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c h a p t e r 6 A Reversal of Fortunes . O N O C T O B E R 2 , 1 6 2 7 , the Tianqi emperor ’s younger half-brother, Zhu Youjian, assumed the throne under the reign title Chongzhen. (As things turned out, his was the last reign of an intact Ming China.) He was sixteen years old, but, unlike Tianqi, he played an assertive part in government from the very beginning of his reign. He also seems to have kept his own counsel. He certainly tolerated no decision-making surrogates, as Tianqi had done. During the first several months of his tenure as emperor, he adroitly handled the dismantling of the “Cui–Wei” regime, a task made easier for him by the passivity of Cui Chengxiu and Wei Zhongxian, who, in the absence of Tianqi, failed to find a way to defend their positions. At its core, the Tianqi regime had been truly warm and familial, a guojia in the emotionally literal sense of the word. Madame Ke and Wei Zhongxian daily attended Tianqi as his personal, parent-like guardians. Wei Zhongxian in the inner Palace and Cui Chengxiu atop the outer bureaucracy accepted each other as father and son. But Tianqi was the center of it all, and his premature death destroyed the tissue of pseudofamilial affections out of which power at the highest level in Ming China had been constructed. With Tianqi dead, there was no way to reestablish those same affectionate arrangements around Chongzhen, who did not love Madame Ke and Wei Zhongxian and, indeed, had no reason to do so. For several weeks, however, Chongzhen gave no hint that things might change. On October 8, he refused to act on Wei Zhongxian’s offer to resign . On November 5, he agreed to Wei Zhongxian’s request that no new temples be built in his honor, but he allowed construction to proceed on those already authorized. On November 12, Chongzhen agreed to a memorial from the acting chief supervising secretary of the Office of Scrutiny for Personnel, Chen Eryi, that the Eastern Depot, Embroidered-uniform Guard, and censors on city patrol duty must together be made to exercise special vigilance because, according to rumor, “remnant villains of the Donglin” were lurking in Beijing hoping for “a change in the weather,” and though the former emperor had already cleansed those ele1 5 0 A R E V E R S A L O F F O R T U N E S 1 5 1 ments, there was a danger that, unless continually watched, “dead ashes” might well come to life again.1 There were some faint signals of a new dispensation, but they were difficult to interpret. On October 11, Tianqi’s wet nurse, Madame Ke, vacated her quarters in the Forbidden City and moved to her private residence outside. Eunuch memoirist Liu Ruoyu reports that in the predawn hours of that day, Madame Ke went in mourning dress to the Renzhi palace where Tianqi’s coffin still lay and wept as she burned the contents of a small box that contained her dead charge’s baby hair, baby teeth, scabs, and nail cuttings.2 And on October 31 Chongzhen replied affirmatively to a request to have the legal authorities investigate student Lu Wanling and others for fraud and coercion in their role in arranging and funding the construction of a Wei Zhongxian temple at the Imperial University.3 In October and November, certain Beijing officials began probing Chongzhen’s intentions by repeatedly calling his attention to Cui Chengxiu ’s overweening position in the Ming government. On October 22, it was requested that Cui and others be relieved of duty so that they might retire home to observe the prescribed mourning regulations.4 Cui’s mother had died, but Tianqi (or, rather, Wei Zhongxian) had considered Cui so indispensable that his mourning obligation had been waived. Cui now asked to be relieved of duty, but Chongzhen denied his request. A month later, on November 21, Censor Yang Weiyuan impeached Cui Chengxiu for accruing excessive powers (Cui was concurrently minister of war and censor-in-chief, while his younger brother served as military commander in Zhejiang province), and for corruptly dominating government . Yang charged that while Wei Zhongxian had repaid Tianqi’s trust with his hard work and his willingness to accept the world’s resentments , Cui had not been faithful to Wei Zhongxian. Chongzhen angrily rejected the impeachment. But Yang Weiyuan thought...

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