The History of China - #29 - W. Han 7: Every Direction But The Sea

Episode Date: July 6, 2014

In this last of three parts of Wu of Han, with the back of the once-mighty Xiongnu Empire broken, Emperor Wu's Han turns to the South, North, and West to gobble up most of its neighbor states in an orgy of expansion. At home, the aging Wu must contend with peasant uprisings, witchcraft directed against him, and his own building paranoia... any of which could destabilize that which he's spent a lifetime building. 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. This episode is brought to you by you. Through the generosity of our phenomenal listeners, the history of China is able to continue exploring the tremendous story of the Middle Kingdom. Special thanks this week to Patreon patron Daniel Crawford, who is helping us with a per-episode contribution. To Daniel and all of our other contributors, both through Patreon and PayPal, thank you all so much. If you, too too think that our show is worth a dollar, or to post suggestions

or questions, or simply would like to join the online fun, please go to thehistoryofchina.wordpress.com where you'll find out how you can support the podcast. Regardless, please continue to enjoy, and be sure to go to the History of China's iTunes and Stitcher pages and rank us highly. Your ranks are very helpful, and we can always use more. Thanks again very much, and enjoy the show. Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 27, Every Direction But the Sea Over the course of episodes 25 and 26, we've covered the early life and reign of Emperor Wu of Han. This included the Chinese's initial exploration and contact with the kingdoms of Central Asia through explorer Zhang Qian,

and later, the forceful seizure of the westward Hexi Corridor and shattering of the Xiongnu Empire's stranglehold on Han by 119 BCE. This time, we look at the other goings-on of Wu, the war-likes, expanding empire to the northeast, west, and south, even as it continued to struggle against the northern horsemen, as well as Wu's later reign and eventual death. The autonomous kingdoms to the south of Han China, specifically Nan Yue, which is today northern Vietnam and Guangdong, had long been viewed unfavorably by Wu and his court, since they had started causing trouble from virtually the outset of the emperor's reign. Though the king of Nanyue continued to pledge himself and his kingdom as a vassal to the imperial throne in Chang'an, he had earned a reputation for unreliability, and was viewed from the capital, at best, as a fair-weather friend.

Emperor Wu had initiated several early attempts to covertly steer non-Yue's neighbors into an alliance against the southern kingdom, but ultimately had abandoned such efforts because of incessant native revolts, not to mention the resources being needed to conduct the massive northern campaigns. It wasn't until Emissary Zhang Qian's return from the west in 122, and specifically his report on the distant realms of Shandu, or India, and Anxi, Parthia, that once again fired up Wu's interest in the unruly south. Though the Heshi Corridor was well on its way to being opened up for the Han, Wu became convinced that control of the south might provide an easier and shorter path to these supposedly

fabulously wealthy western empires. Though Wu did not at that point have the free resources to force the issue, he did dispatch ambassadors throughout the southern kingdoms to persuade their monarchs to bend the knee to Han. That scheme wouldn't come to fruition, however, for another decade. In 112, a coup d'etat led by an independence faction deposed Nan Yue's King Zhaohao shing and his mother the queen dowager both were closely tied to the han imperial court and indeed the queen dowager was ethnically chinese and had come from chang'an itself years prior were in favor of full incorporation into the empire rather than vassal status. The rebels arrested and executed both the king and his mother, prompting a retaliatory strike from Emperor Wu. The Han military launched a five-pronged invasion of Nanyue, easily overwhelming its defenders in capturing the capital, Panyu, which is modern Guangzhou.

In 111 BCE, the entire territory was annexed by the throne and restructured into 10 prefectures. That brings us to Nanyue's neighbor to the east, Minyue, or what is now Fujian Province along China's southeast coast, which remember had been partially conquered and divided into two halves 25 years prior in 135 BCE, after it had continually attempted to invade its neighboring vassal kingdoms. As of now, two separate but co-equal kings ruled each half. On the heels

