The History of China - #50 - 16K 3: Splinters

Episode Date: December 21, 2014

The Jin Dynasty has lost the north, and now hides on the southern banks of the Yangtze River, trying to pull themselves together. Meanwhile the Xiongnu-led tribal coalition calling itself Northern Han will discover that defeating Jin was the easy part, and it's the stresses of governing that will either make or break with tenuous coalition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. 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

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But they also produce throw pillows, silk greeting cards, and even paintings. Go see what Ma'at Silk can do for your holiday shopping list by checking them out at www.maatsilk.com. That's M-A-A-T-S-I-L-K.com. And when you order, please let them know that the history of China is how you heard of their gorgeous products, since purchases through the new year help us to keep our show chugging along. Happy holiday shopping to all, and to all, a good show. Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 48, Splinters. Before we jump in today, let me first apologize for leaving things off for an extra week with

no particular explanation or apparent reason. I promise, there were reasons. Finals week is always a hectic time, and wouldn't you know it, we just got pushed back on production. The good news is that I should have a nice long winter holiday to recover, rejuvenate, and if I'm really, really good, get ahead on episode production. But who am I really kidding? Last episode, we left off with what very well seemed like it might have been the death knell for the just-barely-middle-aged Jin Dynasty. In 312, the Northern Han, led by their Xiongnu Emperor Liu Cong, had captured the Jin capital

of Luoyang, taken its Emperor Huai captive, and then executed him after embarrassing the divine monarch by ordering him to act as a butler. Then in 316, the whole scene repeated, except this time in the burned-out husk of what had once been Chang'an, with the defeat, capture, and subsequent embarrassment and execution of Huai's would-be successor, the pauper Emperor Min. We open today in 318, on the tale of that second imperial execution. Sima Rui, the prince of Lanyi, was approaching 42 years old in 318. He had spent his formative years and much of his adult life in the bustling imperial capital Luoyang. He was described as possessing a steady but dexterous personality in the Book of Jin and had distinguished himself as a minor general in the War of Eight Princes when the

Prince of Donghai had squared off against and utterly crushed the Prince of Chengdu. Fortunately for him, Sima Rui had thought better of his relationship to Donghai following the particularly cruel execution of his uncle, the Prince of Dong'an. Suitably frightened about the clear madness that had embroiled the imperial clan, he fled back to his holding in Langye. There, Sima Rui wisely waited out the final bloody years of the Disorder of Eight Princes and just waited for this whole thing to blow over. Owing to his previous service to Donghai, the victorious regent Prince of Jin eventually promoted Rui to the military commandership of Yang province, along the

southeastern coast of the imperial territory, roughly around the areas of modern Shanghai, Nanjing, and Suzhou. Safely ensconced south of the Yangtze, Prince Rui established his base of power between 307 and 311, and therefore managed to just miss being a part of the Prince of Donghai's magical mystery tour out of Luoyang in 311. This was, of course, fortunate for him, because that had ended up in the unmitigated catastrophe for the Jin, when the roving horse archers commanded by the northern Han semi-general, Shele, happened upon the train and massacred the whole lot of them,

and the subsequent loss of them, and the subsequent loss of Jin control over the entire north. In the aftermath of this ruinous loss for the Jin, wave after wave of refugees fled south, seeking escape from the barbarian hordes looting, raping, and pillaging the countryside. As these displaced people crossed the Yangtze and entered his domain, Prince Ray decided to squeeze what lemonade he could from this very bitter lemon, and added the most talented men among the refugees to his own growing court. And of course, with the last two emperors either dead or playing butler to the barbarian king in the north,

there was a clear and present danger to the Jin as a whole, and an urgent need to unite the southern lords to face this existential crisis. And who better than Sima Rui, who had once been a minor commander of very little note? Well, apparently nobody. Over the course of the years between the disaster of 311 to 315, Prince Rui pulled the other territories south of the Huai River under his direct control and squelched the agrarian revolts that continued to pull resources away from the real threat. When the butler emperor Huai had at last been executed and Min ascended to his burnt-out throne in Chang'an, Prince Ray had been promoted to the position of Prime Minister of the Left.

