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The most powerful of Yang Guifei's family is Yang Guozhong.
If the three ladies of Han, Yu, and Qin, as well as the two brothers Yang Cheng and Yang Qi, were still limited to extravagance and lasciviousness in life, then Yang Guozhong's role and influence in politics in addition to these aspects are far from being comparable to them.
1. How did Yang Guozhong know Yang Guifei?
Yang Guozhong, formerly known as Yang Zhao, is a native of Yongle, Puzhou, Shanxi. Wu Zetian's fortunate minister Zhang Yizhi, that is, his uncle. Yang Zhao has not learned and has no behavior since he was a child, and he is addicted to drinking and gambling (gambling), and the Yang family despises this little scoundrel very much. Yang Zhao couldn't get along in his hometown, so he "joined the army with anger" and went to Shu County to be a soldier in Tuntian, and moved to Tunyou.
Shi Zhangkuan, the governor of Yizhou, beat him up for "hating him" for some reason, and then awarded him the new lieutenant.
Yang Zhao and Yang Yuhuan are brothers and sisters from ancestors, and they are distant relatives with estranged clan relations.
After the death of the concubine's biological father Xuanyan, Yang Zhao came and went to his home, "communicating with the daughter", according to the later situation, the middle daughter is Yang Yuhuan's third sister (the one who is the lady of the country). Because Yang Yuhuan was taken away by her uncle who lived in Henan not long after she was born, she didn't know Yang Zhao when she grew up. In short, Yang Zhao lived a rude life during his teenage years and was always discriminated against.
Since Yang Guifei was lucky, Yang Zhao's fortune has also come. When he was in Shuzhong, Yang Zhao had become acquainted with the wealthy Yu Zhongtong in Sichuan, and often received his help and support financially.
Xian Yu Zhongtong is famous, with words, it is said that he is "quite well-read, material and wise", Jiannan Jiedu envoy Zhang Qiu and Qiong appointed him as an interview envoy, entrusted with a confidant, and discussed with him in case of trouble.
Although Zhang Qiu and Qiong held great power in Sichuan, the eunuch journey was treacherous, and there was no backer in the court, so he was quite worried about his future, and always wanted to find a backer in the important ministers of the court or other aspects to protect his official eunuch future.
When he learned that Yang Guifei's hometown was in Sichuan, he wanted to open up this inner line of relationship through Guifei's relatives in Sichuan.
He put his heart in his heart and Xian Yu Zhongtong said:
"Today, I am alone in the favor, and without internal help, I will be in danger of Li Linfu. Hearing that Concubine Yang is newly fortunate, no one dares to attach to her, and the son can go to Chang'an for me to marry her family, and I will be fine. ”
However, Xian Yu Zhongtong is a local tyrant who does not travel widely, and he has little contact with Concubine Yang's family, and there are not many people he knows in Chang'an.
Therefore, he said to Xian Yu Zhongtong: "Zhongtong Shu people, they have not tried to travel to the country, and they are afraid of losing their business." ”
said that he could not complete this important task.
But when Xian Yu Zhongtong proposed to find the relationship with Concubine Yang's relatives, he remembered Yang Zhao and introduced Yang Zhao to Zhang Qiu and Qiong.
When Zhang Qiu and Qiong met with Yang Zhao, they saw that he was "magnificent, and his words were sensitive", and the conditions were very suitable for doing this kind of errand, so he immediately appointed Yang Zhao as the promoter, and he was emotionally accommodating, and the relationship was harmonious day by day.
When Zhang Qiu and Qiong saw that the time was ripe, they sent Yang Zhao to Chang'an, the division of Beijing, to contribute Shu brocade to the imperial court.
Before leaving, he said to Yang Zhao: I have prepared some things in Pixian County for a day's food, "Zi Guo, you can take it", which can be used by himself.
Yang Zhao went to Pixian County, and saw that Zhang Qiu and Qiong had prepared high-quality Shu goods worth tens of thousands of dollars, which was completely unexpected to him, and he was overjoyed, and traveled day and night, and soon arrived in Chang'an.
