The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History's 100 Worst Atrocities (11 page)

Meanwhile, several smaller bands of rebels in central China between the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers fell under the spell of another branch of the Liu family and consolidated into a larger threat, called the Lulin, or Greenwood, Army after the rugged mountain (Lu-lin, translated as “green wood”) that had served as their first refuge. The Greenwood chief was Liu Yan, a sixth-generation descendant of a former Han emperor, but ironically he proved far too competent and charismatic to keep his supporters. The other Greenwood leaders preferred a weak nonentity whom they could manipulate, so they conspired and connived and elevated Liu Yan’s third cousin, Liu Xuan, to the rank of declared emperor instead.
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Wang Mang sent another massive army, said to be almost 500,000, although it probably wasn’t, to crush the Greenwood forces, said to number less than 10,000, al
though that probably wasn’t true either. In June 23 CE, as the Xin army besieged a Greenwood garrison in the town of Kunyang, Liu Xiu, younger brother of the former leader Liu Yan, gathered fresh rebels in the countryside and moved to relieve the siege. The Xin commander underestimated the strength of the approaching rebels and took an arrogantly trivial force to brush them aside. When the Greenwood rebels beat this small unit, the Xin soldiers fled back toward the main army, spreading panic and pessimism. Then the Greenwood forces inside Kunyang attacked out the town gates, while the rebel forces outside the town followed up their victory. A sudden thunderstorm and flash flood added to the confusion, and the Xin army fled and was massacred in retreat.
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Having lost two major armies in a single year, Wang Mang was doomed. In the race to reach the capital at Chang’an (Xian nowadays), the Greenwood Army arriv
ed before the Red Eyebrows, so their candidate, Liu Xuan, became the leader of the restored Han dynasty. Chang’an fell after determined block-by-block defense. As the palace burned, Wang Mang was beheaded and cut into pieces so that everyone could have a keepsake.
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The New Han

Before Liu Xuan had a chance to settle in and enjoy being emperor, conspiracies began to surround him. The former Infant Emperor Ruzi was wooed out of retirement by a couple of minor noblemen, but their attempt to seize power failed. They were all executed.

To play it safe, Xuan quickly found an excuse to have his former rival, L
iu Yan, executed as well.

Then several generals plotted to kidnap Xuan. They too were discovered and most of them were executed, but one of the survivors managed to chase Xuan out of Chang’an. Xuan regrouped with loyal generals and retook the city. Xuan was hardly back on his throne when the Red Eyebrows arrived and took Chang’an for themselves, installing their own emperor, Liu Penzi. The Red Eyebrows captured Emperor Liu Xuan but merely demoted him to lesser nobility and sent him away to herd horses so as not to stir up resentment. Soon, however, the people began to speak wistfully about the days when Xuan was in charge, so he was dragged into a dungeon and strangled.
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Liu Yan’s brother, Liu Xiu, was off fighting on the frontier. A legendarily prudent man, Liu Xiu had been lying low since Liu Yan’s execution on trumped-up charges a couple of years earlier, but with Xuan out of the picture, he declared himself emperor (25 CE) and marched his army against the Red Eyebrows. It was a tough campaign, but Liu Xiu prevailed and took Chang’an in 27 CE. He pursued the retreating Red Eyebrows and finally trapped them with overwhelming numbers. Sick of all of the killing, Liu Xiu held back the attack and offered generous terms of surrender: a general amnesty, a nice estate for ex-Emperor Penzi, and no mass executions. They accepted.

Liu Xiu’s restored Han dynasty would survive for another two centuries. He became known to poster
ity as the “Complete and Martial Emperor”—in Chinese, Emperor Guangwu.

Population Plummet

Despite a few temporary interruptions, China has existed as a political entity longer than any other nation on earth, and the civil servants of the Chinese Empire have been keeping detailed records for centuries. Many have been lost to fire, flood, war, and mice, but some fragments, copies, and summaries survive. Among them are sporadic census records going back several dynasties. Surprisingly, summaries of the Chinese census of 2 CE are largely intact, giving us the oldest reliable population figures of any society in history. Admittedly, there are a few discrepancies in the data, but most scholars accept that the population of China in 2 CE was around 57,671,400.

After that, census records show that China was in serious trouble. The recorded population plunged to 21 million in 57 CE, bounced up to 34 million in 75 CE, then worked its way up to 43 million by 88 CE. I know that’s a lot of numbers to spring on the unsuspect
ing reader in one sentence, but the upshot is that China appears to have lost close to 37 million people in a half century of war, flood, and famine, and the count was still almost 13 million short as the century came to a close. As bad as that looks, it’s likely that many of the 37 million missing people were still alive but hiding from tax collectors. The reduced census count of 57 CE probably indicates the government’s inability to find every person in China after a period of widespread unrest rather than a pure death toll.

Even so, most scholars believe that there is an actual population loss of many millions hidden somewhere
in there. Depending on whom you read, the real population decline in China during the first century could be anywhere from 8 to 43 million. Scrounging around, I was able to find several different estimates. I have chosen the low-middle estimate of 10 million as a reasonable compromise.
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ROMAN-JEWISH WARS

Death toll:
350,000

Rank:
94

Type:
religious uprising, colonial rebellion

Broad dividing line:
Jews vs. Romans

Time frame:
66–74 and 132–135 CE

Location:
Palestine

Who usually gets the most blame:
Romans

Another damn:
rebellion against Rome

First Jewish Revolt (66–74 CE)

Following Alexander the Great’s conquests, Greeks had settled over the Middle East, where they usually formed an alien upper class resented by the natives. In Caesarea, the chief city of Roman Palestine, Greeks and Jews were always exchanging insults, but sometimes the heckling escalated to full-scale riots. After one round of riots, the Roman governor demanded that the Jewish community pay for all of the damages. The Jews, however, claimed that the Greeks were to blame for sacrificing some birds on the steps of a synagogue in the first place, so they refused. No problem; the Roman governor simply took the money out of the temple treasury in Jerusalem.

