The History of China - #75 - S&N 19: Reunion

Episode Date: September 23, 2015

Northern Zhou seems to have plotted a course for ultimate victory in the contest between the Northern and Southern Dynasties, having already annexed Northern Qi and turned its sights on Chen to the south. But it’s amazing how quickly dynastic fortunes can reverse themselves, and the Yuwen Clan’s line of emperors find itself stopped short, destroyed not by external threat but from an enemy within: the Duke of Sui, the man who would be Emperor of all China.Time Period Covered:577-589 CEMajor Figures:Northern Zhou:Yuwen Yan (Emperor Xuan; “The Responsible”) [r. 577-578, as Retired Emperor Tianyuan; “The Heavenly and Fundamental” r. 578-580]Yuwen Chan (Emperor Jing; “The Silent”) [r. 578-581]Gen. Yuchi Jiong [d. 580]Gen. Yin ShouSui:Duke Yang Jiang of Sui (Emperor Wen; “The Cultured”) [regent of Northern Zhou 580-581, Emperor of Sui r. 581-604]Chen:Chen Xu (Emperor Xuan; “The Responsible”) [r. 569-582]Chen Shubao (Houzhu; “Final Ruler”) [r. 582-589]Western Liang (vassal of Northern Zhou/Sui):Xiao Cong (Emperor Jing; “The Meek”) [r. 585-587] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Thanks again to all of our supporters, and enjoy the show. Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 75, Reunion. Last time, we ended off with a critical turning point in the Southern and Northern Dynasties period of the Age of Disunion. Namely, the reunification of the North under Northern Zhou's Emperor, Wu, in 577.

Unfortunately for him, he would have very little time to relish in that victory, as less than a year later, he would take ill and die, leaving the newly reunited realm to his son and heir, Crown Prince Yuan Yan, who would accede the throne as Emperor Xuan. Today then, we'll be going over Xuan's strange, brief period of rule over the north, then his extremely early retirement, and then shift on over to the ascendant Duke of Sui, Yang Jian, who will quickly come to the conclusion that he could do at least as good of a job on the throne as the unimpressive second and then third generation Zhou monarchs, but all in due time. Emperor Xuan, to put it bluntly, began his reign in much the same way as the last monarchs of Northern Qi had ended theirs. To call it merely inauspicious would be

something of an understatement. The warning signs began popping up almost immediately, and indeed his potential problems seemed to have been pretty self-apparent even before he was enthroned. Much of it could be linked to the bitterness he continued to feel over his and his father's relationship growing up. It seems that as effective as he was a commander on the battlefield, Liu had brought that same strict military discipline and exacting punitive expectations to parenthood as well. At his father's royal funeral, for instance, Xuan not only did not mourn the late emperor, but approached the casket, touched some of the scars his father's royal funeral, for instance, Xuan not only did not mourn the late emperor, but approached the casket,

touched some of the scars his father had inflicted on him for prior misbehaviors, and then he reportedly growled at his father's motionless body, 死得太晚了。 Old man, you died far too late. As is so often the case in abusive relationships, though, the abused becomes the abuser in time. And in Emperor Xuan's case, that meant trouble for the whole kingdom. He is remembered as a violent, capricious, and deeply paranoid ruler,

obsessed with rooting out each and every aspect of his father's mark upon the state. The penal code Emperor Wu had established to great success? Well, that was right out. Xuan would start by Wu had established to great success? Well, that was right out. Xuan would start by issuing several sweeping pardons of prisoners under the pretense of his father's laws being too severe, but would then go on in 578 and 579 to put into place even harsher laws and punishments. Whereas Wu had famously outlawed both Buddhism and Taoism in favor of Confucian principles, Xuan now re-established an honored Taoist thought.

He even went so far as to change the military dress code that had been standardized under his father's reign. In its stead, he went retro by modeling his army's uniforms off of the soldiers of the ancient Eastern Han and Taowei dynasties. For those still alive who had been close with his hated father, life became very difficult, and often very short, under Xuan's new order. His uncle, Prince Yuwen Xian of Qi, would be the first target of his ire, since not only had he been close to Wu, but also commanded enormous respect from the Northern Zhou armies, and was therefore a threat in Xuan's eyes.

