All language subtitles for 10. The Han Dynasty - The First Empire in Flames

In the early years of the third century, around
the year 207 AD, a Chinese poet by the name

Ts'ao Chih made a journey back to the place
of his birth, a city called Luoyang.

At this time, the lands of China were in chaos.

The armies of rival warlords were now tearing
the country apart, and so his journey can’t

have been an easy one.

Ts'ao Chih was the son of a powerful warlord
in the central plains of China, but he was

also a notorious drunk.

He had embarrassed his family to such an extent
that he was exiled, and he now returned to

the only other place he knew; his hometown
of Luoyang.

Luoyang had once been a prosperous place.

For centuries, poets had written about its
bustling life and its leafy avenues full of

blossom, leading up to grand palaces and temples
decorated with thousands of bronze statues.

It had been the capital of China in the golden
age of the emperors which had lasted for more

than 400 years.

But Ts'ao had heard that Luoyang had suffered
in the recent wars.

Still, when he came over the crest of the
Beimang Mountains to the north, nothing could

have prepared him for what he saw stretching
out beneath him.

The entire city of Luoyang was a blackened
ruin.

Later, he wrote a poem about what he saw.

I climb to the ridge of Beimang Mountain and
look down on the city of Luoyang.

In Luoyang how still it is!

Palaces and houses all burnt to ashes.

Walls and fences all broken and gaping, thorns
and brambles shooting up to the sky.

For Ts'ao Chih, the blackened ruins of Luoyang
became an emblem of the golden age that had

now passed.

Only decades before, China had been ruled
by a single emperor from a dynasty known as

the Han, and a period of prosperity had reigned.

The Han were the first lasting dynasty to
unite China under a single banner, and people

believed that this golden age would never
end.

But now the poet Ts'ao Chih walked among the
ruins and ravaged fields of the former capital,

and felt his memories rise up from the soot-stained
stones.

I do not see elders from former days.

I only see young men.

I turn aside, for the straight road is lost.

The fields are overgrown and will never be
ploughed again.

I have been away such a long time that I do
not know which street is which.

How sad and ugly the empty fields are!

A thousand miles without the smoke of a chimney.

I think of the house I lived in all those
years; my breath catches and I cannot speak.

As he walked through those ruins, Ts'ao Chih
must have asked himself; how had the first

great age of Imperial China come to such a
devastating end?

Why had the people of Luoyang left this city
to burn and crumble into the earth?

In the centuries to come, would the golden
age of the emperors ever return?

My name’s Paul Cooper and you’re listening
to the Fall of Civilizations podcast.

Each episode, I look at a civilization of
the past that rose to glory and then collapsed

into the ashes of history.

I want to ask, what did they have in common?

What led to their fall?

What did it feel like to be a person alive
at the time who witnessed the end of their

world?

In this episode, I want to look at the fascinating
story of China’s Han Dynasty, an iron age

kingdom that forged the first true Imperial
power in China.

I want to tell the story of how this remarkable
society rose out of the warring states of

China’s Bronze Age, and how it reached out
its first tentative hands to make contact

with the empires of the west.

Finally, I want to explore what happened to
bring the ornate palaces and towering temples

of China’s first emperors crashing down
in ash and flame.

If you’ve ever seen footage of a car crash
in slow motion, you’ll have some idea of

what that looks like.

The two cars, inching towards each other frame
by frame, the crash test dummies with their

blank stares, strapped securely into their
seatbelts.

When the collision happens, both cars crumple
together, solid metal rippling and buckling.

Our story starts with a car crash taking place
in the slowest motion you can imagine.

Up until about 180 million years ago, India
was part of an immense supercontinent called

Gondwana which covered much of the Southern
Hemisphere.

But between about 180 million and 160 million
years ago, deep in the earth’s liquid mantle,

an enormous plume of magma rose up and began
to shift the plates of the earth’s crust

above it.

Gondwana broke apart, and the landmass that
is now India tore away from it and out into

the ocean.

India moved north slowly at first, about 5
centimeters a year.

But then, around 80 million years ago, it
sped up.

Part of the reason for this is that the Indian
Plate is believed to be only about 70-100

km thick, about half as thick as the other
plates that made up Gondwana.

Powered by the vast currents of molten rock
beneath it, this lighter plate now ploughed

northwards at a rate of 15cm every year.

This is about the same rate as your hair grows,
but in terms of continental plates, it was

a speeding juggernaut.

Right in the path of this runaway plate was
the continent of what is now Asia.

These two landmasses hurtled together with
the same inevitable force as those speeding

cars.

Somewhere between 70 to 35 million years ago,
the impact occurred.

Over millions of years, inch by inch, the
Indian Plate made contact with the mainland

of Asia.

Across an impact zone stretching for 2,000
km, the rock of the Asian Plate began to crumple.

As the Indian Plate was crushed beneath it,
Asia rocked and buckled, and a great mountain

range rose up, the highest in the world.

These are the Himalayas.

This crash is still going on.

Behind the impact zone, marked by the dramatic
snow-capped peaks of the world’s tallest

mountains, the earth’s crust has been pushed
up like soil before a plough.

The result is a vast arid steppe, a table
of land broken by salty lakes and glaciers,

and with an average altitude of over 4,500m,
the Tibetan Plateau.

The formation of this plateau had a number
of enormous effects for the climate of this

region.

Rain clouds from the Indian Ocean find it
impossible to cross the Himalayas, and so

to the south, the mountains create an enormous
reservoir of cloud, bringing the yearly monsoon

rains to India and Southeast Asia.

But behind the mountains to the north, the
situation is quite different.

Here, the Himalayas have created what’s
called a rain shadow.

This is where barely any rain falls and where
vast deserts have formed.

But it’s to the east of this plateau that
our story really takes place and where another

unique landscape has been formed.

On its eastern edge, the Tibetan Plateau drops
off dramatically into a rolling mass of mountains

and valleys, and finally into an enormous
stretch of wide, silty plains.

These stretch for nearly 2,000 km, between
the snowy walls of the plateau in the west,

and the Pacific Ocean in the east.

These plains are home to a number of enormous
rivers.

The tens of thousands of glaciers in the highlands
of the Tibetan Plateau act as a kind of water

tower, releasing a steady flow of meltwater
that cuts its way through the rocky mountain

passes before spilling out into the plains
in long, meandering routes.

Among these great watercourses, two of the
most impressive are the Yellow River and the

Yangtze.

The Yangtze is the longest river in Asia and
the third-longest in the world after the Nile

and the Amazon.

It flows for 6,300 km from the mountains to
the sea, from an altitude of 5 km right through

the centre of what is today modern China.

The Yangtze meanders through deep, dramatic
valleys and stone gorges, and it's a relatively

peaceful and stable river.

The Yangtse has maintained a steady course
for much of its history and has discharged

into the sea at the same point for the last
11 million years.

But to the north of the Yangtze is its sister,
the Yellow River.

This waterway is far more changeable and deadly.

In its upper reaches, the Yellow River passes
through a region known as the Huangtu, or

the “Yellow Earth” Plateau, a landscape
made up of some of the most easily eroded

soil in the world.

As a result, the Yellow River contains the
highest amount of silt and sand of any river

on earth, and this colours it the distinctive
yellow-brown that gives the river its name.

This huge quantity of silt gives the soil
of the northern Chinese plains an enormous

fertility.

But it also creates a number of challenges.

As the river flows, this silt constantly builds
up at its bottom, and the riverbed slowly

rises.

At times, it can even rise to be higher than
the land around it.

When this happens, the river bursts its banks
and floods vast areas of the countryside around

it.

In the most dramatic cases, the river can
change its course entirely, sometimes sweeping

across the landscape for hundreds of kilometres
and washing away everything in its path.

Historically, this kind of devastating event
has occurred about once every hundred years.

Human activity has been verified in this region
as far back as 27,000 years ago.

Rice first began to be cultivated along the
Yangtze River around the year 8,000 BC, while

wheat, barley, and millet were best suited
to the drier lands in the north.

Farming of these calorie-rich foods gave rise
to an advanced culture known as the Jiahu,

who experimented with written symbols on the
walls of caves as early as 7,000 BC.

The first true villages were founded in the
fourth and fifth millennia, and the population

of this region began to boom.

The Bronze Age brought the smelting of bronze
from copper and tin, and it began here around

the year 3,000 BC.

A culture known as the Longshan domesticated
the water buffalo for use in field work, and

they also developed the plough and sophisticated
irrigation techniques, boosting the productivity

of this already fertile land.

In the third and second millennia BC, China’s
first villages grew into towns, and these

towns into its first major cities.

In ancient Chinese conceptions of the world,
the lands between the Yangtze and the Yellow

River were the heart of all goodness.

This was conveyed using the word huaxia, a
word that contains a sense of grandness and

beauty.

One ancient writer, Yen-Yew, spells this out
quite clearly.

Inside is the Chinese Empire, and outside
are the barbarous nations.

The barbarians are covetous and greedy of
gain; their hair hangs down over their bodies,

and their coats are buttoned on the left side.

They have human faces, but the hearts of beasts.

The ancient Chinese believed that the further
you moved away from this centre, the more

the good qualities of the people faded.

One text called the Book of Documents, dated
around 500 BC, contains a particularly precise

version of this world view.

It describes how the virtue of the lands’
inhabitants reduces in steady increments of

500 li, or about 400 km, the further you get
from the centre.

The central 500 li is the Imperial Domain.

500 li beyond is the Domain of the Nobles,
and beyond that the Domain of Peace, where

they cultivate the lessons of learning and
moral duties.

But as you move away from the capital in these
increments of 400 km, things start to look

a little different.

500 li more remote, is the Domain of Restraints.

The first 300 is occupied by the tribes, the
other 200 by criminals who have been banished.

The most remote 500 li is the Wild Domain.

In the south, these wild domains were the
hilly lands south of the Yangtze.

The people there were what the early Chinese
called the Southern Barbarians.

To the west, the Wild Domain was the icy plateau
where few could survive.

In the north, it was the Gobi Desert, and
beyond that, the wide grassy steppes of Mongolia

and Siberia.

A 5th-century Mongolian poet named Altun,
would later write a description of this bare

and level land.

Under the dark mountains where the sky is
like the sides of a tent stretched down over

the Great Steppe, the sky is gray, gray!

And the steppe wide, wide.

Over grass that the wind has battered low,
sheep and oxen roam.

So, this is where the people of early China
found themselves, hemmed in by the mountains

to the west, the jungle and the sea to the
south and east, and the harsh deserts to the

north.

But within their fertile square of land, their
early civilizations flourished.

The first millennium BC in China was a time
of rapid change and feverish invention.

The land’s large population had led to the
swift development of complicated society,

and advanced technologies soon followed.

The people here learned to coat bronze in
chromium to increase its resistance to corrosion,

and inventions like the blast furnace and
bellows later led to the production of cast

iron, replacing bronze as a cheaper alternative.

In agriculture, iron tools and mechanical
devices like the multiple seed drill led to

a production boom.

The invention of complicated pulley systems
and differential gears allowed the use of

waterwheels and other mechanical devices to
power everything from flour mills to furnaces,

and they also allowed the invention of ingenious
mechanical toys.

One early emperor was buried with an entire
mechanical orchestra that could play their

instruments and sing through pipes in their
mouths, all powered by running water.

One kind of vehicle was even invented known
as a south-pointing chariot.

It had a mechanical gear system on board,
powering a device that always pointed south

without the use of magnets.

The crossbow was invented during this time
too, and it was in widespread use in Chinese

armies nearly 2,000 years before it became
a fixture on European battlefields.

Examples have even been found of repeating
crossbows which used delicate mechanisms to

fire multiple bolts in quick succession without
the need for reloading.

One Chinese inventor even invented an early
form of pinhole camera in order to view solar

eclipses.

This era of development and ingenuity is known
as the Spring and Autumn Period.

But with the rapid development of technology,
upheaval soon followed.

The spreading use of iron meant that production
of weapons and armour had become cheap and

easy.

Large armies could now be supplied by anyone
with the wealth to do so.

This ushered in an age quite fittingly known
as “The Warring States Period”.

The period of the Warring States saw countless
feudal kingdoms fighting and conquering one

another, coalescing together like beads of
mercury on a table.

The historian Sima Qian recalls this as a
dark time in Chinese history.

The land was torn by the strife of the warring
kingdoms.

Men honoured deceit and power, and scoffed
at benevolence and righteousness.

They put wealth and possessions first, and
courtesy and humility last.

Some commoners became so rich that their wealth
was counted in the hundreds of millions, while

among the poor there were those who could
not even get enough dregs and chaff to fill

their bellies.

