The History of China - #91 - Tang 9: Reign of Terror

Episode Date: February 29, 2016

With her husband dead, Empress Wu is unrivaled in Chang'an, but that situation is tenuous as she has no legal basis for that power. Her eldest (surviving) son will take up the throne as Emperor Zhongzong for... all of two months before she decides he's got to go. Her timid, youngest son will fit her style much better as Ruizong, but when the high lords of the realm are exposed as conspiring against her, she will unleash her full fury on their ranks, employing tactics and methods that will decimate the literati class. Time Period Covered: 683-686 CE Major Historical Figures: Empress Dowager Wu Zhao Li Xian (Emperor Zhongzong) [r. 684] Li Dan (Emperor Ruizong) [r. 684-689] Empress Wei Wei Xuanzhen Li Jingye [d. 684] Chancellor Pei Yan [d. 684] General Cheng Wuding, "Terror of the Turks" [d. 684] High Inquisitor Lai Junchen [d. 697] High Inquisitor Zhou Xing [d. 691] Monk Xue Huaiyi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 91, Reign of Terror When last we left our main narrative, Tong China was in a bit of a strange place. From the outside in, it seemed a juggernaut. Booming economy, peaceful populace, and a military that in 684 had just finished completely wiping the floor with the Turks, the Koreans, and even the Japanese, almost all simultaneously. Yet, from its center point, the outlook seemed far less stable and uncertain, a view held by many at the high echelons of government, and a feeling that they, and of many historians since, could squarely point at a single person was the Empress, Wu Zhao, who had spent the decades since her initial rise to power buying, bribing, banishing, and even killing whoever it took to stay on top. She had, through her own force of will, and with a big assist, it should be said,

from her husband's almost total lack of it, risen from lowly consort to co-equal ruler of the mightiest empire in the 7th century. All that, however, had rather suddenly, though not altogether unexpectedly, been thrown into doubt with the death of the third emperor of Tang, her husband Gaozong, in late 683. Empress Wu's power, after all, had always hidden itself behind the artifice of the emperor's will. To wit, she held no true formal power, and was still officially only recognized as the empress' consort,

Gaozong's primary wife, and nothing more. That's certainly not to say that anyone was deluded enough to believe such a contrivance, merely that Gaozong's departure opened up a vulnerability to Wu's stranglehold on imperial authority. The Empress, of course, knew that this day would inevitably come, and had made extensive preparations to minimize that window of vulnerability, allegedly going so far as to quietly dispose of those of her sons and the other imperial heirs who would not suit her whims. Strangely enough, her plans to maintain absolute and final authority of the Tang Empire were helped along by none other than the dying

emperor, Gao Zong, who from his deathbed issued an edict stipulating that the empress, soon to be the empress dowager, should be maintained and consulted on state decisions which the young heir could not decide for himself. From Professor Howard Weschler, He, Emperor Gaozong, must have been consciously ensuring that the political dominance which the Empress Wu had established during his own reign would be continued. Perhaps he had come to the conclusion that China, once again beset by serious troubles on the borders and by an internal financial crisis, would be better off under her firm, if ruthless, hand, than under a young and inexperienced ruler.

End quote. Now, if the imperial ministers who had had any designs on putting the honored Empress Dowager out to pasture once the new guy took the job, well, she wasted no time in showing in no uncertain terms that, no, no, this was still her game to run, thanks anyway. Gaozong's will had stipulated that, as with his own coronation, Crown Prince Li Xian ascend the throne before his father's coffin, in effect a kind of seamless transition of power. The emperor is dead, long with the emperor, sort of a thing. But Empress Wu had other ideas. Instead, she managed to delay the accession ceremony by a full week,

revealing both her ability to still manipulate the court proceedings as she saw fit, and also displaying her own misgivings about her son's suitability to the throne. You'll remember that this was the same son that she had personally selected for the role by killing off or exiling anyone who might have stepped in. Nevertheless, once Li Xian ascended as Emperor Zhongzhong, he quickly made it perfectly clear that he was every bit indeed his father's son, and in all the wrong ways. Like Gaozong before him, he had since fallen under the domination of his wife, who he proclaimed Empress Wei in the spring of 684.