Shortly after he began his reign, then, the Prince of Qi and three of his top military commanders were arrested and executed on his orders. Likewise, high officials and clansmen, who had been Emperor Wu's close and trusted advisors, now fell before the wrath of Xuan. The combined effect of such purges surely had the effect of a brain drain on both the civil government and military expertise of the state, which will factor in heavily in events to come. In early 579, Emperor Xuan, then only 19 or 20 years old, officially declared his eldest son, the six-year-old Prince Yuwen Chan, his heir, a title the boy would hold for less than a year, but not for the reason you might think.

Less than a month later, in fact, Emperor Xuan would appropriate yet another bad habit of the now-failed Northern Qi dynasty. He ceded the throne to the crown prince, who would be remembered, very appropriately, as Emperor Jing, meaning the Silent One. Xuan, meanwhile, declared that he was retiring to pursue the finer things in life, although he would retain virtually all imperial power. He proclaimed himself not the by now typical Taishang Huang, or Retired Emperor, but instead the unorthodox title of Tianyuan Huangdi, meaning either the Original Heavenly Emperor or the fundamentally Heavenly Emperor. And boy, did he run with that idea. He changed the name of his palace to

Tiantai, the Heavenly Tower. His wife, too, was given the title of Empress Dowager Tianyuan, and he began behaving, and demanding those around him behave, as though he were not just the son of heaven, but a literal god as well. Among his orders to this effect, he demanded that he, the fundamentally heavenly emperor, should have twice as many carriages, staff, banners, and drums as the new sitting regular emperor, and also that his crown be adorned with twice the number of tassels as his son. He began to refer to himself, and demand that all others do likewise, as heaven itself, and began requiring that any and all officials who wished, or were required, to enter his presence must first conduct the traditional period of fasting and cleaning that formerly preceded worshipping at the altar of a god, specifically that such officials must eat a strictly vegetarian diet

and thoroughly bathe themselves for three days prior to being admitted into his chambers. Getting a little carried away, aren't we, Xuan? But oh no, he was just getting warmed up. It had been since virtually the beginning of the Chinese imperial system itself that naming taboos had been observed for the sitting emperors. If you're not familiar or just don't remember, a naming taboo is a ban placed on writing, or in some instances even speaking, the specific characters that made up a monarch's given name. Though given the homophone rich language spoken Chinese is, I can't picture actually banning a word from being uttered as there would be so many false positives it would be ridiculous. Still, it was a very seriously observed custom, and places had from time to

time been forced to rename themselves should they happen to share a character with the reigning monarch, although that change would typically, though not always, be undone once the emperor in question had died. In a very few instances, though, when an emperor to be given name used a character that was too commonly used to make a taboo against it feasible, such as the character for the son, or young, in one of the most prominent examples, in that instance the crown prince would occasionally be forced to himself rename

before assuming the throne. But in any case, all of this is just to remind you what the naming taboo was, but also the limits to which it was traditionally carried out. So that when I say that in his retirement, the fundamentally heavenly Emperor Xuan went way overboard, you will get the idea. In addition to his own given name, Yun, which as a complex, obscure, multi-part character was easy enough to avoid, Emperor Xuan also placed taboos on the words such as heaven, or tian, high, or gao, upper, or shang, and grand, or da. In other words, a whole host of just ludicrously common words that he had no business forbidding. Imagine a law being passed saying that you could no longer use the words sky, tall, above, or big for the rest of the emperor's life. That is what Xuan did with this prohibition. Yikes. Furthermore, he decreed that

henceforth women across the empire were absolutely not allowed to wear makeup unless they were inside the imperial palace apparently he was trying to secure a monopoly on beauty as well and possibly most bafflingly of all he ordered that from here on out all wheels must be made from a single unbroken piece of wood no assembly allowed i can't think of what possessed him to make that rule, but there you have it. And punishments for infractions were severe. Not quite off with your head severe in most cases, but very painful nonetheless. Initially, he ordered that officials found in violation of his laws were to be caned no less than 120 times. Eventually, though, he'd come to the conclusion that being thrashed with a bamboo pole 120 times wasn't nearly enough, he'd come to the conclusion that being thrashed with a bamboo pole

120 times wasn't nearly enough, and so he doubled the punishment to 240. It might not have been execution outright, but I have to assume a fair few officials met their end in the midst of the beating of their lifetimes. And yet, these policies did their job of terrorizing Xuan's retinue so well that none of them dared speak out against his abuses for fear of finding themselves facing down the lash. In the winter of 579, Xuan officially ended his father's prohibition on Taoism and Buddhism, as I'd mentioned before.

