"Is it my fault?" Zhao Yu was stunned for a long time when he heard this, could it be that he was also wrong to favor his loyal ministers?

"Your Majesty is close to loyalty, far from villain, and there is no fault. But rumors can also kill, the Jiang brothers are trusted by His Majesty and entrusted with important tasks, one is in charge of the government; One commanded 100,000 troops abroad, and half of the Jiangnan was saved. Those who know are His Majesty who knows how to make good use of others, while those who do not know think that they are self-respecting and have a heart of disobedience. Wang Yinglin said.

"This is to live the belly of a gentleman with the heart of a villain, jealous of the Jiang family and spread rumors, and some people in the court can't look down on the good of others!" Zhao Hao snorted coldly, hateful and authentic.

"Your Majesty, don't be confined to the present, there are loyal ministers and good generals available at the moment, but it is difficult to ensure that everyone will be as loyal as Jiang Zhishuai in the future, so we still have to focus on the long term." Wang Yinglin waited for the emperor to calm down a little and then said.

"Hmm!" Zhao Hao nodded thoughtfully after hearing this, he understood the meaning a little, but he still couldn't grasp the point.

"Your Majesty, do you know why after Tang Xuanzong, why did he prosper and decline, stop the split, and finally destroy the country?" Wang Yinglin looked at His Majesty's appearance and knew that his words had touched the emperor's heart, and then asked.

"I only know roughly, Xuanzong favored traitors in his later years, indulged in Yang Guifei, ignored political affairs, caused the Anshi Rebellion, and led to the decline of the Tang Dynasty. But I don't know the details, I am willing to listen to the teachings of the king! Zhao Yu arched his hand.

"Don't dare!" Wang Yinglin also saluted, "What Your Majesty said is good, Xuanzong was obscene in his later years and neglected political affairs, which led to traitors and caused the Anshi Rebellion. But the minister thought that the Anshi Rebellion was only the cause, and the real cause was still the internal cause......"

Zhao Yu listened to his eloquent words and gradually understood the meaning. He thought that the decline of the Tang Dynasty and the outbreak of the "Anshi Rebellion" were just the fuse, which led to the "crisis" that had long been buried in the Tang Empire to be highlighted:

The first is the central contradiction between Xuanzong and Suzong. After the An Lushan rebellion, Xuanzong responded to the development of the war by appointing princes and clans, and setting up large military regions. Especially after Tongguan was conquered and Xuanzong and Suzong parted ways, this strategy became more obvious. But undoubtedly, this policy also intensified the father-son contradiction between Xuanzong and Suzong.

The replacement of candidates in Henan Jiedu and the outbreak of the "Yongwang Rebellion" in Jianghuai are the embodiment of this central contradiction. This crisis finally ended when Tang Suzong arrived in Shuofang at the suggestion of his subordinates and ascended the throne, revered Xuanzong as the emperor, and won the victory in the central struggle against Xuanzong, that is, the return of the Tang Central Committee to the rule of the unitary yuan.

The second wave of the crisis stemmed from the emergence of new local generals. Although the setting of the large military region was no longer continued, Suzong, who replaced Xuanzong, still set up the marshal of the Henan Xingying and the Jianghuai Metropolitan with the right to rule the towns of the feudal domains out of the needs of the rebellion war.

However, whether it was the establishment of a marshal in Henan or a capital in Jianghuai, Suzong now paid special attention to the local generals of Henan who had grown in power through the Anshi Rebellion, although most of them had played a key role in resisting the rebels' southward advance, such as Zhang Xun. Therefore, Suzong had both the efforts to use the marshal of Henan to remove these local generals, and the determination to rely on the Jianghuai capital to suppress them, but the latter's failure eventually led to the "Liu Zhan Rebellion". With the implementation of the above measures, by the end of the Suzong Dynasty, this wave of crises also caused by the Anshi Rebellion came to an end.

The third wave of the crisis originated from the alien race in the west. Taking advantage of the eastward transfer of the Tang army in the west to quell the rebellion, Dangxiang and Tubo gradually eroded the western territory of the empire and posed a serious threat to Guanzhong after the end of the Anshi Rebellion. The successive establishment of eight towns in the northwest of Beijing was a measure taken by the empire to deal with this wave of alien crises. Although this wave of crisis lasted for a long time, and its resolution was mainly related to the decline of the strength of the Tubo and other alien races, in the process of establishing and adjusting the defense system of the eight towns in northwest Beijing and the Shence military town, it can still be seen that the Tang court made careful considerations to resolve this wave of crisis.

The central struggle, the central and emerging local generals, and the threat to the empire from the alien race were the three waves of crises caused by the Anshi Rebellion. The time taken by the empire to resolve these crises varies, and the impact of the three on the empire varies geographically. However, these three were not the main crises that the empire encountered after the outbreak of the Anshi Rebellion, but the contradictions caused by them dealt a heavy blow to the survival and authority of the empire.

"It makes sense that the defeat of the Tang Dynasty was essentially the defeat of the national system, and the main contradiction came from the contradiction between the Tang Dynasty and the border towns, and the Anshi Rebellion was just the result of the intensification of the contradictions, and after the rebellion, this contradiction was not only not eased, but instead implemented the policy of establishing feudal towns to achieve the goal of suppressing the feudal domain and revitalizing the dynasty. However, as a result, the war between the Tang Dynasty and the northern feudal towns dominated by these former border forces was ignited again after the chaos, with the Four Towns Rebellion, the Fengtian Rebellion, and the later Yuan and He Wars. In fact, the process of resolving this crisis can be regarded as a process of reconstructing the spatial structure and power structure of the feudal town, which can be used as a reference! Zhao Yu nodded.

