The History of China - #103 - AnShi 3: Strange Bedfellows

Episode Date: July 11, 2016

Reeling from the loss of both capital cities to the rebel army, Emperor Xuanzong and his heir Li Heng split up. Three days later from the northern garrison at Lingwu, the Crowned Prince declares himself the new emperor, Suzong – surprise, Dad! Newly enthroned, Suzong will be forced to cobble together an unlikely coalition of China’s neighbors in order to have any hope of turning the tide of the civil war that threatens to drown the Tang Dynasty in blood. Arabs, Transoxianans, Ferghanans, and even Uyghur Stepperiders will join forces with a corps of Han Chinese soldiers willing to die to the last man if it means stopping An Lushan and his Yan rebel army in its tracks. Time Period Covered: July 756 – December 757 CE Major Historical Figures: Tang Dynasty: (Retired) Emperor Xuanzong [Li Longji] (r. 712-756, as retired emperor 756-762) Emperor Suzong of Tang [Crowned Prince Li Heng ] (r. 756-762) Crowned Prince Li Yu [b. 727] General Guo Ziyi Yan Dynasty Rebels: An Lushan [d. 757] An Qingxu [r. 757-759] General Yan Zhuang Uyghur Khaghanate: Bayanchur Khan [r. 747-759]“The Viceroy” (Yagbu), Field Commander of the Uyghur Cavalry Major Works Cited: Chamney, Lee (2012). “The An Shi Rebellion and Rejection of the Other in Tang China, 618-763.” University of Alberta. Dalby, Michael T. (1979). “Court Politics in Late Tang Times” in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 3. Inaba, Minoru. (2010). “Arab Soldiers in China at the Time of the An-Shi Rebellion” in The Memoirs of the Toyo Bunko, 68. Liu, Xu. (945). Jiu Tang Shu. Pulleyblank, Edwin G. (1976). “The An Lu-Shan Rebellion and the Origins of Chronic Militarism in Late T’ang China” in Essays on Tʻang Society: The Interplay of Social, Political and Economic Forces. Ouyang, Xiu (1060), (tr. Colin Mackerras, 2004) “The History of the Uyghurs” in Xin Tang Shu. Twitchett, Denis. (1979). “End of the Reign” in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 3. Sima, Guang. (1084). Zizhi Tongjian. Wang, Qinruo, et al. (1013). Cefu Yuangui. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Episode 103, Strange Bedfellows Last time, we ended off with Emperor Xuanzong's stealthy flight from Chang'an ahead of the suddenly unstoppable steamroller that was the rebel An Lushan's self-proclaimed Yan Dynasty. That event had been capped off at the Ma Wei outpost by the murder of the Chancellor Yang Guozhong by the imperial bodyguard, followed by the reluctant acceptance by the emperor of their demands that Yang's sister, the consort Yang Guifei, to be strangled for his crimes as well. At last, with great sorrow and regret, Emperor Shanzong had once again set

forth from Ma Wei, southward towards the walled fortress of Chengdu, far to the south in Sichuan, while his heir, Crown Prince Li Heng, was to remain behind and then head northward to attempt to rally additional reinforcements. We will start in today, however, as promised, with the fall and then the sacking of Chang'an, which until this point had been the largest and most thriving city on Earth, boasting a metropolitan population of between 800,000 to potentially as high as 1 million citizens, and including its outlying townships and the overall urban area, more than 1.9 million residents altogether as of the 742 census.

Well, as discussed last time, that number had taken a precipitous nosedive in mid-756 as the vast majority of the population, and of course the Emperor himself, had taken whatever they could that wasn't nailed down and abandoned the city like rats from a sinking ship. By the time An Lushan's army reached the gates of the once-teeming capital, it must have been an absolute ghost town, with only the poorest, sickest, and perhaps most foolhardily stubborn residents still residing within. The capital city of the Great Tang was captured, and from the sounds of the histories, almost without a shot fired. There simply wasn't anyone left to mount a defense.

That fact, however, did not deter the Yan Dynasty rebels from proceeding to ruthlessly sack the city of whatever valuables had been left behind, and then starting no small number of fires across the by now nearly empty metropolis. On that first day, following their occupation of the city, the An rebels rounded up and put into chains whatever officials of the Tang court had been unlucky or foolish enough to remain behind. An Lushan, however, had specifically ordered that they not be executed. Instead, Emperor An ordered that these newly captured imperial officials be sent en masse

and under heavy guard back to his provisional headquarters at Luoyang. And this order didn't simply include tax collectors and legal aides. To the contrary, An Lushan seems to have put a special importance on rounding up and collecting entertainers, court musicians, and the like to be shipped back to his own court. Once back at An Lushan's seat of power, Li Chomny writes that there seems to have been little evidence that they were ill-treated or abused, a surprising fact given An Lushan's rather infamous propensity to harshly beat and even execute his own lieutenants over trivial slights or failures. Nor did these captured officials seem to be

