The History of China - #107 - Tang 20: This Is Only a Test

Episode Date: August 21, 2016

Today we explore the insanely difficult, stressful, byzantine... and sometimes fatal... world of the would-be imperial official as they attempt to climb their way through the labyrinth of tests explicitly designed to fail them out. One unlikely success of this system is Yuan Zai, who will going from impoverished nobody to Chancellor of the Empire... all before getting his head lopped off. We then finish out Emperor Daizong's time on the throne before the reign of his son Emperor Dezong. Time Period Covered: 762-781 CE Major Historical Figures: Emperor Daizong of Tang (Li Yu) [r. 762-779] Emperor Dezong of Tang (Li Kuo) [r. 779- 805] Chancellor Yuan Zai [d. 777] General Guo Ziyi [d. 781] Major Works Cited: Dalby, Michael T. "Court Politics in Late Tang Times" in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 3. Miyazaki, Ichisada. China's Examination Hell. Sima, Guang. Zizhi Tongjian, vol. 225. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. The French Revolution set Europe ablaze. It was an age of enlightenment and progress, but also of tyranny and oppression. It was an age of glory and an age of tragedy. One man stood above it all. This was the Age of Napoleon. I'm Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast. Join me as I examine the life and times of one of the most fascinating and enigmatic characters in modern history.

Look for the Age of Napoleon wherever you find your podcasts. Do you ever feel like listening to non-history podcasts? No, of course you don't. We're all you could ever need, after all. But if, on the off chance, you do occasionally sneak over the fence, may I at least suggest you give Alison Gerlach's business and finance show The Unapologetic Capitalist a try? Not only is she a fellow Agora Network member, which of course means she's awesome,

but she'll also tell you all the strategies you need to turn your business venture, whether tech startup or a quirky DIY Chinese history show, into a success. Give it a listen through the Agora Network page, www.agorapodcastnetwork.com, or through her own homepage, unapologeticcapitalist.com, or otherwise find her wherever the finest podcasts are on tap. And now, enjoy the show. Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 107, This is Only a Test How high could one hope to fly in a society like the Tang Empire? Episode 107, This is Only a Test.

How high could one hope to fly in a society like the Tang Empire? Not physically, of course, but in terms of social standing, social mobility. You might start to think of a rigid caste system where everyone was just firmly set in their place and station, like the feudal serfs of medieval Europe or the Jati system in pre-modern India. But if you're thinking of that, you might come away from this surprised. To be short, upward social mobility has always meant, and continues to mean even today, a great deal of skill and effort, as well as a good dose of luck. But it was possible for even a man of little means and low birth to reach the highest echelons of power in 8th century China,

as proven by the one we're going to begin our story with today, Yuan Zai. It's something of a testament to his low status that, as with most of the common class, Yuan Zai's date of birth was never recorded, though we can at least narrow it down to the early 710s, probably. Though said to be studious and intelligent, Yunzai was nevertheless forced to take and retake and retake the local examinations he needed to pass in order to proceed to the district levels, and then provincial levels, and then national, and then imperial examinations at last. The problem was he kept failing them. Multiple times, in fact. This was, by the way,

not at all an uncommon situation for those seeking higher standing in society through the examinations process. The testing was so rigorous, in fact, that it was not at all uncommon that a candidate would fail at least once. In fact, at the district level, it was an outright goal to eliminate as many candidates as possible in order to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, which often meant a failure rate of as much as 75% at the district level and 50% at the prefectural level, and so on. Nevertheless, in spite of the expectation that the failed candidate would just dust themselves off and try again the next time, that was an arduous waiting process in and of itself. Though the lower-level exams were held every year and a half,

the provincial, metropolitan, and palace exams were each held only once every three years. Thus, multiple times, unable to afford the luxury of a carriage, Yunzai made his way once again every three years to his provincial capital on foot in order to submit himself to the examination process once again. The examinations themselves were a truly trying ordeal. The book by Ichisada Miyazaki, whose title kind of says it all, called China's Examination Hell, describes the grueling process.

