The History of China - #5 - Xia 3: The Fall Of The House Of Xia

Episode Date: December 6, 2013

This episode we cover our source materials, and then delve into the latter half of the Xia Dynasty post Shao Kang's restoration. It all ends with the corrupt and cruel Emperor Jie coming face to face with the Army of Shang bearing down on him, intent on ending his reign of terror once and for all. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. Hi everyone, this is Scott. If you want to learn about the world's oldest civilizations, find out how they were rediscovered, follow the story of Mark Antony and Cleopatra's descendants over ten generations, or take a deep dive into the Iron Age or the Hellenistic era, then check out the Ancient World Podcast. Available on all podcasting platforms or go to ancientworldpodcast.com. That's the Ancient World Podcast. Hello, and welcome to the History of China.

Episode 5, The Fall of the House of Xia Last time, we ended with the restoration of the Xia Dynasty from ruin by Shao Kang and his triumphant defeat of the pretender General Han Zhuo. This episode, we're going to follow the Xia Dynasty's long second decline, ultimately into depravity, cruelty, and final defeat at the hands of one of his own vassal lords, the Duke of Shang. Unfortunately, there are quite a few Xia emperors that we know very little about. This is largely due to the nature of its questionable historicity, which is in turn due to the total lack of primary sources. What we do have is written between 1500 and 2000 years after the fact. So before we get to the begat, begat, begat of the later Middle Xia dynasty,

let's first take a look at exactly which sources we're mainly pulling from. The bamboo annals and the records of the Grand Historian, which I've for brevity's sake been calling the Shi Ji. The bamboo annals are the older of the two tomes of knowledge. It extends through the year 299 BCE, during the Warring States Period, which infers it was completed between 297 and 296 BCE. The volume was interred along with several other Chinese classics,

such as the Yijing, the Guoyi, and the tale of King Mu, with one of the warlords of this tumultuous period, Xiang of Wei, around 296 BCE. There it would lay for some 400 years before being unearthed as part of the Jizhong discovery in 281 CE during the Western Jin Dynasty. In fact, it's lucky that these works were buried for four centuries, as only a few decades after they were interred in 213 BCE, the emperor of the Qin Dynasty Shi Huang purged the historical records and had virtually all documents and books burned.

We'll get into the details more when we come to him directly, but for now, suffice it to say, Shi Huang did not want his reign bound or compared against the precedents or records of those who came before. It's important to mention that in the days before Gutenberg came up with movable type, any and all literature had to be painstakingly handwritten. Books of any kind were precious and above all, rare. Usually, only the imperial family, and maybe some particularly wealthy lords, had much in the way of historical annals. So when Shi Huang declared that all books were to be burned, he had the power to do exactly that, and fairly easily. Granted, on its own, this public purge of information would have been offset by the fact that he kept private copies

of most of the forbidden texts. But once again showing how precarious a position books have held throughout most of history, any and all of these were also destroyed when the rebel Xiang Yu burned the imperial palace in 206 BCE. Exciting. But we'll cross that bridge when we get there. Our second primary source is the Records of the Grand Historian, or in Chinese, Shiji, which translates literally as historical record. It was written by none other than the grand historian himself, 司馬謙 sì mā qián. Notably, I had to do some digging into historian 司馬 sì mā because I thought I'd encountered an error with his name. Frankly, I thought they'd gotten it backwards.

Chinese, as well as most East Asian names, put the surname first. And Chinese surnames are almost always monosyllabic. Han, Sun, Wang, etc. But there was no mistake. Historian Sima's family name was duosyllabic and uses two characters. He was just that cool. His magnum opus, the Shi Ji, was written over the course of two decades, beginning in 109 and finishing in 91 BCE,

firmly in the Han dynasty. The records begin with the Yellow Emperor, the earliest ruler historian Sima felt was well- well documented enough to be considered historical, and continue up through his own time. The Grand Historian was renowned in his own time as well as today as being both skeptical and careful in his work. His position, inherited from his father, a Grand Historian to the Han Emperor, entitled him to unfettered access of the imperial archives and records. But this was not sufficient for Sima Qian. He also utilized interviews and long treks across the country

