The Tang Dynasty was a unified Central Plains Dynasty after the Sui Dynasty, with a total of 21 emperors and 289 years of national history, and was recognized as a powerful dynasty in China. However, the outbreak of the Anshi Rebellion in 755 caused the history of the Tang Dynasty to be divided into two stages, which was previously a truly centralized empire, and then gradually evolved into a political form of feudal division and multi-party struggle.
In fact, although the central authority weakened after the Anshi Rebellion, and the people suffered from war. However, it can be seen from the fact that the Tang Dynasty was able to continue for 150 years after the Anshi Rebellion, and after the war, the Tang Dynasty also achieved a series of other achievements (such as the development of the south, the development of local rural trade, the rise of salt and iron and water transportation, etc.), and the empire has not yet fallen into a situation of no return. Even so, the impact of the Anshi Rebellion on the late Tang Dynasty and even the Five Dynasties and the Two Song Dynasties was still far-reaching. So how did this unrest break out? What kind of responsibility should Li Longji, as the supreme ruler of the empire, bear?
The Juntian system collapsed, and the conscription system contributed to the strength of the clan towns
The Juntian system was reformed by Empress Feng of Northern Wei and implemented on the basis of the long-term war in the north, and the emergence of a large number of unowned wasteland and landless displaced people. This land distribution system ensured that land resources were fully utilized, so that "cultivators have their own land", greatly promoted the development of the farming economy in the Central Plains, and provided a rich material foundation for the later Sui and Tang dynasties. With the stability of society and the increasing prosperity of the country, the population of the Tang Dynasty continued to grow, and during the Tang Xuanzong Kaiyuan Tianbao period, it finally surpassed the heyday of the Sui Dynasty again.
The rate of population growth far exceeds the rate of expansion of arable land, and the situation of more people and less land is becoming more and more significant. At this time, the taxation system implemented in conjunction with the equalized field system was the rent system, which was a system of taxation according to the fixed amount of the land granted by the family, regardless of the amount of land granted by the family. As a result, the people have been given less and less land, but they have borne more and more taxes. In order to avoid the heavy endowment of the imperial court, many people chose to sell themselves into slavery, and they became tenant farmers under them by incorporating their household registration and entering the family of the valve. In this way, land annexation in the Tang Dynasty intensified, the gap between the rich and the poor became wider and wider, and many peasant households and even government soldiers either hid their populations and entered the name of the gate valve, or fled to the south or local villages and other sparsely populated places.
Land annexation and population concealment led to great financial pressure on the imperial court, and the loss of household registration of many prefectural soldiers triggered the collapse of the prefectural military system. At this time, the basic principle of taxation should no longer be based on the number of people, but should be based on assets, just like the two tax laws in the Tang Dezong period and the amortization of the Yongzheng period in later generations. However, Tang Xuanzong was either unaware of the existence of the crisis, or was unwilling to carry out such a major reform for the sake of maintaining the stability of the situation (most of the courtiers were door valve families or Shu landlords, all of whom were vested interests in land annexation). With the gradual collapse of the Juntian system, the prefectural military system that had originally relied on it could not be supported any longer, and the imperial court immediately reformed the military system and replaced it with a conscription system.
Under the conscription system, the army was no longer compulsory and became a professional soldier, and the soldiers' identification with the direct commander was far greater than their loyalty to the court and the emperor. In addition, under the conscription system, most of the recruits in the northwest and northeast border areas were Hu people such as Sogdians and Khitans, who were obviously more convinced of the orders of the generals from hu origin. All these gave the Tang Dynasty the opportunity to strengthen the strength of the northern border towns, and An Lushan stepped onto the stage of history under this background.
Imperial art is unbalanced, and the rules of the new power struggle are broken
In addition to his negligence about the tax crisis, Tang Xuanzong was particularly superstitious about the art of the emperor and was good at balancing the forces of the court to ensure that the emperor enjoyed an authoritative arbitratory position. During his reign of more than forty years, such factional rivalries between The DPRK and China never stopped. In the early period of Xuanzong, there was a struggle between the two major factions of literature and official talent, the so-called "literature" refers to the court officials selected by the imperial examination, and the so-called "official talent" refers to the court officials who have climbed up step by step by virtue of their political achievements at the local level.
In the early years, the representative figure of the literary examination faction was Zhang Shuo, and the representative of the official faction was Yu Wenrong. Later, the two left the court one after another, and Zhang Jiuling and Li Linfu took over the banners of literature and official talent respectively. The two sides fought for many years, and finally ended with Zhang Jiuling's defeat. However, just as Li Linfu was in the ascendant, Tang Xuanzong struck again, suppressing Li Linfu on the one hand and finding a new opponent for him on the other.
