The History of China - #25 - W. Han 3: The Bloody Empress

Episode Date: June 8, 2014

With Han's first Emperor, Gaozu, dead, his wife the first Empress of China Lü Zhi plans on making a few... *alterations* to the goings on of court life. And she doesn't care who she has cut the arms and legs off of to achieve her goals. 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. you've made it this far and are still interested in what lies beyond, I hope you'll consider becoming our patron here at The History of China. Again, our Patreon address is www.patreon.com slash thehistoryofchina, or you can find that link as well as a direct PayPal link at thehistoryofchina.wordpress.com. Thank you very much, and enjoy the show! Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 23, The Bloody Empress Last time, the Han Dynasty was established under Emperor Gaozu. His wife, the first Empress of China, Lu Zhi, proved herself to be both a capable administrator of state affairs, while Gaozu was snuffing out crisis after crisis over the course of his reign, and an unforgivingly cruel executioner of those who stood in her family's way,

as two generals of the Chu-Han contingency had already learned the hard way. This time, with the death of Han's first emperor, Gao Zu, his and Empress Lu's son, Crown Prince Liu Ying of Han, will ascend to the imperial throne. But, in truth, it will be his mother who seizes the reins of power for herself. Prince Liu Ying, in spite of his late father's attempt to oust him in favor of his younger half-brother, was enthroned in 195 BCE as Emperor Hui of Han. At only 15 years old, though, he was deemed too young to take full command of the empire.

That, also with his temperament of being tolerant, weak--willed and a little too kind for his own good it wasn't for nothing after all that his father had tried to disinherit the boy thus it was his mother lu zhi who had been honored with the title of huang tai hou or empress dowager who would become the power behind the throne, and she had a score to settle. Among all of her late husband's companions, there was one in particular who had managed to really, really get under the Empress Dowager's skin, and that was Concubine Qi, the woman who had been the favored consort of Gaozu in his later years, and whose son had been the waiting replacement of the Emperor's heir. As both competitor for her husband's affections, and the person who had threatened her and her own son's position within the royal household, Empress Liu had developed a seething hatred for Qi, and planned to settle this business once and for all. Gao Zu, in the aftermath of his abortive attempts to install his and Qi's son as his heir,

had not been blind to the potential fallout and the danger the twelve-year-old boy prince now faced. As such, he had named the prince Liu Rui as the ruling prince of Zhao, and on his deathbed ordered the boy to report to the district, which is modern Hebei province, safely out of the capital. As protection, he had appointed his trusted advisor, Zhou Chang, to watch over the boy and spare him from the Empress's wrath. Fatefully, Concubine Qi, unwilling to leave her beloved Emperor's side, would not accompany her son, Tu Zhao, and stayed behind in Chang'an.

With Gao Jun now dead and in full control of the Han Empire, Empress Dowager Lu knew just what she wanted to do with her long-time rival Qi. Almost immediately, Qi was arrested and taken into custody. The Empress began with humiliating the former imperial concubine, stripping her of her status, and ordering her head shaved and to be dressed in prisoner's clothing. Qi would spend her days, at least for now, pressed into hard labor, milling rice grains like some common peasant. With the troublesome mother now in her rightful place, Empress Dowager Lu turned to capture the son, Prince Liu Rui, in Zhao. She repeatedly sent for the boy,

but time and again, her missives were refused by Zhou Chang, who had been specifically ordered to keep Ruyi away from the capital. Empress Liu managed to skirt this particular roadblock thanks to her personal friendship with Zhou Chang. Zhou would not knowingly give up his charge, but neither would he refuse the Empress's request to meet with her personally. Changing tactics, she summoned Zhou himself to the capital. Zhou Chang would come to no harm. After all, the two held each other in very high regard, and the administrator had been among those backing Lu's sons claimed to the throne. But with no one left in Zhou to block the missives to Prince Rui,

it wasn't long before the Empress was finally able to bait him into her clutches. For what it's worth, upon arriving in Chang'an, Ruyi's half-brother, Emperor Hui, did everything his 15-year-old puppet position allowed him to protect Prince Ruyi from the wrathful Empress Dowager. And for a time at least, it did work. As Prince Rui approached the capital, Hui intercepted his younger brother at Ba Shang and took him into his personal custodianship. The pair dined and slept in the same room,

