This article is a series of 200 intensive readings of Chinese history, and 10 consecutive years of "Sui and Tang History" (click on the blue character to view the previous part), welcome to watch.
After Emperor Xuanzong of Tang ascended the throne, while competing for power within the imperial family, the political crisis and border defense crisis were very serious, and small peasant riots continued to appear in the north and south of the great river, and Tubo, Khitan and Turks took the opportunity to invade the interior.
Tang Xuanzong squarely faced reality and boldly carried out reforms.
01. First of all, reform the administration of officials.
During the Kaiyuan period, Yao Chong, Song Jing, Zhang Jiazhen, and Zhang Jiuling successively served as prime ministers. These people had their own strengths, they could speak out, and Xuanzong could also listen to opinions.
In the third year of the new century (715), Tang Xuanzong clearly declared: "Officials do not rise indiscriminately, only they are not vain, but names and instruments, can not be fakes, left and right relatives, it is not worth false rewards."
In accordance with this spirit, he first solved two problems: First, he eliminated redundant personnel, streamlined the organization, and abolished all the thousands of foreign officials, trial officials, and obliquely sealed officials who had been placed by Emperor Zhongzong of Wuzhou since then, thus saving expenses. The second is to restore the system of counselors and historians participating in the deliberations of the prime minister.
Emperor Xuanzong also attached great importance to the choice of county orders, saying: "The county is the foundation of the country, the shepherd is the first to govern, and every official who belongs to this official has a special position." "Sometimes I personally ask questions to find out if the candidates know how to govern the country. Those who excel in examinations are appointed and those who are poor are dismissed.
In the county order examination organized by Kaiyuan Four Years, 45 people failed, and these people were immediately eliminated and "released to learning."
Not only that, when the county order took office, Xuanzong also personally summoned him to teach the opportunity in person. Tang Xuanzong also followed the name and responsibility of local officials in office, and conducted a more rigorous assessment as the basis for deposing.
To this end, he specially promulgated the "Edict on rectifying the Administration of Officials", stipulating that every October, the commissions should be inspected according to the orders of the ministry to "be the most important in the school and the most rational and the most important, from the first to the fifth class, so that the officials and ministers will be covered in detail." The upper class is the most, the lower class is the temple, and the middle third class is determined in turn, and the advantages and disadvantages are changed to ascension and lowering, and the first and the capital officials of the history of the assassination are stabbed." The implementation of this policy has played a certain role in improving local politics.
Tang Xuanzong regarded the strict implementation of the rule of law and strict rewards and punishments as a fundamental measure to improve the rule of officials. He said, "What is good must be rewarded, so persuasion can be exercised; and what is sinful must be punished, so evil is punished." ”
Twenty-four years before the beginning of the new century (736), this spirit was basically implemented. For example, Tongzhou Assassin Jiang Shidu attached great importance to the development of agriculture, and during his tenure of office, he organized the peasants of Tongzhou to open Tonglingpi in Chaoyi and Hexi counties, and "diverted water and the Yellow River irrigation of weir" to plant 200,000 mu of rice fields.
Song Qingli, the governor of Yingzhou, organized more than 80 soldiers and civilians in Tuntian, and within a few years, "the warehouse was rich and solid, and the residents gradually became more and more yin." Song Qingli was therefore promoted to the post of Yushi Zhongcheng (御史中丞).
Those who pervert the law, regardless of their position, are punished according to law. For example, because he had privately amassed five thousand silks, Emperor Xuanzong personally ordered him to be executed. The former crown prince Fu Xiaosong was demoted to the title of Qingzhou Assassin for paying bribes to the lieutenant Niu Xiantong. Zhang Shoujue, the assassin of Yingzhou, had established great military achievements, but later because of his lying about military information and bribing the envoys, he was demoted to the history of the assassination of Kuozhou.
The Thorn Shi County Order was an official who was close to the people, and Tang Xuanzong's reform policy was mainly implemented through them.
02. Secondly, we cracked down on the powerful and powerful families, encouraged the system of equalizing the fields, and built farmland water conservancy.
In the early 8th century, the extortion of the Tang government and the land annexation of the powerful clan made the burden on the peasants in Juntian more and more heavy, and they were often unable to maintain their own survival and simple reproduction, resulting in the situation of "more than half of the world's household registration, fleeing more than half". And most of these fugitives have become the "private belongings" of the powerful and powerful families.
