The History of China - #114 - Tang 26: The Sweet Dew Plot

Episode Date: December 13, 2016

Behind the throne of Tang is where the true power lies in the mid-9th century, among squabbling bureaucrats, shadowy factions, and conniving eunuchs. But this game of shadows is difficult to follow. Nevertheless, when events reach a head in 835 we’ll need to know how all the pieces on the imperial chessboard got where they are, and so we take a look at the real movers and shakers of the late Tang court. Time Period Covered: 808-836 CE Major Historical Figures: Tang Emperors: Emperor Xianzong of Tang (Li Chun) [r. 805-820] Emperor Muzong of Tang (Li Heng/You) [r. 820-824] Emperor Jingzong of Tang (Li Zhan) [r. 824-827] Emperor Wenzong of Tang (Li Han/Ang) [r. 827-840] Crowned Prince Li Yong [d. 838] Emperor Wuzong (Li Chan) [r. 840-846] Niu Faction Officials: Niu Sengru, Duke of Qizhang Li Zhongmin Li Xun [d. 835] Li Faction Officials: Li Jifu, Duke of Wei [d. 814] Li Deyu, Duke of Wei Nonaligned Officials: Zheng Zhu [d. 835] Eunuch Officials: Wang Shucheng [d. 835] Qiu Shiliang, Duke of Chu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I invite you to check out fellow Agora Network podcaster Dominic Perry and his excellent show, The History of Egypt. You can find it on iTunes and wherever fine podcasts are sold, or at EgyptianHistoryPodcast.com. Thanks, and now, enjoy the show. Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 114, The Sweet Dew Plot. As you can note out here, this week I am fighting off the middle of one heck of a chest cold, so I hope you'll bear with me with my somewhat more froggy disposition than usual. Last time I left you all off in the care of the new emperor of Tang, Wenzong, having shot through two of his predecessors, his father, emperor thrown from his horse, Muzong, and his brother emperor, frat boy, Jingzong, in the span of some

six incompetent, terrible years. In their wake, Wenzong would inherit an empire pretty much as bad off as it had been at the beginning of his grandfather, Shenzong's reign. But unlike his granddad, Wenzong would prove to be unable to overcome the obstacles set in his path, and especially those put in place by his eunuch servants and scheming factional officials. Now, last time I had breezed over the Nioh-Li factional strife, known in Chinese as the Nioh-Li Dazheng, because as I'd said back then, it would have detracted from the story arc as I'd seen it. And I promised to come back to it in the next full episode, so that's what we're going to do

right here, off the bat. We're going to go ahead and wade waist-deep into the secretive, shady world of backroom imperial dealing and politicking to see whether or not we can make anything of the scant information available to us regarding the Nyo and Li factions. It's tempting to want to call them parties, since they've functioned in a similar political sense, and that's the terminology that we're most used to bandying about these days. But it's inaccurate in the sense that a political party rather strongly implies a degree of formality or real membership, whereas the factions within the Tang Chinese court were anything but formal. There had been the brief rise and fall of the so-called Wang Party back in episode 110, but apart from that, any emperor worth his salt knew well

enough that allowing factionalization was bad news, and tried their very best to stamp it out whenever and wherever they found it. As a court official, having accusations of factionalization lobbed at you were career killers at best, and potentially far worse. All were supposed to be direct servants of the emperor, after all, without loyalty to other causes. As such, Professor Dalby writes, Rather than being close-knit, well-defined, and well-disciplined pressure groups with a basis in common economic, political, or ideological interest, the 9th century Chinese Dang were loose associations among politicians, arising from complex networks

of personal relations that defy easy characterization. A Dang did not solicit members on grounds of policy differences, as a political party might do today. It did not have a strong cellular nature, and its membership was not fixed." Instead, then much as today, a whole network of connections, close and distant, relative and friend, schoolmate and co-worker, defined where a member of the court stood, and where they placed their particular loyalty. That is to say that it is exceedingly difficult to get an accurate idea of exactly where anyone truly stood, and that's even with all the information available. Now go ahead and remove 90% of the puzzle pieces

