The History of China - #120 - Tang 32: A Thousand Cuts

Episode Date: March 31, 2017

The rebel-general and usurper-emperor Huang Chao will wear out his welcome in Chang’an, and meet his doom in the Valley of Tigers and Wolves… but his reign of terror over the capital will only be the first act of its terrible, drawn out fate – a fate that will mirror the Tang Dynasty’s as a whole. Emperor Xizong, already put to flight once, will return to the capital – only to swiftly find himself on the run yet again as China’s general and governors alike realize that they are no longer servants of the dynasty, but masters of their own domains… if they can hold them. Time Period Covered: 882-888 CE (“The Era of Radiant Beginnings”) Major Historical Figures: Emperor Xizong of Tang (Li Yan) [r. 873-888] Prince Li Jie (Emperor Zhaozong) Chief Eunuch Tian Lingzi [d. 893] Chen Jingxuan, Governor of Sichuan General Zheng Tian, Commander of the Northwest General Li Keyong, “The One-Eyed Dragon”, Khan of the Shatuo Turks Huang Chao, Rebel Usurper [d. 884] Governor-General Zhu Mei, Rebel Warlord, would-be-usurper [d. 887] Li Yun, Prince of Xiang, would-be-puppet-monarch [d. 887] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Episode 120, A Thousand Cuts. We'd last left the great metropolis of Chang'an, jewel of the Tang Empire, a smoldering ruin at the hands of the successful rebel general turned imperial pretender, Huang Chao, who had declared the formation of the new Qi dynasty. This week, although the imperial pretender will ultimately find that he's bitten off a bit more than he can chew, the restoration of the Tang Emperor Shizong to the throne will result in either lasting peace or stability for the realm. Instead, everyone will come to find that the fire-gutted ruin of the once-glorious capital cities reflected the state of the imperial order itself, utterly and irreparably ruined and with no hope of future restoration.

For the moment, though, we join our brave and mighty Emperor Shizong, who, when danger reared his ugly head, bravely turned his tail and fled. Shizhong and his retinue would take much the same route as the previous flight of the imperial court during the Anlushan Rebellion, that is, making a beeline for the remote and well-fortified mountain stronghold of Chengdu in Sichuan. The caravan that secreted out of the capital in the dead of night, just ahead of the advancing rebel forces, was, by typical imperial standards, pretty small potatoes. It was organized by the emperor's chief eunuch and commander of the imperial armies, Tian Lingzi, and the entourage consisted of a token force of 500 shen se guardsmen, as well as four princes and several consorts and concubines.

Notably, none of the other court officials, save Tian himself, were made aware of the impending withdrawal, and when a few of them noticed that the emperor was skipping town and tracked the retinue down to entreat the monarch to return to the capital and direct the defense of the city, the eunuch lord ordered that they be cut down where they stood. The imperial entourage took roads specifically deemed too dangerous for regular routes, and which cut through some of the most dangerous and difficult terrain in the empire,

as well as taking the road-weary soldiers and their charges through mountain passes that reached almost 9,000 feet. For their efforts, they made the nearly 500-mile journey in what must have been pretty close to record time, and in less than six weeks arrived at the gates of Chengdu, Tianlingzi's home and seat of power, and what would prove to be Emperor Shizong's non-optional vacation home for the following half-decade. Tian Lingzi was on extremely good terms with the Governor-General of the Sichuan Circuit, a man named Cheng Jingshuan. This was probably owing to the fact that they happened to be half-brothers, and, oh yeah, Tian had totally gotten Cheng his job.

Once nothing more than a wheatcake vendor, Cheng's family connection with the chief imperial eunuch had been what clinched the humble commoners upjumping to the most powerful military official in the region. Though one account does indicate that he might have actually won the position out of a game of football, but that seems pretty unlikely. Rather humorously, Chen Jingshuan was such an unknown that he was actually successfully impersonated by a local so-called holy man for some time before the actual Cheng Jingshuan arrived to put a stop to the farce. The populace, however, seemed to have liked the charlatan better than the real deal,

and within two years, Cheng's heavy-handed governance had thrown large pieces of Sichuan, which up until now had been one of the quietest regions of the empire, into full revolt against him. Professor Summers writes, Once he took to his appointment, Cheng proved formidable. His regime in Sichuan was corrupt and brutal and remained so even after the arrival of the emperor and his entourage. Part of the problem was caused by Tianling's favored treatment of his own personal troops, to the disadvantage of the local forces, who had been among the dynasty's most loyal soldiers. End quote.

