Feng Hong

Biography

Internal and External Governance

In the first year of Zhengshi (407), Emperor Huiyi of Northern Yan, Gao Yun, appointed Feng Hong as General Who Conquers the East, holding the position of Commander of the Central Guards and being enfeoffed as Duke of Ji Commandery. In the third year of Zhengshi (409), after Gao Yun was assassinated, his brother Feng Ba ascended the throne following the execution of the assassins, appointing Feng Hong as Left Vice Director of the Department of State Affairs.

In the second year of Taiping (410), Guangchuang Gong Feng Wannie and Shanggu Gong Feng Luchen rebelled. Feng Ba dispatched Feng Hong along with Zhang Xing with twenty thousand infantry and cavalry to suppress them. Feng Hong first sent an envoy to explain the situation; Feng Wannie intended to surrender, but Feng Luchen did not. Anticipating that the enemy would raid their camp under cover of night—as predicted by Zhang Xing—Feng Hong ordered soldiers to prepare ten bundles of straw each accompanied by firebrands to set ambushes. When one thousand warriors sent by Feng Luchen attempted a nighttime raid, the hidden troops ignited the fires and attacked, annihilating the rebel army. Both Feng Wannie and Feng Luchen surrendered upon leaving the city, only to be executed by Feng Hong. Following the victory, Feng Ba re-ennobled Feng Hong as Prince of Zhongshan and appointed him Grand Marshal of the Flying Cavalry, maintaining command over the guards. Internally, Feng Hong controlled the palace guards, while externally he managed all state affairs, reaching the rank of Minister of Works.

Usurpation of Power

In August of the twenty-second year of Taiping (430), as Feng Ba lay dying, he summoned the Assistant of the Palace Administration Shen Xiu and the Attendant Yang Zhe to entrust matters concerning succession. In September, Feng Ba appointed Crown Prince Feng Yi as Regent to lead the troops against potential accidents. Consort Song, a concubine of Feng Ba, disliked Feng Yi’s growing power and urged him to return to the Eastern Palace to attend to the sick. Being gentle and weak, Feng Yi obeyed. Consort Song subsequently issued a forged edict to isolate the inner and outer courts, forbidding officials from visiting the patient and allowing only Hu Fu, a Gentleman of the Directorate of Ceremonial, access.

Sensing Consort Song's conspiracy, Hu Fu secretly reported it to Feng Hong. Feng Hong led dozens of armed men into the rear palace, and the guards dispersed without fighting. Consort Song ordered the eastern gates closed, but Feng Hong's servant, Duotemür, scaled the wall into the sleeping quarters and shot a palace maid. Frightened to death, Feng Ba died. Feng Hong immediately ascended the throne, claiming that because Feng Yi had failed to attend to the illness and ministers had neglected mourning rituals, there were suspicions of treason; thus, he assumed regency on behalf of his younger brother to stabilize the state. After Feng Yi's attempt to resist with the Eastern Palace guard failed, he was forced to commit suicide. Over a hundred of Feng Ba's descendants were murdered by Feng Hong.

Reforms of the Daxing Era

On the first day of the first month of the first year of Daxing (431), Feng Hong granted general amnesty throughout the empire and changed the era name to Daxing. In the third month, Lady Murong was invested as Empress. In the first month of the second year of Daxing (432), Feng Wangren, the son of Lady Murong, was named Crown Prince. Previously, Feng Hong had deposed the original wife, Empress Wang, and the eldest son, Feng Chong, ordering Feng Chong to defend Feiru. Fearing disaster, Feng Chong and his half-brothers Feng Lang and Feng Miao fled to Liaoxi and encouraged Feng Chong to surrender to Wei. Northern Wei bestowed titles such as Prince of Liaoxi upon Feng Chong. Feng Yu, sent by Feng Hong, besieged Feng Chong, but the Prince of Yongchang, Tuoba Jian, sent by Northern Wei, arrived to rescue him. Later, Feng Yu submitted to Wei.

