THREE KINGDOMS - Oversimplified - A Historian Reacts

all right you asked for it here it is the only oversimplified video i have not done a reaction to every video that i upload there's somebody who says oversimplified three kingdoms so here it is we're gonna do it today a couple of things up front before we dive into this uh if you're new to the channel welcome my name is chris i don't introduce myself very often on here i live in northeast ohio i went to school for history but wanted to be a history teacher didn't work out that way my life went another direction so this has become my outlet uh for history i do a mix of reaction videos in fact december 8th will be the one year anniversary of my very first reaction video so we're going to be doing some special stuff related to the one-year anniversary of reactions and looking back on some of my favorite ones that i've done but i also do a lot of original content going to visit battlefields vlogs about topics of history that interest me things like that so i hope you'll check out the channel explore that variety of things don't really consider what i do necessarily to be reactions because i try to add something of value try to maybe add something you did not know trying to make some historical parallels to other areas of history because we believe that history rhymes even if it doesn't necessarily repeat itself so um but the goal here is to learn something new and i'll confess up front i do not know a lot about japanese history i do not know a lot about chinese history or just east asian history in general so i'm going into this one pretty blind as far as what i can offer but i will try to offer some information we'll look some things up we're warranted i hope you enjoy it and if not already done so please consider subscribing i would greatly appreciate that and if you want to see more content from battlefields around the world including europe which hopefully will be coming in the next couple of months please consider becoming a patron where all of the money goes directly to funding my travel to go to historic sites and bring you guys original content here we go [Music] the brand new strategy game from the multi-award winning total war series support my channel by using the link in the description game by the way i've played that game on steam also new merch available now in the store including a mystery new character pin i wonder who it could be ancient china the sun is shining the birds are singing the children are playing in the village square what a wonderful time to be alive hey the yellow river flooded again and destroyed all your crops and also we're being raided by nomadic tribesmen and also this period of chinese history may be entirely mythical meaning you may not even exist well that would certainly explain the laser eyes chinese civilization began around the year 2000 bc when the possibly mythical shad dynasty was formed throughout china's history dynasties would usually rise up with a powerful leader who worked for the good of the people but over time the leaders would become more corrupt and self-serving someone would inevitably build a lake of alcohol and the angry populace would overthrow them giving i need to know if that really happened so if we are to assume that this dynasty really did exist um as he said you know a lot of it is mythology and that's true with a lot of early history because we don't necessarily have a lot of sources for a lot of this stuff so you have to try and discern what's mythology what's history and there's probably a truth somewhere in the middle so i think i would err on the side of saying that maybe not all the details of what we know about this time are true but i think the big picture probably is true but here we go according to liu chang i guess that's how it's pronounced i'm terrible with chinese his book uh written around 18 bc so this is you know what 1500 2 000 years later he was corrupted by his infatuation with a concubine who was beautiful but completely lacking in virtue among other things she liked to drink enjoyed music and also had a penchant for jugglers and sing-song girls apparently she had him order a lake of wine made how do you even like keep that i don't know i guess seal it with something they both sailed about in the alcohol lake in an orgy of drunken naked men and women bathing and drinking she then commanded three thousand men to drink the lake dry only to laugh when they all drowned so again that's one of those things is it just trying to make a point about who this person was and maybe exaggerating to make that point i don't know wait for a new dynasty to rise following this pattern the shad dynasty was replaced by the shine who liked bronze and writing but then the leaders got corrupt and were replaced by the joe who liked the iron in philosophy but that one sort of just fell apart and was replaced by the chin like building walls you'll notice every one of these dynasties that's replacing the previous one has a little bit more territory it grew each time i mean check that out um it seems like you know each dynasty that took over expanded the territory of china a little bit who liked bronze and writing but then the leaders got corrupt and were replaced by the joe who liked the iron in philosophy but that one sort of just fell apart and was replaced by the chin who liked building walls and people made out of rock but they were pretty tyrannical from this so those are the terra cotta army uh which is one of the most incredible historic finds in all of history it's literally thousands of life-size soldiers carved uh out of i don't know if it's is it rock i guess it is um and when they discovered