Violence inthe Rise to Power

Anyone who wished to sit on the throne or wield power from behind it normally had to kill political rivals and their adherents. This was a truism whether the context was succession struggles within the palace or fighting on the battlefield to found a new dynasty.

Violence Endemic to the Political Culture

Even though in principle the Chinese legal-bureaucratic system resembled modern ones in having an established hierarchy of offices and administrative regulations, some scholars have argued that a Weberian patrimonial model in which emperors treated retainers as members of the household can further understanding of early medieval Chinese politics.¹ Under these circumstances, newly enthroned monarchs needed to consolidate power by killing rivals, purging adherents of predecessors and placing allies in office. The monarch's reliance on personally loyal retainers was stronger during the periods of political division, but remained a component of rulership during the unity of the Sui and Tang. Courtiers who showed disloyalty were risking their lives. As Max Weber has observed, patrimonialism gave rise to ‘favoritism - of men close to the ruler who had tremendous power, but always were in danger of ^[170] sudden, dramatic downfall for purely personal reasons'.^[171] The violence targeted at political enemies and officials who fell from favour served a broader purpose of enhancing the authority of the ruler by intimidating other subordinates.

Ideally, the monarch should be the only object of loyalty in a patrimonial realm. However, as post-Weberian social scientists have pointed out, another typical aspect of patrimonial-bureaucratic rule is the prevalence of personalistic patron-client relationships that permeate the palace, the court and the govern­mental administrative hierarchy.^[172] Powerful members of the court, the bureau­cracy, the military and local society used resources at their disposal to attract clients.

Militarisation of local society also reinforced the propensity to resort to violence in the palace. In contrast to the stereotype of the Chinese farmer or civil official who disdained warfare, local society included martial elites (haojie or haoxia who were drawn into armies and bureaucracies of states. During the southern dynasties, their cultivation of military skills and concern for ‘personal honour, vengeance, and the willingness to be personally involved in combat and killing' made them attractive soldiers and bodyguards.^[173] Under the northern dynasties and the Sui and Tang, armies were composed of a multi­ethnic array of men, including local martial elites and cavalrymen of Inner Asian origin. The high elite of north China esteemed martial values and pursuits as highly as scholarly and literary ones.^[174] This militarisation of society and inclusion of military men in government increased the likelihood of bloody coups d'etat and succession struggles at court.

Succession Struggles

The stereotype of Chinese dynastic succession involves an emperor who designates an heir, usually the eldest legitimate son, to accede to the throne in an orderly manner after the father's death. The reality is that primogeniture was manipulated or ignored. As a result, succession was ‘volatile and poten­tially very violent', and sometimes entire lines of kin were killed to preserve the power of a reigning monarch.^[175] Even before the demise of a monarch, bloody power struggles often occurred among relatives and courtiers. Coup attempts were common. The ideology of succession by the eldest legitimate son did not hold much sway in this period.

Some scholars have argued that violent struggles over the throne resulted from the cultural influence of the rulers of north China of Inner Asian ancestry.^[176] However, more than foreign cultural influences must have been at play, because analogous succession struggles also regularly occurred in the southern dynasties with ethnically Chinese emperors. In fact the extreme disunity of the fourth century was triggered by succession disputes among the ruling Chinese Sima family of the Western Jin Dynasty (265-317). The origin of the conflict was a struggle between the wife and mother of a weak emperor and their extended families. This triggered various military inter­ventions by Sima kinsmen who held regional military commands. Known as the War of the Eight Princes, the internecine violence led to the demise of the Western Jin.^[177]

Among the southern dynasties from 420 to 550 only one designated heir managed to succeed his father, the Southern Qi Emperor Wu (r. 483-94). During the fifty-nine years of the Former Song, twenty-seven members of the imperial descent group were involved in attempted coups, about half of whom were brothers and uncles of reigning emperors. An example of a bloody succession during the Former Song occurred in 453. The eldest son of Emperor Wen (r. 424-53) assassinated his father and usurped the throne. Thereupon a brief war ensued between the usurper and the emperor's third son, who was a provincial general. The latter defeated his older brother on the battlefield and reigned as Emperor Xiaowu (r. 453-64). His victory depended on a group of battle-hardened retainers. After an uncle raised an army in rebellion, fear of potential usurpers led Xiaowu to carry out bloody purges over the next decade.^[178] The Emperor Xiaowu's reign was established in battle and preserved with the aid of military retainers who could protect the emperor and eliminate actual or potential rivals.