to historical locations to verify their authenticity. In his own words, I myself have traveled west as far as the Kongtong Mountains, north past Zhulu, east to the sea, and in the south I have sailed the Yellow and Huai rivers. The elders and old men of these lands frequently pointed out to me the places where the Yellow Emperor, Yao, and Shun had lived, and in these places the manners and customs seemed quite different. In general, those of their accounts that do not differ from the ancient texts seem to be near to the truth. So those are our two primary sources for this period,

and going forward for quite a while. That established, let's get into the meat of our episode, the latter half of the Xia dynasty. Due warning, we've got nine emperors to get through before we get to the interesting one, Jie. So we're going to be pretty rapid fire in going through emperor after emperor, as I mentioned the kind of begat, begat, begat. Here we go. With the death of Shao Kong in 1985 BCE, his son Zhu ascended to the imperial throne. In his fifth year of rule, he moved the capital from Yuan to Laoqiu. In his eighth year, he invaded a place known as Sanshou, along with hunting in the East China Sea. It's unknown who his consort or consorts were, but he did produce at least one son, Huai. Huai succeeded his father upon his death in 1968 BCE. So little of note is recorded during his rule that nine barbarians coming to the capital in his third year is considered noteworthy.

So too was a minor dispute between two of his ministers, who came to blows at a place called He. Again, his consorts are not known, but he produced a son, Mang. There is a discrepancy in our sources in terms of the lengths of his reign. The Shiji credits him a mere 26 years, but the bamboo annals allots him 44.

Out of an arbitrary sense of convenience, we'll go, as we've done thus far, with the latter, saying he died in 1925 BCE, at least for our purposes. Meng then became the emperor. As a token of his reign, he gifted each of his vassals parcels of precious jade stone. Perhaps it was just a nominal gift, but its inclusion into Meng's brief entry suggests that this may have hinted at a more extravagant element of the Xia beginning to re-emerge. He and an again unknown consort had a son, Xie. Notably, during this period, the lord of Shang, then Zi Hai, decided to move his capital from Shangqiu to the city of Yin. This will be worth writing down because it will not only be one of several capitals in the forthcoming Shang dynasty, but will most importantly be the

home of the oracle bones, our oldest physical link to the Chinese logographic writing system. Logographic writing systems, incidentally, are written characters that directly convey ideas, whereas phonographic writing systems, such as the Latin alphabet we use in English, base their character systems on phonemes or spoken sounds and combining them. It is through the recovered glyphs etched into animal bones that we know for certain the origins of the Chinese written language, and indeed the basis of most of East Asia's written systems. Meng reigned for 18 years, passing the throne onto his son Xie in 1906 BCE. Xie would hold the title of emperor for as many as 25 years. The first half proceeded

peaceably and without much of note. But in year 12, the lord of Shang, Zi Hai, journeyed to the town of Youyi in a neighboring state. He and his party settled in for a stay, but conducted themselves dishonorably. Deciding that they had gone too far with their licentious behavior, the local leader, Mian Chen, placed the lord of Shang under arrest and had him executed. Now in the short term, the solution had the desired effect of forcing the rest of Shang's party to return to their land, but as is often the case, executing the lord of a powerful vassal state would have dire ramifications. Four years later, the minister of Wei retaliated by leading an army

to invade and execute Mianchen for the high crime of enforcing the law on a superior. Internally, interstate relations settled after that, but externally, a band of six barbarian tribes conspired to take the Xia Empire by force. In the 21st year of Xie's reign, the Fei, Bai, Chi, Xuan, Feng, and Yang tribes launched a simultaneous and multi-pronged assault on the empire, hoping to catch them unprepared. But Xia was able to absorb their initial rush and quickly turned the tide of the war to a counter-offensive. Emperor Xie was able to force peace terms on the six tribes, making all of them vassal states to the throne.

Xie had two sons of note, Bujiang and Zhong. Bujiang succeeded his father in 1890 BCE and is often regarded as one of the wisest of the Xia emperors. He would reign for almost six decades. In the sixth year of his reign, he went to war with the city of Jioyuan in Inner Mongolia, beginning the long and storied tradition of warfare between the horsemen of the Asian

steppes and the Han farmers to the south. Meanwhile, the state of Shang continued to amass local power over its neighbor regions. In the 35th year of Bujiang's reign, the Shang made war against and conquered the neighboring Pi clan, ultimately integrating their territories with the Shang state. In a break from the agnatic succession that has become the norm, Bu Jiang had no sons and so abdicated his throne to his younger brother, Jiang, in 1831 BCE.

