The History of China - #127: 5D10K 4: Towering Inferno

Episode Date: August 24, 2017

In the state of Later Tang, things go from bad to worse as a revolving door of emperors combines with a suddenly-mercenary imperial guard corps... all to bring the state itself to an untimely, but fiery, demise. Time Period Covered: 926-937 CE Major Historical Figures: Emperor Mingzong of Later Tang (Li Siyuan)[r. 926-933] Prince Li Congrong [d. 933] Emperor Li Conghou of Later Tang [r. 933-934] Chancellor Zhu Hongjiao [d. 934] Chancellor Feng Yun [d. 934] Emperor Li Congke of Later Tang [r. 934-936] Shi Jingtang, Emperor of Later Jin [r. 936-942] Meng Zhixiang, Emperor of Later Shu [r. 933-934] Emperor Taizong of Liao (Yelü Guangde) [r. 927-947] 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 127, Towering Inferno.

Leaving the Liao behind in their northern expanse, this time we'll be heading back down to the thick of things in the Yellow River Valley, and specifically to the regime of the later Tang at the dawn of its second ruler's reign, Li Siyan, aka Emperor Mingzong. As you recall from the end of 125, Mingzong had taken the throne rather unexpectedly in the year of 926, when he'd just sort of ridden the disaffected coattails of the later Tang army into power. The army had been sent by Tang's first emperor, Li Cunshu, aka Zhuangzong, to stamp out reports of a rebellion being led by Siyuan in Chengde, to which the imperial armies, by this point well and truly over Zhuangzong's flat refusal to pay out the

kinds of bonuses they had grown accustomed, and yes, entitled to, so turned on the emperor and killed him at the capital city of Luoyang. The rest of the pieces just sort of fell into place after that. Here was Li Si Yuan, having been chosen by the army as, in effect, the guy seemingly most likely to pay what the soldiers felt that they were owed by the state. There was the usual bout of ceremonial hemming and hawing by Si Yuan over whether he really should take the throne. After all, wasn't there someone better? Surely, one of Zhuangzong's own

sons could be found to carry on the bloodline. That sort of thing. But as it turned out, wouldn't you know it, suddenly it seemed that none of the imperial princes in direct line for the throne could be found at all. And no matter how many very, very innocent assassins, I mean messengers, so Yuan sent to try to bring any of them back to the capital to take their rightful place as monarch, they only ever seemed to return empty-handed and unable to have found the prince or princess in question, and certainly not with bloodstains on their blades or anything like that.

How strange. What a pity. I guess it must be Li Si Yuan, after all. With Emperor Mingzong's accession to the throne, there was some initial debate between the new sovereign and his chief advisors, specifically over whether he was succeeding as the next emperor of Tang, or as the founder of a whole new dynastic order. He was, after all, only of the royal family through adoption, and so this could be the perfect opportunity, perhaps, to start fresh with a new name, new dynasty, new everything. But Mingzong ultimately decided against starting a new dynasty, since it seemed far more legitimate for the adopted son of Li Kayong and the adopted brother of the late Emperor Zhuangzong to carry

on the line of later Tong, rather than, say, for the Xiatuo Turkic general Miao Jiliye, which was his Xiatuo name, to have violently overthrown and usurped the throne for his own glory. The optics of it were, I'm sure you'll agree, much better. Mingzong's period of rule would be longer than average for this era of warfare and chaos. He'd reign over later Tang's territories for a total of seven years, and in spite of the questionable way in which he'd come to power, he'd be remembered as a disciplined and compassionate ruler who oversaw a period of remarkable peace in this otherwise stormy century. One of the early methods he successfully employed to make sure that his was an effective and

relatively violence-free reign period was to fundamentally revamp the throne's position in relation to the dynasty's constituent armies. Like the great Tang of old, later Tang had fallen into the trap of having too much of his military force controlled by generals and governors who were relatively independent of direct imperial control. And Mingzong should know after all, since he had, you know, been one of them. As such, he took immediate steps to beef up the power of the central imperial guard. Professor Naomi Standen writes of this process, quote, One of Mingzong's first actions was to transform the palace's armies into a powerful personal army that incorporated all other imperial units. He quickly incorporated the remaining imperial

