The History of China - #156 - S. Song 3: Yue Fei, Pt. 2 - The Long-Legged Treachery

Episode Date: December 21, 2018

General Yue Fei will reach career highs as he strikes back against Jurchen aggression with remarkable success. He'll drive his enemies so fast and hard, that he'll drive the Jin Dynasty close to its breaking point. But on the precipice of victory, ministerial machinations back in Hangzhou will spell the undoing of him and his life's work... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Last time, we sketched out the Song general Yue Fei's early life, his rise to prominence, and the vacillating nature of his on-again, off-again relationship with Emperor Gao Zong, and his very much off-all-the-time time relationship with Chancellor Qin Hui. Today then, in part two, we'll be finishing out the tale of Yue Fei, chronicling his highest highs and his lowest lows before his final defeat. We're going to pick up exactly where we left off last time. As I mentioned, this was initially written as a single continuous episode, and as such, I strongly recommend if you haven't listened to episode 155,

that you go and do so first. Otherwise, this is probably going to seem rather more confusing and abrupt than usual. We pick up the thread circa 1137, with Yue Fei having pressed his military advantage against the Zhecheng Jin dynasty that occupies the north of China, only to be recalled suddenly to the southern Song capital, Hangzhou, and relieved of his command. He then made the egregious error of overstepping his place and daring to suggest before the emperor himself that he ought to select his nephew as the chosen imperial heir, something totally out of bounds for a military man, regardless of his rank. In the end, though, his replacement had floundered so badly with his own campaign against the Jin that the majority of his army had outright rebelled and then defected to the Jurchen. And so it's here

that we pick the thread back up. Between Yue's dangerous presumptiveness and Zhang Jun's soldiers' mass defections, the Song War Party was in disarray. In such a situation, Qin Hui, who had come to lead the faction of the court who were advocating for peace with the Jurchen, found his influence with the emperor on the rise. This was further enhanced beginning in 1137 when the Jin emperor, Shizong, sent missives to Gaozong that, along with opening negotiations to return his father's coffin to the Song court, seemed to want to draw down the conflict to a formal peace. Of course, nothing was going to be offered for free, and the terms the Jin Emperor set were humiliating indeed. Jin Shizong knew that he had the Chinese Emperor in a very awkward

situation, bound by the sake of filial piety to recover his father's remains and also with a still shaky grasp on his own throne. As such, the terms were that the Song would be required to formally acknowledge the ceremonial superiority of Jin over itself, and agree to send tremendous tribute payments of silk and silver every year thereafter. Terms that Yue Fei was first and loudest to vociferously dismiss as totally unacceptable. The only thing we should be sending to the barbarians is their own severed heads, not treasures. Yue, however, was ignored. From Tao, quote,

This tension was dynamic. As the Jin threat waxed and waned, so did Gaozong's need for strong generals. But the speed with which the Jin threat could increase meant that Gaozong had to err on the side of granting the generals more power. This command structure kept the situation highly unstable for Gaozong. It's not surprising that Gaozong was interested in a peace settlement as one of the few ways he could regain internal political control of his empire. So rather than Yue Fei's bellicosity, it would instead be to Minister Qin Hui that Gaozong turned to represent the Song in these negotiations. Qin would prove rather less effective at getting Jin concessions than had likely been hoped,

and in the end, the Song was further humiliated by the terms of the treaty completed in 1139. Jin would no longer even refer to the Song emperors as emperors, nor the state as the Song. Instead, they would refer to it only as Jiangnan, the land south of the river. Probably in an attempt to get him to shut up about the unacceptability of the treaty being concluded, in 1140, Uefa was again promoted, but he declined the honor and wrote back to the court a harsh, one might say stupidly harsh, rebuke. Quote, The events of today are a cause for danger, not for peace. They are lamentable, not laudable. We ought to be instructing soldiers and issuing commands to officers. There are no worries with End quote.

