Yuan Hong

Biography

Childhood accession and Empress Dowager Feng's government

Yuan Hong was born in Pingcheng, the Northern Wei capital, under the surname Tuoba. He became crown prince in 469 (Huangxing 3 of Northern Wei), and his father abdicated to him in 471 (Huangxing 5 of Northern Wei). His father continued to wield power as retired emperor. After the latter's death, Empress Dowager Feng again directed the government. She raised Yuan Hong. Official salary reform, the equal field system, and the three chiefs system belonged mainly to this early period under her direction, although decrees were issued in the emperor's name.

Personal rule and the move to Luoyang

Empress Dowager Feng died in 490 (Taihe 14 of Northern Wei), after which Yuan Hong governed directly. He reorganized official ranks, examined provincial administrators, and promoted court ritual. During a southern campaign in 493 (Taihe 17 of Northern Wei), he decided to move the capital from Pingcheng to Luoyang despite opposition from some Xianbei nobles. The move shifted the court's political centre south and increased its contact with Central Plains elites and the southern dynasties.

Cultural reforms and final years

After the move, Yuan Hong required changes in court dress, language, and surnames, changing his own clan name from Tuoba to Yuan. He revised official grades and encouraged marriages between Xianbei nobles and prominent Han families. The measures altered the ruling elite's organization and public culture, but also provoked resistance. Crown Prince Yuan Xun was deposed and later executed following an attempt to return to Pingcheng. Yuan Hong continued campaigning against the southern dynasties and died at the Gutangyuan travelling palace in 499 (Taihe 23 of Northern Wei). He was buried at Changling Mausoleum.

His Birth and the Rule of Killing the Mother on the Setting Up of the Heir

The History of Wei records that "the founder, Emperor Xiaowen, was named Hong, eldest son of the emperor Xianwen; his mother was the Lady Li. On the day Wushen of the eighth month of the first year of Huangxing he was born in the Purple Palace at Pingcheng, with a divine light shining in the chamber and the air of heaven and earth thick and harmonious. The emperor was fair at birth and of uncommon appearance, and as a child of remarkable sense, and growing up deep, generous and filial, with the bearing of a ruler, and the emperor Xianwen loved him especially." On the day Xinwei of the sixth month of the third year he "was made heir apparent" at three years old. By the Northern Wei system the mother of the heir was put to death by the old rule that "when the son is honoured the mother dies", and so Yuan Hong was brought up from infancy by his grandmother the empress dowager Feng. While the empress dowager held court the emperor Xianwen obeyed her in all things, and only after Yuan Hong's birth did she return the government, bringing up the eldest imperial son herself. On the day Bingwu of the eighth month of the fifth year Yuan Hong received his father's abdication, "taking the throne in the Taihua front hall, granting a general amnesty and changing the reign-title to Yanxing".

The Retired Emperor's Rule and the Disorders of Yanxing

At the beginning of Xiaowendi's reign the retired emperor Tuoba Hong still held the government. At that time Northern Wei suffered "years of flood and drought", the levies were heavy, the officials greedy and violent, the people vagrant, and the risings of the various peoples unceasing. In the ninth month of the first year of Yanxing "Feng Bian of Gaoyang in Qingzhou gathered more than a thousand men and called himself king of Qi"; in the tenth month the people of Shuofang under Cao Pingyuan stormed Shilou fort and killed its officers; and in the eleventh month there was another rebellion. In the second month of the third year of Yanxing the court decreed that a county magistrate who could clear his county of "robbers" should "govern two counties and receive the pay of two", that one who could clear two counties should govern three and be promoted to commandery governor after three years, and that the two-thousand-picul officials likewise should be promoted to inspector after three years. The retired emperor Tuoba Hong, in the several years of his rule, also took measures "to reward the honest, punish the corrupt, lighten the levies and encourage farming", "but they had little effect and the situation scarcely changed". It is reckoned that in the ten years from the first year of Yanxing to the fourth year of Taihe alone "the recorded outbreaks and rebellions in the various parts of the realm came to more than twenty, and the Northern Wei government was in grave disorder".

