The History of China - #49 - 16K 2: Barbarians At The Gates

Episode Date: December 7, 2014

Following the bloody struggle between the eight princes, the Jin Dynasty lies in tatters. Into the void will step five non-Chinese tribes, initially led by the ancient enemy of China, the Xiongnu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 47, Barbarians at the Gates. Last time, we capped off the period of betrayal and backstabbing by the members of the Jin Imperial Clan, known as the Disorder of the Eight Princes. We'd left off with the accession of Huai of Jin to the Imperial Throne, following his elder brother's mysterious death, quite probably through poisoning, in 307. Today, as heavily alluded to last week, we're going to look at the other huge problem facing

the new-but-struggling Jin dynasty, the non-Han tribes both surrounding and within the empire, who had been watching this familial bloodletting with growing interest, and increasingly viewing the conflict as a potential opportunity to throw off the yoke of Han Chinese authority once and for all. First, though, let's have a little discussion about these so-called barbarians, who will be featured so prominently in this episode and many more to come. Now I'm as guilty as anyone of throwing the term barbarian around as flippantly as the Han ever did.

I made it the title of the episode, for goodness sake. But it's definitely a loaded and nearly universally disparaging term, specifically intended to belittle any other people and render their individual culture moot. It's difficult not to use the term without picturing some wildly bearded shirtless warrior howling from a mountaintop with a battleaxe in either hand and nothing but a loincloth. But as we have seen time and time again, that catch-all glosses over the fact that these quote-unquote barbarians were many, many different peoples from Central Asian horsemen to the

mountain tribes of Sichuan to the Vietnamese, Manchurians, and Koreans, and even the Wu and Yue peoples of southeastern China, who today are viewed as just as Chinese as any resident of Beijing or Xi'an. It can be easy to forget that the idea of a Han ethnicity has virtually from the outset been a very flexible concept, having itself, supposedly, derived from the union of the two separate tribes, those of the Yan Emperor and the original Huangdi, the Yellow Emperor, way back in the 27th century BCE. A barbarian tribe could, given enough time and distance from its wild roots, eventually be

considered sinicized and even incorporated into the broader Han identity completely, provided it looked and quacked enough like a mandarin duck to pass the muster. Like the Roman citizens of Greece, Britannia, Africa, and Spain who had never set foot on the Italian peninsula, much less the Eternal City itself, the dividing line between a Han Chinese and a barbarian has often been far more about culture and dress than bloodlines. So now I can clamber down from my soapbox and let's get into the action. The nomadic tribes of the northern Asian steppes, you'll surely recall, were nothing new for China. Interactions between the peoples had been ongoing for centuries, oftentimes grating to both and at times downright devastating for the southerners.

Northern interest in what had laden south of the Yellow River had been so long-standing for one simple reason. It's where all the nice stuff was. Natural resources, farmland, trading centers, technology, wealth, you name it, it was all there. Meanwhile, the steppes of Central Asia have been long-renowned for having horses, arid grasslands, desert, wickedly harsh weather, and hundreds and thousands of miles of absolutely nothing else. As such, it's hardly surprising that whenever they'd been able to do so, by invitation or conquest,

the steppe tribes had tried to migrate south of the Ordos Loop and into the relative lushness of the Yellow River Valley. Though there had indeed been long stretches of the Han trying to keep these peoples out of China, other periods had seen the opposite to be true as well. Indeed, a policy of encouraging southward migration had never been more in effect than the period immediately following the Three Kingdoms era. You may recall at the end of episode 44 that I had brought up the population data before and after the tumultuous Three Kingdoms era. You may recall at the end of episode 44 that I'd brought up the population data before and after the tumultuous Three Kingdoms, specifically that

the six-decade conflict had seen China's overall population fall by more than half. Faced with massive labor and military shortfalls, an influx of eager tribes into the depopulated farmlands had been a welcome relief, moving into many of the northernmost provinces and the regions surrounding the imperial capital, Luoyang itself. But there were those who, like the mythical Cassandra, voiced concern over the implications of this policy. An imperial official under the then-crowned prince Sima Yu, named Jiang Tong, wrote in 299 in his work The Xirong Lun, or A Discourse on

