Friends who have seen the legend of the heroes of the Sui and Tang Dynasties know that in the early years of the founding of the Tang Dynasty, there were countless capable generals, comparable to the many heroes and heroes of the late Eastern Han Dynasty who competed for supremacy. Coupled with the great talent and great tolerance of Tang Taizong, the Tang Dynasty finally ended the chaotic world and went to another brilliant peak in history, and even sent emissaries from the distant countries of Goryeo and Japan to congratulate and study.
Map of the Tang Dynasty Territory
What is astonishing is that it is such a strong Andda, the Tang Dynasty that has made many foreign countries submit by virtue of its strong soldiers and strong horses, and it can't even resist a few knots in the future, so that the prosperity and prosperity of the Datang will shatter and fall apart like glass in an instant.
Heroes have been produced since the chaos of ancient times, and the Tang Dynasty Chengping has been prosperous for a long time, and most of the heroes haojie are idle at home to raise their lives, plus the Tang Dynasty Shangwu has become a wind, not at all as weak and suppressive as the Song Dynasty, so the heirs of these fierce generals and the local heroes should emerge endlessly, why is it that when the entire Tang Dynasty needs the most powerful generals, they all disappeared collectively as agreed in advance? What the hell is going on here?
To know what is going on, we also have to rely on a Representative Figure of the Tang Dynasty who established meritorious service through joining the army and eventually became knighted.
Xue Li was born in the last year of the Sui Dynasty, and was a standard family of warriors, and his grandparents were all famous generals of all dynasties. It is a pity that Xue Rengui's generation unfortunately fell in the middle of the road, leaving only a few acres of good land for Xue Rengui, who was a master of strategy and martial arts, to support his livelihood.
Xue Rengui and his wife Liu Shi in the film and television drama
What is rare and valuable is that Xue Rengui married a virtuous wife, Liu Rengui, who was born in a delicate family, but did not dislike Xue Rengui's poverty and poverty, not only put down the means of a rich lady to wash and cook for him, but also repeatedly excused her depressed husband, telling him that people with skills would become famous sooner or later.
When Xue Rengui was thirty years old, he gradually felt that time had passed and nothing had been achieved, and he hoped to reverse his fortune by relocating his ancestral graves, but his wife Liu Shi told him that the eldest husband should first establish meritorious honor and return to his hometown, and then do these trivial and small things.
And she heard that His Majesty the Emperor was marching on Liaodong in person, why didn't he try it, with his strategy and martial arts, to see if he could win a meritorious name, it was better than sitting here and lamenting secretly. After Xue Rengui heard this, he resigned from his wife and surrendered to Zhang Shigui, a famous general who founded the Tang Dynasty and later posthumously became a general of the auxiliary state.
In 644 BC, lang general Liu Junqiong was unfortunately besieged by the Goryeo army, and when he was about to be destroyed, Xue Rengui, who was patrolling, suddenly came out of the foothills of the mountain next to him, and in the tens of thousands of Goryeo troops, he fell into no man's land, and successively provoked several Goryeo generals, forcing the leaderless Goryeo army to rout and retreat on its own, and Xue Rengui also became famous in the battle, and instantly became a well-known figure in the Liao army.
Portrait of Emperor Taizong of Tang
In April of the same year, the Tang army was advancing, and Goryeo, seeing that the situation was not good, hurriedly sent hundreds of thousands of troops, hoping to rely on the terrain of the mountain to curb the pace of the Tang army's attack. Watching the actions of the Goryeo army, Tang Taejong, escorted by many generals, inspected the terrain of the garrison mountains, analyzed and thought that the battle could be broken, so he divided the army into several roads and launched an attack on the Goryeo defenders stationed at the mountain.
In the battle of the black oppressive army, Xue Rengui, who was white-robed and white-horse with an arrow and rushed left and right to kill, could be said to be very eye-catching, and the Goryeo army looked at this Tang general who was like a god under the gods and rushed around, but no one could stop him. So a funny scene appeared, hundreds of thousands of Goryeo troops who were fighting suddenly and for some reason collapsed like a tide and retreated, and the Tang army won a great victory.
This rout of the Goryeo army made the goryeo domestic government shake, and no soldiers could stop the pace of the Tang army, and it was surprising that the soldiers and civilian soldiers and soldiers within a radius of hundreds of miles had fled completely. The Tang army also took the opportunity to advance by a large margin, and then had no choice but to return to the dynasty due to grain and grass weather and other reasons.
Xue Rengui in film and television dramas
During the Battle of Zhengliao, Xue Rengui rose from a common army soldier to a soldier, and then was discovered and promoted by Emperor Taizong of Tang, who appointed him as the right general of Xuanwu Gate. And said such a meaningful and foreshadowing of the later glory and disgrace of the Tang Dynasty.
Judging from Tang Taizong's long-hearted words, we can draw the following conclusions and doubts. One is that people with real skills will stand out as long as they encounter the right opportunity, and the other is that Datang has only opened up in China for a long time, and there has been a situation in which no one can use it.
Where have all the famous generals who can fight good wars gone? Where are the twenty-four heroes of Ling Yan Pavilion? Even if they are all old, what about the new generation of good generals? Why did the combat effectiveness of the Tang army decline so badly?
