Yu Liang - After Su Jun's Defeat

After Su Jun's Defeat

Initially, Su tendered many resignations to the emperor, his nephew. Wang Dao, as regent, turned those resignations down in the emperor's name and but instead commissioned Su as the governor of Yu Province (豫州, by that point referring to modern central Anhui). After Tao's death in 334, Yu succeeded him as the governor of Jing (荊州, modern Hubei and Hunan), posted to Wuchang (武昌, modern Ezhou, Hubei), Yu, and Jiang Provinces and the military commander of the western provinces. Even though he was not in control of the government, but he continued to have great influence from his post as the emperor's uncle.

In 338, angry at what he saw as Wang's overly lenient attitude and not sufficiently grooming Emperor Cheng to rule, Yu tried to convince Chi to join him in an effort to depose Wang, but Chi refused, and Yu never carried out his plans. Instead, in 339, he planned a major attack north against Later Zhao. After opposing from Chi and Cai Mo (蔡謨), however, Emperor Cheng ordered Yu to stop his plans. After Wang died later that year, however, the government became in control of Wang's assistant He Chong (何充) and Yu Liang's brother Yu Bing (庾冰), and Yu Liang resumed his battle preparations. This drew a response from Later Zhao's emperor Shi Hu, who attacked several major cities and bases on the Jin/Zhao border, inflicting heavy losses and capturing Zhucheng (邾城, in modern Huanggang, Hubei) before withdrawing. Yu, humiliated, offered to have himself demoted, and while Emperor Cheng refused, he became distressed and died on lunar new year day in 340.