But once again, he seemed compelled to place himself on equal stature to those gods, and in this case, literally. With the religious prohibitions lifted, he had statues of both Buddhist and Taoist gods constructed or brought into his imperial throne room and placed next to his own seat. There, he'd sit among the various high deities of two religions, in his own mind at least, they're equal. 580 would prove to be a decisive year for China as a whole, for it was the year that Emperor Xuan, god-king of the north, turned his attention to the final obstacle of him becoming the ruler of China,

in fact, as well as pretense, the Chen dynasty of the south, still based in Nanjing and still under the rule of the emperor we'd last left on the throne there back in 569, Chen Shu, aka Emperor Xuan of Chen, which is sort of confusing, I know, but I'll do my best to keep these two Emperor Xuans as clear as possible. The Chen dynasty had been having a rough time over these past several years. In 577, it had thought that it could get in on the action of Northern Qi's collapse, and so its emperor had ordered an expeditionary force sent north to capture some of the Qi territory while getting was good. Well, that hadn't worked out as planned, and instead has

resulted in the northern Zhou army briefly pausing in its conquest of Qi to turn around and absolutely smash the Chen force, resulting in a drop in morale and level of doubt in imperial command so deep that Xuan of Chen was forced in late 578 to hold an official ceremony in which all of his officials were required to reaffirm their continued loyalty to the state and his rule. Yeah, not a great sign of confidence. In late 579, Heavenly Emperor Xuan of Zhou sought to capitalize on this perceived weakness in the south and conquer it as well. And the campaign almost immediately proved to be a great success. By the spring of 580, the armies of northern Zhou had seized vast swaths of territory between the Yangtze and Huai rivers. By the following summer,

he ordered his minister of defense, none other than Duke Yangjian of Sui, to prepare to mobilize his own levy of troops and head south to continue operations against the reeling Chen state. But before the Duke of Sui could depart the capital, Emperor Xuan, at just 20 years old, was stricken dumb and rapidly dying by the sudden onset of an illness. Lying on what would be his deathbed, he managed to summon two of his closest associates to him, and it's assumed to hand control of state over to them. But by the time they arrived, he was both unable to speak and so weak that he couldn't write his wishes out either. Confused as to what they should do, the pair in turn consulted with several other palace officials, and then collectively decided to summon Yang Jian back to the palace to serve as regent to the six-year-old emperor once Xuan bit the big one. They then sent a missive out

at once to find the Duke of Sui and recall him before he could depart. Now, before moving on, I really should go back and make it clear why it was Duke Yang, of all the possible choices, that the palace officials seem to have unanimously agreed on selecting to be the imperial regent. He was simultaneously the least and most obvious candidate for the job. In terms of why he shouldn't have gotten the job, well, he and Emperor Xuan weren't exactly on the best of terms. Hating each other's guts would probably be a pretty accurate way to put it. Xuan had grown increasingly suspicious of the Duke of Sui for supposedly harboring designs on the throne.

He'd made several threatening statements to the duke, such as, I will surely slaughter your entire clan, and even made an actual attempt on the duke's life, on at least one attempt, by ordering Yang Jian to report to the palace and instructing his guardsmen to kill the lord should his behavior in any way betray the ulterior motives Emperor Xuan suspected. Duke Yang managed to walk out of that when he arrived and behaved completely normally, because why wouldn't he? He'd even gone so far as to order Duke Sui's own daughter to commit suicide after getting into an argument with her, and was only talked out of it when her mother, the Duchess, arrived at the palace and begged the Emperor's

forgiveness. So yeah, the Duke of Sui was definitely not on Emperor Xuan's shortlist of favorite people, nor vice versa. But as to why he was the obvious choice to the palace officials, well, he was the emperor's father-in-law. That same daughter Xuan had ordered to kill herself was in fact his empress, Yang, that also made the crown prince his step-grandson. That the Duke was a powerful regional lord, the military commander of the entire empire, and had steadfastly proven to be a capable, shrewd, and loyal servant of the throne over the years surely helped his case as well. Thus, in spite of the dying Emperor Xuan's silent protests, it would be the imperial grandfather,

