Why tang dynasty fall

Imperial authority over those lands was gone forever. Hence, they tried to quell the power of these military governors and restore imperial authority. Though there were some successes, all of them were temporary. Tang court in the 8th-9th century had to spend resources trying to suppress these warlords for a century without any long-term success.

Frequent wars against these Jiedushis significantly worsened the imperial treasury. Tax revenues that suffered from the decreased population could not cover the expenses. To finance the expedition, the Tang government had to increase the taxes on peasants, leading to widespread discontent over the realm. Eunuchs are men who served the emperor in the palace after their castration.

Throughout Chinese history, eunuchs usually become powerful in imperial politics. Strong emperors would keep these eunuchs in check, while weak emperors fell into the grasp of the eunuchs. The rise of eunuch was repeated in every major Chinese dynasty. Tang dynasty was not an exception. These eunuchs rose in prominence in the reign of Emperor Dezong of Tang.

As the emperor attempted to crush the Jiedushis, he relied on the advice of these eunuchs. Since the emperor put his trust in them, they were gradually promoted, so their power increased as well. Several Tang emperors also died relatively young, so their legitimate heirs were either too young or weak to handle administrative affairs.

Thus, he had to put their faith on the eunuchs, whom most of the time were the same people who brought up these emperors. Thus, it was inevitable that the eunuchs possessed imperial powers. Honest and capable ministers would be expelled or executed. In the late Tang dynasty, several emperors such as Emperor Jingzong and Wenzong were murdered by these formidable eunuchs. The administration under these eunuchs was disastrous. Corruption was rampant. Hence, they began to lose faith in the government.

Many would believe that Tang had already lost their Mandate of Heaven Tianming , and the new dynasty was imminent. Overall, Tang emperors not only lost their imperial authority over key states to the Jiedushis, and but also imperial power to the eunuchs.

As a result, they became puppet emperors. Hence, they spent their time on alcohols, women, and luxuries. The imperial families were no different. For instance, when a daughter of Emperor Yizong married, she spent five million taels of silver on her lavish ceremony. That equaled to cumulative yearly incomes of tens of thousands of peasants.

Certainly, imperial treasuries could not keep up with their spending. They became strained in the late Tang period. Tang administration solved this problem by increasing taxes on the population. That was another grave mistake. It led to widespread discontent, especially among the peasants who suffered most. Their incomes already plunged because natural disasters in the AD destroyed their crops.

Finally, the peasants had no choice. They could not tolerate anymore, so they decided to rebel in Thus began the major rebellion of late Tang dynasty. Their leaders were Wang Xianzhi and Huang Chao. Many peasants quickly joined their ranks. The rebels soon numbered more than 10, and started attacking major provinces in the central part of China. Tang court chose to implement a divide-and-conquer strategy to deal with the rebels.

The emissary came to Wang Xianzhi and offered him a title of general. This caused a major break between Wang Xianzhi and Huang Chao. In , Huang Chao left Wang Xianzhi and campaigned by himself. Unfortunately for Wang Xianzhi, the negotiations failed. Tang imperial troops defeated and killed him in However, he faced stiff resistance, so he marched south to avoid a battle with major Tang armies.

Huang Chao quickly conquered several prefectures in the south of the Yangtze River. This caused turmoil in the Tang court. Thus, the Tang government tried to tame him by offering him several titles. However, both sides never reached an agreement. In fall , the rebels attacked and sacked Guangzhou. Arab sources pointed out that foreign merchants up to , were killed. Whether the massacre really occurred was unclear, as it was not mentioned in any Chinese source.

Hence, He decided to march back north. On his way, he fought with several imperial armies. Second, the separatist regions of Fanzhen were another major problem in the late period of the Tang Dynasty.

Actually, the separatist regions of Fanzhen originated from the set-up of Jiedushi regional military governors. In order to safeguard the border areas, the emperors used to set up many institutions called Jiedushi at the frontier. After the An Shi Rebellion broke out, the Tang court set up more regional Jiedushi to defend the central regime. With much administrative rights and military power, those Jiedushi gradually turned into many separatist regimes called Fanzhen.

