The History of China - #113 - Tang 25: The Longshoreman's Prophecy

Episode Date: November 29, 2016

In the wake of Emperor Xianzong’s unexpected death in 820, his work remains unfinished… and now left in the hands of his incapable, incompetent successors. The eunuchs are hard at work securing ultimate authority for themselves, and have no time for a strong central leader, and the Governor-generals of the northeast are eager to get out from under the imperial thumb once again. Into all this madness, a dock-worker, a fortuneteller, and an army of vagabonds will make a quixotic bid for the throne. Time Period Covered: February, 820- January, 827 CE Major Historical Figures: Emperor Muzong of Tang (Li Heng) [r. 820-824] Emperor Jingzong of Tang (Li Zhan) [r. 824-827] Emperor Wenzong of Tang (Li Ang) [r. 827-840] Prince Li Han of Jiang [d. 827] Eunuch-Official Liang Shoujian Eunuch Official Liu Keming [d. 827] Chief Minister Xiao Mian Su Xuanming, Fortuneteller Extraordinaire [d. 824] Zhang Shao, Unlikely Sitter of Thrones [d. 824] Sources: Dalby, Michael T. (1979). “Court politics in late T’ang times: Mid-Ninth Century Court (820-59)” in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 3. 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 Before we get going today, let me take a moment to recommend that you give The History of Islam by Elias Belharad a listen. From its roots in Hira Cave on Mount Jabal al-Nur, to it becoming Hello, and welcome to the History of Islam. Enjoy the show. Hello, and welcome to the History of China.

Episode 113, The Longshoreman's Prophecy. Every so often, history just seems to have a really weird role of the cosmic dice, and we see actual events coming to pass that would have to be cut out of any TV show plot for it being simply too unrealistic. We start today with one of those times. In May of 824, a fortune teller living in the imperial capital, Chang'an, who was named Su Xuanming, hurried to a meeting with a friend of his, a commoner canal dock laborer by the name of Zhang Shao. Fortune teller Su, you see, had beheld a very intriguing vision of the future, and as it directly involved both him and Zhang, he was anxious to share it with his friend. Meeting privately and out of earshot of anyone who might wish to pry into their business,

Su told Zhang just what he had foreseen. A vision of the pair of them sitting in the imperial throne room, and with Zhang Xiao on the throne itself, sharing a fine meal together. A new, young emperor currently reigned over the Tang Empire, but it was in name only. He was frequently away from the palace, and often even his retainers didn't know where he'd gotten off to. The time, Su Xuanming argued, was right to seize this truly unique opportunity. And so they began to contact everyone they knew, all the hoodlums and street urchins of the lower districts of the great capital city. Together, they were going to turn this vision into reality, and hopefully all reap the rewards of such audacity. We'll be coming back to the fortune teller Su and Longshoremen Zhang in just a little bit,

but they are going to need a little bit of time to gather up the necessary manpower. So while we wait for them to muster up Chang'an's underclass, let's flesh out the background of the Tang Empire since last we saw it. Last time, we covered the reign of what was really the last good monarch of the Tang Dynasty, Emperor Xianzong, who had over the course of his nearly 15 years in power managed to wrest provincial authority from the peripheral military governors and back under his administration's central control, and at least vigorously tried to deal with the perennial thorn in the empire's side, that of economic forms aimed

at stabilization. In both instances, he'd seen mixed results at best, but more positive than negative. Regardless, though, his accomplishments had been light years beyond what any emperor virtually since Taizong had managed to accomplish. But then, he had unexpectedly died in the year 820, probably from long-term poisoning brought on, ironically enough, by the very alchemical compositions he was taking in the pursuit of eternal life. So today, we're going to pick up with the enthronement of his heir and successor, the 24-year-old crown prince Li Heng, who will be known thereafter as Emperor Muzong. And with his coronation, we'll see all that hard work done by his father to push the stone up the hill roll right back down to the bottom again.

