The History of China - #71 - S&N 15: The Crowded Hour

Episode Date: July 24, 2015

“There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades take place.”It’s an out and out brawl as everything comes to a head at once in the 550s, all across China. In the south, the Liang princes struggle against both the rebel general Hou Jing who holds the capital and the emperor, but also among themselves. In the north, Eastern and Western Wei similarly are undergoing their own internal struggles, which will see the overthrow of all the dynasties we’ve come to know with a whole new batch of contenders.Time Period Covered:549-557 CEMajor Figures:Liang/Han/ChenWarlord/Emperor Hou JingEmperor JianwenPrince Xiao Yi of Xiangdong (Emperor Yuan of Liang)Prince Xiao Ji of Wuling (Emperor of Western Liang) [posthumously renamed Taotie]Prince Xiao HuanPrince Xiao YuPrince Xiao Cha (Emperor Xuan of Western Liang)General Chen Baxian (Emperor Wu of Chen)Western Wei/Northern ZhouWarlord Yuwen TaiYuwen Jue (Emperor Xiaomin of Zhou)Eastern Wei/Northern QiWarlord Gao ChengEmperor Xiaojing of Eastern WeiGeneral Murong ShaozongGao Yang (Emperor Wenxuan of Northern Qi)Lan Qin Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. Four hundred years ago, a trio of tiny kingdoms were perched on some damp islands off the coast of Europe. Within three short centuries, these islands would become the centre of an empire which ruled a quarter of the globe and on which the sun never set. I'm Samuel Hume, a historian of the British Empire, and my podcast Pax Britannica follows the people and events that built that empire into a global superpower. Learn the history of the British Empire by listening to Pax Britannica everywhere you find your podcasts, or go to pod.link slash pax. This week's episode is brought to you by

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Episode 71, The Crowded Hour In 1917, Vladimir Lenin was famously quoted as having said on the eve of the Russian Revolution, there are decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades take place. He was speaking not just of his own time, but about the patterns present in history across time, locations, and cultures. Now up until this point in the Southern and Northern period of Chinese history, we've been able to pretty well parse the goings-on of Han Chinese hegemony in the southern and northern period of Chinese history, we've been able to pretty well parse the goings-on of Han-Chinese hegemony in the south and Tuoba Xianbei domination in the north into largely separate narrative tracks. But we have been steadily building towards a point of climax between the two, and then

three, competing dynasties, where now their respective fates have become so intertwined that it behooves us to fit those pieces back together to get a sense of the scope of changes rocking the entirety of China at the midpoint of the 6th century. As such, we're going to be looking at quite possibly the shortest span of time we've yet built an episode around, a period of only about seven years. And even this is just a broad overview that glosses over quite a few details. Hence the name of this episode, which stems from a saying coined by Theodore Roosevelt to describe his own experience at the Battle of San Juan Hill in 1898 during the Spanish-American War, describing it as one of the

busiest and most action-packed periods of his life compressed into a seemingly impossibly short span of time. It's not quite a perfect analogy for our tale today, but I like to think it illustrates the state of rapid and near simultaneous changes rippling across the entire divided Chinese empire. We ended last week with both our story and China itself in a state of flux as of the year 549. In northern China, of course, Wei had been split down the middle and remained locked in conflict between its eastern and western halves. That had bled south into the Liang Dynasty, with the defection and then subsequent rebellion of General Hou Jing, who wound up seizing the southern capital, Nanjing,

or as it was called then, Jiankang, locked away its 88-year-old patriarch, Emperor Wu, and then starved him to death. And it's there that we pick up again today. Hojing certainly seemed triumphant. He'd captured the capital in record time, held the emperor captive, and was issuing imperial missives to his Liang vassals, with the clear expectation of them being obeyed. Ni had allowed, well, rather forced, the crowned prince, Xiao Gang, to succeed his father to the throne as a powerless rubber stamp for Hou's directives.

And it was a ruse that fooled exactly no one. Virtually to a man, the other imperial lords and officials outside of Ho's direct control, although they did claim that they recognized the newly enthroned Emperor Jian Wen's legitimacy in theory, in practice they knew that he acted merely as a mouthpiece for the usurper Ho Jing. As such, they refused to obey the imperial missives, since they were clearly being issued under his coercion. All the while, Hou Jing seemed to be at pretty much a loss as to what exactly was going on. He'd captured the king piece, and it was time that the other pieces returned to their assigned spots on the board. Except, it seemed that the pawns and rooks hadn't received that memo this

