The History of China - #85 - Tang 4: The Wild West

Episode Date: December 26, 2015

1,000,000 show downloads!Emperor Taizong turns outward seeking to re-conquer the lost territories of the late, great Han at its height. But it’s easier said than done: to the west he’ll find that there’s a whole new cast of regional powers ready to stake their own territorial claims… meanwhile to the northeast, his rising ambitions about taking the Goguryeo Kingdom at any cost may lead him to follow in the ruinous footsteps of the Sui instead.And since it’s that time of the year, we’ll finish out with a look at China’s very first encounter with a strange monotheistic religion from the Roman Empire, calling itself Nestorian Christianity.Time Period Covered:634-649 CEMajor Historical Figures:Tang China:Li Shimin (Emperor Taizong of Tang) [r. 626-649]Retired Emperor Gaozu [d. 635]Empress Zhangsun [d. 636]Bod Chen Po (Tibetan Empire):Songtsen Gampo (King of Tibet)Tuyuhun Kingdom:Murong Fuyun KhaganMurong Shun KhanGoguryeo Kingdom:King Yeongyang [d. 618]King Yeongnyu [r. 618-642]King BojangDae Mangniji Yeon Gaesomun (Military Dictator)Others:Yazdegerd III (Shah-an-Shah of Sassanid Persia)Constans II (Emperor of Eastern Roman Empire)Monk Aluoban/Alopan/Abraham (Nestorian Christian Evangelist)Major Works Cited:East Asian History Sourcebook: Ch'ing-Tsing: Nestorian Tablet: Eulogizing the Propagation of the Illustrious Religion in China, with a Preface, composed by a priest of the Syriac Church, 781 A.D.Jenkins, Peter. The Lost History of Christianity: the Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia - and How It DiedSørensen, Per and Harrassowitz Verlog, Otto (trans.). The Mirror Illuminating the Royal Genealogies: Tibetan Buddhist Historiography : an Annotated Translation of the XIVth Century Tibetan Chronicle : RGyal-rabs Gsal- Baʼi Me-long.Weschler, Howard. The Cambridge History of China. “Taizong: The Consolidator”.Zhang, Guangda. Collected Drafts on the Historical Geography of the Western Regions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Last time, we left our beloved Emperor Taizong of Tang on a major high note, having managed to completely flip the script on the Eastern Turkic Khagan, which had long threatened his dynastic stability, and instead crushed the Turks utterly. Their chieftains had been brought to Chang'an, some literally in chains, and forced to kowtow to their new heavenly Khagan, while their peoples were scattered across northern China and their base of power ground to dust. Well, today we're going to be following along with the Tang armies as they exploit the heck out of the aftermath of the collapse of the eastern Turks, which means we're going to be spending a majority of our time in the wild and crazy unknown regions of the far west, which also means we're going to be dealing with, and conquering, a huge number of groups of people,

some of which will be familiar, and some of whom we, and the Chinese, will be encountering for pretty much the first time. So make no mistake, we have entered into a period of Chinese history that is just chock full of territorial expansion and all the splendor and glory and violence that accompany that. It's not for nothing that by many accounts, the reigns of Taizong, and all the splendor and glory and violence that accompany that. It's not for nothing that by many accounts, the reigns of Taizong and then his son are often thought of as the high-water mark of the Tang Dynasty, which is itself the second and final golden age of China's imperial history, the first, of course, being the early Han. In the middle and late 7th century, for the first time in a long time, life was good for the subjects of the Middle Kingdom.

So our first western neighbor to bump up against the Tang state is a group we've mentioned in passing back in the days of the Rouran Khanate of the 3rd century. But a catch-up is certainly in order. The Tuyuhun tribe were distant relatives of the Xianbei peoples that made up many of the northern coalitions and states during China's period of disunity. Following the collapse of Rouran authority in the late 3rd century, the Tuyuhun had taken the initiative and essentially seized the entirety of the Gansu Corridor to the west for themselves, and subjugated the native Qiang peoples who lived there and declared their own sovereign kingdom. And at that point, no one in China could do much of anything about it. Now, I mentioned that they held control over the Gansu Corridor, which ought to ring a few bells,

but just in case, that means the relatively narrow passage between the Tibetan Plateau of the south and the Huangtu Plateau of the north, that served as one of the few overland passages out of China itself and to the rest of Asia. During the Han dynasty's height, that had of course been a crucial zone of control for the establishment and subsequent use of the Silk Road trading route, which of course had long fallen out of regular use once Han authority had evaporated. But all that was changing under the meteoric rise of the Tang, and Taizong was beginning to eyeball the westward passage hungrily. For trade, yeah, sure. But much more importantly, he must have wished to recreate the glory of the Han. And then, of course, improve on that.

