The History of China - #43 - 3K 2: Ode Of The Hidden Dragon

Episode Date: October 19, 2014

The state of Cao Wei comes under the pretty-much-permanent regency of the Sima Family and launches a wildly successful blitzkrieg into Shu Han, meanwhile the teenaged Cao Emperor writes angsty poetry about how lonely he is and no one understands him. 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. Hey everyone, I hope you'll enjoy today's episode. But before we launch in, a quick announcement. In one month's time, four weeks from this podcast's release date, the history of China will officially be one year old. Woohoo! I figure we ought to do something special, and I thought maybe opening the episode up to any questions you might have would be a good way to celebrate our very first anniversary.

I already have several questions that I can air, but I would love to have more from you. You can submit your question via facebook.com slash thehistoryofchina, over Twitter via our handle at THOCpodcast, through email to THOCpodcast at gmail.com, and of course, through our website, thehistoryofchina.wordpress.com. While you're there, check out our companion posts, complete with maps of battles, territories, and portraits of our ever-shifting cast of characters. And if you enjoy this show, please rate us on iTunes, and maybe even donate through our links to PayPal or Patreon. I look forward to hearing from you all. Thanks for listening, and enjoy the show. Hello, and welcome to the History of China.

Episode 41, Ode of the Hidden Dragon. Last time, under the successive reigns of the first two emperors of Cao Wei, the Northern Kingdom made its first major territorial gains in decades. Not along its southern borders with Shu Han or Sun Wu, mind you, but as part of a proxy war with Sun Wu to the northeast over who would lay claim to Liaodong Peninsula and the Korean kingdom of Goguryeo for themselves as either ally or subject. Under the command of its brilliant general, Sima Yi, the Cao Wei army had smashed both Liaodong and Goguryeo, executing the former warlord Gongsun Yuan and driving the latter's king Dongqion to abandon his capital and flee.

This episode, we're picking back up with Cao Wei in 239, just as its second emperor, Cao Rui, was lying on his deathbed at age 35, having taken ill the year before. Before dying, Cao Rui had taken the time to choose his successor, which was his adopted son, Cao Fang. Now this was a pretty strange move, because it's not as though Cao Rui didn't have sons of his own. In fact, records indicate that he had at least three of them.

Why he chose to pass them all over in favor of his adopted son is something of a mystery, especially considering Cao Fang's age at the time of his father's death. As Emperor Ray lay dying, Prince Feng was only six or seven years old, and as such would require a regent. Now it's not clear whether or not Cao Ray's other sons were younger or older, or whether a regency could have been avoided with a different pick, but coming so soon after the long, slow death by regency of the Han dynasty, it's enough

to make one shake their head and say, really? You thought a regency was a good idea now? Good idea or not, though, Cao Fang would be made the heir, and after the typical courtly infighting over who would and would not get to be the regent, the details of which we're going to just conveniently skip over, the ultimate victors emerged, and they were Prince Fang's distant uncle Cao Shuang and the general Sima Yi, picked by the emperor as co-regents.

General Sima arrived at Luoyang in late January of 239. He was immediately given an audience with the dying emperor, who commanded Cao Fang to embrace the general as his father. Prince Fang did so, and Cao Rui, apparently satisfied, died later that same day, leaving the state of Cao Wei in the hands of a seven-year-old and two men who would swiftly come to dominate Wei politics completely. Now just because I call them co-regents, this is not to say that Cao Shuang and Sima Yi were particularly friendly, or even cooperative for that matter. Much to the contrary, though there were some initial attempts to share power as had been intended, it wasn't long at all

before all of that was thrown by the wayside and the two regents began to vie for sole control of the imperial court. Cao Shuang proved the better of the two at court politics and managed to slowly strip Sima Yi of his powers as regent. How did he do this? By time and again recommending that Sima Yi be promoted to successively higher appointments and titles, which does sound counterproductive. But what Sima Yi did not realize until after it was too late was that all of these promotions and titles were just empty vessels, which actually wielded little, if any, political power.

