Liu Hong was only twelve when he took the throne.
The Luoyang court had an emperor in the first year of Jianning, but memorials awaiting a decision still went first to Empress Dowager Dou Miao. Emperor Huan had died without a son. The dowager and her father, Dou Wu, had arranged for Liu Hong, the Marquis of Jiedu Village, to succeed him. Because the new emperor was young, the dowager presided over the court.1 Dou Wu became General-in-Chief, and Chen Fan became Grand Tutor; both participated in the work of the Secretariat alongside Hu Guang, Excellency over the Masses. The court officials had their places, their seals and ribbons,2 and their titles. Inside the palace and beyond it, people were still learning who, in this new court, could turn a spoken instruction into an enforceable order.
As the dowager's father, Dou Wu stood high in the military and civil government and had authority to mobilize the palace guards. He had been known for upright conduct before his daughter entered the palace. Once in power, he brought distinguished scholars into office and aided men caught in the Party Proscriptions.3 Many scholars long kept down by the court therefore saw the new emperor's accession as a chance to change its course.
Chen Fan's standing came from elsewhere. An elder statesman of great prestige, he was severe by temperament and had more than once lost office for speaking bluntly, only to be summoned back. As Grand Tutor he was among the most important advisers to the new regime, but he was neither Dou Wu's subordinate nor a client of his family. They worked together because they both believed that, while Cao Jie, Wang Fu, and the other close attendants controlled passage through the inner palace, appointments, memorials, punishments, and rewards would never return to the institutions of the outer court.
At first, events seemed to be moving their way. Scholars who had been barred from office4 or pushed aside were appointed again. New men entered the Secretariat and the General-in-Chief's headquarters. The eunuchs Guan Ba and Su Kang, who had been found guilty of wrongdoing, were executed. Outside the palace, some believed the repression of Emperor Huan's final years was beginning to ease. Inside, people saw something else: the first men were dead, and Dou Wu had not stopped sending demands into the palace.
The dispute was over where the killing should end. Dou Wu told the dowager that the Attendants-in-Ordinary and Yellow Gate attendants had originally been meant to handle the gates and offices of the palace. They now interfered in government, while their relatives and guests held positions throughout the provinces and commanderies. Execute two or three, he argued, but leave the network intact, and it would soon re-form. He called for Cao Jie, Wang Fu, and the others to be taken into custody, and for the eunuchs' reach into the outer court to be curtailed.
The dowager did not flare up when he finished. She knew there was substance to what he and Chen Fan were saying, and she had already allowed men with specific charges against them to be punished. Yet the palace relied on a large body of eunuchs for its daily needs, the transmission of orders, access through its gates, and attendance on the court. To treat the whole group as equally guilty ran against her understanding of Han custom; it would also leave the inner palace without the people needed to run it.
“Those who have committed crimes can be punished for them,” she told her father. “The Han has always had palace attendants. How can we do away with them all for the wrongdoing of a few?”
This was no defense of Cao Jie and the others. Nor was it the approval Dou Wu wanted.
He tried again to set out the danger. The dowager raised a hand to stop him and told him to submit the evidence against each man separately. They were back to one memorial after another, one suspect after another.
After leaving her, Dou Wu relayed the answer to Chen Fan, who made no effort to conceal his displeasure.
“She will punish a crime once it has been committed,” Dou Wu said, “but she will not break their power in advance.”
Chen Fan looked at the memorials on the desk. “Unless we break their power first, every charge must pass through their hands. Question one man today, memorialize another tomorrow. By the time we finish making the list, they will have found a way out.”
“Without evidence for each case, the dowager will not consent.”
“By the time every case is proven, whose hands will the palace be in?”
Dou Wu fell silent. He understood the danger of delay. But he was undertaking this purge as the General-in-Chief and an imperial in-law charged with assisting the government, while the dowager still presided over the court. His own judgment could not stand in for an imperial order. Chen Fan wanted to remove the threat first and complete the procedure afterward. Dou Wu still wanted the procedure itself to show that the purge was more than a private feud.
They sought the same end, but no longer agreed on how to reach it. After an eclipse of the sun in the fifth month, Chen Fan again urged Dou Wu to invoke the celestial event in an appeal to the dowager. By the eighth month, the outer court was changing the people who would carry out arrests. The Metropolitan Commandant, the Intendant of Henan, the magistrate of Luoyang, and the Director of the Yellow Gates, who could reach the palace arrest process, had all become positions that mattered. Dou Wu installed his trusted junior Yellow Gate attendant Shan Bing in the last of these offices and ordered him to arrest Zheng Sa, a Changle Palace Secretariat official, first.
