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Ten thousand tombs on the banks of the Erhai Sea, burying thousands of Tang army generals, expert analysis: The decline of the Tang Dynasty began!

Ten thousand tombs on the banks of the Erhai Sea, burying thousands of Tang army generals, expert analysis: The decline of the Tang Dynasty began!

As we all know, the decline of the Tang Empire began with the Anshi Rebellion. An Lushan, who was also the envoy of the Three Towns Festival, held 200,000 strong soldiers, launched a rebellion in 755 AD, and cut off the Kaiyuan Shengshi, and the Tang Dynasty was devastated from then on, and the remaining more than a hundred years were only surviving. From the perspective of troop strength, the total number of Tang troops at that time reached 600,000 to 700,000, and the fierce generals in Anxi, Beiting, Shuofang and other places were like clouds, and the border army had been in battle for a long time, and its combat strength was not inferior to that of An Lushan's troops. So, why did An Lushan dare to rebel?

Ten thousand tombs on the banks of the Erhai Sea, burying thousands of Tang army generals, expert analysis: The decline of the Tang Dynasty began!

In fact, An Lushan did not seem to have the intention of entering the Central Plains, but more just wanted to divide one side. He bet that the roadside armies would not fight them with all their might, but that they would defeat the weak Forbidden Army themselves. Only one border army was the exception, and that was the Jiannan Jiedushi. This Jiannan Jiedushi was one of the ten envoys of the Tang Dynasty, responsible for the defense of the southwestern region of the Tang Dynasty, and there were nearly 100,000 horses at its peak. There was only one reason why Jiannan Jiedushi made An Lushan jealous, and this was Yang Guozhong's concubine troops.

Yang Guozhong operated in the Jiannan army for many years, and in 751, he led the Jiannan Jiedushi envoy, and was later succeeded by his close confidant Li Mi. An Lushan's biggest enemy in the DPRK was Yang Guozhong, and once he started an army, it was very likely that he would fight against the Jiannan Army, so the combat effectiveness of the Jiannan Army was one of the things that An Lushan was most concerned about.

Ten thousand tombs on the banks of the Erhai Sea, burying thousands of Tang army generals, expert analysis: The decline of the Tang Dynasty began!

However, in the Anshi Rebellion, the Jiannan Army played almost no role, and the main force in suppressing the rebellion was Shuofang and other northern frontier troops. And Yang Guozhong himself was killed by the emperor's personal army at Ma Songpo, and the Jiannan army he relied on was like a fictitious, what was going on? In 1993, Yunnan Province designated a cultural relic in Tianbao Park in Dali City as a provincial-level cultural relics protection unit. This cultural relic reveals the secret of the rise and fall of the Tang Dynasty, a mass grave - the "Tang Tianbao Warrior Tomb", which is the collective tomb where the fallen soldiers are buried.

Ten thousand tombs on the banks of the Erhai Sea, burying thousands of Tang army generals, expert analysis: The decline of the Tang Dynasty began!

In 751, Jiannan Jiedushi led Xianyu Zhongtong to lead 80,000 troops to attack Nanzhao. Under great pressure, Nanzhao fell to Tubo and asked Tubo to send troops to attack the Tang army. Nanzhao did not confront the Tang army head-on, and held the capital Taihe City out of the country. Xian Yu Zhongtong led his army over the Cangshan Mountains, hoping to go around the back of Taihe City and cut off its grain routes, causing a belly-to-back attack. Unexpectedly ambushed by the long-awaited Tubo army, the Tang army was defeated and only escaped back with 20,000 people.

King Ge Luofeng of Nanzhao built the remains of the fallen soldiers of the Tang Dynasty into a Jingguan and inscribed a stele that he was forced to rebel against the Tang. Jingguan is made up of the corpses of the soldiers of the defeated side to show the heroic martial arts of the victorious side and deter the enemy country. There have always been records of Jingguan in Chinese history, starting from the pre-Qin Dynasty and endlessly in the history books.

Ten thousand tombs on the banks of the Erhai Sea, burying thousands of Tang army generals, expert analysis: The decline of the Tang Dynasty began!

Today, in Dali City, there are still 10,000 tombs and 1,000 tombs, which are about 6 kilometers apart. As early as in Bai Juyi's poem, it was called "the tomb of ten thousand people". Experts pointed out that these two warrior tombs are the ruins of the Jingguan built by the corpses of the Tang army. Nanzhao was a regime originating in southern Yunnan, and after annexing the other five edicts, its leader Pi Geluo was crowned king of Nanzhao by Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, becoming a vassal state in the southwest of the Tang Dynasty. Nanzhao's original relationship with the Tang Dynasty was very close, but it could not withstand the interference of inferior officials.

Yunnan Taishou Zhang Qiantuo intended to insult The Crown Princess of Nanzhao, and prince Ge Luofeng of course could not swallow this breath and killed Zhang Qiantuo. Yang Guozhong used this as an excuse to launch a war to conquer Nanzhao, with the intention of making a marginal contribution and consolidating his position. This led to the failed Southern Expedition in 751 AD. Yang Guozhong was not willing to accept defeat, and two years later, he ordered Li Mi to lead an army of 70,000 to re-enlist Nanzhao. Because Nanzhao could not hold out, the Tang army was plagued, and the dead were seven or eight, so they had to withdraw their troops. On the way, they were attacked by the combined forces of Tubo and Nanzhao, and the entire army was destroyed, and Li Mi sank the river and died.

Ten thousand tombs on the banks of the Erhai Sea, burying thousands of Tang army generals, expert analysis: The decline of the Tang Dynasty began!

After two major defeats, the main force of the Jiannan army was completely lost, and Yang Guozhong not only did not make meritorious achievements, but lost his troops and generals, and his prestige in the DPRK was greatly reduced. It is a pity that the lives and blood of hundreds of thousands of Tang generals were lost in vain on the Erhai Sea because of the belligerence and incompetence of the prime minister and the main general. More importantly, It allowed An Lushan to glimpse the weakness of the Jiannan Army. Since then, although the Jiannan Army has been rebuilt, its scale and combat effectiveness have been greatly reduced. This army of Yang Guozhong's loyal soldiers and horses no longer posed a threat to An Lushan, and he could finally raise an army with confidence.

Ten thousand tombs on the banks of the Erhai Sea, burying thousands of Tang army generals, expert analysis: The decline of the Tang Dynasty began!

This Tianbao Warrior Tomb in Tianbao Park was rebuilt after the founding of the People's Republic of China. On both sides of the tombstone are engraved two poems by the famous Ming Dynasty general Deng Zilong and Guo Moruo to mourn the fallen Tang generals. Experts believe that the tomb should have been left over from the first rare Zhongtong Southern Expedition, and during the second Li Mi Southern Expedition, the Tang army also deliberately avoided these two warrior tombs and changed the main direction of attack. The battlefield of life and death is now the most famous tourist attraction in China. The Nanzhao regime also collapsed in 902, and its people not only spread out in the land of China, but also spread widely in Southeast Asia, becoming the ancestors of many ethnic groups. Although the long river of history has countless branches, it will eventually become one.

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