The History of China - #66 - S&N 10: Cold Case File

Episode Date: June 3, 2015

We continue our look at Northern Wei at the dawn of the 6th century. The imperial bookends will be Xiaowen - the chief proponent of sinicization among the Tuoba Xianbei - and his son Xuanwu, a placeholder in just about every sense of the term. The real drama will unfold around two of Xuanwu's wives... and whether or not one killed the other in a murder mystery 1500 years old.Period Covered:499-515 CEMajor Figures:Yuan Hong [Emperor Xiaowen] (r. 467-499)Yuan Ke [Emperor Xuanwu] (r. 499-515)Empress Yu (~488-507)Prince Yuan Chang (506-506)Consort/Empress Gao (d. 518)Gao Zhong, Prime Minister (d. 515)Empress Dowager Hu (d. 528)Crowned Prince Yuan Xu [Emperor Xiaoming] (r. 515-528) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. 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. China is a land of superlatives, biggest, most, earliest, first, and more. For all the exciting events and people in Chinese history, the story of China isn't nearly as well known as it should be. Chris is making sure people in the English-speaking world understand the importance and really how awesome Chinese history is in world history. I host a podcast about the history of the popes of Rome and Christian church called A2Z History Presents the History of the Papacy. I can imagine you are wondering what the connection between Chinese history and Christian church history is. Not too much, huh? Well, think again. There is a ton of exciting connections. The Silk Road was the ancient

world's version of a superhighway that not only carried exotic goods back and forth across the Eurasian landmass, it also transported ideas from one end of the world to the other. One of those ideas was a form of Christianity that didn't quite gain much traction in the West, but spread from the Middle East to China. Nestorian Christianity would rapidly spread along the Silk Road, and in a fairly short time, there would be Nestorian Christian cathedrals in China itself. If you'd like to learn more about the history of the Popes of Rome and Christian Church, and how that connects to many interesting and unusual aspects of history, you can learn more by visiting the website a2zhistorypage.com. Thank you for your time and enjoy the history of China.

Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 66, Cold Case File Last time, we traced the Northern Wei Dynasty through the latter half of the 5th century, culminating in them changing their language, dress, capital city, and even surnames in an officially mandated effort to become the most Chinesest of them all. We concluded with the lead proponent of the Sinicization process, Wei's Emperor Xiaowen, dying from an illness in the year 499 at the age of 31 or 32.

This week we begin with a mystery, one involving the death of an empress and her infant son, a son who would have been the heir to the throne of Northern Wei. Late in the year 507, probably early winter, the Empress of Northern Wei, a girl whose given name is lost but was surnamed Yu, suddenly died at the Imperial Palace in Luoyang. I call her a girl, because that's exactly what she was. She was somewhere between 17 and 19 years old, and had recently given birth to her and her husband, the Emperor's, first son, several months prior. So this definitely was not a birthing bed death,

though those would have been extremely common at the time. There was no recorded period of illness either, nor of ill health prior to Empress Yu's death. Now this doesn't exactly rule out any of these potential outcomes, mind you. The sources that have survived, namely the history of the Northern and Southern Dynasties and the Book of Wei, were drawn up well after the fact, and are prone to giving only passing reference, if any, to women. They recount her as being a quiet girl who was tolerant of her husband, and not prone to jealousy. But, in keeping with the gender bias endemic to ancient historical

texts, she is otherwise little mentioned. Still, it's worth keeping in mind that usually, when someone died of an illness, the tomes say as much. Instead, Empress Yu, at 17-19 years old, what should have been the prime of her life, just seems to keel over stone dead. And that might have been attributable to a tragic accident. We know that such things can and do happen to people because of things like heart defects, aneurysms and the like. Otherwise fit young people can just drop dead with no warning.

But then her son, the prince, died too early the following year, and in a strangely similar fashion. Something seemed rotten in the state of Northern Wei. Now, it's very true that we are in the 6th century and that people die quite a lot, and babies do even more. And it was as true in China as it was anywhere else that the first five years of life were undoubtedly the most death-prone.