Sima Ray accepted the title but refrained from actually committing any of his forces to aiding the pauper monarch, ensuring his eventual destruction at the hands of the Northern Han, as it did in 316. With Min thereafter in custody, Prince Re was urged by his followers to assume the imperial throne. But instead, knowing that while the emperor still lived it would be unwise to hold such pretensions, he declined, and merely declared himself the Prince of Jin. It wouldn't be until Min met his own demise in 318, that Sima Rui would at last take official control of what was left of the Jin Empire,

ascending to the throne as Emperor Yuan, the original. So what was he emperor of, exactly? Well, largely everything south of the Huai River, a northern tributary of the Yangtze, and everything east of the Three Gorges in Hubei. Basically, the bottom half of the country you'd see on a modern map, minus Tibet. However, there were small pockets of Jin-controlled territory in the north, with the main one being You province, which included modern Beijing and Tianjin.

His seat of power was the city of Jianye, which had to be renamed during Min's short reign due to naming taboos, to Jiankang. But let's not overly confuse the issue. For our purposes, Emperor Yuan held court from Nanjing. Now we're going to need to give this reborn Jin dynasty a chance to pull itself together, so we'll leave Emperor Yuan to it for a while. Because we need to head back north, where the northern Han Xiongnu have emerged triumphant

and unseated the Jin from their northern strongholds. But at this moment of high highs, they'll be betrayed from within. Back in 315, the emperor of northern Han, Liu Cong, had begun the unorthodox practice of having multiple empresses at the same time. Now, to be fair, as an emperor, you get to have all the consorts and concubines your lusty heart could ever desire. Even 5,000 of them. Why not? But there was only supposed to be only one empress at any given time.

But the Xiongnu are going to do what they will, Chinese traditions be damned. As his upper empress and right empress, he had taken the beautiful sisters Jin Yueguang and Jin Yuehua, the daughters of the minor general Jin Jun, giving the otherwise unimportant military commander an in to the imperial court and the levers of power. General Jin quickly attached himself to the emperor's first son, Prince Liu Can, marrying yet another of his daughters to the prince, and in 317 earned his gratitude by playing an instrumental role in deposing and assassinating the sitting crowned prince and the emperor's brother, Liu Ai, thus paving the way for Liu Can to become his father's heir apparent,

and Jin's daughter declared the crowned princess. The following year of 318, Emperor Liu Cong at last died, and the throne was passed to Prince Liu Can, who apparently wasted no time in taking each of the four of his father's surviving empresses to bed, which was not only adultery, but considered highly incestuous given that they were legally his aunts. Making matters worse was the fact that one of them was Jin Jun's daughter, Jin Yuehua. And you might say, hey wait, weren't there two sisters? And yes, there were, but one had committed suicide following evidence of her adultery back in 315. Affairs of state were virtually all entrusted to his dear father-in-law,

while the freshly minted emperor whiled away his days with his father's playthings. It appears that all of this canoodling about with his aunt-slash-sister-in-laws got under the skin of Jin Jun, as well as his daughters in question, because within a year, the general had hatched a plot to overthrow Emperor Liu Cang, a plan actively aided by the adulterous-slash-incestuous monarch's own Empress and Empress Dowager's sisters. Now, to be fair, it's possible, perhaps even probable, that the whole incest bit was not the real reason behind the treachery going on. It may well have been Jinzhen's plan all along.

After all, historians strongly suspect that he was ethnically Han, and so may have wished to oust the Xiongnu barbarians pretending to the throne of Han China, and simply used his own daughters as pawns towards that end. But whatever the reason, sex or blood, Jinzhen managed to convince the emperor to sign off on an order to arrest and execute three of his own brothers as well as several of his key officials. When the emperor initially balked at such a suggestion, it was his empress who ultimately convinced him of the necessity of the order, and he was persuaded to essentially cut his own legs out from under him. With the imperial princes and high officials put to the sword, Liao Tan had

little in the way of support left, and wouldn't you know it, two command positions over the imperial armies had just opened up. What a coincidence. And who better to fill them than Jin Jun's own cousins, who was after all the completely trustworthy father-in-law and would never arrange for a coup against the emperor. Power now firmly in his hand, trusted father-in-law Jin Jun initiated a palace coup, easily capturing and killing the unsuspecting Liu Cong, and then massacring the entire imperial Liu clan, men, women, and children alike. And showing once again the careful stock Chinese put in the powers of the dead, Jin made sure to dig up the imperial tombs of Liu Cong and Liu Yan,

