The History of China - #92 - Tang 10: Sage Mother, Divine Sovereign

Episode Date: March 6, 2016

A white stone bearing a prophecy tells of an era of eternal prosperity, a disastrous rebellion spells the doom of the majority of the imperial Li Clan, an obscure sutra tells of the reincarnation of a goddess to rule over the world, the written word itself is altered to fit the times… all of these are will fit together today to explain how and why the 66-year-old Empress Dowager of Tang will manage to become the first and only woman Emperor of China in the year 690. Time Period Covered: 689-693 Major Historical Figures: Empress-Regnant Wu Zhao of Zhou, Sage Mother, Divine Sovereign, Maitreya the Peerless [r. 690-705] Li Dan (Emperor Ruizong of Tang) [r. 689-690] Chancellor Li Zhaode Chancellor Ji Xu Heir-Expectant Wu Chengsi Prince Li Chuan of Dengzhou [d. 689] Prince Li Cheng [d. 689] Prince Li Chen [d. 689] High Inquisitor Lai Junchen An Jingcan (he has guts) Major Works Cited: Guisso, Richard W. L. “The Reigns of the empress Wu, Chung-tsung and Jui-tsung (684-712)” in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 3. Chen, Jinhua. “Sarira and Scepter. Empress Wu’s Political Use of Buddhist Relics” in the Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, vol. 25 No. 1-2 (2002). Kory, Stephen N. “The Remarkably Resonant and Resilient Tang Dynasty Augural Stone” in Tang Studies, 26 (2008). Liu, Xiu. Jiu Tangshu.Sima, Guang. Zizhi Tongjian, vol. 206. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. 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. Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 92. Sage Mother, Divine Sovereign.

Last episode, we left Empress Wu and her Tang Empire in the midst of a thorough purge of its officialdom. This period, though bloody and terrifying, had left the Empress in a position of nearly limitless power and effective impunity, since just about anyone that had been suspected of harboring thoughts of disloyalty towards her reign had left the Empress in a position of nearly limitless power and effective impunity, since just about anyone that had been suspected of harboring thoughts of disloyalty towards her reign had up and, well, disappeared. Even, perhaps especially, her son, the Sovereign, knew better than to stand in Mommy Dearest's way. And so, when she had offered him back his imperial power in early 686, he had done little more than to back away

slowly and shake his head. Well, today we are going to watch Wu Zhao finally carry the ball into the end zone and make herself China's first, and only, female emperor. Wait, did I just call her emperor? Yes, indeed I did. And that does merit a bit of an explanation, don't you think? The title of sovereignty that we commonly translate into emperor in English is, as you may recall, Huangdi. But we translate it to emperor more for convenience sake than pure accuracy. As with much of the Chinese language, Huangdi is a genderless term meaning most closely divine sovereign, so it can, theoretically, and in practice once, be applied to either sex. Why not just keep using the title of Empress, though? Well, again, we run into some translational issues. The Chinese word for Empress is Huanghou, which pointedly does not carry the same potential weight as its Western

equivalent, but merely means the sovereign's wife. So all of that just to let you know that in terms of what we are supposed to call her in the translation, it is a bit murky. Technically, she is going to officially become the Huangdi, the emperor, but many have agreed that that just sounds weird. So, quite a few have gone with Empress Regnant to show her formal command of the state, and others have simply gone on to refer to her by her imperial name, which she's going to build for herself quite literally from scratch, Wu Zetian. But the majority say, eh, to heck with all that, we're just going to keep calling her Empress Wu anyway. Any one of those is perfectly acceptable.

It might sound a bit like I'm beating the point to death, but oh, just wait, because the shell game the Empress is playing with names and titles is only just beginning. By the late 680s, though the Empress Dowager was despised and feared by the official class, she nevertheless held the affection and loyalty of the vast majority of the commoners, which was in large part the reason that the Duke's rebellion against her had failed so miserably. Empress Wu had spared no expense in courting the lower classes, promulgating no fewer than three acts of grace between 684 and 689, and their terms were generous indeed. Though only the last of these three acts has survived the rigors of the ages, if it's anything to go by, and references to the others by classical

historians suggest that it was pretty typical, it was extraordinarily generous to the people. To the poor, those who displayed great loyalty, and to families who had lost a son in battle, the empress doled out rewards of wine, silk, cattle, and grain. Back taxes were forgiven against large numbers of households in order to entice them back into their areas of registration, since many of those families had fled registration by the census takers in order to avoid collection. And in those areas that had been either depleted