It's also at this time that while on a scouting expedition ostensibly to investigate the conditions of the tombs of the Northern Song emperors, but far more to reconnoiter the Jin positions and defenses, Yue lamented on the fact that he was likely as doomed to failure as his own great hero, Zhuge Liang. But like the brilliant general of the Three Kingdoms, he needed to face that inevitability with steadfast courage to the very end. He wrote of Dugas, quote, with death before him, he was stern and did not change his countenance. To the end, he was capable of complete purity, holding himself unbowed, end quote. Later in 1140, he wrote again to the emperor, once again returning to the dangerous topic of the imperial succession, which will suggest shows that he was already resigning himself to the fate of being a noble

failure, quote, of demonstrating the purity and selfless devotion to righteous principles, even when, or perhaps especially when, those principles could not be realized, end quote. Yet it would be in 1140, in the midst of his preparing to go down in noble flames, that fate would deliver to Yue Fei one last chance at success in his mission. With the ink of the treaty still wet, the pro-peace faction within the Jurchen had been ousted and killed by a far more bellicose group led by Yuefei's old northern nemesis, Prince Wu

Zhu. Wasting little time and less energy in the terms of the treaty, Wu Zhu reignited the war against the Song and launched a new multi-pronged pincer attack against Chinese positions to the south, swinging wide around Yue Fei's own position in the middle of the defensive line. This seemingly intentional avoiding of Yue proved fortuitous to him when the Song generals along the flanks this time proved able to largely hold out against the Jurchen armies, although some cities were lost. This new stiffening of the Song military's lines was owed in large part to a new infantry tactic developed by the general, Liu Qi, specifically to counter

the Jurchen's preferred assault tactic of repeated cavalry charges, quote, using long pikes like scythes to hack at their horses' legs, end quote. Not needed to rush around bailing out any of his subcommanders this time around, Yue Fei was free to plunge straight into the heart of the Jin territories. In some tellings, the emperor forbade General Yue from attack, which Yue outright ignored. But in most tellings, his invasion plan was approved, albeit warily, and with warnings from the emperor not to plunge too deeply into the Northlands. Whatever the case, the Song general set about his bloody work with relish. Both Yue Fei and his son personally led his cavalry charges in attack after attack across 1140. They retook Zhenzhou in the sixth month, which sat between Luoyang and Kaifeng. Thus,

the stage was set for his greatest battlefield victory yet, called both the Battle of Yancheng and the Battle of Juxianzhen. Two Jurchen princes led a Jin force of 15,000 cavalry at the head of 100,000 troops to Yanseri to face down Yuefei's own approaching force of reportedly comparable cavalry strength and unknown infantry. From Yuefei's own later telling in his letter of victory back to the imperial court, quote, On the eighth day of this month, whilst out scouting, I saw four evil princes, their mighty warriors, and Wang Yan Dong Xian. General Han Shizong led 15,000 of our troops on horseback, all dressed in shining armor. They seized the road 20 li to the north of Yancheng,

where our cavalry engaged the enemy in the early evening, when the officers and men hacked and chopped at the foes with maja swords and large hatchets. In ten bitter battles, countless enemies End quote. Incidentally, the Maja sword and its prominence in these battles against the jinn at this point are legendary, so let's take a moment to explain just exactly what they are. The Maja blade is a very slight derivation of the Janma blade, which very conveniently translates to the horse beheader. It was a massive two-handed weapon, more than 1.2 meters in length, and with a handle-to-blade ratio of approximately 1 to 3, and with a heavy ring on the end of the pommel to aid in counterbalance. A straight-bladed

saber, as its name implies, it was a straight-up anti-cavalry weapon used primarily against the step-riders. It took an infantry unit of rather exceptional bravery to employ the most effective Maja tactic, which was to stand en masse and unbreaking against a full frontal cavalry charge, and at the last minute, bend low beneath the lances and spears of the horsemen and slice through the horses' unarmored legs, sides, and necks. And up until this point, it had never been successfully accomplished. It just took too much self-control and discipline to have a unit of men not just wait for the horses to arrive, but then act in concert to slice them apart. Nevertheless, when perfected as here at Yancheng, the effects were absolutely

devastating, and all the more so given that for all their fearsome disposition, the Jin cavalry tactics were notably inflexible. Again and again, the riders did the only thing they knew how to do, the thing that had broken through Chinese infantry lines without fail for generations, the frontal heavy cavalry charge. Inevitably, the foot soldiers had broken, ran, and were cut down every time, without fail, so who needed to develop a second strategy? Except now, now it wasn't working. Now their invincible Alpha and Omega tactic was doing little more than cutting themselves to bloody ribbons. Meanwhile, a special squadron of Song's own cavalry, known as the Guai Zima, or the Horse Kidnappers, were busily rounding up as many of the Jin horses as they could,

