Text/Qinghe
One of the compilers of the New Book of Tang, song qi, a famous confucian of the Northern Song Dynasty, wrote a sentence when discussing the demise of the Tang Dynasty: "
Tang died in Huangchao, and the scourge began in Guilin.
Guilin here refers to the "Guilin Mutiny" that occurred in 886 AD, also known as the "Pang Xun Uprising".
Pang Xun Peking Opera image
The Pang Xun uprising is far less famous than the Huangchao uprising, which lasted only one year and two months, and many people who are not familiar with Tang history are estimated to have never heard of it. so
Why is it considered to be the fuse of the demise of the Tang Dynasty?
Today, let's take a look.
01. Disaster arose in Nanzhao
To understand the beginning and end of the Guilin Mutiny, we must start from the small country of Nanzhao in the southwestern border of the Tang Dynasty.
At the end of the Sui Dynasty and the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, there were six major tribes in the Yunnan region, known as the Six Commandments, of which the Mengshe Zhao was located in the south of the Six Commandments, also known as the "Nanzhao".
From the reign of Emperor Gaozong to the Xuanzong Dynasty, the Tang Dynasty was fiercely vying with Tubo for control of the Yunnan region. Among the six tribes, the other five edicts were attached to Tubo, and only the weakest Nanzhao firmly sided with the Tang Dynasty. Therefore, in the Shengluopi generation, the Tang court, in order to show his appreciation, made him the king of Taideng County.
After Sheng Luopi's death, his successor Pi Luoge continued to show loyalty to the Tang Dynasty and constantly strengthened bilateral relations. Of course, the Tang Dynasty also gave a lot of support to Nanzhao, and in the twenty-sixth year of the new century (738), Pi Luoge, with the acquiescence of Tang Xuanzong, annexed the other five edicts, quickly unified the Erhai region, and established the kingdom of Nanzhao.
Unfortunately, in politics, there are no eternal enemies, no eternal friends, only eternal interests.
Pi Luoge used the power of Tang to unify Yunnan, and after the establishment of the Southern Zhao, the relationship with The Tang was very delicate. During the 165 years (738-902) of the existence of the Nanzhao state, there was a constant rebellion between the Tang And Tubo, when the war was peaceful, and when it fell, it rebelled.
In 859, after the new Emperor Shilong of Nanzhao succeeded to the throne, he rebelled against The Tang. Shi Long was a bloodthirsty and warlike monarch who waged war against Tang almost every year. In the fourth year (863) of Emperor Yizong of Tang's Xiantong Dynasty, Nanzhao launched an all-out attack on Annam (present-day Vietnam), which was then part of the Tang Dynasty's territory, and once again attacked Jiaotong City, forcing the Tang army to retreat to Lingnan.
Later, under the leadership of the general Gao Biao, the Tang army broke the Nanzhao army and expelled it from the Annam Capital Protectorate. However, the Tang court's rule over the southwest was already very weak.
02. Mutiny
In the war to pacify Annan, the Tang government ordered the recruitment of 2,000 troops in the Xu and Si regions (present-day Xuzhou, Jiangsu and Si County, Anhui) for reinforcement, and divided 800 men to guard Guizhou (present-day Guilin, Guangxi), according to the agreement, after the expiration of the three-year period, they could be transferred back to their original hometowns.
At that time, the climate in the southwest region was humid and hot, the conditions were harsh, and when the imperial court used troops against Nanzhao before, the people were deeply resentful, and even did not hesitate to self-harm to avoid military service. Now these eight hundred soldiers were ordered to defend, looking forward to returning home at the end of the three-year period.
I didn't expect that
After three years of defense, another three years, and seeing that he had been stationed in Guilin for nearly six years, Xu Si observed Cui Yanzeng, but on the grounds that the military expenditure was insufficient, he asked everyone to defend for another year.
The soldiers no longer believed Cui Yanzeng's lies, and in a fit of excitement, they killed Zhongfu, the king of the capital, and elected Pang Xun, a grain judge who had always been very prestigious, as the leader, and went north on their own, all the way to their hometown of Xuzhou.
At the beginning of the mutiny, the imperial court originally wanted to take appeasement measures, issuing an edict allowing the soldiers to return to Xuzhou and not to hold them accountable. Therefore, when Pang Xun and his party passed through Hunan, Hubei, Anhui and other places, the local governments not only did not obstruct them, but also provided them with supplies, which can be said to be very smooth.
When it is about to reach Xuzhou,
Pang Xun and other leaders of the mutiny began a showdown with the big guys:
They thought that the imperial court was just using clever words to deceive them, and when they arrived in Xuzhou, they would definitely still clean up after them, so it was better to fight back now.
