The History of China - #150 - N. Song 17: Smoke On the Water Margin

Episode Date: October 5, 2018

Emperor Huizong’s Song Dynasty’s luck runs dry with a series of epic screw up that throw the whole system in disarray. War with the Tangut Xi Xia goes badly awry – and his generals won’t even tell him about it. And then rebellions start breaking out in the south – on by a millennialist death-cult led by a 12th century Jim Jones: Fang La… and another breaking out in the swamps and marshes of Liangshan, and led by Chinese Robin Hood of literary fame: Song Jiang. All of this will throw the Song military's carefully laid plans against the crumbling Khitan Liao into disarray, and make their would-be allies the Jurchen Jin wary of how reliable a partner the Chinese might actually be. Time Period Covered: 1103-1123 CE Major Historical Figures: Emperor Huizong of Song (Zhao Ji) [r. 1100-1126] Chancellor Cai Jing [1047-1126] General Tong Guan, Commander of the Imperial Armies, eunuch [1054-1126] Fang La, lacquer farmer-cum-millenialist death-cult leader and rebel commander, mad as hell and not going to take it anymore [d. 1121] Song Jiang, Liangshan rebel commander, Leader Star of Destiny, “Timely Rain,” Haohan Hero [d. ca. 1123] "Chapter/Poetry Music" "Spring River Flower Moon Night" 古筝 - 春江花月夜 - played on guzheng Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. The Civil War and Reconstruction was a pivotal era in American history. 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. I'm Tracy. And I'm Rich. And we want to invite you to join us as we take an in-depth look at this pivotal era in American history.

Look for The Civil War and Reconstruction wherever you find your podcasts. Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 50, Smoke on the Water Margin Any food when you're hungry. When you're cold, rags save life. Any road when you're frightened. When you're poor, any wife. By Shi Nayan Last time, we completely skipped over a solid 20 years of the Songkort snoozefest

and leapt way north to chronicle the origins and then meteoric rise of the Jurchen people into the superstar Jin dynasty that would bring the Khitan and their Liao edifice crashing down over the course of a single decade between the 1110s and the 20s. We'd finished out with the conclusion of a treaty between the newly ascendant Jin and Song that basically had the Chinese emperor getting paddled by his Jurchen corollary and saying, thank you sir, may I have another? Well, now it's time to reel it back in and look at exactly why the great and mighty Song, who after all, at the beginning of the last episode had been riding high on the hog after finally curb stomping their hated Tangut foes in western Xia, why and how they had exactly

been put into such an embarrassing position, or rather put themselves into that position, of having to assume the position for the epic Jurchen spanking that is yet to come. Before getting into that, though, I feel compelled to issue a minor correction, as given to me by my resident linguist-at-large, Don R., who helpfully informed me that the Altaic theory of Jurchen language being linguistically related to Mongolian or Turkic has, sadly, been roundly discredited by those who know far more about such things than I, your humble narrator, do. So let me perform ten kowtows to profusely apologize to everyone who is banking on that

12th century linguistic connection. Sorry, they're not related. I know, I'm as disappointed as you are. It's very common among the classic historical texts, again, that we talked about last time, to simply point the finger at the Song emperor, Huizong, and his court and scream, they did it, it's their fault. That falls, after all, into the classic last bad emperor trope of Chinese historiography. But of course, we all by now know that such simplifications are virtually never really the case. As Levine puts it, quote, Contrary to the teleological narrative of traditional history, neither the profligacy

of Huizong's court nor the policies of Cai Jing's ministry were responsible for the fall of the Northern Song, end quote. Instead, what we see is a coming together of multiple, otherwise largely unrelated historical trends, forces, happenstances, and events that would collectively form a tidal wave no one could have seen coming, not the Jurchen, not the Tanguts, and least of which the Chinese themselves. So we've covered the external events, and now let's turn to the internal happenings of the Song Empire leading up to that moment of terrible, awesome climax. As we saw last time, from the outset of his personal era of rule, Emperor Huizong sought

to emulate his father and older brother in their militaristic expansionism, and especially in reclaiming the territories of the northeast and finally stomping those accursed Tenguts back under whatever desert rock they'd crawled out of. This policy his generals had pursued to an almost unbelievable success at the beginning of his reign by employing a strategy known as advance and fortify into Xisha territories and giving the step-riders no weak points to exploit. Again, from Levine, quote, In the valleys of Qingtang, generals Wang Shao and Tong Guan pursued a blitzkrieg strategy, committing a massive force to besiege and reoccupy strategic outposts that had been surrendered several years before.

