The Decline and Fall of the Eastern Han Dynasty (106 - 220)

In 106 AD, under the reign of Emperor He, the Eastern Han Dynasty was at the peak of its prosperity. Internally, the empire had been at peace for 70 years, led by a succession of four good emperors all known for their hard work, political acumen, and care for the lowest members of society. Externally, major foreign threats had been defeated and trade routes with the outside world re-established, but all this was to come toppling down within a few generations. Emperor He suffered from poor health for most of his life, and he died young in 106 at only 26 years old. Many of his children had died in infancy, and the throne was seceded by a three-month-old infant who himself died seven months later. This allowed the in-laws of the imperial family, collectively known as the consorquins, to seize power, and a vicious political cycle began. To maintain their power, the consorquins were selected as the new emperor, not capable, well-educated adults from the imperial family, but rather children who were easy to control. These child emperors were encouraged to indulge themselves as much as possible and received little education on how to rule properly. As they grew older, they inevitably began to resent the power of the consorquins, and would often ally with the only people they could trust, the eunuchs, to remove the consorquins from power. Now in power, the inexperienced emperors often put their trust into unscrupulous ministers. They often kept dying young. The traditional narrative likes to say that they indulged themselves to death, but with all the ongoing palace intrigues, who really knows. The power vacuum left behind by the deceased emperors allowed the consorquins to again seize power, repeating the cycle. In 145, power was held by a corrupt, domineering consorquin named Liang Ji, who installed a seven-year-old boy who he could easily control as emperor. The boy did not appreciate Liang Ji, and one day caught him out, calling him an arrogant general. Liang Ji panicked. If the boy hates me so much now, imagine what would happen once he grows up. Liang Ji had the boy poisoned and installed another puppet, the 14-year-old Emperor Huan, onto the throne. Emperor Huan lived in fear for 13 years, appeasing Liang Ji in every way he could. Finally, in 159, he plotted with five of his most trusted eunuchs to stage a coup and remove Liang Ji from power. Liang Ji committed suicide, his entire clan was executed, and a major government purge took place. After taking power, the treasury was running dry. To raise funds, Emperor Huan, with the support of the eunuchs, began to sell off noble titles. Emperor Huan often turned a blind eye to corruption from the eunuchs and their supporters, and large numbers of Confucian scholars joined a rival faction to oppose the eunuchs. Tensions came to a head in 166 when many high-ranking officials, plus university students who supported their cause, were barred from government. Emperor Huan died in 168, again without an heir. So again, the consular king seized power and this time selected 11-year-old Emperor Ling to succeed the throne. Within a year, the emperor again purged the consular kings with the help of the eunuchs. This time, the eunuchs used their influence on the young emperor to purge even more of their rivals from power. But unlike the incident from a few years prior in which the Confucian scholars were simply barred from power, this time many were rounded up and executed. All this isn't to say that the Confucian scholars were without blame either. During the Eastern Han Dynasty, in order for someone to join the higher levels of bureaucracy, he must 1. be educated and 2. receive a nomination from his local governor based on if he demonstrated classical Confucian virtues such as loyalty, filial piety, and personal integrity. The problem with this system was that at a time when papermaking was still in its infancy and printing had not yet been invented, books were expensive, and it was very easy for families to monopolize education and knowledge among their own members. And as for the nomination, we all know from our own jobs and careers how much that depends on personal connections. Once families, usually ones that were already wealthy and powerful, began to produce government officials, it was very easy for them to pass down the know-how and connections to keep producing more officials in future generations, especially if they were also good at taking advantage of the factionalism in the capital for personal gain. The power and prestige that came from serving in the government allowed these families to amass huge amounts of wealth and property in the provinces and then pass on the wealth via marriage alliances and carefully selected heirs to the family fortune. They