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When it was flourishing, it was like a peach blossom, and when it was withered, it was rotten like abscesses, and after the chaos of Anshi, Sheng Tang was like a giant who was extremely frightened, panicking, and crawling on the road to death with a rolling belt and constantly accelerating.
The Tang Dynasty turned from prosperity to decline, and there were three main factors, the Mutiny of the Four-Square Domain, the Dispute between the Outer Dynasties and Friends, and the Evil Government of the Eunuchs in the Inner Court, and the three factors colluded with each other, and finally provoked the people's rebellion, and the Tang Collapsed.
It is said that the eunuchs in the inner court are in trouble.
The first time in Chinese history can be called the "eunuch era", the first time is the Eastern Han Dynasty, the main feature is that eunuchs and foreign relatives control the government; the first time appeared in the middle and late Tang Dynasty, this time the eunuch group has a breakthrough development, that is, the invention of the eunuch military supervision system that has been left for thousands of years - the eunuch as the supervisor of the army, the eunuch group, which was originally only the emperor's "house slave", the family slave intervened in the military armed forces, causing the biggest crisis that caused the collapse of a dynasty.
To say that the eunuch of the Tang Dynasty, everyone may be most familiar with Gao Lishi, that is, the one who took off his boots for Li Bai in the legend, he was actually Li Longji and Yang Yuhuan's personal attendant, and this Gao Lishi also had no desire for power and did not involve politics.
But the special status of eunuchs is naturally attached to the attribute of power, or they are the shadow of power, the people around the emperor, of course, not all eunuchs mentioned here, but the emperor must be eye-catching and trustworthy.
Therefore, although Gao Lishi is not involved in politics, as a red person around Li Longji and Yang Yuhuan, he can still shock the government and the public, and the crown prince Li Heng calls him a "second brother", and the princess and horse even honor him as "old lady".
This was the first source of eunuch power—the emperor.
The emperor has supreme power, and they are often willing to share a little power with the eunuchs, in their view, the eunuchs are domestic slaves, their own families, and unlike the courtiers, the courtiers are hired by the royal family to work, and the power given to the courtiers is to let them carry out their work and take responsibility, and it is more reassuring to share a little power with the eunuchs.
In the Tang Dynasty, after the Anshi Rebellion, the emperor was even more full of distrust of his courtiers, especially the generals who led the troops, which was too profound a lesson, so profound that the emperor of the Tang Dynasty was restless and full of suspicion.
What to do? It seems that only these eunuchs around them are still their own people, and since they are their own people, they must find a way to let these people restrain the generals who cannot be trusted.
Therefore, the system of supervising the army was introduced, and eunuchs were appointed as supervisors of the army, and not only were there supervisors in the large military regions, but as long as they were military units, there were also supervisors.
The duty of the supervision army is grandiose, helping military officials solve various difficulties encountered and smoothing the communication of information with the central government; in fact, the supervision army has only one task, supervising military officials, reporting on their actions, and judging whether they have the possibility of defection.
The supervision army can go straight to the top to listen, and a piece of paper can make the commander-in-chief's head fall to the ground.
The overseer is in a position of authority, what he says is what he says, the emperor listens to him, and what he says does not depend on the actions of the military commander, but only on whether the military commander can please him, and how to please him, it is nothing more than money.
Eunuchs are also human beings, people love money, and eunuchs are still artificially created "third sex", and the psychological distortions and perversions brought about by their physical mutilation make the evil of human nature even greater than ordinary people.
An Shi mutinied, the first commander of the rebellion against An Lushan, Gao Xianzhi and the deputy commander Feng Changqing, because they could not satisfy the eunuch Bian Lingcheng's lion's wide-mouthed extortion, Bian Lingcheng falsely accused the two of rebellion, so they were both executed.
This happened in the year of the An Lushan Mutiny, that is, in 755 AD.
When the imperial family was so greatly threatened, the emperor still trusted the eunuchs and overseers so much, which showed that it was also "true love".
The power of eunuchs to oversee the army was so terrible, and they enjoyed the highest authority in the army. The army is to fight, the war is a professional matter, the eunuchs are naturally not professional, but they will report, and if they win, they will naturally take credit for themselves; if they lose, they will rely on the military commander.
On the one hand, extorting money, on the other hand, the eunuch supervisory army toyed with the military commander as if it were a thing in the palm of his hand, and what was even more frightening was that in order to show his role, the eunuch supervisor army most liked that the military commander could rebel and change something, so that they could report to the emperor and appear to be very important.
Therefore, the eunuch supervisory army used the most heinous move, you do not defect, I will force you to rebel, or falsely accuse you of rebellion, anyway, I want to rectify you, there must be a way to rectify you.
