The History of China - #73 - S&N 17: The Only Tear Shed For Wenxuan

Episode Date: September 7, 2015

Today’s episode takes us through the turmoil within northern China and beyond over the 550s. We begin looking outside of China proper as the rulers of the Rouran Steppe Confederacy are overthrown and replaced by the vassal-turned-enemy the Göktürks, and briefly touch on the Khitan Tribe of Manchuria. We then go through the reign of Emperor Wenxuan of Northern Qi, who will initially lead his newfound dynasty to power and prominence before his mounting madness will plunge it into chaos and terror.Time Period Covered550-561 CENotable FiguresAshina Bumin/Tumen (Illig Khagan of Göktürk) [r. 550]Issik Khagan of East GokturkIstemi Khagan of West GokturkGeneral Gao Huan (Warlord of Eastern Wei) (d. 550)Gao Yang (Emperor Wenxuan of Northern Qi) [r. 551-560]Crowned Prince Gao Yin (Emperor Fei of Northern Qi) [r. 560]Gao Yan, Prince of Chanshan (Emperor Xiaozhao of Northern Qi) [r. 560-561]Prime Minister Yang Yin [d. 560]Works CitedThe History of the Northern Dynasties (Bei Shi) – Li Dashi and Li YanshouThe Zizhi Tongjian – Sima GuangEarly Chinese Religion: The Period of Division (220-589 AD) Pt. 1 & 2 – John Lagerway and Lü Pengzhi 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. Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 73, The Only Tear Shed for Wen Xuan Our focus last episode centered on the goings-on in the south of China in the late 550s and early 560s. Primarily, though not exclusively, between the competing dynastic states of Chen in the southeast, centered again around the modern Nanjing and Shanghai areas, and Northern Zhou, who in spite of its name occupied virtually the entire western reaches of what we would reasonably think of as

China at that time, from the northern border with the inter-Asian steppe tribal confederations all the way south into Sichuan and abutting the Thai and Viet kingdoms. Today, then, we're going to focus primarily on the third of the competing powers, called Northern Qi, and which occupy China's northeast, including modern Beijing and Tianjin. Before we launch into the main narrative of Qi, though, I'd like to correct a mistake that I made at the end of last episode during the teaser for this one. I'd referenced Northern Qi's ongoing problems with the Rouran Kaghanid, but that was actually an oversight on my part.

This is because, critically, at the time of our narrative today, the Rouran had actually been replaced as the dominant power controlling the Central Asian Steppe Confederation. The ruling Yujiolu clan's power base had been broken around the year 552, when both Northern Zhou and Northern Qi had given aid to another clan within the Rouran Confederacy, called the Ashina clan, or alternately the Ashinas or Asena. This clan name has been tentatively identified as stemming from the Skittian groups of Central Asia, in what is modern Iran, and translates to the meaning blue. The clan name would be translated into Old Turkic as Gok, again meaning both blue, but also associated with the cardinal direction east. Thus, when the Ashinas took power in the Asian steppes, their new confederation would come to be known as the Gokturk Empire, meaning either the Blue Turks or the Turks of the East. As a part of the Roran, the Ashina had distinguished themselves as skilled metalworkers who had plied their skills from their home base somewhere north of the Altai Mountains for several generations.

Nevertheless, in spite of my use of the word clan to describe the Ashina, that is perhaps a bit too strong of a word. Like most of the rest of the Roran, and Asian steppe culture in general, the Ashina ties of kinship and clanship were far looser and less based on blood ties than what we'd tend to associate with the idea of a true clan today. Indeed, while the Han Chinese eternally hemmed and hawed over who was or who was not sufficiently Chinese and who was a barbarian, the Ashina were a widely heterogeneous group, apparently with certain ethno-linguistic links as far away as the Finns, Hungarians, and even Estonians. In fact, historian Peter Goldman has asserted that the ruling class of the Ashina might have actually been Indo-European in origin, possibly from Iran,