It's easy enough to point fingers at any one of a number of culprits when looking at the backsliding done under Muzong and his successors. First and foremost, as usual, would be the emperor in question. I mean, this is an absolute autocracy, right? How exactly would the buck not stop at Muzong's inability to competently continue his father's reform measures. And to be sure, there's a lot of truth in that. But as we'll see, and as we've been exploring all throughout this podcast, in fact, the goings-on of the Chinese court are rarely as simple as they might first seem. The emperor was the absolute monarch, yes. But even the most powerful of autocrats are, in the end, dependent on their governmental mechanisms behaving properly. Let's first look at Muzong himself. What kind of a man was this, now coming unexpectedly early into the throne?

He was, all things considered, a man who seemed fundamentally incapable of filling his father's all-striving shoes. But more than that, he just didn't seem to really have his heart in it like dear old dad had. I mean, sure, reforming the government was nice and all, but all Mu Zong really wanted to do was what all the other young and strong men of his cohort liked to do. Hunt, long games of polo, lavish banquets full of singing, dancing, and, of course, women. He was, in many respects, a pretty typical 24-year-old guy who had had the fate of his entire empire just dropped into his lap, a burden that he wasn't ready to really commit himself to solving. Though he seems to have been game to at least give

it his best shot, his personality, his circumstance of coming to power, and fate itself, it would seem, would ultimately conspire against a positive outcome. As Professor Dalby puts it, quote, in general, Muzong was not accorded that mixture of fear and respect essential to the functioning of the Tang imperial system. A significant part of the reason lay in his own personality, end quote. So all right, we've essentially got yet another frat boy on the throne. But come on, that's not really that bad, is it? With a properly functioning bureaucracy in place, the empire should at least fall back into a holding pattern of status quo. About that, though, now it's time to bring up yet again everyone's favorite punching bag,

the eunuch official class. And boy oh boy, this really is their time to shine. Muzang's accession to the throne was, in fact, the first of three periods in the mid and late 9th century in which the eunuch officialdom would play a central driving role. Dalby attributes this rise to power to three key aspects that all coalesce more or less at once. First, the increasing, stifling isolation of the imperial family within the palaces from even their own ministers and advisors rendered them ever more susceptible to eunuch interference and manipulation. Second, the blooming of the eunuch class's own

brand of political power into its full prestige. And finally, the total lockdown the eunuchs had on the capital region thanks to their control over the Shunzi Imperial Army stationed nearby. In any case, the eunuch with the most direct influence over the new emperor was a man named Liang Shoujian, owing in large part to the fact that it had been Liang who had secured Muzang's throne for him. Why had the eunuch gone out of his way, indeed seems to have put his own life on the line, in order to lobby for Muzang's unlikely accession? It's difficult to say for sure, given the relative paucity of information we're forced to draw from. There are so little details given in the classical sources, for instance, that historians aren't even sure how long the struggle for the throne might have been going on behind the scenes in the palace prior to Xianzong's death, which proves to be a rather

critical detail when trying to suss out the eunuch official Liang's motivations. Dalby writes of this frustrating lack of detail, quote, If the palace struggle over Muzong's accession was of long standing, as some accounts suggest, involving rival eunuch cliques that go back into the early 810s, then Liang Shoujian would have rendered a very great service indeed by battling for Muzong's interest year in and year out. But if the palace struggle was a flash in the pan, beginning only in 819 or so,

Liang's efforts on Muzong's behalf might have been transparently opportunistic. If basic facts such as these are unknown, how can we hope to understand the post-enthronement relationship between them? End quote. In any case, though, it's well understood that eunuch involvement and intercession in state affairs was as of this point considerably powerful and very much out in the open. Turning away from the mysteries of the imperial court, though, let's take a moment to assess the rest of the empire as it was left in the wake of Xianzong's sudden departure from the world. Xianzong had worked tirelessly to stitch the realm back together again and had done an admirable job, but an incomplete one.