of Han's almost trivially easy conquest of Nanyue, however, one of Minyue's co-kings made what was almost certainly the dumbest decision of his life. Fearing that his half-kingdom would be next on Han's target list for conquest, he decided to preemptively strike at the Han military. And while his surprise attack did succeed in capturing several towns in the former non-US state, ultimately his efforts did little more than ensure that his kingdom was the next target for Han invasion and annexation. So, yeah, whoops. Rather than outright invading, however, Emperor Wu's generals put pressure on the other co-king of Mingyue to take care of the problem himself, not so subtly hinting that any military invasion of one half of the kingdom would,

you know, probably spill over into the other half as well. The rebellious king was assassinated by his cohort in 110. Though older historical documents, such as the Shi Ji, tell of the entire population of Minyue being then forcibly removed and moved inland as punishment for the state's transgressions, more recent archaeological findings within Fujian contradict that story. Contrary to the traditional telling, there appears to be no evidence of either a mass abandonment of the area, nor a subsequent colonization by ethnically Han peoples. Regardless, to round out the conquest of southern Asia, in 109, Han conquered the kingdom of Dian,

which is eastern Yunnan province. That same year, Emperor Wu's attention would be drawn once again northward, this time not to the steppes of Central Asia, but to the Gojoseon Kingdom of the northern Korean peninsula. And please, forgive the detour out of China, but a bit of background is required to really understand what had led up to Emperor Wu's invasion in 109. Nearly a century prior, a Han general named Wei Man had led several thousand followers into exile following his state's defeated rebellion against Emperor Gaozu, the first emperor of Han. The band of refugees made their way to Gojoseon and pleaded with its king Jun for asylum. It was granted, but not long thereafter, sometime between 194 and 180 BCE, General Weimeng usurped the Zhouzong throne and installed himself

as Waiman Zhouzong and his capital at Wanggomsong, often asserted especially by the North Korean sources to be modern Pyongyang, though it could possibly be further north along the Liao River within modern Liaoning Province in China. The deposed King Jun of Gojoseon is said to have fled south to the Jin state, in the southern half of the Korean peninsula, and wouldn't you know it, it's roughly modern South Korea. At the time, the Han dynasty possessed neither the internal stability nor the force projection to do much about Waymon's frivolity in Korea, and so hand-waved the whole thing by declaring that, yeah, that

was totally what they wanted and Waymon Joseon could be their quote-unquote outer subject, nominally vassalized, so long as it permitted the emissaries from Jin, the South Korean state, to pass through its territories to reach Han. Fast forwarding to 109 BCE, Waiman Joseon and Jin's relationship had, surprise, pretty much completely deteriorated. Waiman's grandson, the ruling King Ugyo, decided that he would no longer permit Jin ambassadors to reach Han through his territory. To try to resolve the issue, Emperor Wu dispatched emissary She He to negotiate right of passage. After his audience, though, King Ugyo remained unmoved and denied the Han Empire's request.

Emissary She was escorted back to the Han border, but on the way killed his escort, an assistant of the Gojo Song king. In response, the Korean king dispatched troops to execute the murderous Shi, which in turn earned the ire of Emperor Wu. This turned out to be the stated pretext for war. However, a more modern interpretation of events is that this act, unfortunate as it all was, provided little more than a convenient pretext to preemptively remove the possibility that Waiman Joseon might ally with the down-but-not-out Seongnu against the Han, or to force Joseon's capitulation and reopen trade routes with the Jin state to its south. In response, Emperor Wu launched a two-pronged invasion of the Gojoseon

kingdom. The Han force, consisting of some 50,000 soldiers, set out from Liaodong Peninsula by land and from the Qi regions of modern Shandong province across the Bohai Sea in a naval assault. In spite of the numbers arrayed against it, Joseon's capital city managed to hold out for some time, right up until three of King Eugeo's ministers defected to Han and a fourth allowed the king's assassination. Shortly thereafter, the city remain under the Han Empire's political and military domination for the following four centuries until 313 CE, when Han's waning power in the region would at last be supplanted by the Goguryeo Kingdom of southern Manchuria. Meanwhile, to the far west, the Han Empire continued to push their advantage against the once-again fractious city-states that had allied with the now-broken Xiongnu Confederacy. Han's control over the Hexi Corridor would further solidify in 108 BCE with the dual

conquests of the Luolan and Qishi kingdoms along the northern edge of the Taklamakan Desert. In 105, after decades of fruitless searching, Emperor Wu was at last able to re-establish contact with the Wusun tribe, who were discussed way back in episode 7, and for whom the explorer Zhang Qian had tried to find during his life, but to no avail. Like the Yuezhi found by Zhang Qian during his westward odyssey, the Wusun had also been displaced by Xiongnu expansionism. But unlike the Yuezhi kingdom, they turned out to be ready and willing to make the proto-Mongolians pay for their transgressions now that their base of power was broken.