armies into the two palace forces by removing the imperial army commanders. Emperor Zhuangzong's favorite, Chu Shouyin, led units stationed in the capital. He was posted to Kaifeng and then attacked and killed. Ran Huan, commander of the expeditionary army sent to conquer the former Shu, was made a chief minister, end quote. Critically, Mingzong maintained his absolute dominance over these two newly empowered central commands, known respectively as the Six Imperial Armies and the Palace Guard, by making sure that no single commander was ever allowed to have control of both armies at the same

time. Instead, power was always to be split between one of the emperor's sons and one of his personal advisors. With military power thus re-centralized, this made the usually tricky process of replacing provincial governors with his own choices much easier. Mingzong just simply didn't have to care very much at all about whether the governor being replaced would go quietly or try to rebel, because now the throne held such an overawesome preponderance of military might that it didn't much matter. Step out of the way, or get crushed, Mr. Governor. The choice is yours.

This process worked so well, in fact, that in just four years, Mingzong had replaced all but four of his realm's governors with men of his own choosing, and without so much as a peep of rebellion by those ousted. What seemed to have contributed most to his successful stewardship over the North China Plains, though, was, again, in Standen's words, that he, quote, gained a tremendous advantage from not trying to unite northern China, but merely exert his authority over it, end quote. Put more directly, in marked contrast to many of the other warlords of this era, Mingzong was much more comfortable with dangling the carrot rather than employing the

stick. That is, he'd rather persuade his governors and people that accepting his rule was in their best interests rather than try to ram it down their throat at sword point. Another type of carrot, of course, lay in the fact that he reportedly had at least 15 daughters, whose potential marriage could be used to sweeten the pot for any suitably important ally or subordinate. For the commoners, marriage alliances weren't going to work, of course. But Mingzong had something even better up his sleeve. Tax relief. Sweet, sweet tax relief. In the form of abolishing many of the additional land taxes heaped on by his immediate predecessors, as well as limiting the number and size of tributary gifts from the provinces, which ultimately came at the expense of the populace at large.

Yet for all of that, he was still able to actually increase annual state revenue by unifying the three state offices on the salt and iron monopoly, the population register, and the state budget respectively, thereby ensuring that the amount of money flowing into the central government's treasury could be directly tallied against the amount flowing back out. Well, good job, Imperial China, you've finally learned how to balance a checkbook, and it only took 3,000 years. Don't get too excited, though, because they'll forget it pretty quickly. Another reform implemented was the abolition of several other state production monopolies,

specifically those on iron and alcohol production, thus allowing commoners to make their own tools and booze for the first time in a long time, and the cost of which was reformatted to be a modest increase in overall land taxes, which likewise raised overall revenue for the state. Not all of Mingzong's attempts at cost-cutting reforms were quite so successful, though. Probably the least effective was his attempt to end the state's dependence on foreign horses, which at current the Tangut peoples of the northwest had a lock on trade over and were price-gouging later Tang to their heart's content.

Though Mingzong tried to establish imperial pasture lands in Hadong as of the year 927, such efforts would prove insufficient in producing either enough horses or even steeds of remotely equal quality as those of the steppes. In spite of such false starts, overall, the financial reforms of Emperor Mingzong proved a resounding success and resulted in, according to the Zizitongjian, As we've seen, Mingzong's approach to rule was marked by an unusual degree of intelligence and nuance, which makes it rather surprising to learn, then, that for all of this, he spent his entire life completely illiterate. We must remember, despite the Chinese names, titles, and dress, many of these figures warring over the Yellow River Plains were either from the Asian steppes themselves, or only a generation or so removed.

To say that they were still rough around the edges is to rather understate the point. Another area in which, markedly unlike his rulership over the realm as a whole, we can see Mingzong falling short was in his control over the central court itself, and the rivalries and machinations therein. The most infamous example would have to be the feud between his chief of staff, An Chonghui, and his new chancellor, who he had just transferred from the army, as you might remember, Ran Huan. This dispute boiled over in 927 with an unprecedented shouting match in the emperor's presence over which government agency should be responsible for credentialing imperial messengers. I know, real heated material

that. In any case, following the meeting, at the advisement of a palace lady-in-waiting that she had never before seen or heard such an outburst, and that to do so was an insult to the emperor himself, Mingzong was inclined to agree, and shortly thereafter accepted Ren Huan's resignation from the chancellorship, thereafter appointing him as an advisor to the crown prince, an unmistakable snub since, after all, there was no crown prince at the time. In any case, that position wouldn't last long, since before the year was out,

