The History of China - #129 - 5D10K6: Emperor Jerky

Episode Date: September 29, 2017

Emperor Deguang of Liao has conquered the North China Plain with ease and packed the Later Jin emperor off to eternal exile. But he doesn’t plan to stick around… instead, he’ll pack up everything – and everyone – he deems valuable to take back home. But when illness strikes him dead, new challengers will arise to do battle over the fate of northern China. Time Period Covered: 947-954CE Major Historical Figures: Liao: Yelü Deguang (Emperor Taizong) [r. 927-947] Yelü Ruan (Wuyu, Emperor Shizong) [r. 947-951] Yelü Jing (Emperor Muzong) [r. 951-969] General Xiao Han [d. 949] General Zhang Yanze [d. 947] Later Han: Liu Zhiyuan (Emperor Gaozu) [r. 947-948] Liu Chengyou (Emperor Yin) [r. 948-951] Northern Han: Liu Chong (Emperor Shizu) [r. 951-954] Later Zhou: Guo Wei (Emperor Taizu) [r. 951-954] Chai/Guo Rong (Emperor Shizong) [r. 954-959] Sources Utilized: Sima Guang, et al. 1084. Zizhi Tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance). Standen, Naomi. 2009. “The Five Dynasties” in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 5, pt. 1: The Sung Dynasty and Its Precursors 907-1279 (Denis Twitchett and Paul Jakov Smith, ed.) Standen, Naomi. 2005. “What Nomads Want: Raids, Invasions and the Liao Conquest of 947” in Mongols, Turks, and Others: Eurasian Nomads and the Sedentary World (Reuven Amitai and Michal Biran, ed.) Toqto’a (Tuotuo), et al. 1344. Liao Shi (History of the Liao). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Every episode is driven by a listener's question and a scientific investigation that answers that question. Available on English or Spanish, Tiny Vampires can be found on Acast, Apple Podcast, TuneIn, or Stitcher, and at tinyvampires.com. So check it out. Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 129, Emperor Jerky When last we left the North China Plain, Shi Chonggui, last emperor of later Jin, had been thoroughly and humiliatingly defeated by the Emperor Yalu Duaguang of the Liao Dynasty, culminating with a full-scale occupation of the Yellow River Valley by the Khitan forces, and Chonggui and his retinue being packed off into what would be a permanent exile in the

hinterlands of Liao territory. And so today, we start with the Liao holding the Chinese heartland within its absolute control, thus launching the Khitan in a bid to achieve total reunification of the empire under their iron rule. Right? Well, strangely enough, no. Within five months, Daguang would be heading back to the northlands of his own territories, and the central plains would once again be controlled by a local. What, uh, happened? The invasion had gone off without a hitch. Did Daguang, who had proven himself so shrewd in the north and in Korea,

and now his conquest of northern China, somehow manage to biff the post-game occupation? For centuries, that certainly has been the running theory, that an undying nomadic desire to conquer China ran headlong into an equally undying Chinese impulse to resist alien rule. But a closer look at this pivotally important, yet often understudied period and event immediately betray inconsistencies with this long-standing line of traditional understanding, and modern scholars like Professor Naomi Standen have written some truly wonderful works picking at what the Liao Emperor's intentions really were, specifically in her paper What Nomads Want, Raids, Invasions, and the Liao Conquest of 947, in the book Mongols, Turks, and Others, Eurasian Nomads,

and the Sedentary World. As we've already seen since the time of the Tang, the idea of the Chinese of the north being nothing if not heavily commingled with their even more northerly neighbors is now well accepted by modern scholarship. And that, combined with the argument that the Liao, far from losing control once they were already in the end zone, were actually just really not super interested in trying to control anything more than they deemed rightfully theirs. After all, if the Liao had wanted China, they'd already had an even better opportunity back in 936, but they didn't take it. And so, ultimately, that's the frame in which the Liao Emperor saw this latest successful action against northern China, as little more than an extended punitive

raid against a satrap king who had made the fatal mistake of misunderstanding his subservient place in the universe. But that had, by dint of military success, made him the legitimate emperor of the central plain, and it was a role that he appeared to take seriously, at least while he must. Standen writes, quote, Familiar with Tang protocols and advised by formally educated ministers from both Liao and later Jin, Deguang observed such practices as declaring a new dynasty, wearing Chinese dress, and re-employing former officials. Very interestingly, though, is one of the deeds Duguang performed for the people of the capital following up his seizure of Kaifeng.

