The History of China - #55 - 16K 8: No Country For Old Yan

Episode Date: February 19, 2015

The Xianbei Tuoba Clan from the northwest fills the power-vacuum left by the collapse of Former QIn, and will soon add much of Later Yan to its conquests. But its rulers will be sorely tempted by the trappings of power, and as we all know in this tumultuous period, indulgence is a swift path to downfall. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. Have you ever gazed in wonder at the Great Pyramid? Have you marveled at the golden face of Tutankhamun? Or admired the delicate features of Queen Nefertiti? If you have, you'll probably like the History of Egypt podcast. Every week, we explore tales of this ancient culture. The History of Egypt is available wherever you get your podcasting fix. Come, let me introduce you to the world of Ancient Egypt.

Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 53, No Country for Old Yan Last time, we saw the northern states of China momentarily unite under Fujian's later Qin state, before almost immediately succumbing once again to factionalization, civil wars, and ethnic cleansing. This week, another powerful faction will arise from the far reaches of the Gobi Desert in an attempt to stitch the barbarian states all back together again, and its emperor will plunge headlong into superstition, paranoia, a mad quest for immortality, and even hanging his son upside down in a well. We start off today with a look at a branch of the Xianbei tribe

known as the Tuoba clan. Now, like all of the steppe peoples of this era, the Xianbei possessed no written language of their own, and as such, all records that have come down to us about them were written in Chinese. So the name Tuoba is what the clan came to be called in Mandarin, but is in fact a sinicized phoneticization of the ethnically proto-Turkic people. We can perhaps get considerably closer to the true pronunciation of the group's demonym through the old Turkic language, in which the group was called the Tabgak or Tabgach. Nevertheless, in the interest of this remaining a Chinese history podcast, rather than transforming into some Proto-Mongolian one, I'll be going ahead and using the Mandarin pronunciation, Tuoba.

Of the myriad clans within the Xianbei, the Tuoba was one of the largest and most influential in the west of their controlled territory. As such, way back in the early 4th century, the Jin Dynasty, which had not at this point lost control of the north yet, had entered into an alliance with the powerful northern clan against their then-mutual enemy, the Xiongnu. In 315, the penultimate year of Jin control in the north, the emperor had promoted the chieftain of the Tuoba, one Tuoba Yilu,

from duke to the prince of the state called Dai. As Jin lost control of the north the following year, however, succession issues would claim the life of Prince Yilu when his eldest son assassinated him after being passed over as the heir of Dai in favor of another younger brother. This relative disharmony within the state resulted in Dai

principality languishing along the periphery of the 16 kingdoms period, politically fractured, economically stagnant, and militarily dependent on alliances and vassalization to whomever was the big kid on the block that year, first later Zhao, then later Yan, all before finally being subsumed and annexed completely by former Qin in 376, however brief that was. It would only be former Qin's breakup post-383 that would finally rouse the Tuoba clan from their six-decade stupor and herald the clan's rise to power. In 386, the grandson of the last prince of Dai, then 15-year-old Tuoba Gui, took the opportunity of the renewed chaos in the north to re-establish his principality and with him as its revitalized prince. I ought to pause

briefly here to note that in some other sources, specifically the Book of Jin and the Book of Song, they both give differing accounts of the early life of Tuoba Gui. They both assert that he was considerably older than 15, and in fact the former prince's son rather than grandson. Regardless whether teen grandson or significantly older son, it doesn't change the narrative too terribly much, other than some intrafamilial genealogical eddies that we just won't bother getting into. So anyway, soon after securing his whole-on power and the support of his tribal chieftains in 386, Tuoba Gui established his capital city at Shengle, which is today Hohat in Inner Mongolia. He then changed the name of his state from Dai to Wei that summer, and proclaimed himself

