The History of China - #97 - Tang 15: Law & Order: XZU

Episode Date: May 9, 2016

In the Justice System of the Tang Imperial Court, the throne’s interests are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the Confucians, who argue for traditional ethics, and the Legalists, who argue for the unbending application of the letter of the law. These are their stories… Time Period Covered: 731-740 CE Major Historical Figures: Emperor Xuanzong of Tang Chief Minister Zhang Jiuling Chief Minister Li Linfu Eunuch Commander Gao Lishi General Wang Maozhong Major Sources Cited: Herbert, Penelope A. "A Debate in T'ang Chinaon the State Monopoly on Casting Coin" in T'oung Pao LXII. Twitchett, Denis. "Hsuang-Tsüng: The Middle Reign" in The Cambridge history of China, vol. 3. Sima, Guang. Zizhi Tongjian. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. 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. Before we launch into the show today, let me first recommend that, after you're done here of course, you go check out Roy Field Brown's excellent 10 American Presidents podcast. In each show, Roy Field has a guest give us the life and legacy of 10 of the U.S.'s most influential leaders. My personal favorite episode is, in fact, the first, which is the life and administration of Richard Nixon, as told by none other than Dan Carlin. Yeah, that Dan Carlin.

Please give it a listen, and while you're doing that, check out all of the other shows on offer through the Agora Podcast Network at www.agorapodcastnetwork.com. Thanks again, and enjoy the show. Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 97, Law and Order, XZU In the justice system of the Tang Imperial Court, the throne's interests are represented by two separate yet equally important groups, the Confucians, who argue for traditional ethics, and the legalistsists who argue for the unbending application of the letter of the law.

These are their stories. In the year 735, Emperor Xuanzong held an audience presiding over the trial of a pair of young men accused of a grisly murder. Worse yet, the murder of an official imperial censor in the course of his duties. To be sure, a capital crime if ever there was one. Neither of the defendants nor their counsels ever denied, over the course of the trial, that they had not killed the censor, nor that it had been anything other than premeditated and planned.

They had planned it, they had carried it out, and they had killed the imperial official. On that, everyone was in agreement. So open and shut case, right? Not quite. In fact, this case would prove to be one of the most contentious criminal decisions of Xuanzong's reign, and would produce a ripple effect far beyond mere criminal justice. This case, you see, highlighted and intensified a long-standing split in the imperial court that went all the way to its highest ministers, Zhang Jiu Ling and Li Linfu, respectively. But more on them in a bit. The two accused were actually brothers, the son of a man

who had recently been condemned to death and executed by the very censor official that they had subsequently murdered. That's right, it was a revenge killing, straight up and down. The brothers, having arrived at the conclusion that their father had been wrongfully punished, then took justice into their own hands and killed the censor right back. Hence the terrible dilemma now facing the court. What possible dilemma could there be about that, you might be asking? Well, it was the stark difference between what the letter of the law prescribed and its conflict with two of the ancient Confucian moral values, known respectively as Li and Xiao.

We have discussed Confucianism back about a million episodes ago, but I'm not going to force you to go rifling through the back catalog just to follow along, so I'll go ahead and recap those two values now. Xiao is most frequently translated as filial piety, which is a formal way to say simply obedience to your paternal elders. That would include, of of course one's father, as well as grandfather and ancestors, and at the very top the great father himself, the emperor. Beyond mere obedience, Xiao required that good members of society do their utmost to bring honor to their elders and parents as well, and to keep them from dishonor. Li, meanwhile, is a bit harder

to effectively explain. Nevertheless, we can think of it as being closely related to Xiao, and primarily as decorum and the rules of propriety of good form and custom. It can also be translated sometimes as natural law, that included filial piety, respect for elders, observance of proper social customs, and, of course, loyalty. So we can see how both of these concepts, and especially together, could be argued to socially justify an act like an honor killing or revenge killing against one's father. So acting as defense in the trial of these two brothers, Chief Minister Zhang Jialing argued

exactly that, that the two brothers had acted properly and in accordance with the expectations of their ethical responsibilities by avenging their father. Minister Zhang, as one of the most ardent and upstanding Confucians of the day, argued that the youths should be released at once and be found guilty of no crime, since they had been under a solemn moral obligation to avenge their father. This sounds strange or shocking to most of us, but even though active observance of Confucianism had fallen off steeply since its heyday during the Han Dynasty, its core principles were still the fundamental bedrocks on which the whole of Chinese ethics, and they would have argued civilization, rested. It was nothing to be taken lightly, or simply discarded. The opposite side of the case was Xuanzong's rival chief minister,

Liliangfu. Minister Li's case was a far more cut-and-dry argument. And it was ethics-schmethics. These two broke the law. I'll repeat that for those still yammering on about Xiao and Li over there. They broke the law. Full stop. They're guilty. They admit it. Administer the prescribed punishment.

