Fall of Wei Zhongxian

Timeline

1. 1627Forbidden City · BeijingThe Tianqi Emperor left no surviving sons, so his brother the Prince of Xin, Zhu Youjian, succeeded to the throne. Wei Zhongxian had plotted to continue controlling the court but was blocked by Empress Zhang and others. The new emperor was sixteen; he initially retained Wei Zhongxian, rejecting his immediate request to retire, and observed the situation inside and outside the palace.
2. 1627Beijing · BeijingThe tribute student Qian Jiazheng and others submitted memorials listing ten great crimes of Wei Zhongxian, and over a hundred officials followed with impeachments. After gathering the charges, the Chongzhen emperor issued an edict assigning Wei to tend incense at the ancestral tombs in Fengyang and forbade the building of further shrines in his honor. The eunuch faction collapsed like a tree falling and its monkeys scattering, and the court situation rapidly reversed.
3. 1627Fucheng · HebeiWhile Wei Zhongxian was traveling south, someone warned the Chongzhen emperor that he might conspire with the exiled eunuch faction to cause disorder. The emperor changed his order and had the imperial guards bring Wei back to the capital. Wei learned the news at an inn in Fucheng and hanged himself with Li Chaoqin using a sash. His attendants scattered; when the arresting party arrived, he was already dead.
4. 1627–1629Beijing and Hejian · North ChinaThe Chongzhen emperor ordered Wei's corpse mutilated and his head displayed at Hejian. Ke Shi was beaten to death at the Laundry Bureau. Wei Liangqing, Hou Guoxing, and other relatives of the eunuch faction were executed and their households confiscated. By the second year of Chongzhen, over a hundred persons linked to the eunuch faction had been listed for punishment, of whom more than twenty were sentenced to death. The Tianqi-era eunuch autocracy was by then dead in both name and substance.