Refusal to Surrender to Northern Wei

In the eighth month of the second year of Daxing (432), Emperor Taizu of Northern Wei, Tuoba Tao, personally campaigned against Northern Yan. Feng Hong maintained a stubborn defense of the cities. By the ninth month, six prefectures under Northern Yan surrendered to Wei, and Northern Wei relocated over thirty thousand households from Northern Yan to Youzhou. The Minister Guo Yuan advised Feng Hong to surrender to Wei and offer a daughter as a hostage, but Feng Hong refused, citing deep historical animosities between the two nations, opting instead to hold out for change.

In the fourth year of Daxing (434), Feng Hong sent envoys to seek peace, but they were rejected. He again sent the Minister Gao Yong to apologize and offer his young daughter as a consort and requested that the Crown Prince enter the court to serve, but Feng Hong declined. The Regular Mounted Attendant Liu Xun advised Feng Hong to send the Crown Prince to the court to appease Northern Wei, but a furious Feng Hong executed Liu Xun. When Tai Chang Yang Min suggested another plea for submission, stating he could not bear further loss but if failure occurred, they might temporarily reside in Goguryeo, Feng Hong ignored the warning that Goguryeo could not be trusted and secretly sent messengers to request asylum from Goguryeo.

Flight to Goguryeo

In the sixth year of Daxing (436), Goguryeo sent generals including Geleng to meet Feng Hong. Upon arriving at Helong, Geleng removed his coarse clothing and equipped his subordinates with Feng Hong's superior weapons and armor. Consequently, Feng Hong led the able-bodied men and women of Helong into Goguryeo. Before departing, Feng Hong burned the palaces of Longcheng, and the resulting conflagration raged for ten days.

Fall of the State and Death

After arrival in Liaodong, emissaries from Goguryeo welcomed Feng Hong, addressing him as "King of Longcheng." Feng Hong responded using the status of an Emperor. Consequently, Goguryeo settled him in Pingguo and later moved him to Beifeng. Even within Goguryeo, Feng Hong continued to implement the laws and punishments of his former country, treating Goguryeo with contempt. Goguryeo seized his attendants and took the Crown Prince, Feng Wangren, as a hostage. Enraged, Feng Hong planned to flee south. Since Northern Wei demanded the extradition of Feng Hong from Goguryeo, Goguryeo proceeded to kill Feng Hong and more than ten of his descendants in Beifeng in 438.

Before Feng Hong's flight to Goguryeo, many omens appeared in Longcheng, the capital of Northern Yan: packs of wolves howled around the city every night for a year; rats gathered in the west part of the city and carried horse manure across rivers; terrestrial fires erupted in the garrison lands and burned incessantly for ten days amidst swarms of maggots; and white hair grew up to two inches long in Longcheng.

To commemorate her grandfather Feng Hong and the lost kingdom of Northern Yan, Feng Hong's granddaughter, Empress Dowager Feng (the Empress of Emperor Wenxuan of Northern Wei), once constructed the "Si Yan Fo Tu" (Buddhist Map of Remembering Yan) in Longcheng (present-day Chaoyang, Liaoning). This Buddhist map and its associated temple became a significant early source for the spread of Buddhism in Northeast China, later evolving into the North Tower of Chaoyang, which is currently designated as a major historical and cultural site protected at the national level.

Feng Hong was the last ruler of the Northern Yan. Under his elder brother Feng Ba he held the offices of minister of education and director of the Secretariat, was enfeoffed as Duke of Zhongshan and assisted in government. In the tenth month of 409, when Gao Yun was killed, Feng Ba destroyed the assassins and took the throne, giving Feng Hong high office. In the twelfth month of 410, when the Duke of Guangchuan, Feng Wanni, and Feng Ruchen rebelled, Feng Ba sent Feng Hong with Zhang Xing and twenty thousand foot and horse against them. Feng Hong first sent word of the gains and losses at stake, and Feng Wanni wished to submit while Feng Ruchen refused; Zhang Xing told Feng Hong that they had resolved on battle the next day and would certainly raid the camp that night, and preparation should be made. Feng Hong accordingly had every man prepare ten bundles of grass and a fire starter and lay an ambush. That night Feng Ruchen did send more than a thousand picked men against the camp; the government troops lit their torches at once and the ambushers came out, striking from front and rear, killing and capturing the rebels to the last man. Feng Wanni and Feng Ruchen in terror came out and surrendered, and Feng Hong had them all killed.