further depriving them of their main line of attack while bolstering the Chinese's own supply. By the end of the day, with his army all but annihilated, the Jin commander is written to have bewailed his bitter fate, crying out, quote, which is to say, to make the mountains tremble is easy, next to the impossibility of doing so to Yue Fei's army. With his report back to the emperor, Yue Fei included his request to press onward and seize the Northlands back once and for all. The Emperor replied, congratulating and lavishly rewarding all of the commanders who had won this incredible victory against the Jin, stating in an edict, quote,

Yue Fei, for fifteen years the Jiehu barbarians invaded and plundered. Today I make this announcement. You are loyal and righteous, linked with the gods who provide power and confidence for our soldiers. You repeatedly fought and hurried to defeat these villains, directing your arrows to inflict the bitterest injuries upon these barbarians. You roused an army that will go down in history for bringing me urgent news of the enemy's extermination. Your loyalty and devotion moves me to sigh deeply. I grant your soldiers a reward of 200,000 strings of cash, hereby making known the reason for the reward. End quote. It went further, that the commanders were to have lands, titles, honors, offices, the works.

There was just one tiny little thing missing from the emperor's response and lavish praise, and that was leave to continue the assault. In fact, Gaozong expressly forbade it and directed the Song forces recalled at once to the south, and for its generals, especially including Yue Fei, to report to the imperial court at once. His other generals, Han Shizong and Zhang Jun in particular, knew that the writing was on the wall and gracefully accepted their promotions and rewards. But Yue, as per usual, wasn't nearly so quiet about it. He bellowed, quote,

Ten years' achievements destroyed in a single day! All the captured territories gone in one morning! End quote. The traditional understanding was that this was a combination of Gaozong's inexcusable cowardliness and his treacherous chancellor Qin Hui's unforgivable traitorous nature, calling off the war and subjugating China to the Jurchen right when they'd had him on the ropes. More sober analysis, however, suggests that there were better reasons going on than sheer weakness and treachery. From Wills, quote, If Yue's forces advanced to link up with the emergent guerrilla forces and continue to push towards Kaifeng, they would have been in a dangerously exposed position. From Wills, quote, Even further than that, if, if Yue were

somehow to achieve something approaching a miracle play and secure total victory, that would mean the likely release of Gaozong's brother, Qinzong. And where would that leave Gaozong? Emperor? Maybe not, as his brother was his elder and predecessor. If anything, such a question might have been likely to split the Song government right down the middle and devolve into civil war. Costly as a negotiated settlement was, and it would prove very costly indeed, from the position of the imperial court, a full military victory might be even more costly in the long run. Thus, Yue Fei and his singular drive to reclaim the North, however noble, had to be stopped.

This is, rather obviously, a pretty unpopular line of reasoning for many reasons, and especially so anyone who operates under or adheres to a one-China policy. For political and patriotic reasons, it remains largely anathema within mainland China to espouse such a line of thought, and it often invites comparisons to those who advocated accommodation of the Japanese in the 1930s and 40s. Frederick Motz points out, though, that, quote, historical controversy must be examined apart from such ahistorical sentiments, end quote. In any event, rather than accept his rewards and promotions, Yue Fei decided that he'd had enough. If he weren't going to be allowed to prosecute the war to its completion as he deemed it necessary, then he was going to take his ball and go home.

He tendered his resignation. It was rejected. He tendered it again, and the emperor denied his retirement yet again. Gaozong seems to have, whatever else he thought of his opinions and imperial succession, to truly have been personally fond of the brash, straight-talking general, not to mention the best commander who had likely walked the realm for the last few centuries at least. You don't just let an asset like that retire. And moreover, a guy as charismatic as that, who was able to double the size of his army just by talking to bandits and convincing them to join up with him instead,

