Court and Region in Medieval China: the Case of Tang Bianzhou*

Home , 750s, 770s, 790s, Bi Xian, Cao Xiong, Changyuan

T’OUNG PAO 74 T’oungAnthony Pao 102-1-3 DeBlasi (2016) 74-120 www.brill.com/tpao International Journal of Chinese Studies/Revue Internationale de Sinologie

Court and Region in Medieval China: The Case of Tang Bianzhou*

Anthony DeBlasi (University at Albany)

Abstract Although Bianzhou (modern Kaifeng) is well known as the imperial capital of the Northern Song dynasty, its history prior to the tenth century reveals much about the political fortunes of the Tang dynasty, especially after the An Lushan rebellion. A careful analysis of the backgrounds of the Military Commissioners appointed to govern the region indicates that following an initial period of instability, the Tang court was able to maintain control over this strategically vital transportation hub late into the ninth century and to repeatedly appoint commissioners who had passed the civil-service examinations. This experience helps explain the continuing optimism of Tang elites about the dynasty’s prospects and made Bianzhou itself an important example for the educated elite of why civil values were essential to good government and the survival of the Tang dynasty.

Résumé Si Bianzhou (actuel Kaifeng) est bien connu comme capitale impériale des Song du Nord, son histoire avant le Xe siècle nous en apprend beaucoup sur le destin politique des Tang, particulièrement après la rébellion de An Lushan. L’analyse minutieuse du parcours des commissaires militaires successivement nommés à la tête de la région révèle qu’après une période initiale d’instabilité, la cour des Tang a été en mesure jusque tard dans le IXe siècle de maintenir son contrôle sur ce qui était un nœud stratégique de communications et d’y poster l’un après l’autre des commissaires passés par la voie des examens civils. L’expérience contribue à expliquer l’optimisme persistant des élites des Tang concernant l’avenir du régime, le cas de Bianzhou étant à leurs yeux un exemple important des raisons pour lesquelles les valeurs civiles

* The author would like to express gratitude to Charles Hartman, Robert Hymes, and Anna M. Shields for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this essay. His thanks also to the two anonymous readers of the journal for useful suggestions.

ISSN 0082-5433 (print version) ISSN 1568-5322 (online version)Downloaded TPAO from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access Court and Region in Medieval China 75 demeuraient essentielles à la qualité du gouvernement et à la survie de la dynastie.

Keywords Bianzhou, civil officials, examinations, jiedushi, Kaifeng, Military Commissioners, Tang dynasty.

Better known to history as Kaifeng 開封, Bianzhou’s 汴州 experience during the Tang has generally been relegated to the status of after- thought. Its status as the imperial capital of the subsequent Song dynasty and the relative abundance of source materials for later periods have channeled most scholarly attention to Bianzhou’s later history.1 The level of detail preserved in accounts of the city during the Song period has established it as a central case in the development of such varied fields as economic history, social history, and late medieval urban history.2 Nevertheless, there are compelling reasons for examining Bian- zhou’s history during the Tang period. As it turns out, the events in Bian- zhou between the mid-eighth and early tenth centuries provide a clear window into the larger dynamics that drove both the fate of the Tang dynasty itself and the development of this one city. There are certainly many aspects of Bianzhou’s history during the Tang dynasty that would justify our attention, but my goal here is to illustrate the surprising longevity of the Tang court’s ability to control affairs in this strategically crucial region. Making this case requires answe- ring two questions. First, how did the relationship between Bianzhou and central authority develop during the last century and a half of Tang rule?3 Second, how did that development relate to elite conceptions

1) One of the best accounts of the city during the Song is Zhou Baozhu’s 周寶珠 magisterial work Songdai Dongjing yanjiu 宋代東京研究 (Kaifeng: Henan daxue chubanshe, 1992). 2) See, for example, Heng Chye Kiang, Cities of Aristocrats and Bureaucrats: The Development of Medieval Chinese Cityscapes (Honolulu: Univ. of Hawaii Press, 1999). We are indebted to Meng Yuanlao’s 孟元老 reminiscence Dongjing menghua lu 東京夢華錄 for much of the detail that enables us to reconstruct life in the Northern Song capital. 3) There is a substantial scholarly literature on the imperial court’s level of control in the wider empire. See, for example, Hino Kaisaburō 日野開三郎, Shina chūsei no gunbatsu: Tōdai hanchin no seiritsu to seisui 支那中世の軍閥——唐代藩鎮の成立と盛衰, rpt. in Hino Kaisaburō, Tōyōshi gakuron shū 東洋史学論集 (Tokyo: San’ichi shobō, 1980), Vol.1:21- 171; Charles Peterson, “The Restoration Completed: Emperor Hsien-tsung and the Provinces,” in Arthur F. Wright and Denis Twitchett, ed., Perspectives on the Tang (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1973), 151-92; Ōzawa Masaaki 大沢正昭, “Tō-matsu no hanchin to chūō ken-

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access 76 Anthony DeBlasi of the balance between civil and martial values? The answers to these questions suggest the way that material conditions and concrete events take on broader significance in the context of cultural crisis of the kind experienced by the Tang after 755. The analysis that follows relies on the sorting of Military Commissioners who held authority in Bianzhou into two broad categories: those closely associated with civil avenues of ad- vancement and those tied to military experience. This heuristic device necessarily simplifies a complex set of associations. Civil officials certainly held military appointments during the Tang, and some who held coveted spots as Grand Counselors at court had risen to prominence via their service in military units. A general analysis of the relationship between the two broad areas of government action traditionally labeled wen 文 (civil) and wu 武 (martial), is beyond the scope of this essay. The goal here is more focused. It is to examine the confluence between court authority, appointment mechanisms, and the rhetorical framing that educated elites employed to interpret events in a region seen as vital to national interests. Of course, conditions varied across the empire, so Bianzhou was not strictly “representative” of all regions, but the richness of the sources for its history and its practical importance for the dynasty make it an ex ceptional window into the political history of the second half of the Tang dynasty. There is, however, a danger in pursuing a study of the role of a single place in the larger national history—it is possible to lose sight of the local significance of events in a specific locality. In the case of Bianzhou, whose history is well documented and unique in some important ways, there is a temptation to blur the distinction between the vector of its own development (i.e., its growing national prominence) and the trajectory of Tang decline. To avoid distorting the narrative of Bianzhou’s significance, I embed the history discussed here within a matrix of factors that include local and national geography, ryoku: Toku-sō Ken-sō chō o chūshin to shite” 唐末の藩鎮と中央権力——徳宗・憲宗朝を中心として, Tōyōshi kenkyū 32 (1973): 141-6; Zhang Guogang 張國剛, Tangdai fanzhen yanjiu 唐代藩鎮研究 (Changsha: Hunan jiaoyu chubanshe, 1987); Cheong Byungjun 鄭炳俊, “Tōdai no kansatsu shochi shi ni tsuite: hanchin taisei no ichi kōsatsu” 唐代の観察処置使について——藩鎮体制の一考察, Shirin 77 (1994): 706-36; and Shi Yuntao 石雲濤, Tangdai mufu zhidu yanjiu 唐代幕府制度研究 (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 2003).

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access Court and Region in Medieval China 77 national politics, military administration, local social realities, and the interpretations of events by the Tang elite. These factors reveal what challenges the court faced in governing the territory, why it pursued control of the region so diligently, and how the results of that effort fed into a preexisting narrative of dynastic legitimacy among Tang officials. Simply put, the hard-won success of the court in reasserting control over Bianzhou in the second decade of the ninth century transformed Bianzhou into a proof-case that Tang officials could cite when they lauded their colleagues and defended the dynasty.

The Geography of Bianzhou After the Yellow River emerges from the valley separating the Taihang and Qingling mountain ranges, it proceeds east into the North China plain. Bianzhou sat close to the point at which the river made its gradual turn north and proceeded toward its outlet into the Bohai. The region governed from Bianzhou is therefore a broad, flat one. Located at the Western extension of the North China macroregion identified by G. William Skinner, its agrarian economy produced a reasonable variety of crops.4 While Bianzhou’s status as an administrative center in a macroregional core would have produced moderate prosperity and local significance, another geographical fact gave Bianzhou national significance: it sat near the confluence of two vital waterways, the Yellow

4) G. William Skinner, “Regional Urbanization in Nineteenth-Century China,” in The City in Late Imperial China, ed. G. William Skinner (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1977), 213. See also his map on p. 15 locating Kaifeng in the North China macroregion. For the basic geogra- phic qualities of the region, see Cheng Minsheng 程民生, Songdai diyu jingji 宋代地域經濟 (Kaifeng: Henan daxue chubanshe, 1992), 14.The variety of crops possible is clear from later gazetteers: see Kangxi Kaifeng fuzhi 康熙開封府志 15.1a-5b. There is solid scholarship demonstrating that the characterization of the North China macroregion also holds for the Tang-Song period. See Robert Hartwell, “Demographic, Political, and Social Transformations of China, 750-1550,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 42 (1982), 368-71. Yang Yuan’s 楊遠 plotting of population distributions and densities for 754 indicates that Bianzhou was in a high population zone corresponding to the North China macroregion: “Tangdai de renkou” 唐代人口, in Tangdai yanjiu lunji 唐代研究論集, ed. Tang Institute of China (Taibei: Xinwenfeng chuban gongsi, 1992), 3: 600-601. Skinner identified agricultural productivity as another characteristic of macroregional cores: “Cities and the Hierarchy of Local Systems,” in The City in Late Imperial China, 288. Shi Nianhai 史念海 locates Bianzhou at the edge of the major grain producing region in Guandong 關東: Tangdai lishi dili yanjiu 唐代歷史地理研究 (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1998), 102.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access 78 Anthony DeBlasi

