The History of China - #42 - 3K 1: The King In The North!

Episode Date: October 13, 2014

The war between the Three Kingdoms has ground to a bloody stalemate. Hoping to seize the initiative,Cao Wei and Sun Wu will turn their attention to Manchuria and Korea in search of allies to exploit and foes to crush. 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. The great walls of the history of China grow strong, but they're nothing without the soldiers who defend it. Atop those high walls, on their lonely vigils against barbarian incursion, it is only your support that keeps those soldiers at their posts. Whether it's through financial support through PayPal or Patreon to improve those defensive borders, or through iTunes reviews to embolden the defenders' morale and fighting spirit, you can do your part to ensure that the history of China will remain in tranquility and harmony

for a thousand years or more. Only you can help us stave off the savagery beyond our outer borders. So please, do what you can. And thank you. Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 40. The King in the North. Last time we left off with the official formation of the three kingdoms of China's 3rd century, which is great because we'd certainly been alluding to it for long enough. In the north of China, called Wei or Cao Wei, Cao Cao's son, Cao Pi, had more or less shoved Emperor Xian off the imperial throne and dissolved the Han dynasty altogether. In response, Liu Bei down

in Sichuan had declared himself emperor of Shu Han. And to the southeast, Sun Quan had basically shrugged his shoulders at all this and said, eh, let's just see how this all plays out. Today, well, today I'm going to break with the trying to fit all three states into every episode model, because let's be honest, that's a great way to say just enough about everything to not have a real clear idea about anything. Instead, we'll take the next three or so shows to showcase each of the three kingdoms in turn, roughly between the periods of 220 and the mid to late 250s. Then, if it all goes according to plan, we'll link them all back up just in time for them to all fall down.

This time, if you haven't already guessed from the title, we'll be focusing once again on that chilliest of imperial seats, Taowei, comprising almost all of the territory north of the Yangtze River, and the man who had single-handedly ousted the last vestiges of the late Great Han Dynasty, the Emperor Cao Pi. Now, that title leads me to one further caveat before pushing further into this week's episode. You've been hearing and will continue to hear me calling Cao Wei, Xu Han, and Sun Wu an ongoing mixture of states, kingdoms, and empires. Though this is in part because I am semantically rather lazy and just shift back and forth based on what sounds best at the moment, I'm actually not alone in this lexicographic muddle. In truth, the so-called

Three Kingdoms Period ought to be called the Three Empires Period, since all three of the major states declared themselves the legitimate successor to the Han Dynasty and as emperors in their own right. Nevertheless, the popular name has stuck, both historically and in the popular vocabulary, so semantically correct or no, these three competing empires are remembered as kingdoms, and who am I to try to swim against that current? So, having established that, let's wade in to Wei. As you recall from last time, the ongoing battle over Jing province of central China

had been pushing Wei to the brink. Cao Pi's predecessor, the warlord Cao Cao, had actually considered moving his capital city out of Ye just to be away from the front lines due to the pressure Liu Bei had been committing to his northward offensive from Sichuan. To relieve that strain on men and resources, Cao Cao had been forced to enter into an alliance with Sun Quan of the state of Wu, declaring him a vassal king and legitimizing his de facto holdings along the central and southeastern coast. Sun Quan's submission to Wei, nominal as it was, didn't last long. In 222, after decisively driving off Liu Bei's invasion, Sun Quan began distancing

himself from his supposed ally to the north, and after refusing Taopei's demand to send his heir, Sun Deng, as a hostage to Luoyang, Sun Quan declared himself independent once again as the king of Wu. This led to a series of vicious but ultimately futile conflicts along the Wei-Wu borderlands throughout the 220s, resulting in little more than Sun Quan declaring himself at last the emperor of Wu in 229. As for the conflict with Shu Han, its chancellor, regent, and effectual head of government, Zhuge Liang, launched a series of five invasions between 228 and 234 aimed at capturing the ancient capital city, Chang'an, since it remained a pivotal staging ground for a conquest of the

current capital of Wei, Luoyang. We'll get more into those conflicts in the next couple of episodes, but spoiler alert, they will not ultimately amount to much of anything. For the time being, in spite of the absolutely massive quantities of blood being shed by all sides of the tripartite, the borders of Shu, Wei, and Wu will have effectively been set in stone. There will be no quick checkmate here. So, since we're going to be here a while, let's get to know our Emperor de Jure, Taopei. Emperor Taopei was considered to be a competent, if unspectacular, administrator of Wei. He was 33 at the time of his succession

to the throne of Wei, and as was the custom, had several wives and concubines, and numinous offspring. He had, you'll remember, been rather hastily promoted to the throne of Wei following Cao Cao's death, and had only barely managed to waylay stirrings of uprising against him by his own brothers, when none of them had waylay stirrings of uprising against him by his own brothers, when none of them had dared to make the first move against him. Nevertheless, the uncertainty of that early incident had clearly shaken him, and Taopi made it his mission to strip the new set of imperial princes of their power to oppose his rule. He had their principalities vastly reduced in size and scope, and even ordered a number of his brother's top advisors executed as a precaution.