After Feng Ba's death Feng Hong killed his sons and made himself ruler, changing the era to Taixing. His reign faced grave difficulties at home and abroad: the Northern Wei grew steadily stronger under Tuoba Tao and attacked repeatedly, while the Northern Yan was much weaker than in his brother's day. In 436, as Wei troops reached the city, Feng Hong abandoned the capital Longcheng and fled to Koguryo, and two years later he was killed there by its king, ending the Northern Yan.

His line nonetheless continued under the Northern Wei: his son Feng Lang entered Wei service, and Feng Lang's daughter became the empress dowager Feng who ruled the Northern Wei court, Feng Lang's son Feng Xi also a leading minister. The Northern Yan lasted less than thirty years, from Gao Yun's assumption of the heavenly king's title in 407 and Feng Ba's accession in 409 to its fall in 436, a short-lived state in western Liaoning in the later Sixteen Kingdoms, its fortunes directly bound up with the rise of the Northern Wei.

The founding and fall of the Northern Yan are both bound up with the politics of western Liaoning. Through the Sixteen Kingdoms the region was held by the Later Yan and then the Northern Yan, with the central plains to the south, the steppe peoples to the north and Koguryo to the east, set amid three sides, and so could not long stand alone. Feng Hong's flight to Koguryo and his death there is one outcome determined by that geography.

The name of the Northern Yan came from Feng Ba, and its base was the mixed population of Chinese, Xianbei, Koguryo and others in western Liaoning. In more than twenty years Feng Ba encouraged farming and silk, founded schools and reformed the administration, so that the small state was known in the later Sixteen Kingdoms for keeping its borders and its people. That situation did not survive Feng Hong: his accession cost him the clan, and he could not manage relations with the Northern Wei or Koguryo, neither the legitimacy of his rule nor the pressures upon it being sustainable.

The Wei campaign of 436 is the immediate cause of the state's fall. After earlier attacks, in that year Tuoba Tao sent E Qing and Gu Bi against Longcheng; Feng Hong first sought Koguryo's aid and then moved east with his people, Koguryo sending troops to receive him and settling him about Pingguo. There he still bore himself as a sovereign and was displeased with the honors shown him, so that his attendants were taken from him and he was watched, and he was killed two years later. After the fall of the Northern Yan its lands went to the Northern Wei, and western Liaoning became a region contested between Wei and Koguryo for a long time.

As for the family, Feng Hong's son Feng Lang served Wei, and Feng Lang's daughter became empress to Emperor Wencheng. Holding the court through the reigns of Wencheng, Xianwen and Xiaowen for more than twenty years, she carried out the equal-field system, the three-elder system and the salary reforms, and is one of the most influential women in Northern Wei history. From the house of a fallen ruler to a consort family of Wei, the fate of Feng Hong's line is a miniature of the regrouping of peoples and regimes from the end of the Sixteen Kingdoms into the early Northern Wei.

The pressure from Wei after his accession and the Northern Yan's internal troubles were cause and effect for each other: to meet Wei he sought help repeatedly from Koguryo and the Rouran, each request bringing fresh exactions of men and goods at home, while his killing of the clan left the court without men it could rely on. When the Wei host came in 436 the Northern Yan could organize no effective resistance, and few at court opposed the decision to move east.

Accounts of the Northern Yan come chiefly from the records in the Book of Jin and the relevant chapters of the Comprehensive Mirror, Feng Hong's career centering on his usurpation, his resistance to Wei and his flight. The Book of Wei writes of the Northern Yan from the Wei court's standpoint and says little of its internal government; the two bodies of material together outline the position of this small state in western Liaoning at the end of the Sixteen Kingdoms.

After his killing most of the clan and old officials were moved to the Pingcheng region of the Northern Wei and their descendants merged into its ruling group. The Feng remained prominent in the early Northern Wei, and members of the family took part in the reforms carried out during the empress dowager Feng's regency. In this light the fall of the Northern Yan and the absorption of its descendants is a concrete instance of the passage from the many states of the late Sixteen Kingdoms to a unified Northern Wei.

