The History of China - #45 - 3K 4: House Of The Rising Sun

Episode Date: November 6, 2014

The state of Eastern Wu has been busy, busy, busy, in spite of all the focus given to the rivalry between its Western and Northern neighbors. But when Shu Han crumbles and The Cao Clan is overthrown by the Simas, they'll be in for their greatest test yet. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 43, House of the Rising Sun. Last episode, we ventured back to the beginning of the Three Kingdoms period to take a closer look at the state of Shu Han in Sichuan, and its frequent, costly, and ultimately futile and self-defeating campaigns to invade the north, culminating with it basically buckling all at once with one little push from Cao Wei. This episode, we'll round out our biopics by once again shifting perspective and looking at the state of Wu, aka Eastern Wu or Sun Wu. Then we'll move back up to Wei in the north, just in time to wave goodbye to the last of

the Cao emperors. As a sovereign kingdom or imperial fragment or whatever it is you want to call it, Wu was, you may remember, actually the last of the three kingdoms to officially come into existence. Its warlord, Sun Quan, had spent many of the years leading up to the abolition of the Han dynasty and the fragmentation of China, and then almost another decade after Cao Wei and Xu Han had planted their respective flags, to decide that he was going to do the same in 229. But it must be said that the coastal regions that comprised Wu had long been considered a cultural, ethnic, and at times even political other. Bonus points to you if you remember that back in the 5th century BCE, during the Warring

States period, the quote-unquote semi-barbarian Kingdom of Wu was briefly the most militarily powerful state among the Warring Kingdoms before being undermined and destroyed by yet another southern barbarian kingdom, Yue. But I digress. Anyways, back here in the 3rd century CE, let's sum up the situation thus far. The region had come under the military control of the Sun family after they had conquered it between 194 and 199, and declared itself an independent empire, much to the chagrin of the sitting Han puppet emperor, Xian. The warlord Sun, didn't have long to bask in his victory, however,

as he was assassinated the following year, and control of the territory fell to his younger brother, Sun Quan. Though they really, really hated each other for a variety of reasons I went over in previous episodes, Eastern Wu and Xu Han had managed to put their little blood feud on hold long enough to give Cao Cao and his invading army a thorough spanking at the Battle of Red Cliffs, but that had fallen apart even before the battle was over because, hey, blood feud. That once again boiled over in 219, when still insisting a decade later that he, rather than

Liu Bei, should have control over the ever-contentious Jing province, Sun Quan sent his army in by stealth to capture the province and kill its commander, which just so happened to be Liu Bei's sworn brother, Guan Yu. That, unsurprisingly, had sent Liu Bei into a frothing rage, and he marched his army to conquer Wu once and for all in 222. That plan, however, didn't go so well for him, and he would die of illness in 223, after having been so thoroughly defeated by not only the armies of Wu, but also by freak rock slides, that Xu Han pretty much gave up the ghost of ever trying to attack Sun Wu again. Liu Bei's son and successor, Liu Shan, almost immediately sought out peace terms with Sun Wu, and the two states resumed

their frenemy alliance against the northern menace. That same year, Sun Tren formally broke political ties with Cao Wei, to which he had been paying lip service since 220, having been declared the vassal king of Wu by Cao Pi. He would keep the title of king, Sun of vassal, thank you very much, until 229 when he at last did what all the cool kids were doing and declared himself emperor of Wu at the age of about 47. By all accounts, Sun Quan was a capable administrator who prized efficiency above all else. He was also a capable judge of character and was more often than not able to make wise decisions by listening to the advice of those he trusted the most. He certainly wasn't a rash leader, as evidenced by his careful maneuvering between the tempestuous natures of his two neighbor states, and only mobilizing his armies or jumping into the empire game when he had a well-thought-out path to victory. Within his inner circle,

