The History of China - #110 - Tang 23: Where the Wangs Went Wrong

Episode Date: October 15, 2016

We take a look at the final years of Emperor Dezong's reign, his political successes and failures, and the strange, mysterious,short-lived Wang Party that would seize control over government for about 5 minutes before being kicked out by Dezong's grandson Xianzong. Also, we have a paralyzed, mute emperor, so there's that, too! Time Period Covered: ca. 790-806 CE Major Historical Figures: Tang Dynasty: Li Kuo, Emperor Dezong of Tang [r. 780-805] Li Song, Emperor Shunzong of Tang [r. 805] Li Chun, Emperor Xianzong of Tang [r. 805-820] Dou Wenchang, Eunuch Protector of the Army Huo Xianming, Eunuch Protector of the Army Wang Shuwen, Wang Party Founder Wang Pi, Wang Party Member Tibetan Empire: Prime Minister Shang Jiecan (Shan-rgyal-btsan) Uyghur Khannate: Tun-Baga-Tar Khan Major Sources Cited: Dalby, Richard. "Court Politics in Late Tang Times" in The Cambridge History of China vol. 3 Zizhi Tongjian Jiu Tangshu Wang, Yunsheng (1963). "Second Treatise on the Historic Significance of that Bastard Sima's Political Innovations" in Lishi Yanjiu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. Four hundred years ago, a trio of tiny kingdoms were perched on some damp islands off the coast of Europe. Within three short centuries, these islands would become the centre of an empire which ruled a quarter of the globe and on which the sun never set. I'm Samuel Hume, a historian of the British Empire, and my podcast Pax Britannica follows the people and events that built that empire into a global superpower. Learn the history of the British Empire by listening to Pax Britannica everywhere you find your podcasts, or go to pod.link slash pax.

Hey everyone, before launching in today, let me first offer my brief apologies for being so long this time in between episodes. It's all far too much for me to explain here and now, but between certain visa issues, work conferences, and the like, it all just got pushed back. A thousand pardons. If you're at all interested in knowing more about my recent travails with the Chinese visa agency, which fortunately has since all been sorted out, I'll be posting a link to it on our Facebook page at slash the history of China. And there's already a link via it on our Facebook page at slash thehistoryofchina. And there's already a link via our Twitter feed at THOCpodcast.

It's quite the tale, I assure you. In other news, and while I have you here, I'd also like to recommend that you give a listen to From Wittenberg to Westphalia, in which Benjamin Jacobs takes us on a journey spanning from the Thirty Years' War and then all of the wars of the Restoration within early modern Europe. That's From Wittenberg to Westphalia, not only a great podcast, but also a fellow member of the Agora Network. And now, on with the show. Hello, and welcome to the History of China.

Episode 110, Where the Wangs Went Wrong When last we left the Tang Empire, its emperor, Dezong, was struggling mightily with his bureaucrats and court structure, as well as the burden of not wanting to rock the boat, in a dynastic sense. That had ended off with the frustrated monarch virtually swearing off his official court and beginning to favor instead a tight-knit cabal of academics and eunuchs that history has come to call the inner court. This time, we're going to cover the final decade of his reign and his ultimate end after a period of rule of 26 years, the third longest in the Tang era, right after his great-grandfather Xuanzong and his great-great-great-grandfather Gaozong. Anyways, let's launch right in.

We're actually going to be starting out today not in Chang'an, but out at the edges of the Tang Empire, the borderlands that, as ever, remain a vexation to imperial security. Yet as we launch into the 790s, the Tang regime of Emperor Dazhong will have a rare piece of good news from the borderlands. Now, just to ensure that we're all still on the same page here, let's take a quick look at the international political landscape circa 790. Tang China was surrounded by quite a few independent peoples, what we might reasonably even call states in many cases, and in all directions. To the northeast, there were, of course, the Koreans, as well as the Khitan and the Xi tribes, while the northwest was now dominated by the Uyghur Khanate and the cordial, if not exactly friendly, alliance of convenience between it and the Tang regime.