this it was just an incredible thing pretty tyrannical from the start and were quickly replaced by the han who like creating new trade routes and getting in touch with their emotions in line with this pattern the han dynasty came about under the strong and a lot of the i mean the han dynasty is basically a good bit of modern china and even some of what you see north korea there um so that's i mean now we're starting to get into the borders of what we know china today to be i mean china's got a little more territory over here but strong and popular leadership of emperor gao zoo the dynasty remained firmly in place for over four centuries and was considered a golden age in chinese history developing new forms of art political thinking technology oh looks like all the leaders got corrupt see this happens all the time i mean corruption was a major problem in the european uh dynasties as well uh certainly in places like rome the roman empire you had constant corruption at the top what do they say power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely same kind of thing happening here probably the biggest problem in ancient china's political system that allowed so much corruption to come about all the time was a little something called court culture let me explain imagine for me if you will that you are the son of the chinese emperor hooray now apart from how weird it is that you have a ton of stepmoms and many of them would like to kill you and also all of your friends are middle age dudes with no dongs hold on a second eunuchs do not have no dongs eunuchs have no testicles just a point of clarification life's pretty alright one day your father says son i know our relationship hasn't been the best and i've never said this before but i just want to let you know that i love you oh no i'm having a heart attack look at you now you're the emperor i'm so proud of you but wait you are but this reminds me a little bit of czar nicholas ii whose father never really prepared him uh to be czar and so when he becomes the ruler uh the emperor of russia he really just has not been trained or prepared for it and you can see this in all kinds of other kingdoms and dynasties where you have a young person come to the throne who's not prepared who gets taken advantage of by the more powerful adults of the world and a lot of times dynasties get overthrown nations get conquered when they have a child emperor or king child and have no idea how to rule over a massive empire fret not because just about everyone in your court wants to help you out with that hey man remember me i'm your mom's bro anyway i heard you needed someone to rule over china for you i mean to help you rule china so hey here's a popsicle i hope we can get along and you know honestly if you think about it imagine trying to rule an empire of that size in a time when you don't have technology i mean it's not like you can just have your hand on everything it's not like today where you can pick up the phone and call or you can have a video conference or even 100 years ago where you could send a telegram um you know or you had radio and things like that i mean this is a time when it would have taken months uh to get messages to and from the far reaches of your kingdom no way man we've been your friends and your personal caretakers your whole life and even though we may have no dongs i think you should give us all the power to rule china i mean help you rule china so who will you be influenced by your scheming uncle or your loyal eunuchs and towards the end of the han dynasty a string of child emperors allowed more and more power to fall into the hands of the units interesting oh no now they're scheming too they began handing out government jobs for bribes heavily taxing the poor for their own wealth and while you're sitting there eating your popsicle everyone in your court is literally murdering each other to try and consolidate more power and riches for themselves and this is not unique to china this is the kind of thing that happens everywhere in every generation of every country over time again that the idea of wanting power and competing against people for influence competing against people for uh authority uh boy it has brought down so many uh empires while all the peasants are outside like hey did you guys know there's been a drought out here for two years guys obviously the people weren't too happy that while they were struggling to survive they were also being heavily taxed so that the unique faction could all have rocking mansions complete with swimming pools and alexas so finally when a self-proclaimed taoist wizard came along and was like you know whose fault it is that we're all out here starving it's the emperor and his posse they've lost their mandate from heaven and the imperial family must be destroyed with interesting to see the parallel here uh to uh again nicholas ii because there you had kind of a mysterious wizard guy in the form of rasputin but he was actually a friend at least of the tsarina the czar's wife uh and he becomes a part of what causes that dynasty to collapse the romanov dynasty because people see rasputin as having undue influence uh and they turn on him and therefore turn on the royal family this guy's actually leading the charge against the royal family it's an unrelenting furious wrath well so check this out huh yeah can you tell what it is yet ta-da it's a little kitty cat look at her little ears the people loved his political philosophy he promised them land reforms and his followers grew in number they began arming themselves and wearing yellow turbans is that a baguette this guy's armed with a baguette and he's wearing like