You'll recall that the Liao armies had managed through what was essentially trickery to lure out the vast majority of the later Jin defenders under false pretenses, and then compelled their generals to surrender and change sides. Well, one of those Jin generals, the one who had personally led the force of some 2,000 Chinese cavalry to take control of the now defenseless capital, in fact, was General Zhang Yanzi. Now, surrendering on the battlefield after having been thoroughly outfought was understandable, as was even switching sides given the circumstance, but General Zhang seems to have

gotten it into his head that by taking Kaifeng for Emperor Da Guang, he had somehow earned the right to do whatever he pleased in it and to its residents. This included the multiple murders of his personal enemies, as well as commanding his soldiers to commence looting the city for everything it was worth, and to kill anyone who put up a fuss. Supposedly, his favored method of execution was to cut people in half at the waist, which, yeah, not cool, dude. Zhang and his crew had pretty thoroughly sacked the city by the time the first day of the new year rolled around, and Deguang made his way south and actually entered the capital. And in what has to have been one of the larger dumb mistakes of all time, Zhang seems to have thought that offering the Khitan lord little more than a token slice of the mountain of pilfered

riches he'd seized would be just fine. But it turned out that no, it was definitely not fine for the emperor who had, you know, just gone to war over feeling slighted about his imperial dignity. From the Zizhi Tongjian, quote, When Emperor Taizong, which is Deguang's temple name, by the way, arrived to take control of the city, he was presented with a remonstrance from the high Jin official Gao Xun, citing General Zhang Yanzi's murder of his entire family. Far worse in the Catan lord's eyes, however, was Yanzi's plundering of the capital,

and so ordered Zhang and his interpreter, Fu Zhu'er, arrested and chained about the wrists. Before the hundred gathered officials, Taizong read the list of charges against the pair, and then turned and asked the officials, Does this call for death then? Lord Jieyan replied, They must die. In addition were read the innumerable petitions of the populace, accusing Zhang and his soldiers of further crimes.

Thus, Taizong ordered Zhang and Fu to be beheaded forthwith, and delegated Gao Xun with overseeing the execution. The condemned were taken in chains to the northern market square, to have their sentence publicly carried out. As they made their way to the market, the numerous family members of the literati Zhang had murdered lined the path dressed in their mourning clothes, shouting curses upon Zhang and beating him with staffs. When they reached the market square, Gao ordered that their chains be removed from their wrists by removing their hands, after which Zhang was beheaded. Following the execution, their hearts were cut from their bodies as a sacrifice to his victims, and the crowd surged forward to

break his skull open and eat the flesh as a mark of their disgust. End quote. So, uh, yeah, that just happened. State-sponsored cannibalism. Who would have thunk? In the wake of this gruesome bout of both official and mob justice, Dugong kept the changes coming fast and often, first dissolving the imperial guard, and then banning all provincial governors from holding their own armies or keeping a stable of warhorses, and then demoting Kaifeng as the capital entirely, and instead transferring that designation to Zhenzhou in the north, renaming it Zhongjing, meaning central capital, which was a place more suitable to the Khitan's temperament against the summer heat of the southlands.

But as already stated, Dugwang probably never even intended to stay for long. And indeed, he treated this as little more than a large-scale raid, in which the territories and people that now looked to him for direct leadership and guidance were, for all intents and purposes, irrelevant. No, what mattered was gathering up all the loot and grain that they could possibly carry, and then be back on their way to the Liao territories, leaving a neutered, detoothed, and thoroughly pillaged central plain in their wake. Again from Stand-in, quote, perhaps the most damaging to Deguang's image was the policy of smashing the pasture and grain, which he later regretted as a miscalculation. The Liao armies devastated the region around the capital,

foraging to supply themselves and practicing the all-too-common cruelties of soldiers in wartime, end quote. In a truly bold move, he attempted to haul off absolutely everything and everyone deemed to be of value back north, including, from the history of the Liao, quote, the functionaries of all the Jin offices, the female court attendants, all the way down to the very last editor in the palace library. musical instruments denoting rank, salt and silk, legal items, armor, and weapons, end quote, all the way down to the very last editor in the palace library, and, we must assume, the last hoop pudding and the last roast beast. This complete grinching of the central plane has confused many a historian. After all, if he were somehow being forced out in failure, how could he have taken the time to have boxed up everything to take with him? And on the other hand, if he had intended to rule the region from the north, he would have needed to keep the imperial machinery in place in order to be able

