The History of China - #54 - 16K 7: Best Laid Plans...

Episode Date: February 6, 2015

Fratricide, regicide, and genocide are hallmarks of this period in the north. Though the tumult, Former Qin shall emerge triumphant to reunite both the North and Sichuan under its banner... only to watch it all crumble in the span of two years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 52, Best Laid Plans We left off last time, in the year 351, with the state of later Zhao, which had only a year or so prior been the preeminent power in the north of China, quickly cycling through five separate Shi clan emperors before finally reaching the end of its rope and ceasing to exist as a political entity altogether. In the aftermath of its collapse, predictably, the vultures descended to pick at its carcass. In addition to the ever-looming Jin state to the south, which had picked up no small chunk of territory for itself, it should be said,

three other factions had either taken advantage of the chaos or sprung out of whole cloth from within to seize a slice of power and land for themselves as Zhao shuttered its final death throes. They were, respectively, the states of former Yan, Run Wei, and former Qin. So let's begin today with a little refresher on those states. Former Yan ought to still be fairly fresh in your mind, as it serves as a nice, convenient bookend of last week's episode. It was to the far northeast of China, consisting of what we'd think of today as most of Manchuria, parts of Russia, and extending partway into the Korean peninsula as well. In 351, it was controlled by the 32-year-old Prince of Yan, Murong Jun, who was the second holder of that title after his father, Prince Huang, had died three years prior.

As no great friend of later Zhao, nor the Shi clan within, the Prince of Yan watched his neighbor to the south begin tearing itself apart with a mix of what must have been fascination and ambition, but definitely more of the latter than the former. Over the course of 349, he and his advisors had drawn up extensive plans to annex large swaths of later Zhao's territories in the midst of the chaos, and in the spring of 350, those plans were finally put into action. In a matter of weeks, the mighty city of Ji, on top of which stands modern Beijing,

had been captured and declared former Yan's new capital. This early success was quickly followed up with Yan's armies seizing the entirety of Yeo province, which included Beijing, Tianjin, and much of northern Hebei. Their southern advance would only be halted by the heroic efforts of the Zhao army under the command of its general Lu Bozhao, and even that, only temporarily. Nevertheless, we'll leave former Yan's armies for a moment and allow them to regroup, because it's at this point that we ought to introduce, or rather reintroduce, the founders and leader of Ran Wei, the Heavenly Prince, Ran Min. If that name doesn't ring a bell, he'd be forgiven,

since Ran Min had only recently changed his name to that. We did touch on it last episode, but in the confusion of later Zhao tearing itself apart, such a detail might have slipped by all but unnoticed. For most of episode 51, we'd known the man as Shimin, the great general of later Zhao and a clansman of the Zhao royal family. Last week, however, I'd mistakenly said that he'd reverted his name from Shi to Ron in an effort to sound slash be more ethnically Jie. But given what he's about to do over the course of his reign, this was a frankly ridiculous oversight on my part, and I'm not sure how I managed to so badly

mangle his lineage. So let me correct that now. Ximing's father, Ran Zhan, had actually been captured by Xie Le's army way back in 311. It isn't clear why, possibly his connection to Chinese aristocracy, but the 11-year-old Ran Zhan had been adopted by Shilla's then-young nephew, Shi Hu, as his own son and thusly raised. Thus, Shimin was technically Shi Hu's adoptive grandson. But one thing is abundantly clear. Shimin was not ethnically Jie, and was in fact ethnically Han, something that his adoptive

family never quite let him forget. And so it was that in 349, as the rival claimants to the throne of Zhao killed each other left and right, that Xiamen came to the forefront, given his sizable army and his well-deserved reputation for battlefield command. These would-be emperors, or at least the forces who controlled them, could abide no rival power as it turned out, and as such began sending wave after wave of assassins against Shimin, but were time and again defeated with seeming ease. Still, a, what the heck are you doing, I'm just trying to help you out here, would have been an appropriate response from Shemin since he'd made no claim to the throne for himself and indeed had backed his close kin in their claims, only to have them turn around and

send killer after killer after him once they'd been coronated. It became ever more obvious to Xie Min that, in spite of his father and his adoption into the Jie tribe, none of his so-called tribesmen could ever really be trusted. So, using his authority as military commander of Jie city, he ordered the arrest and house imprisonment of the sitting Zhao emperor, Shijian, and ordered that all non-Han people were forbidden from arming themselves with weapons of any kind. As a result,

any tribal person who was able fled the city. Things were about to go downhill fast, and it seemed like many of them already knew it. Shenmin Yusi had come to the conclusion that the remaining Xiongnu and Jie populace were, as they were historically infamous for being want-to-do, likely to continually stir up trouble and be unreliable allies in even the best of circumstances.