One of Cao Pi's younger brothers, Cao Xiong, is said to have actually committed suicide for fear of what his elder brother might do to him. This was ultimately successful in minimizing the prince's power to oppose the emperor of Wei, but it also effectively bound their hands from holding any means to assist the emperor should a crisis or, I don't know, some kind of a coup from a trusted advisor occur within the state. So yeah, there's the Chekhov's gun you were looking for. It came as rather a surprise then when Cao Pi died on June of 226 at the age of only 39. And as such, there was yet another almost-but-not-quite-succession crisis just six years after the last one.

Cao Pi had never quite gotten around to naming a formal heir, although he did have plenty of sons. The obvious choice, though, was his eldest, Cao Rui. He hadn't been declared the official heir since his mother, Lady Zhen, had been forced to commit suicide by Cao Pi in 221, after she started smack-talking behind her husband's back for basically abandoning her in Ye City while he took his new favorite consort, Guo, as his empress. Interestingly, though Cao Rui would indeed inherit Cao Pi's throne and empire, there's actually a strong case that he may not have biologically

even been the blood of the Cao clan. Lady Zhen, as it were, had been forced to marry Cao Pi following his father's conquest of Yanshao's territory way back in 204. Lady Zhen had been Yanshao's son's wife, but had been taken as a prize of war by the victorious warlord's son. Oh yes, what a wonderful wedding that must have been. Lady Zhen, however, gave birth to Cao Rui only eight months after her shotgun wedding

to Cao Pi, spurring not-incredible speculation that the heir of Cao might have actually been the son of Yuan. Which would just be deliciously ironic if true. From the grave I strike at thee indeed. Court politics aside, back to the geopolitical sense of things. Stymied to the south, as it had been since now 208, Wei continued to hold the line, if only just. But it would definitely be making no territorial gains in that direction anytime soon. Instead, as with his grandfather before him, Cao Rui's only real area of expansion and domination would be north. Against the one foe Cao Cao had never quite crushed, that of the Gongsun clan's hold on the Liaodong Peninsula, parts of North Korea, and much of what

we today call Manchuria, then called You Province, but I'm going to keep referring to it as Liaodong so that you and I both don't get confused. In addition to Liaodong, there was also the rising power block outside of the former Han borders, the Korean kingdom of Goguryeo, to the east of Liaodong prefecture. Now make no mistake, the Gongsuns of Liaodong were no friendly neighbor to the rising star in Goguryeo. As the imperial seat of Han had turned inward toward its eventual implosion during the early 2nd century CE, the Gongsun clan had taken the prefecture and basically run it as their own personal kingdom. In spite of initial cooperation between the Chinese and Korean-slash-Manchurians,

the interstate dialogue had, rather predictably, eventually turned sour and then violent, culminating in the Gongsun's meddling with Goguryeo's internal politics during a succession crisis of its own in 204. Though the Gongsun candidate for the throne was ultimately defeated, bad blood remained between the two neighboring regional powers. This had been a bitter enough feud, however, that the victor of the Goguryeo feud, King Sansang, had felt the need to move his capital away from the Liaodong-Goguryeo border, south to the city of Hwandong, which is today Jian in Jilin province, occupying the north bank

of the Sino-North Korean border along the Yalu River. Though Hwandong was more resource poor than the former capital, King Sangsan was able to make up for it by demanding tribute from neighboring Korean tribes such as the Akjyo and the Ye to the northeast. By the 230s then, Goguryeo had recovered much of its strength, at the expense of its tributaries it should be said, and once again entered into a state of military equilibrium with Gongsun's Liaodong, and retaking some of their territory in the Zhoulban region of the former capital. That tense but relatively stable situation was disrupted in 234, when the state of Wei,