and then try to solve it, and you have the issue with trying to make sense of the situation in the 9th century court. Much of the information that might help historians was destroyed or perhaps never actually recorded at all. Biographical information such as it was was extremely limited, typically only recording a tiny segment of the ruling elite. So even when trying to pierce the veil of the Tang court, we get at best only a few faces, the leaders and higher-ups, without much idea of those who might be around them, or how relatively powerful each sect was. Japanese scholar Tanami Mamoru, for instance, went about putting together probably the most exhaustive list of officials

involved with either of the factions, and was able to compile just 63 members. Yet even his careful scholarship is probably just scratching the surface of the deep and extensive, but carefully hidden, web of connections and influence. It's impossible to say for certain, even as sources at times give tantalizing hints. In 833, for instance, known Li party leader, Li Dayu, posited that one in three members of the imperial court was a faction member, which Dalby agrees sounds reasonable enough, even as he admits that it's couched in a polemic attack on the dismal state of the court. Dalby laments, quote, The poor quality of the evidence severely constrains any effort to discover a deep significance in the Nio-Li controversy. It especially undercuts the various attempts

to identify ideological positions or sociological differentiation as causes of the formation of the factions, end quote. Well, darn. In any event, let's go ahead and give it a shot. The basis of the Nio-Li strife is actually going to take us back almost 20 years before 827, back to the reign of good ol' Emperor Xianzong and the special imperial examination of 808. The two officials who'd been put in charge of the exam in the end selected three finalists, each of whom had written essays giving rather blunt criticism of elements of the government. Their names were Niu Shengru, Huang Fengshi, and Li Zhongming. Unfortunately for this trio of up-and-comers, Xianzong's chancellor, Li Zhifu, took personal offense to the criticisms they had leveled, apparently at least partially at his own

office, and ran off crying to the emperor that the test hadn't been fair because of a conflict of interest, owing to the fact that one of the candidate's uncles had been a reviewing scholar. That, combined with the fact that the essays were themselves treading into rather dangerous political territory, was enough to convince Xianzong, who ordered the dismissal and exile of the exam proctors and effectively stalled out the careers of Niu Shengru, Huang Fushi, and Li Zongming, who were forced to seek out lesser positions in the provinces and work their way through the ranks the hard, slow way. Of the three would-be graduates, we only hear from Nio Sengru and Li Zongming again. Where Huang Fuxi got off to, who knows.

But by 821, which was now into the reign of Muzong, both of them had managed to wend the way back to the capital and into the weave of court politics once again, with Miao acting as a supervisor to the Ministry of Defense and Li Zhongming as a supervisor to the Ministry of Rights. But their past quickly caught up with them. You see, the son of the old Chancellor Li, now the Duke of Wei, Li Dayu, still had a bone to pick with Nio and Li about some of the things they'd said about his old man back in the day. And it's from this feud that we get the name of the conflict. Nio for the faction of Nio Sangru and Li Zongmin, and Li for the faction of Duke Li Dayu. Yes, I know having someone surnamed Li on both sides

is confusing, but we've gotten this far, haven't we? I mean, we've gotten through the entire period of disunion, where like five different factions all with the same surname were fighting each other at the same time, so I think we can handle a couple of Lis just fine. So not only would a controversial imperial examination touch off the rivalry between Nioh Sung-Ju and Duke Li Dayu, but it would be another such exam in 821 that would touch off the powder keg between the two yet again. In the spring of that year, the results of the exams were posted, and it was quickly pointed out that the list was rather heavy on the sons and younger brothers of prominent court members, most controversially,

