What is history: it is the echo of the past to the future, the reflection of the future on the past. - Hugo
The Huangchao Rebellion began in the fifth year of Qianfu (878) and ended in the fourth year of Zhonghe (884), because the Huangchao had cooperated with Wang Xianzhi in the early period, it can also be seen as a follow-up to the Wang Xianzhi Uprising, so it is also collectively known as the "Wang Xianzhi Huangchao Uprising", this uprising was the longest-lasting, most extensive and most far-reaching peasant uprising in the late Tang Dynasty.
Huang Chao's army, using the method of mobile warfare, evaded the real and attacked the virtual, traveled all over the vast areas of today's Shandong, Henan, Anhui, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hunan, Hubei, Shaanxi and other provinces, and once occupied the Tang Dynasty's capital Chang'an, and created its own political power, thus seriously shaking the tang dynasty's rule and dealing a heavy blow to the weakened Tang Dynasty, thus causing the late Tang Dynasty to directly come to the brink of extinction.
On the surface, Huang Chao and his army have almost fought all over China, and such an amazing battle record seems to naturally be attributed to his outstanding military ability and the heroic battles of his subordinates, but in fact, the reason why Huang Chao was able to traverse most of China was mainly because the Tang court at that time had been abandoned by the entire bureaucratic class!
If you are in the position of a Tang dynasty bureaucrat, it is not difficult to draw the following two conclusions:
First of all, the government was extremely chaotic, the emperor was incompetent, and the civil and military officials could not be treated fairly by the imperial court. What left the most stark and impressive impression on the officials was the disposition of Kang Chengxun, who successfully suppressed Pang Xun's mutiny.
In the sixth year of Xiantong (865), Tang Yi sent troops to enlist Nanzhao and ordered the recruitment of 2,000 troops in the Xu and Si regions.
They went to Yongzhou, where 800 men were sent to defend Guilin, and it was agreed that they would be transferred back to their places of origin after the expiration of the three-year period. Xu Si's observation made Cui Yan repeatedly renege on his promise, and the soldiers defended Guilin for six years, but still had no hope of returning home. The soldiers were suffering from military service, and the crowd was indignant, so the public pushed the grain section judge Pang Xun as the first soldier to mutiny the north. Pang Xun led hundreds of people, through hardships, from Guilin, Hunan, Hubei, Anhui, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, arrived and captured Xuzhou, and then won the support of the surrounding people, the momentum is getting bigger and bigger.
In the ninth year of Xiantong, the imperial court appointed Kang Chengxun as an envoy to the Yicheng Army and Xu Sixing's camp to recruit envoys to suppress Pang Xun's rebel army. The following year, Kang Chengxun gathered a large army, recruited a large number of elite cavalry from the Tuguhun, Tatar, Khitan and Shatuo tribes, and then used the Shatuo army as the front to defeat the mutinous army and attack Pang Xun.
As the commander of the Tang army, Kang Chengxun, although he was appointed as the head of the Hedong Jiedu envoy for his merits, was soon demoted by the imperial court on charges of ineffective combat and exiled to remote Lingnan--the generals who had made great contributions suffered this treatment, how could the officials remain loyal?
As a result, at several key points in the suppression of the Huangchao Uprising, Tang officials invariably chose to attack and protect themselves to a limited extent rather than go all out. For example, Huang Chao's army marched north from Guangdong, and at Jingmen was defeated by Liu Jurong's army led by Shannan's Eastern Province, and Most of Huang Chao's men were killed and taken prisoner, and the remnants, including Huang Chao, were scattered. Some people suggested that Liu Jurong take advantage of the victory to pursue and completely annihilate the Huang Chao army, saying: "The country has many negative people, and it is not stingy to reward people in danger, and it is better to leave thieves and hope for happiness." ”
Liu Jurong's words can be described as simple and crude, showing the clear position of the local powerful faction: if Huang Chao is solved, he will inevitably become a victim of the internal political struggle of the imperial court; on the contrary, if Huang Chao sits on the throne of the Tang Dynasty, with the territory and army in his hands, he can not only divide the territory and army in his hands, but also join the new dynasty in exchange for high-ranking officials Houlu, glory and wealth.
Second, the tang dynasty's rule was already devastated and crumbling.
Before and after the Huangchao Uprising, the civil unrest, uprisings, and military mutinies occurred one after another, and the officials and troops responsible for suppression were mostly unusable, and a small number of loyal to the dynasty army could only be exhausted, so that the imperial court had to issue an edict, ordering local assassins and observers to recruit and train soldiers on the spot, and at the same time requiring all villages to prepare their own bows and arrows, knives and guns, and drum boards to guard against thieves.
The people's payment of taxes, military service, and the provision of public services by the state and the guarantee of security were contracts between the two, but at that time, the imperial court, obviously violating the contract, admitted in disguise that it was powerless under the general threat of thieves, and that law, order, and normal social order could only face disintegration and collapse at the grass-roots level- since you could not guarantee my safety, why did you continue to pay taxes and pay grain?
To sum up, at that time, the Tang Dynasty was already terminally ill in the eyes of the bureaucratic class, so it invariably chose to "kill" it, that is, it believed that the dynasty had perished!