Chapter 857: Zhang the Sage, When Will the Realm Be Whole and Unbroken?

In Tang times, Guangzhou and Jiaozhou actually had some circumstances that far exceeded what later generations might imagine.

For example, the vast majority of people do not know that in 758, just as the An Lushan Rebellion erupted and the Central Plains were locked in fierce fighting, a force of Arab and Persian troops stormed and captured Guangzhou.

Well, to call them troops may be an exaggeration; it would be more accurate to say pirates and rioters.

And just as with the wokou pirates along the southeastern coast in the mid-to-late Ming, the muscle among these pirates was provided by Arabs and Persians, but the ones who gathered and maintained them behind the scenes were Han Chinese.

The root of the problem, again, lay with Wu Zetian.

After she established the Wu Zhou dynasty, in order to eliminate the Li clan princes enfeoffed across the realm and the loyal ministers of the Li Tang, she launched a reign of terror under cruel officials and encouraged the common people throughout the empire to inform on one another, with the aim of framing the Li princes.

At that time, even a rustic old farmer, so long as he claimed to have a great secret and demanded to go to the capital to report it, the prefectural and county officials were obliged to supply him with carriage, horses, and provisions to send him to the capital.

In this political atmosphere, the great Feng clan, deeply entrenched in Lingnan, naturally became the target of everyone's arrows.

In the second year of Changshou (693), the cruel official Wan Guojun falsely accused the exiles banished to Lingnan of plotting rebellion, and launched a great slaughter in Lingnan. The Feng clan was implicated, and in the end Wu Zetian sent men to confiscate their property and exterminate the clan.

The famous eunuch Gao Lishi of history was castrated at this very time and sent to the divine capital Luoyang. He was the sixth-generation descendant of Lady Xian, and the great-grandson in the female line of the treacherous minister Xu Jingzong.

Although the Feng clan was indeed overbearing in Lingnan, to say they were plotting rebellion was going too far.

From the time of Feng Ang, son of Lady Xian, the Feng clan had frequently intermarried with the powerful and noble of the court, and their position in Lingnan was perfectly secure. They would have had to be stuffed full and bored out of their minds to rebel.

This time Wu Zetian killed more than two hundred members of the Feng clan, and believed she had rooted out a great scourge of Lingnan, feeling rather pleased with herself.

But the Feng clan and the Xian clan, the natal family of Lady Xian, had been entrenched in Lingnan for centuries. How could killing a little over two hundred people make everything all right?

Those two hundred-odd people were only the direct-line descendants of the main branch. They were killed, but the other collateral branches of the Feng clan went into hiding under the protection of the Xian clan.

Lingnan bordered the sea, and the Feng clan were themselves a great clan engaged in maritime trade. Although for the time being they lacked the strength to oppose the court,

these Feng clansmen quickly concentrated around Hainan Island, and rapidly built the place into a massive pirate base, recruiting large numbers of Arab and Persian pirates, nursing a burning determination to take savage revenge on the court.

By the time of the An Lushan Rebellion, the fighting in the north grew desperate, and the Arab and Persian descendants who had long traded in Guangzhou or even settled there were conscripted by the court, sent north as volunteer soldiers to strike at An Lushan's rebels.

The opportunity the Feng clan had waited sixty-seven years for revenge had finally arrived. The Arab pirates they kept merged with these so-called volunteer soldiers, and suddenly rose in revolt, turning back to attack Guangzhou.

The Prefect of Guangzhou, Wei Lijian, fled over the wall. The city of Guangzhou fell, and the troops of the two lands joined the pirates in plundering the storehouses, burning the people's homes, and then boarding their ships and vanishing out to sea.

History has no detailed record of how great a loss Guangzhou, with its population of three hundred thousand, suffered, but one fact is clear: from then on, Guangzhou declined at a dizzying pace, and in population, tax revenue, and importance in maritime trade, it was left far behind by Jiaozhou.

The later saying that Jiaozhou was richer than Guangzhou began from this very time, which shows how catastrophic Guangzhou's losses were.