again its prince. There he tried introducing a new concept to his people that seemed to be working out well for the Chinese in the south. Agriculture. Remember that like most tribes of the Asian steppes, the Xianbei had traditionally been nomadic horsemen, consisting primarily on a diet of milk, herding animals, hunting game, and of course the spoils claimed through war and raiding. It would turn out, however, that his hold on power wasn't quite as steady as he'd thought,

or maybe his clansmen were just really that unimpressed with the whole idea of farming for a living. Because that autumn, his youngest uncle rallied a number of chieftains to his own banner and pressed his own claim for the throne of Wei. Taken by surprise at this uprising, the Prince of Wei was forced to flee from his seat to the protection of his mother's He Lan tribe. There, he sent messages to the emperor of later Yan, who was at this point Northern Wei's vassal lord, Murong Cui. The Yan emperor sent his crowned prince at the head of an army to assist the beleaguered prince of Wei, and together they were able to put down the rebellion and capture and kill Tuoba Gui's treacherous uncle. In return for imperial aid in defeating the rebellion, Prince Tuoba Gui began planning

how best to show his appreciation. And by that, I of course mean he almost immediately began plotting his vassal lord's ultimate overthrow. To that end, he sent his cousin, the Duke of Jiuyuan, to the Yan imperial capital in 388, ostensibly to offer Wei's tribute to the emperor, but in truth to spy on him and determine whether the Tuoba clan would have a shot at conquering later Yan. The duke reported back that the Yan emperor had grown old and more or less entered his dotage. As for later Yan's crown prince, Murong Bao, he was judged by the duke of Zheyan as a wishy-washy incompetent, unable to effectively make decisions, and tending to favor pandering and flattery over sound advice. The Duke predicted that with such a weak heir, other claimants to Yan's throne would almost

certainly spring up in rebellions and further weaken the state. In short, the perfect opportunity for the Prince of Wei to sweep in and take it all for himself. Of course, that would all have to wait until old man Murong Cui finally kicked the bucket. So, for now, all there was to do was wait. It wouldn't be until 391, some three years later, that the next major incident between Northern Wei and later Yan would take place. And it was definitely not a positive step in that relationship. The Imperial Murong clan had come to view the Tuoba clan, and especially the Prince of Wei, as a potential rival and threat to their stability. And so that fall, when Prince Tuoba Gui sent his younger brother to offer tribute once again to

the imperial throne, he was detained by the crown prince. Tuoba Gui then received what was effectively a ransom note, demanding that he offer a number of horses in exchange for his brother's freedom. And, displaying the true spirit of brotherly love, Tuoba Gui said, Yeah, I love you, bro, but I love horses more. No deal. And refused the ransom. He broke off relations with Later Yan entirely, and left his brother to rot in imperial custody. Nice.

Having left the political umbrage of Later Yan, the Prince of Wei entered into an alliance with Western Yan, also ruled by a different branch of the Murong family. That same year, Northern Wei would launch an attack on the Rouran Khaganate of Mongolia. As just a brief aside, the name Rouran is a Chinese transliteration of the tribe's own ethnonym, pronounced in modern Mongolian as Nirun. But they were also stuck with other, rather less flattering names. The two most common were, and still are, Rouran and Rourou, meaning wriggling insects and fodder, respectively. In spite of such name-calling, and the fact that they're really going to be playing a distant second fiddle

to our own main theater in terms of the scope of this series, it behooves me to point out that the Rouran Confederacy was one of those Pan-Asian empires, on par with the Xiongnu Empire during the Han Dynasty and even the Mongolian hordes of the 13th century. Like Northern Wei and later Yan, the Rouran was led by a core of Xianbei tribesmen, and it would politically control virtually all of the territory surrounding China to the north and west from this period at the end of the 4th

century all the way through the 6th century before finally being broken by a combination of the Gok Turks and the Northern Chinese dynasties in 552. Even the Hephthalite Empire began as a vassal state of the Roran, though they would eventually break off into their own entity in 408. And according to the Book of Song, yet another name given to the Roran Empire was in fact Tatar or Tartar. In fact, some historians have hypothesized that the Roran are in fact identical to the Avar horsemen that would so harry the Eastern Roman Empire beginning during the reign of Justinian I in the 6th century. It's also worth keeping in mind that we're as of now only about 40 years away from Attila's rise to power over the Huns and subsequent burning a path to the Roman Empire as the scourge