River and the Bian River 汴河. The Bian formed the basis for the crucial canal linking the Yellow River to the Huai River and therefore the capital in Guanzhong 關中 with the Southeast.5 Many sources agree that this made Bianzhou a wealthy prefecture. As noted in the Old Tang History biography of the eighth-century imperial great-grandson and official, Li Daojian 李道堅 (fl. 734): “The city in this prefecture was at the center of land and water routes. Truly was it said to be rich.”6 Although it suffered its share of natural disasters,7 on the whole, Bianzhou enjoyed an eco- nomically advantageous geographical position. Bianzhou’s physical geography, sitting astride major transportation routes in one of the empire’s most important macroregions, facilitated its rise to national importance by the eighth century, an importance reflected in an evolving administrative structure. The major inflection point in its administrative evolution during the Tang was the rebellion of An Lushan 安祿山 (lasting from late 755 to 763). While the region could claim a history as a political center back to the fourth century B.C., when King Hui of Wei 魏惠王 shifted his capital to Daliang 大梁 in this region,8 its status from the late sixth to the mid-eighth centuries was more modest.9 According to Li Jifu’s 李吉甫 (758-814) early ninth-century national gazetteer, the prefecture measured 196 li east to west and 235

5) Denis Twitchett, Financial Administration under the T’ang Dynasty, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1970), 187. 6) Jiu Tang shu 舊唐書 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1975; hereafter JTS), 64.2435. 7) Flooding in Henan was particularly severe in Bianzhou in 787: Wang Pu 王溥, comp., Tang huiyao 唐會要 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1955; hereafter THY), 44.783 and JTS 12.356. An 884 flood had a positive side from the court’s perspective; it destroyed the camp of the rebel Huang Chao 黃巢 (d. 884): JTS 19b.718. Locusts were a severe enough problem to pro- voke a court debate on how to deal with them in 716 (THY 44.789), and the entire Henan region experienced a drought that necessitated food relief in 799 (JTS 13.388-89). 8) Cheng Ziliang 程子良 and Li Qingyin 李清銀, ed., Kaifeng chengshi shi 開封城市史 (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 1993), 19-20. For the earlier period, see pp. 7-18. 9) Bianzhou’s post-Warring States administrative history begins the section on Kaifeng fu 開封府 in Yue Shi 樂史, comp., Taiping huanyu ji 太平寰宇記 (hereafter TPHYJ) (Siku quanshu ed.), 1.1a-b. In the late Sui period, Bianzhou lost its status as a prefectural seat entirely until reinstated in 621 under the Tang: Li Jifu 李吉甫, Yuanhe junxian tuzhi 元和郡縣圖志 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1983; hereafter YHJX), 7.175. For the background to this text and a discussion of its purpose, see James Hargett, “Song Dynasty Local Gazetteers and their Place in the History of Difanzhi Writing,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 56 (1996), 411-12. For a cartographical representation, see Tan Qixiang 譚其驤, ed., Zhongguo lishi ditu ji 中國歷史地圖集 (Shanghai: Ditu chubanshe, 1982), 5: 5-6.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access Court and Region in Medieval China 79 li north to south.10 During the Tang, these approximately 5000 square miles were generally apportioned between five or six districts (xian 縣).11 Even after Bianzhou’s prefectural status was fixed in the early seventh century, its internal structure continued to fluctuate, with some changes occurring as late as 712.12 Any uncertainty over Bianzhou’s status in the early seventh century had certainly disappeared by the next century. The change in its national importance can be gleaned from the bureaucratic rankings of the prefecture itself and its subordinate units. Bianzhou was ranked as a “great” prefecture (xiong 雄), just below those in the precincts of the two capitals.13 Moreover, four of its districts were elevated to “prestigious” (wang 望) status between 716 and 724.14 According to the Tongdian 通典, this was reserved for wealthy and populous districts outside the capital precincts.15 Designation as a prefecture gave Bianzhou a direct role in local administration, but its relationship to “supraprefectural” units in the first half of the eighth century not only signaled court recognition that Bian- zhou was important for national security, it was also a harbinger of its post-rebellion role in the empire. The streamlined, two-tiered local administrative system pursued by the Sui and Tang courts, with districts subordinate to prefectures and prefectures subordinate directly to the central government, was never entirely adequate. As a result, prefectures were enmeshed in a web of overlapping units located in various

10) YHJX 7.175. 11) The calculation of surface area is merely suggestive and was arrived at by the expedient of converting li to miles by a factor of 3:1 and then multiplying the two figures together. This is not wholly inappropriate since mid-eighth century Bianzhou had a reasonably regular shape: Tan, Zhongguo lishi ditu ji, 5:44. 12) JTS 38.1432-33. A full chronology of internal changes appears in JTS 38.1432-33. The prefecture’s district organization in the ninth century appears in YHJX 7.176. In its mature structure, Bianzhou encompassed the following six districts (xian 縣): Junyi 浚儀 and Kaifeng 開封 (to the south of Bianzhou city), Fengqiu 封丘 (to the north), Chenliu 陳留 (to the southeast along the line of the Bian canal), Yongqiu 雍丘 (on the southeastern border), and Weishi 尉氏 (on the southwestern approach). 13) For the ranking system and Bianzhou’s inclusion in the xiong category, see Du You 杜佑, comp., Tongdian 通典 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1988; hereafter TD), 33.909. Note that JTS 38.1432 ranks it as a “superior” (shang 上) prefecture, presumably on the basis of its population. For the population cut-off points, see TD 33.909. 14) THY 70.1235. 15) TD 33.919-20.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access 80 Anthony DeBlasi regions. Bianzhou’s importance by the early eighth century saw it recognized as the seat of one of twenty-four area commands (dudu fu 都督府) created in 711.16 It was the An Lushan rebellion, however, that placed Bianzhou at the center of national politics and ultimately made it a test case for court authority in the empire. As the rebellion unfolded, there was a rush to create Military Commissionerships (jiedu shi 節度使) in strategic places in the empire’s interior to shore up regional security. Although it took some time for Bianzhou’s position as the seat of a Military Commission- ership and its associated jurisdiction to stabilize, from 756 it was already an important part of the new structure. The region’s strategic importance solidified when the command of the Xuanwu Army 宣武軍 was transferred to Bianzhou in 784.17 By virtue of its strategic position and military garrison, therefore, Bianzhou remained at the heart of center- periphery relations for the rest of the Tang period.

The Strategic Value of Bianzhou The strategic value of Bianzhou rested ultimately on economic and political considerations, and its growing significance in the post-An Lushan period is closely connected to its economic and military roles. Bianzhou contributed to the national economy in several ways. First, it provided taxation in the form of grain and other commodities to the court. The local specialties offered to the capital as “tribute” were thin silk (juan 絹)

16) On efforts to streamline regional administration, see Li Xiaolu 李曉路, “Tangdai zhong yang jiquan zhi bianhua yu fangzhen de shengchan” 唐代中央集權之變化與方鎮的生產, Lishi yanjiu 1989.3: 125. Ten oversight “circuits” (dao 道) were established early in the Zhenguan 貞觀 reign, and the number was increased to 15 in 733: TD 172.4478-79. Bianzhou was located in the Henan 河南 circuit. Li sees both the dao and the dudu fu as responses to the inadequacies of prefectural organization. He argues they originated in military units and then evolved to include administrative functions: Li, “Tangdai zhongyang jiquan,” 130. The sources on the dudu fu are contradictory as to timing of their creation and the identity of the specific units, but all identify Bianzhou as one. See also the chart in Hino, Shina chūsei no gunbatsu, 34-35. 17) Xin Tang shu 新唐書 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1975; hereafter XTS), 65.1800-1829. For a helpful chart laying out Bianzhou’s military affiliation in the post-Rebellion period, see Zhou Baozhu 周寶珠, “Sui Tang shiqi de Bianzhou yu Xuanwu jun” 隋唐時期的汴州與宣武軍, Henan daxue xuebao (zhexue shehui kexue ban) 1989.1: 62-63.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access Court and Region in Medieval China 81 and silk floss (mian 綿).18 Since Bianzhou was a transportation hub from the Sui dynasty on, the evidence suggests that Bianzhou witnessed dramatic commercial growth following the construction of the canals.19 Tang officials themselves recognized the impact of the canals, and even in the ninth century they pointed to the continuing financial benefits of the project. During Emperor Xianzong’s reign in the early ninth century, Li Jifu, in his great geographical account of the empire, noted the contrast between the cost of the construction itself and its positive legacy: “Although the work of the Sui was burdensome, later generations have truly received its benefits.”20 Later in the ninth century, Pi Rixiu 皮日休 (c. 834-c. 883) made essentially the same observation, reflecting what must have become common wisdom in the official class.21 Bianzhou’s growth as a commercial center also stimulated its population growth. The available statistics suggest a large and complex society. According to the Old Tang History, Bianzhou’s population had reached 577,507 individuals by the Tianbao 天寶 reign period (742-756).22 Du You’s Tongdian, compiled in the late eighth century (after the rebellion) offers the figure of 529,355 individuals.23 Since we know that Bianzhou had long been troubled by vagrancy (i.e., an unregistered and therefore landless population), it is clear that we are dealing with a commercial region with well in excess of half a million people, or something ap- proaching one half of one percent of the Tang population.24

18) YHJX 7.176. These are two of the region’s specialties identified in TPHYJ 1.4b. Cheng Mins- heng establishes the importance of these products in Song taxation: Songdai diyu jingji, 178. 19) Aoyama Sadao 青山定雄, Tō Sō jidai no kōtsū to chishi chizu no kenkyū 唐宋時代の交通と地誌地図の研究 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 1963), 283. Zhou Baozhu makes the same point; see “Sui Tang shiqi Bianzhou yu Xuanwujun,” 60-61. 20) YHJX 5.137. 21) See Pi’s “Bian he ming,” Quan Tang wen 全唐文 (rpt., Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1983; hereafter QTW), 797.8363 (19a-b). 22) JTS 38.1432. 23) TD 177.4662. JTS and TD give household and individual numbers, so we know their mul- tipliers: 5.3 for JTS and 4.6 for TD. Household numbers are 109,876 (JTS) and 115,550 (TD). 24) Already in the 680s, Chen Zi’ang 陳子昂 (‑661-702) listed Bianzhou among regions expe- riencing population displacement: “Shang junguo lihai shi: Ren ji,” QTW 211.2139 (13b). For the general problem, see Twitchett, Financial Administration, 12-16. Yang Yuan discusses the size of the migrant population in “Tangdai de renkou,” 541-42. His multiplier for converting households to bodies (5.5) is somewhat larger than traditional sources. He estimates the empire’s Tianbao-era population to be 108 million (p. 543).