Where our focus is going to fall right now, though, is to the far west and southwest, namely the long-standing boogeyman to China in the form of the Tibetan Empire, as well as a region of quasi-independent tribes somewhat unified under a semi-central king called Nanjiao. Now, the whole Tibetan Empire deal is nothing new to us. The Chinese Empire has been having to deal with them, often militarily, and often at a loss, virtually since the kingdom's formation in the early 7th century, along the high plateaus of the Himalayas. But now in this, our post-Anlushan world, yes, it really is the gift that keeps on giving, isn't it? The Tibetan Empire has gone from perennial nuisance to existential threat for the Tang Chinese. And they had pushed their

way ever eastward and towards the Chinese heartland, seemingly inexorably well into the 770s. The only way China had managed to stave them off so far was through the assistance and material on offer by the Uyghur Khan, who you can be sure demanded a pretty penny for his cavalry's services. Annual expenditures just to protect the capital city alone totaled more than a million and a half strings of cash coin. And just to throw that amount into some kind of perspective here, in the year 734, the ten official Tang mints collectively were producing a mere 327,000 strings of coins annually, an output that would continually decline over the course of the following century, until by 834, the output was a paltry 100,000 strings of coins. If we were to just do some back-of-the-napkin math here and throw that into a modern perspective,

the U.S. currently prints a little bit over $204 billion of new currents each year, though don't freak out, more than 95% of that is just to replace the old bills. But from that perspective, the annual defense costs of Chang'an, or if we were to use the US analogy, Washington DC, alone, would have been the equivalent of more than $935 billion per year. The current annual defense budget of the entire United States, by the way, is about half that, a mere $598 billion annually. It's certainly not a perfect comparison by any stretch, especially not when we compare a stable currency like the dollar to a wildly fluctuating hyperinflated one like the Kaiyuan

Tongbao cash coins. But it does serve as an interesting way to shine light on the severity of the military and financial crisis, when the idea of dumping a trillion dollars per year into defending just your capital city is not just on the table politically, but has become the de facto norm. But there was nothing for it. The prime horse breeding and grazing grounds of Longyu had been lost to Tibet already, and the system of military agricultural colonies that had once fed the armies had been largely abandoned or destroyed, and with their eventual replacements still lost in R&D hell for decades

to come. Nevertheless, in spite of seeming to have all of the initiative, by the early 780s of the Tibetan Empire, through perhaps a combination of reaching what was its natural limit of military reach, and probably much more due to the periodic internal strife that rollicked it from time to time, the two sides had ground each other into an uneasy stalemate. Into that situation, Dezong had tried to broker a peace deal with the Tibetan prime minister of the era, phoneticized into Chinese as Shang Jiechan. Though cautious of one another's motivations, the two empires successfully carried out initial prisoner exchanges, and when those proved successful, that was parlayed into a successfully

brokered peace treaty conducted and signed in 784, which established fixed borders divided by a no-man's land between the two states, as well as China formally recognizing the loss of the territories of the West that the Tibetan armies had already seized. Though that must have been a bitter pill to swallow indeed for a people as image-conscious as the Tang Chinese, the reality of the situation was that those territories had been long lost to them, regardless of what a piece of paper might say. And by recognizing it, China now had at long last secured its western border against further incursion, now and for all the years to come. And that solemn, sovereign treaty would last for all of a year, before the two empires were once again duking it out up and

down the western borders. By 787, after Tibetan spycraft had managed to successfully orchestrate the assassinations of two top Chinese military commanders and the near death of a third, Dezong was at last forced to give up the hope of a lasting peace with the Tibetans at all, after having tried his mightiest for some eight years. He was forced, with great reluctance, to once again approach the Uyghur Khan and beseech him for his aid in beating back the resurgent Tibetan threat. For his part, Tun Bagatar Khan was likewise in the market to seek better relations with the Tang Empire, and so the two powers entered into that most ancient of Chinese alliance systems, the Heqin Marriage Alliance, in which Dezong's own daughter,

Princess Xian'an, was married to the Great Khan. Professor Dalby writes of this, "...the reaffirmation of the Sino-Uyghur alliance, which remained stable until 1840, was of cardinal importance for the late Tang history." It was expensive, it was unfair, and it was distasteful, but at least China was safe from a devastating nomadic attack in the north, in contrast to the nearly constant Turkic and Khitan threats of the early Tang times. In spite of this return to relative safety for the Chinese heartlands, dearly purchased though it was,

there was still another region under Tang imperial control that did not, could not, share in that security net. And that was the far western protectorate regions of Anshi and Beijing, which had, as you might recall, been severed from the rest of the empire once the Tibetans had seized the narrow but vital Gansu Corridor connecting the two. By 790, in fact, the far west had been isolated from China proper by a veritable wall of nomad barbarian warriors for some 30 years. And though the renewed Sino-Uyghur alliance did see a brief push by the Khanate to counterattack the ever-looming Tibetan armies that surrounded the

