Royals › Monarch / Emperor
Zhu Yunwen
Second Ming emperor, of the Jianwen reign, whose moves against his princely uncles provoked Zhu Di's rebellion and who vanished when Nanjing fell in 1402
Mural of the event “Jingnan Campaign”, which this person took part in.
After Ming Taizu's death, Emperor Jianwen ascended and pushed iron-blooded vassal-reduction policy, forcing several royal clan princes to death in short order. This directly pushed the heavily armed Prince Yan Zhu Di to the dead end.
Also known as Minghui Di · Jianwen Di
- Roles
- Monarch / Emperor
Zhu Yunwen, second son of the heir apparent Zhu Biao and grandson of the founding Ming emperor, was born in 1377. After his father's death he was named imperial grandson-heir in 1392, and he succeeded in the intercalary fifth month of 1398, taking the era name Jianwen from the following year. Guided by Qi Tai, Huang Zicheng and Fang Xiaoru, he stripped the princes of Zhou, Xiang, Qi, Dai and Min of their fiefs, and the Prince of Xiang burned himself to death. In the seventh month of 1399 his uncle Zhu Di, Prince of Yan, rebelled, and in the sixth month of 1402 Yan troops entered Nanjing by the Jinchuan Gate. The palace caught fire and, in the words of the History of Ming, the emperor's end is unknown; stories that he escaped as a monk circulated widely. The Yongle court erased his era name, restored only in 1595, and the Qing granted him the posthumous name Gongminhui in 1736.
Life and times
Dates 1377 CE–death unknown (disappeared 1402)