The History of China - #125 - 5D10K 2: The War for Supremacy

Episode Date: June 23, 2017

The Later Liang Dynasty is forced back onto the defense following the murder if its first two emperors by its third, coupled with the rise of the latest Prince of Jin, Li Cunxu, who is waging a war to restore the Tang regime. But he’ll be forced to decide whether a restoration premised on putting himself on the throne rather than the old imperial clan can really be called a “restoration” at all. Time Period Covered: 915-926 CE Major Historical Figures: Later Liang Dynasty: Zhu Wen (Emperor Taizu) [d. 915] Zhu Youzhen (Emperor Mo) [r. 916-923] Later Tang Dynasty: Li Cunxu, Prince of Jin (Emperor Zhuangzong) [r. 923-926] Li Siyuan (Emperor Minzong) [r. 926-933] Crown Prince Li Zhizhi [d. 926] Former Shu Dynasty: Wang Yen (Emperor Houzhu) [r. 918-925] Liao Dynasty: Yelü Abaoji Kaghan (Emperor Taizu of Liao) [r. 907-926] Works Cited: Standen, Naomi. "The Five Dynasties" in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 5, Part 1: The Sung Dynasty and its Precursors, 907-1279. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. TD Direct Investing offers live support. So whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to the History of China. Episode 125, The War for Supremacy

We ended off last time with an absolute bloodbath within Later Liang's imperial household, seeing the newborn dynasty's founding emperor, crown prince, and second emperor brutally murdered all within the span of a year, in a scene that I'm sure would make Quentin Tarantino proud. At the end of it all, it would be Taizu's third son, the assassin of both his adopted brother and blood brother, Zhu Youzhen, who stood alone amidst the carnage to claim the throne of later Liang in 915. He would be referred to in traditional histories as Emperor Mo, which is a bit of a spoiler on his period of rule, as it simply translates to Last Emperor. Such an ominous title was presaged even before he took the throne, by the collapse

of the so-called Great Yan Territory, and its dismemberment by the territories of He Dong, controlled by Prince Li Sun Shu, and the far northern territories claimed by Abaoji Kayan, in the name of the soon-to-be Liao Dynasty. Now, once again, we're going to leave the Kitan largely on the periphery today, but next episode we're going to leave the Khitan largely on the periphery today, but next episode, we're going to circle back around and focus directly on them, since they'll be a pretty big deal for the next couple of centuries. Anyways, for now, back in the Yellow River Valley, the loss of Great Yan and its capital, that Yu City, was a bitter blow for the prospects of later Liang's new emperor,

which suddenly found itself facing down two opponents, each at rough parity with his own strength. The situation would turn further against Liang in the spring of 915, with the death of the allied governor of Weibo. Emperor Mo, taking all the wrong pages from dear old dad's playbook, rushed in and tried to gobble up part of the province, prompting the Weibo army to mutiny against their young allied new governor, who then felt compelled to turn for help from none other than Prince Li Cunxiu.

Well, Cunxiu rode in, and in the words of Standen, "...offered the mutineers not an alliance, but the leadership they needed to survive." Which is to say, the Prince of Jin rode in and at the head of a relief force, rounded up the mutiny's leaders and executed them with all due haste, presenting himself as the savior of the common people of the region. He played the part so convincingly, as it were, that the governor of Weibo wound up offering his own position to Li Cunshu, and Cunshu graciously accepted. Just like that, and with almost no bloodshed,