And so, he decided on a final solution to their continued presence within Ye. He issued a public decree promising all Han people both a reward and promotion for each barbarian head they brought to him, regardless of age or sex, and then personally led the charge of the horrific racial purge throughout the capital city. In a matter of days, the streets had run red with blood, and by some accounts, as many as 200,000 people were slain, beheaded, and their bodies disposed of by being thrown beyond the high outer walls to rot. Among the dead were many who, though in all likelihood actually ethnically Han, had the genetic misfortune of not looking Chinese

enough, by which I mean having a nose that was a little too prominent, or eyes that were a little too set back in their head, or whose beards happened to grow in a little too thick, all markers of non-Hun-ness. Included in the slaughter was the rest of the Shi clan, men, women, and children alike. All in all, it has been estimated that within and surrounding Ye, between 70 and 80% of the northern tribal population was slaughtered by Shimin's order. All of this before firearms, poison gases, or industrial techniques. All by hand.

Following this what can only really be called a genocide, Shimin at last discarded the name of his exterminated adoptive tribesman and restored his Han surname, Ran. And so it was that in 350, now as Ranming, he promoted himself to the emperor of his new state, Wei, before launching himself and his armies against the remnants of the beleaguered Zhao remnant at his capital, Xiangguo. By the end of 351, later Zhao had been destroyed and the last of his emperors, Shizhi, beheaded by his own general and his head publicly burned on a busy street in Ye.

This flirtation with victory, however, was not to last. After all, issuing an order to exterminate what amounted to everyone not racially identical to yourself is liable to ruffle some feathers, to put it mildly. And it would be former Yan to the north that would bring Ranmin's genocidal dictum to account. You'll surely remember that Yan, while a safe harbor for Han Chinese, was controlled and occupied mainly by the Murong clan of the Xianbei people, one of the Five Tribes of the now long-shattered Barbarian Coalition. So yeah, they probably had an objection or two to raise about that whole kill all barbarians order. Or maybe that had just happened to coincide with the ongoing southward land grab Yan was

undertaking and simply provided a convenient cover. Either way, the brother of former Yan's sovereign Prince Jun, General Murong Ke, advanced into Ranwei and provoked Emperor Ranmin's ire. But in a maneuver that would have been, was, and would continue to be such a staple of steppe warrior warfare that Genghis Khan and his son would still be using it to tremendous world-shattering effect 900 years later, General Ke would lead his troops into charging their enemy army, feign panic, and then flee, running away screaming. There must be something primal in a person engaged in combat that tells them that when an enemy is running away, you pursue them. I suppose it's the same chase instinct that drives dogs to chase cars, and why it's a really

bad idea to run away from bears and lions. But regardless, Ranmin's armies were duly drawn out into the open plains, where they were, of course, surrounded and cut off by the Xianbei horse archers. In the resulting chaos, Ranmin was thrown from his own horse and captured. When brought before General Ke, he made the unwise decision to start spitting insults at his captor, and quickly realized the error of his loose tongue when he was ordered to undergo 300 lashes before being executed. His wife and son, now his successor, would manage to hold out for another few months,

but in the end would give up the ghost in autumn or winter of 352, ending Rongwei's brief foray into the 16 kingdoms and leaving Yan, now uneasy neighbors with both Jin to the south and a new power rising to the east of the Zhao capital, the state of former Qin and its iron-fisted monarch, Fu Jian. Fu Jian, whom I should say had not started out named as such, but since people in this era seem to be changing their names about as often as they change their underwear, I won't bother you with that whole headache. He was descended from the chieftain of a D tribesman who had been in the service of Shi Hu, and had been appointed as the governor

of You province in the west of later Zhao, as Shi Hu had lain dying in 349. Following Shi Hu's death, in the chaos that had embroiled later Zhao, more and more of the outlying tribes of the Wu-Hu coalition had looked to free themselves of these complicated and exceedingly deadly political had embroiled later Zhao, more and more of the outlying tribes of the Wu-Hu coalition had looked to free themselves of these complicated and exceedingly deadly political entanglements with those who would dare claim the throne of China. All that came to its obvious head with Shimin slash Ranmin's order of extermination for all peoples such as them, and the Deep People had more or less immediately dissolved their association with the murderous regime in Ye City. people such as them, and the Di people had more or less immediately dissolved their association