Moving the Western Rong Tribes, that the only safe course of action for the Jin Dynasty would be to expel these non-Han peoples from their lands entirely. Historian Niccolo de Cosmo summarizes Jiang Tong's position in his Military Culture in Imperial China as such, From the beginning of the Eastern Han, these peoples have been settled in lands that have Tong's position in his Military Culture in Imperial China, as such, quote, From the beginning of the Eastern Han, these peoples have been settled in lands that have become sparsely populated as the Han population gradually emigrated southward. The Xiongnu, Xianbei, and Qiang who were settled in these areas, meaning Guangzhou, Shaanxi, and much of northern China, have become partly Sinicized while retaining their skill as horse

archers, in which capacity they have served the Eastern Han emperors, and then Cao Cao and his successors. Now the Qiang of Guanzhong were half of the million people of that region, and the Xiongnu of Shaanxi even more. Their hearts were crooked, their dispositions greedy and cruel, and their numbers were increasing every generation. They waited only for a rift among the Chinese to break into open rebellion. It made Jiang Tong's blood run cold.

End quote. The Xiang Yu had long been the recurrent boogeyman of Chinese foreign relations, but as we've now, hopefully, made abundantly clear, they were just one of many tribes existing on the outskirts of imperial rule. It will be the D-Tribe, of the dark jungles of Sichuan in fact, rather than the that will kick off this period of external instability that will ultimately culminate in the Jin Dynasty losing control of nearly its entire northern half to this rising tide of hostile outsiders. The most common name for this period is 五户十六国, or the 16 kingdoms of the five barbarian tribes, or just the 16 kingdoms to be short. But that name,

while adequately conveying the fractious nature of this period, can lead to some confusion. Taken as it often is alongside the historically recent Three Kingdoms, in which three contemporaneous kingdoms all existed alongside one another and vied for power, it's easy to assume that the same might be the case of the Sixteen Kingdoms. However, we might be better served by likening it more to the Disorder of the Eight Princes of the previous episode, in which there were ultimately eight warring princes, but never all at once. Like them, we'll get our sixteen barbarian kingdoms, but we'll have to settle for getting them

a few at a time. So the D-Tribe originated in what is today the southern tip of Gansu province in the as-yet untamed reaches of the former state of Qin, itself having stemmed from the remnants of the long-destroyed Shu Ba kingdoms that had been eradicated by the King of Qin more than six centuries prior. Having just assumed control of the tribe a year prior, Chieftain Li Xiong had capitalized on court intrigue within Luoyang and its commiserate naval gazing to win a stunning victory in 304 against the governor of Chengdu, culminating a two-year struggle began by Li's father.

As the imperial governor fled, Li Xiong and his D tribesmen found themselves in control of the great metropolis. That winter, at the urgings of his officers, Li proclaimed himself the Prince of Chengdu, an act that effectively declared independence from the Jian dynasty, and then as emperor of the Cheng Han dynasty. And this, just as the Sichuanese were getting used to being part of the empire again. Oh well. That blow would, according to later historians, sound the opening bell of the 16 kingdoms

era. But Emperor Huai and Luo Yong wouldn't have to wait long for its next ring. In fact, it would be that same year, 304, that yet another bell would sneak up right next to his ear when he wasn't expecting it, and be unclanging away non-stop. And the man holding that bell? A fellow we call Liu Yuan. Liu Yuan was a prominent member of the Xiongnu nobility, which had been forcibly divided into five tribes upon their resettlement into southern Shanbility, which had been forcibly divided into five tribes upon their resettlement into southern Shanxi, ostensibly to keep them divided enough to prevent

them from becoming an internal threat. They were called, respectively, the tribes of the north, south, east, west, and center. It was there in Shanxi, most likely, that young Liu was born and grew up circa 251, the son of the leader of the tribe of the West. But as was the case for many tribes that had settled within China, first the Cao Wei state, and then the Jin dynasty, had liked to keep these ruffians under their thumbs and ensure their good behavior by either pressuring or outright demanding that the sons of nobility be sent as insurance to the capital city.