Soon, they had settled into seven large kingdoms
locked in constant competition.

Among these, the two that matter most to our
story are the Kingdoms of Han and the Kingdom

of Qin.

For some, it must have seemed like the wars
would never end.

But out of the violence of this time, one
of the seven warring states, the state of

Qin, rose to eclipse all the others.

Qin was the furthest west of these kingdoms,
with its back to the steep walls of the Tibetan

Plateau.

The King of Qin, a man named Qin Shi Huang,
was an enthusiastic reformer who revolutionised

his kingdom’s society and administration.

He moved to reduce the power of aristocrats
and landowners, and strengthened the central

government of Qin to collect taxes directly
from the peasantry.

The Qin also used the latest military tactics,
making an unprecedented use of cavalry, still

a relative rarity in Chinese armies to mount
guerilla raids on their enemies' supply lines

and river crossings.

For years, Qin Shi Huang bided his time and
increased his power.

When all his preparations were ready, he struck
with lightning speed.

He first attacked the Han, the Qin’s much
smaller neighbour directly to the east, and

he took their capital of Shinjeng in the year
230 BC.

Next, Qin Shi Huang struck northward at the
state of Zhao, who surrendered two years later,

and he took the northernmost state of Yan
two years after that.

In less than a decade after setting out on
his campaign, Qin Shi Huang had conquered

all the lands between the mountains and the
sea.

For the first time in its history, one man
would now rule over all the kingdoms of China.

Qin Shi Huang crowned himself as China's First
Emperor.

He declared that he held his position through
a kind of divine authority, the Tianming,

or the “Mandate of Heaven”.

It’s thought that the name of the Qin Dynasty
is what has given us the word for China today.

For the most part, Qin Shi Huang ruled his
empire just as he had ruled his kingdom; it

was a reign of ambitious reforms and territorial
expansion that saw the young Empire of China

grow even further.

But the Emperor Qin’s reign was also not
without its troubles.

He suffered three separate assassination attempts,
narrowly escaping each time, but these attacks

filled him with paranoia.

He became terrified of death and soon began
to tour the whole empire, talking to all the

wise men he could find, and trying to discover
some secret, some medicine or magic spell

that would allow him to live forever.

As his life wore on and his health got worse,
his search became desperate.

He began to execute scholars whose potions
and elixirs had no effect on him.

At one point, he even sent a fleet of ships
out into the ocean, carrying hundreds of young

men and women in search of the legendary Penglai
Mountain, which was supposed to lie somewhere

out in the Southern Sea and where he believed
a 1,000-year-old magician might live.

These people never returned, perhaps wisely
considering how Qin Shi Huang treated those

who failed him.

During these later years, the emperor became
mortally afraid of "evil spirits", and he

had workers build a series of tunnels and
passageways between each of his more than

200 palaces, believing that if he travelled
unseen, they would find it more difficult

to target him.

Soon, this paranoia turned into tyranny.

He turned his rage against the scholars who
were unable to unlock the secrets of eternal

life.

At one point, it’s even recorded that he
burned the books kept in the libraries of

the capital, as the historian Sima Qian recalls
with bitterness.

The Confucian scholars loathed the Qin for
having burned the Book of Odes, and the book

of documents, and mercilessly put to death
the scholars who expounded them, while the

common people hated its harsh laws, so that
the whole world rose up in rebellion.

At this time, everyone began to speak ill
of the Qin.

During his fourth tour of Eastern China, the
emperor became seriously ill.

It’s thought that his court physicians had
been giving him pills full of the liquid metal

mercury, believing that it would extend his
life.

Of course, mercury is actually highly poisonous.

Prolonged exposure can damage the entire nervous
system, causing depression and bodily tremors,

as well as delirium and hallucinations.

If Qin Shi Huang was taking mercury, this
might explain some of his strange preoccupations

towards the end of his life.

When the emperor fell ill, it seems likely
that his doctors would have increased his

dosage.

The First Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang,
died in the year 210 BC, and his dynasty died

with him.

For all of its immense historical significance,
the Qin Dynasty barely lasted more than fifteen

years.

The First Emperor Qin Shi Huang left very
specific requests for his burial and to this

day, they stand as a testament to his greatness,
but also to the madness that plagued him in

later life.

He was buried in a vast mausoleum, one of
the most remarkable constructions of the ancient

world.

It was built in the form of an enormous underground
palace, an exact replica of the one he lived

in during his life.

This buried palace was filled with life-sized
models of the courtiers and bureaucrats who

had served the king, fashioned with meticulous
detail in terracotta, their lifeless eyes

open and staring forever.

The buried palace was also guarded by an army
of thousands of terracotta soldiers, each

with a slightly different face.

In total, it’s estimated that Qin Shi Huang
was buried with 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots

with 520 horses, and 150 soldiers on horseback,
a full retinue of royal bodyguards to protect

their king in the next life.

There was even a replica of the Imperial stables,
where the bodies of real horses were buried

with terracotta figures of grooms kneeling
beside them.

Nearby, a mass burial ground has been found,
for the countless slave labourers who died

while being forced to build this complex.

At the centre of the underground palace was
the emperor's burial chamber.

The historian Sima Qian describes how the
floor was painted to look like the lands of

China, with its rivers represented by flowing
streams of mercury.

The tomb was filled with rare artefacts and
wonderful treasure.

Craftsmen were ordered to make crossbows and
arrows primed to shoot at anybody who enters

the tomb.

Mercury was used to simulate the Hundred Rivers,
the Yangtze, Yellow River, and the great sea,

and set to flow mechanically.

Above were representations of the heavenly
constellations, below, the features of the

land.

While the tomb of Qin Shi Huang has never
been opened, studies have shown that the soil

of the mound that covers it does contain an
unusually high concentration of mercury.

One study even claims to show that the distribution
of the mercury in the mound corresponds to

the position of China’s rivers.

The Empire of China was still a very new idea.

During Qin Shi Huang’s life, it had been
a thin veneer over a still very divided land.

With the death of the First Emperor, the empire
looked as if it might come crashing down.

The Qin state began to fall apart, and China
fissured into 18 kingdoms who once again began

to war among themselves.

It looked like the old age of chaos was about
to return.

But history had other plans.

This is due to a rather unassuming character,
a common man named Liu Bang.

There's not much to distinguish Liu Bang during
his early life.

He was born in the Kingdom of Han, and it's
recorded that he liked to drink.

Nevertheless, he rose to the position of a
local sheriff.

After the death of Qin Shi Huang, he was ordered
to bring a group of slaves to the enormous

construction site where the old emperor’s
tomb was being built.

But along the way, some of these slaves escaped.

Liu Bang knew that when he arrived, he would
likely be punished for this mistake, and so,

he made a remarkable decision.

He broke the chains of all the remaining slaves
and declared that he would rather fight as

a rebel against the empire than deliver them
up to toil on the emperor's tomb.

Many of the slaves were so grateful that they
took up arms and joined him.

Liu Bang and his followers took refuge at
a place called Mount Mangdang, setting up

camp in the crumbling ruins of an old fortress.

From there, they watched the Empire of the
Qin fall apart around them.

They soon entered the service of a rebel king,
fighting what remained of the Qin Empire,

and Liu Bang showed extraordinary skill on
the battlefield.

So much so, that the ancient historian Sima
Qian attributes his military successes to

supernatural causes.

When Liu Bang was still a commoner, he once
killed a great snake, whereupon a spirit appeared

and announced, “This snake was the son of
the white emperor, and he who killed him is

the son of the red emperor!”

When he first began his uprising, he offered
prayers at the altar of the soil at the city

of Feng.

He sacrificed to the warrior god Chih Yu,
and anointed his drums and flags with the

blood of the sacrifice.

Whatever it was that set him apart, Liu Bang
managed to capture the Qin city of Xianyang

for the rebellion, and he was crowned its
king as a reward.

The civil wars raged on, full of complicated
alliances and rivalries, until finally it

was only Liu Bang and his rival of the Chu
family remaining, two great warlords dividing

all the lands of China between them along
the great watercourse of the Hong Canal.

In China to this day, the two sides of a chess
board are referred to not as black and white,

but as Chu and Han.

A few months of peace passed by as the players
of this great chess game considered their

moves.

Then Liu Bang marched across the Hong Canal
and attacked the Chu.

He was victorious and against all the odds,
after eight years of bitter fighting, China

was once more united.

In the year 202 BC, the commoner Liu Bang,
once a lowly sheriff from a small town, declared

himself the next Emperor of China.

He would return to his small hometown in the
state of Han only once.

When he did, he wrote the following piece
of poetry.

A great wind came forth, the clouds rose on
high.

Now that my might rules all within the seas,
I have returned to my old village.

Where will I find brave men to guard the four
corners of my land?

On his coronation, Liu Bang took the name
Han.

He set up his court in the city of Chang’an
and took the new Imperial name Han Kau Tsu.

The age of the Han had begun.

I’ll take just a moment here to discuss
the sources we have available on this era

of Chinese history.

The Chinese of the Han Period were exceptionally
literate.

It’s thought that even in these early years,
at least one person from every family would

have been familiar with at least a few hundred
characters, enough to get by with everyday

things like calendars, simple letters, and
official announcements.

At this point, paper had yet to be invented,
and so books of this period were written on

strips of flattened bamboo, joined together
with thread into long, clattering rows that

could be rolled up into cylinders and wrapped
in cloth.

These books of bamboo slats are part of the
reason that Chinese was traditionally written

from top to bottom.

From the earliest days, colleges were set
up for the nobility, and charitable schools

for the poor.

The emperors supported scribes and scholars
in writing grand historical chronicles.

As a result, even these early periods of Chinese
history are very well documented.

One of the most remarkable of these documents
was written in the first century BC by the

chief astrologer to the Imperial Court, a
man named Sima Qian, who we’ve heard from

a few times already.

This book is known as “the Records of the
Grand Historian”.

It’s a vast chronicle documenting Chinese
history over a period of 2,000 years.

It begins in the age of the Yellow Emperor,
the legendary ancestral father of all Chinese

people.

Sima Qian is a lively and colourful storyteller,
and he loves to put direct speeches into the

mouths of his characters.

But it’s worth introducing a note of caution
when reading his work and the other works

of Chinese history.

Sima Qian wrote his records mostly during
the reign of the Emperor Wu, and so he presents

a typically flattering account of that emperor,
acting as a kind of official propaganda.

But he was also a shrewd judge of human nature
and employed one interesting trick to allow

some criticism of various official personalities
to seep through.

Each of his chapters was named after a particular
person, and he knew that the various lords

and ladies, and even the emperor himself,
were unlikely to read any chapter of his work

other than the ones dedicated to themselves.

Sima Qian would fill these chapters with praise
and flattery, and he would leave any criticism

to other chapters.

But it's clear this didn't always work.

There's only one chapter of the records that
has not survived to this day; that’s the

one focusing on the Emperor Wu himself.

It's impossible to know whether Sima Qian
never wrote this section out of fear of his

ruler or if the emperor read something in
those pages that he didn't like and had the

document destroyed.

Another incredibly useful document is the
Hanshu, or “the Book of Han”.

This was written in the first century AD by
a court official named Ban Gu and his sister

Ban Zhao, who is the first known female historian
of China.

Like virtually all histories that followed,
the Hanshu was modelled on Sima Qian's work.

It records Chinese history from the reign
of the first Han Emperor Han Kau Tsu up to

the year 23 AD.

It’s usually the best source, and sometimes
the only source, for events during this period.

A final major text is the one written by Fan
Ye, a historian and politician of the fifth

century.

This is the Hou Han Shu, or “the Book of
Later Han”, and it covers the remainder

of the Han Period up until the year 220 AD.

While the previous Book of Han was written
by contemporaries who witnessed at least some

of the events described, Fan Ye wrote the
Book of Later Han from a distance of nearly

two hundred years.

He used a number of earlier histories and
documents as sources, but we should always

bear this in mind that he was about as distant
from these events as we are from the Napoleonic

War.

Alongside a number of other smaller sources,
these are the texts we have to work with.

As we’ll find out, these scholars were supervised
and sometimes terrorised by their emperors,

meaning that their accounts have to be supported
with archaeological and other evidence.

But thanks to their diligent scholarship,
a clear picture does begin to emerge of what

happened to bring China’s first great dynasty
crashing down.

When the Han Dynasty came into possession
of the newly-united China in the year 206

BC, it inherited from the Qin not just the
young empire, but also the empire’s problems.

Sima Qian writes about this in the Records
of the Grand Historian.

When the Han Dynasty came to power, it inherited
the evils left by the Qin.

The able-bodied men were all away with the
army, while the old and underaged busily transported

supplies for them.

There was much hard work and little wealth.