An Chonghui had secretly arranged for Ren's assassination. An's victory would prove short-lived, however, when in 930, he made the fatal mistake of overstepping his bounds and offending the imperial consort Wang, as well as the eunuch official Meng Hanzhong, resulting in them pairing up to arrange for the arrest and execution of An and his wife on trumped-up treason charges. It was probably this specific form of death that accounts for An Chenghui being spoken of so highly in the classic texts, in spite of his many negative personality traits. After all, he'd been killed by the classic Chinese imperial bugaboo, a murderous alliance between a eunuch and, worse yet, a woman. So, he couldn't have been that bad, right? In addition to the ever-present scheming of his court members,

Mingzong also had to be ever vigilant to threats coming from outside the capital, namely the governors of the furthest-flung outlying regions that he had been unable to fully bring to heel. Standen writes, quote, Districts often regarded as border provinces of the later Tang retained a high degree of autonomy due in part to their own wealth and strategic advantages, but often due to the ready availability of support from their neighbors, end quote. As such, though they'd up to this point

pledged themselves to the later Tang regime, the support could be effectively reversed at any time. The first instance of a set of governors actually reversing their stance would come in 927 from Sichuan. One of the regional governors there, named Meng Zixiang, came to fear that Mingzong might have designs on his region's immense wealth in the form of its salt mines, and so sought to free himself of the court control, wooing his population and enlarging his army units, and then, in 927, executing a later Tang official sent to oversee his military affairs,

as well as refusing to punish a general for his early return to Sichuan, acting on Meng's own secret order to do so. And so, it was on. The war between Later Tang and Sichuan would last from 927 through Mingzong's own death in 933, in large part due to Later Tang having to divide its attention between the region and other southern kingdoms periodically breaking out in revolt against Later Tang authority, which we'll discuss more in a little bit. But with Mingzong's death and the accession of his heir, Meng Zhexiang would take the opportunity to declare his full independence from later Tang control, establishing himself as the founding emperor, or Gaozhu,

of the state of later Shu, encompassing the whole of Sichuan. He would rule less than a year before succumbing to a stroke, but before dying would name his son Meng Ranzhan as crown prince before dying the same day. Ranzhan would take the throne as Emperor Houzhu, which, spoiler alert, translates as last emperor. But that tale is still a few decades off, so we'll cross that bridge when we reach it. News would prove somewhat better for later Tong on other fronts of conflicts, though. In 928, for instance, Mingzong was able to successfully rely on the Prince of Chu, named Ma Yin, to deploy his navy and successfully prevent the defection of Qingnan Prefecture from the state of Wu in the far south. Along the northern border,

successes would help to offset the eventual loss of Sichuan. 928 would see the successful quashing of a nascent rebellion against later Tang authority in Hebei between the governor of Dingzhou and his Qitan Liao dynasty allies. This victory would in turn set the stage for Mingzong to project Tang authority when, in 929, the death of a ruling prince of the Tangut people in Shoufang, which is part of modern Ningxia in the far northwest, settled between Inner Mongolia and Gansu. The resultant mutiny amongst the Tanguts prompted one of the factions to turn to the later Tang authority for aid in exchange for their offer of submission. Mingzong dispatched one of his

favorite officials to take up the governorship of the region, and his subsequent victory over the Tibetan-backed forces greatly restored the majesty of the Later Tang, and brought Shoufang into its fold, if informally. The reverberations of this victory, even so far outside of Later Tang's direct administrative capacity, seems to have had profound effects. So far as in 933, the government of Lingzhou in Gansu, likewise far removed from Luoyang's ability to directly administer, voluntarily sought the Tang court's confirmation of their new governor, likely seeing later Tang as the region's best bet in preserving its own partial autonomy amidst the territorial ambitions of not just the