Emperor Wu forged an alliance with the central Asian power by offering one of the imperial princesses, from a collateral line by the way, not one of his own daughters, to the Wusun king Kunmo. It seemed that by choice or by force, the minor states of the western regions would find themselves indelibly linked to the throne of Chang'an. Now ever since hearing Zhang Qian's reports of the great western kingdoms, Wu had been dead set on forging economic trade partnerships with the remote powers. From the Sh people, but with weak armies, and placing great value on the rich produce of China. Thus, more embassies were dispatched to Parthia, Alans, the Seleucid Empire, Chaldea, and India. As a rule, rather more than ten such missions went

forward in the course of a year, and at the least five or six." But it wasn't all sunshine and marriage alliances in the far west. Trouble flared up in 104 between Han and the Greek Ionian colonists of Dayuan, or Fergana, over a trade disagreement over horses. Han, you'll recall, had badly depleted their supply of horses during the Battle of Mobei against the Xiongnu. As much as 80% of the Han Empire's steeds had perished in the Gobi campaign due to a combination of battle, poisoned water wells, and the general rigors of the desert. And even though the Xiongnu Empire was still licking its wounds on the northern edge of the Gobi, Wu was well aware of the continued threat they posed.

So when Emperor Wu became aware of the Dayuan kingdom's hardy, strong, and curiously blood-sweating Fergana horse breed, he simply had to have them. Emperor Wu would call this stocky desert breed or heavenly horses, and he tried time and again to get the Dayuan king to agree to export them to Han China. When the Dayuan proved hesitant to give so many of their powerful horses in trade, however, negotiations broke down, culminating in the death of the Chinese emissary, a sent to arrange the trade, and the confiscation of the gold meant to pay for the transaction. As you might imagine, this did not go over well

with the Emperor Wu. He dispatched 20,000 infantry, supported by 6,000 cavalry, under the command of one of his brother-in-laws, Li Guangli, to trek to the Dayuan capital and lay its impudent king low. Unfortunately for General Li's company, they ended up making the same mistake as chang tian three decades prior and blundered straight into the deadly heart of the tclamacan desert and not knowing of the safer routes around it and without any hsiang-nu left in the area to helpfully capture and enslave the party for a decade they had little choice but to press straight through the Thousand Mile Death March. By the time Li's parched force arrived on the other side, having lost the greater bulk of his force before even reaching the Dayuan Kingdom, Li quickly concluded that he no longer had a sufficient military strength to complete his conquest, and so turned right back around and headed for home. When Li returned in 102, Emperor Wu heard his report and gave him a far larger force,

this time replete with oxen, camels, and donkeys to serve as a supply chain through the harsh climate. This time appropriately equipped for the journey, General Li's second army easily reached the Dayuan capital city, Arshi, which is modern Khujan city in northern Tajikistan, and laid it to siege. After 40 days, Li's army had managed to breach the outer walls and cut off the city's water supply. Knowing that defeat was now imminent, the nobility assassinated their king and sent his severed head to General Li, along with a missive declaring

Dayuan's submission to the will of Han, and offering the Chinese all the horses they wanted. Li agreed to the terms and demanded 100 of their finest horses for breeding stock, along with 3,000 regular quality horses. Victorious, Li's army and their prize rode for home. Such were the hardships of the return journey, however, that of the 3,100 horses that entered the western edge of the Taklamakan, only a third would emerge from the other side. The psychological ramifications of this Han victory over a kingdom so far flung as Dayuan

were considerable. The kingdoms of the western region were virtually all cowed into submission by the news. After all, if Dayuan could fall, what hope did they, far smaller and closer to the might of Chang'an, have? Even the Xiongnu Chanyu looked upon this turn of events with trepidation. Not only had Emperor Wu displayed the extent of his reach, but was now in possession of yet more cavalry. So in 102, in spite of having won a major victory against Han and captured an entire army the year before,