The Son of Heaven himself could not find four
horses of the same colour to draw his carriage,

and many of his generals were reduced to riding
around in ox carts.

The empire’s economy was on its knees, with
prices spiralling out of control.

In the midst of all the chaos, rich merchants
were taking advantage of the high prices of

grain.

People who were intent on making a profit
by underhanded means began to hoard their

wealth, buying up the commodities on the market
so that the price of goods shot up.

But easily the most pressing problem was the
constant looming threat of China’s fearsome

neighbours to the north.

These were a people known as the Xiongnu,
a word that is sometimes translated into English

as Hun.

Around the year 6,000 BC, the people of the
Eurasian steppes had learned how to tame wild

horses, and in the intervening millennia,
had developed a symbiotic relationship with

that powerful animal.

They lived nomadic lifestyles, travelling
on horseback in vast populations, moving from

grazing land to grazing land and living without
the need for agriculture.

By at least the first millennium BC, these
nomadic groups of horse riders had become

a military threat to the settled societies
of the Chinese plains.

The Records of the Grand Historian gives one
description of the Xiongnu people.

The Xiongnu are mountain barbarians.

They move about in search of water and pasture,
and have no walled cities or fixed dwellings,

nor do they engage in any kind of agriculture.

They wear clothes of hide or wraps made of
felt or fur.

They have no writing and even their promises
and agreements are only verbal.

The little boys start out by learning to ride
sheep, and shoot birds and rats with a bow.

Thus, all the young men are able to act as
armed cavalry in time of war.

It’s clear that the settled armies of the
Chinese, despite all their technological advantages,

found these nomadic armies incredibly difficult
to fight.

The Records of the Grand Historian speaks
with particular contempt about the battle

tactics of these nomadic warriors.

If the battle is going well for them they
will advance, but if not they will retreat,

for they do not consider it a disgrace to
run away.

Their only concern is self-advantage and they
know nothing of propriety or righteousness.

The kingdoms that bordered the lands of the
Xiongnu were under constant threat of raids

and invasions.

Faced with this danger, the Chinese had for
centuries resorted to desperate measures.

From as early as the 7th century BC, they
began building walls to defend the valleys

and plains of the north.

During his reign, the First Emperor Qin Shi
Huang had approached this problem with a characteristic

boldness.

He ordered that these scattered fragments
of wall be joined together, closing any gaps.

By the time he died in the year 210 BC, a
single defensive barrier now ran the whole

length of the empire’s northern border.

For a time, this offered some measure of protection,
but at the same time that the Han Dynasty

was being formed, all the disparate tribes
of the Xiongnu were also coming together.

They joined forces under the rule of a single
ruler who took the title of Shanyu.

This word, Shanyu, would change over the centuries
to one day become the title of Khan, the title

that would be taken by the fearsome Genghis
Khan.

Taken together, the vast wastes that the Xiongnu
ruled over were the largest empire in terms

of land mass on earth at the time.

As the new Empire of China rose in the river
plains, this Shanyu was preparing for war.

After the death of Qin Shi Huang and the civil
war that followed, the Shanyu spotted his

chance.

Xiongnu horsemen poured into any Chinese territory
that lay to the north of the border wall.

With every Chinese army tied down, they met
with no resistance.

When the empire was restored under Han Kau
Tsu, the Shanyu become more cautious for a

time.

But it was only five years into the reign
of the Han that he struck again.

The Emperor Han Kau Tsu was nearing the age
of sixty when the armies of Xiongnu horsemen

thundered into the province of Shanxi, looting
and burning cities as they went.

Han Kau Tsu was a confident military leader,
and rightly so.

He had defeated all his rivals in the civil
war, and he knew how to command an army.

But he was about to find out that fighting
the swift and mobile cavalry hordes of the

Xiongnu was a very different kind of challenge.

Han Kau Tsu marched out to meet the Xiongnu.

But in the rocky mountain passes, he was struck
with an ambush.

With no warning, Xiongnu cavalry poured down
the valley sides with the thundering of thousands

of hooves, and tore into the Chinese army
on all sides.

The ancient Chinese poet Ch’ü Yüan, writing
in the third century BC, records what a battle

during this time must have felt like.

The enemy roll up like clouds.

Arrows fall thick; the warriors press forward.

They menace our ranks; they break our line.

The horse on the left is dead; the one on
the right is smitten.

The fallen horses block our wheels; they beat
the sounding drums.

The warriors are all dead; they lie on the
field.

Their swords lie beside them; their black
bows in their hand.

The Emperor Han Kau Tsu was utterly defeated.

He retreated back to the walled city of Baideng,
locked the gates, and peered fearfully from

the city’s ramparts.

The Xiongnu encircled the city and besieged
it.

We can imagine the dust that the thousands
of horses would have thrown up, and the low

drumming of their hooves sounding through
the earth.

Han Kau Tsu had only a limited supply of food,
and it looked in that moment like the Han

Dynasty was about to be an even shorter reign
than even the Qin before them.

But after seven days of the siege, some creative
diplomacy at the Chinese court came through.

Spies had been sent to bribe the wife of the
Shanyu and bring him to the negotiating table.

The siege was lifted, and the Emperor Han
Kau Tsu was allowed to return to his capital

a much-humbled man.

From this point on, he abandoned the idea
of a military solution to the barbarian problem.

Instead, he pursued a policy of diplomacy
and appeasement.

This policy was known as ho-chi’in, or “the
marriage alliance”.

It saw Imperial China pay vast amounts of
tribute to the Xiongnu in the form of what

they called “Imperial Gifts”.

These were fixed amounts of silk, wine, rice,
and other kinds of food that the Xiongnu couldn't

grow in their barren lands.

But the treaty also carried with it a more
humiliating condition.

The Han emperor was forced to send his eldest
daughter to marry the Shanyu.

Every time a new Shanyu came to power in the
barbarian kingdoms, the treaty stated that

he would be given a Chinese princess as a
wife.

For the next hundred years or so, this would
be the policy of the Han Empire.

In exchange, the Xiongnu agreed to stop their
raids on the borders of the empire.

For a time, an uneasy peace set in.

But for a number of reasons, that peace wasn’t
to last.

The
peace brought about by this compromise ushered

in some measure of stability, and Imperial
China began to take on a more stable and prosperous

form, even with the exorbitant tributes it
paid to the Xiongnu.

As the year 130 BC approached, China had become
a wealthy land.

The historian Sima Qian recalls this time
of plenty.

The granaries in the cities and the countryside
were full and the government treasuries were

running over with wealth.

In the capital, the strings of coins had been
stacked up by the hundreds of millions until

the cords that bound them had rotted away
and they could no longer be counted.

In the central granary, the grain overflowed
and piled up outside, where it spoiled and

became unfit to eat.

But Sima Qian also writes with something of
a melancholy note, that trouble was already

approaching on the horizon.

It has ever been the law of change that when
things reach their period of greatest flourishing,

they must begin to decay.

Part of the reason for this is that Han Kau
Tsu’s policy of appeasing the Xiongnu was

no longer protecting the empire.

Large armies of horsemen were now regularly
raiding deep into the northern provinces,

at one point even coming as close as 160km
from the Imperial capital.

During the reign of Emperor Jing, more than
10,000 citizens living in the border regions

were abducted and taken away to live as slaves.

One poet and politician of the time named
Chia Yi, wrote with bitterness about what

he saw as the empire’s humiliation.

The situation of the empire may be described
just like a person hanging upside down.

The Son of Heaven is the head of the empire.

The barbarians are the feet of the empire.

But the Shong-no are arrogant and insolent
on the one hand, and invade and plunder us

on the other hand.

Yet each year we provide them with money,
silk, floss, and fabrics.

So, the feet are put on top, and the head
at the bottom.

Hanging upside down like this is something
beyond comprehension.

Chia Yi and others like him were largely ignored
by the rest of the Chinese court.

Many nobles still remembered the ambush and
defeat of the Emperor Han Kau Tsu and his

narrow escape at Baideng.

They feared the Xiongnu and preferred to continue
the policy of appeasement.

Despite this, there was a small but vocal
faction beginning to form at court who wanted

to see China fight.

But it wasn’t until the reign of an emperor
named Wu, that they began to get people’s

attention.

In his later life, the Emperor Wu cut an imposing
figure.

Traditional portraits show him as a broad
man, built like a barrel and wrapped in swathes

of Imperial blue silk.

He is painted with a furrowed brow and a delicate
moustache framing a thick black beard.

But when he came to the throne in the year
141 BC, Wu was only 16 years old.

What he lacked in age, he made up for in tenacity.

Wu sat on the Imperial Throne for 54 years,
a record that would remain unbroken in China

for nearly two millennia.

Over this time, he led Han China through a
period of rapid centralizing reform.

He founded an Imperial University to train
young scholars, and even developed an organisation

known as “The Imperial Music Bureau”,
which was in charge of cultural matters relating

to music and poetry.

But all of this would be useless if he couldn’t
solve the problem of the Xiongnu threat.

In the year 133 BC, at the age of 24, the
Emperor Wu summoned a council to decide what

should be done.

For the first time, the words of the pro-war
faction at court resonated with the young

ruler.

Wu decided on a bold and aggressive new strategy.

The Han Empire would no longer cower behind
its walls.

Instead, it would confront the Xiongnu head-on.

Wu’s plan was to lure the ruling Shanyu
south with his army and into a carefully laid

trap.

It was an incredibly risky plan and it relied
on total secrecy.

The bait in this trap would be a city called
Mayi, a wealthy frontier town that acted as

a trading post between China and the northern
deserts.

To help with the deception, the Chinese hired
the services of a local trader and smuggler.

He crossed over into the Xiongnu lands and
asked for an audience with the fearsome Shanyu.

We can imagine the Shanyu sitting on his throne
in a large tent made of stretched yak skin,

surrounded by crackling braziers, twirling
his long moustache.

The smuggler would have bowed deeply and delivered
the speech he must have been rehearsing on

the whole journey.

He said that he had killed the town magistrate
of Mayi and taken over its government.

He said he was willing to offer the whole
city up to become part of the Xiongnu Empire

if the Shanyu would only come and take it.

The Shanyu was ecstatic.

He agreed to ride out immediately and claim
the city of Mayi.

It seemed like the Chinese plan was going
perfectly.

But the further the Shanyu marched into the
Chinese lands, the more he began to feel that

something wasn’t right.

His horsemen met with little resistance and
as he got closer to Mayi, he began to notice

how empty the roads were.

In the fields outside the city, he saw herds
of cattle, but no herdsmen guarding them.

The Shanyu ordered his men to halt, and sent
out scouts.

They managed to capture a Han soldier and
under interrogation, this man told them what

waited nearby; the massed force of the entire
Han Empire, 300,000 infantry and chariots

concealed and waiting for him to step into
their trap.

The Shanyu immediately ordered a retreat.

With the ambush betrayed, the Han forces burst
out of hiding and tried to chase him.

But the infantry could never keep pace with
the Xiongnu horses, and the Shanyu fled back

to his lands without losing a single man.

He must have been shaking with rage when he
crossed back into the desert, and he resolved

to get his revenge.

He immediately ordered a devastating series
of raids on Chinese border towns.

Pillars of black smoke must have risen over
the horizon for weeks.

The Chinese ambush had failed.

The mood at the Imperial Court darkened and
the pro-war faction was blamed for the failure,

but the Chinese now had no other option.

With their intentions revealed, they would
have to go to war.

The Records of the Grand Historian recalls
what happened next.

After the unsuccessful attempt to ambush the
Xiongnu at Mayi, peaceful relations came to

an end and the barbarians began to invade
and plunder at the northern border.

Armies had to be dispatched time and again
and could not be disbanded, causing extreme

hardship to the empire.

In order to fight this war, the Han knew that
they would have to change their tactics.

The armies of infantry and chariots, effective
in the civil wars fought in the river plains,

were now all but abandoned.

The war chariot was next to useless in the
rocky terrain of the far north, and infantry

moved too slowly in the wide open deserts.

Instead, the Chinese shifted their focus to
cavalry.

They would now develop large, armoured horse
units to match their Xiongnu enemies.

The Emperor Wu recognised that the horse was
the weapon of this new age of warfare, and

so, he made securing a reliable supply of
trained warhorses a major focus of his government.

He would eventually maintain a supply of 300,000
horses, but even these were not enough.

The government began loaning breeding horses
to farmers for a period of three years in

exchange for a portion of some of the foals
they gave birth to.

They even introduced a policy that allowed
a family to excuse up to three of their male

members from military service if they presented
one horse to the government.

Soon, this policy began to pay off, as the
Records of the Grand Historian recalls.