to tax the region and actually derive profit from it. His actions then really only make much sense at all if we view it as nothing more than a large-scale raid for men and material, which was, after all, the standing MO of the Khitan, they who were in the habit of building entire cities for their captured and carted-off Chinese populaces. Probably my favorite aspect of all this was that Deguang pretty much just accidentally stumbled into becoming the emperor of northern China, on what was more or less a complete misunderstanding about the nature of power. For the Chinese, it was all pretty straightforward. Claim the capital, become the emperor. power. For the Chinese, it was all pretty straightforward.

Claim the capital, become the emperor. Stanton writes, quote, Seven of the nine rulers since the fall of the Great Tang in 907 had come to power irregularly, and the ministers of the Jin court were well practiced in the modes of such succession. From their point of view, once Daguang had reached the capital, there was no protocol available with which to receive him other than that which was generally recognized, at least in the Chinese context, as conferring the mandate of heaven to rule the central plains. As a side effect, Deguang was not required to think very hard about whether he really wanted to become the emperor of the southern kingdom, because the ritual of dynastic change had a momentum of its own. The victor becomes the son

of heaven, whether he likes it or not, end quote. From Deguang's own perspective, though, power was more a flexible idea than a title, a mandate, and a palace. He'd already amply shown this from his investiture in support of Shijingtong as the emperor of later Jin, that he was fine with some other dude calling himself the son of heaven or whatever, so long as he also had the correct answer to the question. In the words of Detective John Kimball, you're going to play a wonderful game called who is your daddy and what does he do? The issue, the singular issue that he was prepared to fight over for more than four years was that of authority and subordination,

rulership and submission, rather than something as banal as title or territory. Which is not, I should point out, to say that he was absolutely unconcerned with territorial acquisition. To the contrary, you'll remember that he'd flatly rejected any notion of giving up his claim to the 16 border provinces that his father had successfully acquired, and he even seems to have at least been laying the basis for a permanent seizure of limited additional lands surrounding his new central capital, Zhengzhou. He wrote to his brother in the summer of 947, right after his conquest, saying, again from the history of the Liao, quote, If it were not for the summer heat of Bianzhou and the difficulty of living in this terrain, it would only need one year and we could hope to govern in peace and then retire.

I have also changed Zhengzhou to the central capital in order to prepare for an imperial tour of inspection. I want to subjugate Hadong, but for this time we must wait, end quote. So first off, we see here that the summer weather of the south is just intolerable for this guy, which, being a fellow northerner living even further south along the Innser River, I hardly second. So much so that by his own words, that is the chief reason he doesn't simply roll over the whole of the central plain. Not the natives, not the difficulty in governing so far from his homeland, not some intractable resistance.

No. The weather sucks here, and I want to go home. But more than that is that he's satisfied, at least for the time being, with Zhenzhou and the surrounding region. Maybe in the future we'll expand further to Hadong, but for now, let's get an inspection tour ready for my new holdings. Standen writes that, quote, regarding Dugwang's attitude to conquest, it seems likely that this was a case of Dugwang trying it on, end quote, and that it simply wasn't that high on his priority list. Instead, his objectives were more limited and motivated primarily by opportunism and manageability, rather than some deep intrinsic need to control all under heaven. Rather, in the

pilfering of the central plains, we see what's really important to a ruler like Deguang, a priority that any nomad worth his salt would nod in agreement to, movable booty in the form of wealth, foodstuff, and useful people. That, and preserving the relative status of himself and those who, rightly, govern beneath him, up to and including whoever he allows to manage North China in his absence. In any case, cash and prizes now in hand, Degong would leave the stripped-bare capital city in the third month of 947, leaving his brother-in-law, Xiao Han, in charge as the prefect, and in spite of making promises to two different military commanders in exchange for the defections to his side, he named no one the new emperor of the central plains. No, that would just be him, now ruling in absentia. It was a situation that pretty much everyone agreed was never going to

last long. One does not simply rule China from outside of China. Into this power vacuum would step a fellow named Liu Ziyuan, an ethnic Xiatou Turk, but then again, who isn't these days, and the governor of Hadong, by far the strongest force left in the northern plain. Owing to its strong, nigh-impregnable natural barriers, and the fact that it, markedly unlike the thoroughly sacked regions surrounding the capital, had been left relatively untouched. This is likely because Liu had also stayed out of the Liaojian War, since he'd thoroughly distrusted the now-exiled Emperor Chu, but had shrewdly continued to recruit new soldiers over the course of the conflict. You know, just in case.