In competing for the farmland and labor, battles between Fanzhen and the central court constantly broke out. To some extent, all these Fanzhen regimes became small kingdoms whose military forces were only responsible for themselves. This had threatened the unification of the whole country. Third, the conflicts between the different cliques were an indispensable factor that caused the decline. The court officials of Tang were mainly made up of two groups. One group was from the traditional noble class while the other group came from the civilian class.

Due to different class origin and political status, these two groups respectively formed their own parties. In discussing the state affairs, these parties usually held different political views and adopted disparate policies.

In order to be superior to the other group, all these parties were entangled with power struggles. As a result, all these internal disputes broke down the power of the central regime. The last one was peasants' uprising which was the only external factor that directly led to the decline. The peaceful and profitable relationship between Chinese and foreign residents of Tang's largest cities continued until friction arose between foreign traders and Chinese merchants in the late eight century.

This friction slowly escalated in the form of increasing resentment and suspicion of the expatriate tradesmen living in the Chang-an and other urban centers, until laws were passed in that forbade extraneous social contact between Chinese and foreigners. In the Tang court's liberal policies towards religion were reversed, and all foreign religions were outlawed.

Hostilities with Tibet began to divert resources, while quelling rebellions at home necessitated pulling back garrisons from the northwest. A pragmatic alliance with the Uyghurs to the west would prove to have expensive and even bloody consequences. To the Tang, the charms of alien cultures began to wane and more native tastes were renewed. From to , the Tang government rejected its previously tolerant stance toward foreign religions and waged a brutal campaign against Buddhism, Nestorian Christianity, Manichaeism, and Zoroastrianism.

Perceiving the imperial government's increasing feebleness, kingdoms to the south and west raided China's borders, while bandits and rebellions instigated further unrest within, until the Tang ultimately disintegrated almost years after its founding. Many other foreigners had placed themselves under the Uighurs living in China, in order to be able to do business under the political protection of the Uighur embassy, but the Uighurs no longer counted, and the Tang government decided to seize the capital sums which these foreigners had accumulated.

It was hoped in this way especially to remedy the financial troubles of the moment, which were partly due to a shortage of metal for minting. As the trading capital was still placed with the temples as banks, the government attacked the religion of the Uighurs, Manichaeism, and also the religions of the other foreigners, Mazdaism, Nestorianism, and apparently also Islam. In alien religions were prohibited; aliens were also ordered to dress like Chinese.

This gave them the status of Chinese citizens and no longer of foreigners, so that Chinese justice had a hold over them. That this law abolishing foreign religions was aimed solely at the foreigners' capital is shown by the proceedings at the same time against Buddhism which had long become a completely Chinese Church.

Four thousand, six hundred Buddhist temples, 40, shrines and monasteries were secularized, and all statues were required to be melted down and delivered to the government, even those in private possession.

Two hundred and sixty thousand, five hundred monks were to become ordinary citizens once more. Until then monks had been free of taxation, as had millions of acres of land belonging to the temples and leased to tenants or some , temple slaves. All the property of foreigners and a large part of the property of the Buddhist Church came into the hands of the government.

The law was not applied to Taoism, because the ruling gentry of the time were, as so often before, Confucianist and at the same time Taoist. As early as there came a reaction: with the new emperor, Confucians came into power who were at the same time Buddhists and who now evicted some of the Taoists.

From this time one may observe closer co-operation between Confucianism and Buddhism; not only with meditative Buddhism Dhyana as at the beginning of the Tang epoch and earlier, but with the main branch of Buddhism, monastery Buddhism Vinaya.

From now onward the Buddhist doctrines of transmigration and retribution, which had been really directed against the gentry and in favour of the common people, were turned into an instrument serving the gentry: everyone who was unfortunate in this life must show such amenability to the government and the gentry that he would have a chance of a better existence at least in the next life. Thus the revolutionary Buddhist doctrine of retribution became a reactionary doctrine that was of great service to the gentry.

One of the Buddhist Confucians in whose works this revised version makes its appearance most clearly was Niu Seng-yu, who was at once summoned back to court in by the new emperor. Three new large Buddhist sects came into existence in the Tang period. One of them, the school of the Pure Land Ching-t'u tsung, since required of its mainly lower class adherents only the permanent invocation of the Buddha Amithabha who would secure them a place in the "Western Paradise"—a place without social classes and economic troubles.