The constraints of the powerful
Judging from the data of later generations, Tang Taizong Li Shimin, as a generation of male lords, in addition to killing Hou Junji, almost all of his other heroes were able to make him enjoy his old age in peace. This majestic and tolerant attitude not only contributed to the prosperity and prosperity of the Tang Dynasty during the Zhenguan period, but also indirectly led to the deep-rooted strength of the meritorious aristocratic forces in the Tang Dynasty.
Hou Junji in film and television dramas
They formed a coalition of socialist parties and fought against each other, mastered a large number of social and political resources, and occupied many functional departments and important positions in the imperial court.
These people, who were rich and arrogant, extravagant, and did not think of making progress, not only did not establish meritorious achievements for the Tang Dynasty, but even repeatedly missed the defeat of the fighter in the war situation. For example, Guo Beifeng, the son of Guo Xiaoke in the Battle between the Tang Dynasty and Tubo, and Cheng Huailiang, the son of Cheng Zhijie (Cheng Yaojin), the son of Cheng Zhijie (Cheng Yaojin), a foreign minister of the Tang Dynasty, and others.
These people were born of meritorious and noble, but their skills were not refined, they were full of prominent positions such as the Tang army and the central system, and they often gave orders as a mighty and powerful person, and with their courage and courage, they did not care about the development of the actual war situation, and it can be said that the failure of many foreign wars of datang was caused by these people.
Transformation of the military service system
According to historical records, the military service system in the early Tang Dynasty followed the fubing system developed along the way from the Western Wei, Northern Zhou, and Sui Dynasties, and reached the peak of history in the early years of the Tang Dynasty.
The prefectural military system has an advantage, that is, in idle time, the soldiers are turned into farming and labor, and in wartime, the peasant army is assembled to bring its own weapons and ordnance, which not only saves a lot of military expenditure of the feudal dynasty and ensures the construction of agricultural cultivation, but most importantly, the prefectural soldiers are fierce in combat and can achieve almost any strategic goal of the generals.
Portrait of the soldiers on the expedition
But the only drawback is that the basis of the prefectural soldier system is the equalized field system, which means that it can only play a positive role when the government has a large amount of unclaimed land that can be rewarded to soldiers. However, under the prosperity of Zhenguan Shengshi, the phenomenon of land annexation has become increasingly serious, coupled with the continuous foreign wars, the tasks such as garrisoning the border are heavy and heavy, and the prefectural soldiers have no sources and guarantees such as weapons, income, support, work and rest, etc., and the willingness to fight and the quality of combat have naturally shrunk by a large margin. Therefore, Datang can only use recruitment to solve the problem of the quantity and quality of soldiers.
Xue Rengui entered the ranks through recruitment and eventually ascended to the rank of high official.
However, this kind of recruited soldiers needed the feudal dynasty to pay a lot of resources to support and drag down the economic progress in terms of military training and military supply and demand, coupled with the continuous expansion of the territory of the Tang Dynasty, the war was more frequent and unfavorable, so the Tang Dynasty in order to maintain the prosperity of the prosperous and prosperous world, helplessly opened the moderation system.
Portrait of the Tang Dynasty army
The original starting point of the festival is good, similar to the ancient feudal state, giving a certain degree of autonomy, undertaking the stability and prosperity of the territory and eliminating thieves, and the management of the whole depends on the ability of the festival.
But the bad thing is that people's greed is unlimited, and once power is decentralized, it is almost impossible to take it back. Therefore, the Tang Dynasty's local moderations made every effort to prepare their own armed forces to suppress the disaster in the early stage of authorization, and achieved very good results.
Tasting the sweetness, they gradually found that they could use this to blackmail the imperial court and gradually expand their control and dispatch power in the area they guarded. In this way, Jiedushi gradually developed from the initial affairs of only managing military supplies, tun tian and defending against the enemy to being responsible for the military, civilian, and financial affairs in his area of responsibility, which was basically equivalent to a party prince who changed his title.
According to historical records, in Xue Rengui's later years, the combined forces of the various feudal towns and towns reached a total of 400,000 to 500,000 soldiers and horses, while the central forbidden army of the Tang court was only about 100,000.
Map of the situation of the tang dynasty feudal towns
Through this strong data comparison, we can clearly see that the Tang Dynasty has unconsciously pushed itself to the brink of disaster. And history seems to have tried to prove this, and an unprecedented anshi chaos broke out, which wiped out the prosperity of the Tang Dynasty in one fell swoop.
Why did Datang have no future to use at a time of peril?
Mainly because the dynasty's own meritorious nobles hold the power, and the central system cannot afford to perform talents. In other words, the talented person can't go up, and the person who goes up doesn't have a suitable position for him.
Distribution map of Tang Dynasty feudal towns
You see Xue Rengui Rongma spent his life sweating and blood for the Tang Dynasty, and only after his death did he receive the false title of Grand General of Zuo Xiao Wei (Sanpin) and governor of Youzhou. If you want to know whether Xue Rengui or Tang Taizong personally praised and promoted people, you will understand how deep the waters of this imperial court are. Coupled with the fact that the Fanzhen festival made the control of local talents, Datang eventually fell into the embarrassing situation of no one to use.
Just as the so-called times create heroes, heroes are also timely. No matter what era, there are lurking good ministers and sages waiting to shine. Unfortunately, the talents of Datang were not only rejected by themselves, but also intercepted by the envoys of Fanzhen Jiedushi.
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