And now, with his untimely demise, there was little Muzong seemed capable of doing to pick up those still-frayed strings and continue the process of national reconciliation. The continuity of the program of military centralization had been fatally disrupted before any kind of lasting stability could be achieved, and as soon as Xianzong left the stage, it all began to unravel in a hurry. The first major test for Muzong's new regime on this front came very early on, when less

than a year after his enthronement, the military governor of Zhengde province died. That would lead to what had become a common enough stress point for the imperial court, which was that the provincial government wished to fill the vacancy according to its own prerogatives, while the imperial court demanded adherence to its own long-standing precedent of appointing the successor itself. And in the latter half of the year 820, Muzang's court would stumble its way into a rather fantastic blunder of so-called compromise. It would confirm the heir of Zhengde province, but not as the governor of Zhengde. Rather, its stipulation was that all governors of the northeast were to rotate. The recently confirmed heir, Dalby writes, quote,

was sent off to Yizheng province, the governor of Weibo packed off to Zhengde, and so on. Apparently, the idea was to recognize the claims of the Northeastern governors to participate in politics, but not to let them do so in their home territory, end quote. So, you know, appeasement. Because that always works out so well. Except the governors aren't even really being appeased. They're being uprooted, one and all, and with all the headaches and expenses you might imagine that would entail for each. As if that wasn't bad enough, though, the following year, Emperor Muzong decided to dispatch a civil bureaucrat to the province of Yuzhou to take command. Now, we must understand, Yuzhou, which is modern Beijing, not only had been appointing its own military governors in an uninterrupted succession for almost a century by this point,

but had been the one and only province of the Northeast that had very conspicuously stayed out of all the wars against the throne that we discussed last time. Yu Zhou just wanted to mind its own business, thanks very much. But now this young emperor was sending in his own man, and not even a military one at that, to start sticking his nose into their own affairs, while riding around in his sedan chair carried by servants, neglecting his official duties, and casually overlooking his own crony's abuses of power. We might say it was like Muzong trying to see what was happening inside an oil drum by lighting a match and tossing it in. To say that it would prove to be an untenable situation is putting it mildly. Dalby writes, quote, This powder keg soon blew up in the court's face. There was a mutiny in Zhengde,

and then a full-scale rebellion in 821. The court campaign to suppress it was an expensive failure, end quote. The Zhengde rebellion would be joined by the unhappy Yuzhou, who threw off their civil governor and then essentially said, what are you going to do about it? With little indeed that they could do, the suddenly reeling court at Chang'an was forced to concede that they were in no position to do anything

other than simply write off the rebellious regions and file them in the cabinet labeled whoops. By the midpoint of 822, the 15 years of painstaking labor undertaken by Shenzong had been virtually completely unmade. The situation had reverted almost perfectly to the way it had been in 804. The provinces of the northeast, so recently reunited into the imperial bosom, were one and all, once again autonomous and hostile to the throne. How could this have been allowed to happen? Well, first and foremost, the imperial garrisons sent to put down the insurrections proved wholly inadequate to the task. The armies sent were simply too small to effectively box in and contain the revolters. In addition, a smattering of eunuch officials throughout the command chain further muddied

the waters. Not because they didn't wish to do their best, but because their mere presence was still enough to inspire revulsion and disruption in the chain of command. All the while, the court at Chang'an tried to micromanage the affairs on the ground, a debilitating measure given the distance between them and the actual warfront. And the generals in the field all too often held their best forces in reserve as their personal bodyguards rather than committing them to the battlefields in victory. None of this was surprising, of course. It had been on full display in virtually every major military engagement since at least the time of the An Lushan Rebellion in the mid-750s. Yet here and now, there was the need for a scapegoat on which to hang the blame for this colossal failure. Our goat today will be Xiao Mian, then the chief minister who had made his

career on the idea of reluctance to use military force to deal with the Northeast. As such, he was accused of misleading the sovereign into believing that the empire was completely pacified, and thus discouraging him from further developing plans for stabilization. Yeah, uh-huh, totally his fault. Napoleon Bonaparte rose from obscurity to become the most powerful and significant figure in modern history. Over 200 years after his death, people are still debating his legacy. He was a man of contradictions, a tyrant and a reformer, a liberator and an oppressor, a revolutionary and a reactionary. His biography reads like a novel, and his influence is almost beyond measure. I'm Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast, and every month I delve into the turbulent

