The History of China - #46 - 3K 5: Long United Must Divide, Long Divided Must Unite

Episode Date: November 11, 2014

We arrive at the climactic finale of the Three Kingdoms period, as Emperor Wu of Jin orders a massive warfleet constructed to deal the coup de grace to Eastern Wu. 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 Silk Road, a trade route that has served as the beating heart of commerce between the West and the East for more than 2,000 years. Persian and Indian kings, Arabian caliphs, and Roman emperors all partook in the trade route's riches and would pay any price for the mysterious, lustrous fabric from which the road took its name, silk, the secret of which was locked away from the rest of the world for millennia. Today, though, we are lucky enough not to have to depend on a 4,000-mile caravan path just to get fine silk,

and so, just in time for holiday gift shopping, you can get for your loved ones not just a fine piece of that inimitable cloth, but a one-of-a-kind work of art as well. Maat Silk is an independent artist and producer of unique and stunningly beautiful works of silk—scarves, paintings, pillows, and even silk greeting cards. And for a limited time only, the history of China has an exclusive arrangement with Maat Silk between now and the History of China has an exclusive arrangement with Maat Silk between now and the end of 2014. When you purchase any of their amazing and absolutely one-of-a-kind scarves, you will help our podcast keep on delivering Chinese history to you week after week.

Scarves range in size from 23 by 23 centimeters to 45 by 45, 90 by 90, and all the way up to a 180 by 45 centimeters. Each is hand-painted by the artist in Andalusia, Spain. Literally, there is only one of any design, and once it's gone, it's gone forever. So give a gift this holiday season that is both historical and timeless. Give a scarf from Maat Silk. You'll be giving your loved ones and family a gift they'll treasure forever while also supporting this podcast. Just go to www.maatsilk.com. That's M-A-A-T silk.com. And when you order, please mention that you heard about them from the history of China, since again, your order will help keep us chugging along. And now, on with the show.

Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 44, Long United Must Divide, Long Divided Must Unite. Last time, we looked at the state of Eastern Wu under the increasingly poor reigns of its successive Sun Emperors, culminating with the tyrannical and cruel reign of Sun Hao, beginning in 264. We then swung northward to see our second of the eponymous Three Kingdoms, Cao Wei, ironically fall from within to the rising powers of the Sima kings of Jin, who in turn established themselves as the Jin Dynasty in 265 under Sima Yan. Jin would be forced from the time of its rise to power to confront several internal rebellions by the Qiang, Xianbei, and even pockets of Xiongnu. But today, that third and final domino will at last tumble, after the state of Jin spends a decade extensively preparing for what will be the

last climactic battle of the Three Kingdoms period, against the only kingdom left standing. Now, you may recall from the last couple of episodes that Cao Wei turned Jin had run into the unexpectedly good fortune of conquering their great rival, Shu Han, in almost the blink of an eye. And while that was without a doubt a marvelous victory, it did present significant logistical problems. Most notably, just out-and-out dealing with this heretofore hostile indigenous population. And in victory, the northern state made just about the best decision it could to stem any further pushback from the Sichuan Basin. A policy of what amounted to blanket pardon. I'd mentioned before that the former emperor of Shu Han, Liu Shan, had not only been kept alive,

but actually granted the title of Duke of Anle and luxurious living quarters in the Wei-slash-Jin capital, Luoyang. There, he lived out the rest of his days in peace. And this policy largely extended to the remainder of the Shu populace as well, because it simply would not do to have such a large and far-flung area ready to rise up in rebellion on a moment's notice, especially when Jin wanted to devote its time and resources to Sun Wu to the east. More than 50 notable officials of Xu Han were given marches and titles, and the grandson of the revered Zhuge Liang, who had been an absolute thorn in Cao Wei's side for decades,

was given an imperial appointment in honor of his grandfather's prestige. And as a bit of an aside, the name of the southwestern state was also reverted to what it had been called before the ascension of Liu Bei, back to Yi province. Now this may seem a small matter, what's in a name after all, but to be frank, the faster they could distance the Sichuan Basin from the idea of political independence, the better it would be for Jin. Busy as it was dealing with both the internal rebellions and making sure its hold on Shuhan Kung-I province was secure, Jin also needed to deal somehow with Sun Hao and his warmongering over in Eastern Wu. This isn't to say that Emperor Wu of Qin didn't fully intend to crush Eastern Wu

like the meddlesome bug it was. Just not now. Not yet. And so he employed a different sort of weapon, one that had time and again proved to be as potent and as lethal as any sword or arrow. He sent diplomats. They treated with the Sun Wu court, entreating them to cease hostilities between these two states, and can't we all just get along? And Sun Hao bought it, in that he thought that by sending envoys to make peace, Jin was displaying weaknesses

for him to exploit. The reality of the situation, though, was far from Sun Hao's simplistic takeaway. Yeah, sure, Jin was kind of preoccupied with Sichuan and the little rebels running about to the north, but its real impediment regarding Eastern Wu was a far older and far more significant problem. The necessity of getting their men and material across that geographic feature which had stopped even the might of Cao Cao dead in his tracks, the Yangtze River. To his credit, Wu Evjin didn't simply try to jazz hands his way across the watery barrier as had his predecessor.