some sort of a stopgap measure until he could replace them with his own selected members of his loyalists. Instead, Chami posits, quote, it appears that An Lushan was attempting to relocate the Tang government to Luoyang rather than to tear it down. An Lushan's specific instructions to retrieve the court musicians also indicate that he wanted the to have the same legitimacy as a Chinese dynasty as the Tang. At the very least, An Lushan wanted strongly to project the image of a Chinese-style government, end quote. So that was the situation at the now fire-gutted and thoroughly depopulated imperial capital. So that being said, let's get back to the flight of the emperor, and far more importantly for our purposes, that of his heir. As we go over this story though, it is important

to keep in mind that far more than the period that's been leading up to this rebellion, our sources for the rebellion itself are, in the words of University of Chicago professor of Chinese history Michael T. Dalby, severely constrained. Much of the reason for this troubling lack of surviving sources can be squarely pointed to the devastation of the capital itself that we just looked over, and much more so, what's to come. But An Lushan's occupation of Chang'an in mid-756 will only be the first of a series of occupations and reconquests by the various political actors of this era, all of whom will only further the devastation to series of occupations and reconquests by the various political actors of this era, all of whom will only further the devastation to the imperial archives of the time,

not to mention the of sufficient reliable data. The quantity and quality of 9th century data represents a severe constraint. We must therefore subject the extant Chinese records to the most painstaking scrutiny, and the lack of substantial new evidence makes it difficult to do more, in honesty, than unravel inherited distortions." Yep, that's right. It's our whole Empress Wu puzzle cube situation all over again. Sigh. So here we sit in the immediate aftermath of the bloody events at Ma Wei outpost. Chancellor Yang has been literally ripped apart and his sister, the imperial consort,

brutally strangled at a nearby Buddhist temple at the behest of the imperial bodyguard. As we mentioned last time, theest of the Imperial bodyguard. As we mentioned last time, the murder of the Yan family called into question the whole idea of continuing southward to Chengdu at all, since it had been at the now-late Chancellor's insistence, and primarily because he had numerous allies and clansmen there who probably wouldn't be taking too kind to the fact that the Imperial Army had just straight-up murdered Guo Zhang and his sister. Nevertheless, Emperor Xuanzong refused to deviate from the initial plan, and insisted that the Imperial retinue continue southward to regroup and then and only then push

back against the rebels from his southern stronghold. Xuanzong asked his heir Li Heng to remain behind, apparently initially only temporarily, in order to explain the withdrawal of the royal court to those who trailed behind the imperial retinue itself. Whether or not the crown prince ever truly intended to rejoin his elderly father at Chengdu is unknown, but Dalby writes that it was because of the reaction to the prince's news, by the officials and commoners alike, that caused him to ultimately reconsider his own actions. He writes, quote, Xuanzang asked the heir apparent to stay behind temporarily and to explain this strategic retreat that caused him to ultimately reconsider his own actions. He writes, They argued that the Tang ruling house would be forgotten quickly if both he and his

father disappeared to the faraway southeast." On the other hand, Chomny seems to be more skeptical of this traditional accounting, since he gives credence to the notion that the murderous disturbance at Ma Wei outpost had been orchestrated by Li Hung's sympathizers in order to clear the way for his own ascension and usurpation of the Tang throne that was shortly to follow Yang Guozhong's murder. Whether Prince Li Heng was truly as hesitant to change plans as Dalby posits, or whether he recognized her for the opportunity, it would rapidly prove to be. The Crown Prince did at last assent to his advisor's recommendations and proceeded northwest, with an attendant bodyguard numbering perhaps as few as only 100 men,

or in some accounts as many as 2,000. But in any case, heading toward the Shuo-Fan garrison headquarters at the city of Lingwu, along the western course of the Yellow River's great Ordos Bend northward. From the strongly defended and well-fortified military base there, the Crown Prince was well-positioned to eventually launch a campaign of reconquest against the newly-captured capital, Chang'an. And let me just quickly point out as an aside, don't let the title of Prince fool you into thinking that Li Hung was some spring chicken at this point. Much to the contrary, he was well into his fifth decade by the time of the An Lushan Rebellion's outbreak, and ever the shrewd operator. The 45-year-old crown prince swiftly sent out missives commanding all those generals and military governors still loyal to the Tang to report at once to the Lingwu garrison,