But the one-two punch of knocking out the empress and then the boy who undoubtedly would have become the crowned prince in rapid succession has made many of the historians of this period question whether the two might have been poisoned. But by whom? Or to borrow from Cicero, qui bono? Who might have benefited? Well, to answer that, we're going to have to jump back a few years and give some background. Okay, a lot of background. Specifically,

we're going to jump to the year that we left off last episode, 499, with the coronation of the man who would be Empress Yu's husband, the late Emperor Xiaowen's 16-year-old son, Crown Prince Yuan Ke. Prince Ke's coronation, curiously, didn't actually take place at Wei's capital city,

which was not coincidentally one of China's most ancient capitals, Luoyang. This was largely due to the fact that his father's death had occurred while the monarch had been on military campaign against his southern rival, then called Southern Qi. Xiaowen had been accompanied by his second youngest brother to the warfront, the prince of Pengcheng, Yuan Xie. When his brother died, Yuan Xie was left with a daunting task. He had to keep news of the imperial death under wraps long enough to get the body back to the capital. It would be very poor for troop morale, after all, should they learn that their liege lord had died

in their midst. As the grim procession made its way back towards the capital, Prince Tie summoned his nephew, the crown prince, to meet him at the city of Luyang, some distance southeast of the capital. Once the heir arrived, news of the emperor's death was at last made public, and Crown Prince Ke immediately took the throne as Xuanwu, the responsible and marshal. For his part in bringing the late emperor's body home and ensuring an uninterrupted transition of power, not to mention not declaring against him as several of Xuanwu's attendants feared he might, the new emperor offered the title of prime minister to his uncle, the prince of Pengcheng,

but he declined and was instead declared as the governor of Yang province. And I promise that this will all become relevant as we go through the story today. Once the procession had returned to Luoyang, now as emperor, Xuanmu posthumously declared his mother empress and then promoted three of her brothers, none of whom he'd ever met before, to dukes. This act, though not uncommon by itself, managed to rankle more than a few among the imperial court for two major reasons. First, these brothers, all surnamed Gao, had been commoners before this incredible promotion. But not only were they, in the eyes of the many long and storied

family lines at least, little more than upjumped peasants who received their status by virtue of their sisters' loins, but worse yet, there were rumors that the whole lot of them might be Korean. This was because their family had been forced to flee to the Gojoseon kingdom back during the War of the Eight Princes in the early 4th century, and who knew what kind of intermixing might have gone on during their stay there. The Gao family had of course adamantly denied such claims, stating flatly that they were and always had been proper Chinese from Bohai, end of story. Nevertheless, the question mark around their bloodline, however speculative, remained a sticking point.

Ethnically Korean dukes? What'll be next, handing out imperial thrones to the steppe barbarians? Oh, wait, hmm. Of the new freshly-minted dukes-gao, the one of most particular note, for our purposes, is Gao Zhao. As the duke of Pingyuan, he would swiftly overcome the adversity and sneers of his contemporaries, to prove himself diligent in his work, and as a result, highly effective. Through his track record of success, he would earn the respect and ultimately acceptance of his peers and swiftly rise to the ranks of the imperial governance. Duke Gao Zhao will feature prominently throughout this story.

But as the 6th century dawned and Emperor Xuanmu locked down his hold on Northern Wei's power structure, he couldn't help but notice the absolute chaos that had engulfed his southern neighbor state again. By 500, Southern Qi was at death's door after little more than two decades. And in the tumult, Northern Wei was able to annex the key city of Shuoyang in Anhui province when its governor defected. And what with the dynasty in the middle of its own civil war and dynastic overthrow, well, there was not really much that they could do about it. Though it continued to nibble around the edges of the unstable south,

things weren't exactly rock solid for northern Wei either. Certainly nothing approaching the chaos surrounding Nanjing, but still, in many respects the northern dynasty had at last begun planting the seeds of its own eventual demise. Shortly after taking the throne, Emperor Xuanmu had promoted several of his closest brothers to various high ministerial posts, and by this time Yuan Xie, who had initially refused the offer, had been brought back to Luoyang and begun his term as Xuanmu's prime minister after all. Several of the emperor's generals had begun privately warning him, though,

that Prime Minister Xie was becoming too popular for his own good, and that another of his high-ranking family members, another of his paternal uncles in fact, Yuan Shi, was becoming worryingly corrupt in his office. They therefore recommended that he relieve the pair of their posts, and the emperor did so, deciding that their jobs were too important to trust to anyone else, and he'd just have to do them himself. But as it was to turn out, there was actually a reason to have three people doing these three jobs,