time around. Victorious though he was at Nanjing, Hojing found himself in control of the capital city and the imperial palace but very little else and now surrounded by an entire empire up in arms against him the northern provinces of Liang which is to say those areas it still controlled north of the Yangtze River virtually all opted right out of this whole debacle, and defected to eastern Wei and its warlord Gao Cheng en masse. Meanwhile, Liang's eastern and southern provincial lords continued to ignore the imperial missives to stand down, driven on by reports leaking from the capital of the cruelty and hardships inflicted by the usurper's soldiers over the course of the siege and occupation. And I really should pause here to reiterate the relative position of the imperial court at Nanjing relative to its provincial vassals. Namely, that over the

course of the now late Wu's reign, his hands-off, overly lenient approach had resulted in the imperial governors and princes essentially becoming out-and-out dictators in their own right, and had paid little more than lip service to the imperial throne for some time now, so this was really nothing new for them. They wielded powerful armies loyal to no one but themselves, and they were in little mood to have some northern barbarian usurper come sweeping in and start barking orders at them. Hojing must have thought that by quickly taking the imperial capital, he would have cut off the Liang dynasty's head. But he was quickly finding out the hard way that the only head he'd cut off was that of a hydra, and Wu's would-be replacements were only too eager to strike back against the rogue general,

orders or not. Of the dozen or so more significant dukes, marquises, princes, and governors who now ostensibly rallied together to resist Hou Jing's rebellion, by far the two most powerful were two of Emperor Wu's own sons, the two youngest of his eight total in fact, respectively Prince Xiaoyi of Xiangdong and Prince Xiaoji of Wuling. Together, much less combined with the others who refused to submit to the Hou Jing usurpation, on paper they commanded a force which looked to be able to sweep the Pretender off the map entirely. You know, if they'd been able to work together. Or do much of anything at all, for that matter. The problem was, instead of banding together to fight off this invader,

they seemed to be far too concerned over which of them would be next in line to the throne whenever Ho-Jing managed to leave the scene to actually do anything about it. Instead, as they'd done for the entire Ho-Jing rebellion, they hesitated, hemmed, hawed, bickered, and then finally just withdrew back to their respective provinces to figure out what they should do next. Instead of linking up with his little brother Prince Ji's army, and then together counter-marching on the beleaguered capital, Prince Yi seems to have been so fearful of letting him anywhere near the throne that he encouraged him and his forces to stay right where they were, way, way out in the far western boonies of Sichuan and Chongqing. As for Prince Yi himself, without the help he was so unwilling to receive,

all he felt he could do was to return to his own capital, Jiangling City, which is today a part of modern Jingzhou in southern Hubei province, and bolster his defenses against further attacks by Hou Jing's armies. The strategy, at least for the time being, seemed to be just waited out. The imperial princes could at least agree on one thing, though, and that was Hou Jing's new puppet emperor Jianwen was only temporary, and soon enough he'd be dispatched once Hou Jing went through all the usual motions of total usurpation. In any case, they definitely couldn't recognize or obey him so long as the capital remained under occupation. But who should rule in his stead?

At this, just about all of Jianwan's brothers began jumping up and down and saying, oh, pick me, pick me. Naturally, as the eldest living and non-captive son of the late Great Emperor Wu, and also the single most powerful governor within Liang, the Prince of Jing province, Xiao Yi, naturally felt that he was a shoo-in for the job. This was reportedly confirmed in mid-549, when he received a refugee from Nanjing who had managed to escape Hou Jing's clutches in possession of a secret missive from his father, authorizing him and him alone to assume the mantle of power.

And so he did. Though as yet not formally enthroned, Xiaoyi began appointing governors and military commands, and creating titles for his supporters. And as acting Liang Emperor, he began handing out orders to his now-subordinates, including his brothers, with the natural expectation that they would be obeyed. Over in Sichuan, however, Prince Xiaoji was having none

of the supported secret order-from-dad business. Sure, he might be the youngest of Wu's sons, but he seems to have felt that it was his destiny and his right to rule Liang for himself, and as such, began garbing himself in imperial dress and acting the part as well. In 550, Xiaoyi wrote his brother, ordering him to stay put and not approach the capital. He wrote, quote, The people of Ba Xu, which was the ancient name for Sichuan, are brave, but ferocious, and they easily get emotional and difficult to control.

I need you, my brother, to watch over them so that I can destroy the bandit Hou Jing. End quote. He then made a historical simile between he and his brother. Quote, Based on geography, you and I are like Liu Bei and Sun Quan, and we should each be satisfied with our own territory. Based on our blood, we are like the states of Lu and Wei, and we can continually communicate.

End quote. Now this was an interesting and kind of ironic comparison to draw, since as we all know by now, Liu Bei and Sun Quan of the Three Kingdoms era were only forced to work together by the imminent threat of Northern invasion. Whenever they'd not been under immediate threat of conquest by Cao Cao and his descendants, well they'd basically been constantly at each other's throats. So yeah, not the world's best simile to draw there, shall we?