The Regency of the Empress Dowager Feng and the Early Taihe Years

In the sixth month of the first year of Chengming, when Yuan Hong had just turned ten, the retired emperor Tuoba Hong died suddenly; the History of Wei records that "when Xianwen died violently men said the empress dowager had done it", the rumour being that she killed him. In the early years of his reign his grandmother by the principal line, the empress dowager Feng, issued measures in his name; she "was resourceful and could undertake great matters, and life and death, reward and punishment, she decided in a moment, with rich political experience and ability", and from the first year of Taihe "began a series of great reforms in social custom, politics and economy, consciously carrying out Sinicisation". In the twelfth month of the seventh year she decreed the prohibition of marriage "within one clan and of the same surname", reforming Xianbei custom through marriage; in the sixth month of the eighth year she decreed the establishment of official salaries; and in the ninth and tenth years she had the equal-field and three-elders systems promulgated in Yuan Hong's name, "bringing great changes to Northern Wei society". Emperor Xiaowen, "brought up and trained by the empress dowager from childhood, was most filial to his grandmother and cautious by nature, and from the time she held the court he seldom took part in government, referring every matter, great or small, to her will".

Taking the Government and His Measures in Ritual and Law

In the fourteenth year of Taihe Yuan Hong turned twenty-three. Under the empress dowager's long and strict training and direct influence he "not only mastered the meaning of the classics and the histories and the hundred schools, with a rich vein of talent, but gathered rich experience of government and increased his practical ability, all of which laid a firm foundation for the great reforms to come". In the ninth month of that year the empress dowager died, and "Emperor Xiaowen grieved to the utmost and wept for three days", crying aloud to his ministers that "from childhood I received the empress dowager's nurture, both kind and stern, and the affection of a son and the way of a ruler and father she never ceased to teach me"; and in an edict he said that "I took the throne in childhood and relied on the empress dowager to pacify the whole realm; my ancestors attended only to arms and did not cultivate letters, and it was she who taught me the ancient ways". From this time the twenty-four-year-old Yuan Hong took the government himself, inheriting the will of his forebears to Sinicise and employing scholars of the Han. He carried out Han ritual, "building the Bright Hall, erecting the ancestral temple, rectifying the sacrifices, welcoming spring in the eastern suburb, ploughing the sacred field in person and sacrificing"; in the eleventh month of the fifteenth year he "followed the Han official system in fixing the grades of officials and examining the governors and commandery officials", his decree on examination providing that "a two-thousand-picul official graded in the highest class shall be tried as a general of the fourth rank and given a dun horse, one in the upper middle shall be made a general of the fifth rank, and one in the lower upper shall be given a suit of clothes"; and in the winter of that year he "set up the office of great music, settled the ceremonial music and removed the notes of Zheng and Wei", having Gao Lü, president of the secretariat, with the musicians discuss ancient music and fix it "according to the six Confucian classics and by reference to the musical records of the several states". In the first month of the sixteenth year he issued the decree of the five ranks, that distant kinsmen of the imperial house not descended from the founder and those of other surnames enfeoffed "be reduced to dukes, dukes to marquises, marquises to counts, and viscounts and barons unchanged", the names altered but the grades as before; and he had the ministers discuss the order of the five elements and accepted the proposal of the assistant secretary. In the fourth month he promulgated the new code, "abolishing the cruel dismemberment and waist-cutting of the early Northern Wei" for lighter penalties, "the extinction of five clans reduced to the common ancestor, of three clans to one house, and of a house to the man himself".