though they had by this point fully adopted the language, dress, and customs of the Turkic society that they found themselves effectually governing. The Ashina were first documented in the Book of Sui, and were traced back to the year 439, which was during the 16 Kingdoms era, when some 500 Ashina families fled their area of forced resettlement within what had been northern Liang, and reintegrated with their Rouran brethren to the north. There are some indications as well that the Ashina may have been linked to the ancient Xiongnu tribes, though many contemporary historians dismiss such claims as being little more than laziness or ignorance on the part of ancient Chinese writers,

very much in the same vein of the ancient Greeks and Romans calling every wandering tribe from the East Scythians, regardless of whether they were actually Avars, Huns, or Hungarians for that matter. But anyway, back to the Ashina, the clan's leader in the 540s was named something pretty close to Ashina Bumin, though there are several different recorded iterations of his name, including its recorded Chinese phoneticization, Tumen.. Chief tūmen, or būmīn, had recently assisted his rōran kagān in fending off a rebellion by yet another of his vassal tribes,

called the tiele. But when tūmen sought to secure a marriage with one of the rōran princesses, the kagān sent back a harshly worded rebuff, stating, quote, you are my blacksmith slave. How dare you utter these words? End quote.

It was an insult that would not be forgotten, and would indeed end up unraveling the relationship between the Roran and the Ashina. Tumun angrily killed the messenger, delivering his liege's rejection, and began a rebellion of his own against Roran control. Given the overall discontent with the Roran's current leadership, Tumun's ranks swelled quickly, with other tribes likewise ready for a change at the top. By 551, the Ashina leader's regional power was such that when Tumen requested a marriage to the Princess of Western Wei, later Northern Zhou, its paramount leader, General Yuan Tai, was open to that arrangement, and instructed his puppet, Emperor Wen, to send his daughter, Princess Chang Le, to be the emergent Khagan's bride. This formalized recognition and support from the Chinese to the south sent a powerful message across the now rapidly disintegrating Rouran Confederacy that there was clearly a horse the powerful Han and Xianbei peoples were willing to back.

With this support, Ashina Bumin was able to unite his regional Turkic tribes under his banner, and at last end the Roran dominance once and for all in the year 552 by defeating its Anagwe Khan's army near a place called Huaihuang. When the defeated Khan then committed suicide rather than face capture, Xiumen was able to claim his throne, proclaiming himself Ilig-Kagan of the Gokturks, and his wife, the princess Changle, as his Kagatun. Though his own reign would last only a few months before his death, Ilig-Kagan would then be succeeded by his son, Isik-Kagan to the east, and his younger brother, Istimi-Kagan

in the west. And within a century, the Gokturk empire would rule virtually all of the central Asian steppelands, with the forces of Isac clashing with the Chinese in the Khitan of Manchuria, while the armies of Istimi defeated and destroyed the Hephthalite Empire and cemented their own control over the Silk Road, while his emissaries established relations with the Sassanid Persians as well as the Byzantines, or Eastern Romans, of Constantinople. By the 570s, the Gokturks would rule a territory stretching from Manchuria and northern Korea in the east all the way into the 570s, the Gokturks would rule a territory stretching from Manchuria and northern Korea in the east, all the way into the Crimean Mountains in the west, in all totaling more than 2.3 million square miles, an achievement of Pan-Asian unity that would not be eclipsed

until the rise of Genghis Khan and the Mongolians some seven centuries later. So it was the Khagans of the ascendant Gokturks, not the Rouran, with which the emperors of both northern Zhou and northern Qi were forced to deal with in the late 550s and 560s. And make no mistake, they knew the risks posed by a confederacy of steppe peoples united in purpose, especially should that purpose choose to turn its attention southward. After all, you'll remember that both of the northern states were splintered off of Northern Wei, which had itself been founded by the Tuoba Xianbei tribe, which, that's right, had been a steppe coalition that had turned its attention southward. And so, in 552, the emperor of Northern Qi, Gaoyang, or as we'll be calling him from

here on out, his regnal name, Wenxuan, ordered an undertaking in prepared defenses the likes of which hadn't been seen since the Han dynasty, the reconstruction and expansion of the crumbling, long-abandoned Great Wall series of fortifications. Not only did he order his people to repair the segments of the ancient wall that lay along the northern borders of Qi, but he in addition commanded a new series of walls built spanning the distance between Huanglu Mountain and Sheping Fortress within the Shanxi region. Construction of the fortifications would continue more or less unhalted until sometime around the year 570. Nevertheless, it wouldn't be against the Gokturks that the armies of northern Qi would first be pitted against. It would instead be