The Han generals every year led forces of
twenty or thirty thousand cavalry in attacks

on the barbarians.

The war for the north raged on for decades.

But for a number of reasons, the Han slowly
began to gain the upper hand.

For one thing, the desert country behind the
wall had only a strategic importance to the

Han, but it had great economic importance
to the Xiongnu, as shown by one Imperial edict

celebrating the victories of a cavalry commander
in the north.

The general of the swift cavalry led forth
the troops.

At Mount Ku-Yu-en, ascending the hills and
gazing out across the sea of sand, he executed

the enemy leader, cutting down his pennants
and seizing his war drums.

He seized a great multitude of the enemy,
taking 70,000 captives, snatched the food

supplies of the enemy, and penetrated deep
into their territory.

The Xiongnu Empire was built out of trade,
taxes, and tribute paid to them by weaker

kingdoms.

As the war dragged on, they began to suffer
a downturn in all three.

They had to raise taxes on the regions that
remained under their control, and their population

grew resentful.

Soon, more and more of the smaller tribes
in the Xiongnu coalition began to question

whether they had backed the losing side.

As the years of war dragged on, marginal kingdoms
began to peel away and the trajectory of the

war became clear.

It’s at this point that a narrow strip of
land between the Tibetan Plateau and the Gobi

Desert began to become an important part of
this story.

This place is known as the Hexi Corridor.

Today, the Hexi Corridor is the site of China’s
G30 highway in Gangsu province.

Standing on this long and lonely stretch of
motorway today, with cars zipping along it

through the desert, it’s hard to imagine
that this was once a major battlefield in

a war for the very existence of the Chinese
state.

If you were a Chinese trader who wanted to
make the lucrative journey to the west, you

had a very limited number of options.

The Tibetan Plateau was an impassable barrier
along the whole length of the empire while

in the south, there were heavily forested
mountains and impassable, unmapped jungles.

To the north, there was the desert, which
would spell certain death to any travellers

foolish enough to try to cross it.

But there was one way through.

This was a narrow stretch of land where the
Tibetan Plateau finally drops off to the north

and looks out over the Gobi Desert.

Water running down from the hills has created
a number of fertile oases at the foot of the

mountains, providing fresh water and rest
for travellers on this dangerous journey.

The Hexi Corridor, stretching for 1,200 km,
is the only possible route to the west in

the north of China.

So, anyone who controlled the corridor controlled
the flow of trade from one side of the mountains

to the other.

For centuries now, the Xiongnu and other nomadic
tribes had grown rich from taxing this trade,

but now the Hexi Corridor was the battlefront
of the bitter and grinding war for the north.

For the Chinese, the logistical challenges
of conducting a war across this desert landscape

were enormous.

This letter sent to a later emperor by one
of his counsellors describes in detail the

difficulty of supplying an army in the barren
Xiongnu lands.

The land is for the most part sandy and salt,
with scarcity of water and plantlife, and

before the army has been out a hundred days,
the oxen will all die out, while the quantity

of provisions still left will be more than
the men can carry.

The country is very cold in the autumn and
winter, and exposed to high winds in the spring

and summer, which would necessitate a vast
amount of pots and boilers, firewood and charcoal,

a weight that would be utterly unmanageable.

There would be a want of dried food and water
to drink, and the cares consequent on sickness

and epidemics among the troops.

The Xiongnu were also masters of hit-and-run
tactics, and would attack Chinese supply lines

whenever they could.

So, as they pushed the Xiongnu back along
the Hexi Corridor, the Han did what they did

best; they built walls.

The Han extended the existing segments of
their great wall so that it now ran the whole

length of the corridor, creating a fortified
highway between the wall and the mountains,

guarded by garrisoned forts.

The Book of Han recalls the construction of
this enormous defensive work.

The roads were skirted with lookout towers.

Cities were built outside the wall, and military
colonies were established for protection.

These sections of wall weren’t the elegant
snaking lines of stone walls that you’re

probably imagining when you think of the words
“Great Wall of China”.

The most famous sections that always appear
in photographs were built much later, after

the fourteenth century.

The Han-era walls were rough-and-ready constructions
made of rammed earth.

They were built using frames of rose willow
and layers of rushes, filled with desert clay

and gravel, packed together and left to dry
in the sun.

But they were immensely effective.

These walls have also withstood over 2,000
years of erosion in the elements of the Gobi

Desert, and many of them still stand, magnificent
against the barren desert.

Every 5 km along the wall, a beacon tower
stood, usually about 7m high.

If enemy troops were sighted, the men in the
beacon towers would light a fire designed

to produce smoke by day or light by night.

This cry for help would be passed on in both
directions along the wall, and a Han cavalry

army would soon be dispatched to meet the
threat.

These walls completely neutralised the Xiongnu’s
fast, mobile tactics, and restricted their

ability to move around the landscape.

This final move by the Han slowly choked the
life from the Xiongnu war machine.

In the early decades of the first century
BC, the Xiongnu truly began to fall apart.

Former members declared independence and joined
the Han in carving up its territories.

By 60 BC, they had split into five groups
that engaged in a series of suicidal civil

wars.

In 53 BC, the Shanyu sent his son to China
as a hostage, and two years later, he went

in person to the Chinese court to deliver
his surrender.

It had taken more than 80 years since the
Emperor Wu’s failed ambush at Mayi.

But the war against the Xiongnu had been a
remarkable success.

If you were a Chinese merchant around this
time, you could now travel along a secure

and well-maintained road along the whole length
of the Hexi Corridor.

Eventually, you would reach the end of the
Han fortifications, which ended at a wide

portal known as the Yumen Pass, or the Jade
Gate.

This was the exit gate to the lands of China,
and beyond it lay the wide, unknown world.

If you stepped through the Jade Gate, you
would see a vast desert of shifting sands

stretching out ahead of you.

This is the Taklamakan Desert which fills
an enormous geographical feature known as

the Tarim Basin.

The Tarim Basin is easily visible from space.

It's an enormous flat oval cut out of the
Tibetan plateau, a great sandy eye in the

very centre of the Asian continent.

Today, this desert is in the very west of
modern China in the province of Xinjiang,

on its border with Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan, and Kashmir.

Today, half the people of the Tarim Basin
and the province of Xinjiang belong to the

Uyghur ethnicity, who are still a persecuted
ethnic minority.

The music you're hearing now is a traditional
song of the Uyghur people, recorded in the

ancient oasis town of Turpan.

For millennia, this kind of music has drifted
over the shifting sands of this desert while

trade caravans passed by in their thousands.

But for the Chinese of the time, this wild
area beyond their walls was known only as

the Western Regions.

The Taklamakan desert is the world’s second-largest
shifting sands desert, with over 85% of it

made up of dramatic sand dunes.

Crossing the desert itself is very difficult,
so trade caravans, often made up of Bactrian

camels, would skirt along its edges in the
shadow of the snowy mountains that make up

the rim of the basin.

All of these caravans met on the far side
of the desert in the ancient trading city

of Kashgar, where a famous stone tower stood.

Here, Chinese merchants would reach the end
of their journey.

They would sell their goods here to merchants
who came from the other side of the mountains,

from the exotic and distant lands to the west,
and who knew the routes through the dangerous

paths into Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Many goods originating in China passed west
in this way, even before any diplomatic contact

was made.

Tea was one of these products, as well as
fine items of carved jade and the newly-developed

technology of porcelain.

But by far the most valued of Chinese exports
was a miracle material that was of immense

value to all the people of the world.

That material was silk.

Silk is a natural protein fibre produced by
the larva of a particular kind of moth.

During their larval stage, these moths are
called silkworms.

They like nothing better than to chew on the
green leaves of a tree known as the white

mulberry.

People as early as the year 3,600 BC have
recognised the potential for this remarkable

material.

At first, people would go out into the forest
and harvest wild silk from the trees.

But soon, more purposeful cultivation of silkworms
began.

Over the centuries of breeding by humans,
the silkworm has become a domesticated species.

Compared to its wild cousins, domesticated
silkworms have increased in size, digest more

efficiently than wild slkworms; they lay more
eggs and spin larger silk cocoons, and have

become more tolerant of handling by humans.

All of this means that they have increased
their silk production capacity tenfold.

But unfortunately for the silkworm larva,
they will never reach adulthood.

When they enter the cocoon phase of their
lifecycle, they are killed, either lowered

into boiling water or pierced with a needle.

The whole cocoon is then painstakingly unravelled,
generating a single, unbroken thread that

can be spun and turned into fabric.

It can take up to 2,000 cocoons to make one
silk dress.

But silk was so soft and smooth, shimmering
in the light and holding resplendent colours,

that it was immediately in enormous demand
all over the world.

Outside of China, silk was worth many times
its weight in gold.

The Han Chinese may have been surprised to
know just how far their textiles traveled.

Julius Caesar famously wore a silk cloak to
the theatre, and began a fashion craze among

the Roman nobility.

The Egyptian Queen Cleopatra was an avid collector
of silk items, and silk has also been found

in Viking graves.

We've even found traces of silk in the hair
of an Egyptian mummy of the 21st Dynasty,

dating to around 1070 BC.

After taking the Hexi Corridor, the Han chased
the Xiongnu out of the Western Regions.

They soon absorbed these sandy cities into
their empire, these towns clinging to the

edge of this vast, desert basin.

Soon, the whole of the Western Regions was
under Han control.

For the first time, China was in charge of
its own trade routes to the west.

By the end of the first century BC, the territory
of Han China had taken on a strange shape.

It now comprised the large central plains
around the Yangtze and Yellow River, but it

also included the Western Regions in the Tarim
Basin.

These two areas were joined by the narrow
chain of the Hexi Corridor.

It was an unusual shape for an empire, but
the size of the Han territories had now more

than doubled.

The Han had also ground down those people
who they called “the southern barbarians”

who lived in the hilly country south of the
Yangtze.

The Han now occupied lands right up to the
borders of modern Vietnam.

Han China was now one of the largest empires
on earth, and the other great powers of the

world were beginning to pay attention, as
the Records of the Grand Historian recalls.

All the barbarians of the distant west craned
their necks to the east and longed to catch

a glimpse of China.

The Emperor Wu had transformed the empire
from a frightened and unstable entity into

a confident Imperial state.

But in his old age, he became plagued with
the same kind of paranoia as the Emperor Qin,

nearly a hundred years before.

He began doling out excessive punishments
to members of the court who he believed were

spreading rumours about him.

The most tragic case is the punishment of
Sima Qian, the old historian who spent his

life writing his text, the Records of the
Grand Historian, which we’ve already heard

so much from in this episode.

One of Sima Qian’s friends, a general fighting
in the north, was captured in battle with

the Xiongnu, and he was denounced as a coward
by the emperor.

Only one man stood up to defend him in the
Imperial Court.

That man was Sima Qian.

The Emperor Wu was enraged by this, and he
sentenced the old historian to death.

It was expected that any member of the court
would take their own life before the sentence

was carried out, but Sima Qian refused.

He wanted to finish his great historical work
before he died.

In the end, the emperor commuted his sentence
to only the second most severe punishment

– to be castrated and turned into a eunuch.

After the cruel sentence was carried out,
Sima Qian was given a role as a palace secretary,

and it’s here that he finished the work
that stands as the only great record of the

reign of Emperor Wu.

As the emperor's mental state deteriorated,
more similarities with the Emperor Qin began

to arise.

He also toured the country, talking to wise
men and searching fruitlessly for the secret

to eternal life.

Whether he also started taking mercury pills
is unknown.

But in the year 88 BC, the Emperor Wu fell
suddenly ill.

He died a year later, at the age of 69.

One ancient poem called “The Dew on the
Garlic-leaf,” was often sung at the burial

of the kings and princes of China, and we
can imagine that it may have been sung at

the funeral of Emperor Wu.

How swiftly it dries, the dew on the garlic-leaf,
the dew that dries so fast to-morrow will

fall again.

But he whom we carry to the grave will never
more return.

The palace women would have wept, and the
court held a solemn wake.

The king was first placed in a bath of ice
to help preserve his body, and then he was

wrapped in fine silks.

Pearls were put into his mouth, and his body
was completely covered in a suit made of small

plates of the precious stone jade, sewn together
with gold thread.

He was placed in a great coffin carved from
catalpa wood, painted crimson red and adorned

with ivory, covered with designs of dragons,
tigers, and the sun and moon, while eunuchs

stood by guarding his body with weapons.

The Emperor Wu had turned the Empire of Han
into one of the largest and most powerful

societies on earth.

But he had fallen to the same curse of paranoia
and tyranny.

He wasn’t the first Chinese emperor to fall
prey to this fate.

As we’ll see, he was also far from the last.

