Chapter 22 The true face of "the disaster of the feudal town"

From the history of elementary school, we all know that there was a "disaster of feudal towns" in the Tang Dynasty.But it is still at a loss for its actual situation.I think the perception of ordinary readers today is still roughly the same.The reason is that a large number of reading materials lack compact and comprehensive narratives, but only put forward a lot of names of people and places, which makes readers at a loss.Moreover, the views in many ancient books no longer conform to the modern vision.Now let me give a brief introduction: The so-called troubles of the feudal towns began after the Anlu Mountain rebellion.At first, there were only "three towns in Heshuo", namely Lulong (today's Beijing and the area along the Great Wall), Chengde (the area adjoining Shanxi to the south) and Weibo (from Bohai Bay to the north of the Yellow River).Each town (sometimes also referred to as "Tao") governs five, six or more than ten states, accounting for about one-third of the area of ​​today's provinces.The head of each town is the "Jiedushi", that is, the military chief, who is also in charge of taxation and civil affairs.After the Anshi Rebellion was settled, the imperial court was unable to investigate its organizational system, and only let a group of surrendered generals command these areas.So these sites are all hereditary.Each envoy sends its own prefecture and county magistrates in the territory, and conscripts and collects taxes by itself.As soon as they leave their posts, they will send their own "stay behind", which is also equivalent to the deputy chief and successor.Sometimes they also use the form of tribute to present a part of materials to the imperial court, but the tax and military system are determined by themselves.Among them, there was also a case where the soldiers expelled their leaders and established themselves as heads, and the emperor of the Tang Dynasty had to ratify it afterwards.And this movement of independence and division spread to today's borders of Shandong, Henan, and Anhui, and even in Zhejiang and Sichuan south of the Yangtze River, some envoys took advantage of the weakness of the imperial court to follow suit.

The troubles of the vassals and towns have become a deed in history, and the two dynasties of Dezong Li Shi and Xianzong Li Chun are the most prominent. Their previous courts were powerless to intervene in these vassals. Systematic use of military force to flatten the feudal town.They are grandparents and grandchildren, and the middle generation is Shunzong Li Song.However, before Shunzong came to the throne, he was unable to speak due to wind disease, and it was said that he was located in Xianzong after only eight months in office, which has nothing to do with the narration.Therefore, this period of historical deeds took place between Li Shi and Li Chun, about 20 years before and after 800 AD, and lasted about 40 years in total.

The center's plan to flatten the feudal towns is not easy to take effect because the dynasty itself has no military force to deal with it, so it can only use this to cut down the other, so that the feudal towns can see that unless they jointly resist orders, they will only be defeated individually.So they advocated the political strategy and strategy of "combined vertical" and "connected horizontal" to deal with the royal family in Chang'an.This separatist movement reached its climax in AD 782.The Jiedu envoy who rebelled against the imperial court pushed Zhu Tao, who was in the extreme north, to be the leader of the alliance, and he was called the king of Ji, and the others were called kings of Zhao, Wei, and Qi.So far, they have only declared independence, and are not yet ready to attack the Tang Dynasty.It was not until Li Xilie captured Xiangyang from Huaixi (the southeast corner of today's Henan Province) in 783 and threatened Luoyang from Kaifeng, calling him Emperor Chu, that the court was shaken.Zhu Tao's brother, Zhu Qi, used to actively advocate respecting the king and fighting the barbarians to lead the Tang soldiers to fight against the Tubo. At this time, he was living in Chang'an.Emperor Dezong also believed that he had nothing to do with everyone's rebellion.Unexpectedly, an army transferred from the northwest to suppress the rebellion rebelled in Chang'an. They were old with Zhu Ci, and they also recommended Zhu Ci as their leader.So Dezong fled in a hurry and took refuge in Fengtian, about 200 miles west of Chang'an.Zhu Qi was called Emperor Qin in Chang'an, and once besieged Fengtian.

Emperor Dezong accepted Lu Zhi's suggestion and pardoned all the rebel ministers except Zhu, who was not pardoned in the mausoleum of the violent criminal.In 784, he wrote: "Li Xilie, Tian Yue, Wang Wujun, Li Na, etc., all honored the old, each guarded the vassal state, and I caressed the obedient side, causing them to doubt and fear; Suffering from this disaster. I am not a king, what is the crime of others? It is better to treat all the officials as before. Although Zhu Tao is destined to sit here, the road is far away. , also with the Restoration".Soon Li Xilie was poisoned to death by his subordinates. After Zhu Qi was defeated, he ran away and was killed. Zhu Tao also died of anger.It's just their failure, not Dezong's success.The vassals or descendants replace them; or replace them for their own subordinates, and their independence and differentiation remain the same.Some families have ruled a town for more than ten generations, which lasted for decades.Dezong said that he "passed through hardships, and accepted them as appeasement".