He visited the brothers and sisters of the Yang family one by one, and personally delivered the Shu goods to the door, saying that this was "a gift from Zhang Qiugong".
He and Mrs. Qiu Guo were "old acquaintances", so he lived in Mrs. Qiu's house and left half of the Shu goods to this money-greedy lady.
As a result, the Yang brothers and sisters praised Zhang Qiu and forgave Zhang Qiu in front of Xuanzong day and night, and won Xuanzong's favor for him, and the Yang brothers and sisters became Zhang Qiu and Qiong's political backstage.
Yang Zhao also profited from this, and his brothers and sisters praised him as "good and good" and led him to Jin to meet the emperor. Xuanzong saw that another relative of a noble concubine appeared, so he stayed in Beijing to fill his position, and he could enter and leave the forbidden place with the worship officer, and immediately appointed him as a Jinwu soldier Cao to join the army.
It's just that Yang Zhao is a sparse subordinate and has no social status, so Xuanzong did not give high-ranking officials a reward like Yang Cheng and Yang Qi at the beginning.
This was the autumn of the fourth year of Tenpo (745 AD).
2. How to be favored by Tang Xuanzong?
After Yang Zhao established a foothold in Chang'an, he relied on the conditions of the concubine and the Yang sisters to be favored, and skillfully drilled the camp. Inside, he often entered the palace to get close to the concubine, carefully served Xuanzong, and in the imperial court, he did everything possible to tie up with the ministers. Whenever there was a banquet in the forbidden middle school, Yang Zhao was in charge of the Pu Wenshu (a scorebook for entertainment), "Xuanxiao Precision".
Xuanzong was very appreciative of his shrewdness in arithmetic, and once praised him as a "good degree of zhilang".
Du Zhi Lang Zhong is the official responsible for the statistics and accounting of financial income and expenditure, in fact, Yang Zhao did not Ren Du Zhi Lang Zhong, Xuanzong said this, but it was just a metaphor for his calculation and shrewdness.
However, the Yang sisters grasped Xuanzong's joke and insisted on saying that there was no joke in saying anything, "counting this sentence is above". At the same time, Yang Zhao had already made a knot with the favored minister Wang Jie, Wang Zhao took Hubu Langzhong as the household servant envoy, so he asked him to be his subordinate judge, Xuanzong at the request of Zhu Yang, pushed the boat down the river, and agreed to Yang Zhao to take this official position.
Soon, he was promoted to the position of Inspector of Imperial History. Although the quality of supervising the imperial history is not high, it is a kind of important position, and it is also one of the necessary steps to enter the high-ranking officials, and it is generally held by well-known scholars.
And Yang Zhao is humble, completely relying on nepotism, "suddenly acting clearly, and the courtiers sneered at him." ”
During the Tianbao period, Li Linfu, the minister of power, framed the crown prince Li Heng, and used Yang Zhao to favor and speak out, taking him as his henchman. And Yang Zhao also took the opportunity to take refuge as an opportunity for himself to climb up, so he acted as a thug with Yang Shenjin, Ji Wen and others, and actively participated in various actions to persecute the forces of the crown prince Li Heng.
They set up another push court in Beijing, repeatedly set up a prison, and punished hundreds of princelings. It is said that these were the first things that Yang Zhao attacked. And behind it is Li Linfu who instigates it.
So, the history contains:
"The impeachment played by Guo Zhongfan, who is suspected of being involved in the crown prince, although Lin Fu does not say anything to guide him, it is all Lin Fu's work."
As for Yang Zhao, because he has the Yang sisters as backers, he has no fear, "taking advantage of the evil and being wanton", which not only conspires with the powerful minister Li Linfu, but also benefits Yang Guifei, and he can also establish authority, in his opinion, this matter is a triple win.
In front of Xuanzong, Yang Zhao tried his best to do what he liked.
Because Xuanzong is getting older, he "likes and dislikes". Yang Zhao "found out about his feelings" through the Yang sisters, and prepared in advance, so he "moved the deed to do what he wanted", and won the favor of Xuanzong.
He held several important positions and became an important official in the ruling group.