He analyzed Wang Yinglin's words a little, and it was not difficult to come up with an answer based on what he knew. In fact, the Tang Dynasty themselves had already realized that the most serious crisis of the empire actually came from a chronic disease of the system itself, and this chronic disease was the existence of a militarily powerful Jiedu envoy group in the border areas of the Tang Dynasty.

Specifically, it is the ten festivals of the Kaiyuan and Tianbao years. In the ten knots of opening the heavens, in addition to the Jiannan in the south and the five provinces in Lingnan are slightly weaker, Youzhou, Pinglu, Hedong, Shuofang, Hexi, Longyou, Anxi, and Beiting in the north all have strong troops, and before the Anshi Rebellion, as Du You said, Youzhou, Pinglu, and Hedong under the command of An Lushan, and Hexi and Longyou under the command of Geshuhan have been formed.

Faced with the rebellion from the Northeast Army, Xuanzong's first thought was to use the Western Army to resist. As a result, in addition to a group of generals of the Western Army Corps who were successively sent to Henan, the front line of confrontation with the rebels, the armies of Hexi and Longyou also began to assemble in Tongguan. However, the Hexi and Longyou armies suffered a crushing defeat in the subsequent Battle of Lingbao, and the leader of this group, Ge Shuhan, was also defeated and captured, so the forces of Hexi and Longyou basically collapsed.

However, although the Western Legion suffered heavy losses after the Battle of Lingbao, the two monarchs of Su and Dai, who fought against the rebels after Xuanzong, still had to rely on the forces of these border towns before the chaos to deal with the rebels, in addition to borrowing the army of the Hui Dynasty. It wasn't because they wanted to, but because the Tang court had nothing else to use other than the army of these border envoys.

The Anshi Rebellion ended in the early years of Daizong, but the quelling of the rebellion was not complete, and Hebei after the rebellion was still occupied by the old Anshi generals from Youzhou and Pinglu. As for the former frontier regiments that quelled the Anshi Rebellion, the Tang Dynasty also had to give them on-the-spot treatment in the interior after the rebellion, which was not only a natural measure to praise the meritorious heroes, but also the inevitable result of relocating the border envoys who had to lead the army into the interior due to the loss of the border place.

Therefore, after the end of the wartime system of Marshal Xingying in Henan, the territory of the northern feudal towns after the chaos was almost entirely occupied by the border town forces before the chaos. In addition to the Anshi old generals from Youzhou and Pinglu who will occupy Hebei; The Pinglu faction that helped the Tang court put down the rebellion dominated Henan; Guanzhong was divided by Shuofang, the North Court of the Four Towns, and later the Youzhou soldiers.

In addition, part of the remnants of the Hexi and Longyou armies were stationed in Hedong; As for the Jianghuai area in the south, although it has nothing to do with the border jiedu forces, some foreign generals who gradually settled in the local area after the Anshi Rebellion, especially the Central Plains generals and their subordinates, have greatly affected the local political trend, so it can also be regarded as the result of the border rebellion.

"Your Majesty's intention is to the point." Wang Yinglin approvingly, "The traditional view of history holds that the Tang court's establishment of feudal towns in the interior after the Anshi Rebellion was an act of weakening its own ruling power and promoting local separatism. However, if we compare the political entities in these feudal towns with the border envoys before the rebellion, it can be seen that after eight years of the Anshi Rebellion, the strength of the border military towns before that, whether it was from the northeast of the rebels or the northwest of the towns that blocked the rebels, had actually been greatly weakened. ”

"However, as His Majesty said, although this is an opportunity for the Tang court to solve the problem of a strong border and a weak court, the authority of the Tang court itself has also suffered a heavy blow, and it only solves the crisis that Du You said, 'the border is strong, and the court is weak', but on the whole, the trend of the rise of local forces is still there. Thus, on the one hand, after the end of the crisis in the military towns, the momentum of the imperial court strengthening by controlling the upper echelons of the feudal towns has been reflected in the feudal towns, but the real dominance of the feudal towns has been transferred to the hands of those emerging local grassroots forces, causing a more serious crisis. ”

"Yes, with the victory of the Tang Dynasty's war to cut the feudal domain, the officials of the imperial court, especially a large number of civil officials, were sent to the feudal towns to serve as marshals or shogunate assistants, and successfully re-established the power structure of the feudal towns, and it seems that the imperial court restored its authority. In reality, however, these court-appointed officials did not become the power to control the feudal towns, and they actually replaced the emerging local powers. Zhao Yu said.

"But I think that although these changes failed to prevent the decline of the Tang Dynasty, these experiences were also used as a reference for our dynasty and became the basis for Taizu to formulate Yangwen and suppress martial arts. And I thought that this avoided the emergence of local divisions, but it also made our Korean army weak, repeatedly defeated by foreign invasions, and still failed to avoid the danger of losing the country, which made me distressed for a long time, and I don't know how to crack it! Zhao Hao had fully understood the meaning of Wang Yinglin's words at this time, he was excusing Jiang Cheng and hinting at the crisis he had bred, but he did not give a perfect answer to solve the problem, and this still needed him to crack it......

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