with the murderous regime in Ye City. Initially, Fujian's father had sought political refuge under the umbrage of the Jin Dynasty, and had been granted along with his son the title of Duke. This was just a temporary solution, however. After all, who wanted to merely trade one imperial master for another? As such, within a year, they had swapped from the title of mere duke to that of sovereign prince of the three qins, as well as that of the grand chanyu of the five tribes. Quite the mouthful, indeed. As the d-tribe continued their westward push, however, the prince's trusted general up and poisoned his monarch,

leaving the 43-year-old Fu Jian to inherit the throne. Fu Jian had been none too thrilled with his father having thrown off the Jian dynasty's protection, and as such disavowed his father's self-proclaimed titles and once again embraced Jian's suzerainty. After all, why make more enemies than necessary, right? Fujian took up his father's armies, executed the poisonous general, who had apparently not thought out an exit strategy following his regicide, and then prepared for war. The target? The ancient fortress city, Chang'an. Fujian divided his armies into two columns, and set out in autumn of 350, rapidly advancing and managing to take the city entirely by winter of the same year.

With Chang'an in hand, Fujin now decided that maybe his father's idea to cast off Jin obsequians hadn't been so foolish after all. He therefore declared himself the Heavenly Prince of Qin in his own right in the spring of 351, though we'll typically be referring to the state from here on out as Former Qin. The following year, he took the next logical step and proclaimed himself the Emperor of Qin, and engaged the remnants of later Zhao, Ranwei, and former Yan, before settling into a more or less stable border agreement in 352. That agreement would last for little more than a year, before being shattered in early 354,

when the Jin Dynasty, in conjunction with its still-nominal vassal, former Liang, to the west, launched a two-front attack on Qin, headed by its brilliant general, Huan Wen. In spite of mobilizing their entire armed forces under the command of Qin's crowned prince, the Jin advance caught former Qin sufficiently flat-footed that the southern army was able to advance all the way to the gates of Chang'an itself without serious challenge in the spring of 354.

Here, however, the Jin assault faltered. Since the crop of wheat in the farms surrounding the capital had already been safely harvested and transported within the confines of the city itself, as summer descended on the Jin besiegers, General Huan found his force critically low on rations and with precious little in the way of forage. And when Huan, likely sensing that he stood no chance without adequate supply lines so deep in enemy territory, demurred from forcing the issue by launching a decisive assault on the understandably daunting defenses of Chang'an's outer walls, the siege petered out and was lifted

late that summer. But fear not, for Jin's general, Huanhuan, will ride again. In the meantime, however, though the war had been a success, it had certainly not been without its own terrible cost. Fujian's heir had taken an arrow, possibly to the knee, and languished throughout the summer and fall before finally succumbing in the winter of that year. This would lead to Fujian fatefully naming another of his sons, the violent and capricious 19-year-old Fu Sheng, as his heir apparent in early 355,

before taking ill and dying that summer, leaving absolute power once again in the hands of a temperamental psychotic, because we haven't had enough of those already. As emperor, Fu Sheng took a look at the fairly stable and placid state of internal affairs within the Qin court and thought, BORING! Thus, he rapidly went about making sure that any sense of stability, continuity, or general comprehensibility of policy was buried with his father. Officials who had been instated during Fujian's reign or as part

of his will quickly found themselves out of a job if they were lucky, and out of a head if they were less so. The reasons for these firings slash executions included such gems as the emperor having dreamt of a big fish, prophecies of a great funeral, astrological signs suggesting that the era name be changed at the wrong time, and my particular favorite, Fuxiang turning the master of ceremonies at a feast into an aero pincushion in the middle of the feast, mind you, for the high crime of not getting everyone drunk fast enough. But the fun didn't stop there. For Fuxiang, as it were, was blind in one eye, and had a rather sensitive disposition about being made fun of for it.

The sensible choice, then, was obviously to ban entirely words such as missing, lacking, slanted, less, and without. When confronted about his violence, excesses, and general messing up everything by his uncle, Fusheng responded predictably by cracking his uncle's head open with a hammer and then killing him, causing his grandmother to reportedly die in sorrow. In fact, it seems that just about the only good thing about Fusheng's reign was its relative brevity. Within two years of assuming the throne, his court officials had decided that this was just complete rubbish. In late 357, having been informed that the emperor was planning to order his death,