At last, the de facto sole ruler of Cao Wei, Cao Shuang was desperate for military victory to boost his own fame and secure his legacy, and he selected Xu Han as his target. Leading an army numbering more than 60,000, Cao Shuang invaded Xu Han in March of 244. By May, however, Cao Shuang was forced to flee with his tail between his legs, having been thoroughly crushed at the Battle of Xingshi. Worse yet, his incompetence had ended up costing Cao Wei more than 120,000 troops, or more than 15% of Wei's total armed forces, a devastating blow that would weaken the already beleaguered state. The troops that were lost were no green recruits either. Most of the casualties were the veteran and elite units of the Wei army,

and their loss virtually eviscerated the military experience from the state. Cao Shuang's popularity and influence dropped sharply in the wake of such an embarrassing and costly military defeat. All the while, Sima Yi enjoyed a resurgence in his own prestige by having been vocally against the southward campaign from the start, and now in a position to say, I told you so. Nevertheless, Sima Yi's increased popularity did nothing to get him back into the imperial court, and he still found himself blocked out of power by Cao Shuang, who had filled the young emperor's court with officials personally loyal to him.

He was reduced to having little more than a military command, much as he'd held before, and there he would brood from 241 until 247 when he retired from public life at the age of 68 or 69, citing illness and his advanced age. But Cao Shuang wasn't so sure about this, and he worried that it might be some kind of a ruse or a trick by the always shrewd Sima Yi. Thus, he dispatched Li Sheng as the new governor of Jing province and ordered him to check in on old man Sima to see whether the supposed illness

was real or some scheme. Governor Li arrived at Sima Yi's residence and found the old man in even worse condition than he'd been led to expect. When Li informed Sima that he'd been appointed the new governor of Jing province, the old man apparently misheard it as Bing province. Later, when he was being fed his porridge by his servant, old man Sima had a coughing fit so intense that he spilled the meal all over his own clothes. Li Sheng left the Sima residence, convinced that the old general was on death's door,

and senile to boot. When he reported as much to Cao Shuang, the regent lord was satisfied that his once rival had been reduced to practically nothing. Once that buffoon, Governor Li, had departed, convinced of harmless old man Sima's complete decrepitude, General Sima Yi was able to change his soiled clothes, straighten himself up, and drop the ridiculous act. He was no invalid, even approaching 70, and he certainly had neither forgotten nor forgiven Cao Shuang's betrayal.

With his two sons, Sima Shi and Sima Zhao, the general finalized his plan to overthrow the Cao regency once and for all. Their plan would come to fruition in 249, when the now 16- or 17-year-old puppet emperor Cao Fang paid a visit to Gaoping Tomb, where his father, Cao Rui, had been laid to rest. As was expected, the regent, Cao Shuang, and his entire retinue accompanied the teenage emperor to do the same, and then go on a little hunting trip afterwards.

All this while leaving the capital city under-defended. Ever willing to take advantage of a situation, Sima Yi launched his coup while they were away, using the seal of the Empress Dowager Guo to order the capital city's bridges and gates shut. It's not clear exactly how Sima came to acquire the Empress Dowager's seal, whether she was initially on Sima's side, or it came into its possession by some other means. But regardless, vested with that authority, and with the capital city now firmly under his control, Sima Yi wrote to Emperor Cao Fang in his

mother's name, asking the monarch to remove Cao Shuang as imperial regent and reinstate Sima Yi. Cao Shuang, for his part, was taken by complete surprise by this turn of events, and initially did not seem to be able to make up his mind as to what to do next.