This breakdown in communication between the province's commanders and its armed forces is probably most evident in the tale of Xie Hongzhang, the commanding officer of Zizhou Prefecture. Commander Xie, learning that Governor Chen was sending out his agents to inquire about shortcomings among the officers, which was really just a code word for collecting bribes, he jumped ship and joined up with a group of bandits in the hills. The governor's agents attempted to entice him back into the fold, offering assurance after assurance that it would all be water under the

bridge, no harm, no foul, etc. etc. When he finally did turn himself in, though, surprise, he was clapped in irons and sent off to the governor general to be personally tortured at length. We can imagine what kind of a chilling effect such tactics must have had on the rest of the hitherto loyal command structure of the army. If you're gonna rebel, you'd better really mean it, because there are no take-backs. As a direct result of this debacle, officers in neighboring prefectures themselves rebelled against the governor when they'd learned of Commander Xie's cruel fate. Within a month, more than 10,000 imperial troops, led by Commander Jianneng, had revolted against their governor and were raiding across Sichuan. Governor Chen's response, of course, was to dispatch a contingent of his own personal battalion to quell the rebels, a force of some 7,000. But Chen's personal troops, having long grown accustomed to their pampered and combat-free lifestyles,

steadfastly avoided directly confronting the rebel army, because that was, you know, dangerous, and when pressed, demanded that they'd all receive additional bonuses, which had to be paid out before they would agree to fight. Zheng Nun's own rebellion would be snuffed out in the 11th month of 882, after seven months of fighting, and both he and his loyal subordinates sent to the provisional capital for execution. Yet all the while, the banditry across Sichuan raged on, undeterred. This might seem like a somewhat unimportant aside given the larger events happening. Yeah, yeah, so there's one more bandit rebellion, but what's that amongst so many others? But that is, in fact, the point. Even comparatively quiet, loyalist parts of the empire were by now constantly harried by the rebels and criminals in their midst. Again from Summers,

quote, the process of bandit confederation could take place anywhere and could easily pose a serious threat at the provincial level, particularly when allied with a military rebellion, end quote. The most striking aspect of Jiangneng's rebellion, though, was the government's response to it. As the rebellion's timeline bore out, forces at a provincial level proved themselves still capable of containing and destroying even such a dangerous rebellion, whereas the central imperial government had proven completely unable to retain order at the national level. This pattern would bear itself out time and again over the 880s and 890s. National order is broken down, but it's retained at the regional level, and it's thus at that level and below that new power structures would begin to emerge

in the form of warlord states. Let's leave Emperor Xiezong to his exile for the moment, though, and jump back to Chang'an and its new head honcho, the self-styled Emperor of Qi, Huangqiao. Emperor Huang was finding out that while winning was easy, young man, governing is harder. The chief threat to his burnt-out shell of a capital was the loyalist forces stationed uncomfortably close at Fengxiang, a mere 190 kilometers due west of the capital. The Fengxiang garrison was commanded by former chief minister and Tang commander-in-chief of the entire northwest, Zheng Tian. Huang sent General Zheng missives promising to spare his region and his position if he would only submit to this new order, but the general didn't so much as bother to send a reply. Instead, he sent a missive to Chengdu addressed to Emperor Shizong, apparently written in the commander's own blood

and vowing to organize all loyalist forces and recover the capital in the name of the Tang. Huang Chao, of course, was not simply going to wait around and allow General Zheng the opportunity to raise a force against him, and so, in the third month of 881, he dispatched a force under the command of his own General Shang Zhang, numbering some 50,000 strong to oust Zheng from the northwest. Summers describes what follows, quote, They were confident of an easy victory, since Zheng Tian was known to be a scholar and was thought incapable of putting up a real fight. Huang Chao's men, who had not met any real opposition since moving north of the Yangtze,

advanced almost casually towards Fengxiang, not even bothering to move in ranks. End quote. Well, has it been foreshadowed enough yet? Can you guess what happens? Yeah, you can totally guess what happens. Continuing the quote, Unexpectedly, Zheng Tian proved himself a skillful tactician and positioned his deputy, the military governor of Shuofang, to ambush the rebel army as they moved in. In a crucial and decisive battle, Huang Xiao's army