Li had simultaneously increased his military strength, his territories, and his economic productivity, all while sapping that same strength from his rival, Emperor Mo of later Liang. In a sweeping bit of socio-political judo, he had turned his enemy's strength into his own. Now, I've mentioned this already, but it bears repeating when we're looking at narratives from this era. Li Cunxu is going to be the successor to later Liang, which means that his imperial historians are going to do two things. First, they're going to destroy as much of later Liang's histories as they can possibly get a hold of, since, in their view, Liang was an illegitimate usurper state. And second,

they're going to write their own histories, glorifying, why, themselves, of course. So, of course, and as usual, we must be careful to be aware of the narrative biases at work. The stories we're left with are immensely valuable, but were never written with any sense of dispassionate recounting of pure hard fact. There are good guys and bad guys, and there's a clear narrative goal here. But that doesn't diminish the value of the records we do have from this period. Far from it. It does mean that we must tread cautiously and critically through them. For instance, though from the perspective of the annals of later Tang, Li Sunshu's ultimate

victory over Liang in 926 was essentially inevitable by now, or at least it reads as such. Even with the loss of Weibo, later Liang's fate was anything but sealed in 915, and would be fought over tooth and nail over the following decade, city by city, governor by governor, household by household. It was a war of attrition not in the material sense, but very much so in terms of allegiance and loyalty. He, who could flip more lords and governors over to their side, would ultimately carry the day. Still, beginning in 915, the tide does seem to,

slowly but irresistibly, have begun shifting in Li Cunxu's favor. A Liang force that had been attacking Cunxu's capital at Taiyuan was disrupted and then, shockingly, defeated and routed by a much smaller Hadong army. Liang's ability to resist Hadong was further undercut by a mutiny in the emperor's own armies, which broke out in his capital of Kaifeng. It then pillaged the city and even attacked the imperial palace directly. This mutiny was ultimately put down, but one can only imagine the devastation such treachery must have had on the morale of the Liang populace. By the 9th month of 916, Li Cunshu's armies had control over the entirety of Hadong save for a single holdout prefecture

called Liang, giving him wide access to the Yellow River and its critical trade routes. And of course, the Yellow River was also the Emperor of Liang's last real line of defense. As the winds continued to shift in Hadong's favor, several of the southern states, notably the Wu and Chu kingdoms, had made an assessment of which way the conflict in the north was turning, and had begun sending out feelers for alliances with what they perceived the winning party would be. In 916 and 917, both southern states had formalized treaties of alliance with He Dong and agreed to begin their own attacks and raids against later Liang territories from the south, thus opening up a second front against the already embattled Emperor Mo. By 918, Li had secured enough of a beachhead on the southern banks of the Yellow River

to begin planning an offensive campaign directly against Kaifeng. Late that year, acting on information that the Liang generals were squabbling with one another, Li Cunshu pounced, marching against the Liang capital with a force of some 100,000 troops. Even with such a tremendous force, though, the armies of later Liang were still able to prove themselves equal to the task, grinding Li's southern push into a bloody stalemate over the next two years. The deadlock would only be broken in 920, when the governor of Hezhong, the region surrounding the Yellow River's Great Bend to the north, unilaterally seized and installed his own

son as the governor of the neighboring prefectural capital of Tongzhou. This act amounted to a direct challenge to the imperial prerogative of Emperor Mo, who, naturally, refused to confirm the appointment. He wasn't about to let his governor go rogue, after all. But all that refusal did was prompt the governor of Hezhong to simply turn and ask Li Chengxu if he'd be cool with his son being the governor of Tongzhou. And yes, Li replied, yes, he'd be totally cool with that. And so, just like that, both Tongzhou and the whole of Hezhong province had flipped to the cause of Li Chengxu. On the heels of all this winning, it seems certain that talk of the Mandate of Heaven

having been taken up by the Prince of Jin was widely circulating throughout He Dong. Even so, much like Zhu Wen before him, Li Cunshu seemed in no particular rush to formally take up imperial title or regalia. After all, rushing oneself into the throne wouldn't quite square with the long-standing official stance of the Prince of Jin, which was that his was a war of restoration of the Tang regime, not one to supplant it. However, that unhurried mosey toward the throne was where any similarity between Zhu Wen and Li Cunxu ended. We discussed at some length last time about how little Zhu Wen had cared for the trappings or symbolic weight of the imperial position.