This both provided the Chinese hostages as bargaining chips in the event of tribal unrest, but also promoted the integration of these outsiders into Chinese philosophy, cultures, and way of life. Liu Yuan had been one such hostage under the first emperor of Jin Wu, but he had made the most of his time in the thriving imperial capital, and taken a particular liking in the teachings of Confucius, the histories of the spring and autumn period, as well as the military strategies of Sun Tzu and his contemporaries. Though his depth of knowledge and knack for military tactics earned him more than a few recommendations to the emperor for a military command, and even for generalship. During first the Xianbei Rebellions and then Jin's final conquest of Sun Wu, court distrust of his barbarian ancestry precluded any such

commission from being granted to the young upstart. In fact, Wu's brother, the Prince of Qi, actually urged the emperor to have Liu Yuan executed, supposedly fearful of his potential to lead men. But Wu would be dissuaded from such a rash course of action, and upon his father's death, the emperor allowed Liu Yuan to return to the tribe of the west as its new leader. Now around about this point, you may be noticing that, hey, for a Xiongnu tribesman, Liu Yuan sure seemed to have an awfully Chinese-y name. And you'd be right. Proud as they were, the Xiongnu tribes rarely relinquish their ethnic names, and Liu Yuan's grandfather, referred to as the sinicized but definitely not

Chinese, Yufu Luo Chizhishizhu, and grandnephew to the very last Xiongnu Chanyu, Hu Chuchuan, before the title's abolition in 216 by Cao Cao. So what was up with the name change? Well, to answer that question, we have to go all the way back to the very first emperor of the Han Dynasty, Gao Zu of the 3rd century BCE. You may remember that back in 203 BCE, Gao Zu had suffered a humiliating defeat by the then-equal Xiongnu confederacies Ba Torchonyu at Baideng Plateau. The peace terms that had been reached between the two great empires had included, along with the usual massive payments of goods and cash, the so-called Heqin Pact of intermarriage between the two imperial families. Specifically, that eligible young Chinese

princesses would be shipped off to join the harems of the horsemen's own nobility. As the conflict between the three kingdoms of the 3rd century really started churning through an entire generation of Chinese, only to have its successor state Jin rapidly devolve into bloody infighting between the eight princes, well, the long-defunct Han dynasty, which was by now distant history whose final terrible days were really remembered by nobody at this point. Well, it seemed more and more like some golden era of unity and harmony to those who longed, understandably, for a return to the good old days of yesteryear. In all likelihood, the surname Liu and the sinicization of both Liu Yuan and the names of much of the rest of his clan only came later in life after he started seeing the

value in such a shift. But regardless, it's the name that stuck and was ultimately written down and given to us. What is clear is that by affixing himself and his family with the surname Liu rather than Yufuluo, they were ultimately able to rally many to their banner by claiming to be descendants of the late Great Han Dynasty. In the run-up to the year 304, Liu had managed to overcome imperial hesitancy at granting him military command when the Prince of Chengdu invited him to become one of his subordinate

military commanders, an offer Liu readily accepted. But his story would really take off in 304, when the chieftain of the northern tribe, wary of the ongoing War of Eight Princes and fed up with the running snafu calling itself imperial government in Luoyang, sent a message to the by now charismatic, wildly popular, and still military genius, chieftain Liu Yuan, informing him of a developing plot within the five tribes to regain their independence from Jin, and offering him the title of Grand Chanyu if he would lead them to victory and freedom. Liu was intrigued, but in a bit of a bind, since he was enrolled in military service to the Prince of Chengdu and couldn't exactly slip off into the night with no one noticing. Still, there was a way. The Prince of Chengdu had already been conscripting non-Han

tribesmen by the thousands for his war effort to claim the regency. Xianbei, Wuhan, you name it, he'd take it. Sensing an opening, Liu Yang offered Chengdu the services of his own people, promising a force of 50,000 Xiongnu horsemen if the prince would release him to return home and rally them to his cause. The prince readily agreed to what seemed like a great deal and allowed Liu to return to Shanxi to gather his men. And it ought to be said that by most accounts, Liu Yan wasn't trying to do a double-cross or anything like that.

He seems to have been very much prepared to ride off at the head of his tribesmen to reinforce his prince as promised. But then he received word of Chengdu's defeat at the hands of Wang Jun, the governor of You province, and his panicked flight back to Luoyang. Liu Yuan had an army, but now no commander to reinforce. All dressed up and nowhere to go. Well, might as well make the best of it. So he accepted the title of Grand Chanyu of the Xiongnu,

and declared their reunification into a single nation, and that nation's secession from the Jin Empire. Legitimizing this claim, he cited his imperial ancestry as a descendant of the Han, and announced his intention to succeed the Jin as the rightful heir and continuation of the Han dynasty, citing as he would several times over the course of his reign that the civil war between the imperial princes of Jin indicated that the dynasty's meat and bones were coming apart at the seams.