To the north, under the Sarbi-ruled Northern Wei, the politics of succes­sion likewise were violent, but most blood was spilled within the confines of the palace.

The long-lasting Tang dynasty, whose rulers rose to high elite status under the Western Wei and Northern Zhou, followed a pattern of bloody succession that resembled the northern dynasties more than the southern ones. From 618 to 756 the only succession of a designated heir was Gaozong (r. 649-83). Even in Gaozong's case, the preceding decade was characterised by typical factional disputes over who should be the crown prince.11 The most famous incident involved Emperor Taizong (r.

In the second half of the Tang, a new historical pattern emerged as eunuchs were institutionalised as kingmakers. Previously, eunuch involvement in palace faction struggles had been episodic. For example, Zong Ai, a powerful eunuch of the Northern Wei arranged the killings of several of the crown prince's supporters and perhaps the crown prince himself in 451 and 452, but Zong fell victim soon thereafter.^[183] By the late Tang, eunuch power was institutionalised due to their control over the capital armies and monopolisation of communica­tions with the inner palace, particularly in the 820s and 830s. They installed the 15-year-old Emperor Jingzong after the death of his father in 824. When he proved to be too immature and irresponsible to be controlled, they had him murdered in 827. His younger half-brother Wenzong (r. 827-40) was next chosen to rule at 17 years of age, but he chafed at eunuch control as he matured. Wenzong's gambit to throw off eunuch domination failed in the so-called ‘Sweet Dew Incident' in late 835, when an attempted ambush of eunuchs went awry. In response, the eunuchs called in the army to carry out a bloody purge in which more than a thousand government officials were killed.

After civil wars led to the fall of the T ang in 907, the succeeding Five Dynasties in the north exhibited short-lived dynastic successions, even more unstable than the southern dynasties in the fourth to sixth centuries. The Later Tang dynasty exemplifies a paradigm of highly militarised succession. The original power group was composed of the sons and adopted sons of Li Keyong, who was a prominent general of Shatuo Turk descent at the end of the Tang dynasty. His father had been bestowed the Li surname of the Tang dynastic line as an honour. The Later Tang dynastic founder Li Cunxiu was the birth son of Li Keyong. His reign only lasted from 923 to 926 before mutinous troops, who were poorly paid, killed him and enthroned his brother by adoption, Li Siyuan (r. 926-33). The latter became the only Later Tang emperor to die a natural death. Two of his blood sons were killed in the succession struggles in 933.^[185] Here we see a pattern of the armies, rather than eunuchs, as kingmakers in bloody successions. These martial emperors failed to establish legitimacy because they could not organise a stable civil administration to pay the troops.

The Former Shu Kingdom (903-26) of the south-west, one of the Ten Kingdoms, provides an example of a violent succession struggle involving mutually suspicious sons and females of the harem. WangJian, an ethnically Chinese Tang military governor, officially declared himself king and then emperor as he solidified control over the region as the Tang empire dissolved in civil war. Like the Shatuo-founded Later Tang dynasty to the north, Wang relied on a military in which most commanders were his adopted sons. After declaring the dynasty, Wang was vexed with the problem of designating a successor. He chose his second birth son over his most able adopted son in 908. The bypassed adopted son was executed for insubordination soon there­after. Two years later, the heir apparent was killed while leading his armed adherents in a failed coup attempt. Faced with the need to designate a new heir, Wang fell under the influence of his favourite concubine and chose her child, Zongyan. At 14 years old, he was the youngest son. Though this put an end to internecine conflict, Zongyan proved to be a disastrous choice. After succeeding his father in 918, his negligent administration alienated the army and populace. When Later Tang forces invaded in 925, the Former Shu armies surrendered without a fight.^[186]