by the ongoing construction of Luoyang and its opulent Daming Palace, as well as those that had suffered from Turkish or Tibetan invasions in the border regions, the Empress declared a tax exemption for a full year to allow them to recover. That all might have been fine had the Empire's checkbook been all in order, and its coffers overflowing with currency. As it stood, though, this buying the hearts of the common people would come at a difficult economic time for the Tang. Since the mid-660s, following the failure of the empire's new system of coinage to break the hyperinflation loop caused by rampant counterfeiting, the price of goods had spiraled dizzyingly out of control. The price of rice, serving as a worrying example, had between 630 and 660 shot up in price by a hundredfold. Bad harvests, famine, and widespread tax evasion, not to mention the ever-ballooning dual costs of border defense and paying the empire's own bureaucracy,

had only exacerbated the problem of the currency's failure on the economy. Against this dizzying series of compounding problems, however, the Empress seemed unfailingly more interested in quick fixes and suppression of dissent than attempting to tackle the root causes of this economic squeeze. The results were predictably lackluster and ineffectual. Far more effectual, not to mention expensive, was the Empress's endeavors to create, as Professor Guizhou puts it, an imperial aura about herself. Within Luoyang, the new construction projects were as extravagant as they were endless. Temples, palaces, public works, and of course, at the center of it all, the imperial Daming Palace stood as a testament to the Tang's, or perhaps Wu's own, greatness.

In time, the city that had once been merely the secondary capital would cause Chang'an itself to pale in comparison. Hueso goes on, quote, The Empress herself appeared frequently in public, leading magnificent ceremonies, and attempting to associate herself in the public mind with glory and with the Golden Zhou Dynasty, whose rituals she frequently evoked. End quote. This process would reach its zenith in 689, with a celebration the likes of which China had never before seen, the veneration of the Baotu Stone, or the treasured image.

What in the world is a Baotu Stone? Well, it was a rock, purportedly found by a peasant in the riverbed of the Luo River just outside the capital the year prior. It was brought to the attention of the empress by her nephew and her heir-expectant, Wu Cheng Si. What made it so particularly appealing to the empress was that it bore on its surface a prophetic inscription, reading, A sage mother shall come to rule mankind, and her imperium shall bring eternal prosperity. It is, looking back, a pretty ham-fisted fabrication, and the traditional sources, one and all, conclude that it was the work of nephew Cheng Si, who had made no attempt

to conceal his favor toward the idea of his aunt usurping the throne for the Wu clan. Nevertheless, it was enough of an omen for the famously superstitious Wu, or maybe just far too appealing to her own vanity, to pass up. Stephen N. Corey writes about the procession in his paper, the remarkably resonant and resilient Tang Dynasty Augural Stone. Quote, the stone was designated Bao Tu. Banquets and music were offered to the court officials and other extraordinary offerings made. In mid-June or early July, intending to personally visit the site and accept the Bao Tu and make offerings to the low river, the empress decreed that all provincial supervisors, prefects, and relatives of the imperial clan should gather in

the divine capital ten days before offerings were to be made, end quote. And then and there, it was time to play a fantastic game of name switcheroo. Wu decreed that the spirit of the Luo River be enfifed as the Earl of Manifest Sagacity, and fishing on the body was strictly prohibited. The specific site where the Baotu had been found was named the Spring of the Sagely Chart, and the nearby Mount Song renamed as Mount Divine. The stone had promised an era of eternal prosperity, and so that is exactly what the Empress would give her people. Taking it all a bit literally, she duly changed the era name to Yongchang, which was, you guessed it, eternal prosperity.