Four hundred years ago, a trio of tiny kingdoms were perched on some damp islands off the coast of Europe. Within three short centuries, these islands would become the centre of an empire which ruled a quarter of the globe and on which the sun never set. I'm Samuel Hume, a historian of the British Empire, and my podcast Pax Britannica follows the people and events that built that empire into a global superpower. Listen to Season 1 to hear about England's first attempts at empire building, in Ireland, in North America, and in the Caribbean, the first steps of the East India Company, and the political battles between King and Parliament. Listen to Season 2 to hear about the chaotic years of civil war, revolution, and regicide,

which rocked the Three Kingdoms and the Fledgling Empire. In Season 3, we see how Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell ruled the powerful Commonwealth, and challenged the Dutch and the fledgling empire. In season three, we see how Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell ruled the powerful Commonwealth and challenged the Dutch and the Spanish for the wealth and power of the Americas and Asia. Learn the history of the British Empire by listening to Pax Britannica everywhere you find your podcasts, or go to pod.link slash pax. And just for a dash of added flourish, he claimed the title of Prince of Han, the same title as that of Liu Bang, aka Emperor Gaozu some 500 years prior. In addition, he re-established the worship of Han emperors, specifically focusing on Gaozu, Wen, Wu, Xuan, Guangwu, Ming, Zhang, and Liu Bei.

His state would be called, what else? Han. But it's better known as the Northern Han or Han Zhao, which alludes to this being a new iteration of the Han dynasty, now based in the former Zhao state of the Warring States period. Really clear, right? Yeah. So let's just go with Northern Han, okay? In spite of his rhetorical flourishes, Liu's reign as Grand Chanyu got off to a rather quiet, you might even say lackluster start. He established his capital, Lishi, in Shanxi, but found himself at least initially unable to expand his sphere of influence much beyond that immediate vicinity. For his central army, he entrusted most command decisions to his son Liu Cong, the Prince

of Chu, as well as his Cong, the Prince of Chu, as well as his nephew, the Prince of Shi'an. When their armies engaged in open battle, they tended to excel, sweeping away any Jin commander standing against them. However, taking and holding fortified walled cities proved problematic for Liu's men, being as they were rather light of siege equipment or experience for that matter. After less than a year at Lishi, famine forced Liu's court to move to Li Ting. Still, simply existing as a foil to the thrashing Jin government that was busily eating itself

alive would ultimately bear itself out as a strategy. As conditions worsened across the country with little effectual response from the imperial nobility, further local and regional rebellions began to spring up, some against the ongoing crop failures and famine, and others against the misappropriation of rule by the Jin imperial clan. Perceived as a rallying point against their perceived injustices, Liu Yuan and his Xiongnu attracted many disaffected people,

both tribal and ethnically Han alike. The two most notable additions to his command staff would come in 307, the Han general Wang Mi and Shi Le of the Jie tribe, a former Jin slave turned military commander. Though both maintained their own power structures outside of Liu's main army, and oftentimes seemed to have pretty much said, yeah, whatever you say, boss, to Liu's orders, only to go and do whatever they wanted to anyway. Liu nevertheless counted them among his most loyal and stalwart allies over the course of his conflict.

Bolted in a number and riding high on victory after victory across the plains of Shanxi, the northern Han state rapidly began to gain territory across the region, and soon became a threat that even the Jin princes, preoccupied as they were playing their little game of regents, could not afford to ignore. The first real wake-up call came to Luoyang in late 308, when the northern Han army led by Wang Mi attempted to advance on the Jin capital itself for the first time, but was rebuffed. Within the capital, the new Emperor Huai of Jin had, since his enthronement in 307, been trying mightily to clean up this bloody mess left by the War of the Eight Princes,

trying in vain to pry loose his uncle, the Prince Sima Yue of Donghai's grip on the Imperial Regency and state policy, and of course, dealing with the rising wave of rebellions across the country, especially those led by these pesky barbarian tribes. But the Prince of Donghai had done his absolute best to make sure everyone knew where the center of real authority lay, when in 309 he ordered many of the emperor's associates and family members summarily executed and the dissolution of the imperial guard, stationing his own soldiers in their place to better protect the emperor. That same year, with even more territory under the northern Han's control, Le Yuan once again moved his capital southward, first to Puzi, and then to neighboring Pingyang,