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access 82 Anthony DeBlasi

This expansion, fueled as it was by long-distance commerce and accompanied by a haphazard development of the city itself, made Bian- zhou a difficult place to govern. 25 Commentators inevitably tied the difficulty to the fact that it sat at a crossroads. The authors of the Old Tang History saw the connection as pre-dating the An Lushan rebellion and therefore could use it to make a point about the power of civil vir- tues:

Bianzhou was a great commandery within Henan. Proceeding from the Yangzi and Huai rivers to the Yellow River, boats and carts [meet at] this hub and the people were exceedingly numerous. One after another, the prefects were mostly unequal to the task [of governing the place]. Only Ni Ruoshui 倪若水 (d. 719) and Qi Huan 齊澣 (fl. 724) were able to govern by means of purity and seriousness so that the people and clerks memorialized them in song.26 河南, 汴為雄郡, 自江、淮達于河、洛, 舟車輻輳, 人庶浩繁. 前後牧守, 多不稱職, 惟倪若水與澣皆以清嚴為治, 民吏歌之.

The praise that Ni Ruoshui received for renovating and expanding the Confucian temple (the result of which, we are told, was the flourishing of Confucius’s teachings) is subtle testimony to the perception that Bianzhou was already somewhat out of control in the early eighth century.27 After the rebellion, when the military importance of the region had increased, the conflicting demands of the prefecture’s role in the empire and the diversity of its population exacerbated the difficulty. In 802, for example, Bai Juyi 白居易 (772-846) used a hypothetical dispute between the Transportation Commissioner (zhuanyun shi 轉運使) and the Mili- tary Commissioner at Bianzhou as the prompt for one of his examination practice judgments (pan 判). Bai set the demand of the former for construction of sluice gates (dou men 斗門) in the Bian canal to regulate

25) Aoyama, Tō Sō jidai no kōtsū, 284-85. For the situation already in the Sui, see Heng, Cities of Aristocrats, 48. Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt points out that Kaifeng (Bianzhou’s Song-era descendant) was the result of unplanned sprawl “from the inside outward”; see her Chinese Imperial City Planning (Honolulu: Univ. of Hawaii Press, 1990), 138. 26) JTS 190B.5037. The passage comes from Qi Huan’s biography in the “Garden of Literature” 文苑 section. 27) JTS 185B.4811. The imperial kinsman and future Grand Counsellor Li Mian李勉 (717-788) experienced the same in the 780s: JTS 131.3633. See also Yu Shiping 于式平, “Li Mian, Xuanwu jun, Bianzhou” 李勉，宣武軍，汴州, Shixue yuekan 1994.2: 112-14.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access Court and Region in Medieval China 83 the diversion of water and ensure its navigability against the fear of the latter that his troops would not be able to support themselves via agri- culture if their access to water was cut off.28 Bai’s scenario recognized the inherent difficulty in Bianzhou of accommodating the needs of troops, while also ensuring the flow of tax commodities from the lower Yangzi region after the loss of the North China plain as a grain supplier.29 The context of the changed strategic situation in the ninth century, in which semi-independent military commanders were in control of the northeastern provinces, gave the rhetoric concerning Bianzhou a shar- per edge. Located approximately 400 li (a bit over 130 miles) east of the secondary capital Luoyang,30 Bianzhou lay on the front line against often rebellious military commissioners to the east. The ninth-century official Liu Yuxi 劉禹錫 (772-842), in his wall record (tingbi ji 廳壁記) for the office of the Bianzhou prefect, put it best when he observed:

Since the Sui dredged the new canal drawing the Yellow River eastward, the prefecture included its key point and became a strategic position for the empire. Toward the core, it protects the royal precincts, facing to the east the powerful regional lords. During ordinary times without emergencies, it had a Commissioner for Go- vernmental Integrity (liancha shi 廉察使). Since the military uprising [of An Lus- han], this has been augmented with the banner of a Military Commissioner. The ease or distress of the dynasty is bound to the success in employing men [as officials there].31 自隋釃新渠, 吸黄河而東行, 州含其樞, 為天下劇. 内屏王室, 東雄諸侯, 居無事時常帶亷察使. 兵興巳還, 益以節旄, 用人得否. 繫國輕重.

Throughout the ninth century, Tang officials referred to Bianzhou as the dynasty’s “throat” (yan hou 咽喉). Yuan Zhen 元稹 (779-831) used this phrase to describe Bianzhou’s geographical position when

28) Bai Juyi, “De zhuanyun shi yi Bian heshui … wu yi gong jun” 得轉運使以汴河水 … 無以供軍, in Bai Juyi ji jianjiao 白居易集箋校 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1988), 66.3576. This was in fact a real issue. Imperial orders twenty years earlier had been issued to stop illicit water diversion; see THY 87.1598. 29) Shi, Tangdai lishi dili yanjiu, 99-100. 30) JTS gives 401 li, TD gives 400, and YHJX gives 420. 31) Liu Yuxi, “Bianzhou cishi tingbi ji, 汴州刺史廳壁記, in Liu Yuxi ji jianzheng 劉禹錫集箋證, ed. Qu Tuiyuan 瞿蛻園 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1989), 8.188. The text was written in 827 on behalf of Linghu Chu 令狐楚 (736-837), who was serving in the post. Liu visited on his way back to Chang’an from Hezhou 和州; see Qu, p. 190.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access 84 Anthony DeBlasi congratulating the court on the suppression of the mutineer Li Jie 李岕 (d. 822).32 The situation had not changed later in the century, since Liu Kuanfu 劉寬夫 (fl. 826) used the same language in his wall record for the Bianzhou administrative supervisor (jiu cao 糾曹).33 This rhetoric reflected an operational reality. Throughout the Tang, rebels sought to secure advantage by severing the court’s lifeline to the east and south. Control of Bianzhou was essential to that effort, a fact evident in the calculations of the rebel Li Xilie 李希烈 (d. 786) during the reigns of Daizong and Dezong,34 While the evidence suggests the key role that Bianzhou played in court finances, the other side of the coin was how lucrative control of Bianzhou, a thriving commercial center and tax transit point, was to those appointed as administrators there. During the An Lushan Rebel- lion, for example, when Li Zhongchen 李忠臣 (716-784) defeated a rebel general at Xingyang 滎陽 (to the west) in 759, he recovered two hundred ships worth of rice with which to supply the troops at Bianzhou.35 The example of Han Hong 韓弘 (765-823) is even more illustrative. Twice in 819, Han, who had held command of the Xuanwu Army for two decades, made gifts of 200,000 rolls of tabby silk (juan 絹—a specialty of the region) to the court, the second time adding 270 silver implements.36 Available sources suggest that after 780 only one-third of the levies by provincial administrations regularly contributing taxes were transmit- ted to the court. The remaining two-thirds were retained for local use, including exceptional contributions for court use.37 The line between legitimate use and personal enrichment was, however, a blurry one. The contributions to the court just mentioned were financed by Han’s access to accumulated tax receipts in Bianzhou and the other prefectures under the jurisdiction of the Xuanwu Army, but according to his biography in the Old Tang History, he did not regularly submit taxes but held them

32) Yuan Zhen, “He Bianzhou zhu Li Jie biao” 賀汴州誅李岕表, in Yuan Zhen ji 元稹集 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1982), 33.387. 33) “Bianzhou jiucao tingbi ji” 汴州糾曹廳壁記, QTW 740.7649 (12a). 34) For an earlier seventh-century example, see JTS 12.338 and 151.4055. On Li Xilie’s rebellion in the broader context of Dezong’s reign, see Ōzawa, “Tō-matsu no hanchin to chūō kenryoku,” 142-46. 35) JTS 145.3940. 36) JTS 15.468 and 469. 37) See Zhang Guogang, Tangdai fanzhen yanjiu, 207 ff.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access Court and Region in Medieval China 85 for his personal use, amassing in the process a personal fortune of a million strings of cash, over five million bushels of millet, and seven thousand horses.38 Clearly, the use of such funds could be perceived as illegitimate. In 818, Han Hong attempted to make a sizable gift (five hundred rolls of silk) to Han Yu 韓愈 (768-824) for the latter’s composition of the stele commemorating the Huaixi campaign. In his report to the throne, Han Yu explicitly noted his reluctance to accept the gift.39 When we assess the court’s control of Bianzhou, its resources are a necessary part of the story.