The extent of this new Empress' control over her husband was made apparent less than a month after his coronation, when he declared that his father-in-law should be the rank of chief minister. This kind of upjumping was unwelcome for both the Empress Dowager as well as the existing heads of government. For Wu, because this young little empress Wei seemed conniving and controlling enough to potentially be capable of becoming a rival to her own supremacy. And for the imperial ministers, not only because it was darkly evocative of the in-law promotions that had helped sink the Han dynasty into chaos four centuries earlier, but even more so because they had been chomping at the bit to reassume their

traditional positions of authority once Wu Zhao had been shuttled off to retirement. But now, in this new Empress Wei, they saw the possibility of one dominatrix merely being replaced by a younger model. Of all the ministers to speak against the promotion of the Empress's father, named Wei Xuanzun, by the way, none was more vociferous than the Chancellor Peiyan, who put forth a pointed and angry protest against this action, as well as Emperor Zhongzhong's proposal to promote the son of his wet nurse to an imperial official rank. Emperor Zhongzhong's response to these loud protests by Chancellor Pei, however, would prove to be a crucial misstep. He shot back

angrily at the official, quote, and should I even wish to hand over the whole of the empire to Wei Xuanzhen? Who are you to tell me that I would be in the wrong? Of what concern to me is your wretched opinion? End quote. It was an imperial rebuke so forceful and so beyond the pale of courtly manners that Chancellor Yan quickly reported the outburst to the Empress Dowager Wu. And in it, she saw her chance to break free from the bonds of courtly propriety altogether. It was obviously a rhetorical statement. When the Emperor had said, should I decide to hand over the Empire to Wei, then how could I even be wrong?

He was merely asserting that his own royal, no, divine will was absolute and irrefutable. He knew this, Yan knew this, Wu certainly knew this, but she made the very deliberate decision to play grammar Nazi with her son instead. And so she chose to take this rhetorical outburst as a literal statement of intent, that is, that he was actually planning on ceding the throne to the Wei clan, which was, of course, treason. The Empress Dowager summoned the full imperial court to an open session, and then, in front of them all, charged her son, the sitting emperor of the Tang Empire, with treasonable intent against the realm.

Quite calmly, and with measure, she read the formal edict which deposed him from the throne, while palace guards, personally loyal to her, physically took hold of the sovereign and began dragging him from the throne itself. Zhongzong, who must have been absolutely flabbergasted at this turn of events, managed to struggle against the guardsmen and sputtered to his mother, what crime have I committed? To which the Empress Dowager cruelly replied, You said yourself that you wished to give the empire to Wei Xuanzhen. How could that not be a crime? Emperor Zhongzong, after less than two months on the throne, found himself summarily deposed and demoted to prince once more, and at last exiled to the furthest reaches

of Fang Prefecture. And all this for a guy who had never expected, nor had anyone expected for that matter, to become emperor at all. Quite the rollercoaster. And his ride isn't quite over yet, either. We will see the return of Zhongzong, eventually. For the conceivable future, however, we, and Tang as a whole, will have to deal with the Empress Dowager Wu Zhao, and solely her. From Professor of History Richard Guizhou of the University of Waterloo in Ontario,

quote, There was no doubt in the minds of contemporaries that power was in the hands of Wu alone. In 684, the only question was what further ambitions she harbored. Nor did the Empress seem concerned to allay suspicion. From the beginning, she had rejected the former conventions of female control, and after banishing Zhongzong and his pregnant Empress Wei to Fangzhou, presided openly at the administrative and ceremonial functions of the court, disdaining to even hang the curtain.

End quote. That last little bit about hanging the curtain, we talked about in episode 89, where during the reign of Gaozong, though she was effectively co-ruler, she nevertheless had to attend court proceedings hidden from view behind a veil. But that was no more.

Empress Wu was now a power in her own right, and it was high time everyone just up and got used to it already. There would be another male to sit on the throne, because of course there would. Wu wasn't quite ready to take that step just yet, and she did have a son to spare. This time it would be her fourth and youngest son, the compliant 22-year-old Li Dan,

who would ascend as Emperor Rui Zong. In him, Wu had finally found the perfect puppet who would jump when she told him to, and his position was ceremonial and devoid of power, as everyone had assumed hers would be following Gao Zong's death. At court, she would whisper commands for him to parrot as official edicts. He would appear at no official ceremonies, and wouldn't even occupy the official imperial quarters over the whole of his supposed reign, but instead remained virtually locked away within the inner cloister of the palace itself. At last able to truly rearrange things as she saw fit, Empress Wu got right to work.