was smashed, the government claiming that 20,000 were killed, end quote. It would prove to be a truly decisive moment, and its importance to the war effort cannot be overemphasized. This not only critically weakened the until now ascendant Huangqiao army, but was also the first sign in more than a year that the government could actually defeat rebel bandits. The morale boost alone was tremendous, and Zheng Qian quickly capitalized on the reversal of fortunes. He called for further reinforcements to press the advantage, as well as sent envoys to many of Huang Chao's more fair-weather friends, telling them that the grass was suddenly much greener over on his side, and causing a great

many to abruptly desert the rebel cause back into the Tang fold. For Huang Chao, this reversal in early 881 would prove the beginning of his end. The weakness of the rebel regime, until now obscured by the Tang dynasty's own weakness, was now laid bare for all to see. Though it had managed to replicate many of the trappings of supplanting a dynastic order, it had fundamentally failed to establish a viable political structure, all while systematically alienating potential allies through sheer brutality and terrorism across the capital region over the course of its occupation. When your sole claim to legitimacy rests on being militarily unassailable, you'd better make very sure that you're not actually assailable. The following month would, in fact, see Huang Chao temporarily expelled from Chang'an by the government troops now streaming over from Fengxiang.

Only for this time, the government troops started drinking the stupid juice as soon as they entered the city gates, and commenced with their own sack of the capital rather than continuing their pursuit of the fleeing rebel commander. This would allow Huangqiao to turn, regroup, and launch a vicious counter-assault on the preoccupied government forces, pushing them back out of Chang'an and swiftly retaking the city. However, proving that he'd learned absolutely nothing, once the city was secure, Huangqiao turned and brutally massacred the remaining inhabitants for the crime of having welcomed the government troops into the capital. And you've really got a feel for the poor people of the city.

They'd already been living under a reign of terror for a year, and they had to have known that if they'd done anything but passively acquiesce to the reoccupation by the Fengshang troops, they'd have been put to that sword, only to be killed anyway once the rebel terrorizer-in-chief retook the capital. A real rock-and-hard-place situation. Even with this victory, though, the clock was running out for Huang, and he must have known it. He still commanded enough loyal troops to hold the capital city, but not enough to push beyond. Meanwhile, government reinforcements were slowly but steadily constructing a ring around him, systematically strangling off the entire capital region from resupply. Now, as you may recall, Chang'an is far, far inland and in a semi-arid plain that quite frankly

isn't great for farming on a scale that could support a massive urban population, and certainly not so in the 9th century. Again from Summers, quote, the capital region had never suffered such hardship during the Tang. People abandoned their lands and livelihoods and took refuge into the mountains to avoid the massing armies. The bandits sat in the empty city, cut off from all sources of supplies in a grim and desperate Nonetheless, by the fourth month of 882, the government had effectually managed to form a linked semicircle around the capital region, and now simply waited for the starving rebel general to admit defeat. But no one, either rebel or imperial, was eager to have a great decisive battle. And so the siege ground on day after day, week after week, month after month.

Finally, after nearly half a year of strangling off the rebel-held capital, the Tang government, tired of Huang Chao's intransigence and wishing for an end to it, but nonetheless still full of commanders unwilling to lead a great assault to unseat the rebel general, called in their closer, the chieftain of the Xiaotou Turks, 26-year-old Li Ke Yong. If that sounds slightly familiar to you, that's because it had been Li Ke Yong's father, Zhu Ye Zhe Xin, who had assisted the Tang government more than a decade prior during the events of the Pangxun Rebellion, for which his family had been given use of the imperial surname, Li. The government was nonetheless very hesitant to unleash Li Ka-yong's Turks into the imperial heartland, and did so, we can assume, with only extreme reluctance. You see, in the decades since the victory over the Pangshun rebels, the Shazmo tribes had shown themselves to be, oh, let's just call it highly the An Lushan Rebellion a century prior. Sure, they'd been convinced to spare