The Political History of Post-Rebellion Bianzhou We can hardly overestimate the role of military affairs in the post-rebellion history of the Bianzhou region. Not only was the prefecture the seat of one of the most strategically sensitive military commands, but its military establishment, which numbered in the tens of thousands, directly influenced the region’s political fortunes. Although it had always presented incumbent administrators a challenge in balancing the interests of the agricultural and commercial segments of its population, the military garrison that grew there after the An Lushan Rebellion represented a new wrinkle in the fabric of the prefecture. The military presence in Bianzhou was relatively small prior to the upheavals of the mid-eighth century. When the dynasty organized pro- fessional military units as a replacement for the fubing 府兵 militia in 725, Bianzhou received a unit of only six hundred soldiers. Huazhou 華州 (between Chang’an and Luoyang) by comparison had a garrison ten times that number.40 Later, in the midst of the An Lushan rebellion, when the newly appointed Defense Commissioner (fangyu shi 防禦使) of Henan, Zhang Jieran 張介然 (d. 756), was ordered to hold Chenliu against the rebels, he found a town that, despite having ten thousand households and a wall, was untrained for war.41

38) JTS 156.4136. Hino Kaisaburō argues that Han’s resources would have funded the court’s military for several years: Shina chūsei no gunbatsu, 81-82. 39) Han Yu, “Zou Han Hong renshiwu zhuang” 奏韓宏人事物狀, Han Changli quanji 韓昌黎全集 (Beijing: Zhongguo shudian, 1991), 38.453-54. 40) XTS 50.1327. 41) JTS 187B.4892.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access 86 Anthony DeBlasi

However, by the end of the eighth century, the region was thoroughly militarized. In a preface written in 797 on seeing off Ju Wenzhen 俱文珍 (743-813), the eunuch supervisor (jianjun 監軍) of the Xuanwu Army, as he was leaving for capital, Han Yu pointed out that Bianzhou was the center of one of the most important commands in the empire, control- ling four separate prefectures. Furthermore, when Han recounted the conditions in the command in his record of conduct (xingzhuang 行狀) for Dong Jin 董晉 (724-799), he credited Liu Xuanzuo 劉玄佐 (a.k.a. Liu Qia 劉洽) (d. 792), the Military Commissioner from 781 to 792, with increasing Bianzhou’s troop strength to 100,000. This sizable military establishment further complicated the already difficult governing calculus. The late eighth- and ninth-century sources suggest that the militarization of Bianzhou created two distinct ten- sions within the prefecture. First, the soldiers did not identify with the civilian population and periodically took out their frustrations by loot ing the city. Second, within the military command itself, leaders felt the tension between achieving fiscal solvency and the need to reward the troops. Military Commissioners often found it difficult to strike the proper balance. An example from the early 820s illustrates both of these dynamics well. Li Yuan 李愿 (d. 825), the new Military Commissioner in 822, misjudged the dynamic in the command:42

Prior [to Li’s arrival], Zhang Hongjing 張弘靖 (760-824) was the commander in Bian, and he pacified the troops with generous rewards. By the time Yuan arrived, the treasury was already exhausted, yet Yuan indulged in wastefulness. His household consisted of several hundred people, and he supplied them [from] government offices, not worrying about military administration. The rewards did not equal those of Zhang Hongjing’s time, and he used severe punishments to control his subordinates.43 先是, 張弘靖為汴帥, 以厚賞安士心. 及愿至, 帑蔵已竭, 而愿恣其奢侈, 門内數百口, 仰給官司, 不恤軍政, 賞賚不及弘靖時, 而以威刑馭下.

42) For the importance of Bianzhou, see Han Yu, “Song Bianzhou jiangjun Ju Wenzhen xu” 送汴州監軍俱文珍序, in Han Changli quanji, “waiji” 3.490. Liu’s role in increasing the size of the garrison appears in “Gu … zeng taifu Dong gong xingzhuang” 故 … 贈太傅董公行狀, 37.439. 43) JTS 133.3677.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access Court and Region in Medieval China 87

These and other actions (Li also allowed his relatives to misappropriate funds) eventually embittered the troops, and they mutinied, driving Li from the city in a humiliating fashion and targeting his family:

When Li heard of the disturbance, he and several companions fled with disheveled hair, climbed the northern tower of the inner wall, descended via a suspended rope, and escaped via a watercourse. By dawn, they had traveled more than ten li when they met a farmer driving a donkey. [Li] seized the donkey, mounted it, and thereby was able to reach Zhengzhou. Li’s wife, Madame Dou, died at the hands of the marauding troops, and although his three sons hid and so escaped, his concu- bine was captured. [The troops] plundered the city for three days and then named the commander of the regional army Li Jie as liaison commander, so he could demand [from the court] the white pennant and brown battleax [as symbols of his authority]. It took more than a month before they were finally suppressed.44 愿聞有變, 與左右數人, 露髮而走, 登子城北樓, 懸縋而下, 由水竇而出. 比曉, 行十數里, 遇野人驅驢, 奪而乘之, 得至鄭州. 愿妻竇氏死於亂兵之手, 子三人匿而獲免, 僕妾為軍士所俘. 城中大掠三日, 乃立其牙將李岕為留後, 以邀旄鉞, 月餘, 方誅之.

The requirement that the official historians writing this account as- sign moral responsibility to individuals necessarily blurs some of the issues in Li Yuan’s case, yet it is possible to discern some dynamics here that characterize more broadly events in late eighth-century Bianzhou. The generosity of Zhang Hongjing created an inevitable problem for any successor. The actions of the garrison suggest that there was an expectation of largesse, and when Li disappointed that expectation, the troops rebelled. The immediate target was the commander and his cronies, but inevitably the civilian population also paid the price as the troops also went on a rampage throughout the city. Although Li was indicted by the author of the Old Tang History for his selfishness, the clear observation that the treasury had been exhausted suggests that even an incorrup- tible commander would have had difficulty satisfying the troops. The implicit tension between the garrison and the civilians in Bian- zhou was also longstanding. The record of the 822 mutiny makes abun- dantly clear that the population suffered during rebellions, but other evidence indicates that the presence of so many troops also had an indi- rect impact on the local population. Like Zhang Hongjing, Liu Xuanzuo,

44) JTS 133.3677.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access 88 Anthony DeBlasi who served as Military Commissioner from 781 until his death in 792, had also given generous rewards to the troops. His biography, however, makes it explicit who ultimately financed his munificence: “Xuanzuo was by nature extravagant, and he placed maintaining proper personal relations above [the conservation of his] financial resources. He gene- rously rewarded the troops, with the result that the people were in ever greater distress” (玄佐性豪侈, 輕財重義, 厚賞軍士, 故百姓益困).45 The same source observes drily that the strategy was ultimately counterpro- ductive since the more they were placated, the more arrogant the troops became, to the point that they relieved several commissioners of their command, either by driving them from the territory or actually killing them. Nor were events in the command driven simply by broad-based rewards to troops (or their absence). Carefully targeted funds could always influence the troops’ behavior. For example, when Liu Shining 劉士寧 (fl. 792) alienated the important commanders in the Xuanwu Army in 793, his mutinous subordinate Li Wanrong 李萬榮 (d. 795) used bribery to secure the complicity of Liu’s trusted guard. In the end, the court found a face-saving formula in which an imperial prince was given the title of Military Commissioner, but Li Wanrong was designated its representative as liaison commander (liuhou 留後).46 Considering the strategic location of Bianzhou and the size of its garrison, it is not surprising that much of its history echoes patterns seen elsewhere in post-755 military history. First, as noted above, it was a prime location for military uprisings. The uprisings against Liu Shining and Li Yuan reveal an everpresent instability that was intensified in times of poor administration. The most famous uprising of the Xuanwu Army, one that exemplifies the savagery of such prefectural uprisings in the latter half of the Tang, occurred in 799. The event has been remem- bered for both the gruesome character of the events and the fact that Han Yu barely escaped the carnage.47 The death of a well-respected go- vernor, Dong Jin 董晉 (723-799), was followed by the appointment of a new commander, Lu Changyuan 陸長源 (d. 799), who deliberately chose

45) JTS 145.3932. 46) See Zizhi tongjian 資治通鑑 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1976; hereafter ZZTJ), 234.7549- 51. Note that JTS 145.3933 dates the events to the following year. 47) For a narrative of events, see Charles Hartman, Han Yü and the T’ang Search for Unity (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1986), 39-40. On the diplomacy needed there, see p. 35.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access Court and Region in Medieval China 89 to rein in the troops and reduce their subsidies. The result was that Lu and two of his subordinates were sliced up and eaten on the same day Lu’s appointment became official.48 Such chaos inevitably had a spill over effect on other regions. According to a memorial by Huangfu Zheng 皇甫政 (fl. 796), the Prefect of Ruzhou 汝州, 1700 rolls of damask silk that his prefecture had sent to the capital in 794 disappeared during a military disturbance upon arriving in Bianzhou. Huangfu’s proposal that the lost tax cloth be made up by a levy on newly arrived refugee households in his prefecture prompted the emperor Dezong to observe that it would be better to offer an exceptional forgiveness for the lost silk rather than inflict more hardship on refugees who were already fleeing disorders and poverty.49 A memorial dated to the second month of 799 (the month that Dong Jin died and Lu Changyuan was eaten) requested that the Bianzhou office of the Transport Commission be moved because of the frequent loss of cash and cloth.50 The second pattern that affected Bianzhou involved the military campaigns of rebels outside of the region. In the latter half of the eighth century and then again in the late ninth century, Bianzhou was repeatedly attacked by anti-Tang rebels. This followed directly from the fact that the prefecture sat on the frontline in the defense of the capitals, astride the lucrative canal system.51 Bianzhou’s garrison had to face attacks by An Lushan himself as well as his successor Shi Siming 史思明 (703-761).52 Li Xilie invaded early in 784.53 The prefecture also endured a serious incursion by Huang Chao in 884. Although Huang was on the run by this point, he still managed to leave a trail of destruction in his wake. He reputedly leveled the homes of locals to create a makeshift stockade, and his troops massacred the population of Weishi, one of Bianzhou’s

48) JTS 13.389. 49) THY 85.1565-66. 50) THY 87.1598. Twitchett, Financial Administration, 94-95 and 327 n.82, discusses these texts’ connection to the frequency of military uprisings in Bianzhou. 51) Zhang Guogang, Tangdai fanzhen yanjiu, 23-25. Zhang classifies Bianzhou as one of the “buffer commands» (fang’e xing 防遏型) in his quadripartite classification which includes: (1) separatist commands (割據型), (2) buffer commands, (3) frontier guard commands (禦邊型), and (4) resource commands (財源型). 52) JTS 187B.4892-93 and 111.3306-7, respectively. 53) JTS 12.338.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access 90 Anthony DeBlasi

districts.54 The very next year, a prolonged conflict with rebels from Caizhou 蔡州 began, in which the Xuanwu Army commander Zhu Wen had to fight off repeated attacks led by the rebel general Qin Xian 秦賢 (fl. 885).55 In the eighth century, there were a few common strategies for dealing with external threats. On occasion, local commanders certainly col- luded with other commands in order to protect their own interests and those of the region.56 Another option, one that commanders in Bian- zhou periodically took, was increased fortification. The construction of an outer wall that encompassed the city’s expanded girth altered the strategic calculus in the North China plain. Merely the proposal to build the wall at Bianzhou (thereby creating a strategic military stronghold) prompted the independence-minded governors Li Zhengji 李正己 (733- 781) and Tian Yue 田悅 (751-784) to mobilize large troop formations closer to Bianzhou.57 When coupled with the court’s subsequent refusal to sanction the hereditary succession of Li’s son as the Weibo 魏博 Military Commissioner, the wall signaled a new aggressive imperial policy and provoked the massive, coordinated rebellion of the early 780s.58 As the reaction of the northeast commands to the fortification indicates, the offensive potential of the Xuanwu Army was a useful tool of court policy or the policy of its occasionally autonomous commanders. Regularly during the ninth century, troops from Bianzhou made their presence felt in campaigns outside of the command’s borders. In 807 and 816, for example, the Xuanwu Army participated in operations