Only after Zheng Sa was taken to the Northern Temple Prison did the inquiry close in on Cao Jie and Wang Fu. The prison lay where palace justice and the power of the close attendants met. An arrest order came from the outer court, but its agents had to pass through guarded gates. The man under questioning was an official of Changle Palace, and what the interrogators learned had to go back to the Secretariat and the dowager who presided over the court. Every document passed through someone's hands; every movement in or out required the gate guards' consent. Dou Wu meant to use these procedures to turn power concealed within palace relationships into charges that could be named and placed before the court.
Shan Bing, Yin Xun, and Zhu Jin questioned Zheng Sa together. His testimony soon implicated Cao Jie and Wang Fu.
When word reached Chen Fan, he asked one thing: “Have they been arrested?”
The messenger said they were still waiting for the General-in-Chief to petition the dowager.
Chen Fan went straight to Dou Wu. He did not sit down. He set the document before him and asked, “We have their names in the testimony. What are we waiting for?”
Dou Wu read it and saw the names. “These are close attendants inside the palace, not some clerk in a commandery. If we act without the dowager's order, an arrest today can be called the unauthorized killing of officials tomorrow.”
“If they learn of this first, there will be no tomorrow for you.”
“Then we must submit the memorial at once.”
Chen Fan leaned over the testimony. “I mean arrest and kill them now. Cut off their means of action, then present the charges. You would send this paper back into the place they guard and wait for them to carry it to the dowager?”
Dou Wu looked up. Chen Fan was over seventy, and still would not yield an inch. Dou Wu would not change his answer either. He ordered the case assembled into a memorial and prepared another request for arrests.
Once the papers had been sealed and sent off again, there was one more stretch of road on which the case could be intercepted.
At that moment, none of the outer court's offices had changed hands. Zheng Sa remained in prison; Shan Bing remained Director of the Yellow Gates; Dou Wu was still General-in-Chief; Chen Fan still supervised the Secretariat as Grand Tutor. By title alone, they held the stronger position. But Cao Jie and Wang Fu were still inside the palace, the dowager had issued no final order, and a memorial bearing their names had entered circulation through the inner offices.
In the ninth month, Dou Wu left the palace to spend a night at his residence. After he was gone, Zhu Yu, a clerk of Changle Palace, gained access to the memorial.
What lay before Zhu Yu was no stray rumor. He opened the document and saw how far the arrests might extend. He also saw that the executions of Guan Ba and Su Kang had not ended the matter. He called in those nearby whom he could reach. Seventeen came. If the purge continued, they might lose their posts, their families, or their lives.
Zhu Yu spread the memorial before them. He did not claim that the guilty and innocent were the same.
Pointing to the list, he said, “Anyone who has committed crimes can answer for them. But this goes beyond the guilt of one or two men. They intend to kill or dismiss the eunuchs as a whole. We will not be spared either. Will you wait here for an arresting officer?”
Someone asked, “Has the dowager approved it?”
“If she has, they could come tonight. If she has not, they can petition her again tomorrow. Waiting only decides when the blade falls.”
The men swore a blood oath. They did not wait for another complete plan to be drawn up. The memorial had brought them together around the need to survive. Dou Wu's attempt to separate suspects, question them, and fix each man's guilt in stages had told those in danger how wide the purge might reach, while showing them that the outer court had yet to obtain final approval.
Zhu Yu raised the cry that Dou Wu and Chen Fan endangered the dynasty and meant to depose the emperor. By calling them rebels, he identified what his side needed to seize. With the emperor in their hands, they could issue commands in his name and recast every unfinished petition from Dou Wu as evidence of treason. Whether the accusation would survive examination no longer mattered to the men acting on it.
When Cao Jie heard, he moved first to secure Liu Hong. The twelve-year-old emperor was brought to the front hall of Deyang Palace. His attendants had him draw his sword, with his wet nurse Zhao Rao and others nearby to guard him. Liu Hong saw familiar attendants suddenly moving faster, gates closing, and one order after another placed before him. How the memorial had leaked, how much the dowager had approved, and how far Dou Wu and Chen Fan intended to go were all kept from him behind shut doors and urgent voices.
“Your Majesty, draw your sword,” an attendant urged. “We will protect you.”
