however, refrained from doing that. Instead, he sent Fang a copy of the charges and scolded him. Protect the people and livestock, he demanded, so the Lu will find nothing worth raid- ing. Set up ambushes to intercept them when they leave. You selfishly just want to protect yourself and your family, and you let the Lu pillage freely. If you keep acting like this, I’ll see to your execution. 50

During that same month, a eunuch in charge of firearms, leading another eunuch and his government troops, quartered himself in a peasant’s home near Longmen, a fort about ten miles east of Chicheng. The Lu, observant about such things, saw that one of the eunuchs and the Longmen battalion commander had gotten drunk. They killed both and made off with oxen and horses. Whose fault was that? Xuande upbraided Tan Guang, regional com- mander at Xuanfu. That eunuch was acting on his own, and you should never have allowed that. But in light of your meritorious record, I’ll forgive you for now. The ruler reminded all the border commanders that they were respon- sible for controlling all eunuchs, who were not empowered to act on their own. 51

And Tan Guang got another scolding. This time, a Ming commander, acting on his own, had put the soldiers manning a smoke beacon to personal service and led them out into the steppes to hunt deer, leaving the border undefended. So the Lu came in and abducted people and livestock. Xuande ordered the commander shackled and brought to Beijing for prosecution. He chided Tan for lax supervision. 52

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The absence of a major crisis led to relaxed attitudes and growing malfea- sance as efforts were concentrated on building up the defenses. Thus, while a large labor draft of soldiers was put to work building twenty-six smoke beacons at Piantouguan on the Shanxi border, and more were assigned to rebuild walls in the Jizhou area that had been eroded during rainstorms, a regional military commissioner of high rank and responsibility was indicted for shaking down merchant convoys coming and going through Shanhai- guan. What a shame! Xuande said. He’s so old; he should have known better. And a commander at the Xuanfu Front Guard had his men exit the frontier to cut timber for his own benefit. Raiders killed them and took their horses. That, said Xuande, must be prosecuted according to military law. 53

In November 1429, Tan Guang reported a Lu raid at Xuanfu that a batta- lion commander had failed to stop. Tan himself led a chase and recovered the abducted people and livestock, together with the marauders’ weapons. He recommended that the failed commander be indicted. Xuande scolded Tan for his lax oversight. You got back the loot, he said, but you didn’t kill a single looter, so you deserve no reward. The guilty officer he ordered to be docked two months’ salary, and death would be the penalty if he failed again. 54

Tan could do nothing right, it seemed. He reported that on the night of December 14, 1429, a hundred Lu attacked a post station at Diao’e, a fort about ten miles northeast of Xuanfu. They killed and wounded our soldiers and stole our livestock. Troops from the Huailai Guard, about thirty miles southeast of Xuanfu, helped drive the Lu away; but Tan charged Fang Min at the Kaiping Guard (relocated to Dushi) with failure to show up, for which he should be prosecuted. No, thought Xuande. It all took place at night. Maybe they weren’t ready. I’ll forgive it this time, but not the next. For this and other failures, Tan asked to be punished. Xuande relented but threatened him again. And now he rejected his proposal to punish Fang Min! Xuande’s barks were worse than his bites, certainly. 55

There were in fact Lu raids all along the Shanxi-Datong-Xuanfu frontier during the winter of 1429–30. A supervising secretary of the Office of Scruti- ny for War sent up a lengthy statement of the conditions he’d seen along that frontier. It wasn’t all Tan Guang’s fault that the Lu were making so many incursions. The gaps and passes leading down from steppe country into the Ming interior were manned by troops inadequately clothed for the winter; each gap and pass had roughly a hundred defenders, but they were seriously short of usable weapons; the soldiers hate their duty, and many go off into the steppes to hunt and never come back; grain often fell short because it had to be shipped in over very long distances; and on and on. Xuande said he’d seen the soldiers’ hardships for himself and he’d never forgotten it. He ordered the Ministries of Revenue, War, and Works to remedy these deficiencies at once. At three places on the frontier, there were sick troops and no medicine for

