What is history: it is the echo of the past to the future, the reflection of the future on the past. - Hugo
As the saying goes, "The emperor is not bad for hungry soldiers." "Behind the superficial language, it reveals the great relationship between the military and the economy. According to common sense, the stronger the economy, the stronger the army. The same conscription system, the Western Wei Dynasty, which had a slightly inferior comprehensive strength, cultivated an army with considerable combat effectiveness, while the Tang Dynasty, which experienced the "Kaiyuan Prosperous Era", faced the dilemma of no soldiers to use. The emergence of this strange phenomenon contained the sharp social contradictions of the time.
Above_ Northern Wei murals Town Tomb Warriors
A product of the times
The Northern Wei Dynasty, founded by the Xianbei people, implemented a policy of discrimination between the Xianbei soldiers and the Han people working as farmers. After the Six Towns Uprising, Northern Wei split into Eastern Wei and Western Wei. In the early days of the confrontation, Western Wei was at a disadvantage economically, militarily, and demographically. Yuwen Tai, a great master of the Western Wei Dynasty, urgently needed to consolidate his territory in order to strengthen his power.
Compared with the Eastern Wei Dynasty, Yuwen Tai must not only avoid the risk of Xianbei Hanhua, but also prevent the minefield of Xianbei Huhua. Yuwen Tai adopted the method of combining Hu and Han and established the famous fu military system, which properly resolved the contradiction between the army and the economy, and had a profound impact on the history of the Sui and Tang Dynasties.
In the eighth year of the unification (542 AD), Yuwen Tai gathered the soldiers of the six towns and the Xianbei people into the six armies, and the following year, western Wei suffered the defeat of Mount Yao, and Yuwen Tai collected the township soldiers of Guanzhong Haoqiang and appointed Haoqiang as the township marshal. In the sixteenth year of the reign (550 AD), Yuwen Tai established a system of provincial soldiers consisting of the Eight Pillar Kingdom, the Twelve Great Generals, and the Twenty-Four Kaifu Provinces. Not only that, Yuwen Tai also implemented the surname system, changing the surnames of all the soldiers in the government to the surnames of their respective commanders.
After integration, Western Wei had a Hu Han army with tribal military colors.
- Yuwen Tai (507–556), character Black Otter (一作黑泰)
No markups
In the ninth year of Taihe (485 AD), the Northern Wei Dynasty implemented the "equalized field system" on the basis of the "system of counting and giving land", the essence of which was to distribute land according to the population, and the beneficiaries paid rent and taxes to the state, and undertook certain military and military service, so as to stabilize the political power and promote agricultural production. Yuwen Tai introduced the prefectural military system at the right time on the basis of the Juntian system.
According to the "Biography of the Marquis of Yi", "The soldiers of the first house are above the middle level of the six households, the family has three dings, and the selection of one person is exempted from rent, and the county guards the gap between the farmers and the gap to teach the trial reading." Soldiers dressed in cattle and donkeys and grain are stored in six families, and they are raised and trained, like children. "At that time, the government divided the peasants into nine classes according to the situation of rich and poor, and among the peasants above the sixth rank, three were drawn, exempted from taxes, and armed with horses, weapons, grain, clothing, and other ordnance were prepared, and the local military government was responsible for training and dispatch.
Above_ The image of the Fu soldiers of the Tang Dynasty Su Wei troops
The prefectural military system reached the Sui Dynasty and made great progress. "The soldiers belong to the prefectures and counties, and the reclamation of land is the same as the people." Doing so means that the military system of the military and the people has basically taken shape. In his spare time, the prefectural military is engaged in farming, no different from farmers. During the war, the imperial court dispatched generals to command and recruit soldiers to participate in the war. After the battle, the commander was dismissed and returned to the dynasty, and the soldiers of the government returned to their own provinces. This kind of measure not only puts an end to the drawbacks of the general's monopoly on the military, but also actively develops agricultural production, realizes the integration of military and peasant, and effectively solves the difficult problem of economic constraints on the military.
The early Tang Dynasty was the peak of the development of the military system. In the tenth year of Zhenguan (636 AD), Emperor Taizong of Tang further straightened out the organizational structure of the fu soldiers, renamed the general's mansion to Fold chong Fu, and set up military positions such as folding chong du wei, left and right Guo Yi du wei, and bei generals, stipulating that one point was selected every three years to supplement the vacancy.
The province is divided into three classes: 1,200 people in the upper province, 1,000 people in the middle province, and 800 people in the lower province. There are a total of 634 folding chong provinces in the country, of which 261 are in Guannei, accounting for one-third of the total, reflecting the political intention of "focusing on the heavy and the light, and lifting the crowd in the Guanzhong to the four sides".
Li Shimin led the fu soldiers to establish a great military merit, and he said proudly: "I have a thousand soldiers, and I can hit tens of thousands of Hu riders." ”
Li Shimin (李李) (28 January 598 – 10 July 649) of the Tang Dynasty, was a native of Chengji, Longxi (present-day Qin'an County, Gansu).