Still, for the time being, the uneasy alliance between the brothers Yi and Ji would remain intact. The same could not be said, though, for Emperor Wu's trio of disinherited grandsons, the princes Xiao Huan, Yu, and Cha, respectively. You might remember from our trio of episodes on Wu's reign that when crowned prince Tong had died back in 531, he'd still been in a state of disgrace with his father over the Taoist ritual he'd performed at his mother's tomb without the emperor's knowledge or permission. Given that Wu had been a fervent Buddhist, he considered it witchcraft, and the accusations drove a permanent wedge between the father and son. That grudge had carried through, as was unfortunately common in ancient Chinese customs,

to Tong's children as well. As such, once the crown prince had died, Emperor Wu had actually broken with long-standing Confucian succession tradition and passed the title of crown prince onto his own second son rather than Tong's children, as he should have. And now, posthumously, Wu's decision to disinherit his grandkids was coming home to roost. It's a whole rather convoluted series of alliances, calls for aid and power seizures, and false accusations that would lead them all to this

point. But quite frankly, it's not really worth halting the story entirely just to hash it all out. The simplified version is that the brothers initially paid a little bit of lip service to their uncle Xiaoyi's calls for aid against the rebel Hou Jing, but then very quickly dropped any pretense they'd ever held. In response, Xiaoyi turned the army he'd been keeping in wait at his stronghold, Jiangling City, and prepared to make war against his insolent nephews. Yeah, that's right. Xiaoyi essentially said, the capital city in Hojing can wait, first I need to go spank

my brother's kids. And his first target was Xiaoyu, to the far south in Xiang province, which is modern Henan. The summer of 549 would see the two princely armies clash near Yu's capital Changsha, before Yu's army was defeated and the city put under siege by Xiao Yi. Yu's younger brother, Prince Xiao Cha, seeking to relieve Changsha of the siege, led a contingent of his own troops south to battle off Xiao Yi's encamped army. But Prince Yi had anticipated such an action, and had dispatched one of his generals to counter-strike at Prince Cha's own headquarters, the walled city of Xiangyang,

along the northern banks of the Yangtze River, forcing Cha to withdraw and go on the defensive himself. Now cut off and facing the imminent prospect of his uncle turning his full might against him once he now almost inevitably took Changsha, Prince Cha realized that he had few options left that would save his skin, except for one, the nuclear option. And he pressed the button by submitting his province to Western Wei and its warlord Yuwen Tai, and cementing the deal by sending his wife and son to Chang'an to serve as hostages for his loyalty. In return, Warlord Yuan sent his armies into Cha's eastern Yang province, and with their assistance, Prince Cha was able to defeat and drive off his uncle's besieging army in the spring of

550. Unfortunately, his elder brother was not so lucky. Situated much further to the south in eastern Yang, Prince Xiaoyu had no such ability to defect. As such, Changsha City would fall in the late summer, and Prince Yu was executed by Xiaoyu's general. Back up in Xiangyang City, now safely under the protection of Western Wei, Xiaocha fielded an offer from his new liege lord, Yu Wuntai, an offer to name him the true heir of the Liang dynasty and proclaim him the successor to Emperor Wu. And there was

just one little catch. Accepting such an offer would, if successful, render the entirety of southern China a vassal state to Western Wei. Ultimately, Xiao Cha turned down the offer of enthronement, but did assent to a lesser title, the Prince of Liang. With such a title, he could simultaneously avoid accusations of overt usurpation, while still rendering himself legally able to act with nearly full imperial authority over his realm, small though it might be. From their secured base at Xiangyang, the Western Wei armies, under the local command of the new Prince of Liang were able to issue a series of crushing defeats to Xiao Yi's northward expedition and forced the imperial prince to the peace table in late 550. Xiao Yi was forced to acknowledge Wei domination over the hugely valuable Jing province and all

the lands north of the Han River. Through all this, Eastern Wei was undergoing its own cascade of internal strife. You'll recall from last episode that it had been Eastern Wei's first warlord, Gao Huan, dying and his son Gao Cheng taking over the state that had set off this whole ongoing chain of events in the south. Once it had become clear that Hou Jing was effectively beyond his grasp after he'd seized the Liang capital and taken its imperial court hostage, warlord Gao Cheng had turned his attention to the problems he could perhaps resolve to his satisfaction,