the Xiongnu monarch opened peace negotiations with Emperor Wu. These would break down, however, when information surfaced that implicated the ambassador of Han, Su Wu, in a plot to assassinate the Chanyu. He was arrested and imprisoned for more than twenty years for his treachery and the two empires resumed their hostile glaring match from opposite sides of the vast gobi desert and it is right about here that we at last catch up with our old friend and until now primary source for the goings-on of all things ancient china, the grand historian of Han, Sima Qian. Sima had been born sometime between 145 and 135 BCE in the heart of China, Shanxi, to a family of astrologers. His father, Sima Tan, served as the court astrologer to the emperor, a position Qian himself would ultimately inherit.

The court astrologer's primary tasks were to manage the Imperial Library and maintain or reform the official calendar in accordance with his heavenly observations. Growing up, young Sima Qian was educated both by his father as well as the well-known and respected Confucians Kong Anguo and Dong Zhongshu. After a stint as a palace attendant, one whose job it was to accompany the emperor on his inspection tours throughout the empire. At the age of 35, Sima Qian was commissioned on a military expedition against the barbarian tribes to the west in 110 BCE. His military adventures were cut short, however, when his father fell ill later that year

and summoned him back home to complete the historical work he had begun. Sima Qian had been in the process of compiling a historical collection, modeled after the annals of spring and autumn, the earliest known attempt to compile the history of China dating from the 5th century BCE. Picking up where his ailing father had been forced to leave off, Sima Xian began his work on what would ultimately be known as the Shi Ji, or the Records of the Grand Historian, in 109 BCE. Three years later, he would be honored by a promotion to the position held by his late father,

the imperial court astrologer. He was well-respected, close enough to Emperor Wu to offer direct counsel, and caretaker to the entire imperial library. Life was good for Sima Qian, at least for a time. That would come to a rather sharp end, however, in 99 BCE, when Sima was implicated in what is known as the Li-Ling affair. Li-Ling and Li Guangli, who you'll remember as the brother-in-law who conquered Da Yuan, were two military commanders who had been tasked by Emperor Wu to once again invade the Xiongnu Empire and force them to submission. As had been the fate of the majority of northward excursions into the steppe, however,

the invasion was a dismal failure. Li Guangli was able to punch a hole through the Xiongnu encirclement and retreat, but Li Ling was captured by the horse lords following an ill-advised attempt to attack with only 5,000 warriors backing him against a force of more than 30,000. Li Ling managed to hold out for days, but at last, having lost more than 90% of his men to continual charges by the Xiongnu cavalry, Li at last capitulated and surrendered to the Chanyu's brother. When word reached Chang'an that Li had survived the encirclement and surrendered, having been given up as dead, there was outrage.

A Han army was expected to fight to the last, and voluntary surrender was tantamount to treason, which was exactly what the furious Emperor Wu accused Li Ling of. Of the entire imperial court, only Sima Qian stood up to defend Li, not because they were good friends, they weren't, but because of Sima's abiding respect for the man as a military commander. The Emperor was offended that this minister would speak against him as such, and ordered Sima Qian arrested for the crime of grand insult. He was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to death.

According to the revised law of five punishments, execution could be commuted through two means, either a large sum of money or undergoing castration. As Sima did not possess the wealth to pay the required fee, he was forced to accept both castration along with a three-year prison term. Upon his release, he agreed to live on in the palace as an imperial eunuch rather than commit suicide as was the expectation for a gentleman

of his station. He explained his rationale in a refused to bear these ills, and have continued to live, dwelling in vileness and disgrace without taking my leave, is that I grieve that I have things in my heart which I have not been able to fully express, and I am shamed to think that after I am gone my writings will not be known to posterity. Too numerous to record are the men of ancient times, who were rich and noble, and whose names have yet vanished away. It is only those who are masterful and sure, the truly extraordinary men, who are still remembered. I have gathered up and brought together the old traditions of the world, which were scattered and lost. I have examined the deeds and events of the past, and investigated the principles behind their

success and failure, their rise and decay. I wished to examine into all that which concerned heaven and man, to penetrate the changes of the past and present, completing all as the work of one family. But before I had finished my rough manuscript, I met with this calamity. It is because I regretted that it had not been completed that I submitted to the extreme penalty without rancor. When I have truly completed this work, I shall deposit it, and if it may be handed down to men who will appreciate it and penetrate to the villages and great cities, then though I should suffer a thousand mutilations, what regret should I have? End quote. Given that we do remember him as the grand historian of China, I'd say he had the right of it.