with Rui never out of the Emperor's protection and any food or drink inspected by Hui himself for poisons. Empress Liu, fearful that any attempt on Rui's life might also wound or kill her own son was forced to put her plans on hold while she figured out how to get around her son's guardianship itself. As written by Sima Qian, In one early morning in the twelfth month of the first year of Emperor Hui, the emperor went on a hunting trip. This time, Liu Rui was left alone because he could not wake up early. Emperor Hui supposed his mother would not plot against Liu Rui as several months had passed without any occurrence. Nevertheless, Empress Dowager Liu had an assassin force venom down Liu Rui's throat.

End quote. To follow up this cold-blooded murder, she once again turned to the final loose string, the stripped, humiliated, and tormented former concubine Qi. Empress Liu, it would turn out, was far from done with her. She ordered the poor woman's arms and legs amputated, her eyes gouged out and her tongue cut off, and placed her in either a pigsty or a lavatory and fed animal scraps. Several days thereafter, she called upon her son to witness what she referred to as ren zhi, or human swine. Upon gazing on the tortured, mutilated, and filth-covered form that lay before him, writhing in pig-muck, he realized to his horror that it was his brother's own mother,

the brother who had mysteriously disappeared just days before. The shock and revulsion of this turn would deeply affect young Emperor Hui, who exclaimed, quote, this is not something done by a human! As the Empress Dowager's son, I'll never be able to rule the empire. End quote. He became ill under the stress, which persisted

for more than a year, and during which he relinquished virtually all control of the empire to his mother, Empress Dowager Lu. From then on, Emperor Hui, once again according to Sima Qian, quote, the emperor was so sick of his mother's cruelty that he virtually relinquished his authority and indulged in carnal pleasures, end quote. Conquipan Qi would die under torture in 194 BCE, but the Empress Dowager wasn't nearly finished with her brutal house cleaning.

In the winter of 194, the late Emperor Gaozu's eldest son, Liu Fei, the Prince of Qi, visited Chang'an. And to clear up any confusion as to why Liu Fei hadn't, as the eldest, been named the heir to the throne in the first place, it was a question of mothers. Liu Fei's mother was the Lady Cao, and the Empress's son took precedence over any of Gaozu's other concubines. The Prince of Qi was well received by his younger brother, and the pair attended a welcoming feast hosted by the Empress Dowager. In keeping with the filial piety owed from a younger brother to an elder brother, Emperor Hui treated Liu Fei with with great respect going so far as to seat the prince ahead of him at the dinner-table this breach of table her servants to poison the wine about to be served to Liu Fei. When the envenomed drink was in the Prince of Qi's hand, the Empress Dowager toasted him and bid him drink.

Emperor Hui, however, was well aware of his mother's fondness for poisoning his half-brothers. Before Liu Fei could drink his wine, the Emperor snatched the glass from his hand and lifted it as if to drink himself. Terrified, the empress dowager leapt up and knocked the glass from her son's hand, betraying her own devious plot. Prince Leo, now well aware of what had almost just become of him, apologized profusely to the seething empress dowager for committing whatever he'd done wrong to make her want him dead. In exchange for safe and immediate passage out of the capital and away from Empress Crazy, he offered to give up one of his prefectures from his principality,

to Lu Jia's daughter, Princess Yuan of Lu. The Empress Dowager accepted the apology and allowed the Prince of Qi to leave with his life worst welcoming feast ever but there was one more of gao tzu's good graces of lu zhi that is until he was caught by his wife having an affair you's wife heart-broken and vindictive reported to auntie lu that her adulterous husband was plotting a rebellion The Empress Dowager summoned Prince Liu You to the capital, and, him blissfully unaware of the nature of the summons, You actually went. He was arrested, prisoned, and deprived of food, eventually starving to death when he could not bring himself to suicide. For a while after that, things settled down considerably in Chang'an. Until in 192 BCE, the empress was delivered a missive from the absolute ruler of the northern Xiongnu Empire, Ba Ter Chanyu. The Chanyu wrote, I am a lonesome ruler, born in marshes and raised in plains populated by livestock. I visited your border numerous times and wanted to tour China.

