The History of China - #58 - S&N 2: Thirty-Six Stratagems

Episode Date: March 23, 2015

Northern Wei uses Liu Song's hesitation to move north of the Yellow River as an opportunity to reintegrate the last of the 16 Kingdoms into its hegemony. Koreans, Huns, and Mongols all get caught up in the fray. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 58. 36 Stratagems. Last time we took a look at the opening stages of the aptly named Southern and Northern Dynasties period and its two main players, Liaosong in the south, now controlled by its Emperor Wen, and Northern Wei in the… um, North, helmed by its emperor, Tai Wu. There are still a few other minor players in the game, namely Northern Yan, the rump state that used to be Xia, Western Qin, and Northern Liang, and so it might be argued that I was a little premature in declaring the end of the Sixteen Kingdoms last episode.

But Wei is by now the unquestioned master of the north and is already well on its way to liquidating the remainder of its neighbor states, a process the Osong will, as we'll see this episode, unwittingly aid. You'll surely remember from last time that Emperor Wen's predecessor and elder brother had, in his short, disastrous period on the throne,

overseen the loss of three important cities to weigh back in 422-423. Well, now as the year 430 approached, one was making his final preparations to getting back what his imbecile brother had lost. To that end, he had ordered to assemble a 50,000-man army to mobilize that spring, with the express intent of retaking his provinces south of the Yellow River, now illegally occupied by that barbarian pretender sitting on his false throne up in heaven-knows-where Mongolia. So being the of course more civilized and cultured of the two emperors, one sent a messenger to the Wei imperial palace in Shengle City, bearing the Liusong monarch's declaration of, and the limitations of his objectives,

the cities of Luoyang, Hulao, Huatai, and Chaoao. Emperor Taiwu was, as one might expect, rather miffed about all this, although he couldn't have been all that surprised. He didn't do anything so uncouth as kill the messenger or arrest him or anything like that. Instead, the way Emperor sent him back with a message of his own for his southern counterpart. Oh, you want those cities? Fine, we'll withdraw. Until winter. Once the Yellow River freezes and I can send my armies back unimpeded, we'll see what you southerners are made of then. And that's what he did. The armies of Northern Wei within the walled cities of the south packed

up their stuff and rode off north, leaving the provinces to be retaken by the Song forces without any significant fighting. Seeing what he interpreted as a significant northward push, the acting emperor of Xia, which you may recall was a territory controlled by the Xiongnu Helian family that had been all but gutted in 428 by Northern Wei, reached out to Emperor Wen, offering him an alliance with the objective of jointly defeating Northern Wei, and then splitting it amongst themselves. Wen had agreed to this proposition, and the two states each made noises about commencing their respective assaults on the Northern Dynasty presently. Just, you go first. We'll be right behind you, promise.

Neither Xia nor Song wanted to be the first to strike Wei, and what was supposed to be a military alliance quickly devolved into something more akin to two people holding the door open for the other and insisting that they go first. No, you go first. No, I insist. As this comedy of errors continued on and on over the course of spring and summer, 430. Up north, Emperor Taiwu took notice and quickly arrived at the conclusion that, funny as this all was, eventually someone was going to attack first. And so, he resolved that Liu Song super wasn't going to cross the Yellow River

and had by this point spread its troops out along the river's banks in a kind of static defensive line. While the Xia emperor He Lian Ding was off on campaign against the Western Qin, Tai Wu and his Northern Wei armies arrived outside the gates of Xia's new capital city, Pingliang, and set up camp. He had brought along with him Prince Hali'an Chang, who you might remember was the previous emperor of Xia that had been captured last episode when the old Xia capital had been seized by Northern Wei. The erstwhile emperor was dispatched to try to persuade the city's commander to surrender outright and make it easier on everyone. But that would end up going nowhere, and so let the siege commence.