This meant that once the Liao began packing up to leave, which Liu understood, them being nomads at all, that they surely would, and sooner rather than later, that his army of 50,000 would dwarf any other force in the region. Liu had hedged his bets when Daguang had entered Kaifeng, sending him a letter of congratulation, but begging off actually making the journey to pay up sequins in person, claiming that his population, being of partly Han and partly non-Han peoples, required a firm and constant hand to keep them all in line. And as for the expected

tributary payments? Yeah, it's totally on its way. It checks in the mail. I mean, have you checked your junk folder? Deguang was, understandably, rather skeptical at these kind of snake oil excuses, and quickly realized that Leo was still in the process of feeling this whole situation out. Leo did eventually get around to sending what's called an unusual horse in the process of feeling this whole situation out. Liu did eventually get around to sending what's called an unusual horse in the form of token tribute, but upon the deliverer's return to Hadong, Daguang had sent with him a message bestowing upon the governor several new honorific titles, but also flat out asking him how long he was planning to sit on the fence here. Quote, you did not serve the southern dynasty later, Jin, and now you are not serving the northern dynasty Liao. What are you intending? End quote. And it certainly was not out of the

realm of possibility that Liu might betray him. Deguang was already receiving word from several of the southern provinces that their governors had killed the Liao messengers sent to demand their allegiance, and flipped to the courts of the southern kingdoms of later Shu and southern Tang, respectively. Within his inner circle, opinion of Liu's ministers was divided. Some, like Guo Wei, who's been lurking around the periphery of our story for a while now, but will become central a bit later on, advised patience, counseling, quote, the barbarians hate us deeply. As Wang Jun opined, the Catan are greedy and cruel, and they will not have China for long.

Others among Liu's ministers urged a more hasty action against the Liao regime, but Liu decided to come down on the side of Guo's patience, stating, quote, Currently, the Khitan possess newly surrounded Jin forces, numbering a hundred thousand, and are occupying the capital like a tiger. With no new development, we could not think to act so suddenly. Yet it appears to me that what they are truly after is our goods and wealth. Once they've had their fill, they will return to the north. In particular, the ice and snow have melted in their homeland, so they shall not stay for long.

We should wait until they leave, and then seize the territory. That is the perfect strategy. Yet, in spite of his professed preference to wait, events would conspire to rapidly force Liu Jiayuan's hand. Upon learning that defections were cropping up across the southern provinces, Liu lamented that such occurrences were from want of an actual emperor, and when he learned that former Emperor Chu was departing Kaifeng for his place of exile deep within Liao territory, he mounted an intercept. This was ostensibly to return the surrendered monarch to his rightful place on the throne, but Standen has her doubts as to Liu's true intentions, given after all that Liu and Chu were no friend at all. She states, quote,

Nevertheless, Liu Zheyun now felt that he had no choice but to declare himself emperor. I know, real bummer. 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. Yet notably, he did not change the dynastic name, nor even style his own reign era name at this point, though he did declare it would be the reign era of Xie Jingtang, and pointedly not that of Xie Chonggui. It seems that he wished to at least maintain the surface-level continuity of later Jin,

though I should point out here and now that it won't remain later Jin for long. The next year, Leo's successor would change the dynastic name to later Han, before being overthrown shortly thereafter. And so that's what we'll be calling it in the ever-so-brief period we'll be discussing their blip on our dynastic radar. Liao went about doing all the things one would expect a newly-minted emperor to start doing. But the very first on his to-do list was to engage his kingdom against the Liao occupiers. He banned collections by Liao officials by promising legal immunity for those who'd