The Move to Luoyang: The Divination in the Bright Hall and the Plan of the Southern Campaign

Northern Wei had long had its capital at Pingcheng, which "being far north was cold, with snow in the sixth month and frequent sandstorms", and whose northern position "was the less suited to the rule of the whole Central Plain", and so Yuan Hong resolved to move the capital to Luoyang. To ensure it he made careful dispositions: in the fifth month of the seventeenth year of Taihe he "held a fast in the Bright Hall of the capital Pingcheng, assembled his ministers and was about to divine whether to send out the army against the south", the master of ceremonies divining and "examining the lines on the tortoise shell, finding the hexagram Ge, Revolution"; and Yuan Hong at once quoted its judgement that "the revolution of Tang and Wu answered to Heaven and accorded with men", saying that nothing could be more auspicious, at which the ministers, knowing his mind made up, dared not speak, save the president of the secretariat, the prince of Rencheng, Tuoba Cheng, who said that "Your Majesty inherits the former emperor's work and rules the Central Plain; to send troops against an unconquered small state and yet obtain the hexagram of the revolution of Tang and Wu can hardly be called greatly auspicious", and Yuan Hong rebuked him fiercely and the ceremony ended abruptly. He then summoned Tuoba Cheng and, dismissing those about him, said that "in the Bright Hall I feared the many mouths would ruin my great matter, and so feigned anger to awe the officials", and disclosed his plan: "This undertaking is indeed hard, but Pingcheng is a land for war, not for civil government, and to change customs there is impossible; I mean to take the occasion to move the capital to the Central Plain — what say you?" Tuoba Cheng then understood; and the History of Wei gives his earlier words that "the region within Yao and Han is the house of emperors and the land of the Luo is the king's domain; I mean to take this southern campaign to move into the Central Plain", to which Tuoba Cheng, thus reminded, at once agreed. In the sixth month he ordered a bridge over the river built for the army to cross, "reviewed the troops in person, appointed the heir, issued proclamations and sent letters into Qi territory, claiming a southern campaign", levied men in Yang and Xu and raised troops, "sent the prince of Guangling, Tuoba Yu, with the staff to pacify the north", and set out from Pingcheng with the whole body of officials, a hundred thousand horse and foot; he left the grand commandant Tuoba Pi and the prince of Guangling, Tuoba Yu, to hold Pingcheng, gave the prince of Henan charge of the military of the western passes with the minister of works Mu Liang and the generals Lu Yuan and of the pacified south, and, when the grand commandant Tuoba Pi asked that palace women be taken along, rebuked him sharply, saying that "on campaign one does not speak of inner matters; such a request must not be made". The army marched out in order, "its ranks orderly and its march vast, doing no harm wherever it passed", through Heng and Si prefectures, reaching Luoyang at the end of the ninth month of the seventeenth year, when, in deep autumn with unceasing rain, it halted to await orders, and "many Xianbei ministers, though unwilling to move inward, feared the southern campaign more, and so followed without daring to object again, and the plan of moving the capital was settled". The History of Wei records the crucial scene as "in military dress with the whip in his hand he rode out on horseback, and the ministers bowed their heads before the horse and asked that the southern campaign be stopped; the emperor then desisted, and so settled the plan of moving the capital".

