The History of China - #94 - Tang 12: Two Second Reigns

Episode Date: April 6, 2016

The Tang Dynasty has been restored following Empress Wu's eldest son's coup d'etat. But dynastic restoration does not equate to societal reformation, and many of the problems Wu inherited or exacerbated remain. Throw into that mix a decade long period of palatial infighting between princes and princesses, and we have a period so chalk full of intrigue, espionage, and assassination... that classical historians have preferred to steer around this decade rather than even deign to acknowledge it. Time Period Covered: 705-712 CE Notable Historical Figures: Deposed Empress Wu Zetian [d. 705] Li Xian (Emperor Zhongzong of Tang) [2nd r. 705-710] Li Dan (Emperor Ruizong of Tang) [2nd r. 710-712] Li Longji (Emperor Xuanzong of Tang) [r. 712- ] Princess Taiping Empress Wei [d. 710] Princess Anlou [d. 710] Wu Sansi [d. 707] Crowned Prince Li Chongjun [d. 707] 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. Before we get in it today, let me take a moment to recommend that you take your ears on over to Travis Dow, who hosts more podcasts than you can shake a stick at. Interested in German history? Well, Travis is on that.

How about alchemy? Travis is on that too. What about the history of the U.S., Aufdeutsche? Right again, Travis Dow has that covered too. So please pop on over to agorapodcastnetwork.com to check out Travis Dow's symphony of podcasting, as well as all of the other shows who are a part of the Agora Network. That's agorapodcastnetwork.com. Thanks, and enjoy the show. Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 94, Two Second Reigns Last time, we finished off Empress Wu Zetian's absolutely unique period of power over China, seeing her rise from little more than the emperor's dressing maid to empress and then to emperor outright. Over 15 years, she ruled all of the Chinese Empire,

until at last she was deposed from power by her son and reaffirmed heir, Liu Xian, or as we better know him, Emperor Zhongzong, as well as a host of court officials who had had enough of the 80-year-old's love toys meddling about in an imperial business. This week, with the restoration of the Tang under Emperor Zhongzong, most will try to pick up the pieces left in the wake of Empress Wu's girl power typhoon and get things more or less back to the way they'd always been before. But some will view the Empress's time in power not with disdain, but rather as an example to be emulated and even expanded upon. In his piece on the period we're covering today, Professor

Guizhou puts it bluntly, quote, the first decade of the Tang Restoration was, from almost every point of view, a depressing one. End quote. Why? Well, if we look back for a moment at the major issues that had plagued Wu's Zhou dynasty since, and in many cases existed well before its inception, we find that all of the areas that popular opinion had felt was in dire need of reform, that is, currency and economic instability, official corruption in government, misuse and neglect of the bureaucratic mechanisms in favor

of personal rule, and those had only been some of the central reform points that had ultimately led the cohort of Yulin palace guards to rally behind the crown prince at the Shenmue Gate and commence with their coup d'etat. Thus, looking out over the decade following Zhongzong's second enthronement, it's easy to point out all the ways that neither he nor his successor would move the ball forward in any appreciable sense on any of these major points. The people in the government itself sought out and required a reform candidate capable of undoing the damage the throne's previous occupant had either inflicted or been too concerned with personal aggrandizement to pay much attention to. What they got instead was a ten-year-long period of courtly power struggles, worsening finances, and ever more corrupt administration. For the part of classical

historians, except to show it as an object lesson in misrule, they've been one and all completely uninterested in such a benighted period. So I realize I'm probably not selling you on this period right off the bat, but don't give up just yet. The traditional historians were uninterested in this period because it did not serve their Confucian sensibilities of right government. Not because it's uninteresting, to say the least. To the contrary, the more boring old Confucian ethics breaks down, the more interesting a period is likely to get.