Your Majesty is now alone and living in solitude. Since both of us are not happy and have nothing to entertain ourselves, I'm willing to use what I possess to exchange for what you lack. End quote. Okay, so apart from it sounding like it could have been pulled directly from an OKCupid profile, the proposal, if it could even be called as such, was considered highly indecent by the sensibilities of the Han court, and especially the Empress Dowager.

Clearly, it had been worded to both mock and intimidate the mere woman leader of China. And if we know anything about Lu Zhi, we know that she wasn't the type to let an insult slide. The Empress Dowager immediately called for a court session, in which her generals, virtually climbing over one another to outdo the next, advised the Empress to rally an army and exterminate the Xiongnu and its vile leader once and for all. Knowing how well it had all played out the last time the Han had stepped onto Xiongnu territory, it was fortunate indeed that before she could officially declare war against the Northern Empire, an attendant named Ji Bu recognized the folly of what was about to happen.

He spoke up, pointing out the enormous elephant in the room that the hsiung niu army was much more powerful than the han could hope to counter and attacking the empire which had already effectively rendered them a tributary state would be tantamount to suicide silence, and the warmongering ceased at once. Lu Zhi, for once allowing cooler heads to prevail, drafted not a declaration of war, but a personal and humble reply to Ba Terchanyu's proposition. Your lordship does not forget our land and writes a letter to us, we fear. I retreat to preserve myself. I'm old and frail, I'm losing my hair and teeth, and I struggle to maintain balance when I move. Your lordship has heard wrongly.

You shouldn't defile yourself. Our people did not offend you and should be pardoned. We've two imperial carriages and eight fine steeds, which we graciously offer to your lordship. End quote. While she was not willing to marry the Xiongnu leader, she would still continue the Heqin policy of intermarriage between Han princesses and Xiongnu chieftains, and would continue to pay the annual tribute of rice, liquor, and silks in exchange for peace. In 191 BCE, Emperor Hui was 19 years old, and his mother had decided it was high time for him to get married.

Lu Zhi had the girl already picked out for her little boy, his own niece, the daughter of his sister Princess Yuan of Lu, Zhang Yan. The two were wed, and ultimately, the Empress Dowager would advise her granddaughter Xiaohui that she ought to adopt eight children from the Emperor's other concubines, and while she was at it, have their mothers killed. There is some dispute, it should be noted, over whether the adopted children were of Emperor Hui, or just chosen from unlucky families. Traditional histories assert the latter, but more recent historians gravitate towards the former, stating that there was no mention of the children's father's fates, and it would have been illogical to kill the mothers while leaving the fathers alive.

Unless, of course, the father was the emperor himself. After a reign of only eight years and a marriage of less than four, Emperor Hui succumbed to an unknown illness and died at only 22 years old. And that meant that his eldest son, and adopted son of the suddenly Empress Dowager Xiao Hui, Crown Prince Liu Gong, would succeed him to the throne as Emperor Qian Shao. Unfortunately, very little is known about Liu Gong, neither his true parentage nor even his date of birth, although given that his father was 22 at the time of his own death, a little basic math puts the crown prince at somewhere less than 10 at the time of his crowning. He will, like his father before him, be a complete puppet. So much so,

in fact, that many Han histories don't even bother to include him in their list of actual dynastic monarchs. The one pulling the strings, as ever, was the now Grand Empress Dowager, or Tai Huang Tai Hou, Lu Zhi. The now 50-year-old grandmother from hell openly presided over all state affairs. Since the reign of her late husband, the law of the land had stipulated that apart from the existing vassal kings, only members of the imperial Liu clan could be elevated to princedom. A rule Lu Zhi herself had had a hand in crafting. But she found that such a restriction no longer suited her desires, and so began to install some of her own kinsmen as princes. In the summer of 187, her daughter, Princess Yuan of Lu, died.