What was even more detestable was that these Arabs and Persian descendants did not flee far. Most of them later returned to Guangzhou under various identities.

It stands to reason: there were tens of thousands of them, and at that time in Lingnan and even in the Southern Seas, apart from places like Guangzhou and Jiaozhou, there were hardly any places that could casually absorb tens of thousands of people.

As for sailing back to Arabia, that was pure nonsense. The navigation and shipbuilding technology of the time was nowhere near capable of transporting tens of thousands of people from Guangzhou back to Arabia in a short time.

And so, a very peculiar scene in history appeared in Guangzhou: the resident population of the city began to invert by ethnic group, with Arabs in the majority, and Han Chinese and other peoples of Lingnan in the minority.

At its most extreme, Guangzhou had a population of under two hundred thousand, yet Arabs, Persians, and other such peoples numbered a full one hundred twenty thousand. The whole of Guangzhou was like an Arab city.

Of course, these Arabs did not come to a good end in the end, because very soon, the Heaven-Storming Great General Huang Chao, he whose flower blooms and all other flowers are slain, arrived.

After Huang Chao reached Lingnan, the Han and Li commoners still remembered the deep hatred from more than a hundred years before, and hated even more how the Arabs entered the city as merchants and went to sea as pirates. They came in droves before Huang Chao's horse to tell of the wealth of the foreign merchants in Guangzhou, and begged Huang Chao to avenge them.

At that moment Huang Chao was burning with rage because his request to the court for the posts of Protector-General of Annan and Military Governor of Guangzhou had been refused. When he heard this he was overjoyed, and immediately, guided by the people of Guangzhou, he stormed the city in a single day, slaughtering all one hundred twenty thousand Arabs in the city. Men, women, old and young, all were beheaded without exception, and their gold, silver, and silks were seized.

The remaining Arabs scattered through the other cities of Lingnan were likewise killed by local uprisings.

Although Huang Chao's army could not possibly have counted how many Arabs they killed, it is believed the number was no fewer than two hundred thousand.

The descendants of most of the Arabs who had sacked Guangzhou that year, along with the foreign merchants who had come to trade normally, were all killed without distinction.

It was indeed satisfying, and this must be counted among the few good deeds Huang Chao ever did.

But after this campaign, Guangzhou began its complete decline. The court's authority was utterly lost, and semi-independent powers formed throughout Lingnan, attacking one another.

It was not until the Southern Han, under the rule of Liu and his son Liu Sheng, that the situation stabilized, and population and economy began to recover.

By now, the Southern Han palace in Guangzhou had even grown rich enough to strew pearls in the artificial river in the palace as decoration.

But at this moment, Liu Sheng in the Changhua Palace was in no mood to admire the pearl-strewn artificial river within the palace, because the edict from Zhang Zhao ordering him to send troops to assist in the attack on the Jinghai Army had driven him nearly to collapse.

This was an open conspiracy!

Now that even Nanzhong, which had been controlled in the time of the two Han dynasties, had been recovered, according to Liu Sheng's own reasoning, he was a vassal who had submitted. Then for the realm to be whole and unbroken, only the Jinghai Army remained, and the court had ample reason to attack it.

Of course, there was also ample reason to summon the Southern Han army to assist in the campaign. Even setting aside his self-acknowledged vassal status, even the Nanyue Kingdom of the Western Han period had to obey court edicts to a certain degree.

In the end, it was Pan Chongche, the eunuch general Liu Sheng relied on most, who came up with an idea for him.

Pan Chongche had Liu Sheng submit a memorial to Zhang Zhao, saying that the Wu family of the Jinghai Army, having heard that a sage sovereign had arisen in the Central Plains and a new dynasty had been established, were also willing to obey the court's commands just as the Southern Han did.

As for the Jinghai Army at this time, how to put it — it was in utter chaos.

Back then, after Wu Quan had overthrown the Southern Han, he declared himself king, but he died after only five years as Great King.

Before his death, his sons were all still young, so Wu Quan had his eldest son Wu Changji succeed him, and entrusted him to his elder brother-in-law Yang Sange, hoping that Yang Sange would properly assist Wu Changji.

