Chapter 21 Nine layers of smoke and dust

An Lushan's rebellion against the Tang Dynasty and its aftermath, which lasted seven years, could not have been predicted by the person who made the attack and the opponent.Judging from the short-term and close-range data, this incident should be preventable, and if it has occurred, it should be resolved quickly. Ann is called "Yingzhou Bastard Hu" in Chinese history books.In fact, his paternal ancestor came from Su Ding'an (Sogdiana, the hinterland of Central Asia is now part of the Soviet Union), and his maternal line was Turkic. In the border area of ​​China at that time, his background was not special, and Yingzhou is today's Rehe.When he launched an attack in Fanyang (near today's Beijing), many Chinese civil servants helped him plan.The 150,000 troops under his command marched southward to take Luoyang at a speed of ten miles a day.The weapons in the storerooms of the Tang Dynasty were rotten and unusable, and the militiamen were not trained. At this time, most of the "fu soldiers" had already become official documents. development trend.Therefore, Ann called himself "Emperor Dayan" at the beginning of 756 AD, and he already seemed to overthrow the Tang Dynasty.

However, the rebels did not move west immediately, giving the Tang army a chance to strengthen its defense in the Tongguan area.At this time, Guo Ziyi and Li Guangbi marched into Hebei from Shanxi and regained many prefectures and counties. Local officials loyal to the Tang Dynasty also took the opportunity to instigate rebellion, and it was possible to occupy the entire "enemy rear".It’s just that the Xuanzong Dynasty did not take advantage of this opportunity. The emperor’s decree first sentenced the two generals guarding Tongguan—Feng Changqing and Gao Xianzhi—to death for the crime of retreating from Shan County, and secondly sentenced an old and sick general who had no intention of fighting. Ge Shuhan pushed forward to the front line, but did not allow him to stick to Tongguan, waiting for the expansion of the Hebei army, so that An Lushan was attacked by the enemy, and he forced Ge Shuhan to fight hastily, so that a defeat was irresistible, so Anlushan entered Chang'an. Guo Ziyi and Li Guangbi's flanking actions were also ineffective, so they had to retreat from Hebei to Gansu via Shanxi and Shanxi.

If at this time the Crown Prince Zhongwang Li Heng also followed Xuanzong Li Longji into Shu, the future development would be even more unpredictable.In fact, after the mutiny at Maweiyi, Yang Guozhong was killed indiscriminately by soldiers, and Yang Guifei was hanged to death by Xuanzong's order under the threat of everyone. There was a plot in the history books that "the father and the elders embrace the prince together, and the horse can't do it", so Xuanzong ran south , Soon he was "respected" as the Supreme Emperor.The prince then went north, and packed up the defeated soldiers all the way to Lingwu in Gansu. There were less than 30 civil and military ministers, and he was persuaded by the ministers. If it is useless, he will replace it, so he will become the Sukjong in the future history.The new imperial court of Lingwu took in the troops of Guo Ziyi and Li Guangbi, and with the policy of kinship, with the help of Huihe, they regained Chang'an in one year and three months, and recovered Luoyang in one month.

An Lushan had been murdered by the men of his own son An Qingxu before Suzong launched his offensive, and An Qingxu was killed by An Lushan's famous general Shi Siming after returning from Luoyang to Hebei. Shi Siming is also a "Yingzhou Turkic hybrid Hu". Before he killed An Qingxu in 757, he led 80,000 men to the Tang Dynasty.Su Zongming accepted his surrender and secretly sent people to assassinate him, but he found out.So he called himself the "Great Sage Yan King" and fell into Luoyang again.Later, he was killed by his adopted son Shi Chaoyi when he was unfavorable in fighting the official army.Shi Chaoyi was killed by his subordinate Li Huaixian in 763. Since then, the Anshi Rebellion has come to an end.At that time, both Xuanzong and Suzong had passed away one after another. The day when Shi Chaoyi passed on to the capital was already the dynasty of Daizong Li Yu, and he was also the third monarch of the Tang Dynasty to face this incident.

Today, we re-examine this historical fact in the middle of the eighth century at the end of the twentieth century, and it is difficult to draw definite conclusions in a hurry.The predecessors left many theories, such as the "Old Tang Book" accusing Yang Guozhong, saying that he became a prime minister for being a sycophant, and he ordered An Lushan to rebel. "Since Lushan was terrified, he raised his troops in the name of punishing the country's loyalty." It also said that Xuanzong appointed people improperly.An Lushan was "smart and cunning" and "those who bribed people generously". Xuanzong asked him to be the envoy of Luyang, Fanyang, and Hedong, and also let him serve as the shepherd of the idle stables and Longyou group, and the supervisor of Loufan. The power to raise war horses in the border area was cut off to him, and then he was allowed to replace Han generals with Tibetan generals, encouraging him to rebel step by step.He even asked An Lushan to worship himself as his father and Yang Guifei as his mother.It is also mentioned that "the noble concubine wraps Lushan with splendid clothes, and makes the maids wear colorful clothes." Xuanzong gave the noble concubine money for laundering, which made the inside and outside of the palace and the court hall disorganized, as if these things were also Anshi Rebellion one of the reasons.There are also some historians who believe that appointing Fan will be a mistake, and Li Linfu is to blame.Because Li was afraid that civil servants would enter the prime minister and go out to fight for power with him, so he encouraged Xuanzong to appoint foreign generals. Fortunately, they lacked the cultivation of Chinese literati and could not be high officials in the court. .