Her age is unknown, but she was Hui's older sister, placing her probably in the mid-to-late 20s or early 30s, perhaps. Yuan's son, Zhang Yan, note the conspicuously not Liu surname, was named the new Prince of Liu. In the subsequent three years, yet more positions would be filled by Liu clan members, rather than Liu's. All of this was leading up to 184, when, in a completely unprecedented move, the Grand Empress Dowager named her younger sister Lu Shu the Marquise of Lingguang, a separate fife from her husband. It was around this time that the adolescent Emperor Qian Xiao found out that he had been

adopted, and moreover, Mommy Dearest had put his birth mother to death years prior. Qian Xiao confronted Empress Dowager Xiao Hui, foolishly threatening her that when he grew up, she would pay for her crimes. But when the Grand Empress Dowager learned that her 14-year-old grandson was threatening his adopted mother, her granddaughter, I mean, talk about a weird family tree, she did the perfectly rational thing and put the teenage emperor in time-out, in a dungeon, in secret. The Grand Empress Dowager publicly proclaimed that, sadly, the emperor had fallen grievously ill

and would be unable to see anyone until he recovered. As the days of confinement turned into weeks and then months, the official line eventually became that, sadly, the Emperor's ailment had caused him to develop an incurable psychosis. As such, kindly grandmother Lu Zhi recommended that her stricken grandson be deposed and replaced with his younger half-brother, which again, sadly, necessitated the 14-year-old's death in 184 BCE. Indeed, someone in the palace could properly be said to have an incurable psychosis, and she was about to install her third puppet on the throne. It would be Prince Liu Hong, the young Marquis of Xiangcheng

and Prince of Hengshan, who was named as Qian Shao's successor. And he ascended to the throne following the death of his half-brother in 184 as Emperor Huo Shao of Han. As testament to the absolute impotence of this string of child emperors, though. The long-standing tradition of resetting the calendar to year zero with each new emperor was not observed with Huo Xiao's enthronement, meaning that instead of marking his reign as the first year of Huo Xiao, it was instead recorded as the fourth year of Qian Xiao. The truth of the matter, though, is that no matter how one slices it, it was in fact the eleventh year of lu chih hou hsiao however would turn out to be the last of the grand empress dowager's puppet rulers

where in the autumn of one eighty b c e the sixty-one-year-old monarch would catch ill and die after some fifteen years of bloody iron-fisted rule over Han China. Having never remarried, she was interred within her late husband Gao Zu's tomb, but her specter of carnage was not yet quite finished with the Han royal household. Emperor Huo Xiao continued to have virtually no authority, even following the Grand Empress Dowager's death, because her Lu clan now controlled most of the key positions within the Han power structure. Indeed, Lu Zhi's will stipulated that the young emperor wed the daughter of her nephew, Lu Lu, and proclaim her empress. And from her deathbed, she had installed Lu Lu and Lu Qian in charge of the imperial guard and the government itself. In the period immediately following her death, it became a widely held belief that she had intended her own clan

to overthrow the royal Liu family from within and assume imperial power for themselves. As these disturbing rumors circulated, several of the imperial officials, led by Chen Ping and Zhuo Bo, but also including several members of the Liu family itself, formed a cabal aimed at stopping the Liu clan's perceived conspiracy in its tracks. They formed a plan in which the Prince of Qi, Liu Xiang, would lead an army against the capital, while the commanders of the imperial guard, Liu Zhang and Liu Xingzhu,

would persuade their Imperial soldiers to rise against the Liu family within the capital. If successful, they planned to dethrone the spineless Emperor Huo Xiao and install Prince Liu Shang as the new Han monarch. The best-laid plans of mice and lios, however. In the autumn of 180, Liu Shang began his campaign against the capital by seizing the nearby principality of Langye. In response, Liu Chen dispatched his commander, Guan Ying, to bring the rebellious Prince of Qi to justice. General Guan, however, was in no mood to fight Prince Liu, and in fact sympathized with his cause, having decided that the Liu clan was indeed up to no good and ought to be stopped as the two Lu to give up their power voluntarily,

namely, to return to their own principalities and turn over their positions to the ringleaders Chen Ping and Zhou Bo. Liu Lu quickly saw the wisdom of walking away from what was quickly becoming an unwinnable situation, but found himself stymied by his own clan, who could not reach a consensus about whether or not to allow the power transfer. Peaceful transference of power seemingly now out of the question, the conspirators turned to drastic, violent action to achieve their objectives. Li Ji and Liu Jie issued a forged imperial decree, ordering the northern division of imperial guards, commanded by Lu Lu, to be turned over to Zhuo Bo. After convincing Liu Liu that the order was genuine, they required the division to reaffirm their loyalty to the imperial Liu family. All of this had transpired under the nose of Commander Liu Chan, and when he,

