I heard that Yongle Emperor was a famous Ming emperor. Can someone tell me more history about him?

If i'm not mistaken,he was the guy who financed the naval expedition under admiral Zheng-he to make all the overseas state from japan to east africa become chinese tributary states.

Emperor Yong-le also mounted five military expedition into mongolia and totally crush the remnants of the yuan dynasty that fled to the north after got defeated by first emperor of the ming dynasty.He make mongolia into chinese tributary and all the tribes in mongolia must submit to him and proclaimed themselves vassal.

The Yongle Emperor of China was the third ruler in the Ming Dynasty, from 1403 to 1424. He commissioned most of the exploratory sea voyages of Zheng He. During his reign the monumental Yongle Encyclopedia was completed. Compare to the Qing emperor (Kang Xi, Yongzhen, Qing long), he did not much.

I would have to disagree with the opinion that he did not do much compared to the Qing emperors. I think his accoplishments makes him arguably the greatest monarch China has had.

Not only was he visionary in sending out Zheng He on exploratory missions, Yongle expanded China's sphere of influence and territory on land as well. He was unique in conquering Annam, which had not been under Chinese control since the last days of the Tang, and would never be under Chinese rule again. Manchuria and parts of Mongolia were added to the empire under his reign. Countries near and far had to respect the power of the Ming, because of the credible threat the Ming posed on land and on the sea. He led five expeditions against the Mongols during his rule (Yongle is probably one of the greatest warrior emperors in Chinese history, matched only by Taizong in my opinion), effectively canceling out the Mongol threat during his years as emperor. He oversaw the construction of the Forbidden City, and the building up of Beijing as the capital. And he was also a great patron of literature, the Yongle encyclopedia being the crowning achievement.

Right, except for the fact that his reign ended with the bankrupcy of Ming.




Sending out the exploratory mission accomplished nothing but drained Ming treasury, the nations that subjected to Ming are mere tiny cities such as Malaca, Cylon, and Calicut, not of any major political acheivement. His conquest of Annam only added to the drainage to the already depleted treasury in the naval expedition along with his fruitless mongol campaigns of later years. Manchuria was taken not by force but by wealth and political display. Inner Mongolia was already in Ming hands since Hong Wu although its true that Zhu Di was responsible for subjugating them. His project in Beijing and construction of the great wall was highly unpopular in that it costed so much money and lives. His reign was ruthless and unenlightened, murdering all those that oppose him. The mongol threat was constantly rising and his last campaign against them is little more other than the fact that the khan refused to pay tribute. The only reason he wasn't considered as bad as Sui Yang di was because his last military capaigns weren't as disastrous and Ming didn't collapse, or else he was pretty much the same as the second Sui emperor, by the time he died, the Ming treasury is so drained that his successors and to cancel his enourmous projects and raise living standard. Despite this his tomb is built with the great rich and caused even more money. The best? Hardly

Yongle Emperior also didn't inherit the empire from his father (Zhu Hongwu), in fact, he took it from his nephew. Before he became the emperior he was a Prince responsible for guarding the Great Wall.

Well, I believe one must weigh the benefits against the costs during the reign Yongle, and not just focus on the fact that Yongle drained the treasury. :D Afterall, many great rulers in history have put strains on the economy of their countries (for example, Trajan and Marcus Aurelius), yet this should not be the sole determinant of whether or not a reign is successful.

As for the expenditures of Yongle, they were either necessary or beneficial. For example, the Treasure Fleet not only protected China's coast by eliminating pirates and protected the lucrative trade through Malacca, it expanded China's knowledge of the outside world. Many scholars are critical of China in that they had no motivation to expand their knowledge and argued it led to China's downfall centuries later; was not Yongle visionary in that he tried to do just that?

The expeditions against the Mongols were one of those necessary expenditures. We must keep in mind that there were still Yuan claimants to the throne in Mongolia, and the campaigns led by Yongle was needed to blunt their power. As a specific example, that last campaign you mentioned was not because a khan refused to pay tribute, but because the Mongols were launching raids and invasions of Datong and Kaiping. I don't think anyone can fault Yongle for wishing to defend his empire.

As for Annam, yes, that probably was just for glory and not much else. :P

Guarding the coast is a minor use for the treasure fleet, as later emperors had other methods in doing so. For expanding knowledge wide, thats irrelevant for its time, you are using a modern perspective on ancient China which does not generate a good effect, indeed for the people of that time, the expeditions is little more than a heavy burden to the people and accomplished little political benefit. No one knows that future Europeans would surpass in technology.