under Cao Rui, established contact with Goguryeo. Prior to this, the king of eastern Wu, Sun Quan, had been attempting to win Gongsun Yuan's allegiance in order to establish a two fronts of attack against Cao Wei, and several embassies made their way from Wu to Liaodong by taking the difficult journey across the Yellow Sea. Cao Wei eventually caught wind of these ambassadorial trips and made a successful interception in Chengshan, which is the tip of the Shandong Peninsula. But by then, Gongsun Yuan had already made terms of alliance with Sun Quan. Upon the confirmation of Gansong Yuan's submission, an elated Sun Quan sent another embassy in 233 to bestow Gongsun with the title of the King of Yan. By then, however, Gongsun had kind of changed his mind about aligning with a distant state over the sea

and thereby making himself the enemy of a powerful neighbor. As such, when the Wu ambassador arrived, Gongsun Yuan seized his treasure, killed the leading ambassadors, and sent their heads and a portion of the goods to the Wei court to buy himself back into their favor. Some of the envoys from Wu, however, managed to escape and found a potential ally east of Liaodong, the kingdom of Goguryeo. When the Wu ambassadors came to Goguryeo for refuge, the reigning king Dongqion was happy to assist their new enemies of Liaodong. The king sent 25 men to escort the envoys back to Wu,

along with a tribute of sable and falconskins, which encouraged Sun Quan to send an official mission to Goguryeo to further the two states' relations. Cao Wei, of course, was not about to allow Wu to regain a diplomatic foothold in the north, and as such established its own connections with Goguryeo through the inspector of Yeo province. Understandably, King Dongchun arrived at pretty much the same conclusion that Gongsun Yuan had, that Wu was in fact much too far away to actually provide any realistic support from the enormously powerful and much closer enemy

it was about to make, and as such switched his alignment from Wu to Wei. The Wu envoys to Goguryeo in 236 were executed, and their heads sent to the new inspector of Yeo province as proof. For the moment, both Liaodong and Goguryeo were aligned with Wei, while Wu's influence was diminished. But this whole dating process Liaodong and Goguryeo had both conducted with Wei, while Wu's influence was diminished. But this whole dating process Liao Dong and Goguryeo had both conducted with Wei and Wu had really soured Cao Rui on the whole

idea of their submission. They had, after all, easily switched sides from their supposed earlier alliance. And if the winds of fortune should shift again, what would keep these two supposed allies from changing sides again? Such is the prospect of a turncoat to be trusted by no one. That Liaodong's leader Gong Sunyuan was of questionable loyalty obviously could not stand. Thus, in 237, Cao Rui's general Guangqiu Jian presented a plan to invade Liaodong to the Wei court and was given approval to put his plan into action. With troops of You province, as well as Wuhan and Xianbei auxiliaries, Guangqiujian crossed the Liao River eastward

into Gongsun Yuan's territory and clashed with his enemy in Liao Sui. There, surprisingly, the Wei forces suffered an embarrassing defeat at the hands of the Liao Dong army, and were subsequently forced to retreat due to the flooding caused by the same summer monsoon season that had once also stymied the invading army of Cao Cao. Perhaps it was the sheer unexpectedness of victory at Liao Sui that accounts for Gong Sunyuan's subsequent actions, because he quite clearly had no idea what he was doing. On the one hand, he seemed to try to beg pardon from Cao Wei by memorializing the battle and their heroic fighting, but on the other hand, he was simultaneously declaring himself the independent king of Yan and declaring his era

the reign of the Shaohan, or succeeding Han era. And this whole declaration of eras was typically reserved for an emperor, and moreover, rather starkly implied that the Wei succession of Han totally wasn't even a thing. It's kind of hard to walk back from a move like that. As such, in 238, the Wei court summoned its grand commandant, Sima Yi, who had distinguished himself previously by defending Wei's western borders against no less than Zhuge Liang's offensives. Now up until this point Sima Yi is impressive enough already, but keep that name in the fore of your brain. Because though it's just another vaguely familiar Chinese surname whose distant ancestors

once wrote a book on ancient Chinese history to you at this point, shout out to the grand historian by the way, Sima Yi is going to come out of this conflict amazingly, vastly, totally unexpectedly, um, let's call it for now, empowered. So anyway, Cao Rui wanted to appoint a force of 40,000 soldiers to Sima Yi to lead an expedition against Gongsun Yuan's territories. Several of his advisors protested, saying that such a number was too high and they could not feasibly be spared, lest the still-contentious southern borders be unduly weakened. But General Sima corrected them, noting that since Zhuge Liang had died in 234, there was little to fear from the southern states.