So, suffice it to say that the Tuyuhun kingdom was looking like a mighty fine little piece of real estate to gobble up circa 634. But the real breach would come that year, when Tu Yuhun envoys to Chang'an, who had come to pay tribute to the emperor, on their way home committed the grave sin of plundering Chinese territory. Howard Weschler writes of the incident, quote, Taizong summoned the aged Murong Fuyun Kagan to appear at court in person, but this summons went unheeded. When, as a result, the marriage of one of the Kagan's sons to a Tang princess was cancelled, the Tuyuhyun invaded northwestern China by way of reprisal,

end quote. Well, obviously that wasn't simply going to stand. But Taizong showed remarkable patience in the matter. He sent an emissary to once again summon the Khan to Chang'an, even re-agreeing to the interdynastic marriage on the condition that Fuyun Khan, you know, actually show up. But the elder Tu Yuhun monarch would not be swayed. His raids would continue, and relations would continue to slide rapidly towards war. By the end of 634, then, Taizong would be commissioning a large strike force under the dual command of Generals Li Jing and Hou Junji to deal out punishment to this most unreasonable of cons.

But Tang China was not the only potentially interested state in the Two-Year-Hyun. In her stage left, the Tibetans. Wait, you might be saying, the Tibetans? Where did they come from all of a sudden, and why haven't we seen them up until now if they're suddenly powerful enough to challenge a unified China? Ah, excellent question. And the answer is, well, it all seems to have been rather sudden.

The peoples of the Tibetan Plateau had, of course, existed for millennia at a minimum, but they had never been united as a true political faction, apparently right up until the ascension of a 12 or 13 year old boy named Songtsen Gampo. As the ruler of the area surrounding modern Lhasa, Songtsen Gampo is traditionally credited with introducing and then aggressively promoting Buddhism to the peoples of the area surrounding modern Lhasa, Songsen Gampo is traditionally credited with introducing and then aggressively promoting Buddhism to the peoples of the plateau. Over the course of the 620s, then, he would use a combination of battlefield victories and apparently deft negotiations with his neighbor tribes to rapidly unify the whole of the Tibetan plateau, a conquest empire that would be called Badchend Chán Pò by its own denizens,

but Chú Fán by their Chinese neighbors. A conquest empire that would be called Bàd Chán Pò by its own denizens, Chú Fán by their Chinese neighbors, but Tibet to us. Like the Tang Dynasty, Tibet also eyed the Tuyuhun as the next on this list of conquests, and had been aggressively courting the kingdom's vassal tribes over the early 630s. This is likely one of the reasons the Tuyuhyun kingdom had been behaving so erratically, simultaneously demanding that the Tang emperor ally his state with them through marriage, while also raiding Chinese territories. It was, under intense pressure, caught almost in a literal vice between the twin hungry empires of Tang China and Tibet, when his Khan would do virtually anything to escape.

With the death of the Khagan, Prince Murong Xun, at the imperial palace as a ward and, if times called for it, a political hostage for the good behavior of his vassal. But that political pawn had, with the death of his elder father, suddenly jumped up rather tremendously in value, a potential kingpiece. Emperor Taizong recognized and gave support to Xun's claim to the throne of Tu Yehun and rushed him back to his homeland to take up the Khanhood. Xun would head a group of Tu Yehun nobility and kill his half-brother, whom their father had named the heir once Xun had been left to the care of Chang'an. With his claim to the Khanate now effectively uncontested, Murong Xun turned

right around and offered his people's surrender and submission to the Tang court. Emperor Taizong happily accepted this, and confirmed his double-agent prince as the rightful ruler of the Tuyuhyun, trusting that his Chinese upbringing would continue to translate into loyalty toward the Tang state. But the would-be Khan had been away from his people, his customs, and his homeland for a long time, quite possibly almost his entire life, and it wasn't for nothing that his father had passed him over for succession. The very traits that Emperor Taizong had found so useful in Murong Xun to be a puppet Khan, i.e. his affinity for Chinese culture and tastes, would prove to be his undoing. The Tiyu-Hun were, after all, a proud people who held no great regard for the Sinitic neighbor to the east, and could not respect a would-be leader who so openly adhered to such an alien way of life.

Between 634 and 635 then, rather than stabilizing the political situation within Gansu, Murong Xun's reign only rocked the boat further, culminating with his own inner circle of advisors assassinating him that same winter. Well, so much for that plan. The Tiyu-Hun kingdom, caught as it were between the rising powers of Tang and Tibet, would for the time being remain on the fence, both literally acting as a barrier point as well as a political chess piece. The Tang armies would repeatedly be dispatched to finally bring this wayward region to heel, but with little overall success due to the factors that had initially stymied their advance in the first place, namely the horsemen's high mobility and use of the countryside. And as for the Tibetan designs on the region, well, they weren't ready