life and times of one of the greatest characters in history, and every month I delve into the turbulent life and times of one of the greatest characters in history, and explore the world that shaped him in all its glory and tragedy. It's a story of great battles and campaigns, political intrigue, and massive social and economic change, but it's also a story about people, populated with remarkable characters. I hope you'll join me as I examine this fascinating era of history. Find The Age of Napoleon wherever you get your podcasts. Xiaomian's name was duly dragged through the mud, and he was dishonorably discharged from his office. Yet for all this, somehow that dismissal didn't magically turn everything around for Muzong's

situation. Shocker, I know. Now devoid of a convenient fall guy, blame for the continued intransigence of the northeast now lay directly at the feet of the emperor himself, with not-so-hushed whispers telling of his policies being lax like those of his grandfather, a damning indictment if ever there was one. Rumors swirled around the capital of his supposed sexual indulgences and excesses. True or not, they certainly were designed to begin the process of bringing him down. And even after only this short time in office, he was already receiving barrages of criticisms for his alleged actions. And they might have succeeded given enough time, but as it would turn out, Muzang's burgeoning enemies needn't have bothered. Early in 823, while playing his favorite game of polo,

Muzang was thrown from his horse and badly crippled, rendering him, as Professor Dalby puts it, an invalid. Though he'd survived the initial fall and managed to cling to life through the end of the year, his condition continued to worsen, and at the beginning of 824, Emperor Muzang would succumb to a combination of his injuries and an illness at just 29 years old and after only four years on the throne. He would be succeeded by his eldest son, Li Zhan, who was shortly thereafter enthroned as Emperor Jingzong. Unfortunately, for both the new emperor and his realm, he was only 14 or 15 when he acceded to the throne.

And it showed. If Muzang had been something of a frat boy who was not especially attentive to the duties his position demanded, then Jingzong was the legacy admission who took absolutely nothing seriously. If Muzang had been somewhat uncomfortably cozy to the eunuch officials within his administration, Jingzong displayed favoritism toward them on an unprecedented level. In the very first week of his reign, he is said to have spent a full three days lavishing the greater majority of the now four to five thousand eunuchs of the palace with new official uniforms,

colored bolts of silk, treasures, titles, and all manner of other awards that swiftly drained the treasury. Jingzong seemed not even to care to pay the lip service to duties that his father had, and instead went straight back to his favorite pastimes, polo, feasting, games of strength like arm wrestling, and hosting musicians, whom he lavishly rewarded. When state affairs pressed, he quickly became so infamous for keeping his officials waiting for hours on end that even his own advisors were forced to write him pleading letters warning him that he must stop such disrespectful behavior toward his staff. Now I should pause for a moment and say that through all this there had been an ongoing and strong undercurrent of

political machinations and the formation of two strong factions called respectively the Nyo and Li factions within the court. But this is a hugely complicated and expansive affair that spans decades, and I think it would detract more from the narrative right now than it would add. Besides, it will ultimately reach a culmination of sorts in 835 with the so-called Sweet Dew plot. So what I'm going to do for today is leave the Nios and the Lys on the periphery for the time being, and then when we get to the Sweet Dew Plot next time, I'll swing back around and do my best to explain the whole buildup of the political blocs

and their ceaseless struggles for power. But for now, I think it's enough to say that while emperors like Dezong and especially Xianzong had ruthlessly cracked down on political factionalization, fragmenting their governments. Emperors Muzong, Jingzong, and Jingzong's upcoming successor and younger brother Wenzong were too weak to effectively suppress political factions over their respective reigns.