a i don't know like you know one of those things you'd wear if you're a construction worker on the side of the road to be seen better i love it and they also developed a really catchy slogan in the year 184 the yellow turbine rebellion broke out across china with millions rising up against the han dynasty and the imperial government in the capital city freaked out with all their internal bickering they were completely unprepared and unable to deal with such a huge rebellion so they were forced to call on independent warlords from across the empire to help them deal with this situation some big names took part in the fighting i'm talking the likes of the great south south the tyrannical dongjo liubei sunjin and many many other chinese names i am definitely not pronouncing correctly these warlords crushed the rebellion in their own respective regions and with casualties in the millions the han dynasty breathed a huge sigh of relief you know this is an important aspect of eastern asian history that i don't think a lot of people in the west are aware of just how many millions of people died in some of these wars uh you know we think of things like world war one and world war ii as being kind of the big deadliest wars in history but in terms of percentage of population not even close i'll show you what i'm talking about well as it turns out the deadliest war uh at least in terms of ancient wars is the three kingdoms war we're talking 36 to 40 million people and that was 2 000 years ago uh i mean you can't even begin to comprehend what was the world population at that time um i'm curious about that we'll look that up in just a minute but uh in medieval period uh again the mongol conquests we're talking east asia 30 to 40 million uh a rebellion in china 13 to 36 million uh conquests of temur uh which is uh eurasia so that's a little further west but again it's asia uh just unbelievable death tolls uh world war ii 85 million but we're talking you know 80 years ago so much more modern time period transition from the ming to king dynasties um the taiping rebellion 20 to 70 million people and this was going on at the same time as the american civil war the american civil war killed maybe 700 000 people and in america that's like our bloodbath that we had uh and at the same time that was going on you had a war that killed maybe a hundred times that many people going on at the same time second sino-japanese war same thing so i mean most of the deadliest wars in human history and even world war ii involved large numbers of chinese people let's take a look at what the world population was at the time that this uh three kings rebellion is a three kingdoms uh war is killing 40 million people so the estimate uh here is um perhaps 200 million people on the entire planet uh at the time that this is happening so we're talking 10 of the world's population um now what percentage of the of the chinese population is that is my next question so there were censuses done in chinese history at that time so modern estimates put it around 60 61 million people which would be a third of the world's population at that time and maybe a third to one half of that total dies in the three kingdoms war maybe even more than that so that's what a big deal this conflict is in world history we just don't know a lot about it in the west but what they didn't realize is that by relying on all the warlords and their armies they had essentially diminished their own central control over the empire and many of the warlords now held the power to act almost completely independently and rule over their own local regions themselves back in the capital the emperor and his son were having a little chat listen i know we've had our ups and downs and i spend all of my time with your many many smoking hot stepmoms but what say you and i finally go on a little fishing trip together this weekend oh no i'm having a stroke oh geez and yet another child emperor was on the throne this time however instead of the eunuch faction gaining even more power this child emperor's uncle became his regent who also just so happened to be the head of the imperial army hujin man i hate those sneaky lying cheating eunuchs hey warlord you and chow what should we do kill them all right on you can't kill the eunuchs they're a vital part of this empire's governance and also they paid me a lot of money to say that about them ah come on no so hojin and yuan xiao decided the empress may need more convincing and so they called in an infamous feared tyrannical overweight warlord from the northwest to help convince her that man was dongjo and he set out for the capital city with his army hey guys i heard a rumor that hood jim was planning on killing us then why don't we kill him first and so it was they lured him to the palace with a forge letter from his sister and when he got there they lobbed off his head see this is the problem excuse me the problem with these kinds of plots you've got to carry it out before word gets out or you get the plot turned around on you i was reading the other day and i don't remember where it was about a situation where some ruler was going to get rid of some of his some of the people who worked for him and uh he told them basically you're going to be executed tomorrow but first i want you to you know do some work for me today and so in the middle of the night they killed him first i don't remember the details of it but um yeah you have to when these plots happen you have to pull them off you have to pull them off quickly and efficiently or else it's going to unravel and turn on you [Music] kill them all imperial forces stormed the palace and the eunuchs were all massacred