the smaller but no less fearsome tribes that had been the dominant power in the Manchuria region north of the Korean peninsula since the late 4th century. The two tribes calling themselves the Khitan and the Kumong-Shi. Like so many other regional powers to the north of China, both the Khitan and the Kumong-Shi had stemmed from the Mongolic Xi'anbei tribes, though between the 5th and 8th centuries they would fall under the domination of the Gokturks and Uyghurs from their west, and the Chinese from the south. The Catan will ultimately turn their respective fortunes around, however, and eventually establish a Chinese dynasty of their own, the Liao. In fact, and with no small degree of irony, it will be the Catan that would end up lending their name to the longtime European name for the Chinese, the Cathay or Cathay. A mix-up we can thank the likes of Marco Polo for, for popularizing

following his long stay in the Mongolian Yuan dynasty's capital under the command of Kublai Khan. Though he did at least refer to the southern Chinese, the Han people of the Song dynasty as it were, as the Mangi. Still, that wouldn't be much of an improvement, since Mangyi is itself a corruption of the Chinese manzi, a contemptuous term meaning southern barbarian, applied to the Song by the Mongolian Yuan. But wait, we're getting a few centuries ahead of ourselves. Let's get back to the year 552 and 553, when Emperor Wenxuan would personally lead his northern Qi armies, first against the Kumo-shi, and then against the Khitan raiding parties that had, until then,

been using the political instability within eastern Wei, come northern Qi, to ransack his northern borders relatively unchecked. You'll certainly recall that it was around this period that the rebel warlord Houjing had fled south and stirred up a whole hornet's nest of trouble for everyone, as we discussed at length back in episode 71. With many of his top commanders already in the field to the south, fending off the chaos Hou Jing was stirring up down there, Wen Xuan had little choice but to don his own battle armor and lead a contingent of his own to drive off the barbarian raiders,

and he was able to accomplish this task relatively quickly. His rapid successes against the horsemen of the northeast dramatically elevated his stature and reputation amongst his subject peoples, since he not only led the armies into battle personally, but over the course of the campaign was noted to have frequently placed himself in physical danger while leading his men, and personally contributing a great deal to the campaign's overall success. Wenchuan was a leader who commanded from the front, rather than from some distant capital, a trait that both his own men and his enemies would come

to greatly respect. In fact, in late 551, Wenchuan's great nemesis, the warlord Yuan Tai of Western Wei, that would again soon become Northern Zhou in 557, sought to capitalize on Northern Qi's perceived weakness and launched an invasion. But when General Yuan engaged the Northern Qi forces, he too found out that Wenchuan had taken personal command of his defenders, and led them in such a way that Yuan Tai was forced to call off the invasion in utter defeat. The warlord of the west supposedly sighed and stated, Gao Huan is not yet dead, referring to Wen Chuan's own recently deceased father, and favorably comparing the young emperor to his long-time and very worthy adversary.

Nor was battlefield success all that Wen Chuan was known for. Indeed, he, thankfully, wasn't called Emperor Wu, but rather his posthumous title translates as the Civil and Responsible, which is going to be a huge irony as we will come to find by the end of this episode. Although he was also briefly known after his death as Emperor Jinglie, meaning decisive and achieving. Fitting, if somewhat ironic, appellations both. The early years of his reign were marked by his even-handed and fair governance. Particularly notable, he sought to equalize his people's tax burdens across the social classes,

and made great strides in achieving his aim by officially dividing his populace into nine distinct classes based on the household wealth, in effect creating official tax brackets. He instituted a progressive tax system, where those at or near subsistence paid very little into the state treasury, while those more capable of helping out were charged a higher percentage of their overall worth. By the new year of 554, the Gokturk Empire, or as it were called in Chinese, the Tu Jue, had crushed the bases of Rouran power and forced the remnants of its ruling Yujiaolu clan to flee into northern Qi, begging for asylum and protection from their former blacksmith slaves, the Ashina, now in hot pursuit. Emperor Wenchuan agreed to aid and shelter the Rouran remnants, resettling them at a