The boy drew it. The gatekeepers and those receiving orders could not know how freely he had chosen. They could see only that the emperor was standing beside Cao Jie and his allies.
Palace pass tokens were brought into use, and the gates were shut one after another. Access now depended not simply on a person's office but on who held a token that would be honored at that moment. Cao Jie's group summoned members of the Secretariat as well. Under threat from the blades close beside them, the officials were made to prepare imperial order boards. Documents meant to convey the emperor's will became the means by which men who controlled him could demand obedience beyond the palace.
Wang Fu had been Director of Provisions at Changle Palace and knew the dowager's household and its daily operations. The conspirators now issued a forged order appointing him Director of the Yellow Gates, giving him a title under which to control the gates, relay commands, and lead armed men. An imperial tally of authority was placed in his hands. His first destination was the Northern Temple Prison.
Inside, Shan Bing was still waiting for the formal reply from outside. He saw Wang Fu arrive with the tally and soldiers, but he would not surrender his prisoners on the strength of a token alone.
Wang Fu ordered him to receive the imperial command. Shan Bing refused to bow to it. “This has come with extraordinary speed. The General-in-Chief had just petitioned for Cao Jie and the others to be arrested. How can the men conducting the inquiry suddenly be the ones under arrest?”
There was no time allowed to test the order. Wang Fu gave the command to attack. Shan Bing was killed there; Yin Xun did not leave the prison alive either. Zheng Sa, whose testimony had implicated Cao Jie and Wang Fu, was released.
The same prison, the same documents, and within a short time the whole direction of the case had reversed. Those who held the forms of imperial authority freed the accused and turned the investigators into criminals.
The empress dowager was next. Her Southern Palace was placed under guard; sealed imperial documents5 were seized, palace attendants watched the gates, and the elevated passage linking the palace compounds was cut off. She remained the empress dowager, and her formal authority to preside over the court had not been abolished. But if she could neither send people out nor use the imperial seals nor pass orders through the gates, her title could not for the moment be made effective.
An attendant reported that Dou Wu was in rebellion and asked her to remain inside. She demanded that her father be brought to her at once.
“The gates are shut,” the messenger replied.
“Who ordered you to shut them?”
He would say only that he was acting under imperial command. He gave no account of how that command had been made. The dowager's attendants were held in place and urgent messages could no longer take their usual route. Dou Wu had been waiting for her final formal approval; now she and her seals were separated, and even a denial from her would have to pass through gates held by his opponents.
Wang Fu sent a man with the imperial tally to arrest Dou Wu. At the General-in-Chief's residence, Dou Wu had heard enough scattered reports to know the gates had changed hands. He could not yet know how fully the other side controlled the dowager, the emperor, the Northern Temple Prison, and the Secretariat's documents. The order before him called him a rebel and demanded his arrest. Its form was complete; its content reversed the very petition he had been pursuing.
Dou Wu refused it. Without waiting for a second delegation, he hurried to the infantry camp. His nephew Dou Shao, commandant of the infantry, joined him in shooting the men sent in pursuit. Orders to assemble the five divisions of the Northern Army soon rang around the camp. Messengers ran to the other garrisons; officers checked the General-in-Chief's orders; soldiers formed up and marched out. By the time they gathered at the metropolitan pavilion, Dou Wu had several thousand men.
The Northern Army guarded the capital. Its officers and soldiers served under several overlapping claims of authority: the state establishment, the palace guard, and the General-in-Chief. They were never a household force6 belonging to any single family. Dou Wu's ability to call them out showed that his office was real power. Keeping them with him meant answering a harder question. If an imperial order had indeed come from the palace, were they suppressing a rebellion, or following the General-in-Chief into rebellion against the emperor?
Dou Wu stood before them. “The Yellow Gate attendants and the Attendants-in-Ordinary have rebelled. They have shut the palace gates, seized the dowager, and forged an order to arrest the ministers. Those who give their full strength will be rewarded for their service.”
The front ranks answered. Behind them, men kept looking back toward the palace. The reports contradicted one another. The General-in-Chief called the eunuchs rebels; palace messengers called the General-in-Chief a rebel. One side had the office that usually commanded them. The other had the emperor's presence, palace tokens, an imperial tally, and order boards. No soldier could walk through the sealed gates and ask the twelve-year-old emperor what was true.
