Huan Wen - Mutual Suspicion With Imperial Officials

Mutual Suspicion With Imperial Officials

The victory over Cheng Han, however, brought fear in imperial officials that the ambitious Huan intended to control the government. Emperor Mu's granduncle Sima Yu the Prince of Kuaiji, in order to counter Huan, invited a renowned official, Yin Hao, to join in major decision-making with him and Cai Mo (蔡謨). This brought a rivalry that Huan and Yin had since their youth (when both were viewed as up-and-coming talent) into the open. The rivalry intensified after Yin seized more power late in 350 after accusing Cai of being disrespectful to the emperor (by repeatedly declining an honor that was being bestowed on him) and demoting Cai to commoner status.

Over the next few years, as Later Zhao collapsed in the midst of internecine wars between the emperor Shi Hu's sons and adoptive grandson Shi Min after Shi Hu's death in 349, Huan repeatedly requested the imperial government to authorize him to advance north to try to recover northern China for Jin, but he was repeatedly rebuffed, even after a campaign by Emperor Mu's maternal grandfather Chu Pou (褚裒) ended badly. Around the new year 352, Huan, upset that his requests were being repeatedly denied, mobilized his troops and gestured as if he were about to attack the capital. Yin was shocked, and initially considered either resigning or send the imperial banner of peace (Zouyu Fan, 騶虞幡) to order Huan to stop. After advice from Wang Biaozhi (王彪之), however, he instead asked Sima Yu to write a carefully worded letter to Huan, persuading Huan to stop.

Yin, meanwhile, was preparing his own campaigns, and he launched one campaign in the middle of 352 and one late in 352—the second one being thoroughly disastrous, as he offended and intimidated the general Yao Xiang (姚襄) into rebellion, and was ambushed by Yao at great loss of life and materials. The people despised Yin for his military losses, and Huan submitted a petition demanding Yin's ouster. The imperial government was compelled to demote Yin to commoner status and exile him. From that point on, the imperial government largely no longer dared to deny Huan's requests.

Read more about this topic:  Huan Wen

Famous quotes containing the words mutual, suspicion, imperial and/or officials:

    Every nation ... have their refinements and grossiertes.... There is a balance ... of good and bad every where; and nothing but the knowing it is so can emancipate one half of the world from the prepossessions which it holds against the other—that [was] the advantage of travel ... it taught us mutual toleration; and mutual toleration ... taught us mutual love.
    Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)

    Conversation is a traffick; and if you enter into it, without some stock of knowledge, to ballance the account perpetually betwixt you,—the trade drops at once: and this is the reason ... why travellers have so little [good] conversation with natives,—owing to their [the natives’] suspicion ... that there is nothing to be extracted from the conversation ... worth the trouble of their bad language.
    Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)

    This is no war for domination or imperial aggrandisement or material gain.... It is a war ... to establish, on impregnable rocks, the rights of the individual and it is a war to establish and revive the stature of man.
    Winston Churchill (1874–1965)

    The conflict between the men who make and the men who report the news is as old as time. News may be true, but it is not truth, and reporters and officials seldom see it the same way.... In the old days, the reporters or couriers of bad news were often put to the gallows; now they are given the Pulitzer Prize, but the conflict goes on.
    James Reston (b. 1909)