place called Ma Yi, in what is now Shanxi province in north-central China. Once resettled, Wenchuan named the surviving eldest male clansman as the new Khan of the now-vassalized Rerun. The Gokturk armies, unwilling to allow their quarry to simply flee south, continued to pursue the Rerun, forcing Emperor Wenchuan to once again command his army to attack the Goktur Turks and drive them back. But 554 would see a distinct darkening of Wenchuan's reign, a turn towards capriciousness, cruelty, madness, and policies of terror across the northern Qi state. That spring, having successfully concluded yet another campaign against rebellious tribal peoples, this time the Shanhu tribe or the mountain barbarians of western Shanxi,

bordering the Yellow River, Wenchuan ordered an extremely harsh measure against his defeated foes, one he'd not enacted before, what amounted to shattering the tribe in its entirety. In a move that reminds me of nothing so much as the conquests of Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan, Wenchuan ordered that all of the Shanhu men and every boy above the age of 11 be put to death. As for the women and the young children, they were awarded as spoils of war, that is, slaves, to the soldiers of the victorious Qi army. Even more chillingly, though, was the account of one of his own lieutenant's fates. When his commander died during the fighting and the lieutenant proved unable to save him,

Emperor Wen Xuan ordered that he be eviscerated as punishment, and then his organs cut up and consumed by the rest of the soldiers. Quite the meal. Later that same spring, the Rouran he'd just taken in and resettled had the gall to rise up in rebellion against him. Once again, Wen Xuan personally led the attack in quelling their uprising. In the aftermath, the remnants of the Rouran sued for peace, with their prince of Anding offering the emperor of Qi a number of his personal stable of horses as a peace offering. Wen Xuan, however, balked at the offering as being insufficient, and in response, he

demoted the Rouran prince to a commoner, had his hair plucked or torn from his head, and then relegated him to working in a coal processing plant. This may sound harsh, but it will sound pretty darn tame by the end of this episode. In another incident, he had one of his old political enemies flogged to death, and then had his 20 sons lined up and simultaneously beheaded before all of the bodies were then thrown into the Zhang River and disposed of. It's difficult to know quite what to make of such reports. With Wen Xuan, as with several of the other terrible emperors of Chinese history, one almost wonders if it's a political assassination job done from beyond the grave.

If these stories are to be believed, Wen Xuan seems to have been fundamentally changed at the beginning of the year 554, and certainly not for the better. It's possible that, yes, he did in fact change. There are multiple sources attesting to it. Both the authors of the History of the Northern Dynasties and the Zizhi Tongjian seem to agree that the 554 battle against the Shanhu was an ominous turning point for the Emperor of Northern Qi, who was winding up on the top 10

worst Chinese emperors ever list. It appears that such a change might be explained by the fact that Wenchuan was quickly sliding into the downfall of many an emperor, rampant, violent alcoholism, a vice that would wind up killing him very young, but not before he'd do irreparable harm to his own administration and state. But before going on, I should make note that over this whole period of time that we cover today, Northern Qi, as a political entity, was of course thoroughly caught up in the goings-on of the Southern Conflict. It was sending armies and attempting to carve out territories from the dying Liang Dynasty over this whole period of time. However, since 1. we've already covered much of that whole period in the previous episodes, and 2. the overall effects of Northern Qi's repeated insertions

into Southern affairs will all amount to virtually nothing of note, I feel fairly comfortable with leaving it at this, and instead devoting ourselves today to the inner machinations of the Northern Qi court as its first emperor slipped rapidly into madness. In the spring of 555, as the Northern Qi armies commenced with yet another ultimately pointless strike at Liang, Wen Chuan's increasing mental instability once again made itself manifest.