In this case, immediate decapitation. This was hardly the first time such a dispute between the legalists and Confucian halves of the imperial brain had come into conflict over an issue along these more or less exact same battle lines. Probably the most famous example had actually occurred back during the reign of Empress Wu, where over the course of deliberation it was seriously suggested that offenders of such killings should receive two outcomes simultaneously. On the one hand, those found guilty would be given, according to Professor Twitchett, quote, On the one hand, those found guilty would be given, according to Professor Twitchett,

It would have been a decision that Stannis Baratheon himself would have been proud for its purity of justice. The good does not wash out the bad, nor the bad wash out the good, and each should have its own reward. Alas, Westerosi logic proved itself rather too schizophrenic for the court of Empress Wu, and nor would it prevail in the court of her grandson. In the case before Xuanzang, he was to side with the argument of Minister Li, that, quote, the preservation of law and order and the criminal law had overriding importance, end quote. By order of the Emperor, the two brothers were executed. We begin this episode with this tale in part as a shameless hook, but all the more to help illustrate the deepening and widening chasm between the two halves of the Emperor's

court one could think of them as development into proto-political parties, and the very real-world ramifications those disagreements could have on imperial policy. Especially as Xuanzong grows older, he'll come to rely more and more on his ministers to act in the throne's interests, and so it's important to understand how divided those opinions could often be. I mean, one half of your advisors arguing for total acquittal while the other insists on the death penalty is a pretty wide gap to bridge. Right now, however, we're going to rewind just a little to detail yet another of these fundamental disagreements between members of the imperial hierarchy, and the profound effect

its outcome would have on Shenzong's tenure. In 731, a common-born warrior was on a meteoric rise through the ranks of the officialdom, and not just common-born in fact, but a foreigner and a slave both. He was Wang Maocheng, the Korean-born personal slave to Li Longji before he had taken the throne, and in fact one of the key members of the palace coup against Princess Taiping that has seized him power. For this act of loyalty, Wang was freed and also granted rich rewards, the highest possible nominal office, and a succession of appointments in the palace guards. Maocheng had spent the majority of the 720s then parlaying that royal favor into higher and higher offices, culminating in 729 with his marriage to the daughter of one of the generals

commanding the northern palace armies. This marriage drew more than its fair share of criticism from court officials, chief among them the eunuch official Gao Lishi. Now I know what you must be thinking right now. Uh-oh, eunuchs, that probably means trouble. And that had been true-ish once. Ancient Chinese histories from the Shang to the Sui are littered with tales of eunuch treacheries, at least on par with the other Confucian political boogeymen, which were, of course, women. The particular infamy of the eunuch class had come about, though, in large part because of the curious manner in which the alterations were meted out. We've talked about this before, but it's worth a quick rehash. Prior to the Sui dynasty, castration had been systematically applied as a criminal penalty,

as one of the traditional five punishments. But then, those emasculated felons had been conscripted into the imperial palace as guardians of the palace ladies, and frequently as high officials. You can probably see the problem already, putting your enemies and convicts, often political or even military opponents of the regime, in close contact with your imperial court, unrivaled access to the imperial clan, and frequently huge amounts of political clout, given that they were among the only people allowed direct access to the sovereign and his family. Well, that could and did repeatedly result in incidents of court eunuchs seizing power either covertly or overtly for their own ends.