of God in the 440s. So that, more or less, is the people we're talking about when we reference the Rouran Khaganate, or even the Tuoba and Murong branches of the Xianbei that had now situated themselves within China's borders. Albeit, those last two were well on their way towards being sinicized enough to have lost many of the steppe qualities that made them so fearsome in the first place. So, anyways, back to China. Tuoba Gui's campaign to destroy the Rouran would, unsurprisingly, end in failure. The hostile feelings between the two states would remain, however, and for the remainder of Northern Wei's existence, the Rouran would remain its near-constant nemesis. In 394, the Emperor of later Yan began a campaign across northern China with the aim of reuniting its territories under his Yan government.

As northern Wei's overlord, western Yan came under assault. It called for aid from its vassal states, including Wei. But though Tuoba Gui ordered his army to mobilize to assist, it would never actually end up engaging any later Yan forces. And in the end, Yan was able to successfully conquer its western counterpart and annex the territory into itself. But even with the state it had supposed to have been protecting, now dead and buried, Northern Wei just couldn't help itself.

It had to just go and poke later Yan with a stick. And did so by raiding its western border territories. The response was swift and predictable. Emperor Murong Cui raised an army of 80,000 and commissioned his crowned prince, Murong Bao, to lead it against Wei, joined by another 18,000 under the joint command of Bao's brother and nephew. When the prince of Wei received news of this punitive expedition, he immediately left his capital to flee west across the Yellow River, though reportedly this was no panicked flight, but instead a deliberate ruse to draw the later Yan armies in. Come into

my parlor. Prince Bao's army took the bait, and swiftly reached the eastern banks of the river to make preparations to cross in pursuit of his quarry. But here's where things got a little wonky. Even though Northern Wei's monarch was in full flight, the state's field army was still carousing about the countryside unopposed, and had taken the opportunity presented by the Yan crown prince's single-mindedness to cut off communication lines between later Yan's capital, Zhongshan, and its army. They then captured Yan's messengers, and sent in their stead, and their clothing, messages proclaiming that the emperor had died suddenly. This, understandably, threw the Yan army into a state of, if not quite disarray, then certainly a deeply disturbed state.

If the emperor was dead, that sort of threw everything else into question. Should the crown prince return to the capital to ascend the throne at once, or should he finish the mission? After all, there sat Tuoba Gui, just right there, on the other side of the river. However, even Murong Bao's personal sorcerers foresaw a disaster and urged his lord to retreat immediately, a piece of mystical advice Murong Bao would dismiss at his own peril. For twenty days, the Liderian army sat on the banks, with commander, officer, and enlisted

alike, apparently all unsure of what exactly they ought to do next. That uncertainty would be broken, however, when, just as Tuoba Gui's spies predicted they would, supporters of another imperial contender within the Murong clan began to rise up in rebellion against the crown prince, intent on seeing his downfall and their own preferred candidate enthroned in his stead. The coup would ultimately result in failure, but not before utterly sapping the remaining morale of the Yan army. As autumn gave way to freezing winter, the punitive expedition was abandoned, and Prince Murong Bao abandoned his prepared positions to retreat back to the capital,

and, he thought, claim his deceased father's throne. What happened next is a bit of a head-scratcher, because the Murong clan had been living in the north of China for decades, centuries even, and surely the effects of a northern winter were nothing new for the crown prince. But then again, he is remembered in history for basically being an imbecile, so maybe that explains it. Regardless, he retreated from the banks of the Yellow River, apparently oblivious to the fact that water, you know, freezes. To be fair, though there were already chunks of ice forming within the water as he began his retreat, it wasn't completely stupid of him to assume that a huge river would take more than a single night to freeze over solid. By then, he'd be long gone. And so it was that on December 1st, as Murong Bao and his later Yan