became more and more like the aristocrats of medieval Europe, just usually without formal noble titles. Peasants became increasingly oppressed and forced into either indentured servitude or slavery. The Confucian officials were the people who ultimately wrote history, and they loved to blame corrupt eunuchs for all of the empire's ills. This isn't to say the eunuchs were not corrupt, but so were many of the Confucian officials. And if you were in the shoes of the Eastern Han Dynasty emperors, at least you could feel pretty sure the eunuchs were loyal to you, whereas many Confucian officials were on the side of the consort kings, the very people you were fighting against for power. So in these situations, even if you were a competent ruler, and many were not, you may still tolerate some corruption from the eunuchs if it meant keeping your rivals in check. As Emperor Lin grew older, instead of being like his predecessors who gave the eunuchs noble titles with little real power, he gave them actual government positions. And instead of just selling empty noble titles like his predecessor did, Emperor Lin actually sold real government positions with real responsibilities. The decades of political strife, especially under Emperors Huan and Lin, allowed corruption to fester. Floods, famines, and plagues broke out. In response to the resulting mass suffering among the lower classes, a religious society began to form based on Taoist principles. Their leader, Zhang Jiao, traveled around China with his brothers, providing free medical care to the poor, promoting the formation of communal societies, and preaching about an upcoming apocalypse. In 184, they organized a major peasant rebellion across China, the Yellow Turban Rebellion. The initial rebellion was usually crushed within a year, but to fight the rebels, the emperor allowed the local elites to raise their own militias, which they kept after the rebellion. Small-scale rebellions continued to break out throughout China, and in response to this, Emperor Lin expanded the powers of provincial inspectors. Previously, their role was to 1. lead the military in the province, and 2. order the governors of the individual commanderies. Emperor Lin now made them governors with civilian authority, so they essentially had absolute powers within their provinces. The rest of this video deals with the fall of the Han Dynasty, which is the period covered in the first two-thirds of the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. This is one of the most famous periods in Chinese history, but paradoxically also one of the most difficult to understand properly, because the events from the novel are so famous that it can be challenging to separate facts from fiction. Emperor Lin died in 189, leaving behind two sons from two different women. The consular kings again seized power and installed the older son as emperor, although the eunuchs favored the younger son. He Jin, the head of the consular kings and the emperor's uncle, wanted to purge the eunuchs, but was too scared to act decisively. Instead, he asked nearby governors, including a general named Dong Zhuo, to march their armies onto the capital and help him against the eunuchs. Now fearing for their lives, the eunuchs preemptively ambushed He Jin and killed him. He Jin's supporters then stormed the palace and massacred the eunuchs. At this critical moment, Dong Zhuo entered the capital with his army, put the emperor under his protection, won over the imperial guards, and so effectively controlled the capital. To further consolidate his power, Dong Zhuo deposed the existing child emperor and installed the younger son of Emperor Lin onto the throne. This was Emperor Xian, the last emperor of the Han dynasty. This move angered many people in the bureaucracy, including Yuan Shao, who came from one of the most powerful families of Confucian bureaucrats in the empire. His family had somehow survived all the purges over the past century, only becoming stronger after each one. Yuan Shao openly broke with Dong Zhuo over deposing the emperor and then fled the capital. Wanting to placate the bureaucrats who broke with him, Dong Zhuo did something very stupid. He gave many of them important governorships in the provinces. Once there, these governors easily raised their own armies from the local militias already in place, formed a coalition against Dong Zhuo with Yuan Shao as their leader, and then marched onto the capital in 190. Dong Zhuo panicked and fled the capital with the child emperor to Chang'an, near his home base in the northwest. On his way out, he looted the area, including the mausoleums of the eastern Han emperors, and burned Luoyang to the ground, turning the area around the capital into a wasteland. Instead of pursuing Dong Zhuo and rescuing the emperor, the leaders