Fusheng's cousin, the prince of Donghai, who was also named Fujian but a different Jian than the previous emperor, just trust me on that, rose in rebellion. As Prince Fu Jian's private army surrounded the imperial palace, the royal guard, themselves also totally fed up with this serial killer-for-a-monarch nonsense, had the good sense to defect outright, leading to Fusheng's easy capture, demotion, and execution by being dragged to death behind a horse. Fu Jian then assumed the throne at 20 years old, and for the moment, just skirting the issue of imperial designs by only taking the title Heavenly Prince rather than Emperor, but at the same time posthumously honoring his father and mother as emperor and empress dowager,

so, you know, pretty much. And things went pretty darn good. Yeah, we could launch into the ins and outs of Fujian 2.0's not-quite-imperial-court-at-yea, the intrigue, the politics, the backstabbing, and you know me, I'm generally inclined to do just that. But there are things to do and states to destroy, so let's jump ahead about eight years or so of relatively uneventful rule to 365, when Murong Ke, the famed northern general who had in 360 become not only supreme commander of the Yan armies, but also the imperial regent to his nine-year-old nephew, Emperor Ye, had finally captured Luoyang, the ancient Jin capital, and one of the cities

that still had, against all odds, managed to retain a loyalist Jin government after all this time, Buda Thang. After nearly two years of siege, the forces of former Yan had finally brought the storied city to its knees and raised their own banner above its high outer walls. From there, Murong's Yan army seemed positioned to launch a strike against former Qin's territories directly. The heavenly prince Fu Jian personally led his armies to face what seemed to be a mortal threat to the survival of Qin. But, owing to both strategic considerations and his own gradually declining health, Murong Ke withdrew back to Ye City without attacking. There he would die two years later.

It was with the death of Yan's highly capable military leader, and moreover his replacement with a sub-optimal handsitter and distant cousin, that former Qin began looking to Yan as a northern fruit that was at last ready to be plucked. But that brief flirtation with a war of conquest against former Yan would swiftly have to be shelved when a frenzied war of survival turned up on Qin's own doorstep, after no fewer than four dukes of the Heavenly Prince's own imperial clan and their personal armies rose in rebellion against Fu Jian's rule, doing no less than offering the State of Qin up to the Murongs of Yan in the winter of that year. From Fort Sumter to the Battle of Gettysburg, from the Emancipation Proclamation to Appomattox Courthouse, from

the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Compromise of 1877, from Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, to Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, the Civil War and Reconstruction was a pivotal era in American history. I'm Rich. And I'm Tracy. And we're the hosts of a podcast that takes a deep dive into that era, 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. Look for The Civil War and Reconstruction wherever you find your podcasts. And did I mention that the new military commander of former Yen, one Murong Ping, was a complete

do-nothing? Because guess what he decided to do to aid these rebel commanders, basically offering up former Qin on a silver platter to him? That's right, absolutely nothing. He did not mobilize his armies. He did not send aid to the Qin dukes. As far as we know, he didn't even pen a harshly worded letter to the editor. He just sat there while Prince Fujian was able to mobilize his own army against each of the rebellious dukes in turn, crushing each one by one. And while the army of former Yan hadn't started the rebellions, nor aided them, nor endorsed them, nor seemed to have even taken notice of them,

it did provide an extremely convenient casus belli for Prince Fu Jian that Prince Fu Jian had been looking for against the northeastern state. So we're finally going to invade Yan, right? No, because before it could even mobilize, the whole strategy would be thrown into disarray by no less than General Huan Wan, the supreme commander of the Jian imperial army and widely considered the most gifted military commander since the fall of army and widely considered the most gifted military commander since the fall of Jin control in the north. See, I told you he'd be back. Even by this point, well past 50, General Huan had proved himself more than a match for the intricate and, frankly, onerous political lemarchand box that was the Jin imperial court.

But his name would truly be made by his two northward strikes against the barbarian kingdoms, a fact not in the least bit punished by the fact that they would ultimately founder and fail. By this I mean, it was only by his expertise and amazing military tactics that Jin was able to achieve even this modicum of success against the vastly numerically superior northern forces, a testament to his personal commandability. Thus it was in 369 that General Huan marched his forces north, intent on conquering former Yan in one fell swoop. And this was an outcome Fu Jian of former Qin was not prepared to take lying down. Understandably panicked from being invaded,

former Yan sought out Qin's assistance, promising to return the city of Luoyang and its surrounding regions to former Qin should it assist. Most former Qin's officials opposed, but Fujian was ultimately convinced by his inner circle that the Qin dynasty could by no means be allowed to occupy much less conquer, former Yan. After all, ceding such a tremendous northern foothold to Jin would virtually ensure its resurgence in the north, and a likely end to Qin altogether. Fujian thus dispatched his troops to reinforce the Yan positions, though it ought to be said

that said reinforcements would not arrive until Yan had managed to stabilize its own situation and deal with the major threat of the Jin invaders by itself. Nonetheless, the combined armed force would go on to deal yet another strategic blow to the southern army. However, following victory, former Yan would renege on its promise to cede Luoyang, turning the two brief allies into enemies once more. In spring of 370,

former Qin armies advanced on Luoyang and forced its surrender, and then advanced on Hupass, crushing all former Yan resistance on the way before laying waste to Jinyang City in Shanxi. The do-nothing Murong Ping finally got his hands out of his pockets and led a 300,000-strong force against Qin, but stopped short at the Lu River, apparently unsure of how best to proceed from there.

