It is said that we are the "earth emperors" who divide one side and monopolize power, but in fact, we are just "workers" who maintain the fragile ruling balance of the crumbling Tang Dynasty after the Anshi Rebellion! ——Datang Jiedushi made the Migrant Work Alliance announce
I. The Root Cause of the Anshi Rebellion: The collapse and disintegration of the "prefectural military system"
First of all, we must understand what is the "prefectural military system"?
That is, the state gives a certain amount of uncultivated wasteland to your family because of the war, and in exchange, your family has to go out of the country to fight for the country without compensation, and you have to bring your own equipment. After the war, he continued to go home and farm.
In a word, it is summarized: the recruitment system that only pays "fields" and does not pay wages.
The advantages of the prefectural military system are very many: 1. The prefectural soldiers are only loyal to the imperial court. 2. Greatly reduced the military expenditure of the imperial court. 3. The will to fight is strong, after all, "defending the family and defending the country" is to protect one's own fields. 4. Well-equipped, after all, it is a life-saving guy who buys it at his own expense, and he will certainly not be sloppy. The famous Mulan is a glorious soldier.
The "fields" granted by the prefectural soldiers are also divided into two types: Kou fen tian and Yongye tian. The former maintains its state-owned nature, only gives the right to use, and after burping, it is returned to the state for redistribution. The latter burped after the inheritance, quite private land. The ratio is about eight or two.
Clear-eyed people have found that there is a natural logical loophole in the design of this system: with the passage of time and the growth of population, eventually the country can recover less and less land, and the people can get less and less land. The Junta system eventually became an empty shelf.
For a young soldier in the Middle And Tang Dynasties, the state could grant him very little land. If the father's generation is more reliable, and the Yongye field accumulated by the ancestors can be inherited, if the father's generation eats, drinks, gambles, sells land and sells the land, then in their own generation, it will be miserable, and there is almost no land to plant. But the obligation to fight as a soldier was inherited. So what to do? Run, even if you don't run, you don't have money to buy equipment, and going to the battlefield is not to send people's heads!
As a result, the prefectural military system, which was based on the Juntian system, also began to disintegrate.
Land annexation and corruption in the administration of officials accelerated the collapse of the juntian system and the prefectural military system. By the time of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, the prefectural military system was basically replaced by the conscription system.
This is a big problem, I analyzed in detail the core formula for the rise and fall of the ancient Central Plains Dynasty in my previous article "Yongzheng Dynasty: Let's not say you understand it, before figuring out the "underlying logic" of the operation of the feudal dynasty":
Taxation (treasury) = bureaucratic incentives + anti-terrorist military expenditure + water conservancy and disaster relief
When the formula is balanced, the dynasty can continue to survive and develop, and once the formula is unbalanced, then the dynasty will inevitably go to turmoil or even extinction.
At this time, Datang's tax system was still based on the original equalized field system. What does that mean?
Even on the left side of the formula, the financial revenue of the imperial court was basically maintained at the original level. However, on the right side of the formula, the military expenditure required for the conscription system has increased significantly compared with the original prefectural military system. The two sides of the formula began to lose their balance.
So how can we maintain the balance of payments in the imperial court's finances? The old and confused Tang Xuanzong patted his head and simply engaged in the "border defense contracting system," that is, the infamous "moderation system," that is, the chiefs of the border areas should grasp the military and government at the same time, and the expenses required for the conscription system should be solved by themselves. Anyway, don't come to the central government to ask for money.
This "stripping off bad debts" approach is actually a solution. However, this plan has great side effects, in the previous government military system, soldiers were directly favored by the imperial court's "granting of land", of course, listen to the imperial court. The conscription system under the temperate system is changed from being paid by the moderation envoy to obeying the orders of the moderation envoy.
What is even more frightening is that the Tang Dynasty's personnel arrangements for the generals have not yet awakened from the inertial thinking of the "prefectural military system", and they have not yet deeply realized the harmfulness of the side effects of the moderation system, and they have not arranged a balance constraint, resulting in the emergence of a person like An Lushan who is also a festival envoy in the three important towns of Fanyang, Pinglu, and Hedong, and a dominant warlord.
Therefore, in the case of a serious imbalance between the central and local forces, the Anshi Rebellion inevitably broke out.
Second: Why did the temperance system become a life-saving pill for the late Tang Dynasty for 150 years after the Anshi Rebellion?
First of all, after the Anshi Rebellion, although the central government of the Tang Dynasty lost the right to appoint envoys to border towns, the essence of the "border defense contract system" did not change, and although the imperial court lost the taxes of the frontier areas where "the old and the young were border poor", they also disguised themselves from the huge military burden they had originally borne to resist the steppe nomads. If only the economic account is calculated, the imperial court will still "earn".
Secondly, after the Anshi Rebellion, the central government of the Tang Dynasty lost control only of the border areas, but the increasingly rich control of the Jiangnan region was still firmly in the hands of the imperial court. It provided a steady stream of financial support to the imperial court.
Finally, after the Anshi Rebellion, the imperial court profoundly realized a truth: the moderation system is not so terrible, and what is terrible is the emergence of a single festival envoy. Therefore, in the late Tang Dynasty, the imperial court attached great importance to the balance between the emissaries of the festival, and the number of the emissaries increased from 8 in the Era of Emperor Xuanzong to 40 in the Period of Emperor Daizong, as long as the Envoys of the Festival were independent and scattered, they did not pose a threat to the Imperial Court. The elite "Divine Strategy Army" established by the imperial court, which relied heavily on jiangnan grain, maintained an absolute advantage over a single festival.
In other words, the group beating the imperial court can't beat you, but which dares to be too arrogant, the court singles you out of more than enough. A "balance of terror" between the central and local governments has been formed.
Based on the above 3 reasons, after the Anshi Rebellion, everyone unexpectedly found that the core formula for the rise and fall of the Central Plains Dynasty: taxation (national treasury) = bureaucratic incentive + anti-sufficiency military expenditure + water conservancy and disaster relief still maintained a "deformed balance". This "game" can continue to be played.
In the end, the late Tang Dynasty continued to "live" for 150 years in this seemingly "fragile" but actually very "stable" balance. From a higher historical perspective, those late Tang Dynasty emissaries who were criticized by the history books as "Tu Emperors" were essentially just "workers" of the Tang Dynasty.