In the sixth month of 1103, Song forces had recaptured Shanzhou and Huangzhou and dozens of attached fortifications. General Wang claimed that this move had pacified an area of 1,500 square li which is about 65 square miles, which supported a population of 100,000, belonging to more than 20 different tribes. By the end of 1104, native resistance was extinguished." Such overwhelming victories compelled Emperor Huizong and his commanders onward, encouraging them to commit further to the idea of reclaiming all of the territories lost to the Xia via previous generations' incompetence.

The peace forced upon the Xi Xia and its regnant Empress Dowager was painful for the Tanguts, but stable enough that it would hold for some seven years following the treaty's conclusion in 1105. The issue that, inexplicably, was not settled by the 1105 treaty, however, was the position and nature of the border between the two states. This, as you might well imagine, remained the central sticking point in Song-Xia relations, until finally boiling over in 1113 and sparking a renewed series of conflicts. This time, however, things would not go the way that they had the last, and for the next five years, General Tong Guan overcommitted Song

forces to fight in a conflict with unattainable objectives. Just as they had a decade before, Song troops made simultaneous incursions into Qingtong and Hengshan. Never achieving the final breakthrough they had expected, the Emperor's generals squandered massive resources and caused the deaths of, according to at least one estimate, several hundred thousand imperial troops. How did General Tong account to the emperor for such devastating losses? Well, it's simple. He didn't. Instead, as described in the History of Song, he was apparently bribed by the commander of that ill-fated assault to just, you know, forget to include it into his report back to the capital. This was further swept under the rug when, later that year, the Song armies were at last able to wrest control of the Cangdi River from Tangut control,

which had been the ostensible objective of the whole campaign in the first place. Nevertheless, Song fortune would not hold. In battle after demoralizing battle, the Chinese forces were fought to defeat or costly stalemate. The cherry on top would come in the winter of 1116-1117, when the Xia cavalry launched a surprise attack over the frozen but relatively snowless rivers and fields aimed against the walled town of Jingxia. This loss seemed to have driven the Song commanders into something of a frenzy, as they quickly drew up plans to pay the Tanguts back in kind. It would prove to be the last of their ill-fated campaign, and what Levine describes as an, quote,

impossible mission. Plotting to eradicate the Tangut menace once and for all, Tong forced an unwilling commander, Liu Fa, to lead an invasion into Shuofang, at the core of the Xisha Empire. Leading 200,000 troops into what quickly became a suicide mission, Liu was attacked by a massive contingent of Tangut forces outside the walled city of Dong'an. Walking into a deadly trap with no escape route and short of food and water, Liu's armies were encircled by 300,000 Xisha infantry and cavalry commanded by the Xisha prince, Cha Gou. 100,000 Song troops survived, fleeing some 20 miles under the cloak of night, only to be pursued and ambushed the next day,

when Liu was beheaded." In the aftermath of this devastating defeat, and the likewise ruinous counter-siege by Tangut forces leveled against the Song stronghold at Chengwu, where the fleeing Chinese troops had been attempting to run, General Tong did what he did best. He covered up the news of the massacre and prevented such information from reaching the capital or Emperor Huizong. Even as late as 1119, he was still claiming to have had the whole situation well in hand and winning victory after glorious victory to the court at Kaifeng. It's clear enough that Tong Guan was stalling, and hoping against increasingly unlikely hope that he'd somehow be able to pull out a massive, decisive victory