and that was because it was far too much work for any one person to do it all well, or even passably. Especially when that single individual just so happened to be a rather sheltered 17 or 18 year old, with a full plate already. With far too many balls up in the air to juggle already, he had no time or energy to keep tabs on his officials' actions, and they quickly noticed. In short order, the majority of the imperial court was slipping deeper into indolence and corruption,

with officials flexing their de facto powers that they wielded against their populaces with the emperor's attention otherwise occupied. Now, Xuanwu might have been brash and young, but he wasn't a moron, and he did quickly realize that he'd bitten off significantly more than he could hope to chew, and that he needed to rely on somebody to help him with this enormous task of running state affairs. And who should step into his office just then but Duke Gao Zhao, the maybe Korean, definitely peasant stock, uncle. Duke Gao offered to assist the overwhelmed emperor in his responsibilities,

and, being his beloved mother's brother, who could possibly be more trustworthy? Xuanwu jumped at the chance and made Gao his right-hand man, along with a small council of other close associates. This trend toward greatly empowering Gao Zhao would be accelerated when Xuanwu's uncle, Yuan Xi, the uncle official he'd just stripped of his position, took offense at the action and began planning to defect to the south, and whichever claimant happened to win his ongoing civil war at that point.

With him he planned to bring all the provinces south of the Yellow River, but he was found out well before he was able to try it, and of course, executed. His lands and titles were given to Gao Zhao for his loyal services thus far, and from there on out, Emperor Xuanwu would harbor little trust for his own family members, or at least those on his dad's side of the family, and began alienating himself from them more and more, and therefore increasing his reliance on Gao Zhao. This dangerously close relationship between Xuanwu and Gao Zhao would be cemented further in 503, when the emperor took one of the duke's daughters as his consort,

who is known, appropriately enough, as Consort Gao. And yes, if you're keeping track, that does make her his first cousin. But since she was from his mother's family, it was not considered incestuous at the time, but still, yuck. Xuanwu and consort Gao turned out to be quite smitten with one another, and in short order, she became one of his favorite companions, above that of even the empress. The following year, Gao Zhao became aware that the current prime minister, another of Xuanwu's many, many uncles, was having a lurid affair with one of his cousins.

And then, twisting it into a logical pretzel that has left me completely befuddled, somehow managed to turn this affair into charges of treason against the throne. The accused was stripped of his titles and his underlings executed and he died shortly thereafter. And of course, Gao Zhao then successfully convinced the emperor, who had already been deeply into distrusting his imperial uncles after all, to put all of the imperial princes under heavy guard, if actually placing the whole lot of them

under house arrest. And now there was simply no one left to challenge Gao's authority. And he knew it. Through all this, Xuanwu's administration was doing its best to earn him the Wu in his name, which is again a designation of military prowess. They accepted southern defections

and stopped a potential mutiny of their own. But beginning in 502, the armies of Northern Wei launched what would be an almost unceasing flurry of attacks against the borderlands of the newly formed Liang dynasty. These attacks would last through 506 and result in modest territorial gains. The tide of the conflict would shift in the spring of 507 however, when the bulk of the Wei army committed to attacking the Liang fortress at Zhongli, but were utterly crushed by the opposing general, which pretty much marked the end of major combat operations

once and for all between the south and the north, at least for now. And this leads us back, at last, to the strange deaths, and possibly murder, of the Empress Yu and her son in late 507 and early 508. Who might have wanted them dead? Or more specifically, who would have gained? Qui Bonham.

Well, just prior to the birth of the young prince, Emperor Xuan Mu and Empress Yu had had something of a falling out. Nothing so terrible that he'd be a likely suspect, but enough so that she was definitely on the outs with the Emperor, and he was making no secret of his new favourite wife, Consort Gao. 400 years ago, a trio of tiny kingdoms were perched on some damp islands off the coast of Europe. Within three short centuries, these islands would become the centre of an empire which ruled a quarter of the globe and on which the sun never set. I'm Samuel Hume,

a historian of the British Empire, and my podcast Pax Britannica follows the people and events that built that empire into a global superpower. Listen to Season 1 to hear about England's first attempts at empire building, in Ireland, in North America and in the Caribbean, the first steps of the East India Company and the political battles between King and Parliament. Listen to Season 2 to hear about the chaotic years of civil war, revolution and regicide which rocked the Three Kingdoms and the fledgling Empire. In Season 3, we see how Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell ruled the powerful Commonwealth and challenged the Dutch and the Spanish for the wealth and power of the Americas and Asia.