and first on that docket would be recovering the four border provinces Hou Jing had uselessly bartered away to Western Wei before his flight south. Thus, he dispatched his top general, Murong Shaozong, to oversee the reconquest, beginning with Changshe City. 548 would prove, however, that Changshe was no soft target, and over the course of the fighting, both General Murong and another of Gaocheng's top commanders would be killed, thus forcing the warlord of Eastern Wei to lead a relief column personally to take over the siege operations. Even with such reinforcements, though, Changshou would hold on through the summer of 549, finally falling before Gao Cheng's unrelenting siege. With their primary fortress city of the region now recaptured,

the armies of Western Wei realized that they had effectively lost city of the region now recaptured, the armies of Western Wei realized that they had effectively lost control of the region and withdrew from the remaining three southern provinces later that year. The autumn of 549 would see a remarkable, and one might call it random, change of events, however. Gao Cheng had entered into talks with several of his closest associates about how to best formally seize the imperial throne out from under his puppet, the emperor Xiao Jing. This seemed like it would be a simple enough task, since Gao had been married to the emperor's

sister about a decade prior. While they discussed their plot to usurp the throne, servants came and went, serving wine, food, and other such refreshments as the high lords planned and schemed. But as it so happened, one of those servants was actually the son of the high-ranking Liang army general, who had been captured and taken as a prisoner of war, and whose name was Lan Qin. In spite of repeated attempts by his father to ransom back his son, Gao Cheng had yet kept the youth as his personal servant, and it was he who delivered that evening's meal. When Lan Qin stepped out of the room,

Gao Cheng remarked, seemingly offhand, quote, I dreamt last night that that slave was beating me with a sword. I think I should have him killed. End quote. But Lan overheard this apparent death threat from the other side of the doorway and seemed to have decided that enough was enough.

He drew a knife, re-entered the meeting room, and before anyone could react, promptly stabbed the warlord to death. Though his murder was initially kept a tightly guarded secret, and officially it was proclaimed that the assassin had merely wounded Gao Cheng, rumors soon swirled throughout Ye City of the warlord's death, and made their way to the puppet emperor Xiao Jing. Perhaps, he thought, this could be the moment that he retook the imperial power that was his by right and ruled Yishun Wei in truth as well as title once again.

Privately, he was recorded as having stated, It is heaven's will that the Grand Marshal is dead. Power must return to the Imperial clan. But this was not to come to pass, because no sooner had such thoughts entered Xiao Jing's mind than Gao Cheng's little brother, Gao Yang, arrived at the capital. And he didn't come alone. Rather, he traveled with a personal guard corps numbering some 200, alongside some 8,000 loyal soldiers,

a display of force that immediately cowed any thoughts of independence the emperor might have held. The Gao clan would continue its stranglehold over eastern Wei, and indeed, Gaoyang picked up virtually exactly where his elder brother had been literally cut off from, plotting the overthrow of Xiaojing and the usurpation of the throne. Gaoyang did not linger in Ye, but left the emperor to play with his little toys while he made his way to the ancestral stronghold of his clan, the city of Jinyang to the north in modern central Shanxi. Once settled in in the spring of 550, Gaoyang sent word to the imperial puppet, instructing him that a new title was in order, the Prince of Qi.

Duly, he was granted the rank. That summer, after a brief flirtation with seizing outright power, he demurred for the time being, and instead demanded the nine bestowments should be granted to him. There was, after all, a proper order to these sorts of things. Again, Xiao Jing, who could do little else, met the demand. Now more properly positioned, the Prince of Qi once more made way to Ye City and formally requested that Xiao Jing give up the throne. Given no option, Emperor Xiao Jing did as asked, and Gao Cheng established a new dynasty to supplant the now defunct Wei, Northern Qi, with him as its founder emperor, Wen Xuan. And as for the now-former emperor Xiao Jing? Well, in the words of one of the commenters

on an earlier episode, he needed to make his bucket list real short. He was demoted, of course, and then put under house arrest, and ultimately poisoned along with three of his sons. Though he would initially be buried with full honors due to a monarch, sometime later, Emperor Wenxuan would, for reasons unknown, order the sarcophagus dug up and unceremoniously chucked into the Jiang River. And so ended Eastern Wei in 550. An especially ironic fate, since only a couple of years prior, anyone betting would have put good money on it triumphing

over the Western counterpart. But, them's the breaks. 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. Back in the South, the struggle between Houjing and the Liang provinces, and among the princes themselves, continued to rack the kingdom and its populace. From the imperial palace in Nanjing, the outlook had somewhat improved for Houjing's cause by the winter of 549, as the combination of military campaigns to the southeast and the region's

princes remaining unable to unite in any meaningful fashion, led to the downfall of several governors surrounding the capital, and allowing Hou to secure much of the region to its southeast, which is modern Zhejiang province. The following spring, he wed Emperor Jianwan's daughter, which clearly was designed to ankle him toward legitimacy, but the sources do also state that Ho felt deep affection for the girl, and as a result, the relationship between warlord and monarch did substantially improve from there on out. Nevertheless, the wars against the Liang princes had taken a heavy toll on the resources of Nanjing, which is to say they took a heavy toll on the populace.