Originally, Emperor Xuanzong of Tang was particularly fond of Concubine Wu in the middle of the period, and Concubine Wu Huifei gave birth to Li Mao (Li Mao, the Prince of Shou) who was clever and clever since childhood, and was very popular with Tang Xuanzong, so Concubine Wu Huifei moved the mentality of making her son a crown prince. In order to achieve this goal, she had to overthrow the crown prince Li Ying, so she united with Li Linfu in the outer court. However, Li Ying also gained the support of courtiers, and the faction led by Zhang Jiuling was the supporter of the crown prince. Because of this, Concubine Wu never fulfilled her wish until her death.
Later, Zhang Jiuling fell, and Li Ying and his other two brothers were immediately destroyed (the famous "Three Princes Time"), and the position of crown prince was empty. At this time, Concubine Wu Huifei was dead, and Li Linfu belonged to the same party as Li Mao, the King of Shou, and in order to prevent Li Linfu's family from dominating, Tang Xuanzong did not appoint his favorite son King Shou as crown prince, but instead chose another son, Li Heng, who was obviously weak. However, the crown prince's appointment was only a preliminary containment of Li Linfu's power, and after The death of Concubine Wu Hui, Tang Xuanzong snatched Princess Yang of Shou from Li Mao, the Prince of Shou, under the pretext of being depressed and in urgent need of comfort. By allowing yang to enter the Taoist temple as a Daoist taizhen and then enter the palace, he changed his identity and was later crowned as Yang Guifei.
After Yang Guifei ascended to the throne, Tang Xuanzong began to support her brother Yang Guozhong, gradually cultivating Yang Guozhong to become Li Linfu's biggest political enemy in his later years. In his later years, Tang Xuanzong became increasingly extravagant in his life, and it happened that Yang Guozhong was familiar with the road in terms of accumulating wealth (mainly due to Li Linfu's discordant Jiannan Jiedushi envoy Zhang Qiu and Qiong's gift), and won the emperor's heart. In the early days, Yang Guozhong tried his best to curry favor with Li Linfu in order to promote his rank, and the two sang a harmony in the construction of the crown prince Li Heng, but in the end, under the design of Tang Xuanzong, the momentum of the struggle for power and profit between the old and new nobles became more and more obvious.
This is true of the court, and the military is no exception. Tang Xuanzong initially relied heavily on Wang Zhongsi in the Northwest Frontier Defense Army, and was later succeeded by Ge Shuhan, while supporting An Lushan in the Northeast Border Defense Army. As for the contradiction between An Lushan and Yang Guozhong, tang Xuanzong was also happy to see it. What Tang Xuanzong did not expect was that with the collapse of the Juntian system and the prefectural military system, the rules of power struggle in the Tang Dynasty also underwent tremendous changes. Zhang Shuo, Yuwen Rong, Zhang Jiuling, Li Linfu, Li Mao, and others who had been toyed with by him would have nothing without the support of the emperor. However, An Lushan was different from Ge Shuhan, they had been guarding the border town for many years, had great prestige in the local area, and had a heavy army. Many of these armies were local Hu people, and it was very likely that they shared the same religious beliefs as An Lushan, so there was a tendency to private army and became an important political resource for An Lushan.
Whether it was Zhang Jiuling or Yang Guozhong, or even Li Linfu, they were all in the throat of the rise of the warlords of the local feudal towns. Even if some of them promoted foreign vassals in order to defend their own power, they were also in a political sense of smell and saw that the expansion of local forces threatened the center of the empire. However, Tang Xuanzong obviously did not realize this, and was still addicted to his own power game, not realizing that the forces of the various parties had long been unbalanced. Even if Yang Guozhong repeatedly reminded the emperor to beware of an rebellion at An Lushan, he was only put aside, and the power was only a partisan dispute. In order to gain the emperor's trust, Yang Guozhong went so far as to raid An Lushan's mansion in Chang'an and arrest and kill many of An Lushan's cronies. This incident was considered by An Lushan to be a change in the direction of the imperial court, which directly angered An Lushan and caught Tang Xuanzong by surprise.
To sum up, the Anshi Rebellion was an important node in the tang dynasty's transformation from prosperity to decline, and the reason for its outbreak was the collapse of the juntian system and the prefectural military system, resulting in changes in the economic foundation and power structure. However, Tang Xuanzong did not pay attention to the crisis at the economic level and implemented reforms, and at the same time, while keen on the imperial balance of power, he failed to notice the changes in the rules of power struggle, and finally induced the Anshi Rebellion under the combined effect of a series of mistakes.
Of course, the impact of the Anshi Rebellion was not limited to the Tang Dynasty, it had a profound impact on the Five Dynasties and even the Song Dynasty. During the Five Dynasties period, most of the northern feudal towns were Hu people, and the "false son" system (that is, the acceptance of outstanding generals as righteous sons) that prevailed began to prevail from the An Lushan period. After the Anshi Rebellion, the wave of northerners moving south intensified, the south was further developed, and by the two Song Dynasties, the south had become China's new economic center of gravity.