Succession was frequently a violent political struggle involving many different actors at court. In the case of strong princes contending for the throne, violent successions arose from the need to eliminate rivals with real or potential claims to the throne. They generally relied on their military clients to kill and cow kin who were potential adversaries. Successions remained bloody even when harem women, eunuchs or armies influenced or controlled the monarch because of the need to prevent rival factions from promoting other claimants to the throne.

Dynastic Changes

Succession disputes spilling out of the palace, conflicts among the elite, poor administration of the empire and natural disasters were factors that could provoke a dynasty's army and/or subject population to revolt. Rebellious commoners never founded new dynasties in the early medieval period. Instead, military officers, leading personal armies that succeeded in gaining control of the court, in most cases established the new imperial lines. Since the dynastic founder and successors were expected to be males, eunuchs and women who were powers behind the throne were not candidates for estab­lishing dynasties. Empress Wu's Zhou dynasty, to be discussed below, was the sole exception.

The fall of the Northern Wei dynasty provides an example of dynastic change resulting from civil war. The troubles began when the garrisons guarding the northern frontier revolted in the 523. The catalyst was a local commander who refused to distribute grain to soldiers and their families during a period of drought and famine. A military officer of agro-pastoral Jie descent, Erzhu Rong, succeeded in gaining the loyalty of rebel troops in 528. He carried out a massacre of the Northern Wei child emperor, his mother and 2,000 officials and courtiers who had surrendered. Erzhu enthroned a puppet Wei emperor, but two years later Erzhu was assassinated while visiting the puppet court.^[187] By 534 rebellious troops had coalesced into two rival factions under Yuwen Tai, a Sarbi strongman, and Gao Huan (496-547), a Chinese officer who had assimilated into the frontier Sarbi culture. The rival factions established competing states with puppet rulers, the Western Wei (535-56) and Eastern Wei (534-50) respectively. Later, their heirs founded the Northern Zhou (557-81) and Northern Qi (550-77) dynasties. Both military strongmen had risen from relatively low positions in the officer corps through their intelligence, cunning and ability to gain the respect and personal loyalty of subordinate generals, including former rivals. In addition, the calculated use of violence was an aspect of their success. For example, when Western Wei Emperor Fei (r. 551-54) chafed at Yuwen Tai's control, the emperor was deposed, replaced by his brother, and poisoned two months later.^[188]

Yuwen considered carrying out a coup to establish his own dynasty, but decided to wait until he had reunified all of China. Before this could happen, he died of natural causes in 557 at age 50, but soon afterward his 15-year-old son was installed as the first Northern Zhou emperor. Most members of the former Wei imperial house were spared, perhaps because they had lacked real power for two decades. The exception was the abdicated Wei emperor, who was killed in less than a month. Two ofYuwen Tai's close associates also were killed because they were suspected of disloyalty to his heir.^[189] The Northern Zhou succeeded in conquering the Northern Qi, but lasted only two decades because it would succumb to the Sui Dynasty (581-618) in a much bloodier coup.

Coups were especially prevalent during the periods of division between north and south. The typical case involved a powerful military officer of elite social status who had gained regency over a child emperor. The usurping dynastic founder was given a patina of legitimacy when the child ruler was forced to abdicate ‘voluntarily' to his ‘virtuous' successor. The claim to morality was particularly sanctimonious in coups d'etat because the dynastic founder typically sought to exterminate the abdicated emperor, his kinsmen and their loyal adherents in order to consolidate power.