So, please forgive me as I go down the rabbit hole of Chinese examination procedures rather than forwarding our timeline for a little bit, but it really is a fascinating topic. Chinese parents even today fret and worry over the college entrance exams, called the gaokao, much as Western parents worry about their children's SAT or ACT scores. But few parents today worry much about the prospect of their child leaving the testing room in a body bag. For the Tang Empire, that was within the realm of possibility. Candidates were only allowed to bring the barest necessities with them—a water pitcher, a chamber pot, their own bedding, their own food, an inkstone, ink, and, of course, brushes.

Before being admitted to the exam facility, armed guards would verify the candidate's identity and conduct a thorough search of him for any hidden prints or written works he might be attempting to smuggle in. Given the weight and importance such tests' results could have on one's life prospects, you see, it should come as no surprise that attempted cheating was rampant. And as such, so were the precautions taken in an attempt to curb it. Miyazaki writes, quote, Subdivided within and isolated by a great wall from the outside world, the whole examination compound had only one entrance, the great gate, which was used by

the staff and candidates alike, end quote. Over the course of the testing, too, multiple anti-cheating measures were in place to attempt to root out and curb anyone who might be trying to pull one over on the ever-watchful exam officials. Again from Miyazaki, An hour after the first question had been announced, the proctors went around and stamped a seal on the papers to indicate how far each student had progressed in his answer. If a man had not written anything at all,

even if thereafter he managed to compose a good answer, there was always the suspicion that he had cribbed it from someone else. End quote. Over the course of the following three days and two nights, allowed no interruptions or communication, and with the single gate to the outside world solidly sealed from the outside, the candidates were to write lengthy essays, compose poetry, and recopy flawlessly memorized passages from the ancient classical texts that they had been studying since childhood.

These were tests of memorization, make no mistake, not of potential skill at whatever job they might eventually have. For several of the tests, a strict time limit was also in place. Given no candle or lantern, the candidate would simply have until sundown to complete as much of the assignment as they could before darkness fell and they were left in the pitch black of their tiny cell, punctuated only by the collection of their possibly incomplete essays. Nevertheless, candidates, from the pressures and strain, or even unrelated health problems, did at times die during the course of this draining trial, to the point at least where an official policy had to be drawn up about how to deal with a corpse of a candidate found dead

mid-essay. Again from Miyazaki, quote, the high outside wall did not have an opening large enough for an ant to get through. Thus, if a candidate died in the middle of an examination, the officials were presented with an annoying problem. The latch bar on the great gate was tightly closed and sealed, and since it was absolutely never opened ahead of schedule, beleaguered administrators had no alternative but to wrap the body in straw matting and throw it over the wall. End quote.

They were thus taking the term dropout to a literal extreme. Clearly, it was an extremely difficult, taxing, and more than anything painfully drawn-out and uncertain ordeal, one that could take years at a minimum, and potentially decades, to pass enough of the test to be considered truly hireable for much of any post. And through it all, candidates at almost every level were considered officially still students, and were thus banned from holding another official job. This, of course, proved to be yet more stress for the would-be officials and their families, especially those, like Yuan Zai, who did not come from wealthy or powerful means.

The rich could afford to have their sons idly pass years of their lives by in study and examination, but those from middle-class families and below could not afford to be unemployed forever. Fortunately for them, however, the plight of these officially out-of-work would-be bureaucrats found a suitable gray zone of quasi-employment by joining the staffs of full officials as secretaries or associates. Miyazaki writes, quote, High officials engaged private secretaries as a kind of brain trust. The number of these secretaries ranged from a few men, in the case of a minor local official, to several dozen for a high office, end quote. The pay was not high,

certainly nothing at all compared to what they could hope to earn when and if they ever made it through the litany of examinations, but it was at least enough to support a family on. As such, and especially given the tremendous failure rate, it's little surprise that a great number of candidates for officialdom simply gave up partway through and instead settled for remaining on as secretaries to the full officials as a full-time occupation.

