INTERLUDE.

THE CHARACTER OF LI SHIH-MIN

The tragic story of the quarrel between Li Yuan’s sons reveals the defects in Shih-Min’s character as clearly as it depicts the criminality of his brothers. The conqueror who had outwitted the most experienced generals of his day and shown deep insight into the minds of his military opponents, had been the helpless and apathetic victim of palace plots, only saved at the eleventh hour by the devotion and despairing vehemence of his supporters. Then, indeed, tardily awaking to his peril, Shih-Min had applied a characteristically swift and drastic remedy.

There is here an apparent contradiction which deserves examination. Shih-Min as the man of action, the general in the field, or the strategist in the council chamber, was resolute, alert and perspicacious. As the courtier attempting to thwart the intrigues of his rivals he was inept, unprepared and obtuse. Shih-Min, in fact, was no politician. This is the more remarkable as skill in the art of politics, in complex intrigues and the adroit manipulation of personal factors, is an outstanding characteristic of the Chinese people. This faculty is developed in early life and constantly exercised in the family life of the widespreading Chinese clan. In households where several generations and many collateral relatives live together under one roof, the individual soon learns the art of intrigue and the higher graces of tact

Shih-Min conspicuously lacked these very qualities, so highly developed among his countrymen. The singular fact is in some measure explained by the circumstances of his upbringing and early life. From the age of fifteen, when his military career began in the Turkish border wars, Shih-Min had never been absent from the army. His youth and early manhood, for more than twelve years, had been spent in the camp, where he had for long occupied the highest post.

Family life in the ordinary Chinese sense was therefore unknown to him. Accustomed for years to command armies and give orders to his officers, he had no experience of court­craft, no skill in flattering palace ladies and conciliating politicians.

Although it has been convenient to collect the events leading up to the Hsuan Wu gate tragedy into one chapter, it should be emphasised that these intrigues were carried an over a long period of years; years during which Shih-Min was absent on the Turkish frontier for many months at a time. His visits to Chang An were rare and his sojourns at the capital brief. As the military support of the empire his presence was constantly needed on the frontiers. This was inevitable, and Shih-Min could not have evaded these obligations without imperilling the dynasty.

But it is also plain that during those years he took no political steps to counter the machinations of his brothers. He allowed them to gain the emperor’s ear through the all ­important channel of the imperial concubines. Able men such as Wei Cheng, whose political support would have been invaluable, were permitted to drift into the crown prince’s faction, and there is no evidence to show that Shih-Min realised the harm that this indifference to politics was bringing to his fortunes.

Finally, the boy who could persuade the irresolute Li  Yuan to take the hazardous step of open rebellion against Yang Ti, was now, with all the prestige of great victories behind him, unable to influence his father in matters vital to his own safety. During the years following the foundation of the dynasty Shih-Min’s influence at court steadily waned. Though the persistent intrigues of his brothers were no doubt mainly responsible for Li Yuan’s changed feelings, it seems probable that had we accounts of this crisis derived from the crown prince’s party, more stress would be laid upon Shih-Min’s autocratic manner and barely disguised contempt for the silken courtiers of the eastern palace.

 Bred to the life of the frontier and the camp, passing his days with officers whose fortunes he had made, and who were devoted to his person, Shih-Min had acquired an authority and habit of command which must have been highly offensive to the crown prince and even to the emperor himself. At Tai Yuan Fu, when his father was still merely a provincial governor, Shih-Min had shown skill and understanding in gaining his father’s consent to the rebellion. But when Li Yuan was raised to the lonely eminence of a supreme autocrat, Shih-Min seems to have been unable to adapt his methods to these changed conditions. For in the field Shih-Min had been too successful. He outshone the emperor himself and his exploits made the crown prince appear ridiculous. Yet it does not appear that he ever realised the danger of inflicting such “loss of face” upon these important personages.

Shih-Min’s political ineptitude is as much in evidence in the final crisis as in the years of intrigue that went before. When, enmeshed in the plots of his enemies, he went in daily danger of his life and was about to lose his position in the army, he resorted to a purely military solution of his difficulties. In their failure to foresee this possibility his brothers, who counted on Shih-Min’s political incapacity, made their fatal mistake. Imbued with a courtier’s civilian point of view, the crown prince discounted the risk of a military coup d’ètat in the capital. Shih-Min, essentially the soldier, and unable to make headway in a political contest, took what the Chinese call a horseback way out of the difficulty. Applying military methods with which he was familiar to that political world which he did not understand, he left an example of successful and unashamed open violence as an evil precedent to later generations.

In later life, when wider experience as reigning emperor had opened hos eyes to the political methods in use in his court, Shih-Min had reason to regret that resort to undisguised military violence which gained him the throne. He was to learn that such examples, which destroy the veil of legality and decency that commonly cloaks a political crime, tend to encourage the ambitious and shake the stability of established laws. Shih-Min found, too late, that in politics hypocrisy is not only inevitable but also valuable and praiseworthy.

A man of great foresight and wide mental horizons, Shih-Min never understood the smaller minds of lesser men. He could choose his ministers and generals with skill and employ them with discrimination. But he did not understand the intriguer. In the army and the council chamber he did not encounter these types of character, or if they showed themselves, they were swiftly dismissed.

But in his own family be had to deal, not with such men as he had chosen, but with men such as they were born, He could not alter the characters of his brothers and sons, and he filled to understand either their motives or their methods. In military life, dealing with objective realities, or with men of action—whether allies or enemies—whose motives he shared and whose mental processes were akin to his own, Shih-Min was unsurpassed, his genius and intuition never at fault. Bu this talents were ill-suited to the stealthy warfare of palace corridors.

CHAPTER VII.

THE CONQUEST OF THE TURKS.

AD 624-630