Yongle Emperor - Terror

Terror

Many scholars in Nanjing refusing to recognize his usurpation, the Yongle Emperor began a thorough purge of them and their families, including women and children. Other supporters of the former regime were extirpated throughout the country, as well as a reign of terror related to eunuchs settling scores from the two prior administrations.

Chinese law had long allowed for the execution of families along with principals: The Classic of History records insubordinate officers being threatened with it as far back as the Shang Dynasty. The Hongwu Emperor had fully restored the practice, punishing rebels and traitors with death by a thousand cuts as well as the death of their grandparents, parents, uncles and aunts, siblings by birth or by bond, children, nephews and nieces, grandchildren, and all cohabitants of whatever family, although children were sometimes spared and women were sometimes permitted to choose slavery instead. Four of the purged scholars became known as the Four Martyrs, the most famous of whom was Fang Xiaoru, the Jianwen Emperor's former tutor: threatened with execution of all nine degrees of his kinship, he fatuously replied "Never mind nine! Go with ten!" and – alone in Chinese history – he was sentenced to execution of 10 degrees of kinship: along with his entire family, every former student or peer of Fang Xiaoru that the Yongle Emperor's agents could find was also killed. It was said that as he died, cut in half at the waist, Fang used his own blood to write the character 篡 ("usurper") on the floor and that 872 other people were executed in the ordeal.