and burn the Han Zhao Temple to the ground. With his coup against the Xiongnu a resounding success, Jin Jun proclaimed himself the twin titles of Supreme Commander and Heavenly Prince, acting as the Supreme Head of Government and Emperor in all but name. He then sent word to Emperor Yuan down in Nanjing of his great success and intoned that he was preparing to revert Northern Han to Jin imperial control. Yuan was, of course, elated to hear such a prospect and dispatched an army to support and assist the supreme commander Jin. But before the Jin army could make its way to the Han capital, Pingyang, the blowback struck, and struck hard. Two of the preeminent commanders of Northern Han

had likewise received word that their emperor had been betrayed and murdered by Jin Jun, and they weren't about to take this eminent reversion to Jin authority lying down. Before we launch into their campaign, however, let's get to know these two a little bit better. They were, respectively, Xe Le, general and supreme commander of the East,

and chieftain of the Jie tribe, and Liu Yao, the prince of Qin and one of Liu Cong's cousins. Shi Le is the name that comes down to us, but was certainly not the Jie clansman's birth name. Like many tribal peoples, the Jie did not utilize family names such as we would recognize them. He may have originally been named Fu Le, but that remains speculative.

He was born in or around 274 and raised, as many other tribes that had been relocated southward into China proper, in Shanxi. But when major famine had struck in the years 303 and 304, the Jie had been forced to disperse, making them easy pickings for slavers within the Jin Dynasty. Xie Le had been one such tribesman taken a slave, and sold to a man named Xie Huan, who had subsequently freed the 30-year-old after being impressed by the man's talents. Xie Le went on to become a leader of a ring of bandits, but in spite of that, was befriended by one of the Prince of Chengdu's military commanders. The two would join the War of Eight Princes, initially in support of the Prince of Chengdu's claim to power. But when that bid collapsed and Chengdu was forced to suicide in 306, Shoula opted to join up with the ascendant Xiongnu Grand Chanyu, Liu Yuan, in his bid for independence from the imploding Jin Dynasty, and was made a general.

Though a staunch supporter of Liu Yuan's cause, Shoula largely stood apart from direct imperial control. Instead, commanding an army at large, recruited by himself and roving the countryside, more interested in pillage and plunder than territorial capture. Where he really made his name, however, was his army's utter destruction of the Jin force bearing the Prince of Donghai's body to burial in the summer of 311, and marking the unmaking of Jin in the north. In the early spring of 312, his army captured the city of Shuangguo in Hebei, making it their fortified headquarters.

Over the course of 313, with Emperor Liu Cong proving himself to be violent, wasteful, and succumbing to the finer things in life, rather than transforming northern Han into an efficiently run state, Shile was beginning to act with more and more independent authority, and Lei claimed a huge swath

of the still nominally northern Han territories in the east. He managed to attack Yeo province's capital, Beijing, in 314, and kill its Jin loyalist governor, though control of the province would ultimately remain with the Jin loyalist Duan people. Shilat had better luck in 317 against the governor of Bing province, which is now Shanxi, and incorporated the territory into his own burgeoning holdings. In all human history, there are few stories like that of ancient Egypt. On the banks of the Nile,

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But first, our second northern Han general, Liu Yao. The prince of Qin, Liu Yao, had been raised by his uncle, Liu Yuan, following the earlier death of his father. Though intelligent, studious, and strong, he was also rather infamously vainglorious, comparing himself from a young age to the likes of Cao Cao and even Emperor Wu of Han. At some point in his youth, while studying in Luoyang with his cousin, Yao committed some sort of unspecified crime, but one punishable by death. He was forced to flee, not only the city, but the empire itself, all the way to Pyongyang, Korea. There he would stay until one of the imperial throne's

intermittent general pardons was issued, signaling that he could finally return to China. He would do so, but from there on out he tended to stay far away from cities where he could get himself into further trouble and stick to the wilds and mountains as much as possible. When Liu Yan had declared northern Han independent from Jin in 304, the Chanyu had made his adoptive son one of his major generals. Over the course of Liu Yan's reign, Liu Yao proved himself perhaps worthy of his youthful boasts, by engaging and defeating the Jin imperial forces time and again. He likewise served his cousin Liu Cong faithfully following Yuan's death in 310, and the following