As a result of the decrease in the number of taxpayers, the government's internal storage is scarce, water conservancy is in disrepair, armaments are not in order, and national defense is empty. After Tang Xuanzong came to power, in order to save the central government from the financial crisis, he had to fight with the Powerful Clan, competing for land and labor from them to maintain the Juntian system.
Emperor Xuanzong always supported officials in attacking Haoqiang, and when Li Yuanxuan was serving as Jing Zhaoyin, "the princes and princes wanted to be in power, and all the (Zheng Bai) canals were touched to harm the paddy fields." Yuan Xuan "destroyed everything for the officials, and the people reaped great benefits."
Wang Xiantong, the uncle of King Li Ye of Xue, invaded the people and forcibly seized the people's land, and the relevant personnel planned to punish him according to law. Li Ye interceded with Emperor Xuanzong, and at the insistence of the chancellor Yao Chong and Lu Huaishen, Tang Xuanzong punished Wang Xiantong according to law, and from then on "your relatives tied their hands."
In the early years of the new century, although some powerful and powerful clans were sanctioned, from a nationwide perspective, the blow was very incomplete and could not be thorough, and at that time, there were still many black lands and labor forces controlled by the powerful clans, thus reducing the financial revenue of the Tang government.
In order to save the financial crisis, from the ninth year of the new century (721) to the twelfth year, the Tang government used four years to carry out a nationwide campaign to inspect the land and enclose the households: The edict Ordered Yuwen Rong to serve as a national envoy to persuade the peasants to cover the land, and set up ten envoys to persuade the peasants and judges to persuade the peasants, and went to all parts of the country separately to inspect the labor power of the black land and the shadows of the Hao and bureaucrats; confiscated the land outside the inspection and distributed it to the landless customers according to the equalized land system; for the off-the-books population, they were re-registered, naturalized on the spot, exempted from rent for six years, and only paid household taxes.
As a result of this household-based campaign, the central government increased the number of households by 800,000, and millions of household taxes were collected at the end of the year.
It can be seen from this that the result of the campaign to inspect the land and the households strengthened the centralization of power, increased the income of the state, restricted land annexation, and thus eased class contradictions. From the mainstream point of view, Tang Xuanzong's measures have indeed promoted the development of social productive forces.
03. Third, crack down on Buddhist forces and attach importance to the development of academic culture.
After Tang Xuanzong came to power, in the early years of the new century, he issued an edict to eliminate the monks and nuns of the world, and at that time, there were more than 12,000 laymen in various places. In August of the same year, Emperor Xuanzong also ordered that the construction of new Buddhist temples was strictly prohibited, and the casting of Buddha statues and the copying of Buddhist scriptures were prohibited. At the same time, it also prohibited aristocratic officials from communicating with monks and nuns, which greatly hit the Buddhist power.
During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the cultural relics and classics were lost, and although the early Tang Dynasty did some collection and collation work, it did not gain much. In the Kaiyuan period, with the development of social economy, academic culture also developed greatly. Emperor Xuanzong appointed Ma Huaisu, a scholar of the Zhaowenguan, as a book repair envoy, and together with Chu Wuliang, he jointly organized the collection, collation, and compilation of books.
Emperor Xuanzong also personally inspected the editing of books, and ordered the establishment of a jishu academy in Luoyang, Chang'an, to organize famous scholars throughout the country and ask them to concentrate on writing books and teachings. Emperor Xuanzong also ordered the Dafu Temple: "Give five thousand times of hemp paper every month, give three hundred and sixty pills of ink every season, and give five hundred pieces of rabbit skin as a pen material every year." "to ensure the smooth progress of the compilation and copying of books."
Tang Xuanzong himself was also a musician, dramatist and poet, who loved literature and art and was vassal of elegance. In the Two Books of Tang, the "Music Chronicle" and the "Li Le Zhi", there are many records of Xuanzong and concubines singing and rejoicing together.