Tanguts and the Tibetans, but the Khitan Liao and even the Uyghur tribes as well. This is also the period that we looked at last episode from the Liao perspective, and saw that the new Liao emperor, Taizong's elder brother, flee into Later Tang custody, following him being passed over as the heir yet again. Far more dangerous to the ongoing relations between Liao and later Tang than a spurned member of one royal court-seeking asylum was a more general misunderstanding between the two cultures as a whole. We explored to some extent the rift between the Khitan's nomadic lifestyle as compared to the Han Chinese's agrarian setup, and the difficulties that posed

even just within Liao itself. But from the perspective of the later Tang court, actions thought of as entirely non-threatening by the Liao, their seasonal migration through parts of northern China, for instance, could look to Tang patrols like an ominous military buildup. This natural mistrust was magnified by the fact that with later Liang out of the way, it was now the Liao that served as the primary alternate authority, and thus threat, to later Tang's suzerainty over the northern territories. Stanton puts it, quote, dangers imagined out of imprecise understanding had a nasty habit of becoming all too real, end quote. What would prove the most dangerous development to the stability

of later Tang, however, would come from neither Sichuan nor the Northlands, but from within the royal family itself. By 933, approaching 66 years old and stricken with an illness following an ill-advised trip through heavy snow, Emperor Mingzong found himself on his deathbed. This proved rather more of a crisis than it rightly should have, since the emperor had several capable sons, all of adult age. But the eldest, and thus most natural choice as heir, had resisted being formally named crown prince, because he hadn't wanted to live in the heir apparent's designated palace at the capital, choosing instead to remain on at his post as commander of the six imperial armies. But now, with his father actively dying, Prince

Cong Rong all of a sudden realized that the throne might actually go to his younger brother, Prince Cong Ho, who he'd long felt his father preferred anyway. And so, he decided to make his way to Luoyang at the head of an army numbering in the thousands, and, you know, politely but firmly, ask his dying father to confirm him as the rightful heir that he was. As the army approached the city gates, the Imperial Guard rightly flipped out. They appeared to be under attack by the prince himself. Hi everyone, this is Scott. If you want to learn about the world's oldest civilizations, find out how they were rediscovered.

Follow the story of Mark Antony and Cleopatra's descendants over ten generations, or take a deep dive into the Iron Age or the Hellenistic era, then check out the Ancient World Podcast. Available on all podcasting platforms, or go to ancientworldpodcast.com. That's the Ancient World Podcast. When they informed Mingzong, the dying monarch is recorded as having wept and lamented, quote, The fact that our family could emerge from such an obscure past to lay claim to the world was because we repeatedly saved each other from dangerous situations.

Oh, the audacity of Zongr Rong to commit such a sinister act as this! End quote. He then ordered his guard commanders to defend the city as they saw fit. After just a day of fighting, Prince Song Rong, his wife, and his eldest son were all killed by the palace guard, who then proceeded to also execute his second son who was living in the imperial palace. The scope of this bloodshed overwhelmed Mingzong, who is said to have collapsed upon hearing the news of the murder spree. And we must imagine there was something approaching that is not what I meant by handle it, you incompetence.

With the deed done, though, there really was nothing to do but summon the younger prince Conghou from his post in Wenzhou and confirm him as the crown prince, with Mingzong finally giving up the ghost only six days after his second son's arrival at the capital. He had ruled later Tong for six years as an experienced general and governor, and as Stanton puts it, Although we might attribute the good harvests and relative peace of a short reign to fortunate timing, contemporaries took them to indicate his virtue as a ruler.

End quote. At 19 years old, Li Conghou ascended to the throne in late 933, but he would scarcely last five months before being unseated by his adopted brother. Almost immediately upon the untested youth taking up the throne, we see in Sichuan Meng Zhexiang taking the opportunity to declare his independence as later Shu, as we discussed a few minutes ago, guessing correctly that the new Tang emperor would be unable to mount any kind of a real response. Over the course of his brief reign, he was thoroughly dominated by two court ministers, Zhu Hongjiao and Feng Yun. It would be these two who inadvertently set in motion the events that would bring Cong Hou to his early end.