year led the assault against Luoyang that would finally see the once mighty Jin capital city fall, and Emperor Huai taken captive. Liu Yao personally oversaw the raising of much of the city and the execution of the Jin officials, but took as one of his own prizes Empress Yang of Jin as his own wife and eventually empress. And as an aside, Empress Yang Xiangrong is unique in Chinese history for being the only woman ever to be an empress for two different empires and two different emperors. Liu Yao would also be the commander who would take the final imperial stronghold in the

north, Chang'an, in 316 and take Emperor Min captive, an act for which he was promoted to the Prince of Qin. When news reached Liu Yao's court in Chang'an of Jin Jun's betrayal at Pingyang and the mass butchery of the imperial clan there in 318, which included his mother and brother, he like Shile, mobilized his army to the northern Han capital. The two forces converged on the city from two directions, trapping Jinzhen within and preventing any potential relief force from aiding the treacherous official. Imperial officials who had managed to flee the capital city found Liu Yao and offered

him the throne, given that there was pretty much no other imperial prince left to offer the thing to. Prince Yao accepted the promotion and was declared the Emperor of Northern Han outside the walls of Pingyang. Now, to deal with that pesky Jin Jun. The new Emperor's messengers presented the Supreme Commander of Pingyang with what can only be described as the most generous of terms. Surrender now, and I'll not only spare your life, but I'll also leave you in charge of basically everything you're in charge of already. The deal sounded very good to Jin Jun, almost too good in fact. As he hesitated and pondered over whether to accept the offer and to trust that Emperor Yao wasn't, oh, I don't know,

planning to renege on the offer the minute the gates opened, the decision was made for him. A small cabal of conspirators, consisting largely of Jin's own clan members, fearful that Jin Jun might turn down the offer of clemency and doom them all, took matters into their own hands by assassinating the suddenly wishy-washy Supreme Commander and opening the city gates to Liu Yao's awaiting army. And surprise! Upon entering the city, Liu Yao decided to make their efforts especially ironic by breaking his end of the deal and massacring the entire Jin clan for their troubles. In the aftermath of the Sack of Pinyang, the city's destruction was so total that Emperor

Liu Yao actually decided that Chang'an, remember that fire-gutted ruin, would be a more suitable capital and moved his imperial court back there. And it's really saying something when someone in this decade says your city is in worse shape than Chang'an. And so, Northern Han settled back into unity, with everyone content in their stations and ready to immediately mobilize against the Jian Emperor to the south. Just kidding, they weren't nearly done tearing themselves apart. This is called the Sixteen Kingdoms for a reason, after all. In early 319, General Shi Le, Lord of the East, sent his messengers to Chang'an to formally offer the new Han Emperor tribute and pledge fealty, because that's just what you do.

Liu Yao was of course delighted to receive such a display of loyalty. After all, with Shi Le pledging himself to the northern Han throne once again, Yao's reign would be secure and unopposed. He sent word that in return, the emperor was naming Shile the Prince of Zhao and granting him all associated imperial privileges. And that is where the whole operation went all to hell. As the imperial court and the now princely delegation began wrapping up their visit, one junior member of Shile's delegation had a different outcome in mind.

Perhaps he had something or someone he was in no hurry to return to, or maybe he just really, really liked the imperial city's glorious burnt-out houses and scorched inner walls. But whatever the real reason, he decided that he absolutely must remain in Chang'an and thought he had a perfect way to make that happen. He contacted the emperor and informed him that he'd heard that Shele was actually planning to attack and overthrow his imperial majesty just as soon as his guard was down. Liu Yao believed this because of course he did, but that's where the young delegate's plan sort of ended up looking like a really stupid idea,

because the emperor's first act against this monumental supposed treachery was to order the entire diplomatic delegation executed at once. So that didn't really pan out. As word traveled to Shele out in Xiangguo over the next few months that his delegation had been summarily executed for what seemed to be no reason at all, Emperor Liu Yao decided that a few changes were in order for his new regime. He named his wife, the former Jin Empress and current Princess Yang, as his new Empress,

