Fang La Rebellion: A Visual History

The Fang La rebellion (1120-1121) broke out in the Zhejiang hills when Fang La, a landowner ruined by Emperor Huizong's 'Flower and Rock Network' requisitions of garden stones and plants, rallied peasants, possibly with Manichaean religious overtones, in October 1120. Within months his followers took Hangzhou and six prefectures with 52 counties, killing officials and the rich. The Song diverted the army meant to attack the Liao, under the eunuch general Tong Guan, which crushed the rising by spring 1121; Fang La was captured in his cave and executed. Perhaps two million died, and the diversion weakened the Song's northern campaign on the eve of the Jurchen invasion.

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Prefectures held by the rebels

Timeline of the Fang La rebellion

1. 1120
   Fang La rises at QingxiOctober.
2. 1120
   Hangzhou falls to the rebelsDecember.
3. 1121
   Tong Guan retakes HangzhouFebruary.
4. 1121
   Fang La capturedApril; executed August.
5. 1125
   Jurchen invasion of the Song

The Flower and Rock Network

Huizong, an aesthete emperor, ordered rare stones and plants shipped from the south to his imperial garden at Kaifeng; officials seized them from private estates and dragooned peasants to haul them, tearing down bridges to move giant rocks. Zhejiang, rich and heavily taxed, suffered most. Fang La, a lacquer farmer of Qingxi, was among those ruined.

The uprising

Fang La proclaimed himself Sage Duke in October 1120 and his followers, called 'vegetable-eating devil-worshippers' by officials (suggesting Manichaean or Buddhist sects), swept through Muzhou, Hangzhou, Wuzhou and beyond, killing landlords and officials, some by mutilation. Hangzhou fell in December. Alarmed, the court cancelled the Flower and Rock Network and sent Tong Guan south with 150,000 troops meant for the Liao war.

Suppression and consequences

Song forces retook Hangzhou in February 1121, defeated the rebels in a series of battles and stormed Fang La's mountain base at Bangyuan in April; he was found in a cave and taken to Kaifeng for execution in August. The reprisals were bloody. The delay of the Liao campaign and the exposure of Song weakness contributed to the Jurchen decision to attack; five years later Kaifeng fell and Huizong was a prisoner. In the novel Water Margin, the outlaws of Liangshan are sent to crush Fang La and most of them die doing it.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Northern Song dynasty (960 to 1127)
• Liao dynasty (916 to 1125)
• Jin dynasty (1115-1234) (1115 to 1234)
• Southern Song dynasty (1127 to 1279)
• Western Xia (1038 to 1227)

Wars of the same era and region

• Song-Dai Viet War (1075 to 1077)

8 surprising things about the Fang La rebellion

1. The Flower and Rock Network shipped a single Taihu rock so large that canal bridges and city gates were demolished to let it pass.
2. In Water Margin, the campaign against Fang La kills most of the 108 heroes of Liangshan, and Song Jiang is poisoned soon after.
3. Officials called Fang La's followers 'chicai shimo', vegetable-eating devil worshippers, a term for Manichaeans in Song China.
4. Fang La reportedly took the title Sage Duke and set up his own reign period, Yongle ('eternal joy'), the same name a Ming emperor later chose.
5. The historian's figure of two million dead may include the reprisals and famine that followed.
6. The rebellion is one of the few peasant uprisings in Chinese history to be led by a landowner rather than a poor peasant or sectarian.
7. Emperor Huizong, whose garden mania sparked the rising, is remembered as one of China's greatest painters and calligraphers.
8. The Song general Han Shizhong, later a hero against the Jurchen, made his name capturing Fang La.

Sources

• Fang La Wikipedia
• Song dynasty: Huizong Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Northern Song Dynasty World History Encyclopedia
• Kao Yu-kung, 'A Study of the Fang La Rebellion', Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 24 (1962-63) Harvard-Yenching Institute

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