of the coalition now turned against one another, and open fighting between the warlords began. Two major early players were Yuan Shao and his younger half-brother Yuan Shu, who formed coalitions against one another. Because the Yuan family was so influential, whichever of the two brothers could control the family resources would likely be able to get most of the other warlords to fall in line under him and from there possibly build a new coalition government. Yuan Shao leveraged his influence to take over Ji province and an ally with Liu Biao, the governor of Jing province. Yuan Shu controlled the border regions between Yu and Jing provinces, and allied with Gongsun Zan, based out of You province. Yuan Shu invaded Liu Biao and attacked the strategically important city of Xiangyang, but was forced to withdraw when his general, Sun Jian, was killed in the fighting. Over the next few years, Yuan Shu was slowly forced out of Yu province and reestablished himself further east in Yang province. One rapidly rising star during this period was Cao Cao. He came from a nouveau riche eunuch family. His father was the adopted son of an eunuch, and so he did not have the political connection that the Yuan brothers enjoyed. He was the governor of a commandery in Yan province, but in 192, a large band of yellow turbans up to one million strong invaded the province and killed the provincial governor. As a talented general himself, Cao Cao outmaneuvered the yellow turbans and eventually negotiated a surrender, after which he recruited from their ranks a personal army loyal only to him, and settled the rest of the yellow turbans, including women and children, onto his territories. He became the new governor of Yan province, and after surviving a major rebellion against him, was firmly entrenched there by 195. Meanwhile, Dong Zhuo had been assassinated by one of his generals in 192. The northwest fell into chaos, and even the emperor had to wander from place to place in search of protection. Seizing this opportunity, Cao Cao brought the emperor to his base in Xuchang in 196. The emperor became the puppet of Cao Cao, who was now able to issue decrees in the emperor's name. In 197, Yuan Shu had again become powerful and now declared himself emperor, causing neighboring warlords to ally against him. He was quickly defeated and died of illness. His northern territories were conquered by Cao Cao, while the southeast became independent under Sun Ce, the son of Sun Jian who had been killed in battle years earlier. Sun Ce was cruel and massacred many of his political rivals. He was assassinated in 200, and his younger brother Sun Quan took over the southeast. The recent wars had turned the once densely populated central plains region, now under Cao Cao's control, into a wasteland. First, there had already been decades of neglect that led to the Yellow Turban Rebellion. Large numbers of peasants were massacred during the rebellion itself, and even more became vagrants who looted and rebelled when their situations became desperate enough. During the warlords' era, armies frequently massacred every living being within their paths. Agriculture became highly disrupted in many areas, and the price of grain in some places increased several thousand times. Others led to even more famines, flooding or droughts, plagues, and locust plagues. Large numbers of people fled as refugees to the south, where things were much more peaceful. Cao Cao did his best to rebuild the central plains and began to settle refugee peasants onto vacant farmland. In exchange for military protection and stability, the peasants were tied to their lands and taxed heavily, up to 60% of their annual products. This gave Cao Cao the strong economic foundation he needed to pursue further campaigns. By 200, only two major warlords remained in China, Cao Cao in the central plains and Yuan Shao north of the Yellow River. Yuan Shao invaded Cao Cao in 200 with an army of 100,000 soldiers, twice as large as Cao Cao's army, but suffered a heavy defeat at the Battle of Guandu and fled back north across the Yellow River with only 800 horsemen. Yuan Shao died of illness two years later, and his sons fought one another for control of his territories. They were defeated piecemeal by Cao Cao, who conquered Ye in 204 and made it his new base. He then conquered the rest of northern China by 207. Cao Cao now turned his attention southward to unify China. Liu Biao had recently died, and Jing province surrendered without a fight. Cao Cao gathered a fleet to sail down the Yangtze River and conquer Sun Quan, his last remaining major rival. Sun Quan's only ally was Liu Bei, a very distant member of the imperial family who up to this time had mostly been a minor warlord. Although Cao Cao's army vastly outnumbered those of his opponents, his