After the Move: Dress, Speech, Registration and Surname

In the eighteenth year Yuan Hong formally proclaimed the move to Luoyang. As it proceeded great numbers of Xianbei poured into the interior, while "the women wore narrow-collared short-sleeved coats and most could not speak Chinese, all of which did not accord with the customs of the Central Plain"; and the new settlers, "coming first to Luoyang, had not a beam for a roof nor a picul of grain, were unskilled at farming and longed for the old", so that unless this were dealt with it "would gravely hinder intercourse among the peoples and the growth of economy and culture". With the support of Han scholars Yuan Hong at once set about reforming Xianbei customs: first the dress, "the officials of the court changing to the court dress of Han officials", and a few days later a decree remitting three years' taxes for the settlers, "encouraging them to till the fields newly granted by the government", many of them being enrolled as imperial guards. Just then the governor of Yongzhou under Qi rebelled against Wei, and Yuan Hong, "taking his disloyalty and unrighteousness as his pretext, sent the general of the southern campaign against Nanzheng in four columns against Qi", and at the end of the twelfth month led three hundred thousand in person south across the Huai to, but "Shouyang being strongly held and the Wei army unable to take it", he gave it up and went east along the Huai against Zhongli, having to withdraw in the third month of the following year. Returning, and "heedless of the weariness of the march, he at once assembled his ministers to discuss the prohibition of the barbarian speech", and in the sixth month issued a decree that "the speech of the northern customs shall not be used in court; whoever offends shall be deprived of his office". In the same month he decreed that the Xianbei who had moved to Luoyang "should be buried in Henan after death and not be taken back to Pingcheng", so that "those who moved from Dai commandery to Luoyang all became men of Luoyang county in Henan". In the eighth month of the nineteenth year the Jinyong palace at Luoyang was completed and schools were set up in the city; in the ninth month the new capital was all but finished and "the six palaces of Pingcheng and all the officials moved to Luoyang". In the first month of the twentieth year he decreed the change of the two-syllable Xianbei surnames into single-syllable Han surnames, the decree saying that "the old houses of merit who moved from Dai commandery to Luoyang have surnames that are often repeated; all shall be changed", so that "the Xianbei surnames were no longer strange and repetitive but exactly like the Han surnames". To further the fusion of Xianbei and Han he also strongly encouraged intermarriage, "taking the daughters of great Han families such as that of Fanyang into his own palace" and himself arranging marriages for his six younger brothers, the eldest, the prince of Xianyang, marrying the daughter of Li Chong, the chief of the court of justice of Longxi, and the youngest, the prince of Beihai, Yuan Xiang, the daughter of Zheng Yi of Xingyang; "of the six princesses, all but the daughter of Mu Mingle of Dai commandery, one of the eight great Xianbei noble houses, were of the great Han families of the Central Plain". He also "adopted the Wei and Jin system of grades of lineage, assigning surnames and clans among the Xianbei nobles and giving different offices and privileges according to rank", a period called "the restoration of Xiaowen".

The Deposing of the Heir, the Mutei Rebellion and the Later Campaigns

The deposing of Yuan Xun was the most painful family affair after the move. Yuan Xun "never loved learning, was fat and bulky and dreaded the heat of Luoyang, always longing for the old capital and thinking of returning north", and "would not speak Chinese nor wear Chinese dress, tearing up all the Han robes and caps given him and going back to the loose hair and left lapel of the Xianbei"; the junior tutor Gao Daoyue admonished him earnestly again and again, but he not only would not mend but bore a grudge. Yuan Hong's absence on progress gave him his chance, and he plotted with those about him "secretly to take three thousand of the imperial horses from the palace and flee to Pingcheng", and "killed Gao Daoyue with his own hands within the palace precincts". When it came out, the general Yuan Yan "posted troops to guard every palace gate and stopped the affair"; the next morning the president of the secretariat galloped in with the report, and Yuan Hong, greatly alarmed, "turned back to Luoyang in haste, at once summoned Yuan Xun, and in uncontrollable anger recounted his crimes, beating him with his own hands" and having the prince of Xianyang beat him more than a hundred blows "until the flesh was cut to the bone, when he was dragged out and imprisoned in a separate lodging west of the city". In the tenth month Yuan Hong received his ministers in the Qinghui hall to discuss deposing him, and in the twelfth month reduced him to commoner and imprisoned him at Wubi city in Heyang; in the fourth month of the next year, on progress, the censor-in-chief Li Biao "secretly memorialised that Yuan Xun was again plotting with those about him", and Yuan Hong at once sent the prince of Xianyang, Yuan Xi, and the attendant of the secretariat with poison to Heyang, "forcing Yuan Xun to take his own life at fifteen". The rebellion of Mutei arose from the discontent of the old Xianbei nobles: Yuan Pi and the others "were mostly old Xianbei nobles and their descendants, displeased that Xiaowen employed only scholars of the Central Plain", and opposed the move, the change of dress and office and the prohibition of the old speech, Yuan Pi "even appearing openly at a great court assembly in the old Xianbei dress without scruple", and the emperor, seeing him old and infirm, did not press him; and at the beginning of the move Yuan Long and Yuan Chao had "tried to seize the heir Yuan Xun and keep him at Pingcheng, rising to hold the two prefectures of Heng and Shuo north of the Yanmen pass", and though that plot failed their rebellious intent remained, and now they prepared a greater rebellion with Mutei. Yuan Cheng, then ill in bed, was at once summoned; he "went by forced marches through Yanmen northward", and "entering the city alone and unawares, explained to Mutei's party the chances of fortune and ruin, and the rebels crumbled in a moment"; Mutei, at his wits' end, "hastily led several hundred of his men against Li Huan, failed, fled west of the city and surrendered", and Yuan Cheng "prosecuted Mutei's whole party and imprisoned Lu Rui and more than a hundred others, so that the region was quiet", reporting the whole to the court. After the rebellion was put down Yuan Hong, "because the old Xianbei nobles and the chiefs of the northern peoples could not bear the heat, allowed them to live at Luoyang in autumn and return to their tribes in spring, and men of the time called them the 'geese subjects'".