He is a rather controversial emperor... espically now with the more modern historians who often try to take different views and checks of the old history...

First he took teh throne by force... he rebelled against his father's choosen successor (his nephew).... his reign sees the height of the Ming but also resulted in it's downfall (at least great finacial trouble), he greatly increased the power of Eunich (totally against the doctorins set by his father) which would plauge teh Ming for the rest of it's reign...

He did not inherit his father's conservative approach to spending money but apparently inherited his mercilessness and ability to perform great brutality... when he took the throne he commanded the most famous scholar at the time to write his inaguration speech.. the stounch scholar openly refused and even insulted him in front of everyone by writing the word "燕王篡位" (king yang steals the throne.. king yang is his original title) and throwing it on the ground in front of him... Yongle slaughtered anyone who was even remotely related to the scholar including all his students.

The exploratory looks great but it actually lead the country into bankruptcy. His policy of exploration and expeditions costs a lots of money. After he died, the Ming began to declined. His exploration mission bring no benefit to the state.

Yongle emperor was actually a man of great strategy and ambition. It was during his time that Ming dynasty reached its peak and zenith of power. He was notable for moving the capital from Nanjing to Beijing, launched 5 expedition against the Mongol as well as sent Zheng He on 6 voyages to South-East Asia.

that's what the conventional historians say anyway...... but looking from the other perspective.....

He moved the capital for quiet a few reason... one because that's where he's power base is...... and thus more securing his "acquired" throne.... of course it's undeniable that the move probably helped the Ming's defense against the north too...

His reign was the peak of the Ming also suggest (as many other so called peak emperors like Tang Tuan Zhong, Han Wu Di, Qian Long etc...) that he was somehow responsible for the decline too..... which would not be hard to find in his spendings and certain policies.

The Voyage today is still shrouded in much mystry as much of the documents have been destroyed :(..... would be very interesting to know more though.

Zhu Di burned the captial of the Mongols down to the ground and broke their power, that made him alright in the eyes of Chinese historians.

As for comparison with Sui Yangdi... when Sui Yangdi died he left behind a war torn country, and a full imperial treasury. When Zhu Di died, he left behind a stable country, and an empty imperial treasury. That fact alone made their reign completely different.

Its Zhu Yuan Zhang that burned Karakorum not Zhu Di.

When Khara Khorum was burned in 1388, Zhu Di was already king of Yen and in charge of Northern Ming forces. I'm not sure if it was he who ordered the sack of the Mongolian captial or not, but most Mongols blame him for the destruction of the city of the khan.

Here are some brief notes about him.


The Yong Le emperor was a rebel. He was equally as ambitions as his father and equally pitiless in his elimination of those whom he disliked or feared. Like his father, he was quick to anger and often abused officials cruelly. On his accession he brought terrible retribution to those who had most closely advised the previous emperor. They and all their relatives were put to death, and before the purge ended, thousands had perished. He also revoked the institutional and policy changes of his nephew-predecessor and even ordered history rewritten so that the founding emperor’s era name was extended through 1402, as if Zhu Yunwen, the Jianwen emperor, had never reigned at all. The one reform policy that he retained was that princely powers must be curtailed. Hence, the surviving frontier princes were successively transferred from their strategically located fiefs into central and south China and were deprived of all governmental authority. From the Yong Le period on, imperial princes were no more than salaried idlers who socially and ceremonially adorned the cities to which they were assigned and in which they were effectively confined. At no time was he, or any subsequent Ming emperor, seriously threatened by a princely uprising. He was domineering, jealous of his authority, and inclined toward self-aggrandizement. He staffed the central government with young men dependent on himself and relied to an unprecedented extent on eunuchs for service outside their traditionally prescribed palace spheres — as foreign envoys, as supervisors of special projects such as the requisitioning of construction supplies, and as regional overseers of military garrisons. His insecurity caused him to establish in 1420 a special agency of his Imperial bodyguard called the Eastern Depot (Tong Chang) to ferret out possible treasonable activities. It quickly became notorious, and it was a hated and feared force of secret police during all later decades and centuries.

