The History of China - #53 - 16K 6: The Year Of Five Emperors

Episode Date: January 24, 2015

The second half of Shi Hu's reign over Later Zhao, his scheming heirs, and the short, unhappy reigns of his eventual successors... all leading the the once-supreme kingdom being pulled apart like so much carrion by its neighbors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. 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. Learn the history of the British Empire by listening to Pax Britannica everywhere you find your podcasts. Or go to pod.link slash pax.

Today's show is brought to you in part by audible.com. By using the web address www.audibletrial.com slash THOC. You can receive a free audiobook download, along with a free 30-day trial of the service. With over 150,000 titles to choose from for your iPhone, Android, Kindle, or MP3 player, Audible's the nation's leading seller and producer of spoken audio content. Again, sign up for your free 30-day trial with free audiobook of your choice Hello, and welcome to the History of China.

Episode 51, The Year of Five Emperors First off, let me briefly apologize for the delay in getting this episode out. January is a notoriously hectic time of year for my household, what with there being, in addition to the New Year, three birthdays, an anniversary, and a whole host of other things going on. On top of that, we just so happen to be in the middle of a period of Chinese history where five different tribes are forming a dozen and a half different kingdoms, and well, yeah, the timetable will tend to lag a bit. I hope you can understand. I'm getting these out as quickly as time permits, and thanks very much for all your patience and continued support. Last time, we ended off with the execution of Crown Prince She Sui,

whose cannibalistic reign of terror had held the capital of later Han, Ye City, paralyzed in fear, but who had ultimately been undone by mistaking his father, the Heavenly Prince She Fu's policy of turning a blind eye for weakness, and had met his end for it, much to the populace's relief. But if the citizens of later Zhao thought it was all going to be smooth sailing from here on out, man were they in for an unpleasant surprise. This time, the latter half of Shi Hu's reign, the four successors who would all take their place on the throne of Zhao, and subsequently the execution block, in the span of a year, and an unexpected, ignominious, and final end to Later Zhao altogether. Before all that, though, I'd like to take a moment to set up Later Zhao's neighbor to the

northeast, the proto-Manchurian kingdom of former Yin, and its ever-troublesome peninsular rival, Goguryeo, aka Korea. Viewed from within, the collapse of northern China into chaos and civil war had frankly been, and continued to be, a terrible series of events, or if we're going to get picky, a successive series of events. The devastation inflicted on the land and the population was, as we've earlier discussed, so complete that it would take China literally centuries to recover, and ranks to this day among the greatest losses of life in human history. But for some, specifically those who had either stood apart from the Middle Empire

or had been forced under its yoke while it had been internally strong, this age of disunity could be thought of as a great boon indeed. One such area was the long-subjugated people of the Goguryeo Kingdom. As you may recall when we discussed it in an earlier episode, Korea had been forced to accept the Han Dynasty's suzerainty under the rapid expansion of Emperor Wu back in the 1st century BCE. There it had remained until it had once again broken free from imperial control as Han authority unmade itself over the course of the 3rd century CE. That would prove short-lived, however, when the warlord of its once-allye Cao Wei, the infamous general Cao Cao, had marched his armies north to smash his potential rivals

before turning south towards Red Cliffs. The capital of Goguryeo, the mountain fortress city Hwandong, was captured and destroyed, and the Korean king forced to flee for his life to his secondary city, Pyongyang, in 244. This move was a little like abandoning Helm's Deep for Rohan, to use a very nerdy Tolkien reference, and so it was very unsurprising when Pyongyang too was smashed and the royal court forced to flee on a giant panic circuit of virtually the entirety of Korea and Manchuria before finally managing to lose their pursuers. But as the Three Kingdoms period had ground on and on and on, and Wei had been consumed from within by the Simas of Jin, and then veritably detonated into the 16 kingdoms of the barbarian

tribes, wouldn't you know it, Korea had pretty much slipped off of everyone's radar. And so, at the dawn of the 4th century, Goguryeo had managed to not only reclaim and rebuild their old capital of Huandou, but had once again taken to raiding the nearby Chinese prefecture, the Aodong, culminating with them seizing the entirety of the peninsula and ending Chinese hegemony there for the first time in more than four centuries. This challenge to Chinese authority, or rather by this time the Chinesh, Xianbei people of the Northeast, is where we'll pick up again today. The Xianbei had long been in control of the Liaodong duchy,