54) For Huang Chao’s incursion, see ZZTJ 255.8301-5 and JTS 19B.718. Nicolas Tackett, The Destruction of the Medieval Chinese Aristocracy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Asia Center, 2014), chapter 8, 187-234, discusses the transformative impact of the rebellion on the empire. 55) ZZTJ 256.8318, 8337, and 8350. See also JTS 19B.720. 56) An example from outside of Bianzhou is Chen Shaoyou 陳少遊 (724-785), who made deals with Li Xilie and Li Na 李納 (759-792) to protect himself; see JTS 126.3565. 57) JTS 144.3915. Li moved 100,000 troops into Caozhou 曹州, which bordered Bianzhou to the east. Tian increased the number of troops he had stationed on the Yellow River. Li Mian was centrally involved in the expansion of the wall; see Yu Shiping, “Li Mian, Xuanwu jun, Bianzhou,” 112-13. 58) JTS 141.3841. Li Mian completed the expansion of the walls in 781 (JTS 12.328). For an authoritative account of the rebellion, see Charles Peterson, “Court and Province in the Beginning of the Ninth Century,” in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 3: Sui and T’ang China, 589-906, Part I, ed. Denis Twitchett and John K. Fairbank (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1979; hereafter CHC), 500-507.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access Court and Region in Medieval China 91 against anti-Tang rebels.59 Bianzhou units also occasionally participated in frontier actions, as when they assisted in operations against a Uighur group raiding along the northern borders in 842.60 This extended discussion of the role of the military in Bianzhou during the latter part of the Tang dynasty has a larger point than simply il- lustrating the difficulty of administering the command and therefore the prefecture. It demonstrates that the Bianzhou military commissioners themselves were central actors in the national events of this period. Their characters and actions also help us evaluate the ways that Bian- zhou served a symbolic role for members of the bureaucratic elite in the post-An Lushan era. First, however, we need a more specific analysis of the Military Commissioners.

The Xuanwu Command and the Tang Government Although the relative abundance of source material concerning the Mil- itary Commissioners of the Xuanwu Army would alone make them worthy of close study, an even more compelling reason recommends them for scrutiny. Outside observers and policy-makers understood that the kind of Military Commissioner appointed to Bianzhou spoke to the state of the empire itself. More directly, the appointment patterns for the Military Commissioners stationed in Bianzhou indicate the level of court control in the region. Analysis suggests a clear rhythm in the appointment of Bianzhou Military Commissioners. Figure 1 provides a graphical introduction to the issue. Based on the data contained in Wu Tingxie’s chronology of Tang provincial commands (fangzhen 方鎮), it graphs the number of men holding the post of Military Commissioner in each decade between 755 and 907 for five different commands.61 The criterion for choosing the commands included is their relationship to central power as gene-

59) For examples in 807 and 816, see JTS 14.422 and 15.456. 60) JTS 18A.592. 61) Wu Tingxie 吳廷燮, Tang fangzhen nianbiao 唐方鎮年表 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980). Page numbers are as follows: Xuanwu, 185-213; Pinglu 平盧, 330-55; Chengde 成德, 576-98; Shannan 山南 West, 650-77; and Huainan 淮南, 716-41.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access 92 Anthony DeBlasi

Figure 1: Individuals Appointed as Commissioners, by decade, in representative commands. Note: Numbers exclude multiple appointments of the same individual in the same decade; Source: Wu Tingxie, Tang fangzhen nianbiao. See note 61 for page numbers associated with each command.

rally characterized in modern scholarship.62 They represent a spectrum from recalcitrant to relatively loyal, as can be seen in the frequency with which they contributed taxes to the central government: Chengde and Pinglu were northeastern commands that were often at odds with the court and rarely submitted taxes; both Shannan West and Xuanwu contributed taxes irregularly in the early ninth century; and Huainan, at that time, was the only one contributing regularly.63 Bianzhou’s experience then can be evaluated against this range of administrative behavior. The patterns in the graph are quite striking. Taking the five commands as a whole, we see that, with some qualification, the three decades between An Lushan’s rebellion and the 770s saw increased numbers of commissioners appointed to the commands. The excep- tions in this period were Pinglu and Chengde. Generally, the 780s, 790s,

62) The analysis follows Twitchett’s characterizations in Financial Administration, but Zhang Guogang proposes a similar typology; see Zhang Guogang, Tangdai fanzhen yanjiu, chapter 5, 77-103, especially his table of four types on p. 101. 63) See maps on pp. xv and 117 in Twitchett, Financial Administration.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access Court and Region in Medieval China 93 and the first decade of the ninth century saw reduced numbers of commissioners. The main exception here is the dramatic spike in Xuanwu during the 790s, which I discuss below. This period of low appointment activity was followed by a gradual increase that even affected Pinglu. The increased activity lasted until the 880s when it began a rather dramatic decline. The figure represents a well-known phenomenon: the periods with few commanders per decade represent times when the central government court had weakened authority over the provinces. The decrease in numbers of appointments translates into a longer average tenure of commissioners in the post, suggesting that the court was unwilling or unable to make changes in its military command. Tang De- zong’s 唐德宗 (r. 779-805) reign, rendered cautious by the devastating multi-province rebellion of 781, corresponds to the decline in military commanders. Including the 770s shows us that a number of commands (Pinglu, Chengde, Xuanwu, and Huainan) experienced decades with only one commander. The second period of reduced numbers of Mili- tary Commissioners came at the end of the Tang, a development explai- ned by the impotence of the court during the dynasty’s death throes. Though we have a fairly straightforward explanation for declines in the number of military commissioners, the causes of periodic increases in the numbers are a bit more complicated. Wu Tingxie’s chronology makes the very reasonable decision to include all military commissioners who actually received a court appointment, but this has the unin- tended consequence of blurring the level of court control over events. To give one example, in the case of Bianzhou, the rebellious general Li Lingyao 李靈耀 (d. 776) did receive an appointment as administrator of the command at Bianzhou after staging his mutiny. He is therefore included in Wu’s chronology; however, Li persisted with his rebellion so that the court had to continue operations against him.64 It would therefore be incorrect to conclude that Li’s appointment represented an increase in court control. The increases in numbers of military commissioners may follow as a result of two contradictory possibilities. The first is that the court may have been making more appointments because it had greater control over either the place or the officials, therefore transfer between posts

64) Wu, Tang fangzhen nianbiao, 190 and JTS 11.309-11.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access 94 Anthony DeBlasi became more routine. Such routine transfer would naturally decrease the average length of commissioner tenure and result in greater numbers during any given period. The second possibility, however, is that the court might have made more appointments in response to local up heavals. Mutinies, rebellions, and other extraordinary circumstances could have taken the initiative away from the court. Whether recogni- zing faits accomplis or appointing commanders to respond to turmoil in a given command, the actions of the court, in such circumstances, can- not be taken as automatically indicating court power or influence. It is necessary therefore to examine the circumstances of the appointments as well as the number. The Bianzhou data justifies such caution. Figure 1 shows that there were two separate spikes of increased appointment activity in Bianzhou (the darkest red bars). These corresponded to the decades first between 750 and 800 (the graph suggests that it was particularly pronounced in the 790s) and second between 830 and 880. Each was followed by extended periods with few commanders, and both witnessed at least one commissioner who stayed in his post for more than two decades. Han Hong held his command from 799 until 819, while Zhu Wen 朱溫 (852-912) occupied the post from 883 until 907 when he finally usurped the throne.65 Although it is fairly clear that the multi-decade tenures of Han and Zhu correspond to weakened central control, we need some criteria for evaluating the nature of periods with many appointments. It is possible to identify three metrics for assessing imperial control in Bianzhou based on the appointees’ backgrounds, the contexts of their appointment, and their identification as candidates. The first metric assesses the appointee’s commitment to civilian authority. The history of the latter half of the Tang dynasty is awash with military men—which is to say, men who established their credentials via service in military units—so committed to holding onto power that they were willing to confront the court over the issue (see the case of Li Lingyao discussed above). Men with civilian credentials were generally more responsive to the central government, since they were committed to bureaucratic careers in the capital rather than commands in the

65) Wu, Tang fangzhen nianbiao, 194-97 and 210-13 respectively. The court rewarded Han with a promotion when he voluntarily gave up his post (JTS 15.468-69).

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access Court and Region in Medieval China 95 provinces. This is not to say that all military men were disloyal; rather, it recognizes that in the militarized context of the mid- and late Tang, men who owed their prominence solely to their military experience had available a base of power and support in the military units that was not automatically accessible to bureaucrats appointed to military command. Of course, this observation recognizes the blurry line between the two statuses (civil and military). Many high-ranking officials with stellar literary credentials during the Tang had practical experience in military commands. And even someone like Han Hong in Bianzhou, a man who rose from an obscure background through military experience, recognized the value of being cultured since he actually submitted some kind of musical compilation to the throne in 813.66 The important point in what follows, then, is that certain mechanisms of appointment, when combi- ned with the other metrics, are associated with increased court control. Furthermore, Tang commentators used the old dichotomy between wen and wu to articulate that relationship.67 The question then is what would make a suitable proxy for what I am calling “civil status” (i.e., bureaucrats committed to civil values and whose appointment vector was most likely to remain within court control)? Examination experience is a good choice for a couple of reasons. The training and education required to pass the examinations meant that such men were thoroughly familiar with civil culture. It also suggests a commitment to mastering the tradition that enshrined that culture. Although favoritism was endemic in the Tang examination system, nothing suggests that examination degrees were given to those who had not actually mastered the necessary educational curriculum. Second, examination success is a fairly objective measure (in the sense that we do not need to evaluate separately the quality of the experience), with the caveat noted above that there was no absolute distinction between being a “civilian” and having risen via military experience during the period.

