- Born: 1563
- Died: 1620
- Reign: 1573-1620
- Other Names: 朱翊鈞 (Zhū Yìjūn), Shenzong
- Chinese/Japanese: 萬歷帝 (Wànlì dì / banreki tei)
The Wanli Emperor was the fourteenth emperor of the Ming Dynasty. Though one of the more prominent emperors of the dynasty, and one whose reign saw many significant events, Wanli is perhaps most known for his frustration with the bureaucracy and/or distaste for the actual work of governing, to the point that he would often leave petitions and other matters to pile up; much governmental or Imperial matters of his reign were delayed severely, or even held up entirely, never being resolved.
Throughout his life, like any Ming emperor, Wanli was surrounded by state ritual and courtly obligations, and by eunuchs who controlled the bureaucracy to such an extent that even as emperor, he found himself unable to weaken their grip, or to truly exercise power himself. According to some sources, it was as a result of his frustration with this situation that, later in his reign, Wanli came to frequently refuse to meet with officials, to hear petitions, or to participate in state rituals. Other sources attribute it to a self-centered and entitled attitude, the result of a spoiled Imperial upbringing. His inaction, and indeed at times willful stoppage of government, is often cited as contributing to the weakening and decline of the Ming Dynasty, leading eventually to its fall, 24 years after Wanli's death.
Major events of the Wanli reign included Toyotomi Hideyoshi's invasions of Korea in the 1590s, and the arrival of Jesuit Matteo Ricci at the Beijing court in 1620, just prior to the emperor's death that same year.
Life and Reign
Wanli ascended the throne in 1573 at age nine, spending the vast majority of his childhood both before and after that point in the Forbidden City. Until his marriage in 1578 (at the age of 15), his mother, the Empress Dowager Cisheng, shared his living quarters, and was close to him, waking him up each day and so forth. The Grand Secretary Zhang Juzheng and eunuch Feng Bao were among his closest companions, his teachers, and advisors; Feng Bao was later promoted to Director of Ceremonies and head of the palace staff.
A supernova which appeared in the sky in 1572-1573 inspired the young emperor to be especially diligent in his studies, and in his efforts for right, proper, behavior, since it was an emperor's duty to maintain the order of the cosmos. The first decade or so of his reign proved quite peaceful and prosperous, in the end, tormented little by nomads in the north or pirates in the south as previous reigns had been; due to the competent administration of Zhang Juzheng, government coffers were well-filled.
His marriage in 1578 was to a commoner girl, who had been selected by his mother or other such figures, and whose father had been quickly appointed to military position in order to make the daughter eligible to marry an emperor. Though this girl, who was to come to be known as Empress Xiaoduan, was essentially of no particular significance, still this was not a love marriage, but rather was arranged so that the young Wanli Emperor might produce an heir as soon as possible. Married, he was now less watched, and less controlled, by his mother; whether for this reason or otherwise, he soon came to take more frequent entertainment, drinking and wandering the gardens of the Imperial City, as well as organizing frequent soirees. On one particular occasion in 1580, he sentenced two young women to death for failing to sing particular songs he ordered them to perform (these were not songs with which the women were sufficiently familiar); though the sentence was only symbolic, and they lost locks of hair rather than their heads, this was still taken as a serious breach of conduct for the emperor. His mother, along with Zhang Juzhen, arranged that he should have to abdicate the throne, and relented only after an hour of prostration and apology by the young monarch. While he kept his throne, Wanli was now to be accompanied more closely by Zhang Juzhen, and by a group of Hanlin Academy masters, who might help (re)educate him in the ways of virtue and proper conduct.
He had nine sons and ten daughters by ten wives, but it is said that his relationship with one of those wives, Lady Zheng, was a particularly caring one, which lasted throughout the rest of their lives; in 1585 or 1586, he promoted her above all his other wives & consorts to a status second only to the empress.
In 1582, after the death of his tutor & advisor Zhang Juzheng, the emperor freed himself of the Hanlin scholars who had been assigned to keep a watch over him. Wanli's first son was born in the summer that year, allowing him presumably to free himself from his mother's control even further as well. Yet, he still found himself at the mercy of eunuchs and officials when it came to making policy; factions warred amongst the officials, and just as Zhang Juzheng convinced the emperor of the benevolence, wisdom, and selflessness of his policies, leading the emperor to defend him against numerous critiques and complaints, now, beginning in 1582 when the late Zhang Juzheng was succeeded as Grand Secretary by Zhang Siwei, Siwei began working to convince the emperor that Juzheng had been controlling him, misleading him all along, and that the policies which had brought such prosperity in the first ten years of Wanli's reign were in fact bad policies, and had not done so. Convinced of Juzheng's treachery, Wanli began signing his approval to reverse many of Juzheng's policies, one by one, and to remove many of his followers from their official appointments. Where Zhang Juzheng had previously successfully convinced the emperor that his rivals' accusations were all lies, Zhang Siwei now succeeded in convincing the emperor they were not, and that Juzheng had been manipulating the emperor for his own personal gain, and that of his faction, without truly having the interests of the nation in mind.
| Preceded by Longqing Emperor |
Emperor of Ming 1573-1620 |
Succeeded by Taichang Emperor |
References
- Robert Tignor, Benjamin Elman, et al, Worlds Together, Worlds Apart, vol B, Fourth Edition, W.W. Norton & Co (2014), 499-500.
- Ray Huang, 1587: A Year of No Significance, Yale University Press (1981), 1-41.