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them. Xuande ordered the Imperial Academy of Medicine to rotate two phy- sicians to make half-year visits to the patients. 56

Not all the news was bad. In March 1430, Marquis Xue Lu announced that Ming troops had marched to a place called Phoenix Ridge, where they met and killed a hundred marauders and came away with forty-six male and female captives (Chinese, probably), plus a thousand horses and livestock. The rewards list included an astounding number of soldiers—11,262 of them, who got 418,230 ingots of cash, 585 bolts of silk gauze, and 12,748 bolts of cotton cloth. 57 Victory didn’t come cheap.

The problem of long-distance grain hauling was addressed by the Minis- try of War in a memorial of May 1430. The Kaiping Guard, relocated to Dushi, 150 miles north of Beijing, consumed forty thousand piculs of grain yearly. It was too much for civilians to haul as part of their service obliga- tions. So we should build eleven evenly spaced forts, settle a thousand men at each, and have them haul the carts; it will take them a day and a half to move grain from one fort to the next and three days to move two thousand piculs, so all forty thousand can be shipped over a period of sixty days. Granaries will provide casings, and the government the cloth bags. And there were more details, regarding donkeys and escort guards. Xuande gave the plan his approval. 58

Taking advantage of the lull in major warfare, Xuande pressed ahead with building up the border defenses. Tan Guang checked and found thirty-nine gaps where raiders could enter. He suggested building forts with at least a hundred men at each. Xuande approved. The Wanquan regional military commission was organized and located at Xuanfu in July 1430, as sixteen Xuanfu guards and their battalions were too many and too scattered to man- age effectively from Beijing. A registry, judicial office, police chief, and jail warden were soon added. 59

Intelligence capabilities were given a major boost in January 1435. Fron- tier watchtowers and reports from refugees did not provide an adequate pic- ture of what was going on among the Tatars miles out in the steppes. So there began to be developed what might be styled special forces, operatives who could undertake deep reconnaissance missions. These were called yebushou, or scouts “not kept in at night.” This was hard and dangerous work. The scouts had to bear exposure to the elements, rain and snow, hiding by day and probing by night. One couldn’t ask young soldiers to do this kind of work. It was too demanding. Volunteers were needed. Cao Jian, assistant regional commander at Datong, said six pints (dou) of monthly salary grain wasn’t attracting anyone. He asked that it be made one picul (shi). Xuande agreed. Scouts had to be paid more than ordinary soldiers, he said. 60

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With all this new construction, troop redeployments, and supply reorganiza- tion in progress, Xuande announced that he was going to visit the frontier personally again to see how things were going. He left Beijing on October 25, 1430. The soldiers were warned not to enter people’s homes and demand things. Xuande and his entourage transited Juyongguan on October 27, where they took part in a hunt. (Unlike Yongle, Xuande was fond of hunting.) He sent an upbeat message to his mother, the empress dowager, that everything was looking great. The weather was clear and warm, but it gets cold at night. He ordered up extra clothes and shoes for the soldiers.

At Nihe (Mud River) in Xuanfu, he had an amiable talk with Tan Guang and gave him some generous gifts. Then he announced he was going to make a five-day trip to Ximalin, along with the troops and a small entourage. Ximalin was a fort on the very outermost edge of Ming China, some twenty miles northwest of Xuanfu. There he inspected the walls of the fort. He reviewed the troops and horses, all wearing armor and bearing flags. It all looked superb. Xuande was pleased. The next day he went on a hunt. Then he discussed political philosophy with his entourage. “What are the best expe- dients the ruler has for ruling the world?” he asked. Clarifying virtue and punishing crime was the stock reply. “Yes,” said the ruler, “but we have to be right about what it is we like and hate.” On November 6, he was back at Mud River, and the next day he led a big battue hunt. “It’s not for the animals,” he said. “It’s to deter the Lu from raiding when they see I’m returning to Bei- jing.” He arrived back in the capital on November 10. It was a whirlwind tour, taking only sixteen days. 61

