Season 4, Episode 4: Tang, Silla, and Balhae

We left the mainland last season as the fall of Baekje became finalized in 663 with the Battle of Baekgang and the conquest of Koguryo completed in 668. We’ll start today by reaching back just a bit farther so that we can give justice to one of China’s most influential and charismatic rulers in all of history. A ruler whom both Empress Genmei and Gensho admired and, in their own way, sought to emulate.

In 649, Emperor Gaozong took the reins of China’s national government shortly after his father, Emperor Taizong, died from either an illness or by being poisoned from whatever was in the pills that the court alchemists had crafted for him. In 655, Gaozong’s favorite concubine - a beautiful, educated, and influential woman - accused Empress Wang, longtime principal spouse of the Emperor who had given birth to a daughter but no sons, of witchcraft. The Empress had been steadily losing support from key members of the imperial family and this accusation was just the pretense the Emperor needed to depose his wife and elevate the accusing concubine to Empress. She would be remembered by history as Empress Wu Zetian.

The story of Empress Wu’s elevation is part of a pattern which frequently repeated itself during her lifetime. She was decisive, ambitious, and not afraid to employ violence when she felt it necessary. During her first decade as Empress, her husband often sought her advice on every matter of state and valued not only her opinion but also her determination. In 665, two years after the fall of Baekje, Emperor Gaozong suffered a series of debilitating strokes and thereafter directed that matters of state should fall under the supervision of Empress Wu.

In 668, Koguryo likewise fell thanks to the combined efforts of several Chinese armies and thus the Tang government believed that the land of Koguryo should fall under their governance, essentially arguing that this was a return to rightful ownership because of the previous occupation under the Han Dynasty more than three hundred years before. Empress Wu, acting on behalf of her husband the Emperor, of course, ordered a new office established to govern affairs in Korea. The Protectorate General to Pacify the East was composed of 9 commanderies with a combined 42 prefectures made up of 100 counties. In place of Baekje, they established Ungjin Commandery and likewise began referring to Silla as the Gyerim Protectorate and hoping that awarding King Munmu the official title of the regional commander would help the people of Silla ignore that the Tang Dynasty was essentially declaring sovereignty over them. This did not work. In the very next year, 669, the people of former Koguryo staged an uprising and Silla likewise gathered its armies and attacked the former land of Baekje, now Ungjin Commandery. The Tang armies successfully defended their new acquisitions at first and the government forcibly displaced over 78,000 people from former Koguryo, relocating them in relatively unoccupied or abandoned areas within China’s interior. While this certainly reduced the number of potential rebels in the protectorate, it did nothing to quell the people’s desire to expel the Tang.

For each of the three years thereafter, the army of Silla would strike at the castles within Ungjin Commandery and the people of former Koguryo, led by their now-disinherited nobles, staged rebellions. Every year the Silla army would return unsuccessful and the regional rebellions would be crushed until the uprising of 673. This guerilla effort managed to succeed for four years, frustrating the Tang and even causing them to relocate the protectorate’s capital in 676 from Pyongyang to the more westerly city of Liaoyong just north of the Liaodong peninsula, then the next year relocated to the city of Xincheng. Meanwhile, 674 proved a turning point for the Silla armies, whose ranks swelled with former Koguryo fighters as well as various Manchurian peoples who believed their best chance at driving the Tang out was to join with Korea’s last kingdom.

Silla’s successes in 674 appear to have frustrated the Tang court and they decided to change tactics. They declared that King Munmu’s younger brother Kim Inmun was the rightful king of Silla and dispatched him along with an army to enforce this claim. Inmun had served the Tang emperor as a scholar since 651, being sent there by his father to secure the alliance against Baekje and Koguryo. He later fought alongside Tang troops during the invasion of Baekje and without a doubt had the good favor of the emperor and, more importantly, Empress Wu. It seems he was so well thought-of that even King Munmu became nervous at the suggestion that his younger brother would return and claim his crown as his own. The king of Silla sent a delegation to intercept Kim Inmun’s army along with a formal apology and a request for forgiveness. Having officially renounced the title of King of Silla granted to him by the emperor, Inmun returned to the Tang court and continued in his duties there. The peace would not last long.

In 675, a Tang army under the command of Li Jinxing invaded Silla territory alongside an allied group of Manchurian soldiers who supported chinese sovereignty. They met with the army of Silla near the fortress of Maeso and what happened next isn’t entirely clear. Chinese sources claim that the Silla were soundly defeated and sued for peace. Silla sources claim that the Tang suffered a devastating defeat, losing thousands of their cavalry and abandoning even their weapons and armor as they fled the field.