He was advised by some to launch a war in the emperor's name to retake the capital and punish Sima Yi for his treachery. Others, however, urged him to surrender to Sima at once, since his family was now hostages within Luoyang, and Sima had promised that he'd be allowed to live if he surrendered. And that second option sounded pretty good to the regent. After weighing his options over the course of that evening, the next morning Cao Shuang requested to be relieved of his military command by Emperor Cao Fang, sent emissaries to Sima Yi to apologize on his behalf to the victorious general, and retired along with his brothers to their respective estates. The idea that Sima Yi was just going to let them all go, however,

proved to be wishful thinking. Soon after retiring, Taoshuang's court was rounded back up by Sima's agents and executed on charges of treason. In the wake of this coup d'etat, stirrings of dissent rumbled through the country, in spite of Sima Yi's relative popularity. General Wang Ling sought to

ally his forces with the Prince of Chu, one of the sons of the late Great Cao Cao. Together, they planned to overthrow the Sima regency, as well as the weak puppet Cao Fang, to install the Prince of Chu as the new Emperor of Wei. But in 251, before the plan could be carried out, its details were leaked to Luoyang. Sima Yi swiftly advanced on the pair's position to confront them, and promised to pardon them if they submitted to his authority immediately. Caught unprepared, there was little General Wang or the Prince of Chu could do but surrender. However, as with Cao Chuang before them, Sima reneged on his promise of clemency,

and had the pair killed once they gave themselves up into his custody. Emperor Cao Fang offered General Sima the rank of Chancellor and the infamous Nine Bestowments, and Sima, in the typical kabuki theater of the imperial court, declined them time and again before finally giving in and accepting the promotions. Gee whiz, if I have to. Sima Yi reigned as chancellor of Cao Wei for two years before dying in early September of 251 at age 71 or 72. His titles and authority were passed to his eldest son Sima Shi, who was by this time in his early 40s, though it's not known exactly when he was born. Following his key role in the overthrow of the Cao regency and putting his father back where he rightly belonged, Sima Shi was granted

a march and served as his father's key assistant between 249 and 251. Since Sima Yi had so thoroughly purged the state of all opposition to his rule, Sima Shi's ascendancy went over without incident or conflict. Sima Shi sought to improve his military reputation early on in his reign, and as such launched yet another southward invasion in 252, this time against Eastern Wu, which was itself under a regency, with the elder son patriarch, Sun Quan, having recently died. The regent lord of Sun Wu stopped the Taowei advance cold and dealt the invaders a major defeat in 252. But the following year, having accepted the blame for his own failings and having promoted those generals who had pointed them out beforehand, Sima Shi managed to reverse the tide of the war and claim victory in 253. Though little if any territory was

ultimately exchanged, the outcome served to undermine the regent of Wu while affirming Sima Shi's own military prestige. In 254, however, the balance of power in Luoyang would once again shift dramatically. Sima had grown suspicious that the emperor Cao Fang was conspiring against him with one of his ministers. He summoned the minister in question, whose name I won't bother you with because we won't be talking about him for long, where he was interrogated by Sima Shi

and these talks he'd been having with Emperor Cao Fang. When the minister refused to spill the beans, Sima grew impatient and beat the man to death with the butt of his sword. He then accused the dead minister, as well as two of his friends, of treason and had all of their families put to death with the butt of his sword. He then accused the dead minister, as well as two of his friends, of treason and had all of their families put to death. The emperor himself was forced to depose his empress Zhang, who was the daughter of one of the accused. Now, if you think the emperor

might have been somewhat upset by all this, you'd be right. His allies presented the young emperor with a plan later that year to remove the threat of Sima Shi once and for all. Sima Shi's brother, Sima Zhao, was scheduled to arrive at the capital city shortly, on his way to take command of the garrison stationed in Chang'an. Take command of the soldiers he led, and use them to overthrow and kill Sima Shi. It was a pretty decent plan, all things considered, and it may well have worked. But Emperor Cao Fang had spent his whole life a spineless puppet, and he wasn't about to grow a backbone now. Instead, he hemmed and hawed, and the window