that would render all of his accumulated wrongs right. His prayed-for miracle, however, would go unanswered, and inevitably he was forced to concede defeat against the might of the Tangut forces that had so outfought him at every turn. The peace concluded between Xisha and Song would be a particularly humiliating one for the emperor for whom Tong had fought and lied. Huizong was forced to send a formal written apology to the Tangut ruler, as well as abolish the entire military command structure along his northwestern border. Ouch. Incredibly, Tong Guan would walk

away from this, how else can one put it, fiasco, pretty much entirely unscathed. In spite of his rampant incompetence and the massive loss of life, treasure, and prestige he'd inflicted upon the Song state, with this defeat at the hands of the Xisha, General Tong was neither fired nor even apparently reprimanded. Instead, he'd continue to serve his emperor as the most trusted military commander Huizhong held in his service. The mind doth boggle. It would, in fact, be Tong Guan who in 1118 initially suggested and pushed the idea of conducting an alliance with the Jurchen people along the Korean border, who were, even now, waging a surprisingly effective rebellion against

their hated Liao overlords. Supply advisors, armaments, and yes, commit our own troops to the fight, Tong stressed, and Song China could now reclaim the 16 prefectures of the north that had remained a constant thorn in the empire's side for more than a century. Thus it was, looking back, that Tongguan managed to leap off of one sinking ship and onto another, and immediately proceeded to bring the second one down as well, and along with it, the regime as a whole. But before we get back into that little scuffle along the northern border involving the Chinese, the Khitan, and the Jurchen, we must now turn south in order to better understand just why the Song Empire, for all of its vast riches, population, and military might, would prove so utterly incapable of projecting that force into the northeastern frontier region, and thus allow the Jurchen

Jin forces to seize the initiative, and indeed, the entire North. The problem with the Southlands was, as was so often the case, rebellion, insurrection, and the myriad problems that naturally come with trying to govern a far-flung region full of people who didn't particularly wish to be ruled. Add to that the fact that the South's burgeoning economic output was, in large part, thanks to the new policy's propensity to extract every last coin it could from the populace, not improving the lives or livelihoods of those who ought to have benefited from the fruit of their own labors. It's only natural that, yeah, the population at large would start getting pretty fed up with the confiscatory policies coming from distant Kaifeng

to fund its military misadventures. Therefore, today we look at the two largest rebellions that would break out in southern China between 1119 and 1121, and they are the Fangla Rebellion and the smaller but far more famous Songjiang Uprising. We'll go ahead and take each in turn, but first, a little literary background. 静目之事,有孔为真。 Even what you see with your own eyes may not be true. You might not have understood the meaning of this episode's title, and if that's the case, we're going to correct that here and now. One of the most famous works of historical fiction in China is the 14th century Shuihu Zuan, most commonly translated as The Water Margin. Though thanks to the fact that fiction

writing wasn't nearly the prestigious or respected profession in imperial China as it is today, the authorship of the work remains in contention, and indeed it's likely that the work was completed in stages by several different authors. The most commonly cited potential author is one Shi Nayan from Suzhou, who is himself something of a historical question mark, as there are doubts among modern scholars that he might be anything other than a pen name for another author often given at least partial credit for Water Margin, Luo Guangzhong, who is also credited with writing the other of the first two four great classic novels of China, that is, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Now, I'm not going to exactly go through Water Margin as a novel and detail the releasing of the 108 Stars of Destiny who would

become the major characters because, well, that would be exhausting, I'd never do it justice, you'd likely get bored, and I'd hate to undermine someone else's million-dollar podcast idea to go through the book chapter by chapter. Free idea, folks, it's up for grabs, I still believe. Instead, we're going to, insofar as we can, go over the major historical events and figures who so harried the Song dynasty on its southern flank and the ripple effects of those conflicts into its northern campaigns against the barbarians. Our initial outbreak of rebellion in the south came from perhaps one of its most unlikely regions, that of Liangzhe, the administrative circuit surrounding the delta and mouth of the Yangtze River, roughly encompassing the modern Chinese provinces of Zhejiang and southern Jiangsu,