So there is much more to this period than the likes of Sima Guang would deign to admit. The mid-20th century historian and author Michio Tanigawa determined that out of this unbalanced equation, there arose three competing groups striving for power, almost right out of the gate. They were the favored ministers, the imperial family, and then the emperor's in-laws. As the latter two especially essentially debased themselves and their classes into naked power grabs, they lost much of the mystical highborn aura surrounding much of their positions. It's hard to look particularly regal, after all, while wrestling around in the mud. Kanegawa points out that it was in large part because of this compromising of the popular

respect towards the high and noble houses of the realm that the shu, or commoner class, began to rise. The wealthy merchants and landlords found that with corruption this high, and this nobility so wrapped up in their own struggles, and of course having to pay for those costly affairs, they were far more willing to sell off titles and official posts to the highest bidders. As such, there is in this period an influx of moneyed commoners, formerly locked out of government positions by the prohibitively difficult official examinations. But now, they're able to simply buy their way into office, rather than have to test for them. But let's not get too far away from the story.

Depressing decade or not, it is in the Imperial Palace that the heart of this story lies. So, Zhongzhong is once again on the throne of Tang, and so he was the one in charge, right? Not exactly. Not at all, really. You might remember from last time that when his 80-year-old mother confronted him and his 500-man strong army outside of her own palace, he was the one trembling like a leaf as she dressed him down before returning to bed. You may have gathered from that that Zhongzong wasn't exactly the shining paragon of masculinity and confident rule,

and you would be right. At the time of Tang's restoration, it was no secret that, of the two dominant figures at the imperial court, neither was the emperor himself. In what should by this point be a fairly typical fashion, the first of these dominant figures was none other than the empress. No, not that empress. This time it was Zhongzong's wife, Empress Wei, the woman that had once reminded Wu Zetian of a younger version of herself, so much so that she dethroned and banished her son just to get her potential enemy out of the capital and away from the levers of power. Well, she's back now.

Hueso describes her as, quote, a lewd and ambitious woman whose total ascendance over her husband was the result, according to one source, of his gratitude for the support she offered during his exile. He is said to have promised her complete authority in the event of his restoration, end quote. Hmm, starting to sound familiar yet? Empress Wei's effective second-in-command in this post-Zitan world order was both her lover and her distant cousin by marriage, Empress Wu's own nephew, Wu Sanshu, who had survived his on-step position by hiding under the robes of the Empress Ascendant. The final piece of this

alliance would be Empress Wei's and Emperor Zhangzong's daughter, the 21-year-old Princess Anle. She was the Empress' only surviving child, and had been born while the couple was en route to their place of exile, thus ensuring that she was absolutely doted upon by her father. In 705, she had been married to Wu Sanshu's own son, Wu Zhongxun, thus cementing their familial alliance. What quickly became apparent post-nuptials, however, was that Wu Sanshu had no intent on playing second fiddle to Zhongzong or Wei, or anyone for that matter, at least not for very long. Now that Princess Anle was his daughter-in-law, his plan was to rule through her, at least

initially. What's striking here, of course, is the fact that in the immediate aftermath of Empress Wu's reign, the de facto reality might have actually made it more acceptable, possibly even expected, for powerful, capable women to assert themselves into the affairs typically reserved for men, and there was no shortage of ruthlessly intelligent noblewomen seeking to follow the deposed Empress Regnant's example. This more accepting sentiment towards women in the public sphere, however, was tested to its extreme right off the bat by Wu Sanshu, when he pressed Princess An Lo to assert her own claim as the heir to the throne of Tang.

The court, Guizhou points out, was stupefied. It had been one thing to accept Wu Zetian on the throne. She had been there so long, her grip on power so absolute, that she must have seemed more a force of nature than some sort of precedent setter. Yet now was the logical outcome of her reign, her granddaughter asserting the right to inherit the throne from her father. The outcome was as disappointing as it was predictable. Wu Zetian was one thing, but another woman on the throne was several bridges too far for many of the powerful members of the court. And they banded together to deny the princess her claim and declare that the temporary heir would be another of Zhang Zong's sons by a lesser consort named Li Chongjun. In essence, the court had come together to declare, yeah, we don't know exactly what we want, but we know that we don't want her.

Yet, in spite of this setback, Wu Sanshu was as determined as ever. He next began a campaign to get those leading figures most likely to oppose any of his schemes out of the way. Assassination was too messy and would lead to suspicion and accusations, so that was out. It would be all but impossible to get them all demoted or fired without the rest banding together against him. There was, however, a third option. One of the funny things about the multi-tiered system of government in the Tang structure was that royalty, revered a position though it was, did not necessarily have any authority in the government processes. This is not unlike royalty in many other monarchies, but what it allowed in this instance was for Wu Sanshu to use the Empress Wei's authority to promote and elevate his five chief opponents and name them royal princes, which secured them privileges galore no doubt, but effectively kicked them upstairs out of their ministerial roles and into powerless minor princedoms. But Wu wasn't finished with these five who would have stood against him.