been forced to collaborate with them, and ordered that all regions under his command punish by Liao officials by promising legal immunity for those who'd been forced to collaborate with them, and ordered that all regions under his command punish the Liao. Employing groups of irregular fighters, often called bandits, Liao was able to occupy cities under Liao control, kill their envoys, and transfer their city government's allegiances to him, rather than seeing them fall to the likes of later Shu or Southern Tong. Yet for all this hullabaloo, Emperor Daguang was remarkably indifferent. to him, rather than seeing them fall to the likes of later Shu or southern Tang. Yet for all this hullabaloo, Emperor Dagwang was remarkably indifferent. He was, after all, in the middle of a much more important task, namely removing the sum total of Chinese wealth back to his homeland. This isn't to say he made no response to the outbreak of rebellion against

him. On his way back north, he did punitively annihilate the unfortunate city of Xiangzhou, reportedly slaughtering some hundred thousand men and children and taking away the women. He also dispatched several garrison forces to at least slow down and impede the advance of the later Han army, though as Standen notes, quote, the Liao, for their part, did not vigorously defend the territory they had conquered. On the few occasions when they did fight, they did not try very hard. End quote. Da Guang, for his part, seemed to actually understand and even empathize with where these Han rebels were coming from. In the letter he wrote to his brother, he noted, quote,

I made three errors. Such it was right that the realm was rebelling against me. First, I extracted the money from the circuits. Second, I let the soldiers from the greater Liao Empire thresh the grass seeds. End quote. Later historians and writers would often use this list of self-admitted mistakes as an abject set of warnings to Chinese rulers of what to avoid if they wish to escape comparison with a barbarian. The journey home would prove to be Emperor De Guang's final ride, though. By the time he and his army had arrived in Lincheng, the Khitan emperor was

spiking a fever, such that by the next stop, his aides were stacking ice on his chest, limbs, and as he chewed on yet more ice, just to try to cool himself off. Suffice it to say, he quickly succumbed to his illness and died on the road on the 18th of May 947 at the age of 44. His generals, needing to get their deceased monarch home, but of course not wanting him to go bad on the way, did the only thing that they could think of, mummify him then and there by packing his body with some of the large quantity of salt that they were carrying with them. As a result, when word reached later Han, the citizenry began sarcastically referring to Deguang as Di Ba, meaning, and I'm not making this up, Emperor Jerky.

Culinarily inspired epithets aside, though, this unexpected death seems to have changed the Liao game plan little, if at all, apart from forcing Deguguang's nephew and adopted son, the 28-year-old Wu Yu, to hasten his return to the supreme capital of Liao, where he managed to secure the throne for himself as the new emperor, Shizong. In his haste, however, the soon-to-be-enthroned Shizong did manage to forget to pack along the captive Jin court officials his uncle had so recently spirited away, leaving them all behind at Zhenzhou, even while taking with him and his army all of the women, eunuchs, and musicians, so you can see what he thought was the most important in life. Nevertheless, this leaving behind of the officials was a windfall for the future administration of the Central Plains region,

since it would retain the continuity of the bureaucracy rather than having to start again from zero. The other really notable effect of Dagwang's death was that it forced the acting prefect of Kaifeng, the late emperor's brother Xiao Han, to depart back north to the supreme capital at once in order to participate in the curl tie that would elect the next Liao monarch. Before leaving, he would install a member of the former Jain imperial line, whose name I won't bother you with, to act in his stead. But lo and behold, when Liu Ziyuan inevitably came riding in to claim the capital, he immediately relinquished his authority to the emperor declarant and submitted, only to be killed anyway. Liu pretty much rolled across the plain, meeting virtually no resistance to his advance,

and when he reached Luoyang and received an official letter of welcome from the few remaining city officials, he finally got around to getting off the threadbare coattails of later Jin and formally declaring his own dynasty, the later Han, with himself as Gao Zu, the founder, and received submission from the imperial governors. It was a takeover that, in spite of a few little localized intrigues, backstabbings, and the like, which was all very much to be expected, went about as smoothly as anyone could have imagined. Stanton says, quote, Leo came into the throne at the head of the only credible military force remaining in the region and as the only governor who still controlled significant resources of his own, end quote. In other words, like it or not, there was simply no point in trying to resist Leo Jolien's total