as well as, of course, my own home base of Shanghai. Coastal, trade-oriented, fertile, and one of the most commercialized regions in the empire, Liangzhe seemed like the last place a popular uprising should take root. After all, such things are bad for business, and Liangzhe, then, as now, was in the business of business. Yet even in this thronging heart of commerce and trade, the parasitic outcomes of the new policies run amok had so sapped the region of its economic prosperity that the business of Liangzhe had more and more veered toward insurrection. As a highly commercialized and urbanized region, Liangzhe had suffered

disproportionately from the various service exemption fees and trade taxes aimed at the non-farming urbanites, as well as a policy that seemed to have been specifically aimed at places like Liangzhe, called the Flower and Rock Network. As the name would suggest, this set of policies sought to extract from the region its rich deposits of jade, as well as the various herbal and medicinal plants that were coveted empire-wide, including not just flowers, but also bamboo varieties and coastal seafood delicacies. Day by day, month by month, the populace chafed ever more under the oppressive policies from Kaifeng that seemed to so unfairly rob them of their livelihoods, f by month, the populace chafed ever more under the oppressive policies from Kaifeng

that seemed to so unfairly rob them of their livelihoods, fomenting just the kind of anti-governmental sentiment that a rebel could best use to their advantage. Enter stage right, Fang La. Fang La was a native of Muzhou, in the westernmost Liangzhe, that is, the furthest from the Pacific coast. From author Cao Yu Kong, in his Study of the Fangla Rebellion in the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Muzhou was, quote, During the last decade of Huizong's reign, the production of tea, oil, lacquer, and lumber. During the last decade of Huizong's reign, the 1120s, the local taxes and levies were extremely heavy, and the addition of a special tribute of rare plants and stones for the imperial gardens, the aforementioned flower

and rock network, vexed the inhabitants of the southeastern provinces, end quote. Suffice it to say, the region was hurting under the heavy-handed imperial policies. Fangla himself was at this time a prosperous and fairly well-to-do landowner of a plantation that specialized in lacquer trees. He had, in the few years leading up to his rebellion, become a victim of his own success. If you think back to our series on the new policies, you'll remember that one of the most dreaded and hated imperial duties a landowner could pull was that of imperial supply master for his region. This post, not only unpaid but financially on the hook for any and all potential expenses incurred, was, that's right, supposed to go to the wealthiest and most prosperous peasant in the region who did

not qualify for an exemption from service. Remember, too, that people had literally committed suicide or broken up their families just to avoid having to serve as supply master. This was no joke. That already crippling imposition by the government was compounded thereafter by a series of formative abuses at the hands of the local officials after being slow to pay out the egregious extra taxes they claimed that he owed. Ultimately, Fang La came to the conclusion that enough was enough, and a man could only take so much. Rather than suicide, Fang La chose the path of insurrectionary leader. Over the course of his career, Fang had tended a widespread and carefully laid network of alliances

and patron-client relationships among his fellow Muzhou citizens, paying special attention to the poor and downtrodden of the region, to whom he gave money and provisions in exchange for, well, a favor whose day may never come. But come that day would, and come it did. Concurrently, he laid a second network through the avenues of religion, setting himself up as a kind of leader, an apparent miracle worker, using what Kao describes as, quote, a mixture of Manichaeism, some elements of Taoism and Buddhism, and sorcery and magic. Within this religious group, cooperation in social and economic

life was encouraged, so that once the signal of rebellion was given, this tightly organized congregation would be capable of becoming a disciplined armed force, end quote. His regular sermons included such gems as preaching to his devout that their path of salvation would, quote, be cleansed with the blood of imperial officials and soldiers, end quote. So, yeah, it's a cult. Fang La built himself a fanatical millennialist death cult. This 12th century David Koresh declared his rebellion was on in the 10th month of 1120, in a rather spectacularly bloody fashion, by murdering a large landowner who resided in the county seat of

Qingqi, before fleeing westward with his followers to a network of secret caves tucked away in the mountains. From there, the bandits-slash-cultists waged an ever-enlarging series of guerrilla campaigns against the local government and attracting yet more adherents to his cause. Less than one month later, Fang Le challenged the throne directly by adopting imperial pretensions, proclaiming himself Shenggong, or sagely lord, with his own reign-era title of Yongle, meaning everlasting joy. And what cultist rebellion is complete without a uniform? In fine rebellious style, Fang ordered his followers to don red turbans, a symbol of Melanarian insurrections dating all the way back to the Han.