under at least the pretense of recapturing Chang'an ahead of Xuanzong's triumphal return to the north. Dalby puts it, quote, As the crown prince's advisor pointed out, there could be no greater act of filial piety, end quote. Well, that was certainly a nice way of thinking about it, but Li Heng's actions almost immediately put such sentiments to rest as little more than self-comforting lies. The traditional histories like the Old and New Books of Tang and the Zizhi Tongjian paint the Crown Prince's next actions as done only with great reluctance and a sense of necessity. But Twitchit, Dalby, and Chamney all agree that it didn't take long at all for his advisors to, ahem, convince the long-waiting heir apparent to declare himself

emperor outright. Twitchit writes, quote, With a small escort of 2,000 troops, Li Heng traveled by forced marches, first to Yuanzhou and then to Lingwu, where he arrived on the ninth day of the seventh month. Three days later, he was persuaded by his advisors to usurp the throne. He is known in the histories by his posthumous temple name, Suzong, end quote. And so it was. And from here on out, that's what we'll be calling him, Emperor Suzong of Tang. Because in spite of the fact that dear old dad Xuanzong was still alive and kicking and still headed for Sichuan,

he'll put up very little fight indeed to this changing of the guard. None, in fact, at all. Suzong would bestow upon his aged father the title of Shang Huang Tian Di, or Retired Emperor, a term that we have come across several times by this point. Nevertheless, it would be a further two months before Xuanzong himself would actually receive the messengers dispatched to him from Lingwu, informing him of this fait accompli. It wouldn't be until the twelfth day of the eighth month, half a month after he'd gone through the formalities of establishing a court in exile at Chengdu, that Xuanzong received an announcement from his heir's

usurpation, and yet he seems to have just had no fight left in him. Puchit writes, quote, The emperor, old and exhausted, and wracked with remorse for the death of the consort Yang Guifei, gave his assent without demur, end quote. His reply to the missive of Suzong's assent was simply to send his son the imperial regalia, signaling a formal end to the Tang dynasty's longest and by all accounts most brilliant reign with very little fanfare indeed. The period that was to immediately follow this proceeding

was primarily marked by Emperor Suzong dispatching envoys across the remainder of the empire and then awaiting their acknowledgement of his accession to the throne. In all, it was a process that would require a further two months. Meanwhile, back down in Chengdu, Xuanzong's chief minister put forth a plan to divide the empire evenly among his myriad sons, in effect creating what Dalbi refers to as a feudal polity. But virtually every member of the retired emperor's court quickly dismissed such a plan. Now was certainly not the time to be subdividing the Tang's holdings,

and to attempt to do so would only court further disaster. Regardless of the specific circumstances of Suzong's coming to power, there was nothing to be done but simply rally around the flag against the clear and present danger of the Yan rebels even now occupying and pillaging Chang'an. Moreover, the accession of a relatively active, personally powerful heir to the aged and infirm Xuanzong was by no means received poorly by the majority of the imperial governors and princes. To the contrary, Suzong must have seen just the sort of fresh blood the Anlushan crisis

required to effectively combat. Though there was some initial hesitation on the part of fresh blood the An Lushan Crisis required to effectively combat. Though there was some initial hesitation on the part of regional commanders to respond to Suzong's call to arms from Lingwu, over the course of the preceding months, quote, the imperial forces there had swelled in number as tens of thousands of troops arrived in Lingwu and Taiyuan from the Eastern Front, end quote. Of particular importance were the arrival of the two commanders of the imperial armies, Generals Guo Ziyi and Li Guangbi, respectively. Bolstered both by his father's acceptance of his decision to preemptively succeed him, and by the larger

empire's likewise assent to his rule, Suzong made it the absolute number one top priority to retake Chang'an and Luoyang as the imperial seats as soon as was humanly possible. And to that end, he would need help. Ironically enough, from the very foreigners the Chinese propaganda of the age was busy demonizing. Foreign assistance would come from two very unlikely sources. The first would be Arab Muslims. Yes, those same Muslims who you no doubt remember the Chinese had not so long ago gotten trounced by at the Battle of Talis. So what are they doing helping the Tang

armies out only half a decade later? It's a very interesting question, and one that has been puzzled over by almost every historian who has written on this rebellion ever since. Even now, there's little in the way of a real clear or universally accepted answer. Remember how I said that this period was severely constrained in terms of historical understanding and surviving sources? Yeah, this is one of those times. Certainly, there is little doubt that Arab Muslims did play a significant role in Suzong's imperial mobile brigade he was about to go on the offensive with. Both the Old and New Book of Tang state rather flatly that the brigade was a force of about 200,000 soldiers from Shuo Fang, Anxi, Huihe, Nanman, and Dashir.

