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Updated: June 22, 2025
The whole of the reign of Hongwou was taken up with a war for the supremacy of his authority and the security of his frontiers, in which he, indeed, took little personal part, but which was carried on under his directions by his great generals, Suta and Fuyuta. The former of these generals was engaged for nearly twenty years, from 1368 to 1385, in constant war with the Mongols.
Through these timely precautions Chuwen, who was only sixteen years of age, was proclaimed emperor without any opposition, and took the title of Kien Wenti. Hongwou had rightly divined that his sons might prove a thorn in the side of his successor, and his policy of employing them in posts at a distance from the capital was only half successful in attaining its object.
Although Tsongching had some nominal successors, he was, strictly speaking, the last of the Ming emperors, and with him the great dynasty founded by Hongwou came to an end. The many disasters that preceded its fall rendered the loss of the imperial station less of a blow to the individual, and the last of the Ming rulers seems to have even experienced relief on reaching the term of his anxieties.
The plot was discovered in good time, but it is said that the emperor did not consider the exigencies of the case to be met until he had executed twenty thousand of the mutineers. In 1398 Hongwou was attacked with the illness which ended his life. He was then in his seventy-first year, and had reigned more than thirty years since his proclamation of the Ming dynasty at Nankin.
He was crowned emperor under the title of Hongwou, and instituted the Ming dynasty, which held the throne of China until three centuries afterwards, when another strange turn in the tide of affairs again overthrew Chinese rule and brought a new dynasty of Tartar emperors to the throne.
But while he rewarded his army, Hongwou very carefully avoided giving his government a military character, knowing that the Chinese resent the superiority of military officials, and he devoted his main efforts to placing the civil administration on its old and national basis.
The Emperor Keen Lung, in his history of the Mings, states that Hongwou possessed most of the virtues and few of the vices of mankind. He was brave, patient under suffering, far-seeing, studious of his people's welfare, and generous and forbearing toward his enemies.
When they had driven out the Mongol the Mings seem to have settled down into an ordinary and intensely national line of rulers. The successors of Hongwou did nothing great or noteworthy, but the Chinese acquiesced in their rule, and even showed that they possessed for it a special regard and affection.
The pacification of the northern borders was followed by the dispatch of troops into the southern provinces of Szchuen and Yunnan, where officials appointed by the Mongols still exercised authority. One of these had incurred the wrath of Hongwou by assuming a royal style and proclaiming himself King of Hia.
In this he received the cordial support of the Chinese themselves, who had been kept in the background by their late conquerors, whose administration was essentially military. Hongwou also patronized literature, and endowed the celebrated Hanlin College, which was neglected after the death of Kublai.
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