Chang'an, but only at the expense of completely sacking Luoyang later on. But in spite of imperial misgivings, there was nothing for it. If the deadlock was going to be broken any time soon, foreign troops were simply a necessity. And thus, Li Ke-yong was called in to finish the job. In early 883, Li Ke-yong had mobilized into the Guangzhong region, with an army reportedly numbering as many as 35,000, and consisting of a number of confederated border peoples. That's right, it's a full-on step-righter confederation, and nothing bad ever happens when one of those show up. General Li initially confronted Huang Chao's brother, Huang Kui, and made short work of the latter, prompting the pretender emperor to personally challenge this Turk who would ride

against him. At the head of an army supposedly numbering still more than 150,000 strong, Huang Chao marched on Li Kayong's position as Li was being reinforced from troops from the Zhongwu, Yiding, and Hezhong regions. Whatever numerical superiority Huang may or may not have had, as a number like 150,000 remains highly suspect, it proved to matter not a whit. Huang Chao's army was utterly devastated by the Turkic forces, with, quote, countless rebels killed or taken prisoner, end quote. Huang Chao himself was able to escape the carnage, and after a string of subsequent defeats, was pushed east out of the capital region in the fourth month of 883. Shortly thereafter, government and allied

troops once again entered the devastated Chang'an and, that's right, commenced with once again looting and destroying whatever was left, reportedly, quote, reducing to ashes those palaces which were still left standing, end quote. Nonetheless, for his decisive contribution to the victory over the rebel, Li Ke Yong would be honored by the still-exiled Emperor Xizong with the title of Tong Zhongshu Menxia Pingjiangshi, an honorary chancellery rank, roughly meaning official bookkeeper of the

palace gate. By his own men and the Tang troops, though, he would earn another nickname, Du Yanlong, the one-eyed dragon. As a quick aside, it might feel as if I'm throwing a larger than normal number of names and titles your way this time, and you're not wrong. It's just that, well, pretty soon we're going to have to deal with five dynasties and ten kingdoms, pretty much all at once. In fact, we're beginning to already. And yeah, many of those commanders and regional power players right now will go on to found their own attempts at imperial dynasty in the decades to come. We've not, for instance, seen the last of the One-Eyed Dragon, not even in this show, and yeah, stop laughing at the name.

400 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. Listen to Season 1 to hear about England's first attempts at empire building, in Ireland, in North America and in the Caribbean, the first steps of the East India Company and the political battles between King and Parliament. Listen to Season 2 to hear about the chaotic years of civil war, revolution and regicide, which rocked the Three Kingdoms and the Fledgling Empire. In Season 3, we see how Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell ruled the powerful

Commonwealth and challenged the Dutch and the Spanish for the wealth and power of the Americas and Asia. Learn the history of the British Empire by listening to Pax Britannica everywhere you find your podcasts, or go to pod.link slash pax. Anyway, Huang Xiao and his still-formidable force withdrew east, where in the sixth month they'd surround and besiege the city of Zhenzhou, which would continue through that winter. As the situation within the city grew grim, and the populace began to starve in spite of the considerable provisions the garrison commander had socked away,

Commander Chaozhou sent out pleas to his neighboring prefectural commanders. Those who responded to his calls for aid, and Commander Chao himself for that matter, all actually owed their position to the very person they were now uniting against, Huang Chao. None of them really held any loyalty for the Tang dynasty, and moved against the rebel general now only out of fear of what he might do to each of them in turn. Summers explains, quote, but by this time the only important consideration was the maintenance of a local stronghold of one's own, and to these commanders, who were essentially local warlords, Huang Chao's army posed a serious threat. Self-interest alone prompted them to join

forces against Huang Chao, end quote. Even with these local forces united against him, though, it would once again wait upon the intervention of the One-Eyed Dragon, Li Ke Yong, to decisively end the siege at Zhenzhao after almost 300 consecutive days. Fortune would continue to be decisively against Huang, as shortly after his withdrawal from Zhenzhao, many of his men and the majority of his supplies were carried away by a flash flood and a series of further defeats inflicted by the relentless pursuit of Li Ke Yong. When his most important ally and trusted lieutenant, Shang Zhang, surrendered with more than 10,000 men at Wuning, Huang Chao entered a murderous rage,

straight up killing several of his other lieutenants before finally regaining control of himself. By this point, the fifth month of 884, he'd gone from more than 150,000 troops to now less than a thousand still following him. Though he'd managed to elude Li Kayong by entering his home region of Shandong, prompting the Turkic commander to give up the chase and return west, his trail would very quickly be picked up by another general, in fact one of the former rebels who had so recently defected at Wuning. He was cornered at last in the early summer of 884 in Langhu Valley, the Valley of Wolves and Tigers, a region quite close to his initial uprising, now almost a decade prior. Supposedly, rather than allow himself to fall into the imperial army's hands,