High wartime taxes combined with harsh martial law, and then a famine spreading across the region led to large-scale dissatisfaction with the direction Hou Jing's rule was taking them all. But the opinions of the peasants was hardly important to Hou Jing. He had a kingdom to run, and a war to win, so let the farmers grumble. With the southeast now mostly pacified, Hou's imperial army turned its sights on the prime threat to his continued rule over Liang, Prince Xiaoyi, who was just finishing up his campaigns against his two brothers, which had forced one to defect to Western Wei and the other to the newly established Northern Qi. Under the command of General Renyue and Hou Jing himself, the imperial

army advanced westward against the forces of Xiaoyi, taking the city of Jiangsha in a surprise assault, capturing the Prince of Liang's heir apparent and subsequently putting him to death. Hou's army then laid siege to Baling city for months, before their supplies began to run dangerously low, and they were forced to abandon the plan and retreat eastward. In the ensuing pullback, at least three of his top generals were captured or killed, a major blow to imperial strength. In the late summer of 550, Ho joined the string of Chinese warlords having themselves proclaimed princes by ordering Emperor Jianwen to name him the Prince of Han, a move that, as we well know

by now, has only one ultimate outcome. The following year, to show off the absolute extent of his control over the imperial court, Po dismissed Emperor Jianwan entirely, placed him under house arrest, and ordered the execution of his sons, including the crowned prince. Jianwan, now confined to his quarters, would spend the next two months writing hundreds of mournful poems on the walls and floors of his home, since he was denied even paper on which to write. I've mentioned before, but I'll say it again. Incidentally, Jianwen, or as he was known in his life and writings, Xiao Gang, was actually one of the more prolific poets of his era, and was one of the pioneers of advancing the style of poetry known as Fu. One of his most

famous works, the Fu on Lotus Picking, I'm still trying to work out a suitable translation for, but I'd like to include it as a supplemental episode of sorts in the weeks to come once I get it all worked out. Regardless, after two months of waiting and writing and writing some more, Jianwan's doom was finally sealed. Convinced by his lieutenant that holding him was dangerous, Ho-Jing dispatched a trio of agents to meet with the former emperor. Jianwen was no idiot, and he quickly surmised the true purpose of their house call. Nevertheless, he was determined to go out in style, and blasted drunk. He feasted his assassins, toasting them all well into the night until he'd literally blacked out from liquor.

Once he'd been incapacitated, his also very drunk murderers suffocated him in his sleep, stashed his body in a box to serve as a makeshift coffin, and then hid the box deep in the bowels of a local brewery. It wouldn't be until the following year that his body would be found and given a proper burial with full imperial honors. Back at the imperial palace, Hojing had subsequently forced his new puppet emperor, a man quite frankly so unimportant I won't even bother you with his name because I'd say it once and then never again, to grant him the nine bestowments and then cede the throne to him altogether.

And then, of course, offed the emperor of less than a year by drowning him in the Yangtze River early the following year, though it would not be by the agents of Ho Jing, because the usurper's time had come. Ho Jing proclaimed himself the founding emperor of a revitalized Han dynasty in the autumn of 551. That winter, his armies lashed out to the east, seeking to cow the pockets of, in his mind anyway, rebellion that yet simmered against his rule. What he viewed as rebellion, however, the majority of Liang, pretty much everywhere except the capital itself,

viewed as valiant struggle against a foreign barbarian usurper. Indeed, though he was trying to put a brave face on it, the reality of the situation was that his armies were striking out eastward for little reason other than they'd been so thoroughly defeated in every major encounter to the west of the capital for some time now that they'd been forced onto their heels, and then their butts, time and time again. Chief among the resistance, of course, was Prince Xiaoyi, who had come quickly to be viewed as the de facto emperor of Liang,

though he had as yet refused all imperial title in spite of Emperor Jianwan's death. Xiaoyi's army was on the offensive, striking eastward towards Nanjing and making rapid headway against the retreating and shaken forces of the so-called New Han Dynasty. By the early spring of 552, Xiaoyi's generals Wang and Chen had made a virtual repeat of Hou Jing's own campaign, and arrived at the city gates of Nanjing. A counterattack was brushed off, and Hou Jing's troops crushed in a pitched battle. In the aftermath of what was to be the death knell of the nascent new Han dynasty, Ho-Jing made the rational choice and fled, which you may recall was a decision

none too alien to him. He made eastward, seeking refuge, any refuge at all. But his luck had run out, and he seemed to know it. He was recorded as musing, quote, It was by the will of heaven that I had defeated the peasant rebels who stood against Arjurong and become famous north of the Yellow River. Later, after I crossed the Yellow River, I easily captured the palace and forced General Liu Zhongli to surrender. My defeats today are also heaven's will. End quote. Hou intended to make from Mengshang Island, off the coast of Shandong Peninsula, in the East China Sea. But during the voyage, his crew mutinied while he slept, and turned the ship around to head back for the port of Jingkou, which was now back in the Liang dynastic control.

