Chapter One
Last Voyage
In the summer of 1421 the emperor Zhu Di lost a
stupendous gamble. In doing so, he lost control of China
and, eventually, his life.
Zhu Di’s dreams were so outsized that, though China in
the early fifteenth century was the greatest power on
earth, it still could not summon the means to realize
the emperor’s monumental ambitions. Having embarked on
the simultaneous construction of the Forbidden City, the
Ming tombs, and the Temple of Heaven, China was also
building two thousand ships for Zheng He’s fleets. These
vast projects had denuded the land of timber. As a
consequence, eunuchs were sent to pillage Vietnam. But
the Vietnamese leader Le Loi fought the Chinese with
great skill and courage, tying down the Chinese army at
huge financial and psychological cost. China had her
Vietnam six hundred years before France and America had
theirs.
China’s debacle in Vietnam grew out of the costs of
building and maintaining her treasure fleets, through
which the emperor sought to bring the entire world into
Confucian harmony within the Chinese tribute system. The
fleets were led by eunuchs-brave sailors who were
intensely loyal to the emperor, permanently insecure,
and ready to sacrifice all. However, the eunuchs were
also uneducated and frequently corrupt. And they were
loathed by the mandarins, the educated administrative
class that buttressed a Confucian system in which every
citizen was assigned a clearly defined place.
Superb administrators, the mandarins recoiled from risk.
They disapproved of the extravagant adventures of the
treasure fleets, whose far-flung exploits had the added
disadvantage of bringing them into contact with “long
nosed barbarians.” In the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368),
mandarins were the lowest class. However, in the Ming
dynasty, Emperor Hong Wu, Zhu Di’s father, reversed the
class system to favor mandarins.
The mandarins planned Hong Wu’s attack on his son Zhu
Di, the Prince of Yen, whom Hong had banished to Beijing
(Nanjing then being the capital of China). The eunuchs
sided with Zhu Di, joining his drive south into Nanjing.
After his victory in 1402, Zhu Di expressed his
gratitude by appointing eunuchs to command the treasure
fleets.
Henry Tsai paints a vivid portrait of Zhu Di, also known
as the Yongle emperor: He was an overachiever. He should
be credited for the construction of the imposing
Forbidden City of Beijing, which still stands today to
amaze countless visitors from lands afar. He should be
applauded for sponsoring the legendary maritime
expeditions of the Muslim eunuch Admiral Zheng He, the
legacy of which still lives vividly in the historical
consciousness of many Southeast Asians and East
Africans. He reinforced the power structure of the
absolutist empire his father the Hongwu emperor founded,
and extended the tentacles of Chinese civilisation to
Vietnam, Korea, Japan, among other tributary states of
Ming China. He smoothed out China’s relations with the
Mongols from whom Emperor Hongwu had recovered the
Chinese empire. He made possible the compilation of
various important Chinese texts, including the
monumental encyclopaedia Yongle dadian….
Yongle [the alternative name for Zhu Di] was also a
usurper, a man who bathed his hands in the blood of
numerous political victims. And the bloodshed did not
stop there. After ascending the throne, he built a
well-knit information network staffed by eunuchs whom
his father had specifically blocked from the core of
politics, to spy on scholar officials [mandarins] who
might challenge his legitimacy and his absolutism.
Under Zhu Di, the mandarins were relegated to organizing
the finances necessary to build the fleet. But for
generations of mandarins who governed the Ming dynasty
and compiled almost all Chinese historical sources, the
voyages led by Zheng He were a deviation from the proper
path. The mandarins did all they could to belittle Zheng
He’s achievements. As Edward L. Dreyer points out, Zheng
He’s biography in the Ming-Shi-lu was deliberately
placed before a series of chapters on eunuchs “who are
grouped with ‘flatterers and deceivers,’ ‘treacherous
ministers,’ ‘roving bandits’ and ‘all intrinsically evil
categories of people.'”
As long as the voyages prospered, and tribute flowed
back to the Middle Kingdom to finance the fleet’s
adventures, the simmering rivalry between mandarins and
eunuchs could be contained. However, in the summer of
1421, Zhu Di’s reign went horribly wrong. First, the
Forbidden City, which had cost vast sums to build, was
burned to ashes by a thunderbolt. Next, the emperor
became impotent and was taunted by his concubines. In a
final indignity, he was thrown from his horse, a present
from Tamburlaine’s son Shah Rokh. It appeared that Zhu
Di had lost heaven’s favor.
In December 1421, at a time when Chinese farmers were
reduced to eating grass, Zhu Di embarked on another
extravaganza. He led an enormous army into the northern
steppe to fight the Mongol armies of Aruqtai, who had
refused to pay tribute.
This was too much for Xia Yuanji, the minister of
finance; he refused to fund the expedition. Zhu Di had
his minister arrested along with the minister of
justice, who had also objected to the adventure. Fang
Bin, the minister of war, committed suicide. With his
finances in ruins and his cabinet in revolt, the emperor
rode off to the steppe, where he was outwitted and
outmaneuvered by Aruqtai. On August 12, 1424, Zhu Di
died.
Zhu Gaozhi, Zhu Di’s son, took over as emperor and
promptly reversed his father’s policies. Xia Yuanji was
restored as minister of finance, and drastic fiscal
measures were adopted to rein in inflation. Zhu Gaozhi’s
first edict on ascending the throne on September 7,
1424, laid the treasure fleet low: he ordered all
voyages of the treasure ships to be stopped. All ships
moored at Taicang were ordered back to Nanjing.
The mandarins were back in control. The great Zheng He
was pensioned off along with his admirals and captains.
Treasure ships were left to rot at their moorings.
Nanjing’s dry docks were flooded and plans for
additional treasure ships were burned.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from 1434
by Gavin Menzies
Copyright © 2008 by Gavin Menzies .
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
William Morrow
Copyright © 2008
Gavin Menzies
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-06-149217-4
