Chinese Emperor Yang-ti (569-617)

After poisoning his father Wen-ti (541-604), Yang-Guang acceded the throne as Yang-ti. As a youth, he had served in the south and married a girl of the leading southern Liang family. He also had several concubines. He was known to suffer from mood changes and depressive periods.

Chinese Emperor Yang-ti

Within a few years of his accession, Chinese Emperor Yang-ti (569-617)'s love of luxury became apparent. He started a building program at exorbitant costs. Three major campains against Korea resulted in crippling losses of live and money. Ruthless attempts to crush the opposition couldn't stem the tide and in 617 Yang-ti was forced to abdicate and flee. He was strangled by the son of a minister whom he had disgraced.

As Emperor, Yang-ti had a marked love for luxury. He used forced labour for the building of a new city, Luoyang, close to the grain-producing regions of China. Luoyang was ornamented with palaces, an artificial lake with islands and a pleasure park. Its cost was exorbitant. Yang-ti loved to make boat trips or horse rides at night, while he was surrounded by young girls, singing and reciting poems. He also undertook long journeys throughout his Empire with an immense following.

Early in his reign Yang-ti had ordered the construction of a Grand Canal and a restoration and extension of the Great Wall. Like his father, Wen-ti, Yang-ti had new Buddhist temples constructed. With military might he tried in vain to subdue Korea. He fought the Turks, too, but diplomatic missions and bribery, inciting the eastern against the western Turks and vice versa, had better results.

The wars and building projects resulted in crippling losses of life and money, but Yang-ti ignored the mounting unrest. The unrest increased when the Chinese suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the Turks in 615, when Yang-ti was forced to move his seat to the south. When in addition the Yellow River flooded, peasant uprisings swept the country. Ruthless attempts to crush the opposition failed.

In 618 Yang-ti’s most-beloved son, the dutiful Yang Gao (607–618), was killed before his eyes, and Yang-ti himself was subsequently strangled. His younger son Gong-ti (±611-618) was placed on the throne with a northern military figure, Li-Yuan, as regent. The next year the regent deposed the puppet Emperor and declared himself the founding Emperor of the Tang dynasty.