First
Chapter
'1421'
By GAVIN MENZIES
On
2 february 1421, China dwarfed every nation
on earth. On that Chinese New Year's Day, kings
and envoys from the length and breadth of Asia,
Arabia, Africa and the Indian Ocean assembled
amid the splendours of Beijing to pay homage
to the Emperor Zhu Di, the Son of Heaven. A fleet
of leviathan ships, navigating the oceans with
pinpoint accuracy, had brought the rulers and
their envoys to pay tribute to the emperor and
bear witness to the inauguration of his majestic
and mysterious walled capital, the Forbidden
City. No fewer than twenty-eight heads of state
were present, but the Holy Roman Emperor, the
Emperor of Byzantium, the Doge of Venice and
the kings of England, France, Spain and Portugal
were not among them. They had not been invited,
for such backward states, lacking trade goods
or any worthwhile scientific knowledge, ranked
low on the Chinese emperor's scale of priorities. Zhu
Di was the fourth son of Zhu Yuanzhang, who
had risen to become the first Ming emperor
despite his lowly birth as the son of a hired
labourer from one of the poorest parts of China.
In 1352, eight years before Zhu Di's birth, a
terrible flood had struck parts of China. The
Yellow River had burst its banks, submerging
vast areas of farmland, washing away villages
and leaving famine and disease in its wake. The
country was still in the throes of a terrible
epidemic. The Mongols had ruled China since its
conquest in 1279 by the great Kublai Khan, grandson
of the greatest warlord of them all, Genghis
Khan. But in 1352, plagued by famine and disease
and desperately poor as a result of the depredations
of their Mongol overlords, the peasants around
Guangzhou on the Pearl River delta rose in revolt.
Zhu Yuanzhang joined the rebels and rapidly emerged
as their leader, rallying soldiers and farmers
to his cause. During the next three years the
revolt spread throughout China. Over decades
of peace, the once ferocious Mongol warriors,
the scourge of all Asia, had grown idle and complacent.
Riven by internal dissension, they proved no
match for the army raised by Zhu Di's father.
In 1356, his forces captured Nanjing and cut
off corn supplies to the Mongols' northern capital,
Ta-tu (Beijing).
Zhu Di was eight years old when his father's
army entered Ta-tu itself. The last Mongol Emperor
of China, Toghon Temur, fled the country, retreating
north to the steppe, the Mongol heartland. Zhu
Yuanzhang pronounced a new dynasty, the Ming,
and proclaimed himself the first emperor, taking
the dynastic title Hong Wu. Zhu Di joined the
Chinese cavalry and proved himself a brave and
skilful officer. At the age of twenty-one he
was sent to join the campaign against the Mongol
forces still occupying the mountainous south-western
province of Yunnan, bordering modern Tibet and
Laos, and in 1382 he was ordered to destroy Kun
Ming, to the south of the Cloud Mountains, the
remaining Mongol stronghold in the province.
After the city was taken, the Chinese butchered
the adult defenders and castrated those prisoners
who had not reached puberty. Thousands of young
Mongol boys had their penises and testicles severed.
Many perished of shock and disease; the surviving
eunuchs were conscripted into the imperial armies
or kept as servants or retainers.
Eunuchs served as 'palace menials, harem watch
dogs and spies' for rulers throughout the ancient
world, in Rome, Greece, North Africa and much
of Asia, and they had played an important role
throughout Chinese history. Surprisingly, they
were intensely loyal to the emperors who had
authorized their mutilation. There had been eunuchs
at the imperial court since at least the eighth
century BC and as many as seventy thousand were
employed in and around the capital. Only sexless
males were permitted to act as personal servants
to the emperor and to guard the women of his
family and the quarters occupied by his concubines
in the 'Great Within', inside the palace doors.
Emperors retained thousands of concubines both
as a symbol of their power and to ensure a number
of male heirs at a time of high infant mortality;
guaranteeing the continuity of the dynasty and
the worship of ancestors was a vital part of
Chinese cultural rites. Non-eunuchs, even relatives
of the emperor and his consorts, were barred
from the vicinity of the women's quarters on
pain of death. The absence of potent males ensured
that any children born to the concubines had
been sired by the emperor alone.
Eunuchs also helped to preserve the aura of
sanctity and secrecy that surrounded the imperial
throne. While the gods granted a 'Mandate of
Heaven' to legitimize the emperor's rule, they
could rescind it if he proved guilty of human
failings, misgovernment or misconduct. It was
forbidden to look upon the emperor: even senior
officials kept their eyes downcast in the imperial
presence, and when he passed through the streets,
screens were erected to shield him from public
gaze. Only the 'effeminate, cringing eunuchs',
slavishly dependent upon the emperor for their
very lives, were considered cowed enough to be
silent witnesses to his private foibles and weaknesses.
Ma
He, one of the boys castrated at Kun Ming,
was billeted in the household of Zhu Di, where
his name was changed to Zheng He. Many of the
Mongols whom Zhu Di and his father expelled had
adopted the Muslim faith. Zheng He was a devout
Muslim besides being a formidable soldier, and
he became Zhu Di's closest adviser. He was a
powerful figure, towering above Zhu Di; some
accounts say he was over two metres tall and
weighed over a hundred kilograms, with 'a stride
like a tiger's'. When Zhu Di was elevated to
Prince of Yen - a region centred on Beijing -
and given the new and more important responsibility
of guarding China's northern provinces, Zheng
He went with him. Copyright © 2003
by Gavin Menzies |