The eunuch Liu Cheng'en, a supervisor of the Zhaoyi Military Region (Changzhi, Shanxi), often insulted Liu Wu, but Liu Wu could not tolerate it, arrested Liu Cheng'en, and declared that he was no longer loyal to the central government.
It was not only Liu Wu who was forced to rebel by the eunuch supervisors, but Zhou Zhiguang of the Tonghua Military Region (Dali, Shaanxi) made Zhou Zhiguang simply kill the eunuch Zhang Zhicheng and issued a statement: "I originally had no intention of rebelling, but I was forced by you, and I could only rebel helplessly." ”
Even the servant Gu Huai'en, one of the generals who extinguished the Anshi mutiny, there were forty-six people who died in the war for the country in one of the doors, and the daughter responded to the state and pro-policy, and married back to the Khanate, but only because she offended the eunuch Luo Fengxian and was secretly accused of rebellion by Luo, the servant Gu Huai'en had to raise an army, he saw gao Xianzhi's fate, and he did not want to be Gao Xianzhi's second.
How arrogant can a eunuch be? There's one thing —
The Chengde Military Region, one of the four towns of Heshuo, made Li Baochen meritorious in his conquest, and the emperor at that time, Li Chun, sent the eunuch Ma Chengqian to comfort him, which was originally a good thing, and Li Baochen also wanted to do a good job, and when Ma Chengqian returned to Chang'an, he specially went to send off to thank him, and very "sensibly" prepared a gift for Ma Chengqian - a hundred silk satins. You must know that Heshuo has been a bitter and cold place since ancient times, and this hundred silk satins are quite a considerable gift.
What Li Baochen did not expect was that Ma Chengqian only looked at it once, and he hated that the gift was too light, threw the satin to the side of the road, and then scolded away.
This made the commander of one of the military districts very embarrassed, and one of his subordinates really couldn't look at it anymore, and said to him, "We are serving the battlefield, and now that we are needed, they still despise us so much, once the world is at peace, can we still live?" ”
Li Baochen did the opposite.
Behind the eunuchs was the emperor, and because the emperor only believed in them, they could act arbitrarily and arbitrarily.
How close can the emperor and the eunuchs be?
Li Yu, the eleventh emperor of the Tang Dynasty, whenever the eunuch returned from an envoy, always asked what gifts he had received on this trip, how much he had received, and if he had not received or received less, he would be very angry.
Because in his thinking, there is such a logic: the eunuch is my domestic slave (family), he goes out on behalf of me, you do not send some gifts or too little, that is not to hit the face of the eunuch, but to hit me, the face of the emperor.
This kind of bastard logic made the eunuch's atrocities not only public but even institutionalized.
Of course, there were also ministers who were dissatisfied with this situation and suggested to the emperor that the eunuchs should be disciplined, but basically there was no use, and the fourteenth emperor Li Chun said, "The eunuch is just a domestic slave, for the sake of convenience, let them go out and run a point, how dare they do something wrong?" Even if you break the law and discipline, getting rid of them is as easy as pulling out a hair. ”
The confused emperor Li Chun did not get rid of the eunuchs, but instead had the eunuch Chen Hongzhi killed, and the eunuchs had the power to depose the emperor from then on.
The eunuch clique was able to sit so big that it was even "anti-slave-oriented" because the Tang emperor later gave them another power—not only to supervise the army, but even to control the army.
After the Mutiny of the Jingyuan Military Region, The emperor at the time, Li Heng, was even more uneasy about the military generals, so he gave the command of the Janissaries, that is, the Left and Right Divine Strategies Army, to eunuchs and served as the commanders (lieutenants) of these two armies.
In this way, the power of the eunuchs not only came from the emperor, but also from the blessing of the troops.
This blessing of power accumulated over a long period of time, and eunuchs cultivated unshakable prestige in the Janissaries.
With one point of power, he wants to do two things, not to mention that there is so much power, so much power, the eunuch naturally wants to do something, not just a microphone for the emperor.
Therefore, from 820 onwards, after the eunuchs murdered the fourteenth emperor, Li Chun, a vicious example was opened: who became the emperor was not decided by the previous emperor, but by the eunuchs, and the emperor's life and death were in the hands of the eunuchs.
From the killing of Li Chun in 820 to the fall of the Tang Dynasty in 907, in less than a hundred years, 12 emperors were replaced, all of whom were established by eunuchs, six of whom ended up being killed by eunuchs.
What is the need for such a dynasty to exist?
Therefore, Datang died.
When datang flourished, it was unparalleled, and when datang died, it also died quite ugly.
Thank you for "watching"