Learn the history of the British Empire by listening to Pax Britannica everywhere you find your podcasts, or go to pod.link slash pax. Should, say, the Empress die suddenly, it would have seemed a shoo-in to replace you with Gao, and subsequently their children would be of course first in line for the throne, but only if the heir-to-be was out of the picture as well. This would have definitely been in line with the interests of consort Gao herself, but also, and maybe even more so, the interests of her and Xuanwu's uncle, Gao Zhao, who by now had a lock on governmental power, but no obvious way to secure

that in terms of a legacy. That inconvenience would be solved were his niece the empress, and the heir to the throne of his clan. So, between the two of them, they certainly had the means to poison whomsoever they might choose. After all, given Chinese Emperor's penchant for ordering subordinates to kill themselves with poison, the imperial palace was surely stocked with all manner of toxic substances. They also had a strong motive to get rid of the empress and her son, to supplant them with a Gao empress and a Gao heir, and thereby secure the throne. And with the free access they had to everywhere in the imperial palace and beyond,

there would surely have been no shortage of opportunities to slip a little poison into the Empress's bowl of congee. Seems like a slam-dunk case, right? Means? Motive? Opportunity? Well, maybe. But it's hard to be sure. Though historians have largely agreed that Gao Zhao and Consort Gao were very likely behind the sudden deaths of Empress Yu and her son,

even when the old histories were written, they were too far removed to feel sure enough to convict them beyond a doubt. And so, the case of the stone-dead Empress remains officially unsolved. But whether scheming murderers or simply historical patsies, Gao Zhao and consort Gao certainly did benefit greatly from the untimely deaths of Empress Yu. As was expected, Gao was declared Xuanwan's new empress later that year, and would remain so for the rest of his reign. As empress, Gao proved to be very much the opposite of her mild-mannered predecessor,

and is recorded as having been extremely jealous and possessive of Shanwu, to the point where she rarely allowed any of the other imperial consorts to have time with the emperor. She would bear him a son and then a daughter, but in a probably ironic twist of fate, the boy would die in infancy, and she'd never conceive another. Gao's promotion to empress came in spite of the strenuous objections of the emperor's paternal uncle, Prince Yuan Xie.

Yes, the same one who had carried Xuanwu's father back from the warfront almost a decade prior, and later had his position stripped from him by the emperor for being too good at his job, back from the war front almost a decade prior, and later had his position stripped from him by the emperor for being too good at his job, and who had since spent just about every waking moment trying to dissuade Xuanmu from making terrible decisions, often to little effect other than slowly but surely wearing out his welcome in the emperor's presence. And with this last effort to oppose consort Gao's promotion to empress, he would at last step over the line for Gao Zhao,

and was swiftly bumped up to the very top of his kill list. When opportunity arose in the fall of 508, in the form of a rebellion declared by one of the emperor's brothers, Gao Zhao was quick to fabricate evidence implicating Prince Xie in conspiring with the rebellious prince and the Liang dynasty. Moreover, Prince Xie's own attendants, apparently seeing which way the wind was blowing, agreed to testify against their lord. This was all done with Xie none the wiser, and with no immediate action taken against him. But later that year, Yuan Xie was summoned to

the palace to attend an imperial feast along with many of the other imperial clan members. Though his wife was due to give birth, and he was loath to leave her alone to attend a dinner party of all things, the invitation was such that he couldn't possibly turn it down. After the feast had concluded, the emperor directed his assembled family to spend the night in rooms that he had prepared for them especially. And again, this was not an optional part of the festivities.

One does not simply say no to an imperial slumber party. It is folly. But once Prince Xie had found his room and turned in for the night, no doubt to fret over his very pregnant wife, a commander of the imperial guard showed up at his room, and turned in for the night, no doubt to fret over his very pregnant wife, a commander of the imperial guard showed up at his door, bearing a gift from Emperor Xuanwu. It was a bottle of poison, and an order to drink it. At first, Prince Xie refused and started demanding to see the emperor and make some final appeal for his life. But the guard commander not only ignored his protests, but began beating