As for herself, being, obviously, at least in her mind, the intended recipient and bearer of the stone's prophecy, a change in her own title was in order as well. Thus, on the 22nd of June, she took the title Shengmu Shenhuang, or SageMother, Divine Sovereign. And to those of you paying close attention, you may have noticed that this would mark the first instance of Wu affixing the word Huang, Sovereign, to her title, perhaps dipping her toes into that particular pond before the full plunge. Empress Wu had summoned everyone who was anyone from across the empire to bear witness to this ceremony of veneration, which she had planned to combine with the grand opening of the Daming Palace. And it was, to be sure, not an optional invitation. This, as a matter of course,

included the many collateral princes of the imperial Li clan, who had been almost all shoved out of their positions of power and shunted off to the fringes of the empire, where they purportedly eked out a meager existence, quote, without an inch of land to call their own, end quote. Even so far to the periphery, however, the princes were still keenly aware that their mere existence could be seen as barriers to the empress's seemingly limitless ambition to power. As Guaishou puts it, quote, well informed of events at the capital, and clearly aware of the dangers of their position as barriers to the Empress's ambition, the princes were probably plotting counter-moves even before receiving the summons to the capital, end quote. But whatever

their plans might have been, the princes were forced into action by dire warnings that filtered back to them, telling them that this supposed ceremony was in fact just an elaborate ruse to get them all back in one place to be disposed of by the Empress in one fell swoop. It's difficult to tell how true these warnings might have been, but even the possibility of walking into a mass death trap forced the princes of the Li clan into an impossible position. Well, obviously they couldn't risk just attending the ceremony. But by that same token, a mass refusal to obey the Empress's summons would equally and far more certainly condemn their clan. Trapped between two impossible decisions, the Li princes opted to double down and risk it all on a rebellion instead. The ringleader of this princely rebellion was Li Chuan, the prefect of Dengzhou in the

distant reaches of Sichuan. Again from Guizhou, But it would be these difficulties of distance and geographic distribution that would ultimately spell the doom of this rising against the Empress. One of the other princes, Li Cheng in Hebei, got a little over-eager in raising his troop levies. Not only did he jump the gun and give the plan away before the other princes could rise against the central authority as well, but the conscripts that Prince Cheng was able to raise proved puzzlingly and frustratingly thin. In spite of the region's long-held warlike and separatist tendencies, the prince was able to raise only a meager 5,000

troops, many of whom seemed to have joined up only with the greatest reluctance, and would vanish once again at the first hint of setback. We can likely trace this reluctance by the would-be soldiery once again to the empress's policy of rewarding those who resisted rebellion and going to great lengths to ensure that the people at large were content with her on the throne, even if her fellow nobles were anything but. Before the first contingent of imperial troops could even arrive to confront this paltry rebel force, Li Cheng had been slain at the hands of his own men, who had then melted back into the larger populace.

With the element of surprise they had been entirely relying upon for success utterly blown, the princes still found themselves painted into a corner, as there was now no choice but to proceed anyway, no matter how lost their cause already was. From Guizhou, realizing that his son's action had doomed him, Li Chen felt he could only rebel in his turn, and using every means at his disposal, managed to recruit a few thousand men.

These also fled before the loyalist army, and with the defeat and suicide of Li Chen, the so-called Prince's Rebellion came to a swift end. End quote. In the wake of this sputtering, hopeless last gasp of resistance against the supremacy of Empress Wu, her backlash would be swift and conducted with her usual degree of mercilessness. Guilty? Innocent? Young? Old? Man? Woman? Child? It didn't matter. None who would count themselves among the Li clan were spared a systematic and horrifying decimation that lasted well into 691. And though the traditional historians like Sima Guang and the Zizhetongjian unsurprisingly harshly condemned the brutality

of the purge, even the empress's harshest critics were forced to admit that in doing so, she had the support of her people. The ceremony to venerate the Baotu stone would move forward as planned and with only minor delays. In fact, this last rising of the Li princes to stave off Wu's ascendancy may have, in a truly ironic turn, lended additional confirmation in the Empress's eyes of her divine favor. To have crushed this insurrection on the eve of her ascendancy, and with such ease, why that could only be the blessing of the divine favor. To have crushed this insurrection on the eve of her ascendancy, and with such ease, why that could only be the blessing of the divine. Thus it was in the final month of 688, Empress Wu presided over the Baotu ceremony in full and

magnificent imperial regalia. She ordered sacrifices to be conducted to her father and her ancestors on a scale typically reserved for the founder of a dynasty, and styled after the most ancient and holy rituals of all, those of the Zhou. This was in keeping with a long pattern of association the Empress has been conducting, linking her and her family back to that most legendary and perfect of all Chinese dynastic lines. Going so far as to claim that the founder of her own clan was the celebrated Duke Wu of Zhou, much as the Li clan had claimed its progenitor as Lao Tzu. You surely see where this is headed. Before that inevitability becomes reality, though,