protectorates, the following year, 791, would see the Tibetans punch back and drive both the Uyghurs and the Chinese out of their fortifications once and for all, thus ending Chinese administration in eastern Turkestan for almost a thousand years. But I promised you a silver lining in all this dark cloud, didn't I? Well, here it comes. The Nanjiao Confederation of six powerful tribal kingdoms in what is now today the majority of Yunnan in south-central China had seceded from its alliance with the Tibetan Empire and returned to the fold of Chinese Cesarity. The Nanjiao people had been steadily ingratiating themselves to the Tang court over the course of the second half of the 8th century. They had adopted Chinese dress, customs, and even a centralized imperial style of government

at their own capital of Dali, along the shores of Lake Arhai. That had all been thrown into the shredder, however, when the Nanjiao king had, after having been goaded by the Chinese regional governor's robber-baron-like treatment of their state, attacked the Chinese garrison and slaughtered everyone there, as we covered all the way back in episode 101. When the subsequent Chinese initiative expedition had met with total defeat at the hands of a combination of Nanjiao and Tibetan troops, with more than a little dash of southern disease, for the subsequent three decades, Nanjiao had become something, with more than a little dash of southern disease, for the subsequent three decades, Nanjiao had become something of a little brother to Tibet, and the pair had deeply vexed southern China. But that relationship had become ever more strained as Tibetan taxation

policies had tightened down and demanded ever more from the small southern state. Over the course of the late 780s, the regional governor of the south had steadily ramped up diplomatic pressure on the Nanjiao king to ditch those old Tibetans and come back to China, a slow burn policy that would finally start to pay dividends in 794, when Nanjiao formally renounced its loyalty to Tibet and renewed its former vassal status with the Tang Empire. Reunited and feeling good, Tang and Nanjiao pivoted the following year and commenced with an all-out attack on the Tibetan armies massed near Kunming, throwing the Western Empire into a quite unaccustomed-to defensive posture. Over the course of 796 and 797, both the king and the prime minister of Tibet, who had both been staunchly anti-Chinese in their outlooks and policies, would die and be replaced by

far less bellicose political agents. That changing of the guard, combined with an 801 plunge by the combined Tang and Nanjiao forces deep into the Tibetan heartland, managed to successfully convince the Tibetan emperor that this whole war business was for the birds. I never liked dad's policies anyway. Let's talk peace. Thus, by 805, more than a half a century of conflict between the two great East Asian empires had at last been brought to a conclusion, and Dezong's eventual successors will have a much freer hand to deal with the internal state of the Tang Empire without having to constantly watch their back for the next horseman raid cresting the hills from the west. But before we get to Dezong's successors, we do need to close out his period of rule.

And so it is that we will now once more venture away from the frontiers and back towards the capital city, Chang'an. You'll recall that back in the 780s, there had been a series of what we might call rather traumatic revolts, stemming from the autonomous governors of Hebei, in many respects a kind of echo of the Great Anshir Revolt. Well, that whole debacle had shown nothing quite so clearly as the fact that the Imperial Central Armies, headed by the famous Army of Divine Strategy, or Shunsa Army, had greatly decayed since its glory days of protecting the Emperor from the rebels in the 750s. Since then, the temporary command over the Shunsa Army to a pair of eunuchs had, thanks in large part to popular court pressure,

not to mention the eunuchs' own considerable graft, led to the palace army command being turned over to a succession of pencil-pushing bureaucrats, and you can imagine just how well those desk jockeys handled the job. Or at least, that was the conclusion De Zong, rather infamous by this point for his distrust of bureaucrats, had drawn. No, he reasoned that in order to regain the glory of the imperial army, there needed to be, as ever, a return to its roots. And had not the roots of the Shunsa's army's rise to victory and fame been under the command of eunuchs? The solution was, at least to the emperor, quite obvious. The eunuchs had been in command, and so obviously they must be again. Since 786, the eunuchs Dou Wanchang and Hu Xianming had been granted overall

supervisory command of both of the Shunsa army's brigades. But a decade later, Dezong expanded that to direct commands over the army, bestowing upon the two eunuchs the title of huzhen zhongwei, or eunuch protectors of the army. What had those two done to deserve such high accolades as creating out of whole cloth a new official rank for them? Well, they had been among the personal bodyguard that had spirited the emperor to safety back in 783, when he'd last been forced to abandon the capital, all while the rest of the Shenzhen army had given a rather exceptionally poor showing against the rebels. Bob's your uncle, the two eunuchs were put in charge. Dalby writes, As a practical matter, this meant that Dou and Hou had extended unit command over the palace army's entire force of ten brigades.