And it's that last term, Dashir, which is the Chinese word for the Abbasid Caliphate. Likewise, the Zhizhetongjian corroborates the claim that Arabs made up a large part of the Tang army's force, saying, Though he already had secured the soldiers from Shuofang in his command, the Emperor Suzong wanted to reinforce his army by borrowing soldiers from abroad. The Emperor was informed that the soldiers from Anxi, Beijing, Fergana, and Dashir had arrived up to Liangzhou. End quote. The question then is not so much whether Muslim soldiers were fighting for the Tang, but why and where they came from. Inaba puts forth four primary possibilities.

The first is that the Tang's Islamic reinforcements the West, were in fact a part of an internal split in the Abbasid Caliphate. Right at the beginning of 756, round about the time that An-Lushan was declaring his own rebellion in fact, the hero and leader of the successful revolt against the now defunct Umayyad regime had been murdered in a bit of court intrigue, which triggered another revolt against the Abbasid regime centered in the city of Nishapur in modern Iran. To contrast themselves against the black standard of the Abbasid regime, these rebels clothed themselves in all white, and even called themselves Sepid Jamegan, or those who wear white.

Intriguingly, the Song Dynasty-era encyclopedia called the Sefu Yanggui cited meetings with the Arabs of a very curious dress, stating, quote, in the 12th century of the first year of Shanyuan, which is to say January of 761, an audience was granted to 18 embassies, including Poyeshe, the ambassador of the Baiyi, end quote. The Baiyi means, you guessed it, white clothes. It had been assumed that this was nothing more than an erroneous recording of what was typically the Arab dress at this point, which were of course the black robes, and surely that's a simple enough mistake to make. But the timing does seem to line up tantalizingly well. Perhaps the court of Sudzon was indeed receiving rebel emissaries,

claiming to act in the name of the caliph and operating out of Nishapur. Inaba's second possibility is that many of the Arabs recruited into the Tang military force were either mercenaries or forced conscripts captured in fights against the likes of the Tibetan Empire. Certainly, when Emperor Suzong put out the call to arms, he had promised lavish rewards for soldiers of fortune of every stripe, and undoubtedly many heeded the call to battle and riches. A third possibility is that since many of these Arab soldiers arrived alongside and among the soldiers sent from the Transoxiana region, which we might also refer to as Ferghana, it was a cultural melting pot. Even though the Chinese had lost lost Talis, after all,

they still maintained control over the far western Anxi region, for at least the time being. The final possibility relates to a type of soldier from Central Asia referred to alternately as Chakars, Yellow He, and Jiazhi, but which all seem to be the same type of force, a kind of mix between a slave army and a mercenary force. The Chakar, Inaba puts, was, quote, a prototype of the military slave system later known as the Mamluk, end quote. The Mamluks, you may be aware, would go on to historical fame in the Khwarizmian Empire of Iran, Mamluk Egypt, and the Ottoman Empire, respectively,

just to name a few. It seems entirely likely that the reality of the Muslim Arab assistance against An Lushan's Yan rebels could have been a combination of any, or perhaps all, of these possibilities, and the question of such a force's true origin and makeup remains an open one. Regardless, the Arab levies were joined as allies of Tang China by none other than a power to the north that we haven't yet discussed at any length. It is the Uyghur Khanate. This Khanate was rather newly established in the Asian steppes, having coalesced little more than a decade prior in 744 in typical steppe confederation fashion, namely a large swath of various clans and tribes

united under a powerful lead clan, in this case, the Orkhon Uyghurs. They were, like most steppe tribes at this time, an offshoot of the Turks, and generally referred to, by the Chinese of the era at least, as the Jiu Xiang, or the Nine Clans. Today, their descendants live primarily in western China, the Xinjiang region, and make up the majority of China's Muslim population. But in the 8th century, their home

territory was instead the majority of modern Mongolia, on the northern side of the Gobi Desert. The Uyghur Khanate had come into being following a successful rebellion of their own against their Gukturk overlords, beginning in 742 and lasting until 744, when they at last achieved independence and peace terms from the much diminished Turkic Khanate. Very interestingly, and markedly unlike the majority of the steppe Khanates that would precede and indeed follow the Uyghur's stint in power, they would use the profits of a stable and profitable trading relationship with the Chinese to fund the construction of two permanent cities within their territory, a fairly stark contrast to the usual nomadic steppe lifestyle of the horse, bow, and yurt tent. Their capital,

established at the site of the former Gukturk capital, was called Ordubalik, meaning City of the Court, and its ruins can still be found a mere 27 kilometers northeast of the later Mongolian Khaganate's capital at the time of Genghis Khan, Karakorum. From Fort Sumter to the Battle of Gettysburg. From the Emancipation Proclamation to Appomattox Courthouse. From the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Compromise of 1877, from Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, to Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. The Civil War and Reconstruction was a pivotal era in American history. I'm Rich. And I'm Tracy. And we're the hosts of a podcast

