Chinese's good to talk about the ancient. First, because the history is long, there are many stories, and the content is rich, and there are too many to say. Second, because of Chinese Confucian culture, it emphasizes "prudence and pursuit of the future" and remembers the sages. For individuals, it can be long insight, and for the country, it can be long spirit. Moreover, "knowing the past and learning from the present, and using history to govern the government" is of great benefit to the long-term peace and stability of the country, and successive rulers have always attached great importance to it. "What is good at the top will be worse at the bottom." Ordinary people talk about the past and the present and become natural and become part of the national culture.
When it comes to past history, the most talked about is the Han and Tang dynasties, because it represents the most glorious Chinese civilization. Although there were later Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, the influence of status was always less than that of the Han and Tang dynasties.
But everything has a certain law, according to Sima Qian's "History", "when the moon is full, it is lost, the prosperity of things is declining, and the heavens and the earth are always", and the so-called prosperity is also accompanied by the emergence of decline. The Tang Dynasty reached an unprecedented peak in the early days of tang Xuanzong Li Longji's reign, and at that time, it was called "the prosperity of the Kaiyuan Dynasty, which was beyond the reach of the Han and Song Dynasties". According to the saying at the time, the grain accumulated in the warehouses was "tens of thousands" of grain in the prefectures and counties. And the price is so low that a bucket of rice "money thirteen" and a horse of silk "money two hundred" point. Materially rich, the people are rich, and the social order is quite good, and later generations talked about the "Kaiyuan prosperous world" and said that "although the walkers do not hold inches of soldiers for thousands of miles."
However, people who have read Du Fu's "Remembrance of the Past", although they have some understanding of the "Kaiyuan Heyday", they are also deeply shocked by "the smell of Zhumen wine and the frozen bones on the road". On the surface, a great civil war of "Anshi Rebellion" destroyed this happy landscape, and the mighty Tang Empire turned from prosperity to decline until its demise. In fact, we slowly cleared the fog of history and found that the seeds of the decline and demise of the Tang Dynasty had long been planted before the civil war, and even blossomed and even borne fruit, and the subsequent "Anshi Rebellion" only accelerated his decline and collapse.
In the successive peasant uprisings in China, there was no discomfort because the land in their hands was gradually dispossessed, and the common people could not survive, so they had to take up arms and start a new distribution. At the end of the Sui Dynasty, peasant revolts in various places were also based on this reason. After the establishment of the Tang Dynasty, it was very shocked by the strength brought by the landless peasant uprising, so for the sake of the long-term peace and stability of the regime, the land system was implemented in the land system. This gives farmers land to farm. Coupled with the government's frivolous and meagre endowments, the economy quickly recovered, the society developed steadily, and finally the famous "rule of chastity" in history appeared. However, in the Wu Zetian period, the equalized field system gradually showed shortcomings, and more and more land annexations were acquired, while the peasants had less and less land to cultivate. With the loss of land, the peasants could not live and work in peace and contentment, and could only go to work as displaced people and look for food everywhere. According to Di Renjie's note to the imperial court, he said: "Fang is starving in the Guandong, Shu Han is fleeing, south of Jianghuai, the solicitation is endless, and if people do not resume their business, they will be thieves." By the time of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, the annexation did not stop, but became more and more intense. At the same time, Tang Xuanzong also appointed some officials who were sneaking horses to manage the finances, and in the end, the palace was full of gold and silver, and the common people had a hard time.
The imperial court economy was generous, and the money available to the emperor naturally increased, and he was content to enjoy, and the extravagance and waste were even more amazing. Yang Guifei's family competed with each other for wealth, and built buildings and halls one after another, and the cost was often tens of millions of silver. Moreover, from time to time, it has been dismantled and covered, covered and dismantled, so that "the work of civil engineering, day and night". In order to build a house for An Lushan, Li Longji ordered that it should only be good-looking, and it could be done without cost, and finally the mansion was built, so that even the kitchen utensils were decorated with gold and silver. Its extravagance is jaw-dropping.
The Zizhi Tongjian commented on Tang Xuanzong: "With the use of the country to enrich the yan, it is regarded as a dung soil, and the noble family is rewarded with no limit." His shots are even more exaggerated. Once, after "ordering a hundred officials to read the world's tributes to Shangshu Province", they actually gave all their belongings to Li Linfu's family in a car!
The emperor is so extravagant, lower-level officials have followed suit, but the money in his hands must be less than the emperor, if you want to be luxurious, you have to find your own way, corruption and bribery naturally become the only way. Yang Guozhong served as chancellor for only one year, and "the chinese and foreign salaries were left behind, accumulating to 30 million horses". During the Tang Dynasty, the silk could be used as currency, and such a huge amount of silk was the silver of countless white flowers, while in the countryside, a large number of landless peasants fled everywhere, hiding from heavy taxes and looking for opportunities to eat. This strong contrast inevitably made the peasants even more disgusted with the rulers of the Tang Dynasty.
When the Tang Dynasty implemented the prefectural military system, and when the government had no foreign wars, these soldiers were peasants who cultivated the fields, and at most they only defended the Beijing Division. If there is a war in the country, it will be ordered to attack, the war will be lifted, and "the soldiers scattered in the province will be returned to the DPRK." However, with the destruction of the Juntian system, the status of soldiers declined, and "the servants were like slaves, and the people of Chang'an were ashamed of them, so much so that they criticized each other." Most of those who are on the sidelines are bitter messengers, and they are in the interest of death and have no wealth, so that those who should be soldiers of the government flee into hiding, and there are no soldiers to deal with." The unsustainable prefectural military system had to be replaced by a conscription system. Don't underestimate this seemingly small military reform, which actually implies a major change.
Since then, the situation in the early Tang Dynasty that "soldiers are not unemployed, and the commanders have no weight to hold the troops" has completely changed, and the so-called situation of "lifting the crowd in the middle of the pass and approaching the four sides" will no longer appear.
After the reform of the military system, Tang Xuanzong began to vigorously set up emissaries in order to stabilize the frontier. In particular, most of the northern feudal towns used the Fang people to fill the post, such as Gao Xianzhi was a Koryo tribe, Geshuhan was a Turkic tribe, and An Lushan was a Lite tribe. At the same time, the central government has less and less military power, the power of the towns on all sides is getting bigger and bigger, and the centrifugal force is further strengthened. Especially after the Anshi Rebellion, the war can no longer rely on the rank of the door valve to discuss the merits and rewards, the promotion of soldiers and generals is determined by the achievements of the hard state, the great merits are listed as princes, and the princes are promoted to the envoy of Jiedushi, the town guards the side, and the feudal town is divided!
These large and small feudal towns, occupying one side, became independent kingdoms and no longer accepted the control of the central government. "Mountain head" was established, "small circles" were popular, tens of thousands of strong soldiers were in hand, and in the places under their rule, the civil and military officials were all from among them, and the taxes did not have to be handed over to the imperial court, although it looked like a country in name, in fact, there was no leadership relationship between the upper and lower levels.
The emperor was arrogant and corrupt, the local self-interest, the officials bribing the public, the peasants lost their land and struggled, the soldiers had no fighting spirit, and any imperial court had one of them that was fatal, not to mention the concentrated occurrence, but the elite of the Tang Empire at that time were immersed in this splendid "prosperous" dream and had no reflection.
When the horn of the Anshi Rebellion sounded, the Tang Empire woke up, but it was already too late, and it was accompanied by the fall of the land and the dream was gone!