66) Titled “Shengchao wansui yuepu” 聖朝萬歲樂譜, evidently a collection of long-life lyrics in honor of the dynasty, probably by various authors, comprising, we are told, three hundred compositions; see JTS 15.447. 67) It is worth noting in this context that the dichotomy itself was never seen as opposi tional. Instead, rulers were expected to employ “civil” or “martial” policies as the situation dictated.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access 96 Anthony DeBlasi

Another important metric for assessing the level of court control over a place like Bianzhou is the context for an official’s appointment. Was the official appointed because the court was under some form of duress? An appointment made in the face of a mutiny or invasion was a constrained choice and differed in significance from an appointment made as part of routine administrative rotation. Routine appointment suggests that the court was acting on its own initiative and in accordance with its own agenda. Finally, the analysis must take account of how a given commissioner was identified for appointment. Appointment of those who were recog nized by the court after first arrogating command to themselves does not imply court control but court impotence. Similarly, if conditions in the command constrained the court’s choice of commissioner, then it is safe to conclude that that appointment does not indicate court strength. This includes those occasions when the court felt it necessary to appoint commissioners based on their family connections to former military commissioners. By contrast, transfer of officials into the command from other posts as part of a regular bureaucratic appointment process not occasioned by a crisis is probably symptomatic of court control. By looking at these three parameters—orientation of appointee, context of appointment, and identification of the candidate—we can reasonably evaluate the degree of court influence in any given command. The available sources suggest a clear pattern in the case of Bianzhou. The first spike in the numbers of commanders in Bianzhou represents a loss of control over the command because these appointments tended to result from either mutinies or responses to rebellions. The second period of increased appointment activity is more intriguing, because it corresponds to a period in which the vast majority of commissioners appointed were civil officials transferred in and out of Bianzhou as part of regular bureaucratic operations. The timing deserves some attention. As noted above, this period of increased appointments lasted from the 820s into the 880s. In other words, it lasted for half a century after the traditional end of Xianzong’s so-called restoration (zhongxing 中興).68

68) Bianzhou thus conformed to the principles laid out by Peterson, “Court and Provinces,” 543-545. Twitchett observed that by the end of Xianzong’s reign, “provincial autonomy, apart from two or three minor rebellions, ceased to be a major issue”; see his “Varied Patterns of

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access Court and Region in Medieval China 97

The data for these conclusions appear in Table 1, which presents a list of all the recognized military commissioners of the Xuanwu Army. In addition to presenting the lengths of the tenures of the commissioners, it also includes data, where I have been able to determine this with some certainty, on the methods by which they qualified for government, the circumstances of their appointments, and the way their tenure in the command ended. Several key findings emerge immediately from this tabulation. First, the 750s appear as a period of marked instability, which is understandable given that the court was attempting to deal with the An Lushan rebellion. However, it is clear that the increased number of commissioners at that time does not support the idea that the court possessed greater control. A graphical representation of one of the key parameters identified above makes this finding more evident. Table 2 presents data concerning what might be called the “civilian index” of Bianzhou. To calculate the civilian index, I have divided the post-rebellion period by decade and separately totaled the number of years of service for those with examination credentials (our proxy for civil officials) and those for whom the sources indicate an explicit entry into office as a result of military training or experience (see column three in Table 1). These years of service bear the labels “Civilian Commissioner Years” and “Military Com- missioner Years” respectively. The index is simply the number of years served divided by the total number of years for which we can make clear determinations. In other words, I have divided the number of years served by examination holders by the sum of the years served by degree holders plus military men. The result is an index between 0 and 1, where 0 indicates no civil officials served and 1 corresponds to a decade in which all commissioners in the sample had examination degrees. A similar operation provides a “military index” that provides a shorthand evaluation of the importance of military qualifications in each decade. In this tabulation, which is based on standard historical sources, there are fifty-four commissioners, of which the qualification methods of twelve remain uncertain. Although epigraphical sources would

Provinical Autonomy in the T’ang Synasty,” in Essays on T’ang Society: The Interplay of Social, Political, and Economic Forces, ed. John Curtis Perry and Bardwell L. Smith (Leiden: Brill, 1976), 106.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access 98 Anthony DeBlasi

Table 1: Military Commissioners of the Xuanwu Army, 755-907 (Note key: see at end of table; Chronology following Wu, Tang fangzhen nianbiao, 185-213). Name Year Qualification Appt. End Sources Zhang Jieran 張介然 755 Skill CU K JTS 187B.4892-3; XTS 191.5527 Li Ju 李巨 756, 756 Military CU T JTS 112.3346-47; XTS 79.3555-56 Cui Guangyuan 崔光遠 756, 758 Protection CU T JTS 111.3317-19; XTS 141.4653-55 Li Sui 李隨 756 ? CU ? XTS 72A.2450; ZZTJ 218.6962 Li Zhi 李祗 756 ? CU T JTS 76.2653 Helan Jinming 賀蘭進明 756 Examination CU T ZZTJ 219.7003, 7029 ; (jinshi) DKJK 7.252 Zhang Hao 張鎬 757 ? CU T JTS 111.3326-7; XTS 139.4630-31 Xu Shuji 許叔冀 759 ? CU S ZZTJ 221.7077, 7082 Zhang Xiancheng 張獻誠 762 Military RR T JTS 122.3497 Tian Shengong 田神功 764 Clerk CA D JTS 124.3532-33; XTS 144.4702 Tian Shenyu 田神玉 774 Military CA D JTS 11.304, 124.3533 Li Mian 李勉 776, 779 ? CA/CA E/E JTS 131.3633-36 Li Lingyao 李靈曜 776 Military LU A JTS 11.309-310 Li Zhongchen 李忠臣 776 Military CA E JTS 145.3939-42. Liu Xuanzuo 劉玄佐 781 Military CA D JTS 13.373, 145.3931 Wu Cou 吳湊 792 Protection CA E JTS 183.4746 Liu Shining 劉士寧 792 Military LU E JTS 13.378, 145.3933 Li Wanrong 李萬榮 793 Military LU D JTS 13.384, 145.3934 Dong Jin 董晉 796 Examination CA D JTS 145.3934-37 (mingjing) DKJK 27.1096 Lu Changyuan 陸長源 799 Military CA K JTS 145.3937-38; XTS 151.4822 Liu Yizhun 劉逸準 799 Protection CU D JTS 145.3939

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access Court and Region in Medieval China 99 69707172 Table 1: Continued.

Name Year Qualification Appt. End Sources Han Hong 韓弘 799 Military CA T JTS 156.4134-38 Zhang Hongjing 張弘靖 819 Protection69 CA T JTS 15.469, 16.487 and 129.3610 Li Yuan 李愿 82170 ? CA E JTS 16.487; 133.3677 Han Chong 韓充 822 Military CU D JTS 156.4137-38 Linghu Chu 令狐楚 824 Examination CA T JTS 172.4459-62 (jinshi) DKJK 12.458 Li Fengji 李逢吉 828 Examination CA T JTS 167.4365-68 (jinshi) DKJK 13.488 Yang Yuanqing 楊元卿 831 Skill CA T JTS 161.4228-29; XTS 171.5190-91 Li Cheng 李程 833 Examination CA T JTS 4372-74 (jinshi) DKJK 14.502, 505-506 Wang Zhixing 王智興 835 Military CA D JTS 156.4138-40 Li Shen 李紳 836 Examination CA T JTS 173.4497-99 (jinshi) DKJK 16.585 Wang Yanwei 王彥威 840 Examination CA D71 XTS 164.5056-58 (mingjing) DKJK 27.1100 Sun Jian 孫簡 845 Examination CA T JTS 190B.5045; (jinshi) XTS 5761-62 DKJK 17.620-21 Liu Yue 劉約 846 ? CA D72 XTS 182.5368 Lu Jun 盧鈞 846 Examination CA T JTS 177.4591-92; (jinshi) XTS 182.5367-68; DKJK 17.643

69) Zhang later served as a Chief Examiner in 809 (DKJK 17.644), but he is not counted as “civil” in this analysis in order to keep the data consistently focused on those who passed the examinations. 70) JTS has two different dates: 16.487 gives the third month of 821, but 133.3677 (Li’s biography) gives the second month of 822. 71) XTS is a bit vague on the circumstances of his death, so this remains tentative. 72) According to XTS 182.5368, Liu Yue died before he actually arrived in Bianzhou.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access 100 Anthony DeBlasi 73747576 Name Year Qualification Appt. End Sources Lu Hongzheng73 盧弘正 850 Examination CA D JTS 163.4270-71 (jinshi) DKJK 18.683 Zheng Lang 鄭朗 850 Examination CA T JTS 173.4493 (jinshi) Cui Guicong 崔龜從 851 Examination CA D74 JTS 176.4572-73; (jinshi and XTS 160.4976 xianliang DKJK 18.671-72 and fangzheng) 19.694 Liu Zhuan 劉瑑 853 Examination CA T JTS 177.4606-07 (jinshi) DKJK 21.766 Pei Xiu 裴休 856 Examination CA T JTS 177.4593-94; DKJK (jinshi and 19.711, 20.746 xianliang fangzheng) Ma Zhi 馬植 857 Examination CA T JTS 176.4566-67 (jinshi and DKJK 18.676 and xianliang 20.746 fangzheng) Zheng Ya 鄭涯 857 ? CA ? JTS 18b.639 Bi Xian 畢諴 85975 Examination CA T JTS 19A.650-51, (jinshi) 177.4608-10 DKJK 21.755 Yang Hangong 楊漢公 861 Examination CA D76 JTS 176.4564; (jinshi) XTS 175.5248-49 DKJK 18.656 Linghu Tao 令狐綯 861 Examination CA T JTS 172.4465-66 (jinshi) DKJK 21.752

73) Also known as Lu Hongzhi 盧弘止; see Fu Xuancong 傅璇琮 et al., eds. Tang Wudai renwu zhuanji ziliao zonghe suoyin 唐五代人物傳記資料綜合索引 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1982), 213-14. 74) Both JTS and XTS seem to suggest he died in the command: JTS 176.4573 and XTS 160.4976. 75) The JTS biography suggests 861, while the “Basic Annals” asserts 859; see 177.4609 and 19A.650, respectively. 76) XTS 175.5250 is a bit vague on whether he held a concurrent post with Xuanwu when he died or had been transferred to the second post where he died.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access Court and Region in Medieval China 101 77 Table 1: Continued.