what we think of today as most of Heilongjiang, Manchuria, and northern Korea. This had been the case since their chieftain of the Murong clan, sometimes also phoneticized as Muzhun, had submitted to the Jin Emperor back in 289. But when the nascent Jin dynasty had imploded in the north, Liaodong had become a bastion of relative safety and security for the ethnically Han peoples displaced during the fighting, and one of the final outposts of nominal Jin authority in the north. In 337, its current duke, Murong Huang, asserted his power by promoting himself to the Prince of Yan, which typically serves as both the founding date of what will be yet another of our 16

kingdoms, former or early Yan, and as the beginning of an alliance between Yan and later Zhao's heavenly prince, Shi Hu. The pact of alliance was to mobilize both states' armies against their neighbor and mutual enemy, the Duan tribe, which occupied a neighboring region called Liao Xi. The joint attack was to be launched in the spring of 338, with the Prince of Yan swiftly defeating the forces of the Duan, but withdrawing back to his own territory before Shi Hu's armies had arrived. Misinterpreting his ally's deference as betrayal,

the Heavenly Prince turned his eye around Liaodong once the Duan were driven off into the Miyun Mountains, invading the territory and forcing to submission every city except its walled capital, Ji. From there, the Prince of Yan conducted a successful defense against later Zhao's siege for between two and three weeks, before the enemy army was forced at last to withdraw. As the besiegers retreated, the Prince's son and heir launched a counterattack, two and three weeks before the enemy army was forced at last to withdraw. As the besiegers retreated, the prince's son and heir launched a counterattack, devastating the later Zhao columns and retaking not just the cities they had lost, but many of those formerly under the command of the Duan, all the way south into Henan. From his hideout in the Miyun Mountains, the Duan chieftain, perfectly happy at this point to help his two enemy neighbors tear each other's throats out,

sent a courier to Murong Huang with a message stating that he had sent word to Shi Hu, falsely expressing a desire to surrender. According to historian V.S. Taskin, the message read, Shi Hu is greedy, but not prudent. I asked him for permission to surrender and asked to meet me. And he does not suspect anything. Hiding troops in ambush and intercepting them coming to see me may achieve success. End quote. Murong Huang took this opportunity into consideration and ordered his son to stage an ambush at the appointed meeting point. When Shi Hu's emissary, the commander of Punishing the East, Ma Qiu,

arrived at the head of 30,000 East, Ma Chiu, arrived at the head of 30,000 men to accept the Duan's surrender, Murong Ke launched his ambush to stunning effect. Reportedly, of the 30,000 later Zhao troops, 60-70% were killed outright, and the remaining 10,000 or so fled into the wilds on foot. When word reached Shi Hu of his commander's failure, while the Heavenly Prince dined, news of such a disastrous rout so alarmed the monarch that he spat out his food and stripped Ma Qiu of all his titles and positions on the spot.

With Li Erjiao's northeastern forces thoroughly beaten, Shi Hu could only stand by and watch as their ally-turned-enemy gobbled up and incorporated the remainder of Duan territories, before turning eastward itself toward the revitalized Goguryeo Kingdom in the winter of 342, when it once again attacked and destroyed its capital and sent the Korean royal court to flight, who must have all been like, ah, come on, not again. In the aftermath, the Xianbei of Yan began to colonize the peninsula, as well as take as many 50,000 ethnic Koreans as slave labor, along with the queen and queen mother. Alright, so now that we've set up former Yen, which I promise will come back and be important later on, we can at last get back to the phenomenal debacle that is the second half of Shi Hu's reign over later Zhao. By 342, Shi Hu was finalizing plans on a three-sided strike against not only Jin to the south, but former Liang to the west, and former Yan to the east as well.

To that end, he had, quote, collected from each household three out of every five draft animals or two out of every four draft animals, including households exempted from taxation, so that together with the forces present in Ye City, to bring the overall number of troops to 500,000 strong, and also to build 10,000 boats for transporting by the Huan River to the sea, 11,000 hu of grain and beans to provision the troops which were to participate in the punitive expedition, end quote. Simply put, he had amassed an army of half a million, drafted thousands of animals, and had mobilized a vast fleet so that they could carry their food with them.

