The eunuchs ignored
his two sons, and placed his brother Voutsong on the throne.
The evils of the day became specially revealed during the reign of Ytsong,
who was scarcely seated on the throne before his troops suffered several
defeats at the hands of a rebel prince in Yunnan, who completely wrested
that province from the empire. He was as pronounced a patron of Buddhism
as some of his predecessors had been oppressors, and he sent, at enormous
expense, to India a mission to procure a bone of Buddha's body, and on its
arrival he received the relic on bended knees before his whole court. His
extravagance of living landed the Chinese government in fresh
difficulties, and he brought the exchequer to the verge of bankruptcy. Nor
was he a humane ruler. On one occasion he executed twenty doctors because
they were unable to cure a favorite daughter of his. His son Hitsong came
to the throne when he was a mere boy, and at once experienced the depth of
misfortune to which his family had sunk. He was driven out of his capital
by a rebel named Hwang Chao, and if he had not found an unexpected ally in
the Turk chief Likeyong, there would then have been an end to the Tang
dynasty. This chief of the Chato immigrants - a race supposed to be the
ancestors of the Mohammedan Tungani of more recent times - at the head of
forty thousand men of his own race, who, from the color of their uniform,
were named "The Black Crows," marched against Hwang Chao, and signally
defeated him.
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