When asked about Gongsun Yuan's possible reactions to Wei incursion, Sima stated plainly, To leave his walls behind and take flight would be the best plan for Gongsun Yuan. To take his position in Liaodong and resist our large forces would be the next best. But if he stays in his capital, Xi Jinping, and defends it, he will be captured. Only a man of insight and wisdom is able to weigh his own and the enemy's relative strength, and so give up something beforehand. But this is not something Gongsun Yuan can do. On the contrary, he will think that our army, alone and on a long-distance

expedition, cannot long sustain the effort. He is certain to offer resistance on the Liao River first and defend Xiangping afterwards. Therefore, I estimate a hundred days for going, another hundred days for the attack, and still another hundred days for coming back, and sixty days for rest. Thus, one year is sufficient to deliver Liaodong to you." Bold words, but Sima Yi is a bold man. When news reached Gongsun Yuan's ears of General Sima setting out northeast at the head of 40,000 soldiers, he once again panicked. He sent a desperate missive to Sun Quan, profusely apologizing for, you know, totally betraying you back in 233. Sun Quan considered

paying Gongsun back in kind and killing his messenger outright, but was persuaded to use Wei's northern invasion as an opportunity to seize southern territories from Wei. This would, however, as noted earlier, ultimately go nowhere, resulting in no gains for anyone because the south is absolutely deadlocked. Sima Yi and his army reached the banks of the Liao River by June 238. There, Gongsun Yuan had dispatched his main Liaodong force to set up camp at Liao Cui, and its encampment stretched some 10 kilometers of walled fortifications from north to south. Sima's subcommanders pressed to attack Liao Sui directly,

but Sima Yi reasoned that attacking the encampment would only wear down their strength without considerable gain. Instead, since the bulk of the Liao Dong army was at Liao Sui, Gongsun Yuan's headquarters at Xiangping would be comparatively lightly defended, and the Wei armies could take it with ease. Thus, Sima Yi ordered a small force to launch a sortie out to the southeast, specifically tasked with planting flags and banners, as though the main thrust of the Wei army was in that direction. Gongsun's commander, falling for the ruse, hastened with his men to the south, where he was broken and crushed by Sima's forces. Meanwhile, Sima Yi himself secretly led the main Wei army across the Lia river to the north. After he made the crossing, he burned his bridges and boats and made a long barricade across the river, and then headed towards Xiangping. By now realizing his great mistake, Gongsun's general Bei Yan hastily

withdrew his troops during the night and headed north to intercept Sima Yi's army overland. Bei Yan caught up with Sima Yi on Mount Shan, west of Xiangping, where he was ordered to fight to the death by Gongsun Yuan. He achieved this goal by dying, and Sima Yi achieved a great victory there and proceeded to lay siege to the city of Xiangping. With the month of July came summer monsoons, which impeded Guangqiu Jian's campaign by about a year or so. Rain poured down so constantly for more than a month that ships could sail the length of the flooded Liao River from its mouth at the Liaodong Bay

all the way up to the very city walls of Xiangping. But even with water several feet high at ground level, Sima Yi was determined to maintain the siege despite the complaints of his officers, who proposed to change camp to a position on higher ground and, you know, not in a foot and a half of rainwater. In response, Sima Yi executed Zhang Jing, an officer who kept bringing up the issue, which pretty effectively shut up anyone else who wanted to complain about their wet boots or

whatever. Obviously though, this siege was not going to be a cakewalk. Due to the floods, the encirclement of Xi Jinping was by no means complete, and the defenders used the flood to their advantage to sail out to forage and pasture their animals. Though these might seem a tempting target, and indeed a way to inflict further misery on the city by denying its resources, Sima Yi actually forbade his generals from pursuing the foragers and herders from Xi Jinping, stating, have not worried about the rebels attacking us, but I have been afraid that they might flee. Now the rebels are almost at their extremity regarding supplies, and our encirclement of them is not yet complete. By plundering their cattle and horses, or capturing their fuel gatherers, we will only be compelling them to flee. War is an art of deception. We must be good at adapting ourselves to changing situations. Relying

on their numerical superiority and helped by the rain, the rebels, hungry and distressed as they are, are not yet willing to give up. We must make a show of inability to put them at ease. To alarm them by taking petty advantages is not the plan at all." The officials back in Wei court, in Luoyang, were also concerned about the floods and proposed to recall Sima Yi. But the Wei emperor, Cao Rui, being completely certain of Sima Yi's ability, turned the proposal down flat. And as if on cue, the king of Goguryeo sent a noble and a keeper of records at the head of several thousand men to aid Sima Yi's ongoing conquest. When the rain finally stopped and the floodwaters drained away, Sima Yi hastened to complete the encirclement of Xiangping. The siege utilized mining, hooked ladders, battering rams,

