The Zhengde Emperor was the eleventh emperor of China's Ming Dynasty.
While previous emperors were obligated to a strict schedule of rituals and audiences every day, Zhengde was the first to manage to break free, absenting himself from the palace, and from the city, for extended periods, beginning in 1517, during which time government and administration carried on without him. The Confucian scholar-bureaucracy resisted this, insisting on the importance of the daily rituals and meetings, but Zhengde simply pushed them aside, in favor of eunuchs who were more amenable to his intentions. The palace eunuchs, led by eight known as the emperor's "tigers," thus dominated government while the Zhengde Emperor entertained himself with sports, sex, parties, drinking, and so forth.[1] Much of this took place at the Leopard House, a mansion in the open areas of the Imperial City (outside the innermost parts of the Forbidden City) he had built and where he took up residence beginning around 1507 or 1508. In 1517, Zhengde traveled to the front to contribute strategy and leadership to efforts to defend the empire from Mongol incursions; he later claimed to have killed a Mongol himself during the fighting. Though blocked by the bureaucracy from being permitted to journey there, the emperor had the relevant official at the Great Wall replaced by a eunuch, thus eliminating the core of the bureaucratic opposition. He was gone from the palace for four months, during which time he received many petitions and memorials, but issued few rescripts (orders from the emperor, and/or responses to petitions).[2]
Zhengde died in 1521 without a direct heir; he was succeeded by a nephew, who took the throne as the Jiajing Emperor. This marked the first time in the Ming Dynasty that an emperor was not directly succeeded by his son.
| Preceded by Hongzhi Emperor |
Emperor of Ming 1505-1521 |
Succeeded by Jiajing Emperor |
References
- Ray Huang, 1587: A Year of No Significance, Yale University Press (1981), 8.