The Sui founder, Yang Jian (541-604), followed the blueprint of coups d'etat that had been established in the preceding centuries. Yang was from a well-connected family that had risen to power under the Western Wei and Northern Zhou dynasties. He became a close associate of Northern Zhou emperor Wudi (r. 561-78), who was responsible for the conquest of the Northern Qi. A key to Yang Jian's future occurred in 561 when his oldest daughter was betrothed to Wudi's designated heir, and Yang Jian gained access to the palace as father-in-law of the emperor. When the heir died only a few years after Wudi, Yang Jian instigated a coup with forged edicts appointing him as supreme military commander and regent to the new child emperor. When he invited some Northern Zhou princes to the capital, they revolted because they suspected an ambush. In the ensuing war, Yang Jian used his control of the capital armies to defeat opposing troops and kill fifty-eight members of the Yuwen imperial lineage.

Yang Jian's desire to carry out the coup and found his own dynasty may have been because the child emperor was born of a concubine rather than YangJian's daughter. In accordance with custom, YangJian moved gradually to found the dynasty. Over the course of several months, edicts were issued in the name of the child emperor praising YangJian. Finally, in early 581 an edict was promulgated in the name of the child emperor offering his abdica­tion. Making a customary display of reluctance, Yang declined three times, but was finally ‘persuaded' to become the son of heaven. The abdicated child emperor was eventually killed. The brutal extermination of all male kin of the Yuwen line, whom Yang Jian and his father had served loyally, forestalled any attempt to restore the Northern Zhou dynasty. ^[190]

However, the Sui proved to be another short-lived dynasty because Yang Jian's heir overtaxed the population with repeated unsuccessful attempts to conquer Korea. Massive rebellions broke out starting in 613. As China dissolved into civil war, the eventual Tang dynastic founder, Li Yuan, became one of the major combatants seeking to reunify the empire. He used a mixture of martial violence and diplomacy to consolidate power. Li Yuan was initially a Sui loyalist military officer involved in suppressing peasant rebels, but by 617 had decided to revolt. He became one of nine major rebel warlords, more than half of whom were former Sui military officers. All of the major contenders, including Li Yuan, claimed to have received the mandate of heaven and proclaimed the founding of their own dynasties while fighting was under way.^[191] Li Yuan emerged victorious in part because of his willingness to coopt rivals. Regional warlords or their followers who voluntarily surrendered were appointed to positions in the Tang military or civil administration. In contrast, rival warlords who refused to surrender were attacked. For example, in a key battle in 621 Tang forces under Li Shimin, the future emperor, defeated the Tang's two strongest opponents, Dou Jiande and Wang Shichong. Some 3,000 men fell in battle and 50,000 were captured. Dou and Wang were captured and convicted of treason. Dou was executed in the marketplace of Chang'an, and Wang was killed surrepti­tiously on the way to exile.^[192] In other cases, warlords who insisted on defying the Tang to the end faced the wrath of their own adherents. For example, Gao Kaidao had originally received investiture from the Tang, but later revolted. Knowing that the Tang would execute him for treason, he refused to surrender, but committed suicide when most of his own forces rebelled against him.^[193] As China dissolved into civil war, military leaders often personally shed blood. The future Tang emperor, Li Shimin, and other warlords, such as Dou Jiande, were involved in combat, often leading their troops in cavalry charges. Li Shimin claimed to have killed more than a thousand men.^[194]

An example of failed dynastic change in an earlier civil war demonstrates that founding a successful dynasty required more than military prowess. When a military governor of the Northern Qi dynasty, Hou Jing, fled south­ward with his army, the Southern Liang dynasty was unable to put up effective resistance. Hou Jing took the capital, Jiankang, in 549 after a six- month siege that brought misery to the populace. Marrying a Liang princess, he ruled through puppet emperors for two years until founding his own Han dynasty. However, due to poor governance and lack of attention to con­solidating control over the countryside, Hou Jing was soon forced to flee Jiankang. After his erstwhile adherents killed him while on the run, his body met a grisly fate. His head was delivered to the new Liang emperor, his hands were sent to the Northern Qi as a peace offering, and the remainder of his body was returned to Jiankang where the flesh was devoured by a mob that included his widow, the Liang princess, and the bones were burned and ‘mixed with wine and drunk by those who suffered because of him'.^[195] Hou Jing's example demonstrates that a military leader with poor political and administrative skills not only could lose political support and legitimacy but also could become the object of contemptuous collective violence.