The palace, too, was gathering troops. Orders issued in imperial form made Zhou Jing, the minister in charge of the imperial household's finances, acting General of Chariots and Cavalry and gave him a tally of authority. Zhang Huan, the commandant charged with defending against the Xiongnu, was summoned to bring the men of five camps to the palace's aid. Zhang Huan had long commanded troops on the frontier and had only recently returned to the capital. His command came from the place where the emperor was, accompanied by the tally and palace messengers. He did not know about the leaked memorial, the forged orders, or the dowager's detention behind the closed gates.
He had no second order from the emperor with which to compare the first. He could act only on the command presented to him as official.
As the five camps approached the palace, Dou Wu's men saw more than Wang Fu's immediate guard facing them. A commander with a long record of frontier service had also taken the opposite side. This made the claim that the emperor had ordered action against Dou Wu seem more credible. Zhang Huan may not have realized how much weight his reputation and troops lent to a forged command.
Wang Fu stationed more than a thousand Tiger Guard, Feathered Forest guards, stablemen, palace sentries, and armed men at the Vermilion Sparrow side gate, then joined Zhou Jing's and Zhang Huan's troops. Men on both sides may have belonged to the capital's guard establishment; some knew one another and knew they had once served the same court. In one city, two sets of orders, each claiming to speak for the Han court, had divided its guards.
Wang Fu did not send his men into an immediate assault. He ordered them to call out again and again to Dou Wu's line.
“You are palace guards. Your duty is to protect the court. The emperor is here; his order is here. Dou Wu has rebelled. Why follow him? The first to surrender will be rewarded. Anyone who hesitates will share his guilt!”
Dou Wu's men shouted back that the dowager had been seized and the command was false. The charges traveled back and forth across the ranks. Neither side could bring the dowager before them, and no soldier could enter the hall to question the emperor. What they could see was Wang Fu with the tally, Cao Jie's side holding the palace gates, and Zhang Huan and the five camps appearing under orders.
The first men to leave Dou Wu's line were not an entire camp. A junior officer and a few soldiers beside him backed away, laid down their weapons, and waited to be received. Wang Fu's troops did not kill them. They let them cross. Men behind them saw what happened. Another group began to move: some followed, some stayed. Gaps opened in the formation, and the line of banners began to break apart.
Dou Wu sent men along the ranks to halt the departures and repeat that the eunuchs had forged the order. Some still obeyed, but the command lost force with every line it passed. The soldiers had not decided that Cao Jie was innocent, or that Wang Fu deserved their loyalty. They had to judge what their own position required. As palace guards, they faced the natural force of a claim made from where the emperor stood. As members of the Northern Army, they could not simply discard Dou Wu's command. The longer they hesitated, the worse it became for him: the other side accepted deserters, and the palace gates stayed shut.
From morning until the time of the first meal, more and more men went over to Wang Fu. Some crossed in units. Some left their weapons where they stood. Some simply would not advance. No single attack broke Dou Wu's thousands. Each period of watching, each surrender, each order whose truth could not be checked took another layer out of his force. When his officers reported that the divisions could scarcely be held together, he was still General-in-Chief. He still possessed his title and seal. The army willing to turn that title into action was gone.
“Form up again,” Dou Wu ordered.
Dou Shao looked across the emptied ranks. He did not say it could not be done; he sent men to recall those who had scattered. Fewer and fewer returned. The calls from the other side continued, and Wang Fu's force grew with the men it received.
Dou Wu saw at last that staying at the pavilion would neither carry the truth into the palace nor bring the dowager out. He and Dou Shao left the ranks and tried to escape the encirclement. Pursuers quickly closed on them. Both men, trapped at the end, took their own lives.
There had been no public trial. Nor had Zhang Huan cut them down in front of their troops. Afterward, the heads of Dou Wu and Dou Shao were taken back to Luoyang and displayed at the metropolitan pavilion. The soldiers who had answered the General-in-Chief there that morning passed it again to see the court's public judgment on its “rebels.”
Chen Fan heard of the change later than Dou Wu. The reports reaching the Grand Tutor's residence were fragmentary and contradictory: the palace gates were shut; Dou Wu had gathered men at the pavilion; an imperial order had gone out to suppress a rebellion. One thing was plain to him. If he stayed home to await formal notice, the next formal notice would probably order his arrest.
He called together his staff and students. More than eighty could follow him at such short notice. Some carried blades; others were clerks and students who had come from the offices. They were no force that could withstand the Northern Army or the Tiger Guard and Feathered Forest troops.
Someone urged him to leave the city first and learn whether Dou Wu's army still held together.