Yuan Zai seemed poised to never advance past his local exams, and thus condemned to live out his years in poverty as the dregs of society, or at best as one of the Sheng Yuan semi-professional secretaries. However, as luck would have it, in the early 740s, as Emperor Xuanzong was beginning to favor Taoism, to that end he commissioned a special examination for scholars well-versed in the classical Taoist texts. Being a devout Taoist practitioner himself, Yuan Zai

enrolled and excelled in the special examination, where, against all odds, he passed with flying colors and was thereafter promoted to the sheriff of Xinping County. From there, his career path turned skyward. As county sheriff, he was at last able to interact with and get to know the who's who of high society, which he was able to rather quickly parlay into a series of promotions, first as clerk and then as a secretary within the Imperial Supreme Court, and later on as a junior judge on its panel. The bloody chaos that would engulf China in the form of the An Lushan Rebellion beginning in 755 would turn out to be a curious fortune for one such as Yuan Zai. Though he managed to escape the capital and flee southward,

once Emperor Suzong had retaken Chang'an, there was a desperate shortage of able-bodied government officials left, which meant, that's right, it was time to call up the B-Squad. Yuan was recalled to the capital and promoted to a minor office within the Ministry of the Censorate. And after a personal audience with the new Chang Emperor, Yuan Zai managed to impress the monarch with his quick thinking. As a token of this trust, Suzong promoted Yuan further, to the post of deputy minister of the censorette. From this post, he held in his power the ability

to regulate taxation across the region where the Huai River fed into the Yangtze. Yuan, believing this region to have been particularly unaffected by the civil war, relentlessly hiked up its tax rates to line his own pockets, with the Zizhi Tongjian citing rates as high as 80-90%. Needless to say, as tax collector, Yuan Zai made no friends within the Yang Zihuai confluence. Yuan Zai's star truly began to shine, however, when he began his friendship with the powerful court eunuch we discussed last episode, Li Fuguo.

Taking the young Yuan under his wing, Li secured his apprentice the position of mayor over the whole of the capital region. But when Yuan learned of this special promotion, he hurriedly met with the eunuch and forthrightly declined such a position, as was tradition. At this, however, Li Fuguo simply interpreted Yuan's refusal as a sign that the position he'd offered was just too low, and that what Yuan was actually asking for was an even higher office. And as luck would have it, the very next day, the imperial chancellor was removed from his office. And Yuan Zai, the poor street urchin

from Nowheresville Chi Prefecture, who had once had to walk miles and miles in his bare feet just to fail out of a test for the third time, was all of a sudden one of the de facto chancellors of the entire realm. Dreams really do come true. Now, this unorthodox path of promotion is not to say that Yuan Zai was in any way unsuited to the job he'd been assigned. To the contrary, Professor Dalby lays praise on the unlikely official, saying, After the death of Yang Guozhong in 756, no politician of comparable stature appeared at court until Yuan Zai became chief minister in 762, end quote.

High praise indeed. Let's hope it ends better for Yuan than it did for Yang. Spoiler alert, it won't. Nevertheless, he was a man of unmistakably transparent ambition, though this was offset by his natural ability, his shrewd judge of character, and his ability to utilize and manipulate the talents of others to his own ends, as well as for that of the realm itself. It was Chancellor Yuan, for instance, who would look upon the ever-vexing troubles in the northwestern defensive lines with a clear head and a fresh take. Dalby writes, quote, in 773, after years of repeated attacks by the Tibetans, he proposed that

while the Tibetans were off their guard at Kokonor, enjoying the summer pasture, China should seize the walled town of Yuanzhou, an easily defended forward position in Shanxi, and the key to the invasion route through the mountains, end quote. It was a plan that, if enacted, stood a real chance of making a strategic difference on the warfront. Without Yanzhou as a staging point into the soft underbelly of the capital region's central plains, the tables would have effectively turned against the Tibetans, who would have lost their forward operating post, and be thereafter forced to attack against an easily defended bottleneck. However, at such a suggestion, the generals balked, calling Yanzai little more than an