* * *

An uptick in Lu raids and other activity along the frontiers was connected not to hostility toward the Ming, but to fallout from the fighting between the two steppe powers. People coming over to China from among the Lu said that the Oirats, now under the leadership of Toghon, defeated Arughtai, whose men scattered, many of them regrouping on the China frontier. Xuande thought some of them might want to defect to us, likewise the Chinese they’d ab- ducted; if so, they should be fed and escorted to Beijing. But some may raid, so we must keep up our guard. 62

Indeed, defectors straggled in, in groups big and small. In June 1431, forty-nine Lu with 258 family members, having arrived in Beijing, were sorted into five grades by the Ministry of War and assigned military ranks accordingly. All got caps, belts, gold-weave garments, colored silk, silver, cash, silk gauze, and saddle horses, plus housing and furnishings. 63 Encour- aging such defections was a Ming policy of long standing, but it would eventually cease.

Tatar defectors reported that Arughtai, hard pressed by the Oirats, had moved south with his family. Some at the Ming court urged an attack on him.

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Xuande refused. That would not be a benevolent response to a long loyal tributary. They’re in deep trouble, but we can’t exhaust our own resources in an effort to help him. So Xuande sent him a token gift of helmets, armor, and fine clothing. In July 1431, Zhang Heng, regional commander at Datong, reported that two thousand of Arughtai’s forces were camped near Lake Jining, not far to the north. What to do? Xuande said that if they don’t raid us, let them alone. If they want to surrender to us, verify that, and let them choose what they want to do—come down to Beijing, stay on the frontier and hunt, or go back north. Don’t send spies; that will just provoke their vio- lence. 64

More Tatar defectors came and said that Arughtai, having been defeated by the Oirats, had heard rumors of a Ming campaign against him and was living in fear of that possibility. Xuande told an envoy of Arughtai’s that it would be neither benevolent nor righteous to attack an adversary in peril. He sent Arughtai a reassuring letter to the effect that no ruler of all under Heaven would desire to profit from someone else’s distress, that Arughtai had shown nothing but compliance as our tributary, and that he could therefore rest in security on our border. 65 This was the kind of diplomacy a power still confi- dent of its global supremacy could conduct.

In November 1431, Xuande warned Zhang Heng at Datong that remnant Lu were scattered in distress and were under no one’s command and now, in the cold weather, they may raid us. A report from Kaiping had just come in that five hundred Lu approached the frontier but, hearing cannon fire, went north again. Xuande said we don’t know who these raiders are. We’d best be on guard. Bring all the people and their animals into the forts so that if the raiders come they’ll get nothing. 66

In keeping with his policy of treating Arughtai and the Oirats equally, Xuande began tilting toward Arughtai after his defeat by the Oirats in order to redress the imbalance. In February 1432, he warned Gansu regional com- mander Liu Guang that the Oirat Shunning king Toghon was faithful in sending us tribute, but the Lu nature is deceitful and he could well be using the embassies for espionage purposes. We have to be on guard for that. And Xuande began paying close attention to troop placements in the far north- west, where the Oirats might threaten. 67

By September 1433, Ming-Oirat relations were in trouble. Some Ming court officials wanted to detain Toghon’s envoy in light of the fact that he was detaining three Ming envoys. Xuande said that wouldn’t be polite and that the Oirats insisted they weren’t being detained but had stopped some- where on the road, and so he accorded Toghon’s mission generous treatment. He sent Toghon a message: Our nation (guojia) treats distant peoples very generously, and you, the king, have shown sincerity to our court, and your envoys emphasize your goodwill, but three of our envoys have gone to your place and none have returned. Were they all blocked on the road? We haven’t