The southern campaigns grew more urgent in his last years. In the sixth month of the twenty-first year of Taihe he "ordered the levy of more than two hundred thousand men from the five prefectures of Ji, Ding, Ying, Xiang and Ji, preparing for a great southern campaign"; in the eighth month he set out with the six armies from, leaving Li Chong the president and the censor-in-chief Li Biao at the capital and giving his younger brother the prince of Pengcheng, Yuan Xie, temporary command of the central army; "he led his troops straight toward Xiangyang, the prince of Pengcheng and the other thirty-six armies following one after another, said to number a million, blowing their lips and sweeping the ground", and reaching Zheyang he left his officers to take it while he led his troops south against Wancheng, "taking the outer city that night"; but Fang Boyu held out and the Wei army could not win, and the attack on Xinye "met the stubborn resistance of the Qi governor Liu Siji and could not be taken until the tenth month", the Qi emperor sending the general Cui Huijing with more than twenty thousand horse and foot to relieve Xiangyang. In the eleventh month the Qi generals Han Xiufang and fifteen others surrendered to Wei, and only then did the Wei army win a victory north of the Mian river; the war went on to the third month of the following year, when Wei at last took the commanderies of Nanyang, Xinye and Nanxiang, "at Dengcheng beheading and capturing more than twenty thousand"; and Yuan Hong, pressing his victory, with a hundred thousand invested Fancheng, its Qi governor holding the gates. But "in the battle of Guoyang the Wei army was beaten, more than ten thousand killed and three thousand taken, with arms, engines and goods lost to the value of ten million", and only the urgent sending of a hundred thousand more horse and foot forced the Qi to withdraw. In the ninth month Yuan Hong, hearing of the death of the Qi emperor, decreed that "the rites do not permit attacking a house in mourning" and led his army back, falling gravely ill on the march so that "for more than ten days he could not receive his attendants", recovering only after emergency treatment. In the first month of the twenty-third year of Taihe he returned to Luoyang and, "though the illness clung to him, still held court and attended to business"; the Qi sent the grand commandant Chen Xianda, who "besieged Majuan city three hundred li north of Xiangyang for more than forty days, until the food in the city was exhausted and the officers and men ate the flesh of the dead and the bark of trees", so that the Wei troops broke out with more than a thousand killed and wounded and Chen Xianda retook Nanxiang commandery. In the first decade of the third month Yuan Hong "rode out from Luoyang in person once more, ill as he was", leaving Yu Lie in charge and keeping the general of the right guard at his side with medicines "day and night, tasting his food before it was served, unwashed and uncombed, never loosening his belt and never sleeping at ease"; and being "irritable in his long illness, he would put to death any attendant who made the slightest fault". The Wei army met the Qi at Majuan city and he "insisted on directing the fighting himself"; at the end of the third month, his illness worsening, he was forced to turn north and died at the Gutangyuan palace. Because Chen Xianda pressed in pursuit the death was concealed, and only at Wancheng was the secretary of the palace, Zhang Ru, sent with an edict to summon the heir, the news of the death then made public; and the heir Yuan Ke, reaching Luyang, held the mourning rites and formally took the throne as Emperor Xuanwu, burying Yuan Hong at Changling in the fifth month. As to the death of the empress Feng, she, left in the palace while Yuan Hong was on campaign, had a liaison with a eunuch, "afterwards denounced by the princess of Pengcheng", and in her fear "used witchcraft to curse Emperor Xiaowen to incurable illness"; on his return Yuan Hong examined the matter in secret and found it true, but "because of his filial piety to the empress dowager Wenming, whose niece the empress was, he did not depose her", only shutting her up in the palace never to see her again; and when he grew gravely ill he decreed her death, and after his death the prince of Beihai, Yuan Xiang, brought the decree and the chief of the long autumn, Bai Zheng, supervised the execution, the empress refusing to take her own life and being "forced to swallow pepper and die". Yuan Xie, for his part, "never loosened his belt in tending the sick emperor, serving him his broth himself and not troubling to comb his hair when it fell loose", yet Yuan Hong "abused him to his face at every turn" and even "in his fits of madness cut down the attendants about him", Yuan Xie out of pity "often urging the emperor not to kill at random and saving some of the attendants", though he himself "was once nearly given the whip".

