Incense burner given to Wei Qing by Emperor Wu of Han 2nd C. BCE

January 26, 2023

Incense burner given to Wei Qing by Emperor Wu of Han 2nd C. BCE

"Emperor Wu began to trust governing officials who were harsh in their punishment, believing that such harshness would be the most effective method to maintain social order and so placing these officials in power. For example, one such official, Yi Zong (义纵), became the governor of the Commandery of Dingxiang (part of modern Hohhot, Inner Mongolia) and executed 200 prisoners, even though they had not committed capital crimes; he then executed their friends who happened to have been visiting. In 122 BC, Liu An, the Prince of Huainan (a previously trusted adviser of Emperor Wu, and closely enough related to have imperial pretensions) and his brother Liu Ci (刘赐), the Prince of Hengshan, were accused of plotting treason. They committed suicide; their families and many alleged co-conspirators were executed. Similar action was taken against the other vassal Princes, and by the end of the reign, all the vassal kingdoms had been political and militarily disabled.

A famous wrongful execution happened in 117 BC, when the minister of agriculture Yan Yi (颜异), was falsely accused of committing a crime, though he was actually targeted because he had previously offended the emperor by opposing a plan to effectively extort double tributes out of princes and marquesses. Yan was executed for "internal defamation" of the emperor, and this caused the officials to be fearful and willing to flatter the emperor.

Starting about 113 BC, Emperor Wu began to display further signs of abusing his power. He began to incessantly tour the commanderies, initially nearby Chang'an, but later extending to much farther places, worshipping the various Gods on the way, perhaps again in search of immortality. He also had a succession of magicians whom he honoured with great things. In one case, he even made one a marquess and married his daughter, the Eldest Princess Wei, to him; that magician, Luan Da, was later exposed as a fraud and executed. Emperor Wu's expenditures on these tours and magical adventures put a great strain on the national treasury and caused difficulties on the locales that he visited, twice causing the governors of commanderies to commit suicide after they were unable to supply the emperor's entire train.

About 100 BC, due to the heavy taxation and military burdens imposed by Emperor Wu's incessant military campaigns and luxurious spending, there were many peasant revolts throughout the empire. Emperor Wu issued an edict that was intended to suppress the peasant revolts: he made officials whose commanderies saw unsuppressed peasant revolts liable with their lives. However, this edict had the exact opposite effect, since it became impossible to suppress all of the revolts, officials would merely cover up the existence of the revolts. He executed many people who made fake coins.

In 96 BC, a series of witchcraft persecutions began. Emperor Wu, who was paranoid over a nightmare of being whipped by tiny stick-wielding puppets and a sighting of a traceless assassin (possibly a hallucination), ordered extensive investigations with harsh punishments. Large numbers of people, many of them high officials, were accused of witchcraft and executed, usually along with their entire clans. The first trial began with Empress Wei Zifu's elder brother-in-law Gongsun He (公孫賀, the Prime Minister at the time) and his son Gongsun Jingsheng (公孫敬聲, also an imperial official, but arrested under corruption charges), quickly leading to the execution of their entire clan. Also caught in this disaster were Crown Prince Ju's two elder sisters Princess Yangshi (陽石公主, who was said to have a romantic relationship with her cousin Gongsun Jingsheng) and Princess Zhuyi (諸邑公主), as well as his cousin Wei Kang (衛伉, the eldest son of the deceased general Wei Qing), who were all accused of witchcraft and executed in 91 BC. These witchcraft persecutions later became intertwined in succession struggles and erupted into a major catastrophe."

"Notwithstanding the sketchy and scattered depictions in the Shiji 史記 and the Hanshu 漢書 , this event played a significant role in the later years of Wudi’s reign. Many scholars even consider it a turning point of the Middle Western Han (202 BCE–8 CE) court policy. It cost tens of thousands of lives, including that of the Empress, the Heir Apparent, two princesses, two Chancellors, and dozens of civil officials and military officers, among hundreds of thousands of others." (Zhang Hanmo, Witchcraft and Witch-hunting in the Later Years of Emperor Wu’s Reign: A Reappraisal)

"In 94 BC, Emperor Wu's youngest son Liu Fuling was born to a favorite concubine of his, Lady Gouyi (Consort Zhao). Emperor Wu was ecstatic in having a child at such an advanced age (62 years old), and because Consort Zhao purportedly had a pregnancy that lasted 14 months (the same as the mythical Emperor Yao), he named Consort Zhao's palace gate "Gate of Yao's mother." This led to speculation that the emperor, due to his favor of Consort Zhao and Prince Fuling, wanted to make Liu Fuling the crown prince instead. While there was no evidence that he actually intended to do anything as such, over the next few years, conspiracies against Crown Prince Ju and his mother Empress Wei arose that were inspired by such rumors.