Soon, Xuanzong thought that he had done a good job and was officially promoted to Duzhi Langzhong. In short, in less than a year, Yang Zhao led more than 15 envoys and transferred them to Zhongcheng, who was also the middle of the imperial history, and judged the branch of the department.
In the eighth year of Tianbao (749 AD), Xuanzong summoned the ministers and hundreds of officials to visit the things in the Zuozang treasury, and was very happy to see the materials and coins.
From then on, Yang Zhao had to be appointed to Qian Valley, entering and leaving the inner courtyard of the deep palace, and the eunuchs said good things for him in front of Xuanzong, so Xuanzong was even more fortunate to him.
In the ninth year of Tianbao (750 AD), Yang Zhao asked Zhaoxue, the brother of his uncle Zhang Yi, to ask for it, and Xuanzong actually agreed. Then, Yang Zhao used his name "Zhao" to include the word "Golden Knife", and if he committed a crime, please change his name to show his "loyalty". Xuanzong then gave the name "Guozhong".
3. Bloody career
After some painstaking management, Yang Guozhong's wings gradually plumped, and with a certain political strength, he began to unscrupulously dump his colleagues who were favored with him.
When Li Linfu instructed Wang Ji to rectify Yang Shenjin, Yang Guozhong had already actively participated. Later, Wang Jiao suffered, and Yang Guozhong was a vicious thug who jumped up and down.
Because at that time, Wang Ji was the imperial historian and Jing Zhaoyin, and his favor was above himself, and his official prestige was also above him. So he took advantage of Xing Wei's case of "plotting chaos" and threw himself into the well to achieve his own goals.
Wang Jie's younger brother Wang Wei was friendly with Xing Wei, and Yang Guozhong seized on this article to accuse Wang Wei of being implicated in Xing Wei's conspiracy. At the beginning of Xuanzong, he exonerated Wang Jie on the grounds that Wang Jie had been appointed for a long time and that he had "merit" in financial management, and he may not know about it, thinking that Wang Jie and Wang Gang were half-brothers, and it may be that Wang Gang was jealous of Wang Jie's wealth and deliberately framed him. Therefore, Xuanzong wanted to forgive Wang Jie's sin without questioning, but he had to ask Wang Gong to plead for the crime first, and then pardon it.
Then he secretly ordered Yang Guozhong to inform Wang of this intention. However, Yang Guozhong not only did not reveal Xuanzong's true intentions to Wang Jie, but instead persuaded Wang Jiao to endure the pain and cut his love, "but resist and invite the sin Langzhong (Wang Lu was Hubu Langzhong)" to save himself. Wang Ji thought for a long time, but did not agree, and said:
"The younger brother's ancestors loved him, and he was frequently punished in the past, and he did not want to give up and seek (self-)survival. ”
Therefore, he did not ask the emperor for guilt in accordance with Xuanzong's will, which made Xuanzong angry. As a result, the back of the Wang brothers was executed. And Yang Guozhong, however, was able to act as the official of Wang Zhao and won the important position of Jing Zhaoyin. This was the year of the 11th year of Tianbao (752 A.D.).
Since then, Yang Guozhong "leaned into power inside and outside, and the secretary of state was vigilant." ”
Yang Guozhong entered Beijing after the canonization of the concubine in the fourth year of Tianbao (745 AD), and in just five or six years, he jumped from a low-status new lieutenant to a new upstart dignitary of the central government of the Tang Dynasty. Because he relied on the strength of the concubine and the Yang sisters.
Therefore, although he is a prominent official, he is still looked down upon.
He colluded with the five Yang sisters and brothers to form a corrupt force of a group of foreign relatives, and through Yang Guozhong's wanton intervention in the government, the political affairs became worse.
4. Xian Yu Zhongtong Nanzhao's defeat
For Tang Xuanzong, spoiling Yang's relatives certainly has its side of pleasing the concubine.
However, this pampering has greatly exceeded the limits of ordinary coping. Under normal circumstances, the official positions granted to relatives are limited to idle and loose officials, Xuanzong Kaiyuan to the family of Queen Wang and the family of Concubine Wu Hui in Kaiyuan, all of which are the same.