there would be two further steps to pave the way for Wu's usurpation of the Tang dynasty for herself. In what may well have been an implicit link between herself and the mythical creator of the Chinese written language, Wu set about devising and then promulgating a series of new characters that were to be substituted with the older forms, which she had come to view as being needlessly complicated to the point of incomprehensibility. The initial set of twelve characters would include that of day and month, as well as her own given name, Zhao. The original form of Zhao means simply bright, but in its revised form, the name that would serve as the taboo character during her reign, it would be rendered what she

deemed its true meaning, apparent to all. It was constructed of the components of light, suspended above the character for void. Thus she would be as a heavenly body in the sky, illuminating all below. If this revision of the written language might have been seen as a piece of far-reaching propaganda of her will to the literate classes, she would need to take a somewhat different tact in persuading the majority of the illiterate masses that she was truly the bearer of the mandate of heaven, rather than simply as regent. She would therefore turn to the language that everyone in the empire understood, the language of religion. And that religion was Buddhism. The predominant sect of Buddhism in China at this time, as we have discussed before, was the Mahayana school. Empress Wu found that within this sect there was a sutra called the Dayun, or Great Cloud Sutra, that contained a very convenient

prophecy. It foretold the imminent reincarnation of a holy female deity called Maitreya, who was a future Buddha in fact, who would come to earth and rule over its entirety. One version of the prophecy reads, Harvests will be bountiful and joy without limit. The people will flourish, free of desolation and illness, of worry, fear, and disaster. The rulers of the neighboring lands will all come to offer allegiance. At that time, all her subjects will give their allegiance to this woman as a successor to the imperial throne,

and the world will be awed into submission. End quote. And as with the prophecy of the Baotu Stone, Wu took one look at this and said, well, hello there. Yes, I'd say that describes me perfectly. It was, who else, the Empress's lover monk, Huaiyi, who supposedly found and interpreted the text as referring to his beloved matriarch. The empress at least put on a display of surprise when he approached her with this text, but naturally took to the idea quite readily. Not only did she promulgate the sutra across the whole of the empire, but went so far as to order the construction of great cloud temples in every prefecture, and at the state's expense, and had more than a thousand new monks

ordained to staff them. Shortly thereafter, she would add to her growing list of titles that of Mila Wushuang, Maitreya the Peerless. So there she now sat, perfectly in position for what was to come next, with not one, but two prophecies very conveniently found, implicating that a woman should rule and bring boundless prosperity to the realm, and having successfully associated her family line with a peerless duke from the dawn of history remembered as the Perfect One, as well as having fundamentally altered the written language of the realm and having officially elevated Buddhism above Taoism, much to the delight of the populace at large. She had not only survived repeated attempts to oust her, but had absolutely trounced all contenders, and emerged not only intact but positively enhanced in both her power and the

people's love and support for her reign. The time for checkmate was at hand. In the eighth month of 690, the Empress Dowager received three separate petitions begging her to take the throne for herself, including one from Emperor Ruizong himself. And each of these she declined, which was, as we are all well aware of by now, a pro forma step before usurpation so as to appear to accept the ultimate authority only with great reluctance and out of pure necessity. 400 years ago, a trio of tiny kingdoms were perched on some damp islands off the coast of Europe. Within three short centuries, these islands would become the centre of an empire which ruled a quarter of the globe and on which the sun never set. I'm Samuel Hume, a historian

of the British Empire, and my podcast Pax Britannica follows the people and events that built that empire into a global superpower. Listen to Season 1 to hear about England's first attempts at empire building, in Ireland, in North America, and in the Caribbean, the first steps of the East India Company, and the political battles between King and Parliament. Listen to Season 2 to hear about the chaotic years of civil war, revolution, and regicide, which rocked the Three Kingdoms and the Fledgling Empire. In Season 3, we see how Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell ruled the powerful Commonwealth and challenged the Dutch and the Spanish for the wealth and power of the Americas and Asia.