and artificial mounds for siege towers and catapults to get higher vantage points. The speed at which the siege was tightened caught the defenders off guard, which is to say Sima's strategy of deception had worked. Since they had been obtaining supplies with such ease during the flood, there had apparently been no significant attempt to stockpile goods inside the city. As a result, famine and supposedly cannibalism broke out inside the city, although really the trope of cannibalism is so often employed during sieges, but one has to wonder how often it has ever actually been true. Which it surely has from time to time, but how often is it

merely invoked as a literary device to show how awful conditions were and how desperate the people had become? Far be it from me to say the citizens of Shamping weren't eating each other en masse, it just strikes me as a suspiciously common fallback for besieged cities in Chinese historical texts. Regardless, over the course of the siege, many of the Liaodong's generals surrendered to Sima Yi. The dam really broke on September 3rd, though, when a comet was seen in the skies of Xiangping and was interpreted as an omen of destruction by those in Liaodong. A frightened Gong Sunyuan sent his high ministers to negotiate the terms of surrender, where he promised to present himself,

bound, to Sima Yi once the siege was lifted. Sima Yi, wary of Gong Sunyuan's double-crossing past, however, executed the pair of emissaries, explaining his actions in a message to Gong Sunyuan, that he desired nothing less than an unconditional surrender, and, quote, these two men were apparently a couple of senile imbeciles who must have failed to convey your intentions clearly. Since they were obviously of no use, When Gong Sunyuan sent Wei Yan for another round of talks, this time requesting that he be allowed to send a hostage to the Wei court. Sima Yi dismissed this final messenger as a waste of time. Quote, now that you're not willing to come bound, you're determined to have death.

There's no need of sending any hostage. End quote. Dang, Sima, that is straight cold-blooded. On September 29th, the famished Xiangping at last fell to the Wei army. Gongsun Yuan and his son Gongsun Xiao, leading a few hundred horsemen, managed to break out of the encirclement and fled to the southeast, but were swiftly hunted down and executed by the main Wei army on the banks of the Liang River. Gongsun Yuan's head was cut off and sent to Luoyang for public viewing. Once having entered the city, Sima Yi assembled all those who had served in Gongsun's military and government under two banners. Everyone who had held office in Gongsun Yuan's rebel regime, which was some 1,000 to 2,000, were executed in a systemic purge. In addition, 7,000 men and boys, aged 15 and up, who had served in Liaodong's army, were put to death, and their bodies heaped up to

form a great mound meant to terrorize the remaining populace into submission. After the massacre, he then pardoned the rest of the survivors. Though his conquests had gained some 40,000 households and more than 300,000 people for the state of Wei, Sima Yi did not encourage these frontier settlers to continue their life in the Chinese northeast. Instead, he ordained that those families who wished to return to central China be allowed to do so, and when in April or May of 239 Sun Mu defeated the Wei defenders in southern Liaodong, it prompted the Wei court to evacuate the coastal population to Shandong, further accelerating the trend of depopulating Liaodong. By 265, the number of Chinese households in Liaodong had fallen to a mere 5,400.

In the meantime, the removal of the Gongsun regime cleared a barrier between central China and the peoples of the further east. As early as 239, a mission from the Wa people of Japan under Queen Himiko reached the Wei court for the first time. For its part, Goguryeo soon found itself rid of the thorn in its side, only to be replaced by an even stronger, even more aggressive neighbor. And it managed to start throwing stones at this particular hornet's nest when it began raiding Chinese settlements in Liaodong and Xuantou prefectures between 243 and 244. In response to Gouguirou's aggression, the inspector of Yeop province,

which is to say, again, Liaodong peninsula, set out into Guguryeo with seven legions, amounting to some 10,000 combined infantry and cavalry in total. King Dongchon of Guguryeo countermarched with his army of some 20,000 infantry and cavalry from his capital, Hwandong, to meet the advancing Wei force. The two opposing armies would clash at the junction of the Fu'er River and the Tongjiah River, in a place known as Liangkou. Sources differ on how the battles played out. The later Korean source Samguk Sagi states that Guangzhoujian's army invaded in the

eighth lunar month of the year, but was twice defeated before winning a crucial battle that sent the king back to the capital. The first battle, according to the Samgyeoksagi, Goguryeo won and killed some 3,000 Wei soldiers. The second engagement was much the same, and Goguryeo again captured and killed 3,000 more soldiers. King Dongchun then led 5,000 ironclad horsemen to lead the charge against Guan Xiuqian, who put what would have been his final 4,000 troops into a square formation and fought to the end. But by the end of the battle, some 18,000 Goguryeo soldiers had been killed, and the defeated king fled to the plain of Yalu, with a little more than a thousand horsemen left.