They deeply distrusted the new emperor's adopted brother, Li Cong Ke, who was then Jiedushi of Fengxiang Circuit. In the spring of 934, Zhu and Feng made the brilliant decision to sign off on an order that would rotate Song Ke as well as his brother-in-law to new military governorships without getting the emperor's seal of approval. Instead, they issued the edict directly from the office of the chancellery. Already aware of the fact that this was being done specifically to isolate him and place him amongst his enemies, Songke refused the summons to court to accept this new assignment, and instead issued a call to arms from his neighboring governors and prefects, offering large payouts and rewards if they would rally to his

cause and assist him in, quote, explaining the wickedness of those surrounding the emperor, end quote, thus declaring himself in rebellion. This proved to have been pretty ill thought out on his part though, since only a single prefect responded in the affirmative to Ceng Ke's call for aid. What might have been his last mistake though, was turned to his advantage when a section of the imperial guard showed up at Fengxiang with orders to assault the city walls. Unwilling to do so, the guardsmen, as well as the provincial troops they traveled with, soon turned on their commanders and defected en masse to Li Congke.

Appropriately shocked by this shocking betrayal, and at the urging of his two ministers-slash-puppet masters, Zhu Hongjian and Feng Yun, the emperor sent out a second army, this time led by a General Kang, who totally promised that they would definitely not defect. And you'll never guess what happened next. That's right, General Kang's army completely deserted him for the rebels, and he was forced to surrender to Li Congke, to be later executed along with his family. When word got back to Luoyang of this second disaster, Emperor Tongho summoned Minister Zhu to ask him what should be done next. But upon seeing the imperial summons,

Zhu assumed that the emperor wished to punish him for urging the second army sent, and instead opted to commit suicide by jumping into a well. Which is why, kids, you should never assume. Anyways, by this point, it was clear which way the tide had shifted, and neither the emperor nor Minister Feng Yun were planning on being around when the rebel army arrived at the capital. Li Conghou made it out of the city, but Minister Feng wasn't so lucky, and instead fell into the hands of the general of the Imperial Guard, who decided that he'd stand a much better chance of

living through this whole ordeal if he had a gift for the soon-to-be new emperor. Well, a second gift. He already had one, which was the late Zhu Hongjian's severed head that he'd managed to fish out of the well. But it would be better to complete the set of Cong Ke's enemies, and so he added Feng's head to his grisly collection before defecting to the incoming rebel forces. I mentioned that the emperor did successfully escape Luo Yang, but that didn't really do him any good, since the first place he stopped he was taken captive anyways to be used as a bargaining chip with the incoming Li Congke. And so it was that by the time Congke entered the city of Luoyang, he'd already won virtually by default. There was no great siege or storming of the gates, because there were, quite frankly, no loyalists left to even keep them closed.

When he arrived at the largely deserted imperial palace, he found the remaining officials welcoming him and offering him the throne, and Cong Ho's own mother, the Empress Dowager, having legally cleared the path for Cong Ke by demoting her son in absentia back to Prince. With his usefulness as a bargaining chip now gone, Cong Ho's captor quickly lost interest in the former ruler and had him killed. Thus it was that Li Tongke would, in a ceremony before his adopted father Mingzong's still unburied coffin, a seat to the throne of later Tong on the 21st of May, 934. It had been a process of replacement almost uncannily similar to the enthronement of Mingzong himself, with this

newest emperor doing little but riding the wave of military desertion against the sitting monarch into power. The only real difference was that while Mingzong had ridden a wave of heavy dissatisfaction with his predecessor and had been chosen based on his long and highly respected military career, Li Congke had virtually no military experience to his name, and his support was based almost entirely from within the imperial guard. Not because they hated the guy who came before, but mostly because Congke had promised to pay them more. In all, it seems a circumstance that is nothing so much as like the Roman Praetorian Guards during the early crisis of the 3rd century,

in which duty and honor had taken a firm backseat to cash and prizes. The thing with promising the men with spears ridiculous sums of money, though, is that when they win the war for you, they're going to expect you to pay up. And that would prove rather problematic for Li Cengke, since military salaries had already been difficult enough to scrounge up from the tax base by the time of Mingzong's late reign. Over the course of the very brief campaign toward Luoyang, Cengke had kept his troops sated by distributing loot seized from the cities they passed through to his armies. But now that he sat on the throne, there was no more easy war booty to

hand out, just a state treasury that looked far too empty for the guard general's likings. Moreover, at this time, the civilian population was also suffering through the effects of a drought, leading the new emperor to conclude that he could either pay the military and have the rest of the city out for his head, or vice versa, but there was no way he could make everyone happy. To his credit, Tongke did make what I think we'd all agree was the objectively more moral choice. That is, he opted to relieve pressure on the peasantry and announced that, yeah, those rewards I promised you soldiers, turns out that's not gonna happen, and I'm actually gonna need you all to take a pay cut,