But as he prepared to mobilize his armies to the south, east, and west, an ominous event caused him to rethink. During a feast Shi Hu organized for high officials in the front hall of Tai Wu Palace, over 100 white geese descended and landed south of the main road. Shi Hu ordered his guards to shoot at the geese, but none of them were hit. Again, according to Taskin, At that time, Shi Hu was going to embark on a punitive expedition to the three sides of the world, so from all provinces were gathered over a thousand thousand warriors.

The great astrologer, Zhao Lan, told Shi Hu in a secret conversation, The fact that the geese landed next to the palace indicate that the palace premises would be deserted. The campaign should not be undertaken. Taking that advice, Shi Hu ascended the Xuanwu Guan Tower, conducted a large review of the troops, and lifted martial law. In other words, the astrologer predicted that since none of the archer's arrows seemed to be able to hit the flock, it indicated defeat on the battlefield, after which Shehu's army would be forced to flee north after the geese, thus leaving his capital abandoned.

Put off from his invasion, at least for the time being, Shehu turned his interests toward other endeavors, namely, tomb robbing. Quote, Like Shele, so was Shehu distinguished by greed and did not follow the rules of proper conduct. After he started ruling the lands of ten provinces, he attained an infinite amount of gold, silk, pearls, jade, and rare things. But Shehu, feeling even that was not enough, commanded that the graves of's tomb of valuables, it is likely he was also attempting to confirm a long-standing rumor about the origins of Qin Shi Huang. Namely, that he wasn't ethnically Chinese at all, but instead Turkic or Hunnic, like Shi Hu himself. Woodblock ink prints of Qin Shi Huang show him with a prominent nose, deep-set eyes,

a heavy mustache and beard, a remarkably un-Chinese hairstyle and cap. In short, he doesn't look very Chinese at all. And this is not even outside the realm of possibility, as the Qin clan did spring from what was then the very outer and semi-barbaric fringes of the known world up to that point. Nevertheless, neither Shi Hu nor anyone since has yet been able to confirm or deny such speculation, since to this day Qin Shi Huang's burial chamber remains sealed and undisturbed outside of Xi'an, guarded over by his terracotta army. It wouldn't be until 348, however, that Shi Hu's succession problems would rear its ugly head again. You'll remember from last episode that the outright Hannibal

Lecter-esque character of his first son and heir, Shixuan, had transformed into until at last he had overstepped even the leniency of his father and publicly embarrassed the heavenly prince, leaving him little choice but to purge Shixuan and his entire family and designate a new heir. That would fall to his second son, Shixuan. The now-crowned prince had a full-blooded brother by the name of Prince Xitao, but their relationship was strained at best. The rivalry between the brothers had grown ever more acrimonious since the elder brother had been named heir, and it was in 348 that it would ultimately boil over.

The final straw for the crown prince was when he learned that his brother, Prince Tao, was overseeing the construction of a palace for himself. But it wasn't the palace itself that was at issue. It was the name. You may remember that quirky little idiosyncrasy in Chinese dynastic convention, the naming taboo. It's exactly what it sounds like. An imperial prince or monarch's name becomes sacrosanct and forbidden to be written or even spoken.

So it was a flagrant infringement on crown prince Xuan's name when his little brother named his new palace Xuan Guang, likely looking his older brother in the eye and smirking while he did it. At this point, in our understanding of the Shi imperial family, it should come as pretty much no surprise what the crown prince's reaction was to such a blatant slight against him. He arranged for the assassination of Prince Tao, because of course he did, as his brother meditated within a Buddhist temple in the capital. He also seriously considered doing the same to his father, although fatefully decided against it. History isn't black and white,

