The continual warfare entailed great expense, and so did the intrigues,
because they depended for their success on bribery. Still more expensive
were the great canal works. In addition to this, the emperor Yang Ti,
unlike his father, was very extravagant. He built enormous palaces and
undertook long journeys throughout the empire with an immense following.
All this wrecked the prosperity which his father had built up and had
tried to safeguard. The only productive expenditure was that on the
canals, and they could not begin to pay in so short a period. The
emperor's continual journeys were due, no doubt, in part simply to the
pursuit of pleasure, though they were probably intended at the same time
to hinder risings and to give the emperor direct control over every part
of the country. But the empire was too large and too complex for its
administration to be possible in the midst of journeying. The whole of
the chancellery had to accompany the emperor, and all the transport
necessary for the feeding of the emperor and his government had
continually to be diverted to wherever he happened to be staying. All
this produced disorder and unrest. The gentry, who at first had so
strongly supported the emperor and had been able to obtain anything they
wanted from him, now began to desert him and set up pretenders. From 615
onward, after the defeat at the hands of the Turks, risings broke out
everywhere. The emperor had to establish his government in the south,
where he felt safer. There, however, in 618, he was assassinated by
conspirators led by Toba of the Yü-wen family. Everywhere now
independent governments sprang up, and for five years China was split up
into countless petty states.

[Illustration: Map 5: The T'ang realm _(about A.D. 750)_]