Yuan Hao
| Yuan Hao | |||||||||
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| Reign | 529–529 | ||||||||
| Died | 529 | ||||||||
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| Dynasty | Northern Wei | ||||||||
| Full name | |
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| Era dates | |
| Xiàojī (孝基) 529 Jiànwǔ (建武) 529 |
Yuan Hao (元顥) (died 529), courtesy name Ziming (子明), was an imperial prince and pretender to the throne of the Chinese/Xianbei dynasty Northern Wei, who briefly received allegiance from most of the provinces south of the Yellow River after he captured the capital Luoyang with support of neighboring Liang Dynasty. He became complacent after capturing Luoyang, however, and when the general Erzhu Rong, who supported Emperor Xiaozhuang, counterattacked later that year, Yuan Hao fled Luoyang and was killed in flight.
Yuan Hao's father Yuan Xiang (元詳) was a son of Emperor Xianwen and a younger brother of Emperor Xiaowen, and was created the Prince of Beihai early in Emperor Xiaowen's reign. Yuan Xiang became powerful, as the prime minister, during the reign of Emperor Xiaowen's son Emperor Xuanwu, but was later accused of corruption and stripped of his titles. He died in imprisonment 504, and after his death, although his titles were stripped, Yuan Hao was allowed to inherit the title of Prince of Beihai. His mother's family name was Fan (范), and she was not Yuan Xiang's wife.
Yuan Hao was considered generous and ambitious in his youth. After inhering the title he was made a general, but later was accused of unspecified crimes, and both his general status and his princely title were stripped.
After Emperor Xuanwu's death in 515, his young son Emperor Xiaoming took the throne, and the imperial government was under the successive regencies of Emperor Xiaoming's mother Empress Dowager Hu and Yuan Cha, both of whom openly tolerated corruption. As a result, the empire fell into chaos, with many agrarian rebellions dividing the empire. In 524, while Yuan Cha was regent, Yuan Hao, who was considered military capable, was restored to his princely title and commissioned with an army to fight the forces of the rebel leader Hu Chen (胡琛). Yuan Hao enjoyed some early successes, and while he was unable to destroy either Hu Chen or Hu Chen's successor Moqi Chounu (万俟醜奴), he was largely able to hold his own. As a result, he received increasingly great responsibilities. In 527, however, when fellow general Xiao Baoyin's forces were defeated by Mozhe Tiansheng (莫折天生), Yuan Hao's forces also collapsed, and he was forced to flee back to Luoyang. In spring 528, Yuan Hao was again commissioned with an army and put into the post of governor of Xiang Province (相州, roughly modern Handan, Hebei), to defend the region against the rebel leader Ge Rong (葛榮), who had by this point taken much of the territory north of the Yellow River and claimed the title of Emperor of Qi.
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