that takes a deep dive into that era, when a war was fought to save the Union and to free the slaves. And when the work to rebuild the nation after that war was over turned into a struggle to guarantee liberty and justice for all Americans. Look for The Civil War and Reconstruction By all accounts, it seems to have been quite the wondrous city, though of course tiny by Chinese standards. It nevertheless deeply impressed a later ambassador of the Samanid Empire, Tamim Bimbar al-Mutawi, who wrote of its most striking feature in 821, quote, From a distance of five leagues before he arrived in the city of the Kagan,

he caught sight of a tent belonging to the king, made of gold. It stands on the flat top of his castle and can hold one hundred men, end quote. As of 756, the Uyghurs were ruled over by their second Khan, named Bayanchur, who agreed to help the besieged Tang dynasty in its hour of need. This decision was likely both on account of the ongoing profitable trade arrangements between his Khanates and the Tang economy, and also probably due to the long-standing enmity between An Lushan and all of the northern quote-unquote barbarian hordes.

We get an account of this plea for aid from the Daniel C. Waugh translation of the New Book of Tang, which states quote, Emperor Suzong ascended the throne. Ambassadors came to the court asking leave to help in the fight against An Lushan. The emperor issued an edict that the prefectural prince of Tunhuang, Chen Sheng, should make a pact with the Uyghurs, and further ordered Bugu Huayen to accompany the prince to receive their soldiers. At the same time, he sent his great chiefs to court to seek a diplomatic marriage. The emperor, wishing to confirm his loyal feelings, immediately infifed the barbarian's daughter as the Bijia princess. The short version of this story is that the combined Uyghur-Arab-Chinese

force placed itself under the command of General Guo Ziyi and began to make its way back southeast, intent ultimately on carrying out Suzong's will to retake the capital at once. They would, however, have to contend with an unexpected threat that arose to challenge the new emperor's power from the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, far to the south. It was the errant prince of Yong, a distant imperial relation, who had staked an opposing claim to Suzong's from Lilin, which is modern Nanjing. The combined Tang army proved its efficacy in late 756 against this minor rebellion and quelled the southern uprising in short order. Though, owing to Emperor Suzong's personal affinity for his wayward cousin and his family,

he never publicly declared it a rebellion as such, and though Li Lin was himself executed on the field, against the throne's orders no less, his sons and relatives were allowed to keep their official titles and offices, and were not punished for this little inter-family kerfuffle. By the new year of 757, Suzong's Tang army had swelled in number to tens of thousands, and was prepared to march once again for Chang'an. Suzong's Tang army had swelled in number to tens and possibly hundreds of thousands, and was prepared to march once again for Chang'an to retake their capital city. Before that could take place, however, in late January, the leader of the Yan rebels

and self-declared emperor, An Lushan himself, was murdered on the direction of his own eldest son, An Qingshu. Chamni writes of the assassination, "...if the old Tang history is to be believed, Qingshu was an unsuitable candidate for the throne of Yan. He was noted as being small-minded and having nonsensical speech, both of which indicate that Qingshu probably suffered from a mental or nervous disability." Nevertheless, as his father's mental and physical health

continued to deteriorate into fits of senseless rage and needlessly brutal punishments of his underlings, those same underlings would turn to Ching Shui to sanction the actions several of them had plotted. Terrified of a future under An Lushan and craving power for themselves, the cabal of rebel lieutenants plotted to kill their mad emperor. They asked for An Qingshu's consent to kill Lushan, without fear of punishment, and Qingshu, likewise sick of his dad's mad rantings and violent ravings, as well as himself fearful that Lushan was thinking over the possibility of replacing him with his more mentally competent younger brother as the heir to the throne, gave his assent to the assassination plot.

Chomny puts it, But it would be neither a happy nor a long reign for the patricidal son. He would rule only some two years before he too would be assassinated in turn. But even before his death, the mechanism that had been keeping the whole rebel force operative in the first place, that of An Lushan's own force of personality and iron will, would have largely broken down. And the so-called Yan Dynasty was in fact little more than a cult of personality to the murdered general-turned-emperor. And with him no longer in the picture, the delicate and personal relationships that had held his fractious groups together under a united purpose began to dissolve with a frightening speed.

But there is still some fight left in the suddenly faltering Yan rebels, and they're not down or out just yet, which is evidenced by the sieges of Yongqiu and Suiyang. As one of his first acts as Yan Emperor, An Qingshu ordered that the Yan mass their forces and besiege the walled city of Suiyang in central Henan province. The strategic purpose of capturing the city would have been to punch open a gateway to the south that had long eluded the Yan rebels, and to that end, An Qingshu supposedly ordered a force of more than 130,000 soldiers to surround and starve out the city's defenders.