where he at last got around to declaring himself what everyone knew he was eventually going to declare himself, Emperor, and given the regnal name Guangwen. Now well and truly broken off from the Jin, and with Prince Liu Cong and General Wang Mi having seized and held even more territory of southern Shanxi, they once again made a push for the imperial capital in 309, which again failed. By this point though, Liu Yan was nearly 59 and had slipped into ill health. He would hang on until mid-August of 310, naming his eldest son Liu He as his heir, before finally dying on the 19th. Liu He would become the new emperor of Han Zhao for about a week, during which time he was convinced to take out several of his brothers who were seen to be potential threats to his new rule.

He dispatched his armies to deal with these problems, only to have the plan spectacularly backfire when two of the princes dispatched to preemptively assassinate their family members defected and warned their targets, another simply gave up without fighting, and the final two were defeated and killed for their trouble. Alerted and enraged by this bald-faced betrayal by their own brother, the targeted Liu princes, led by Liu Cong, stormed into Pinyan, besieged the imperial palace, and killed both Liu He and his treasonous cohort brothers. At this point, Liu Cong initially offered the once-again empty throne to Liu Ai, his half-brother and the prince of Beihai.

But the whole kabuki of throne offerings being what they were, Prince Ai of course declined and then reciprocally offered the throne back to Liu Cong, who ultimately took up power and was enthroned as Emperor Zhao Wu in late September. He named Ai as his crown prince, however, and promised to eventually give the throne over to him. You know, eventually. This inordinate level of affection for his half-brother, Prince Ai, seemed a little strange. Nio Cong was a young guy, after all, and with sons. Why promise the throne to Ai of all people?

Incest, that's why. Later that year, the new emperor was discovered to be having a lurid affair with his aunt, Prince Ai's mother, by Ai himself. Ew. It's unclear when she was born, but Empress Dan was described as still being young and beautiful, but capable of independent thinking, implying she was at least of age by 310. Prince Ai tried to persuade his mother to end her affair with her nephew, for God's sakes, and she died in late 310, quote,

of her shame, potentially pointing to suicide. With her death, Sotu dimmed the affection between Liu Cong and Prince Ai, and the emperor would ultimately begin contemplating replacing his half-brother with one of his own sons as crown prince, egged on by his own empress Hu Yan to do exactly that for her own son, Liu Can. In the meantime, however, there was still a war to run. Under the capable commands of General Wang Mi and Shi Le, as well as the Han Zhao emperor's eldest son Liu Can and cousin Liu Yao, the pressure against the flagging defenders of Luoyang intensified. as well as the Han Zhao emperor's eldest son Liu Can and cousin Liu Yao,

the pressure against the flagging defenders of Luoyang intensified. Though taking and holding cities remained a weak point for Han Zhao's armies, their virtually unopposed rampages to the enemy farmlands had rendered much of it essentially barren, and the capital city's defenses stretched ever thinner. This situation was exacerbated by the imperial regent Sima Yue's continued alienation of his generals, officials, and allies. By 310, he had found himself unable to even go on the attack for fear of betrayal by his own supposed allies, and with few, if any, governors willing to send reinforcements to the capital at his behest. Finally giving up on the pretense of defending the emperor and the imperial capital at all, the Prince of Donghai packed his bags in late December of 310,

gathered up his 40,000 remaining troops, along with the imperial officialdom stationed around Luoyang, and basically said, well, it's been fun, see ya, I'm off to Xuchang. And with Sima Ye, so too left the military, the imperial court, and even the city police force, leaving Emperor Huai almost alone in the palace save for a tiny garrison tasked with ostensibly protecting him, but really more there to make sure he didn't try any funny business. As for the wider city, it was left to its own devices and quickly descended into banditry and gang rule.