Duke Yangjian of Sui, who'd be entrusted with governing Northern Zhou now that the heavenly Emperor Xuan was breathing his last. Fate, as it were, can sometimes have a sense of irony. But given the bad blood between the Duke and the now-dying Emperor, it's entirely understandable that when he received the message summoning him back to the capital on short notice, it gave him pause. This could, after all, just be another elaborate trap, and one he'd not likely be walking out of a second time. Therefore, at first, he refused the summons and continued making ready to ride off to the warfront. But by late that day, with increasingly urgent missives being delivered that the emperor was actively dying and he was desperately needed, Yang Jian

at last relented and made his way warily to the imperial palace. And it would prove to be just in time, because almost no sooner had he arrived at the palace that evening than Emperor Xuan succumbed to his sickness. When the monarch's death was confirmed, Duke Yang immediately ordered his men to secure the palace and ensure that there would be no vacuum or palace coup against either his young charge or his own nascent regency. Northern Zhou was now in the

hands of the Duke of Sui. Within the capital, and in large part across the empire, the Duke's assumption of the regency was met with a collective sigh of relief. The increasingly mad reign of the heavenly emperor, his wastefulness and cruelty, was at last at an end, and Duke Yang did much to immediately soothe the lingering pain of Xuan's reign by abolishing many of his more burdensome and frankly mad policies, resulting in palpable relief on the state's treasury and the people's burdens. Nevertheless, there were those who did not meet the news of the choice of regent with cheers but rather growls of suspicion. Chief among those naysayers was the commandant of Xiang province and legendary battlefield commander General Yu Chizhong, who suspected that the Duke of Sui would seek to use

his newfound lock on power to overthrow the Yuan clan and establish a dynasty of his own. When General Yu Chizhong received an imperial summons to return to the capital and attend the royal funeral, he responded by instead raising his flags in rebellion against the regent duke and announcing that his intention was to protect northern Zhou's imperial lineage from what he suspected was a coup d'etat in the works. As such, he declared the late emperor Xuan's uncle, Yuan Zhao, the true emperor of Zhou, and sent out missives to rally supporters to his cause. And rally they did. 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.

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Qian, both rallied to the rebellion with their respective armies, surely under the notion that they were about to be led by the best of the best, a legend in his own time. Critically, however, the vassal emperor of Western Liang did not respond to the summons, and instead pledged to remain loyal to the throne and to its regent. Unfortunately for all involved in the rebellion, however, though General Yuchi had indeed been extremely formidable in his prime, he was now in his dotage, a senile and fragile old man whose mind was only partially there at best. Where the wardens of the southern provinces thought they were to be led by a military and tactical genius, what they instead got was Grandpa Simpson, who had left virtually all of

his important strategic decisions to his personal secretary, or more surprisingly still, his wife, the Lady Wong. And suffice it to say, Lady Wang wasn't nearly the strategist her husband had been in his prime. Within 68 days, the Imperial Army was beating down the doors of General Yuch's stronghold in Ye City. With little time left to salvage his own honor, the once great general was given time enough by his subordinates to end his own life, and he did so. Even with such an honorable end, though, his sons were still rounded up and executed for their participation in his rebellion once Ye's city was taken. And as for the city itself, as the former capital

of northern Qi, Ye had already proven itself to be more trouble than it was worth, since it seemed to serve as an effective rallying point for would-be opponents of the regime. As such, with the rebellion stifled, Duke Yangjian ordered the entire city of Ye torn down brick by brick, leaving it nothing but a depopulated scattering of stones and half-buried statues. And why, if you look on the map of Hebei or Henan today, you will see no place called Ye. In modern times, archaeologists have made

extensive excavations of the once-mighty city, and in 2012, turned up nearly 3,000 Buddha statues from the site carved primarily from white marble and limestone and dated back to the mid-6th century. But it wasn't only generals and governors who were initiating plots against Yang's regency. It went much higher. Several of the imperial princes, in fact, used the insurgency and Duke Yang's focus on quashing it to make a direct attempt on the regent lord's life and install one of them as the child emperor Jing's protector. The attempted assassination only served to alert Yang of the threat the Yuan princes posed to him, and so he used the attempt to justify a widespread purge of the Yuan clan, and especially its princes. And from here, the course of the Northern Zhou dynasty was pretty well locked in, and it should sound quite familiar by this point. Duke Yangjian