Sun Quan was known to treat his officials like close friends, even addressing them by their courtesy names, which was highly unusual in such settings. The level of trust was so deep between the King of Wu and his top advisors that Sun Quan even ordered a duplicate of his royal seal card and gave it to his Chancellor Lu Xun so that he would be able to conduct state affairs or even revise royal decrees if he deemed it necessary. As with the ongoing clashes between Shu Han and Cao Wei, so it was between Sun Wu and Cao Wei. And by that, I mean big, frequent, bloody combat, and in the end, not an inch of territory gained or lost for either side. The stalemate was so total that the Emperor of Wei, Cao Pi,

following yet another costly, fruitless battle along the riverbank, stated in 225, As with the other two states, however, just because they couldn't break each other's lines didn't mean territorial expansion wasn't occurring. And for eastern Wu, that meant gobbling up the kingdoms and tribes of the south. Notably, in 226, the armies of Wu were able to defeat Shi Hui, the warlord of Jiao province, which is modern northern Vietnam, and assert suzerainty.

Piling on, Wei was also able to add several heretofore independent kingdoms in modern Cambodia, Lao, and southern Vietnam to its list of vassal states. So it's not like the state of Wu was just sitting there twiddling its thumbs during the 220s, waiting for Shu and Wei to finish punching each other the whole time. And it's not for nothing that Sun Quan felt justified in declaring himself emperor in 229, since, after all, he had just forged himself an effectual empire. Nevertheless, the declaration threatened to damage the alliance between Wu and Shu Han. The Leo clan, after all, did see itself as the only legitimate successor to the late Han dynasty, and so declaring yourself an independent emperor really isn't cool, man.

But in spite of its hurt feelings, Xu's chancellor, the ever-eminent Zhuge Liang, came down firmly on the side of pragmatism, and basically forced the emperor of Shu to accept this state of affairs. Shu and Wu's defensive alliance was more important than who gets and does not get to wear those funny little hats, after all, and later that same year, the two fledgling empires drew up a treaty confirming that yes, Sun Quan was the emperor of Wu, and the two allies would divide up Taowei equally, you know, assuming they could actually conquer it, which did turn out to be a pretty big assumption. One final big change in 229 would be geographic in nature, specifically the location of Wu's capital. It had been Wuchang City,

which is in modern Hubei province, but Sun Quan decided to move it eastward to the city of Jianye. Which I only bring up because today Jianye is known by the far more familiar name, Nanjing, which of course will be the eventual capital of the Republic of China, the Taiping Kingdom, the Ming, Southern Tang, Chen, Liang, Southern Qi, and Liu Song dynasties, and oh yeah, the Jin, which spoiler alert, will be happening shortly. So yeah, Nanjing is kind of an important place, and it's all thanks to Sun Quan and Eastern Wu. Well, sort of. In 230, Sun Quan dispatched two of his generals, Wei Wen and Zhuge Zhi, to command a fleet of

10,000 ships on a mission of exploration. The goal of this naval expedition was to find two legendary islands, one called Danzhou and the other Yizhou, and if they found them, to conquer them and whoever might live there. Danzhou, as it turned out, was indeed mythical. But Yizjo, or at least an island sufficiently matching that description, turned out to be real enough. Now, it's not entirely clear which specific island Thubu Navy found in the Pacific. Often it's cited as being Taiwan, which is certainly a strong contender, but other scholars have asserted that it might have instead been the Ryukyu Islands, today Okinawa, that were

discovered by Wei and Zhuge. Regardless, the two generals carried out their mission and captured several thousand natives to present to their emperor, but at a terrible cost. Reportedly, diseases endemic to the island absolutely ravaged the foreign conquerors, resulting in fatalities as high as 80-90% of the total Chinese force over the course of the expedition. And the bad news wasn't over for the survivors, or at least not for its commanders. Upon returning with what men they had left, as well as their captives, General Wei and Zhuge were deemed failures by Emperor Sun Quan. They had failed to find Dan Zhou, and they had failed to capture Yi Zhou, according to their monarch.