him until he at last complied. Not wanting his family to suffer on his behalf for an act of futile defiance, he finally did as ordered. At which point, the commander and his attendant guardsmen entered the prince's room and killed him before the poison even had the chance to take effect. You know, you could have just said that from the beginning, guys. After this, his lifeless body was wrapped in blankets and returned to his own house, with the excuse that he had accidentally died from alcohol poisoning, which might have actually worked as an alibi. If, you know, the guardsmen had simply let the poison do the dirty work for them. But it's kind of hard to attribute a death to a

drinking binge when the body is visibly beaten, bruised, and quite possibly stabbed. Needless to say, Prince Xie's family and the public at large considered how Xie had recently opposed the emperor proclaiming consort Gao his empress, took one look at his broken, lifeless form, and then took about five seconds to arrive at the conclusion that obviously Gao Zhao was behind this all. The immediate result was a serious blow to Gao Zhao's already rather abysmal public approval ratings. It was already widely understood that he, the peasant Korean masquerading as a proper Han Chinese duke, had amassed far too much power using methods that could only charitably

be called shady. And while the emperor remained apparently blind to the serpent whispering in his ear, the public at large, or at least that fraction that mattered, was having none of it. In this latest episode, him clearly, obviously engineering the murder of the prominent and wildly popular Prince Yuan Xie was just the icing on the cake. Both within and outside of the imperial court, Gao Zhao's name was effectively mud. It got so bad that later that year, when his son proved a key player in defeating a princely rebellion,

Gao was forced to instruct his son to refuse all the honors offered for appearance's sake. In 512, he finally was appointed by Xuanmu as the imperial prime minister. But even in what should have been his hour of triumph, the shadow of his ignominious reputation haunted Gao Zhao. Though he was to receive pretty much the top job, the emperor simultaneously relieved him of a lower post. Now this would have been inconsequential, save for one little detail. The lower post had required the emperor to meet with it every day, whereas the prime ministership did not. It was in terms of actual outcome, promoting Gao Zhao out

of his absolute grip on governmental power. And he was not amused. In fact, his very public rantings and ravings to that effect became so widely known that he became an object of ridicule within the imperial court for it. Oh, there goes Gao Zhao whining about being promoted to prime minister again. Boo-hoo, the poor guy. Shifting focus back to Emperor Shuangwu, however, it would be in 510 that would prove an especially auspicious year for him, because at long last another son was born to him named Prince Yuan Xu. Not from his empress, mind you, but one of his other wives, Consort Hu, who had somehow managed to sneak past the empress's jealous guard and find some alone time with the emperor.

Still there it was, and with his two previous sons having died early, and both of them having been in suspiciously close proximity to Empress Gao when they did, Xuanwu was not about to take any chances. He forbade both Empress Gao, as well as the child's own mother, Consort Hu, from being anywhere near the infant prince. In their stead, he hired an entire team of experienced mothers to serve as the infant staff of wet nurses. Under their care, young Prince Xu thrived and grew, and in the winter of 512,

he was declared the official crowned prince of Northern Wei. And I know what you're thinking. And now he's going to say, the poor consort Hu got the blade of an axe. And at any other time, you'd be right. But this time, in fact, no. For whatever reason, Zhuang Mu broke with the long, bloody Tuoba custom

of dispatching with the crown prince's mother. Maybe it had to do with the ever-ongoing sinicization of Wei, or maybe he just liked her. But whatever the reason, he broke with custom, and Consort Hu would be one of the only mothers of a Northern Wei emperor to live long enough to see him take the throne. And she wouldn't have to wait very long. In the winter of 514-515, Emperor Xuanmu ordered an invasion of Yi province,

one of the border territories of the Liang dynasty to the south Commanding this vast expedition would be the prime minister himself, Gao Zhao and the army set out from Luoyang to win glory and hopefully, yet more territory for Wei But shortly after the force departed, the unexpected occurred Back in the imperial palace, Emperor Xuanwu, at about 32 years old, notably the same age as his father before him, was stricken with a sudden illness, and before anyone even really had time to know what was going on, he was dead.

As a slight aside, Emperor Xuanwu's tomb is actually open to the public as part of a larger set of 25 reconstructed imperial tombs that have been uncovered in Henan province in and around Luoyang, at a place called the Ancient Tombs Museum. So if you're ever in Luoyang, go say hi to Xuanwu, and then check out the tomb architectural styles of everything from the Northern Wei to the Jin, both Hans, and even forward in time to the Tang and Song dynasties yet to come. But back to the narrative, the empire then fell into the lap of Crown Prince Yuan Shu, who was at this point all of five.