takeover, since no one could possibly take him on without getting help from the outside, of which the only real option was the oh-so-recently-departed Liao armies, and no one was willing to go tattling on them again, since that by definition would pretty much lock them out of the opportunity of ever taking the throne themselves. This is certainly not to say that everyone was happy about this neat little coup, or that they would just sit on their hands forever, or even that they would not eventually go running to the Liao emperor when it suited them. Just that, for the moment, the best option they all seemed to agree was just to wait and see. Liu did take the smart step of designating an heir,

his adult eldest son, Cheng Xun. Unfortunately, Cheng Xun would meet his end, apparently whilst on campaign, against one of the holdout rebellious governors. This turn of events would, the accounts say, swiftly result in Leo's own death, as the grief over his son's demise drove him into a terminal illness. By the spring of 948, sensing that his time was short, Zhiyuan appointed his younger son, the 16-year-old Liu Chengyou, as his replacement heir, entrusting him to a group of his advisors and his mother, stating, quote, my remaining breasts grow short and I cannot speak much. Chengyou is young and weak, so what happens after my death must be entrusted to you, end quote. And then he died

on March 10th at age 53, leaving his newly won Han dynasty to a teenager and a cabal of advisors. As you may well imagine, the results were rather less than ideal, and would in a period of less than four years see the fall of later Han, marking it out as the shortest-lived of the five dynasties, and leading to the last of the traditionally recognized five dynasties, later Zhou. Guo Wei had been born in 904 as the son of a relatively minor Han Chinese official in Hebei. His family had moved to the city of Taiyuan in Hedong when Guo was just a toddler, amidst the growing chaos of Great Tang's collapse. There, his father was employed as prefect in the outlying city of Xunzhou, under the command of the Shatou general, Li Ke Yong. You remember the old one-eyed dragon, don't you? That didn't work out so well, since his father was shortly thereafter killed by a conquering rival warlord. And before he'd even lost his baby teeth, Guo Wei's mother had died

as well, leaving the boy an orphan to be raised by a distant relative. By the time he was 17, he'd grown into a strapping, hard-drinking, hard-fighting rabble-rouser and gambler with the nickname of Guo the Sparrow, or Guo Qiao'er, owing to a peculiar tattoo on his neck. Now, in most times and most places, a guy like this would be on the fast track to imprisonment or even execution. But this, of course, was no usual time, and the kind of guy who would drunkenly stab a butcher to death in public over an argument was just the kind of guy some people were in the market for. And so, when Guo did just that in the city of Luzhou, the regent of the city, who was secretly amassing an army for himself to turn against his own lord

and defect, let the youth walk free, after extracting a promise that when called upon to serve, Guo Wei would honor his end of the bargain. Beginning at the age of 19, Guo would initially serve under the later Liang regime after his master did indeed defect. But when that dynasty was overthrown, Guo, like most of the surrendered troops, would be re-employed by the victor, later Tang, where he won an officership when he showed himself to be both militarily capable and literate. With later Tang's collapse in 936, Guo's loyalty once again transferred to the successor, this time later Jin, and had come up in the ranks under Liu Ziyuan himself as his assistant military commissioner, up through the declaration of later Han in 947.

With the new adolescent emperor on the throne following Zhou Yuan's death, however, challengers immediately began springing up to, well, challenge this apparent weakness at the top. By the autumn of 948, the Han imperial court felt it had no choice but to further promote Guo Wei to the post of commander-in-chief of an expeditionary army against the rebel governors. Guo was able to easily crush his enemy by the end of the following year. Flexing his newfound military muscle, in the year 950, Guo was dispatched to Weizhou in the north to retaliate against a series of ongoing Khitan border raids. But the young emperor, Liu Chengyou, was more and more convinced that his advisors were against his best interests, and needlessly bounding his power against his wishes. And so he reacted violently against them, initiating a series of bloody purges targeting essentially any and everyone within reach.

That swiftly turned upon Guo Wei himself, still up north at the head of his massive imperial army in the north, and now deemed to be far too powerful to be left alive. So here's the thing, Cheng You. I get that you're young and inexperienced and naive, but one does not simply target the commander-in-chief of your largest and most powerful expeditionary force for purging, at least not without getting him away from that army first. It is folly. Deciding that, clearly, the young emperor had misunderstood the situation, and that his companions were clearly the ones to blame for whispering these false ideas into his ears, Guo decided to march south to the capital, with his, yes, his, entire army to, uh, explain himself.