And as the former Yan forces milled about, apparently unsure of their next step, the former Qin armies were able to array themselves on the far banks of the water and fortify their position. Still, against such a massive force, even prepared positions might not have been effective enough. Until, that is, Murong Ping managed to make the frankly unbelievably stupid decision that now, with his army in the field and facing a fortified enemy army. Now was the perfect time to start fleecing the local populace for their loose change and lunch money. He ordered guards stationed at forest and stream crossings, disallowing commoners and even his own soldiers from cutting firewood or fishing

unless they paid a toll in either money or silk. To be sure, this extortion tax soon netted Murong a tidy stash of personal wealth, but at the cost of the morale of his soldiers. Even his monarch, the Emperor of Yan, sent messages rebuking such idiotic profiteering and ordering to distribute the pilfered wealth among his men. But it was too little, too late. The damage was done. In winter 370, the two enemies finally clashed, but despite the huge numerical advantage that Murong Ping had, former Qin's forces not only held their own, but outright crushed him, forcing Murong Ping to flee back to Ye City by himself. The emperor of former Yan, Murong Wei,

was forced to abandon Ye in the ensuing chaos and tried to flee to one of his old capitals, Heilong, in Liaoning. Nevertheless, he was captured en route. Though Fujian ultimately pardoned Murong Wei, he had him formally surrender with his officials, officially bringing former Yan to an end later that year and incorporated

into former Qin. Fu Jian continued to carry out campaigns that were intended to eventually unite all of China. In 373, he launched a campaign against Jian's western region, conquering much of modern Sichuan, Chongqing, and southern Shanxi. Meanwhile, many former Qin officials had become concerned about the large number of Xianbei people he had placed in the heart of the empire, and how many Xianbei officials, including those of former Yan's imperial Murong clan, he had put in charge of important posts. Fu Jian, however, flatly refused such criticisms, opting instead to continue his campaigns against the Qin dynasty and let the chips fall where they may in terms of internal governance.

A policy I'm sure we'll all agree could not possibly go wrong. Fu Jian's relentless campaigns, while militarily successful, were recorded as a vast drain on Qin's national resources and its people, and worse yet, for the exhausted troops shipped from one campaign to the next, to the next, to the next, with no rest or recuperation. Further, Fujian, who had been praised and renowned in his early reign for keeping a tight imperial purse, began to slip into the time-honored imperial quagmire of building palaces on the government dime, a sure sign of bad times to come. Further, a long-standing area of governmental focus and oversight, that of keeping government officials honest and competent, appeared to have begun to be ignored,

as false reports of historical records began to once again creep into official records. One notable example is from 382, when former Qin suffered a major plague of locusts that required a failed extermination effort throughout You, Qing, Ji, and Bing provinces, which is to say most of northern China at that time. And yet official records paradoxically record that these provinces, except for You province, harvested large yields on their crops, and that locusts did not infest the hemp and bean plants, which is a rather fantastical accounting of events. This suggests that government officials were no longer reporting statuses of their provinces with any degree of honesty, but simply making reports to please the emperor and the high-level officials. This may have been because, by slipping into personal indulgence and more and more surrounded by cronies and yes-men rather than actually trustworthy confidants, Fujian had come to feel that he had to personally oversee everything himself

and swiftly became overburdened by the sheer enormity of the task. This interpretation seems to be corroborated by a 376 imperial edict indicating that his workload was burdening him so much that half of his hair had turned white. In fall 376, Fujian launched a major campaign, this time to the west against former Liang. This had come about after its governor, Zhang Tianxi, refused to show submission by visiting the former Qin capital, Chang'an, and then pushed this insult way over the edge by killing the emissaries Fujian had dispatched. Zhang's generals, who were themselves displeased with this young monarch's blatant favoritism, either surrendered outright or allowed themselves to be easily defeated.