of opportunity passed without him approving the action. Nevertheless, word of the plan leaked to Chancellor Sima, who had just about had enough of Cao Fang. He forced the emperor to abdicate the throne. In his place, Empress Dowager Guo managed to convince the chancellor to install the 13-year-old Prince Cao Mao as the new emperor of Cao Wei. Though still very young, Cao Mao was widely known for his uncommon intellect, and it's possible that Empress Guo insisted on his ascension because she thought that Cao Mao alone among the imperial clan might have the wit and guile to resist and counteract the growing power of the Sima family. That same year, yet another rebellion broke out against the Sima clan's power,

this time centered in the important eastern stronghold city of Shoucheng in modern Anhui province. The rebellion would once again prove easily crushed, but the campaign came at a particularly bad time for Sima Shi. He had contracted an illness in one of his eyes, and had recently undergone surgery to attempt to fix the problem. Though he was successful in stomping out the rebellious generals in Shouchun, the rigors of combat proved too much for his not-yet-healed eye, which ended up, rather disgustingly, popping completely out of its socket. The injury festered and his condition rapidly deteriorated.

Less than a month after his victory, Sima Shi died in 255 while at Wuchang City, passing the regency on to his younger brother, Sima Zhao, who was there at his side. When news of Sima Xie's death reached the capital city, Luoyang, the young emperor, Cao Mao, sought to capitalize on the situation. He issued an imperial edict ordering Sima Zhao to remain in Xuchun on the pretense that the rebellion in Xochun was still not fully suppressed.

Simultaneously, he recalled several of Sima's assistants back to the capital, likely in an attempt to keep them all separated. Sima Zhao, however, saw through the ruse and ignored the edict, instead returning straight away to Luoyang and taking up the reins of power. At this point, it seemed clear that there was no way to break the Sima family's stranglehold on imperial authority, and Emperor Cao Mao seemed to have slipped into a depression upon that realization. In 259, the emperor received reports that yellow dragons had been spotted in two wells around the capital. Though this would typically have been seen as a sign of divine favor,

Cao Mao took it as a bleak metaphor for his own hopeless situation and wrote a poem titled 乾隆詩, meaning Ode to the Hidden Dragon. It states, The poor dragon is trapped, alone and cold.

He cannot leap out of the depths. He cannot rise to the heavens. He cannot even descend onto fields. The poor dragon fell into a deep well. Even catfish dance before him. He hides his teeth and claws and sighs. Am I this depressed as well? End quote. At the time this poem was written, Sima J Zhao and Cao Mao were in the middle of a yet another offer-decline-offer-decline charade regarding the nine bestowments. In 256, Sima Zhao had forced the emperor to allow him to wear imperial regalia, hats, robes, and boots. Sima had then forced the emperor to publicly offer him the bestowments in 258, but had declined them to show his supposed humility.

But having read Cao Mao's poem, Sima Zhao was greatly displeased with his little puppet. After all, he was supposed to dance, not write angsty, sad teenage poems. And so, as if just to rub the situation in his face further, Sima ordered the emperor to once again issue a proclamation granting the chancellor the nine bestowments, only to again turn it down. Because winning just isn't fun if you can't ruthlessly mock your powerful hostage while you do so, right? But this was the breaking point for the now 19-year-old Cao Mao.

I mean, enough is enough. There's only so much humiliation you can expect a person to take. As such, Cao Mao enlisted three of his generals in a final attempt to break Sima's hold on the government. But two of them ended up defecting and warning Sima Zhao of the emperor's advance. Sword in hand, Emperor Cao Mao approached Sima Zhao's home and faced off personally with the would-be usurper. Sima briefly either fought or argued with Cao Mao before breaking off and fleeing, having been publicly shamed for opposing the emperor's will. As Cao Mao attempted to follow, he was speared at the entrance of the Sima residence

by an overzealous soldier who had been given orders to defend Sima Zhao at all costs. Emperor Cao Mao collapsed dead. As reward for following his order to, and perhaps a little bit beyond the letter, the guard would be executed 19 days later on the charge of regicide. Following Cao Mao's death, there was a shuffling of his titles. First, they were all stripped and he was to be buried as a lowly commoner. But after an outcry from not only the imperial court, but the Empress Dowager, as well as members of his own family, at such a horrid thing to do to a guy that was already dead after all, Sima Zhao relented and had the emperor reinstated as a duke,