Rather than allow any of them the chance to escape their gilded cages, by the year's end, he'd be able to find pretexts for official rebuke and banishment for each of them in turn. Professor Guizzo writes of the incident, quote, It must have brought a smile to the lips of the old Empress Wu to see her nephew so quickly supreme, and turning to the reenactment of some of her former measures, end quote. She would die later that month, so she, as usual, seemed to have ended on a high note. Back at the court, with the five troublemakers now way, way out of the way, Wu Sansu had only two others to contend with who could potentially rival his own power. They were the former emperor, Ruizong, and his and Zhongzhong's sister,

Princess Taiping. They, however, would prove to be rather disinterested adversaries, at least for now, and were easily placated by Sun Shu with gifts of some 10,000 households of revenue each, by all accounts truly enormous bribes, and illegal at that. Tang law stipulated that the legal limit for the number of households a princess could claim was a mere 300. Yet though there could be denying such a huge legal breach, no one dared speak out against Wushan Xu or Princess Taiping's arrangement. Later that year, Taiping, as well as six other princesses, were allowed to hire on personal staffs on the same scale as the Princes of the Blood,

i.e. those with a direct relation to the ruling line. This special allowance entitled them to administrative staff for their fiefdoms, preceptors, a household administration, a contingent of personal bodyguards, as well as a contingent of palace guards. The posts were to be filled as the princesses saw fit, and each and every one of them began selling them openly to the highest bidders. This was no tiny number of staffers either. Sima Guang in the Zizhi Tongjian lists the number of staff personally appointed by Wu Sanshu alone at more than 2,000, and with an additional 1,000 eunuch servants appointed as well. During this period, one court official, clearly aghast at the sheer volume of these superfluous positions, wrote bitterly that, quote,

Though personally enriching the nobility involved, such vast expansions of these bureaucratic staff postings, each requiring payment, lands, and titles in turn, would have been extremely costly to the already floundering imperial economy. As of the year 707, for instance, a posting to the Buddhist clergy could be guaranteed to a member of any social class for a mere 30,000 cash, whereas for ten times that amount, a position within the household staff of the princess in question was yours for the taking. Napoleon Bonaparte rose from obscurity to become the most powerful and significant figure in modern history. Over 200 years after his death, people are still debating his legacy. He was a man of contradictions, a tyrant and a reformer, a liberator and an oppressor, a revolutionary and a reactionary. His biography reads like a novel,

and his influence is almost beyond measure. I'm Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast, and every month I delve into the turbulent life and times of one of the greatest characters in history, and explore the world that shaped him in all its glory and tragedy. It's a story of great battles and campaigns, political intrigue, and massive social and economic change, but it's also a story about people, populated with remarkable characters. I hope you'll join me as I examine this fascinating era of history. Find The Age of Napoleon wherever you get your podcasts. Why were such extremely expensive positions such a hot commodity

then? Money-wise, there was a great return on investment for a person able to afford such a position. It afforded immunity from corvée labor duties for the state as well as all normal taxes on the peasantry. But of course, the main appeal for wealthy merchants and landlords was the opportunity for social advancement beyond the gates of peasantry and into the halls of officialdom. And they were popular enough that, though thousands of redundant and superfluous positions had been created, quote, yet some men still waited years for posts to which bribery, outright purchase, or occasionally talent had entitled them, end quote. Nevertheless, the princesses in question did little to earn anything but the ire of the people in and around the capital. As with the charges leveled against the late Empress Wu, many of

these are reported by historians aghast at the prospect of women in political power, and so such accusations should be looked at critically. Still, Sima Guang tells of them illegally seizing lands around the capital for themselves, massive construction projects, diverting streams and thus disrupting local farming, and most damningly of all, if it's to be believed, purportedly even regularly seizing the children of the poor families to be used as slaves. The street treasuries were depleted more and more as they dipped further in to fund their personal and religious projects and constructions. One official lamented that, though the granaries were empty and the people exhausted, new temples were forever popping up all over the capital city, ranging in scale