But following the legal reforms of the Sui, castration as a penalty had been abolished, leaving the eunuchs of the court and public understanding of them in an unique place. Gone was the stigma of punishment from the class, but their unique ability to gain lucrative and prestigious employment in the imperial court remained. Thus, from the Sui and Tang onward, the majority of court units would be pulled from indigenous tribal peoples from southern China, and later on from Korea as well. Yet there was also an undeniable appeal for Chinese families to submit a son of theirs

to the procedure in order to secure him political appointment and them courtly favor and wealth. Though it may sound horrific to our modern minds, it was actually pretty common in the pre-modern world, and certainly not limited to China. Egypt, Assyria, the Achaemenid Persians, the Romans, the Greeks, the Ottomans, and even the Catholic Church all utilized eunuchs as high political functionaries, and in each of those societies was the draw towards voluntary and even self-castration in the name of political power. This was the case for Gao Lishi, who had come into the court as a young castrato in 698 and served successively under Empress Wu and then Emperors Zhongzong, Ruizong, and now Xuanzong.

With Xuanzong in particular, Gao had made himself an indispensable and implicitly trusted member of the imperial inner circle through his participation in the overthrow of Princess Taiping. As a reward, he was not only named the head of the unit bureau, but was also granted the title of General of the Imperial Guard Corps, marking him out as the first eunuch to be promoted to the third-highest rank of the Tang system's possible nine. So, now having spent hopefully sufficient time on the setup, let's get back to the budding feud between the eunuch lord Gao Lishi and the general Wang Maozhong. Gao's complaint against the marriage of Wang to the daughter of an Imperial Guard commander was that, in effect, it gave the former slave too much power over both the

palace guard as well as the northern armies. guard commander was that, in effect, it gave the former slave too much power over both the palace guard as well as the northern armies. In other words, it gave him a near monopoly on a dangerous amount of military force. These grave warnings were initially dismissed by the emperor, but Wang managed to fan the flames of distrust in 729 when he began demanding that he be made president of the board of war as well. Xuanzong's spidey sense began to tingle, and he denied the promotion, much to Mao Zong's chagrin. With the emperor now alerted and increasingly alarmed at Wang's arrogance and naked ambition, Gao Lishi bent his ear and suggested that Xuanzong act first before Wang got any funny ideas. Xuanzong agreed, and thus in the early spring of 731, Mao Zong, his sons, and several of his fellow generals were demoted to provincial posts in the border regions, thus banishing them all from the capital,

which was once again based in Chang'an at this point. Shortly thereafter, a follow-up imperial missive arrived at the exiled Wang Mao Zong's new doorstep, ordering him to commit suicide. For Gao Lishi, however, his role in warning the emperor of Wang's dangerous ambitions secured his position as Xuanzong's right-hand man, with Xuanzong even remarking, quote, This was, it seems, a literal statement, as post-731, Gao would rarely sleep in his own home and was nearly a constant presence in the imperial palace.

From there, he would place himself in a position to screen petitions to the emperor before passing them on to the throne, and rapidly became so trusted that Shanzong even allowed him to pass rule on lesser matters himself, and without consulting the monarch beforehand. Gaolixue would remain on as the emperor's trusted servant for nearly half a century, and his own rise to power marked the commensurate rise of the eunuch class once again to power and prominence in Tang China. Professor Twitchett writes of the course of these events, In fact, going forward, the eunuch class, in spite of their historical infamy,

would come to be seen as even more reliable executors of the imperial will than even the scholar officials, who could, after all, potentially hold pretensions of overthrowing the dynasty and establishing their own line, whereas the eunuchs physiologically could not. The year 732 would see Xuanzong's administration once again turn and attempt to deal with the seemingly unkillable boogeyman of his reign, the still-faltering, still-mortally-compromised economic system that more and more dragged on the empire as a whole like an anchor. Xuanzong's agents had tried and failed to deal with this bugaboo earlier in the reign. You may remember Song Jing's disastrous attempts to eliminate the counterfeiting cabals of the Yellow River Valley in the late 710s, But those efforts had at best proved ineffective, and, as in Song Jing's case, catastrophic

failures that only compounded the financial crisis even further at worst. But the time had come now to take another swing at it. 732 saw a new bandit applied to the problem of empire-wide coin shortages in the form of an imperial edict stipulating that all debts and large transactions were to be paid in a mixture of cash and commodities. This, however, was only the latest stopgap measure aimed at relieving the symptoms of the problem without addressing the underlying cause, which Professor Penelope A. Herbert points out was the natural result of the state failing to meet the minimum needs of its expanding economy in terms of minting. She writes,

Illicit minting catered to the needs of expanding trade, which were not met by the state mints. Moreover, the expensive and inefficient methods of the ill-coordinated system of official mints made private minting an easy and profitable task, end quote. Two years later, however, we'd see a truly shocking idea set forth in an attempt to address one of the root causes of the issues, rampant counterfeiting. The suggestion would come from none other than the Confucian chief minister at the beginning of this story, Zhang Jialin.