He was a simple, brutal, and effective military governor that carried such simple, brutal, and effective policies and understandings with him into empire. Straightforward brute force was what he understood, how he lived, and indeed, how he died. Li, on the other hand, was highly attentive to making sure that his leisurely sidle toward imperium had all the trappings of legitimacy and appropriateness. Li understood, in a way Jun never had, that being the emperor was at least as much about the whole theater of the role as the role itself. One might be able to forcibly seize some of the empire by force of arms alone, but the whole of China could only be brought back into the fold if the people believed in the idea

of it. That's the thing about these strange abstractions we call states or nations. They exist only if and only so long as there's a collective agreement that they do. It's a subtle but important difference between a military occupation zone and a sovereign state, a resident population versus a citizen body. So bearing that in mind, even though a lot of what I'm about to say seems just like empty political theater and ceremonial title pile on, because it totally is, it's also critically important in reigniting the realm's belief in its own institutions. So, back in 913, Li Cunxu had accepted the title of the Director of Department of State Affairs and had set up a branch office of state affairs and begun appointing staff.

All of this on the heels of him reaffirming his father's commitment to restore the Tang regime. All of this went to show that there was actually still a regime left to restore it all. You say the Tang is dead, do you? Well then, how are its institutions and directors still operating, hmm? You can't explain that. Eight years later, in 921, acting, or so the story goes, at the behest and pleas of his own generals as well as the territories of former Shu in Sichuan and Wu in the southeast, Li Cunshu at last relented to the popular pressure and reluctantly agreed to have imperial insignia made for himself.

But what's this? Rather conveniently, who should turn up on Li's doorstep but an ancient monk with the original Tang imperial regalia in hand and a story that he'd been keeping it secret, keeping it safe, for the past 40 years since Huang Chao had sacked Chang'an, but now wished to give it to Li Cunxu, its rightful bearer. Hmm, yes, convenient indeed. Of course, even at the time, there were some who still balked at this rather unlikely state of affairs, notably in a memorial written by the eunuch official Zhang Chengye, decrying this evident breach of the Hedong Li's old pledge of unwavering loyalty to the imperial Li's claim to the throne. Here's what he said, according to Book 271 of the Zizhi Tongjian, quote, Zhang Chengye's remonstrance said, My earthly prince,

who has pledged his loyalty to the Tang court in order to save it from its current plight, who has slaved away towards this goal for more than thirty years in the service of the Tang's fortune, and in its name summoned and led countless troops and horses and forsworn all thoughts of thievery or usurpation.

Now, with the north under your command, yet Jews still alive, under this luster of conquest, can it be you are now prepared to abandon your pledge and take the throne for yourself? My prince, you must not allow yourself to partake in such a self-destructive indulgence, but instead you must put your full weight and power toward the usurper Jew's annihilation. Once this is finished, under the righteous banner of the Holy Tongue, you shall sweep over Wu in the south and Shu in the west like the unstoppable torrent of a flood and reunite the whole of the realm. When this is so, and the restoration of the regime of the great Taizong borne out in full,

you will understand what folly it had been to have ever thought to claim the throne yourself. And tales of the Prince of Jian's virtue in restoring the rightful to the throne shall be told and remembered for all time. The Prince replied, I wish this not, yet my will is subordinate to the demands of the people.

But Cheng Ye, unable to contain himself, wept and cried out, Now Prince battles Prince to bloody conclusion, but to what end? No longer for the noble restoration of the Tang, but only your own foolish self-aggrandizement. You are, each of you, foolish slaves to your own desires. With that, Zhang Chengye retired and returned to his home at Jinyang Town,

recusing himself of any further participation in this growing sickness in men's hearts. End quote. Now, it may be easy to read this passage with the degree of cynicism typical of our modern minds. And by that, I mean, in essence, reading Li Cunxu's attesting that he's deferring to the will of the people as nothing more than a figly for his own drive for personal power. And to be sure, that may have well been the case, in whole or in part. Yet we also do need to remember, as ever, that the ideas and beliefs these people carried, they typically wholeheartedly believed in,