 Regarding who won the Battle of Maeso and who lost, it seems more likely to me that the army of Silla gained a victory. The next year, 676, a Tang army led by Xue Rengui crossed the Yellow sea to push the Silla out of Ungjin Commandery land. This effort met with an undisputed Chinese defeat and diplomatic ties between the Tang Dynasty and Silla were severed and wouldn’t be restored for several decades after. Silla now controlled the territory of Ungjin Commandery and thus historians refer to Silla during this period as “Unified Silla.”

All was not lost in Manchuria and northern Korea for the Tang, however, although things were beginning to look grim. Repeated forays to the south had weakened the troops occupying former Koguryo and the peoples who lived in the Protectorate were constantly rebelling or planning to rebel.

Seeking to mollify the people and marginalize the rebels, in 677 the Tang appointed former King Bojang to the post of “Liaodong Commander and King of Joseon.” Joseon is the Korean pronunciation of the Chinese word for Korea.

You might have trouble remembering King Bojang, and that’s alright. He was powerless when he ruled, essentially a subservient puppet to military dictator Yeon Gaesomun and his quarrelsome sons. The Tang wanted him to serve as their puppet, and gave him nominal authority in hopes of satisfying the anti-Chinese factions disrupting their domination of the former lands of Koguryo. Shortly after he arrived in 677, however, he began meeting in secret with Koguryo loyalists as well as leaders of the Mohe people.

The Mohe are an East-Asian Tungusic people who primarily lived in Manchuria though some clearly had settled on the Liaodong peninsula region by this point. The Chinese generally considered them uncivilized barbarians, and had a similar opinion of Koreans, Japanese, Vietnamese and Tibetans. King Bojang spent years making preparations and gathering support but in 681 the Tang court discovered his intentions and sent him into exile in Sichuan in southwestern China, which is just about as far away from Korea as possible. While he died the year after, that was not the end of his line, so to speak. One of his sons, Go Yak’gwang, fled to Japan around the time Koguryo fell in the late 660s and was accepted as a Kuge and granted court rank by King Tenji. He adopted the Japanese name Koma Jakko and founded the Koma Clan.

Back in China, the emperor’s health declined so sharply in 675 that he considered having Empress Wu named his official regent. His two closest advisors, wary of the Empress’s ambition and growing power, urged him not to do this and the sovereign heeded their advice. However, by this point her political power and reach far outstripped that of both these men - and arguably outstripped the power of the emperor himself - and it turned out she really didn’t need the title in order to continue wielding executive authority.

Throughout the late 670s and early 680s, Empress Wu busied herself with removing rivals as well as potential challengers who might attempt to set themselves upon the throne in the event of her husband’s death. After accruing a body count that even Shakespeare would find excessive, she even had her own son Li Xian deposed and exiled after suspecting him of assassinating her favorite sorcerer, then named his younger brother Li Zhe crown prince in his stead.

Toward the end of 683, Emperor Gaozong succumbed to his many ailments and conditions and in 684 Li Zhe was crowned as Emperor Zhongzong. Empress Wu, however, was not ready to retire just yet. She had convinced the late Emperor that she ought to be installed as both Empress Dowager and Regent upon his death, which actually gave her more authority than the new Emperor Zhongzong. The histories indicate that this particular son was a weak man who, for some mysterious reason, needed the guidance of a strong woman in his life to help him make decisions. When he ascended the throne he was 28 and married to such a woman known as Empress Wei. She encouraged the emperor to defy his mother and seize the power which should be rightfully his as Emperor, particularly when it came to awarding lands and titles to her various family members and to herself as well. This lasted six weeks until the Empress Dowager issued an edict that Emperor Zhongzong was unsuited to the office and even had the generals who were loyal to her physically drag him off of the throne. She replaced him with his younger brother, Li Dan, who became known as Emperor Ruizong.

Throughout the reign of Emperor Ruizong, Empress Wu tightened her grip on power by creating a secret police force with the authority to detain those suspected of plotting treason and even torture them into confessing. The new Emperor walked a fine line and seems to have possessed a much more acute instinct for survival than his brother. Several times throughout the late 680s the Empress Dowager would offer to return to him some of the powers which Emperors usually enjoyed but which now lay under her supervision. Each time he refused, wisely. These were likely not legitimate offers but traps set by a woman whose power may have only been outstripped by her own paranoia.