Li Zongming's own son-in-law. Protests surrounding the result led to multiple complaints and memorials being addressed to Emperor Muzong, who had no choice but to intercede in the matter. The emperor would dispatch a pair of courtiers to the examination hall and ordered a new round of exams conducted on all involved. This time, though, all but one of the previously successful candidates were failed, and the original examiners were disgraced and relieved from office. It all sounds pretty damning, but Dalby cautions, quote, We must remember that the examination system was still at an early stage of development in the tongue. By and large, a candidate's success depended as much on establishing a receptive mood in the examiner's mind as it did on his actual performance. End quote. Candidates often sent warm-up essays ahead of time to display their overall literary talent, rather than rely

only on the one actual exam essay. A practice largely accepted because, after all, one of the examiner's primary objectives in conducting the tests was to pass an outstanding group of young men whose career prospects were bright and could also be counted on for future political support. In fact, it's pointed out that even those officials now crying foul of favoritism to the emperor were doing so in a disingenuous, cynical sort of sour grapes manner, since after all, they'd one and all played the same game with the examiners in urging them to pass their own pet candidates. So in spite of the issue at hand

ostensibly being testing fairness, the subtext reveals that this was just a facade concealing the far higher stakes of the political turf war going on behind the scenes. The politicians like Ngo Sung-ru and Lee Da-yu pushing their own chosen candidates were, as Dalby points out, quote, "...in the crucial middle stages of their careers. Either they had known power briefly and hungered for it yet again, or they were just at the point where they might hope to attain it for the first time." End quote. In the Tang political world, there were two especially important choke points in the way of an aspiring official clawing his way up to the top. The first was the boundary between the 6th and the 5th rank, which was essentially the dividing point between the vast crowd of faceless low-level functionaries and

yes-men, and around the 2,000 or so officials that made up the 5th rank and above. Those that progressed to this level were surely the who's who of the capital, and or so officials that made up the fifth rank and above. Those that progressed to this level were surely the who's who of the capital, and they could well be congratulated on such an achievement. Again from Dalby, quote, they were admitted to the society of the capital, were permitted to attend certain court audiences, and were given distinctive financial and sumptuary privileges, the most important of which was being allowed to designate one son for entry into the officialdom, end quote. But they were still simply bureaucrats acting as cogs in the machine. Slightly larger cogs, yes, but cogs all the same. And besides, the far tighter bottleneck was still to come, and many a career languish indefinitely in these fifth and fourth rungs

of the ladder. But the truly audacious, hungry man couldn't be satisfied by such pedestrian affairs, and for them the temptation of real power, of not just turning the gear, but making actual decisions of real importance, loomed at the third rank and above. Naturally, there were far more men who desired such positions than there ever were open slots, and to say that competition among those of the middle ranks was brutal is putting it mildly. Just as important as drawing positive attention and accolades to oneself was doing everything in an official's power to defame and impede potential rivals to high office. And that was what was at the core of the examination scuffle

of 821. Naked, self-serving ambition on all sides. Under strong emperors, those like Xianzong, Dezong, and Taizong to name some of the strongest, it's likely that the situation like the politicization of an official examination would have never been permitted, and the factionalism clearly on display stamped out with a vengeance. But as I'm sure we're all aware by now, Muzong and Jingzong were no Xianzong. Though they and their successor Wenzong would try to suppress such fissures from splitting their court, they were fundamentally incapable of overawing the officials of the capital, which meant that they were unable to crush factional behavior or to prevent the intense

political struggle for power in the upper strata of the post-Shanzong court from coming out into the open and from becoming increasingly acrimonious. The intensity of the Niu-Li strife was further intensified by the active, open participation of the eunuchs into such affairs. Now, as we pointed out time and again, they had gone from being a pariah caste at the end of the 8th century to by now, in the mid-9th being, like it or not, just a normal part of the political world of Chang'an, an element one simply had to deal with and through to get things done. The officialdom didn't have to like it, and they didn't, but accommodation was taking place. It was no longer the scandal of the year when a eunuch showed up to a bureaucratic function. But with that increasing role of power and political acceptance came a splintering of the eunuch

class itself. Dalby writes, quote, The eunuchs had ceased to be a solid block. Indeed, the progress of the dissolution had probably kept pace with each gain made by the eunuchs, for as they achieved more power after the turn of the century, there was more for them to fight about amongst themselves, end quote. Or, in the words of the century. There was more for them to fight about amongst themselves, end quote. Or in the words of the late poet Christopher Wallace, Mo' money, mo' problems. I want to be as clear as I can be here, because I run the risk in consistently harping on the eunuch class of simply becoming yet another chronicler of the history of the Tang to just categorically say, and then the eunuchs took power, and that's always bad. Indeed, I wish to stress that in all likelihood,