Name Year Qualification Appt. End Sources Li Fu 李福 862 Examination CA T JTS 172.4487; (jinshi) XTS 131.4517 DKJK 21.759 Jiang Shen 蔣伸 863 Examination CA T JTS 149.4029; (jinshi) XTS 132.4534-35 DKJK 27.1057 Zheng Chuhui 鄭處誨 864 Examination CA D JTS 158.4167-68; (jinshi) XTS 165.5062 DKJK 21.762 Li Wei 李蔚 868 Examination CA T JTS 178.4624-27 (jinshi) DKJK 21.782 Zheng Congdang 鄭從讜 870 Examination CA T77 JTS 158.4169; (jinshi) XTS 165.5062 DKJK 22.788 Gui Renhui 歸仁誨 871 Examination ? ? JTS 149.4021 (jinshi) DKJK 21.788 Wang Duo 王鐸 873 Examination CA T JTS 164.4282-83; (jinshi) XTS 185.5406 DKJK 22.786 Mu Renyu 穆仁裕 875 ? ? ? Kang Shi 康實 880 ? ? ?

Zhu Wen 朱溫 883 Military ? R

Key: CA: central appointment; CU: central appointment during or after an uprising; LU: local acclamation after uprising or mutiny followed by court ratification; E: expelled; K: killed; D: natural death in post; T: transferred; R: rebelled; S: surrendered; A: appre- hended. Sources: DKJK: Xu Song 徐松, Dengke jikao 登科記考 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1984); JTS: Jiu Tang shu; XTS: Xin Tang shu; ZZTJ: Zizhi tongjian

77) Fear of Zheng’s popularity seems to have played a role in his transfer; see JTS 158.4169.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access 102 Anthony DeBlasi 9 7 2 7 0 7 1 1 2 0 0.22 1.00 0.78 0.00 821-830 901-907 8 8 0 0 1 1 0 0 10 10 1.00 1.00 0.00 0.00 811-820 891-900 Tang fangzhen Tang nianbiao , 8 8 0 0 1 1 0 0 10 10 1.00 1.00 0.00 0.00 801-810 881-890 4 0 7 4 3 5 0 1 2 10 0.70 0.00 0.30 1.00 791-800 871-880 0 0 1 0 0 7 10 10 10 10 1.00 0.00 0.00 1.00 781-790 861-870 7 9 0 7 0 9 3 0 0 5 1.00 0.00 0.00 1.00 771-780 851-860 2 0 2 0 1 0 0 4 10 10 1.00 0.00 0.00 1.00 761-770 841-850 2 8 1 1 1 7 1 1 1 3 0.50 0.13 0.50 0.88 755-760 831-840 mmissioners military index military index civilian index civilian index total calculable years total calculable years total military commissioner years military commissioner years civilian commissioner years civilian commissioner years military commissioners military commissioners civilian co civilian commissioners Table 2: BianzhouTable Civilian and Military Indices appointed only was commissioner military first the causes: several from result years) ten than fewer with (i.e., decades “Short” Note: in 756; the Bianzhou command was temporarily abolished between 760 and 762 ( XTS 65.1802-4 and Wu, definition. my military or civil by not explicitly when the commissioners who held post were years eliminated and I have 187);

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access Court and Region in Medieval China 103

Figure 2: Xuanwu Command Military and Civilian Indices, by decade. Note: Figures are civilian indices. Calculations use only individuals with unambiguous data. reduce that number of uncertainties somewhat,78 they would not change the basic pattern suggested by the standard sources of the kind of commissioners in place during each decade. Figure 2 graphs the two indices against each other by decade. This graph helps to differentiate the two spikes observed on Figure 1. Discounting the chaotic period of the 750s, the first surge of appointments corresponds to a period in which military men were increasingly given the command, and the second period was one in which examination graduates served as military commissioners. The graph thus clarifies the periodization applicable to Bianzhou, and it reveals that there were three phases in the history of the command: an initial military phase, a lengthy civil phase, and a subsequent military phase. The graph also helps confirm my earlier hypoth- esis concerning the relationship between length of tenure and court control from a different angle. There were three examples of military commissioners whose tenures exceeded ten years: Liu Xuanzuo from 781 to 792, Han Hong from 799 to 819, and Zhu Wen from 883 to 907. All qualified for service as a result of their military experience. Extreme mo-

78) Data provided by Nicolas Tackett to supplement The Destruction of the Medieval Chinese Aristocracy does not significantly change the figures: data available at www.ntackett.com, accessed 09/06/2014. His diagram of civilian versus military appointments in the various commands (p. 164) tells the same story.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access 104 Anthony DeBlasi nopolization of the office therefore correlates with military appointees and little external interference from the capital. As the pattern mapped out in the tables demonstrates, Bianzhou’s initial military phase was largely driven by the kinds of garrison mutinies discussed above, a trend that increased during the latter part of the eighth century.79 Li Lingyao’s mutiny prevented the centrally appointed commander from taking up his post in 776, an event that was to set a precedent for the next twenty-three years. The court certainly did not want to recognize Li, yet in the short term it made the decision to do just that.80 One of the heroes of the suppression of Li Lingyao suffered a similar fate after he replaced Li as military commissioner. Li Zhongchen 李忠臣 (716-784) was expelled from the prefecture in a mutiny by subordinates.81 Some stability returned during the 780s after Liu Xuanzuo took over command of the Xuanwu Army from Li Mian,82 but Liu’s death in 792 ushered in a tragic cycle of mutinies and rebellions that characterized most of the rest of the decade. The grotesque mutiny following Dong Jin’s death in 799, already discussed, was just the last in a series. Wu Cou 吳湊 (fl. 792) was prevented from taking his post as replacement for Liu Xuanzuo. Instead, the garrison mutinied and advanced Xuanzuo’s adopted son Liu Shining. Shining, in turn, was driven from the command two years later in the rebellion that brought Li Wan- rong to power there. Although Li was able to weather a mutiny himself and died in his post, his son, Li Nai 李迺 (fl. 796), was driven from the prefecture by the troops after he attempted to secure the succession (amounting therefore to a mutiny within a mutiny).83 The cycle of mu-

79) According to Zhang Guogang, 30.4% of mutinies during the period occurred in buffer commands like Xuanwu: Tangdai fanzhen yanjiu, 24. This suggests that such commands were simultaneously vital to court interests and centers of instability. 80) JTS 11.309-10. 81) JTS 145.3942. 82) The chronology is complicated here. In the early 780s, the connection between the Xuanwu Army and Bianzhou was not yet absolute. Li Mian remained in control of Bianzhou, which was attached to another command, until 783 when he was driven from the prefecture after a lengthy siege by Li Xilie (JTS 131.3636). Liu Xuanzuo held the command of the Xuanwu Army, but was based in Songzhou 宋州 from 781 (JTS 12.327-28). Since Bianzhou was usually the seat of a military commissioner after the An Lushan rebellion and thus these years are somewhat atypical, I have chosen for simplicity to follow the command chronology as reconstructed by Wu Tingxie. 83) For these events, see JTS 13.373, 183.4747, 13.378, 380, and 384.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access Court and Region in Medieval China 105 tiny and court recognition seemed so persistent that Lu Zhi 陸贄 (754- 805) warned against further rewarding disloyalty by acceding to Li Wanrong’s request for recognition.84 Other factors at work in Bianzhou in the 780s and 790s reinforce the conclusion that the court was simply reacting to situations on the ground. Not only were most of the men who were appointed during this period military men and somehow connected to military crises in the prefecture, a number also had a closer bond: they were family. The long-serving commissioner Han Hong was a maternal relative of Liu Xuanzuo,85 and the court looked again to this family in 822 when the troops drove out the military commissioner Li Yuan and attempted to set up their own candidate. The court decided to appoint Han Chong 韓充 (769-824), Han Hong’s younger brother, as military commissioner because he had spent significant time in Bianzhou and therefore was viewed favorably by the troops.86 This means that this single family held the command of the Xuanwu Army for thirty-three of the forty-three years between 781 and 824.87 Such a tenure certainly ranks alongside other long-serving military commissioners in the period, such as Wu Shaocheng 吳少誠 (750-810) in Huaixi (twenty-four years) and Wei Gao 韋皋 (745-805) in Sichuan (twenty years).88 Bianzhou’s military phase was thus a period in which the commissioners were presented to the court either as men who emerged from within rebellions or who were perceived as having some special connection to the place and its troops. Furthermore, it is tempting to see the periods of instability that afflicted Bianzhou in the 770s and the 790s as