By the beginning of the 12th month of 1120, his force had swelled to some 20,000 followers, a strength capable of easily overwhelming the few thousand defenders at Muzhou and seizing the region for Fang La. These first few months of rebellion conducted in the dead of winter must certainly have been heady times for the adherents of Fang La. These first few months of rebellion conducted in the dead of winter must certainly have been heady times for the adherents of Fang La, as they, having clearly caught local and regional authorities completely off guard, were able to grow explosively. From Levine, Rebel forces occupied Liangzhe Circuit and more of neighboring Jingnan East Circuit. Garrisons of imperial troops offered scant resistance, and local administrators fled in panic, abandoning county after county to the rebels. By the first month of 1121, the boundaries of Fangla's kingdom stretched north into the Yangtze River and south to the seacoast." While several prongs of the rebel force pillaged across the countryside to

the west and southeast, seizing town after town, and often massacring any and everyone unlucky enough to not have fled ahead of their arrival, government official, soldier, or innocent civilian urbanite alike. Meanwhile, Fangla himself took the main rebel force and advanced east to capture the regional capital and thriving trade city of Hangzhou. Their battle tactics relied primarily on two devices beyond just simple speed. First, sheer numbers. The rebels would often seek to overwhelm their opponents with expendable human wave attacks. Aiding this, though, was probably one of the Fanglao rebels' most effective weapons, theatricality and deception, which are powerful agents,

and they could thus become more than just men in the mind of their opponents. To encourage the morale of their troops, the rebel leaders relied heavily on magic and sorcery, an effective device since their followers were generally superstitious. The rebels went into battle wearing red scarves as identification and shouting in unison to enlist the aid of devils. To disconcert the enemy, they made extensive use of colored robes, painted faces, and mechanical devices to create the appearance of monsters or ghosts. The assault of thousands of soldiers of both sexes and all ages, among whom appeared numerous monsters of bizarre color and towering height, terrified the government troops. End quote.

400 years ago, a trio of tiny kingdoms were perched on some damp islands off the coast of Europe. Within three short centuries, these islands would become the centre of an empire which ruled a quarter of the globe and on which the sun never set. I'm Samuel Hume, a historian of the British Empire, and my podcast Pax Britannica follows the people and events that built that empire into a global superpower. Listen to Season 1 to hear about England's first attempts at empire building, in Ireland, in North America and in the Caribbean, the first steps of the East India Company and the political battles between King and Parliament. Listen to Season 2 to hear about the chaotic years of civil war, revolution and regicide, which rocked the Three Kingdoms and the Fledgling

Empire. In Season 3, we see how Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell ruled the powerful Commonwealth and challenged the Dutch and the Spanish for the wealth and power of the Americas and Asia. Learn the history of the British Empire by listening to Pax Britannica everywhere you find your podcasts, or go to pod.link slash pax. Coming upon the empty and abandoned city, the rebels entered and occupied it without resistance, and in a particularly notable display of their hatred for what they deemed the six felons of the imperial bureaucracy, purportedly sought out and then desecrated the family graves of Cai Jing's ancestors. In the span of just two months, Fang La and his

fanatical devotees had devoured virtually the entirety of Liangzhe, so fast that the central government yet had no time to mount any kind of direct response. This slowness to react was in large part because the Kaitheng court was otherwise occupied with trying to plan out their upcoming operation to retake at long last the Liao southern capital, Ye City, as well as their ongoing treaty negotiations with the Jurchenjin armies. But losing an entire military circuit, and not only that, one of the empire's most productive in such a blindingly short time, needed to be dealt with, and quickly. Thus, the emperor was forced to call his trusted