Learn the history of the British Empire by listening to Pax Britannica everywhere you find your podcasts, or go to pod.link slash pax. It was only, supposedly, once she had been informed that her personal symbol, the phoenix, had been seen above the Imperial Palace, and that a flock of brilliant scarlet birds had been flying around the throne room, that she at last assented to the pressure her officials, her son, and it would seem heaven itself, was laying at her feet. At last accepting Ruizong's offer of abdication, Wu Zhao acceded to the throne of China,

with her typical display of pomp and ceremony, becoming the holy and divine emperor of the restored Zhou dynasty, returned at long last after more than nine centuries of absence. And beginning the first, last, and only decade and a half where a woman ruled China in title as well as in truth. As far as usurpations go, the transition from Tang to the second Zhou was about as smooth and mild as they come. Professor Guizhou writes, quote, the Zhou dynasty was not regarded by contemporaries as a sharp break in Tang continuity, end quote. Indeed, even her eventual successor, her eldest living son, Zhongzong, would, in the very document proclaiming the restoration of the

Tang in 705, call her period of rule brilliant, virtuous, and wise, and go on to say that, quote, nothing had really changed, that she had renewed the basic policies of the Tang, and had simply been acting on behalf of the Li clan's ultimate interests, end quote. It certainly seems surprising that such high praise would come from one of the imperial sons she had personally overthrown, and perhaps all the more so that it would become essentially the official position of the usurpation by the Tang dynasty itself after the fact. This is both because dynastic understandings of usurpers are rarely favorable, and all the more so because later

historians like Sima Guang and Liu Xiu reverted back to the more typical revilement of her time in power. On the other hand, it does make the Li clan look at least a little bit less inept to say, in effect, yeah, that was the way we planned it all along. Totally deliberate. Regardless, with herself now the divine sovereign, and as I mentioned at the top of the episode, I'm going to keep referring to her as Empress, as in Empress Regnant, to minimize confusion here, Empress Wu wasted no time in designating that Luoyang, long her favorite city, was now the only capital rather than the first of two. Chang'an was out, Luoyang was in. And to ensure that no one would be confused, she went ahead and ordered some 100,000 households to move from the old capital to the new.

She also moved swiftly to begin pulling back and reining in the policy of terror against the official classes, since the absolutely paltry showing of the Prince's Rebellion had clearly demonstrated two facts. First, that those officials who were in any position to even think about rising against her had almost all been rooted out, and second, that the populace was overwhelmingly on her side in any event. It was in the wake of this pullback from the terror that, as we discussed last episode, one of the censorate's high inquisitors, Zhou Xing, would be asked to enter the pot and subsequently banished to death. Inquisitor Zhou's conviction would mark the first instance of the total destruction of

her own network of spies and informants that was to come in the decade ahead. In fact, the following year, no fewer than 850 of Zhou Xing's minions and co-workers would find themselves likewise facing their own tribunals, and either executed, banished, or simply made to disappear. In spite of her outward image of holiness and care for the little guy, in practice, the Empress was as coldly ruthless as ever, showing that she was just as capable of disposing of the tools she no longer had any need of as she had formerly supported them. Upon taking power, one of the first great

big questions to face the Empress Regnant of the Zhou Dynasty was, how was this whole succession situation going to play out anyway? It was a puzzling situation after all. She had not one, but two sons, who she had deposed but still remained alive, as well as having named her father's heir, her nephew Wu Changse, as the unprecedented heir expectant. And by my count, that's about two potential heirs too many. The initial situation following Wu's enthronement was that Li Dan, formerly Emperor Ruizong, had defaulted back to the crown prince.

Nevertheless, and especially in light of the Wu clan's rising star, Wu Changsi was sufficiently confident in his own position to start a kind of grassroots movement among the commoners to call for him being named the new heir, making the argument that the new imperial clan was the Wu's, and as such a Wu successor rather than a Li was only right. The Empress was moved by this position, at least enough that she ordered the executions of three of her chancellors who argued a bit too hard against the idea. I said that she'd begun to rein in the terror, yes, but let's not confuse that with her ending it any time soon. In spite of the triple execution, she still wasn't quite

convinced enough to actually follow through on the petition, and wound up denying the request. Though she did allow the commoner leader of the petitioners, a man named Wang Qingzhi, free access to the imperial palace so that he might hold audience with her. Into this uncertain situation, one of the great defenders of the Tang dynasty's interests arose in the form of one of the empress's chancellors, Li Jiao De. And I should point out that although he was defending the imperial Li clan's interests and was himself surnamed Li, he was not of the royal line and had in fact earned his high standing through the examination system. He was a hardliner, a stickler, perhaps you could

