SQ Emperor Jing

 

It was as though Sima Qian consulted the court calendar and made a list of events for Emperor Jing’s incredibly bland biography.  The single most important event of the Emperor’s reign was the revolt of 7 Kingdoms led by his relative Liu Pi, but that war was dealt with in one paragraph [H1.312b].  The revolt was clearly important because Sima Qian detailed it from the rebels’ point of view in the Liu Pi chapter [H1.403-422], yet he did not do a parallel account in the Emperor’s chapter.  I think Sima Qian was making a comment about the role of the ruler in (mostly) peaceful times: the caretaker Emperor’s task is to keep what worked for his predecessor.  The rebellion had been slowly brewing for decades.  When it finally exploded three years into Emperor Jing’s reign, he was not prepared to rule through it.  So he listened to his advisors, but did not know how to judge whether the advice given were proper advice for an emperor not used to war. 

In the Liu Pi chapter, Emperor Jing listens to his favorite Chao Cuo and begins to take away feudal territories, but he chooses not to reduce Liu Pi’s territory as Chao Cuo had suggested [H1.406mb].  Then when Liu Pi begins the revolt as Chao Cuo had predicted he would, the Emperor listens to a different advisor, Yuan Ang, on how to end it [H1.414t].  Though aware that Yuan Ang and Chao Cuo were enemies [H1.459m], he agrees to appease the rebels by executing Chao Cuo.  The plan did not work.  Although the Emperor did eventually put down the revolt, it took yet another advisor, Lord Deng, to point out that the Emperor had in fact made a mistake in managing the revolt from the beginning [H2.465tm]. 

Perhaps Sima Qian could not point out these deficiencies in Empeor Jing’s chapter, for he was the current emperor’s father.   Or, maybe writing about these issues in other chapters was enough so that the Emperor Jing’s biography reads as that of a peacetime ruler.  After all, Sima Qian had earlier praised the reign of the ineffective Emperor Hui, who did nothing other than sit “with folded hands and unruffled garments” during a time of peace [H1.284].   

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