Chapter 23 yellow nest

Civil upheavals in China usually start out with a bit of fantasy and mystery.The reason is that the general peasants resettle their land and relocate. Unless there are severe natural and man-made disasters, there are very few opportunities to prompt a large number of people to take risks.And even if they are thrown into the melting pot of chaos, they still need popular religious thoughts, such as legends and concepts such as the heaven replacing the yellow sky, Maitreya's rebirth, etc., to mobilize spiritual power to support their large-scale riots.It will take these two factors to get involved and brew for a period of time before this civil uprising will lead to some kind of social movement with signs to follow, so that people can study its true significance in history.

The events led by Ye Huangchao at the end of the ninth century did not conform to the above-mentioned procedures.Although in 870, "the people who were still famine and the famine turned into robbers" constituted the background of the chaos, Huang Chao and his predecessor Wang Xianzhi could not lay the foundation for rebellion in Shandong, Henan and Shaanxi where the locust plague had affected.Huang Chao once called "General Chongtian", and spread some rumors and proverbs to encourage his movement, but religious references were never a noteworthy factor in his movement, and there was no mobilization of the whole people to promote his movement. A sign that women and children are involved together.

Regarding Huang Chao's background, the "Old Tang Book" only stated that "he used to sell salt as a career", with a contemptuous tone. The "New Book of Tang" says that "the world sells salt and is rich in gold", which is no longer an ordinary poor merchant.He even mentioned the background of his "repeated promotion of Jinshi but not the first".Moreover, both the old and new Tang books listed him alongside Zhu Qi, and the "New Book of Tang" even marked it as "Biography of Rebellious Officials", which shows that traditional historians did not treat him as a general rogue.

"New Book of Tang" also said: "When the nest rises, the people will attach it. Or the nest will relax in all directions, and the chapters will be listed, all pointing to the abuses of the government, and the speeches of those who are not inferior." It's just the words. It is too simple, and we cannot determine the actual situation of its "people thus attached".However, the background of his general Zhu Wen, who later became Liang Taizu Zhu Quanzhong, has recently been studied by Wang Gungwu, which proves that he is not very humble.Even at this end, it can also be seen that what the "New Book of Tang" said is true.

Huang Chao's rebellious cause has passed through a wide range of areas. Except for "opening seven hundred miles of Xingshan Mountains" between Jiangxi and Fujian, he generally does not avoid the capitals and cities, and also travels along huge rivers and rivers. Therefore, the composition of his peasant army is Not very thick.He seemed to have attracted a large population of the city, and his troops were quick to recover when dispersed, so he must often take in the troops of the attacking army. In 878 AD, Wang Xianzhi was awarded the title near Huangmei, Hubei, and all the bandits were forced to the south of the Yangtze River, so that the movement of Huangchao was fully launched.He entered Fujian from Jiangxi, Zhejiang in this year, Fuzhou in the winter or spring of the following year, and captured Guangzhou in the summer of 879.At this time, he also hoped that the imperial court would recruit him to be the envoy of Guangzhou Jiedu.It's just that this plan was not paid and epidemic disease was added, and many soldiers died of illness. After the massacre in Guangzhou, he was determined to return north, and easily obtained Tanzhou (Changsha) on the way. At the beginning of 880, he was defeated in Hubei by the Shatuo (Turkic) cavalry of Liu Jurong, the governor of Shannan Dongdao. However, Huang Chao continued to invade Jiangxi, Anhui, and Zhejiang along the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, and finally crossed the river north at quarrying. The force was 600,000. Its number cannot be ascertained.After several detours, Luoyang was occupied first and Tongguan was captured for the second time, so far Chang'an won without a fight.Li Yan, Emperor Xizong of the Tang Dynasty, had already rushed to Sichuan in a hurry.

Huang Chao occupied Chang'an for two and a half years and called himself Emperor Daqi.It is the peak of his career, and it is also a trap for himself.His relationship with the people of Chang'an has not been well established. He himself gave up mobility and was unable to expand the territory, so that the supply in the capital gradually became a problem. In 882, Zhu Wen descended to Tang Dynasty. In 883, Shatuo's "Black Army" was called to serve the king of Tang Dynasty and conquer Chang'an.However, Huang Chao and Dongben still fought with the Tang army for a year, and finally defeated and killed himself in Shandong in the summer of 884, not far from where he had started ten years earlier.