As is so often the case after the long rule
of a successful king, the reign of Emperor

Wu was followed by a series of relatively
inept successors.

But it was under the Emperor Cheng that the
empire would experience its first slide into

real disintegration.

For the first time, it looked like the Han
Dynasty was coming to its end.

Cheng was a type of emperor that you’ll
soon start to find familiar.

He was lazy and incompetent, and he was more
interested in cockfighting and chasing after

beautiful palace women than administering
his government.

He left much of the affairs of state to his
relatives who belonged to the Wang clan.

They wasted no time in gathering large amounts
of personal power and wealth, and meanwhile,

corrupt and greedy officials continued to
plague the government.

As a result, rebellions broke out throughout
the country.

Emperor Cheng died in the year 7 BC.

His young nephew took the throne, but by this
time the Wang family had become too powerful.

Among these, one man had been going on a personal
propaganda campaign to amass a vast body of

support among the common people.

This was a man named Wang Mang.

Wang Mang is a remarkable character.

He was a Confucian scholar and a great speaker,
and by all accounts was immensely popular

among the peasants.

At one point, the Imperial Palace even received
a petition written on 500,000 rolls of bamboo,

demanding that Wang Mang be given the highest
political offices in the land.

The source of Wang Mang's popularity isn't
hard to see.

Disillusioned by the corrupt politics of the
Imperial Court, the peasants of China were

desperate for something to change, and Wang
Mang offered them that change.

He believed that all the modern reforms of
the last few hundred years had led the empire

astray.

He was convinced that if the empire were run
exactly according to the principals of the

ancient philosopher Confucius, then peace
and prosperity would naturally follow.

At the age of 50, buoyed up by this groundswell
of popular support, Wang Mang toppled the

young boy emperor and seized the throne for
himself.

Wang Mang was not from the Dynasty of Han.

He was the first non-Han emperor to rule China
in 200 years.

At the time, it must have seemed like the
time of the Han had ended for good, crippled

by the corruption of its officials and the
mismanagement of its politicians.

But the rule of Wang Mang was an unmitigated
disaster.

Part of the problem was that since he himself
had usurped the throne, he was terrified of

giving his advisors any power in case someone
else did the same to him.

As a result, he tried to make all of the countless
decisions of state himself which completely

paralysed the government.

When it actually came to putting his bold
ideas into practice, Wang Mang ran into further

problems.

It turned out that there was more to administering
an empire than choosing the proper music to

play at court and the proper ceremonies to
perform in the temples.

One Qin Dynasty historian, writing in the
16th century, described his reign in the following

terms.

After he usurped the throne, he did not know
how to comfort and guide the people, and felt

that he could ceaselessly deceive everyone.

Therefore, he caused both the Chinese and
the foreigners to hate him.

The entire empire was already collapsing,
but Wang Mang did not care, but rather buried

his head in what is old, believing that once
he returned the government structure to the

old days, the empire will be peaceful.

He only sought to establish proper ceremony
and music day and night, without spending

time on the important affairs of state.

Wang Mang also attempted some radical reforms.

He banned the private ownership of land, and
this was enough to cause significant unrest

on its own.

But his real undoing would come from one of
China’s deadliest and most unpredictable

natural forces; the great watercourse of the
north of China, the Yellow River.

As we’ve already seen, the Yellow River
was the most deadly and dangerous of China’s

rivers.

Every hundred years or so, it would change
its course, bursting its banks and washing

away every town and village in its path.

As fate would have it, this once-in-a-century
disaster occurred right at the time when Wang

Mang was sitting on the Imperial Throne.

The new emperor was completely unprepared
for this natural disaster.

Peasants who lost their homes in the floods
felt that the emperor had done nothing to

help them, and their resentment reached a
fever pitch.

It wasn’t long before peasant revolts rose
up around the country.

The most powerful of these were known as “the
Red Eyebrows”, since they smeared their

foreheads in red paint before going into battle.

The widespread chaos and loss of Imperial
control meant that the empire’s borders

began to come apart.

The nomadic Xiongnu began to once again gain
power and confidence in the north, and Wang

Mang's lack of diplomatic skill caused trouble
to erupt in the Western Regions, as the Book

of Later Han recalls.

The principalities of the Western Regions
split up and formed fifty-five kingdoms.

Wang Mang, after he usurped the throne, demoted
their kings.

Following this, the Western Regions became
resentful and rebelled.

They therefore broke off all relations with
China and altogether submitted to the Xiongnu

once more.

The Xiongnu, subdued by the Han Empire for
nearly a century, now sensed weakness.

They launched a surprise attack on the empire’s
outposts and seized the entire region of the

Tarim Basin right up to the Jade Gate.

From there, they poured along the Great Wall
into the Hexi Corridor.

In just a matter of years, all the gains of
the great Emperor Wu were undone, as the Book

of Later Han recalls.

The northern savages forced several countries
to help them plunder the commanderies and

districts of Hexi.

The gates of the towns stayed shut in broad
daylight.

Meanwhile, the Red Eyebrow Rebellion seized
vast swathes of the countryside.

Soon, the nobles of China were joining the
peasants in revolt, and one goal was now on

all of their lips.

They wanted to topple the Emperor Wang Mang
and restore the Dynasty of the Han.

Eventually, the people of the Imperial capital
of Chang’an also rose up in the streets.

They overcame Wang Mang’s guard, stormed
the palace, and beheaded the emperor.

The Imperial Palaces were burned to the ground.

Wang Mang's body was cut into pieces and his
head was delivered to the temporary Han capital

of Wancheng to be hung on the city wall.

There, the people’s anger was so fierce
that they dragged the head down from the wall

and kicked it about the streets like a football.

The capital of Chang’an was now occupied
by the Red Eyebrows.

Their leaders tried their best to keep order,
but before long, the city’s food ran out

and the rebels began to riot and steal.

They burned many of Chang'an’s palaces and
pillaged the city for days.

By the year 25, the Han Dynasty was restored
under a new emperor called Guanwu.

But the capital of Chang’an was a smoking
ruin and its palaces were just blackened skeletons.

One anonymous Chinese poet who stumbled on
the ruins of an old palace, wrote the following

poem of mourning at the site.

Although we don’t know for sure which ruin
he stood by, it may well have been the ancient

Imperial capital as it stood then in ashes.

The wind howls in the pines, the rats fly
at my approach and hide under the old tiles.

What monarch once had this palace built, of
which there only remain ruins on a mountain

side?

The owner of this palace had beautiful dancers,
who are today one with the cold dust.

Of all this pomp, of all this glory, what
remains?

A marble horse lying in the grass.

I should like to express my great sadness
in an enduring poem, but I weep, and my pencil

trembles.

The restored Emperor Guanwu decided that he
would move his capital from Chang’an to

the east, to the city of Luoyang.

These two phases of Han history are sometimes
called the Western and the Eastern Han, or

more simply the Former Han and the Later Han.

Guanwu’s reign was a new dawn for the empire,
and another chance for the dream of a stable

Imperial China that would stand the challenge
of time.

A number of tests would now arrive that would
determine whether the lessons of the fall

of Former Han had been learned.

These tests would determine whether this new
incarnation of the empire would survive or

whether it too would end in ash and flame.

The new capital city of Luoyang was a beautiful
place.

The shallow Gu River flowed right past its
walls and diverted into a moat that encircled

the city, while the Luo River flowed two kilometres
or so to the south, crossed by a floating

bridge of boats.

In the distance, the blue peaks of the Beimang
Hills looked out over the city.

One Chinese poem from the Han Period in the
second century describes the bustling streets

of Luoyang, full of life beneath the shade
of its leafy trees.

On the eastern way at the city of Luoyang,
at the edge of the road peach trees and plum

trees grow; flower matched by flower, leaf
touching leaf.

A spring wind rises from the northeast.

Flowers and leaves gently nod and sway.

Up the road, somebody's daughter comes carrying
a basket to gather silkworm's food.

Luoyang had
been an important holy city for centuries.

It was smaller than Chang’an, about a third
of its size, but its position on the rivers

and at the crossing point of various major
canals made it better connected economically.

It was also further from the frontiers of
the empire, making it a little safer than

the smoking ruin that was the former capital.

Once the new capital was established, much
of the first century in China was spent rebuilding

after the fall of the Former Han and the destruction
left by Wang Mang's disastrous leadership.

Vast construction works took place to dredge
the bottom of the Yellow River, dig drainage

canals, and to avoid any more devastating
floods.

New palaces were built at Luoyang to accommodate
the Imperial Court, as well as religious institutions.

Guangwu ordered the construction of an altar
to the Gods of the Soils and Grains.

He also ordered the entire Imperial library
be moved to Luoyang.

It took 2,000 carts to transport all the books
that were contained in these libraries across

the country to the new capital.

One poem written by the poet and historian
Ban Gu around the year 65 AD, celebrates the

new Han emperor’s achievement in transforming
the old city.

He refurbished Luo City, enhancing its imposing
grandeur, making resplendent its order and

proportion.

He made the Han capital shine through the
empire, controlling all eight directions.

Then, within the Imperial City, the palaces
were glittering and bright; the hall courtyards

were divinely beautiful.

By the year 36 AD, Guangwu had crushed the
Red Eyebrow Rebellion, as well as any lords

who still resisted.

He announced that the Imperial colour would
from there on be the colour red, and he would

govern under the element of fire.

He had restored the Han Dynasty to power,
but the empire was now a much-weakened state.

The long period of chaos had sapped its wealth,
and in the north, the Xiongnu had resurged

as a power to be reckoned with.

The Chinese general Ban Chao was put in charge
of reclaiming the Hexi Corridor and securing

the Western Regions once more.

This struggle once again took decades.

Ban Chao painstakingly beat the Xiongnu back
along the Hexi Corridor, reclaiming the old

crumbling walls as he went.

By the year 91, the Han Empire was once again
in control of the deserts and the trade routes

that ran through them.

This re-opening of the route to the west came
at a uniquely interesting time in world history.

In the decades since the Han had last controlled
the Western Regions, a new power had risen

up in Central Asia, known as the Kushan Empire.

In the mid first-century, this Buddhist empire
had grown to cover much of Pakistan, Afghanistan,

and Northern India.

This is significant because it created a stable
and unified territory that stretched across

Central Asia.

Touching the Kushan Empire on the west was
the Parthian Empire which stretched across

Iran, much of the Middle East, and into Turkey.

Even further to the west, the Han Chinese
had heard of an even greater power that rivalled

even their own, a mysterious empire of enormous
wealth centred on a vast inland sea.

This was the first time in history that four
large empires formed an unbroken chain from

the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic.

The general Ban Chao recognised the potential
that this unique moment in history could hold.

In the year 97, he summoned one of his most
trusted men, a man called Gan Ying.

He told Gan Ying to journey as far west as
he could and to find out more about this great

faraway empire on the other side of the continent
which they knew only by the name Da Chin.

Gan Ying travelled for what must have been
many months, down the Hexi Corridor, through

the Gate of Jade, and across the shifting
sands of the Taklamakan Desert.

From there, he crossed the mountains through
the dangerous snowy passes and into the high

valleys of the Kushan Empire.

He would have traversed the arid lands of
Pakistan and passed the snow-capped peaks

of Iran, then crossed over the Tigris and
Euphrates Rivers where the city of Babylon

still stood and where the ruins of Sumerian
and Assyrian civilizations were still crumbling

into the sands.

Finally, he reached the frontiers of the great
Empire of Da-Chin, an empire that we know

by the more familiar name of Rome.

Later, Gan Ying wrote down everything he had
learned about this exotic empire.

Its territory extends for several thousands
of li.

It has more than 400 walled towns.

There are several tens of smaller dependent
kingdoms.

The walls of the town are made of stone.

They have postal relays at intervals which
are all plastered and whitewashed.

There are pines and cypresses, as well as
trees and plants of all kinds.

Gan Ying made detailed notes about the customs
and ways of the Romans, which seem to have

greatly impressed him.

They shave their heads, and their clothes
are embroidered.

They have screened coaches for the women and
small, white-roofed one-horse carts.

When carriages come and go, drums are beaten
and flags and standards are raised.

He was also amazed to hear about the system
for appointing Roman emperors, although it

does seem that the Romans gave him a slightly
sanitised version of their political system.

Their kings are not permanent.

They select and appoint the most worthy man.

If there are unexpected calamities in the
kingdom, he is unceremoniously rejected and

replaced.

The one who has been dismissed quietly accepts
his demotion and is not angry.

But Gan Ying never actually made it to the
city of Rome.

He reached the shores of a sea that may have
been either the Mediterranean or the Persian

Gulf.

There, some Parthian sailors discouraged him
from continuing his journey.