The Tang loyalists within Suiyang numbered a mere 7,000 to 10,000, and it must have seemed a hopeless fight even from the outset. Nevertheless, showing a level of resolve to hold out to the last man, rivaling even that of the Spartans of Thermopylae, the Tang general commanding this Shui-Yang garrison had his war drums beat as sunset approached, each and every day, thus giving the impression, time and again, that the Tang force was preparing to ride out and attack the Yan rebel force in the field. This forced them to abandon their active siege operations during the night

for fear of a potential ambush. Yet as time went on and the war drums proved to be a false alarm time and again, more and more of the Yan soldiers began to simply ignore them, not even bothering to don their armor, and with some even outright sleeping through the booming drums, certain that they'd figured out this little Tang scheme. Once the Tang general's spies reported this lackadaisical attitude had taken hold amongst the majority of the Yan troops, as had been the plan all along after all, the drums sounded once again in the twilight hours. But this time, the Tang cavalry

did indeed ride out of the city gates to ambush and raid the Yan lines. Taken by surprise, the Yan troops were cut down into thousands, and their morale was dealt a shattering blow. After only 16 days, the Yan had suffered some 20,000 casualties, if the traditional histories are to be believed. They were dealt a truly grievous blow, however, when the rebel general, having been given away and singled out by the Tang commander, had an arrow put through his eye. Though the commander survived, the army was thrown into chaos, and all he could do was to command that the Yan forces call off the siege and retreat in order to reinforce their depleted numbers and try to undo the damage

Suiyong had managed to do to their own troops' badly shaken morale. The Yan force would not return for another two months by then having replaced the 20,000 lost in the initial siege's disaster with a fresh 20,000 troops. Now, this was not to say that everything was just hunky-dory inside the city walls. To the contrary, in spite of initially having more than a year's worth of food and supplies stored in the city ahead of the siege, the graft of the local district governor had seen those stores thoroughly pilfered. As 757 crawled on into the height of summer, the situation had become dire indeed. The Tang soldiery were given nothing more than a single small daily ration of rice, and were expected to forage for any other calories they might require,

whether animal, insect, mere plant root, or something even worse. Even then, though, the Tang defenders managed to repel near-daily attempts by the Yan besiegers to scale the city walls. But the famine was taking its terrible toll. By August, the initial 10,000 defenders had been whittled down by starvation, sickness, and of course combat, to a mere 1,600 soldiers against the seemingly endless legions of the rebel force surrounding them. At the behest of the Tang captain, Nan Di Yun, who along with 26 other men had broken

through the Yan lines and rode as fast as they could to the nearby fortress to request badly needed aid, and by some accounts even bit off his own finger to show the severity of the situation when the fortress commander initially balked at the idea of committing more troops to Shuiong's ongoing defense, the fortress did ultimately send a further 3,000 troops to assist the city's defense. Ultimately, though, only about a third of those sent ever made it to the gates of Seoyong, and the rest were either cut down or turned back by Yan resistance. And here is where things get really gruesome. Despairing, but understanding that there

was no other option but to hold out as long as possible, the defenders of Seiyong reportedly turned to the most desperate of measures in order to try to stay alive. Cannibalism. From the old Book of Tang, quote, the food in the city had run out. The dwellers traded their children to eat and cooked bodies of the dead. Fears were spread and worse situations were expected. At this time, the Tang commander took his concubine out and killed her in order to feed his troops. Afterwards, they caught the women in the city. After the women had run out, they turned to old men and young males. 20,000 to 30,000 people were eaten, but the people always remained loyal. End quote. Of course, we must take accounts like that with a grain of salt,

but if even part of such a tale is based in fact, that is a truly horrific experience to have to live through. Eating your own countrymen, women, and children just to hold the walls against the enemy force one day longer. According to the new Book of Tang, in fact, the people didn't turn on the cannibalistic defenders simply because they didn't have the energy to do so, and that by the end of the siege and the eventual fall of the city to the Yan army, only about 400 soldiers were found still alive

in what had only months before been a city of tens of thousands. When the surviving captives were taken prisoner by the Yan army, they steadfastly refused to capitulate, apparently stating only that they wished to eat the enemy commander alive. Fearful of what such Wendigo soldiers might do if given half a chance, the Yan general reluctantly ordered all three executed, along with 26 of their elite guardsmen. In October of 757, Suiyang had at last fallen to the Yan army, and the way to the south had been opened. And yet the victory had been a pyrrhic one, and in spite of outnumbering the defenders more than ten to one, the siege of Suiyang had dragged on for months, and cost the rebel army some 60,000 troops by its end, nearly half the total force

sent against the walled city. And it, combined with the likewise disastrous Battle of Yongqiu in the autumn of the previous year, which had seen a rebel army of some 40,000 cut in half by a defending force of less than 2,000 from the safety of their city ramparts. Between these two battles, the tide had turned decisively against the once numerically and tactically superior Yan rebel force. Though the rebel army might have numbered in total more than 300,000 at the beginning of 756, by the end of the following year, they had lost, in just those two battles alone, a full third of that overall strength. The Tang and their Arab and Uyghur allies at last outnumbered the once