and as previously mentioned, that made her the only woman in Chinese history to hold two different Empress titles, and their eldest son, Liu Shi, his heir and crowned prince. His other major change was in name. You'll recall that the first emperor of Northern Han, Liu Yan, had called his breakaway state Han because he claimed to be descended from the imperial line through one of many Liu clan princesses sent to the Xiongnu Chanyus as per the Heqin marriage alliance system. But now as emperor, Liu Yao felt it was time to end all that Han dynasty garbage. They were Xiongnu, and that was something to be proud of, not something to pretend wasn't the case. He personally lionized the late great Ba Tuo Chang Yu, the steppe warrior who had

initially united the steppe tribes into the mighty Xiongnu Empire back in the 2nd century BCE. Thus, to the end of removing the Chinese influence from his Xiongnu regime, he renamed his dynasty from Han to the more northern-sounding Zhao. So for those of you who might have been wondering why I'd sporadically referred to the Xiongnu dynasty as Han Zhao for the last few episodes before settling on calling it Northern Han, this is why. The state is most commonly known as the Former both because of this abrupt name change, but also because of the splinter state I'm going to talk about momentarily. That said, I've opted for Northern Han up until now because the name Zhao didn't even

enter the lexicon until this moment. It went from being called Han to being called Zhao, and it's only been in later histories that the two words ever co-mingled. But from here on out, well, I can't very well call the state Northern Han anymore, can I? So for the sake of clarity, I'm going to now shift back to calling it Han Zhao. Why not just call it Zhao and be done with it? Well, it might have something to do with the fact that Liu Yao just slaughtered the new prince of Zhao's delegation. Once word had reached Shi Le, the prince of Zhao, he was understandably miffed. He controlled in essence the entire eastern half of Han Zhao,

in fact, virtually the entire north except for the regions immediately surrounding the sometimes capital cities of Pingyang, Luoyang, and Chang'an respectively. And here the new emperor was going to just play him like that? No, that wasn't going to fly. In mid to late 319, he declared his independence from Han Zhao by the authority of his shiny new imperial princedom. And in typical fashion of being completely uncreative in the naming process, he named his new dynasty after that principality. Yep, Zhao. He probably hadn't heard yet that Liuya had already dibs'd that name, so don't be too hard on Shi Le. Regardless, to better parse out this increasing number of states named Zhao, historians have come to call Shi Le's rebel state Later Zhao. So we've got Han Zhao to the west and Later Zhao to the east. Got it? Good. Under the command of Prince Shi Le, later Zhao began consolidating

its position in northern China, as well as sweeping away the remaining Han-Zhao loyalist pockets scattered across the countryside. But in 321, the only real impediment to that process that yet remained was the Duke of Liaodong, an ethnically Xianbei chieftain called Muronghui, who still claimed vassaldom to the Jin dynasty holed up south of the Huai River. Fortified in the walled city of Liaoning near the Korean border, and with access to the sea and thus resupply from the south, there was little Shoula could do but let the Duke of Liaodong sit in his city, by now the only remaining bastion of even nominal Jin power north of the Huai.

Meanwhile, the Emperor of Hanjiao had slid into a disconcerting streak of impulsive violence. Liu Yao, having discovered in 320 a conspiracy against him, plotted by two chiefs of the Di tribes, commenced with executing not only the two conspirators, but an additional 50 chieftains of the tribes, enraging the Di as well as their ally the Qiang, and throwing them both into open rebellion, splintering off into a minor, short-lived state called Qin that would be reincorporated into Han Zhao three years later. We're actually going to leave the two Zhao's off there today, since they'll only really begin directly contending with each other in the mid-320s and I don't want to start

into that and leave off midway through. Instead, we'll finish off by looking back south, at Emperor Yuan's Jin Dynasty and what he had been up to in these past few years. It is a dark time for the Jin Dynasty. With the fall of the north, Xiongnu troops have driven the imperial forces from their strongholds and pursued them across the Yangtze River. Evading the dreaded northern Han horsemen, a group of loyalists have established a new capital in the remote southern city of Nanjing.