He lived in retirement for another decade. Emperor Jiang ruled for between 18 and 21 years, with virtually no details surviving, save that his son, Jin, succeeded him to the throne. Jin came to power in 1810 BCE and reigned for about 21 years. He established his capital along the banks of the West River and oversaw his people through a period of serious drought in his eighth year. In 1789, he died and his son Kongjia took control.

It's here that things for the Xia Empire really noticeably began to go from plateau to decline. Kongjia was a highly superstitious man, and cared little save for alcohol, hunting, and beautiful women. Is this sounding familiar? In a move that no doubt incensed his lords, he stripped title and power from one of his nobles, Shiwei. Perhaps sensing that some further distance from the capital and its increasingly capricious king was in order the lord of shang relocated his capital back to shang tcheou in the east in seventeen fifty eight b c e kong chia died and was replaced by gao ruled for eleven years and in a move to placate the still angered lordsords, restored nobility to the line of Shui. Our penultimate Xia emperor is Fa. He is notable for two things.

First, during his rule, the first ever earthquake was recorded at Mount Tai in modern Shandong. This occurred near enough to the period of the emperor's death that the bamboo annals links them together, stating, When Emperor Fa died, Mount Tai shattered. His second claim to fame, or rather, infamy, lies with his son, the last emperor of Xia, Jie. Alright, finally, the good part. While it's certainly not for any who suffer under them. It is true that more often than not, it's more interesting to hear about the bad guys in history than anyone else.

Of course, especially in morality tales such as this, the bad guy is really bad. You'll see. Napoleon Bonaparte rose from obscurity to become the most powerful and significant figure in modern history. Over 200 years after his death, people are still debating his legacy. He was a man of contradictions, a tyrant and a reformer, a liberator and an oppressor, a revolutionary and a reactionary. His biography reads like a novel, and his influence is almost beyond measure. I'm Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast, and every month I delve into the turbulent life and times of one of the

greatest characters in history, and explore the world that shaped him in all its glory and tragedy. It's a story of great battles and campaigns, political intrigue, and massive social and economic change, but it's also a story about people, populated with remarkable characters. I hope you'll join me as I examine this fascinating era of history. Find The Age of Napoleon wherever you get your podcasts. Jie seized control of the empire in 1728, and immediately decided his current pyramidal palace was not opulent enough. So he had it torn down in a new style known as a tilt palace, constructed over the next seven years.

Tens of thousands of slaves toiled away on this project, and over the course of its construction it required huge sums of money, which, of course, meant huge tax increases. Unsurprisingly, there were not many who felt great about how their tax coppers were being utilized. His first consort was Mo Xi, whose beauty was only matched by her amoral, psychopathic cruelty. A great, if kind of unlikely, incident involving Mo Xi was when she convinced her husband to have a lake built. But not just any lake. She loved to drink almost as much as the emperor did, and she wanted it filled with wine. When this ridiculous task was completed, they floated a barge on their wine lake and hosted a drunken orgy. Afterward, Mo Xi ordered the 3,000 slaves who had dug and filled the lake to drink it dry,

and when they drowned in the attempt, or succumbed to alcohol poisoning, it moved her to fits of laughter. Emperor Jie would only drink a certain kind of liquor, specifically a pure white spirit called ching jio which is very powerful i can tell you from experience if he demanded his drink of choice and it was not available the poor servant responsible was put to death he took to requiring his courtesans to allow him to ride around on their backs like a horse while engaged in his frequent drinking sessions. At one point, he ordered his chancellor to serve as such a mount. After a period of time, the old man was so exhausted that he could no longer crawl any further and begged the king to let him rest.

