The History of China - #19 - E. Zhou 8: The End Of Zhou

Episode Date: April 27, 2014

In this first of two part exploring the end of the Warring States Period, Qin continues its campaign again the six other fractious kingdoms, decimating Zhao and Yan before putting the Zhou Dynasty itself to rest forever. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. Today's podcast is brought to you in part by Audible.com. By using the web address audibletrial.com slash China, you can receive a free audiobook download, along with a free 30-day trial of the service. With over 100,000 titles to choose from for your iPhone, Android, Kindle, or MP3 player, Audible is the nation's leading seller and producer of spoken audio content.

The History of China podcast is available for download and subscription through SoundCloud, the iTunes Music Store under Podcasts, and most recently has joined the Spotify network. Also, please join us on our official website, thehistoryofchina.wordpress.com, as well as on Twitter via the handle at THOCpodcast, and on Facebook at www.facebook.com slash thehistoryofchina. Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 18, Part 1, The End of Zhou Last time, we looked at the repeated attempts of the six states of Zhou to unite against the aggressive expansionism of the Kingdom of Qin,

which had already succeeded in massively expanding to the south, west, and had been incessantly pushing east into the Yellow River Valley. No matter how they tried, however, the mutual distrust, suspicions, and backstabbing among the Zhou vassal kingdoms, not to mention Qin's own web of alliances specifically aimed at weakening its potential enemies, precluded any lasting defensive alliance. We finished off on this note with a spectacular implosion of the final alliance between Han and Wei against Qin in 294 BCE, who exploited its enemies' differences to seize the bulk of both territories. This episode, the first of two parts, we look at the final act of the Warring States period, beginning with the Qin and Qi agreeing to stay out of one another's business, thereby freeing both of the powerful states to expand in their own separate directions.

Qin, ink scarcely dry on the peace terms with Han and Weii refocused itself on the northernmost former jian state chou at the same time chi looked to its south at the minor state song which had just been cut loose from its former protective alliance with chin had existed as a political entity since the inception of the Zhou Dynasty some eight centuries prior. It had been granted to the remnants of the previous Shang Dynasty in return for their loyalty to the new regime. And up through the Eastern Zhou period, Song had remained a regional power. But when imperial control had collapsed in the spring and autumn, and especially the Warring States period, it found itself outstripped by its larger neighbors, and eventually rendered a second-tier player at best. Nevertheless, in 328 BCE, Duke Dai of Song had followed the zeitgeist of the era and proclaimed himself King Kang of Song after murdering and replacing his elder brother. The kingdom of Song had, for a time, been able to hold its own against the

periodic encroachments from the likes of Chu to the south, Wei to the west, and Qi to the north. But more and more, its continued security had come to rely on the threat of intervention by its ally to the west, Qin. But with the armistice between Qin and Qi now in place, that protection had been revoked, leaving the small state hopelessly vulnerable to Qin's depredations. And so, in 286 BCE, and with little fuss, Song was annexed into Qi through a joint strike by Qi, Wei, and Chu troops. Before we check back with the goings-on in Qin, though, I've realized that while I've devoted time to minor states like Song and Zhongshan, there's one major state of

this period I've managed to ignore almost completely until now. Yan. So let's correct that. The King of Yan controlled the northeasternmost portion of the Warring States. As of the late 4th century BCE, it had been expanding steadily northeast into the Liaodong Peninsula, just north of the modern Sino-Korean border. Liaodong had been the capital and seat of power for the Gojoseon Kingdom, but with the successful Yan invasion, the King of Gojoseon had been forced to relocate far deeper within the Korean peninsula to the south, calling his new capital Pyongyang. As Yan pushed further north, it had been forced to stretch its southward defenses thinner and thinner to maintain its strained supply lines. In 314, that had almost proved its undoing when its main antagonist, Qi, had invaded from the south and conquered almost all of the kingdom within the span of a few months.