armchair commander who knew nothing of military matters. General Tian Shenggong was particularly dismissive of the chancellor's proposal, stating, Battles and being able to judge enemy strengths is difficult even for the most seasoned generals. Why would your imperial majesty then listen to the likes of a mere civilian on such matters, and thus put the whole of the realm's security under his jurisdiction? End quote. In the face of such rejection, Chancellor Yuan proposed that, at the least, the capital should be moved southeast to eastern Shanxi,

where it would both be better protected from Tibetan incursions and have easier access to supplies from the Grand Canal network. This was a stark break with the traditional notions of the fallback capital being Luoyang, but Yuan felt that all too recent history amply demonstrated that neither Chang'an nor Luoyang was well-positioned to stave off a concerted military push. In this, again by Dalbi's estimation, Yuan Zai had powers of analysis and vision beyond those of the ordinary bureaucrat.

Nevertheless, like his plan to take Yuan Zhou, his push to relocate the capital gained little traction in the court and was ultimately not carried out. Over the course of the Emperor Daizong's early reign, Chancellor Yuan Zai continued to amass tremendous personal and political power, and with it, more than a little criticism of his methods and objectives. Especially after his death, he'd be posthumously accused of all manner of crimes. Gross nepotism, limitless greed, giving and receiving enormous bribes, and an uncontrollable, toxic jealousy of what the former could not buy him. Directed especially at As usual, we must take such post-mortem slanders with an appropriate grain of salt.

Yet there is likely at least some degree of truth to them, however exaggerated. It's known, for instance, that in 766, he successfully requested that the emperor allow his office to oversee the review process for any and all petitions or official correspondence seeking the throne's attention. This included all levels of the bureaucracy, including even the censorate. His intent in this maneuver was, rather transparently, to be able to intercept and deflect any criticism of himself from ever reaching the emperor's ears. And this would work for a time, but over the course of the 770s, even Yuan Zai found that he could not keep Emperor Daizong oblivious to his shenanigans forever. The specifics of the plot that would at last bring him down are both shrouded in uncertainty and, as per usual, needlessly Byzantine and complex

for our purposes. Even Dalby says of this period of shadowy politics and intrigue, quote, unfortunately we do not know much about the political opposition to Yuan Zai, other than the fact that it existed and grew steadily as his exercise of power became more violent, end quote. So suffice it to say that by 773, Yuan Zai's house of intricately placed cards was beginning to fall apart. Follow the story of Mark Antony and Cleopatra's descendants over ten generations, or take a deep dive into the Iron Age or the Hellenistic era, then check out the Ancient World Podcast. Available on all podcasting platforms, or go to ancientworldpodcast.com. That's the Ancient World Podcast. It began with the indictment, demotion, and expulsion from the capital of several of his key associates,

which the histories say resulted in a noticeable downtick of corruption within the court. Slowly but surely, the emperor and those who influenced him began to realize that perhaps it was Chancellor Yuan who had been at the heart of so many of their frustrations. Yet, for a period of some four years thereafter, the emperor feared to overtly move against the chancellor, lest he find himself outmaneuvered. The hammer would fall at last in 777, when Daizong at last reached his personal breaking point with the scheming chancellor. The details remained murky at best, but it appears that the emperor entered into a pact with his uncle, a general surnamed Wu, which, yes, as in the Empress Wu, they might be down, but they're not out yet. On the 10th of May, in a sweeping purge at Daizong's command,