He had learned the lessons of history, and knew that if he were to have any chance of breaching that particular impediment, he'd need time. Time to train his men, and build the weapons he'd need to ford the heavily defended riverbanks. What would become more than a decade of careful preparations began in 269, when the broad strokes of conquest were laid out by the Jin Emperor. He selected three of his forward bases

to launch his grand invasion of the southern state. The centralized and ever-contentious Jin province, to which he appointed the imperial secretary, Yang Hu, as its military governor, stationed in the riverfront stronghold, Xiangyang City. To the north, Emperor Wu of Jing appointed Wei Guan, the general who conquers the east, as governor of Qing province in modern Shantong. And to the west, he appointed Sima Zhou, the prince of Langye, and the general who stabilizes the east as the viceroy of Shu province, which is modern Jiangsu. Mustering points duly chosen, the next step of preparations was constructing a massive fleet, powerful enough to penetrate Sun Mu's riverfront defenses. To that end, he appointed Wang Jun, the general who raises dragons, as the viceroy of Yi province,

which you'll remember is Sichuan and was Xuhuan, and tasked him with overseeing the construction of an unbeatable navy. Wang Jun, who by this point was already more than 70 years old, was still a highly ambitious commander and eager to win glory and honor through the conquest of Sun Wu. In fact, he had actually begun construction of the fleet some five years before he'd even been appointed the head of Yi's government. But his new status only served to speed up the timetable, as he was now able to draft a vastly expanded workforce. Back when he had been a mere provincial administrator, he'd only had 500 or 600 total

laborers. But now, as the provincial governor, he was able to requisition 10,000 men from each of the province's prefectural capitals. With this new glut of labor pools, Wang Jun was able to complete the remainder of his fleet's construction in less than a year. But remembering the disastrous effects of putting a bunch of land troops on ships and calling them marines, Wang didn't build the standard-issue troop transports of the day. Instead, he decided to make up for the Jin army's lack of naval combat experience with sheer punching power in the form of massive ships, some as long as 170 meters three stories tall and able to carry 2,000 troops each, and all constructed around a central metal-plated ram bow, which

is exactly what it sounds like. The bow, or front of the ship, was specifically constructed to ram into the hulls of enemy vessels and punch huge holes in them, or sometimes split them completely in half, thereby either disabling or sinking the struck vessel. Now all this activity and construction generates waste materials, which, then as now, often was disposed by simply chucking it into the river and letting whoever was downstream worry about it. The problem with this particular waste disposal policy was that those downriver happened to be the officials of Sun Wu, sitting as the state did, along the mouth of the Yangtze.

Notably, the administrator of Jianping had been collecting the various pieces of wood and debris that had been flowing from the secret naval construction yard in Sichuan, and managed to figure out much of what was going on upriver. He sent the debris and his explanation in an urgent missive to the Emperor of Wu, Sun Hao. Now this might have been a massive strategic blow to the Jin's battle plans had the Emperor listened. Emperor Sun, however, unwittingly gave his enemy to the north a reprieve. Rather than taking the evidence of a massive fleet being constructed to the west as signs of a build-up to imminent attack, he ignored the missive and dismissed the threat. Sun Hao was extremely overconfident and felt, perhaps with some merit, that the Yangtze had

served as an unbreachable barrier for almost 60 years at this point, so what was the panic? In fact, just about the only thing he did during the 270s that could even sort of be construed as taking military matters seriously, was to split the commands of his land force, defensive garrisons, and navy into five separate commanders, which were five brothers surnamed Lu, as it were. On paper, this might have looked like it was a good way to ensure flexibility on a changeable battlefield, but it had the actual effect of slowing command decisions way down and

limiting the amount of cohesion that the Army and Navy could fight with. In short, it massively weakened Sun Wu's military strength by basically giving it too many heads. Wu did reinforce its defenses by deploying iron awls linked together by iron chains in the three gorges to prevent ships from passing, but Sun Hao and his followers were so overconfident about this additional measure that not even a single soldier was deployed to guard the region. By October of 276, Wang Jun felt his fleet and the troops who would sail in them were ready for combat, and sent a message saying as much to the imperial court at Luoyang.