And in less than a month, Zhang was forced to surrender, and former Liang's territory was officially annexed into that of the Qin Empire. In 378, Fujian sent a strike force to attack the important Jin border city of Xiangyang. The Emperor's son, Prince Fu Pi, ordered that Xiangyang be surrounded to force it into submission at minimal losses. Your classic siege, if you will. But Fu Jian, unhappy at his son's slow pace in capturing the city, ordered Fu Pi to either capture the city by the spring of 379 or commit suicide. With no other option, Fu Pi launched a major assault on the city,

capturing it in the spring of 379 to the tune of incredible losses, along with the nearby city of Weixing. But such a resource commitment and expenditure had its own costs, and another army sent by Fujian was defeated by the Jin and forced to abandon Pang City. In 380, Fujian carried out a historically controversial decision to redistribute the Di people under his rule, which by this point constituted only a small minority in his empire. They were spread about the various regions of the empire under the commands of his sons and other generals. Now, he probably intended to have them serve as some kind of a stabilizing force throughout the empire, but in the short

term, the result was that the heart of the empire, Guanzhong, was left with very few Di and filled with Xianbei and Qiang, which would eventually result in a critical destabilizing effect, as we will later see. By late 382, Fujian had once again finalized plans to conquer Jin. Most of his important officials opposed such a course of action, including his prime minister, but Fujian would hear no such dissent. If his important officials opposed such a course of action, including his prime minister, but Fujian would hear no such dissent. And when an official raised the point that the Yangtze River was a very difficult crossing indeed, possibly remembering the last great general who had tried to force his way across

it at Red Cliffs, Fujian dismissively remarked, quote, "...we have so many soldiers that if they threw down their whips, it would be enough to stop the flow of the Yangtze altogether. End quote. In 383, Fujian sent a detachment on a campaign to Shiyu, which you'll recall

is the truly far western regions surrounding and beyond the Taklamakan Desert, today Xinjiang. Those peoples had once been conquered and vassalized by the Han dynasty in its prime, but had long since been abandoned and largely left to their own devices as the Han had pulled inward and then buckled in on itself during the 3rd century. There, some of the now de facto independent fiefdoms and kingdoms had submitted to former

Qin as vassals, but others had refused to recognize this new northern power's authority. The commander of the Shiyu campaign then, General Lu, would conduct a campaign that would last several years and be quite successful in its own right. However, by the time it was completed, his Emperor Fujian would be dead and former Qin near destruction. The North was, with the exception of a few tribes way out in the middle of the desert that were still mopping up, by now in pretty much total submission and reunified under the one banner of former Qin.

And not just the North, but also Sichuan and the city rightly called the key to the Middle Yangtze, Xiangyang. So now came the obvious next step, the south. In May 383, a Jin army of 100,000 had attempted to recover Xiangyang, but was driven off by a Qin relief column of 50,000 men. In response, Fujian had ordered a general mobilization against Jin. Six out of every ten able-bodied men were conscripted, and 30,000 elite guards were gathered. In August of 383, Fujian sent his brother, the Duke of Yongping, with an army of 300,000 as an advance force.

Later that month, Fujian himself marched with another army of 270,000 cavalry and 600,000 infantry from Chang'an. In September, Fujian reached Shang City. Initial contact with the Jin armies at Shuoyang resulted in victory, but from there, former Qin's momentum rapidly wore down. Tipped off by spies within the former Qin army to the fact that Fujian's full strength had not yet arrived, the Jin were able to use their superior knowledge of the land to mount a massively successful ambush against the arriving Qin column.

The strike force, though only 5,000 strong, managed to so completely take the former Qin forces by surprise that by the end of the battle more than 15,000 former Qin soldiers lay dead. Subsequent engagements resulted in little more than 15,000 former Qin soldiers lay dead. Subsequent engagements resulted in little more than costly stalemates, where the Qin emperor had been expecting easy victory, and settled into a deadlock along the now non-existent Fei River, with the former Qin forces to the west and the Jin forces along the eastern bank. That tense cross-river staring contest would be broken, however, in what is frequently considered one of the most politically and militarily significant battles in Chinese

history, the Battle of Fei River. The standoff rested on the fact that when two armies face each other on opposite sides of a river, neither wants to be the group crossing. Crossing a river is difficult, dangerous, and exhausting, even in the best of circumstances. But now, imagine trying to do the same thing weighed down by armor and weapons, with arrow fire pelting you the whole way. And should you be one of the lucky ones to make it across, congratulations, you now have to fight a pitched battle against a fortified enemy army, wet, cold, and exhausted. Thinking that this sounded not at all fun, the former Qin commanders opted to conduct a feigned withdrawal to lower the Jin army across the river.

