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c h a p t e r 1 The Ming Throne Imperiled The Three Cases . I N T H E S U M M E R of 1620, Ming government at its highest level came close to a point of meltdown. Many opinion makers of the time asserted that the ultimate blame for that lay with Zhu Yijun, better known as the Wanli emperor (r. 1573–1620). For decades, Wanli liked to do things, or not to do things, in his own way. He hated being pressured. Ming house law, the Ancestral Instructions (Zu xun), clearly required that oldest sons be designated as successors to the throne. Wanli had an oldest son, Zhu Changluo. Formally installing him as heir apparent should have been a routine matter. Somehow it was not. For fifteen years Wanli made excuses about it, and his delay became the focal point of dark speculations and fervent protests among Beijing officialdom. Sequestered inside the Forbidden City as he kept himself, no one knew for certain what Wanli’s procrastination meant. A protracted standoff, indeed a national crisis, resulted and earned its own rubric: the “struggle over the root of the state” (zheng guoben). In October 1601, the emperor angrily gave in to the pressure and had the nineteen-year-old Zhu Changluo formally designated heir to the throne of Ming China.1 But the struggle over the root of the state, far from quieting down, soon intensified. Rumors about family matters inside the Forbidden City caused many officials to suspect that the emperor did not care for Zhu Changluo and was maneuvering to replace him with Zhu Changxun, a younger son by his favorite concubine, the notorious Zheng Guifei. In 1614, after many years of official protest, Wanli again yielded to pressure and sent Zhu Changxun (Prince of Fu) away from the Forbidden City and out to a lavish residence built especially for him in Henan province. Zhu Changluo’s position as heir apparent, once again, seemed secure. But, once again, it was not. The first of the sensational Three Cases happened in the very next year, 1615. It involved an alleged attempt to mur9 1 0 T H E M I N G T H R O N E I M P E R I L E D der Zhu Changluo. It is known as the Stick Case (tingji zhi an). Overnight , it became a major issue of dispute between the Donglin party and its opponents in late Ming China’s steadily intensifying intrabureaucratic struggle. . A few facts about the convoluted Stick Case everyone agreed upon. There was no doubt that in the early evening of May 30, 1615, a lone assailant armed with a stick somehow managed to enter the Forbidden City and proceeded to the lightly guarded Ciqing palace, where Zhu Changluo lived as heir-designate to the Ming throne. The assailant struck an elderly eunuch by the name of Liu Jian to the ground. Then he went up the steps of the palace. Eunuch Han Benyang cried for help. Six or seven other eunuchs came running. They seized, disarmed, and tied up the intruder. Then they took him to the office of the security guards at the Donghua gate. Meanwhile, Han Benyang told Zhu Changluo what had happened, and Zhu Changluo sent him to tell Wanli. At the Donghua gate, squad leader Zhao Guozhong interrogated the suspect. His superior, Commander Zhu Xiong, wrote up a report that, on the following day, May 31, was incorporated into a formal memorial by Censor Liu Tingyuan, on duty as imperial city patrolling inspector. According to Censor Liu’s memorial, the assailant’s name was Zhang Chai; he was a commoner, thirty-five years (sui) old; his home village was Jingeryu in Jizhou prefecture (some fifty miles east of Beijing); and he was a religious sectarian of some sort. Little else of his testimony made sense, however. It appeared he might be mentally deranged (fengmo), but his demeanor also suggested some possible deceit. Censor Liu recommended that Zhang Chai be interrogated further, and then be severely punished for his violent intrusion upon the imperial security.2 However, the Stick Case exploded within a matter of days into an irresolvable national political dispute. Was Zhang Chai merely a deranged loner? Or was he part of some sinister plot to kill Zhu Changluo? Those in the upper echelons of the bureaucracy who believed that Zhang Chai was unquestionably involved in an assassination plot were the so-called Donglin faction...

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