However, due to the ongoing internal struggles against the Xianbei rebels, the assault against Wu was put on hold. It would actually remain on the backburner for a further three years, until 279, when once again Wang Jun petitioned the emperor to commence the attack. This time, he was supported by both Imperial Secretary Zhang Hua and the new commander of Jing province, the general who conquers the south, Du Yu. And as an aside, aren't these military titles just the best? The three of them managed to convince Emperor Wu of Jin that the time was indeed nigh,

and he ordered the assault on Sun Wu to commence. Of the about 500,000 troops available to the state of Jin, 200,000 of them would board the massive combat transports and begin their journey down river that December. In spite of such a huge number of soldiers, the Jin army actually did not have numerical superiority over Sun Wu, which itself had some 230,000 soldiers defending its borders, and more than 5,000 ships patrolling its stretch of the Yangtze. But those defenders were stretched out along the borders of the state, some several thousand miles in all. All the while, the Jin's advance would proceed along five columns, each with some 40,000 troops, which could overwhelm and destroy any individual pocket of Wu defenders, in short order. The general who establishes might, Wang Hun, and the senior

general who stabilizes the east, Sima Zhou, were tasked with engaging and tying down the primary Wu defense force by threatening the capital Nanjing, thereby preventing it from reinforcing other pockets of defenders. Meanwhile, the other three commanders, Wang Rong, Du Yu, and Hu Fun, would take their contingents and seize all of Wu's strongholds west of Xia Kou before linking up with Wang Jun and his personal command of 70,000 troops. In January of 280, the assault began in earnest with Du Yu and his sub-commanders attacking and seizing the fortresses along the riverbanks west of Xia Kou. This went off without a hitch, and by February, they had all been taken, along with the notable

capture of Danyang City, along with its supervisor Shangji. The Jin fleet under Wang Jun continued its course until it came upon the defensive barriers at the Three Gorges, that massive iron chain-link fence. But General Wang had already captured many of Sun Wu's agents as well as prisoners of war, and with the information he managed to glean from them, had detailed knowledge of the river defenses, where they were, how many soldiers guarded them, and where the weakest points to attack were located. Wang Jun sent out ahead of his main fleet dozens of small rafts, which struck the iron awls and impaled themselves on the defensive

structures. The rafts were full to the brim with oils and tinder, which, when lit, burned hot enough to melt the ironworks. After waiting several hours, the defensive structures had completely fallen to pieces, and the Jin navy was able to continue on unimpeded. By February 5th, the Wu strongholds of Xiling, Jingmen, and Yidao had all come under Jin control. All of their commanders had been captured and then put to death, ensuring that the advancing fleet's attack continued unimpeded. In the meantime, Du Yu had sent a subordinate to cross the Yangtze River with 800 horsemen

at night to plant Jining flags up and down the slopes of Mount Ba. This ruse was aimed at convincing the local Wu garrison that a large force was mustered there, when in reality, a much smaller team waited in ambush just outside the local garrison of Le Xiang. When the Le Xiang garrison sallied forth to engage, Zhou Zhe and his men were able to sneak into the city and capture it. The commander of Le Xiang was taken prisoner and sent to Du Yu, and the commander of Sun Wu's naval forces, Lu Jing, was killed in the fighting. By the end of February, Emperor Wu of Jin ordered his commander Du Yu to reinforce Wang

Jun's amphibious strike by attacking southward to take Lingling, Guiyang, and Heyang, and then transfer command of an additional 17,000 troops to the general of the uplifting dragon. Soon thereafter, a combined strike by Hu Fen and Wang Jun's forces would seize Xia Kou, and a further 7,000 troops were to join up with Wang Jun's command. Shortly after that, Wang Rong would make a joint attack on Wuchang, and once the city fell, transferred a further 6,000 men to General Wang's rolling hammer strike. Personally, I picture this much like a tidal wave surging down the Yangtze, with each tributary force Wang Jun reached feeding him yet more kinetic energy and unstoppable momentum. With the majority of Wu's forces swept away by the military tide,

the final target lay in sight, the capital of Wu, Nanjing, where Emperor Sun Hao wasn't nearly as smugly self-assured as he had been a mere month prior. At this point, what defenses Wu had left were often surrendering outright or putting up only the meagerest of fights before throwing in the towel. With most of their commanders dead and the majority of their defensive line rolled up like dominoes, what were they going to do? Shocked at the rapidity of his defensive line's collapse, and with Jin troops now streaming over the river into Wu nearly unopposed,