but allowed to be buried with the honors due to a prince. And thus, we get to our fifth and, spoiler alert, last emperor of Cao Wei, Cao Huan. Born in 243, Huan was 17 or 18 at the time of his hasty coronation as the figurehead du jour of the powerless imperial throne. As an interesting little aside, he was actually born Cao Huang, but they changed his name to Huang because of the imperial naming prohibition, and Huang was just in too many words to try to declare it taboo. But enough about him. Back to the guy pulling all the levers, Sima Zhao.

With an emperor once again safely seated on the imperial throne, Chancellor Sima announced in 262 his intention to invade and destroy Cao Wei's old enemy, Xu Han. Now this sounded ludicrous to most of the imperial court, and they said as much. There's a reason we've been deadlocked for 40 years. We can't penetrate the south's defenses. Cao Cao couldn't do it, Sima Yi couldn't do it, and you, Sima Zhao, are no Cao Cao or Sima Yi. Nevertheless, Sima was convinced that he'd found a key strategic weakness that would ensure Xu Han's downfall, in spite of his predecessor's failings. The border with Wu still enjoyed the natural defensive barrier that was the Yangtze River, as well as a powerful navy of more than 5,000 vessels.

Attacking Wu over the river would be… well, we saw what happened at Red Cliffs, didn't we? Shu Han, on the other hand, had no such watery defensive line. Therefore, the armies of Wei would be able to do what they did best, attack overland. If successful, Shu would be destroyed, and Cao Wei wouldn't need to divide its attention between two rivals and could focus solely on Sun Wu from south of the Yangtze. Finally, with less than half the standing army of Sun Wu, Shu Han would be far more vulnerable to overwhelming numbers than its eastern neighbor.

By this time, though control of Shu Han was still nominally that of its emperor Liu Shan, the son of Liu Bei, actual political and military authority, much like Cao Wei to the north, rested with his regent and supreme military commander, Jiang Wei. Jiang had initially been a mid-level officer of the Cao Wei military corps, but had defected in 228 during General Zhuge Liang's northern expedition. Jiang Wei had come to deeply admire the aggressive and offense-oriented foreign policy of Zhuge, and sought to rekindle Xu's military supremacy through such a means when he took over as commander-in-chief in 253. In spite of internal opposition to his policy of punching up,

Jiang Wei organized a coordinated strike with the leadership of Sun Wu against Cao Wei. But a combination of insufficient supplies, plague, and broken sieges forced both the Shu and Wu armies to break off their expeditions in 254, only to try again the following year. From 255 onward until 262, the armies of Shu Han under Jiang Wei would strike northward again and again, sometimes meeting failure and defeat and other times fleeting success, but never dealing a sufficiently strong blow to establish a foothold in Wei territory, nor give the northern state much pause. And by the early 260s, with its death toll rising, budgetary strains, and lack of

anything concrete to show for all that blood, sweat, and tears, much of Xu Han's populace had become resentful at Jiang Wei's leadership. In spite of his offense-offense-offense strategy, Jiang was no fool, and he knew he had to have a contingency plan in the event of another southward push by Cao Wei. As we discussed in an earlier episode, the only real path into Shu Han for Wei was through the passes surrounding Hanzhong City, that oh-so-critical zone of control that had seen so much fighting already. But rather than fortify the

city against a potential attack, Jiang Wei formulated a strategy that, while not exactly novel at this point, was certainly unorthodox. In the event of a northern invasion, Xu Han's garrisons in Hanzhong region were under orders not to resist, but instead to withdraw to fortifications within the mountain passes, and essentially just wait it out there. Once the invaders had passed, they were to seal up the routes of retreat and wait for the northerners to tire themselves out, besieging the border cities and defenses, before destroying them as they tried to retreat. The surround and envelop plan looked good on paper, and Emperor Liu Shan rubber-stamped it.