The Prince of Donghai's magical mystery tour through the countryside would be short-lived, however, since he'd die only a few months into the trip in the spring of 311. This was supposedly out of anger and stress after he found out that Emperor Huai had, surprise, entered into an alliance with his own second-in-command to get rid of him. Who'd have thought, right? I leave him alone for one minute and he plots my downfall. Following his death, the Xucheng trip was cancelled, and Sima Ye's entourage changed course and set out for his home district, Donghai, to bury their departed prince. And upon hearing the news, the tiny garrison left to protect the emperor similarly abandoned their posts and made for Donghai, not wanting to be left out of the funeral after-party or whatever. This ad-hoc funeral procession would, however, come to a

rather abrupt end when it was encountered by the northern Han general, Shi Le, and his rampaging army outside of Ningping City in central Henan that summer. Though a much larger force than Shi Le's marauders, Jin were taken by surprise. Moreover, Schiele's whippingly fast cavalry force surrounded and mowed through the unformed infantry lines with ease. According to The Military Culture of Imperial China by Nicola de Cosmo, Schiele, quote, turned his cavalry loose to surround and shoot them down. Over 100,000 officers were piled atop one another in mounds.

Not a single man made his escape. End quote. Almost as soon as it had begun, the battle, if it can really be called as such, was over. Numerous Jin princes and officials were taken captive by Shilla's cavalry, including all of Sima Yue's sons, and then, to a man,

ordered them thrown off the walls of Ningping City. The body of the Prince of Donghai was disposed of with fire, with Shilla justifying his decision as the elder prince having caused such destruction across the empire that he deserved no burial. Just like that, the single largest force left to the Jin Dynasty in the north had been annihilated. This game-changing victory wasn't lost on the commanders of Northern Han, who essentially immediately wheeled around and converged once again on the now mostly abandoned and utterly defenseless Luoyang, which had been drained of both resources and men over the course of the conflict, and by this point was stricken with abject famine. With little in the way of struggle, the Jin capital capitulated to

the Xiongnu forces commanded by Shile, Wang Mi, and Liu Yao. Upon entering the starving, depleted city, the Han Zhao generals commenced with the aptly named Yongjia Zhihuo, or Disaster of Yongjia, named after the era of Yongjia from 307-313. The Xiongnu forces commenced with an indiscriminate massacre of the civilian population that yet remained within the city walls, purportedly killing upwards of 30,000, along with the imperial ministers and the crown prince of Jin. The imperial palaces within the city were burnt to the ground, and imperial mausoleums disinterred and the bones scattered, an absolutely horrifying sacrilege against the Jin ancestors.

As for Emperor Huai himself, the 26-year-old monarch was spared the slaughter for the time being, but taken captive and delivered to the northern Han capital, Pingyang, and the waiting Emperor Liu Cong. Huai would be forced to endure the humiliation of capture for almost two years, and was effectually demoted to mere Duke of Kuaiji by Liu Cong. Notably, at a feast in 312, the Emperor of Han Zhao engaged in a famous discussion with his defeated opponent, saying, When you were the Prince of Yuzhang, I had once visited you. You showed me music you had written, and then asked me to write lyrics for it.

You liked them. Then we spent some time shooting arrows. And you gave me gifts of a mulberry bow and silver inkstone. Do you still remember? To which Huai responded, How could I forget? What I regret is not realizing I was in the presence of a dragon. Flattered, Liu Tong further inquired, How is it that your clan came to slaughter one another? Huai said, That is not a matter clan came to slaughter one another? Mai said, That is not a matter for mortals, but the will of heaven. Great Han was to receive the mandate of heaven, so our clan eliminated itself for you.

If the Sima clan had been able to follow the directives of Emperor Wu and remain united, how could your imperial majesty have become emperor? The pair spent the rest of the night talking, and remain united, how could your imperial majesty have become emperor? End quote. The pair spent the rest of the night talking, and Liu gave a gift of one of his favored concubines to the Duke of Kuaiji. But the budding bromance was not to last. In 313, at an imperial new year celebration, Liu Tong ordered the former Jin emperor to serve wine to the guests. Several former officials of Jin, unable to bear their former monarch's humiliation at being made to wait tables, cried out, infuriating Liu Cong and convincing him that there was a mutiny afoot.