They gave him this dire warning.

"If you encounter winds that delay you, it
can take two years.

That is why all the men who go by sea take
stores for three years.

The vast ocean urges men to think of their
country and get homesick, and some of them

die."

It’s possible that these Parthians wanted
to continue to control the lucrative trade

running between Rome and China, and they didn’t
want any Chinese ambassador cutting out the

middle man.

But it’s also possible that Gan Ying made
this story up.

Perhaps he was simply tired of his journey
and wanted to go home.

At the sight of the lapping waves of the Mediterranean,
he may simply have decided that he would make

something up and head back to his family.

After all, who back home would ever know?

At this time, Rome and Han faced each other
from opposite sides of the Eurasian landmass.

They were roughly comparable in size, population,
and complexity.

While Rome governed an area of about 5 million
square kilometres, Han at its height commanded

6 million.

While Rome governed nearly around 56 million
people, Han governed over 60 million.

Around the time that Gan Ying made his epic
journey across the continent, it’s thought

that half of all humans on earth lived in
either the Roman or Han Empires.

Gan Ying was perhaps the first recorded man
to travel the entire length of a route that

would be of enormous importance for the history
of the world.

This would become known as the Silk Road,
named after the Chinese silk that poured along

it in such vast quantities.

It became a highway connecting the east and
the west, and would later spread inventions

like gunpowder, paper, porcelain, and the
compass right around the world.

The opening of the Silk Road was one of Han
China’s enduring achievements.

But already the stormclouds were gathering.

The days of the Han Empire were numbered.

The reason for this would be found not in
the barren wastes of the north, but in the

very heart of the empire.

In fact, within the capital and the Imperial
Palace itself.

The Imperial Court of Han China was a place
of elegance, refinement, and beauty.

Wealthy people in beautiful clothes would
mill about its Outer Court while fine music

and incense would have drifted on the air.

But this was also a battleground just as deadly
as any in the desert lands to the north.

It was well-known that anyone who had access
to the emperor, and who the emperor trusted,

could use their influence to amass a great
amount of personal power and wealth.

So, people would stop at nothing to gain this
kind of influence for themselves.

The Imperial Palace was one of the most heavily-guarded
places on earth.

Very few were ever allowed to even set foot
in it, and no men were allowed to remain there

after dark.

There were only two kinds of people who were
allowed regular inside access to the emperor.

Throughout the second century AD, they were
locked in a bitter struggle over who would

control him.

These two factions were the palace eunuchs
and the palace women.

The first of these factions, the eunuchs,
were despised and mistrusted by society but

held in an immense amount of trust by the
emperor.

A eunuch, simply speaking, is a man who has
been castrated.

In ancient China, this was typically carried
out as a punishment for adultery or other

promiscuous behaviours.

If he survived his punishment, the newly-castrated
man was then taken to the Imperial Palace

and forced to work there as what was called
a special attendant, essentially a form of

high-class slavery.

In less-common cases, a man volunteered to
become a eunuch in exchange for the secure

position in the palace staff.

There were a number of reasons why eunuchs
were prized as Imperial servants.

One reason was the sexual jealousy of the
emperors.

With multiple wives and consorts, it was considered
too risky to have uncastrated male guards

and attendants in their vicinity.

But another reason was the paranoia of the
emperors.

It was commonly believed that since a eunuch
couldn't produce a son and heir, he would

be less inclined to use his influence to amass
personal power.

Crucially for the later history of Han China,
this belief turned out to be very mistaken.

The use of eunuchs in China as the servants
of rulers goes back to at least 3,000 years

ago.

But in the Later Han Dynasty, their use as
palace attendants increased dramatically.

Eventually the Imperial Court would be home
to more than 2,000 eunuchs.

They acted as fetchers and carriers, bodyguards,
nurses, butlers, maids, and cooks.

They were virtually the only men that a young
emperor would meet until he became an adult.

Because of this privileged access to the Inner
Court, these thousands of eunuchs soon formed

a kind of shadow government within the Imperial
Palace.

The second faction was the palace women, and
more specifically, the Empress Dowagers.

An Empress Dowager was the wife of an emperor
who had died.

While her husband had been alive, she had
enjoyed a supreme position in the Royal Court,

the focal point of adoration and influence.

But once the emperor was dead and his body
was interred in the stone tombs on Beimang

Hill, the Empress Dowager’s position became
incredibly insecure.

In order to maintain her influence, she would
need to be clever, and to gather allies around

her.

In the polygamous society of early Imperial
China, an emperor could have a number of wives,

and this meant that the court could soon become
quickly overpopulated with Empress Dowagers,

each of them fighting and jockeying to maintain
their influence.

These two factions, the eunuchs and the Dowagers,
fought as much within their groups as between

them.

Empress Dowagers were constantly poisoning
each other and their children, and several

were put on trial for attempting to use witchcraft
against another.

Meanwhile, the eunuchs plotted against each
other endlessly.

But over the next century, these two groups
would sink their teeth into every emperor

of China.

The result was that the emperor become just
another chess piece in this complex and deadly

game.

The emperors of the second century were not
chosen for their skill or popularity, but

simply for how easy they would be to control.

For this reason, these emperors were very
often children.

One extreme example of this is the fifth emperor
of the Later Han Dynasty, the Emperor Shang.

He was a newborn baby who was crowned in the
year 106 AD at an age of little more than

100 days old.

His mother was a Dowager Empress, wife to
the previous emperor.

All of her other children had died in mysterious
circumstances, quite probably murdered by

other jealous Empress Dowagers.

Now, the tiny Emperor Shang was her best hope
at maintaining her status at court.

If her surviving child could be emperor, then
her position was assured.

We have detailed records about what was involved
in the pomp and ceremony of a Chinese Imperial

coronation.

We can imagine that the drums and gongs, the
marching soldiers, the music and the chanting

of ceremonial words all going on around the
oblivious newborn emperor as he lay in his

crib with his tiny fists balled, crying in
fear and confusion.

As usual, the new emperor was gifted with
a sceptre carved of jade, and the ancient

legendary sword known as “the sword that
slew the snake”, which had belonged to the

first Emperor Han Kau Tsu.

Then the crowd would have burst out in rapturous
cries, shouting “Ten thousand years! Ten

thousand years!” as the baby wailed and
screamed in the centre of the great hall.

But the Emperor Shang would rule for only
a matter of months before he also died.

His causes of death unknown, but they are
not hard to guess.

The fifth Emperor of the Later Han never even
reached his first birthday.

Two decades later in the year 125, it was
the turn of the eunuchs.

They led a successful coup to replace another
Empress Dowager and her son, and put the ten-year-old

Emperor Shun on the throne.

They were a little more successful, and the
Emperor Shun reigned for nineteen years.

But when his son was crowned at two years
old, he died mysteriously after only six months

on the throne.

These are just two of the countless examples
of intrigue, murder, and plotting by these

two factions that turned the Imperial Court
into a slaughterhouse throughout the second

century.

In the rare instances when an emperor reached
adulthood, they were encouraged to stay away

from the business of actually ruling.

Instead, they were usually directed to a life
of indolence and pleasure.

As the second century wore on, and weak young
emperor followed weak young emperor, the power

of these two factions only increased.

But it would ultimately be the eunuchs who
would truly seize the reins of power.

In the year 159, a group of eunuchs at court
were even granted royal titles.

Seven years after that, university students
in Luoyang took to the streets to protest

against the corrupt officials in the government.

At the advice of the eunuchs, the emperor
had all of the students involved arrested.

One county magistrate named Li Yun even submitted
a petition urging the emperor to curb the

eunuch’s power.

In this letter, he asked what many in the
empire must have been thinking.

"Is the emperor turning blind?"

The emperor responded by having Li executed.

Soon, a group of twelve eunuchs controlled
virtually everything that happened in the

Imperial Palace.

This inner faction was led by four individuals.

One popular song written around this time
mocks the enormous power that these eunuchs

had gathered.

Zuo can reverse heaven's decision.

Ju sits by himself without match.

Shu is a lying wolf.

Tang's power is as prevalent as the falling
rain.

Meanwhile, outside of the insular world that
the Imperial Palace had become, the fabric

of the empire was truly beginning to come
apart.

A number of problems plagued the Han Chinese
throughout the second century.

One of these was the continued presence of
northern nomads on the empire’s borders.

The empire had beated the Xiongnu a second
time, but now to their dismay, a new group

known as the Xianbi had swooped in to occupy
their lands.

This new group was every bit as powerful a
challenge as the Xiongnu had been, as the

Book of Later Han recalls.

Since the Xiongnu have fled away, the Xianbi
have become powerful and prosperous and have

occupied their former territory.

They can claim a hundred thousand soldiers,
skilled and strong, and their ideas and understanding

are steadily increasing.

They also have renegades from Han to serve
them as masters of strategy; in the sharpness

of weapons and the clash of horse, they are
more dangerous than were the Xiongnu.

But it wasn’t until the reign of the Emperor
Ling that the true disintegration of the Han

Empire began.

Ling was a model specimen of the kind of young,
lazy ruler that had become the norm for Imperial

China.

He came to the throne at the age of 12, put
in place by one powerful Empress Dowager.

The Emperor Ling was brought up by the eunuchs
at court, now led by two named Zhao Zhong

and Zhang Rang.

They had so much influence over his upbringing
that the Book of Han recalls the young emperor

making this statement.

"Regular Attendant Zhang is my father and
Regular Attendant Zhao is my mother."

When he came of age, the Emperor Ling was
more inclined to spend time with his palace

women than actually run the state.

He especially enjoyed creating roleplaying
scenarios to engage in with his beautiful

consorts, as recorded in the Book of Later
Han.

The emperor ordered a market set up in the
harem apartments and had all his women trade

there.

They robbed and fought one another and the
emperor dressed as a peddler, joined with

the crowd, and drank wine and feasted with
them.

Ling was also financially irresponsible, and
increased the burden of taxation on the people

to fund his lavish lifestyle.

The emperor was in the habit of laying by
money and treasure for himself.

He arranged that all valuable goods from the
empire and all tribute sent in from the commanderies

and kingdoms went first to the Inner Palace.

He took a share for himself and called it
his commission.

Hatred of this corruption spawned peasant
rebellions which quickly emptied the Imperial

Treasury.

Increasingly strapped for cash, the empire
began offering minor titles and positions

to its wealthiest citizens in exchange for
payment.

This was a short-term measure to fund the
armies that were needed to put down the rebellions.

But since the rebellions were in protest against
corruption in the first place, this policy

had the effect of pouring gasoline on a fire.

Matters were made considerably worse by the
Emperor Ling who started selling high political

offices for money.

Even the position of Chief of Police in the
Imperial capital was put up for sale.

This policy severely damaged both the effectiveness
and the legitimacy of the Han civil service.

Corruption now trickled down to every level,
from the Royal Court to the lowest officials,

as the Book of Later Han recalls.

During the reign of Emperor Ling, the inspectors
of provinces and the heads of commanderies

and kingdoms were greedy as jackals and tigers,
oppressing the people in most cruel and ruthless

fashion.

Most of these rebellions were easily put down,
but as the decades wore on, along with the

simmering intrigue in the Imperial Court,
the rebellions got worse.

Some of these became truly enormous.

Perhaps the worst of these was the rebellion
of the Qiang people.

The Qiang were an ethic minority who lived
in the mountainous regions of the Tibetan

Plateau in a province known as Liang, an arid
and rocky place in the northwest of China.

Liang has its back to the Tibetan mountains
in the west and south, and stares out into

the Gobi Desert to the north.

It was the gate to the Hexi Corridor and the
staging ground for caravans setting out through

the deserts.

The Qiang were a hardy people who herded yak
and lived in fortress villages in the stony

hills, cultivating narrow plains along creeks
and mountain terraces.

They built strong houses from granite fieldstones
and tall, narrow stone watchtowers to defend

from attacks.

The first Qiang rebellions were put down easily
by the empire, but they were only the first

in a long line of revolts that would be a
thorn in the side of Imperial China for the

rest of the Han Dynasty.

By the middle of the second century, the Qiang
rebellions had reached such a pitch that the

empire was considering extreme measures, measures
that we today would recognise as ethnic cleansing,

as this letter from one general to the emperor
shows.

If I have 5,000 cavalry and 10,000 foot-soldiers,
with 3,000 carts for baggage, in three winters

and two summers, I can break these people
and settle them.

The emperor gave his permission for the campaign,
and a year later, the general wrote back triumphantly.

After just one year, with less than half the
money expended, the remnant enemy are reduced

to ashes and are on the point of total destruction.

These cruel reprisals against the empire's
ethnic minorities only hardened the hearts

of the common people.