He began to grow insanely jealous over one of his consorts, the Lady Xue, particularly over the fact that prior to coming into his own service, the Lady Xue, particularly over the fact that prior to coming into his own service, she had been romantic with his uncle, Gao Yue. In a fit of rage, he penned an order to his uncle ordering him to commit suicide, and then follow this up by murdering and beheading Consort Xue herself. At a banquet later that day, he arrived carrying her severed head in his sleeve,

and then tossed it upon the dining table to the horror of the assembled guests. But he wasn't anywhere close to finished. As the banquet invitees looked on in what was surely shock and revulsion, in a Patrick Bateman-esque move, he had the headless body likewise brought up to the table, where he then began to cut into it and play with the poor consort's leg. At some point during the macabre display, though, Wenchuan seems to have at least come somewhat to his senses, since he suddenly began to cry, and then ordered the mutilated corpse packed into a cart and hauled off, and then followed it out of the shocked banquet hall, crying all the way. It was official. Their monarch had more than one screw dangerously

loose, and everyone assembled now knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that they'd best watch their every move, lest they wind up as the display piece of the next imperial banquet. In all human history, there are few stories like that of ancient Egypt. On the banks of the Nile, these people created one of the most enduring and significant cultures. Their tale comes to life in the History of Egypt podcast. Every week, we explore the tales of this amazing culture, from the legendary days of creation and the gods, all the way to Cleopatra, and everything in between. The History of Egypt podcast is written and produced by a trained Egyptologist. We go much

deeper than your average documentary or magazine article to uncover tales of life, great endeavours, and the amazing arc of a mighty kingdom. The History of Egypt podcast is available on all podcasting platforms, apps, and websites. Come, visit ancient Egypt, and experience a legendary culture. Wenchuan's volatility wasn't confined to his personal life either, but by the fall of 555 had bled into imperial policy regarding, of all things, state religion. As had been the case since Northern Wei's glory days, both the Buddhist and Taoist schools of thought had coexisted in northern China with a pretty good track record for fairly good-natured interactions. With the exception of the occasional imperial purge of mostly Buddhism,

the two religions found that there was generally enough people that both could thrive in the region. Well, guess who's about to commit the next great religious purge in Northern Qi? Yes, that's right, the unhinged Emperor Wen Xuan. Wen Xuan, you see, had decided that, by golly, two schools of thought regarding the eternal truth of life, the universe, and everything was just one too many. Or in the words of Sima Guang in his Zizitongjian, quote, Buddhism and Taoism, for Wen Xuan, explained the same phenomenon in two

different ways, and he wished to get rid of one of those, end quote. Surely, one should be sufficient. So he decided to organize a little contest in the ninth month of 555, a grand debate between the religious scholars of Buddhism in the red corner and the masters of Taoism in the blue corner. Both sides presented their arguments and apologies for their respective viewpoints, with Wenxuan himself as the debate's adjudicator. But when both sides had finished, Wenxuan had reached his decision. The Taoists had come across, in his opinion, as far too bigoted and sneering in their apology for Taoism itself. And so, the victory went to the Buddhists, and it was probably a cake cut and confetti poppers for

them. The Taoists of Northern Qi, however, got the consolation prize, which was in this case an immediate, total, and completely non-voluntary fusion with, and forcible entrance into, Buddhist monastic life. Heads shaved, here's your orange robes and copy of the Eightfold Path, there's your bunk, see ya. Those who resisted the order were, rather predictably, killed on the spot. Again, to quote Sima Guang, all the lands of Qi were informed of this change, and thereafter, the country had but one faith. There were no more Taoist priests in the land of Qi. End quote. But again, we must be careful at taking the ancient historians like Sima Guang, who has a long and storied track record for embellishment,

at their literal word. Shall we really conclude that Taoist activity within Northern Qi was really reduced to zero, just like that? Historians John Lagerwey and Lu Pengzhe, in their two-part book, Early Chinese Religion, The Period of Division, conclude otherwise, stating, When Emperor Wanshuan prohibited Taoist activities and made the priests live in Buddhist monasteries, he was enacting a policy to streamline religious interests at court from one to two groups. By holding a debate, it at least gave the impression that the emperor did not premeditate his decision, but chose the most convincing apology. Regardless of the winner, the emperor foresaw his interests strengthened by converting two

communities into one. In other words, having two different groups that interpreted the Tao in such radically disparate ways only resulted in distorting the truth. End quote. So long as two different versions of the eternal truth were at loggerheads with one another, living in two separate communities, and simply talking past one another, Wenchuan must have reasoned that no one was actually getting anywhere near the actual answer to the great question of life, but only seeing it through their own respectively warped lenses. Only by merging the two groups together, by force if necessary, could a clearer and more accurate picture of the eternal truth come into better focus. Moreover, for the lives of the common people, there was likely little in the way of real change, regardless of the official policy at court. So the Taoist priests had been forced into Buddhist robes. That didn't mean that the farmer or the merchant would