She named her nephew, the heir of her father, as a wholly new title, Huangshu, meaning Emperor Expectant, an extremely alarming title to bestow on someone not of the Imperial Li clan, for sure. Even more, she then went on to establish seven new temples dedicated to her own ancestors, a privilege that had formerly been solely held by the emperor himself. That same year, she issued her own first Act of Grace, an official imperial edict stipulating anything from administrative changes to rewards of merit to pardons of convicted criminals. In Wu's 684 Act of Grace, she was making it clear that from here on out there were going to be some changes, starting with the drapes. No, seriously.

Henceforth, the banners of the realm would be changed to gold with violet trim, and certain ministers' official dress would be changed in kind. Luoyang, long the Empress's favored capital, would be further elevated from its status as secondary capital under Gaozong to the primary and sanctified capital. Its palace would be rendered the primary imperial residence and renamed Taichu, or Great Beginning. Moreover, and reflecting Empress Wu's deep and abiding concern with wording and symbolism, the act declared that certain of the empire's official posts held titles which were deemed defective. As such, they were to be renamed, with some hearkening back to titles of the fabled and perfect Zhou dynasty of old. Still others were to hold names created by the Empress

herself out of whole cloth, such as the Secretariat, now being called the Phoenix Court, the Chancellery, being renamed the Luan Terrace, which references a mythological bird, and the Censorate, now being called the Terrace of Circumspect Law. The signs were about as obvious as they could possibly be, and through the capital and across the empire, rumors began to spread that the Empress Dowager might be preparing to do the unthinkable, to usurp the throne and become a second coming of the bloody Empress of Han, Lu Zhi. And there were, to be sure, more than a few prepared to take whatever means necessary to ensure that she would never get the chance.

Most prominently were the increasingly marginalized members of the Imperial Li clan itself, many of whom had found themselves demoted and dispatched to the remote corners of the empire in the wake of the Empress's rise. They would band together under a man named Li Jingye in mid-684, at least nominally to restore the deposed Emperor Zhongzhong to the throne, though their true objectives remain rather fuzzy. To rally more to his banner, he ordered a declaration of rebellion be drafted and distributed to the neighboring prefectures. And it was truly epic, like something out of the climax of a movie. Here's part of what it said. It's a bit of a long quote, but I feel it really is worth listening to.

Quote, The woman, Wu, she who has falsely usurped the throne, whose nature is unpleasant and unyielding, and whose ancestry is truly obscure. Formerly, she was among the lowest ranks of Taizong's concubines, fit only to change his clothes. Yet as she grew, she brought disorder and strife into his august household by concealing her sexual proclivity with the sovereign from the heir apparent. With her mouth concealed behind her sleeve, she skillfully slandered the other women. With crafty flattery and perverse talents, she deluded the ruler. And so it was that she usurped the pheasant regalia of the empress, and in doing so, trapped our ruler in an incestuous relationship. With the heart of a viper and the nature of a wolf, she favored evil sycophants whilst destroying loyal and good officials.

She killed her own children, butchered her brothers, murdered the ruler, and even poisoned her mother. She is hated by gods and men alike. Neither heaven nor earth can bear her. Yet still she harbors disastrous intent and plans to steal the sacred regalia of the ruler himself. Thus I, Ling Jingye, former minister of Great Tang and eldest son of a noble family, have received the will of our former emperor. My spirit rises in anger like the wind and the clouds. My will is set upon restoring tranquility to the altars of soil and grain. I therefore raise the standard of righteous

rebellion in order to purify the empire of this baleful omen of disaster. We will join with the Yue people of the south and conscript from the Yellow River Valley in the north. And as the yellow flag rises above the banks of the Yangtze, how can any doubt that the restoration will be soon? At the sound of our iron-like horse's start, so too the north wind itself. Should we but whisper, mountains will crack, and if we are to yell out, the very winds and sky will change. As we use these to attack the enemy, which enemy could not be destroyed? As we seek to accomplish great feats with these, which accomplishment could be out of reach.