army pulled back, the crown prince neglected to order any sort of a rearguard against the northern Wei coming after them because, hey, there was still a river in the way. But that night, a sudden storm hit, dramatically lowering the temperature and speeding the freeze of the river's water, turning the Yellow River from a formidable barrier to pursuit into a superhighway. Tuobaogui personally led a cavalry force across of 20,000 men in their charge against the later Yan army, and they swiftly caught up at Canhe slope. There, lost in the blinding winter storm, Murong Bao's armies were unable to see their doom

approaching, set up camp, and sent scouts to hunt for game and wait out the blizzard conditions. But on the hills above the Yan encampment, the Northern Wei army moved in total silence and set up their own positions in preparation to strike at first light. At dawn the next day, they charged down the hills and set themselves upon the completely surprised Litterian army, which quickly broke and fled in a panicked rout. Thousands reportedly died by being simply trampled to death by their own fleeing countrymen, and thousands more met their frigid end when they jumped into a nearby river to either drown or succumb swiftly to hypothermia.

The Northern Wei attackers were little more forgiving, and in the course of this single battle managed to kill or capture virtually the entire Imperial army of 98,000 in one fell swoop. Only a few thousand managed to stagger their way out of this devastating defeat, including the crown prince himself and a few lucky officers who had managed to escape the carnage. Other accounts, such as in the Zizhetongjian, do indicate that prior to the battle, Murong Bao had sent a force of about 30,000 away, meaning that they would not have been a part of the slaughter, and somewhat diminishing the total casualty toll. Even so, we can reasonably guess that somewhere north of 60,000 troops perished during or immediately after

the engagement. Following the battle, Murong Wei pondered what to do with the thousands of soldiers he had captured. And though initially of a mind to release them and gain the goodwill of the population of later Yen, he was ultimately convinced by his brother-in-law that they might pose a further danger should they be imprisoned, much less returned, and finally ordered the lot of them toysburg. 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. Once he'd arrived back in Zhongshan, later Yan's capital, you can imagine the crown prince's surprise when he learned that the news of his father's death

had been greatly exaggerated. And what was more, dad was none too happy with Murong Bao managing to lose an entire army over a stupid oversight. Emperor Murong Cui, understandably not okay with his heir or his state being viewed as a laughingstock after the massacre at San He slope, re-raised the Yan army and set out once again for Northern Wei in early 396. But this time, his idiot son wasn't going to screw it up, and the emperor himself led the expedition into combat. This all went well, and the later Yan army claimed several victories against the Tuoba's, until the aged emperor took ill at or around Tan He Slope, which apparently was just later Yan's Achilles' heel, and was forced to pull back to the capital, abandoning the campaign entirely.

There he would die soon after, this time for real. Murong Bao would then ascend to the throne of later Yan, which will, we'll shortly see, be just about the worst thing that could have happened for the state at that particular moment. In the fall of 396, Liu Bagui went on the warpath once again, this time launching a wildly successful surprise attack on later Yan's Bing province, quickly capturing it and using it as a springboard into the rest of Yan proper. The Northern Wei army advanced eastward

toward the capital Zhongshan, and the now emperor Murong Bao made the fateful decision to stay behind the city's walls and defend the capital itself, having been convinced that Tuoba Gui would retreat back to Wei once his men had worn themselves out pillaging and burning his countryside. This seems like a decent strategy perhaps on paper, and indeed the single assault Wei mounted on the capital city would result in failure and a change in his strategy. But in practice, the garrisons across Later Yan, now effectively left on their own and without support, were not so keen on being left to die

as the Northern Wei army burned its way across their kingdom. So they defected. Pretty much all of them, in fact, with the exception of Zhongshan itself and two other cities. Virtually the entire nation just flipped and was now pledging itself to Touba Gui. Meanwhile, Wurong Bao suddenly found himself less the emperor of Yan and more like the mayor of a couple cities. But the tide of northern Wei seemed poised to reverse itself suddenly in the spring of 397,