but here you can have these nice robes from the palace. Will that suffice? It did not, as it would ultimately turn out, suffice. Though the armies didn't immediately go out and find another royal dupe to seat on the throne, and for the time being would just angrily chew their lips and grumble, neither would they forget the fact that as his first act in office, this new emperor had turned his back on them and broken his promise? They'd wait, but they wouldn't forget, and they wouldn't forgive. Over the course of the following three years, Li Congke was able to get most of the governmental positions filled by his own supporters, with two notable exceptions. The governor-general of Hedong, Shi Jingtang,

and the governor of Yuzhou, Zhao Dejun, both of whom were related by marriage to the late emperor Mingzong. Shi was Mingzong's son-in-law, and Zhao's son was also Mingzong's son-in-law. And yeah, you'll probably already see where this is going. In 935, Governor Shi had deep suspicions cast on him when some of his own Hedong troops apparently attempted to declare him emperor without his knowledge. Realizing that the time wasn't right, though, Shi quickly executed the ringleaders of this unexpected acclamation

and personally sent word of what had transpired and the measures he'd taken in response. Since he was, after all, the most loyal servant to the throne you'd ever seen, okay? No one's more loyal than him, believe me. The imperial court was willing to, very reluctantly, believe that it was all just a big misunderstanding. But that didn't mean that it wasn't going to let Xie keep his powerful military position in He Dong anymore, and so ordered him transferred to the post of deputy city governor of Taiyuan, a significant downgrade, to be sure.

Xi Jintang, knowing very, very well that any hesitation whatsoever would mean his head, didn't so much as bat an eye and readily complied with this new order. But he did take a calculated risk in the process by sending all of his property ahead of him to Taiyuan in order to finance his local military units, an act that really was neither unusual nor in any ordinary time more suspicious. But at this point, the imperial court was on a knife's edge and not willing to tolerate anything that might even be construed as Shi amassing a personal loyal military force. So it was that in response, the court once again demoted Shi, this time to the tiny backwater of Yunzhou city, just south of the Ordos Loop of the Yellow River

and far, far away from anywhere politically dangerous. It was, to put it bluntly, a test of loyalty, but a rigged test. You either accept this transfer and prove yourself loyal by admitting that you were a traitor, or you reject it and you show your traitorous colors. At this, Shi tried to argue rationally that none other than Mingzong himself

had promised that he would retain the governorship of Hadong for life, and he'd already agreed to a humiliating transfer to Taiyuan. But this was going too far. According to Sima Guang, in his letter to the emperor, Shi even went so far as to angrily rant that Li Congke, as merely an adopted son of Mingzong, was actually a usurper

and demanded the restoration of the true imperial bloodline in the person of the prince of Shu named Li Congyi. This seemed to strike a chord with several units of both the imperial guard and the civil governors, who promptly rallied behind the indignant Shi Jingtan. Seemingly surprised

at the effects his words had on them, he tried to warn at least one of his newfound followers that they were, quote, abandoning the strong and pledging allegiance to the weak, end quote. But the reply came back that they one and all had already outed themselves against the throne, and there'd be no quarter shown any of them, even if they did stand down right now. There was no going back, and so there was nothing left to lose. What was immediately clear, as though it hadn't been already, was that whatever allies he'd assembled wouldn't be anything near enough to take on the later Tang military might.

Right out of the gate, Emperor Tongke had arrested Shi's sons as well as his younger brother and had them all put to death, defeated the meager armies his allies had fielded against him, and then the imperial armies showed up outside of Taiyuan and put the city to siege. Shi Jingtong needed help, and he needed it badly.