eunuch general, Tong Guan, off of the task of planning the northern invasion of Liao, and appoint him as the pacification commissioner of the southwest, tasked with rooting out and exterminating this Fang La person and his band of religious zealots. With him, Tong Guan was given the use of 150,000 troops, consisting not only of crack imperial capital troops, but also specifically trained units of Fanping, or barbarian units, that were otherwise to have proceeded north, thus forcing the capital to postpone his attack on the 16 prefectures that would prove to be an exceptionally inopportune moment, as it threw into question Song's commitment to the not even yet inked Song Jin alliance, and thus jeopardized the whole proceeding. The culprit must pay for his wrongs, the debtor for his debts. In spite of the chaos they'd sown far and wide across the Yangtze, once the Fangla rebels were facing down actual crack imperial troops rather than

provincial self-defense garrisons, they had virtually no chance of victory. The quote, poorly armed and armored rebels proved themselves relatively easy opponents for the soldiers under Tongguan's command, end quote. In fact, once their theatrical tricks were recognized as such and accounted for, theirs was in actual combat a rather primitive force, wearing virtually no armor whatsoever and only makeshift weapons from repurposed local equipment. And that was for the lucky rebels. Again from Cao, quote, the most efficient fighters were armed. The rest, including women, children, and old men, were driven by force or faith to the front to fight with their bare hands as an expendable first wave of assault, end quote. The imperial troops' victory

was assured, though, when Fang La committed a grave tactical error. Instead of occupying the south bank of the Yangtze and employing the river as a natural defensive boundary, he concentrated his forces to besiege the city of Xiuzhou, which is modern Jiaxing, where they were caught and defeated in a deliberate pincer movement of converging imperial troops. The defeated rebels retreated southward and attempted to make further stands at the previously captured cities of Xuanzhou and Hangzhou, but were easily routed in each case. Having lost their mobility and their initiative, their strengths were neutralized and their weaknesses magnified. At last, they were forced back into their first, and what would prove to be last, redoubt, the very caves in Qingqi Mountains, where Fang Le and the small contingent of holdouts were surrounded and

captured. Fang and his higher-ups were taken in chains by Tong Guan himself back to Kaifeng, where they faced a tribunal for their high treason. Easily convicted, they faced the ultimate punishment that the state could mete out to traitors, lingchi, or slow slicing, more infamously known as the death by a thousand cuts, though as many scholars have pointed out, such a name is far more for dramatic effect than an actual description. In a process perhaps taking as little as 15 to 20 minutes, although it could be dragged out for hours if not days, the condemned was bound to a post and would have non-lethal wounds cut into their bodies. Until at last, blood loss, wounds too deep into important tissues, or simple

mercy resulted in eventual death. Such a sentence, like pretty much all torture executions in the pre-modern era, served as powerful reminders of state power, humiliation for the condemned, and, well, what are you going to say, humiliation for the condemned, and, well, what are you gonna say, cheap entertainment for the gathered crowds. Yet for the course of a further year, pockets of the Fangla rebels yet persisted in spite of the crushing military dominance of the Song military, and it wouldn't be until the third month of 1122 that final victory was at last proclaimed. The aftermath and final accounting of the rebellion and its imperial response was nothing short of catastrophic for Liangzhe and the surrounding

regions. The lands themselves lay in ruins across some six prefectures and 52 counties, and between the Fangla rebels' callous and apparently religiously motivated disregard for human life, and the imperial troops' likewise callous orders to fulfill execution quotas of rebels, but any head would do, really. Estimates approximate that the civilian loss of life in the course of the two-year rebellion was between one to two million dead. Adding salt to that grievous wound, though, was the fact that, either as punishment for the rebellion or simple blindness on the part of the court ministers, Kaifeng reimposed the hated ruinous tax on jade and herbs over the region, compounding its misery and hatred of the six bandit ministers, who, they still had no reason to doubt, ran the affairs of the government against the interests of the people. The imperial government had obviously learned nothing from its time dealing with the Fangla rebels, as evidenced by the fact that it would be forced to put down several other rebellions waged for very similar reasons, albeit at smaller scales than the initial revolt in Liangzhe.