A potentially risky plan, but one that, if properly executed, could end the standoff in Qin's favor. Though other of his advisors cautioned against such a maneuver, Emperor Fujian dismissed their concerns and gave the go-ahead, an order he would live to regret. You see, the thing about these kinds of false maneuvers is that they require discipline, unit and army cohesion, and a trust in command decisions. So unless the troops either know about the ruse or are at least disciplined enough to do exactly as they're told, things can get really ugly really, really quickly. And it's important to keep in mind that far from some unified force that had years of experience fighting together and under their commanders, Fujian's force was composed of many smaller armies

levied from the conquered northern territories, along with cavalry drawn from the nomadic peoples of Xianbei and Xiongnu. Most of the soldiers had little or no loyalty to former Qin itself, and had either joined voluntarily or had been forced to join simply because of rations or pay. Many battalions had problems following orders as instructed by their commanding officers, even on good days. As such, Emperor Fu was warned of the poor training of his patchwork quilt of an army, but had been counting on the sheer numbers of men to simply overwhelm any opposition. Yet now he was expecting them to execute an enormously complicated gambit, and no one bothered to inform the soldiers of former Qin that this withdrawal

was indeed a punt fake, you can probably guess where this is going. As the retreat started, the Jin's ongoing tactic of ambush and inserting double agents paid dividends once again. Already demoralized from the Jin's surprise attack, and now wondering why a sudden retreat order had been given, it didn't take much more than a spark to blow the whole operation into chaos. A Jinn spy raised the cry of, The Jinn army has been defeated! Which spread rapidly across the army and soon enough,

what was supposed to have been a false retreat turned into a very real, unforced rout. The Jinn commanders, waiting for just this moment, were now able to lead their troops across the river unmolested and lay waste to the panicked enemy army. In the chaos, the general commander of former Qin, while trying to calm his troops, had his horse tripped up and fall under him. The pursuing Jin troops were able to surround the commander and slay him, which of course only led to further panic and demoralization of the former Qin army. Troops dropped their weapons, supplies, and even armor as they fled for their lives. Then all told, between combat, starvation, and subsequent exposure, it is estimated that between

60 and 70 percent of the total former Qin army died in or around the Battle of Fei River. Even Fu Jian himself was nearly killed when hit by a stray arrow and was forced to flee to one of the few units that wasn't undergoing total collapse, and with it withdraw all the way back to Luoyang, legendarily decrying his fate with, Tianwang Woye, heaven has annihilated me. At this point, the patchwork quilt that made up former Qin began to unravel rather quickly. Now we could go into the specific devolutions of former Qin, how the Murong family kind of wanted to kill Fujian and reestablish the state of Yan, but then didn't, but bad blood was

cropping up between them anyway, or how the Dingling tribe, smelling blood in the water, started rising up in rebellion itself. It's all fascinating, but instead I'll cut to the chase and say that following the disastrous campaign and the slaughter at Fei River, former Qin's goose, was effectively cooked. In the spring of 384, Murong Cui would claim the title of Prince of Yan, establishing Later Yan. He soon captured many cities in the Eastern Empire,

although both Ye and Luoyang were beyond his power to take for the time being. Meanwhile, Murong Cui's nephew, upon hearing the news of his uncle's uprising, gathered some Xianbei soldiers of his uncle's uprising, gathered some Xianbei soldiers of his own and started his own rebellion within Guanzhong, claiming his old former Yan title of Prince of Jibei and starting Western Yan. Fu Jian sent his brother against this rebellion, intent on cutting off the Xianbei commander's escape route, despite his chief advisors urging to, you know, just let him leave

if he wants to leave. Like an animal backed into a corner, the Prince of Western Yan, exit blocked, was forced into combat and managed to absolutely crush the imperial army sent against him and kill its commander. When a messenger arrived at the Qin capital to report the defeat, Hu Jian lost his cool and became so angry that he, yep, killed the messenger, at which point the official to whom the messenger belonged went into a panic and fled with a contingent of his own Qiang tribesmen. He then declared himself the Prince of Qin for 10,000 years, establishing Later Qin. Meanwhile, the newly self-crowned Prince of Western Yan advanced on

Chang'an, and following an unsuccessful strike against the Later Qin rebels, and his son abandoning Luoyang to come to Chang'an's aid, pretty soon Fu Jian looked around and realized that he had just lost the entire eastern half of his empire, save for Ye City itself. This would have been bad enough, but the Jin Dynasty's armies weren't about to let up on the heels of their stunning victory at Fei River. And following up also launched campaigns to recapture Sichuan and southern Shanxi, both of which would prove successful by early 385,

as well as making major gains south of the Yellow River. Back in late 384 though, following an unsuccessful assassination attempt by a Xianbei member of the Yellow River. Back in late 384, though, following an unsuccessful assassination attempt by a Xianbei member of the Murong clan, Hu Jian ordered the execution of every last Xianbei within the walls of Chang'an. When news of this genocide reached Western Yan's ruler, he responded by declaring himself Emperor Wei in early 385.