His survivability couldn’t last forever. In 688 several princes rebelled, fearing that they would soon be targeted by the Empress. These uprisings were not well coordinated, however, and what could have been an organized nation-wide rebellion instead was just a series of regional risings which the Dowager crushed with ease. Then came 690, when many high-ranking courtiers and military officers submitted petitions to Empress Wu requesting that she take up the imperial throne herself, becoming the sovereign in title as well as practical reality. Emperor Ruizong, clever enough to see which way the wind was blowing, submitted such a petition himself and soon after the Empress was crowned as the reigning sovereign or “Huangdi,” a title which, while gender neutral, had thus far only ever been held by men.

In addition to legitimately installing herself as the sovereign, Wu Zetian officially declared herself the founder of a new dynastic house. She claimed to have descended from the Zhou Dynasty, and took up its name as her own which probably helped portray the whole affair as a restoration of the rightful dynasty rather than an unjust usurpation. To try and prevent confusion, historians generally refer to the period of her sovereignty as the Wu Zhou dynasty, though many today don’t consider her reign significantly different enough to warrant its own special dynasty and simply fold her into the Tang Dynasty.

Empress Wu was more than just a ruthless and calculating politician who was literally willing to step over her own children to stay in power; she was also a devoted buddhist. She sponsored the carving of some of the great statues of the Longmen Grottoes, which I mentioned last season as part of the inspiration behind the casting of large buddha statues in Japan. Through her power as Empress, she elevated Buddhism to nearly the level of a national religion, sponsoring the building of great temples in the capital and surrounding areas. She also appointed high-ranking monks to positions of influence within her court, including a monk named Huaiyi with whom the Empress had been carrying on a romantic affair since 685. His influence is frequently blamed for the Empress’s suppression of Taoism.

In addition to promoting great works of art and architecture across the land, Empress Wu seems to have been, at heart, a woman who did not suffer incompetence. She routinely expelled and punished both the corrupt and the incapable, and expanded the already-existing public education program to the poorest villages in the nation as well as ensuring that poverty would not exclude anyone from taking the examinations and potentially earning bureaucratic appointments.

Huaiyi eventually fell out of favor when he became jealous of the Empress’s other lovers and she had him killed by an ambush in 695. Ever the romantic, however, she ordered his body to be cremated and the ashes mixed with mud which would be used to construct a pagoda. With the death of the man who had been not only a lover but also a spiritual advisor, the Empress seems to have relied less upon divination and sorcery and turned her attention instead toward practical governance.

Trouble arose in 696 when leaders of the Khitan people, one of several people groups who lived in Manchuria, were angered over oppression and mistreatment by dynasty officials. They united and rebelled against Chinese authority, attacking garrisons and pillaging the Protectorate General to Pacify the East. Empress Wu sent an army to punish them, but the Khitan defeated them and continued their raiding. To make matters worse, the Turkic Khaganate likewise began to attack and raid border towns across the north. Luckily for the Wu Zhou Dynasty, the Turkic Khaganate was also at war with the Khitan and took every opportunity to attack them as well.

The Empress decided to split the difference and request peace from the Turks by offering them some very generous conditions if they agreed to continue their assaults on the Khitan. The Turkic Khaganate was happy to agree and for a time the two nomadic factions occupied their time attacking one another and leaving China alone, for the most part. In 698, however, a new enemy (composed of old enemies) emerged in the lands formerly belonging to Koguryo.

As rebellion broke out in Manchuria, a coalition formed of former Koguryo military leaders and the Mohe people, as well as some of the Khitan tribes who lived east of Manchuria. The army they formed in 698 was led by Koguryo general Dae Jung-sang and Mohe leader Geolsa Biu. Empress Wu sent an army to stop this uprising and the two forces clashed at Tianmenling in Manchuria.

The fighting was fierce and at first the battle seemed to be turning against the Koguryo-Mohe coalition. Both Dae Jung-sang and Geolsa Biu died early in the fighting, very nearly giving the Wu Zhou forces an easy victory. However, Dae Jung-sang’s son Dae Joyeong successfully rallied the coalition forces and the tide gradually turned against the Chinese. I wasn’t able to find as much information about this battle as I would have liked, but it seems to have been a massive defeat for the Wu Zhou forces, possibly causing many tens of thousands of casualties.

What we know for certain is that shortly after the Battle of Tianmenling, Empress Wu was kept busy with settling disputes within her court and mollifying the dissatisfied Turkic Khaganate who rejected the marriage alliance she offered because they considered the bride she selected unsuitable and not of equal rank with her Turkic counterpart. Meanwhile the Tibetan empire in the west was making incursions onto land claimed by the Chinese. Manchuria would have to wait.