and did not just cynically employ them whenever it seemed advantageous to do so. To wit, in this instance, the Mandate of Heaven. It may well have been the case that Li Cunshu really wasn't personally gung-ho about the idea of claiming the throne, but that said, if the mantle really had passed to him, as evidenced by the insistence of the populace at large, then who was he to deny such a responsibility? As Stendon puts it, Thus it was that in 923, Li selected from his high officials a body known as the Hundred Ministers, another crucial step in building

what would ultimately become an imperial court. And in the fourth month of that year, he officially assumed the title of Emperor of the re-established Tang Dynasty from his forward operating base of Weizhou. He'd be known in the historical annals as Emperor Zhuangzong of later Tang. So thankfully, I can just now start officially calling the regions of the Yellow River later Tang, rather than use their somewhat more confusing regional designations. His established realm was suitably vast, as he'd been able to attract the allegiance of at least 13 major provinces and more than 50 prefectures. Yet, for all this pomp and circumstance, the Henan regions south of the Yellow River refused

to recognize this new-slash-old regime's legitimacy and retained their allegiance to Emperor Mo of later Liang. And so it was that the war would grind on. One of the main hotspots over the course of 923 was the walled and heavily fortified city of Yunzhou in western Shandong province, since it lay between two of later Tang's beachheads to cross into the south. Records of this period are suitably vague and sparse about what precisely went down over the ten or so months of campaigning against Yunzhou, and so it's hazy at best. The city seems to have been occupied by both Tang and Liang forces several times, and it seems that the Liang forces halted at least one major Tang offensive

by breaking a levee along the Yellow River and flooding four prefectures north of the river. But by the 10th month, many of Emperor Zhang Zong's advisors were suggesting giving up the idea of crossing into the south at all, and suggesting that he simply return north to regroup and regain Tang's strength before pressing the issue again. But here we seem to see that Zhang Zong really did buy into the notion that he held the mandate of heaven, as he said that he was confident with whatever conclusion the fates should decree in this conflict. His mind made up, he bid his farewell to his family, possibly for the last time, and committed his forces to an all-or-nothing assault to take Yunzhou, and thus later Liang, or die trying.

As it would turn out, the autumn assault didn't meet with stalemate as before, but instead with the Tang victory so easy that it seems to have surprised both Tang and Liang forces. The high commander of the later Liang force was captured on the field and taken prisoner before Zhuangzong attempted to sway him into joining his side by offering him a generalship in the Tang army. The Liang commander refused to betray his state, however, prompting Zhuangzong to order his execution. Nevertheless, Zhuangzong took the capture of such an esteemed enemy commander in battle as a sure sign of heaven's favor in this war,

and pressed further southward, directly toward the Liang capital of Kaifeng. It's obvious that this turn of events took the Liang armies and emperor completely by surprise, since the capital itself was by this point defended by a paltry 4,000 troops and with its larger army nowhere in sight. Emperor Mo of later Liang, seeing the writing very much on the wall for his short-lived dynasty, ordered one of his generals to kill him rather than face capture by the enemy, thus bringing later Liang to its end after a mere 16 years. The method by which Zhuangzong of later Tang had come to power and achieved his supremacy was in stark contrast to the rise and reign of the

founding emperor of later Liang. Taizu of Liang, you'll remember from last time, had cobbled together his empire bit by bit, prefecture by prefecture, and had never had any real decisive moment that he could say, I am the emperor and I can prove it by this singular spectacular victory. Instead, he relied on possibly apocryphal tales of great heroes proclaiming his greatness and their eternal devotion to his rule. Contrast that, then, with Zhang Zong's Confirmation of Power, a vast unequivocal victory in the field of battle, fully in line with the traditional confirmation of the transfer of the Mandate of Heaven. In line with the founding of the first Tang, the Sui, the Han, Qin, Zhou, and Shang before it.