The Changling Tomb and the Remains at Luoyang

Yuan Hong was buried at Changling, in what is now the south of Guanzhuang village in Mengjin district of Luoyang, where "two mounds, one large and one small, remain above ground, popularly called the great and small tombs", the emperor's being the great one, "lying north of the central axis", its rammed-earth structure peculiar in that "beneath the outer face of the mound is a ring-shaped rammed trench", with the tomb passage running south on a long slope. Twenty-one metres south of the mound "are two symmetrical stone plinths, the bases of stone figures", and forty-six metres further south "two symmetrical long rectangular pits", the passage, plinths and pits on one line, which should be the line of the original spirit road; and the tomb of the empress Wenzhao, the small mound, lies some hundred and six metres northwest, with a long sloping passage found south of its mound but no clear trace of a spirit road. With the building at Luoyang go the caves of Longmen: the middle cave of Binyang "from the first year of Jingming to the fourth year of Zhengquang, taking twenty-four years, became the chief of the many caves at Longmen for its splendour", being one of the caves made by Emperor Xuanwu "to acquire merit", its "plan horseshoe-shaped with a domed roof, twelve metres deep, ten point nine wide and nine point three high, the main wall bearing a seated Sakyamuni, the face long and clear and kindly with a faint smile, flanked by the disciples Kasyapa and Ananda and the bodhisattvas Manjusri and Samantabhadra, Kasyapa grave and mature and Ananda lively and open, so that they seem alive". Of his descendants it is recorded that "the posterity of Tuoba Hong, Emperor Xiaowen of Wei, is divided into three branches, Tuo, Yuan and Yuan; the Tuo are mostly in Shanxi, Shaanxi and Hebei, the Yuan fewer, with descendants in Hunan, and the Yuan in Hubei and Sichuan".

Several Small Matters

Yuan Hong also had his side of practical kindness and attention to small things: in the second year of Taihe "he gave many palace women to poor men who could not find wives". His personal habits show a mixture: the life of Xing Luan records that "the founder, having taken his drug, went south of the office of works", and he wished the physician Xu Jian to make him "golden elixir", "thinking that to eat the elixir would prolong his life", though "the elixir was never successfully made"; and after moving to Luoyang, since he "could not get used to the water there, he often sent out several camels, having them relieve one another in turn to fetch water from Hengzhou for his daily drinking". His talk with close ministers had its humour too: he told Cui Guang that "my sons' names all have 'heart' as their radical, and your sons' names all have 'strength'", and Cui Guang answered that "this is what is meant by the gentleman labouring with his heart and the small man with his strength", at which Yuan Hong was greatly pleased. And once, eating with the empress dowager Feng, a small insect fell into the gruel and "she picked it out with a dagger and thought nothing of it", while Yuan Hong "flew into a rage and ordered the cook who had made the gruel put to death", and only at her "laughing remonstrance" did the cook escape.

Major Activities

Capital and court institutions

Moving the capital to Luoyang was one of Yuan Hong's most consequential decisions during his personal rule. It located the imperial house and central offices closer to the political and economic centres of the Central Plains. He also revised official grades and ritual with reference to institutions of the Wei, Jin, and southern courts, using imperial authority to implement the changes.

