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The dangerous intrigues and downfall of the Ho clan

The revolt of the Ho clan is probably the most important single
internal disturbance during this reign. When Emperor Hsüan was
enthroned, Ho Kuang modestly resigned; Emperor Hsüan retained this
minister in power, and he was the actual ruler until his death in 68 B.C.
Emperor Hsüan paid no attention to the government until after Ho
Kuang's death. In recompense for his services, Emperor Hsüan granted
Ho Kuang a laudatory edict, ranked him the same as Hsiao Ho, Emperor
Kao's Chancellor of State, who had founded the dynastic institutions,
and gave his heirs the right to be exempt from the usual inheritance tax,
by which the estate of a noble was decreased one-fifth each time it was
transmitted from one generation to another. Ho Kuang's son, Ho Yü,
was made General of the Right; Ho Kuang's grand-nephew, Ho Shan,
was made Intendant of Affairs of the Masters of Writing; Ho Kuang's
grand-daughter was the Empress Dowager née Shang-kuan; his daughter
was the Empress nee Ho; his sons-in-law, grand-nephews, and other
relatives were all given high positions.

Thus the Ho clan seemed to be in firm control of the court. But the
train of events that was to bring about this clan's speedy downfall and
destruction had already begun.

Ho Kuang's first wife had no sons; his son, Yü, was born of a slave-girl,
Hsien. After his first wife had died, Ho Kuang had accordingly made
Hsien his wife. Her unscrupulous ambition destroyed his house.

When Emperor Hsüan had been a commoner, with the name Liu
Ping-yi, he was at first not even allowed to be enregistered as a member
of the imperial house; consequently his friends found difficulty in securing
a wife for him. The eunuch Superintendent of the Lateral Courts (the
imperial harem) had been a follower of Heir-apparent Li, Liu Ping-yi's
grandfather. One of the Superintendent's subordinate eunuchs, Hsü
Kuang-han, had a daughter, P'ing-chün, who was in her fourteenth or
fifteenth year. She had been betrothed to a boy who had died and so
it would be difficult to find a husband for her. The Superintendent
persuaded her father to marry her to Liu Ping-yi, which was done in
75 B.C. Hsü Kuang-han had been a Gentleman to Emperor Wu, but
through sheer stupidity had been impeached for robbery when accompanying
the Emperor, a capital crime; his punishment had been commuted
to castration, and he had finally become Inspector of Fields in the Drying
House, the prison in the harem of the imperial palace, where was located
the palace laundry. Several months before Liu Ho4b's deposition, P'ing-chün
gave birth to a boy, who later became Emperor Yüan.

After Liu Ping-yi became Emperor, P'ing-chün was made a Favorite
Beauty (the highest rank of imperial concubines). Ho Kuang had a
young daughter, and the officials began talking of appointing an Empress,
thinking naturally of this daughter. But Emperor Hsüan cared
for P'ing-chün and knew the Confucian principle that a wife married in
poverty must not be cast off in success, so told his officials that they
should seek even for the swords he had used before he had been ennobled.
They took the hint, and suggested P'ing-chün as Empress.
She was appointed in 74 B.C.

Ho Kuang's wife, Ho Hsien, was now at her wits' end, for she was
ambitious to make her daughter the Empress. The next year, the
Empress nee Hsü was with child and fell ill. One of the imperial women
physicians was a favorite with the Ho family and came to ask Ho Hsien
for a favor in behalf of her husband, who was a guard in the palace
harem. Ho Hsien saw her opportunity, and persuaded this woman to
poison the Empress. Medicines given to imperial personages were
always tested befoŕehand; this woman watched her opportunity and
mixed the extract from some poisonous shells with the great pill of the
Grand Physician. Before the Empress died in great agony (71 B.C.),
she asserted she had been poisoned. Ho Hsien did not dare to reward
the woman physician highly; the imperial physicians were all arrested

and questioned; Ho Hsien had to tell her husband what she had done.
He said nothing, but managed to have the woman physician released.
Then Ho Hsien prepared her daughter's marriage garments and sent
her to the imperial palace. A year after the Empress née Hsü's death,
Ho Hsien's daughter became Empress. She secured the sole affection
of the Emperor.