He relied heavily on a secretarial group of young scholar-officials assigned to palace duty from the traditional compiling and editing agency, the Hanlin Academy, and by the end of his reign they became a Grand Secretariat, a powerful buffer between the Emperor and the administrative agencies of government. He also sponsored the compilation and publication of Confucian and Neo-Confucian Classics, and it most notably ordered the preparation in manuscript form of a monumental compendium of literature called Yong Le Da Dian (“The Great Canon of the Yong Le Era”) in more than 11,000 volumes, which preserved many works that would otherwise have been lost. But he considered such work as an activity for literati who enjoyed public esteem but not his personal trust. It kept them busy, and therefore out of mischief. He was a military man of action, and had little enough patience with unavoidable administrative business, much less with intellectual exercises.

The Yong Le emperor had expansionist inclinations, and this led China into an ultimately disastrous military adventure against China’s southern neighbor, Annam. In 1400 the heir to the Annamite throne had been deposed and a new dynasty proclaimed. He was urged to intervene and restore legitimate rule, and, when his own envoys to Annam were murdered, in 1406, he authorized a punitive campaign. Chinese forces rapidly occupied and pacified Annam. Because no heir seemed available, in 1407 he transformed Annam from a tributary state into a new Chinese province. Local resistance broke out almost immediately and continued irrepressibly. Especially after 1418, guerrilla warfare against the Ming authorities made the Chinese position in Annam increasingly precarious. By that time the Yong Le emperor had lost most of his early interest in the southern regions, and the situation was allowed to deteriorate until his grandson, the Xuande emperor with some humiliation, realistically abandoned direct Ming rule of Annam in 1428.

The most notable domestic event of the Yong Le emperor’s reign was the transfer of the national capital and the central government from Nanking to Peking, though precisely why he did this has never been fully understood for Peking was not the ideal site for the national capital. It was far removed from China’s economic and cultural heartland, and it was dangerously close and exposed to the northern frontier. But it was the Yong Le emperor’s personal power base, and it was a site from which the northern defenses could be kept under effective surveillance. In 1407 the Emperor authorized transfer of the capital there, and from 1409 on he spent most of his time in the north. In 1417 large-scale work began on the reconstruction of Peking, and thereafter the Yong Le emperor never returned to Nanking. The new Peking palace was completed in 1420, and on New Year’s Day of 1421 Peking formally became the national capital.

Before this transfer of the capital could be accomplished and before the northern defenses could be made satisfactorily secure, the Yong Le emperor had to provide for the reliable transport of grain supplies from the affluent Yangtze Valley to the north. Since the old Grand Canal linking the Yangtze and Yellow River valleys had been neglected for centuries and was largely unusable, coastal transport service around the Shantung peninsula was reorganized, and it proved spectacularly successful in the early years of the Yong Le emperor’s reign under the naval commander Chen Xuan. Rehabilitation and extension of old waterways in the north proceeded simultaneously, so that in 1411 sea transport vessels could enter the Yellow River mouth south of Shantung and thus avoid the most perilous part of the coastal route. Then in 1415 Chen Xuan successfully rehabilitated the southern segments of the Grand Canal, and sea transport was abandoned. With Chen Xuan serving as supreme commander of the Grand Canal system until his death in 1433, the new army-operated waterway complex, extending from Hangzhou in the south to outside Peking, was able to deliver grain supplies in quantities adequate for the northern needs. In 1421, when Peking became the national capital, deliveries began to exceed 3,000,000 piculs (400 million pounds) annually.

The Yong Le emperor’s ill-fated occupation of Annam, the northern campaigns, the rebuilding of Peking, and the rehabilitation of the Grand Canal, and the spectacular but unproductive overseas expeditions, the all required enormous expenditures of supplies and human effort. That China was able to undertake such projects during his reign gives evidence of the Yong Le emperor’s strong leadership, but they left the country exhausted needing an era of recovery under his successors.

He was a memorable emperor. However, it is difficult to credit him with much more than the creation of the Forbidden City (although this wiped out the great forests) and the rehabilitation of the Grand Canal. The naval expeditions gained him personal recognition and enabled him to buy (expensively) tribute from neighboring minor countries, but provided no benefit to Chan as a whole. And the Great Canon was a mere by-product of his attempt to keep the scholar-officials occupied.

I think that there was no follow through with Yongle's policies after his death.

After the naval expeditions, the Ming government should have encouraged commercial developments in the areas visited by ZhengHe (just like Columbus). Hence the government will not have to finance further naval expedition & there will be extra tax revenue from naval trade.

