Multiple contradictions and struggles in the Tang Dynasty from the Kaiyuan Year to the Tianbao Year
You still need to upload some information from time to time, otherwise you won’t be able to figure out the internal connections in many plots.
For example: Why did Zhang Jiuling target Niu Xianke? Is it just because he disliked him?
Well, since Niu Xianke was a minor official, it is normal for Zhang Jiuling to look down on him.
Then why did Zhang Jiuling look down on Zhang Shougui and want to prevent him from becoming prime minister?
It is said that before Zhang Jiuling resigned as prime minister, Zhang Shougui's qualifications, popularity, and military achievements were already sufficient. Why did Zhang Jiuling want to stop him?
This reason can also explain why he looks down on Niu Xianke.
Therefore, when looking at history, we should not just focus on the fragments recorded in history books. We should not let the ancients and historians dictate the pace. We must find the answer from the context of historical facts.
Without further ado, let’s get down to the practical stuff.
Let’s first take a look at the prime ministers of the Tang Dynasty from Kaiyuan to Tianbao. They are divided into “groups” because they are usually replaced together, and their terms of office are generally 3-4 years (with some exceptions).
The first group: Zhang Shuo (this will be explained later by the prime minister), Liu Youqiu, Wei Zhigu, Lu Xiangxian, and Guo Yuanzhen.
These people were in the transitional period of the first year of Kaiyuan, and they were not in power for more than one year. Because the political situation was undecided at that time, they were not included in the analysis.
Group 2: Yao Chong, Lu Huaishen
Yao Chong: Born as a handsome man, he is a veteran.
Lu Huaishen: If you get the imperial examination, you are almost in trouble.
There are no financial management officials among them, but there are elders (Yao Chong) trained during the Wu and Zhou Dynasties.
Group 3: Yuan Qianyao, Song Jing, Su Ting
Source Qian Yao: Jinshi and the rank.
Song Jing: Passed the Jinshi title
Zhang said: Veteran officials during the Wu and Zhou Dynasties
There are no financial management officials, but Yuan Qianyao is just a prime minister, basically useless.
PS: "A man of high caliber deserves his due, how can I be a good man?" This is what Yuan Qianyao said, but now it can be inferred that it is not that Lao Yuan does not want to recommend Li Linfu, but that he is a subordinate in the central power structure.
Status, making wisecracks is just to cover up one's own powerlessness.
Group 4: Zhang Jiazhen, Su Ting, Yuan Qianyao, Zhang Shuo
Zhang Jiazhen: Jinshi of Ming Dynasty, veteran of Wuzhou
Su Ting: passed the imperial examination, and Wu Zhou entered officialdom in his early years.
Zhang said: A veteran trained during the Wu and Zhou Dynasties.
There are also no financial management officials.
Group 5: Li Yuanhong, Du Xian
Li Yuanhong: Enyin started his family and was the great-grandson of Duke Ying Li Can.
Du Xian: Passed the Ming Jing examination and has decades of local experience.
Group 6: Xiao Song, Yu Wenrong (short), Pei Guangting
Xiao Song: Menyin entered the officialdom and his ancestor was Xiao Kui, Emperor Ming of Liang.
Yuwenrong: Menyin entered the officialdom, he was the grandson of Yuwenjie in the service, and he was a professional financial management official.
Note that he was the first professional financial management prime minister since the Kaiyuan Dynasty, and he vigorously promoted Li Linfu.
Pei Guangting: The middle family room of the Pei family in Hedong, where he became an official in the shade of the door.
Group 7: Han Xiu (short), Pei Yaoqing, Zhang Jiuling, Li Linfu
Han Xiu: He was promoted to an official position (the imperial court opened a special subject for selection), and he was a professional admonisher.
Pei Yaoqing: Passed the Tongzi Examination (equivalent to Menyin becoming an official), has strong overall ability and focuses on financial management.
Zhang Jiuling: Jinshi, representative of Ci ministers, partial admonishment ministers.