when a rebellion near Tobai's capital broke out, forcing him to pull back and offer peace to later Yan. But Emperor Murong Bao rejected the olive branch and, sensing weakness, rode out to attack the enemy army as it prepared to withdraw. This would prove to be yet another of his many military mishaps, when the Northern Wei army, even in retreat, managed to turn itself around and beat the snot out of the Yan imperial army yet again, sending Murong Bao in what amounted to exile as he abandoned Zhongshan entirely. His flight from the capital, it ought to be said, wasn't simply because of this defeat, although that was almost certainly a contributing factor. What actually forced him out were brooding rebellions of his own,

instigated by his cousins, nephews, and local lords. This would begin the death spiral of later Yan's imperial household as they began picking each other off and claiming the throne for themselves, apparently unaware that the throne was almost all there was left of the once-sprawling empire, because outside of Zhongshan and a few other isolated holdings, there was just about no yen left to rule. In the meantime, Tuoba Gui was undergoing a transformation in ruling style. At Canhe Slope, he had been pure Mongol when he'd slaughtered the soldiers who had surrendered to him. And he'd come to find out that, surprise surprise, the populace of later Yan's territories hadn't exactly forgotten that little incident. And what might have been the

first time, at least the first time I seem to have encountered, of a warlord of the north realizing that maybe it wasn't all about crushing your enemies seeing them driven before you and hearing the lamentations of their women tobaquay decided that maybe just maybe he should try treating his conquered subjects nicely crazy i know but even in the face of ongoing civil resistance toba put on his kid gloves and generally treated them, well, gently. After, of course, ordering the exterminations of the families who had advocated for the death of his imprisoned brother. I mean, just because he was going to

try out this humane rule idea didn't mean he'd gone completely soft. And it worked. Pretty well. Not all at once and not super quickly, but over time, the resistance ebbed, and eventually, the territories he had conquered began following his dictates willingly. Who'd have thunk? Now, I'm certainly not meaning to paint Tuoba Gui as some born-again hippy-dippy peacenik of the proto-Mongolian world.

Demonstratively, right around the time that he was experimenting with his maybe-don't-kill-em-all policy, a massive plague erupted in his army, sweeping through the ranks and killing as much as half of his standing forces and the livestock that marched with them. When his generals approached the Prince of Wei, begging him to suspend his campaign and let the disease peter out, before it caused even more mayhem within, again, his own army. Huoba's reply was chilling. Quote,

This is the will of heaven, and I can do nothing about it. A state can be established anywhere on earth where there are people left. It only depends on how I govern it, and I am not fearful if the soldiers should die. End quote. In other words, let the men die. They can be replaced easily enough. The campaign goes on, plague or no. And go on, it did. Even rippled through with disease as it was,

the Army of Wei was still able to prepare an assault on the city of Ye in early 398. Its meeker defenders abandoned their posts and fled south to the Yellow River, leading to an easy conquest. That summer, the conquest of Later Yan was all but finished, and Tuoba Gui moved his capital from Shengle south to Ping City, which was in a more central, commanding location to his newly won territories. He also implemented a statewide system of weights and measurements, as well as ceremonies that blended Xianbei and Han Chinese traditions.

Around the new year of 399, Tuoba Gui declared himself Emperor Daowu, and suddenly found out that he was descended from the ancient and mythical Yellow Emperor himself, thereby happening to legitimize his rule over the Han people. What luck! Seems legit, right? Totally. Now, formally, if questionably, enthroned, Daowu would reign over Northern Wei for a further decade. He'd reorganize the government into a more complex, bureaucratic system, and import as many books as he could find to Ping City in an effort to fill his new imperial library. But it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows for Northern Wei, and in fact this period would be marked by him basically doing a complete face-heel turn from his policies of live and let live-ish as the Prince of Wei,