Land annexation harms people and harms people
In the middle of the Tang Dynasty, land annexation intensified, which had a huge impact on the prefectural military system based on the Juntian system. The juntian system is the product of a compromise between the rich and the poor. In the actual granting of land, some farmers do not receive or in full the land. The weak ability of peasant households to resist disasters and prevent changes in the land has laid the groundwork for land annexation.
Since ancient times, land has not been an isolated case, and the Tang Dynasty was no exception. The Tang Dynasty law stipulated that land could be bought and sold under certain conditions, and the nobles and powerful people thus exploited the loopholes in the law. In addition to "the rooms of the rich and the rich, all of whom occupy the land outside the country", the nobles took advantage of their political privileges to wantonly encroach on and plunder in the name of "borrowing the wilderness", "dispossessing the herds", and "taking over the tenants". According to records, at that time, "Ding Kou turned to death, not the old name; the field was changed, not the old amount; the rich and the poor rose and fell, not the old first." "The peasants lost their land, the population fled, the gap between the rich and the poor, and the social contradictions of the Tang Dynasty continued to intensify." The law of the government soldiers is soaked", and the system has been abolished at a critical moment.
Above_ The tang dynasty used the voucher for conscripting the fu soldiers - the fish charm
In the ninth year of the new century (721 AD), Emperor Xuanzong of Tang realized the seriousness of land annexation and ordered the inspection of the land and the household. By the 22nd year of the New Century (734 AD), more than 800,000 fleeing peasant households had been found, and more than 800,000 mu of illegal land had been annexed. The following year, the imperial court clearly stipulated that the peasants' mouth and field and Yongye fields were not allowed to buy and sell pawn stickers. After that, the imperial court once again stressed that the Koufentian and Yongyetian fields could not be transferred, and at the same time restricted mergers such as "borrowing the wilderness", "dispossessing the herding", and "wrapping up the tenants".
The policy introduced by Tang Xuanzong was the last chance to save the Juntian system. However, in terms of measures to curb land annexation, the imperial court did not exert sufficient efforts and achieved little effect. The aristocracy is arrogant and self-propelled, expanding wildly, and contradictions are prominent. The prefectural military system, which is based on the Juntian system, has lost the foundation on which it depends for its survival, and has eventually become a "chicken rib" that is tasteless and discarded.
- Li Longji of Tang Xuanzong (685–762)
Self-defects are about to be destroyed
There are some shortcomings in the prefectural military system itself. Due to the continuous war, the prefectural soldiers changed from serving in turn to forcibly defending, and over the years, the local labor force of the military government was insufficient, affecting agricultural production, resulting in the economic decline of the region and the overwhelm of the prefectural soldiers. The Tang army took fire as its basic unit, ten people and one fire, in addition to raising daily armaments by themselves, they also had to take care of the "six pack horses" responsible for transportation, which made the peasants' burden even heavier.
In addition, the Tang army fought with the Khitan, Uighur, Turkic, Tubo and other forces for a long time, and the Fu soldiers "fought more and more timely", and the casualties increased significantly, and the replenishment of the Fu soldiers was difficult to sustain. The aristocratic bureaucracy arbitrarily privately envoyed the soldiers of the government, reducing their status, and the concept of being ashamed of being a soldier in the government was formed in society. The rich, in collusion with the bureaucracy, tried to evade military service. For many reasons, "the guards are slightly hidden", the number of soldiers in the Folding Chong Province is insufficient, it is difficult to replenish, and the prefectural military system exists in name only.
Wu Zetian (624 – 16 December 705)
Multi-pronged return to heaven lack of surgery
The Tang Dynasty also took corresponding measures to ease the pressure of conscription. In the first year of the Banzai Tongtian Dynasty (696 AD), Wu Zetian announced the conscription of united soldiers with the goal of rich and strong ding, who enjoyed the treatment of exemption from conscription, could learn bows and arrows by themselves, and were regularly assessed every year. At the beginning of Tang Xuanzong's reign, due to the serious shortage of vacancies in Zhaochong Province, it was difficult to complete the military affairs of conscription, and the frontier military towns began to recruit adult men who voluntarily joined the army, and thus the far-reaching conscription system began to sprout.
In the twenty-fifth year of the new century (737 AD), Emperor Xuanzong ordered the envoys of each town to set up conscription quotas according to the needs of defense, and recruit soldiers who volunteered to fight on the border. The following year, the imperial court decided not to recruit fu soldiers from the interior to guard the border, and the original non-Long March soldiers were all released, a decision that fundamentally announced the end of the function of the prefectural military system. In the eighth year of Tianbao (749 AD), in view of the fact that "there were no soldiers to surrender to the provinces", Emperor Xuanzong of Tang ordered the replacement of the military system with a conscription system.
After the historical inflection point of the prefectural military system, bold innovation, extraordinary significance, its glorious arc is very long, but always bent forward bowstring.