When Ha Lian received word that his own capital was under attack, he wheeled his army around and made to relieve the city, but would quickly find himself bottled up by a detachment of the Wei army, and only able to escape through sheer force, getting himself badly injured in the process. He was in no position to help out Ping Liang, and was forced to simply hole up in Shanggui as winter approached. For several months the defenders within the Xia capital held fast, but as food and supplies dwindled and the dead of winter crept into their bones with no rescue in sight, hopes flagged. By the new year of 431, both

Pingliang and the nearby city Anding finally capitulated to Northern Wei and opened their gates before the conquerors. There's no mention of major damage or looting to the Xia cities once occupied, but the Xia Empress was taken captive and given to Taiwu's top general as a concubine. With her capital taken, again, it seems that the writing was on the wall for the rest of Xia. In short order, the garrisons of most other Xia cities had either surrendered or outright abandoned their posts and fled. Even Emperor He Lian wasn't immune to the creeping despair, and he made the determination that he wouldn't be able to defend Shanggui against Wei aggression

with the force he yet commanded, and that he and his men's only real hope would be to push even further west and displace Western Qin of their last remaining stronghold, Nan'an. He therefore sent his uncle to take the city, which after becoming so gripped by starvation that purportedly cannibalism took place, surrendered and turned over its own emperor, whose execution at Shangui would see the end of Western Qin. Victory over Western Qin would be short and hollow for the Xia emperor, however. As he marched further west to attempt to take northern Liang's territory, Lian Ding would be captured by the Khan of the Tu Yuheng Empire. Now since, like the Rouran Khanate to the north of China,

the Tu Yuheng had made no claims to Chinese sovereignty and existed as a distinct and separate political entity, we're only going to be touching on them briefly, or else risk getting ourselves lost forever in the western deserts and Tibetan plateau. But we can pretty much think of the Tuyuhun territory as what had once been, back in the Han dynasty, the western corridor out of China and along the Silk Road, what is today much of Gansu and Xinjiang, and extending at times as far away as Afghanistan and Kashmir and even northern Sichuan. They were the dominant force to the west of China up until their eventual destruction by the rising Tibetan Empire in the late 7th century. I'll be putting up a companion post on thehistoryofchina.wordpress.com for this

episode with some of the better maps I've come across, to help us all remain clear about who was what and where and when. After all, there has been a lot of changes in rapid succession from northern China especially, so much so that it's been difficult to keep track of where everything is. And now, since territorial exchange is at least slowing down a bit, now seems a good time to update our visuals. Back to the main story, though. Murong Mugui Khan captured and delivered the Emperor of Xia to Northern Wei in 332, and was amply rewarded for his loyal service to the dynasty. And it's worth pointing out that while the Khan of Tuyuhun wasn't exactly a vassal of Northern Wei, it also wasn't exactly not either. And in any case, Muguikan seemed to have decided that it was worthwhile to stay on the good side of the

Chinese dynasty that had between 70 and 90% of China's total population within it. As for He Lianding, he was executed, bringing about a final end to Xia. But what had been going on with Liu Song while Xia had been driven into the dirt? Surely it had taken some direct action against its northern foe, especially since Tai Wu had pretty much said, I'll be back, when pulling his troops out of the southern provinces, right? No. Emperor Wen had reached the banks of the Yellow River and promptly decided that that was as far north as he cared to go, thank you very much. Instead of pressing onward, he headed back to his capital in Nanjing, leaving the newly reacquired cities in the hands of three of his top generals,

and apparently forgetting all about that impending wintertime pushback, Tai Wu could not have been telegraphing any harder if he'd tried. And once the Yellow River froze over in the winter of 430, on cue, here came the barbarians. Luoyang was the first city to fall after its commander realized he couldn't possibly hold the place and abandoned it. This was soon followed by Hulao,

which left the garrison commanded by General Zhu Xiuzhi all alone in Huatai City to stave off the Wei armies that entire winter. The following spring would see Emperor Wen attempt to send a rescue column to Huatai, but it was cut off by the northern Wei forces, leaving the city to finally exhaust its resources and surrender. Interestingly, when General Zhu was brought before Emperor Taiwu as a POW, he was not punished, but instead rewarded for his bravery and faithfulness in defending Huatai against him.