Emperor Hsüan would not, however, allow affection for a new wife
to prevent him from doing his duty to the wife of his poverty. A year
after Ho Kuang died, the Emperor made Liu Shih, the son of his first
wife, his Heir-apparent, and made his first wife's father, Hsü Kuang-han,
a marquis. Ho Kuang had previously opposed such an enfeoffment,
saying that it was not proper for a criminal to be made a noble. Ho
Hsien was now extremely angry, and instructed her daughter to poison
the Heir-apparent. The sudden death of the Empress née Hsü had put
people on their guard, and the child's nurse tasted all food given the boy,
even when it was offered by the new Empress, so that the latter could
not find any opportunity to poison the boy, even though she summoned
the boy several times and kept poison by her.

After the death of Ho Kuang in 68 B.C., the Grandee Secretary Wei
Hsiang and others pointed out to Emperor Hsüan the danger of allowing
one clan to monopolize the high positions in the court. The power of
Ho Kuang's grand-nephew, Ho Shan, was accordingly curtailed drastically
by enacting that memorials might be sealed before presentation
and no duplicate need be presented. Thus the Intendant of Affairs of
the Masters of Writing no longer knew beforehand what was being said
to the throne and could not completely control the government business.
Wei Hsiang had long private talks with the Emperor. About this time
Emperor Hsüan heard the truth regarding the assassination of his first
Empress. He did not attempt to punish the Ho clan immediately, for
that clan and its relatives controlled the army. The Empress's assassination
was accordingly not investigated any further. Instead of that,
the members of the Ho faction were gradually displaced and their power
taken away. The generals in that faction were one by one given civil
posts or sent out into the provinces to be Grand Administrators of distant
commanderies. Their positions were given to members of the Shih or
Hsü clans, to whom belonged the maternal grandfather and the fatherin-law
of the Emperor. Wei Hsiang was made Lieutenant Chancellor
in place of the incompetent Confucian scholar who had been appointed
through Ho Kuang's influence. Ho Yü was promoted to be Commanderin-chief,
but was denied the right to wear the regular hat of a commanderin-chief
or to carry the commander-in-chief's seal (whereby orders were
authenticated), and thus his troops were taken out of his control.

When the Ho clan thus saw their power shorn away, they wept and
blamed themselves. At last Ho Hsien told them about the poisoning of
the Empress née Hsü. They then saw that there was no hope for their
safety except by some desperate action. So they plotted to have the
Empress Dowager hold a feast to which Wei Hsiang and Hsü Kuang-han
were to be invited, at which the Empress Dowager was to issue an edict
to behead these two enemies of the Ho faction, dethrone Emperor Hsüan,
and make Ho Yü the Emperor. A messenger bearing news of this plot
was intercepted by the imperial officials, and the palace of the unsuspecting
Empress Dowager was carefully guarded, to prevent word of
the plot being carried to her. At the same time, an imperial edict commanded
that there should be no more arrests, thereby confounding the
Ho faction. Their plot could not be carried out, because persons essential
to the plot were moved to positions away from the capital. Ho
Shan and his second cousin, Ho Yün, were dismissed from their positions
for disrespectful lack of attention to their duties. Then Ho Shan was
arrested and sentenced for having written secret letters. Ho Hsien
offered to pay a thousand head of horses and to turn over to the government
her residence west of Ch'ang-an, in order to ransom Ho Shan, but to
no avail. He and Ho Yün then committed suicide. Thereupon Ho Hsien,
Ho Yü, and the other conspirators were arrested and the whole Ho faction
was exterminated. Altogether several thousand families were executed
and destroyed as accomplices; the only ones saved alive were the two
Empresses. The Empress Dowager seems to have known nothing about
the plot. The Empress nee Ho was dismissed and sent to a palace in
Shang-lin Park, outside the capital; eleven years later she was moved
to a still meaner place, whereupon she committed suicide. Thus the Ho
clan, from having held the dominating power in the government, fell into
utter ruin and annihilation within two years after the death of Ho Kuang.
A more complete upset would hardly be imagined. The skill with which
power was gradually taken away from this faction, its suspicions allayed
by making no attempt to unearth evidence against them, while they were
yet pursued relentlessly, is worthy of note. Rarely has such great
power been so successfully withdrawn.