Yeah, yeah, we'll go with that. And it turns out that brutal purges are not, in fact, the best means of retaining your governor's and army's allegiance. Though the imperial court promised rewards to the armies not yet under the command of Guo Wei, it received little response from the regional governors. Worse yet, when Guo's force approached the pivotal river crossing at Shanzhou on the way to Kaifeng, the governor of the region stood his troops aside and simply allowed Guowei to pass without challenge. From Standen, quote, As more governors and generals joined Guowei, he continued to declare himself subject to the

emperor's will, yet rewarded his troops in preparation for a fight and promised them ten days of plunder in the capital, end quote. Yet by the time he had arrived outside of Kaifeng, there was virtually no one left to oppose his army's entrance into the city. The imperial troops had almost to a man defected, fled, or already submitted to Guo Wei. Given the relatively peaceful denouement to his march toward the capital, Guo was actually forced to backpedal a bit on his promises of imperial booty, and impose strict limits on his soldiers' looting. Yet upon entering

the imperial palace, in spite of taking extreme care to show and say that he wasn't seeking violence, wasn't seeking the throne, and wasn't seeking the overthrow of the sitting emperor, he found that Liu Chengyou and his court officials had been murdered by defecting imperial guardsmen, leaving Guo now as the only significant powerholder within the capital at all. But in this moment, Guo once again played his cards well, and did not immediately assume the throne. Instead, while he did continue to consolidate his power behind the scenes, publicly at least, he continued to observe all of the proper protocol, asking the Empress Dowager to choose a successor to her dead son, and even suggesting Cheng You's nephew as a potential candidate. But once he was out of the capital and back out in the field with his army again,

you'll never believe what happened. It was the most crazy, random, totally spontaneous thing ever to have happened in the history of ever, and no one, especially not Guo Wei, had seen it coming at all. His troops, totally of one mind and, I have to stress, entirely of their own volition, all simultaneously acclaimed Guo Wei as their new emperor. Wink wink, nod nod. Like I said, who'd have ever seen that coming in a million years, right? Right. Quote, this time Guo Wei made no protestations of unwillingness, but simply wrote to the dowager empress asking for permission to pay his respects to to the Liu ancestral temple and to treat her as a mother. In effect, he was asking to be regarded as Liu Jiayuan's adopted son, and thus as legitimate

an heir to the throne as the adopted sons Qu Yu Gui or Li Si Yuan in their time, end quote. And really, what could the empress do but assent? Say no? I think not. And so she demoted her nephew, made Guo the regent, leading to in the first month of 951, without having fought a single battle or shed a drop of blood, Guo Wei proclaiming himself the Emperor of China as the dynastic founder of later Zhou. Now, not everyone in the extended later Han royal family was quite so alright with this changing of the guard as the Empress Dowager had been, however. This resistance was embodied first and foremost in the full-blooded brother of the late Liu

Zhe Yuan, named Liu Cong, who sat as the military governor of He Dong at his fortress capital Tai Yuan. And he was having none of this adopted son or later Zhou business, especially if it had Guo Wei's name attached to it at all, as the two had been long-standing enemies. As such, he immediately declared that this thing that had just happened was totally not a thing, and that he was in fact the legitimate successor of the still definitely existent Han Dynasty. Now, just to clear this up, because I know I'm throwing around a lot of laters and formers and

northerns and other modifiers to all these declared dynasties, and I know I've said this before, but it bears repeating. All these dynasties would have only been calling themselves by the names of Han, Zhou, Tang, etc. And all these prefixes were added on by later historians so that we'd all have an easier time telling one from another, which was, you know, nice of them. But in any case, that's going to help explain the fact that while Liu Zhiyuan continues to insist that he was continuing on with later Han, the Rump State that he took control of is normally remembered in the histories as Northern Han, or even, just to confuse us all, Eastern Han, to separate them out. Nevertheless, the general consensus is that it was different enough from

later Han to warrant a name of its own, but not different enough to deserve a spot on our official list of the titular five dynasties. Heck, even Liu Chong himself seems to have had a bit of an existential crisis of rule when he decried his own court, saying, quote, what kind of an emperor am I, and what kind of officials are you, end quote. I agree, Liu, it's pretty murky at this point. So you remember way back at the beginning of this series when I said that Chinese historians liked neatness of numbers in their names over strict accuracy? Yeah, here it is out in the open.