Their control over these mobile and strong units, close to the capital, was the foundation of the power exercised by the eunuchs for the next hundred years. End quote. There was just one little problem. Being named the commander of the army is all well and good, but it's quite another thing actually exercising and securing that command. And since this was the imperial bodyguard, it was in both the two-unit commanders and the emperors' interest to secure and maintain the army's loyalty, no matter the cost.

As such, while many of the rank-and-file grunts of the border armies or the expeditionary forces could be expected to receive very strict terms of service, harsh punishments, and payment when convenient, if at all. The palace guards, on the other hand, headed by the Shunzi army, were paid at above market rates and at regular intervals. In addition, they were able to leverage their unique position to demand, and receive, legal and financial exemptions on such generous terms that the wealthy residents of Chang'an bribed eunuchs to enroll them as nominal soldiers in the ranks of the palace guard. As such, under the supervision of the eunuch commanders, the ranks of the palace guard ballooned into the tens of thousands in the late 8th and early 9th centuries, though only a fraction of the names listed were ever actually legitimate soldiers.

If only that were the extent of it. As the saying goes, however, power corrupts, and in short order, the special treatment, the soldiery and command staff of the Shunsa army, and the palace guard as a whole, began to succumb to the temptation to abuse that position. Over the course of the 790s, palace troops would often extra-legally confiscate possessions from among the common people in and around the capital. Even more loathsome to the populace, though, was that the eunuch commanders engaged in a practice of regularly cheating the city's merchants by manipulating or outright short-shifting them within the confines of the palace market system. Further, it swiftly became the norm that promotions to provincial postings and governorships were run through the eunuch officials, since such promotions typically came from inside the ranks of the Shenzhen army. As such, officers hoping for advancement were compelled to pay out massive bribes to their eunuch commanders in order to

secure their placement, with the expected sums frequently mounting to well beyond their actual means to pay. As such, almost like some cartoonish farce, these would-be high government officials and provincial governors were compelled to take loans from the eunuch officials in order to make good on their outstanding bribes to that same group. These debt-saddled officials came to be known as zhuai shuai, meaning generals in debt. Though the merchants and the citizenry complained bitterly at this mistreatment, and a few very brave, or very foolish, officials even brought up such protests in court, they were uniformly ignored, in the case of the former, or jailed and then exiled, in the case of the latter. Dalby notes, quote,

The troublemakers were secure from reprisal, even in the most notorious cases of fraud and extortion, and for centuries, historians have used these episodes as illustrations of the evil of eunuch oppression during the late Tang. But it didn't even end there. As we discussed a few minutes ago, over the early 790s, Emperor Dazong had cross-promoted his eunuchs to oversee both civil and military offices. This was, of course, hugely beneficial for the eunuchs themselves. But was it, as traditional Chinese historians would have us believe, a sign that Dezong had simply succumbed to personal excess and myopic self-interest

at the expense of his own administration? More modern research suggests that, to the contrary, the move was instead a shrewd one on the emperor's part. Since they retained no official standing in larger society or the imperial court, the eunuch's power bases remained confined to the emperor's will alone. They had few other, if any, political attachments that might compromise that symbiotic relationship. And as such, they would prove to be among Dezong's most loyal and potent spies, his eyes and ears across all facets of his empire, civilian and now military alike. That situation would be further ensconced in 795, when, for the first time ever, the eunuch officials were given a seal of high office.

This was a monumental, and to the traditionalist members of the court, deeply troubling, turn of events. Dalby again puts it, For decades, the institution of eunuch-led supervisorships had caused annoyance in the provinces, but from this time onwards, the eunuch supervisors were feared. End quote. But from this time onwards, the eunuch supervisors were feared." One of the highly interesting aspects of this period, in fact, were the methods these increasingly powerful class of eunuchs began to employ, and with official consent at that, to effectively bypass the one limiting factor of themselves that had made them so trusted and indispensable to the throne in the first place, that is, their own lack of reproductive ability. You can give a eunuch a lot of power,