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A Zenith of Peace? Xuande, r. 1426–35 103

sent more envoys to report. We’re waiting for the roads to clear and the return of the envoys. Then we’ll let you know. 68

There were other nomads besides Oirats off to the northwest. A Lu defec- tor reported that one Jiubu, supposedly a commander of Arughtai’s, was readying a raid. Xuande ordered an alert, and in October 1433, Jiubu raided Liangzhou and Yongchang in Gansu. This was a thousand miles away from the Liaodong frontier, where Arughtai was thought to be lingering. Gansu regional commander Liu Guang chased Jiubu off and seized his camels and horses. Xuande was pleased at the news, but he predicted these Lu would soon strike again out of frustration. He put all of Gansu, Ningxia, and Datong on alert. Meanwhile, Liu Guang raided Jiubu’s camp. His men beheaded eighty Tatars, including Jiubu and his sons. He sent thirty captives off to Beijing, where Xuande ordered them placed in the prison of the Embroi- dered-Uniform Guards. A long list of deserving soldiers got their rewards. 69

In late January 1434, as an embassy of Arughtai’s was on the verge of departure from Beijing, some court officials suggested that since Jiubu had been Arughtai’s officer, so Arughtai’s envoys should be detained and an expedition sent against Arughtai “to inquire into his crime.” Xuande wouldn’t do that. He said seizing envoys is not how we treat distant people. Arughtai’s commanders are scattered in disorder; they no longer cleave to him, and he has no way of controlling what his people do far away in Gansu. Xuande sent the envoys off with a message for the beleaguered Tatar chief- tain:

I could have campaigned against you, but I didn’t, for fear of harming inno- cents. You’ve been loyal, and we’ve treated you well. Recently the raid on Liangzhou didn’t do us much harm, and the evildoers have been killed, as Heaven imposes disaster on those who go to excess. My officials wanted to detain your envoys, but my understanding is that either the raiders disobeyed you, or they were so far off you didn’t know, or if you did know, you weren’t able to restrain them. So I denied the officers’ plea. You must restore disci- pline and keep up our good relations. I send you apparel and cash. 70

Mongolia was in distress for environmental reasons as well as war. In February 1434, Datong said a hundred Lu with their families were nomadiz- ing nearby. Their horses are in bad condition, and they’re divided about what they should do. Should they be chased and captured? No, said Xuande; these aren’t bandits. Don’t attack them; call them over. Datong regional command- er Zhang Heng said that the northern Lu are in straits; they admire our transforming virtue and have been coming over one after the other. They come naked or in rags, as do the male and female Chinese escaping captivity and slavery. We’ve had the local officials issue them clothes and send them ahead to Beijing. But recently their numbers have so increased that we can’t

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Chapter 3104

help them. Xuande ordered the miscellaneous manufactures service at Da- tong to give out any clothing, pants, and shoes they had in store. 71

In May 1434, Datong assistant regional commander Cao Jian stated that Assistant Regional Military Commissioner Xu Bin had sent out scouts with placards to “call and instruct” remnant Lu in the steppes to the northwest. The scouts never returned. Xu Bin led forces to the abandoned guard site at Dongsheng, atop the big loop of the Yellow River, but the Lu fled, and Xu didn’t dare give chase for fear of violating his call-and-instruct orders. This looked like a normal and straightforward report. But Xuande, not usually a suspicious type, immediately spotted its dishonesty. He scolded Cao for it. “You know very well,” he thundered, “that you were ordered to treat the Lu families kindly if they responded, and to let them go if they declined. You were never ordered to go out into steppe country after them. But you dis- obeyed. You had Xu Bin leave China for half a month, nominally to put up placards, but actually to conduct battue hunts. You lost men to the Lu. You covered things up. You’re guilty, but I’ll keep you on the job. You’re to blame if the troops never return.” 72