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blatantly, obviously not mourning for his slain brother, and had actually laughed out loud when he viewed the mutilated body during the funeral, well, suffice it to say, the heavenly prince's suspicions were piqued. Of course, suspicions are not fact, but Shi Hu had a solution to that too. The crown prince and his followers were all arrested and put to, as they say, the question. Following whatever tortures were to follow, one or more of Prince Xuan's cronies cracked, and the whole plot came to light, including that little part about

maybe ordering the assassination of Shi Hu himself. Whoops. The crown prince's fate seemed sealed, but at this point an interesting little wrinkle developed, at least by the account of the Zizhi Tongjun, which it should be said was written well after the fact with the benefit of hindsight, so maybe take this story with a grain of salt. Shi Hu, a self-avowed Buddhist, kept on retainer a favored monk named Fu Tucheng, sometimes also phoneticized as Fu Tudeng. Monk Fu,

a native of Kucha in modern India, had studied his religion in Kashmir before immigrating to Luoyang in 310, and apparently had the power of prophecy. As well as single-handedly being responsible for converting the Jie people to Buddhism, he ultimately lived to be more than 100 years old. In terms of his influence in spreading Buddhist thought across China, his impact is difficult to overstate. According to historian John Kieh in his book China, A History, quote, Fo Tudong's disciples would include some of Chinese Buddhism's most outstanding scholars. When the later Zhao kingdom fell apart in 349, spoiler alert by the

way, Fo Tudong's disciples fanned out across the north from Shandong to Sichuan, and gravitated south as far as Guangdong. One of them, the monk Dao An, became the greatest exponent, translator, and organizer in the early history of Chinese Buddhism, and of his disciples, several assisted Kumara Jiva, another native of Kucha, in the most ambitious of all translation projects in terms of quantity and fidelity. Yet all such luminaries continued to revere Fo Tudong's memory, which would suggest that he was more than a mere showman and miracle worker." For now, though, Meng Fu predicted dire catastrophe on the entire nation should the heavenly prince follow through on his planned execution of his heir. Shen Hu held the monk

in very high regard, and so his warning surely must have given the monarch of later Zhao pause. But in the end, there could be no forgiveness for the murderous heir, nor would there be any mercy. The execution of crowned prince Shi Xuan would go ahead as planned. And it's important to remember that the idea of a death penalty being thought of as a humane ending of life, and as that death being a punishment in and of itself, is a relatively new invention in human history. Instead, as we've seen so often thus far in the show, most of the death penalty's history has centered on inflicting as much pain as physically possible before death itself occurs. And so it was with Prince Xuan. Quote, to the north of Ye was piled a heap of firewood, and at the end of it was installed a winch with

a rope tied to it and a ladder against the pile of firewood to lift Xishuan up to the post. Xitao's favored eunuchs, Hao Zhi and Liu Ba, were ordered to pluck out Xishuan's hair, tear off his tongue, drag him to the stairs, and lift him to the pile of twigs. Hao Zhi tied a rope around Xishuan's neck, he was winched up, and Liu Ba hacked off his arms and legs, punched out his eyes, and ripped open his belly. The same torments that had been inflicted on Shi Tao. The heap of the brushwood was set aflame on all sides,

and the smoke and flames rose to the sky. When the fire died down, the ashes were collected and placed at the intersection of the walkways at the main gate. End quote. As per the norm at this time, the late Prince Shren's mother, Empress Du, was stripped of all title and nobility, his wife, concubines, and his nine sons all executed, as well as his subordinates.

His guards, who after all had only been following orders, must have thanked their lucky stars when they were only exiled from the capital out to the far-flung region of Gansu province. Well and truly getting off easy, all things considered. In a horrific case of Shi Hu's will being carried out to a fault, Prince Xuan's youngest son, one of his grandfather's favorites and only a few years old, was, quote, repeating, I'm not guilty, and Shi Hu wanted to pardon him. But the officials, not agreeing with that, snatched the child from Shi Hu's hands and put him to death. The child clung to his grandfather's clothes and loudly

shouted, all who saw that shed tears, and Shi Hu then fell ill, end quote. With his second heir's line now wiped out, Shi Hu of course needed to determine which of his other sons ought to replace the late crown prince. Again. Two of his grown sons were highly regarded by the court and deemed to be the most capable choices. But Shi Hu's now two experiences with adult heirs turning treacherous made him wary of making the same mistake a third time. Instead, he named his youngest son, the nine-year-old Shi Shi, as his heir in late 348, over the objections of his trusted advisor and minister of agriculture. And as we all know, nothing bad has ever happened when an underage heir is named, passing up elder siblings in the

