85
An Lushan’s rebels conquered and
occupied Chang’an, but the general
himself remained in Luoyang, where
he was later assassinated by one of his
sons in a dispute over the succession.See also: The First Emperor unifies China 54–57 ■ Kublai Khan conquers the Song 102–03 ■
Marco Polo reaches Shangdu 104–05 ■ Hongwu founds the Ming dynasty 120–27THE MEDIEVAL WORLD
The seeds of rebellion
Under Xuanzong (712–56), the Tang
dynasty reached the zenith of its
power and prestige, yet several key
economic, social, and political
issues threatened to destabilize it.
Firstly, the state was struggling
to raise sufficient taxes to fund a
sharp rise in military expenditure.
The fu-bing, the cost-effective and
self-supporting national militia
system in which soldiers worked
the land when not required for
active military duty, was proving
inadequate in the face of repeated
invasions by neighboring groups.
Xuanzong was forced to establish
military provinces along China’s
northern frontiers, headed by local
governors who commanded huge
armies, and who came to acquire
considerable power and autonomy.
The Tang’s coffers were drained
further by the failure of the “equal
field” system, a program of land
distribution and tax collection that
protected small farmers from the
depredations of wealthy landowners
by periodically reallocating land to
them. Its gradual demise enabledthe nobility to grab land to increase
their regional power bases, and led
to unrest among the peasantry.
Lastly, earlier reforms made by
Emperor Taizong (reigned 626–649)
to the examination system used to
recruit civil servants, which opened
it up to able men from humbler
backgrounds without connections,
had created a bureaucracy based
on merit that eroded the power
and influence of the aristocracy.
Xuanzong now had to manage rival
factions in his court—potentiallyrebellious nobles, ambitious
professional bureaucrats, and
military governors, some of whom
had begun to intervene in politics.
However, it was a series of
military debacles that provided the
spark for revolt against the Tang,
including the defeat by Abbasid
Arabs in 751 that halted China’s
expansion into Central Asia.Turning on the Tang
Discontent exploded among the
military, which saw its position
threatened now that the era of
conquest was over. An Lushan,
a prominent military governor who
had become a court favorite, rose
up against his masters. Claiming
that the emperor had asked him to
remove Yang Guozhong (the court’s
chief minister, with whom An
Lushan was engaged in an intense
power struggle), he mobilized a
rebel army and marched south.
At first the revolt looked set for
success: it captured the eastern
capital, Luoyang, early in 756—
where An Lushan declared a rival
dynasty, the Yan—before storming
Chang’an, the primary capital.
Xuanzong fled from his court, only
just escaping An Lushan’s clutches.
After eight years of war, the
Tang finally crushed the revolt, but
the effort had fatally weakened it.
Over the next century it lost more
political power to the military, and
further rebellions broke out. By 907,
the empire had fragmented into
local dynasties and kingdoms that
vied for power for 50 years. ■Ten thousand
houses with stabbed
hearts emit the
smoke of desolation.
Wang Wei
Tang poet (756)US_084-085_An_Lushan_revolt.indd 85 26/02/2016 15:49