from costing tens of thousands for even the smallest project and swiftly spiraling well into the millions. The following winter, 706, the imperial court returned again to Chang'an. There, the pressure on Emperor Zhongzong by Empress Wei and Wu Sanshu continued to mount for him to name the Princess Low the heir to the throne, an option that must have at least held some appeal to the Emperor, which is not especially surprising given his apparent regard for her. But you'll remember that there was already someone seated in the heir's chair, albeit, for now, as little more than a placeholder, but there, nonetheless, Prince Li Chongzhen. And it had been made as obvious as it could be by the Empress,

the Chancellor, and their whole staffs, that they were all out to get him, ousted, and quite possibly killed. They would verbally harass him, even going so far as to refer to him as a slave, and make him feel very justifiably in fear for his life. That mortal fear would turn to violent preemptive strike the following fall, when Prince Chongzhen enlisted the aid of a veteran step-general, Ni Duozuo, and another of his cousins, and their combined attendant 300 Yulin guardsmen.

Together, this vindictive force marched on the Wu family compound, where they found and executed Wu Sanshu, as well as his son, Princess Anlu's husband. The force then turned toward the royal palace itself, intent on finishing the job. However, the royal family, the emperor, the empress, and the Princess Anlu, were able to barricade themselves within the tower atop the Xuanmu Gate, and from there, Zhongzong showed a rare flash of courage that would elude him much of his life. He issued personally a dramatic appeal to the hundreds of soldiers massed outside his tower, urging them to reconsider their actions and to turn on those who would command them to strike against the sovereign. And it was super effective.

The Yulin guardsmen were not nearly as committed to overthrowing the emperor as their commanders were, and so, in what was apparently fairly short order, unturned their coats and slaughtered their general Li Duozuo. The by now ex-heir, Li Chongjun, turned and fled, and would make it as far as the borderlands of Tibet before Tang agents at last found and killed him. Wu Sanshu was now out of the picture, but the remaining parties to the plot were no less committed to achieving their goal of Princess Anle as the heir, and now the path was open. The former heir had been branded a traitor and hunted to the ends of the earth, and it would seem that An Lo would be a shoo-in. And yet, here she really, really manages to slip up, because though Sanshu's plan hadn't died with him, his sense of tact and subtlety certainly had. Over the course of 707, Princess An Lo moved with

all the subtlety of a giant panda, critically, fatally stumbling her way into fingering Ruizong and Princess Taiping for some nonsense that they were easily able to swat aside. An Lo had just undone one of the foundational underpinnings of her father-in-law's carefully laid plans. She had roused the sleeping dragon, the daughter of Wu Zetian, against her. In the short term, the three years between An Lo's ill-advised move against Taiping in 707 and 710, it would seem that no action would be taken against her in retribution, but Taiping did not forget, and she did not forgive. Instead, she used those three years to build a bulwark of support both within the court and as well as with her brother, Ruizong. With those firmly in place, in mid-709, she began a whisper campaign

directed at her other brother, the emperor, to alert him of the misbehaviors of both his wife and daughter. Zhongzhong was duly angered at the prospect of his own family committing potential crimes, and began voicing his displeasure about them openly as of 710. And then, wouldn't you know it, he up and died suddenly and mysteriously. Nothing suspicious there, surely. On the contrary, many, and particularly classical historians, have been all too ready to point the finger of blame at either the Empress Wei, her daughter Princess Anle, or both of them together. The alleged weapon? Poison, of course, slipped into Zhongzong's favorite cakes. Imagine that, the granddaughter of Empress Wu using poison as a weapon against her own

family. It's almost poetic. Which is not to say there's any firm evidence either way, certainly not enough to bring up formal charges. However, the fact that Empress Wei waited to tell the court for two days or more while she secured important positions for her family members and fastened her son, the crown prince, firmly on the throne before revealing that oh no, my dear husband is dead, well that doesn't do her case too many favors. The heir to the throne, Zhongzong's last surviving son by any of his wives as a matter of fact, was a 15-year-old boy named Li Chongmao. His posthumous name, Shang, meaning the child emperor, might give you a hint as to the length of his reign. Did you guess two weeks? Because that was all little Emperor Shang got to enjoy his new chair. Because whether or not Zhongzhong sat the throne, Princess Taiping was only getting started.