When he awoke and realized the treachery, Ho tried to get the ship turned back around, but was greeted with a spear through his belly in the attempt. His body was stuffed with salt and delivered to the imperial palace as proof that his illegal reign had been ended forever. His head was sent to Prince Xiao Yi, and his hands sent to Northern Qi, while the rest of his body was quartered and displayed in the capital, where, at least according to the traditional tellings, the gathering crowds rapidly cut it up and consumed it themselves. It's hard to tell exactly how true or apocryphal this portion of the tale might be, though it is certainly true that under Hou's reign, the citizenry of Nanjing had starved. As such, this act of cannibalistic payback might have seemed particularly poetic.

You stole our food and drove us to famine, so now we'll eat you instead. Regardless, Hou Jing and whatever legacy he'd hoped to build were now gone. Prince Xiao Yi now controlled both the capital and the hearts and minds of the majority of Liang. One of his first orders was to root out the pathetic wretch that had once been Hou Jing's puppet emperor. A short time later, the former emperor, Xiao Dong, was seized and thrown into the Yangtze to drown. As they'd done several times before, his lieutenants and advisors once again urged the prince to take up the imperial mantle for himself, but he once again declined. In the meantime, the provinces and territories north of the Yangtze River,

rather than submitting to the will of Nanjing, instead defected and pledged themselves to the rising power that was Northern Qi. Nevertheless, in spite of the absolute shambles the Liang Empire was in—Vietnam lost, the Northwest lost, the Northeast lost, internal famine and rebellion—Xiaoyi remained both hopeful and resolute. In the winter of 552, he finally assented to the continuing stream of his advisors, insisting that he take up the imperial throne. He was then enthroned as Emperor Yuan, with his capital at Jiangling, rather than Nanjing as was traditional. Now, with that little formality out of the way, Emperor Yuan turned to deal with his younger brother, Xiao Ji, who had been eyeing an imperial claim for himself now for some time.

He was, after all, quite far away in central Sichuan, and there wasn't exactly any new news coming from the war front far to the east. But since he didn't know that his brother had already won the war, he began to voice his growing doubts that Xiao Yi was even capable of doing so. Soon thereafter, interpreting flowers growing on his house as a sign of heaven's blessing, he declared himself the new emperor of Liang, and put to death any foolish enough to voice opposition to the decision. The execution of at least two of his top officials prompted his cousin, the prince of Qin prefecture, to make the dire prediction that a ruler killing his skillful men was a sure sign of impending disaster. Once word reached Jiangling of his brothers assuming the imperial mantle, Emperor Yuan

felt he had no choice but to cut him down to size. But between the general fatigue of fighting Hou Jing and a rebellion within his own ranks over the arrest of a popular general, Yuan realized that he'd need help if he were going to face down his little brother. He therefore called upon the warlord of Western Wei, Yuwen Tai, to use his armies as the second arm of what was to be a giant pincer maneuver around the whole breakaway state. Yuwen, for his part, saw this as a chance, nay, an outright invitation, to seize a large portion of the south for his own, and so readily agreed to this makeshift alliance. In the spring of 553 then, while Emperor Yuan and the Prince of Wuling approached one another to do battle, well, that was the reality of the situation, but in fact Xiaoji's own son and heir had actually been feeding his father false information, and had been convincing Xiaoji that Hou Jing

was not only still alive, but on the verge of victory over Xiao Yi. Thus the army from Sichuan was marching under the assumption that they were about to do battle with Hou Jing's forces, not the resurgent Emperor Yuan's. In the meantime, Yuan Tai's Wei army made a rear approach and began an assault of its own on Chengdu, which was western Liang's capital. Xiaoji did send a task force back to Sichuan to relieve the city of the siege, but resolved to press onward with the bulk of his army, in spite of their own protests that they really ought to head home and protect it from the northerners. Even once it became obvious that Hou Jing was in