most of the eunuch officials, most of the time, were just normal functionaries, carrying out their assigned roles in life to the best of their abilities. Certainly, they were no saints, but it's just as unlikely that they were, as a whole, any more corrupt than the larger body politic, regardless of what Sima Guang wished to say to the contrary. Remember that by this point, the eunuchs weren't punished criminal castrati anymore. By the Sui and Tang eras, eunuchs had typically been taken from the indigenous tribes of the far south and raised as such, and by the 9th century, you may recall, were even permitted to adopt families of their own. Where the real danger of the eunuchs becoming politicized lay,

then, was not because they were secretly working against the dynasty for selfish aims, or at least no more so than any other official was doing, but instead that they had long ago been empowered to freely cross between inner and outer courts with near impunity, and as such were able to bring together potential allies from both worlds in the service of a single cause. Thus, in the absence of a strong mediating hand in the form of a powerful emperor, what might have been a localized flash in the pan-factional squabble was by the 820s a struggle that had engulfed the entire imperial court system. It would be a tedious waste of time to try to recount every major instance of such a large scale back and forth between the Neo and Li factions over the course of two decades.

The Li faction gains the upper hand with the Emperor and takes the opportunity to lob charges against the Neo faction, getting the upper members demoted, but then for some reason or another, usually a war going badly somewhere or infighting breaking out, the tables are inevitably turned, the Li faction is dismissed from command, and now it's the Neo party's turn to come into power and start the whole vindictive cycle over again. And on, and on, and on. For the most part, it seems that the Nioh faction held the upper hand more often and more consistently than the Lis. Especially during the reign of his playboyness Emperor Jingzong from 824 to 827, for which they took not an entirely undeserved historical drumming.

You'll recall from last episode that it was none other than Nioh Sung-ru, who as chancellor took his leave from the capital and took up a military governorship out in the provinces, signaling that he was himself done with Jing Zong's foolishness and didn't intend to be anywhere nearby when he got his comeuppance. Which he did, in the dark, after the candles blew out at a post-hunting trip party in the winter of 827. And so we come back now to the brand new reign of Jingzong's younger brother, Emperor Wenzong. How will he fare against this backdrop of empowered eunuchs and out-in-the-open factional infighting? Well, better than his dad or brother, that's for sure.

Unfortunately, that's also not saying much. 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 wherever you find your podcasts. Wenzong began his reign well-intentioned enough. He sent many of the palace ladies back to their families, a break in the usual tradition of shipping them off to a Buddhist nunnery, as well as disavowing many luxuries associated with the position, and held daily audience in a style much like his great-great-grandfather, De Zong, half a century earlier. But De Zong had been a man who understood the people surrounding him

and their motivations, a skill that by Wenzong's era of rule had been long forgotten. Rather than reading his ministers and choosing a stable course for the ship of state, Wenzong, for all his good intentions, had all the directions of a craft without a rudder. It seems that he would just take on the position of whomever he'd last spoken with. Or whichever one of the Nyo and Li factions happened to hold primacy at the time, which tended to swap places every two or three years or so. In 827, the Nyo's took power. In 830, their chancellor was dismissed from office and the Lis assumed the role, only to swap back again in 832, and on and on and on. Importantly to this whole revolving door of ministers, Wenzong carried over from his father Xianzong's reign the idea that demotion should not carry with it significant additional punishment like, say, exile to the borderlands. Instead,

he continued the tradition of reappointing his ex-ministers to provincial appointments in line with their rank—governors, prefects, and on down in accordance. Some of these supposedly banishments to the political wilderness were actually quite lucrative, most especially the governorship of Huainan, just north of the lower Yangtze River. From its capital city of Yangzhou, which is, incidentally, where we get the name Yangtze from,