so the thinking always went, because he could not possibly have a son to pass that power on to. But then, as now, there are workarounds for such physical inabilities, namely adoption. It's actually somewhat evocative of the by now ancient Roman imperial custom of adopting worthy adults as sons in order to carry on the family name and legacy. Likewise, it's also evocative of even modern Japanese businessman practices of doing much the same. But the eunuchs of the late Tang dynasty began the practice of adopting other eunuchs, younger than themselves of course, as legal sons in order to perpetuate and extend their political and economic influence beyond their own limited lifespans. Hi everyone, this is Scott. If you want to learn about the world's oldest civilizations, find out how they were rediscovered,

follow the story of Mark Antony and Cleopatra's descendants over ten generations, or take a deep dive into the Iron Age or the Hellenistic era, then check out the Ancient World Podcast. Available on all podcasting platforms or go to ancientworldpodcast.com. That's the Ancient World Podcast. It began in a straightforward enough manner, but over the course of the 9th century, we'll come to see the practice expand and become quite elaborate, even going so far in some cases as to include wives, daughters, and even occasionally uncastrated males into these adoptive families. Those occasional uncastrated males, by the way, were typically of high military rank and usually were

seeking to parlay that into wealth and influence within the government. Though there would be attempts to legally limit the number of sons that could be adopted by high-ranking eunuch officials in both the 790s and later on, Dalby puts it that, quote, adoption by that time was unstoppable, end quote. Owing much to their ability to capitalize on the outsized level of power and influence, eunuchs were frequently allotted within the imperial system. Ironically, itself a product of them traditionally not being able to pass that power on to anyone, these adoptive families would quickly begin to play a central role in Tang court politics well into the 9th century. By the midpoint of the last decade of the 8th century, then, the eunuch class, once despised

agents lurking in the shadows and with little or no official standing beyond the emperor's personal will, was at last able to step into the light as regular actors within the political structure, and, like it or not, the regular officials of the court were going to have to learn to live and deal with them as a truly formidable power bloc. In fact, the one man who really could have stepped in to rein in eunuch influence over the imperial government, Emperor Dezong himself, of course, was increasingly hard to find over the course of his last decade in power. Having grown disgusted with the seemingly small-minded and ineffectual courtiers of his regular bureaus, as we saw last episode, Dezong increasingly inserted his personal will into the mechanisms of government in the form of his personal appointments of the so-called inner court to positions of great power. Over the final decade of the 700s, then, with these personal agents in place,

De Zong more and more frequently cloistered himself away in his personal villas and apartments within the palace, neither calling court to session nor allowing his officials access to his person. From the Cambridge History of China, quote, The routine of ordinary court activities was disrupted and the schedules of audiences and From the Cambridge History of China, Yet for all his self-imposed sequestration, Dezong does not appear to have been idling away the hours with personal pleasures. To the contrary, though he refused to hold official meetings with his ministers for long stretches of time, he nevertheless would later be criticized for an overwhelming concern with the trivialities of the administrative mechanisms, rather than taking interest in the large-scale tasks that yet boggled his empire.

It's not that he was taking a stroll through the forest, it's just that he seemed to have been missing it for the trees. So it is probably inaccurate to say that in his final decade, Emperor Dezong abandoned his administrative and executive responsibilities to the state, to his eunuchs, in spite of traditional historians' frequent admonitions to that effect. Though the eunuch class would assume many of the key governmental positions after 795, it's probably more fair to say that the ongoing underperformance of the key governmental positions after 795, it's probably more fair to say that the ongoing underperformance of the regular bureaucracy made their accomplishments and deeds simply more obvious than they had been before. Moreover, distant though he may have been, Dezong remained firmly in charge of his eunuchs, the supreme ruler in both form and function, which, as we'll see in

episodes to come, will prove a marked contrast to the later still-Tong and function, which, as we'll see in episodes to come, will prove a marked contrast to the later still-tongued monarchs, who will be more or less completely subsumed by the wills of their own supposed servants over the course of the 9th century. Instead, in this instance, it was Dezong using the eunuchs for his own interests, and not the other way around,

nor was it to gain favor among the bureaucrats that he had grown to so despise. As Dalby once again puts it, While the advance of the eunuchs under Daozong did lay the basis for their later political power, their gain in the 790s was realized under an emperor who was no fool. Moreover, though he was withdrawn from court politics for much of his last decade, when the empire itself was periodically threatened, for instance the sporadic rebellions stemming from Hanan between 798 and 801, Dezong would unfailingly re-emerge to deal with the problems swiftly and sharply and quickly

restore order to the realm before returning once again to his self-imposed isolation. So he was kind of a bit like Batman in that regard. Though there would be no person nor body sufficiently powerful to directly challenge Dezong over the whole of his reign, haters were nevertheless going to hate. By the turn of the 9th century, a small but influential group of imperial officials, disgruntled about the recent spate of political, military, and social disturbances, most of which they laid solely at the feet of, of course, the hated eunuchs, had begun to convene with and around the heir apparent of the empire, Crown Prince Li Song. Chief among these grumblers, though fast-becoming conspirators, were two minor officials from