fact dead and that his brother Yi had claimed the imperial throne for himself, Xiao Ji decided that this particular gambit was already in motion and there was no turning back. And if this were a certain other history show, this would be the very place I'd insert an infamous phrase about dice. Unlike the crossing of the Rubicon, however, luck would not be on Xiaoji's side. After an initial victory at the Three Gorges, Emperor Yuan offered to make peace with his brother and allow him to keep his domain, but Prince Qi refused. Shortly thereafter, however, he became aware of just how close Chengdu was to being captured by Western Wei, and then wrote back to his brother saying that, you know, on second thought, that peace offer looks pretty reasonable, so let's do that. But by that point, Yuan had been

informed of the rock-and-hard-place situation his younger brother was in, and reneged on his original offer. Prince Ji, refusing to part with his war chest or distribute his wealth among his troops, further compounded his already dire situation, and as a result their fighting spirit sank even further. By the summer of 553, Western Wei battalions had completely cut off Xiaoji's route back west, and the pincher began to close around him in earnest. With his armies either routed, destroyed, or just simply unwilling to carry on, Prince Ji boarded a ship and made ready to flee across the Yangtze River. But Emperor Yuan's General Fan Meng was able to surround the vessel and prevent it from escaping. When the Emperor learned of this turn of events, he sent a rider to General Fan with a secret order reading,

quote, as long as that person remains alive, there can be no victory, end quote. General Fan therefore boarded Prince Ji's ship personally and confronted the ruler of Western Liang. In a final desperate bid for life, Xiaoji threw a large sack of gold at the general's feet and begged him, quote, let this gold hire you from me. Please take me to see my brother, Xiao Yi, end quote. But General Fan coldly replied that orders were orders, and moreover, quote, I could not possibly take you before the emperor. Besides, once you're dead, this gold is mine for the taking regardless. It's not going anywhere, end quote. Xiaoji was then cut down where he stood, along with the son who rode with him.

Subsequently, his other sons were either executed or arrested and thrown into prison by the victorious Emperor Yuan, who in a particularly vindictive moment struck his brother's name from the clan records entirely and posthumously changed his name to Tao Tie, meaning the gluttonous one. Now the undisputed emperor of the Liang Empire, Yuan of Liang accepted a diplomatic envoy from his new best friend, Yuan Tai. Unfortunately for him, his haughty attitude in the afterglow of victory rubbed the diplomat entirely the wrong way, especially since he seemed to be treating the northern Qi representative much better. As a result, relations between Liang and Western Wei grew very frosty very quickly.

This was compounded by Emperor Yuan demanding that Warlord Yuan agree to redraw the map of their two states to be in accordance with the pre-war borders, which is to say, demanding that Yuan pretty much give up all of the new territory to the southwest he'd just gained through his involvement. And yeah, that wasn't going to happen. Upon reading this laundry list of demands, Yuan is written to have said, quote, Xiao Ji is that proverbial person who has been abandoned by heaven and cannot be revived by anyone else, end quote. He was calling the Emperor of Liang a lost cause, and began to format plans to get rid of this neighbor who was clearly beyond reason. The following winter of

554 marked the reopening of hostilities, but this time between Liang and Western Wei. Yuan Tai commanded his armies to begin a series of major strikes as the opening salvo of a move against the Liang capitals of Jiangling City directly. Even so, Emperor Yuan initially refused to take these reports seriously, and neither rallied his forces nor retreated to a slightly less extremely vulnerable stronghold. In short order then, the armies of Western Wei descended on the unprepared capital, laid it to a brief siege, and then took Emperor Yuan captive. He was thereafter given over to Xiao Cha. You remember him, right? The grandson of Emperor Wu and the defecting Prince of Liang that we discussed earlier in this episode,

who had defected to Western Wei to evade Xiaoyi's wrath? Well, now as a vassal of Yuan Tai, Prince Cha was only too happy to carry out the sentence on his hated uncle, and was subsequently declared the Emperor of Liang by Yuan Tai, using the regnal name Xuan. Although he would never be recognized as the true recipient of the Mandate of Heaven by the remaining lords of Liang, and his legitimacy has been debated by historians ever since, in any case, he's generally regarded and stated as being the emperor of western or later Liang, rather than of the main state, as he'd only ever hold de facto control over a small northwestern region

between the north and the south. The following year, 555, the remaining lords of Liang briefly declared Xiao Cha's cousin the true emperor of Liang. But that would last for less than a year, before yet more internal strife saw one of Xiao Yi's surviving sons proclaimed emperor. But it's all ultimately pretty pointless because even that situation would only last until 557, when the moribund Liang dynasty was at last put out of its misery and overthrown entirely, replaced by General Chen Ba Xian as Emperor Wu of his new Chen dynasty, the fourth and final southern dynasty, and interestingly, the only dynastic line in all of Chinese history to be named for its founding imperial clan,

but more on Chen another time. Up in Western Wei, changes were likewise on the wind. Yuan Tai had already taken drastic measures to remake Wei society as he saw fit, with one of the major events taking place in late 553, seeing the rollback of the Sinicization of Xianbei names that had taken place under the reign of Emperor Xiaowan of Northern Wei back in the 490s. The Yuan clan once again became the Tuoba clan, and this nominally reigning Emperor Fei placed under house arrest and executed after being implicated in a conspiracy against Warlord Yuan's life. Fei's successor, Gong, would fare little better.