Huainan, you may recall, is the home of the empire's largest and most productive iron mines, and its governor concurrently held a monopoly on the production of the Commissioner's largest and most productive iron mines, and its governor concurrently held a monopoly on the production of the commissioner for salt and iron, with that bit about salt being a ceremonial carryover from the Han dynasty. Dalby writes, quote, All of this amounted to a system to provide for those out of power. It was understood, at least by the cooler partisan combatants, that turns of fortune were temporary, and that too vigorous persecution of a fallen

adversary might invite far worse retribution, end quote. And through it all, there were the eunuchs acting as gatekeepers, hands outstretched to receive enormous payments in return for special arrangements to specific appointments. Nevertheless, in spite of these supposed changeovers at the top, there was a surprising lack of movement among the lower ranks of the court. With factionalism at its height, we might reasonably expect that there be a large-scale turnover with the shifts in political fortune, but that does not appear to have been the case. Again, from Dalby, quote, In fact, with the single possible exception of the year 830, the movement in and out of the

executive department was far less marked than at times of turbulence such as the An Lushan Rebellion or the reign of Shenzong, end quote. So maybe the factionalism didn't extend deeply beyond the top levels after all. It is ultimately hard to say. Where this whole systemic tension reaches its apex and breaking point then is in the year 835. The so-called Sweet Dew Incident, or Sweet Dew Plot, will mark the first time since 805, three decades at this point, that someone would try to substantively change the direction of the Tang imperial government's inertia. Back in 805, it had been the co-founder of the Wang Party, Wang Shuwen, who had launched his ill-fated bid to root the eunuchs out from governmental affairs, only to be stymied by overplaying his own hand and was ultimately

forced to end his own life in exile. In 835, however, it won't be some bureaucratic functionary leading the charge at substantive reform, but the Emperor Wenzong himself, for all the good it will do him. It's important to remember that the eunuchs were walking a tightrope. Well, several tightropes, in fact, and all at once. But specifically in terms of the emperor, it was maximally beneficial for them to have one as minimally competent and as malleable to their whims as possible. Nevertheless, there was an extreme past which that incompetence became undesirable, with Wanzong's brother Jingzong serving as a bloody example. In Wenzong, then, the eunuch officials seemed to have thought they'd found that Goldilocks emperor, just smart enough not to choke on his own tongue but weak enough

to bend to whatever they desired. But 835 would prove their assessment of the emperor very wrong indeed. Wenzong himself had long been troubled by the shortcomings of his reign. This whole absolute power shtick wasn't all it was cracked up to be, it turned out. As far back as 830, he'd entered into private discussions with certain trusted members of his Hanlin Academy scholars about his troubling inability to reign in the head eunuch official Wang Shouzheng. The Hanlin academicians, sharing his concerns, convinced the emperor to move ahead with a plan to undermine the political positions of the eunuch lords in question. However, by 833, word of the Hanlin plot had leaked to the eunuchs, as it inevitably does, and they counterattacked. Preying on Wenzong's own weaknesses and fears, they managed to convince the emperor that it was the academicians who were

actually working against him, and were sequentially in league with his brother, the Prince of Chang, to supplant him on the throne. Dalby writes, At the crucial moment, Wenzong wavered, unsure of himself, isolated from reliable advice and fearing for his life. He ordered Hanlin scholar Song Sun-shi to be tried, along with some of the many suspects the eunuchs had rounded up from among his acquaintances and relatives." end quote. Though his courtiers managed to convince the emperor to remove the trial from the inner court, that is to say, out of the direct control of the eunuchs themselves, the scholar Song and his supposed accomplices from among Emperor Wenzong's inner circle were nevertheless found guilty of the charges. Though they were spared execution, they were banished from the capital and into exile,

and Wenzong very probably had just shot himself in the foot politically, by purging his own allies from the central government. At much the same time, Wenzong had also become more and more frustrated with the ever more apparent factionalization within his court between the Nios and the Lys. By 834, he'd become so despairing that he's said to have lamented in the Zizhetongjian, quote, Getting rid of the outlaws in Hebei would be easy compared to getting rid of the factions at court, end quote. By year's end, regretting the hasty decision he'd made in exiling his allies

in the trial of Song Sonshi, and realizing that both excessive eunuch power and court factionalization would have to be dealt with all at once, together, or not at all, he resolved to take action. Thus was born the sweet plot of 835. In order to carry this plan out, he'd require the help of men who were beyond suspicion. The first would be the physician, Zheng Zhu, who had so much become a persona non grata among the eunuchs that he had even been the target of an unsuccessful assassination attempt on their behalf by a general in the Shunzi army back in 833. So he could definitely be counted on.