and turning into basically a completely terrible person. So much so that we'll see his reign ended by his own 15-year-old son as he tries to save his mother from execution at his father's hands. But first things first, just how awful was Daowu? Well, the same year of his coronation, 399, Daowu launched a major attack on the Gaoche tribe of the Gobi Desert, in spite of the fact that he was still at war with the rump state that yet remained of later Yan, that yes, just continues to refuse to die. War against the Gaoche proved victorious, and the armies of Northern Wei were able to capture large numbers of prisoners as a result. This time, he didn't have the captives executed outright, so he'd at least

learned that particular lesson. Instead, though, he took them as slaves, ordered them to construct a deer farm for his hunting amusement, and reportedly even used the enslaved tribesmen as a kind of human wall to pen in animals when he went on hunting excursions. So, I mean, yeah, not the most horrible thing in the world. Certainly no human meatball scenario a la Dong Zhou at the end of the Han Dynasty. Check episode 36 for more details. But geez, you just better hope you're not in the section of the wall blocking the animal if he shoots and misses. His increasingly poor reputation was further marred by an incident where, when a subordinate had insufficiently criticized the

Jin emperor in a correspondence, he ordered the official to commit suicide. This would come back to haunt him over the next several years, as even important Jin officials fleeing their territories after losing civil wars would steer clear of Da Wu's northern way, leading to a kind of indirect brain drain. A similar situation would be repeated in 406, when he commissioned a city planner to devise a new layout for his capital city, only to order him to commit suicide when it was discovered that a minor error had been made. That was only compounded when Emperor Daowu then went ahead and used the

dead planner's layout anyway. As the first decade of the 5th century ground on, Daowu also became increasingly infatuated with the idea of immortality, and began hiring numerous alchemists, mystics, and sorcerers to concoct for him the secret of eternal life. Now, the ideas put forth by these ancient alchemists were the same sort of mysticism that had so ironically claimed the life of the first Qin emperor more than 600 years prior. You remember, right? Him drinking mercury? This time, it wasn't anything so straightforward,

and Chinese emperors won't be circling back around to drinking straight mercury until at least the 16th century, when the Jiajing Emperor of the Ming Dynasty convinces himself that this time it'll definitely work. But the concoctions they were brewing in the 5th century were still just about as ironically deadly as quicksilver. The 7th century publication, Danjing Yaoyue, or the classic of essential alchemical formulas, lists many recipes that were supposed to grant life everlasting. Some of the least dangerous ideas around was that somehow ingesting jade, hematite, or gold would grant immortality.

At which point, you've got rocks in your stomach, but you might be okay. Another popular choice was cinnabar, which is an ore of mercury, and again is rather toxic in its own right. But the most popular ingredients by far for an elixir of eternal life were compounds like sulfur, mercury salts, and, wait for it, arsenic. So suffice it to say that whatever Dao's alchemists were feeding him was probably not helping matters much. Then again, nor was his increasingly alarming habit of not eating or sleeping for days on end, and he began mumbling incessantly to himself about his past.

The first emperor of Northern Wei had become one of the most dangerous kinds, a poisoned, insane, paranoid absolute monarch, and as he descended into madness, so too did his kingdom descend into terror. Often lost in his own incoherent thoughts, he would at times snap back to attention when officials were making reports to him, and abruptly cut them off by furiously listing off all their past failures, faults, and perceived slights against him. He'd then order them punished, and often put to death. He developed a hair-triggered temper, and if even slightly perturbed by the conduct of someone in his presence, he would personally kill them and

display their body outside his palace. In fact, the only two within his administration who appeared immune from the insane purges were the minister Cui Hong and his son Cui Hao, who had somehow managed to intuit the Goldilocks zone when interfacing with the emperor, by neither offending nor flattering him, either of which could have tipped him into a homicidal rage. So we're coming up now on the end of Daowu's reign, but before we get there, we need to deal with succession. He had decided by 409 that it should be Tuoba Si, his eldest son, who was recorded as being wise and kind, who should be named the crowned prince.