All of the above explanations are suspected of being far-fetched.Regardless of truth and distortion, the insights it puts forward are often based on one-sided rumors on personnel to explain many major organizational and institutional issues. In the year of Tianbao (742), Emperor Xuanzong set up ten military envoys, stipulating ten national defense zones, with a total of 490,000 soldiers and more than 80,000 horses. This is a very grand plan on paper.In the past, the strength of troops in various border towns fluctuated. At this time, the distribution of human resources is like the so-called "organization" in modern military language, which has been endowed with a fixed nature.But when we look carefully, we know that this kind of grand plan is still guilty of "bureaucracy" and cannot be separated from the "intermediate design" of "inverting the pyramid" to cover real people and real events with ideal mathematical formulas. .In terms of personnel, at this time the Fubing system has roughly become a document, but it has not been completely abandoned. Most of the soldiers in the border area were called "Jianer" and "Kuangqi" due to recruitment, and they all served for a long time after 737. Most of them are Tibetans, and some even bring private horses.Just like when Gao Xianzhi came out of Congling in 747, "at that time, all the infantry had private horses to accompany them."The most problematic part of the Anlu Mountain defense area is the Khitan and the Xiongnu "other species", who often fight against the official army to which An belongs.However, when An Lushan rebelled, there were a large number of Khitan soldiers and Xi soldiers in its southward troops, and the latter appeared in Chang'an.He had invited Xuanzong to replace the Han generals with more than 30 Fan generals, so it can be seen that the motley troops he organized mainly consisted of Fan soldiers.As for horses, except for private horses, the government did not control a large number of war horses as claimed in some historical materials. "New Tang Book" "Bingzhi" said: "At the beginning of Kaiyuan, the national horses were exhausted, and Taichang Shaoqing Jiang Huinai sued the horses in Liuhuzhou with an empty name, and led 30 horses and one guerrilla general."That is to say, the horses controlled by ethnic minorities are recruited by selling officials and nobles.Wang Zhongsi was also the Jiedushi about the same time as An Lushan. His biography also mentioned, "When you go to the mutual market, you pay the horse directly, and the tribes compete to come to the market."When he was concurrently serving as the Jiedushi of Longyou (Ningxia and Gansu) in Hexi, he transferred 9,000 horses from the area of ​​Hedong Shuofang (Shanxi and Shaanxi) to the concurrent area, which also shows that the government has limited horses.When it comes to supplies, most of what the frontier army uses is obtained from the farmland.The area near Chang'an was often affected by natural disasters in the early years of Xuanzong's reign, and the food supply was insufficient. Even the imperial court had to move to Luoyang for food. At this time, most of the grain supply came from the North China Plain, reaching north to Hebei.After the middle period of Xuanzong, the situation improved, and the taxes and food in the north were paid with silk cloth, but the materials were still collected from various places to the Gyeonggi area.Although we can't know the supply situation that day, there is no record in the various records that the central government has made overall arrangements for the supply of the ten defense zones.The rebellion to Anlu Mountain has become a fact. "Old Tang Book" "Shihuo Zhi" says: "The warehouses in the two capitals are overflowing and cannot be named. Yang Guozhong designed it to call the things that cannot be consumed in the main warehouse, so that Cui Zhong, the censor He paid money to monks, nuns and Taoists in the east of the river, and he got millions of money in ten days." It can be seen that the supplies of the two capitals are not used to supply border defense on weekdays. Buying a monk's Taoist certificate is a method of raising funds by donating money to buy a license exempt from taxation.

Therefore, judging from various indications, the commander of the frontier defense, known as the Jiedu envoy, is also in charge of civil affairs, relying on his own wit and the ability to control the manager to buy horses and recruit troops, store grain and make weapons.Except for a few cases where the central government subsidizes, the principle of self-sufficiency of the defense zone is generally adopted.The more people like An Lushan, who "interpreted Liufan language and became a mutual market Yalang", the more they can see the details of the place, the location of manpower and materials and the method of collection.Xuanzong was not a fool, he knew that An Lushan was capable enough to be a part of the Northeast military alone.It's just that the more effective it is, the harder it is to replace it.The more the emperor bent himself to flatter him, the more people saw that An Lushan would turn against him.