But he had a pretty good idea of where he might be able to get it. Indeed, the subject had come up at least two months prior in the course of secret discussions with his closest allies. If Shi Jingtong was going to stand a chance, they'd need the help of an outside power that could stand toe-to-toe with the likes of the Tang imperial guard, and that meant turning to the Liao dynasty of the north. That, of course, was a deal with the devil, and no deal with the devil comes cheap. Standen writes, quote, Shi Jingtong's agreement with the devil comes cheap. Standen writes, quote, Shi Jingtang's agreement with the Liao emperor, Deguang, is probably the most famous event of the five dynasties period, taking to mark the

beginning of the barbarian encroachment into northern China that culminated in the Mongol conquests of the whole country, end quote. Shi and Deguang exchanged terms and came to an agreement. The Khitan army would send down an overwhelming force of more than 50,000 step-riders and infantry to supplement Jingtang's own border force, and thereby help Shi succeed in claiming the imperial throne of China. In return, when Shi won, if he won, he would agree to cede to the Liao emperor the 16 prefectures along the border Liao had long demanded be returned, a swath of territory vastly larger than anything ever ceded to a foreign force before. In addition, he would agree to subordinate himself to the Liao Emperor

as both subject and adopted son, thus relegating northern China to a similar status as had befell the Baohei Kingdom of Manchuria. Shi and his force managed to hold on through the summer siege of Taiyuan in 936, in large part thanks to a militia at Wenzhao mutinying against the later Tang, and thus tying down its additional resources. In any case, they managed to hold out long enough for the Liao cavalry to be able to sweep south and lift the siege, join up with the beleaguered but freshly heartened rebel troops, and in turn cut off the later Tang army as it attempted to flee its forward base at Jin'an, which was then put under a counter-siege that would last far into the next year. It was here at the siege of Jin'an that Shi Jingtang

and Emperor Guangde would meet in person for the first time, and Guangde would formally invest Shi as the Emperor of later Jin in the winter of 936. The Siege of Jin'an came to an end when the lieutenant of the commanding general of the later Tang armies, named Yang Guangyuan, assassinated the stubborn general and surrendered the rest of the army to Shi and Guangde outright. Yang was, in return, made a general over the force, now in the service of the later Jin and Liao. It's notable, though, that though they'd benefited greatly from this change of allegiance among the Tang commander's lieutenants, Emperor Guangde nevertheless took the opportunity to praise the now-captured general's steadfast loyalty to his sovereign and to castigate those officers

who had flipped their allegiance. The turncoats were still rewarded for their service, but not without first a stern finger-wagging from the Khitan monarch. With loyalty as fickle as it clearly already was, the last thing any emperor wanted to do was encourage more of it. The loyalty of the later Tang armies had always been brittle at best, and its definite gene would prove to be its shatterpoint. In the wake of the siege's conclusion, Li Congke turned to find that he only had a single prefect and a single minister's continuing loyalty. This definitely didn't look good. The combined Liao, later Jin, armies approached Luoyang, but Emperor Guangde, noting that the Han populace of the city would likely panic if a host of Khitan troops entered the city under arms, instead dispatched an honor guard of just 5,000 troops to accompany Shi Jingtang and his

force to take control of the imperial capital, which now lay completely undefended. There was little for Li Congke, who had ruled his unhappy empire for just three years, to do now but sit and wait for his by now inevitable capture, humiliation, and eventual execution. No, wait, that wasn't the only option. There was still a way to avoid two of those things. And two out of three ain't bad at a moment like this. His death, of course, was now inevitable. But neither he nor his family needed to suffer capture and humiliation at the hands of this uppity barbarian governor. So instead, with his family, his treasures, and even a few suicidally loyal staff members in tow, Li Congke ascended the Shenmu Tower of the Imperial Palace, and there, with all of the possessions and people left to

him all around, his entire empire now occupying a single room, he set the hold of it on fire, and went out in a blaze of, well, not exactly glory, but a blaze in any case, and with him, all that was left of the later Tang dynasty. It had been founded by his adopted grandfather in 923, and had lasted all of 14 rather inglorious years. As Danden puts it, quote, when Li Congke killed himself, few seemed sorry to see him go, end quote. Next time, Shi Jingtang of later gene is victorious, but his victory, won through foreign swords almost alone, seems hollow indeed without some form of indigenous Chinese support. Meanwhile, Liao is greatly enriched by this welcome turn of events in the Yellow River Valley, and its newfound control over the

northern border territories. But the alliance of convenience between Lair Jin and Liao is built on quicksand, and it will start shifting underfoot as soon as Shijing Tang decides that he doesn't want to be a sub-emperor to the Khitan after all. Thanks for listening. long-form history podcast dedicated to exploring the ambiguities and nuances of the past. From a revolution of hope and liberty to the infamous reign of terror, you can't understand the modern world without understanding the French Revolution. So search for the French Revolution today.