Perhaps the most violent attack on the political elite of the entire period originated in the harem when Empress Wu carried out a coup to abolish the Tang and found her own Zhou dynasty (690-705). She ascended from being Gaozong's (649-83) concubine to empress, and finally ruled outright as emperor in part because of her mastery of the politics of the harem and bureaucratic administration. Perhaps due to the anti-female bias of the traditional historians, contemporary sources depict her as particularly cruel and vindictive. Regardless of the truth of these accusations, she irrefutably resorted to violence more frequently than male contenders for power in order to overcome social resistance to female rule. We also should not overlook her deft political skills and ideological innovations, which, like the violence involved in her consolidation of power, were perhaps the most intense in imperial Chinese history.^[196]

While still a concubine, she assembled a network of spies in the inner palace to outmanoeuvre her rivals, including Empress Wang, who was deposed on the orders of the emperor and later killed. Officials who had opposed her elevation to empress were banished, killed or forced to commit suicide over the next several years. When Gaozong suffered a debilitating stroke in 675, the empress took control over government. After his death she usurped authority from her own sons - Zhongzong (r. 684, 705-10) and Ruizong (r. 684-90, 710-12) - who served successively as figureheads. The empress had always been a brilliant political strategist, but as she increasingly consolidated her power from 683 to 697, she took ideological innovations and violence against elites to the highest levels of the early medieval period. After she forced Zhongzong to abdicate in 684, a rebellion occurred in south China. In reaction, she carried out what has been described as a ‘reign of terror' to protect her informal control of the court. She claimed ‘thousands of victims over the next six years'. By 685 her loyal ‘cruel' officials staffed judicial offices and lodged charges of treason, which were frequently false, against high- ranking officials and military officers. Confessions were obtained through torture. Punishments extended to family members who were executed or exiled in accordance with Tang law against sedition. In the following year, she installed a giant bronze urn where suggestions and complaints could be filed anonymously. The urn became the means for malcontents and oppor­tunists to file false charges against their rivals. The culmination of the violence came in 688, two years before she founded her Zhou dynasty. Laying a trap similar to Yang Jian's in 580, she invited the collateral kin of the Tang house to a grand ceremony in the capital. Suspecting an ambush, one of her deceased husband's uncles attempted a poorly organised revolt that ultimately failed. In retaliation, almost every member of the Tang's Li lineage was accused of sedition and executed. The few exceptions included her sons Zhongzong and Ruizong and their children, who remained under house arrest.^[197]

The use of violence ultimately paved the way for her usurpation of power in 690. In contrast to other coups, after Ruizong's forced abdication he was named heir apparent and the Li surname of Ruizong and her other surviving children and their offspring was changed to her surname of Wu. Her use of violence against real, potential and imagined political enemies was qualita­tively similar to contemporary standards, but quantitatively unique in its large scale. Although unique to early China, her purge perhaps resembles similar efforts under the first emperor of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) and Chairman Mao during the Cultural Revolution.^[198] As an unconventional female emperor, she seems to have needed to resort to violence more frequently than her male contemporaries to assure that the military and bureaucracy were filled with supporters, and that potential opponents were cowed or dead, including almost the entire Li lineage. Nonetheless, her female dynasty relied too much on her personal political talents to endure. As she became too feeble in the final year of her life, she fell victim to a countercoup and Tang restoration in 705 with her son Zhongzong on the throne. Perhaps too old and sick to be considered a threat, she was allowed to retire and apparently died a natural death months later at the age of 80.^[199]