But it had one tiny, almost inconsequential little hiccup. It assumed that an invading army would besiege the border towns. And we all know what happens when we assume, right? In the autumn of 263, Sima Zhao launched his attack on Shu via imperial edict. As the Wei armies crossed the Shu-Han border, Jiang Wei's contingency plan went into effect. As ordered, the defending troops pulled back to the mountain passes without opposing the incursion. The twin fortresses of Han and Yue were intended to serve as lures

against which the Wei army would wear itself out. And here is where Jiang's assumption made an ass out of him. Rather than breaking against the fortress's defenses in large-scale siege works, the Wei commander, Zhong Hui, simply broke off two detachments of 10,000 troops each to besiege the respective fortresses. Not to try to take them, mind you, but just to keep their garrisons pinned in. And then he took the rest of his men and marched right on by, without even slowing down. Hmm, we didn't really see that coming.

Unimpeded, General Zhonghui swiftly penetrated into the heart of Xuhang, and within weeks had arrived at Yang'an. Though there was some resistance offered there, Xuhang's inferior force mobility proved decisive, and the city quickly capitulated. Shortly after its capture, realizing that their supply lines were becoming dangerously extended, General Zhang sent a vanguard force to secure a food stockpile within the city of Guangcheng, ensuring that they wouldn't be forced to retreat due to supply disruption and potentially lose all of the territory they had just conquered.

This should have been a difficult operation, a pitched battle, an epic siege, something. But instead, internal disagreements among Guangcheng's defending officers resulted in not only the defection of one of the city's subcommanders, but him leaving the gate to the city purposely opened when he left. Fierce house-to-house fighting resulted, of course, but with the main defensive fortification, the city wall, conveniently bypassed. The city was quickly captured, and the Wei army's supply concerns alleviated, at least for now. And just like that, the entire region of Hanzhong fell to the might of Wei. That probably all sounds quite abrupt, and it's meant to.

In terms of pacing in ancient imperial warfare, this was something of a blitzkrieg. Typically, I've been talking about city sieges in terms of years, with citizens being reduced to cooking their own children, and the besiegers being able to construct massive works and diverting entire rivers. Not here. In a period of mere weeks, the entire sprawling region of Hanzhong had been lost to Xu Han. The invasion had begun in September of 263, and by October, in the glow of this incredible victory, Sima Zhao celebrated by accepting the title of the Duke of Jin, this being the seventh time the position had been offered to him by the emperor. Having learned of the improbable loss of Hanzhong, Jiang Wei changed course.

He diverted his men to the mountain fortress at Jiangge, where he planned to resist any further advance by Wei's army from the forbidding pass's fortifications. Meanwhile, General Zhong Hui took a break from the battlefield to visit Zhuge Liang's tomb and personally wrote to Jiang Bin, the commander of the bypass defenses of Han Fortress. In his note, he told Zhong that he had already paid his respects to Zhuge Liang at his tomb. In saying as much, Zhang Hui wanted to make it clear just how quickly and easily he'd been able to win this war so far. Mocking him further, Zhang told Jiang Bin he wanted to pay respect to his late father, and asked where the tomb was located. But Jiang Bin wasn't so easily broken, and pithily replied that his father died in Fu County,

and Jiang Bin could pay his respects on his way west. Fu County, as it were, was almost 500 kilometers to the west of Yangon Pass, deep in the heart of Shu Han. And Jiang Bin's reply was a show of confidence that Wei army could not hope to pass the Jiangga fortress. Next time, Cao Wei's campaign against Xu Han will conclude. But first, we'll take the opportunity to plunge into the southwestern kingdom's intervening history a bit more, especially the life and legend of its most famous general, Zhu Ge Liang. In Wei, Sima Zhang has taken on

the title of the Duke of Jin, and his successors will start looking to make the Cao emperors go the way of the Han. After all, being the Duke of Jin is just one step away from being the King of Jin, and King is just one step away from Emperor. Thank you for listening.