process. Nope, nothing bad at all. I'm sure he'll have a long and happy reign. Right. In the spring of 349, the now 54-year-old Shi Hu finally got around to declaring himself emperor, and all of his remaining sons promoted officially to imperial princes. With this new era came the expected and customary round of general pardons, but to the shock and horror of the late Prince Xuan's exiled personal guard corps, no pardon was forthcoming for any of them. Desperate to escape their now permanent exile, they together rose in rebellion against this perceived injustice. And make no mistake, this was no paltry force. Purportedly, the number of guards for the capital palaces alone had numbered more than 100,000 strong,

a full third of Laderjau's standing peacetime army. For a sense of perspective, Laderjau's total population was estimated to be about 3 million people, meaning something on the order of 10% of the total population was in its army. That's like the US having an army of 30 million, or modern China maintaining a standing force of 120 million. To be able to support such an armed force is absolutely mind-boggling, even with modern industrial logistics. Of that 100,000 strong palace guard, about 10,000 horsemen had ultimately been exiled and now began to mobilize against the capital, pillaging as they went and all the while attracting more and more disaffected soldiers to their banners. By the time they reached Chang'an in late spring, supposedly their initial

10,000 had ballooned to 100,000 warriors and had been able to repeatedly and easily smash every imperial army sent against it. It was only once Shi Hu granted his general, Yao Yizhong, with emergency powers and overall command of the Zhao army that the rebellion was finally put down outside the city of Xinyan and its leader beheaded. General Yao, war hero that he was, tried to use that leverage to again reason with his emperor that he really ought to reconsider having a ten-year-old as his heir given the state of instability and discontent across the realm. Shi Hu paid the commander lip service, but ended up just ignoring the advice altogether. That summer, a disease that Shi Hu seems to have had for quite a while beforehand

turned acute and his health rapidly declined. Realizing that his end was near, he issued a proclamation naming his two elder sons, Shibin and Shizun, the same two in fact that he had earlier passed over for succession, as the co-regents of later Zhao, alongside his captain of the guard, Zhang Cai. However, this ran afoul of both Captain Zhao and Crown Prince Shi Shi's mother, Empress Liu, who together had planned to dominate her son and the government once the elder emperor had died. With Shi Hu incapacitated, it must have been easy enough to borrow the imperial seal and begin fixing this unexpected hiccup in their plans. They sent a courier to Prince Shabin with a message stating,

quote, the emperor is slowly recovering from his disease, and if you, prince, wish to hunt instead, you can stay a little longer rather than coming to the capital directly, end quote. Shabin, like many a prince before him and after him, rather enjoyed his wine and his hunting, and so said, thanks very much, don't mind if I do. But once it was clear that Prince Bin was no longer immediately on his way to the capital to visit his very much dying father, Empress Liu issued a forged imperial order stating that Shi Bin had neglected to show his loyalty and deference to his stricken father, and was therefore stripped of all his possessions and placed under house arrest. Shortly thereafter, his brother and co-regent, Prince Shizun,

arrived to Ye City to visit his father. Instead, he was coldly received in the audience hall, denied access to his father, and ordered to return to his province with a gift of 30,000 imperial warriors, much to his chagrin. With one regent locked up and the other on his way back to the middle of nowhere, the Empress's co-conspirator, Captain Zhang, felt it was time to end this little charade once and for all. Invoking the stolen imperial seal's authority, he ordered his

younger brother to kill the imprisoned Shi Bin. For her part, and likewise utilizing the ill-gotten seal, Empress Liu issued a proclamation in the emperor's name, appointing Zhang as the sole regent to the imperial heir and commander-in-chief of all military affairs in and around the capital, thereby cementing the pair's lock on power. Everything seemed to be going just swimmingly. And then, it all went to hell. Once Shehu, who had since succumbed to senility as well as frailty, died in late summer of 349.