The Qi soldiers, however, enjoyed themselves a bit too freely with the Yan population, and they took liberties with their people and property, engendering their hatred. This culminated in a popular uprising against the occupiers that ousted the Qi forces and restored the kingdom of Yan to its rightful heir. The newly crowned King Zhao capitalized on the popular resentment of Qi and his people's momentum by forging an alliance with Qin, Han, and Wei for a joint invasion of Qi itself. The strike force took less than a year to break the Qi army's defensive lines and seize all but two of its cities. But like the near-destruction of Yan, this too was not to last. The youthful King Zhao died suddenly and mysteriously, and accusations of sinister motives, assassination, and treachery generated a succession crisis in the Yan court, forcing its armies to pull back

from the brink of victory and restoring the previous borders between the two states. In a period of only two years, Qi and Yan had taken turns occupying and almost destroying each other, and the end result was exactly zero gain for either kingdom. While the result of this war between Qi and Yan was lackluster, it does serve as an early example of the changing pace and scale of warfare in the late Warring States period, which is to say, bigger, faster, stronger, and deadlier. So, back west to the kingdom of Qin'in han and wei were pretty well down for the count and ch'u had been thrown into disorder when its capital yin had been captured in two seventy eight of the Zhou Empire, Zhao. Though on a map, the two states shared a small border, the ground situation made an invasion of Zhao a far less simple endeavor. Due to the exceedingly rough nature of the border regions

between Qin and the states to its east, the only real avenue for a sizable force into Zhao would be through the Changping Pass of Xiangdang Prefecture, an area controlled by Han. The Qin military formed its battle plans, and in 265 launched its massive invasion of the already crippled Han. Like Qin's own defensively fortified pass at Hangu, attacking Changping directly would have been suicidal. Instead, the Qin military spent the following four years meticulously isolating the entire prefecture from the rest of Han by capturing the main roads and garrisons surrounding it. It was slow, but effective, and the Changping garrison faced

defeat through simple starvation if nothing changed. In all likelihood, the king of Qin either expected Han to do nothing and allow the region to fall in due time, or just cede it outright to spare the lives of his soldiers, and cede the territory the king of Han did, just not to Qin. Intuiting Qin's real objective, and knowing his army could not possibly hold the area for much longer, he instead offered the entirety of Shandong Prefecture to the King of Zhao, which simultaneously spared his soldiers' lives and extended a colossal middle finger to the King of Qin in the process. King Xiaocheng of Zhao gladly accepted Han's gift, guaranteed safe passage for the evacuating soldiers, and then rushed his own armies in to re-fortify Changping Pass before the Qin mounted their own assault.

To command the critical pass, he dispatched his greatest general, Lin Po, one of the four great generals of the warring states period. In 262 BCE, General Lian scouted out the Qin formations and his forces engaged in several minor skirmishes. These gave the Zhao general the information he needed to form his own strategy, and he concluded that meeting the invaders in a head-on combat would be disadvantageous. Instead, if he could not guarantee victory on the field, he would block Changping with a network of forts and just wait the Qin out. Mighty as it was, war operations were still enormously taxing on any state, and those costs rose exponentially the longer the supply chains needed to be. Thus, the fortress network was completed in 260, and it was, by all accounts, an unambiguous success. The Qin invasion was halted within the pass, and found itself frustratingly unable to

penetrate Lin Po's barrier. For three years, the Qin army probed at the Changping Pass, looking for any weakness to exploit, and amazingly managed to break through the Zhao defensive network only once, and that at such tremendous cost that it could neither advance nor even fortify its own position behind the Zhao lines, and was ultimately forced to withdraw. But back in the Zhao capital, Handan, King Xiaocheng was having his ear thoroughly bent by all the wrong people. While the siege of Changping dragged on, in his favor, mind you, the Zhao court had been heavily infiltrated by the Qin spy network. Inside Handan, the Qin agents had spared no expense in bribing the king's officials and courtiers to voice their concerns and speak ill of Lin Po's progress, or in their words, lack thereof. With time, the king himself, who it should be noted hadn't really been fully on board

with General Lin's defensive plan to begin with, grew more and more dissatisfied with the cautious, passive nature of waiting for Qin to simply tire itself out. Instead, he grew increasingly convinced that his general was too cowardly and too old to be in command of such an important operation, or to effectively win the war, a feeling the agents provocateur within Handan were only too happy to encourage. Ultimately, the king of Zhao would recall his famed general and replace him with Zhao Guo, the young and reckless son of another famous general of the era, Zhao Shi. According to the more legendary tellings, Zhao Shi had known before his death that his

son would bring ruin on any army he commanded, and so on his deathbed made his wife swear that she would never allow their son to lead an army, for fear that his failure would stain the honor of his entire clan. But the king of Zhao would hear nothing of such objections, certainly not from a woman, and appointed the youth in spite of his mother's insistent refusals. She was able, however, to extract from the king a guarantee that whatever the outcome of his decision, the Zhao family name would not be held responsible nor punished. Quite the vote of confidence, Mom and Dad. I do hope Zhao Kuo surveyed the carefully laid plans and fortifications of his predecessor Lian Po, and promptly discarded the whole idea.

