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The festival on Chinese New Year's Day had it all.

28 heads of state were invited, the total number of guests is said to have been 26,000.

They were served a ten-course menu, but only after they threw themselves to the ground in front of the emperor.

An army of concubines provided further entertainment, which was protected by a guard of tens of thousands of men.

China's Emperor Yongle (1360–1424) inaugurated his new residence on February 2, 1421: the Forbidden City in Beijing (for comparison: at the recent wedding of Henry V of England to Catherine of Valois, 600 guests were welcomed to stockfish and cod served on stale bread).

Yongle had good reasons for the effort.

Born under the name of Zhu Di, the later son of the first Ming emperor Hongwu, he overthrew the young heir to the throne in 1402 and usurped power with the government motto Yongle ("Eternal Joy").

Successes and spectacular companies should therefore replace what he lacked in legitimacy.

One of these projects was the relocation of the capital from Nanjing to Beijing.

Emperor Yongle (1360-1424) offered more than a million slaves and craftsmen to complete his residence

Source: Photo12 / Universal Images Group v

With more than a million inhabitants, Nanking on the Yangtze River was the largest city in the world at that time.

“An almost 40 kilometer long city wall enclosed everything that belongs to a capital”, writes the sinologist Kai Vogelsang: “an imperial palace, the large examination court, state altars, authorities, granaries, an imperial university, temples and military barracks.” Everything should be over move a thousand kilometers north.

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Beijing was not chosen at random.

The great khans of the Mongols, who ruled as the Yuan dynasty before the Ming, had already resided in Beijing or Duda, as it was called at the time.

Yongle also began his elevation as governor from here.

Beijing, on the edge of the steppe, was the hinge to the north, from here the empire could be held together and secured more easily than from Nanking, which lay in the heartland of the Han civilization.

The Forbidden City in Beijing is now a tourist attraction

Source: picture-alliance / dpa

Yongle spared no effort or expense.

At times, a million slaves and more than 100,000 artisans toiled on his new palace city, which comprised 720,000 square meters, one fifth of which was built up with halls, palaces, kitchens, warehouses, workshops and libraries with almost 10,000 rooms.

The audiences were held in the “Hall of Supreme Harmony” at the outer court.

Groceries, taxes and tributes reached the city via a canal.

A ten meter high wall pierced by four gates closed the huge residence from the rest of the world.

Up to 300,000 soldiers who were stationed in the surrounding area ensured safety.

"Beijing was the expression of imperial splendor and power in stone," Vogelsang sums up.

Empress Cixi with palace eunuchs, 1908

Source: Wikipedia / Public Domain

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In the interior lived next to the emperor and his family officials and above all eunuchs.

Yongle had a special relationship with many of them.

As a young general of his father, he had conquered the Mongol fortress of Kun Ming in 1382.

All adults were massacred, but male prisoners who had not yet reached puberty had their penis and testicles cut off.

Those who survived the ordeal were accepted into the army or into the imperial household.

Only castrati were allowed to serve the emperor and stay close to his approximately 2000 concubines, which were, however, subject to a strict ranking.

This was to ensure that their children were of imperial blood.

In addition, the “effeminate, creeping slaves” could not endanger the “mandate from heaven” that the emperor had received from the gods and that they could reclaim in the event of incompetence, catastrophes and misconduct.

Only eunuchs "were considered low enough to be silent witnesses of his private mistakes and weaknesses," writes the British historian Gavin Menzies.

Eunuchs could rise to the highest positions, as the example of Zheng He shows.

He belonged to Yongle's closest circle of advisors and, after the brilliant inauguration of the city, was given the task of escorting the guests home with four huge fleets.

The purpose of this overwhelming demonstration was to make the distant subjects of kings and princes aware of who actually held power over the world.

Then the fleets were to sail on and take tribute from the barbarians across the seas, who would thereby recognize the imperial rule.

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Where Zheng He went with his ships has not yet been conclusively clarified.

After Yongle's death, the spirit of discovery quickly waned and was not revived by the Manchu, whose Qing dynasty inherited the Ming in 1644.

Their last emperor, Puyi, lost the throne in 1912 and was chased from the Forbidden City twelve years later.

Nevertheless, it has remained a symbol of China's imperial greatness.

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