Xiexie took the throne and reigned for a grand total of 33 days. Once he'd assumed the throne, his now twice-snubbed elder brother finally seemed to catch wise to the trick that had been played on him once he learned of his brother's execution and his supposed-to-have-been co-regent assuming sole power. He raised his personal army, along with those of a number of powerful generals who supported him, and marched on the capital, Ye, in all commanding a force of some 90,000. In short order, he had taken the capital, captured Regent Zhang and executed him, and ordered both the Empress Dowager and the prepubescent Emperor detained. Empress Liu was then demoted to princess and Shi Shi to prince,

and then the pair were both executed as well, leaving Shi Zun to ascend the throne. This too, however, was not to last. When he broke a pre-war vow to appoint his nephew, General Shi Min, as his crowned prince, the opinion of the Shi clan and later Zhao's military swiftly turned against this new new emperor. The final straw, however, was Emperor Shizun announcing his intention to arrest and execute General Min, but then hesitating from carrying out the plan long enough for word to leak. Liking his head exactly where it was, thank you very much, the general swiftly surrounded the palace, and within half a year of seizing the throne, Shizun, too, had been arrested, overthrown, and executed in the winter of 349, leading to the reign of his brother, Shijian, though with true power still residing in the body of General Min.

When Emperor Jian also tried to rectify that imbalance by sending his generals in a failed attempt to oust Prince Min, and then plan failing, executing them all afterwards in an attempt to cover up his own involvement, he too found his way to the chopping block after only 103 days on the throne. With the Ye Palace now devoid of imperial princes, General Shemin, who had by this point decided to revert his family name from the Chinese Shi to the ethnically Jie Ran, decided that the time was right to take control of the kingdom for himself, and declared himself the first, and it should be said, only, emperor of Ranwei.

Meanwhile, in the old Zhao capital of Xiangguo, yet another imperial brother, Prince Shizhi, had arisen and laid a claim of his own to the throne of later Zhao. The now dual and dueling emperors Ranmin and Shizhi had their armies clash time and again over the course of 350, although no clear victor emerged. So what were the other kingdoms of China doing as former Zhao busily tore itself apart? Certainly not sitting on their haunches just watching it all go down. Remember, at the top of the episode I'd left one heck of a Chekhov's gun in view by explaining the origins and rise of former Yan to the northeast, and I'd be remiss if we didn't

use it by episode's end. Indeed, both former Yan to the north and Jin to the south were using the civil chaos within former Zhao to peel off enormous sections of the formerly dominant northern kingdom. For instance, in 350, Yan was able to seize the areas encompassing both Beijing and Tianjin as a part of a relentless southward march. Other groups joined in the feeding frenzy as well. In either late 350 or early 351, a chieftain of the Di tribe, Fu Jian, claimed virtually the entire western half of later Zhao for his own people and the title of Heavenly Prince, naming the region Qin, or as it will be known to history, Former Qin.

We'll be covering Former Qin at length in a future episode, so for now, I'm going to try to not completely swamp you with the explosion of states going on here. Caught between Jin, Ran Wei, former Yan, and now former Qin, tearing his state limb from limb, Emperor Xuezhi tried in vain to flip someone, anyone, into being an ally to stave off the others. He even gave up his imperial pretenses and demoted himself back to prince in 351 in an attempt to coax Prince Murong of former Yan into an agreement. But,

smelling blood in the water, it was to no avail. And even a general slash assassin, Shizhe sent to kill Ranmin, ended up defecting, returning as a double agent and killing the beleaguered monarch of later Zhao, bringing a final end to the once mighty kingdom. Northern China once again has been embroiled in chaos and conflict. Where just a year prior events seemed headed toward reunification, in late 351 it had refracted along ethnic lines into three powerful states in conflict, the Han Chinese Ran Wei, the largely Xianbei, former Yan, and the Di, former Qin.

But next time, one will be able to claim victory and for one precious moment at least, seize the entirety of northern China for itself. Thank you for listening. Hey everyone, hope you enjoyed the show today. Please help us out by popping over to the iTunes Music Store Thank you. PayPal or Patreon. Thanks again, and see you next time. Have you ever gazed in wonder at the Great Pyramid? Have you marvelled at the golden face of Tutankhamun? Or admired the delicate features of Queen Nefertiti? If you have,

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