To the defeated but eminent Liu Song commander, Tai Wu gave him the daughter of one of his imperial clansmen in marriage, a magnanimous gesture, if ever there was one. Of course, one can't afford to be magnanimous in victory, and the outcome of 431 certainly was that for Northern Wei. It had, as promised, retaken every last inch of territory it had abandoned the year prior

ahead of Liu Song's advance, which must have been a bitter pill indeed for Emperor Wu and his Yellow River Maginal Line strategy. Tai Wu followed up his victory by that summer sending a message to Emperor Wen, a message this time not of war, but of marriage, namely that of one of his sons to one of Wen's daughters, and likely intended to serve as an olive branch between the two nations. It's not exactly clear what Wen's response exactly was, only that it was something ambiguous but neutrally positive-ish enough that from this point on Emperor Tai Wu would re-raise the offer of his

interdynastic marriage just about every year thereafter, and always with one making vague noises and just sort of letting the question hang there unanswered. Should our kids get married? Ehh. Up in Shangla though, Taiwu wasn't about to get hung up on Liu Song's cold feet, because there were a lot of other things to do, places to conquer, and interesting new titles to invent. One such title would stem from that most curious and horrible of Tuoba Xianbei succession traditions, which you'll remember stipulated that a prince's mother must be put to death for him to be named the heir to the throne. In her stead, of course, another woman, a wet nurse if the child was that young, would raise and care for the heir. As such, in 432, Emperor Taiwu honored his own wet nurse with a new position,

Bao Taihou, or Nurse Empress Dowager, which would become a traditional honorific for the caretakers of all future Wei emperors. These Nurse Empress Dowagers were typically granted pretty much the same degree of power and authority as a full empress dowager had ever possessed, and so it should be noted that in so doing, the whole rationale of forcing the mother to commit suicide in the first place, which was to prevent her from dominating the political landscape, was rendered largely moot. Oh well, I guess it's the thought that counts. History isn't black and white, yet too often it's presented as such. Grey History, The French Revolution is a long-form history podcast dedicated to exploring the ambiguities and nuances of the past.

By contrasting both the experiences of contemporaries and the conclusions of historians, Grey History dives into the detail and unpacks one of the most important and disputed events in human history. From a revolution based on hope and liberty, to its descent into the infamous reign of terror, there's plenty to discuss and plenty of grey to explore. One can't understand the modern world without understanding the French Revolution. So if you're looking for your next long-form, binge-worthy history podcast, one recommended by universities and loved by enthusiasts, then check out Grey History – The French

Revolution today. Or simply search for the French Revolution. 432 also saw Tai Wu pivot toward the state northern Yan, surrounding Beijing and up into the Liaodong Peninsula, and he began to attack the state that summer. He put Yan's capital under siege, and forcibly relocated huge numbers of Yan's populace to deep within his own territory, and even convinced the governor of Liao Shi's city,

one of the Yan's imperial princes no less, to surrender the city to Wei before finally calling off his assault as winter approached. The Yan would be left greatly reduced, depopulated, and impoverished at the beginning of 433, but at least for the time being, still alive. Wei's attacks on northern Yan would continue periodically over the course of 433 and 434, but he would become bogged down in too many other things to ever quite finish the job. First, a rebellion under He Lian Chang, the former emperor of Xia, had to be crushed and the He Lian clan put down once and for all.