Surnames and social practice

Yuan Hong changed the Tuoba surname to Yuan and required Xianbei nobles who had moved to Luoyang to alter dress and court language. He sought to establish a different political identity for the governing elite. The equal field and three chiefs systems were important foundations of later Northern Wei government, but their first implementation took place under Empress Dowager Feng; Yuan Hong inherited and developed that institutional setting.

Office, Examination, Salary and Selection

In the Taihe years Yuan Hong "settled the grades and ranks of the hundred officials", in nine grades each divided into principal and secondary; and in the nineteenth year he "fixed the surnames and clans of the Xianbei nobles from Daibei according to family and office, surname being the higher and clan the next", among them the eight houses of Mu, Lu, He, Liu, Lou, Yu, Ji and Wei, "all of whom, since the founder's time, have won merit in the world and risen to the rank of prince and duke, plainly known; let them be given to the province of Si and the ministry of personnel, not to be counted among the base, but ranked with the four surnames" — the four surnames being, on one account, the great Han houses of Cui, Lu, Li and Zheng of the Central Plain. The fixing of surnames and clans "allowed the Xianbei nobles and the Han gentry to be further joined". The examination law was divided into "outer decrees" for local officials and "inner decrees" for central ones, and it is recorded that "Emperor Xiaowen, striving after good government, had all officials within the inner ranks examined by his own reckoning for promotion or demotion", the examination being "held once in three years, testing the officials' understanding of the classics, and only after several examinations deciding their rise or fall". The salary system was promulgated in the eighth year, "declaring that corruption to the value of one bolt of silk beyond the salary should be punished with death", and the equal-field decree of the following year provided that "local officials may be given a certain number of fields in proportion to their office, the public fields not to be sold but handed on to the successor". Soon after the salary system he introduced ranks of nobility, and "office and nobility being two great systems" of the ruling class, and Northern Wei having freely enfeoffed tribal and military nobles in time of war, "the title was then only an honour, called a 'borrowed title', with no economic meaning, and so was granted to excess". Of the salary system itself the effect fell short of the intent: "the honest official still lived poorly, the gap in income among local officials widened, and holders and non-holders of titles differed not only in honour but in income; corruption was not rooted out but goaded some great robbers into being, and the rapacity of garrison commanders stirred unrest on the frontier". The same decay touched selection: "after Xiaowen's reforms, Northern Wei selection valued lineage, the sons of great houses entering office thereby and holding a considerable number of posts, and their sons in turn rising in the same way, gradually forming a vast bureaucratic group"; and "the examination law gradually became a formality, officials of whatever ability being mostly graded as neither rising nor falling, so that the bureaucratic group lost its vitality and swelled, until in the later Northern Wei there were few posts and many men".

The Strategy of the Southern Campaigns and the Control of Buddhism

The move to Luoyang and the southern campaigns were two sides of one matter. Since the Northern Wei invasion under Emperor Taiwu in the Yuanjia period of Liu Song and their seizure of Qing and Qi in the Taishi period, "the Southern Dynasties were under enormous military pressure"; and "after Yongming the balance of north and south was broken, and after moving the capital to Luoyang Emperor Xiaowen was in an actively offensive position". "Before taking the government Tuoba Hong, under the influence of the empress dowager Feng, seems already to have had a settled plan for conquering Jiangnan and uniting the realm", and after taking the government he "made the strategy of the southern campaigns clearer and led his armies in person again and again against the Southern Qi, showing a strong wish to unite Jiangnan", so that "the decisive move of the capital to Luoyang was one link in the strategy of unification", and "on Xiaowen's southern campaigns and his strategy of unification the ministers were much divided, and even fiercely contested". Towards the surrounding peoples he used the policy of loose rein: Northern Wei, "having ascended the throne and inherited the position of sovereign of Huaxia, carried on the tradition of former dynasties in its enfeoffment of the surrounding tribes and powers", and "towards the surrounding peoples showed a posture of drawing them in, seeking to keep its international influence", since "the greatest benefit of obtaining the name of legitimate Huaxia sovereign was that it lessened the resistance the Northern Wei rulers met in their expansion". As to Koguryo, "in the Taihe years of Xiaowen relations between Wei and Li were put in order; from the sixth month of the first year of Chengming to the tenth month of the eighteenth year, when the capital moved to Luoyang, a period of eighteen years, the two sides kept friendly intercourse", and in the fifteenth year, when the Koguryo king Gao Lian died, "Emperor Xiaowen, already governing in person, held a solemn mourning ceremony for him". Towards Buddhism he was strict: at that time "there were nearly a hundred Buddhist temples in the capital", and though Yuan Hong personally "believed in it with especial devotion", yet "as a secular ruler he laid great weight on managing and controlling Buddhism, making a series of laws and regulations and strictly forbidding the abuses in its spread"; and in the seventeenth year, after the move, "in view of the indiscriminate building of temples at the old capital Pingcheng, he laid down in the plan of the new capital a rule strictly forbidding the wilful building of temples — the rule of Taihe: 'within the city only one site is reserved for the Yongning temple, and outside the wall only one nunnery; all the rest shall be outside the walls; let this rule be kept forever and none dare overstep it'."

