The Anshi Rebellion, which began in 755, was finally pacified by the Tang Dynasty after more than 7 years.
However, the negative impact of this rebellion, which plagued Chinese history, continued the entire Tang Dynasty empire, and even later generations formed a one-sided fear of "feudal towns".
The rebel groups represented by An Lushan and Shi Siming, who started by military and were eventually defeated by the military, were not limited to military destruction.
So, how chaotic was the Anshi Rebellion, and how did the Anshi Rebellion, one of the few major rebellions in Chinese history, end?
In 754, Li Longji, who was 69 years old at this time, entered the final stage of his life.
The prosperous era of Kaiyuan's rule showed a trend of decay in Li Longji's later years.
Not only did the entire empire regress, but even Li Longji himself gave up his pioneering spirit and gradually entered the stage of faint and old age.
However, an important figure in the late Tang Dynasty began to appear on the stage of history, and he was An Lushan.
This year, An Lushan was only 51 years old, and it was the moment when he was like a fish in water and in the prime of life in the officialdom.
What's even worse is that An Lushan won the trust and favor of Li Longji, and controlled the Tang Dynasty's Ten Road Domain Towns on three roads.
An Lushan, whose military and financial resources are infinitely expanded, is even more ambitious.
At this time, the pattern of the Tang Dynasty was between internal and external troubles.
The external troubles, of course, are the big feudal towns, represented by An Lushan.
The internal worry is that the traitorous party group headed by Yang Guozhong controls the government and bewitches Li Longji, so that he can continue to lose himself in pleasure.
What led to the eventual demise of the Tang Dynasty was the hostility and confrontation between the two forces, internal and external.
Of course, there were fundamental reasons for the fall of the Tang Dynasty, and the contradiction between the bureaucracy and the power of the feudal towns was only one aspect, but this aspect was skillfully captured by An Lushan.
In the Anshi Rebellion that broke out in 755, An Lushan's slogan was to kill the traitors in the court, so as to support the justice of the Tang Dynasty and restore the past atmosphere of the Tang Empire.
It's just that everyone knows that An Lushan's slogan is just a slogan, and its essence is usurpation of power and treason.
In the face of An Lushan's rebellion, Tang Xuanzong did not believe it at first, but was skeptical of the soldiers who reported the military situation, believing that An Lushan, as his favorite minister, would not betray him.
In the end, in the face of the facts, Tang Xuanzong had to respond, but Tang Xuanzong's response was in a passive role.
Yang Guozhong was in charge of the government, and instigated Tang Xuanzong to order that he mistakenly kill Feng Changqing and Gao Xianzhi in 756, and the rebellion that could have been quelled at the beginning of the Anshi Rebellion entered a long war of attrition.
The straw bag generals who replaced them did not bring a trace of stability to Tang Xuanzong, but caused Tang Xuanzong to escape from Chang'an, and his reputation was ruined.
Without resistance, An Lushan marched forward and entered Chang'an in June 756.
After entering Chang'an, An Lushan is like entering a treasure house and a slaughterhouse.
He ordered his soldiers to loot the entire city, and all the royal assets and personal wealth were looted and turned into his own personal property.
Then, he connived at the soldiers to massacre the officials and civilians in the city, and the targets of the massacre, regardless of the old and the young, women and children, were all killed by An Lushan.
At that time, Chang'an City was not an exaggeration to describe it as ten rooms and nine emptiness.
In addition to wealth and the massacre of civilians, the brutal An Lushan also set fire to the houses in Chang'an, the most densely populated city in the Tang Dynasty, and never a single intact house could be found.
Until this time, Tang Dynasty or Li Longji had not made up his mind to carry out a resolute counterattack, and blindly fleeing became his final choice.
Under the persecution of famous ministers and scholars, in August 756, Li Longji finally opened his mind and decided to pass the throne to his son Li Heng.
Li Heng's performance was much stronger than Li Longji's, and under his auspices and leadership, Chang'an was recovered in 757, and then Luoyang was quickly recovered.
As for Li Heng's mediocre performance in the later period, it is another matter.
Li Heng's ascension to the throne brought a turning point for the Tang Dynasty, and under his beneficiature, Guo Ziyi and Li Guangbi rose rapidly and became the greatest contributors to the pacification of the Anshi Rebellion.
In 757, after An Lushan was killed, An Qingxu continued to rebel.
At this moment, the rebels aimed at Suiyang, trying to open up the road to the south through Suiyang and continue to plague the Tang Dynasty.
However, the rebels encountered strong resistance here, and the 130,000 troops faced the 10,000 defenders of Suiyang and did not take it for 10 months.
The guard general Zhang Xun is also a ruthless character, even if there is no food and no bark to eat in the city, he has persevered for 10 months, but the number of women and children and wounded who have been eaten in these 10 months is endless.
A tragic resistance battle was finally exchanged for a counteroffensive by the Tang Dynasty, coupled with the struggle for power within the Anshi group, so that the rebellion was quickly put down.
But the price paid by the Tang Dynasty was too great, the death of 2 million people and the suffering of more than 20 million people made the Tang Dynasty finally step down from the altar and begin to decline.