Where was the glory in hiding behind fortress walls and waiting for the enemy to just run out of food? Thus, he began recruiting and reinforcing his army in preparation to decisively end the war. But unbeknownst to Zhao Kuo or any of his officers, the King of Qin had also been shuffling his army's command chain, and had secretly installed General Bai Qi to finish off this adversary for good. For those of you who remembered the stakes on Bai Qi from the last episode,

feel free to place your bets. By July of 260, Zhao's army had swelled to between four and five hundred thousand soldiers. Feeling he had the initiative, Zhao led an assault on the main Qin encampment. General Bai Qi countered with a maneuver that would be made famous in Roman history a mere forty-four years later by Hannibal of Carthage during the Second Punic War at the Battle of Cani. Upon meeting the attacking Zhao force in the field, Bai Qi allowed his center to give ground back towards their defensive fortifications. Zhao Kuo, sensing impending victory, pressed after the retreating Qin center to divide

and smash the enemy army. But in the wings of the Qin army, 25,000 cavalry and some 5,000 horseback archers had held their ground and waited for Bai Qi's signal. It came when the Qin infantry reached their defensive lines and turned to re-engage the pursuing Zhao army. The cavalry broke off from their holding pattern on the wings, and just like that, the Zhao military found itself immediately and completely encircled. Already fully engaged with the suddenly attacking again Qin infantry, the Zhao were mowed down by the repeated cavalry charges from their rear and flanks, while the 5,000 archers picked them off at will from the perimeter. In the chaos, Bai Qi's infantry managed to split the Zhao army down its center and cut off its supply lines entirely.

General Zhao found himself, quite unexpectedly, unable to attack, unable to retreat, and really only able to do one thing, take the portion of his army still under his command and make a break for a nearby hill to dig in. There, all they could do was watch as the other portion of their army was cut down where they stood and just wait for assistance to arrive. Unfortunately for Zhao Kuo and the men under his command, the Kingdom of Zhao had earned itself quite the reputation over the course of the Warring States period. And not a good one. It was considered a consummate opportunist by the other states, flitting from anti-Qin

to pro-Qin alliances every time the winds shifted direction. In short, not to be trusted, and certainly no great friend worth sticking one's own neck out for. Though the King of Zhao sent envoys to the courts of both Chu and Qi to beg their support in breaking free his encircled and besieged army, neither state felt much like lifting a finger. All the while, King Zhao Xiang of Qin took note of this other state's responses to Zhao's overtures, or, more accurately, their telling lack of responses. Comfortable in the knowledge that there was no relief force being mustered and no alliance being forged to assist Zhao or attack Qin,

he took the opportunity to mobilize yet more of his forces to pour into Changping. The recruits, overwhelmingly raw peasants granted one grade of noble rank in order to report to the battlefield, bolstered Bai Qi's army to more than 650,000 soldiers, or at least according to Sima Qian. For 45 days, Zhao Kuo's force made several increasingly desperate attempts to break out of the Qin army's encirclement as their food and water supplies dwindled. But on the forty-sixth day, Zhao Kuo and a cadre of his best men were killed by Qin archers while probing once again for an escape route. Their commander and best chance of survival slain, the remainder of the Zhao army surrendered to Bai Qi later that day. Unfortunately for them, this particular battle was where Bai Qi earned his nickname, the Butcher of Men. He felt that, being in such hostile country, his army could not take the risk of such a large number of prisoners getting any bright ideas about revolting. So, to both spread