All the way back to the historical mists at the dawn of time. You can see which one's rather more auspicious, can't you? 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. In any event, though the emperor of later Tang came to rule over the Henan region by a far different method than his predecessor, he was certainly able to take advantage of the benefits of later Liang's centralization and consensus-building efforts. Standen, once again, writes,

The later Liang had used their control of the machinery of the capital bureaucracy to reassert central rule over their provinces, and Li Cunxu was the beneficiary. Once he had taken the capital, all of Henan was his too. The later Liang governors, numbering 50, all sent tribute and were kept on in their commands. Whereas Zhu Wen had met widespread resistance from his peers with his accession, Li Cunshu enjoyed immediate recognition from all the neighboring powers except former Shu.

In fact, the following year, 924, the lord paramount of Fengxiang, Li Maozhen, would die, and his two eldest sons immediately acclaimed the legitimacy of later Tang, and were adopted by Emperor Zhuangzong as adopted sons, thereby officially ending Fengxiang's independence and further strengthening later Tang's grip on northern China. Right off the bat, Emperor Zhuangzong sought to at least ceremonially undo the changes wrought by the later Liang regime. His was, after all, a restorationist regime, and as such was, virtually by definition, concerned first and foremost with getting back to the way things used to be, you know, the good old days.

The 910 Liang Code was officially abolished in favor of the Old Tang Code, though in actuality Zhuangzong would retain many of the more practical and beneficial changes made by the Liang rulers. Of course, he would never have admitted to such a thing. Another early order, one that we've brought up before, was that the historical records created by the Liang regime were rounded up, as best they could, and then destroyed. Though many Liang officials were eventually replaced by Tang restorationist picks, many others were allowed to remain on indefinitely. For, as we'll see in a minute, Tang would quickly find itself facing a vast appointment problem. Another rather dubious practice of the Tang, now restored by its latest incarnation, was the employment of many, many eunuchs as palace commissioners and attendants,

alongside which they regained as a class much of their long-despised outsized political influence. Another big reversion was that of the capital itself. Whereas Kaifeng had been the Liang capital city, later Tang would render Luoyang once more the prime imperial capital, with Chang'an as one of the secondary capitals, but poor Kaifeng ignored entirely. One major roadblock to getting the machinery of state humming along again was the lack of aristocratic families willing or able to seek high office under this later Tang regime. You will recall that many of these noble families had been heavily marginalized and stripped of their offices and powers by the later Liang drive to replace all office holders with officials personally loyal to the emperor. Moreover,

there was an investigation begun in 924 to ascertain whether or not many individuals claiming to be of aristocratic stock actually were. You see, any claim of belonging to a prestigious family was expected to be backed up by an official certificate verifying that status. By the end of 925, though, the investigation had found that the level of falsified certificates of nobility was so high that more than three-quarters of all officials holding such documents were dismissed from office as frauds and their certificates destroyed. Though it had rooted out a vast network of corruption, in so doing, the investigation had also presented the later Tang regime with a significant problem in that there weren't enough qualified applicants

to even come close to being able to fill all the empty slots. In 925, as a very notable example, though there were more than 2,000 vacancies, there are recorded only 60 official appointments. One key way in which later Tang pointedly did not seek to emulate its forebearer was in military distribution. Now, I don't need to tell you by this point that the Tang policy of distributing the totality of its military strength out to the governor-generals of its borderlands had proven rather disastrous, and Zhuangzong had taken a

hard-learned lesson to heart. Instead, he maintained an overwhelmingly powerful military force under his personal, centralized command from the capital, as well as allowing his supervisors of the armies on campaign to bring with them powerful contingents of their own, thus ensuring that generals would be forced to listen to their supervisors rather than just ignore them. After all, Zhuangzong had big plans for his armies and wasn't about to risk any of them going rogue on him. There were two potential enemies against which later Tang might have focused its energies following the conquest of later Liang. To the north, there was the Khitan tribes of Abaoji Kayan, who had by this point formally invested himself with the Chinese-style court and title of Huangdi, and was thus a formal