And as such, he had the pair put to death. In response, likely fearing that his father was beginning to lose his marbles, the crown prince Sun Deng left his stronghold in the west of Wu and made his way back to the capital so that his father wouldn't separate more of his generals' heads from their bodies needlessly. But Sun Quan's naval misadventures were just getting started. In the very next year, in 232, he launched yet another watery expedition, this time aimed at purchasing horses from their nominal vassal to the north, the Gongsun clan of the Liaodong Peninsula. You remember them, right?

Well, in spite of his urgings from his advisor, Yu Fan, that such a trade mission, passing as it did dangerously close to their great enemy, Cao Wei, was a folly, Sun Quan sent his ships forth anyway and exiled Yu Fan for his trouble. But as predicted, the Sun Wu fleet was intercepted and destroyed by Cao Wei. Rather embarrassed, Emperor Sun did try to recall his prophetic advisor Yu, only to learn that the poor man had died in exile. But the parade of follies just went on and on for Sun Quan,

who was proving himself to be one wonton short of a takeout meal. Gongsun Yan then swore fealty to Wu, which you may recall will last for about five minutes before he realizes how bad of an idea that is. But Sun Quan was ecstatic and named Gongsun the Prince of Yan, granting him the nine bestowments, and then sent a detachment of 10,000 troops by sea to assist his vassals' offensive against Cao Wei. All of this against the advice of every single one of his advisors. And, predictably, by the time the amphibious force arrived to assist their northern ally, Gongsun Yan had realized that he'd made a huge mistake by angering his own neighbor, Wei, and reneged on his alliance with Wu. And by reneged, I of course mean he slaughtered the Wu commanders sent to treat and advise with him, and seized the corps of soldiers for himself, all in an ultimately fruitless attempt to stave off destruction by

Sima Yi. It's pretty hard to make heads or tails of just what was up with Sun Quan in his later life, because although he would have periods like we just talked about where he was making terrible, nearly outright crazy decisions and punishing anyone who spoke up to say what a terrible, crazy decision it was, he at least still had some periods of his former clear, calculating, and pragmatic self. One example is in 235 when he decided to take a deal offered by the northern emperor Tsao-Re. This deal was to exchange way horses for Wu pearls, turtle shells, and jade. Now, such an offer was only made by Tao Re to mock and belittle the Emperor of Wu, and everyone knew it. I'm not entirely clear on why it was

such an insult, but I do have a couple of guesses. First is that trinkets like jade and pearls were typically given to a hegemon by a vassal as submission, and or the second is simply that an enemy state offering to trade you strategic goods, like horses, for luxury goods like jade, shows just how dominant it either is or perceives itself to be. But regardless of the intended insult, Sun Quan reasoned pragmatically that his state needed the horses far more than it needed such trinkets, and even more than he needed his dignity. Another indication that Sun Quan still had at least a few bats in his belfry came in 238, when Gongsun Yan in Liaodong was besieged by General Sima Yi in what would be his final defeat. Emperor Sun, of course, had absolutely no reason to assist the treacherous Gongsun,

and every reason to wish him a slow, painful death. However, he reasoned that Wu might benefit if Gongsun was not immediately defeated, and thus kept Sima Yi and his army tied up for the time being. Thus, he did not refuse Gongsun's plea for aid, hoping to launch a surprise attack while Wei was distracted with protracted operations against Liao Dong. The fact that this did not pan out and Sima still managed to capture the prefecture quickly doesn't detract from the fact that it takes a clever man to think that far ahead and to forego immediate revenge in the pursuit of a larger goal.

In 241, however, tragedy struck for the Sun clan, when Sun Quan's eldest son and heir, Crown Prince Sun Deng, suddenly died of an illness at age 31. Now of course the death of a child is always tragic, but what makes Sun Deng's more so than the millions of other children dying on the front lines year after year after year in this era, is that it marked Sun Quan's final descent into madness, as well as throwing the entire state of Wu into a succession crisis from which it would never quite emerge. The following year, Emperor Sun named another of his sons, Sun He, as his heir, but then he went ahead and authorized yet another of his sons, Sun Ba, to have the same level of staff and servants as the new crowned

prince, once again in spite of repeated protests by his advisors that such a move would only encourage the two princes to compete for the throne. And indeed, the two half-brothers' relationship quickly deteriorated as they began to vie for power. Especially after 245, when they were granted separate residences, things really turned sour. Sun Ba began scheming on how to get his now very inconvenient brother out of the way towards Airdom, until, in 250, in an amazingly violent and rather incomprehensible set of actions, Emperor Sun Quan simultaneously deposed Sun He as the crown prince and ordered