had Emperor Jing promote him rapidly from duke up to the prince of Sui. Then came the Nine Bestowments, the ritualistic refusals, the insistence that no, really, take them, they're yours, well, okay, if you insist. And by the spring of 581, with one last stage-managed refusal and reluctant acceptance, Emperor Jing at eight years old ceded the throne to his step-grandfather, formally ending Northern Zhou and beginning the Sui Dynasty, with Yang Jian as its founding Emperor Wen, the cultured. The fate of the now former Zhou Emperor would be as predictable as it was tragic. Eight years old or not, we can't just leave these loose threads

dangling freely in the wind, now can we? Jing was demoted to the Duke of Jie, kept under tight guard within a palatial prison while his family members were quietly picked off all around him, and finally himself assassinated on the secret order of Emperor Wen. Though he knew Sui Monarch would feign shock and outrage over his predecessor's untimely death, and proclaimed an official mourning period for his passing and an imperial funeral. With that messy business out of the way, Emperor Wen of Sui turned to deal first and foremost with his domestic situation. He had inherited, okay, well, not inherited, but taken by force,

a house very much out of order, and he intended to set things right. Northern Zhou had been sunk by its own imperial incompetence, and one felt he knew just how to fix those fatal flaws. First things first, he reorganized the layout of the central government from the six departments of the preceding dynasty to a new system of only five bureaus. The Executive Bureau, the Bureau of Examination, the Legislative Bureau, the Bureau of Archives and Records, and the Bureau of Unix. Moreover, he'd noted over the course of his usurpation that he'd personally really lucked out that the northern Joe princes had been too weak to put up much of a fight against him, and now that he held the top job, he intended to close that loophole as soon as possible. Rather than the neutered

princes of Joe, he appointed his sons to be his new line of imperial princes and bestowed upon them broad, sweeping powers within their respective principalities. Should the throne come under attack, he reasoned, strong imperial princes would be waiting in the wings to swoop in and save the day. He likewise charged a task force of officials to make key revisions to the legal code to both simplify and ease off the harsh punishments for infractions, a system of law that would largely be adopted by subsequent dynastic lines. Internally, Emperor Wen had done well in ensuring that his changing of the dynastic line had been swift and conclusive, and that his new reign was stable from within. Where pockets of rebellion had or threatened to spring up,

he moved swiftly to crush them, while at the same time easing off many of the policies that had become burdensome on the population. But of course, it was not only domestic threats that would loom large for the newborn Sui state. There was Chun that remained to be dealt with. But even before that, Emperor Wen's government would need to move fast to negate the threat of the Gukturk empire. Granted, the Gukturks had been engaged in a marriage alliance and had maintained long-standing friendly relations, and even occasional military alliances with northern Zhou. But Sui was not Zhou, and those alliances that had so stabilized

Sinoturkic relations up until now suddenly swung the opposite direction. For one, Xiaoluwe Khan's wife, Princess Qianjin, was Emperor Wu's niece, the daughter of Prince Yuan Zhao. Suffice it to say, she was none too happy with the wholesale slaughter of her extended family and the usurper one dissolving her imperial line. Moreover, one of Sui's policy towards the Gukturks was much more hardline than the lovey-dovey intermarriages the Yuan clan had engaged in. Thus, almost as soon as he donned the imperial crown, the Guk Turks began engaging in a series of border raids against Sui, and quickly entered into an alliance with the Northern Qi loyalist generals, who still controlled the territory of Ying province near the Korean

borders. Nevertheless, one knew that at least for the time being, he couldn't afford to engage the Guk Turk empire in outright warfare, certainly not if he had any hopes of knocking out Chun anytime soon. And so he turned to that other great weapon in an empire's arsenal, diplomacy and intrigue. Rather than dealing with the Great Khan directly, one took the advice of his high general, Zhang Sun, and began sending gifts and making placating gestures to the Great Khan's uncle, cousin, and brother, respectively his top-level sub-commanders. With the three of them now thinking that, hey, maybe Sui wasn't so bad after all, the Gukturk Empire, mighty though it was,

would over the next several years begin to fracture from within, and ultimately unable to move against Emperor Wen in any cohesive or unified fashion. With the Gukturks thus rendered a nuisance rather than existential threat, Wen was able to continue the campaign against the beleaguered Chen dynasty he'd begun as Northern Zhou's military commander, and over the remainder of 581, he commissioned a series of successful strikes against the southern foe. However, when news arrived in Chang'an in the early spring of 582 that Chen's Emperor Xuan had died, one recalled his armies, believing that it was improper to attack a state that