Only at this time, for the Yang family's relatives, Xuanzong banned the net and granted him a real position, allowing him to expand his power, especially Yang Guozhong, and re-promoted.
Is Xuanzong so stupid because of his femininity?
No. He did so in order to create a new force among the courtiers. Facts show that Xuanzong in the late Tianbao period had begun to gradually alienate Li Linfu, and he supported Yang Guozhong, on the one hand, to contain Li Linfu's dictatorship, and on the other hand, to prepare for replacing the aging Li Linfu. This is the usual method of Xuanzong.
After Yang Guifei became favored, many officials tended to become inflammatory, currying favor with Guifei and her relatives. However, Li Linfu's attitude is quite subtle, and there is almost no record of him actively supporting Nayang Yuhuan's entry into the palace from the existing historical materials (it is not surprising that Shouwang Mao was originally the object of his protection).
If compared with his attitude of actively currying favor with Concubine Wu Hui back then, the two are in stark contrast. Obviously, there is a considerable distance between Yang Guifei and Li Linfu.
In this context, the expansion of Yang Guozhong's power in the imperial court cannot but pose a threat to the authoritarian and arbitrary minister Li Linfu.
After Yang Guozhong became a high-ranking official in the imperial court, with the expansion of power, his contacts were also wider, and his understanding of the internal situation of the upper ruling group was also deeper and more detailed.
He found that Li Linfu, the minister of power, had the support of the military forces of An Lushan and the northern towns of Anlu, and the crown prince Li Heng also had the support of the military forces of the northwest towns, and these two military groups could not penetrate by themselves.
Without the support of the military forces of the local town, his power and status in the imperial court would be very limited. This is especially true when unforeseen events occur.
Therefore, he desperately wanted to gather some military forces as his political backing, and the target was naturally the Jiannan military town that he was familiar with.
At that time, the king of Nanzhao had been attached to the Tang court, and the kings of Nanzhao often brought their wives and daughters to meet the local governors of the Han nationality.
However, the king of Nanzhao, Luo Feng, refused to submit. Zhang Qiantuo was annoyed and ashamed, "sent people to humiliate him", and reported to the court to accuse him of his crimes.
Ge Luofeng was very "resentful", so he sent troops to capture Yunnan County, killed Zhang Qiantuo, and captured 32 Yizhou. Xuanzong was shocked when he heard the report and wanted to send troops to attack.
At this time, it was the end of the ninth year of Tianbao (750 AD), and not long after Yang Guozhong took office as Jingzhao Yin, he took the opportunity to recommend his old friend and henchman Xian Yu Zhongtong as the envoy of Jiannan Jiedu, and ordered him to lead his troops to attack Nanzhao.
In Yang Guozhong's view, this can kill two birds with one stone: it can not only install the same party, but also use it to establish military merits in order to cultivate the power of the southwest military town.
However, Xian Yu Zhongtong had neither political skills nor military literacy. He led 80,000 troops, divided into two roads out of Rongzhou (now Yibin City, Sichuan) and Wangzhou (now Xichang, Sichuan), when the army entered Quzhou (now Zhaotong, Sichuan) and Jingzhou respectively, Nanzhao King Ge Luofeng saw the Tang army pressing the border, feared that he would not be invincible, and hurriedly sent envoys to negotiate peace, expressing his willingness to return the captured population and materials, and restore the county town of Yunnan to the Tang Dynasty.
And proposed:
"Today, the Tibetan soldiers are pressing the border, if I am not allowed, I will return to Tubo, Yunnan Tang Youye. ”
Unexpectedly, Xian Yu Zhongtong ignored Ge Luofeng's words, thought that he personally led an army of 80,000, and wanted to pacify Nanzhao in one fell swoop, but he did not know the strength of Nanzhao, and did not consider the consequences of the alliance between Nanzhao and Tubo, detained the envoys sent by Nanzhao, and rashly refused the request for peace talks of Nanzhao King Ge Luofeng, and ordered to continue the march.