In addition, Tang Xuanzong also paid attention to recruiting and cultivating various talents, and he hired many famous scholars as his academic advisers. For example, Zhang Sui was a famous astronomer, and because he refused to cooperate with the great noble wu Sansi, he lived in seclusion in Songshan and became a monk. In the third year of the new century (715), Emperor Xuanzong of Tang summoned Zhang Sui to Chang'an and made him an astronomy adviser.
Zhang Sui took advantage of the conditions created by Xuanzong and his own hard work to finally create the famous "Great Yan Calendar" and guide the measurement of the earth's meridian, becoming an outstanding astronomer in history.
Emperor Xuanzong also issued an edict to recruit the great poet Li Bai and let Li Bai make Hanlin offerings and give him generous treatment. Li Bai was recruited into the palace with a cloth coat, which had a great influence on the cultural circles at that time.
Under such an environment, the prosperity and development of literature and art is an inevitable phenomenon.
04. Thoroughly solve the problem of border areas
Before Tang Xuanzong ascended the throne, the border defense crisis was very serious. In the first year of the Long Live Tongtian Dynasty (696), Khitan Li Duzhong took advantage of ethnic contradictions to incite his people to "raise an army to rebel" and capture Yingzhou. Subsequently, the prefectures of Lianchang, Shi, Xian, Wo, Shen, Rui, Xin, Li, Bin, Yibin, and Bincong under the jurisdiction of the Yingzhou Governor's Office were also lost. Therefore, after 696 AD, the governments of these twelve states were forced to move to Qing, You, Song, Xu and other prefectures.
Wu Zetian sent Wang Xiaojie and other organizations to counterattack, but the result was a big defeat, almost the entire army was destroyed, and the general Wang Xiaojie was killed.
From then on, the Khitan nobles often took advantage of their advantageous position in western Liaoning to plunder the interior and maim the people of the north.
As for the west of the Yumen Gate, in 692 AD, although Wang Xiaojie recovered the four towns of Anxi, 11 years later (703), the slave-owning nobleman U zhile attacked the town of Shanye, one of the four towns, and "moved his teeth and lived in it", and from then on "Anxi Province" was extinct.
Wu Zhile had 140,000 armed forces, and then attacked the Northern Tingdu Protectorate and forcibly occupied some parts of the western part of Tingzhou. This not only undermined the unification of the country, but also blocked the Silk Road, which seriously affected the foreign trade of the Tang Dynasty.
When Shanye and Tingzhou fell, Wu Zetian was already 80 years old and could no longer solve the problem of the Western Regions. After Wu Zetian's death, during the reign of Emperor Zhongzong and Emperor Ruizong, not only was there political corruption, but the struggle for power within the court was very fierce, and they did not want to and could not recover the broken leaves. This burden historically fell on the shoulders of Tang Xuanzong.
In the northern border region, after the defeat of the Turkic slave-owning nobles in the early Tang Dynasty, they unified the north and south of the desert and set up the Shan Yu and Anbei (Yanran) capital protectorates, which respectively governed the vast area from inside and outside the Great Wall to Lake Baikal. Since then, the north of the Great Wall has remained relatively stable for decades.
However, by the end of the 7th century, Yunzhou (present-day Datong, Shanxi), the northern gateway of the Tang Dynasty, was captured by the Turks. Since then, there has been no danger to the south of the Great Wall. In 683, the Turks attacked Ulju (蔚州, in modern Wei County, Hebei) and Dingzhou (定州, in modern Dingxian County, Hebei). Due to the loss of a large area of territory north of the Great Wall, in 685 AD, the Tang government temporarily placed the Anbei Capital Protectorate in the same city until the beginning of the new century.
From the above situation, it seems that by the time of Emperor Xuanzong's reign, the Western Regions of Shanye and Tingzhou, the north of Yunzhou in the north, and the twelve prefectures of Western Liaoning had been occupied by Turkic and Khitan slave-owning nobles, and the people of Longyou and Hebei were often plundered and slaughtered. The situation of national unification in the Tang Dynasty was destroyed.
After Tang Xuanzong came to power, in order to thoroughly resolve the border area problem, the following two measures were adopted:
(1) Rectify the military brigade. First of all, he promulgated the "Edict on Training Troops", which decreed that "the number of soldiers in the northwest military towns should be increased, and the troops should be charged with the side of the army, and the selection should be refined, and the old examinations and other colors should be heard by regulations." Soldiers should not be reduced to a team, but specially ordered to be trained, and must not be served by envoys. "Not only did he issue the edict, but he also sent the military attendants and others to the military prefecture to supervise and inspect the implementation of the edict.