What this meant in terms of economic outlook was that the Confucians were more tolerant of what we might think of as laissez-faire economic policies, favoring open trade and the people's welfare above all. Meanwhile, the legalists were basically hardliners, who were all about the absolute control of the monarch and the authority of the state to monopolize trade and currency and basically whatever else it wanted to. Minister Zhang's suggestion, then,

was that the state should relinquish its monopoly on minting coinage, and essentially just accept the fact of the matter that counterfeiters were going to counterfeit as long as it was profitable to do so. Rather than try to swim against that tide, the imperial court ought to acquiesce to the popular demand for more coinage regardless of its point of origin. In short, just let anyone and everyone mint their own coins if they want, and the problem will probably sort itself out. His rationale follows from a very logical argument, in essence that the coins themselves and their specific metal content,

or whether or not the state itself minted them, ultimately didn't matter. Coins were, after all, just tools of convenience and trade, and carried no actual value in and of themselves. Now this might sound strange to some of you, perhaps crazy even, but let's give Zhang Jialing the chance to explain himself. He wrote, quote, Textiles cannot be used by the foot and inch in transactions. Pulses and grains cannot be used by the minutest measure to exchange that which one has for that which one has not. Therefore, the ancients invented coin in order to act as a medium of exchange, end quote. In other words, look, coins are used as vessels of value because no one wants to haul around grains or textiles to every transaction.

Having an economic system based on currency rather than direct barter came about in almost every settled society in the world specifically because barter is a time and energy sink that frankly sucks and no one wants to have to do it all the time. Now what he's saying is absolutely true and probably more obvious in today's modern economies than it has ever been before. Think about what money is to most of us in the 21st century for a second. I mean, what is it really? Some of us might immediately jump to the idea of dollar bills or quarters or dimes, but how about the money you have in your bank account or on your credit card or whatever digital wallet

you might happen to use? What is that? It's just information. A sequence of ones and zeros that changes based on input. What intrinsic value does any of that have? The nickel-copper coins in your pocket, the paper bills in your wallet, or the numbers you see when you check your bank statement. What value does that really hold in terms of real physical worth? The answer is nothing. Our money holds value for no other reason than we've all agreed that it does. Were we to wake up tomorrow and collectively decide that the US dollar or the euro is worthless, then it would be. Boom. Just like that. And before you say, aha, see, leaving the gold standard was a mistake, and the Fed, and the Fed, well, recognize that gold, silver,

platinum, or whatever reserve bullion you think has any more real value than a piece of green paper is just an equally elaborate social construct. Likewise, if we all decided tomorrow that gold should be deemed less worthless than a bucket of wet sand, it would be. Ultimately, all currency of any type only holds value by either popular or governmental fiat, since its only function is to act as a stand-in for what's actually going on, which is just an abstracted system of barter. Minister Zhang goes on about this point, saying, Of late, the products of farming and weaving have become somewhat cheap,

which harms the primary producers, while the objects which are cast, because they are scarce, have become dear. Lately, though there has been official's arguing for a very market-based approach to fixing the systemic flaw that he perceives in the Tang economy that is driving the crisis. The fact that official mints are inefficient and unable to meet the needs of the marketplace. And so, it's only natural to contract minting out to those private entrepreneurs who are already making a killing off of their counterfeit operations. They might as well legalize the private mints altogether, and at least ease the economic hardships on the populace. In making his argument to the imperial court, Zhang, in typical fashion, made reference to the precedent of ancient times, specifically the reign of Emperor

Wen during the Han dynasty, who allowed for the private minting of coinage. Now, Zhang intended his reference to Emperor Wen's allowance to bolster his point, sort of a, look, this has been done before and we remember it as one of the golden eras of civilization. But his opponents, the legalists, seized on this reference for a wholly different reason. 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 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. You see, one of Han's abandonment of the state monopoly on minting had not been without its opponents then, either. And the legalists took up as their champion the argument of Jia Yi of the Han court, who had argued, correctly it should be said, that such a course of action would lead to the people neglecting agriculture altogether, and instead to focus on printing as much of their own coins as they possibly could, which would in turn lead to lawlessness and overall economic collapse.