Then, cementing a lasting peace with the Rouran Kagane through a series of marriages. Then, Tai Wu had to deal with another rebel commander, this time a Xiongnu chieftain who went by the name Bai Long. After being ambushed and nearly captured by the Xiongnu commander, Taiwu made it his personal mission to exterminate the entire tribe. In fact, it took Taiwu so long to be able to make time to wipe Northern Yan off the map entirely, that they'd went ahead and made an alliance with their own neighbor to the southeast, Goguryeo, aka Korea. And I ought to point out that this was

not some natural alliance, but one bore out of sheer desperation by the northern Yan emperor, named Feng Hong, to stave off annihilation. In fact, prior to joining up with the Koreans, he'd unsuccessfully tried to pledge his state as a vassal to the Liu Song, only to be informed that while Emperor Wen welcomed him as a vassal, he wasn't about to lift a finger to stave off the inevitable Northern Wei offensive. So that was out. Then Emperor Feng tried the obvious thing, pledging himself as a vassal to Northern Wei itself. But that fell apart in a hurry when Wei accepted the tributes and bribes offered, but then just went ahead and continued demanding more and more. And so, it was to

Goguryeo's King Jangsu, a vassal of Northern Yan, that Fenghong had been forced to turn at last. King Jangsu agreed to help the Northern Yan population, and sent a contingent of his cavalry to oversee what seemed to be the only reasonable way to save the Yan people, total evacuation into Goguryeo itself, while giving the Korean troops wide leave to take anything of value in the capital city they could cart off. Northern Yan was effectually at an end, and Feng Hong himself gave it a final send-off, as well no doubt as one last screw you to Emperor Tai Wu, by setting fire to his own imperial palace before leaving Heilong City and China itself forever.

Tai Wu, of course, demanded that Zhang Su turn over Feng Hong at once, but the Korean king diplomatically refused. But here, now, with his state gone, and now totally reliant on the protection of his once-vassal King Zhang Su, Feng Hong made what would be his fatal misstep. He kept acting and insisting that he was still the overlord of the Korean monarch, rather than acknowledge that times had changed. Feng Hong still openly looked down on his benefactor, as well as the Korean people as a whole, and routinely flouted their laws and customs. And wouldn't you know it, he wore out his welcome

pretty darn quick. After less than two years in Goguryeo, Feng Hong had so antagonized King Jangsu that the Korean monarch had felt compelled to seize his so-called vassal lords, ladies-in-waiting, and son as insurance for Feng's good behavior. This was too much for the former emperor to bear, and sent word to Liu Song, requesting an escort at once to ferry him south to the Emperor Wen's court. But as far as Jiangsu was concerned, his thoroughly unwelcome guest wasn't about to just pick up and leave after all of these shenanigans.

No, it was time for this outspoken former landlord to learn his true place in the post-Yen world. Before the Liu Song escort could arrive, he sent his agents to assassinate Feng and his sons, extinguishing their dynasty in exile permanently. And that left one final piece of the puzzle that was northern China for Emperor Taiwu to fix into place before his hegemony was complete. Northern Liang to his far west. Again, I suggest you check the maps I'll be posting to get a better feel for its placement relative to northern Wei.

Liang was still, nominally, a vassal to Wei, but by this point it was obvious to all that such obsequience was in name only. Conquest was the obvious choice, of course, and one Tai Wu never took off the table. But time and again, his advisors had urged against committing the number of troops required to seize the territory to such a distant place, with their reasoning being pretty hard to argue with. The Roran Khaganate, which had in late 436 broken the tenuous peace brokered in 434, surprising precisely nobody. A lasting peace, indeed. And so, between 436 and 439, Tai Wu would try time and again to find a diplomatic solution to the question of Northern Liang, with his main weapon being a marriage alliance, using his own sister, Princess

Wu Wei, as the bride-to-be. The king or prince of Northern Liang, Zhu Chu Mu Jian, took Tai Wu up on the offer, but it would fall apart once it became obvious that Princess Wuwei's new sister-in-law, the Lady Li, as well as the king's sister, was trying to poison her. Why? Well, Lady Li was having an affair not only with King Mu Jian, but two of his brothers as well, all while being married to yet another of his brothers. I know, right? Ew. Apparently, she thought that while she should be allowed as many Jiuqu brothers as she desired, such an arrangement didn't work the other direction, and she would brook no competitors for any of their affections. Emperor Taiwu dispatched doctors at once to tend to the stricken princess, and were able