Dae Joyeong wasted no time in securing his victory through political establishment. Naming his new nation the Zhen Kingdom, he quickly dispatched delegates to the Turkic Khaganate offering to ally with them against the Wu Zhou, an arrangement which was enthusiastically accepted.

Now that they had both an ally to support them and a just cause for feeling snubbed by Empress Wu, the Turkic Khaganate launched a massive invasion that reached all the way to Zhao Province, which is just 800 Kilometers northeast of the capital Chang’an (that’s less than 500 miles, American listeners). However, this was more of a punitive expedition and the Turkic leaders, satisfied that the Wu Zhou had been sufficiently chastised, withdrew shortly thereafter.

Luckily for the beleaguered Empress, pressure from the Tibetan empire was relieved when its own rulers descended into civil war in 699, and once the Turkic expedition returned to their homeland in the north, she could focus once more on civil matters.

By 704, her health was failing and she began to suffer bouts of illness. During a particularly long period of ailment, her courtiers began accusing one another of corruption and she had to issue pre-emptive pardons in order to halt official investigations and save the reputations of some of her closest advisors.

In 705, however, she again grew very ill and this time her opponents at court would take full advantage. The Li clan, the family line of the Tang Emperors, was especially eager to put their own blood back on the throne and so they convinced some of the other powerful courtiers to turn on Wu Zetian’s favorite and most powerful allies, the Zhang brothers. They accused them of treason and rushed them off to a hasty execution, then surrounded the palace where Empress Wu lay in her sickbed and told her in no uncertain terms that she would name Li Zhe, her son the former Emperor Zhongzong, as regent, which she agreed to do. Li Zhe used his power as regent to pass an edict in the Empress’s name that he would be named Emperor in short order. He was crowned the next day and ten days after it was announced that the Tang Dynasty had been restored. Empress Wu died in December of 705 and was interred alongside her late husband Emperor Gaozong.

Empress Wu’s reputation for ruthlessness and her tendency toward using secret police and other repressive methods against rivals is well-earned, if a bit exaggerated here and there. However, even her most severe critics throughout history have always acknowledged her ability to recognize talent regardless of class circumstance and her intolerance of corruption and incompetence. She was, in many ways, a woman of her time, and was generally admired by the Empresses of Japan in the Nara Period.

While he probably savored scoring a victory over his mother who had previously set him aside, Emperor Zhongzong was largely controlled by his wife, Empress Wei. While Empress Wu and Empress Wei clashed while the Dowager was alive, I think we can safely conclude that Empress Wei did admire Wu Zetian and her ability to wield real power in spite of being a woman. She pressured her husband to grant her titles and offices, even going so far as to demand being named as Empress Regnant upon Zhongzong’s death and to have her daughter named as crown princess (meaning she would be eligible to inherit the throne in her own right as well). While he was happy to listen to his wife’s advice regarding the affairs of state, Emperor Zhongzong resisted her overtures to essentially become a second Empress Wu.

Emperor Zhongzong’s tenure was defined by internal strife among quarrelsome princes and the occasional rebelion. He did manage to secure a marriage alliance with the Tibetan empire, however, which secured China’s western border for the time being. In 710, Empress Wei convinced like-minded officials to support her in wresting the throne from her husband and claiming it for herself. The chronicles attest that she and the ministers who plotted with her managed to add poison to a cake which the Emperor ate and then died. Taken out by cake; what a way to go.

Empress Wei was now elevated to Empress Dowager as one of Emperor Zhongzong’s sons from a concubine was crowned as Emperor. This new arrangement lasted less than a month. The officials whom Empress Wei placed in charge of the palace guards tried to establish their authority over the soldiers through harsh discipline which only served to alienate them. The son of the former Emperor Ruizong found it only too easy to arrange a palace coup and execute the Empress Dowager and her allies. He then arranged for his father to be put on the throne once more as Emperor Ruizong.

Ruizong was more of a puppet than an acting Emperor, and his reign lasted only a few years with most of the important decisions being made by his son Li Longji, now the crown prince, as well as his sister, Princess Taiping. In 712, the princess attempted to convince the Emperor that Li Longji was plotting against him by bribing astrologers to tell him that the signs pointed to a change in his position. Instead, the emperor concluded that he should change his position himself and retired, ordering Li Longji’s coronation. His son ascended the throne as Emperor Xuanzong. Emperor Ruizong continued to essentially reign as Emperor at first, though eventually his power would fade as his health failed.