On the 17th day following Emperor Shang's enthronement, a force led by Taiping's nephew, Li Longji, and accompanied by Taiping's own son, approached the Xuanwu Gate of the Imperial Palace under the cover of night. Now I know I've thrown a lot of names at you today, but Li Longji is definitely the one to triple underline in today's story. Though he starts out as kind of a bit player, he's going to get, well, you'll see. So Li's small gathering outside of Xuanwu attracted the notice of the gate's Yulin guardsmen, who I think by this point have pretty much earned themselves the distinction of worst palace guards ever. They seriously seem to do nothing but join rebellions against the palace they're supposed to be defending. And here we go again. Li Longji

managed to, once again, convince the gate's guardsmen not only to let him in, but to join up with him against the young emperor and his guardian, the Empress Dowager, Wei. The plan proceeded flawlessly. All of the right palms were greased, undoubtedly, first and foremost, the outer guardsmen themselves, and in short order, Li Longji's little band of assassins was within the imperial compound. Any members of the Wei family the group could find were killed on sight, along with the Empress Wei, her chief of staff, and Princess Anleu as she applied her makeup. Gui Sa notes, It was a smooth operation, one which required money and influence. The 25-year-old Long Ji

had neither, end quote. Obviously, this plot had some major backing, and it would only be a matter of days before she revealed herself. The Princess Taiping would burst into the imperial audience chamber as the adolescent emperor sat on his throne. Ignoring whatever protests might have been uttered, Taiping marched straight up to the throne and physically dragged Emperor Shang off of it, literally casting him down from his position. Taiping then summoned her surviving brother to the throne room, offering Raizong his own second chance at rule. Raizong, ever the weak-kneed yes-man, accepted the offer, though undoubtedly with great reluctance. He was, after all, being put back into the exact same powerless situation that he'd had under his own mother before,

and he'd barely walked away from that debacle in one piece. Now he was being forced to relive the experience, but this time dominated by his sister. Sima Guang writes, quote, Whatever she wished, the emperor granted. From the chief ministers down, appointment and dismissal hung on one word from her. The most powerful people in the land flocked to her doorway as if it were a marketplace, end quote. It seemed that Taiping was following almost the exact path to power paved by her mother, the late Empress Wu. Use the men in your life to insulate yourself until you can usurp the throne outright. Guizhou points out, though, that in one critical area, she failed to secure her supremacy. He writes, quote,

Unsurprisingly, Emperor Reizong hesitated to make a selection by himself, but was helped in making this difficult choice by the apparent selflessness of his eldest son, Cheng Qi, who volunteered to give up his claim in favor of his cousin. Thus it was that in mid-July, 710, Li Longji would become the crown prince to the Tang Empire. Though at the time, Princess Taiping offered no opposition to Longji's appointment as the heir to the throne. Within weeks, she seemed to have realized the enormity of her error and mounted a tremendous campaign of slander against him. Though it's uncertain precisely what caused her to change her mind about this new crowned prince, it seems

likely that he simply showed too much capacity, that is, he was too good at doing the actual job, and not good enough at getting bullied around by her. In fact, just the fact that it was Li Longji named as heir seemed to mark an uptick in overall morale, and Sima Guang writes of it, quote, all were agreed in believing that the atmosphere of the Zhen Guang and the Yonghui periods had been revived, end quote. As the crown prince grew into his office, he remained unobtrusive but visible enough that his popularity continued to rise at court and beyond, largely through his overarching support of paring down the thousands upon thousands of bureaucratic offices. Nevertheless, Prince Longji remained keenly aware that Princess Taiping would continue to do

everything she could to drag his name through the mud and, she hoped, bring him down altogether. Though the crown prince hesitated to overtly act against his aunt, a number of his followers were not nearly so demure. On their own initiative, two of Longji's lieutenants gained audience with the emperor and convinced him that the best and easiest solution to end the tension within the imperial household would be to remove Princess Taiping from the capital altogether. Rézong reluctantly agreed to a temporary exile, and his sister and benefactor was moved to the nearby residence at Puzhou. From there, however, she found her ability to manipulate events within the capital little diminished, and since it had been his own men who