the peasants who were still is that adolf hitler's dad spanking one of the eunuchs in the back i'm sure that's what's happening here that looks like alois hitler from the the hitler video that's a fantastic reference to that one i love it i don't know what's going on with these sheep goat things here dragons i don't know what they are i'm sure there's other references i'm missing still suffering from drought and starvation saw what was going on and began to riot the emperor and his brother were forced to flee the city which was now in flames and the feared nasty tyrannical bloated dongjo had just arrived he found the emperor and his brother wandering the hills outside of the city and was understandably confused so he scooped up the emperor went to the capitol and was like hey guys what's up i see the capital is on fire also i'm here with my army and i have the emperor with me wait a minute the capital is on fire i'm here with my army and i have the emperor screw you guys i'm in charge so now dongjo ruled over the han dynasty as a lot of times possession of the child ruler meant you were the ruler uh the first thing that richard iii does when he begins the process of usurping the throne from his nephew is get possession of his nephew edward v uh edward v had been with his uncle on his mother's side um lord rivers and uh so richard comes in and scoops him away and that then gives him the ability to have leverage in the situation and that's what's happening here too you don't want to be seen as overthrowing the emperor uh so by having the emperor you're helping rule in his name so you're seen as a loyal servant of the emperor rather than a tyrant that you really are the emperor's regent his first act was to say to the emperor hey man no hard feelings but i like your little brother better so i'm actually making him emperor instead of you so you're free to go do whatever you want kill him actually yeah that feels better we talk about that all the time you can't have a former ruler or a very powerful claimant to a throne out there alive i know it sounds callous but that's the reality of the world because then they become a source of rebellions because there can always be if people are looking for an excuse to rebel what a better excuse than putting the rightful emperor on the throne so this is just kind of how things had to be done unless you're in the byzantine empire and then you don't have to kill them you just have to blind them that was a big thing they like to do dongjo ruled with an iron fist and he did whatever the flip he wanted he made absolute decisions himself showing no regard for the monarchy he had his opponents or those who disagreed with him killed he broke protocol doing things like keeping his sword when approaching the emperor wearing shoes in the court crocs sleeping in the emperor's bed and worst of all he would walk in the presence of the emperor you were meant to trot so this is all definitely done on purpose it's his way of exerting his authority it's his way of saying you know what i'm really the one in charge here all you peasants need to obey the rules with the emperor i don't need to the other warlords around the empire hated him and so they said something needs to be done about this guy what say we form a coalition and oust him and it was agreed warlords from across china their armies amounting to a hundred thousand men allied together against the tyranny of dongzhou yuan xiao's coalition consisted of some of the nation's most capable leaders including his half-brother yuen shu the great satsao and sunjien but dongjo had an ace up his sleeve his protege an adopted son one of the most skilled and feared warriors in all of china it's lubu this guy was a beast of a man he never lost a duel and no other warlord dared challenge him to one he was also famous for betraying just about every warlord he ever fought for something that dongjo didn't seem too concerned about the coalition attacked dongjo and liu yang and in particular sunjien's forces inflicted a heavy defeat against him and he was forced to flee to the city of changhan after this initial success however the war entered into a stalemate the warlords in the coalition realized it was going nowhere and also they all secretly hated each other so they all went home dongjo was safe until legend has it that a government official in chiang mai had a daughter who was hot super hot he invited lubu to his home and promised lubu that someday he could marry his daughter then he invited dongjo to his house and did the exact same thing dongjo was so smitten that he insisted on taking her as his concubine immediately and when lubu heard the news he was pretty unhappy hey man aren't you worried that you stole lubu's girl and betrayal is like his personal hobby lubu betray me no way man never gonna happen and this is the problem with the super egos that some leaders like this have when they think they can get away with anything and do what they want they start to feel invincible uh you see elements of this in leaders that win a lot of military victories throughout history uh you know even people like robert e lee for example started to get this kind of invincibility complex which is how you end up with gettysburg and the stupid stupidity of things like pickets charge everybody around him knew it would fail but he had gotten so used to winning that he didn't think that anything could happen like that and this guy just feels invincible at this point ah crap lubu along with other government officials assassinated the tyrannical dongjo then they left his body burning in the streets some sources say he was so fat and oily he kept on burning for days nice