Yet the most famous of these, and actually occurring before the Fangla Rebellion, is immortalized in literature. It's the rebellion of Songjiang from his hidden marsh base surrounded by the mountains and forest of Liangshan Lake in Yunzhou Jingdong West Circuit. A natural barrier within a natural barrier, the marshes of Liangshan had been a bandit stronghold difficult enough to penetrate in force by imperial troops that they had rarely made the attempt. This is, incidentally, the same region that Sun Quan used as his base of power in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. So yeah, after all, maybe it's not that incidental after all. Unlike Fan La, whose brutal methods and cultist religious rites turned him into a villain and even outright monster in historical memory, Song Zheng and his band of merry men are

known and celebrated as the Chinese Robin Hood, fighting on behalf of the little guy against the big bad government tax collectors, robbing from the rich to give to the poor and all that. And as we've already seen, Kaifeng's tin ear regarding its tax policies forced upon the peasant population made that kind of a tale a pretty easy one to sell. From Chapter 18 of The Water Margin, quote, Song Zheng helped anyone, high or low, who sought his aid.

He was always making things easy for people, solving their difficulties, settling differences, saving lives. He provided the indigent with funds for coffins and medicines, gave charity to the poor, assisted in emergencies, helped in cases of hardship. And so, he was famed throughout the provinces of Shandong and Hebei, and was known to all as the Timely Rain, for like the rain of the heavens, he brought succor to every living thing. Thus it is that Song Zhang is the protagonist and hero of the novel Water Margin, but as I've already said, that fictionalization isn't really why we're here today. If fated, men come together though a thousand li apart.

If not, they miss each other even though they meet face to face. There is, unsurprisingly, no real written record of precisely when or how what would become the Songjiang Rebellion began, or its initial reasons. These were bandit outlaws after all, and were hardly keeping detailed calendars of their crimes. The story tells us that Song became an outlaw after he wrote a poem while drunk, and capped it off with a seditious couplet. If one day I can realize my noble ambitions, I dare to laugh at Huang Chao for not being a real man.

This poem, which Song forgot even writing after he'd sobered up, was, of course, found by an imperial official, who reported it and, yeah. We all surely remember the late, not-so-great Huang Chao from the late Tang Dynasty, and the terrible rebellion that he'd led that helped bring about the regime's collapse. So it's understandable that government officials might get a little touchy about someone claiming that they were going to outman what Huang Chao did. As just one more aside, it's worth pointing out also that over the course of this story, the protagonist group, called the 36 Heavenly Spirits, routinely refer to one another as

haohan, which literally just means good han or good Chinese or good guy, but tellingly, it's most typically translated and understood as meaning heroes. In any case, the group popped up into Song government's radar, and thus our paper trail begins, toward the end of 1119, when Huizong issued an edict ordering the immediate arrest and conviction of the so-called Jingdong rebel leader, Song Jiang. In spite of this arrest warrant, however, the regional and local government forces dragged their collective feet, only making half-hearted attempts to apprehend the criminal leadership, and thus even a year later had made no significant progress toward actually doing so. Over the course of this period, the Songjiang rebels ranged freely over Puzhou, Danzhou, Qizhou, and Qingzhou prefectures within

the Jingdong Circuit. By the winter of 1121, the rebel band had reached the coastal prefecture of Haizhou, thus prompting additional orders to be issued from on high to the prefect Zhang Shuyie to spare no effort in bringing them to imperial justice at last. Prefect Zhang, markedly unlike his neighboring government officials, moved with relative swiftness and efficacy to suppress and infiltrate the rebel band. He dispatched spies to gain entry into the group, who in turn uncovered that Song Jiang and his followers had managed to cobble together a fleet of boats and ships hidden in the coastal caves and coves, the beginnings of a formidable pirate navy that, if left alone, might rise to terrorize the coasts

for years to come. This, obviously, could not be allowed to come to pass, and as such, Prefect Zheng dispatched the full might of his garrisons to surround the rebels-cum-pirates and force their surrender. From Zhang Shuyi's biography a thousand warriors, set up an ambush in a nearby city, and sent lightly armed troops to lure the rebels to attack them. He also ordered his best soldiers to station themselves along the coast. When the rebels showed up, the soldiers set fire to the rebels' vessels and dealt a heavy blow to their morale. The warriors waiting in ambush seized the opportunity to attack the rebels and capture their leaders. Song Jiang surrendered. End quote.