Emperor Sun Hao ordered the commanders he had left to lead a force of 30,000 Wu troops to ride out and stem the tide of battle and reinforce the buckling defensive lines upriver. That would prove easier said than done, however, when after an initial victory or two against a Jin force of 7,000, the Wu army would be forced to rout after losing almost a third of their numbers, and then, when trying to retreat, losing three out of the unit's four commanders in yet another Jin ambush that stunned the Wu high command. Meanwhile, the amphibious army under Wang Jun's command now numbered some 80,000 strong. Once again, Sun Hao attempted to stop the Jin advance, this time with his own naval force numbering 10,000. But heavily demoralized by defeat after crushing defeat, when the Wu navy encountered Wang

Ju's force in mid-March, the entire force surrendered en masse, including its commanding officer. Wang Jun's juggernaut army continued its advance along the Yangtze, next moving against San Shan, just to the southeast of Nanjing. There, one of the last significant Wu commanders still standing, General Tao Jun, organized a force of 20,000 to make a glorious last stand. This would turn out to be rather less glorious than planned, however, when virtually the entire army deserted and fled that same night, leaving only a token die-hard force to remain with General Tao,

where the lot of them would be slain by the Jin invaders shortly thereafter. Emperor Sun Hao attempted a last-ditch strategy in an attempt to delay the inevitable, and on the advice of his officials, sent letters of surrender to the Jin generals Sima Zhou, Wang Jun, and Wang Hun. He had apparently hoped that his submission would stir up internal divisions within Jin, but no such fracture would occur, and the three generals promptly took the emperor of Sun Wu up on his offer. And so it was. On March 15th, 280, Sun Hao stripped himself to the waist and had his arms bound, this being the traditional manner prisoners of war were presented to victors.

He then walked himself over to Wang Jun's waiting camp to formally surrender both himself and his state to the Jin expedition. He issued one final imperial decree, stating that the people of Wu should not despair at the end of their state, but should instead prepare themselves to serve a new dynasty. Sun Hao was then taken to the Jin capital, Luoyang, with his imperial chariot, but was not allowed to ride in it. Instead, he traveled on foot, as he was now a prisoner of war. After hearing of Sun Hao's surrender, the last pocket of Wu resistance in Jiamping followed suit, even after having successfully defended against all Jin attacks

throughout the campaign. Upon arriving in Luoyang, Emperor Wu had Sun Hao unbound and seated next to himself at the next imperial gathering. The monarch reportedly remarked, I have had this seat for you for a long time. Sun Hao's response was, I also had a seat for your imperial majesty in Jianye, which again was the period name for Wu's capital, modern Nanjing. When the Jin official Jia Chong, seeking to humiliate Sun, asked him, I heard that you had had such cruel punishments as poking out people's eyes and peeling the facial skin off of people. What kind of punishment is this?

Sun Hao's response was, If a subordinate planned to murder his emperor or was treacherous, I would use those punishments on him. Jia Cheng, who had been instrumental in the Wei Emperor Cao Mao's death, was humiliated and could not further respond. As with the former emperor of Shu Han, Emperor Bu of Jin pardoned Sun Hao of all crimes and would later name him the Marquis of Guiming and his sons junior officials in Dijin court. The former emperor of Eastern Wu would live another four years before dying in 284 at

the age of 42. The capture of Wu marked the end of the Three Kingdoms period and the reunification, however briefly, of China into a single political entity. It is with no small degree of irony, however, that of the three dynastic states that had warred for six decades to establish supremacy over the empire, none of them in fact managed to survive. The ultimate victor had been the upstart Sima clan of usurpers who had forced the once-mighty Tao family from power. This period of strife had been, in the grand sweep of things, very short indeed. But the sheer enormity of the conflict and the resultant loss of life have also made it one of the most formative, and of course, romanticized, in all of Chinese history.

In terms of sheer human cost, the numbers tell an absolutely staggering tale. In the official state census, circa 2 CE, right before Wang Meng would seize power from the Western Han to disastrous effect, official counts had placed the population of China at around 57 million people. But the census taken in 290, just a decade after the conclusion of the Three Kingdoms, registered only 24 million, with some accounts putting the conclusion of the Three Kingdoms, registered only 24 million, with some accounts putting the population of Jin in 280 at just over 16 million. All that to say that in less than three centuries, the population of China had been more than halved, all of this including the rapid territorial expansion to the north and south.