And so, Jie had him dragged outside and beheaded, granting him a very final rest. Jie's other reasons for ordering execution were equally as capricious and frivolous. They included not preparing his food correctly, delivering unwanted news, and daring to warn him that his tyrannical actions were angering the populace. In the tenth year of his reign, an omen was seen in the heavens, five stars aligned, followed by a meteor shower. Shortly thereafter, the earth once again trembled mightily. Heaven, it seemed, had declared its satisfaction with this emperor of Xia, and though Jie would ignore the signs, others would not. The following year, he summoned all of his vassals to court.

But when the lord of Youyi did not appear, he flew into a rage at the slight. He immediately ordered his armies to invade and conquer the territory. Though he'd spent seven years and huge amounts of the treasury building his tilt palace, he decided that it was no longer suitable, and moved his capital back to the ancient Xia home of An Yi. For this trip, he decided to have himself carried by litter for the journey, a practice he would adopt into daily life thereafter. Shortly after establishing himself in An Yi, he led his army to the westernmost reaches of the empire and to the min mountains in modern sichuan there he met the king of min shan though it was his daughters who had catched jie's eyes going so far as to rename them Zhao and Hua. But deciding that three is company but four a crowd, he abandoned his first consort, Mo Xi, in favor of this duo of younger models.

To the east, the power of Shang had been waxing for quite some time, since Kongjia had first shaken his vassal's faith in the Xia line some sixty years prior. The current duke of Shang, Tang, recognized the depths of injustice and depravity to which the once-righteous Xia had fallen. Though he was initially reluctant to act against his liege lord, he eventually realized that there could be no other course of action. Though action against the emperor would undoubtedly lead to strife and chaos, allowing Jie to continue his reign of cruelty and terror was even more unjust.

To this end, Tang of Shang called 40 of his fellow vassal leaders to his cause. At first, he made a show of remaining loyal to the Xia emperor. He sent his most trusted advisor Yi'in to An'i as counsel to the king for three years and continued to offer tribute to the capital. In the meantime, he moved the bulk of his forces to the mouth of a great flatland known as Bo, which offered a relatively straight and flat advance all the way to Anyi. In 1702 BCE, the 26th year of Jie's reign, Lord Tang set in motion his plan by using some pretext to invade the neighboring loyalist territories of Xia. These nearby states formed the bulk of Xia's military, and combined vastly outnumbered the Shang army.

Yi'in, newly returned from the emperor's side, however, suggested Tang invade each in turn, thus dividing them and weakening the Xia's overall position. Beginning with a state of one directly to the west, Tang began swiftly conquering his would-be foes. The king of Kunwu to the southwest sensed the Shang would attack his state next, and so launched a preemptive strike. This took Shang off guard, and they would spend the next several years endeavoring to recover from Kun Wu's ambush. Yet despite this setback,

Shang was able to continue pushing forward, opening front after front against Mi Shu, Wei, and Gu in turn, all of which would fall within the year. All the while, back in An Yi, Emperor Jie was forced to contend with more than just insurrection. It seemed the very heavens and earth had set themselves against his rule. In 1599 BCE, he had ordered a water tunnel dug through the Qin Mountain, but it ended in catastrophe when the whole mountainside collapsed in a landslide. Moreover, in what were to be the last years of his reign, nature itself became unhinged from the natural order. Queer and stinking yellow fog clung to the land. Ice and frost held their grip into the summer months, and even when they passed, torrential rain toppled

buildings and destroyed farmlands. The sun itself dimmed, hot and cold arrived in disorder, and massive crop failure ensued. This may sound fantastical, but there's actually a geological explanation for such a bizarre sequence of events. Volcanic winter. And while there was no volcano erupting in China during the Xia Dynasty, half a world away in the Aegean Sea of Greece, the island of Thera, which is one of the most powerfully destructive volcanic eruptions ever recorded, as much as five times the destructive power of Krakatoa in 1883. And it pulverized the then-inhabited island, as well as wiping out several settlements surrounding it and along the coast of Crete.