Zhejiang province, Wang Shuwen and Wang Pi, and though there is no relation between the two, I'm nevertheless going to call them the Wangs. The former had made a name for himself by being rather good at the board game, Wei Qi, aka Go. Wang Shuwen was shrewd enough to caution the crown prince against speaking of his own complaints against the emperor dad, Da Zong, since that might be construed as treason. Still, the Wangs made no attempt to stop the prince from listening to them, as they and their fellow Malcontents began to lay out their own plans for the governments that would come in the post-Dazong world. Ultimately, this small band would come to include around 20 co-conspirators,

even including a eunuch, and each is said to have sworn an oath of total secrecy to one another. And strangely enough, that seems to have actually worked for once, because theirs seems to have been one of the very few political plots that was not discovered beforehand and destroyed. In a twist of fate, however, in the winter of 804, the crown prince would suffer from what appears to have been a stroke at the age of 43. Though he'd survive, it would leave him partially paralyzed and mute, or nearly so, and unable to conduct court business in the normal fashion. Throwing something of a monkey wrench into what would come to be known as the Wang Party.

Had Dezong long survived his eldest son's episode, he may well have appointed another of his sons as his designated heir, owing to Lisong's sudden infirmity. Indeed, there was wide speculation and rumor throughout the capital that Lisong might now be incapable of rule. But Dezong, now 62, slid into what historians have described as a deep depression and soon succumbed to an illness. He died on February 25, 805, after 26 years on the throne. Partially paralyzed and mute, though he might have been,

Prince Li Song duly succeeded his father as the emperor of the Tang Dynasty, as Emperor Xunzong. Though, as always, that is his posthumous temple name, not one that he would have used in life. Though their favored candidate, that is his posthumous temple name, not one that he would have used in life. Though their favored candidate being so hobbled was certainly a stumbling block for the now ascendant Wang party, for the first few months of Shenzong's new reign, at least, they were able to turn such circumstances to their favor. The emperor himself was of course shuffled off to his private quarters and away from the rigors of actual rule, which he was of course too weak to undertake. Isolated within his compounds, Shunzong would be attended to solely

by his favorite concubine, the Lady Niu, as well as his trusted eunuch servant, Li Zhongyan. Meanwhile, the Wang party situated themselves to essentially take full control of the central government. Wang Pi, an elderly academic and poet from Hangzhou, who apparently spoke only his local Wu dialect rather than high middle Chinese of the imperial court, nevertheless was able to situate himself as the go-between to relay the imperial edicts from the emperor's private quarters to Wang Shuwen, and from there out to the other Wang Party members at various high government stations. Dalby writes,

Unsurprisingly, voicing opposition of any kind to this state of affairs quickly became a rather dangerous thing to do, typically resulting in a summary end to your career if you were lucky. Nevertheless, though heavily frowned upon by most traditional historians for their overt factionalism in what amounted to a hostile takeover of government, the Wang Party should at least be given credit where it's due. They did, for instance, knuckle down and really try to solve the ever-ongoing administrative crisis within the government. The eunuch officials, having long grown used to virtual blanket immunity

for their crimes of fraud and the theft from commoners, all at once found themselves under heavy scrutiny and even prosecution from the Wang party officials, and their haven of swindling, the much-abused palace market, was abolished altogether. Likewise, the Wangs' outright banishment of the governor of Chang'an from the city entirely, a man who had made himself so hated by the populace that he apparently only narrowly avoided being stoned to death in the street by the city's residents as he fled. The Wangs were able to re-ban the system of the irregular tributary gifts from vassal lords and provincial governors to the emperor in lieu of a regular system of taxation, a policy that,