Another failure of the Ming government after Yongle's death was the capital at Beijing. I think it is a very good idea to keep the capital up there as long as you have a capable emperor. Upon the death of Yongle, if my first suggestion was enacted, they can take the proceeds from the naval tax revenue and use those funds to build cities/fortress in Manchuria, making it a part of China proper. This will make Beijing a even more important location.

If these two things were completed, we would be say that Yongle was a visionary.

That's true, because after the death of Emperor Yong Le, the successors couldn't be able to restore the glory of the Ming Dynasty, and at that time, the dynasty was on the way to doom. Extra revenue from naval trade is a good idea as it can replenish the imperial treasury that was almost empty. Building cities/fortress in Manchuria can be useful for later successors so that they can keep track the Manchu people there. This should make the last emperor, Emperor Chong Zen, less worry and tension in dealing the Manchu people.

If this things are really happened, I believe the history needs to be rewritten...

During the reign of Emperor Cheng Zu, what's his greatest contributions to the Ming Dynasty??? As far as I know, he overthrew the previous emeperor, Emperor Jian Wen, and proclaimed himself the new emperor. He tried to destroy all records regarding the previous emperor.

Could anybody tell me?

If you want to learn more about the Yongle Emperor and Ming China during his reign, perhaps you would be interested in this book:

http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php...dpost&p=3003759

Thanks for your suggestion. I'll read that up if I have the free time. At least, I have some knowledge about him...

His was my fave emperor all the time .. He is ming greatest emperor compare to han wudi of the han and tang taizong of the tang. He is also great at fighting the mongols besides been a good ruler ..

I also admire Emperor Ming Cheng Zu because if his abilities. However, he wasted too much government's resources to build a manificent imperial palace at Beijing, plus some other projects. By the time at end of his life, the governmen'ts coffers was almost empty...

Because of his decision to shift the capital to the north, there is a lack of focus on the central plains. This has led to the government overstating the threat of Manchu compared to the internal rebellion.

Perhaps, he didn't see the inportance of settling the internal matters first, then the external matters. That's why he shifted the capital to the north. I wonder what would happen to the Central Plain???

He is a better ruler compare to zhu yuan zhang . Thats how i feel. Well at least he spend the goverment resouces for the sake of country .. He support zheng he sailing around the world.. i think he is great .. if all the ming rulers were like , Ming would be superpower ..

Yeap, he was a great ruler. If Emperor Chong Zhen liked him, maybe the Ming Empire could be saved. Unfortunately, because Emperor Yong Li had spent so much resources for his country, towards the end of his reign, the government's coffers were almost empty.

Emperor Chongzhen's weakness is that he is not very good in his relationship with his officials and is very suspicious of them....

I guess that's not the case of his weakness. Most of his officials were corrupt, and could not be trusted. Emperor Chong Zhen didn't know how to deal with them because the officials somehow had the power on their own...

Yongle is one of my favorite emperors. Better than Qian Long. Not as good as Tang TaiZong, & Han Wudi.

His strengths is that he was willing to deal with the Mongol situation head on. The best defense is a good offense. Moving the capital to Beijing was a very offensive decision. I fully support the ZhengHe voyages, however, they should have a private enterprise element to those voyages.

His greatest weakness was his reliance on the eunech (misspelling). His somewhat reckless financial decisions. And I believe Yongle or Hongwu abolished the Prime Minister position which seriously handcapped the Ming for years.

He had no choice. He had to rely on eunuch because of opposition from the mainstream officials as a number of them felt that he was not the proper emperor.

Btw Hongwu abolish the prime minister position.

If the Emperor Hong Wu wouldn't abolish the position of Prime Minister, I believe the situation won't be so bad. Then, Emperor Yong Le won't rely on eunuch more. However, I believe Emperor Yong Le would face greater threat from Prime Minister as he was not the proper emperor...

He abolish it to make the power was concentrated in the hands of the emperor......
This is not good if an incompetent emperor was ruling the empire...

This was true. I wonder during the reign of Emperor Chong Zhen, was there any Prime Minister? In the drama "Perish in the Name of Love", I didn't see any Prime Minister there.

Anyway , he was the golden ruler of ming .. given his abilities i am sure he don't really have to rely heavily on enunchs

is he the king that likes to make wooden things protrayed in some films?