As a result, Pang Xun's army quickly captured the city of Suzhou, claiming to be "the queen of soldiers and horses", and officially pulled out his own banner. Shortly thereafter, xuzhou was captured, the former superior Cui Yanzeng was captured, and the Jianghuai transport line was controlled, cutting off the economic lifeline of the imperial court.
At the same time, the people everywhere "sent their sons to their sons, and their wives encouraged their husbands" and rushed to respond, and the insurrection ranks expanded larger and larger, reaching 200,000 people at their peak. What was originally a small rebellion developed into a large-scale peasant uprising.
03. Soldiers are defeated and killed
In the early days of the uprising, the government army was gradually defeated and the situation was very good. At that time, the envoy of Huainan Jiedushi, Ling Huxiu, fearing pang xun's attack on his territory, offered to help Pang Xun request the position of emissary to the imperial court.
Pang Xun was carried away by successive victories, and his mentality was a little drifting. He actually stopped using troops in Huainan and waited for the good news to come. He ignored the advice of his advisers and "feasted on daily affairs, and was extravagant and lascivious." The elders who raised the army with him even began to "rob people of their resources and plunder people's women."
On the other hand, the imperial court was actively preparing for war, sending multiple armies to attack the cities occupied by the rebel army. Pang Xun reacted to this and was deceived, and quickly shook his spirit to deal with the war, and once reversed the decline in the middle, and won and lost with the imperial army
Kang Chengxun, the commander of the Tang Army, adjusted the strategic deployment in a timely manner, taking the brave and good-fighting Shatuo cavalry as the forward, and the rebel army was gradually defeated and retreated, and the city was constantly lost.
Zhang Xuanyi, the defender of Suzhou of the rebel army, seeing that the official army was strong, gathered his confidants for consultation overnight, obediently sent a surrender letter to Tang Chengxun, and together with the officials and troops, besieged Xuzhou, and soon captured Xuzhou.
After several failed battles, Pang Xun was finally killed by Shatuo's cavalry and the entire army was destroyed.
04. Why is it said that "Tang died in the Yellow Nest, but the disaster was based on Guilin"?
The PangXun Rebellion, which began in July of the ninth year of Xiantong (868) and ended in September of the tenth year of Xiantong (869), lasted for one year and two months and did not seem to be very conspicuous. But it was like the first "domino" that was pushed down, setting off a chain reaction.
At that time, Nanzhao constantly harassed the border, and the imperial court mobilized troops to pay for this, and the people of the Central Plains were already suffering from huge military service and tax burdens.
The Pang Xun uprising was so noisy that it was even more laborious and hurt the people's wealth, which deeply shook the foundation of the rule of the Li Tang Dynasty. The Old Book of Tang and the Yizong Ji records:
"Although Xu Kou was killed, Henan was empty"
。
As a result, within a few years of Pang Xun's uprising, the "Wang Xianzhi Rebellion" (874) and the "Huangchao Rebellion" (875) broke out in the Central Plains. At that time, the imperial court was already weak and had to be suppressed with the help of local forces and ethnic minority forces.
The uprising was suppressed, but the various forces that emerged in the suppression of the uprising began to divide one side and became a new threat to the imperial court. The most typical is Zhu Wen and Li Keyong.
Zhu Wen rose to prominence during the Yellow Nest Rebellion and later became the direct terminator of the Tang Dynasty.
The Shatuo tribe used by Li Ke began to rise from the Pang Xun Rebellion. Li Keyong's father, Zhu Evil Chixin, led the Shatuo cavalry to charge the battlefield in the suppression of Pang Xun's rebellion, and made great achievements. Emperor Yizong of Tang gave the honor to the Datong Army and gave him the surname Ofe Li and the name Guochang.
Li Keyong also made a great contribution to quelling the Huangchao Rebellion, and was made the King of Jin, after which he divided Hedong for a long time. It was li keyong's son Li Cunxun who officially established the Later Tang.
In short, from a small mutiny in Guilin, to a succession of peasant uprisings, to the local separatist forces that could not be destroyed, step by step pushed the Li Tang Dynasty to its destruction.
Song Qi said that "Tang died in Huangchao, and the disaster was based on Guilin", which can be said to be a very objective evaluation of the "Pang Xun Uprising".
Resources:
01 Wang Zhenping: "The Tang Dynasty in Multipolar Asia";
02. Lu Simian: The Great History of China
03. Ouyang Xiu, Song Qi, etc.: New Book of Tang
02. Liu Xun et al.: Old Book of Tang