He ordered the Jin officials executed at once and then had Huai of Jin poisoned. Liu Cong's temperament wouldn't much improve for the remainder of his reign, and he became increasingly vengeful, capricious, and cruel. His minister, attempting to convince him against misappropriating funds to construct the new palace for his new empress as a flagrant waste of money, so enraged Liu that he ordered the minister's execution, only to have the death sentence rescinded at the last moment through the intercession of the new empress herself. In the summer of 313, the fourth and last emperor of the Western Jin dynasty would declare. He was the 13-year-old Sima Ye, son of the late Prince of Wu and posthumously adopted by his uncle, the Prince of Qin. He had been among the

few who had been able to flee Luoyang ahead of its sack in 311, and had made an arduous, dangerous trek all the way to Guanzhong, where, with the support of Jia Pi, a capable general loyal to the Jin emperors, they had managed to seize Chang'an and begin re-fortifying what was in effect a gutted ruin in 312. The once-mighty city had been so thoroughly depopulated that it reportedly held less than a hundred households. When word reached Chang'an of Emperor Huai's murder some three months after the deed had been done, Prince Ye held a period of official mourning before officially ascending to the throne as Emperor of Jin. Posthumously, he would be granted the chillingly telling name Min, meaning the Suffering. Situated as his court was in the shell of a once great city, Min's reign was that of a pauper monarch, apparently with only four wagons at his disposal,

and with his court officials lacking even basic uniforms or official seals. And this lack of real standing was apparent even in his interactions with those still nominally paying the Jin court allegiance. Wenming's court issued orders to the princes of Nanyang and Langye, who still had at their disposal significant forces. To reinforce the emperor's position at Chang'an, both paid the order lip service and pledged their support, but never actually followed through.

In the lead-up to the new year of 314, Northern Han launched a surprise attack against Chang'an, intent on snuffing out this last pocket of imperial resistance in the north. And though the meager defenses of the Jin capital were able to withstand, barely, the assault, it really only made obvious that the Jin imperial court was only hanging on by a thread here, with neither the power to adequately defend itself nor draw support from its supposed vassals and allies. The tenuous stalemate would hold, however, through 315 and into 316, until General Liu Yao launched a major offensive against the area surrounding Chang'an. The Prince of Nanyang, Sima Bao, considered but ultimately declined to

reinforce the capital, leaving Emperor Min with the scant resources he already had and two minor detachments of reinforcements, none of whom were in any great rush to go screaming to their certain deaths in a futile defense of their pauper emperor. This hesitancy to engage in battle allowed Liu Ya's army to besiege the city unopposed. When food reserves at last ran out, Emperor Min had no choice but to surrender himself to the forces of Northern Han, and was delivered, just like his uncle before him, to Pinyang where Liu Cong awaited. There, in a virtual repeat of Huai's captivity, he would be stripped of his imperial office and rendered a marquis, and then forced to ultimately act as a mere servant at imperial feasts.

When his former officials again protested such indignation in 318, Liu Cong did what Liu Cong did, and had the lot of them killed for their trouble, Min included. And so it stands. Less than 40 years old, the Jin Dynasty already appears to be on its last legs, having lost all territory north of the Huai River to the machinations and brutal tactics of the Xiongnu barbarians and the Han Zhao emperors.

Those that have survived the conflict have been forced to flee south and watch in horror as once again China has been ripped apart at the seams, meat from bone. But next time, though we're almost a century into the Great Period of Disunity, we're really only just getting started into the 16 kingdoms, much less the additional three centuries before we can really consider the empire reunified under the Sui. Though Han Zhao's star is rising, it will only be a matter of time before it eats itself alive, an unsurprising outcome for a coalition cobbled together from tribes who really couldn't much stand one another anyway. But in the south, the remnants of the gene are down

but not yet out. They'll reorganize under the rule of the young, untested, and until then minor imperial prince of Langye, Sima Rui, who will draw a line in the sand at the southern banks of the Huai River and tenaciously hold off the barbarian hordes from overrunning what's left of their civilization. Thank you for listening. Hey everyone, hope you enjoyed the show today. Please help us out by popping over to the iTunes Music Store and ranking the History of China.

And if, in the spirit of the season, you feel like we've earned it, please feel free to head over to thehistoryofchina.wordpress.com and click either of our donation links to PayPal or Patreon. Thanks again, and see you next time. The Civil War and Reconstruction was a pivotal era in American history. When a war was fought to save the Union

and to free the slaves. And when the work to rebuild the nation after that war was over turned into a struggle to guarantee liberty and justice for all Americans. I'm Tracy. And I'm Rich. And we want to invite you to join us as we take an in-depth look at this pivotal era in American history. Look for The Civil War and Reconstruction wherever you find your podcasts.