This also created a situation in which the national defense organization and the civilian bureaucracy organization were incompatible with each other: the frontier defense focused on the actual situation, and in the Tang Dynasty when the nomads in the north were prosperous, the defense area was advantageous for its large territory and flexible use of resources (other festivals outside Anlu Mountain Dushi is also a governing number area).Commanders should be professional, stay in office for a long time, and be in harmony with the local people's customs and customs to be effective.In short, it is a structure that requires organizational focus and can deliver quick and sure results.The organization of the national bureaucracy first uses the standpoint of benevolence, righteousness and morality to form administrative logic, which is determined to preserve the general and is willing to sacrifice the partial.Under this premise, the appropriateness of the personnel relationship exceeds the need for work efficiency, and attention must be paid to the simplicity and similarity of the transfer and exchange of various positions, and no one side is allowed to advance by leaps and bounds.That is to say, before An Lushan's rebellion, the spirits of these two organizations were opposite, and there was already a tendency that they could not coexist.For example, both Wang Zhongsi and Niu Xianke showed their talents in the border area, but they were humiliated or unsatisfactory when they returned to Chang'an.Zhang Shougui concealed his defeat in Youzhou.Yang Guozhong also covered up Xianyu Zhongtong's great defeat against Nanzhao and recounted his military exploits.Even if the aforementioned strategy of resisting An Lushan is inappropriate, it is still due to the fact that the military deployment must first meet political needs.Therefore, the Anshi Rebellion can be regarded as an incident caused by the conflict between these two systems.

The government of Chang'an has also been aware of the strangeness in the middle.In the era when Li Linfu was prime minister, literati began to "remotely lead" Jiedu envoys in Beijing, while military officials actually controlled everything locally.It's just that this method can only decorate the facade, and cannot eliminate the internal conflict.As for the "fan generals", it is not the focus of the problem.Their presence is nothing more than a sign of the incompatibility between bureaucracy and military organization.Using foreigners as senior generals can ease political friction.Gao Xianzhi is from Koryo, Li Guangbi is from Khitan, and Ge Shuhan is from Turkic, so nothing caused trouble.

As for the Anshi Rebellion, after more than seven years, it can be seen that the supporters of the Tibetans rebelled, and it was easy to let go but hard to stop. The way of fighting that day was to indulge the soldiers to plunder.Although there is no proper description in the original source, we can also imagine that An Qingxu's murder of An Lushan, Shi Siming's killing of An Qingxu, Shi Chaoyi's killing of Shi Siming, and Li Huaishi's killing of Shi Chaoyi were not only grievances between trustees, but also must-haves in the organization of the rebels. Contains many contradictions.This is also similar to the various shady scenes in the Li Tang Dynasty.When Suzong was the prince, he was suspected by Xuanzong.Although he welcomed the Supreme Emperor back to the capital after recovering Chang'an, he later listened to the eunuch Li Fuguo's proposal and moved the Supreme Emperor to Xi Nei. The "Biography of Eunuchs" in "New Book of Tang" says that "Xuanzong collapsed after he moved."According to official records, Xuanzong and Suzong died almost at the same time, only twelve days apart.That's not to mention, when Emperor Daizong Li Yuzhi ascended the throne, he also wanted to kill Empress Zhang and remove the eunuch Li Fuguo.Such things happen repeatedly, and we can't just complain about bad people's hearts.However, it must be pointed out that traditional Chinese politics seeks to control too much, and the principles cited are too simple. There are many inaccuracies and inaccuracies shrouded in it. When there are real conflicts between people and personnel, they cannot be reversed, but only extremes, and even relatives become feuds.

After more than 1,200 years, we can also see that An Lushan's rebellion was wiped out on the surface, but in fact it was a loss for both sides.The civil service system of the Tang Dynasty, after the bleak management between Empress Wu and Xuanzong, gradually had a clue. The materials from the southeast can also supply the area where the court is located, but the plan to organize the defense line in the north has never been able to after this incident. accomplish.The base of Anlu Mountain's rebellion is just like what the "New Book of Tang" says: "Give up the rebellious generals, protect and raise the evil buds", "After the Tang Dynasty died for more than a hundred years, the dead will not be the land of the king".With this fact, coupled with the historical records of the next five hundred years, we can also imagine that the Anshi Rebellion was not only caused by the "smoke and dust in the nine-fold city" that day, but a series of serious problems emerged with this incident: China's In the rear, as Pei Yaoqing said to Xuanzong: "There are many household registrations in the south of the Yangtze River, but there is no conquest and defense." The defense organizations in the north, because of the need for war horses, cannot guarantee their supply only by "precision farming", but must be assigned to " extensive agriculture”, that is to include livestock.Because of its large scope, it cannot fail to take ethnic minorities as one of the main components of the organization.Can these two systems coexist?Can it be controlled by the same center?And does this unified center consist of Confucianism as the main body? The "Second Empire" mentioned in "Big History" includes the Sui, Tang, Five Dynasties and Song.Its history is centered on answering such big questions.