Alright, so we are now back to May of 824, and the fortune teller Su Xuanming and the dock worker Zhang Xiao have now cobbled together the army they need to make their play for the throne. And oh, what a ragtag group it was, consisting of possibly as many as a hundred fellow laborers, low-level servants, street urchins, and beggars. It must have been a truly bizarre sight to see this group approach the palace gates and launch what must have looked to be the most ill-conceived attack ever. But Su and Zhang had timed their blitz on the palace well,

because palace security had grown startlingly lax among the guard, owing to the emperor's erratic schedule and proclivity for not being in the palace at all for large stretches of time. As such, the peasant force was quickly able to overpower the few guards that stood between them and the main throne room, and before anyone could think to react, they had seized the structure. Unluckily for them, but very luckily for the emperor, he was not there at the time, but in another part of the palace, Qingsi Hall, playing, as he so often did, a rousing game of polo. As soon as he was made aware that ruffians had seized the throne room, though, he made straight for the Shunsa army's troop compound,

which sat just outside the capital, and roused its commander to action, with an order to put down this rebellion and retake the imperial palace at once. Meanwhile, back at the now-occupied throne room, the two masterminds of this rebellion, Su and Zhang, contemplated their next move. They had failed to seize the emperor outright, which made this whole venture rather more tricky. As they discussed, the evening meal was prepared and served to the pair and the other members of the peasant force. Zhang sat to eat, and so did Su, but then he realized that Zhang

was sitting in the imperial throne and Su was sharing a meal with him, though neither of them now were, or ever would be, emperor. The prophecy had been fulfilled, and Su Xuanming lamented that he now understood that they were all well and truly doomed. The small band tried to make a run for it, but by this time, the whole of the palace complex had been encircled by the left and right Shunzi armies, and its unit commander Ma ordered his cavalry force to storm

the throne room and put the insurgents down. Zhao, Su, and most of the other peasant rebels were slain on the spot, but a few managed to escape into the palace gardens, where they remained through the night before being caught and presumably executed the following day. And yet, even in victory, Emperor Jingzong seemed compelled to screw things up and anger his own staff. In the wake of this inexcusably negligent oversight on the part of the palace guard captains, the unit guards in charge of the inner palace were punished only lightly. And in fact, Jingzong took this opportunity to richly reward the commander of the Shenzhe army for his valor in putting down this vicious band of misguided, lightly armed rabble.

This whole situation was just all too ridiculous for several of the court's key staff, and in the wake of this bizarre incident and Jingzong's reckless and inexplicable reaction to it, even the imperial high chancellor, Niu Shengru, resigned his post in disgust and instead took up a Jieduxia governorship on the outskirts of the empire, an ominously telling move if ever there was one. Not only was Niu saying that he didn't feel he could be of any assistance to the emperor anymore, but he was retreating from the capital to surround himself with personally loyal border troops rather than risk staying inside the increasingly unstable palace. Over the next year and a half or thereabouts, Jingzong just kept on rather obliviously burning

bridges. His excessive rewarding of his eunuchs had already alienated him from his regular courtiers. But his capricious nature began to grate on the eunuchs as well, especially his tendency to impulsively exile, imprison, or even physically beat individuals who brought him bad news that he didn't want to hear, or otherwise just angered him. Thus it was decided at the highest levels of the eunuch bureau that they had just about had it with Jingzong, and it was time that someone took care of him. In early January of 827, the now 17-year-old emperor was returning from one of his frequent hunting expeditions, and, having had a successful outing, invited some 28 of his fellows,

including his favored eunuchs and polo players, for an alcohol-fueled after-party at the palace. The congratulations and toasts went well into the cold dark of the night, and the drafty chamber was of course lit entirely by candlelight. The story goes that as the emperor got up from his seat to use the restroom, a rogue burst of winter wind blew out the candles all at once. In the sudden darkness, a scuffle ensued, and when the lights were at last relit a few minutes later, How unfortunate. With that messy business, I mean tragic accident, out of the way, the next question was, of course, who would the successor to the throne be?