The later Emperor Shi Le, obsessed with defeating young Emperor Yuan, has dispatched thousands of soldiers to the far reaches of the Huai River. By 320, however, Emperor Yuan had a more domestic threat to contend with, namely the powerful western general-turned-warlord Wang Dun, who operated with increasing independence within the three provinces under his direct control. He had been put in command of the Western regions in order to suppress the agrarian rebellions that had continued to plague the Jin lands, but had come to view his nominal lord and emperor with increasingly thinly-veiled distaste, and with those Western provinces as a domain unto himself.

Emperor Yuan was no dummy, though, and it was patently obvious what Wang's ultimate ambition was, which was to either break away from the Jin or outright supplant it. To that end, Yuan sought to alienate Wang's power base by surrounding himself with vehemently anti-Wang officials, and with decidedly mixed results. Sure, in the short term, he was immune to Wang's direct effects. But the coalition he was forced to cater to was a rather, oh, let's call them morally flexible bunch. And by cozying up to such questionable characters, Yuan alienated many of his erstwhile supporters, who were like, if those are the kinds of people the emperor is cavorting about with,

maybe Wang Dun is right about this after all. The two factions within Jin knew the break was coming, but neither wanted to make the first move until they were absolutely ready. And that moment would hold off for a further two years until the spring of 322, when Wang, claiming that the emperor was being deceived by several of his officials and officially seeking to merely clean up the government, at last launched his campaign against the imperial throne. And in spite of his years of preparations for this moment, Yuan's defenses proved ridiculously inadequate against Wang Dun's western army.

Within the year, the imperial positions had been overrun, and Nanjing itself briefly besieged before falling and being pillaged by Wang's forces. Ah yes, the old protective pillaging. And it would appear that with his capital, so too was Emperor Yuan's health pillaged. He grew despondent and succumbed to an illness around the new year of 323 at the age of 46. The throne then passed to the 24-year-old crowned prince Xiao, who ascended as Emperor Ming the Understanding, though a thoroughly muzzled monarch. There seemed to be little the Jian dynasty could do against the power of the victorious warlord Wang Dun,

who quickly grew drunk and cruel on power. Wang Dun thought little enough of the new emperor, and he planned to outright usurp the throne. In the summer of 323, he had Emperor Ming summon him to the capital, only to conspicuously ignore the imperial summons and instead move his headquarters closer to the capital, only to conspicuously ignore the imperial summons and instead move his headquarters closer to the capital, and then taking the opportunity to unilaterally announce that he would be taking over the governorship of the capital province. But in 324, the Jin dynasty would experience something of a reprieve from domination and eventual usurpation.

Wang Duan grew ill, and though he knew he was nearing death, hastened to complete the work he'd begun in bringing down the Jin. Though he knew he would not likely live long enough to take the throne himself, he yet strove to ensure his adopted son, Wang Ying, could be the emperor. When Emperor Ming heard of Wang's mortal illness through a loyal minister, he grew heartened that he might yet save his ailing dynasty from destruction. Another loyal minister took the further step of prematurely declaring Wang Duan's death to the imperial army, further increasing their morale, all while Emperor Ming summoned his elite troops from the northern borders to reinforce his

position against Wang's last gasps at seizing power. A move made possible by later Zhao's armies having recently retreated to their strongholds to more effectively deal with the blossoming conflict between them and Han Zhao. The Jin imperial army and General Wang's forces would clash, but with their lines stiffened from the northern reinforcements, the Jin army was able to stave off the rebel attack before launching a devastating counterstrike that would break the back of Wang Dun's designs on the throne. And as the histories tell it, Wang Dun, upon hearing initial news of this defeat, died outright in sorrow.

We'll go ahead and leave Emperor Ming and his reinvigorated Jin Dynasty on this high note, because goodness knows neither will have many more. Next time, Ming will unceremoniously die at the age of 26, leaving the empire in the hands of his four-year-old son, Crown Prince Yan. And of course, we all know how that sort of situation is likely to turn out, especially once his mother, the Empress Dowager, seizes the regency and the imperial court falls into a, by this point, virtually formulaic pattern of infighting. Meanwhile, in the north, the two Zhao emperors, Shi Le and Liu Yao,

will get into fisticuffs over who will claim the entirety of the north for themselves. What they don't and can't possibly realize, however, is that Zhao Han and later Zhao are but the first of what will ultimately be a baker's dozen more Northern kingdoms, all vying for supremacy. 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,

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