to make an overt move against Tang interests, and as such were content to play the long game for now. The years following the action at the end of 635, then, would actually remain pretty quiet for China, both in terms of foreign affairs and even internal affairs. In the spring of 635, Taizong's father, the retired Emperor Gaozhu, at last passed away at the age of 69, having taken ill sometime before. This would prompt Emperor Taizong to enter a period of official state mourning, though his own personal work ethic proved unquenchable enough that he would emerge only a few months later to take up the reins of state yet again. The following year would deal yet further loss to the emperor, when in the fall of 636, his primary wife,

the Empress Zhangsun, died at the age of 34 or 35. It is written that she apparently had suffered from severe asthma for much of her life, and the condition had worsened in the prior few years. Prior to her death, she wrote a farewell letter to her husband, telling him, among other things, quote, During my lifetime, I made no contributions to the people, and I should not harm them in my death. I hope that you will not build a tomb to cause the people to labor and the empire to waste resources. Make a hill my tomb, and use only brick or wooden implements in the tomb.

I hope that your imperial majesty will continue to be close to honest men and stay away from those lacking virtues, that you will accept faithful words and reject wicked flattery, that you will decrease labor and stop hunting. Even as I go into the underworld, if these things happen, I will have no regrets. It is not necessary to summon the sons and daughters back here. If I see them mourn and cry, I will only be saddened." For his part, Taizong sadly stated when he learned of his wife's passing, It is not that I do not know the will of heaven and mourn uselessly, but now, when I enter the palace, I can no longer hear her corrective words.

I have lost a wonderful help, and I cannot forget her. He would prove unable to carry out her wishes for a simple, unadorned tomb, but instead ordered a full imperial ceremony befitting her rank, wherein she was given the posthumous name of the Civil, Virtuous, Serene, and Holy Empress. Nevertheless, he did try to curtail the expenditures as much as possible to attempt to honor what she would have deemed appropriate. And, in a display of how much he cared for his empress wife, even more than a decade after her passing, Kaizong would ultimately be interred with her

in her relatively simple tomb once he died in 649. Nevertheless, the building tension between Tang China and the Tibetan Empire would continue to mount, ultimately coming to a first head in 638. This incident would come about as the result of the Tibetan king Songtsen Gampo learning through his emissaries to Chang'an that apparently the Tang emperor was predisposed to giving imperial princesses to the powerful foreign leaders as pacts of alliance. Looking around and thinking to himself, well, I don't see anyone around here who's more powerful than me, Song Teng quickly got it into his head that a Chinese princess bride would be just sort of the thing that he'd like this year. And so, on his next diplomatic mission to Chang'an,

his envoys made that perfectly clear. They paid additional tribute to the Tang Emperor, and reiterated that a Heqin marriage alliance was their objective, as it had been since 634 on their initial mission. Taizong, however, had been rather too preoccupied with the Tuyuhyun, to by that point have gotten around to answering their request directly. Emperor Taizong was, by all accounts, initially predisposed to granting the Tibetan monarch's request. He had, after all, no shortage of princesses, or at the very least girls he could dress up like princesses before sending off, to placate any number of neighboring powers. But at this, the

emissary of the Tiyu-Hun interceded, apparently slandering the Tibetan king and leading Taizong to change his mind about the whole arrangement. Now, this point is contentious. Older sources tend to support these slanderous claims, while other more recent scholars like Horowitz and Sorensen dismiss them as blatant falsehoods. But whatever the actual reality, it seems clear that Songtsen Gampo believed what his emissary told him, and resolved to make both the Chieh-Hun and the Chinese pay for their perceived slight. From the 14th century Tibetan chronicle called The Mirror Illuminating the Royal Genealogies, quote, the Tibetan king sent an envoy to China to ask for the emperor's daughter,

but the Chinese emperor refused to give the daughter in marriage, and the envoy had to return empty-handed to Tibet, where he, however, falsely reported to the king, the Chinese emperor is highly fond of us Tibetans and was about to give the girl in marriage. But when the Yellow Uyghurs, which is the Tibetan name for the Tuyuhun, arrived and gave slandering reports about us Tibetans to the Chinese emperor,

they instead took away the princess. End quote. Personally leading his plateau armies, King Songsen deployed against both opposing states with a massive army. The Tibetan Chronicle lists Songsen's armies as numbering some 100,000, while Chinese histories, as ever with their penchant for wildly inflating military numbers, went ahead and doubled that number to 200,000 strong. After all, it's best to cast yourself as much of an underdog as possible when writing histories, right? The Tuyuhun were rapidly overwhelmed by the Tibetan force,

and their Khagan and the remainder of their kingdom was forced to abandon their defensive lines and flee north to the banks of Qinghai Lake. The Tibetan strike force then turned against Tang, striking at Songzhou City in modern Sichuan, which then served as an outpost abutting the Tibetan territories. Songshan's armies handily defeated the local defense force sent against them from Songzhou, which then promptly shut its gates tight and dispatched riders to Chang'an as fast as their little hooves could carry them to plead for imperial assistance while the attackers took up siege positions around the city. Emperor Taizong, understandably alarmed at this completely unexpected turn of events, at now being