They likewise brought up the issue of coin quality. If anyone can just print their own coins, and all these coins are acceptable as currency, then where does that end? To add to our modern interpretation, how would you react if someone started insisting that their monopoly money was the equivalent in value to federal reserve notes, or insisting that their spare O-rings are as good as the official state coinage? It would debase the very idea of using a currency at all, if anyone can just claim that anything is perfectly acceptable legal tender. The heart of the legalist argument against Zhang Jialing's laissez-faire minting proposal, however, was that

it would threaten the authority of the emperor and the state itself. In a joint rebuttal to Zhang's policy outline, his chief legalist opponents, Pei Yaoqing, Li Linfu, and Xiao Zhong, outlined their counter-argument as follows, quote, As to coin, it is a medium of exchange and it is the key to controlling the state. This is why, throughout successive dynasties, private minting has been prohibited to prevent lawlessness. Now, if once the door is opened, we fear petty men will abandon farming to pursue profit and wickedness will increase, end quote. They then went on to reference an argument presented in the seminal legalist text, the Guanzi, which set forth, quote, End quote.

But by far the most forceful attack against the proposal to sanction private minting came from legalist minister Liu Chi, who, like his fellow opponents of the measure, drew heavily, and in this case quoted directly from, the ancient arguments of the Guangzi. As he put it, This is why controlling the currency is called keeping the balance. Keeping the balance means causing things now to rise in price, now to fall, and not allowing them to have a fixed price. Thus, to give is in the power of the ruler, to take away is in the power

of the ruler, to make poor is in the power of the ruler, and to make rich is in the power of the ruler. Therefore, the people look up to the ruler like the sun and moon and love him like a mother and father. The application of this method of government constitutes the authority of the ruler of men." End quote. Were the emperor to just abandon his monopoly on coinage, Leo continued, not only would his control over the people diminish, but so too would his ability to likewise control price and supply of commodities. But his greatest, and to us probably most interesting concern, was with the distribution of the empire's wealth among its populace, and the negative effects deregulation of currency might inflict on them.

He wrote, quote, If you allow the private casting of coin, the poor will certainly not be able to carry it out. I'm afraid the poor will become even poorer and will submit to service in the rich houses, while the rich houses will take advantage of the situation to become even more prosperous, end quote. Having the economic balance between the haves and have-nots thrown out of balance by allowing the wealthy to simply mint their own currency, he argued, would throw the whole social order into chaos. Those with too much wealth would have no motivation to serve the public good.

After all, what incentive could the government offer them for such service if they could forego an imperial salary and simply print their own money instead? Meanwhile, if the economic situation on the poorest subjects declined further, they would be too motivated by the immediate needs of survival to bother submitting to the law, and would not be deterred from crime by threats of penalties. After all, what fear does a man starving to death have of legal punishments? Even more frightening to anyone interested in maintaining the social current order, though, was Leo's dire recollection of what had taken place following the Han's allowance of private minting. He wrote, quote, the great families, aggressive and powerful, obtained control of the profit of mountains and seas. One family would collect a host of over a thousand men, mostly exiles who had gone far

from their native hamlets, abandoning the tombs of their ancestors. Attaching themselves to a great house and collecting in the midst of mountain fastnesses and barren marshes, they made wickedness and counterfeiting their business, seeking to build up the power of their clique. End quote. The worst-case scenario of allowing anyone to print money, by Liu's analysis, was that factions could, and had for that matter, emerge, that could ultimately build up enough independent support to challenge the power of the ruling dynasty outright. Criticism of Zhang's proposal, however, was not limited to the legalists' concerns with state authority. Even some of his fellow Confucians took an opposing position that was, surprisingly enough, pretty similar to that of the legalists.