It should be noted, however, that he was no slouch in his duties as court astrologer either. Prior to completing the Shiji, he implemented a calendar called the Tai Luchi, which was one of the most advanced of its era, and nothing short of a revolution to the Chinese calendar tradition. It was the first to calculate that there were 365.25 days in a year, and 29.53 days in a month. He would live another decade before finally dying at age 59 or 60 in 86 BCE. He can take solace, however, that he has since become a permanent part of our solar system with the naming of a particular asteroid in the main belt found in 1960, 12620 Sima Qian.

By the turn of the century, about 100 BCE, Emperor Wu had been in power for more than four decades and had thrown Han into conflict after conflict for almost all of it. Though he had vastly expanded the reach of his empire, he had done so largely on the backs of his populace, in the form of that most popular of governmental tools, crushing rates of taxation. This had been coupled with a return to almost legalistically harsh forms of punishment, in spite of the han dynasty's long-standing preference towards more lenient taoist philosophy and slowly abandoned the touchy-feely Confucian and Taoist methods in favor of what he saw as a necessarily strict social order. Thus, summary execution, familial extermination, and even thought crime once again became part of

the de facto imperial policy, most famously displayed through the fate of the Minister of Agriculture, Yan Yi. Minister Yan had been accused of committing a crime, and during the investigation, it became known that once, when a friend of Yan criticized a law promulgated by the emperor, Yan, although he didn't say anything, moved his lips. He was therefore executed for internal defamation of the emperor. But back to the peasantry. By 100 BCE, they had gotten so fed up with the levels of taxation that revolts began to spring up across the empire. In response, Wu issued an edict aimed at suppressing the violence. He decreed that any of the magistrates

of any prefecture undergoing revolt that did not effectively suppress the unrest would be held responsible with their own lives. Now this kind of makes sense if you sort of hold it at arm's length and squint really hard, but the results were completely predictable. The magistrates, of course, wanting to keep their heads attached to their bodies, but also without the resources to stem the tide of peasant unrest, did the only logical thing they could. Report to the capital that all was well. Everything's under control. Situation normal. No, pay no mind to those burning buildings or the angry mobs. Everything's perfectly all right now. We're fine.

We're all fine here, thank you. How are you? In 196 BCE, approaching his 60th birthday, Emperor Wu began to have truly disturbing visions. He had nightmares of being whipped by tiny puppets with sticks, and visions of assassins hiding throughout the palace, but who left no trace upon investigation. While we might think of such things as sleep paralysis or stress hallucinations today, the Emperor of Han came to a very different conclusion. It must be witchcraft. Thus he ordered extensive investigations into anyone

and everyone who might have a reason to hex the Emperor, many of whom were his own high officials, or even family. The first witchcraft trial of Han was conducted against the Prime Minister and elder brother-in-law of the Empress, Gongsun Ao, as well as his son. When convicted of placing evil spells on the emperor, the prime minister and his son committed suicide, and their entire clan was executed. The turmoil created by the state's sanctioned witch hunts would lead to disastrous consequences for the imperial clan itself. In 94 BCE, Emperor Wu's youngest son, Liu Fuling, was born to Lady Zhao, and Emperor Wu was ecstatic at having a child at such an advanced age, 62. Moreover, her pregnancy had purportedly last more than 14 months, the same as the mythical Emperor Yao of prehistory. Emperor Wu decided to name her household the, quote, Gate of Yao's Mother, end quote. This led to speculation that Emperor Wu

wanted to get rid of the 38-year-old Crown Prince Liu Zhu and replace him with the three-year-old Liu Fuling. While there is no evidence that Emperor Wu actually intended to do such a thing, both rumors and conspiracies began to swirl around both the crown prince and his mother. In particular, the conspirators would include Jiang Chong and Su Wan. Jiang was a high-ranking legal official known for his ruthlessness and opportunism, who had ongoing bad blood with the sitting crown prince. Su-1 was the emperor's chief eunuch. Why is it always eunuchs? And he had previously tried to frame the crown prince by falsely accusing him of committing adultery with Emperor Wu's palace maids. Clearly, both had every reason to keep Liu Ju off the throne of Han, and this witchcraft nonsense fit the bill perfectly.