There was about five seconds of consideration over whether Jingzong's son should succeed him to the throne, but since he was an infant, he was immediately thrown out of contention. A scholar was then summoned to the chamber and instructed to write out Jingzong's will, which stipulated that the now late emperor wanted his uncle, Muzong's younger brother, Prince Han of Jiang, to be put in charge of the state. That state of affairs, however, wouldn't last out the week, since Prince Han, now acting as an emperor, even if not yet formally enthroned, made no secret of his intention to conduct a thorough purge of the upper echelons of the imperial court, and especially the eunuch bureau, specifically

targeting the commandants of the Shenzhen armies. And yeah, you can probably guess the outcome of Prince Han broadcasting intentions like that. In no time at all, literally the next day, the commanders of the Shenzhe armies had assembled their respective forces, as well as another force called the Feilongbing, meaning the Flying Dragon Soldiers, and said, in effect, no, I think you will find it is not us who are about to be purged. The army attacked the Prince of Jiang and his entourage, killing the majority of them outright, including the prince. Of those who managed to flee, the eunuch official who had put the idea

to purge the rolls into the deceased prince's head, named Liu Keming, attempted to commit suicide by jumping into a well. But he was fished out before drowning and had his appointed day with the headsman. In the wake of this bloody counter-coup, the remaining members of the court organized the transference of power to occur via Muzong's widow, the now Grand Empress Dowager, Guo, who proclaimed that her second son, Emperor Jingzong's little brother, Prince Li Han, would succeed to the throne. He would be enthroned a mere four days after his elder brother's assassination as Emperor Wenzong at age 16. He'd grown up seeing the wastefulness of both his father and older brother in action, and how that had negatively impacted the reigns of both, even under their respective deaths. And so, markedly unlike them, Wenzong's period

of rule would be one of conservation, diligence, and attention to detail. But as we'll see next time, these positive qualities would be fatally marred by indecisiveness and wishy-washiness. One thing that he was not indecisive about, however, was his growing dissatisfaction with the level of control his eunuch handlers seemed to hold over him, a discontentment that would continue to bubble under the surface across the early portion of his reign, until it would finally boil over in 835 in the form of a plot of sweet dew. Thanks for listening. Before signing off this time, I'd like to take a moment to express my appreciation for all of you that have been very patiently waiting for this next episode to be released. Especially since we've recently been celebrating the third anniversary of the show,

I'd like to let all of you know just how amazing you all are as an audience. I'm amazed week after week at just how many of you have come to share an interest in this topic and this civilization, and blown away by your consistent support and encouragement. So, owing to the fact that it is the holiday season, and the show's belated birthday for that matter, I'd like to put out one of my periodic calls for your continued support. That can be as simple as a review, or a share on the social media of your choosing, or even if it makes sense for you becoming a patron of the show. It's amazing how lots of small donations add up into a

huge difference for me. Because of the show's patrons, big and small, I've been able to have a show that pays for itself and even finance additional sources of information that I'd never been able to afford without it. It really is an invaluable help, as well as a huge motivator when I know that people are willing to not only just listen, but back the show up and help keep it going. If you can, please go to patreon.com slash thehistoryofchina, or find the support link at our page, thehistoryofchina.wordpress.com. That said, I'm well aware that I've been rather less consistent these last couple of months than any of us would like me to be. Believe me, it's not from lack of enthusiasm on my part. In terms of the extra week it took me this time, well, I actually have good news on that front.

I was too busy to produce this episode last week because I was occupied with three of my fellow Agorans, Thomas Daly, Stephen Guerra, and Ben Jacobs, discussing the relative merits of two of the great philosopher kings of the ancient world. We compared and contrasted the reigns of the last of the good emperors of Rome, Marcus Aurelius, to that of our own great co-founder of the Tang, Taizong. I'll be sure to let everyone know when it's set loose upon the world, and where you can find it, because it was a very interesting and entertaining discussion on all fronts.

So, stay tuned. As for us here at the History of China, we'll hopefully be back to one episode every other week with more regularity. Once again, thanks for your patience, and see you next time. Have you ever gazed in wonder at the Great Pyramid? Have you marvelled at the golden face of Tutankhamun, or admired the delicate features of Queen Nefertiti? If you have, you'll probably like the History of Egypt podcast. Every week, we explore tales of this ancient culture. The History of Egypt is available wherever you get your podcasting fix. Come, let me introduce you to the world of Ancient Egypt.