Before long, the state was locked in a number
of rolling insurgencies in the west, which

combined with the peasant rebellions in the
east to further sap its strength.

Combined with these were also a new kind of
rebellion, one that the Chinese authorities

were completely unprepared to deal with.

These were the devout religious crusades of
the Yellow Turbans.

Religion in China around this time is a complicated
subject.

In the Royal Court, the most influential ideology
was Confucianism.

Confucianism wasn’t exactly a religion - more
a series of guidelines about how a society

should be ordered and run.

But in the countryside, religious beliefs
were extremely diverse from region to region.

This extract from Sima Qian’s Records of
the Grand Historian gives you a sense of this

variety.

The shamans from the region of Liang worshipped
such deities as Heaven and Earth, the Heavenly

Altar.

Those from Qin worshipped the Five Emperors,
the Lord of the East, the Lord in the Clouds,

the Arbiter of Fate, the Bringer of Fire,
and so on.

The shamans of Qin worshipped the gods below
the hall, Ancestor of Shamans, and the Giver

of Gruel.

Since about 500 BC, a new religion had also
risen up among the peasants in the countryside;

the religion of Daoism.

Unlike Confucianism, Daoism looked to nature
rather than human beings as the source of

morality.

It was a vision of a human society that conformed
to the Dao, or The Way, the essential unifying

element of all that exists.

Around the year 180 AD, about twelve years
into the reign of the Emperor Ling, a Daoist

religious order was formed known as the Taiping
Sect.

It was led by a man named Zhang Jiao, who
claimed he had the power to heal the sick.

The historian Yu Huan regards these practices
with particular contempt.

Such procedures did nothing to cure sickness;
they were simply false and evil.

Petty fellows, however, stupid and confused,
were only too eager to follow such teachers.

It wasn't long before several Imperial officials
became concerned about the dedication that

Zhang Jiao inspired in his followers.

They suggested that the empire should act
to crush this new cult.

But Emperor Ling, occupied with his harem
women and hunting, did nothing.

But the religious zealot Zhang Jiao was in
fact planning a rebellion.

He was preparing his followers to rise up
and topple the entire Imperial Order.

This Daoist mystic had named 36 of his followers
as military commanders.

He set up a shadow government ready to take
over, and even plotted with two eunuchs in

the palace to overthrow the emperor.

When the plot was discovered, the emperor
realised too late how much power this mystic

had gained, and ordered his arrest.

The followers of Zhang Jiao immediately took
up arms.

They took local garrisons by surprise and
swept through the country, capitalising on

the growing resentment people held for their
rulers.

Each member of this rebellion wore a yellow
piece of fabric wrapped around their head,

and so they became known as the Yellow Turban
Rebellion.

The rebellion would ultimately prove a failure.

The empire’s armies swept into the countryside
and put it down with enormous force.

Zhang Jiao was eventually killed in the year
184, but the rebellion had a number of lasting

effects.

The first of these was that the common people
no longer trusted the empire to protect them.

Villages and towns that had been plundered
by the Yellow Turbans now formed their own

militias in order to defend themselves.

Local governors took on greater powers, and
the central power of the empire began to falter.

Another effect was the growing influence among
the army of a company known as the Liang troops.

These were the soldiers that had spent their
whole careers up in the tough mountain lands,

crushing the constant rebellions of the Qiang
people.

They were battle-hardened, remorseless, and
brutal in their methods.

Now they were being used not against ethinc
minorities like the Qiang, but against the

empire’s own Chinese peasants in the depths
of their heartlands.

The Liang company became feared not just among
the peasants, but among the other soldiers

in the Imperial Army, too.

They began to feel the power that came from
that fear.

One of the generals leading these Liang troops
was a man named Dong Zhuo.

He is remembered to history as a fearsome
tyrant, a butcher, and a sadist.

He would be the final nail in the coffin of
the Empire of the Han.

When reading about the meteoric rise of Dong
Zhuo, it’s hard not to draw comparisons

with the figure of Julius Caesar who died
on the other side of the continent.

Like Caesar, Dong Zhuo believed in the ruthless
application of power, and he was a man who

understood how power really operated.

Dong Zhuo was born in Lintao in Liang province,
that same arid, rocky land where the Qiang

people refused to bow to the empire.

It was an unforgiving landscape that gave
birth to this unforgiving man.

As Dong Zhuo grew up, he would have seen many
rebellions put down with brutality.

As a youth, he was strong and showed an immediate
talent for violence.

He excelled in horseback archery and in his
early twenties joined an elite unit of cadets

known as the Guards of the Feathered Forest.

These were one of the units tasked with guarding
the emperor.

He spent some months in the Imperial capital,
and it’s here that Dong Zhuo must have got

his first taste of the power and prestige
of the emperor, and perhaps it's here that

he first dreamed of one day getting a morsel
of that power for himself.

Less than a year into his time in the capital,
in 166 AD, another Qiang rebellion burst out.

He was sent back to his homeland along with
the other Guards of the Feathered Forest to

crush those who defied the empire.

The campaign would have been bloody and brutal;
burning down villages and doling out collective

punishments to civilian populations.

We don’t know the exact details of Dong
Zhuo’s involvement, but we do know that

he sufficiently impressed his superiors that
he was rewarded with 9,000 rolls of fine silk.

Never one to miss an opportunity to increase
his men’s loyalty, Dong Zhuo insisted that

the silks should be shared with every one
of his soldiers.

In the early 180s, when the Yellow Turban
Rebellion sprang up, Dong Zhuo was put in

charge of a large and battle-hardened army
of those most feared Liang troops.

For his services during that campaign, Dong
Zhuo was given the title “the general who

smashes the cowards”.

He was offered a position as the governor
of a large province, but he refused.

His power had now grown to such an extent
that he dreamed of even larger things.

He returned to the rocky hills of Liang province
along with his army, and continued to exercise

their brutality on the Qiang people.

The power that Dong Zhuo held over the Liang
troops seems to have worried some people at

the Imperial Court.

At one point, they summoned him to the capital
in order to take up office as the minister

steward.

This was a promotion, but it was also clearly
designed to remove him from military command.

Astonishingly, Dong Zhuo refused, writing
back to the emperor that his men would not

allow him to leave.

My Huang-jong auxiliaries, they hold onto
my carriage and refuse to let me leave.

These Qiang and other non-Chinese have evil
hearts and the nature of dogs.

I cannot bring them under proper discipline,
but I shall stay to keep them quiet.

Later, and getting a little desperate, the
government tried again.

But once again, Dong Zhuo refused.

I have received your heavenly favour and held
military command for ten years.

My officers and men of every rank have long
been close to me.

They appreciate my generous care and are always
ready to obey my orders.

I beg to take them with me to the north, to
assist in the defence of the frontier.

Although wrapped up in the usual polite language,
this was a clear affront to the Imperial authority.

It shows that even at this point, Dong Zhuo
knew that his army’s loyalty belonged to

him, and it’s easy to see why.

Dong Zhuo had led his soldiers for years now,
out in the remotest parts of the empire.

They had committed atrocious acts of violence
on his behalf, and he was also the one in

charge of paying them and feeding them.

After a while, these men must have begun to
look on him as a kind of father figure.

Just like Julius Caesar with his Gallic legions,
these Liang troops now owed their loyalty

not to the empire and its weak succession
of child kings, but to the man who rode at

the front of their army.

Whatever he ordered them to do, they would
carry out without question.

In the years to come, this combination would
spell doom for the fragile order of the Han

Dynasty.

During the final years of the reign of Emperor
Ling, the Book of Later Han records a number

of dark omens beginning to appear.

In the second month on the 7th day, there
was an eclipse of the sun.

In the summer, on the 11th day, there was
an earthquake.

In the sixth month, a black emanation resembling
a dragon came down in the Eastern Court when

the emperor was present.

In the autumn, a dark rainbow appeared in
the courtyard of the Jade Hall.

The emperor immediately summoned his wise
men and councillors, but their advice was

not encouraging.

They were asked how these omens and strange
occurrences might be halted.

One replied, “When Heaven sends a rainbow,
all the world is angry and all within the

seas is in confusion.

A period of four hundred years of government
is reaching its end.

Now, a gang of concubines and eunuchs have
combined to dominate the court, and they cheat

and deceive your celestial intelligence.

I wish your majesty might be hard-hearted
enough to get rid of these evil associates."

When the emperor heard this, he is said to
have simply turned his back and sighed.

These wise men were put in prison.

They were later exiled and the palace eunuchs
arranged for them to be assassinated on the

road.

By this time, the eunuchs were despised by
just about all the people of the empire.

The wealth they had amassed was staggering,
and it was now widely known how easily they

could manipulate the emperor, as the Book
of Later Han remembers.

The eunuchs built great houses for themselves,
rivalling the Imperial Palace.

On one occasion, the emperor wanted to climb
the Observation Terrace of the Palace of Perpetual

Peace, but the eunuchs were frightened he
would see their mansions.

They sent harem official Shang Dan to say,
"The Son of Heaven must never climb high,

for if he does so, his people will be impoverished
and scattered."

From this time on, the emperor never climbed
a tower again.

In the year 189, the Emperor Ling became critically
ill.

He died later that year, and there was the
typical power struggle between eunuchs and

Empress Dowagers, which finally resulted in
the crowning of a 13-year-old child as emperor.

But he wouldn’t make it through his first
year.

Later that year, a group of military commanders
saw their chance to rid the empire of the

curse of the eunuch advisers.

Among these commanders was the ruthless tyrant
of Liang, the fearsome General Dong Zhuo.

When he received the message asking him to
become part of the plot, Dong Zhuo responded

with glee.

The Regular Attendant Zhang Rang and his eunuch
fellows have corrupted and disrupted all within

the seas.

Though it is painful to burst an abscess,
it is better than a malignant tumour.

I now sound the bells and drums of punishment
and march to Luoyang.

I ask permission to clear away all evil and
wrongdoing.

Dong Zhuo arrived outside the capital of Luoyang
in time to see flames rising over the city’s

Southern Palace.

His co-conspirators had already struck, storming
the city.

The eunuchs were slaughtered in their mansions,
along with many young attendants, killed simply

because they hadn’t yet grown beards and
were therefore mistaken for eunuchs.

Stories are even recorded of palace officials
stripping off their clothes so that the soldiers

could see that they were not castrated.

Other members of the government fled the palace
and went into exile.

One group of eunuchs tried to kidnap the boy
emperor Shao and his brother, and tried to

flee into the hills, but Dong Zhuo’s soldiers
caught up with them.

The eunuchs killed themselves by jumping into
a river, and the two princes were brought

back to the capital.

This was a military coup and Dong Zhuo was
now the true power in the empire.

Three days after capturing Luoyang, Dong Zhuo
deposed the young Emperor Shao.

He was thirteen years old, only a few years
from becoming a man in his own right, and

at that point, he may have become difficult
to control.

Instead, Dong Zhuo set his younger 8-year
old half-brother on the throne, crowning him

as the Emperor Xian.

He would be the last emperor of the Han age.

After the coronation of the new 8-year-old
emperor, Dong Zhuo forced his older brother

to drink poison.

Then, he issued this chilling command to the
Royal Court.

Any person who seeks to impede the grand design
will be dealt with by military law.

The corrupt rein of the eunuchs had been replaced
with a military tyranny.

The golden age of the Han Empire was finally
coming to a close.

The actions of the warlord Dong Zhuo caused
outrage among the lords and nobles of the

empire.

As he sat in the city of Luoyang, with the
boy emperor in his clutches, dozens of China’s

formerly independent kingdoms declared their
independence once more.

Slowly, a resistance began to form against
the usurper.

This resistance was started by a man named
Yuan Shao, who camped with his army on a crossing

of the Yellow River, north of Luoyang.

He sent out word that he intended to fight
the tyranny of Dong Zhuo.

He was soon joined by his brother and other
nobles from the previous regime, and by the

Chinese New Year of the year 190, their forces
were swelling.

Their tents would have spread out, bright
and colourful across the plains, and soon

they began to pose a real threat to the usurper
holed up in the capital.

Dong Zhuo knew that he could not hold Luoyang
against an all-out assault.

As the rebel forces grew ever more powerful,
he decided to take a drastic action.

He would flee west, back to the ancient capital
of Chang’an.

He would take all of his hardened Liang soldiers
and most of Luoyang’s civilian population

with him.

As he left, he would burn the Imperial capital
to the ground.

Dong Zhuo’s men burst into the city’s
palaces and temples, into the government offices

and the houses of its people.

They looted and burned, and stole everything
they could lay their hands on.

They sent men out into the countryside to
loot and burn in the towns and villages, too.