General Wu arrested Yuan Zai and all of his known associates. Yuan and friends were dragged one and all into the imperial dungeon, where they were interrogated at length until they produced a suitable confession for their crimes. After what was deemed a hurried trial, Yuan was convicted and sentenced to death, but given the option of suicide. Yuan, however, refused to take his own life, and instead asked that the executioner simply let him die quickly. At this, according to Sima Guang, the executioner simply let him die quickly. At this, according to Sima Guang,

the executioner replied, quote, Lord Chancellor, if you wish your death to be quick, then you must first suffer some measure of humiliation for your crimes. So please pardon me, end quote. The executioner then removed his socks and stuffed them into the chancellor's mouth, before hefting his sword and decapitating Yan Zai. His death was indeed quick, but his humiliation was not over. After death, his corpse was ripped apart and paraded through the street in a macabre celebration of his end. His palatial residence was looted and destroyed by mobs of the peasantry, and his extended family were brutally murdered for the crime of being related to such a hated public figure. Several months after his execution, even his ancestral temple was put to the torch and burned to the ground. In all, the ultimate act of disgrace for someone who was dead.

All in all, it was a purging of the public's pent-up frustration and hatred of the man, on par with the likes of Egyptians scratching out the face and name of the woman pharaoh Hatshepsut, Dalby notes, A meteoric rise, it seems, had led to an astronomic fall. Ai's personal significance is our best witness to the passions his career had aroused, end quote. A meteoric rise, it seems, had led to an astronomic fall. What could have possibly led to such a degree of governmental corruption and opulence, not to mention the obvious imperial blind eye toward it? As we mentioned last time, Dai Zong was, well, he was no Taizong or Shenzong or heck even Gaozhu. He was just too blah to really inspire much of anyone to do much of anything.

It certainly hadn't helped that his first couple of years in office had shown him that ever trusting anyone could and would lead them to rebellion, and thus his feeling compelled to hold everyone at arm's length and with an unreasonable suspicion. So thanks for that, Pu Gu Huai Yun. In all, Daizong's reign can be characterized as one of a distrustful and despondent man, unwilling to ever roll the dice, and always wanting to hedge his bets. Ironically, that can actually help explain why he actually tolerated the excesses of Yuan's eye for the 15 years he did. Yuan had, after all, been a holdover from his own grandfather and father, and Daizong, ever the conservative nail-biter,

was loath to break with the political patterns and expectations of dear father and granddad. Likewise, this helps to explain his tolerance of the eunuch officials and the sweeping power grab of the financial specialists, as we discussed last time. He was hedging his bets and always making sure that he wasn't leaning too heavily on any one strategy, meaning in the end that no strategy was ever given enough support to actually make effectual improvements, and instead devolved into individuals simply carving out pieces of the imperial pie for themselves. Of course, there's also the strong likelihood that Daizong, like his grandfather

before him, had over the course of his reign become less and less interested in active governance, and more deeply fascinated and occupied by the mysteries of the beyond, specifically the teachings of Buddhism. It always was a delicate balancing act with the Tang emperors regarding their relationship with Taoism and Buddhism. To be short, the Imperial Li clan could never out and out break from Taoism, whatever their personal leanings, since their own, highly fictionalized, family tree placed none other than Lao Tzu, you know, the immortal founder of Taoism, as their progenitor. Nevertheless, time and again, Buddhist thought had effectively infiltrated the inner imperial court,

and by the midpoint of his reign, Daizong was no exception. This growing fascination with the religion from the far west was deeply influenced and furthered by the monk Amoghavajra, or as he's called in Chinese, Pugong. Amoghavajra was the last of the three patriarchs and founders of the Tantric sect of Buddhist thought in China, and until his death in 774 was a close friend and teacher of esoteric Buddhism to the Chinese emperor. Like both his father and grandfather before him, Daizong underwent the Tantric baptismal rite of Abhisheka, which was an initiation into the mysteries and wisdom of tantric practice that symbolically enrolled the emperor as the monk's

disciple. For his own part, monk Amoghavajra was not at all shy about inserting himself and his faith into the political machinery of the Tang's imperial mechanism. He translated into Chinese a politically relevant Buddhist text entitled The Sutra of the Humane King mechanism. He translated into Chinese a politically relevant Buddhist text entitled The Sutra of the Humane King, as well as conducting state-sanctioned ceremonies purportedly aimed at warding off natural disasters. On the heels of this, Emperor Daizong even gave partial credit for the collapse of Pugu Huai'an's attack on Chang'an to Amoghavajra,