yeah, you definitely don't just let an asset like that wander off into the sunset on his own. He might start getting some funny ideas about an army of his own. Instead, no, no, we need to keep him comfortable, we need to keep him close, we need to keep him fat, happy, and more than anything, under our direct supervision and control. Gaozong ordered that Yue Fei's house in Hangzhou be expanded, to be more in line with his exalted position within the empire. You know, things like higher walls, with more guards, and lots and lots of room so you never feel like you have to leave. Meanwhile, Chancellor Qin Hui was pursuing a very different strategy in keeping the irredentist Yue Fei under his, ahem, I mean, Gao Zong's thumb. We need not heat plaudits and rewards on a man as dangerous as Yue Fei just to keep him in line, if we can show that he did something wrong. We needn't construct for him

a gilded cage if we can just throw him in a regular one. 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 three, 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. He began work investigating the general, certain that he could find some kind of charge that might stick. At least enough to get him exiled or demoted or something. Anything. The initial charge he threw out was misappropriation of funds, but no evidence could be found, especially when time

and again Yue had turned down extra money and rewards because he wasn't about that life. They literally had to force him to accept this latest construction project on his house. Well, alright, no matter. Surely at some point or another he did something against orders, or didn't move his troops fast enough? I imagine at a charge like this, Yue must have just stared at his accuser and been like, dude, didn't move my troops fast enough? Do you know whom I am? I'm goddamn Yue Fei. Again, no conviction could be secured. At last, Qin Hui was able to rustle up one of Yue's most trusted subordinates, a soldier named Zhang Xian. Now, it's unclear what had gone wrong between the two of them, but apparently something had, because Zhang testified to Qin Hui that his commander had,

gasp, plotted rebellion. Let the mustache twirling commence, Chancellor Qin. Qin Hui immediately issued summons for both Yue Fei and his eldest son, Yue Yun, to be interrogated. Now, all of his friends and his wife were like, don't go, it's not going to go well for you if you turn yourself into this snidely whiplash qin guy. But Yue Fei just laughed them off and said he'd be fine. Yue sat himself down in front of his interrogators, and first things first, tore off his own shirt, swiveled around to display the words tattooed on his rippling, muscular, Herculean back, 尽重报国, with utmost loyalty, serve the nation. And at this point, just basically said, the defense rests.

He admitted nothing, he said nothing, and no one, not a single person, was willing to give a single word of corroboration for the charges leveled against him. Meanwhile, peace negotiations were ongoing with the Jin emissaries and were led by, of course, Qin Hui himself. And apparently word had gotten out that Qin had the hated general Yue Fei, who had murdered thousands of their Jurchin countrymen, confined in a cell. And so, the Jin representatives leaned over to Qin Hui and said, from Hammond, quote, one account notes that Prince Wu Zhu sent a letter to Qin Hui

demanding Yue Fei's death as a prerequisite for successful negotiations. Another notes that Chu Zhu expressed his vexation with continued guerrilla activity in Jin territory. Since Yue Fei had been the most vociferous proponent of supporting the guerrillas, this was interpreted as an indirect statement about UFA being an obstacle to negotiation. End quote. Listen, Jin, old buddy, old pal, you've got UFA. You don't like UFA. We don't like UFA. These negotiations are going to go a lot better for you if, you know, our mutual non-friend were to just not be a problem anymore. Know what I'm saying? If this were the case, though, the implication that Yue needed to be taken care of before negotiations could bear fruit proved to be, well, empty. Negotiations proceeded apace, and by the 11th month of that year, the Treaty of Shaoxing was being finalized, even as Yue Fei yet lived. Quote,

Even so, at the end of 1141, when executions were to be carried out, a death warrant was signed for Yue Fei. Not wanting to risk a public execution that might spark public unrest, Qin Hui had Yue Fei killed in his prison cell. End quote. This was done either via poison or strangulation. According to some tellings, after more than two months of torture yielding no confession from the general or his son, Qin Hui lamented his lack of progress to his wife. Lady Wang is said to have gazed at him and replied, quote, well old man, are you so weak-willed after all? It's easy to catch a tiger, but hard to get rid of him. End quote.

Qiancai's telling has it that it was then a serving girl came in bearing a basket of oranges into the room, and Lady Wang hatched a plot. She told Qin to slip an execution notice inside the skin of an orange and send it to the judge presiding over Yue's case. This way, Yue and his companions would be put to death before the emperor or Qin himself would have to rescind an open order of execution. His son, Yue Yun, was publicly executed, and his family's properties and titles confiscated, and many of the records of his long career destroyed.