was in official mourning for its monarch. He would even go so far as to send envoys to engage in mourning for the deceased southern emperor along with a personal letter of consolation from Emperor Wen himself, in which he, in a very unusual move, referred to himself by his given name, Yang Jian, a sign from a reigning emperor of deep humility and respect. The reply that came from the new emperor of Chen, named Chen Shubao, raised the hackles of the Sui court when it stated within, quote, may it be that when you govern your state, all things will be well, and that between heaven and earth, there will be peace and quiet, end quote. Now, to me, at least, that seems like a

nice enough sentiment, nothing to get all bent out of shape over, but both the Sui court officials and Emperor Wen apparently balked at what they deemed to be its arrogant and condescending tone. Of course, any breach of etiquette might have been explained by the fact that Chen Shubao was at the time just barely recovering from being stabbed in the neck by his own brother in a succession dispute following their father's death. I know I certainly wouldn't be at my most polite in a similar situation. But of this, Emperor Wen surely had no way of knowing. Despite this faux pas, over the course of the following several years,

the two Chinese emperors would remain in a state of détente, but one everyone knew was only temporary. And all the while, Emperor Wen would quietly bulk up his forces along the Yangtze River's northern banks, in preparation for the day his great conquest would resume. Nevertheless, Wen would take the opportunity this transient peace would present to order the construction of a new capital city, believing that Chang'an, august and ancient a seat of power though it was, was too small to effectively serve as the imperial seat any longer. This new capital, dubbed Daxing, was constructed on the outskirts of Chang'an, however, meaning that though officially the city was changed, the two cities were joined together from basically the outset. As such, the capital of Sui would be interchangeably known by both names. And so, for the sake of simplicity, I'm going to just keep calling it Chang'an, and you'll know

what I mean. The mid-580s would see not only a new capital city built, but also a series of large-scale canal construction projects undertaken, ultimately linking the capital city with the Wei River, the Huai River, and the Yangtze River, all of course at great taxpayer expense. By 583, the seeds of dissension and disunity Emperor Wen's ploy with the Gukturk sub-Khans had borne its fruit, and the Great Steppe Empire had been grievously weakened internally. Consulting with his generals, and still safely within the Chun dynasty's mourning period armistice, Wen decided that the time was right to marshal his armies along his northern border and strike a decisive blow against the ever-present potential threat to his north.

The Gokturk Confederacy, by all indications, was on the verge of tearing itself apart, and Wen was only too happy to be the man providing a pair of shears to expedite that process. He directed his northern armies, commanded by General Yin Shou, to strike, not at the Gukturk heartland, but at the remnant warlord state of northern Qi in Liaoning to the far northeast. General Yin was able to crush the meager Qi forces in the field and then kill their final warlord in the resultant pursuit, sweeping away the last vestiges of the once mighty northern power. With any and all semblance of cohesiveness now shattered by the destruction of its ally, the already fractious Gukturk sub-Kans launched into a civil war against one another and against the great Kan himself. Through it all, Emperor Wen simply stood aside, guarding his borders but

offering aid to no one, and let the barbarians tear themselves apart. By the following year, even the Great Khan, Xiaolui, had been forced to come crawling in submission to Sui, his base of power thoroughly shattered. It would be another generation or more before the horsemen of the north would threaten China again. With the Gukturks effectively dealt with, Emperor Wen would turn his attention once more southward, though not back to Chen right away. First things first, that little rump state calling itself Western Liang, that by some miracle or oversight, still existed.

Its Emperor Jing had bought himself a few more years of nominal power when he refused to join the rebellion against Wen's ascendancy back in 580, but it had ultimately only been a temporary reprieve. In 587, Emperor Wen summoned Jing of Liang to his palace at Chang'an, but once the vassal monarch departed his capital from Jiangling City. In what was either an unfortunate misunderstanding or, in my personal opinion, just a pretense, Wu sent an army to guard, yeah, that's what we'll call it, guard the vassal capital city, but neglected to inform its own garrison of the Sui army's benevolent intentions. Thinking that Sui was trying to capture their seat of power while their ruler was away, the garrison leader promptly defected and beseeched Chen for aid and protection. In response to this seemingly all-too-convenient

state of affairs, Emperor Wu announced that Western Liang, as an independent political entity, was abolished forthwith. Its territories were to be immediately and totally annexed into Sui, and its Emperor Jing was to be stripped of his title and demoted to the Duke of Ju. And the ancient historians can call that a misunderstanding all they want, but that seems to have worked out just a little bit too perfectly for one of Sui to have been anything but a carefully orchestrated coup d'etat, and it certainly wouldn't have been his first. With that little speed bump out of the way, Emperor Wen at last enacted the final phase of his grand plan in the spring of 588, though it wouldn't be until the following spring that the invasion of Chen would actually recommence. The armies of Sui had been for almost six years slowly amassing their forces along the