Moving back to the Kingdom of Zhen, Dae Joyeong still sat upon the throne and in 712 he gave the Kingdom a new name, Balhae. Unfortunately, the history of Balhae is disputed partly because three different nations occupy its land today - China, North Korea, and Russia specifically - and even the nation’s name itself has several similar-but-different spellings and pronunciations. Bohai and Parhae are among the most common names but I will be using Balhae because that does seem to have the greatest frequency.

In 713, the King of Balhae sent a delegation to Tang China after about fifteen years of the diplomatic cold shoulder. The court of retired Emperor Ruizong and reigning Emperor Xuanzong happily received the embassy and even awarded the king with the title “Prince of Balhae Commandery.” This was, of course, a face-saving measure on the part of the Tang that allowed them to continue pretending they had any real authority over the lands of Balhae while reassuring the rulers and people of Balhae that they were safe from any Tang incursions, at least for now.

In the meantime, relations between Silla and Balhae remained cool and in fact King Go, as King Joyeong is remembered posthumously, took an aggressive stance with their southern neighbor. While Koguryo was decades gone, its descendents had long memories and held grudges. King Go ordered periodic raids against Silla, essentially as punishment for their betrayal of Koguryo so many years before.

In response to repeated raids by Balhae, as well as his own failed attempts to punish those incursions, King Seongdeok of Silla ordered the construction of a massive wall along Silla’s northern border. The national chronicle claims that nearly 40,000 people of Silla were conscripted as laborers for this effort, a testament to the increasingly centralized power wielded by its monarchs in this period. In an effort possibly similar to Nara Japan’s, the Silla government also attempted to reform land distribution among its able-bodied citizens but we aren’t certain whether this effort was meant specifically to promote cultivation.

In 719 King Go of Balhae died and his son King Mu ascended the throne. He continued many of his father’s policies, especially hostility toward Silla. In 727 his northern neighbors the Heishui Mohe swore fealty to the Tang Dynasty and King Mu grew wary of a future cooperative effort between the Tang and Heishui Mohe which could attack Balhae from two sides and crush it. Thus he launched a massive raid against the Heishui Mohe, stripping them of resources and ensuring that they would fear to go to war against Balhae.

In 728 King Mu sent a diplomatic mission to the Nara Court, claiming to be the rightful successors of Koguryo. He recommended for the Japanese to treat Silla with the same hostility he had adopted, which wasn’t difficult because relations with Silla had become very strained in recent years. Silla had become plagued by raids from Japanese Pirates or Wako, and the imperial court of Japan had balked at Silla’s requests for help.

King Mu began making plans for a large-scale assault against the Tang, which one of his younger brothers opposed. So strong was his objection that he fled the country, likely fearing reprisal if he stayed, and defected to the Tang Court. Ironically, this development practically ensured that King Mu would go forward with his plans because the Tang now had a potential pretender which they could place on Balhae’s throne.

Unlike Koguryo before it, Balhae was not just a land-based power but fielded a decent navy as well. King Mu decided to use that navy in 732 to launch a daring expedition against the Chinese province of Shandong, which is just across the Yellow Sea from the Liaodong peninsula. The raid was startlingly effective and King Mu and his armies managed to kill the governor of Dengzhou. The Tang Dynasty initially had the option of shrugging at the raid as a mere act of local piracy which they could claim was a problem for the regional authorities. The governor’s death, however, escalated the matter to an act of war.

Silla and Tang, united once more by mutual enmity, planned a joint invasion of Balhae. However, the cooperative effort was slowed by particularly heavy snowfall and the hungry, cold troops who arrived to do battle were easily repelled by the Balhae defenders. The Tang Dynasty, who presently lacked the resources for additional conflict with Balhae without jeopardizing their many other conflicts around the periphery of their empire, decided on a compromise and officially recognized King Mu’s sovereignty and Balhae’s independence. This was a huge victory for the fairly young polity as this meant the Chinese now no longer considered them merely an autonomous commandery, not even on paper.

This act of loosening their grip on claims to Korea and Manchuria seems to have been a larger trend at the Tang court in the 730s, as King Seondeok of Silla also managed to wrangle an official declaration of Silla’s independence and was even officially ceded the lands formerly belonging to Baekje. Silla had, of course, occupied these lands for many decades already, but it was probably a relief that the likelihood of China claiming rightful ownership of that region was now greatly reduced.

King Mu and King Seondeok both died in 737, having earned reputations as strong, capable rulers who defended their respective nations’ independence from the declining Tang Dynasty. Next time, we’ll return to Japan in 724, where Emperor Shomu has just ascended the throne amid the rising tension between imperial prince Nagaya and the Fujiwara Clan.