And just like their erstwhile opposition, these Confucian dissenters reached back to the arguments that had circulated during similar debates in the Han Dynasty, stating, Now, if the hills and marshes are not state-controlled, they will yield profit to both prince and minister. If there be not interdiction on coinage, the counterfeit will circulate with the genuine. If the officials and rich vie with one another in extravagance, the lower classes will devote themselves to gain, and thus the two will undermine one another. End quote. Minister Zhang's fellow Confucians also argued that Zhang seemed to have had a huge blind spot when it came to the quality of private mints' potential output. There was only a profit to be made in minting, after all, if they were producing so-called

bad coinage, which is to say coins that were swapping out copper for other, cheaper metals, like lead or iron. The only way to be sure that these bad coins were not put into circulation by private mints would be to somehow enforce a strict ban on their production, and, as the court had bitterly learned back in 718, such bans were easy enough to write and proclaim, but actually enforcing them was something else entirely. The Confusions instead proposed an alternative to privatizing coin production, that instead the imperial government should implement a tax payable only in copper ore. This would, in theory, increase the state's physical control over the raw metal.

The lead minister pushing this plan, Cui Mian, wrote on this, quote, Now, if a tax were to be collected in copper in commutation of labor service, then official minting could be accomplished with success. If the value of coin were worked out and the cost of labor service, then official minting could be accomplished with success. If the value of coin were worked out and the cost of manufacture assessed, then private minting would be rendered unprofitable." Even legalists like Liu Che agreed with this assessment. The core of the problem was that the state treasuries physically did not have enough copper to keep up with the demand for official coinage, and that lack of metal was short-circuiting the whole economy. Thus, rather than deregulating minting, the opposite was in fact the solution, a new state monopoly on copper ore altogether. Leo wrote, quote,

If copper were not available to your subjects, illicit casters of coin would no longer have a way to cast coin, and official coin would not be defaced, and the people would not commit a capital crime. Moreover, the number of official coins would daily increase, and secondary production would again be profitable to the state. And I should have mentioned before going on that when they refer to primary production and secondary production, what they're referring to is the production of goods or food being primary or first-order production, whereas trade and coins were the second-order or secondary production. I'm sure you've by now inferred the whole outcome of this rather one-sided debate. The overwhelmingly negative response to Zhang Jialing's proposal ensured that Emperor Xuanzong rejected the idea of allowing private minting of currency.

Instead, something of a compromise between the two opposing positions was enacted in 734. The imperial decree to that effect read, From now on, any who have real estate or horses to trade should first use silk, linen, damask, gauze, silk thread, and silk floss as the medium of exchange. In other trading, where prices exceed 1,000 cash, coin and goods should be used together. End quote. On the tail end of this compromised position, the obvious fact that the financial system as a whole

was in need of systemic reform was pushed to the fore by a number of key ministerial officials, chief among them Li Linfu, the legalist chief minister and the president of the Board of Finance. In early 736, he led the charge to implement a sweeping revision of the taxation and provisionary systems, regularizing and rationalizing them across the empire. Though the specific details have been lost, and indeed would have been well beyond this show's purview, since they would have needed to vary greatly from region to region in order to equalize out the huge discrepancies in

collection and dispensation from place to place,, what is clear is that it was a major step in finally actually bringing the empire's purse under control. Twitchit writes of the policy shift, quote, this was a major step in administrative rationalization, bringing the empire's financial system more closely in touch with local realities. It was also a major innovation, in that, for the first time, the government tacitly abandoned the general principle of uniformity throughout the empire, both of the rates of tax and labor service and of the administrative details of the financial administration." The final conflict we're going to touch on today will be the ultimate clash between Xuanzong's court's Confucian and legalist champions, respectively, of course, ministers Zhang Jialing and Li Lingfu. In spite of the positive achievements

they'd managed to push through into policy, sometimes even seeing their interests dovetail, the pair's feelings for one another were anything but cordial. The first real conflict between the two ministers broke out in 735, over the murder trial we discussed at the beginning of this episode, when the two sons of an executed man then killed the censor responsible. Li Linfu and the legalist positions won the day, as we discussed, and the two brothers lost their heads. But that would only be the first of the battles to come for the two nearly diametrically opposed ministers.