Liu Zhu's sisters, Princess Juyi and Princess Yangshi, as well as one of their cousins, were also accused of involvement in witchcraft and subsequently executed. This effectively removed almost all of the crown prince's political allies in the Han court. Their mutual foe now isolated, Jiang and Su decided that the time was right to move against Liu Zhu directly, and accused the heir of Han of, what else, witchcraft. Because the physically deteriorating Emperor Wu was then vacationing at his summer palace in Shanxi, he relied heavily on messengers like Jiang and Su for everyday information. Jiang,

with approval from Emperor Wu, conducted searches through anywhere suspected of harboring witches, all the while planting voodoo dolls and pieces of cloth with mysterious writings in the houses of the so-called perpetrators. Once the search-slash-frame-up was completed, he then condemned the victim on the spot. And so it was when he reached the palaces of Prince Zhu and the Empress Wei. His agents overturned virtually everything in the buildings, and in the end, Jiang announced that he found overwhelming evidence of crime, particularly at the crown prince's household.

Liu Zhu was shocked by these obviously phony charges, and forced to consult his close advisors. His teacher, invoking the infamous story of Zhao Gao's scheme to murder the crown prince of the first Qin emperor, raised the possibility that maybe Emperor Wu was actually dead, and suggested that Liu Ju start an uprising to get rid of the villains trying to frame him and deny him his birthright. Liu Ju initially hesitated and wanted to speedily proceed to Emperor Wu's vacation palace and explain himself directly to his father, but he soon learned that Jiang's messengers were already on their way to report the false accusations. Thinking that he had no other option, he decided to accept the suggestion and sent an individual

to impersonate a messenger from Emperor Wu, arresting Jiang and his co-conspirators, except for the eunuch Su Wen, who managed to escape. He then denounced and personally executed Jiang and reported his actions to his mother. Empress Wei, faced with the dilemma between her husband and her son, chose to support her son and authorized Liu Ju to rally her palace guards and recruit civilian militias in preparation to defend himself against retaliation. Concurrently, Su Wan reached the emperor's palace and told Wu that the crown prince was committing treason. Now, Emperor Wu may have been a paranoid old man at this point, but he wasn't so much so that he was buying that his own son was rising against him.

He concluded, correctly it should be noted, that this was a result of the ongoing feud between the crown prince and Jiang Chong, and so sent a messenger back to Chang'an to summon his son to explain himself. The messenger, however, a low-ranking eunuch, didn't dare proceed to the capital city, but instead returned and falsely reported to Emperor Wu that Liu Ju was going to kill him. Now really believing that his son was trying to overthrow him, Emperor Wu ordered his new prime minister to lead the regular Han army and put down the rebellion. The two forces clashed in the streets of Chang'an in a pitched battle that lasted for five days, but the prime minister seized the upper hand after it became clear that Prince

Zhu did not have his father's authorization and the bulk of his support vanished. Liu Zhu was forced to flee the capital with his two sons, while the rest of his family were killed. Shortly after Liu Jiu's escape, Emperor Wu sent two officials to Empress Wei's palace to seize her imperial seal, which suspended her rights in preparation to depose her. Empress Wei Zhefu committed suicide in response, and most of her clan members were wiped out in the turmoil. Meanwhile, the crown prince Liu Ju was tracked down and cornered in Hu County by local officials eager to collect the bounty on his head. He committed suicide when it became obvious he could

not escape, and his two sons were also killed. Even after Jiang Chong and Prince Ju both died, however, the witchcraft trials continued. One final prominent victim was General Li Guangli, famed for his victories over both Da Yuan and Xiongnu, despite the huge body count his amateurish tactics tended to rack up. In 90 BCE, while Li was assigned to complete a campaign against Xiongnu, a palace eunuch accused Li and his political ally, Prime Minister Liu Chumao, that they had conspired to use witchcraft against the Emperor.