In April of the tenth year of Tianbao (751 AD), Xianyu Zhongtong's army entered the Xi'er River and engaged the Nanzhao army. As a result, the Tang army was defeated, 60,000 soldiers were killed, and the commander Xian Yu Zhongtong was almost killed and fled in disarray.
Ge Luofeng was afraid of the Tang attack, so he threw himself into Tibet. Tubo ordered Luo Feng to be "Zampu Zhong", respected him as "Eastern Emperor", and gave him a golden seal. The Nanzhao language called the younger brother "Zhong", which means the younger brother of the king of Tubo, and signifies the equal alliance between the two regimes to jointly deal with the powerful Tang court.
5. Yang Guozhong's Jiannan Military Town Group
Due to the failure of this attack on Nanzhao, especially the surrender of Nanzhao to Tibet, the military pressure of the Tang Dynasty in the southwest region was even greater. However, Yang Guozhong did everything possible to cover up Xian Yu Zhongtong, not only "covering up his defeat", but also "recounting his military exploits", so that he was rewarded.
Then, under the planning of Yang Guozhong, emphasizing the importance of Sichuan's status, Xian Yu Zhongtong came forward to ask Yang Guozhong to lead the Jiannan Jiedu envoy, and Xuanzong gave Yang Guozhong the right to know the history of the governor of Shu County, and served as the deputy ambassador of Jiannan Jiedu, and knew the affairs of the festival.
Yang Guozhong recommended Xian Yu Zhongtong to enter Chang'an and replace himself as Jingzhao Yin, and then, Yang Guozhong asked for a second army to attack Nanzhao.
Xuanzong ordered the system and recruited troops in Liangjing (Chang'an, Luoyang) and Henan and Hebei.
The reservists in Guanzhong and the Central Plains region were not only physically strong, but also good at fighting. However, the northern soldiers were not accustomed to the water and soil of the south, and were especially afraid of the miasma of the south, and when the northern soldiers arrived in Sichuan and Yunnan, they often died of this miasma on the way before they went to the battlefield. Therefore, when I heard that I was going to fight in Nanzhao, many people refused to apply. Yang Guozhong relied on his power and sent Yushi to supervise the arrest, "send the flail to the military station", and forcibly recruit him.
According to the system, those who have honors can be exempted from conscription, but because Tang has been using troops in border towns for a long time, there are fewer and fewer people who can be conscripted, so Yang Guozhong asked "take the high honor first". So, "the walker was sad, and his parents and wives gave it away, so the cry vibrated wildly." ”
It aroused strong dissatisfaction among the people of Guanzhong and the Central Plains. Du Fu's famous poem "The Carriage of Soldiers" is said to describe and criticize the situation of this forced conscription.
The poem says:
"The chariots, the horses, and the pedestrians have bows and arrows at their waists. The grandmother and wife sent each other off, and the dust did not see the Xianyang Bridge. The clothes stopped crying, and the crying went straight to the sky. ”
For Yang Guozhong, of course, he hopes that this war can be won by luck in order to establish his own prestige, and it doesn't matter if he fails, because the emperor is far away, he can lie about the military situation and cover up the defeat into victory.
The important thing is that he can take advantage of the troubles in the border towns to control the military town group in the Jiannan region from then on, and cultivate the third largest military force after the Northeast Military Group and the Northwest Military Group, as his own political backing.
Soon, he obtained the important position of Shannan West Road Interview Envoy from Xuanzong, which strengthened his strength.
With the change of Yang Guozhong's political status and the growth of his military strength, the contradictions between him and Li Linfu, the prime minister who had always controlled the power of the military state, became increasingly acute.
Li Linfu and Yang Guozhong are both representatives of the decadent aristocracy, bureaucrats, and ruling groups, and the only difference between them is that Li Linfu represents the interests of the old aristocratic bureaucracy, while Yang Guozhong represents the interests of the new aristocracy with the color of foreign relatives.
One wants to do his best to protect his vested rights and interests, and the other wants to do everything possible to develop his own power, so the conflict between the new upstart and the old nouveau riche for power and profit cannot be avoided.
Faced with this situation, some bureaucrats who were inclined to join or cling to one faction according to their own interests and relations started a struggle against each other.
(End of text)
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