attacked by this previously unknown, oh, what were they called again? Tibetans? Dispatched at once an imperial army under the command of four of his top generals to beat back this unprecedented barbarian incursion. Once the Tang force arrived outside of Songzhou, they had to figure out a way to breach the Tibetans' formidable defenses and drive them back from the city gates. One of the force's sub-commanders, General Ngo Chi-in-da, proposed a daring nighttime raid against the encamped, besieging force, which was quickly agreed to by his other generals. Under the cover of darkness, a Tang strike force led by General Ngo infiltrated the Tibetan siege camps and commenced

with a slaughter, inflicting heavy casualties on the invading force. Owing to this unexpectedly stiff resistance, Song Tsanggampo lost his nerve and called off his campaign, retreating back to the Tibetan highlands. Nevertheless, he had proved his point to the Chinese imperial court. In the words of Weschler, Although the attack was beaten off, the Chinese realized that they had to contend with a new and formidable neighbor. Thereafter, the Tibetan king would once again seek rapprochement with the Tang emperor, sent yet more jewels and gold as tribute to the majesty of China, and again repeated his request that Taizong send him a Chinese princess to wed.

This time, now much better understanding of the power and ferocity of this previously unknown power to the southwest, Taizong made no bones about it and readily agreed to the union. Still, it would be a further two years before the marriage was followed through upon. In early 641, Song Sengangpo sent his prime minister, Gar Tongtsen Yulsung, to finalize the agreement and pay the bride price. Emperor Taizong had already selected the daughter of one of his clansmen, whom he dubbed the Princess Wencheng, but was so impressed with the conduct and behavior of his clansmen, whom he dubbed the Princess Wencheng, but was so

impressed with the conduct and behavior of the Prime Minister Gar Tongtsen that he gave another of his clansmen's daughters, the Lady Duan, to him as a bride, in spite of the Prime Minister's protestations that, hey, I'm already married. Ah well, three's company too. Princess Wencheng and her royal retinue were escorted back to Laja and married at last to King Chongzhangangpo, solidifying a Sino-Tibetan alliance that would hold firm for more than two decades. As per custom, Tibetan nobles were sent to Chang'an both to study Chinese customs and knowledge, as well as to serve as effective hostages for their kingdom's good behavior. This alliance would also see the

technological transference of the knowledge of papermaking, silk manufacture, millworking, and winemaking to the Tibetan plateau, though that wouldn't occur until early in the reign of Taizong's eventual successor. Nevertheless, the court of Taizong's Tang Empire, in spite of the lesson learned at Songzhou, would never fully comprehend the sheer scale and threat that the Tibetan Empire would come to pose for its grip on East Asia. In spite of the peace, at least for now, to the southwest, Emperor Taizong's westward gaze was undeterred. Following the conclusion of the marriage alliance with Tibet, his next interest would be the regions that had marked the furthest extent of Han dynastic control at its height, Xiyu, the far western territories in modern Xinjiang. Now, since the collapse of the eastern Turkic Khaganate,

the Xiyu kingdoms had largely reverted to dominion of the western Turks, though some, most notably the regionally powerful Xueyantou and Uyghur Confederation, which lay just north of the Turin Basin, had at least partially resisted full vassalage to the western Khagan and retained at least nominal independence. They had in fact managed to use the collapse of the eastern Turks to their advantage by moving in and occupying much of the territories that had formerly been subject to Turkic domination, all the way to the Ordis Loop of the Yellow River. Nevertheless, in 641, Ni Shoyanto Khan made what would prove to be a fatal mistake.

He took out a hit on Emperor Taizong's life. The assassin would fail in his task, prompting the Tang to once again become belligerent to the Shoyanto, and engaging in a running series of wars to remove them from Chinese lands altogether. At this, the Uyghurs realized that they'd hitched their horse to the wrong wagon, and promptly defected to the Tang, which would prove to be one of the wisest decisions ever, since instead of being subjugated or destroyed, Taizong would frequently turn to the Uyghur chieftains to appoint as the regional heads of conquered western territories. By the new year of 640, a Tang army had pushed westward into the wastelands of Xinjiang and laid the Xueyantou base of operations,

a region known as Karakoja, or also known as Gaochang, to siege. Though their Khan initially sought relief from the western Turks, none would prove forthcoming, and so he was forced to surrender. Rather than keeping the state intact as a vassal, Emperor Taizong instead annexed and divided the territory into two prefectures, Xi and Ting, respectively. In order to ensure that his rule was carried out and his new domains remained firmly under the Tang's thumb, he would establish a protectorate general, charged with pacifying the region and ensuring compliance with Tang dictums. In order to better defend the far-flung region, he then ordered that all conflicts whose sentences had included exile were to have their sentences commuted to joining the Protectorate Army

to defend the western regions for a period commensurate with their original sentence, and that all those in the empire condemned to death were instead to have their sentence commuted to permanent resettlement in Xiyu. With a military foothold firmly established in the Tarim Basin for the first time since the fall of the Han, the Tang sought to capitalize on this opportunity. The collapse of the Eastern Turks and the division of the Western Turks provided the region with enough instability that the Chinese armies were able to relatively easily push further westward, seizing or turning into vassals many of the oasis states scattered on the fringes of the vast shifting sands of the Taklamakan Desert.