threat to the supremacy of the later Tang regime. The Khitan, however, had proven themselves in practicality to be of relatively little threat, as they still contented themselves with only occasional border raids in the Northlands, and showed no signs of building up to any kind of campaign of conquest. The other threat lay to the southwest, and it was former Shu in Sichuan and its imperial claimant Wang Yan, with the, spoiler alert, temple name of Emperor Houzhu, meaning last lord. Houzhu was the second sovereign of Shu and had succeeded his father Gaozu of Shu in 918. It would be against former Shu that Zhuangzong would next direct his

army of conquest, albeit cloaked in utmost secrecy. In 923, the annals of Shu record that court astronomers observed a comet passing through the heavens. This was, as we've said before, among the gravest possible omens that there were, and a sign of great upheaval and a change to the dynastic order. This seemed to have been borne out the same year with the Tang's overthrow of later Liang, but in retrospect, maybe Shu shouldn't have let down their guard quite so soon. In 924, Zhuangzong of Tang sent an emissary to Shu, which had neither submitted nor declared against the nascent northern dynasty. The emissary returned with a mix of bad news, which was a proposed trade deal to exchange Tang horses for Shu jewels had fallen through, but also good news, which was

that the state of Shu was corrupt, governed by its bureaucrats rather than its emperor, and militarily weak and should be very easily conquerable. Though the Shu emperor wasn't blind to the possibility of war between his state and later Tang, he does seem to have been rather more optimistic than events would later have justified. Though he initially reinforced key routes into Shu territories, later on in 924 he dramatically scaled back his garrisons, thinking that peace would triumph between North and South. Meanwhile, Zhuangzong of Tang was under no such illusion and had been spending the majority of the year building up a massive cavalry force

to campaign against the South. In the summer of 925 then, under the twin commands of the heir apparent, Prince Li Zizhi, and General Guo Zhongdao, the mounted army of later Tang stormed into the Shu territories and commenced with a campaign that progressed so rapidly that Houju of former Shu purportedly refused to even believe reports of the war's outbreak until he saw for himself his own troops repeating in full flight from the prefectures the Tang army had already captured. From Standen, quote, when he finally responded it was too late. Prefectures fell by the dozen, with only one pitched battle in the campaign. In the end,

a former Shu general, Wang Congpi, took control of the regime and surrendered. End quote. In total, the campaign to conquer former Shu took just 70 days, and had netted Emperor Zhuangzong 64 new prefectures, 30,000 additional troops, and 10 million measures of assorted goods. This shocking, climactic victory, and with such ease, against the southern state prompted Abaoji of the Khitan to immediately cease his raids into Tang territories and secure a stable peace deal between the two states. This would allow both Khitan and later Tang to prosecute war efforts against other, more

immediate foes, rather than risk all-out war against one another. We'll get to the Khitan wars next time, but for now, let's stick with later Tang. Because even in victory, there would prove to be no peace. Early 926 would see the outbreak of a series of revolts against later Tang authority, which had been prompted by the shady murder of one of Zhuangzong's closest advisors through a plot instigated by his own empress. It had been further worsened by ongoing efforts by the Tang court to restrict the powers of provincial governors in favor of lower-level administrators, like prefects. It all made perfect sense at the macro level,

of course. Overly powerful governors had ultimately spelled the doom of the old order. No one could deny that. After all, what were all these warlords and self-styled emperors other than, that's right, overly powerful governors who had thrown off their imperial yokes? No one wanted a repeat of that, well, except perhaps the new batch of up-and-coming governors. In any case, as a result of these growing tensions, revolts first erupted in Weibo, when troops, returning from campaign, rose up and killed their commander, and then elected a new leader from among