The fall of the Northern Yan came on the eve of Northern Wei unification: within the following decade Wei destroyed the Northern Liang, reduced Chouchi and settled the Hexi, ending the division of the Sixteen Kingdoms. Feng Hong's state was one of those cleared away in that process, and his flight and death carry a certain symbolism: the last independent Chinese regime in western Liaoning disappeared with him.

Regimes changed hands frequently in western Liaoning during the Sixteen Kingdoms, the Later Yan, Northern Yan and Northern Wei meeting there, its households and resources much depleted by war. After the Northern Yan fell, Wei set up prefectures, moved populations and gradually brought the region into its regular administration.

The Northern Yan occupies little space in the annals of the Sixteen Kingdoms, yet its character is representative: founded by a frontier military group, resting on control of refugees from the plains and of local tribes, it collapsed under pressure from a stronger northern power.

His flight and death are not unusual among the last rulers of the Sixteen Kingdoms: most ended their lives in exile, their remaining people moved into a new governing system.

The Northern Wei's management of western Liaoning was afterward tied to its policy toward Koguryo, and the region's allegiance changed several times in the Northern and Southern Dynasties.

His deeds appear in the Comprehensive Mirror under the Song and Wei annals alongside events of the southern court, showing that affairs in that corner of western Liaoning drew attention in the north-south contest of the time.

His era name Taixing was used for six years, its chronology appearing in both Wei and Koguryo records.

Major Activities

Suppression of the Feng Wannie Rebellion

While serving under Feng Ba, Feng Hong demonstrated exceptional military strategy. During the suppression of the rebellions of Feng Wannie and Feng Luchen, he adopted Zhang Xing's suggestion of utilizing grass bundles soaked in oil as incendiary devices for an ambush. This successfully annihilated the enemy force attempting a nighttime raid on the camp and resulted in the deaths of the rebel leaders, thereby consolidating Feng Ba's rule.

Usurpation of Authority

Exploiting the chaos in the palace caused by Feng Ba's critical illness and Consort Song's attempts to install her infant son, Feng Hong led troops into the imperial chambers, causing Feng Ba to die of fright. Subsequently, he slaughtered Crown Prince Feng Yi and over a hundred of Feng Ba's children, declaring himself ruler and establishing the Daxing era to solidify his control over Northern Yan.

Exile and Collapse

Faced with overwhelming military pressure from Northern Wei, Feng Hong refused to surrender, eventually leading his clansmen and subjects to flee to Goguryeo in 436. His arrogant behavior during his stay in Goguryeo ultimately provoked the King of Goguryeo, who had him killed, signifying the total termination of the Northern Yan regime.

Personal Relations

• Father**: Feng An (Emperor Xuan of Yan, posthumously honored)
• Mother**: Zhang Clan (Empress Dowager, posthumously honored)
• Elder Brother**: Feng Ba (Founding Emperor of Northern Yan)
• Second Elder Brother**: Feng Sufu (Prince of Liaoxi)
• Fourth Younger Brother**: Feng Pi (Marquis of Changshan)
• Former Wife**: Madam Wang (mother of Feng Chong, Feng Lang, and Feng Miao)
• Queen/Empress**: Murong clan (mother of Feng Wangren)
• Eldest Son**: Feng Chong (Duke of Yanchangle, later Prince of Weiliao)
• Second Son**: Feng Lang (Duke of Guangping)
• Third Son**: Feng Miao (Duke of Leling)
• Fourth Son**: Feng Wangren (Crown Prince)
• Fifth Son**: Feng Ye (Marquis of Songhuai)
• Eldest Daughter**: Feng Zhaoyi (Left Concubine Wu of Emperor Wudi of Northern Wei)
• Granddaughter**: Empress Dowager Feng (Empress Wen of Northern Wei, daughter of Feng Xi)

Historical Assessment

The Book of Bei Wei evaluates Feng Hong noting: "Wentong habitually treated Goguryeo with contempt, conducting administration, punishment, rewards, and penalties exactly as he had done in his own state." It points out that even during his time in Goguryeo, Feng Hong maintained the arrogant demeanor of a sovereign monarch, applying his home nation's decrees and legal codes, which served as a primary reason for his eventual assassination.