Hi everyone, this is Scott. If you want to learn about the world's oldest civilizations, 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. The kingdom of Karasar, also called Yangqi, had pledged fealty to the Tang as early as 632. But when this throne was usurped in 644 by a Turkic loyalist, the Tang Western army moved in to reassert direct control. By 648, not only was the usurper dead

and the loyalist Tang vassal government re-established, but an even more direct form of Chinese control had been placed in Karasar, the first of what would ultimately be the four garrisons of Anxi, or Western Peace. By late January the following year, the first of what would ultimately be the Four Garrisons of Anxi, or Western Peace. By late January the following year, the neighboring kingdom of Qucha was likewise surrounded by Tang troops and forced to submit to its might. It should be noted, however, that more recent scholarship has cast doubt on the idea of Tang firmly establishing its direct control over the Tarim Basin quite so early. And 20th century historians such as Zhang Guangda in his publication Collective Drafts on the

Historical Geography of the Western Regions asserts that we should push back direct control of the Tang, or the establishment of the four garrisons, by about a decade, to sometime between 658 and 660. That is beyond the scope of our episode today, but never fear, we will return to the Tang exploits of the far west in an episode or two. For now, though, we're going to return once again to the northeast of China to look at the last and perhaps most infamous of Taizong's attempted conquests for the Tang, Goguryeo, the Korean kingdom. Now, you'll remember that the Tang dynasty's predecessor state, the Sui, had tried, tried again, and then again, to storm the defenses of little Goguryeo, but had found that between the natural hardships of the Manchurian landscape

and the dogged defenses of the Koreans themselves, it had proved a hard target indeed. It had ultimately been the tremendous strain of Emperor Yang of Sui's repeated expeditions to take Goguryeo that had seen the disintegration of Sui rule altogether. However, the establishment of the Tang dynasty in 618 had just so happened to coincide with the death of Goguryeo's obstinate King Yongyang, who had just been such a thorn in the side of Sui. His replacement with his younger half-brother, King Yongnyu, provided a unique opportunity. The simultaneous changing of the guards for both China and Korea greatly facilitated reconciliation between the two states. And by 619, Goguryeo had once again recognized de facto Chinese suzerainty over them,

and duly sent tribute to the court of Chang'an. Some three years later, relations would be further healed between the two when King Yongnu agreed with Emperor Gaozhu's suggestion that they should conduct a mass prisoner exchange for those captured on both sides of the Sui-Goguryeo Wars. Supposedly, some 10,000 Chinese subjects were repatriated to Tang, though a sizable number chose to remain in Goguryeo, as they'd voluntarily emigrated there during the Sui's collapse and didn't see much of a reason to return to what at that point was still a highly unstable Chinese state. Nevertheless, in spite of the friendly relations between the two, this new Korean king wasn't about to take any chances.

Weschler writes, During the 620s, moreover, Goguryeo prudently began the construction of massive fortifications along the western bank of the Liao River to guard against the possibility of renewed Chinese invasion of their territories. This defensive line took ten years to complete. As the old saying goes, after all, good fences make good neighbors. Not that they need have worried. After all, over almost the whole of Gaozu's reign of Tang, he was primarily concerned with internal rebellions and stabilizing his newborn regime. He wasn't about to go gallivanting off to Korea once again, as he had

seen firsthand the devastation that little misadventure had caused the guy who came before him. During the period of peace then, King Yongnyu used the breathing space offered to recover from the massive toll the war had also taken on his own lands and people, and later to strike southward into the Korean peninsula to recover those territories Goguryeo had lost to the South Korean kingdoms of Silla and Baekje, while it had been busy fending off the Sui armies. But with the ascension of Emperor Taizong to the throne of Tang, a new attitude progressively began to seize the Chinese monarch and government. As we've been discussing over the course of this episode, markedly unlike the inward-looking and cautious Gaozhu, Taizong proved himself to be aggressive, bold,

and expansionistic, and with clear designs on restoring the former glory of the Chinese empire to all of its former holdings. From Wechsler again, quote, As Taizong grew more confident of Tang military power, and as the Chinese economy recovered, the memory of Xue Yangdi's disastrous failure in Goguryeo gradually became an obsession and a challenge for him. End quote. By the year 641, he was heard to be openly discussing the possibility of once again invading the kingdom, positing that a combined land and sea assault would be able to overwhelm the Koreans' defenses, which is a tune I'm sure you'll recall we have heard before.