O Dukes of Tang, Emperor Gaozong's words are still in your ears. How can loyalty have possibly fled your hearts? The earth covering his tomb is not even yet dry. We may yet change misfortune to good fortune, and show homage to this dead emperor by serving his living successor. You should one and all arise and devote yourselves to acting for the ruler. Do not allow the former emperor's orders to amount to nothing. End quote. A stirring speech, and one so moving that even Empress Wu herself commended its literary style, commenting that her ministers had been fools to allow one as gifted with a pen as Li Jingye to have languished in obscurity out in the provinces

rather than putting him to better use in the capital. 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. She then, of course, went on to command a full strike against this would-be rebel leader, no matter how well-spoken he was, and go so far as to dig up the bodies of Li's father and grandfather from their tombs, strip the corpses

of their titles, and also revert their family name back to Shu, which they had changed to Li as part of a reward for having submitted to Emperor Gaozhu during his own rebellion against the Sui. Unfortunately for Jingye, he would turn out to be not nearly as good of a rebel leader as he was a speechcrafter. Professor Guizhou sums up his fate tersely as, quote, In spite of its skill, however, the Manifesto failed to attract much sympathy for the rebel cause, and the insurrection was crushed in less than three months. End quote. Gee, that is a tough audience. How could have that been the case, though? Reading that speech more than a millennia later gets

me a little pumped up now, so how could it have fallen so flat at the time? Well, much of the answer lies in who the manifesto was actually addressed to, versus who it really needed to have addressed. Li Jingye had directed his message towards the high lords of the realm, the imperial dukes. Meanwhile, Empress Wu had been devoting her time and energy, and even a hefty portion of her act of grace edict, to address the concerns of the peasantry. You know, the common people. She, for one, knew who buttered her bread, and she'd been sparing no effort in framing herself as an ardent populist

and winning the hearts of the people. So while Li was yammering on about military conscriptions and join-or-die rhetoric, the Empress was countering with an empire-wide policy of rewarding any and all who resisted the rebellion, and even offering amnesty for those who had been coerced into joining against their will and now wished to come back into the fold. No harm, no foul. In its first days, the rebellion of Li Jingye managed to attract some 100,000 men to its cause, but no more than a trickle came after that initial rush. And so, when the Tang Imperial Army, some three times the size of the rebel force, marched into Jiangsu in mid-684, there was little doubt on either side as to the outcome.

The imperial force used favorable wind conditions to light the dry grasses ablaze and wait for theferno to drive the rebel force out of their prepared positions. Reportedly, some 7,000 were killed in battle before the rebel army broke and fled, which is almost always when the truly gruesome part of any battle takes place. Thousands more drowned as they attempted to flee across a nearby river, while Li Jingye's own lieutenant, no doubt hoping that in doing so he could be pardoned for his role in the rebellion, turned on his commander and beheaded him. The rebellion was at its end, but it would, within the Empress's mind, plant seeds of paranoia that would begin to sprout as a result. And in the wake of the failed revolt, she would adopt a sweeping new policy towards the officials she now knew beyond any doubt would never accept her, and she could never trust. It would be a policy of terror. One of the very first victims of this reign of terror would

be Pei Yan, which you'll remember was the chancellor who had gone running to tattle on Zhongzong to the empress just a few scant months before. She now had become convinced that Pei was somehow connected to Li Jianye's cause, and ordered him arrested immediately. Brushing aside typical court policy and procedure, she had him summarily proclaimed guilty of treason, and then dragged out to the marketplace to be publicly beheaded. When his friend, a hero general named Cheng Wuding, who tellingly bore the nickname Terror of the Turks, protested this rash and clearly illegal action. He joined Pei in the dirt and was beheaded as well in front of his own troops, who could do nothing but watch in horrified silence. Following this stunning and bloody scene, Empress Wu convened her, yes, her, imperial court and addressed them all reproachfully.

Look at the stations you all hold. Who do you think you have to thank for that? I'll tell you who. Me. Me and no one else. And you'd do well to remember that with every single breath you draw. Then she brought up the topic of her three recently slain enemies, Li, Pei, and Cheng, stating with no veil whatsoever to the threat, quote, They were regarded as eminent, yes, but they were foolish enough to oppose my rule, and for that they have been destroyed by my will. If any of you believe yourselves superior to these three, then make your move straight away. If not, then reform your hearts and serve the throne, or else join them in the market square.