Jews all over the country rose up in anger at the blasphemy. Radical nationalists—the Zealots—easily chased the small Roman garrison into Syria. In the first flush of victor
y, it looked like God had restored the Jewish nation to its former glory until Emperor Nero sent a full army under Vespasian to put down the uprising. His Roman legions systematically eradicated the rebels in Galilee with sieges, massacres, and political maneuvering, and eventually they closed in on Jerusalem.

The war was interrupted in 68 when Roman generals fed up with Nero’s antics overthrew him, and one after another, every Roman general in the empire marched his legions on Rome to claim the throne for himself. Vespasian proved to be the last and most permanent of the four emperors proclaimed during this year and a half of chaos.

Emperor Vespasian turned the Jewish rebellion over to his son Titus, who surrounded Jerusalem. Siege engines were difficult to build in Palestine because trees were scarce and scraggly, but sheer Roman stubbornness kept Jerusalem sealed off for two years and brought its defenders toward the edge of starvation. Every day the Romans captured desperate foraging parties of Zealots outside the walls and nailed them up in plain view of the defenders. When Jerusalem finally fell in 70 CE, the Romans massacred the population and reduced the temple in Jerusalem to rubble. The five-foot-tall seven-branched gold candlestick that had graced the temple was hauled off to Rome and triumphantly paraded for the people.

Most of the city walls were demolished, but Titus ordered a short, impressive stretch of the temple-complex wall preserved as a lesson to future rebels that even the thickest walls can’t withstand the Roman army. This wall fragment (now known as the Western or Wailing Wall) is the holiest spot in Judaism, which proves that the
real
lesson for future rebellions is either (a) faith can indeed withstand the Roman army or (b) if you start to demolish a holy site, finish the damn job.
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The last 960 Zealots retreated to the mountain fortress of Masada. The defenders watched helplessly as the Romans began to methodically build a massive ramp up the mountain in order to roll their siege engines into range. Knowing they were doomed, the trapped Zealots drew lots. The losers killed the winners and then drew lots again. The losers killed the winners, and so on, until only one defender was left alive to commit the unpardonable sin of suicide.

Bar Kokhba Revolt (132–135 CE)

The destruction caused by the first revolt was centered mostly on Jerusalem, and much of Palestine remained unravaged. Peace and prosperity gradually returned.
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Then the Romans tried to assimilate the province into the larger Mediterranean cultural melting pot. Around 132, Emperor Hadrian banned genital mutilation throughout the empire, which sounds like an excellent idea until we remember that Judaism requires circumcision. Hadrian quickly revised his order to make an exception for Jews. Unfortunately, Hadrian also chose this moment to start rebuilding Jerusalem as a modern Roman city with a temple of Jupiter where the temple of Yahweh had stood.

The Jews would not accept any of this, and they rose up under Simon ben Kosiba, who gained the messianic nickname Bar Kokhba, “Son of the Star.”
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The rebels were strongest in the countryside, where they built fortified strongholds interlaced with hidden access tunnels. The Romans sent three legions to put down the rebellion. It was a hard campaign, and one of the legions disappears from the history books after this, probably wiped out by the rebels. The war is said to have destroyed fifty strongholds and 985 villages. It was so destructive that we still don’t have the whole story or too many relics, just a few caves discovered in the cliffs near the Dead Sea. These caves housed the last of the rebels, and archaeologists named them after their most distinctive contents: the Cave of Scrolls, the Cave of Arrows, the Cave of Letters (including some written by Bar Kokhba), and the Cave of Horrors (forty skeletons, entire families dead of starvation), among others.

When the fighting was over, most of the Jews in Palestine were killed, exiled, or enslaved, and this time the Romans made certain there would not be a next time. The Romans depopulated much of the territory and restocked it with more cooperative ethnicities. The Jews were exiled from Palestine, and the Diaspora, the scattering of Jews across the globe, began.

Death Toll

Ancient historians claim that as many as 2 million Jews were killed in these and other revolts. The contemporary Jewish historian Josephus reported that 1,197,000 people were killed during the siege of Jerusalem in the first revolt, although Tacitus estimated a death toll of half that: 600,000.
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Cassius Dio
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reports that a total of 580,000 Jews were killed in battle during the second revolt. Ancient historians report the death toll for other rebellions by Jewish minorities in Cyrene and Cyprus (not included here) as 220,000 and 240,000.
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These unbelievable claims are usually held up as the perfect example of why not to trust the numbers in ancient histories.

Realistically, maybe one-fifth to one-half of the inhabitants of Palestine died in each of the revolts, but that’s still not a complete answer because no one knows how many people lived there to begin with. Estimates of the pre-revolt population of Palestine run anywhere from 0.5 million to 6 million. Religious historians tend to favor the high numbers, which are based on written sources like the works of Josephus; archaeologists favor the low numbers, which are based on land use and population densities.
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In any case, a reasonable estimate would be something like 350,000 deaths all told, which would be around one-third if the original population was 1 million, or one-half if it was 700,000, or one-fourth if it was 1.4 million. No matter what anyone says, it’s unlikely that the ancient population of the area came anywhere close to 2 million, which was the number of inhabitants at the time of independence in 1948.