necessarily have to stop praying to the jade emperor, Lao Tzu, or the three pure ones within the privacy of their own home. What's more, there is concrete proof that Wen Xuan's attempts to stamp out Taoist thought wouldn't even survive his reign. Two stone stalions have been found, one dated to 565 and the other to 576 within Northern Qi, both of which had inscribed staunchly Taoist sayings. In the words once more of Lagerwey and Liu, quote, we should leave open the possibility that Taoist activity in Wen Xuan's realm In the words once more of Lagerwey and Liu, But back to his more generalized madness. Sima Guang, in his Zizhi Tongjian, places blame for Wen Xuan's descent into depravity and madness

squarely at the feet of his rampant alcoholism. This is, of course, a very common trope amongst ancient Chinese historians in attempting to explain what could account for the worst behaviors of their most notorious monarchs. And to be sure, there is almost undoubtedly a large degree of truth that heavy drinking would have worsened any aberrant behaviors, especially in someone who could get away with basically anything. But it's equally clear that in implicating Wen Xuan's alcoholism, or any of the other worst of the worst emperors in Chinese history, Sima Guang and the other classical historians are either ignoring, or far more

likely, simply had no real concrete understanding of the mental illnesses that in retrospect pretty obviously popped up periodically amongst the Chinese monarchy. Drinking too much baijiu might make you kill your consort in anger over a perceived infidelity, but dragging her headless body to a feast to carve up is something typically reserved for someone rather further down the line of mental disorders. His mental break with reality and own spiraling insanity was summed up by Sima Guang thusly, quote, Emperor Wenchuan drank heavily and lived immorally, carrying out cruel and barbarous acts at a whim. He would raucously sing and dance day and night, and often dressed himself in barbarian clothing and sashes, and parted his hair like the horsemen of the steppes. Sometimes he bared his body and

put on makeup. Sometimes he rode donkeys, cows, camels, or elephants without using saddles. He would order his high government officials to carry him on their backs while he beat a large drum, and his nobles and officials came to dread his frequent unannounced incursions into their private residences. He would parade through the streets of Yer, sometimes sitting or even sleeping on them for all to see. When it was warm, he was known to strip naked to bask in the sun. But even in the coldest winter, he would likewise strip naked and run around. His attendants could not stand his behavior, but he himself did not care. Once he asked a woman on the street, What is your opinion of the Son of Heaven? The woman responded, He is so crazy that he

really cannot be considered a Son of Heaven. He then beheaded her." In one particularly notable incident, again explained as him being overwhelmingly drunk by Sima Guang, Wenchuan's mother, the Empress Dowager, finally snapped and began berating her son's inexcusable behavior. Wenchuan began shouting at the Empress Dowager, and purportedly threatened to marry her off to an old barbarian, at which point she got really mad. A mother's anger is never something to scoff at,

and even the Son of Heaven apparently grew fearful of her wrath, and so drunkenly endeavored to lighten the mood by getting down on all fours and trying to crawl underneath her chair. This rather spectacularly backfired, though, when he, big as he was, only succeeded in knocking over the chair as she sat in it and injuring the Empress Dowager. Hours later, when he'd crawled out of his bottle enough to realize that it had been his actions that had so harmed his beloved mother, he demanded that a large pyre be constructed and lit. In a scene reminiscent of the unhinged

steward of Gondor, Denethor, in Tolkien's The Return of the King, Wen Xuan announced that he intended to throw himself into the fire and kill himself, but rather than a wizard cracking him on the head, it was the Empress Dowager, injured though she was, who ended up pulling him back from the blaze. Wen Xuan would live to be crazy another day, thanks to Mommy Dearest, to which the residents of the capital surely must have sighed and said, yeah, thanks, Empress. Thanks a lot. Wen Xuan knew he'd screwed up, though, and he resolved to make it up to his mother by solemnly pledging that he was giving up drinking once and for all. And he was serious, like super serious, so serious that he actually made it a