had convinced the emperor to banish her, Prince Longji must have known that she blamed him, and would seek to retaliate in kind. In an ill-conceived attempt to mollify Taiping, Longji had the two ministers who had her banished demoted from their posts, an act the princess immediately capitalized on by replacing them with ministers loyal to her. In short order, by the years end in fact, Longji himself was literally begging the emperor to recall the princess Taiping back to the capital just to end the economic pain she was inflicting on his interests. But all this swirling intrigue, building to an inevitable climax, was about to be undone by a sign from heaven itself. Long sunk in doubt and disillusioned by his family's constant infighting, Emperor Reizong saw the comet that blazed over Chang'an through the midsummer sky of 712, and in it he found an answer. It was a decision he'd been pondering for some time now, but now it had been confirmed by the skies above. Regime change was in the air

itself. After conferring with his attendant astrologers, who verified his own findings, Ruizong made the formal announcement that he was to abdicate the throne in favor of his heir, Crown Prince Longji. This pronouncement would see the undoing of all the hard work Princess Taiping had been investing into her campaign against Longji. If he became the emperor after all, it was all for naught, he wins automatically. And so she was forced to make a bold play, almost as bold as when she'd physically dragged Emperor Shang off the throne in favor of Raizong. She loudly, publicly, and repeatedly protested the

decision. This time, though, her bold maneuvers would prove in vain. Though she managed to force something of a compromise by getting Raizong to accept the post of Retired Emperor, and thus retaining something of the royal authority, the reins had firmly shifted to the new sitting sovereign's command upon his enthronement as Emperor Xuanzong. But for Princess Taiping, it was a bitter pill to swallow. She was still extremely powerful, yes, but the tide had turned against her, and she could hardly expect to maintain anything resembling a favorable balance of power against an even half-competent emperor. And Xuanzong, as we will see in the episodes to come, is rather above half-competence.

Here we see Taiping's infamous facade of calmness and patience crack against the pressure she was under. With time now against her, she decided that she must act immediately, and resorted to poison in an attempt to kill off Longji before he could act against her. The contaminated food, however, was discovered, and there could be no doubt to Emperor Xuanzong that it was his aunt who was responsible. If before, there had been only the barest possibility of peaceful reconciliation, that was now snuffed out entirely. The summer of the following year would see Taiping up in the ante considerably by organizing an attempted armed palace coup in what now had become almost the typical fashion. Gui Si writes, quote, her plans had been laid out with customary care,

and had she been a man, able to carry them out in person, might have succeeded, end quote. Instead, she had no choice but to entrust her plans to men that she had deemed trustworthy, and in at least one of those instances, she had been wrong. The plot leaked, as it does, and Emperor Xuanzong took the appropriate course of action. The day before the coup was to spring into action, imperial agents calmly knocked on the doors of each of the ringleaders and hauled them off to the Imperial Audience Hall for summary trial. To a man they were pronounced guilty of treason and beheaded. As for the Princess Taiping, given her nobility, she would be granted the right to a dignified suicide three days later within her own palatial residence.

And that would bring a final end to the period of female dominance in Tang China. Guizhou writes, quote, Her death may be suitably seen as the end of an era. Never again would so many women, for so long, influence the political life of the Chinese state. End quote. It has been a rocky decade, and one that might have been perceived even at the time as the potential undoing of the dynastic order that had only a generation ago reunified China. This idea of a reunified empire is culturally deep, but in living memory, it's still a relatively recent reality. But in some sense, the competing interests of Empress Wu's children seems to have

brought back some real sense of dread at the prospect of collapse. Their abuses of power and the state treasury exacerbated an already dire financial situation, and certainly must have seemed to have the potential to shake the state's order apart altogether. With so many of the court ministers willing to accept just about any prospect to end their abuses against the state, when Emperor Xuanzong took power, he would prove able to unite his officialdom into one of the greatest periods of rule for not just the Tang, but Imperial China altogether. And so, next time, we'll be out of these doldrums and back into one of the greats, who will, over the course of his four-and-a-half-decade reign, reform the aging institutions of the Tang Empire into its height of culture and power. Thank you for listening.

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