Introduction
Empty memories of the alliance in the Palace of Eternal Life, the country is more important than beauty. Huaqing Pond is water and Mawei soil, and one person washes jade and buries incense. ——Qing Dynasty · Yuan Mei "Inscription on Concubine Yang"
Tianbao In the early years, the 1990s Tang Xuanzong included his favorite concubine Yang. After the interpretation of the literati, the palace story of the two finally became a love song that has been sung for the ages.
If you tear apart the cloak of literature and only explore the causes of the love tragedy based on historical facts, is everything based on the comments of many literati in later generations just a tragedy caused by Emperor Xuanzong of Tang's negligence in government and ruining the country due to personal love?
Tianbao fifteenth year (756 years), it was the node when the Li Tang Dynasty declined from prosperity and the end of the love story of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang and his favorite concubine Yang.
This year, the famous " Anshi Rebellion ". Under the powerful offensive of the rebels, Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, who was defeated by military preparation, was forced to go into exile. When passing through
When the army followed, the soldiers suddenly mutiny and made a request to Xuanzong to kill Yang Guifei and deal with the slander ministers of the Yang clan. In order to ensure his own safety, Emperor Xuanzong of Tang endured the edict and ordered Concubine Yang to hang himself in the Buddhist room.
The love story between Li and Yang has a beautiful opening of "three thousand beauties in the harem, three thousand beloved in one", but in the end it can only end with yin and yang separation.
This kind of orchid is thought-provoking. After careful study, you can find that the love tragedy between Li and Yang is not only reflected in the separation of life and death between them, but also in the social changes and national fortunes of the entire Tang Dynasty
Through the research on historical materials, the author summarized the love between Xuanzong and Yang Guifei. Three reasons for the tragedy:
Reason 1: Kaiyuan prosperous times hidden land crisis
Li Tang Once, the equal-field system inherited from Northern Wei was destroyed, and the serious land annexation intensified the social conflicts hidden in the prosperous times.
Compared with the previous dynasty, Tang Dynasty 's restrictions on land purchase and sale were gradually relaxed, which undoubtedly provided conditions for the aristocratic clans to acquire and merge land on a large scale.
In the early Tang Dynasty, the spearhead of land annexation had gradually emerged.
When Wu Zetian was in power, the originally complete equal-field system was severely damaged, making this system only restrain the rich and the poor had a minimum level of disadvantages exposed.
The area of land available for granting is already seriously insufficient. In addition, the increase in the number of Li and Yang clans and other nobles has promoted land annexation, which ultimately caused the embarrassing situation that the court had no land to grant.
Historical records show that during the Tianbao period of the Tang Dynasty, land annexation between bureaucrats and nobles had developed to a very fierce level, so it forced Xuanzong to issue the "Edict on Forbidden Officials to Seize the People's Orders and Divide Yongye Land". The scene described in the edict was as follows:
"The kings and officials and wealthy families should be compared to the land of the countryside and annex, and do not fear the constitution."
The expansion of local power will inevitably weaken the centralization, which has been the case since ancient times. Therefore, as the scale of land annexation by bureaucratic aristocrats increased, the amount of land that the government could control to ensure the equal-land system was getting smaller and smaller.
Ancient Chinese political system was also based on agriculture, and the shortage of land would inevitably lead to the intensification of social contradictions. Although Xuanzong introduced a series of remedial policies after discovering the problem, they were all measures to temporarily cure land annexation and could not solve the problem from the source.
As loopholes occur in the equal field system, problems have occurred in rental and manpower system based on equal field.
National fiscal revenue has decreased year by year, and public grievances have been secretly agitated.After the Anshi Rebellion broke out, complications caused by land problems finally began to occur, and eventually became one of the important reasons for Li Yang's love tragedy.
Reason 2: The fatal loopholes left by the reform of the military system
In the late Tianbao, The original government system of the Tang Dynasty was replaced by recruitment system , and created conditions for the initiators of the Anshi Rebellion to gather military forces.
Like the equal-field system, the government soldiers system in the early Tang Dynasty generally inherited from the previous dynasty, emphasizing the unity of soldiers and farmers, and reformed in the details.
In the early Tang Dynasty, in order to cope with the border pressure exerted by border areas and ensure the number of recruitment, the National Government also made adjustments to the selection requirements of the government soldiers - lowering the requirements compared with the previous dynasty.
" Old Tang Book " records: "Anyone who sent a sect to defend the towns and guards also has a corps. When an infantry group is formed, the leader has already led it. There are six horses in the fire. If the father, brother and son are not sent to him. If the grandparents are old and have no family members, they will be exempted from the election and the prostitute."
Despite this, it seems that the collapse of the government system is still in disintegrating with the equal-field system.
In the case of the equal-field system being destroyed, people who evade military service or self-harm have repeatedly appeared among the soldiers of the government. In addition, as the status of the government soldiers gradually declined, people at that time began to be the government soldiers.
multiple factors superimposed, and finally there was a situation where "there was no soldiers to be handed over to the government" and the government announced the abolition of the government military system.
The collapse of the military system led to the development of the military recruitment system. However, compared with recruiting the children of innocent families to be soldiers from government soldiers, the largest and most fatal flaw in recruiting the military recruitment system is that it is easy to make local armed forces bear their own troops.
The military force in the hands of the Jiedushi they recruited was commanded by them for a long time, which easily led to the situation of generals and special forces in the area, especially in the border areas far away from the capital, thus threatening the central government's rule.