Yangtze River, and by 588 had stationed supposedly more than 518,000 troops along the northern bank, stretching all the way from Sichuan to the East China Sea. With this massive force, in early 589, major divisions crossed at Jingkou and Caishi in the lower reaches of the river, while another detachment pushed eastward up the river aboard several thousand massive warships designed to confront the powerful Chen military that guarded the Yangtze. The largest of these ships were towering, having five-layered decks and the capacity for more than 800 non-crew personnel. They were also outfitted with six 50-foot long booms that were used to swing and damage the enemy ships or to pin them down so that Sui marines could board the Chen vessels and capture them.

Besides employing their own Xianbei and other Chinese ethnic groups for the fight against Chen, Emperor Wen was also able to employ the service of peoples from Sichuan, which they had also recently conquered. Still, another division blocked potential reinforcements from assisting Nanjing from the middle reaches of the river. It was, to put it mildly, about a perfect mousetrap snapping shut as could be. In the course of a single battle, the lone garrison that was able to defend the Chun capital was defeated and captured, followed by Nanjing itself almost immediately afterwards. The emperor of Chun and his family were taken captive, but brought safely to Chang'an and treated there as honored guests.

But much as he had done with the former capital of northern Qi, Ye City, Emperor Wen ordered Nanjing, or again as it was then known, Jiankang, pulled down brick by brick to be buried and forgotten by time, though markedly unlike Ye that wouldn't ultimately be the fate of the southern capital. For all its sounds and fury, and more than three and a half centuries of strife, political turmoil, and bloodshed on an unimaginable scale. The period of disunity was ended not with some apocalyptic battle, but almost with a whimper. In a state of events strangely reminiscent of the end of the Three Kingdoms period, circa

280, once the ball really got rolling in one empire's favor, the contest was almost surprisingly quickly and with minimal fuss. As of mid-589, for the first time since 220 CE in anything but name, China was once more unified into a single, cohesive political state, with Emperor Wen at its helm. And my oh my, what a change had been wrought to the fabric of that empire. Whereas China of the Han Dynasty had been almost entirely an extension of the Confucian Han people of the Yellow River Valley, Sui-China of the late 6th century is a multi-ethnic conglomerate of Xiongnu, Han, Xianbei, and a multitude of other tribes now lorded over by a Sinicized clan of Xianbei descent. Moreover, China has gone from primarily Confucian, with a smattering of Taoism during the

Han, to an officially Buddhist state under Emperor Wen, with major sects of fundamentalist Taoists constantly vying for influence, and with Confucian thought as a distant third fiddle, only occasionally remembered or deemed relevant in this new age. From a geopolitical perspective, power and population had fundamentally shifted as a direct result of this three-century-running series of conflicts. Whereas before the fall of the Han dynasty, the banks of the Yangtze effectively marked the endpoint of Chinese hegemony and the beginnings of the southern barbarians, by the dawn of the Sui dynasty, the situation had almost completely reversed itself.

North of the Yangtze, once the very heartland of the Han people, is now dominated by peoples the Chinese once thought of as uncultured brutes, but who have by this point become so Chinese in dress, custom, and language that they're really difficult to tell apart without squinting hard. Meanwhile, the Han have been forced to relocate en masse to the southern banks of the Yangtze and have pushed ever further south. From this point onward, southern China will no longer be some uninhabited or uncivilized borderland, but will, thanks to the mass migration patterns the Age of Disunity brought, continue its ascent into the political, cultural, and economic powerhouse that will be more than capable of competing with the Yellow River Valley on equal footing from here on out. But that will have to wait for next time,

because it is here, at the closing of the six dynasties and the long-awaited reunification of the Chinese Empire, that we are going to leave off. Next time, the later reign of Emperor Wen of Sui and how he sought to now hold on to the crown jewel he'd conquered. Thank you for listening. 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

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