themselves before occupying and pillaging their own home city of Weizhou and holding fast against an imperial counter-assault. Four days later, another force commanded by General Li Shaochen claimed the greater portion of recently conquered Shu territory and marched on its capital, Chengdu. Yet another minor commander in northern Weibo, so minor in fact that he only commanded some 400 troops, proclaimed himself a governor. But probably the most worrisome of all was a contingent of Emperor Zhuangzong's own bodyguard mutinying,

nominally in response to the murder of his advisor. While the rebellion in Sichuan and Xingzhou were swiftly stamped out, initial attempts to put down the larger of the two rebellions in Weibo proved to be failures, which only prompted the rebellion to spread further upstream, up the Yellow River. In response, Zhuangzong wished to personally lead his imperial army against the rebel force, but was persuaded by his adopted brother, General Li Suiyuan, that he would be better tasked for the operation. Thus, taking the largest part of the central imperial armies under his command,

Li Suiyuan marched against the Weibo rebels and arrived at the city walls in the third month of 926. Yet, it seems that before an initial assault could be conducted, follow-up orders arrived from the capital, instructing the armies that in the emperor's name all of the rebellious soldiers were to be put to death. The greater part of the expeditionary army, apparently revolted by such monstrous orders against their own countrymen, who were first and foremost acting out of protest against the illegal killing of one of their favorite ministers, themselves began to rise in revolt, shouting and acclaiming their general, Li Suiyun, as the emperor of Hebei,

while agreeing to leave Zhuangzong as the emperor of Henan. Li Suiyun initially tried to decline and deflect these calls, only to find himself physically handed over to the rebels within Weizhou city, where quite unexpectedly, rather than executing him, the defenders, having heard all this commotion, up and submitted to the man who they swore would be their new emperor. Well now, isn't this something? Li Suiyan rallied the gathered soldiers and began raiding the imperial grazing grounds to accumulate the requisite horses to form a cavalry corps. When this was completed, he turned his force right around and headed back towards

Luoyang, under the premise of at least wishing to explain himself to the emperor, though you can take that however you like. Whatever his true intentions might have been, his letters explaining his predicament were intercepted by a later Tang loyalist and prevented from ever reaching the capital or the emperor's eyes. Thus, without any explanation as to why his brother and top general had turned around and was marching on Luoyang, Zhuangzong declared Li Suiyan a rebel as well. It's really important to understand the pent-up frustration that many troops across the empire had been feeling since Zhuangzong's accession. And to get any real sense of that, we must understand, to the best of our ability at least, what kind of soldiers they were. Call them Chinese all you want, but they were by

and large, in attitude at least if not necessarily ethnicity, step-troops, which is to say, mostly mercenary. Their loyalty extended not very far beyond their next paycheck, and especially in a world where it was a pick-your-favorite flavor of dynasty, very little further. As such, when Emperor Zhuangzong attempted to order the troops stationed at the river crossing in Mengzhou, a critical crossing point on the way to Kaifeng and then Luoyang, the soldiers looked down at their empty coin purses, which were months behind on payments by this point, and said essentially,

yeah, no thanks. Even when Zhuangzong offered them additional payments and back payments and bonuses, they'd reached the point of frustration where they'd rather hold up their middle finger to the man than submit to the almighty paycheck any further. They weren't going to fight, at least not for later Tang. Much to the contrary, the troops under Li Siyan had absolutely nothing to complain about as they crossed the Yellow River, since their commander made sure to plunder shipments of silk along the way and dole it out generously to all who now fought for him. It was night and day.