He became Emperor Xiaoming. This of course left the actual power of governance in the hands of the Empress Dowager, none other than Lady Gao, and her partner in crime, Gao Zhao, which was a situation more than a few of the imperial court were not about to let take root. While historians looking back on this time period, and consequentially this podcast as well, have refrained from pronouncing the Empress and the Prime Minister as having definitely murdered her predecessor and son? The majority of the Imperial Court of Northern Wei had no such scruples. They were more than certain that they were guilty of not only that murder,

but of the Prince of Pengcheng as well. And it would be Pengcheng's own two brothers, the princes of Rencheng and Gaoyang respectively, along with Duke Yuzhong of Lingxiu, who would lead the charge against the pair who had already been tried and convicted in the court of public opinion. The first step would be to secure and protect the life of Xiaoming's mother, Consort Hu, who had managed to avoid the chopping block in spite of Tuoba tradition, but now again faced a very real and very present danger,

the Empress Dowager's jealous wrath and unwillingness to brook any competitors. As the Empress made her plans to execute the consort, the anti-Gao Caval had to move swiftly and hid her away from the Empress's grasp. The group then seized the Empress directly and forced her away from the Empress's grasp. The group then seized the Empress directly and forced her to sign the Imperial Regency over to the dual care of Princes Ren Cheng and Gao Yang, rather than her obvious choice, Gao Zhao. With the Regency now firmly and legally in their grasp, the Princes turned to deal once and for all with the Prime Minister, Gao Zhao, who could yet unravel the whole ball of yarn. But as it so happened,

the timing of Xuanwu's death proved fortuitous, since Gao Zhao had just been dispatched to the warfront and was therefore unaware of the goings-on at the capital. He received a letter bearing the imperial seal of Emperor Xiaoming. This letter politely summoned him back to the capital. But from its tenor, he quickly realized that the late Xuanwu's uncles were now in power.

A very bad sign, indeed. He departed at once. But upon arriving, the trap the princes of Rencheng and Gaoyang had laid was sprung. When he entered the imperial palace to pay his respects to the deceased monarch, the prince's agents ambushed and strangled him.

And so it was adieu to Gao Zhao. Before his body even cooled, the two princes had drafted, and stamped with little Xiao Ming's imperial seal, an edict claiming that Gao had committed suicide. Yeah, yeah, that's it. He strangled himself to death. Yeah. The edict also went ahead and stripped him of his posts and honors, though he would at least be given the dignity of a burial with the honors due to a scholar, and not all the way down to

mere peasant. As for Empress Gao, she too was overthrown, though not quite as violently. The princely regents likewise stripped her of her position and power and forced her to live out the rest of her days as a Buddhist nun within the confines of Yaoguang Temple. In her stead, Consort Hu, the young emperor's mother, was declared the new Empress Dowager. The now nun, Gao, would live at Yaoguang until 518, when, having interpreted astrological signs and omens as foretelling ill fate for the Empress Dowager, Empress Hu sought to

deflect the onrushing bad luck onto the former Empress, and therefore ordered her killed, thereby bringing a final end to the Gao clan's designs on imperial power. We have also reached the end of the period of stability for the Northern Wei Dynasty, which had lasted for almost 130 years since its foundation back in 386 CE. From here on out, the wheels are going to start coming off this particular wagon. And so here's how I've decided to lay it out over the next few weeks. Next week we're going to follow Northern Way all the way down its death spiral through 535, and the eight emperors who will ever so briefly sit the throne,

one for as little as a single day, and was also an infant, and was also not even a boy. Then, once we've wrapped Northern Way in its death shroud and sealed it away in its tomb for good, we'll go back down south to chronicle the comparatively stable reign of the founding emperor of the Liang Dynasty, Wu. We're only about seven decades from the end of the Southern and Northern Period and the reunification of China, but I never said they'd make that reunification easy on us. Thank you for listening. The Civil War and Reconstruction was a pivotal era in American history.

When a war was fought to save the Union and to free the slaves. And when the work to rebuild the nation after that war was over turned into a struggle to guarantee liberty and justice for all Americans. I'm Tracy. And I'm Rich. And we want to invite you to join us as we take an in-depth look at this pivotal era in American history. Look for The Civil War and Reconstruction wherever you find your podcasts.