Xianzong actually succeeded Dezong to the throne.Twenty years after his grandfather's concession policy, he launched the reduction of the vassal.Xichuan Jiedu envoy Liu Bijiaoqian was dismissed after Xianzong sent troops to crusade.After Xia Sui stayed, he and the Zhenhai Jiedu envoy refused to order and were both beheaded.It's just that Xianzong acted more steadily in view of Dezong's loss.Do not fight on two fronts, and do not make the feudal towns that are willing to wait and see doubts and fears in advance.His pacification of Huaixi took five years, and finally the commander Yu Xueye, who commanded the battle situation, marched out of the enemy and captured the opponent unexpectedly. In 819, Li Shidao of Pinglu (today's Shandong) rebelled, and his subordinates rebelled and sent him to the capital. This is the peak of the Tang Dynasty's reduction of vassals.In the Yuanhe Dynasty (Xianzong reign), the Tang Dynasty was known as ZTE.But the good times didn't last long, and the following year Xianzong Li Chun was killed by eunuchs.It turned out that Emperor Dezong wanted to strengthen the military power of the central government and organized the "Shence Army" to be led by eunuchs. At the beginning, it was only to defend the palace. Because the supplies of the Shence Army were far superior to other troops, many frontier troops voluntarily " "Remote Li" magic policy.The imperial court often sent eunuchs as "military envoys" to inspect other troops, which increased the strength of eunuchs. In the last years of Emperor Xianzong, it is said that Changfu Jindan had a violent temper, which led to such an ending.

The problem of the feudal town involves many factors, and it cannot be solved entirely by the disposal of personnel.Only a few months after Xianzong's death, the Jiedu envoys sent by the imperial court to Chengde and Youzhou were either murdered or imprisoned by the rebels, and the imperial court's efforts to suppress the rebellion were ineffective.So the government of Chang'an once again acknowledged the reality and let the three towns of Heshuo go their own way.So far, the whole country has been divided into forty to fifty "Taos", and the number of territories is often changed.The actual autonomy of Jiedushi varies from person to person and from place to place.Therefore, the problem of the feudal town has never been resolved.It's just that the eunuchs in the court of Chang'an abolished the monarchy, cronies confused the political situation, and they would face rogues like Huang Chao in the future.

Existing materials about the troubles of the feudal town or the calamity of the feudal town are mostly written from the perspective of "dynastic history".After 1,200 years, if we overthrow all the restrictions in the past, we will first ask whether the Tang Dynasty should continue to exist after the middle of the Tang Dynasty, and even whether China should maintain a unified situation in the ninth century. There are bound to be different perspectives on the issue. In 780 AD, Emperor Dezong used Yang Yan's plan to implement the "two tax system", which was tantamount to abandoning the previous "intermediate design" organization and system such as land equalization, rent, mediocrity, transfer, and government soldiers.The prosperity in the early years of the Tang Dynasty was due to the fact that the land was sparsely populated at first, and the underlying structure was compact and simple.So following Taizong Li Shimin, Empress Wu Zetian and Xuanzong Li Longji formed a new bureaucratic system on a large scale in the early years, repelling the power of the rich and powerful, and extending the powers of local officials to a wide range of areas.Its execution depends entirely on a set of mathematical formulas assigned from top to bottom.Its purpose is consistent with the traditional monarchy and the habit of truth from top to bottom (the emperors of the Tang Dynasty were called saints), and it is also inconsistent with what the bureaucracy advocates.

It's just that the economy is booming, the population is moving, the conditions of various regions are uneven, and the factors of technological control are becoming more and more complicated.This kind of metamorphosis is exactly what the civil service organization, which has always been interstitial, cannot do.Yu Wenrong’s policy of enclosing households in Xuanzong’s generation has already shaken the unity of the bureaucratic group. Materials from the southeast are transported by water to Chang’an, which opens the door to battles. The frontier army recruits soldiers, and the purchase of war horses must take into account the situation in various places. The basic reason for the central control is that under totalitarian politics, statistics and truth are determined by the top.If the rural organization is taken as the unit, what it controls is incomplete and unreal, and it is easy to be covered by one village and one place, and it will not affect the whole body.As soon as people and materials are clustered and various factors are interrelated, their rights and obligations cannot be accounted for, and a splitting effect will occur in the organization.

The two-tax system was based on the needs of the time. Under the new system, the central government and local governments negotiate with each other to determine the local contribution to the central government each year.Since it is a contracting system, Jiedushi must have the power to make laws and control personnel within the jurisdiction.However, such methods of local mastery have no precedent in Chinese history, and the people's wisdom has not yet been developed, the business organization is immature, and representative politics cannot be talked about. This has created an embarrassing situation and caused the rise of professional soldiers.