northern soldiers were not used to the southern conditions, and plagues broke out. To deal with the high waves of the Yangtze River, Cao Cao tied his warships together with iron chains. In the winter of 208, the southern fleet launched a surprise attack against Cao Cao's ships at the Battle of the Red Cliffs, taking advantage of a sudden change in the wind direction to burn Cao Cao's warships, and ending his dream of unifying China within his lifetime. After the battle, Jing province was split between the three factions, Cao Cao in the north around Xiangyang, Sun Quan in the east, and Liu Bei in the west. In northwestern China, Cao Cao put down rebellions and consolidated his rule there. Sun Quan further consolidated his rule in the southeast, and in 211 founded, for his new capital, the city of Jianye, which became modern-day Nanjing. Over the decades of the two-tenths, Sun Quan and Cao Cao fought a series of battles over the strategic city of Hefei, which Cao Cao controlled, with neither side gaining an advantage over the other. Meanwhile, Liu Bei marched west and conquered the mountainous Yi province in 214. From there, he launched a series of northern expeditions against Cao Cao, conquering the strategic Hanzhong commandery in 219. In the same year, Liu Bei's general Guan Yu invaded Cao Cao from the east. Cao Cao's army was annihilated in a flood, and Guan Yu besieged the twin cities of Xiangyang and Fancheng across the Han River from Xiangyang. At this point, Liu Bei was at the height of his pomp, and both Cao Cao and Sun Quan feared that he would become too powerful. They formed a secret alliance, with Sun Quan launching a sneak attack against Guan Yu from behind. Guan Yu was captured and subsequently executed. During his life, Guan Yu had already been quite famous for his generalship, combat skills, and unwavering loyalty to Liu Bei. Over the many centuries after his death, the mythology around him grew more and more, until he became deified as an emperor and a god of war. He is still one of the most widely worshipped figures in Chinese folk religion today. Cao Cao died in 220. Although by then he had long been emperor in all but name, he refused to formally usurp the throne, and the highest title he took for himself was the Prince of Wei, with Wei being the geographic region around Ye, where he had now set up his home base. During his long career, he had witnessed a prosperous empire descending to an apocalyptic level of destruction, and through sheer force of will reunified the north and brought some semblance of normalcy to there. Regarding his accomplishments, he once bragged, Without me, how many people would have declared themselves emperors, and how many would have declared themselves kings? Outside of politics, he was also a literary giant. He wrote a set of commentaries on Sun Tzu's Art of War that are still widely read today, and also some of the greatest poems in Chinese. He was very much the most significant political figure of this time period, although because of the influence of the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, he is usually remembered today less for his accomplishments and more as a conniving villain. As northern China fell into chaos during this time, barbarian tribes also began moving in. In the northwest, the Jiang people, which had fought wars on and off against the eastern Han dynasty for over a century, began migrating into the depopulated areas. The South Xiongnu, which had been settled within Han territories for 150 years and had already begun to assimilate into Han culture, also migrated south. Cao Cao kept the Xiongnu in check. He divided them into five tribes, each under the supervision of an ethnic Han governor, and recruited auxiliaries for his armies from the tribesmen. Another tribe, the Wu Huan, had also moved south. As part of his wars against the Yuan family, Cao Cao launched an expedition against the Wu Huan in 207, decisively defeating them, and soon afterwards they disappeared from history. But even the Wu Huan was just one of many migratory tribes from the steppes, and after their defeat, their close relatives from further north, the Xianbei, gradually came down to fill their place. The earth was entering a few centuries of global climate cooling, and for the nomads on the steppes, this really was winter is coming. After Cao Cao died in 220, his son, Cao Pi, took over power, and within a year he forced Emperor Xian to abdicate the throne. The Wei dynasty, known in history as Cao Wei, was established. In response to this, Liu Bei declared himself emperor, so technically the Han dynasty continued through Liu Bei, although it is now considered a separate dynasty as part of historical convention. The Han dynasty was deposed after 400 years of rule, and China now entered the Three Kingdoms period.