as you might remember, Dezong had once been convinced to enact, but had then reverted to his old ways after less than half a year. Nonetheless, the Wang party's time in the spotlight would be short indeed, hastened all the more, no doubt, by their crippled Emperor Shunzong's own continually declining health. By the summer of 805, Shunzong's health had slipped into the red zone, and the imperial court, in a panic, demanded that he name an heir at once, fearing that if he died without doing so, they might be saddled with yet another incompetent monarch. Defying both the Wang party officials and all court decorum, an academic of the Hanling Academy named Zheng Yin was able to sneak into the imperial chamber,

smuggling with him a single sheet of paper on which he'd scrawled a request to the emperor himself. It read simply, the crown prince should be the eldest son. The ailing mute Shenzong read the sentence and did nothing more than nod, but a nod was all that was required. Thus it was that the eldest son of Emperor Shenzong, Li Chun, would be made the crown prince on April 25th, 805. It was news that could not have been welcomed to the Wang party, since it was widely suspected that Li Chun held no love for their grip on power. Nevertheless, the newly minted crown prince was able to stave off the Wang's direct antipathy by taking a page from his old man and keeping his mouth shut about it. What would prove to be the final nail in the coffin of the short-lived Wang party, though,

would be the support of the military, or rather their absolute lack of it. Oh, they tried to get the military on their side. Boy, did they ever. Wang Shiwen had spent months on end trying to get himself appointed as the head of the overall imperial military command structure, a plan that by necessity and design would have removed the eunuch commanders from their positions of power. However, though the imperial court officials loathed the eunuch commanders from their positions of power. However, though the imperial court officials loathed the eunuchs, the field commanders and border generals by this point owed their very careers to those same commanders, and as such didn't take kindly to these Wang people taking over and probably costing them their jobs. Dalby writes, quote, on their own initiative,

the overall commander appointed by the Wangs was rebuffed at the main Shunzi army camp in Fengtian. Once it was clear that the Wangs had failed to win over the army, it was all over. End quote. Without the military to secure their position, the Wang party could do little more but watch in horror as a coalition of eunuchs, Hanlin academics, and military governors banded together to say, yeah, that's just about enough from you Wang people. Together, they were able to successfully petition mute Emperor Shenzong to abdicate the throne in favor of his newly minted heir, Li Chun,

who would take over as regent for several months before he was formally enthroned on August 31st, 805, as Emperor Shenzong. And as for the Wang party, it was game over, man. Game over. Wang Shuwen was compelled to leave his official post in mid-July after his mother died in order to observe the legally required period of mourning. Several times, the elderly Wang Pi tried to have Shuwen recalled to his position, but to no avail. Realizing that this might be his last best chance to get out while theizing that this might be his last, best chance to get out while the getting was good, Wang Pi supposedly feigned a stroke of his own, and

thereafter excused himself from further government service. Even that would not be enough for the newly enthroned Shanzong, however, and after having kept silent on his feelings toward the Wang Party's manipulations of the Tang government for this long, he felt it was high time that they heard exactly how he felt about them. As one of his first actions in office, Xianzong stripped away the Wang Party of all their titles and positions, and banished them all forthwith from the capital to the far corners of the realm. Wang Pi would have the good sense to die of an actual brain hemorrhage while in exile, but Wang Shuwen required further prodding. Ultimately, in late 805, he'd received what he must have known had been coming, an imperial edict from Emperor Shenzong ordering him to commit suicide. The curious case of the Wang Party in the late Tang government is interesting not only because

it seems to have so flagrantly violated one of the oldest and most long-standing taboos of the Chinese imperial government, that is, a strict ban on overt political factions, but also because there's a lingering element of mystery to the whole strange brief affair. As noted in the Cambridge History, there is very little primary documentation left to us of the Wang Party's real motivations, objectives, or even desired outcomes? Almost certainly because the Tang government of Xianzong went to pains to destroy every trace of them that they could find. What does remain in the likes of the Books of Tang and the Zizhetongjian are unmistakably biased against this upstart party, making drawing firm conclusions little more than matters of conjecture, which throughout the centuries since their fall from grace, many historical and political writers have been all too happy

to partake in. Conventionally, there are two widely held understandings regarding the Wang Party. The traditionalist view of most older historians has been that the Wang Party members were nothing but xiaoren, small men, that is to say, political vultures only out for their own betterment and narrow self-interest. A rather less classically popular viewpoint is that the Wangs were actually well-meaning reformists who did at least try to oust their arch-enemies, the eunuchs, from power. As is often the case, the most likely answer is somewhere in the middle. We can safely assume