Li Linfu: He entered the official position in the shadow of his family, with strong comprehensive ability, and officials in the administrative department are partial to financial management.
Group 8: Li Linfu, Niu Xianke
Niu Xianke: Born as a grassroots official, rich in experience at the grassroots level, and a leader in officialdom.
Group 9: Li Linfu, Li Shizhi
Li Shizhi: Men Yin enters the official position, and Bian Jiang becomes the prime minister.
Group 10: Li Linfu, Chen Xilie
Chen Xilie: Entering the official position in the shadow of the door, making soy sauce
Group 10: Chen Xilie, Yang Guozhong
Yang Guozhong: A junior official came to power (nepotism), and Li Longji thought he was good at managing money.
The above is a preliminary summary, and it can actually be subdivided.
The following is my personal analysis:
Before Yuwen became the Prime Minister in the 14th year of Kaiyuan, the financial problems of the Tang Dynasty had not yet broken out. Therefore, among the people who became the Prime Minister, there were Jinshi and Ci ministers, as well as the practical people who were gradually rising in the local area, and those who were cultivated during the Wu and Zhou Dynasties.
Veteran.
The power structure is actually one-time power structure, and most of them have prime ministers who play a role in the affairs. Li Longji was in power more often, and the power of the prime minister was relatively loose.
Since the fourteenth year of Kaiyuan, the financial problems of the Tang court have become an issue that the prime ministers have to consider. Pei Yaoqing, Li Linfu, Niu Xianke and even Yang Guozhong, their financial management ability is one of the main factors in worshiping the prime minister.
Therefore, the meaning of existence of Ci ministers like Zhang Jiuling and financial management officials like Li Linfu are completely different, and even contradictory to each other.
This is the first contradiction in the Central Committee of the Tang Dynasty: the contradiction between the traditional Confucian scholar-official bureaucrats and the financial management bureaucrats who emerged as a result of the situation. Moreover, this contradiction is often irreconcilable.
The thoughts of Confucian bureaucrats (taking Zhang Jiuling as an example) are: the people value the emperor, the small government reduces fiscal expenditures, reduces the number of officials, reduces the central government's interference in local affairs, reduces the cost of the legal system, and focuses on the rule of virtue.
Yes, the legal system requires costs, and this cost is not low. In the case of ancient powerful people who basically did not abide by the law, the role of rule of virtue may not be smaller than that of the legal system. This is an objective limitation of the feudal era.
There is nothing much to say about the thinking of financial management officials, except for one sentence: Find ways to increase central finance!
To increase finance, we must get it from the people, we must increase taxes, and we must open new institutions. Big government is inevitable.
A major problem that Li Longji encountered at this time was: if the status quo of the Tang Dynasty was to be maintained, financial management officials like Li Linfu must be re-employed. If the various shortcomings of the Tang Dynasty were to be reformed, Confucian officials like Zhang Jiuling must be re-appointed.
However, what is regrettable is that, looking back from now, even if Zhang Jiuling was in power for 20 more years and killed Anlu Mountain in advance, he would not be able to change the substantial disintegration of the grassroots society of the Tang Dynasty:
The foundations of the government army and land equalization system no longer exist, the administrative reform that treats the symptoms but not the root cause cannot be continued, there is no original solution to the sharp contradiction of land annexation (such as the method of fighting fire with fire as in the Northern Song Dynasty cannot be implemented), and the economic problems caused by the growing capital
, ecological imbalance.
If Zhang Jiuling continues to reign for twenty years, there is a high probability that his reputation will be ruined. This is just like if Li Linfu died of illness after being prime minister for four years, his reputation would go down in history.
This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! Li Longji can also see this. The reform of the Tang Dynasty is hopeless, just stay in it. When you close your eyes, it will be dark, and if you don't leave Chang'an, the world will be over.
Peace.
The fall from favor of Zhang Jiuling and others is inevitable. There is no hope for what they can do; they cannot do what Li Longji urgently needs.