When Yue Fei's longtime fellow and ally, Han Shizong, learned of the cruel fate that had befallen his comrade-in-arms, he confronted the chancellor directly and asked to see the evidence that had condemned his friend. Qin responded that there had been a series of three letters between Yue's son and the accuser Zhang Xian, discussing a plot to reunite Yue Fei with his army and spark a rebellion. Qin went on, however, that the letters were no longer necessary, and had therefore been burnt. Han Shizong incredulously asked,

how can the three words no longer necessary mollify the nation? Once word of Ye Fei's death reached Jin, celebrations were held. In fact, up to this day, that very phrase, mo shuyou, is an idiom referring to fabricated evidence or false charges. Nevertheless, with his successful conclusion of the Treaty of Shaoxing, which brought a lasting peace to the divided realm, and saw the return of Emperor Huizong's coffin to Hangzhou, in exchange for 250,000 tails of silver and 200,000 bolts of silk annually, and the acceptance of the lesser status

of Song before the Jin. Qin Hui had his government's status solidified. As many had feared of the chancellor, whose own contemporaries had often described as a, quote, self-important and mean-spirited politician, guilty of excessive nepotism and self-aggrandizement even by the standards of the time, end quote, Qin would use his improved position and standing to harshly crack down on those who dared speak against him. Quote, Han Shizong's estimation of the heavy-handed tactics employed by Qin Hui proved correct. At the end of 1141, he was able to take harsh retaliation against those critical of his handling of Yue Fei and of the peace treaty in general. Some who publicly decried Yue Fei's execution were themselves executed. Disapproving officials were stripped of office and exiled. of Yue Fei and of the peace treaty in general. Some who publicly decried Yue Fei's execution

were themselves executed, disapproving officials were stripped of office and exiled, end quote. Yet for all that, his treaty with the Jin, however abjectly humiliating, would hold, and with it his position within the government as peacemaker. Qin Hui would die in 1155 and was praised by Emperor Gaozong for the rest of his reign. It would only be with the age of Gaozong's retirement and the accession of his adopted son, Xiaozong, that Yue Fei and his position would be forgiven, posthumously pardoned of his alleged crimes, and rehabilitated in the eyes of the government. In the mind of the populace at large, though, they'd never forgotten who had won them glory

and who had purchased them nothing but shame. Work would shortly begin on the temple mentioned at the beginning of the last episode in honor of the great General Yue, and the eternal condemnation of the official who had betrayed him to his death. In the end, Qin Hui would be remembered by a subruquet more fitting of his nature, Qin Zhang Tui, or Long-Leggedin. And yes, this does take a little bit of an explanation. As I've come to understand it, calling someone zhang tui is saying that their body is out of proportion, their legs are too long, or as my wife put it, they're built like a pair of chopsticks. The connotation, then, is that such a physical abnormality must correspond with an abnormality or defect of the essence or spirit. Of course, today we well know there is no such link, yet the epithet has stuck. So, if you wish to think of Qin Hui as some kind

of slender man or tall man in the House of Haoning Hill, that's kind of the point. But let's end out with a somewhat more serene accounting of the Great General's end than the brutal reality. Qian Sai put it poetically in his accounting in the Shuo Ye Quan Zhan. Quote, Yue Fei strode in long strides to the pavilion of the winds and waves. The warders on both sides picked up the ropes and strangled the three men, Yue Fei, Yue Yun, and Zhang Xian, without further ado. At the time, Lord Yue was 39 years of age and the young Lord, Yue Yun, 23. When the three men returned to heaven, suddenly a fierce wind rose up wildly and all the fires and lights were extinguished. Black mists filled the sky and sand and pebbles were blown about. End quote. Next time, we'll take a closer look at

some of the inner workings of the Treaty of Shaoxing and the new and unsteady peace between the Song and Jin. That may prove to take us a bit longer than usual, however, for a couple of reasons. First, I'll be taking a trip to the US over the holidays, and second, because for the time being I'm going to need to be working on a little side project. I'm not ready to talk about it specifically just yet, but keep your fingers crossed, hopefully it'll prove well worth the effort. In any case, and as always, thanks for listening. 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.

Every week, we explore tales of this ancient culture. The History of Egypt is available wherever you get your podcasting fix. Come, let me introduce you to the world of Ancient Egypt.