Now this isn't to say that half the population had necessarily died. There is considerable evidence of large-scale migrations away from the conflict and to more stable regions of the world, as far away as Persia. But between battle, famine, and disease, the death toll was undeniably catastrophic to the entire nation. In fact, it would not be until the 8th century during the Sui dynasty that the population would once again exceed the record high set by the census of 2 CE. That is to say, it would take more than 400 years to undo the damage wrought by the end of the Han

dynasty. It's fair to ask how this could have happened. After all, China had already had more than its fair share of massive, sprawling conflict both within and outside its borders. One answer is that it was in fact here, rather than the 19th century, that the world saw its first taste of what would later become known as total warfare. The warlord Dongzhou was a particularly vicious and early example of the horrors that would become common throughout this period, as he was well known to give his army full leeway to rape, torture, and plunder the indigenous populations of his captured territories and cities.

So too did he embark on what can only be described as a scorched earth campaign when the anti-Dong coalition began to rally against his despotism, declaring, quote, Nor were the other, later warlords, much improved. When Cao Cao launched his attack on Shu province, for instance, it was written, quote, hundreds of thousands of men and women were buried alive. Even dogs and chickens did not survive. The Si River was blocked. From then on, these five towns never recovered. End quote. During this period, we also see the rise of the militarization of nearly the entire population of the three competing states. The population of Shuhan, for instance, is estimated to have been about 900,000, yet able to field a military of more than 100,000, or more than 11%

of the state's population. For some perspective, today, North Korea boasts the largest military per capita in the world, consisting of 1.1 million active duty soldiers. Yet with a population of just under 25 million, that means only about 4.5% of the total population is in uniform. The U.S. military, boasting 1.4 million in uniform, meanwhile consists of just 0.4% of its total population. The economies of all three states likewise suffered tremendously, as both running famines and the devastation wrought to their respective populations left many fields to fallow. Where the peasantry could find safety enough to plant and grow their livelihoods was almost universally within heavily defended manorial regions controlled by a powerful local lord,

resulting eventually in largely self-contained and self-sufficient strongholds independent from larger regional market forces. This was made even worse by the collapse of the monetary system. After all, with no one central authority minting copper coins any longer, regional lords would from time to time try to mint their own localized currencies, but that would prove ineffectual, since such newly minted coins virtually never found their way into general circulation. This failure to uphold the coinage system was reflected as early as 221, when Cao Wei officially declared silk cloth and grain to be its official currency, which is a virtual

throwback to the barter system of pre-monetary societies. Though China would be politically reunified, the cultural regionalization of the major powers would echo on for centuries after the conclusion of this conflict. Even 700 years later, during the Northern Song Dynasty, it was still possible to see the nominally unified nation as three largely separate regional markets. Yep, you guessed it, neatly coinciding with the former boundaries of Wei, Shu, and Wu. This is, however, not entirely the fault of the Three Kingdoms conflict, per se. It is important to remember that this had largely been the case even before the outbreak of

hostilities, as the three regions are largely cut off from one another by natural geographic barriers, and it was only through man-made construction projects that routine contact and commerce was feasible. Namely, the Grand Canal connecting the north and south, the path through the three gorges linking Sichuan and southeastern China, and the galley roads through the mountains connecting Sichuan to southeastern China, and the galley roads through the mountains connecting Sichuan to northern China. In spite of the fact that I've been somewhat disdainful of Luo Guanzhong's 14th-century fictionalization of the period, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, it is one heck of a read. Epic, tragic, at once mystical and deeply human. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in the history of China.

And there can be no doubt that he captures the spirit of not only the era, but of Chinese history as a whole with the twin opening and closing lines of his epic novel. 话说天下大事,分久必合,合久必分。 Or, approximately, such has it ever been. The empire, long united, must divide. And long divided must unite. Next time, we're breaking with our chronology to bring you a very special edition of the History of China, our first anniversary! We've been taking in questions from all of you, and I look forward to answering as many as I can.

I hope you'll join us, and we'll see you then. And as always, thank you for listening. Hey guys, hope you all enjoyed the show this week. If so, please consider helping us climb the charts by giving us a review on the iTunes Store, which remains by far the cheapest, easiest way to get new people interested in Chinese history and this podcast. For any of you who might wish to go one step further than a review, the History of China's WordPress site also has links to our donation pages either through PayPal or Patreon. So if you think we're worth a dollar or more, please click and donate. Our server costs are entirely paid for by

listeners like you. Thanks very much, and see you again next week.