End quote. The ministers, to a man, kowtowed to the woman, who was inarguably their lord and master. Still, and in spite of this display of power, the Empress nevertheless wished to ensure that such treachery would never again threaten her reign, and so the reign of terror would go on to reach new heights. It would reach its most horrifying crescendo within the walls of the Censorate and Board of Justice, which in effect became the Empress's personal band of secret police, informants, and interrogators. At the head of the Censorates' secret police were two men, Lai Junchen and Zhou Xing, who would oversee some of the harshest interrogation methods

employed by those accused of crimes against the empire. Chillingly, they would go on to write the Luo Zhejing, known as the Classic of Accusation, which was in essence a 12-chapter how-to guidebook of how to most effectively frame someone for a crime and then force them to confess. The names of the techniques are telling and chilling. We have the Please Destroy My Family technique, the Begging for Death, the Dead Swine's Lament, the Breath Does Not Come, the impossible made reality, and the guts of the lost soul. I will leave the rest to your imagination. As with many of these forced confessions under torture, a key component was to get the accused to name others plotting treason,

which undoubtedly, after facing any or all of the techniques named before, they would have probably implicated the Buddha himself if it would have made the proceedings end. As such, entire families were massacred by the thousands as the waves of denunciations poured in and then compounded. This was furthered by another innovation of the Empress, the installation of bronze boxes in every city across the empire. Hueso describes them as, quote, A bronze urn was constructed, and anyone who wished could place in a message in one of its four openings. The first was for self-recommendations and schemes to improve agriculture or the people's welfare.

The second was for criticisms of the government. The third for complaints of injustice. And the fourth for omens, prophecies, and secret plots. The emperor's had likely installed these boxes with the intent of seeming more in touch with her people's feelings and wishes, another propaganda move, if you will, for her as the people's monarch. But it didn't take long at all for that whole system to devolve into that fourth opening and only that fourth opening, the one for anonymous and often false denunciations. Nevertheless, the idea of the anonymous dropbox for recommendations would remain a staple of the Tang for the remainder of its time in power. Before moving forward, I feel like I really shouldn't leave the two chief inquisitors to their horrific work, so let's briefly jump ahead and I'll tell you that they don't get off scot-free.

In 691, Inquisitor Zhou Xing would be invited to lunch by his co-worker, Lai Junchen. Lai asked him, once they had sat down, what seemed to be a fairly straightforward business question. Many of the accused, I process, are unwilling to confess. Tell me, Brother Zhou, what is the best method you know to extract confession? To this, Zhou confidently replied, that's easy. You take a big pot and you place it over a fire, and then you put the accused in the pot and start asking questions, and he will tell you everything in no time. Lai nodded approvingly and then ordered a large pot to be placed on a fire in the room, stood up, and stated to his surprised colleague,

I have received a secret command from Her Imperial Majesty regarding your activities that are in need of answers, Brother Zhou. I invite you to enter the pot. Zhou immediately knelt and confessed everything, anything, that Inquisitor Lai wished to know. And it turned out that Zhou had been right. It was a very effective interrogation method indeed. Ultimately, Zhou Xing would not face execution, but was instead exiled by the Empress. But en route, he was ambushed and killed by his enemies, which, let's be honest, given the nature of his grisly career, was probably everyone in the country. From that famous incident stems the Chinese phrase, literally meaning invitation to enter the pot, but today meaning catching someone in their own trap.

Lao Junchen would fare a little better, but not much. Though he would last until 697, he'd eventually grow a bit too big for his britches and begin harboring designs on the throne itself. In a likewise ironic twist of fate, he was duly informed on by his friend. He was found guilty and executed by being cut apart. And that is what we call poetic justice. But in a larger sense, what are we to make of this sweeping policy of torture, denunciation, and execution? Well, if we were to just go by the traditional historians like Sima Guang and his ilk, we would be forced to conclude, no surprise here, that Wu Zhao was some kind of demonic monster hellbent on death and destruction for its own sake. They really pull no punches.

Which is not to say that Wu's reign of the working class sticking it to the man, a view that, as we've discussed, has been pretty thoroughly discredited. Well, apart from them, there's not been anyone really willing to step up to the plate and defend the terror's egregious excesses and miscarriages of justice. Yet rather than seeing her as just an inhuman monster, it may be more helpful to view her policy in this regard through a combination of realpolitik authoritarianism and simply being misled by her underlings. In the case of the former, the terror was brutal, no question, but it served a very clear purpose, namely to weed out those in high office who would seek to undermine her, while simultaneously reminding everyone in the empire of the absolute, anytime, anywhere power

of the central authority. And of course, its head, which was Wu herself. Nor were the purges random, or affecting every level of society equally. It was laser-focused on the high officialdom, those in the fifth rank and above, who were, let's remember, viewed by the Empress as her sworn enemies who would do literally anything to stop her, so turnabout is fair play. Towards the peasantry, which is, again, to say the vast majority of the population, the Empress had remained magnanimous, even in the worst of the purges. And wouldn't you know it, when the latest batch of treasonous officials got their heads lopped off, there were new vacancies in government opening right up,