Okay, let’s go back to what we mentioned at the beginning: Why did Zhang Jiuling prevent Niu Xianke from ascending to the throne? Is it just because the other party lacked ability?
I don't think that's the case, at least not entirely.
From the perspective of future generations, Yan Tingzhi's ability will never surpass Niu Xianke, and his merits will be even less impressive. I spent a long time looking for historical materials about Yan Tingzhi's achievements.
So why did Zhang Jiuling recommend Yan Tingzhi to be prime minister?
First, both of them were imperial examination scholars; second, both of them were poets and good writers. In other words, they were comrades in the trenches, so they would naturally become friends.
Zhang Jiuling said that Niu Xianke "doesn't know how to read", not that he can't read, but that Niu Xianke can't write essays and his literary quality is very low. In comparison, Yan Tingzhi's literary quality is much higher.
How many orders of magnitude?
Therefore, it was Zhang Jiuling's ideal to form the pattern of civil servants governing the country during the Renzong period of the Northern Song Dynasty. It cannot be said that there was anything wrong with his idea, because hundreds of years later, this pattern was really realized in the Northern Song Dynasty.
Zhang Jiuling has grasped this historical trend of dismantling aristocracy, lowering the upper limit of aristocratic rights, and lowering the threshold for political participation.
But it cannot be said that his ideas are without problems, because this central political structure has had a very serious, negative, and long-lasting impact.
The reason why Niu Xianke was not allowed to become prime minister was because he was not a person who came from the "rules of the game", so this hole could not be opened. The "rules of the game" in Zhang Jiuling's heart were the imperial examinations.
For the same reason, he opposed Zhang Shougui becoming the prime minister from Jiedushi, because Zhang Shougui became the prime minister as a border general (this was the tradition of the early Tang Dynasty).
Zhang Jiuling hopes to create a central group of traditional literati circles composed of people who came from the imperial examination. This is his ideal.
Therefore, even if Niu Xianke were replaced with a brain like Xiao Fang, Zhang Jiuling would still oppose it. Of course, if Niu Xianke was admitted to the imperial examination and continued to work as a military governor in Hexi, he could also be accepted by Zhang Jiuling and others.
Li Longji thought that Zhang Jiuling had "formed a party" and he was not wronged. The ambition of the party Zhang Jiuling formed (he may not have realized it himself) was so great that it almost spanned hundreds of years of evolution of the civil servant political structure.
Looking at this point, Li Longji did not kill him purely because he was short-sighted and not wise. Of course, this was also Zhang Jiuling's luck.
This is the second contradiction in the Central Committee of the Tang Dynasty: the clear factional contradiction between officials who came from the imperial examination and "miscellaneous" officials such as Men Yin who became officials (including low-level officials and generals who became prime ministers).
Suppose, if An Lushan came to Chang'an to become prime minister, would he rebel? The answer is definitely not, although there will definitely be people in the Youzhou Group who will take over and rebel.
Zhang Jiuling suppressed the generals and became prime minister. In fact, the feudal town would rebel sooner or later.
Moreover, this kind of contradiction did not disappear because of the Anshi Rebellion. Instead, it was reflected in the "Niu-Li Party Struggle" during the Xianzong period of the Tang Dynasty. Things like chicken feathers in one place are the continuation of this kind of struggle.
That’s why the title of my book is “Elegy of the Prosperous Tang Dynasty” because the old structure of the prosperous Tang Dynasty is really hopeless and full of contradictions from the inside out.
I wanted to write this book as a benchmark for historical literature from the end of Kaiyuan to the Anshi Rebellion. The exploration of the historical context is very in-depth. Under this premise, I tried to ensure the smoothness and excitement of the plot.
Then even if I come back to read this book ten years later, I still feel that it has merits. When I read it for the second and third time, I will not feel that it is insulting to my intelligence and made up, and it will not turn into a book that makes me vomit because of the passage of time.