“If the General-in-Chief can still give orders,” Chen Fan replied, “I must go into the palace and speak for him. If he cannot, someone must tell the men at the palace gate who is truly making this trouble. Withdraw today, and tomorrow all the realm will see is an edict calling Dou Wu a traitor.”
He did not claim to know who would prevail. He refused to let Cao Jie and Wang Fu's account become the court's only account because no one had opposed it.
With drawn blades, the group forced its way through Chengming Gate and pushed toward the Secretariat gate. The guards had not expected the Grand Tutor himself to come in at the head of armed men; for a moment their ranks fell back. Chen Fan cried out that Dou Wu had served the state loyally and that the Yellow Gate attendants were the rebels. Wang Fu heard and brought troops to stop him.
When the two faced one another inside the gate, old ranks of office and age meant less than the numbers at their backs. Chen Fan was still Grand Tutor. Wang Fu's appointment as Director of the Yellow Gates rested on that day's forged order. But Wang Fu had soldiers; Chen Fan had little more than eighty staff and students.
Wang Fu accused him of following Dou Wu and entering the palace by force.
Chen Fan drew his sword. “Dou Wu served as an imperial in-law assisting the government. He asked for criminals to be punished. You seized the dowager, shut the gates, and forged the emperor's command. You call loyal ministers rebels, and still dare ask why I came in?”
For a moment the soldiers in front held back. Chen Fan's long standing, the dignity of the Grand Tutor's office, and the force of his accusation could still make men hesitate, but they could not reverse the balance of force. Wang Fu brought up more troops and ordered them to close in from several sides. The ring tightened, leaving Chen Fan's men no room to advance on the Secretariat gate. Some were disarmed, some pinned down, and the rest soon scattered.
Chen Fan was taken to the Northern Temple Prison. In one day, it had held three successive groups: Zheng Sa, questioned by Dou Wu's men; Shan Bing and Yin Xun, who had resisted the false command; and now the Grand Tutor who had urged that the eunuchs be eliminated before they could strike. Horsemen escorting him trampled and insulted the old minister. Once he was inside, no public trial was arranged to establish what had happened. Chen Fan was killed that same day.
When the palace gates were secure again, the reckoning in Luoyang had only begun.
Members of the Dou clan, their guests and relatives by marriage, and officials appointed under Dou Wu were hunted down. The edicts used harsh language such as “exterminate the clan,” but the result was not the death of every blood relative. Some were killed, others removed from office and barred from service; Dou Wu's family was sent into exile at Bijing in Rinan. Government offices sealed residences and counted people and property. Former subordinates who had passed through the General-in-Chief's gates had to decide whether to flee, wait to be arrested, or find some way to protect his body and young family members.
Empress Dowager Dou was moved to the Cloud Terrace in the Southern Palace. She retained her title, and the palace did not immediately cut off her provisions. But her attendants' movements were restricted, and the outer court no longer waited for her decisions. Her father and Dou Shao were dead. Chen Fan was dead. Yin Xun, Shan Bing, and others had died at the Northern Temple Prison. The general purge she had refused to authorize had not preserved a balance between the eunuchs and the outer court; it had given those who struck back time to seize her sealed documents and the gates.
Only afterward did Zhang Huan gradually learn that the order he had obeyed came from an inner palace controlled by Cao Jie and his allies. He could not accept a grant of rank as though it were an honor earned in a clean victory. He later refused it, returned his seal and ribbon, and spoke in defense of Dou Wu and Chen Fan. None of that could reassemble the soldiers at the pavilion or bring back the men killed in prison. The five camps he had led while information was withheld from him had already helped determine the day's outcome.
The young emperor remained in the palace, still on the throne. It was the people around him who had changed. At the beginning of the year, a court jointly guided by the empress dowager, the General-in-Chief, and the Grand Tutor had seemed possible. After the coup in the ninth month, only the shadow of those titles remained. The dowager had her title without effective power. Dou Wu and Chen Fan had been condemned as traitors. Cao Jie, Wang Fu, and their allies stayed in the inner palace as men who had protected the emperor and put down a rebellion.
When new commands reached the government offices in Luoyang, officials checked the seals, then the messenger, and in the end complied. No one could tell from an imperial order board that it had been written under threat of a sword. No one could tell from a tally how the dowager's sealed documents had been taken away.
A purge undertaken in the name of restoring order at court ended when its opponents seized control of the visible forms of that order.