grand total of ten entire days, give or take, before he was back on the sauce. And with it, if it had ever indeed lapsed, came back his violent insanity. He was written to have shot an arrow at his mother-in-law, and then whipped her, and later to have killed with his bare hands one of the ladies of his own clan when she refused to have sex with him. It was around this point, the prime minister, who must have just been off his rocker at this behavior, at last devised a workable solution to the monarch's overwhelming desire to kill while drinking. He arranged for the palace guards to have a group of prisoners, already condemned to death, available to them at all times. As such, when the intoxicated emperor inevitably demanded blood, they'd simply bring forward one of the prisoners to slake Wenchuan's bloodthirst. Two words, one stone. Quite elegant.

In fact, the simple matter that the Northern Qi government remained functional at all was in large part thanks to the tireless efforts of the Prime Minister Yang Yin. He had what must have been the exhausting double duty of both running the entire imperial apparatus and at the same time cleaning up the bodies Wen Xuan's lunatic murder orgies left in its wake. Prime Minister Yang found that in a way, the emperor's insanity could kind of be made to serve a positive purpose for the state. With all the emperors in mortal dread of stepping anywhere

close to out of line, corruption was way, way down in all departments. As such, it became the kind of gallows humor tongue-in-cheek saying at the time within Northern Qi that though the emperor was murderously insane, at least his government was remarkably efficient. Efficient though Prime Minister Yang was though, even he could but delay the inevitable draining of Northern Qi's treasury due to the combined expenses of Wenchuan's own personal wasteful behavior and of course the continual ineffectual military adventures against the South as the Liang dynasty continued its civil war-fueled death spiral. By late 557, in fact, the same year Liang was divided between Chen and Northern Zhou, respectively, Northern Qi's coffers had run dry, and no amount of progressive tax system was going to dig it out of the financial hole its

emperor's behavior had gotten it into any time soon. Northern Qi, which had begun the 550s as the wealthiest and most powerful of the competing northern and southern dynasties, would end out the decade as the most indebted and weakest, both internally and externally. The mad emperor's ravings would also turn against his own son and heir, Crown Prince Gao Yin, whom he'd come to scornfully consider far too Han-like for his tastes. Emperor Wensheng, you see, like his father, General Gao Huan before him, looked down at the Han people and considered Xianbei culture and behavior largely superior, an especially ironic position given that the Gao clan was ethnically purebred Han themselves.

Nevertheless, tensions between father and son reached a boiling point in winter of 557, when Wen Xuan ordered his heir to serve as the executioner of a condemned prisoner. You know, it'll put hair on your chest. But the crown prince found he did not have the stomach for such bloodshed, in marked contrast to his father. In typical Bruder response then, Wang Xuan reacted to his son's perceived weakness by beating him silly with a whip handle, a thrashing so severe that according to the history books,

it would permanently scar the crown prince's psyche, resulting in him living the rest of his life with an intermittent panic disorder and rendered for long stretches of time totally unable to speak. Not content with abusing his son both physically and mentally, though, Emperor Wenxuan then began repeatedly and loudly considering whether or not he ought to depose the crown prince entirely and replace him with his uncle, Wenxuan's own younger brother. At this, however, Prime Minister Yang was forced to intervene for the sake of the government itself once again. In private, he urged the emperor to stop his musings on deposing his heir at once, and rather surprisingly, he really put his foot down about it. His fear was that should this

public vacillating between potential heirs continue, it would only serve to further destabilize the already tottering imperial government, with doubts over the succession order of the imperial clan. And given that Emperor Wen Xuan, though only just in his 30s, was burning the candle not only at both ends, but right through the middle, he feared that doubts over his succession must be kept to an absolute minimum, lest his eventual death take the entire government down with it. And if that's not foreshadowing, I don't know what is. Prime Minister Yang's predictions regarding his emperor riding for a fall,

sooner rather than later, would in fact prove spot on. In the autumn of 559, his heavy drinking, that had long been negatively impacting his health, not to mention the health of anyone within sword range, finally caught up with the then 33-year-old monarch. He took gravely ill, probably due to liver failure, and died soon thereafter. Before he departed this world, however, he was recorded as having resigned himself to his fate, stating to his wife, the Empress Li,