Now another claimant to the imperial throne rather than just another rebel prince, the emperor of Western Yan would continue to deal the former Qin army, commanded by Fujian's son and heir, defeat after humiliating defeat. Ultimately, dishonored by his military failures and his father's repeated and angry rebukes for screwing this whole war up, this is all your fault, the crown prince of former Qin committed suicide. The Western Yan army was able to surround and lay siege to Chang'an, and the city rapidly descended into terrible famine. Desperate, Fujian decided that he would lead his army out of the city

to try to capture food supplies, leaving his new crown prince in charge of the city. This son, however, would prove even less competent than the last, and as soon as the emperor left, the city fell and the crown prince fled south to Jin. Without a capital to return to, Fu Jin decided to get on his horse, grab his concubine, hole up, batten down the hatches, and wait for this whole thing to blow over. Thus, he took his army to Wuzhang Mountain, but was surrounded and captured by later Qin forces and taken as a prisoner along with his consort and family.

The advisor-turned-rebel leader of later Qin, Yao Chang, tried to persuade Fu to ceremonially pass the throne to him, but when Fu refused, Yao sent his soldiers to strangle him to death. Former Qin had gone from unifying the entirety of northern and central China to hanging on the very precipice of oblivion in the span of less than two years. Though the state would not technically end with Fujian's death, it would only just survive, with the imperial title being inherited first by a surviving son for a year before he too was captured and killed. But even then, it still wasn't quite the end for former Qin, when a

distant relation, Fu Deng, managed to take up the imperial mantle and fight on beginning in 386. Notably, Fu Deng's armies clashed with those of later Qin during a time of severe drought and famine. His solution? Well, let's just say there was a reason he called his defeated foes shǒu shì, or prepared food. He told the soldiers under his command, quote, Fight in the morning, and you will have meat to eat in the evening.

Victory will save your hunger. End quote. And no, he was not being metaphorical. Enemy combatants were stripped of their flesh, cooked, and eaten en masse, prompting the Lederchin commander to fearfully write to his brother, begging for help and saying, If you don't arrive soon, Fudong will have devoured us all. In spite of his cannibalistic survival strategies, Fu Deng ultimately would prove unable to overcome the might of later Qin,

owing in no small part to his own inability to take decisive action or capitalize on battlefield advantages. At last, in 394, he finally slipped up when he mistook the new emperor of later Qin's youth for naivete, and committed himself to a foolhardy assault on the rival state. The new emperor of later Qin anticipated the attack, captured and then executed Fu Deng, whose son would survive a few months longer as the nominal head of former Qin, before he too was captured and put to death, thus ending the state of former Qin and its northern hegemony once and for all in the winter of 394. Northern China, which had ever so briefly experienced political reunification, was once

again plunged into factional division and infighting. But next time, even as former Qin lay dying, a new power is set to sweep in from the north to seize control for themselves, the Tuoba Xianbei, better known to the Chinese as the Northern Wei Dynasty. And south of the Huai River, the Jin Dynasty had managed to unite the Battle of Fei River to force back the barbarian hordes then and there. But in the absence of a clear and present danger, the lords, princes, and imperial wannabes will go right back to bickering among themselves, leading to a change in management

from the house of Sima to the house of Liu, and a change in dynastic name from Jin to Song. Thank you for listening. was basically an episode and a half, will hopefully explain why this one took longer than usual to arrive. I'll be doing my best from here on out, though, to live up to this show's goal of actually being weekly rather than what it's been for the last month or so of being once every two weeks. Fingers crossed. I'd love to hear from you on Twitter, Facebook, or our home at thehistoryofchina.wordpress.com. And if you like what you hear, please go to the iTunes store and give us

an awesome rating and review. Thanks a bunch, and see you next week. The French Revolution set Europe ablaze. It was an age of enlightenment and progress, but also of tyranny and oppression. It was an age of glory and an age of tragedy. One man stood above it all. This was the Age of Napoleon. I'm Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast. Join me as I examine the life and times of one of the most fascinating and enigmatic characters in modern history. Look for the Age of Napoleon wherever you find your podcasts.