seemingly unstoppable rebel army. And in the last quarter of 757, Emperor Suzong planned to take back what was his, with fire and blood. The Uyghur Khan had extracted a heavy price for his cavalry's service in reclaiming China for the Tang. From the Old Book of Tang, quote, the Khagan himself acted as general and had a meeting with General Guo Zeyi in the Huyuan Valley. Relying on his strength, he had drawn up his soldiers and had made Zeyi pay respect to his wolf pennants before he would see them, end quote. In other words, the Uyghur Khagan demanded that the Tang general bow and kowtow before the wolf banner, which was effectively the Khanate's national flag,

before the Khan would even agree to meet with the general at all. Chomny sums up this stark change in the power dynamic between Uyghur and Chinese as, quote, over the next six years or so, the Uyghurs successfully negotiated extraterritoriality for their subjects, which means the rights for Uyghurs to settle freely in Chinese territory. Continuing the quote, It must have been an exceedingly bitter pill for Suzong, not to mention the rest of the imperial government, to swallow. To once again place themselves under the yoke of a foreign power in order to drive off another seemingly foreign power. But there was nothing for it. The Song

needed reinforcements, and couldn't afford to be terribly picky about where they came from or the terms demanded for them. Chomny puts this rock-and-hard-place situation as, quote, This massively complicated the ethnic dimensions of the rebellion. The Yan royalty were Turkosogdians, who advanced the independence from outside control of Hebei. The Tang royalty were Sinoturks, more Chinese than Turkic,

who now advanced the dependence and penetration of China as a whole by a foreign power, end quote. And what did the Tang army gain for this embarrassing submission to the wolf standard? Well, it would receive in return some 4,000 Uyghur cavalrymen, which does sound rather small when talking about the forces ranging from tens to hundreds of thousands. But these lifelong step archers and soldiers were said to be several times better than anything the semi-professional and conscripted Tang armies could produce themselves. They would show their effectiveness in combat

in September of 757, when the Tang combined army, purportedly having swelled to more than 150,000 troops in strength, at last marched on the captured capital of Chang'an, whose own resident rebel garrison numbered a mere 100,000. The field commander of the Uyghur regiment, recorded in the histories only by his title, Yagbu, meaning most approximately Viceroy, drove both his own troops and the assembled Han Chinese to great measures of heroism in the service of retaking the metropolis. When the two armies clashed,

the viceroy led his steppe cavalrymen against the left flank of the rebel defenders, breaking it and collapsing the Yen Line to ensure a Tang successful recapture of Chang'an. In the aftermath of the battle, the Chinese army showed little quarter indeed to the rebel soldiers that surrendered or were taken alive. The New Book of Tang states that more than 60,000 captives were put to death in the wake of the battle, and given the Chinese typical regard for those they deemed rebels, thieves, and by this point foreigners in general, it's likely that very few, if any, were spared at all. Once the city had been taken, both Uyghur Viceroy and the son of the Khan, who was acting commander-in-chief, requested that the Chinese make good on their earlier promise that they had given the steppe riders, the right to loot the captured city for themselves.

At this, now inside the walls of their own city once more, the Chinese commanders balked at such a request. Allow foreigners to sack our own city? We think not. When the Viceroy displayed his displeasure at this evident betrayal of the terms of what they had agreed to, the son and heir to Emperor Suzong, Crown Prince Li Yu, who commanded the Han portion of the army, realized that he must placate the Uyghurs in some way, lest a breach open up between the two forces and threaten to tear down their newfound alliance

before the war was even won. The heir to the throne of Tang paid a formal obeisance to the Uyghur commander. According to Chami, the first time Chinese royalty had deigned to bow to a foreigner since the founding of the Tang dynasty itself. And when the Uyghurs expressed reluctance to continue on to the next target on the Tang army's hit list, Luoyang, citing that their initial agreement, to which the Chinese already seemed unprepared to live up to, had made no mention of continuing eastward to the secondary capital, why they'd been contracted to help retake Chang'an, and they'd done so with gusto. In reply, the crown prince was forced to offer an even

larger portion of the loot to be gained at Luoyang once the city was taken, or else watch his best cavalry ride off back to the steppes. The Uyghurs, however, were lured by the promise of even greater riches than they'd been denied at Chang'an, and agreed to march on the secondary capital and current seat of the Yan rebels. In an attempted repeat of the strategy that had so long bottled their own advance against Chang'an, the rebel general, Yan Zhuang, committed the bulk of his troops to trying to fortify and block the Dengguang Pass once again. But before they could, the two armies

