Welcome, friends, to that special time of year where RPM dives and the views don’t matter,
that’s right it’s January and that means it’s time to get adventurous
and learn about some history that has nothing to do with Rome or even France.
Last year as you may recall I got really into Muslim and Byzantine history and this year I
thought it’s time I really take the plunge into ancient China, by which of course I mean I did a
bunch of research for Matt over at Useful Charts about the country’s past and had to desperately
restrain myself from making a 52-part series on the entirety of China’s dynastic history.
So instead, I want to give you just a little taste of the Han dynasty,
China’s Rome, if you will, and what better place to start than the man who fought
his own family to take the empire to its greatest heights, and then nearly doomed
an entire civilization fighting with his own family. The Martial Emperor, Wu of Han.
[intro]
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Wu: “So everything I say is going into the history book?”
Sima Qian: “Possibly, sir, I was your Grand Historian and did conduct interviews,
but primarily this is just a framing device for the video, you have my utmost discretion. Now,
what can you tell me about your family?” Wu: “Well… I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t
for the day gran-gran went to see a fortune teller. She was just a peasant woman, but -”
Fortune teller: “But your children will be highly
honored one day! Mhmm! That’ll be fifty copper” Wu (V.O.): “Gran-gran took that as a challenge”
Gran-gran: “You’re getting a divorce!” Wu’s mother: “But I love Jin Wangsun!”
Gran-gran: “And I love backrubs and caviar, get in the wagon!”
Wu: “I was born on the day my father was crowned. He was a wise and gentle Taoist leader”
Sima Qian: “Who killed his nephew with a chess board.”
Emperor Jing (throwing chess board): “No you go fish!”
Wu: “First cousin twice removed, and the game was Liubo”
Sima Qian: “Your mother was a commoner, how did she become the empress?”
Wu: “The first empress couldn’t have kids. Dad’s next favorite concubine was Lady Li.”
[Jersey Shore and Nickelback playing in the background]
Wu (V.O.) “We’re not sure what he saw in her.”
Wu: “Auntie Piao offered to hitch Li’s son to her daughter, Li turned her down, my mother took her
up on it. I got engaged to my cousin at the age of 5. Over time, Lady Li and my father… grew apart”
Emperor Jing: “Honey, if I were to be killed in a freak Backgammon accident,
would you take care of the step-kids?” Lady Li: “**** no!”
Messenger: “Your majesty, given the empress has recently been deposed, and Lady Li’s son
is already the crown prince, I’ve been given a very important message to deliver to you:
just make me ****in empress, yeah?” Jing: “Who sent you?!”
Wu: “He pieced it together eventually”
Sima Qian: “Lady Li” Wu: “Auntie Piao, actually,
but yeah that convinced him to give Li the boot.” Sima Qian: “So your mother became the new
empress instead and you became emperor when your father died. Impressive.”
Wu: “Yes, well, there was just one problem. Gran-gran.”
Teen Wu: “Yes, emperors Wen and Jing established a robust system of welfare while keeping taxes
at record lows by cutting unnecessary government expenditures, but at this point we’ve cut all we
can! And besides, this laissez-faire approach to fiscal policy is fundamentally at odds with our
ability to regulate our own currency! Meanwhile our vassals are taking advantage that leniency
to exploit our subjects - if we were to assume control of all non-central government checkpoints,
we could be looking at a government surplus in fifteen months, all while decreasing the net
burden of the average taxpayer.” Gran-gran: “Who taught this boy
federalist theory? Was it you?” Adviser: “No ma’am, reaching our
fingers into the coffers of our vassals would be a dramatic overreach of the central government”
Gran-gran: “Round up his family. Make him watch.” Adviser: “The handling of personal income by
larger governmental bodies necessarily invites economic inefficiencies…!”
Wu (O.S.): She was too powerful. I had to lay low until the time was right.
Gran-gran: “What’s going on here?!” Teen Wu: “Gran-gran! I was just…
uh… snorting coke from this young lady’s… bosom…”
Gran-gran: “...good kid.” Teen Wu: “Okay, give me the brief
on our relations with the Xiongnu Confederacy, I want everything over the past thirty days…”
[sound of Gran-gran falling down the stairs] Teen Wu: “...and bring back the champagne”
Sima Qian: “So, after she died…” [Jack whispers in Sima Qian’s ear]
Sima Qian: “What the whole thing? I thought we were doing like another-”
[Jack whispers again] Sima Qian: “Oh yes I suppose that wouldn’t
make much sense if he were telling me about the future. Very well, I’ll pack up my things-”
So Wu grew up to be a very successful emperor, his name means Martial for a reason. He took
over lands to the South, and on two occasions all he had to do was threaten the possibility
of war and the enemy responded by killing their own leader, and one time giving him their head
as a present! Took over Korea too, but the biggest victory was against the Xiongnu in Central Asia,
think of them like the Mongols before the Mongols. For years China had been
paying them tribute and entering into marriage alliances in order to avoid war, but the thing is
they never actually stopped raiding the border, so China’s response was effectively:
[pillaging sounds] “Everyone please!
