The rebellion of Hou Jing and the fall of Jiankang

Hou Jing had governed the lands south of the Yellow River for Gao Huan of the Eastern Wei. After Gao’s death in 547 he rebelled against Gao’s son and offered his provinces to the Liang, and Emperor Wu accepted. But a Liang army sent north to support him was routed and its commander Xiao Yuanming captured; Hou Jing himself was defeated at Woyang early in 548 and seized the Liang city of Shouyang, and when the Liang court began to negotiate peace with the Eastern Wei, he feared being handed over. On 27 September 548 he rose, declaring that he wanted to rid the court of corrupt ministers such as Zhu Yi.

With the secret support of the emperor’s nephew Xiao Zhengde, Hou Jing crossed the Yangtze at Caishi on 7 December with, according to the Book of Liang, a few hundred horses and a thousand men (the Zizhi tongjian says 8,000), and two days later reached the capital. The walled palace city, Taicheng, held out for four and a half months. According to the Zizhi tongjian, when the gates were shut more than 100,000 men and women were inside, over 20,000 of them in armour; by the end eight or nine in ten had died of hunger and disease, and fewer than 4,000 could still man the walls. The relief armies of the Liang princes gathered outside but never broke the siege. On 24 April 549 the rebels took the palace city and plundered it; Emperor Wu, their captive, died on 12 June in his 86th year by Chinese reckoning.

Hou Jing ruled through puppets, killed Emperor Jianwen and on 1 January 552 proclaimed himself emperor of Han. War, drought and locusts ruined the lower Yangtze: the Zizhi tongjian speaks of ‘a thousand li without the smoke of a hearth’ and white bones heaped up like hills. From Jiangling, Emperor Wu’s son Xiao Yi sent Wang Sengbian down the Yangtze; joined by Chen Baxian, who had marched north from Shixing (modern Shaoguan) in the far south, he retook Jiankang on 28 April 552. Hou Jing fled by boat towards the sea and was killed by his follower Yang Kun — in the fourth lunar month, late May or early June 552, according to the Zizhi tongjian, whose day date is corrupt, while the Book of Liang records his defeat under the third month. The Liang never recovered: the Western Wei took Sichuan and then sacked Jiangling, and in 557 Chen Baxian founded the Chen dynasty.