According to statistics, the nine military governors and one strategic commander in the early years of Tianbao were six times the army controlled by the central government. This formed a situation where the local Jiedushi is authoritarian:
"Every time several states are used as towns, the Jiedushi will govern these states, and all the state governors belong to it."
The changes in the military system led to the Jiedushi gradually developing from a barrier to defending the imperial power into a powerful local separatist force, becoming an uncrowned king in the actual sense of the local government.
The initiator of the Anshi Rebellion An Lushan is the governor of the three towns of Fan Yang , Hedong and Pinglu. The financial and military forces he controls are enough to have a certain impact on the central government.
plus the many problems caused by the central government's years of deficits have made the Tang Dynasty, which was already ineffective, even more vulnerable.
It can be said that the implementation of the recruitment system not only had a very significant impact on the formation of the separatist situation of the vassal states of the Tang Dynasty, but also was one of the military conditions for the outbreak of the Anshi Rebellion, and indirectly became the driving force of the love tragedy between Xuanzong and Yang Fei.
Reason 3: The passive and lazy rule of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang and the abuse of power and autocracy of the Yang clan
If the above two reasons are external conditions that contribute to the love tragedy between Li and Yang, then the political chaos caused by Emperor Xuanzong's lack of power is undoubtedly the last straw that broke the camel's back from the rulers.
In the early years of Tianbao, the Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, who originally worked hard to govern, Li Longji , became a motivated political party after the founding of the prosperous era.
The former wise ruler went from illumination to dimness, gradually no longer adopted the ministers' advice, began to pursue extravagance, and was addicted to the sensuality all day long, and no longer mentioned any thrift and diligence.
Tianbao three years, Xuanzong even asked Gao Lishi if he could entrust all his political affairs to Prime Minister Li Linfu , and Gao Lishi was displeased with a sentence of "The emperor's patrol is the ancient system, and the world is bright and bright, and he cannot pretend to be a person. He is arrogant and will succeed. Who dares to reconsider it?"
According to " New Book of Tang ", since the 28 years of Kaiyuan, Xuanzong and Yang Guifeihua have been in the Qing Palace more and more. They composed and danced, and their poems were harmonious.
Surprisingly, Tang Xuanzong, who worked hard in his early years, seemed to have become a different person during this period. Not only did he indulge in his emotions, he even publicly said words such as "Now the world is in a state of reign, the court has nothing to do... I should have fun with the people and enjoy it."
histor Sima Guang in his book "Zizhi Tongjian " commented on the actions of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang in his later years:
"In his later years, he relied on peace and thought that there was no more worry in the world, so he lived in the ban, devoted himself to entertainment with his voice and color, and entrusted all political affairs to Lin Fu."
The ruler is so indulgent, he will eventually bring disaster to the country.
In addition, while Yang Guifei brought glory to the entire Yang clan, it also sowed the seeds of political corruption in the Li Tang Dynasty.
According to historical records, Yang Guifei's eldest sister was named Korean Lady, the third sister was named House Lady, and the eighth sister was named House House Lady of Qin Lady. The three ladies can receive a monthly fee of 100,000 yuan.
Her brothers were all given high-ranking officials. Even Yang Zhao, a distant brother who was originally a rogue in the market, was named Guozhong because of her relationship with her. Later, she served as a branch doctor and manipulated the government affairs.
The Yang family was the dominant in the court at that time, and the children of the Yang family were all powerful. Yang Guozhong openly had an affair with the Lady of Guo in the palace, and Even the Yang family slaves dared to whip the princess.
( "Old Book of Tang" records: "After Guozhong was in charge of the prime minister and also led the Jiannan Jiedushi, and his power gradually became arrogant. After ten years of the first month of the first month, the Yang family traveled at night, and went to the five houses of Guangping and Princess Guangping and cavalry from the battle for Xishimen. Yang's slave waved his whip and the princess's clothes, the princess fell from the horse, and the princess Cheng Chang's son-in-law helped the lord, and because of the several."
all these imperial concubines did not participate, but they were closely related to her - As a concubine, she only needs to be the empire. The responsibility of the rise and fall is "the responsibility of persuasion ".
But even this little responsibility is too heavy for a Yushu anticle flower that is dependent on Emperor Xuanzong of Tang. So Yang Guifei chose to be a delicate flower in the deep palace, while the Yang clan continued to be a borer crawling on the petals.
Tang Xuanzong became increasingly foolish, allowing the borer to suck the blood of the empire under his nose, and finally the country was overthrown. He himself also in just a few days Everything was lost, and even the most cherished love in his later years could not be preserved.
Conclusion
In short, negligence is only one of the reasons for the tragedy of the love between Emperor Xuanzong of Tang and Yang Guifei, and is by no means all. The identity of the emperor concubine made their relationship not as free and pure as that between ordinary couples.
Putting aside their personal actions, the hidden crises in the early Kaiyuan period, the reform and replacement of the decision-making of the government, and the perspective of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, are responsible for the love tragedy of the two.
Their love has been nourished and protected by the empire since its birth. Therefore, when the building collapses, the love between the two cannot be kept alone.
As the saying goes, "How can there be a complete egg in the vast nest?" When facing the problem of survival of the country, no matter how sincere love is, it can only become a burial object of the country.
cited documents:
【1】 "New Book of Tang·Biography of Concubines"
【2】 "Old Book of Tang·Biography of Concubines"
【3】Sima Guang "Zhizi Tongjian"
【4】Zheng Chuhui "Miscellaneous Records of Emperor Ming"
【4】Zheng Chuhui "Miscellaneous Records of Emperor Ming"
6