The following year would provide the incident that would ultimately serve as the nominal Cass's belly for reigniting hostilities between China and Korea, though it seems entirely likely that this was simply the most convenient excuse to present itself, and just about anything would have done in a pinch. But, such as it were, the incident that would nominally touch off the Goguryeo-Tong wars would be an assassination within Goguryeo itself. King Yongnyu had apparently been plotting with several of his own court members to off a general he had felt had grown a little bit too big for his britches. This general, named Yeon Ge-seomun, found out about the assassination plot against him

and did what probably any of us might do in return. He planned to kill Yongyu right back. In late 642, then, General Yong acted first, staging his coup against King Yongyu and killing him, along with more than 100 of his supporters. In his place, he had given the throne to the young son of yet another royal brother, who would take the title of King Bojang. In reality, though, he was little more than a puppet controlled by General Yun, who bestowed upon himself the title of Daemangniji, meaning in effect Generalissimo, or military dictator, and seized overall authority over the kingdom's government. This presented sufficient pretext for war against Goguryeo,

since not only had Yunyu been an ally and a vassal of the Tang, and thus his usurpation justified a response from the suzerain, but even more so because Generalissimo Yeon's political stance was far more hardline and anti-Tang than the deposed former monarchs. Yeon had, after all, been the commander in charge of the construction and oversight of the defensive line opposite the Tang border, and he immediately began to plot a course for Goguryeo that pursued a policy of greater independence from China. Emperor Taizong, however, did not immediately leap on this pretext for war, in spite of multiple urgings from his court officials to do so. Instead, he reminded the more hawkish of his advisors that in order to conduct a successful war against the Korean kingdom,

the Tang armies would need to go through northeast China to get there, a region which even after more than two decades remained fairly pulverized by the destruction and economic hardships that the Sui Wars had inflicted on the region. The emperor then wished to play the long game and make sure that the time was right before committing himself to what could very well be a ruinous boondoggle like it had come before. The Goguryeo generalissimo, however, would prove to be far less cautious than his Chinese counterpart, and would force the issue less than two years later. In late 643, an emissary from the Silla kingdom of the southeast Korean peninsula and a vassal of Tang reported that a newly re-militarized Goguryeo had struck an alliance with the third Korean kingdom, Baekje, to jointly attack Silla. Troubling though that was, what really struck Taizong's nerve was the fact that since both Baekje and Goguryeo were belligerent

to Silla, its king could no longer send tribute to Chang'an as all routes were cut off. Well, that simply would not do. Emperor Taizong tried to reason with General Isimoyon, sending envoys of his own to persuade the military dictator to halt its aggression against its southern neighbor and, nudge nudge, Tang vassal state, by the way. General Yon, however, responded by throwing one of the Tang emissaries in prison, which, you know, pretty much ended the time for peaceful negotiations. Emperor Taizong in turn locked up the Goguryeo emissaries to Chang'an, turnabout is fair play after all, and determined that he would personally lead an expeditionary

strike force into Goguryeo and, hopefully, manage to avoid the pitfalls that had devoured the Sui. In response to this course of action, his court advisors overwhelmingly turned and said something to the effect of, what, are you crazy? From the Cambridge History of China, quote, Zhang Sunwuxi, the emperor's closest advisor, was vehemently opposed to any expedition, while Qu Suiliang remonstrated violently against the emperor taking personal command of the army, end quote. For them, this looked to be almost an exact repeat in the making of the disastrous Sui invasion of Goguryeo, whose second emperor had likewise taken personal command of the imperial army,

and not for the better. Continuing the passage, quote, The only chief minister who appears to have favored the invasion was Li Shixi, Taizong's most powerful general, who reminded the court that when previously the court had not taken strong steps against their adversaries, they had later regretted it. But in spite of the overwhelming disapproval of his officials, Taizong would not be dissuaded. He was going to move forward on his plan of action. Historical parallels be damned.

By the winter of 644, Tang mobilization to the Goguryeo border was in full swing, and Emperor Taizong himself began to make his way northward, wintering in Luoyang. There he issued an edict justifying the actions he was about to take against Goguryeo, namely that General Yuan, quote, was a regicide and a tyrant, and his attack on Silla, a loyal Tang vassal, had to be punished, end quote. And that was all well and good from a PR standpoint. But of course, his actual motivations for following the ruinous path of Yang of Sui were rather more nuanced. Weschler expounds, quote, In fact, other factors were probably far more important in producing his obsession with Goguryeo.