even call him a zealot for law and order, which was evidenced by him famously beating to death a high official and close personal friend of the high inquisitor Lai Junchen at that, in full view of the palace, for the crime of wearing the wrong robes to work. It would be Li Zhaozhe and his propensity for epic beatdowns that would begin working against the whispers of Wu Chengsi to become the new imperial heir. First and foremost, those pesky peasants the Empress had given free access to the palace and who kept pressuring her on Chengsi's behalf. When their leader, Wang, at one point overstepped his bounds with the Empress, she ordered Li Zhaozhe to teach the guy a lesson by roughing him up a little. Li, though, seeing an opportunity to remove that bug from the

Empress's ear altogether, took Wang out back and proceeded to, yep, beat him to death. The rest of the peasant petitioners quickly made themselves scarce. That left nephew Wu Chengsi himself, though, who by now held both a princely title as well as that of a chancellor. Li Jiaozi cautiously approached the empress and expressed in careful terms that, in his estimation, Chengsi had become too powerful and thus dangerous. Empress Wu responded, He is my nephew. We are of one blood, and so I trust him. Jada pressed further, though, saying, You possess the empire, and of course you should pass it to your descendants for ten thousand generations. But is not your son, and the son of the divine emperor Gaozong, your descendant as well?

And not just your blood, but of your flesh? I have never before heard of a nephew who built a temple for his aunt. And more than that, if you give the throne to Wu Chengsi, his holiness, your husband, will never be worshipped again. End quote. Zhengde then went further, imploring Wu, quote, How can the relationship between nephew and aunt be greater than that of child and parent? There have been sons who killed their fathers and usurped their thrones,

and nephews are at least as capable of the same. Right now, Wu Chengse is your imperial highness's nephew, prince, and chancellor. Thus his power rivals your own. If you do not heed this warning, I am afraid that your imperial majesty may not remain on the heavenly throne for long. End quote. Well, that certainly caught the Empress's ear. Within a week of this conversation, she had thoroughly reorganized her cabinet,

stripping three of her Wu clansmen, including her nephew, of all titles and offices that might grant them actual power within the government, and replacing those titles with ceremonial ones instead. When Cheng Si was informed of this new state of affairs, he burst into the throne room and angrily demanded an answer from his aunt as to why this had come to pass, and moreover to tear a new one into Li Zhende. He was cut off mid-rant by the Empress, though, who with her usual cool calmness said, quote, Since I have employed Minister Li, I have found my first sound sleep in years. He has and continues to devote his every effort on our behalf and that of the dynasty. Therefore, I will have your silence on the matter. End quote. This is not to say the matter of

succession was settled. Far from it. And though Rézong would retain the title of heir for the time being, he was never allowed to settle very comfortably into it. The Empress kept her youngest son guessing and fearing for his and his family's fate for years to come. Those who she deemed had become too close to the crown prince, she took pains to punish. And in 693, she would order the

deaths of two of his favorite consorts on patently baseless accusations of witchcraft leveled against them by a vindictive lady-in-waiting. The crown prince felt his own position and life in such a precarious state that he didn't even dare to mourn their loss, but instead was forced to carry on as though nothing had happened at all. Even that wouldn't be enough to spare the prince and his associates from the dangers of being too close to the Empress's power, and thus right in her sights. Whispers would ultimately reach the Empress's ears that Ruizong might be plotting treason,

and she went right to Defcon 1, sending her personal pitbull, the High Inquisitor Lai Junchen, on him and most especially his companions. Inquisitor Lai Junchen, on him and most especially his companions. Inquisitor Lai's investigation saw the mass arrest, questioning, and of course, heinous torture of many of the crown prince's close associates and servants. And in short order, he had them singing exactly the tune he wished to hear. Yes, many of them begged, the prince is treasonous, I'm ready to usurp the throne,

and my grandmother is plotting rebellion. Who else do you want to be treasonous, and I'll tell you. It was enough, more than enough, to seal Crown Prince Lidan's fate. And this would have been the part where he's dragged out into the marketplace and quartered, except for one rather exceptional twist of fate. Faced with the prospect of the most intense tortures Inquisitor Lai could offer up, one of the prince's servants, named An Jingcan, resisted and refused to serve his master up on a platter. Instead, as the censors were preparing to drag him off to the dungeons, with every intention of getting him, like all the rest, to spill his guts, An proved that he was prepared to take that to a whole new level of literalism. He loudly protested the prince's innocence, and then grabbed the knife