that one of the objectives of the Wong Party's members was the accumulation of power, and in that sense they did a pretty remarkable job of getting just so much of it as they did in such a short period of time. Where they really seemed to have misstepped in that regard was in their rapidity and inexperience. What I mean is that they moved a bit too quickly, and in the process managed to piss off everyone before they'd fully come into control of anyone. Dalby, once again, writes, quote, they did not control the Han Lin Academy fully, nor did they placate truly influential sections of the court with chief ministerships, nor did they enlist adequate

military support to their cause. Even a small force of guards might have tipped the balance and prevented their enemies from regaining the initiative." There is, however, a third and much more recent take on the Wang Party, which is the Marxist perspective that, as a matter of course, became quite popular in China over the course of the 20th century. Communist Party historian Wang Yuncheng took the position in his 1963 publication in the Journal of Studies in Chinese History, or the Lisha Yanjiao, his rather colorfully entitled article, The Second Treatise on the Historic Significance of the Bastard Sima's Political Innovations. In it, he posited that the Wang Party represented a genuine struggle between

competing elements of the landlord class. The Wangs, according to Wan Yunsheng, again, no relation, were fighting on behalf of a commoner landlord group against the aristocratic landlord group comprised of the eunuchs and other high officials. It's admittedly rather hard to pay too terribly much credence to someone with that big of an ideological axe to grind, with such an obvious post-hoc spin, and with so relatively little solid evidence for such a bold class-strugglist claim. Still, it's always interesting to see various perspectives, and all the more so since such a topic can clearly arouse such passion, even more than a millennium after the fact.

Regardless of the viewpoint one deems to take in the end, though, what is very clear is that the failure of the Wang party to complete what amounted to a political coup would have long-lasting consequences and implications for the Chinese empire, and it would take another three decades for any group of imperial bureaucrats to muster enough courage, or perhaps foolhardiness, to attempt to force change upon the political structure once again. We'll end off today, however, by finishing out the life of our now-retired emperor, Shen Zong. And don't worry, it'll be brief. There is, I should point out, a rather strange incident that very winter, in which a seemingly random hermit named Luo showed up at

the prefectural capital of Qin and claimed to its governor that he held an edict from the retired emperor stating that the government should rise in rebellion against the new emperor, Shanzong. The governor, however, essentially took one look at this guy and said, no way am I buying that line of BS, and so he dragged the hermit back to Chang'an, where he was subsequently caned to death. And, well, that was certainly random. For the actual Shunzong, though, life and retirement was short and full of illness. Though only about 45 years old, he would succumb to the residual effects of his stroke and other ailments in early February of 806, having reigned for a mere six months and as a semi-paralyzed mute on top

of that. Even so, the almost too convenient timing of his death in order to pave the way for the newly created heir apparent has left the door open for later historians to posit that Shenzong's swift death following his retirement may not have been a natural consequence of his debility, but may instead have been helped along, perhaps by the same group of palace eunuchs who had so vociferously promoted and supported Xianzong into power. That, of course, remains pure speculation, but more than a few classical historians have jumped at the chance to pile on yet one more crime onto the ever-despised unit class. In spite of his very brief term of service, the historian Han Yu memorialized this unfortunate ruler of the Tang Dynasty in fairly glowing terms in the mid-10th century. Why? Well, I'll let him explain. He wrote in the Old Book of Tang,

quote, Unfortunately, he became seriously ill when he was emperor, and his close associates took undue power. But he was able to pass the throne to his oldest and best, such that the dynasty was able to continue in prosperity. Was he not then good? End quote. And so we have come at last to the end of Emperor Dezong, as well as his ephemeral immediate successor. Next time, therefore, we will launch into the reign of that oldest and best son, the Emperor Xianzong, who will in short order launch himself and his administration into a war against the one group you would think would be the last one he'd want to pick a fight with.

That same class that had so recently embroiled China in not one, but two devastating rebellions. The military governors that guarded the borderlands. The Jie Du Shi. Thanks for listening. One last thing before we close out today. If you like what you're hearing, please do take a moment to give us a rating on iTunes or the podcatcher of your choice. And if you're able, support the show through our Patreon page, patreon.com slash thehistoryofchina. And both that link and our link to PayPal are also available through our website,

thehistoryofchina.wordpress.com. You will be forever blessed by the Jade Emperor, and help this little show keep paying for itself. Thanks so much, 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.