On the other hand, at the end of the 7th century, the military horses were "too half of the submarine consumption", and when Xuanzong ascended the throne, there were only 240,000 horses left. In order to strengthen the maintenance and breeding of military horses, he appointed Wang Maozhong, a servant of the imperial household, as an envoy to the internal and external stables, thus improving work efficiency. By the thirteenth year of the new century (725), the number of military horses increased to more than 430,000.
(2) Expand the Tuntian District and conscientiously solve the problem of military food. From Zhongzong to the early years of the new century, military expenditure was huge, and if all the funds were added to the peasants, it would not only cause the intensification of class contradictions, but also make transportation difficulties. Therefore, Emperor Xuanzong of Tang ordered the establishment of a huge Tuntian district on the border line in the northwest and parts north of the Yellow River.
According to the data, in the kaiyuan year, the total number of tuntian fields in the whole army was 1141 tuns, with an area of at least more than 5 million mu.
The distribution of Tuntian is the largest in the border area, accounting for 82% of the total. There are only 18 percent in the interior, because the purpose of tun tian is to solve the problem of rations for the border guards.
On the basis of preparation for war, Xuanzong began to recover lost territory and consolidate the security of the border areas, especially to maintain the smooth flow of the "Silk Road".
In the fifth year of the new century (717), Tang recovered all thirteen prefectures, including Yingzhou, which had fallen for 17 years. Xuanzong sent Song Qingli as the governor to rebuild the defense of Yingzhou and open the 120th district of Tuntian. At the same time, Bayegu, Tongluo, and Huilu, north of the Great Wall, also announced the abolition of the title of division and cooperated with the Tang government. As a result, the Anbei Capital Protectorate was restored, unifying the north of the Great Wall.
The settlement of the Western Regions problem was carried out in two stages. In the first stage was in the twenty-seventh year of the new century (739), when the Tang Xuan sect of Moraine Xi Jiedu made Gai Jiayun defeat Tuqishi, capture his khan, and recover Broken Leaf, thus returning the town of Broken Leaf, which had fallen for 37 years, back to the Tang Dynasty.
The second stage was to defeat Tubo and Xiao Bolu and reopen the gateway to the "Silk Road". In the early years of the new century, the Khan of Xiaobolu (north of Kashmir) in the Western Regions went to the Tang Dynasty to ask for surrender, and the Tang government placed suiyuan troops in them.
In the sixth year of Tianbao (747), King Xiao Bolu married the daughter of the Tubo king, because she was attached to Tubo. The Tang Xuan Sect sent Gao Xianzhi, the deputy capital of Anxi, to defeat Tubo, capture King Xiao bolu and the princess, and send them to Chang'an.
After the victory of this war, "the seventy-two countries of the Whispering and Eating Hu were all shocked and salty." The Tang Dynasty's re-opening of the "Silk Road" not only safeguarded national security, but also facilitated economic and cultural exchanges between the East and the West.
Classic General History of China (16 volumes) ¥168 purchase
The content of this article is compiled from the Sui and Tang Dynasties History of the Chinese reading book "Classic Chinese General History" jointly created by China International Broadcasting Publishing House and "Reading History".
There are 16 books in the complete set of "Classic Chinese General History", namely: "Xia Shang History", "Western Zhou History", "Spring and Autumn History", "Warring States History", "Qin and Han History (Part I)", "Qin and Han History (Part 2)", "Three Kingdoms History", "Two Jin And Northern And Southern Dynasties History", "Sui and Tang History (Part 1)", "Sui and Tang History (Part 2)", "Five Dynasties History", "Song Dynasty History", "Yuan Dynasty History", "Ming Dynasty History", "Early Qing Dynasty History", "Late Qing History".
This set of books was carefully compiled by more than a dozen older historians born in the first half of the last century and took several years to compile. From the historical migration of xia and shang to the late Qing dynasty, the panoramic depiction of 5,000 years of Chinese history is professional and authoritative, and it is easy to understand, suitable for all ages, passing down classics, and it is worth learning and cherishing.