Huang Chao instead produced a blade and cut his own throat. His head and those of his chief lieutenants were sent to the emperor in Sichuan, thus signaling an end to Huang Chao's rebellion, and that the emperor should return to the capital city with all due haste. Nevertheless, though 884 would prove an end for Huang Chao and many of his associates, it would certainly not be an end to the Tang Dynasty's problems, or of endemic and widespread rebellions. Even though the Tang Emperor still claimed nominal authority, the fact of the matter was that China at this point, such as it was, had already broadly and irreversibly fragmented. To go through each of these divisions would be a waste of time and probably more

counterproductive than anything. But the gist of it all was that by the mid-880s, direct imperial authority existed only over the capital region itself, with only the furthest reaches of the south and west, such as Sichuan, still pledging outright suzerainty to the imperial will. The entire rest of the country, though, had to one degree or another peeled off into states of de facto independence from the throne. Of these almost 50 states, less than half a dozen even paid lip service to the capital or offered alliance with the emperor, and in fact, the vast majority of the empire's provinces now lay in the hands of rogue governors or, even more common, former lieutenants of the late rebel Huang Chao. Finally, to the far northeast, no real surprise here,

the indigenous non-Chinese residents had taken imperial weakness as their cue to throw off the yoke of Tang oppression and once again claim their own tribal and ethnic sovereignty. I've been putting up a series of colorized maps on the website, and the next one going up will show the specific regional breakdown of the empire that I'm describing, so please go check those out and get a better sense of what's happening. But the short version was, the pieces of China that yet remained loyal to the Tang regime were tiny islands amid a vast sea of people, seeing more and more each day that they didn't have to listen to Chang'an anymore, and there was really nothing stopping them from making a run at the top job, which was by now clearly up for grabs.

For his part, Emperor Xizong did make a go at trying to salvage whatever he could of the rapidly waning royal majesty. He would return to Chang'an for the first time in nearly four years, or again, what was left of it, in the early spring of 885. And though the city might by now be an empty, burnt-out shell that was now reclaimed by thorns and brambles, foxes and hares, dag-nabbit, Shizong wasn't going to get down in the dumps over it. Upon his return, he issued an official act of grace in which, along with the customary general pardons,

he also declared that it was time for a new reign era, and his choice of name kind of says it all. This new period was to be known as Guangqi, the Era of Radiant Beginnings, which was, to put it mildly, putting a brave face on things. The fact of the matter was that the one tenuous thread by which his Era of Radiant Beginnings yet held was the Imperial Army, which was by this point a combination force of the Shunsa bodyguard that had accompanied the Imperial retinue to Chengdu, as well as a force raised from the province thereafter. Now, the Shunsa troops, in the grand scheme of things, were likely loyal enough, given that they were, at least in theory, the cream of the Imperial crop. But the provincial force would prove to be a different story altogether. They were, for lack of a better word, mercenaries, whose loyalty to the regime

they served extended only so far as the next payday. And that would immediately prove to be something of a problem, since when the imperial court returned to the capital, they found it thoroughly and absolutely picked clean, and the imperial treasury having long since dried up. You see, virtually every province and region empire-wide had simply, you know, stopped paying their taxes to the capital, since it had become pretty obvious that there wouldn't be any dynastic officials swinging through to check their books anytime soon. So when the emperor started going on about needing to once again mobilize the Sichuan army to retake lucrative North China plains or the Huai and Yangtze river

valleys, which would surely more than pay for themselves once they were back in the fold, the soldiers looked at their empty coin purses and said, in effect, yeah, that sounds nice and all, but we're going to need our money up front before we go off a-conquering for you anymore. And so, in order to retake the regions that would allow the government to pay their troops, they were going to need to find a way to first pay their troops. Rock, meet Hard Place. The first thing they tried, and I'll admit it sounds like a pretty good idea, was to use the long-standing government monopoly on salt production to raise the necessary quick cash. Heck, it'd work a hundred years ago to keep the dynasty afloat during the An Lushan Rebellion.