And both, more and more, were of a mind that the imperial court wasn't big enough for both of them. The next friction point will come as no real surprise, since it has often been the source of heated controversy in the imperial courts of the day, whatever the era might have been. I'm referring, of course, to the ever-present question of succession. As we mentioned last episode, Xuanzang's particular problem was not a lack of heirs. To the contrary, he had at least 59 children at about a 50-50 male-to-female split. Now, here the question centered around which potential heir should get the top job.

Xuanzong's favorite consort, as we discussed last episode, was Lady Wu Huifei, Empress Wu Zetian's grand-niece. That lineage, stemming as it was from a clan who had been branded an enemy of the dynasty, was problematic, since it effectively precluded the consort Wu from becoming the empress. The imperial court was still of the very understandable position that one Empress Wu had been more than enough, but thanks anyway. Being locked out of the empressship meant, however, that her son was likewise not the shu-in to the crown prince position that she hoped he would be. Instead, that position was still filled by the son of

Shanzong's late empress, and more and more, the emperor was convinced that that really ought to be changed. In 736, the issue was brought to a crisis point when Lady Wu made allegations that the crown prince and several other royal brothers were conspiring to assassinate her and her son to keep them from the throne. Into this brooding successional crisis stepped in Li Lianfu, whose legalist leanings sided him with the emperor and prime consort's personal wishes, rather than, say, hereditary propriety of succession order. One guess as to who will fill that role in this emergent controversy, though. Through a eunuch intermediary, Minister Li gave his support to Xuanzong's wishes,

to replace his current heir with Lady Wu's son, giving the very familiar line that successional decisions were a private family matter and not subject to debate in the imperial court. Lady Wu then sent a message to Minister Zhang Jialing, promising him that if he were just to support this decision, she would ensure that he remained on as one of the court's chief ministers. As an ardent Confucian, however, Zhang simply scoffed at this ham-handed attempt to buy off his ethics.

He had a long and loud history of supporting the traditional line of succession, as well as a systematic education of the heir to prepare him for moral rule when the time came. You couldn't just swap him out willy-nilly for some unprepared wannabe. Rather than acquiescing, Zhang instead wrote directly to the emperor, advising against deposing princes altogether, and casting doubt on this whole idea that the sons had been plotting against Lady Wu and Prince Mao, given that, you know, they all live in the imperial compound and their actions are monitored 24-7. Although it seems Xuanzang may have favored swapping out his heir,

Zhang was nevertheless able to convince him against taking any action. Nevertheless, he had managed to paint a target on himself in the eyes of Li Linfu and Lady Wu, which was only the latest of the bullseyes on his back. Zhang, you see, had a really easy time making enemies at court and a really difficult time making friends. Chalk it up, if you will, to him being an inflexible paragon of blunt honesty and being prone to ill-tempered outbursts when his rigid sense of propriety was violated. To which it puts it, quote, He was certainly a difficult counselor. Even his extremely eulogistic biography admits that he was short-tempered, hasty, and cantankerous, and disliked by the emperor's other courtiers.

His constant insistence on moral issues had also begun to take the form of direct political criticism, end quote. In other words, he's not the kind of guy you'd probably like to have at a dinner party, and his constant, prudish, shrill moralizing had by mid-736 taken its toll on his reputation and influence at court, in spite of his high position. Before his downfall, though, Minister Zhang would issue a stern warning that would posthumously turn him into something of a Chinese Nostradamus in the eyes of later historians. That same year, 736, the Khitan and Shi tribes of the northeast rose in rebellion, while the commander of the protectorate was away at court reporting to the throne. In his absence, one of his subordinate generals, a man we'll all come to know in the episodes to come, An Lushan,

led his armies in a punitive expedition against the insurgent tribes. This counter-strike would end in disaster and defeat, and since General An had undertaken the failed expedition on his own initiative rather than under orders, the Buk, by law, stopped with him. The legal precedents were clear and unambiguous. He was to be executed for his breach of command and his failure to secure victory against the barbarians. Xuanzang, however, saw potential in the junior general, and with the recommendation of An Lushan's superior commander,

wished to spare his life. As you might imagine, such a decision did not sit well with Zhang Jialing, who wrote in his dissent for the sake of military discipline that An Lushan must face execution for this breach of law. Moreover, and here we really get into the prophetic end of his letters, Zhang put forth his belief that An Lushan exhibited personality traits consistent with someone who might eventually plot rebellion and treason. Xuanzang, however, disagreed, essentially saying, sit down, Zhang, he's fine. He commuted the execution and merely reduced An Lushan to a commoner rank, but allowed him to remain a part of the army. Cue the ominous music, because Xuanzang is going to live to regret not listening to Zhang Jialing

