In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

c h a p t e r 2 Beijing, 1620–1624 The Storm Clouds Gather . T H E D E A T H O F their patron Taichang in September 1620, after a reign of just one month, gave a severe jolt to the Donglin partisans’ hopes for political and moral dominance over the affairs of Ming China. However, Yang Lian and the other Donglin men had played so forceful a role in guarding the succession of his young son, the Tianqi emperor, through the “removal from the palace” crisis that they seem to have assumed that the unsteady new ruler would favor and rely on them as much as his father had. They acted as though they thought it possible to educate the new ruler and, under his auspices, reverse the waning fortunes of Ming China. The Donglin were disappointed in this expectation, as the years 1620–1624 showed. For all his undisguised physical and psychological handicaps, Tianqi managed to win battle after battle in the face of violent Donglin challenge . He retained the companionship of his wet nurse, Madame Ke, despite the sociomoral objections and the contemptuous insults the Donglin hurled at him. From the outset of his reign, he shifted the rescript-drafting function from the Grand Secretariat to the eunuchs of the inner palace, and he seized personal control over all new appointments to the Grand Secretariat. He secured a personally congenial palace eunuch staff headed by the controversial Wei Zhongxian, and he protected Wei Zhongxian against a series of withering Donglin assaults launched from the outer court. Up until the summer of 1624, the Palace cooperated with chief Grand Secretary Ye Xianggao in a strategy of compromise with the Donglin in the outer court. But as the rift in the outer court between the Donglin partisans and their opponents grew increasingly unmanageable, the Palace by degrees gave its support to the anti-Donglin forces. The Donglin program for Ming China consisted of three main elements . First was their insistence upon scrutinizing all high-level official appointments with a view to supporting the “good species” and rejecting 3 1 3 2 B E I J I N G the morally unfit. Second was their nationwide effort at Confucian moral rearmament, revolving around the organization of lecture meetings and academies, with the Shoushan academy, which they set up in Beijing in 1622, as the center. And third was their claim to a right on moral grounds to interfere in the affairs of the Ming imperial family and its inner palace staff. The opponents of the Donglin readily accepted the Palace and the imperial family as they were, rejected Donglin assertions of absolute moral and judgmental certitude, and accused them of using moral arguments as a cloak for partisan mobilization. The worrisome external event of Tianqi’s first four years of rule was military defeat and the loss of yet more Manchurian territory in 1622 to Nurhaci and his emerging Manchu state. Given the already heated political climate in Beijing, it proved impossible for either the Palace or the outer court to prevent the personal disagreements between the two commanders responsible for that loss from becoming engulfed in the partisan battles. The Donglin—with some reluctance—rallied behind Xiong Tingbi, while their opponents energetically vilified him and protected (also with some reluctance) Xiong’s enemy Wang Huazhen. Then, in the summer of 1624, the Donglin camp itself began to unravel over the issue of official appointments. Secret decision making by Minister of Personnel Zhao Nanxing and his agent, the controversial broker of recommendations Wang Wenyan, created disappointment, suspicion, and anger among men who had hitherto been friendly to the Donglin and drove them into the arms of Tianqi’s surrogate, the palace eunuch Wei Zhongxian. That set the stage for Yang Lian’s sensational but desperate “Twenty-four Crimes” memorial against Wei Zhongxian in July 1624, and for the retaliatory political murders that so darkened the later years of Tianqi’s rule, 1625–1627. The Palace, 1620–1624 One of the Taichang emperor’s key aides in identifying and recalling Donglin officials was the palace eunuch Wang An. He had been for many years a tutor (bandu) and personal aide to Taichang (i.e., Zhu Changluo) when he was heir apparent. Wang An suffered from various infirmities and spent much of his time after around 1601 in his private home in Beijing, where he lived well off the proceeds of house and shop rents. There he practiced longevity...

Share