to save Wuwei's life. When it was clear that she was out of the woods, Taiwu demanded Jiuqu Mujian to turn over Lady Li for his judgment, to which King Mujian refused. And just to compound the situation, Northern Wei messengers to the semi- independent city-states in Shiyu were informing Tai Wu that King Mujian had been advising the Shiyu kingdoms to refuse to submit to Northern Wei at all, and should instead pledge themselves to the Rouran Khaganate. Enough was enough. Emperor Taiwu readied his armies and prepared to march on northern Liang

to end this farce he'd already spent far too much time playing into. The Wei army reached Liang's capital of Guizhong in the fall of 439, laying it to a two-month siege before taking it in spite of a diversionary attack staged by Liang's northern ally, the Khan of Rouran.

Mujian was taken prisoner, and northern Liang, like the rest of its contemporaries, was absorbed into the now unchallenged state of northern Hui, ruler of the once again united front of the combined tribes occupying northern China. Down south, of course, Liaosong hadn't just been lying around, even if that had seemed to be the emperor's de facto foreign policy. Though from the outside Song seemed languid, perhaps even paralyzed, internally, one had been busy enacting quite a few new social policies, as well as defending his own legacy against those who would seek to unmake the dynasty from within. He had certainly not been aided in either of these endeavors by his health. Between 436 and 437, Emperor Wen repeatedly and frequently became dangerously ill. The exact symptoms are not recorded, but his series of afflictions were serious enough

that he had been convinced to consolidate his dynasty's power in the event of his death. What do I mean by that? Well, Wen's informants had long been keeping their eyes on a certain governor of Jiang province, one Tan Daoji, and for good reason. General Tan had been the military hero of two separate dynasties and countless battles, having served alongside Liu Yu first to defend and restore the Jin dynasty and then to replace it entirely. From there, he'd gone on to serve not only Liu Song Emperor Wu, but also Xiao and Wen to boot. Tan had, in fact, been one of the two generals who had taken part in Emperor Xiao's overthrow, and it had been General Tan who had personally led the column in the attempt to relieve the defenders of Huatai City as it lay under siege back in 431.

His army had been making good time to relieve the city, until the northern Wei attackers had managed to cut him off from his own supply train, thus leaving the Liu Song commander in a historically famous bind. In this instance, in spite of his military genius, he made the decision to withdraw and spare his army while leaving Huatai to its fate. This decision would be immortalized with a threat issued from another rebellious general at the end of the 5th century, stating, quote, of Lord Tan's 36 stratagems, retreat is your best option. You should run, end quote. And it would be from that pithy comment that one of the more famous compilations of Chinese military stratagems would ultimately take its name,

the 36 stratagems. From his imperial name, the 36 Stratagems. From his imperial appointment as the governor of Jiang province, General Tan had spent the better part of the last decade surrounding himself with the best of the best military minds, as well as raising his own sons to emulate his prodigious tactical and logistical skills. He was a dangerous guy, and especially as the emperor's health declined, one began to fear more and more that General Tan might just decide to get rid of him the same way he had his elder brother, Shao. And the next time Tan overthrew a Liu Emperor, he might just decide to follow in the footsteps of dear old dad, Liu Yu,

and take the Empire for himself. Clearly, that couldn't be allowed. And so, one and his brother, the prime minister, headed off a potential betrayal with one of their own, summoning the great general to the capital, then ordering him arrested, convicted of treason,

and then executed. As Tan was taken into custody on the docks of Nanjing, the Book of Song states that he threw his hat to the ground and bitterly exclaimed, 乃父坏辱, 换林之长城, meaning,

with this act, thou art destroying ten thousand miles of your own great wall. And indeed, when officials within Northern Wei learned of the feared General Tan Daoji's execution, they celebrated as though a physical barrier to invasion had indeed crumbled. Emperor Wen, who had ordered Tan killed out of fear for his own impending death, They celebrated as though a physical barrier to invasion had indeed crumbled. Emperor Wen, who had ordered Tan killed out of fear for his own impending death, would in fact recover and live to regret his rash action while watching the majority of his kingdom burn in 450, and woefully lament that if General Tan had been around, he would have been able to prevent the incursion.