Sun Ba to commit suicide. In their place, he appointed his youngest son, the seven-year-old Prince Liang, as his new heir. The aftermath of this purge was even bloodier, as Sun Quan ordered either the suicide or execution of many officials who had sided with either of his elder two sons, as well as those who opposed his youngest son's promotion to the throne. In 251, just a year before his own death, Sun Quan named his first and only living empress, Sun Liang's mother, Consort Pan. Knowing that his time on earth was short, he named a regent for his child heir, Zhuge Ke, an aggressive, pretentious, and vainglorious general

beloved by all of Wu's populace, and yes, the nephew of Zhuge Liang in Xu Han. In 252, as Sun Quan neared death, Empress Pan was murdered, but how she was murdered remains controversial. Wu officials claimed that her servants, unable to stand her temper, strangled her while she slept. But a number of historians across time have put forth the theory that top Wu officials were in fact complicit, as they feared she would seize power as an empress dowager after Sun Quan's death. Later that year, Sun Quan died at the age of 70 and was buried at Zijingshan, which literally means Purple Gold Mountain, but is more commonly known as simply Purple Mountain, to the east of Nanjing. Under the regency of Zhuge Ke, taxes across Wu were lowered, along with a relaxing of strict social policies that had been put in place under Sun Quan's reign. In late 252, Zhuge rebuilt the Dongxing Dam that had been destroyed by his predecessor to fend off a Wei incursion.

This border activity, however, prompted a response by Wei, which launched a three-pronged strike to attempt to seize the region. And it was, as always, repulsed. But Zhuge Liang took this outcome in an entirely different way, namely that his young and inexperienced opponent, Sima Shi, who it should be noted was about four years younger than Zhuge, but still 45 at this time, which is not nearly old enough to qualify for a senior discount or anything, but by no means some greenhorn. With that in mind, though, Zhuge ordered virtually every able-bodied man of Wu to strike at Wei, a move thoroughly criticized and objected to

by several court officials. This counteroffensive was, again, as always, completely negligible in terms of territory gained or lost for either side, but was devastating to Wu's armies and population. The impregnable defenses of Wei's border cities, combined with plague sowing death and sickness throughout the siege camps, killed thousands upon thousands of soldiers until Zhuge was at last forced to call off the abortive offensive and withdraw. But instead of admitting that he had assessed the situation poorly and taken the blame for its failure on himself, Zhuge's pride dictated that he admit assessed the situation poorly and taken the blame for its failure on himself. Juga's pride dictated that he admit no fault.

Instead, he stayed away from the capital and neither accepted responsibility for his failure nor apologized for the massive, senseless loss of life. When he at last did return to the capital, he took it one step further, attempting to snuff out any and all dissent of his strategies and ruthlessly targeting anyone who spoke against him. Something had to be done, and one of his officers, Sun Jun, a longtime member of the imperial court and backroom power player, decided that he was the guy to fix this issue. He told Emperor Sun Leong that Zhuge Ke was planning to seize the throne

and set a trap at an imperial feast celebrating Zhuge's return. Now, how much the young emperor actually knew of Sun Jun's plan and whether or not he agreed to it is unclear. Traditional histories imply that Sun Liang knew and concurred, but I mean, for heaven's sake, he was a ten-year-old at this point. How much could he really have known? During the middle of the feast, assassins that Sun Jun had arranged for killed Zhuge Ke, and Sun Jun's armies then exterminated the remainder of his clan. Sun Jun's own regency over Wu would last only four years, however, when in 256, while preparing