In September 1434 came news of the death of Arughtai, reportedly killed at the hands of the Oirats. Xuande reacted as though he’d lost an old friend. Arughtai’s followers all broke and scattered, many of them heading south. Xuande had the Ministry of War put placards outside the frontier promising good placement for all who wished to surrender. The ruler pitied their desti- tution. Some of them will hide like rats, but our border defense is tight, thankfully. He alerted commanders as far out as Gansu to accept any steppe refugees and to watch out for Oirat king Toghon, smug after killing Arughtai; he may come and reconnoiter our frontiers. An Oirat embassy confirmed Arughtai’s killing. Surrendered Lu said a khan named Atai was with his people in the steppes near Liangzhou in Gansu. Xuande said Atai seemed to have nowhere else to go. He ordered his forces there to be ready for raids. 73

All this meant that the Ming policy of treating Oirats and Arughtai’s people both as friendly steppe adversaries and keeping the peace that way, a policy which seemed to work, could no longer be sustained. A vital compo- nent of it had collapsed, leaving the Oirats in a good position to dominate the steppes altogether. And how would that impact Ming security in the years ahead? Not favorably.

* * *

Xuande announced his third tour of the northern frontier in October 1434. This tour retraced the itinerary of 1430. Two days were spent hunting game. At Huailai on October 16, the ruler called Grand Secretary Yang Shiqi to his tent and asked him his impressions of what he’d seen on the road thus far. Yang replied that there were many more residents than there had been in 1430. Xuande said he’d noticed this too, and he wondered how well they

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A Zenith of Peace? Xuande, r. 1426–35 105

were living. Yang said he’d asked at a house along the way and was told they’d had a very big harvest. That news pleased Xuande. He then asked if the troops had harassed anyone. Yang said he hadn’t heard of any such cases, but close monitoring of the men was always necessary. Xuande showed some poems he’d just written while on horseback, and he ordered Yang and the others to take up their pens and write and enjoy some wine and snacks. On October 25, they reached the end of the line at Ximalin. Xuande visited the fort and reviewed the troops. It looked good, and the defenses were tighter than in 1430.

Two days later, the ruler held a policy discussion session with his com- manders. They told him the Lu were often to be found less than thirty miles from there conducting battue hunts. We could go attack them at such a time. Xuande (as expected) said no; as long as they’re not threatening the border, leave them be. The commanders said the Lu have the hearts of wolves, and we can’t guarantee that they won’t become a threat. Xuande replied that he’d done this tour to check up on the defenses, not to corral the Lu. I’ve sent messengers to soothe them. A surprise attack on them would make me un- trustworthy. You all are being loyal to the dynasty (guo), but I must preserve the imperial good faith. Xuande had permitted them to nomadize and hunt that close to the frontier, and Grand Secretary Yang Rong assured him he’d be guilty of enticement if he then launched a raid upon them. By November 3, the ruler was back in Beijing. 74

The Tatars were in bad shape, no doubt. A son of Arughtai’s, beaten and bereft, pleaded to be allowed to surrender. Xuande pitied him and treated him kindly. A former commander of Arughtai’s named Bata led his family and a crowd of eighty-nine to surrender. Like most Tatar refugees, he wanted mili- tary appointments and permission to live in Beijing. They were all given the usual generous treatment. 75 Gansu regional commander Liu Guang updated Xuande on the Tatar situation based on what captured Lu had told him. He said that during March and April 1434, Oirat prince Toghto Bukha killed Arughtai’s wife, sons, and followers and seized his animals. Arughtai and thirteen thousand of his people moved off, but Toghon attacked and killed him and sent his followers into flight. Arughtai’s designated successor Atai went off with barely a hundred people. A party under one Oljei Temur attacked the Lu, who then chased him, cut off a dozen heads, and captured him and twenty males and females and sent them all in shackles to Beijing. Xuande replied to Liu Guang that the Lu are desperate; of course they’ll raid. Don’t let this small win make you complacent. Stay on alert day and night. 76