The conflict is not only in the struggle between centralization and decentralization, but also because of the traditional overall planning and attention to overall uniformity, which conflicts with the new type of fiscal focus.That is to say, one side is balanced control, focusing on form; the other is unbalanced control, focusing on reality.Although Yang Yan made two taxes, he still focused on the former.His purpose can be summed up in one sentence, "Shang Shu supports the President Yan".The latter can be represented by Liu Yan.He built ships with public funds, commercialized the finances, and increased the government's revenue by making profits from the sale of goods.Due to their different perspectives, even though they both served in the central government, they eventually formed two incompatible systems, so that Liu Yan was slandered and killed by Yang Yan.At that time, the autonomy of the feudal towns also tended to be fiscal pragmatism and emphaticism.No wonder many Jiedu envoys protested against Liu Yan's death.Defense in the ninth century also underwent considerable changes.The Turks threatening the north have already declined.The troubles of Tubo are mainly encroaching on the territory, and there are very few large-scale internal crimes.Huihe not only did business in the border area but also plagiarized occasionally, and the Li and Tang dynasties also used the method of friendship and mutual market to win over them.It's just that these tribes are approaching Chang'an, and the central government is duty-bound, and the shortage of Nanzhao in the southwest has become a serious problem.Xi and Khitan in the northeast corner are beyond reach.According to past experience, the bureaucratic approach to dealing with ethnic minority issues not only often misses the opportunity, but also its policies are easily deceived by the central concept of responsibility and formalism, sometimes forcing ethnic minorities to rebel.

Both the "Old Book of Tang" and the "Biography of Beidi" in the "New Book of Tang" say that after the Anlushan Incident, there was no large-scale harassment in Hebei by Xi and Khitan.Both histories said that the interests of the feudal towns were their own. They not only sent scouts and patrols frequently, but also did not provoke for no reason to seek military exploits.Therefore, from this point of view, the independence of each feudal domain is also integrated with the above-mentioned trend of rationalizing the border defense issue.So Niu Sengru said that as long as these feudal towns can defend the north, their disobedience to the court is no longer the key point. From various indications, Hebei seems to have become an economic region with a mixture of agriculture and animal husbandry in the ninth century.Conclusive evidence is yet to be collected, but volumes 210 to 213 of "New Book of Tang" list 20 aristocratic families who ruled the three towns of Heshuo and Pinglu in Shandong, two of which came from Xi and two from Huihe , and there are Khitan, Hu and Goryeo families each, all of whom have Chinese names.Xi Bing had already appeared in Chang'an when An Lushan rebelled.Li Riyue, the brave general under Zhu Xi, is also Xi Ren. A major weakness in China's war with the northern peoples has always been the lack of horses.Because agriculture relies on intensive cultivation, it must be densely populated and the scale of the cottages is large. In this environment, there is a lack of water and grass, and the livestock are loaded with heavy loads, and the horses will surely die.However, records of the ninth century refer to the towns of Hebei and show the predominance of their cavalry.However, Han Yuwen said that "there are many horses in the world in northern Hebei", and the appearance of its horses is "group".Mr. Liu, the governor of Lulong, enshrined 15,000 court horses before he abandoned his official position and became a monk in 821 AD. In 822, Zhu Kerong, the governor of Youzhou, also said that 10,000 horses and 100,000 sheep should be imported. Although the latter may not have been practiced, these signs indicate that the local social and economic conditions are very special, which is beyond doubt.Some historians believe that at that time Hebei was a society where the majority and the minority were mixed. Based on the above circumstances, it is not surprising that there were feudal towns in the late Tang Dynasty.What is surprising is that under such circumstances, the Li and Tang Dynasties could continue for a hundred years.Chen Yinke's explanation is that the imperial court can continue to support the frontier defense in the northwest with materials from the southeast. As long as this historical mission continues, the Li and Tang Dynasties can also continue to exist.We can also say that the focus of China's national defense must be shifted from the northwest to the northeast, and the nomads who used to be invaders on the frontier will be replaced by new foreign invaders, such as the Khitan Liao. The foundation of agriculture, China will have a competitive system to deal with it, and the Northern Song Dynasty was born under this condition.During the transition period, the "disaster of the feudal town" was just a special phenomenon that occurred in the alternation of the old and the new. Let’s make a general description again: the biggest change during this period was the deterioration of land ownership, the national economy dominated by small farmers could not continue, and the tax system also abandoned the previous principle of levying according to the population level, and infiltrated progressive taxes. The scope of levying included interim (housing and real estate), removal of foreign land (compulsory deductions from the budget) and business acquisition, etc., the detailed measures are taken care of by each locality, and the armament is generally increased. There is a big difference.Speaking to the dynasty, the vassals and towns are indeed causing troubles and disasters, but they have still produced quite positive functions in the long-term development of history.Because the recruiting system and the new tax system require a new administrative agency to preside over it.The positions of feudal towns are hereditary, and their heirs (retained) should not be promoted by subordinates.As a local government, it cannot completely ignore the special interests in its territory. All of these are contrary to the principle of uniformity and uniformity in the civil service system, and cannot be constituted by central orders.And they organized a kind of elite troops called "Yajun", and spread their commanding power from the state where Jiedushi was stationed to radiate to a town. In this way, many problems that could not be solved by totalitarian politics were technically solved invisibly, and it became a new system, which was accepted by the Northern Song Dynasty through the Five Dynasties. Therefore, we cannot deny that they were in the "Second Empire" In the evolution of history, it has produced the function of bringing forth the new through the old.