since he had, after all, prayed for protection from foreign threats. Daizong took the destruction of the rebel force as proof positive of the monk's divine message, and redoubled his belief in the Buddhist doctrine. Dalby writes, Construction of temples and support of Buddhist practices reached new heights of expenditure and enthusiasm. The affairs of the Buddhist church became tied more closely than ever with the Tang government. End quote. Of course, not everyone was all aboard Amoghavajra's happy times tantric train. And Daizong had no shortage of critics for his ever more prevalent and costly religious bent. But none were more critical, or more loudly so, than those steadfast champions of secular morality,

the Confucianists. You remember them, right? The pie in the sky, everyone is naturally and innately a good person, man. People. Yeah, somehow they had managed to rationalize their way through both the period of disunion and then the An Lushan rebellion, and we're still of a mind that can't we all just, like, you know, get along? Well, anyway, following Yuan Zai's death by socks and sword, his pro-Buddhist regime was swept from the government and replaced with a decidedly Confucian-leaning one. Unfortunately, that meant instead of an insanely corrupt government that actually got stuff done, Daizong now had a pedantic and morally pompous government that couldn't get anything done because it spent all day, every day, incessantly arguing over who was more officious and upstanding. As we're about to see, though in principle both the emperor and the court were in

favor of significant governmental reforms to undo the damage of the likes of Yuan Zai between 777 and 779, the Confucian officials' excessive bloviating and petty, incessant arguments quickly wore down any interest Daizong had ever had in listening to his little peacock's prattle. As Dalby states, quote, The high officials bickered interminably before the emperor over questions of propriety and ritual, which apparently interested Daizong very little. Despite the reformist air attributed to the court, it is clear that without the active participation and support of the emperor, Confucian sentiments alone were quite inadequate to produce fundamental changes in politics.

End quote. In other words, you're not wrong, Confuciists. You're just assholes. The end of Daizong's reign appears to have been just as dithering and mediocre as its beginning and middle had ever been. He had, to be fair, attempted several campaigns against the governors of the Northeast, you know, those former lieutenants of the rebel emperor An Lushan, who you may recall had nominally pledged themselves back into the Tang fold

in exchange for more or less total autonomy from the capital. That autonomy had blossomed into out-and-out warlord states by the 770s, with four independent military leaders having carved up the Yellow River Valley, and with a combined force of perhaps as many as 200,000 professional frontier soldiers among them. 775 had seen Daizong mount an expedition against the most powerful of these northern lords, a particularly fiery and defiant man named General Tian Cheng Si, who had incurred the imperial wrath by ignoring the emperor's personal command that he abandon his conquests of neighboring prefectures. Enlisting the forces of the other nominally field lords, the initial campaign proved quite successful in driving back Tian's forces.

However, General Tian was able to promise enough to several of the opposing generals to peel them off and convince them to take their armies and return home. The result was that less than a year after he had ordered the punitive expedition against General Tian, Emperor Daizong was forced to call it off in early 776 and pardon the rogue general. The summer of 779 would see Daizong, at little more than 52 years of age, grow suddenly ill and die after a reign of some 17 years of malaise and worsening problems for the Tang government. The throne would pass to his eldest son, Crown Prince Li Kuo, who was at this point about 37 years old.

Li Kuo would be enthroned as Emperor Dezong, and he had a very different set of ideas than Daizong as to how his empire ought to be run. And so, to finish out today, we're going to lay out the early policies and attempts at reform Dezong enacted in his first couple of years on the throne, and how they would set up the wars yet to come. Dezong must have been nothing less than a breath of fresh air to the imperial court, so long dragged down by the melancholy and uncertainty of Daizong's period of rule. He was a man on a mission, and that mission was, according to Daobi, quote, halting the steady decline experienced during his father's 17-year reign, end quote.