He'd last another two years until 556, when Yuan Tai reorganized the imperial government to be more in line with traditional Xian-based social structures, and also formally declared his son, Yuan Jue, his heir. This proved to be just in time, as soon thereafter, while on tour, he took ill and died. Yuan Jue subsequently took power in Western Wei, deposed the current and final emperor of Wei, and assumed the throne as Emperor Xiaomin of Northern Zhou in the spring of 557. Though by that autumn, due to yet further internal power struggles,

Xiaomin was dead at two of his brother's hands, replaced by one of them, who became Emperor Ming. Phew! Well, that is where we are going to leave off the narrative for now, but I'd like to take a brief look back at what China's just gone through in this incredibly short but incredibly frenetic period of its history. If you're confused, don't worry, it's for a good reason. This period is terribly confusing, with multiple plots, wars, and kingdoms springing up all the time, all over the place, and inevitably knotting themselves all together into a web so tangled it's easy to get lost in it almost forever. There is a reason that many survey courses

on Chinese history avoid the period of disunity like a plague, because it's terribly complicated, and it can be easier simply to move on to sui and Tong, which are, in terms of narrative, just so much easier to follow. We're not nearly done with the Southern and Northern period, but we are entering its final phase. And once we are well and truly done, I am planning on putting together a kind of end-of-the-era look-back episode to really take stock of just what this period meant to the Chinese Empire as a whole. But for now, let's at

least get a sense of scale for this multi-front, multi-ethnic, running series of conflicts between and within the northern and southern dynasties. It was, to put it simply, massive. In fact, the only reason it's not included as one of the largest losses of life in human history is that it's not typically understood as a single event, and rightly so. Still, rough estimates of the population of China before, during, and after the period paint a stark portrait of the severity of the conflict. Now, the numbers are all very speculative, because there wasn't anyone going around performing censuses while four or five wars were going on at the same time. But since the Three Kingdoms Wars at the end of the Han Dynasty that had cut China's population in half from about 56 million to around 20 million,

the 16 kingdoms and subsequent early Northern and Southern period had allowed China's population, on the whole, to bounce back. It wasn't a fun life, for sure, but by the beginning of the 6th century, Chinese population was almost back to its Han dynasty highs, something approaching 50 million people. But by where we are now, the population had bottomed out once again on a scale not seen since the devastating end of Eastern Han back in the early 3rd century. Another halving of the population, down to the mid-20 millions. There is a poem by the Liang court official Shen Zhong on returning to Jiankang, or Nanjing, after a period of captivity over the course of the 550s that really captures his view of the Southlands upon his return and the shocking devastation he finds.

It is entitled The Fu of the Returnlands upon his return and the shocking devastation he finds. It is entitled The Foo of the Returned Soul, and reads, quote, Even now I fear hoofbeats of northern horses, barbarian lances, and their frightful armed forces. Where once lived proud villages, now only trees remain, deserted walls crumble, with none to maintain. Of old friends once living, now there are none. Those I meet bear different names, each and every one. Even a hundred years thence, thirty thousand days in all, this heart-wrenching sorrow shall still hold me in its thrall. End quote. The political landscape of China has likewise changed all at once. Where before we only had

to deal with two kingdoms, we've suddenly cycled through eight all at once, with the roulette wheel stopping, for the moment, on Northern Qi in the Northeast, Northern Zhou in the Northwest, Chen in the Southeast, and tiny Western Liang in the Southwest. And that's where we'll be picking up when we come back. Because the history of China is going to be taking a bit of a hiatus for the next month following this episode. I'm going on vacation! Woohoo! We're all headed back to visit my family in the US and get away from this daily grind. But never fear, because though I won't be recording or releasing full episodes like this monster until we get back in the end of August, my plan is to put out a few little mini-episodes to tide us all over,

covering some details that have definitely been lost in the fray as we've woven our way through the twisted tale of the late Southern and Northern Era. So stay tuned! We'll be back full bore at the end of August, but in the meantime, we'll be looking at some of the lesser-examined but no less significant contributions of the period of Dicenian, and with a significantly more positive bent than we've gone through today. As always, thank you for listening, and I'll see you in September. Have you ever gazed in wonder at the Great Pyramid? Have you marvelled at the golden face of Tutankhamun, or admired the delicate features of Queen Nefertiti? If you have, 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.