Liu Guang soon reported a Lu raid by one Dorjibal on Liangzhou, where a chase ended in killing four, capturing four, and corralling forty horses and camels. Xuande expressed displeasure at this news. A censor on tour cast doubt on the veracity of Liu’s report. Even if it’s true, said Xuande, you

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failed to foil a Lu raid. You didn’t stay alert as I asked you to do. The marauders got in, and your failure was egregious. You must do better. 77

The victorious Oirats, meanwhile, stayed in Xuande’s good graces. Their tributary relations continued uninterrupted. As an Oirat embassy was about to return, Xuande had a message for Toghon: You continue your predeces- sors’ horse tribute missions, so your sincerity is proven. We’ve been told how you killed a hereditary antagonist in Arughtai. You say you have a jade seal [of Yuan vintage], and you want to give it to us. But we don’t need that to validate the dynastic transition, so keep it. Xuande sent along a gift of fifty hemp and silk garments. 78

Liu Guang’s report of more trouble arrived in mid-January 1435. He said three northern Lu had shown up in Ganzhou as envoys and that Dorjibal and his crowd of three thousand were camped in the steppes three miles (ten li) from Liangzhou; they were out of food and wanted to surrender; and they wanted to retrieve Dorjibal’s lost nephew. Liu thought this was all a lie and ordered a general alert. He asked what should be done about Dorjibal. The minister of war agreed with Liu that Dorjibal wasn’t sincere and tossed the ball back to Liu. (The Veritable Records note editorially that Dorjibal was once a follower of Arughtai’s; that he’d received the high Yuan military title of commissioner-in-chief; and that after Arughtai’s death at the hands of the Oirats, he’d fled with nowhere to go and raided Liangzhou, where the Ming captured his nephew. Xuande had pitied the nephew and spared him. Now Dorjibal was probing us to disarm our defenses and see what the court’s reaction might be.) It was decided that since Dorjibal had the option of “letting his rats steal,” it would be best to try to mollify him. Liu Guang was instructed to escort Dorjibal’s envoys back and tell him that if he would return all the people and livestock he’d taken from Liangzhou, he’d get his nephew back. 79

And there things stood when Xuande died on January 31, 1435, after a short illness of some sort. He was thirty-five years old.

* * *

As for Liaodong, the northeast wing of China’s long frontier, it mirrored the northwest in some respects. Han Chinese guard cities gave way, the farther out you went, to non-Chinese guard cities or centers. Below the level of guards, the Ming dealt with a plethora of ethnic communities led in the northwest by lamas; and in the northeast, extreme fracturing characterized hundreds of different communities called guards, inhabited by Jurchen of various sorts and Jurchen Yeren (or Udiha), which were dealt with individu- ally by the Ming. Both sent frequent tribute missions to Beijing, just as though they were so many tiny foreign countries. The Ming regime, without saying so, seems to have preferred this to dealing with large consolidated entities. When the Manchurian guards did consolidate in the mid-seventeenth

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A Zenith of Peace? Xuande, r. 1426–35 107

century, the power that was generated became the Qing dynasty, which, as we all know, went on to conquer all of China and more.

In Xuande’s time, Liaodong was fairly quiet. A regional commander by the name of Wu Kai managed the area from 1425 until he died in 1439—a long-term posting characteristic of China in the early Ming years. The in- tense hostility between Taizu and Korea, as each advanced conflicting claims to Manchurian territory, dissipated; Korea backed off, and tributary relations between Yongle and Xuande with Korea were smooth.

But how does one explain the subsequent Ming drive to dominate all Manchuria out as far as the Amur River? Was it mindless expansionism? Curiosity? A sense of global supremacy? A desire for trade? Yongle sent out probes to nearly every state in the eastern hemisphere. The Jurchen eunuch Isiha, acting in Ming service, led some half dozen missions out to the far edge of Manchuria over the years 1411–32. He set up a Buddhist temple and the Nurgan regional military commission at a site very near present-day Komsomol’sk na Amure (Nikolaevsk), some two hundred miles from where the Amur empties into the Sea of Okhotsk—1,000 miles northeast of Liao- yang and 1,400 miles from Beijing. This activity being eunuch led meant it was a palace operation, bypassing discussion by the high officials and avoid- ing any public declaration of purpose.

