Zhu Gaochi

Also known as Ming Renzong · Hongxi Di

Zhu Gaochi, eldest son of the future Yongle Emperor, was born in 1378 and named heir to the Prince of Yan in 1395. During the Jingnan campaign he held Beiping against Li Jinglong's much larger army. He became crown prince in 1404 and acted as regent in the capital while his father campaigned on the steppe. Enthroned in the eighth month of 1424, he declared the next year the first of the Hongxi era and at once stopped the western ocean treasure fleets and provincial procurement missions, freed the families of Jianwen loyalists who had been made state slaves, and released the revenue minister Xia Yuanji from prison. In the third month of 1425 he resolved to move the capital back to Nanjing, but he died in the Qin'an Hall two months later, in his forty-eighth year by Chinese reckoning. His temple name is Renzong. His son Zhu Zhanji succeeded him, and historians pair the two reigns as the Ren-Xuan period of good government.