When he left the capital, the Emperor would delegate authority to Crown Prince Ju. Eventually, however, the two began to have disagreements over policy, with Ju favoring leniency and Wu's advisers (harsh and sometimes corrupt officials) urging the opposite. After Wei Qing's death in 106 BC and Gongsun He's execution, Prince Ju had no strong allies left in the government. The other officials then began to publicly defame and plot against him. Meanwhile, Emperor Wu was becoming more and more isolated, spending time with young concubines, often remaining unavailable to Ju or Wei.

Conspirators against Prince Ju included Jiang Chong (江充), the newly appointed head of secret intelligence, who had once had a run-in with Ju after arresting one of his assistants for improper use of an imperial right of way. Another conspirator was Su Wen (蘇文), chief eunuch in charge of caring for imperial concubines, who had previously made false accusations against Ju, claiming he was joyful over Wu's illness and had an adulterous relationship with one of the junior concubines.

Jiang and others made many accusations of witchcraft against important people in the Han court. Jiang and Su decided to use witchcraft as the excuse to move against Prince Ju himself. With approval from Emperor Wu who was then at the Ganquan Palace, Jiang searched through various palaces, ostensibly for witchcraft items, eventually reaching Prince Ju's and Empress Wei's palace. While completely trashing the palaces up with intensive digging, he secretly planted witchery dolls and pieces of cloth with mysterious writings. He then announced that he had found the items there during the search. Prince Ju was shocked, knowing that he was framed.

Prince Ju fled to Hu County (湖縣, in modern Sanmenxia, Henan) and took refuge in the home of a poor peasant family. Knowing that their good-hearted hosts could never afford the daily expenditure of so many people, the Prince sought help from an old friend who lived nearby. However, this move exposed their whereabouts, and he was soon tracked down by local officials eager for a reward. Surrounded by troops and seeing no chance of escape, the Prince hung himself. His two sons and the family housing them died with him after the government soldiers eventually broke into the yard and killed everyone. The two local officials who led the raid, Zhang Fuchang (張富昌) and Li Shou (李寿), wasted no time in taking the Prince's body to Chang'an to claim a reward from the emperor. Emperor Wu, although greatly saddened to hear the death of his son, had to keep his promise and rewarded the officials.

Even after Jiang Chong and Prince Ju both died, the witchhunt continued and combined with Wei Zifu's jealousy led to the execution of the Li family on accounts of treason. General Li Guangli caused unnecessary losses with his military incompetence. In 90 BC, while Li was assigned to a campaign against Xiongnu, a eunuch named Guo Rang (郭穰) exposed how Li and his political ally, Prime Minister Liu Qumao, were conspiring to use witchcraft on Emperor Wu. Liu and his family were immediately arrested and later executed.

By this time, Emperor Wu realized that the witchcraft accusations were often false accusations, especially in relation to the crown prince rebellion. In 92 BC, when Tian Qianqiu, then the superintendent of Emperor Gao's temple, wrote a report claiming that Emperor Gao told him in a dream that Prince Ju should have only been whipped at most, not killed, Emperor Wu had a revelation about what had led to his son's rebellion. He had Su burned and Jiang's family executed. He also made Tian prime minister. Although he claimed to miss Prince Ju greatly (he even built a palace and an altar for his deceased son as a sign of grief and regret), he did not at this time rectify the situation where Prince Ju's only surviving progeny, Liu Bingyi, languished in prison as a child.

With the political scene greatly changed, Emperor Wu publicly apologized to the whole nation about his past policy mistakes, a gesture known to history as the Repenting Edict of Luntai (輪台悔詔)."

taken from wikipedia and Zhang Hanmo's 'Witchcraft and Witch-hunting in the Later Years of Emperor Wu’s Reign: A Reappraisal'