Remain. Calm. We have declared peace with the Xiongnu, please do not provoke them!”
It was emperor Wu who chased them out of the steppes and back towards Siberia,
but that martial attitude started to rub off on him in a bad way. He needed strict advisers,
guys who know what they want and how to get it, but what he got was guys like Yi Zong.
Yi Zong: “Prisoners, I’m happy to announce that 200 of you will be going home today...in
shiny new caskets!” Prisoner: “I’m only in here for tax evasion!”
Yi Zong: “I don’t care if you’re in here for fishing without
a license now get in line!” Friend: “I’m just visiting!”
[BANG!] Yi Zong: “No excuses!”
By the time the emperor is around 40 he’d killed a guy for “internal defamation”
i.e. disagreeing with the emperor in court, he castrated his historian -
Sima Qian: “No please, your brother-in-law demonstrated superb military prowess in his
flanking maneuver, not just anyone can march at such a great clip!”
-he made a law saying government officials who didn’t put down peasant revolts fast enough
would be killed so they all just stopped reporting peasant revolts, and he started
roaming around the countryside with a flock of magicians muttering something about immortality.
Really giving everyone bad vibes because that’s like exactly what happened before the fall of
the Qin dynasty, though in hindsight it’s hilarious that his official Wikipedia page
mentions the national treasury was put under great strain by quote “magical adventures”.
Also, witchcraft, that’s important to mention. Hated witchcraft. Magicians yes, witches no,
killed some of his own kids for being involved in witchcraft, probably right after they got
their Hogwarts acceptance letters, there were a lot of ups and downs that day.
Meanwhile, he’s got this son Crown Prince Ju. He’s a good kid, not big on the whole obsessive
violence thing. But father and son had become isolated from one another. Wu because the life
of an emperor is a blessing and a curse. He could never truly know those around him, who they really
are, what they truly believe, so he spent his days in the arms of his young concubines in a
vain search for companionship. Ju was isolated because his dad killed all his political allies.
So these guys who don’t like Ju come into the picture and they accuse him of witchcraft,
and when they go to search his home,
“Oh my God look, look here’s this doll and these strange writings that we just found here,
I don’t know much about witchcraft but that looks pretty witchy to me!”
Ju takes up arms against the conspirators, captures and kills one in the capital,
but the other gets away and writes to the emperor saying this is totally proof of Ju being evil!
Wu is paranoid… but he’s not stupid, and he correctly reads that Ju had something against that
guy that he killed and was not, in fact, trying to rebel against the empire. So Wu sent a messenger
to summon Ju to the palace… but the messenger is too afraid to enter the city just in case,
so he comes back to the emperor and says “Uh-huh, yeah, he’s doing a coup, for sure”
Ju fights the emperor’s men in Chang’an for 5 days but he ends up having to flee,
taking two brothers and a small cohort of armed guards with him. The rest of his loved ones
were all executed except for his newborn baby grandson who was thrown into prison.
A junior official finally steps forward to tell the emperor that this is all one
huge misunderstanding, and Wu actually believes him but he doesn’t want to pardon the prince right
away since y’know it would be pretty awkward given how recently he killed everyone he ever
loved. Meanwhile Ju and co are living with a random peasant family who’ve probably burned
through their life savings trying to feed them for a month, so Ju tries to call in some favors,
gets caught, army shows up at his doorstep, and the most promising future emperor hangs himself.
So a few years after this Emperor Wu finally comes to the realization that if you immediately kill
everyone accused of witchcraft, people are going to use that to kill people. So he looks back on
his life and he realizes that things really slipped away from him - he’s become cruel
and paranoid. And so as a reminder to himself he built a palace for the late crown prince,
and in an act of humility publicly apologized to the entire nation for all of his mistakes.
Trouble is, with Ju dead, Wu’s got nobody to make the next emperor. Two of his sons
are spoiled little brats with no respect for the law, so he ends up settling on his youngest son,
who was eight years old when Wu died. But at the very least, the wars of conquest had ended,
and the country’s ministers had begun to work to ease the people’s hardships once again.
Except for that baby whom he never released from prison.