Simple dynastic ambition, to succeed where Yangdi had failed, and to restore what had once been Chinese territory, played a part. So too did strategic considerations, for there was a risk of Goguryeo unifying the whole Korean peninsula, and it was in China's interest to keep Korea divided and prevent any alliance with the Malgao of the eastern Manchuria or with Japan, end quote. There was also quite possibly the personal need Taizong felt to get away from the capital following a deeply troubling succession crisis that had occurred the previous year, but we'll leave that for next episode to expand upon. The following spring, Taizong set out for Goguryeo at the head of a force of some 60,000 troops, while another 43,000 sailed across the Yellow Sea as a marine force

consisting of 500 ships purpose-built for the invasion, and aimed directly at the Goguryeo capital, Pyongyang, which they planned to besiege from the sea. Initial contact with the Korean lines proved far more encouraging than those of Emperor Yong some 20 years prior. Rather than immediately bogging down against the defensive barriers along the Liao River, the Tang armies led by Taizong were able to rapidly overwhelm and seize the region of Liaodong, including its primary fortress at Laoyang, in the fifth month of 645. This was impressive, specifically because Laoyang Fortress had remained steadfast against all of the Sui Dynasty's assaults.

But that initial success would prove fleeting, and once again the curse of Manchuria seemed to rear its ugly head against the Chinese invaders. Rather than plunging southward to reinforce the sea invasion of Pyongyang, Taizong made the strategic decision, what many historians after the fact have determined was a major strategic blunder, to instead besiege the relatively minor but well-defended city of Ansi, which lay a relatively short distance southwest of Liaodong. Markedly unlike the rapid collapse of Liaoyang, Ansi held fast against the Chinese

siege, patiently awaiting the imminent arrival of Korea's greatest defensive ally, General Winter. Seemingly no closer to taking Ansi by late autumn than he'd been in the late spring, and with the icy chill of death beginning to blow in the increasingly cold air, Taizong reluctantly called off his siege of An Si and ordered his armies to withdraw to their winter quarters. But it would prove too little too late. During the Tang army's withdrawal, they'd nevertheless be caught in a terrible blizzard that claimed the lives of several thousand men. Even Taizong himself could not escape the ill-fated invasion unscathed.

Possibly as a result of this blizzard, he would take ill, an affliction that he seems to have never fully recovered from. In the end, Emperor Taizong would never live down his ill-advised, ill-fated attempt to claim Guguryeo, but that by no means meant he didn't try. General Isamu Yon took the opportunity presented by the Tang army's dismal showing in Manchuria to rub the Chinese emperor's nose in his own failure, becoming even more arrogant in his dealings with the Tang, detaining yet more of its emissaries, and redoubling his efforts to invade and conquer Silla. In the face of such impudence, Emperor Taizong launched a second expedition in 647, with somewhat more positive but still inconclusive results.

The Tang army was once again able to seize some territory from the Koreans, and this time even defeated the Goguryeo royal army in a large-scale set-piece battle. Nevertheless, winter once again forced the Chinese back, and most of the gains that had been made were lost yet again. By this point, Taizong's determination had turned into unhealthy obsession. In late 647, Taizong ordered the construction of an enormous battle fleet from the shipyards of the upper Yangtze River in Sichuan. The cost and labor was forcibly imposed on the local populace, and proved so onerous on the local people that it even sparked a minor rebellion. This obsession with conquering Korea, the little kingdom that could, seemed to be with Taizong, as it had with Yang of Sui,

be consuming the emperor of China completely, and threatened, perhaps, to once again destabilize his entire dynastic rule. In early 648, Taizong announced that he was going to raise a force of some 300,000 soldiers to commence an all-out invasion of the peninsula in a do-or-die decision point for the Tang. He would take Korea, damn it, or he would die trying. And, as it turned out, it would be the latter. Taizong would die before he conquered Goguryeo, though not on the battlefield in the middle of his grand invasion or anything like that. Instead, disease took hold of him in the summer of 649, perhaps a worsening of the illness he'd caught in the blizzard of 645, though some scholars point to the possibility of a reaction to pills he'd been given by his

royal alchemists. Regardless of the reason, though, he would slip into a coma and swiftly die on the 10th of July, 649, in the summer Sui Wei Palace, at the age of 51. Perhaps as one of the greatest and most successful monarchs to ever rule China, which he had done so with amazing unprecedented success for 23 years. He had, upon consolidating his power and his dynasty's hold on China and East Asia, commissioned a series of six panels called the Zhaoling Liaojun, or the Six Steeds of Zhao Mazhalium, to extol his virtues and accomplishments as the Emperor of Tang. These panels, emblazoned with the images of his favorite horses, were moved upon his interment

to the spirit path on the northwest side of his tomb. Altogether they read, quote, Since I was engaged in military campaigns, those war chargers which carried me rushing on the enemy and breaking their lines, and which rescued me from perils, their true images should be portrayed on stone and be placed left and right of my tomb to demonstrate the righteousness of curtain and cover. End quote. Nevertheless, in spite of his tremendous victories against the Turks, the Tuyuhun, and his reconquest of the long lost western regions, his final, unfulfilledquest of the long-lost western regions. His final, unfulfilled goal of at last taking Goguryeo remained unfulfilled, and a bitter taste on his tongue to the very end. His Tang Empire, and his designs on the Korean peninsula, would