However, two multilingual inscriptions, dated 1413 and 1432, celebrate the building and later the rebuilding of the Buddhist temple Yongningsi and throw some light on what Yongle and Xuande had in mind.

The first attests to the grandeur of Heaven, earth, and the sagely virtue of the ruler, who brings joy to those near and overawes those who are distant, and whose bountiful beneficence extends to everyone. The text reads,

In the fifty years since the Ming finding, foreign peoples streaming in from everywhere have come to offer tribute. But the state (guo) of Nurgan lies at an immense distance. People called Jiliemi and Yeren live intermixed. They’d heard of us but couldn’t reach us. And they don’t grow grain or cotton, and raise dogs only. Some [hunt with falcons? The text is broken]. Others fish. They eat flesh and wear skins. They’re good archers. I, the ruler, understood they were peaceful but desperately poor. So I sent eunuch Isiha at the head of a thousand troops and twenty-five big boats and set up the commission. The people all rejoiced, recalling how well they’d fared centuries ago under the Liao and Jin. We distributed offices, seals, and clothing, and set up guards and battalions to bring the people under control. On the route from Haixi to Nur- gan, the expedition gave out men’s and women’s clothing plus utensils and grain, set out banquets, and made everyone happy. No one rejected us. The ruler paid gold and silver for a site to build a Buddhist temple as a means to soften the people, so they know they should revere and obey [text broken]. The people rejoiced at the blessings this temple will bring them. No more disease, famine, or cold.

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A listing of all the names of some fifty-four officers involved followed. The names of the artisans were listed as well: three calligraphers, the engrav- er, three chief carpenters, two sculptors, two or more artisans in lacquer, the brick and tile maker, and two plasterers. (More are listed, but the inscription is too weathered to read.)

The later expedition, with two thousand troops in fifty boats, led by Isiha and six other palace eunuchs, reached Nurgan in 1433. They found the Yong- ningsi in ruins and the statue of the Bodhisattva Guanyin smashed to bits. Blame was laid on the Jiliemi people, who now trembled in fear of Ming retaliation. Instead, acting on Xuande’s policy of leniency, Isiha not only granted them a pardon but laid out a banquet and doled out gifts of cloth. The temple was rebuilt, a new statue of Guanyin was installed, and a new stela was put up, this time adding a text in Tibetan as well as Chinese, Mongolian, and Jurchen. Again, all the people rejoiced. All the officials’ names were listed, as well as those of two artists, a carpenter, two stonemasons, the plasterer, and one or more ironsmiths. Again the inscription dwelled on Ming altruism and beneficence and the joyous submission of the natives. Nothing was said of security. But Nurgan was not a cockpit of violence, as Songpan was for example. Except for the chance survival of the stelae, we’d know nothing of any of this. 80

* * *

After Xuande died, an era that began in 1368 gradually faded away. It was an era suffused with a deep belief that China was the world’s one superpower and absolute moral center. After Xuande, no ruler ventured to articulate that belief as those three did. And no ruler after Xuande could make a credible claim to an ability to lead people and armies out in the field, beyond the walls of the palace. The whole Ming approach to the steppe world and the issue of national security underwent a shift. Ming China spoke less and less by letter directly to the steppe rulers. It took in fewer and fewer steppe refugees. It gradually ceased entertaining huge embassies in Beijing. It sent fewer envoys to the rulers in their encampments in the steppes. The rhetoric of benevo- lence, compassion, and fair dealing, words saying that the world was one family under an emperor acting in Heaven’s behalf—all of that fades from the record. Slowly, what came to replace that worldview was something closer to a Han Chinese nationalism, a posture of fortress China pitting itself against the world.

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