The Prince and the Sage: Concerning Wang Yangming’s “Effortless” Suppression of the Ning Princely Establishment Rebellion

In 1519 Wang Yangming (1472–1529) was residing in southern Jiangxi after having just led campaigns to suppress rampant banditry throughout the region. Although he wished at the time to leave his post of Grand Coordinator of Southern Gan and Superintendent of Military Affairs and return home to visit his aging father and recuperate from chronic illness, he was prevented from doing so by the development of a rather different kind of threat to the security of the country. This threat was the rebellion of the Prince of Ning Zhu Chenhao (1478–1521), the great-great-grandson of Ming Taizu’s sixteenth son, the Prince of Ningxian.¹

The prince initiated his rebellion on 1519/6/14², but was defeated by Wang Yangming within approximately 42 days in what must have been a rather dishearteningly ignominious conclusion to years of grandiose expectations and preparation. But the challenges for the grand coordinator did not end with the capture of Zhu Chenhao. At the very moment he was submitting victory memorials, favorites of the Zhengde emperor, (Zhu Houzhao; Ming Wuzong; r. 1506–21), had convinced their ruler to lead a force of his own to the region. These favorites in turn attempted to force Wang Yangming to hand the prince over to their custody so they could release him on Lake Poyang and create an opportunity for the emperor to lead a campaign of his own. Because Wang Yangming refused, his life was at stake for months. In the end, however, after having resided for a period of time in Nanjing, the emperor chose to return to Beijing, and Wang Yangming survived the challenge.

The story of Wang Yangming’s campaign and his success in navigating the harrowing aftermath have received a degree of attention in scholarship on his philosophy and intellectual development because it was just after the campaign that he began speaking extensively about what is usually considered to be his final teaching: “the extension of the innate knowledge of the good (zhi liangzhi).”³ Because the primary focus of virtually all scholarship on Wang Yangming has been his philosophy, his conduct throughout this time is typically narrated in brief and somewhat hagiographical fashion as testimony to the significance of his teaching, or at least as background context for and commentary upon his intellectual development and spiritual journey. Julia Ching, for instance, states that these trials and tribulations “proved to him the reliability of his own ‘way,’ the way to sagehood which follows the promptings of the human heart and its desire for good.”⁴ These promptings were the innate knowledge of the good (liangzhi) which for Wang Yangming became an “an absolute norm, an authority for itself.”⁵

Similarly, although Xu Fuguan is one among a very small number of Wang Yangming scholars who attempt to give serious consideration to his “meritorious achievements” in light of his philosophy, and who therefore pays attention to his large number of official communications, his conclusions are similar to those of Julia Ching. He points out that those who hold Wang Yangming’s achievements in high esteem typically point to his rapid suppression of the Prince of Ning’s rebellion. With this he is largely in agreement. According to his assessment:

The rapidity with which he assembled troops, the resourcefulness and decisiveness with which he deployed the military, and [the fact] that within less than two months and seven days he pacified the rebellion,⁶ naturally are very striking achievements. Yet this is something a skilled general could have achieved. But amidst dangerous suspicion and shocking [circumstances], the clarity with which he saw principle, the decisiveness with which he judged matters and, after his success, [his ability] to evade suspicion and distance danger, to remain unfettered by concern over safety and danger, and to look indifferently upon worldly honor and official rank—this is not something a skilled general could have done.⁷

Xu Fuguan believes that what is most impressive about this campaign was Wang Yangming’s ability to navigate harrowing challenges and yet remain...