essentially decimated china was left with a huge power gap and a ton of warlords who all slept soundly at night dreaming of being the one to fill it here we enter into a crazy and chaotic period of civil war all across china with so many people so much portrayal so much intricacy it makes game of thrones look like a dr seuss publication but just to give you an idea of how crazy and chaotic it was see if you're able to keep up with this are you ready here we go here's a rough map of the warlords throughout the han dynasty at the time half brothers yuan xiao and yuan chu were both in a power struggle for who would become the figurehead of their family you and shu made alliances with warlords in the north along with sun jien the guy who defeated dongzhou yuan xiao also made alliances who was an amazing strategist and general all of these warlords began fighting each other satsang began building his own strength by subjugating nearby remnants of the yellow turbine rebellion into his own forces and this is how you end up with a third to one half or maybe more of the people dying in these wars because it's not just one side versus the other it's one side versus the other versus the other versus the other versus the other you got like 20 different sides going on constantly changing hands constantly fighting other people it's a recipe for just disaster but because there were so many people even though they weakened themselves to this point they still made up such a large part of the world's population you know in other times later in history something like this happens you'd have an outside force come in and probably just take over the whole lot of them down south things weren't going so well for xinjiang as he was killed in an ambush so took over then yuan shu got pushed back to the river why so he ordered sunsa to take the territory of warlord liu kang then sunseo went off to capture territories in the east for himself satsa's family lived in this province over here one day they were murdered oh no satsang held the province's governor responsible and so he launched a cruel invasion in which he pillaged cities and murdered over a hundred thousand civilians the governor sent out a call for help and a very popular likable warlord by the name of leo bay came to his aid however while tsatsa was away fighting a rebellion was staged against him in his home province by none other than it's lubu satsang rushed home and defeated lubu who fled to the east which by now had been inherited by leo bay then lu bu surprise surprise launched a rebellion against leo bay together satsang leo bay would go on to invade and defeat lubu lubu offered to join soutsau and satsaw considered the offer but his advisers were like no way man this guy's betrayed literally everyone he ever worked for and so boohoo lubu was executed next satsang convinced the emperor to move in with him now he's in control of the hand government something that made his allies very jealous yuan shu out of nowhere decides to declare himself emperor of the new zhang dynasty nobody like that his allies cut ties with him the imperial government it's one thing to fight for your area of the world to fight for your territory and your dominance over that region but to make yourself emperor that doesn't sit well with anybody did everyone to kill him he tried to flee to his brother yuan xiao but died of illness on the way sinsa took over his territory and then got assassinated so his brother sun chen took over leo bay turned on sauza but got obliterated and was forced to flee south yuan xiao finally defeated the warlord to his north and could now focus south he declared war in his allied south south but was defeated at the battle of guandu so it's basically like one of those uh free-for-all hearts of iron four games uh like i've played a few times the the state mod where each of the 50 states is its own kingdom and then you slowly start wiping out the other ones until you grow until there's only a few left and so that's what's happening here you're slowly seeing the warlords get defeated and so you're going to end up with just a couple of them that are going to vie for rule of the kingdom sao sao has now united the north and he turned his attention to the south in particular leo bias province was becoming a powerful threat so tzatzo attacked him leo bay was now fighting for leo bio and he held satsawa for a while but then leo died and his son took over and immediately surrendered to liubei was horrified and he fled southward to try and maintain control of the province satsang was on an absolute role and it looked like he would be the one to take control of china he began making plans to attack both lyobae and tsunchen and the two of them seeing where things were headed met up and decided to form an alliance now i know that was a lot to take now that works great until you eliminate the other one and then at some point you're gonna have to face each other and they probably both understood that but at least it gives you a better chance but all you really need to know at this point is that this guy is on his way to taking over everything and he's about to throw his full weight at the southern warlords these two have one chance one battle to prevent him from invading the south and that battle was the famous battle of red cliffs to take this out satsai would need to control and cross the mighty yangtze river he had over two hundred thousand men to face against leo bay and sunshine's combined force of fifteen thousand how would they stand a chance when they were so outnumbered tactically says most of sunshine's advisors pleaded with him to surrender but then he smashed up a table and