And he took to that with a gusto. In a mere few months following his accession, he'd already drafted and promulgated dozens of imperial decrees aimed at curbing official graft and pulling the Tang's economic ledgers out of the red. These series of decrees demanded frugality from the central government, as well as the luxuries allowed for its high officials. Taxes on alcohol were abolished, as was the practice of accepting tribute gifts from provincial governors in lieu of regular tax payments. Dezong likewise sought to clamp down on what he saw as several emerging threats to social and political stability from within.

The eunuchs, whom Daizong had been so very tolerant of, Dezong now heavily targeted, as well as the ordained Buddhist ministries so favored by his father. Dezong now insisted that all government sponsorship of temple construction and ordainment of new monks and nuns was to cease at once. At the same time as all of these sweeping reforms were being enacted, Dezong likewise sought to make it perfectly clear that his would be a new regime, a better regime, than his weak and indolent fathers. And to that end, he began to clean house. The standing chief ministers were replaced, one and all, with the new monarch's own trusted men. And perhaps most surprisingly, Dezong at last forced the effectual retirement of the near-legendary and venerated general Guo Ziyi, whom you'll no doubt remember from his

long list of military campaigns against any and all comers during the Anshir Rebellion. And he's often credited as the man who single-handedly saved the Tang dynasty and put down the revolt. And then after that, furthered his career against the Tibetans and Pugu Huayun. Now in his early 80s, General Guo had remained ever steadfast in his devotion to the Tang regime, and hadn't shown so much as a hint of disloyalty. Nevertheless, as Dalby puts it, quote, his prestige was too great, and he was too much of a symbol of the old policies to be permitted to continue in active service. Now Guo was not going to be fired,

or officially retired even, or anything like that. He was far too much an important, legendary even, figure for something like that. Instead, he was simply promoted out of power, meaning for his long and distinguished career in service to the throne, he had high honors and titles heaped upon him and was given hugely important ceremonial posts, all the while making sure that his actual functional command posts were redistributed to a handful of his subordinates. Guo Zi would live

for about two more years following his glorious retirement from command before dying peacefully in 781, and remembered ever after as one of, if not the, greatest general in Chinese history. Popular Chinese folklore, in fact, says that Guo Ziyi did not meet his end in 781, but instead had an encounter with Zhenyu, the weaver goddess of the heavens, who descended from the sky on her feast day and asked the aged general what his heart's desire might be. Guo replied that he had spent almost all of his life fighting and killing, and that his greatest wish was to leave such violence behind forever and instead experience true peace and happiness.

Zhenyu granted his wish, and he ascended to the heavens to become the incarnation of Fuxing, the god of happiness and wealth. Back at the Imperial Palace, though, Dezong's early reforms continued in their drive to restore the Tang regime to the forefront of authority and power within the empire. Probably the biggest single change was to that of the tax policy under the new chancellor, Yang, which replaced the basis of taxation from a headcount of adult men to the much simpler and fairer assessment of property owned. Moreover, ever distrustful of the eunuchs and their power, Dezong suspended their role in

control over the imperial treasury, returning authority instead to the central court. And it was a great success. Imperial records show, in fact, that for the fiscal year of 780, quote, more tax revenue was collected through the new system alone than from all sources the previous year, end quote. It does really seem like the makings of a new beginning for the Tang under its young, bold, and decisive new leader, Da Zong. But as we'll see next time, boldness can lead to impatience,

and decisiveness lead to recklessness in decisions. Trying to change too much too fast, and without letting everyone have the necessary time to process and adapt to these rapid policy shifts, would make Dezong more than a few powerful enemies in the years to come. And especially in the face of a resurgent central power from the capital, those Hebei generals, who had been promised their autonomy, will show that they're willing to go to any lengths

to retain their independence and keep Chong'an's meddling nose out of their business, up to and including a new round of war with the empire. Thanks for listening. History isn't black and white, yet too often it's presented as such. Grey History, The French Revolution is a long-form history podcast dedicated to exploring the ambiguities and nuances of the past. From a revolution of hope and liberty to the infamous reign of terror, you can't understand the modern world without understanding the French Revolution. So search for the French Revolution today.