Yang Sange's real name is no longer recoverable, because the word ge, in Tang times, was an honorific for an older male close relative, not a name.

Translated into Central Plains terms, Yang Sange was roughly equivalent to the concept of the "second father" that Lu Buwei held.

Only this "second father" Yang Sange was far more ruthless than Lu Buwei. Wu Changji had not been Great King for even half a year before Yang Sange rose violently and usurped the throne. Wu Changji could only flee under the protection of his trusted followers.

Thereafter Yang Sange formally took the title King of Ping and was Great King for about five years, but before he could savor it, he was overthrown by Wu Quan's second son Wu Changwen, who rallied the yabing guards and yabing officers below.

After Wu Changwen overthrew Yang Sange, he brought his elder brother Wu Changji, who had been living in exile in the countryside, back, and thus began an even more bizarre period of joint rule by the two brothers.

Originally, Wu Changwen was a son of a concubine, and his prestige was not high. He brought back his elder brother Wu Changji, who had already fled among the common people, with the intention that Wu Changji would have some self-awareness and obediently serve as a puppet.

In Wu Changwen's thinking, Wu Changji had already been forced by Yang Sange to hide among the common people and "eat dirt." Now that he had returned, even as a puppet, he would have all the delicacies of land and sea, and should be satisfied.

But Wu Changji was not satisfied, and had not the slightest self-awareness. The moment Wu Changji returned to Coloa (one of the ancient names of Hanoi), he immediately proclaimed himself Great King, and even set his title as King of the Celestial Strategy.

This was not a lack of self-awareness! This was practically trying to ascend to heaven.

Wu Changji was the eldest son of the primary wife, had been driven from the throne by Yang Sange, held little power, and had been rescued by his younger brother Wu Changwen.

Faced with this situation, Wu Changji slapped his little head and thought hard with his pig-brained, limited understanding, and suddenly realized that this scene was very much like Li Jiancheng and Li Shimin!

His own life was in some danger. What was to be done?

In an instant, no one knows what wire crossed in Wu Changji's head, but he suddenly thought: since I am so much like Li Jiancheng, about to be killed by his younger brother Li Shimin, then why not simply—

Why not call myself the King of the Celestial Strategy.

This way, I am Li Shimin, not the elder brother Li Jiancheng who got killed.

What is this called? This is called seizing the high ground first.

When Wu Changwen saw his elder brother do this, he was utterly stunned. After racking his brains, he too came up with a brilliant scheme.

You take the two characters "Tiance" and stack armor on yourself, huh? Let me see who's better at stacking armor.

So after much racking of brains, Wu Changwen had a flash of inspiration and proclaimed himself King of Southern Jin.

Heh! You call yourself King of Tiance, so I'll just call myself King of Southern Jin. The Li-Tang rose to arms from Jinyang — no matter how great the Tiance Office was, could it be greater than Jinyang, where the dynasty began?

And the yabing officers below, watching these two brothers start a rivalry, were overjoyed. They supported Wu Changji one moment and Wu Changwen the next, and before long they had swindled away most of the family fortune accumulated by Wu Quan and Third Brother Yang.

And what was swindled away was not only money and goods, but also the authority to garrison various places. These yabing officers and local great clans, through a flurry of double-dealing, soon formed ten fairly large powers, whom the Annan people called the Ten Envoys.

These Ten Envoys, plus the brothers Wu Changji and Wu Changwen, then began a great free-for-all across Annan.

They fought all the way until the end of last year, when apparently even Heaven could not bear to watch any longer — the clueless Wu Changji suddenly fell gravely ill and dropped dead, and Wu Changwen seized the chance to absorb his forces. Only then did things quiet down a little.

Actually, this was not even the final version. The final version came eleven years later, in 965, when Wu Changwen led over a thousand soldiers out of the city to exterminate bandits — and the dignified Great King was ambushed and killed by several hundred bandits at a village entrance.

With that, the Wu family's power utterly declined. Wu Changwen's yabing officers Du Jingshuo and Yang Jili broke away from the Wu clan and also proclaimed themselves Envoys.