And the second would be a younger official and former member of the Neo faction, Li Xun, who had become disenchanted with the petty partisanship after a period in exile back in the 820s. Both men were ambitious, to be sure, but in a direction that at least saw the possibility for substantive change to the regime, and that was just what Emperor Wenzong was looking for. They may not have been the ideal vessels for that change, but flawed and workable is almost always better than ideal and impossible. By exploiting the animosity between the Nios and the Lys, Wenzong was able to insert the pair into the upper echelons of his government with relative haste until they held the offices of chief ministers. Learning well from the mistakes of the last failed attempt at

political revolution from within, back in 805, Zhengzhu took the pivotal step of secretly assembling a strike force of troops to be held in reserve and wait for the right moment to secure their transition of power. Meanwhile, Lixun gained the support of key officials within the capital, who held guard detachments of their own to be called upon when the time was right. The plan was essentially this. Lure the eunuchs away from the safety of the Shenzhe army, and then pounce on them and eradicate them before anyone could react. This plan, obviously held in the highest of secrecy, was, for once, actually kept a secret right until the last minute.

In order to set the plot in motion, Zheng and Li knew that they'd need the kingpiece of the eunuch bureau, Wang Shoucheng, out of the way. To that end, in early December of 835, they temporarily allied themselves with his chief rival within the unit clique, Qiu Shiliang. With Qiu's help, the pair of conspirators were able to have Wang Xiucheng arrested and thrown into prison, where he was subsequently served poisoned wine to finish the job. Six other powerful eunuchs were sent out of the capital on tours to the various provinces, with the plan being to later send each an imperial missive ordering them to commit suicide. The plot takes its name, again the Sweet Dew Incident or in Chinese, Ganlu Zhibian, from what in essence was the code word that would set it all in motion. At a dawn court date on December 14th,

the chamberlain of the left Jinmu Corps approached the sovereign and gave his morning report. Rather than the typical report of all being well on the left and right, though, this general, a confederate in the plot, reported instead that the previous evening had left a sweet dew on the pomegranate trees outside the palace near the left Jinmu headquarters. Such an event was understood by all to be a heavenly portent of great fortune, and so, with all haste, Emperor Wenzong dispatched his eunuch officials, led by Qiu Shiliang, to investigate this apparent miracle. However, just as the entourage of eunuchs entered the courtyard of the Hanyuan Hall, where the trap was to be sprung, a gust of wind blew through the area,

causing the armor of the soldiers that lay hiding in wait to clank. Somehow, the group managed to immediately recognize the danger they were in, and fled back to the courtyard's gateway, where the majority were able to escape through the doors before they were shut, sealing the unfortunate few in to their dooms. The plan, however, had failed. Led by an infuriated Qiu Shiliang, the eunuch officials stormed directly back to Emperor Wanzong, and in spite of protests by Li Xun ordering the Jinwu guardsmen to protect the emperor, Qiu explained that there was an emergency and forced the emperor to retire to his own harem quarters within the palace, placing him beyond the reach of Zhang Ju or Li Xun. Once safely within, Qiu summoned the aid of the Shunzi army, whose combatants were,

you'll remember, themselves eunuchs, and they descended on the palace to massacre the officials complicit in the plot. At some point in all this, the eunuchs realized that the emperor must have been complicit in such a plot, and they openly cursed him to his face, causing Wenzong to become so afraid for his life that he was unable to speak. In the government quarter of the city, the officials suspected of being a part of the plot attempted to flee the oncoming Shunsa soldiers, but quickly found themselves trapped at the bottleneck that was the palace gate. Sima Guang estimates that more than a thousand officials were cut down that morning by the Shunsa troops, and in the process destroyed many official seals, documents, and records. Dalby writes, amnesty and limitation on further prosecution was proclaimed in early 836." The aftermath of this bloody backfire was what you would expect. The eunuchs, slated for annihilation, emerged from the Sweet Dew plot holding Emperor Wenzong by an even tighter leash.