The Disorders of the Imperial Kin After His Death

What Yuan Hong charged on his deathbed sowed the troubles that followed. Of his brother Yuan Xi it is told that "once, at a banquet, Xiaowen said openly to Yuan Xi that 'after my death, if my successor is not able, you may wait a while and see; if you can support him, support him, and if you cannot, you may as well take his place — only let not the throne fall to another surname'". Yet "this rash saying of Xiaowen directly roused Yuan Xi's ambition to usurp", and on his deathbed Yuan Hong "even made Yuan Xi the first of the guardians of Emperor Xuanwu", so that Yuan Xi "grew the more insolent, saying openly that 'I am not only the emperor's son but his uncle, and now I am a guardian as well; what difference is there between my own wishes and the emperor's edicts?'" and "with Fu Chengzu and Xue Weisun tried to kill Emperor Xuanwu and usurp the throne"; "when it came out, Emperor Xuanwu had Yuan Xi put to death, and Yuan Xi, before dying, weeping bitterly, kept repeating to those about him the words Xiaowen had once said". The other guardian, the prince of Beihai, Yuan Xiang, though guilty of no treason, was "insatiably grasping and took much; traded publicly and privately and plundered near and far; kept base favourites and sought their help everywhere; was full of rare and beautiful things and given up to music and women; built and adorned his mansions and made hills and pools, spending millions", and "not only sowed discord between Emperor Xuanwu and Yuan Xi but by plots pushed out the worthy and able prince of Pengcheng, Yuan Xie"; and Emperor Xuanwu, "detesting him greatly", in the first year of Zhengshi had him arrested and his greed and lewdness investigated, so that "soon after his imprisonment Yuan Xiang died strangely". As to Yuan Xie, "precisely because Yuan Xi suddenly rebelled, Emperor Xuanwu conceived a strong suspicion of the princes of the blood and grew more and more distant from them"; in the third year of Zhengshi he held that the princes of Jingzhao and Guangping, Yuan Yu and Yuan Huai, were "tyrannical and lawless", and "ordered all the princes imprisoned"; and afterwards, on slander, he "put to death without guilt his sixth uncle Yuan Xie, whose war merits were great and whose virtue was honoured by all".

Personal Relations

• Tuoba Hong: father and previous Northern Wei emperor, who abdicated to Yuan Hong.
• Lady Li: birth mother, who died when Yuan Hong was young.
• Empress Dowager Feng: grandmother and guardian, who directed government during his early reign.
• Yuan Xun: son and former crown prince, deposed after opposing the move to Luoyang and related actions.
• Yuan Ke: son and successor as emperor.

Historical Assessment

The Book of Wei, in its annals of Gaozu, emphasizes Yuan Hong's ritual institutions and reforms during personal rule. Both accounts focus on the move to Luoyang and changes often called Sinicization. Attributing the equal field and three chiefs systems entirely to his period of personal rule would obscure the decisions made under Empress Dowager Feng. The reforms changed ruling elite structures and cultural practices; their effects cannot be captured by a single direction of cultural assimilation.