I'd like to leave off here with our main narrative today and take a little time to help set up next week's episode, which is going to center on what will become known as the first disaster of Wu. So what I'd like to do is hopefully flesh out our understanding of the state of religion in China during the 5th century. And it is, much like the political and ethnic landscape of the time, starkly divided. Now, of course, Buddhism had been percolating through the Han Chinese since the 2nd century, but had really only found its toehold in the latter stages of the 16 kingdoms era, with the arrival of the monk Kumara Jiva

from the Kucha kingdom of the far western region Shiyu, to the court of later Qin. Monk Kumara Jiva managed to do for the Chinese what previous monks had found so difficult as to be almost impossible. They effectively beautifully translate the Buddhist sutras into clear, deep works of Chinese literature, which had made the teachings far more accessible and comprehensible to large swaths of the populace. Over the course of the period of disunity, the philosophies that had previously acted as moral guideposts for Chinese civilization, largely the teachings of Confucius, had lost much of their luster, since Master Kong's pie-in-the-sky attitude of can't-we-all-just-get-along governance and Mencius' assertion that men were inherently good and kind didn't mesh too well with the horror and destruction that China had been facing for more than 200 non-stop years.

Buddhism's central tenets, on the other hand, that life was at its core a cycle of suffering, impermanence, and loss to be escaped, must have seemed a far more reasonable, realistic worldview to the culturally shell-shocked Chinese of the 4th and 5th centuries. So it doesn't seem surprising that especially now that they could read the sutras, it would have spread quickly. But of course, the budding Chinese Buddhism movement had its competitors, chiefly the Taoist schools of thought. Taoist philosophy must have also seemed a source of comfort and a way to understand a world thrown into chaos, as its central tenets revolve around the idea of an unknowable, incomprehensible force that drove

the events of the universe and could influence and be influenced by the state of balance between yin and yang energies within a person, place, or thing. A constant balance between the light side and the dark side of reality that eternally played against one another, yet fundamentally could not exist without each other. And yes, when a practitioner dies, they become one with the Tao and more powerful than you can possibly imagine. All that's really missing are lightsabers. In the South, Taoism had taken the form of so-called Neo-Taoism, or in Chinese, Xuan Shui, literally meaning arcane, mysterious, or profound studies, which pretty succinctly

sums up what they were doing with their time, meditating and contemplating the I Ching and the Tao Te Ching, all while receiving royal patronage from the Emperor of Liu Song. But in the north, Emperor Tai Wu was a devout Taoist, and had come under the influence of a sect called the Way of the Celestial Master, which had begun in Sichuan back in the early 2nd century, but had migrated north following the end of the Three Kingdoms. In spite of its competition with Buddhism, the northern way of the Celestial Masters had lifted several key elements more or less directly from the Western Transplant. These borrowings including monasticism,

dietary and lifestyle requirements very similar to Buddhist prohibitions, an almost verbatim karma cycle of death and rebirth. Styles of Taoist art that began to look suspiciously Buddhist. And even statements that Buddha himself was a student, yes, a student, of Lao Tzu. Who was touted as the human embodiment of the eternal Tao and creator of the universe. And who would occasionally pop in to bring updates and new scriptures to the masters of the Wei. The interplay between these two religions, aided in no small part by the fact that they had found themselves on opposite sides of an ongoing struggle for supremacy over China,

virtually guaranteed that there would be religious-based conflict in the years and decades to come. And once the shaky peace between Liu Song and Northern Wei breaks following the death of General Tan and his Great Wall defenses, the Southern and Northern Cold War will heat back up and spill over into the great religions of the region through violence and brutal purges in our next episode. Thank you for listening.