The authoritarian centralization of power in ancient Chinese society was constantly strengthened until it reached its peak during the Ming and Qing dynasties. In this process, it is a game between centralized power and local decentralization, imperial power and phase power, and too strong will pose a threat to imperial power.
During the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang directly abolished the chancellor to strengthen imperial power, and once the local decentralization was stronger than the centralization of power, it would shake the foundation of the country, and the An Shi Rebellion launched by An Lushan and Shi Siming was a representative example.
The birth and development of the jiedushi
In 618, Li Yuan established the Tang Dynasty, in order to better manage the army and strengthen the army against the enemy, the imperial court set up jiedushi, but only military power and no other power, until the Tang Xuanzong period, Jiedushi already had the power of the army, the people, and the wealth, and the strength gradually surpassed the central government.
During the Tang Xuanzong period, the strength of the jiedushi had reached 490,000, while the central army had only 120,000 troops, and there was a big gap in the strength of the two sides, and once the jiedushi made the rebellion, it was difficult for the central government to quell it.
The reasons for the excessive power of jiedushi are as follows: First, the collapse of the Juntian system in the Tang Dynasty.
In order to curb land annexation, the Tang Dynasty inherited the system of the previous dynasty in land policy and implemented the equal field system, but during the tang Gaozong period, the equal field system was gradually destroyed, and many peasants lost their land and became homeless, posing a threat to social stability.
During the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, in order to solve this serious social problem, the imperial court decided to recruit these displaced people to replenish the army, which led to the Tang Dynasty's military system becoming a conscription system. The birth of the conscription system has put more than half of the country's military strength in the hands of the emissaries, and very few troops controlled by the central government.
Second, the Tang Dynasty's frontier wars were frequent. In the years from Emperor Taizong to Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, there were frequent border wars in the Tang Dynasty, but the number of soldiers allocated by the central government to the localities was insufficient to compete with foreign enemies, so Jiedushi recruited soldiers to increase their troops. In the fifth year of the new century, the army stationed on the frontier reached more than 600,000 people.
Since these soldiers were recruited by the Jiedushi, they had a strong dependence on the Jiedushi, and in their hearts there was only the Jiedushi and no Emperor, and the Jiedushi cultivated their own cronies in the army to enhance their military power.
In order to solve the excessive expenditure of materials brought about by the war, the moderation made it far from enough to rely on the supply of the central authorities alone, so they relied on Tuntian to solve the problem of supplying the army, and over time the financial ability of the economy was greatly enhanced.
By the time of Emperor Xuanzong, there were already ten military towns in the border area, and nine jiedushi and jingluo envoys were set up to manage them, which already had all the power of a district and became a time bomb for the Tang Dynasty.
There was no prosperity after the Anshi Rebellion
The time bomb eventually exploded. In 755, Jiedu sent An Lushan and Shi Siming to lead an army of 150,000 to attack the capital Chang'an on the pretext of attacking Yang Guozhong. The army marched from Fanyang to Chang'an, and when Tang Xuanzong learned of this, he mobilized Pinglu Jiedushi to defend.
However, the enemy army was too strong, An Lushan's army only took more than thirty days to attack Luoyi, and the generals defending the city were all beheaded by An Lushan, and Tang Xuanzong did not expect that his carefully deployed defense plan would be so vulnerable in front of An Lushan.
An Lushan declared himself emperor shortly after capturing Luoyang, and his next target was Tongguan, which was a barrier for Chang'an to defend and difficult to attack, but once Tongguan was lost, then Chang'an was also in danger. At this time, the generals stationed at Tongguan were Feng Changqing and Gao Xianzhi, who adopted defensive tactics in the face of the enemy and took advantage of the geographical advantages of Tongguan to hold out.
I thought that by holding Tongguan, There would be no crisis in Chang'an. However, Tang Xuanzong, who was above the court, listened to the advice of the traitor Yu Xiaoren and asked Shoucheng Jiangling to change the battle plan and go out of the city to meet the enemy, forced by the emperor's will, the generals of Tongguan went out of the city to meet the enemy and fell into the trap of An Lushan, and finally the entire army was destroyed, resulting in the loss of Tongguan.
After the fall of Tongguan, Chang'an was in a hurry, and under the protection of the guards, Tang Xuanzong led Yang Guifei and the crown prince Li Heng to flee from Chang'an, and when the team arrived at Ma Songpo, the Ma Songpo Incident occurred, and Yang Guifei and Yang Guozhong were executed. Subsequently, the crown prince Li Heng ascended the throne on his own behalf of Emperor Suzong of Tang.
Guo Ziyi and Li Guangbi were ordered to attack An Lushan, and by this time the balance of victory had fallen to the side of the Tang Dynasty. First of all, in the Battle of Suiyang, the Tang army held out for ten months to resist the enemy troops moving south, An Lushan was cruel and unkind to his subordinates, and his prestige in the army was greatly reduced, and finally he was killed by his son An Qingxu.
The Tang army became more and more courageous, forced by the helplessness of the situation, An Qingxu asked Shi Siming for help, but Shi Siming killed An Qingxu and established himself as king, Shi Siming and An Lushan had the same fate, both were killed by their own children.
In 761, Shi Chaoyi killed his father Shi Siming, and two years later was forced by the Tang army to be cornered and hanged himself, ending the Anshi Rebellion, which lasted for eight years.
After the Anshi Rebellion, the scene of the once prosperous Tang Dynasty was gone, and the local feudal towns were only nominally subordinated to the imperial court, and the festival was passed down from generation to generation, just like an independent kingdom, and the problem of the feudal towns has not been resolved. Above the imperial court, there is the eunuch dictatorship, and the politics are dark, just as Li Mu said in the poem: the merchant girl does not know the hatred of the country, and the backyard flowers are sung across the river.
Fight for hereditary rights
At first, after jiedushi had military and financial powers, he ostensibly obeyed the central government, but he only asked the imperial court on major matters, and was appointed by the emperor. But people's desires are like mountains and flowing water, once they start, they will not stop, they think that their children and grandchildren can also be thrifty, so they begin to fight for hereditary rights.
Due to the outbreak of the Anshi Rebellion, the generals with military achievements were enfeoffed as jiedushi envoys, and the Tang Dynasty, which could not control the power of jiedushi envoys very well, added forty-two jiedushi envoys, which undoubtedly aggravated the division of feudal towns, and these jiedushi already had hereditary rights in the area under their jurisdiction, forming a hereditary system, the most representative of which was the "three towns of Hebei".
Even if the central government wanted to stop this behavior, it was powerless, and as time went on, the "Three Towns of Hebei" declined, and Zhu Wen, who nominally submitted to the Tang Dynasty government, actually began to expand its power with Henan as the center, becoming the largest feudal power at the end of the Tang Dynasty.
As The Song Dynasty Yin Yuan said: "Those who are weak in Tang are also princes; those who are weak and have not died for a long time, the princes are also weak, tang is weak, and Hebei is also strong; Tang is also weak in Hebei." In 907, Zhu Wen usurped the Tang Dynasty, and the Tang Dynasty also disappeared in the long river of history.
After Zhu Wen established the Later Liang, the forces of the feudal towns with hereditary power in various places followed suit and established themselves as states, and the wars between the feudal towns continued unceasingly, and the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, which lasted for more than half a century, began.