The winds and clouds in the sky are unfathomable. A man's luck can change in an instant. And it's at this point here that we're actually forced to revert to the fictive telling of Water Margin in order to get a sense of Song Jiang's fate post-capture. Apparently, he had already been in direct negotiations with the imperial government and had strongly advocated to his compatriots that they should surrender to the government in exchange for amnesty. This is pretty common with Chinese rebels, as often the government could find it more convenient to offer amnesty to a rebel command structure than to try to track every last one of them down. In return for their lives, they would agree to serve the imperial military in the course of its campaigns.

Emperor Huizong agreed to this, and as such, the majority of Songjiang's rebel force were pardoned and co-opted into imperial military service, to be sent against the likes of Fangla, as well as the campaigns against the Liao dynasty to the north. It would prove a costly amnesty indeed, however, to the adherents of Songjiang, the so-called 108 Stars of Destiny. Of them, less than a third would return from their campaigns, and the survivors either retired into a normal life of farming that they'd typically come from, or, like Songjiang himself, returned to the capital to receive honors from the imperial court. Song would receive from the throne the governorship of Chuzhou in modern Jiangsu. However, the so-called Four Treacherous Ministers consisting of Gao Qiu, Yang Jian, Tong Guan,

and Cai Jing conspired against him for his earlier misdeeds. They sent a pot of poison wine bearing the emperor's name and a command to drink. Song knew what was up and that there was little that he could do, yet he didn't want the names of his fellow Haohan heroes to be sullied after he died and was worried that his second-in-command, Li Kui, would renew their rebellion against the dynasty if he learned that Song was poisoned on orders from the imperial court. In order to head this off, he invited Li over and had him drink the poisoned wine with him together, killing them both. Emperor Huizong, after receiving a ghostly visit from their two spirits telling them the circumstances of their untimely deaths, ordered an investigation, but it would all amount to nothing, because the

porter of the poisoned wine was himself killed in mysterious circumstances that, in the course of the story, never come to light. But it's all okay, because Huizong confers posthumous honors on them all and honors them as loyal heroes of the dynasty. Back in reality, once again from Levine, quote, back on the shores of Liangshan Lake, bands of commoner bandits continued to rebel against the seizure of public lands, a government initiative that was supervised by the eunuch Li Yun, another of the six felons. Huizong's ministers obtusely refused to learn any lessons from the Fang Law and Songjiang rebellions, even as their fiscal policy provided the tinder to be sparked into armed uprisings

which were quashed at great human and financial cost, and central government continued to extort revenues and resources from the countryside. End quote. And thus concludes our bedtime story with the following moral. There's no such thing as happy endings. Nothing you do matters. Bureaucracy will crush your dreams and won't even care. See? Aren't Chinese novels fun, kids? Sleep well. So that is what we will finish out with today. And now that we've laid the groundwork and are all set for the massive uppercut to the face

of the Song Dynasty it's about to receive. And so next time we will get into exactly that. The Jurchen strikes southward into the Yellow River Valley, the utter collapse of Song imperial authority in the north, and the dissolution of the northern Song dynasty altogether. Thanks for listening. Just one more thing before leaving you today. Be sure to check out the Agora Podcast Network's feed all through this month for the Agoraphobia Scary Story event, in which many of us do our yearly best to give you audio chills and thrills.

New Agoraphobia episodes will be released weekly across October, with this first installment featuring The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe, as read by Thomas Daly, and a classic strange tale from our own Pu Songling called He Came Back, read by me. So give it a listen, and thanks again. The French Revolution set Europe ablaze. It was an age of enlightenment and progress, but also of tyranny and oppression. It was an age of glory and an age of tragedy. One man stood above it all. This was the Age of Napoleon. I'm Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast. Join me as I examine the life and times of one of the most fascinating and enigmatic characters in modern history. Look for the Age of Napoleon wherever

you find your podcasts.