Huang Chao's troops crossed the Yellow River twice and the Yangtze River four times.But his galloping north and south is not "like entering a land without people".In the early days, he was in the north of the Yangtze River, avoiding attacking fortifications, but only plundering land to coerce the people to participate in his actions.His tactics seem to be derived from Wang Xianzhi. "New Book of Tang" says that before the king's death, he plundered the Changsha area of ​​Yuezhou, Nanchang, Anqing (he, Hong, Yue, and Tan states in Tang Dynasty).Its tactics focus on maintaining a strong central command system, and at the same time send search troops to several places. If the enemy is determined to hold on to a certain place or is ready to attack head-on, he will give up this aspect and leave it to others.Therefore, do not attack what is in the land, and do not take what is in the city.It's just that the major cities in the south generally have lax defenses, which gave him the opportunity to be presumptuous.His only exception in the north was the attack on Tongguan at the end of 880.However, at this time, the Shence Army, the main body of the defensive army, was controlled by the eunuchs of the Tang Dynasty.Shen Ce's usual military status is owned by the children of rich families in Chang'an. They borrow military horses and uniforms to prestige, and when it comes to fighting, they temporarily pay and hire poor people to replace them.Moreover, Tongguan's defense also focused on the city towers, while ignoring the surrounding terrain, which also allowed Huang Chao to win without a fight.

The political chaos in Chang'an itself cannot be separated from the stories of these rogues.Since the beginning of the ninth century, the central government of the Tang Dynasty has had the titles of "Northern Division" and "Southern Division".Beisi is the yamen of the eunuchs. They have four to five thousand people. Since Dezong Li Shi established the Shence Army, the eunuchs gained military power and abolished the monarch. There is a tendency to gradually form a military government to compete with the Nansi led by the prime minister. . The civil servants of Nansi also have their own problems.About forty years before 850 AD, the most important dispute was the "Niu Li Party".Niu Sengru and Li Zongmin were born as Jinshi in the same year, and they have similar voices.Li Jifu and Li Deyu are father and son, and their political power is passed down in one continuous line.When Li Jifu was prime minister, Niu Sengru and Li Zongmin attacked him in front of the emperor.Later, Niu and Li Deyu were both important ministers in the court and successively served as prime ministers, and they also involved the enmity between father and son.In addition to their personalities and backgrounds, there are also obvious differences in their policies and positions.In modern terminology, Li Deyu can be called "classic" and "conservative".He believed that we must not relax the vassals and towns, we must uphold the prestige of the central government, and we must take the initiative in national defense against Huihe and Tubo, and he rejected new civil servants and looked down upon those who came from the imperial examination.Niu Sengru can be called a "realist" or a "liberal". He saw clearly that the imperial court's power was limited, and he was unwilling to create complications in domestic and foreign affairs. There was no possibility of cooperation and compromise between Niu and Li, and it would also affect each other. disciples.

Niu Sengru and Li Deyu died one after another around 850, and their quarrel has become a thing of the past.But the split between the DPRK and China remains the same.As early as 813, Li Jiang said to Emperor Xianzong Li Chun: "The words of cronies are hateful, but if you find them, you will never find them." Until Huang Chao occupied Chang'an, Emperor Xizong's government-in-exile in Chengdu was still a faction, and each side refused to give in. . The impact of such a divided government on the war situation is that all military chiefs feel that their safety is not guaranteed, so they wait and see, unwilling to make merit, but hope to be innocent.Liu Jurong, who defeated the Huang Chao army in Hubei, is a typical example.Legend has it that someone persuaded him to take advantage of the victory to pursue Huang Chao, and all the bandits were expected to be wiped out.He said: "The country likes to disappoint people. If it is urgent, it will care for some officers and men who do not like officials to reward. It is better to abandon them or offend them. It is better to keep the enemy as a source of wealth." Whether he really said so bluntly cannot be verified, but This attitude is very common.That is to say, the high officials sent to suppress Huangchao, such as Gao Pian and Wang Duo, were all like this.Therefore, false reporting of the enemy's situation on the battlefield, lack of coordination among the various forces, leaving a way out for the rogues in advance, preventing them from fighting with beasts, not expanding if there are victories, and sometimes collapsing before fighting have become a common phenomenon among the officers and soldiers.As a result, many gaps have been left in the government lineup.Huang Chao's actions are unpredictable, his vision is not limited by the local situation, he can coordinate the actions of large troops, it is impossible to have no discipline and military genius, but his success is still due to the weakness of the opponent.

The above factors overlap and corroborate each other, which makes us see that Huang Chao's rebellion is different from general civil uprisings.The fall of the Tang Dynasty was also very different from the fall of the Han Dynasty.Rural issues and land ownership are of course related to major issues, but they are not the most important link.Chinese society in the ninth century did not completely collapse after being harassed by Huang Chao, just like the stage of the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties.The reunification of the Song Dynasty in the future also depends entirely on the management in the city, and there is no need to reorganize in the countryside.