The Ming emperor who liked carpentry was Zhū YóuJiào, Emperor XīZōng whose reign (1620-1627) was known as TiānQĭ (朱由校 - 熹宗, 天啟/天启). Thought to be a useless illiterate emperor who allowed the notorious eunuch Wèi ZhōngXián (魏忠賢/魏忠贤) to rise in and abuse power, he was the emperor before ChóngZhēn emperor who commited suicide when the rebels led by Li ZiCheng seized Beijing (1644).

The namesake of this thread was Zhū Dì (朱棣), Emperor ChéngZŭ (成祖), less well known as TàiZōng, reign (1402-1424) was known YŏngLè (永樂/永乐). He was the son of the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty. After the dynasty's founding, he was appointed as Prince of Yan (燕王) and based in present-day Beijing (the capital of the Dynasty was initially at Nanjing). A veteran soldier who was assigned to protect against return of the Mongols, he won a power struggle against his nephew, the second emperor of the Dynasty. He also led several expeditions against the Mongols, had the capital of Ming Dynasty moved north to Beijing, commissioned numerous maritime voyages led by the eunuch Zheng Ho (Cheng Ho) and also commissioned a vast encyclopaedic compilation. Quite a capable chap.

I guess you're confused who was who. Carpenter emperor was Emperor TianQi, elder brother of Emperor Chong Zhen. Because Emperor Tian Qi didn't have any sons, so Emperor Chong Zhen ascended the throne...

okay thanks, so his in viet is called Yen Vuong before he became king right? he lead an army and attack the capital and kick his nephew out right?!

is he a good king? i mean was he good to the people, cos some films i watched protrayed him as a good king while others protrayed him as a power hungry person.

I think you're referring to Emperor Yong Le, the third Ming emperor. He was by far the best and most capable Ming Emperor. The famost Forbidden City at Beijing was established by him...

Well, embarassed to say I don't know what Emperor Cheng Zu is called called in viet, but Yen Vuong sounds close enough to Yan Wang (Prince of Yan).

And it's not as simple as he woke up one day and decided to march to the capital to seize the throne.

There are several angles to the story.

First of all, he was probably the most capable surviving son of the founder of the Ming Dynasty. Among the imperial princes, his fief was the closest to the Mongols who were just driven from central China, and his posting there was to guard against their return.

He was the fourth son, and his eldest brother Zhu Biao was the Crown Prince by reason of primogeniture, but as far as historical accounts show, was not a strong character. Zhu Biao died in AD 1392. As a result, the Zhu Biao's son, Zhu YunWen, grandson of Zhu YuanZhang, became the designated heir and ascended the throne at the age of 22 in AD 1398.

As part of attempts to consolidate the new dynasty and bring about internal stability, Zhu YuanZhang (founding Emperor HongWu) appointed 24 out of his 26 sons as princes over various parts of China. Some of the princes (like Zhu Di) had become entrenched in their power bases when Zhu YunWen ascended the throne as Emperor JianWen. Some of the princes had died and passed on their positions to their respective successors. There was an awareness that these branches of the imperial family might end up rivalling for power with the main imperial line they originally meant to support.

When Zhu Di travelled with military escort from Beijing to Nanjing to pay respects after Zhu YuanZhang died, Zhu YunWen forbade Zhu Di to approach and had him turn back. The pretext was that the military escort was disrespectful to the late Emperor and to the new Emperor. Some suspected the new ruler was actually afraid of his uncle.

In order to consolidate power for the new emperor, advisors to Emperor JianWen (Huang ZiCheng and Qi Tai etc.) guided the emperor to remove a number of enfeoffed Imperial princes. Zhu Di was aware his turn would eventually come and chose to act first. He staged an uprising on the pretext of ridding the emperor of evil ministers (Huang ZiCheng etc.). In some accounts, it was said Zhu Di had been preparing for quite some time to usurp the throne and would have acted regardless of Emperor JianWen's actions.

Initially, Zhu Di was met with a several setbacks. But an advisor suggested that with most of the imperial forces deployed, the capital would be weakly defended. Zhu Di took a great risk to make for the capital, fighting several major battles along the way.

The Imperial Court in Nanjing could not coordinate the imperial forces in time and the capital was indeed poorly defended when Zhu Di's army arrived. A fire broke out in the palace and the Emperor JianWen was supposed to have perished with his wife.

Zhu Di then assumed the Dragon Throne for himself.