clashed once again to the east of Chang'an, and the Uyghur cavalry once again proved itself the decisive factor, again turning the rebel army's flank and then rolling them right on up. From the old book of Tang, quote, End quote. With the collapse of the Yan armies attempted defending against the Tang's advance, the events of 756 virtually played themselves out once again, but this time in reverse. With the bulk of their army now lying dead along the mountains and hills between Chang'an and Luoyang, the Yan court quickly realized that their position in the capital was untenable, and so they were forced to abandon it ahead of the Tang force's rapid advance, and retreat northward back across the Yellow River, and once again take up residence at what

had been An Lushan's initial headquarters, Fanyang. It seemed to all involved that the An Lushan rebellion was at its death's door, and would quickly be at an end. They had been rolled all the way back to their final stronghold, and seemed to be facing their ultimate defeat. Yet in Luoyang, the Tang army and their Arab and Uyghur allies swiftly got bogged down. The Uyghurs' promised price to continue westward, after all, was that of being able to pillage to their heart's content. And they did just that. For three days and nights, the steppe riders mercilessly pillaged, raped, and looted the city for everything that wasn't nailed down. And though the crown prince was horrified at this display of barbarian brutality, he had already embarrassed himself once by convincing them to spare Chang'an. And this time, there would be no stopping the sacking.

It was only once the elders of the city put together an absolutely massive bribe of silk fabric and precious embroidery to give to the Khaganate's commanders that they at last called a halt to stripping bare the city. The Tang Dynasty rebels had managed to do the seemingly impossible and roll back virtually the entire Yan rebels' advance by the end of 757. Emperor Suzong celebrated this monumental victory in truly royal fashion, and word arrived from Chengdu from the now-retired emperor, Xuanzong, congratulating his son and reaffirming his ascent of his heir-taking formal command of the empire,

in light of this glorious success. So, good job, right? Congrats all around, let's pat ourselves on the back. Well, not so fast, because in spite of the copious amount of back-patting going on in Suzong's imperial court, the reality of the situation wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. Dennis Twitchett put it bluntly, quote, but was the hurried return to the capitals a strategic mistake? Quite possibly, end quote. How so?

Well, in retaking their two traditional seats of power, Twitchit writes, the Tang thus gave up whatever sense of mobility that they had had, and once again adopted the very same fixed positions of static defense that had, I should say this again, been seized and captured twice already in less than a calendar year. And all that effort had come not from Chinese force of arms, but instead largely had been reliant on the foreign cavalry and troops it had managed to

borrow from neighbors that could probably be best described as enemies of an enemy rather than anything approaching friends. Under their own power, the Tang military was not in a position to extend itself further northward to quench that last seemingly dying ember of the An Lushan rebellion. Tuchik goes on, stating, quote, And most importantly, the sense of urgency ebbed away after it appeared that the dynasty was going to survive. People's thoughts turned to their own futures. They no longer fought so hard, and so the war dragged on." The hurry to recapture the two capitals had already cost the Tang dynasty much in the way of power and prestige, and it wasn't even as though that path had been Emperor Suzong's only

option. There had been other possible courses of action open to Suzong before he committed to the thoroughly political and image-conscious decision to wrest control of Chang'an and Luoyang back from the Yan Dynasty. A strike at Fanyang, for instance, a strategy that had been proposed by one of the court's leading strategists, might have cut the rebel forces in the south off from their northern power base and isolated them, while allowing the imperial armies the chance to link up with the loyalist insurgent groups still scattered across eastern Hebei. But Suzong had insisted on the idea of retaking the two capitals as a symbol of the dynasty's restoration, and then that being done, he kind of rested on his laurels, confident of the impending

victory that was sure to come, and thus allowed the rebels the critical time and space that they so urgently required to retreat, regroup, and linger on. And next time, we'll follow up on just what that decision would cost Emperor Suzong's Tang Dynasty in the years to come as the already terrible civil war, which might have been ended here and now, instead would drag on and on into the 760s, and why his over-reliance on the Uyghur Khanate, and thus allowing it virtually free reign over the Chinese empire, would prove a rather less-than-foolproof strategy in securing the Tang regime's own future. As Suzong and his court have already tasted, and will soon be forced

to choke down, the enemy of their enemy is, after all, no true friend at all. Thanks for listening. The French Revolution set Europe ablaze. It was an age of enlightenment and progress, but also of tyranny and oppression. It was an age of glory and an age of tragedy. One man stood above it all. This was an age of glory and an age of tragedy. One man stood above it all. This was the Age of Napoleon. I'm Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast. Join me as I examine the life and times of one of the most fascinating and enigmatic

characters in modern history. Look for the Age of Napoleon wherever you find your podcasts.