the word of his absolute victory at Changping, as well as sow terror of what was coming for the remaining inhabitants of Zhao, 240 of the youngest captives were released. As for the hundreds of thousands left, he ordered massive pits dug and the entire Zhao army to be cast into and buried alive in them. Sima Qian estimates that between the Battle of Chongping and its horrifying aftermath, upwards of 450,000 soldiers from Zhao perished. And though there are compelling reasons to suspect historian Sima to be, oh, let's call it stretching the battlefield

casualties for his own purposes, both to make the story more juicy and to, more importantly, highlight the barbaric depravity of a China divided against itself, the archaeological evidence of the battlefield speaks volumes. To this day, the site of that battle regularly turns up new human remains and relics, frequently entombed in large numbers in massive burial pits. Whether or not Sima's estimate is anything approaching accurate, Bai Qi's infamous mass execution was no less horrific for it. Following up on his victory at Changping, General Bai was now free to march his

army uncontested through Shangdang Prefecture and straight to the Zhao capital city, Handan. But the Qin army had been exhausted by the already protracted war, and it should be said that though victorious at Changping, they had also lost a sizable number of soldiers, as many as 250,000. Moreover, the defenders of Handan mounted a tremendous resistance to the besiegers, and in the end, even General Bai Qi was unable to storm the city. Thus, they settled in for yet another nice long siege. For his part, the king of Zhao was terrified at what looked to be the doom of his kingdom. Though his advisors strenuously opposed the decision, he attempted to offer

six of his cities to Qin to end the bloodbath. But between bureaucratic bungling and the very people the king relied on to relay his offer being adamantly opposed to it, the siege of Handan was drawn out for another two years. All the while, envoys and missives were being sent out in droves to Zhao's neighbors, continuing to beg anyone who might listen for aid. Back outside the walls of Handan, General Bai determined he'd had enough of siege operations, and resolved to return to Qin. Thus, he handed off command of the army to the first of a series of replacement commanders, and headed home. This turned out to spare his battlefield record a blemish, as finally in 257 BCE, possibly just sick of listening to Zhao continue to whine and plead,

though definitely also seeing an opportunity to stick it to an overstretched and fatigued Qin army, Wei and Xu joined the war to drive the besiegers out of Zhao. Even Qin, mighty as it was, was not immune to the enormous crippling expenses of maintaining a war hundreds of miles from their borders. As such, both the army and the populace back in Qin were largely exhausted by the effort, especially one that continued to be going absolutely nowhere against the altogether far too stubborn Zhao capital. So when the Chu and Wei armies showed up itching for a fight, well, that was just about all the excuse the Qin army needed to throw their hands up, abandon the siege, and head home. for their effort against the spent qin military both ch'u and wei managed to recover portions of their former territory and zhao was given a stay of execution for now not been quite able to seize that final objective of ending Zhao altogether, from a strategic

standpoint, even counting the territories restored to Chu and Wei, the Qin war against Zhao was a smashing success. It had gained huge tracts of territory from both Han and Zhao, and something even more important. Though it's frequently breezed by as almost a historical footnote, part of Qin's successful push into the core of China, a stepping stone towards what was fast becoming its larger, ultimate goal in all of this conflict, was to end the figurehead Zhou dynasty once and for all. This was symbolically important, because remember, the Mandate of Heaven clearly stated that there could never be two legitimate dynastic

rulers of China. So long as the Zhou Dynasty existed, however neutered it might be, the King of Qin would always technically either be a playing second fiddle or simply a usurper. The one loophole in the Mandate's logic was, of course, if the sitting dynasty was shown to have lost the Mandate by, say, losing the throne, then it would be granted to the most worthy successor, meaning the guy who took it. Thus, in 256 BCE, the armies of Qin seized Chengzhou, the imperial capital, to depose and execute King Nan of Zhou.

Now, a successor was safely evacuated and thereafter declared King Hui, but the capital was occupied and the mandate of heaven clearly lost. The so-called King Hui of Zhou would hold on to his claim and not much else until 249 when the Qin armies returned to finish the job, wiping out his tiny holdfast and extinguishing the line of Zhou finally and completely. The long, slow decay of the Zhou dynasty was over, but the War of Qin unification had only just begun. In Part 2, we will at last conclude the Warring States period

and learn how King Yingzheng, who will by the end be known as Qin Shi Huang, put the Qin in China. Thank you for listening.