and lopping off on Lushan's head then and there. Ultimately, it would be Zhang Jialing's devotion to telling the emperor the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, that would see him kicked unceremoniously out of his high office. In the autumn of 736, Xuanzong wished to immediately return to Chang'an from Luoyang to conduct ancestral rituals in order to stave off unfortunate omens he had seen. Zhang and another minister, I won't trouble you with, argued against this, saying that the harvest season had not yet come, and as such the whole court uprooting and moving through the country, like the plague of locusts it was would effectively destroy the region's ability to harvest the grain it had spent all summer growing.

Lili and Fu, on the other hand, once again as always, came down on the side of essentially letting the emperor do whatever the hell he wanted to do, and argued that the two capitals were both the imperial residences and the emperor was at liberty to freely choose to move wherever or whenever he wished. No prize for guessing which side Xuanzang came down on. Huichet writes of what follows, quote, the emperor accepted Li Linfu's advice, and the court returned to Chang'an for the last time on the 21st of the 10th month of 736. On the 27th of the next month, Zhang Jialing fell from power, End quote. Zhang's downfall would be brought about by him inserting himself into a cascading series of condemnations at the hands of Li Linfu against his political enemies.

Zhang's friend and a lesser member of the court was caught up in charges by Li that he was promoting factionalism within the government, and of corruption. When Zhang set in to attempt to defend his friend against the charges, he too was caught up in the Führer. Ultimately, both were dismissed from their posts as chief ministers and instead kicked upstairs to high-ranking but politically powerless positions. With the momentum on his side, Li Linfu moved to strike the deathbed to Zhang Jialing's career in the capital. In 739, following yet another political scandal involving one of Zhang's allies, Li Linfu was successfully able to lobby the emperor to demote Minister Zhang to a provincial post along the Middle Yangtze River. He would never again return to the capital and would die the following year at the age of 52.

Zhang's departure from the imperial court was a dark turning point for Xuanzong's administration. Song Dynasty historian Sima Guang wrote of the chancellor in the Zizitongjian, quote, Of the chancellors the emperor commissioned after he took the throne, Zhang Zhaoling embodied honesty. After Zhang was demoted, however, the officials were all concerned with keeping their positions, and honest words no longer had a place in government. End quote. I hope I haven't lost too many of you treading through the political and economic weeds of Shenzong's middle reign. Though it hasn't exactly been explosive or as action-packed as other periods we've gone over, and like some just over the horizon, I do hope that you'll agree that,

in their own way, these debates over the policies upon which the whole of the Tang system rests are both important and interesting to understand and discuss. Economic policy and political factional infighting might have sounded dry or dull at the beginning of this episode, and maybe it still does, but even if it is not your cup of tea, and it sure wasn't mine going into this period, but I've been converted over the course of my research, I hope you can still see why it's worth taking the time to really come to grips with it all. Though there might not have been any splashy battles that you could make a movie out of, the issues at the core of this episode touch on the heartstrings of the

Tang dynasty as a whole, and whether or not it will be able to survive the century. Sure, I mean, Shenzong himself had thus far proved to be an able enough ruler, but without substantive reform to the bones of the Tang regime, it would otherwise be poised to crumble the next time a strong wind blew by. And make no mistake, nothing less than a typhoon gale is approaching in the next couple of decades, in the form of the general whose life was pardoned in spite of Zhang Zhaoling's exhortations against such clemency, An Lushan. The Tang dynasty under Shanzong has managed to stabilize its financial situation, as well as find something of a balance point between the political idealism of Confucian thought and the realpolitik machinations of the legalists. And just in time, too. Because as we're going to see moving forward, it will really need all the institutional,

economic, and popular stability it can get if it's going to make it out of the 8th century alive. Thank you for listening. you have, you'll probably like the History of Egypt podcast. Every week, we explore tales of this ancient culture. The History of Egypt is available wherever you get your podcasting fix. Come, let me introduce you to the world of Ancient Egypt.