The cult of Maitreya, which was always more revolutionary, receded for a while. The Chinese annals are filled with records of popular risings, but not one of these had attained any wide extent, for want of organization. In began the first great popular rising, a revolt caused by famine in the province of Zhejiang.

Government troops suppressed it with bloodshed. Further popular risings followed. In began a great rising in the south of the present province of Hebei, the chief agrarian region. It is important to note that Huang was well educated. It is said that he failed in the state examination. Huang is not the first merchant who became rebel. An Lushan, too, had been a businessman for a while. It was pointed out that trade had greatly developed in the Tang period; of the lower Yangtze region people it was said that "they were so much interested in business that they paid no attention to agriculture".

Yet merchants were subject to many humiliating conditions. They could not enter the examinations, except by illegal means. In various periods, from the Han time on, they had to wear special dress. Thus, a law from c. They were subject to various taxes, but were either not allowed to own land, or were allotted less land than ordinary citizens.

Thus they could not easily invest in land, the safest investment at that time. Finally, the government occasionally resorted to the method which was often used in the Near East: when in the emperor ran out of money, he requested the merchants of the capital to "loan" him a large sum—a request which in fact was a special tax.

The terrified government issued an order to arm the people of the other parts of the country against the rebels; naturally this helped the rebels more than the government, since the peasants thus armed went over to the rebels. Finally Wang was offered a high office. But Huang urged him not to betray his own people, and Wang declined the offer. In the end the government, with the aid of the troops of the Turkish Sha-t'o, defeated Wang and beheaded him Huang Ch'ao now moved into the south-east and the south, where in he captured and burned down Canton; according to an Arab source, over , foreign merchants lost their lives in addition to the Chinese.

From Canton Huang Ch'ao returned to the north, laden with loot from that wealthy commercial city. His advance was held up again by the Sha-t'o troops; he turned away to the lower Yangtze, and from there marched north again. At the end of he captured the eastern capital. The emperor fled from the western capital, Ch'ang-an, into Sichuan, and Huang Ch'ao now captured with ease the western capital as well, and removed every member of the ruling family on whom he could lay hands. He then made himself emperor, in a Ch'i dynasty.

It was the first time that a peasant rising had succeeded against the gentry. There were other peasant armies on the move, armies that had deserted their governors and were fighting for themselves; finally, there were still a few supporters of the imperial house and, above all, the Turkish Sha-t'o, who had a competent commander with the sinified name of Li K'o-yung.

The Sha-t'o, who had remained loyal to the government, revolted the moment the government had been overthrown. They ran the risk, however, of defeat at the hands of an alien army of the Chinese government's, commanded by an Uighur, and they therefore fled to the Tatars. In spite of this, the Chinese entered again into relations with the Sha-t'o, as without them there could be no possibility of getting rid of Huang Ch'ao. At the end of Li K'o-yung fell upon the capital; there was a fearful battle.

Huang Ch'ao was able to hold out, but a further attack was made in and he was defeated and forced to flee; in he was killed by the Sha-t'o. In much of the late 8th century the Tang Dynasty was in decline. In the 9th century disputes within the court grew more acrimonious and the Tang dynasty weakened further.

Though a Tang emperor occupied the throne until , by the s most of the empire was in the hands of independent and ambitious military leaders. Invaders from the north destroyed the Tang dynasty in , and China once again was thrown into a period of anarchy and disunity that lasted this time for about a half a century.

After the Tang Dynasty collapsed the empire split into ten kingdoms, and would remain fragmented until its reunification under the Song dynasty. In addition to natural calamities and jiedushi amassing autonomous control, the Huang Chao Rebellion — resulted in the sacking of both Chang'an and Luoyang, and took an entire decade to suppress.

Although the rebellion was defeated by the Tang, it never recovered from that crucial blow, weakening it for the future military powers to take over. There were also large groups of bandits, in the size of small armies, that ravaged the countryside in the last years of the Tang, who smuggled illicit salt, ambushed merchants and convoys, and even besieged several walled cities.