The final version — what history calls the great free-for-all of the Twelve Envoys of Annan — had finally taken shape.

But at this moment, Wu Changji had only just dropped dead, and Wu Changwen had just unified the Wu clan's forces. He was brimming with pride and ambition, about to destroy the Ten Envoys who had grown powerful.

But he did not know that the Central Plains had already undergone drastic change. Following old habit, he sent his younger brother Wu Changjun to Xingwang Prefecture to seek an audience with Liu Sheng, intending to use submission to Southern Han in exchange for a stable external environment, as well as to swindle some rewards out of Southern Han.

So, when Liu Sheng said Annan was willing to submit to the court, he was not entirely lying. If Wu Changwen knew the Central Plains had been unified, he would certainly choose to submit to the court.

And to a certain extent, if Liu Sheng's somewhat deceptive strategy succeeded, it could indeed shut Zhang Zhao's mouth.

But — Liu Sheng clearly underestimated my Sage Zhang's determination to recover Southern Han and the Jinghai Army. Of course, he even more underestimated my Sage Zhang's shamelessness.

After Zhang Zhao received advance intelligence, he directly issued a death order to the Embroidered Uniform Guard, ordering them to intercept and kill Liu Sheng's envoys at all costs, and not let them reach the divine capital Luoyang.

In an instant, the Embroidered Uniform Guard's intelligence network within Southern Han territory went into full operation.

Often, the envoys Southern Han sent to report to the court had not even left Southern Han territory before they were intercepted and killed by mountain bandits and brigands bribed by the Embroidered Uniform Guard.

The batch of envoys that got the farthest was still caught and killed more than ten li from Guilin Prefecture.

Liu Sheng and Pan Chongche were now utterly stunned. Only now did they witness how ruthless my Sage Zhang's methods were, how decisive his actions — outwardly benevolent and amiable, but behind the scenes he truly had the ferocity to throw away all face.

But do you think my Sage Zhang's methods stop there? What a joke — this is the all-new three-in-one Emperor, after all.

So while intercepting and killing Southern Han's envoys, Zhang Zhao issued an edict to Liu Congxiao, Duke of Zhang, ordering him to send elite naval forces to the Jinghai Army to investigate the situation.

Liu Congxiao sent his nephew Liu Shaoquan, Commander of the Dinghai Garrison of the Imperial Navy, to personally lead three hundred sailors setting out from Zhangzhou.

Liu Shaoquan and his men disguised themselves as sea merchants and landed in Jinghai Army territory, then launched a surprise attack on Haimen Garrison in Wu'an Prefecture of Annan — that is, the later Haiphong in Vietnam.

They directly seized the garrison commander and more than twenty officers and soldiers there, then brought them back to Zhangzhou for harsh interrogation and obtained the truth.

Zhang Zhao was thrilled!

Excellent! You, Liu Sheng, claim to be a loyal vassal, but you secretly accepted the Jinghai Army rebels as a tributary — that is overstepping your authority.

Accepting gifts from the rebel Jinghai Army — that is shielding and colluding.

Deliberately describing the Jinghai Army's submission to the Han state as submission to the court — that is deceiving the sovereign.

Good heavens — deceiving the sovereign, colluding with rebels, overstepping authority. The charges are complete. Any one of them would be enough to justify sending troops to punish him.

In the eighth year of Shaoming, 954 by the common calendar, in the second month, Wang Jiu, Left Vice Minister of Rites and Earl of Shi'an, personally led a party of more than thirty imperial envoys to Xingwang Prefecture.

At this time, Liu Sheng still did not know that the court had obtained conclusive evidence as early as last year. He merely came out of the royal city, somewhat uneasy, to receive Wang Jiu.

As for Wang Jiu — he had experienced far too many scenes like this. Grabbing the Gaochang Uyghur Khagan's robe to stop him from leaving, seizing Li Jing's sleeve and cursing him out while pointing at his nose — those were all my Earl Wang's signature works.