and cut open his own stomach as a proclamation of his sincerity. Empress Wu was informed of this servant who had disemboweled himself on her son's behalf, and was deeply moved. She ordered that with all haste her personal physicians take custody of An's critically wounded body, and that they make every possible effort to spare his life. Amazingly, they wound up able to put everything back inside the man, roughly where it belonged, and stitch up his abdomen. An Jingtan would survive his attempt at Harakiri, though the histories do say that the royal physicians were only able to accomplish this feat with extreme difficulty. One can only imagine, given the state of surgery and medical knowledge in the late 7th century. In lieu of this supreme act of protest, though, Anne's sacrifice was not in vain.

The Empress immediately called a halt to her and Lye's investigation of the crowned prince, and the release of the servants that were held in the censorate's dungeons, or at least whatever might be left of them to release. The prince would remain heir, though never at ease in his position. This strange, dangerous balancing act between the two competing imperial clans, the Lys and the Wus, would continue all the way up through 698. Professor Guesso writes on this situation, quote,

Two explanations are possible for this conduct. One is that the empress was genuinely torn between the claims of her own clan and those of her sons. The second possibility, however, is just as likely. She delayed her decisions until 698 because the succession question was a valuable tool to balance and divide ministerial interest groups. If this is so, it may be regarded as just another aspect of the political virtuosity the Empress showed throughout her reign. End quote. Whichever way it was to play out, though, the decision of the imperial heir would remain hers and hers alone, as she was as ever hostile in the extreme at any hint of wishing to limit the royal prerogative. And so we'll end off today

with a rather striking example of this in effect. The Zizhi Tongjian tells of one of her favorite officials, the Chancellor Ji Xu, earning the Empress's ire with his insistence on bringing up the issue of her succession, in spite of the fact that she had made it perfectly clear that it was a private, family matter rather than one for the court, thanks anyway, conversation over. When the Chancellor brought up the issue again anyway, Empress Wu glared at the imprudent official, who no doubt suddenly felt the temperature of the

throne room drop a few hundred degrees. She then said, Have I ever told you about the time as a very young girl, as Emperor Taizong's lady-in-waiting? Well, he had a horse, a great beautiful steed that he called Lion Stallion, and with good reason. For all his many horse trainers, none had been able to so much as sit on the beast, much less break it for riding. So I told the emperor that I could have that horse broken that very day, and would require only three items to succeed in the task. The first, of course, would be an iron whip. If a whip would not cow the beast, though, then I would use my second tool, an iron hammer, to beat it into submission. If, however, the beast proved so obstinate that even my hammer could not bend it to my will,

well, my third tool was a dagger to slice its throat. One way or the other, every beast can be broken to my will. And I'll tell you, Taizong commended me on my bravery that day. So you tell me, Chancellor Ji, which tool do you require? Whip, hammer, or dagger?

Shaken, and by all accounts physically shaking, the Chancellor withdrew from the audience chamber and did not bring the subject up again. Next time, the Empress Regnant of the Zhou Empire will be facing some problems with her new order. Some internal issues that have never really gone away, for instance the economy continuing to sputter and gasp in the midst of China's currency crisis, as well as several external threats, some old, some new, and some that, wait a second, didn't we kill these guys already? Thank you for listening. If you're in the market for another great history podcast while waiting for the next History of China,

may I suggest David Crowther's The History of England, where he traces the rain-soaked, tea-guzzling story of that soggy island in the North Atlantic. It is a fascinating tale, and brilliantly told by David, so I suggest you go give it a listen. You can find it on iTunes, or it and all of our Agora Network's shows at agorapodcastnetwork.com. Interested, perhaps, in learning more about China? Of course you are! So come join us at thehistoryofchina.wordpress.com for updates, bonus content, and further discussion. You can also join our page on Facebook at facebook.com slash thehistoryofchina, or follow the show on Twitter under the handle at THOCpodcast. As always, the show is sponsored by you, the listeners, so please consider becoming

our patron. You can find links to our Patreon page and our PayPal link on our website. Again, that's thehistoryofchina.wordpress.com. Thanks very much, and see you next time. 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.