they all backed down luckily satsa's forces were ravaged by disease and exhaustion and his northern soldiers weren't too comfortable on ships so when tatsa sailed down the river and the two sides met for an initial skirmish at wulin zatsa was unable to inflict a defeat against the allies then one of xin chen's men came up with a very sneaky plan he sent satsa a letter pretending that he and others wanted to defect to his side and offered to bring him some of leo bay and sunshine's finest ships little did satsang know however that those ships were full of flammable reeds approached his fleet they were set alight and destroyed his ships and camp seeing the situation as hopeless satsaw ordered a difficult retreat through the rain and marshlands during this is you know the kind of stuff you have to do when you're heavy heavily outnumbered uh and out powered this is what the us did in the american revolutionary war uh it's about outlasting you know it's about outsmarting it's about dropping back dropping back dropping back until you see a favorable situation it's about using deception and things like this this is what you have to do to even the odds in which more of his men fell to illness and disease the underdogs had won and satsaw would never again have another chance to take the south following that the three warlords took some time to finish off some smaller competitors in their own regions and by the year 214 china looked a little bit like this tatsau continued to try to penetrate the southern regions but had no success and even lost the hanjon region to leo bay in 217. the former allies eventually fell out over who should own this territory here with sun shin coming out on top only a matter of time south died of a head disease and was replaced by his son sao p sao pig convinced the emperor of han to abdicate and then proclaimed himself the emperor of the new state of way leo bay followed suit declaring himself the true emperor of shuhan and a few years later sinchen joined in the fun and declared himself emperor of wu and so now you have a number of kingdoms in china how many count them one two three three kingdoms except actually they weren't kingdoms they were dying and when the kingdom is finally formed not a whole lot happened yeah we have to remember that the concept of nationhood doesn't really exist in this time anywhere in the world really these are about dynasties like you said these are about families that rule regions you didn't serve your country you served your lord so it's just a different way we have to look at things next three decades they continued to engage in combat but it almost always ended in stalemate and nobody really got anywhere so how did it all end did satsa's descendants eventually realize his dream of unifying china not quite instead the three kingdoms became victims of the usual problems that plagued chinese dynasties in wu sinchen's descendant became a tyrant who is more interested in spending time with his concubines than governing in shuhan history rhymes corrupt eunuch faction rose up and by now we all know how that ends and in way a string of young emperors gave way for a powerful family the summa clan to take control of the dynasty's government this sema clan recognized the weak state shu and wu had been reduced to and so they began making plans i've just received this letter that says way is planning to attack us should we make preparations for war nah it's probably nothing to worry about let's do absolutely nothing sounds good to me way launched a full-scale invasion into shu which fell within a year then simeon forced the way emperor to abdicate and proclaimed himself emperor of the new jin dynasty in the year 279 jin launched an invasion of wu and finally unified china in the year 280 the pattern of rising and falling dynasties division and reunification would continue in china for centuries to come and as we already looked earlier you see rebellions happening and civil war is happening and every one of them involves the deaths of multi-millions of people just unfathomable carnage in a place where you have this large of a population right now you may be asking yourself but wait a minute what would have happened if tatsau had his way in unified china or what if lubu never assassinated dongjo and he continued to rule over the han dynasty what about if one of these smaller warlords had risen to the top dang it what if i want to be a warlord during the downfall of the han dynasty whoa three kingdoms uh of the uh total war game which is a lot of fun has a really cool multiplayer component to it but we're gonna wrap it up right there because he's obviously gonna get into talking about that i do have a link in the description to the original video make sure you support them um all of the revenue from uh the the ad revenue from me doing oversimplified reactions goes to them anyway so just by watching this reaction you're making them money so i don't feel real obligated to show his ad because he's already making the money off of this anyway but i hope you guys have enjoyed this uh let me know your thoughts in the comment section below hit that like button if you would and we will see you again soon thanks for watching you

Channel: Vlogging Through History

Views: 205,242

Keywords: oversimplified reaction, history reaction, reaction video, chinese history, liu bei, yellow turban, oversimplified three kingdoms reaction, three kingdoms, oversimplified three kingdoms, han dynasty, three kingdoms - oversimplified reaction, total war three kingdoms, three kingdoms oversimplified

Id: Qus7FPdRx_Y

Length: 33min 11sec (1991 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 01 2021