Why not this time? Well, the problem was that, imperial monopoly or no, the central government no longer directly controlled the salt-producing zones nearest to the capital, just on the other side of the Yellow River, in fact, called the Anyi and Jiexian salt pools. These regions were under the control of a fellow surnamed Wang, who was a long-time and outspoken enemy of the emperor's chief eunuch, Tian Lingzi, and who everyone was certain wouldn't voluntarily relinquish his hold on the region or its profits if he even so much as suspected Tian's involvement. So instead, the court tried to pull a fast one by issuing a series of reappointments, which was of course very much in line with typical imperial prerogatives that from time to time

rotated the officials through their various territories. This immediately encountered a speed bump though, when it became clear that out of all the provincial level officials out there, there was only about three who might even bother listening to such an order. The rest, presumably, would have some choice words about where the emperor could stick his transfer orders before resuming the personal rule over their fiefdom. But then Tian Lingzi managed to screw it all up. First, he made the highly presumptuous step of naming himself Monopoly Commissioner of the Two Salt Pools before the transfer had actually gone through, which stripped away any possible platitude of how Tian has nothing to do with this. Then, the eunuch sent an envoy to Wang personally, I mean, ostensibly to probably make nice with the guy, but instead, the envoy disrespected

the official, who then simply refused to recognize the transfer. This standoff would trigger, that's right, another military rebellion against the throne. Hooray! To counter the forces that were being mustered against him by Tianlingzi, Commissioner Wang enlisted the help of the one-eyed dragon of the Turks, Li Kayong, who was by this point rather ticked off at the Tong for his own set of reasons, mainly the dynasty's refusal to support a campaign of his own against a regional rival. The three forces would clash at the same place that General Li had defeated Huang Chao two years prior, and though the imperial army was able to drive Commissioner

Wang's force to rout, Li Kayong's force penetrated the Tang lines and plunged directly towards the capital, and oh god, oh god, it's all happening again. From Summers, quote, The emperor and his terrified court abandoned the capital once again, less than a year after their return from the long exile in Sichuan. The capital, which had been partially destroyed after Huang Chao's departure in 883, was now sacked more thoroughly than ever by marauding soldiers. Oh, how embarrassing. The emperor and a couple hundred of his officials once again ran off into the mountains of the Westerlands, ignoring messages sent by both Commissioner Wang and Li Ke Yong that they remained essentially loyal to the dynasty and were only angry with Tian Lingzi.

They urged the emperor to execute the eunuch, and then return to the capital. I mean, come on already. But Qizong wasn't really in any real position to be ordering the execution of Tian, given that Tian by now had pretty much complete control over the emperor's personal safety and freedom of action. Pursued by a mounting cohort of pro-Tong but anti-Tian armies, the imperial retinue took a harrowing and dangerous detour over the bridge of Khazad-dum, where they encountered a foe beyond any of them, a beast of fire and ash and... oh wait, I'm reading from the wrong book again.

No, the court actually took a path called the Linked Cloud Road over the Jinling Mountains, a road Summers describes as, quote, one of the most frightening of the routes across the mountains, because a full one-third of the 430 li went across a system of wooden trestles pounded into the side of cliffs above the roaring mountain torrents, end quote. And all the while, the opposing armies were actively trying to destroy those trestles over which they needed to pass in order to prevent their escape. Yeah, no thank you very much. I'll just face the Balrog instead. Over the course of this harrowing flight, one of the emperor's distant relatives, the Prince of Xiang, Li Yun, took ill and they were forced to leave him behind to be captured and returned to Fengxiang City

when he was too weak to continue on. The rest of the imperial entourage continued on, managing to barely escape the encircling armies and make for the relative safety of Xingyuan City, where they'd try to set up yet another government in exile. Once established within, it became clear that the region would not be capable of supporting such an influx of imperial officials. Thus, and rather hilariously optimistically, the emperor tried appointing Commissioner Wang as the official in charge of delivering 150,000 bushels of emergency

grain to the emperor. Hey, guy who we tried to con out of his saltworks and then set up this whole rebellion in motion, we could use a little help over here. Unsurprisingly, Wang ignored the summons, once again citing Tianlingzi's continued place in the court as his reason for non-compliance. Back in the capital region, in the absence, yet again, of the emperor, a new power was rising in the person of Zhu Mei, the governor-general of Jingnan. As the acting commander of Chang'an, it was Zhu Mei who would personally take responsibility of the captured and ill Prince of Xiang, Li Yun. Though only a distant relative of the sitting emperor, Zhu quickly came to realize that he'd been handed a trump card. If that emperor over