Dong Zhuo even sent one of his subordinates,
a man named Lu Bu, to tear open the tombs

of the Han emperors on the hills of Beimang,
and to despoil them of their treasures.

The vast Imperial libraries of Luoyang also
went up in flames.

Some books were written on fine silk, and
the illiterate soldiers took them to use as

screens, scarfs, and umbrellas.

Dong Zhuo ordered Luoyang’s library in the
eastern pavilion to be set ablaze.

It had once taken 2,000 carts just to transport
the empire’s store of books from Chang’an

to the new capital.

But after the destruction of Dong Zhuo, the
books that survived could barely fill seventy.

More than 96% of the empire’s entire collection
of books were destroyed in a matter of hours.

Dong Zhuo had the great bronze statues at
Luoyang melted down and turned into coins.

Since these were of a poor quality and not
properly marked with the official stamps,

it resulted in all of China’s copper currency
becoming devalued, and the economy went into

freefall.

According to the Book of Later Han, Dong Zhuo
destroyed everything within a distance of

a hundred kilometres outside of Luoyang.

When the Emperor Guangwu had restored the
Han Empire at the start of the first century,

he had announced that he would rule under
the sign of fire.

But now it was fire that tore through the
Imperial capital’s palaces, through the

ornate pleasure gardens and libraries, through
the homes and workshops of its people.

The fires of Luoyang would have lit up the
sky for days.

The rebel lords camped on the river crossing
realized what was happening too late.

They now marched on the Imperial capital,
but when they reached it, they found only

a desolate ruin.

No large buildings were left standing in the
city, and the whole land was covered in a

layer of ash like a dusting of snow.

There was barely anywhere to shelter.

Dong Zhuo had escaped with the Emperor Xian,
and he had burned the empire's capital to

the ground.

When Dong Zhuo reached the old capital of
Chang’an, he set up an Imperial Court and

attempted to govern what was left of the empire.

Moving back to the old capital had solved
some of his immediate problems, but it was

still not a strong position.

For one thing, Chang’an was more isolated
than Luoyang had been.

Dong Zhuo had hoped that being closer to his
home of Liang province would help him, but

there, the Qiang rebellions had burst out
again, and made those lands all but ungovernable.

There was barely any economy left to speak
of, and Dong Zhuo's rule depended on the vast

stores of treasure he had looted from the
ruins of Luoyang.

He sent a constant stream of raiding parties
out into the neighbouring provinces to bring

back whatever they could steal.

He was essentially a pirate emperor.

Meanwhile, half the country was up in arms
against him.

Quickly, those around him began to realise
how untenable their situation was.

Some accounts of this time paint a lurid picture
of Dong Zhuo.

They describe him holding macabre banquets
where the main entertainment was the sight

of prisoners of war being tortured to death,
even boiled alive.

It’s said that while all the other guests
were put off their food at the horrific spectacle,

Dong Zhuo alone ate hungrily while his prisoners
screamed.

Some of these stories are likely later fabrications,
but it is difficult to know for sure.

Dong Zhuo's love of feasting meant that he
put on a great deal of weight, and he soon

became famously large.

Dong Zhuo soon became paranoid, and he built
a vast personal fortress for himself on the

Wei River, 90 km from Chang’an.

He stocked his fortress with 30 years worth
of supplies, and spoke in confident tones

about this insurance policy.

If things go well, I shall be master of the
empire.

But even if I fail, I can hold out here in
comfort and die of old age.

This would not turn out to be the case.

It's here that the final comparison with Julius
Caesar should become apparent.

On the 22nd of May, in the year 192, one of
his bodyguards, a man named Lu Bu, decided

that enough was enough.

He plotted with a number of other generals
under Dong Zhuo and decided on a course of

action.

When Dong Zhuo was on his way to inspect his
troops one morning in his chariot, Lu Bu and

the co-conspirators struck.

They drew daggers and stabbed Dong Zhuo, and
he later died of his wounds.

Lu Bu and the other plotters followed up this
act by killing all of Dong Zhuo’s family

and supporters, both in Chang’an and in
his fortress on the River Wei.

Dong Zhuo’s body was left in the street,
and it’s said that his killers mocked him

by putting a candle wick in his belly button
and lighting it.

He is said to have been so large at the time
of his death that the candle burned for days

on the fat of his stomach.

The villain of this chapter of Chinese history
had been defeated, but the destruction he

had caused could not be undone.

The boy Emperor Xian, by that point only 11
years old, passed between the hands of the

various warlords who fought for control of
Chang’an after Dong Zhuo had died.

Early in the year 195, two of these rival
chieftains burned down the Imperial Palace

at Chang'an while fighting over who would
control the capital.

Now, both of China's Imperial cities lay in
ruins.

Later that year, at the age of 14, the Emperor
Xian managed to escape Chang'an, sneaking

through the gates in disguise with a select
few attendants.

They fled back across the country, travelling
by ox cart, evading the roaming bands of bandits

and the raiding parties of the warlords that
were even now beginning to tear China apart.

The historian Wei Shu recalls that on this
journey, the child emperor no longer held

any respect among the men who guarded him.

When the Son of Heaven met with his ministers,
common soldiers hid in the bushes to watch,

pushing and jostling one another to make a
laugh.

When he finally reached his once beautiful
home of Luoyang, the Emperor Xian must have

experienced something similar to the feeling
described by the poet Ts'ao Chih, which opened

this episode, when he crested the hills of
Beimang and saw the blackened ruin of the

Imperial capital stretch out beneath him.

By this point, Luoyang had been a ruin for
five years.

Brambles and ivy would already be growing
over the blackened stones of the city’s

palaces.

The young Emperor Xian and his attendants
tried to move back into the ruins of the palace.

They made some repairs to a small part of
the Imperial residence, rendering them just

about habitable, kicking among the broken
stones and heaps of ash, the human remains

still scattering the palace halls, and the
blackened skeletons of the buildings.

Thick mats of thorns grew among the wreckage
of the buildings.

The emperor’s attendants spent their days
foraging for wild grains among the ruined

buildings.

Some of them starved and others were killed
by hungry, lawless people who were still trying

to eke out a living among the ruins.

This tragic situation continued for a year
until eventually a warlord named Cao Cao arrived

and rescued the child emperor.

By this time, the ruler of all the Chinese,
the holder of the Mandate of Heaven, must

have looked like any other soot-blackened
orphan wandering around the ruined streets

of Luoyang.

This General Cao Cao made one last attempt
to reunify China under the restored name of

Han, and he came close.

But he was defeated at the Battle of Red Cliff
in the winter of the year 208.

The Battle of Red Cliff involved around 300,000
soldiers on the waters and the banks of the

Yangtze River, and it has been called the
largest naval battle in history.

Cao Cao’s failure confirmed the end of the
Han Dynasty.

China was now divided into three kingdoms
and a new age of history began.

The Emperor Xian was treated fairly by the
victors.

He was made a duke, and lived out his life
in peace and comfort.

The young boy emperor, the last of the Han,
died peacefully at the age of 53.

The medieval writer Luo Guanzhong, in his
medieval historical epic known as the Romance

of the Three Kingdoms, summarises this period
of Chinese history in the following way.

The empire, long divided, must unite; long
it united, must divide.

Thus it has ever been.

The Han Dynasty had been a remarkably successful
ancient empire.

But it was brought down by the corruption
of its politicians and the power struggles

in its Royal Court.

Today, it gives its name to the largest ethnic
group in the world, the Han Chinese who, at

1.3 billion people, make up nearly a fifth
of the world's entire population.

The divided realm of China would one day reunite
under a new emperor, but that is a story for

another day.

The ruins of Luoyang would stand in the fields
below the Beimang Hills, overgrown with thorns,

for decades before anyone returned to repopulate
it.

The poet Yang Xuanzhi paints a beautiful picture
of what the ruins of Luoyang must have looked

like after the fall of the Han Dynasty.

The inner and outer walls had collapsed.

The palaces and chambers had fallen down.

The monasteries and temples were reduced to
ashes.

The pagodas and stupas were in ruins.

The walls were covered with mugwort.

Lanes were lined with thorns.

Wild beasts burrowed in overgrown stairways.

Mountain birds nested in courtyard trees.

Vagrants and herd boys lingered in the avenues.

Farmers and old tillers hunted broomcorn millet
by the twin gateways.

More than half a century after the burning
of Luoyang, the poet Zhang Zai visited Mount

Beimang where the tombs of the great Han kings
had stood for centuries.

But what he found there was only a series
of ruins.

Dong Zhuo’s men had destroyed many of the
tombs and stolen their treasures, while grave

robbers during the years of chaos had seen
to the rest.

The walls of the mausoleums had crumbled,
animals had made burrows between the fallen

stones, and children now played among the
ornate carvings.

On Beimang, how the graves join one to another.

I would ask whose graves these are.

All say they are of lords of the Han House.

At the end of the dynasty, destruction and
chaos arose.

Robbers and thieves were like wild dogs and
tigers.

The earth was despoiled by more than a handful.

In the inner corridor, the secluded doors
have been opened.

Precious gems have been pilfered and stolen.

The funerary park and resting chamber have
become wastes.

There are no segments left of the surrounding
walls.

On the tomb pathways climb boys and youngsters.

Foxes and hares burrow within them.

Overgrown with weeds, they have not been swept.

The abandoned mounds are all ploughed and
tilled.

On them, commonfolk tend their gardens.

Sad and sorrowful, I lament the distant past.

The ruins of the Han Dynasty stood empty and
broken in the fields, a testament to the greatness

of former ages, and to the passing transience
of all things.

I want to end this episode with some extracts
from some of my favourite ancient Chinese

poems, known as the Nineteen Pieces of Old
Poetry.

They likely have a number of different authors,
but tradition typically attributes them to

the first-century Han Dynasty poet named Sheng.

These poems are melancholy meditations on
the transience of things.

As you listen, try to imagine what it must
have felt like to watch the peace and prosperity

of your lands torn apart by corruption and
greed.

Imagine seeing the life you’d known, destroyed
by the hunger of warlords who profited from

death and destruction.

Imagine watching the vast stores of the Imperial
libraries, centuries of accumulated knowledge,

going up in flames before your eyes, and watching
the leafy city of Luoyang burning, its flames

licking at the night sky.

Imagine seeing the once-great capital of a
mighty empire now reduced to nothing but ashes

and smoke, as an age of 400 years comes crashingly,
devastatingly, to a close.

The autumn winds shake the hundred grasses.

On every side, how desolate and bare!

Prosperity and decay each have their season.

The Eastern Castle stands tall and high.

Far and wide stretch the towers that guard
it.

The whirling wind uprises and shakes the earth.

The four seasons alternate without pause.

The year’s end hurries swiftly on.

I drive my chariot up to the Eastern Gate.

From afar I see the graveyard north of the
wall.

Beneath lie men who died long ago.

Black is the long night that holds them.

Thousands of years they lie without waking.

In infinite succession light and darkness
shift, and years vanish like the morning dew.

Man’s life is just a visit.

Mourners in their turn were mourned.

The dead are gone and with them we cannot
converse.

The living are here and ought to have our
love.

Leaving the city-gate I look ahead and see
before me only mounds and tombs.

The old graves are ploughed up into fields.

The years of a lifetime do not reach a hundred.

Yet they contain a thousand years’ sorrow.

Cold, cold the year draws to its end.

I go and lean at the gate and think of my
grief, and my falling tears wet the double

gates.

I want to go home, to ride to my village gate.

I want to go back, but there’s no road back.

There’s no road back.

Thank you once again for listening to the
Fall of Civilizations podcast.

I’d like to thank my voice actors for this
episode, Claire Hynes, Shem Jacobs, Alex Peaty,

and Jake Barrett Mills.

Special thanks also go to Meng Wang of the
Norwich Mandarin Learning Center, for allowing

us to hear the sounds of ancient Han era poetry.

I love to hear your thoughts and responses
on Twitter, so please come and tell me what

you thought.

You can follow me at PaulMMCooper, and if
you’d like updates about the podcast, announcements

about new episodes as well as images, maps,
and reading suggestions, you can follow the

podcast at Fall_of_Civ_Pod, with underscores
separating the words.

This podcast can only keep going with the
support of our generous subscribers on Patreon.

You keep me running, you help me cover my
costs, and you help keep this podcast ad-free.

You also let me dedicate more time to researching,
writing, recording, and editing to get the

episodes out to you faster, to make them longer,
and to bring as much life and detail to them

as possible.

I want to thank all my subscribers for making
this happen.

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider
heading on to patreon.com/fallofcivilizations_podcast

or just Google Fall of Civilizations Patreon.

That's P-A-T-R-E-O-N.

For now, goodbye, and thanks for listening.