However, Huang Chao's riots have completely exposed the fact that government agencies cannot agree on various things.This weakness also goes back to taxation and finance.Zuyong's modulation in the early Tang Dynasty was just like the saying in "Shihuo Zhi" in "New Book of Tang", "people-oriented".With such a design, assuming that the population rarely moves, the situation in various places is generally uniform, and the civil service organization that manages them is also a huge flat body, and various factors in it can be exchanged with each other.After the mid-Tang Dynasty, this situation has completely changed.Yang Yan's "Two Taxes" met the needs of the time, but the new system produced only a single document.At this time, how to levy taxes per mu, how to implement a progressive tax system, and how to collect property taxes from businessmen all depended on local officials below the state level.Once the way of decentralization of power is opened, it is no longer possible to coordinate and merge, and the contributions of various departments to the imperial court are also called "tax-exclusive square circles", and there are also "daily advances and monthly advances".The northern vassals and towns were independent. From the first to the early ninth century, only the southeastern region of the country, which accounted for about a quarter of the Tang Empire, paid taxes to the central government on time. About a quarter of the northern regions did not pay at all. Half of the places pay indefinitely.There is no way to review the revenue and expenditure of local governments. In 837, Li Deyu replaced Niu Sengru as the governor of Huainan, and the accounts of the two parties stated that he had a fortune of 400,000 yuan.The central government's own income also has the appearance of adopting a contract system. In 821, Wang Bo, the envoy of salt and iron, bought millions of "Xianyu" silk at one time.Of course, this is not a clarification of the administration of officials, and it is no wonder that there are factional disputes among civil servants. In this environment, the emperor can only rely on eunuchs. Moreover, most of the military expenditure at the end of the Tang Dynasty was spent on the income from the salt tax. People at that time said that "half of the world's endowment with salt is profitable."Except for the southeast coast, other salt ponds and salt wells are patented by garrisons everywhere. Finance and taxation lack regularity and unity. As a result, on the one hand, bureaucracy is heavy and it is easy to arouse popular uprisings.Huang Chao went with him in the same industry.Xu Wen, who was the king of Wu during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, Wang Jian, who founded the former Shu, and Qian Miao, who ruled Zhejiang separately, also used to sell salt as a robber.It can be seen that the government's monopoly on salt is closely related to people's livelihood, and if it is not handled properly, this source of profit can become a source of trouble.Another impact is that in this financial confusion, the national economy is also restricted.Li Deyu's attempt to cut down 2,000 officials was also due to the fact that "wealth days are few and luxuries are many".Tian Lingzi, the eunuch of the Xizong Dynasty, was the lieutenant of Shence (commander of the imperial guards). "Shihuo Zhi" in "New Book of Tang Dynasty" also attributed his actions as "using the power of the family, supervising and giving urgently, Wang Xianzhi and Huang Chao, etc., the world was in chaos. Public and private exhaustion".And after Huang Chao was in chaos, he competed with Wang Chongrong, the Jiedu envoy of Hezhong, for two pools of salt.The income of the two ponds has always been in the hands of the king, and he only pays 3,000 carts of salt to the court every year.At this time, Tian recruited recruits, hoping to get back the salt payment.In a rage, Wang Chongrong marched into Chang'an again, which caused Xizong Li Yan to flee again. Judging from the above sections, the Huangchao incident proves that the collective security of the mainland requires a new system, which is also closely related to finance and taxation.At this time, the Tang Empire in Chang'an was unable to take the lead.Moreover, the country lacks a suitable currency system, and the rich households live in strange places, resulting in a shortage of money. In addition to deflation, some taxpayers pay three times the original amount.There are 50 provincial-level units in the country, and they should be merged urgently.All of these have to wait for some adjustments by the military governments of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms before they can embark on the formal system of the Zhao and Song Dynasties.Under such circumstances, Huang Chao and his recruitment are only a tool to advance history, not an important program of historical development.Those with knowledge have already seen through the mystery.Qian Miu and the town general Dong Chang were both from Lin'an, and they fought against Huang Chao under the command of Gao Pian, but Qian said to Dong, "Seeing that Mr. Gao has no intention of seeking evil, why not leave in the name of defending the village."Only by seeing the overall situation clearly in this way can Qian Yao save his strength. Later, Wuyue, which he founded alone, ruled Zhejiang for hundreds of years, and it lasted the longest among the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms. .