for yet another major offensive against Cao Wei's positions, he fell ill. Sensing perhaps that he would not recover, he transferred his powers of regency to his close cousin, Sun Chen, before dying at age 37. Sun Chen, however, would have an equally unhappy and even shorter reign as regent. He deposed the sitting puppet emperor, Sun Liang, and replaced him with his own candidate, Sun Xiao. But this would prove to be the regent's undoing, when in 258, the supposed puppet cut his strings and organized the assassination of Chancellor Sun Chun

to reclaim his imperial authority. Then, as an act of further revenge against the already dead, both Sun Shen and Sun Jun were posthumously banished from the Sun family records. Because yeah, that'll teach them. As the new emperor of Wu, Sun Xiu is remembered as having been studious and tolerant of dissenting opinion, and yet for all of that, rather incompetent. Most of the day to day running of the empire was left to his two subordinates, General Zhang Bu and Puyangxin. Now this might have worked out alright if they'd been halfway decent at their jobs, but they proved too inept and, even worse,

corrupt. A project to construct an artificial barrier lake to stymie northern aggression, for instance, ran well over time and budgetary constraints, which ultimately led to the whole ridiculously expensive project to at last be abandoned before it was even finished, and with the bonus of leaving the state's finances in dire straits. Eastern Wu had already been on the verge of stalling out when Sun Xiao had taken control, but under his rule, the state went into an effective tailspin. This is indirectly evidenced by a letter written by Wu's own ambassador to Xu Han, Xue Xu, who, after visiting the flailing western state in 261, reported back

to Emperor Sun Xiu, quote, Quote, The emperor is incompetent and does not know of his errors. His subordinates just try to get by without causing trouble for themselves. When I was visiting them, I heard no honest words. And when I visited their countryside, the people looked hungry. I have heard of a story of swallows and sparrows making nests on top of mansions and being content, believing that it was the safest place, but not realizing that the haystack and the support beams were on fire and that disaster was about to come. This might be what they are like." Now of course he is directly talking about Shu Han in this letter, but it is

widely believed that in so illustrating the probable fate of Wu's sister state due to official mismanagement, Xue was making a not-so-subtle comparison to Wu's own position, and trying to get his emperor to wake up and pull the country out of its tailspin before the inevitable crash occurred. This intent, however, seemed to fly directly over Sun Xiao's head, and few, if any, changes were made to quench the metaphorical fires burning underneath his own nest. Reality, however, always seems to have a way of crashing down, and so it would on Sun Tzu's dream world in 263, when several prefectural capitals in northern Vietnam, including modern Hanoi, rose up in rebellion against Eastern Wu's incompetent rule and began pleading for aid from Cao Wei. That request would eventually be granted, fanning the rebellion's flames until 271.

And as you may remember from last episode, that fateful year of 263 was the same year that Cao Wei at last broke through Xu Han's defensive lines and proceeded to crush the western state once and for all. Now, Wu was bound by both treaty and existential self-interest to assist the floundering Emperor Liu Shan, but with the majority of his forces tied up in Vietnam trying to stem his own rebellion, he was only able to send two columns to relieve the battered Xu Han defenders, a force that proved totally inadequate to do much of, well, anything. Without the aid promised from the east, Emperor Liu Shan surrendered later that year, leaving Sun Wu to face the might of the north, all alone. But all was not well within Cao Wei either. You'll of course recall that the Cao line of emperors following Cao Cao and Cao Pi had rapidly declined and been effectively supplanted by the Sima clan between 249 and 246,

culminating with the crowning of Sima Zhao as first the duke and then the king of Jin. He named his adopted son, Sima Yan, his heir later that same year, and died in 265, only one step away from formally usurping the imperial throne from the long-impotent Cao emperors. Sima Yan would be the one to finish the job his great grandfather Sima Yi had begun, and upon assuming the title of King of Jin, promptly forced the long-suffering Emperor Cao Huan to abdicate the throne and bringing about the end of the state of Cao Wei. In its place, Sima Yan crowned himself the Emperor of Jin, with the regnal name Wu, an homage to Wu the Warlike of the early Han Dynasty. As his first act in office, Emperor Wu sought to actively avoid what he perceived as the fatal flaw of the Cao dynasty, which was the fact that imperial princes had virtually no power under the Cao emperors, and as such could not assist