a person lives and dies, there is nothing to regret, other than that Gao Yin is so young, and another will likely unseat him. Then, to his younger brother, Prince Gaoyan of Changshan, the one who he'd considered replacing his son with as the heir, he stated, At his funeral, Wenshan's officials ceremonially mourned him, as was custom. Nevertheless, it was written that the only person to actually shed any tears throughout the entire service was the Prime Minister Yang Yin. And even he was likely only saddened by the fact that there would likely be more calamity to come, since the realm had been so destabilized. That no one else seemed truly upset by the

loss of this alcoholic, stark, raving mad mass murderer, well, no real surprise there. Emperor Wanchuan's death may have been welcomed by pretty much everyone, but it wouldn't stem the chaos that his reign had begun throughout northern Qi. Now near bankruptcy and internally weak, now would be a really, really bad time for, oh, I don't know, a series of short-lived rulers to overthrow one another and further destabilize the government. Well, guess what happens next? Hm. Wenchuan's predictions regarding his son proved to be among the most cogent and accurate things he'd uttered in a number of years to this point. The crown prince would indeed take the throne at 14 years old, but he'd proved to be

as ineffectual and short-lived as his father had feared. Tellingly, he is remembered by the two titles, Emperor Fei, the deposed, and Prince Mindao, the untimely death. He would reign in Ye City for a grand total of nine months, before his uncle Gaoyuan at last convinced the Grand Empress Dowager to issue an edict deposing Emperor Fei and authorizing Yan to accede as Emperor Xiao Zhao in September of 560. For a time, he even attempted to honor his late brother's dying wishes of ensuring that he kept his nephew alive by rendering him a prince and keeping him, for safety, in Ye, while he ruled from the secondary capital at Jinyang.

That situation would last until the fall of 561, when his imperial sorcerers informed him that the imperial aura yet remained within Ye City, causing Xiao Zhao to fear that his nephew might someday return to power. Well, that couldn't be allowed to stand, so in spite of his promise to his brother and the opposition of his own mother, Xiao Zhao disposed of his formerly imperial nephew once and for all. But though his rival had been axed, Emperor Xiaojiao would have precious little time to get comfortable on the throne. That same winter, he himself would be dispatched by, of all things, a rabbit. While riding in the

woods on a hunting expedition, his horse was startled by a bunny and reared back, throwing the new emperor from his saddle and breaking several of his ribs. He was returned to the imperial palace, but either infection or damaged internal organs soon took hold and he began to die. Xiao Zhao had just enough time to pass the throne on to his younger brother, Gao Dan, before succumbing to his injuries after less than a year on the throne. He would be the last monarch even approaching competence Northern Qi would ever see. But the misadventures of Gaodan, now Emperor Wucheng, will have to wait until next time, because this is where we're going to leave off for the week. Northern Qi, which just a decade prior had been the mightiest of the northern and southern dynasties, is now a shell of its former

self. From within, its monarchs have gone from psychotic but efficient, to ineffective and rapidly dying off, and now to incompetent and indolent. Far from a winning combination. And from the outside, it is surrounded on all sides by hostile parties, all eager to capitalize on its current weakened state. Chun to the southeast, the Khitan tribes to the northeast, the Gokturk Khanate to the northwest, and of course, its longtime nemesis, and what will prove to be the truly mortal threat, Northern Zhou to the west. Next time, we will pull back from our focused look at the respective dynasties to begin to look at the broader perspective of divided China over the course

of the 570s, while also beginning to follow the meteoric rise to prominence and power of a two-bit governor of a minor prefecture, who will nevertheless earn his place among the highest levels of power within the northern Zhou state, and eventually begin working on plans to not only assume control of his own kingdom, but do what no leader had been able to accomplish since the collapse of the Han dynasty more than 350 years prior. Reunify China. Thank you for listening. find out how they were rediscovered, follow the story of Mark Antony and Cleopatra's descendants over ten generations, or take a deep dive into the Iron Age or the Hellenistic era, then check out the Ancient World Podcast. Available on all podcasting platforms, or go to ancientworldpodcast.com. That's the Ancient World Podcast.