He knew perfectly well what he had come to do, so when he saw Liu Sheng dressed in a silver-white python robe with shoulder dragons, he showed not the slightest mercy.

He did not even wait for Liu Sheng to finish his formal greeting before dragging out the captured Haimen Garrison commander of the Jinghai Army and his party, and flinging them down in front of Liu Sheng.

Then, in front of all the civil and military officials of Southern Han, he pointed at the panic-stricken Liu Sheng and cursed him out.

Item by item, charge by charge, his curses rose and fell in cadence — from Liu Sheng's feigned deference, to his deceiving the sovereign, to his wanton killing of his brothers and unfitness to rule — leaving Liu Sheng, the lord of Southern Han, utterly humiliated before several hundred people.

At first Liu Sheng could listen quietly, but as Wang Jiu's curses grew more and more vicious, his face gradually flushed red, until at last it turned the color of gold paper, and his whole body began to tremble.

By this time, Liu Sheng favored eunuchs and palace women, had long grown unable to tolerate remonstrance, and cared desperately about face — let alone being cursed at to his face.

Had Wang Jiu kept cursing for a few more minutes, he might well have achieved the unprecedented feat of cursing a king to death.

Fortunately, seeing Liu Sheng cursed at with a finger in his face, his most favored eunuch Lin Yanyu and palace woman Lu Qiongxian and others flew into a rage and rushed over to curse Wang Jiu back.

At this, it was Wang Jiu's turn to be stunned on the spot.

He had cursed many people, but he had never seen a king's civil and military officials stay out of it while eunuchs and palace women rushed over to trade insults with him like shrews on the street.

Zhong Yunzhang, Left Chancellor of the Secretariat, and Pan Chongche, Commissioner of Palace Attendants, inwardly groaned that this was trouble.

Fools like Lin Yanyu and Lu Qiongxian, who had barely left the palace in their entire lives, had no idea how powerful the Central Plains court was. They cursed without any restraint, and quickly added several more layers of crimes onto Liu Sheng.

More importantly, their coming out to curse like this could easily make the already mentally unstable Liu Sheng throw caution to the wind.

Sure enough, before Zhong Yunzhang and the others could come out to "put out the fire," Liu Sheng let out a shrill howl, glared with bloodshot eyes, pointed at Wang Jiu and the other imperial envoys, and roared: "Seize them! Seize them! I want to—"

Pan Chongche immediately lunged over and grabbed Liu Sheng's leg, wailing loudly: "When the lord is humiliated, the servant dies! They have gone too far! I beg Your Majesty to order this slave to throw these insolent wretches into the great prison for harsh interrogation!"

With Pan Chongche's howl, Southern Han's civil and military officials all came to their senses. Even if Southern Han fell, as long as they knew what was good for them, most of them could still keep their lives.

But if Liu Sheng, in his madness, killed the imperial envoys — and especially Wang Jiu, Left Vice Minister of Rites and a favored minister of the Shaoming Son of Heaven — then the problem would be enormous. They might all end up buried with him.

Therefore the entire Southern Han court displayed unprecedented unity, loudly echoing Pan Chongche in cursing Wang Jiu, and even shoving Lu Qiongxian and Liu Sheng's other confidants to the back.

It looked like utter loyalty, but in truth they were trying to save Wang Jiu's life.

Liu Sheng was already somewhat mentally ill. Now, seeing his ministers act this way, he was both furious and agitated. He was about to say something when he felt an explosive pain in his forehead. The words never left his mouth; his vision went black, and he fainted.

The Southern Han ministers were "overjoyed." Some escorted Liu Sheng back to the palace, while others hurriedly summoned guards to drag Wang Jiu and his party away and throw them into the great prison.

But regardless of what became of Wang Jiu and his party, there was now no shortage of pretexts for a punitive expedition.

It happened that the brothers Zhang Yue (Murong Xinzhang) and Zhang Huang (Zhang Xiancun), the most important external vassal states, had already basically stabilized.

Zhang Zhao immediately mobilized his forces and prepared to take Southern Han and complete the great enterprise of unification.

(End of Chapter)

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