At this point, amusingly enough, it became an out-and-out foot race to the city of Kaifeng. You see, the governor of the once-and-future capital city had publicly declared that he had no dog in this fight at all, but that he'd be willing to surrender his city to whichever of the two contenders arrived at his gates first. Game on. The two sides redoubled their efforts to reach Kaifeng first, but it would prove to be Li Suiyan's advance guard that won the day, winning not only the city itself, but a host of other provincial defections as well from governors who had stuck a finger in the air and felt the change in the winds. As for Zhuangzong, he'd lost a hell of a lot more than a footrace, and returned to

Luoyang defeated and dejected. But things were about to go even further south for Zhuangzong, since upon reaching his capital, he learned that an officer in his own capital guard, Guo Chongqian, had led a mutiny against his rule. In the ensuing battle, Emperor Zhuangzong was wounded by an arrow, and though he was carried out of immediate danger, he quickly died from the wound. In the ensuing panic, chaos gripped the capital. Infamously, Zhang Zong's widowed empress set the imperial palace ablaze before fleeing the city. Standard writes of what followed,

quote, Li Suiyuan's arrival restored order, and the chief counselor, Duoluo Kou, led Li Cunshu's officials to offer Li Si Yuan the throne. Li Cunshu's designated heir, Li Zhezhe, at first planned to occupy Fengxiang with the expeditionary army used to conquer the former Shu, but then killed himself instead, leaving the army to the care of the bureaucrat general, Zhen Huan, who decided to submit to Li Siyan. After that, what little opposition remained in the provinces was handled swiftly and locally. It would prove to be yet another very different way to come into power.

Whereas Zhu Wen had taken command through creeping ground-level takeovers, and Li Cunshu had done so through sweeping military conquest in the classical style, now instead Li Si Yuan had come to the throne through popular consensus. In all, the rebellion was begun and ended in the span of only a few weeks. That's how quickly this tide had turned against the only just victorious Zhuangzong. Yet even Li Si Yuan himself seemed to have just been riding the wave of it all, as surprised as anyone else that he'd stayed on this board as long as he had and not been smashed underneath the tide. It's not as though he'd really done that much, he'd just been. And apparently, that had been enough

for the supremely dissatisfied soldiery of later Tang to say, yes, yes, that is everything I want and more. Ultimately, it seems to go right back to the kind of army, and not just army, but ruler style of the whole enterprise. Zhuangzong had been a battlefield commander, and that is what had won him his throne. That is where he excelled and where he belonged. The irony of it, as it often is, was that his very success on the battlefields of northern China had put him into a position that he was unqualified and incompetent to carry out,

a 10th century iteration of the Peter Principle in action, such as it were. Which, in case you're unfamiliar, states that, in time, every employee will be promoted to their level of incompetence. In this instance, he'd been leading an army premised on the assurance of large caches of loot and plunder supplied frequently through conquest. The problem becomes obvious in victory, however. How can that model possibly sustain itself in peace? Moreover, his very rise isolated him ever further from his troops, stymieing one of his greatest assets, which was his ability to forge and maintain personal bonds of loyalty with them. Quote, even the huge profits

from the conquest of former Shu were gone by the time Li Siyuan marched on Kaifeng, but leaving Li Cunshu able to pay his imperial armies, let alone reward his close followers, who were alienated accordingly. Without the solid backing of the imperial armies, Li Cunshu was vulnerable to his governors and their forces. Li Cunshu's appeal lay in offering a remedy as one governor and general among his peers, rather than as someone who might threaten the autonomy of the governors so much desired." And so, with Zhuang Zong assassinated, Li Cun Sayin will be acclaimed to the throne in 926, albeit uneasily, as Emperor Mingzong. And that's where we'll pick up when we get back to the Yellow River Valley in two episodes' time. Next time, however, we're going to be pulling up stakes and trekking way up north, past even the most remote borders

of China proper, and into the wild steppelands of Manchuria and even Mongolia, where we'll look into the history of a people known as the Khitan. They're not Chinese, but they're still going to play a massive role in this conflict, and many to come. After all, under the con we've already discussed to an extent, Abauji, the Khitan people will style themselves after Chinese culture, customs, language, and even government, ultimately forming a ruling coalition that will claim much of the north all the way into the 13th century, the Liao Dynasty. Thanks for listening.

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. Learn the history of the British Empire by listening to Pax Britannica everywhere you find your podcasts, or go to pod.link slash pax.