the emperor militarily against internal conflicts. To that end, he empowered his relatives with independent military commands and nearly complete autonomy within their own principalities. In trading systems, he would also trade problems. Cao Cao after all had abolished the power of imperial princes because he feared that they might themselves seek power, especially if there was a vacuum. But though it would take some blood, sweat, and tears to get the balance quite right, it would ultimately prove a better system than letting regions take over willy-nilly. Emperor Wu also sought to reform the penal system

within his empire, which he saw as too strict. But in terms of who it was too strict towards, I am of course only talking about legal reforms that would benefit the nobility and ruling classes, because who cares about the peasantry, right? Certainly not Wu. Under these legal changes, nobles convicted of crimes would often merely receive official rebukes, while the peasantry still faced the same old harsh penalties to their lives, limbs, families, and property. And when justice is doled out unequally, and those in power feel they can get away with just about anything with little more than a wrist slap, corruption is bound to follow, and quickly. But it was the ongoing military problems that most interested Wu of Jin,

and they were twofold. First, of course, the incessant military harassment that continued to come from that persistent little pest, Sun Wu. The southeastern state had now come under the control of Emperor Sun Hao, the nephew of Sun Xiao, who had died in 264 after a period of illness at age 29. Rather than promoting Xiao's son and crown prince, Sun Wan, his chancellor, however, felt that an emperor older than the child crown prince was required in light of Xu Han's recent downfall and the political instability of the country. And so it was that instead the 22-year-old Sun Hao

would take the throne and promptly convince everyone what a terrible choice he had been. In Jin, Emperor Wu was delighted to hear the tales of misery and suffering coming from Sun Hao's reign of debauchery and terror. Those of first demoting and then ordering the suicide of the Empress Dowager, his aunt, and that of him forcibly moving the capital city across the country, at great expense, because he'd believed a prophecy, as well as tales of him regularly executing officials who dared to object to his wasteful and cruel ways,

which of course he paid for by imposing cripplingly huge levies on the peasantry, driving them to despair, starvation, and eventually rebellion. All of that, combined with Sun Hao's foreign policy of constantly harassing and launching raids into the Jian Empire, meant that Emperor Wu had the perfect cause to invade Sun Wu and put it down once and for all. To that end, he began gathering his troops in preparation for a final southward push to break the stalemate and reunify China once again. But that would have to take a back seat for now to the ongoing Qiang rebellions that just refused to die down even after being squelched no less than four times before now. They were

still centered in the Qin and Liang provinces, which is modern Gansu province, but what made them particularly worrisome was the fact that not too far away, in Shanxi, a great number of Xiongnu horsemen had been settled after the dissolution of their state back in 216. Though they had not done anything aggressive as of yet, the popular thinking went that if rebellions in Qin and Liang picked up any steam, these barbarians might just start getting back into their old habits and causing all sorts of problems for the fledgling Jin state. And indeed, once a tribe of Xianbei began to rebel and deal with the Jin military with

remarkable success, beginning in 270, at least one of the Xiongnu chieftains would take the opportunity to do a bit of raping and pillaging of his own. Though the Xiongnu threat proved to be overblown, and the steppe warriors were easily contained and put down, the Xianbei rebellion under its chief, Tu Fu Xu Jineng, turned out to be a particularly tough nut to crack. Time and again, Chieftain Tu Fu would best his Jin adversaries in battle, and he and his warriors would remain a thorn in the Qin's side for almost a full decade before finally being put down in 279 by General Ma Long, at last freeing up the Qin armies to turn south towards eastern Wu once more.

We're going to leave off there today, but next time, the Northern Hammer falls southward for one final, decisive strike to reforge China into a unified state once again after six decades of disunity. Thank you for listening.