there wasn't going to listen to reason, I'll just make this guy emperor instead. Thus, Zhu Mei issued a declaration announcing to all that his decision was to depose Emperor Shizong right away, and replace him with an alternate member of the royal household, Prince Li Yun. There was actually considerable provincial and military support for this proposal, and with a confederate called Li Zhangfu, Zhu Mei began the process of enthroning his would-be imperial puppet. But in mid-886, two critical developments would disrupt Zhu's plans. First is that, quite unexpectedly, the Yunuch official Tianlingzi, whose very presence you'll recall was the sated casus belli for this whole mess, voluntarily stepped down from the court to

take up a position as military supervisor of Sichuan, and then there was a falling out between Jiumei and his partner in crime, Li Jiangfu. Li began to suspect that Zhu had no intention of actually sharing power with him, and so defected back to the imperial fold, where Emperor Shizong was only too happy to offer him an appointment to high office in exchange for his surrender. Another stumbling block to this plan came about when General Li Kayong refused to support Zhu Mei's plans to depose Shizong, and instead joined an alliance of two other military governors to oppose the coronation of Li Yun. They all seem to have come to the very logical conclusion that having a powerless and ceremonial figurehead in the form of Shizong beat the heck out of a powerful warlord like Jiumei controlling a puppet on the throne.

But Jiumei was not going to be deterred by this course of action. In the 10th month of 886, he formally elevated the Prince of Shang as the new monarch of Tang, prompting everyone to basically go bananas. The court in exile issued empire-wide proclamations stating that anyone bringing them the head of the outlaw warlord Jiumei would be rewarded with an appointment as a military governor. But it would be one of Jiumei's own lieutenants who would actually finish the job. Returning from the provinces at the head of a 5,000-man army, he engaged Jiumei in a brief but bloody battle outside of Chang'an that ended with the warlord's death. In the wake of their victory, the soldiers, everyone together now, once again pillaged and burned the capital city. Jiumei's key supporters and officials who had accepted

appointments in his usurper government were nearly all put to death as well, including the poor Prince Li Yun, who, for the crime of falling ill and getting captured and used as a political dummy, had his severed head shipped to the court in exile at Xingyun. With Warlord Jiumei's death and the near-total eradication of his supporters, Emperor Shizong once again returned to the capital region in early 887, though tellingly not back to the capital itself. Summers says it was, quote, so devastated by successive occupations and sackings that it was now in a state of virtual anarchy. Instead, the emperor stayed in the nearby city of Fengxiang under the protection of Li Jiangfu.

You know, the same governor who had only so recently defected from Jiumei's side. It seems pretty clear that this protection consisted of do exactly as I say, your highness. But this proved to be a disastrous mixture. When fighting broke out between the troops of the imperial Shenzhe army and those under Li's personal command. Apparently flying into anger, Li Zhengfu, quote, attacked and attempted to burn down the emperor's temporary residence, and there was bitter fighting in the streets, end quote. General Li would be defeated by the imperial troops and driven out of the city, where two months later he would meet his death. Emperor Shizong, though technically sort of victorious, would likewise not be long for the world. He was only 27 years old in 887, but the repeated flights to and from the capital

seemed to have drained the young monarch entirely. Shortly after arriving in Fengxiang, Shizong took gravely ill. He would die in the third month of 888, having ruled for 15 troubled years. Professor Summers writes, quote, it could hardly be said that he had ever ruled. His years on the throne were a time of overwhelming crises of every description, military, political, social, and institutional, which proved far beyond the capacity of the Tang dynasty to solve. Some have attributed the dynasty's rapid collapse to Shizong's boyish frivolities or to his inattention to government, but it is doubtful whether any ruler could have effectively checked the collapse of Tang power Instead, the once radiant capital lay a four-time-sacked ruin, the imperial authority a complete sham,

and the empire itself shattered into dozens of autonomous warlord kingdoms. If there had ever been any doubt, there was no longer. The era of radiant beginnings was at an end. The rapidly crumbling throne of Tang would fall to Xizong's younger brother, the 21-year-old Li Jie, who will be known as the penultimate monarch of the dynasty, Emperor Zhao Zong. And as we'll see next time, his will be a period not of rule or might or majesty, but of simple survival. Thanks for listening. 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.