Now their power over the Tang Empire was all but absolute, and it would remain so for the remainder of the dynasty. Nevertheless, Qiu Shiliang and his associates knew better than to flaunt such a victory, and in short order they retreated, imperial leash still firmly in hand, back to the shadows to manipulate events within the court from their traditional place out of the limelight. Two overt, and this eunuch dictatorship over the imperium would invite military intervention from the provincial governors, after all. For all its spectacular failure, though, the Sweet Two Incident did seem to at least achieve one of its own goals,

namely that it ceased the brooding war between the Neo and Leaf factions within the court. Whether out of sheer terror or something else, whereas power had before been ceaselessly swinging back and forth between the two factions prior to 835. Afterwards, the chancellery would be divided fairly equally between faction members, who held it in a rough balance thereafter. Nonetheless, this would prove to be Emperor Wenzong's last card. The failure of the Sweet Dew Plot had broken his strength and his spirit, and from 836 on out, he retreated evermore from political affairs. Instead, he hid himself away at the bottom of a bottle, bored by courtly debate and having lost even his lifelong interest in poetry. He spent his days regretting the turn

his life had taken and drinking his cares away. By 839, despondent, he attempted to inquire into the court's records to see what the court historians had been writing about him. In essence, how would history view his reign? Rather than answering him, though, the court compilers simply rebuffed him and their books remained sealed. An answer in and of itself. He despaired that he would go down in the history books as the worst kind of ruler. When one of his officials attempted to placate him by promising that he would be ranked alongside the likes of the three sovereigns from the beginning of time, Wanzong spat back that it was more likely he'd be compared to the final emperors of the Zhou and Han in all their failure and weakness. He said, quote, Both King Nan of Zhou and Emperor Shan of Han were controlled by their strongly armed vassals.

Yet here I am, controlled by my own house slaves. From this perspective, I'm inferior even to them. End quote. Ultimately, Wanzong doesn't seem to rank quite as lowly a position as he feared. At the very least, he tried to take action against the forces he knew were strangling his house in rain, and even if he failed in the attempt, the attempt itself is nothing to sneer at. Yet, in the end, his sweet-dew plot, aimed at removing the eunuch lords from their position of power over the dynasty, did little more than to cement them there in a now impregnable position at its helm. As for Wenzong himself, he would scarcely outlive the decade. At only thirty years old,

he would take ill, apparently a resurgence of an old ailment of his, and die in early 840. The prelude to his death, however, would mark one of the more complicated and mysterious succession crises of the Tang Dynasty. Wenzong, as it were, had only one son eligible to succeed him, the Crown Prince Li Yong. However, due to an accusation made against his mother and then further accusations against him living a life of excess, the Crown Prince was briefly detained and then died under mysterious circumstances. There is some thought that Wenzong, having grown indifferent to the well-being of his only son, might have even permitted his secret execution, but no solid evidence exists one way or the other. Regardless of the circumstance, the 838 death of the only heir to the throne, as the Emperor himself grew more and more ill, threw the court into panic mode.

The eunuchs, of course, intervened, this time on the side of one of Wenzong's younger brothers, as the emperor himself grew more and more ill, threw the court into panic mode. The eunuchs, of course, intervened, this time on the side of one of Wenzong's younger brothers, the 26-year-old prince of Ying, Li Can. Following Wenzong's death, the eunuch lords would persuade Li Can to assume power and order both his elder brother, another contender for the throne, Li Rong, and Rong's mother to commit suicide, before being enthroned as Emperor Wu Zong. That is where we're going to leave things today. The Tang Dynasty is in a dark state, and things are not looking to improve anytime soon. We've entered the beginnings of the empire's death spiral, though it will be a protracted one indeed. Next time, Wu Zong will take the throne, and as a devout Taoist, will initiate the third

and final disaster of Wu, yet another persecution against the Buddhist faith in particular and foreign faiths in general. A dark streak China thought it had left behind in the final phases of the period of disunion back in the late 6th century, but which will rear its ugly head once more. But hey, at least this time it won't involve the deaths of thousands of monks. 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.