be left to his son and heir. Though, strangely enough, not his first son, nor his second, nor his third, but curiously enough his ninth son, Li Zhi. But more on that strange little wrinkle next time. Before we leave off, though, it's important to take the time to note that though he virtually duplicated the failure that cost the Sui dynasty its throne and plunged China into civil war, Taizong's own military misadventures in Goguryeo was not nearly the existential crisis that Sui's failure had been. Howard Weschler notes, quote, The disastrous campaigns against Goguryeo, for all the shadow they cast upon Taizong himself, did little to reduce the growing power of the Tang in Asia. As the frontiers of the empire expanded and its prestige soared, tribute began to pour into Chang'an from

remote peoples like the Kuli Khan, living far to the north of China, perhaps in central Siberia, and the Kyrgyz, a Caucasian people with red hair, blue eyes, and tall stature, living in the area east of the Urals. End quote. Likewise, ambassadors arrived from far and wide, from strange new kingdoms few in the Middle Kingdom had ever heard or even dreamed of, all drawn to the city of eternal peace by the rising might of the Tang. In 638, for instance, what would prove to be the final Shah and Shah of Sassanid Persia, Yazdegerd III, sent to Chang'an his son Firuz, likely to request Chinese aid against the

Arabs who were by then attacking his kingdom. sent to Chang'an his son, Firuz, likely to request Chinese aid against the Arabs, who were by then attacking his kingdom. Taizong ultimately refused, though, and Yazdegerd and his dynasty would perish. Later on, in 643, Taizong received yet another ambassador from the kingdom of Fulin, or as we might better know them, the governor of the Byzantine province of Syria, which was believed to have been sent by the Eastern Roman Emperor Constans II. Far from being some remote, insular, or unknown empire of East Asia, by the time of the Tang Dynasty and its second emperor, Taizong, the capital city of China had become a truly international metropolis. It received diplomats from all over Asia, housed numerous minorities of peoples of many races, and its schools and monasteries educated the sons of the royal families of Goguryeo,

Silla, Baekcha, Tibet, and even Karakosha. Along with the influx of foreign peoples came foreign goods, entertainments, customs, and religions. So, given that the winter solstice is upon us once more, I figured that we would close out today with a little seasonal, historical cheer. Buddhism, of course, was by this time so long established in China that we wouldn't even consider it a foreign religion, really. But an even stranger belief system had begun to be introduced during the reign of Taizong, one that venerated neither Buddha, nor the Tao, nor even one's own ancestors, but instead told of a single creator deity who, stranger yet,

had descended to earth and walked it as a mortal man. This bizarre Western import, dubbed by the Chinese as Jidujiao, you might better know as Christianity. According to the Stele of the Propagation in China of the Luminous Religion of the Roman Empire, although rather more manageably called the Stele of the Luminous Religion, or simply the Nestorian Stele, was erected in the year 781, although it would be buried again during one of China's periodic bouts of anti-Buddhist, anti-foreign purges, and in fact

would not be rediscovered until the late Ming Dynasty. The Nestorian Stelae chronicles over some 1900 characters, the previous 150 years of Christian faith in Tang China, and documents its introduction to the Middle Kingdom as occurring in the ninth year of Emperor Taizong's reign, and therefore the year 635. The Nestorian Syriac monk, whose name is phoneticized on the stele as A-luo-bun, is commonly written as Alapan, though the name may in fact be a phoneticization of the name Abraham. Regardless, he was the leader of the expedition that arrived in Chang'an and established formal relations with the Tang sovereign. His entourage brought with them holy

books and sacred images, and were welcomed by Taizong, who himself favored religious toleration and openness. The emperor not only allowed the monks to open a mission, and later dozens of subsidiaries, but to also propagate their faith, and ordered that Chinese translations of their holy books be made at once for further study. Christianity would remain an accepted religious faith within the Tang Empire for a further two centuries until it, like the stele that had documented its arrival, would be deemed unsuitable for an influence and purged from the kingdom in the 10th century. The faith would remain prescribed in China until the rule of the Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan in the late 13th century. But as we sign off for this December 25th, it seems appropriate that we pay our respects to the Persian Nestorian monks

who braved the rigors and the dangers of the Silk Road to bring the Church of the East to the Far East in this mid-7th century. So, shengdang kuaila to all, and to all a good night. And as always, thank you for listening. History isn't black and white, yet too often it's presented as such. Grey History, the French Revolution is a long-form history podcast dedicated to exploring the ambiguities and nuances of the past. From a revolution of hope and liberty to the infamous reign of terror, you can't understand the modern world without understanding the French Revolution. So search for the French Revolution today.