and the Empress was prone to distribute those open positions to the commoners, sometimes even illiterate ones at that, on a scale never before seen in imperial history. So, social mobility, yay! The policy of terror would likewise solidify her own hold on personal power within the court itself. Those officials, lucky enough not to be swept away into the censorious torture dungeons, were now walking on eggshells around the Empress. As such, there were none who could gain any meaningful sense of ascendancy before the throne, as had been the case with the chancellors

of Gaozong's reign, most irksomely Zhang Senwu Ji, who had so steadfastly worked against her in decades past. This change of ruling style was probably most shockingly displayed in 688, when one of her chancellors, Liu Weiqi, refused an edict on procedural grounds, namely the fact that it had not yet been ratified and stamped by his department, the Secretariat. He was right, but it didn't matter.

In sense that what she felt was the ingratitude of, quote, he to whom I have given employment, end quote, Wu immediately offered him the choice of either suicide or execution. The Empress would allow the terror to slacken with time, and even at its height did seem to have been genuinely concerned with at least the idea that it was justice being

administered and not just wanton carnage. Guizhou puts it, quote, Ultimately, she would order virtually all of her own secret police force to themselves be executed in 697, probably both to appease the growing tide of public hatred against them, but also, at least if we're to go by her own words, because she felt they had misled her into ordering unduly harsh punishments. Traditional historians have frequently pointed to Empress Wu's terror as proof positive that she was, by the mid-680s, definitely preparing to usurp the throne for herself. But there are signs, ignored by the likes of Sima Guang, that she might not have been so gung-ho about full usurpation as was believed, and may have been content to continue the puppet rulership through her son, Emperor Re Zong.

Yeah, remember that guy? In 685, for instance, she would plunge herself and her reign into public scandal when she, at age 61, took up her first of several lovers, a man named Huaiyi. He was neither duke nor prince, but was in fact a hulking, burly merchant of cosmetics and, wait for it, aphrodisiacs. When the affair between the sovereign and the merchant went public, she was forced to act swiftly. It was, after all, absolutely intolerable for an uncastrated man, who was not the emperor himself, to be in the inner sanctum of the palace, much less with one so holy as the Empress Dowager. Not wanting her boyfriend diminished in any sense,

she had him ordained as the abbot of the White Horse Temple, which is China's oldest and most prestigious Buddhist monastery. So I envision it as this great big muscle-bound fella, hard-living, hard-fighting, hard-drinking, aphrodisiac street merchant who's probably never read a sutra in his life, suddenly ordained as the head of the holiest temple in China. He's surrounded by quiet, ascetic monks who have largely renounced the pleasures of the flesh. Meanwhile, Abbot, Huayi, is going around punching everyone he meets in the arm, starting fights with his personal game of ruffians with Taoist monks, and of course riding his imperial steed off to the palace to show the Empress's little Buddha.

And she seems to have just been head over heels in puppy love with Huayi. She used just about any excuse to spend time alone with him, and was at pains to explain away his eccentricities to ministers who were justifiably irate at this trussed-up ruffian commoner with his merry band of bald-headed thugs, insulting them, lording over them, and violating laws all without consequence. In early 686, in fact, Empress Wu apparently was so off the wall about spending as much time as possible with Huaiyi that she called in her son, Rui cut down, and also remembered that time that his mom maybe probably killed his oldest brother, and then that other time where she did it again to his second brother, and said, wait a minute, is this a trick? This is a trick, right?

It's probably a trick. Ruizhong would decline the offer, opting to keep his head firmly attached to his shoulders and his food unpoisoned thanks very much. The monk Huaiyi would enjoy the empress's favor for more than a decade, and apart from servicing her personal needs, would also serve in roles as varied as a general against the revitalized eastern Turks, and even as the chief architect of the final stages of the Daming Palace's construction in Chang'an.

For today, though, that is where we will leave Tang China. Empress Wu otherwise occupied with her boy toy, but still firmly and utterly in control of the empire, and beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, she didn't need a puppet to sit on her throne for her anymore. Thank you for listening. The Civil War and Reconstruction was a pivotal era in American history. When a war was fought to save the Union and to free the slaves.

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