Liu and his family were immediately arrested and later executed, and Li's family was also put into custody. When news reached him, General Li realized that the only way he could possibly return home at this point would be through major victory against the Xiongnu to prove his loyalty. This would fail, however, when many of his senior officers, completely unconvinced by his needlessly risky plan of attack, mutinied. He was forced to retreat, and en route he was ambushed by Xiongnu forces, where he finally, realizing that there was no way he could turn this around, he at last defected.

In response, his whole clan was executed by the emperor, and Li himself later fell victim to infighting with the older Han defectors to the Xiongnu. Eventually, it seemed the paranoia-induced blood haze that had gripped Emperor wu began to wear off he came to the realization that maybe just maybe some of these accusations of witchcraft might be false especially in relation to the crown prince's rebellion revelation about what had happened, and he had the eunuch Su burned alive and Jiang's family executed. However, although he claimed to miss Prince Zhu greatly, and even built a palace and an altar for his deceased son as a sign of grief and regret, he did not at this time actually rectify the situation with Prince Zhu's only surviving progeny, Wu's own great-grandson, Prince Liu Binyi. The infant prince, who had been

spared execution because of his age, still languished in prison as a result. Emperor Wu then issued a public edict of repentance, apologizing to the entire nation for his policy mistakes and vowing to make amends with both the living and the dead. Acting on the suggestion of his new new Prime Minister Tian, the decades of warfare on the borders were drawn down, and agriculture rather than expansionism became the focus of the Han Empire. With his health failing, the emperor was faced with a dilemma, that of succession. After all, he'd just forced his designated heir to suicide. There was the option of any number of his surviving sons, especially the eldest, Prince Liu Dan. But Wu found Prince Dan to be unsuitable, as he did not respect the law.

Gee, Dad, hypocritical much? And ultimately, he settled on his youngest son, Liu Fuling, you know, the one who had been in utero for 14 months. Since Fuling was only six years old at the time, he appointed Huo Guang, the half-brother of the heroic Han general Huo Chubing who had crushed the Xiongnu force in the northern Gobi, to act as the child regent and mentor. He considered Huo to be both trustworthy and faithful to the well-being of the dynasty, which would certainly prove true as time went on. And then, as a measure of how fearful an uncontrollable empress dowager like Liu Zhi still held within the psyche of the dynasty, Emperor Wu ordered the execution of the newly crowned prince's mother, Consort Zhao,

because he was just a classy guy like that. Shortly after installing Prince Fu Ling as his heir, Emperor Wu of Han finally gave up the ghost, dying in early 87 BCE at the age of 69, and after a reign of 54 years, a tenure that would not be surpassed for more than 1800 years until the reign of the Kangxi Emperor of the Qing Dynasty. He was buried under the Maoling Pyramid, just outside of modern Xi'an. His legacy is decidedly mixed, and often contradictory. He almost doubled the size of the Han Empire, and waged hugely successful wars against its many enemies, but often at the cost of his own people's well-being.

He officially encouraged Confucianism throughout his reign, but especially toward the end, backslid precipitously into legalistic harshness, including a massive resurgence of family exterminations as punishment. He took the Han Empire, that was a mere tributary of the Xiongnu Empire, and forged it into one of the most militarily and economically powerful nations in the world, but through his policies also danced dangerously close to destabilizing his entire dynasty by promoting popular uprisings and rebellions from within and killing off the majority of his own family and trusted advisors during the Prince-Jew revolt. He implemented the imperial examination system to methodically promote the best and brightest in his empire to suitable positions regardless of social class,

but in his personal life allowed superstition and paranoia to drive him to murderous extremes. Emperor Wu of Han remains one of the most interesting and formative figures of ancient China. But now, he is dead. Next time, his successor, the seven-year-old Crown Prince Liu Fuling, who will be named Emperor Zhao of Han, and his regency under the guiding hand of Huo Guang. Thank you. 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.