Don't say I didn't warn you. Alright, so in any case, it'll be Liu Chong of Northern Han who will finally bite the bullet and go running off to the Liao to once again beg for assistance, and offer, by way of payment, both his formal subordination and an annual tributary payment for such aid. As their envoys put it, quote, in the ways of the later Jin House, end quote. Liu was formally invested by the Liao emperor, Shizong, as his nephew. And so, for those of you keeping track here, yes, a 33-year-old Khitan just made a 55-year-old Turk his nephew. Actual military aid from Liao was substantially delayed, however, when, that same year, Shizong was murdered by agents within his own household in a successful coup d'etat.

Nevertheless, when the eventual successor was chosen, one Ye Lujing, aka Emperor Muzong, he would honor the arrangement with northern Han against later Zhou. The subsequent winter of 951 saw a large combined force of Han and Liao armies lay siege to the Zhou city of Jinzhou, only to be driven back by both a lack of sufficient food and the timely arrival of later Zhou reinforcements. The Zizhid Hongjian makes the claim that in the retreat and pursuit that resulted, as many as a third of the Liao and Han host were killed. Now in order to pay for all this, Liao had by necessity needed to raise his Rome's taxes. By a lot. But that had the unfortunate side effect of causing a large number of his region's already smallish population to say, well, screw this noise, and flee to Later Zhou, causing an already critically low population to

fall even further. At the same time, Guo Wei made such an option even more attractive to potential defectors by relaxing his own country's economic restrictions and lowering taxes, with the added benefits of stimulating an overall economic recovery, and promoting his perceived virtue as a ruler both inside and outside of Later Zhou itself. Now, whether or not this perceived virtuousness was genuine, or perhaps it was a carefully constructed PR campaign, or maybe some combination of both, remains rather a mystery, since we don't actually have much time to see him in action as the ruler. Instead, less than three years into his reign over later Zhou, Guo Wei became ill in early February of 954. When it became clear that

he was not getting better but slipping further and further, he spent the next two weeks getting his affairs in order, planning his funeral and tomb arrangements, ensuring that planned flood barriers were all set to begin construction, and ensuring that there would be an orderly succession. He had chosen his nephew and adopted son, the 33-year-old Chai Rong, and took the further step of reorganizing the imperial court to better suit the incoming heir. His work, such as it was completed, Guo Wei died in late February 954 at the age of 49. Chai Rong would accede without incident as Emperor Shizong of later Zhou that same day. So, we've churned through quite a bit today,

starting with the Liao's destruction of the impudent later Jin and total occupation of the northern Chinese plains, and then to the Turk-led blink-and-you'll-miss-it tenure of later Han and its I'm-not-quite-dead-rump state of northern Han, and then to end off with later Zhou led by a native son of Han for

the first time since 923. For all this craziness, we are actually now coming up on our end state for northern China, and the setup for the fateful year of 960. And so next time, we'll finish laying out the groundwork in the north, and then hopefully take no more than an episode or so to veer down to the far south and take a tour through the Ten Kingdoms, which I know sounds like it should take a lot longer than Five Dynasties, but it's actually a rather simpler and therefore hopefully quicker tale to tell. And since I know this whole period is dizzyingly complex to follow with a lot of rapid fire changes, I'll be doing what I haven't done in quite a long while and posting some handy dandy maps of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms over at thehistoryofchina.wordpress.com.

So come check those out once I get them up. In the meantime, here's wishing you all a glorious and harmonious Chinese National Day and Golden Week. And as always, thanks for listening. One other thing before going today. It has been quite a while since I've gone door-to-door with the collection bowl in hand, so it's worth mentioning that if you've made it this far, you've probably found something of value in the show.

So think about helping me out by popping over to the show website or to our Patreon page to become one of the show's financial supporters, and you too can join the few and the proud on the eternal imperial court of the history of China. Again, the show site is thehistoryofchina.wordpress.com, and our Patreon page is patreon.com slash thehistoryofchina. Thanks again. Have you ever gazed in wonder at the Great Pyramid? Have you marvelled at the golden face of Tutankhamun? Or admired the delicate features of Queen Nefertiti? If you have, you'll probably like the History of Egypt podcast.

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