This decision, however, had a bit of a hitch to it. It had long been the Tuoba tradition that when an heir was declared, his mother must be put to death. This tradition, brutal as it was, was not without reason. After all, how many times have we seen an Empress Dowager seize power for herself and drive a dynasty into the ground as a result? This was one of the chief fears of the Chinese monarchy. Still, it really tends to take the luster off of receiving the heirdom to learn that, oh yeah, by the way, your mom's gotta die. Daowu tried to explain this to his new heir.

It's not sure whether this conversation occurred before or after his mother had been forced to suicide, but the close relationship Prince Si had with his mother caused him to mourn greatly at her loss. When word reached Daowu that his son still hadn't just gotten over it already, he summoned his heir back to the palace. But since he was by this point infamous across Northern Wei for his insane and unpredictable mood swings, Prince Si's advisors cautioned him against once more putting himself into his father's hands, and instead convinced him to flee the capital city entirely for the relative safety of the south. With his heir, M.I.A., and apparently having fled

the capital, Daobu felt he had no choice but to name his second son, the 15-year-old Tuoba Xiao, heir in his stead. In accordance with that same tradition, and even more especially since he'd recently gotten into a marital spat with Prince Xiao's mother, he had her arrested and planned to execute her on the next morning. But that night, as she languished in prison, Consort He Lan, Prince Xiao's mother, sent a message to her son, begging him to help her escape. Prince Xiao, himself a reckless and impulsively violent youth, responded in form, sneaking into his father's chambers that night and assassinating the emperor in his sleep.

Prince Xiao then tried to take the throne as emperor in his own right, but his elder brother, Tuoba Si, was able to sneak back into the city, gather sufficient support, including a significant portion of the imperial guard itself, and shortly thereafter make his move by arresting his younger brother, consort He Lan and their associates. He charged them with regicide and ordered their execution before taking the throne of Northern Wei on November 10th, 409 as Emperor Mingyuan. Emperor Mingyuan will, for once, actually be a good and wise ruler who will stabilize his state's tenuous situation in the north. But that is for another episode.

Right now, I want to finish out by taking a moment to wish you all a very happy Chinese New Year and Spring Festival. It is now the beginning of Yangyan, which can alternately be thought of as the year of the sheep, ram, or goat, since all are pretty much interchangeable in Chinese. Within the Chinese zodiac, goats are thought of as highly auspicious, and indeed it is impossible to spell auspicious in Chinese without the character for goat. They are also peaceful, kind, and popular, but can be clingy and resistant to change. This particular year in the sexagenary cycle corresponds to the element of wood and the force of yin, which is strong, flexible, cooperative, and idealistic. The last year of the goat was 2003. The next will be 2027.

And the last year of the wood goat was 1955. So whether you'll be setting off fireworks, eating sticky rice cakes, or just going about life as usual and wondering when I'll quit with this ancient chronomantic astrology mumbo jumbo, have a very happy, auspicious, and prosperous year of the Yin Wood Goat. Gong qi fa cai, xin yin kuai le. Next week, we move south to Jin and see what's been going on as the barbarians have continually torn the north to shreds. We'll come to see that though they've been able to put forward a united front in the face of northern aggression, in fact there are numerous tensions within that continually

threaten to split the nominally unified state down the middle. And by episode's end, a whole new dynasty will supplant the Jin and claim sovereignty for itself, the Liu Song. Thank you for listening. trial.com slash T H O C. You can receive a free audio book 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 is the nation's leading seller and producer of spoken audio content. Again, sign up for your free 30 day trial with free audio book of your choice at audibletrial.com slash THOC. follow the story of Mark Antony and Cleopatra's descendants over ten generations,

or take a deep dive into the Iron Age or the Hellenistic era, then check out the Ancient World Podcast. Available on all podcasting platforms or go to ancientworldpodcast.com. That's the Ancient World Podcast.