none the wiser, attempted to enter the imperial palace the following day, he and his bodyguards were trapped in the courtyard and killed. By now firmly convinced that the Lu family had been attempting to overthrow the Imperial family from within, over the course of the next few days the remainder of Grand Empress Dowager Lu Zhou's clan was hunted down and exterminated to the last person. In a meeting following the Grizzly slaughter, and with the capital under their control, the heads of the Loyalist conspiracy met to discuss what steps they ought to take next. It was at this meeting that the accusation was first officially leveled

that in fact none of the late Emperor Hui's children were of his line, and that Empress Zhang Yan had adopted them all after killing their respective birth mothers. All at the Empress Dowager Liu's instigation, of course. It became clear that beyond the concern over bloodlines, it was a blood debt the group was truly concerned with. The imperial children, they feared, might grow up and seek revenge against those who had killed their mother's family. As such, they resolved to replace the adolescent Emperor Huoxiao altogether. Though there was some initial dispute over who ought to claim the throne, the Gabal settled

on the sitting Emperor's uncle, Gaozu's oldest surviving son, the 23-year-old Prince Liu Heng of Dai. Resolved, they sent secret messages to Dai to invite Prince Hung to become the new Han Emperor. Upon receiving the letter of invitation, Prince Hung's advisors were justifiably suspicious. After three successive puppet emperors dancing to the tune of the murderous Empress Dowager, out of the blue some shadowy new group was just offering liu hung the throne they were concerned that true to the form of the situation and the opportunity it presented. He believed that in spite of the revolving door of emperors as of late, for the empire as a whole, the Han dynasty was still a pillar of stability and justice,

and maintained widespread support. The people, therefore, would be unsupportive of any attempted overthrow of the popular royal family. Moreover, given that there were many principalities outside the capital still held by members of the royal family, any cabal of court officials would be unable to usurp imperial power, even if that was their goal. Interest peaked, but still suspicious. Prince Liu Heng sent his uncle, Bo Zhao, to Chang'an to meet with the conspirators and determine their true intentions. Administrator Zhou met Uncle Bo upon the latter's arrival, and in subsequent talks, Zhou guaranteed that he and his fellow officials had been absolutely sincere in their offer

and held no designs on controlling the prince once he was in power. Bo Zhao was convinced of the offer and sent word to Prince Heng, urging him to accept it and take up the imperial mantle. Liu Heng set out for the capital, and upon arrival was greeted by his soon-to-be subjects. At an evening ceremony held at the Dai Principality's mission in the capital, the officials, led by Chen Ping, officially offered the throne to Prince Heng. The prince, as was expected of him, declined the offer once, twice, thrice, and four times,

before finally accepting it with great humility and formally ascending to the throne. That same night, Liu Xingzhu forcibly evicted former Emperor Huoo from the imperial palace and welcomed the new emperor one of han with great pageantry for a time huo shao now again only liu gong would be kept at the ministry of palace supplies which sounds an awful lot like the imperial broom closet. But after some hemming and hawing over what to do with the former puppet king, he was at last executed later that year, along with his wife, Empress Liu. The Han dynasty had been buckling under the stranglehold Empress Liu Zhi had held it in for more than 15 years. But as bloody as it was, and whether or not one ascribes to the accusations leveled by

the anti-Lu clan conspirators that they had designs on the throne itself, the coup d'etat had, in many respects, a regenerative effect on the Han dynasty. By reaffirming that power lay directly within the emperor, the Lu clan disturbance, as it would be known, prevented the imminent devolution of imperial authority to court officials and the individual territories, as had befallen the Zhou dynasty centuries before. At least as important, though, was that its new ruler, Emperor Wen, proved himself as an exemplary monarch, and he and his son's reigns marked as one of the highest points of the Han dynasty.

As for the fate of the Liu clan, they would serve as an abject lesson and cautionary tale throughout Chinese history to the families of future empresses, to not assume too much power and to emperors not to allow them to do so. Next time, we forge ahead into one of the truly golden periods within the Han Dynasty, and Imperial China as a whole, the reigns of Emperor Wen, and later his son, Emperor Jing of Han. Thank you for listening. 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

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