I'll throw up satellite pictures of what's left of the island on thehistoryofchina.wordpress.com. Since the Minoan people had been such a dominant cultural force in the Aegean Sea up to that point, it's actually believed that Thera's destruction was the basis of the myth of Atlantis. And it's fairly accepted that with the prevalent wind patterns of the region, this massive event kicked up enough ash and dust into the atmosphere

that it disrupted weather patterns half a world away in Xia China for upwards of three years. But whether that was the actual cause or not, the people of Xia took these disasters as a clear sign that heaven had revoked its support of the totally corrupt Emperor Jie. Shang's time to strike was nigh. After nearly five years of warfare between the two states, Shang had finally managed

to grind down Kun Wu's resolve and forced their capitulation. With the way to An Yi cleared, Lord Tang marched to the capital and called a halt just five li, or about 1.6 miles, from the city's fortifications. His chief advisor, Yi Yin, had noticed, however, that their long and costly war had sapped much of the Shang army's morale. He and Tang both realized how dangerous that could be. A demoralized soldier might be thinking of home rather than to slay his enemy. He might break and run when the situation was dire rather than hold his ground. In short, it could be the difference between victory and crushing defeat. Thus, on the eve of battle, Lord Tong rallied his forces and gave them his pledge.

Come, ye multitudes of the people, listen all to my words. It is not I, the little child, who dare to undertake a rebellious enterprise. But for the many crimes of the sovereign of Shia, heaven has given the charge to destroy him. Now, ye multitudes, you are saying, Our prince is not compassionate to us, but is calling us away from our husbandry to attack and punish Shia. I have indeed heard these words of you all, but the sovereign of Shia is guilty, and as I fear God, I dare not but punish him. Now you are saying, what are the crimes of Shah to us? The king of Shah in every way exhausts the strength of the people, and exercises oppression to the cities of Shah. His multitudes

are become entirely indifferent to his service, and we feel no bond of union to him. They are saying, When wilt thou, O son, expire, we will all perish with thee. Such is the course of the sovereign of Shia, and now I must go and punish him. Assist, I pray you, me, the one man, to carry out the punishment appointed by heaven. I will greatly reward you. On no account disbelieve me, the one man, to carry out the punishment appointed by heaven. I will greatly reward you. On no account disbelieve me. I will not eat my words. But if you do not obey the words which I have thus spoken to you, I will put your children to death with you. You will find no forgiveness." The next morning, the two armies faced one another before the city of Anyi.

Lord Tong's stirring speech and implicit threat had done their job. The army of Shang howled for the blood of the despised Emperor Jie, and having fought so long to this point, could sense that victory was near. Across the field, the Emperor himself attempted to command his own forces, but with little success. Jie's generals loved their leader almost as little as those standing to oppose him, and they balked at his orders. Moreover, the size of the Shang host was staggering, numbering perhaps 6,000 infantry.

The Xia army paled in comparison, given that the Shang had already subdued its most powerful contingents. When the call to charge sounded, the Shang surged forth, and before the two armies had even met, the Xia had begun to crumble. Entire portions quickly broke off and fled if they could, as did the emperor when he realized, which was very quickly, that he was facing his end. Outnumbered and abandoned, the rest of the Xia army surrendered. Jie of Xia fled southeast and made it as far as Kunwu

before seeking the shelter of his vassal. But Lord Tang, knowing what had happened the last time a would-be conqueror had let the Xia kings flee, dispatched his general Wu Zi to find and capture the fleeing Jie. Lord Tang then pursued and eliminated any remaining Xia army elements that had not surrendered, and purged the capital of his remaining supporters. The peasantry of the Xia were taken in large part as slaves to the Shang. Kunwu, worn down as it was from years of conflict with the Shang force, was in no position to resist Wu Zi's re-invasion and seizure of the emperor. They dragged him before his

conqueror, Tang of Shang, who, in a surprising move, did not have Jie executed. Instead, he found him guilty of crimes against the people, stripped him of title, and banished him from the empire. Jie was carted off to the south and unceremoniously dumped in the village of Nanchao in modern Anhui. He lived out the rest of his days as an outcast in a foreign land before finally succumbing to illness in 1675 BCE, taking the house of Xia with him to the grave. Next time, the Shang Triumphant. Victorious in China's first noble revolution, the House of Shang will anoint

its first of 30 emperors, Tang. It will also reinforce the legitimacy of its succession by building on tradition and expanding the reach of the now Shang Empire. Thank you for listening. The Civil War and Reconstruction was a pivotal era in American history.

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