In contrast, the nearly contemporary biography of Guan Qiujian in volume 28 of the Records of the Three Kingdoms contains the Chinese account of this battle, and states that King Dongqian was repeatedly defeated in the tremendous fight at Liangkou and then was forced to flee. So who should we believe? The story of the Chinese army being whittled down to almost nothing before finally opening up their can of spinach Popeye style and delivering a ridiculous death blow to Goguryeo? Or a steady stream of Chinese victories culminating in a predictably crushing defeat and retreat by King Dongchian. Well, as it so happens, Japanese researcher Hiroshi Ikiuchi points out that the Korean account was transformed from Guan Choujian's biography, reversing the results of the battles before Liang Kuo in order to save face for the Goguryeo kingdom. Nevertheless, both Chinese

and Korean sources agree on the fact that King Dongchon ultimately lost the Battle of Liangkou and retreated back to Huandou. The Wei army, duly emboldened by victory, gave chase to the routed Goguryeo king after the Battle of Liangkou. Since the mountainous region rendered the cavalry ineffective, the Wei army fastened the horses and chariots there and climbed up to the mountain city of Huantou. Guangzhoujian first struck the stronghold, guarding the main city, and then descended upon the capital, where the Wei army destroyed much of the city and captured or killed thousands. The king and his family, however, managed to flee the capital and continue the fight.

With the Goguryeo capital duly subjugated, Guan Chaojian returned to Yeop province with his army in June 245. Shortly thereafter, King Dongchang returned to the abandoned capital of Hwando after the Wei army retreated. Predictably, that same year, Guan Chaojian sent his subordinate, the Grand Administrator of Shantu, in pursuit of the king. And wouldn't you know it, there he was, right where he used to be. Since the capital city's defenses had been utterly destroyed by Wei's previous campaign, the king was once again forced to flee, this time to south Aqiu. However, the defenders there were swiftly cut down by the

pursuing Wei army, and he was forced to flee northward. Pursuing the King of Goguryeo along the coast of the Sea of Japan, King Dongchon's trail effectively went cold, and the army of Wei found around and returned to Shunji Prefecture, having completed a near-total circumnavigation of Liaodong, North Korea, and Manchuria. Around this same time, General Wang Qi sent a detachment force to attack the Ye Kingdom of Eastern Korea, since they were allied with Goguryeo. Although the king of Goguryeo evaded capture, the Wei campaigns almost completely succeeded in undermining the stability and power of his regime in the Korean peninsula. Although the king of Goguryeo evaded capture, the Wei campaigns almost completely succeeded in undermining the stability and power of his regime in the Korean peninsula. Thousands of Goguryeo people were deported and resettled in China.

And more importantly, perhaps, the incursions into Aukjyo and Ye split those allies off from a centralized Goguryeo control and brought them back under the influence of Cao Wei. In doing so, Wang Qi and his generals removed a substantial part of the Goguryeo control and brought them back under the influence of Cao Wei. In doing so, Wang Qi and his generals removed a substantial part of the Goguryeo economy and dealt the Korean king an unrecoverable blow. When King Gongchon of Goguryeo finally resurfaced and returned once again to Hwando, he found the city far too ravaged by war and too close to the border to be a suitable capital. As such, he had little choice but to relocate the capital far to the south to a walled city-town-in-the-plain, or Pyongyangseong, in 247. From his new capital, Goguryeo underwent significant reorganization, particularly in

regards to his economic base, in order to recover from the devastation by way. I won't tread any further into Korean history, as I'm sure I'm already stepping on the toes of a The History of Korea podcast somewhere. Things had changed for Wei in this time period as well. The emperor who had seen us off to war from Luoyang back in 237 had died only two years into the campaign, leaving Cao Wei to his adopted son, Cao Fang, in 239.

And let me tell you, things have gone all to hell for the Cao dynasty because of, uh, well, you remember I told you how Sima Yi was going to be kind of a big deal? Yeah. Next time, the Cao dynasty of Wei finds out what it's like to be on the receiving end of a usurpation and overthrow, before we once again venture southward to see just what in the world is going on with those other two states, Shu Han and Sun Wu. Thank you for listening.