I guess there's no simple way to evaluate him.

After crowning himself the new ruler, he embarked on a campaign to rid himself of several potential rivals and remnants of Emperor JianWen's cliqué/supporters - mainly by killing them or reducing them to ordinary citizens. He probably considered it necessary to secure the throne for his line and for the stability of the country.

After the civil war, much of the countryside were devastated. Zhu Di implemented numerous programs to resettle the displaced refugees of the civil war and to restore/develop farmlands damaged by the war.

He also repaired and upgraded the Grand Canal to facilitate transport of grains from the south to the north.

How would one decide whether he was a good ruler?

I've merged the two discussions on Yongle, one being started by asiaconquerer and the other by dragonlord. Have a nice day.

yong le is not a king, well he used to be a king but that was before he ascended the throne. In chinese context, the emperor is the King of Kings, reminds me of jesus...anyway an emperor is effectively a higher ranking then King, dunno if this is the same concept in the West?

Wow, that's cool indeed. Just like unite one nation by asiaconquerer with another nation of mine. Later ruled by wuTao??? Hahaha... just kidding...

i would say that makes him a good ruler since he did clean up after himself.



the word Vuong in vietnamese doesn't have to mean king, like the word Vuong Gia means a decendent of the imediate ruling family that has been put into a post in the imperial court. like Da Nhi Gon of the Qing dynasty, he was also refered to as Nhiep Chanh Vuong when he took care of the court affairs during the early years of thuan Tri.

Da Nhi Gon = Duo Er Gun?

Nhiep Chanh Vuong = She Zheng Wang? (Prince of Regent)

Thuan Tri = Shunzhi?

Hope that I'm right.

I guess all of them are right. They sounds more or less the same. Whew, really need to take a little bit of effort to think the meaning of the vietnamese version...

Not only he is good at fighting mongols.. Country prosper under his rule.. In order to spread chinese superiority worldwide.. he started zheng he voyayges.. He was really a good ming ruler with many many good achievements.. He was a ruler which bring glory to the chinese.. in my opinion he is better than tang taizong and han wudi

Yeap, he was the best ruler among the Ming rulers. However, he was a thrifty person as he used up all government resources for his own objectives. As a result, by the time his seccessors took over his throne, the government's coffer was almost empty...

If there is one (BIG) problem he should bear responsibility was his allowing the eunuchs into positions of power after his father, the founder emperor Hong Wu, explicitly stipulated that the eunuchs were not to be permitted to participate / influence / interfere with affairs of the Imperial Court.

Hong Wu had a large bronze sign engraved at the Palace with those very instructions. The sign was later taken down by the eunuch Wang Zhen was served the emperor Ying Zong and responsible for the disaster at TuMu against the Oirat mongols.

Though that was a few generations later, it was Emperor Yong Le who assigned eunuchs into positions of power in the Imperial Court - the most famous being the admiral Zheng Ho.

One of the reasons for his doing so was believed to be the shortage of civil/military officials Yong Le could trust - after all, regardless of the official spin, he was a usurper. Another reason was that the eunuchs played a significant role in the success of his coup.

Though Yong Le did not take down the bronze sign erected by Hong Wu, he (re-) opened the can of worms that plagued many previous dynasties, something which Hong Wu was trying to avoid. During his own reign, the eunuchs were generally able talents who were assigned tasks as much for their capabilities as well as their loyalties.

For someone who struggled his way to the throne, Yong Le was a mature man, capable of controlling the eunuchs and remain the boss in the picture.

This was not the case for later emperors to inherit the thrones without demonstrating any abilities for the power. They, especially those who were crowned at a young age (and Ming Dynasty had a lot of those, their predecessors usually dying young from overindulgence) were vulnerable to the influences of the eunuchs - the role of the master and the servant being swapped in all but name.

The emperor Ying Zong who got captured at the Battle of TuMu was an example of a young emperor influenced by his eunuch caregiver. Ying Zong was eventually released by the Mongols and returned to Beijing, where he was consigned to live in seclusion while his brother sat on the throne, having been installed as emperor after Ying Zong's capture. Ying Zong was one of the few rulers in Chinese history who actually got a chance to regain power. Restored to the throne in a coup while his emperor brother was critically ill, Ying Zong was then a mature adult after all his experiences, and demonstrated a lot more sense and leadership, not being susceptible to influences of the eunuchs anymore.