84) “Qing buyu Li Wanrong Bianzhou jiedushi zhuang” 請不與李萬榮汴州節度使狀, QTW 475.4846 (4b-5b). See also Josephine Chiu-Duke, To Rebuild the Empire: Lu Chih’s Confu- cian Pragmatist Approach to the Mid-T’ang Predicament (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 2000), 116-17. 85) JTS 156.4134. 86) JTS 156.4137. Shi Yuntao argues that taking into account the feelings of the troops was a common practice in the court; see Tangdai mufu zhidu yanjiu, 283. 87) On this point, we might also mention the earlier tenure of the two Tian brothers: Tian Shengong 田神功 (d. 774) and Tian Shenyu 田神玉 (d. 776). Shengong held the command from 764 until his death in 774. He was immediately succeeded by his younger brother until the latter’s death in 776: Wu, Tang fangzhen nianbiao, 188-89 and JTS 11.303-4. Note that there was some flux in the administrative hierarchy at the end of this period as Bianzhou was temporarily assigned to the Huaixi 淮西 command; see Wu, 189 and XTS 65.1807-8. 88) Wu, Tangdai fangzhen nianbiao, 8.1257-60 and 6.969-72 respectively.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access 106 Anthony DeBlasi creating the conditions that favored the development of the long-term, strongman governments of Liu Xuanzuo and Han Hong. In both cases, a period of rapid turnover led to a subsequent time with no turnover. In this way, prior to 820 Bianzhou illustrates clearly the first possible interpretation of increased commissioner appointments: lack of court initiative and control. The record of military commissioners up to 822 would not on its own give any grounds for optimism concerning the court’s ability to reassert control in the prefecture, but the Bianzhou command was tied to larger national trends. The process of reinvigorating court control throughout the provinces so ably discussed by Charles Peterson was also felt in Bian zhou. After a somewhat rocky start, the 820s would initiate a half century of civilian rule and court control, what we might call its “civil phase.” This era began with the appointment in 824 of the highly respected and well-connected official Linghu Chu 令狐楚 (766-837), who held the jinshi 進士 degree and was close friends with a number of famous literary men of the era.89 It continued until Wang Duo 王鐸 (d. 888) was transferred out of the post in 875.90 Certainly, by the end of this half century, much of the country was beset by rebellion and banditry, but Bianzhou and its military command remained an island of court control. The experience of the civil officials who served as Bianzhou’s military commissioners during this era stands in stark contrast to their earlier military counterparts. First, the string of men with examination degrees is quite impressive. Twenty-three of the twenty-seven military com missioners from Linghu Chu to Wang Duo held examination degrees. Of these, twenty-one passed the Presented Scholar (jinshi) examination, and another one passed the Explication of Classics (mingjing 明經) examination. Although Cui Guicong 崔龜從 (d. c. 853) was exceptional in holding three examination degrees (the Presented Scholar, plus two decree examinations),91 among those who passed the Presented Scholar examination, three others also passed the Worthy and Upright, Able to Speak Forthrightly and Reach the Ultimate in Remonstrance (xian-

89) JTS 17A.512 and 172.4459. 90) JTS 164.4282-83. 91) JTS 176.4572. He had also passed the “Selecting Excellence in Calligraphy and Judgments” (shupan bacui 書判拔萃) decree examination.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access Court and Region in Medieval China 107 liang fangzheng 賢良方正, 能直言極諫) degree examination, while six served as Chief Examiners during their careers.92 By contrast, we are certain of only two degree-holders between 756 and 824.93 None of these degree holders passed the military examinations or any of the more technical examinations such as mathematics or law. Taken as a group, then, this cohort of military commissioners falls squarely on the civil side of the ledger. Lengths of tenure further support the interpretation of court control. Twenty-seven commissioners served between 824 and 875, a period of fifty-one years. That equates to an average tenure of 1.9 years. Wang Yanwei 王彥威 (d. ca. 845), who held a mingjing degree and was a ritual scholar, served the longest at five years.94 Only four others served four years; the rest served one to three years.95 The average tenure from 756 to 824, on the other hand, was 2.6 years. If we eliminate the period of the An Lushan rebellion, then the figure jumps to 3.9 years, and, as noted above, Han Hong’s twenty-year tenure was not the only one to exceed a decade.96 Equally significant was the circumstances surrounding their appointments. Unlike the earlier period, Bianzhou’s civil phase saw very few garrison disturbances. All twenty-seven commissioners from this period (including the four who seem not to have had degrees) were appointed as part of routine bureaucratic operations, and the sources suggest that all left their post either by being transferred to another post or dying a natural death in office. None were driven from the command by mutiny or rebel incursion.97 It seems then that by the 820s, the court’s

92) The degree-holding Chief Examiners were Li Fengji, Li Cheng, Pei Xiu, Li Wei, Zheng Congdang, and Wang Duo: DKJK 18.666, 18.672, 22.816, 23.850-51, 23.842, and 23.849 respectively. As noted above, Zhang Hongjing served as a Chief Examiner (DKJK 17.644), but he is excluded from the calculations here since there is no evidence he passed an examination. 93) Note that here our use of examinations as a proxy for civil status may undercount “civil” officials somewhat. There were a number of officials who qualified for office via the “protection” (yin 蔭) privilege and advanced via the civil bureaucracy. Nevertheless, the overall impression that military men dominated the first phase and civil officials dominated the second is valid. 94) XTS 164.5056 and Wu, Tang fangzhen nianbiao, 201-02. 95) The four were Linghu Chu, Li Shen 李紳 (d. 846), Lu Jun 盧鈞 (fl. 846), and Zheng Chuhui 鄭處誨 (d. 868). All held examination degrees. 96) These figures take into account the disestablishment of the command from 760 to 762. 97) The circumstances of the beginning and/or end of their appointments are uncertain for three commissioners (see Table 1).

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access 108 Anthony DeBlasi ability to project authority into the provinces had stabilized. The will- ingness to appoint those whose main qualification was cultural achieve- ment rather than military merit and the ability to incorporate the Xuanwu command into the regular bureaucratic appointment process suggests court confidence in the situation. Finally, the court seems to have had more freedom even where family members of military commissioners were concerned: Bianzhou’s civil phase was not immune from having commissioners with family connections to one another. Zheng Lang’s 鄭朗 (d. 857) young kinsmen Zheng Chuhui and Zheng Congdang 鄭從讜 (d. ca. 887) both served in Bianzhou as military commissioners.98 Linghu Chu’s son, Linghu Tao 令狐綯 (802-879), was also a commissioner there. Yet, the sources suggest that the family connections were not as central as in the earlier period. First, with the exception of the younger Zhengs, the gaps between the kinsmen were quite long (fourteen years between Zheng Lang and Zheng Chuhui; thirty-three years between the Linghus). Second, the sources do not record any mention of the benefits of appointing men with connections to the prefecture or any evidence of popular demand for the later family members. The overall impression that one gets is that succession per se was an issue during the military phase but not during the civil phase.99 The importance of Bianzhou, however, meant that the court was careful to make appointments of men with practical administrative and policy-making experience. We can see this in the kinds of appointments that preceded their time in Bianzhou. To cite just a few examples, Li Fengji 李逢吉 (758-835), Yang Yuanqing 楊元卿 (764-833), Li Cheng 李程 (fl. 833), Wang Yanwei, Lu Jun, Bi Xian 畢諴 (802-864), and Linghu Tao had all served as military commissioners in other commands before taking up their posts in Bianzhou.100 Pei Xiu, on the other hand, had a significant amount of financial experience and came to Bianzhou after serving the Emperor Xuanzong 宣宗 (r. 846-859) as a Grand Counselor.101

98) The younger sons were brothers; see JTS 158.4168. 99) This conforms to the national pattern that Tackett has identified ; see Destruction of the Medieval Chinese Aristocracy, 155-67. 100) JTS 167.4367, 161.4229, 167.4373, 164.5058, 177.4591-92, and 177.4609 respectively. 101) JTS 177.4593-94.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access Court and Region in Medieval China 109

These civil officials were men with the requisite experience to understand the practical imperatives of ninth-century government. As experienced as these men were, they could not stem the tide of events. Fifty years of civilian rule gave way to a renewed militarization in the 880s. By the time Zhu Wen was appointed military commissioner in 883, events beyond Bianzhou were quickly impinging on the command. Although the backgrounds of Wang Duo’s two successors are not clear, Zhu emerged from Huang Chao’s rebel movement and therefore represents the clear end of the reign of the degree-holders.102 The spread of rebel movements throughout the Southeast and the North China Plain reduced the ability of the court to exert direct power in the provinces. The result was that it had once again to recognize the facts on the ground and ratify the positions of those who, by virtue of their military experience, came to exercise power in the various commands. This was accompanied by an increasing influence of military men (including those who had risen from provincial commands, those who had their origins in rebel armies, and those with connection to imperial guard units) in all aspects of the government.103 Although Bianzhou suffered massive destruction during the Huang Chao rebellion,104 the installation of Zhu Wen began a process by which the center of gravity of the empire gradually shifted east to Bianzhou. The final section of this paper will address the symbolic importance of the change, but first it is necessary to understand the dynamics of that process. The foundation of this shift was the impotence of the court. The rebellions of the late ninth century destroyed the possibility of court initiative. Already by 885, Zhu Wen was one of at least twelve commanders who maneuvered against each other beyond court control. The situation was not helped by the fact that these commanders cut the supply route to the southeast leaving the court in control of only a fraction of the empire.105

102) For Zhu’s background, see Michael T. Dalby, “Court Politics in Late T’ang Times,” in CHC, 758-59. 103) An 879 edict banning the transfer of military men into civil offices may have been a defensive reaction to a perceived erosion of civil values: JTS 19B.704. 104) JTS 200B.5397-98. 105) JTS 19B.720.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access 110 Anthony DeBlasi

Zhu’s eventual usurpation ending the Tang dynasty showed that the balance of power between the court and provincial powers had tipped in favor of the latter. We can see the shift in gravity in at least two ways. First, the dominance of Zhu’s political organization became clearer as he gradually secured control of most of the prefectures in the North China plain.106 Furthermore, as the court weakened, Zhu also became a power broker in its politics. According to the Old Tang History, a third of the participants in an 890 debate over whether or not to give Zhu per- mission to attack his rival Li Keyong 李克用 (856-908) supported Zhu, indicating clearly that there was already a court faction aligned toward Zhu.107 Zhu’s relationship with high-ranking bureaucrats was mutually beneficial. Not only could his court supporters advocate his interests at court, but he could use his considerable influence to pressure the court on their behalf. Thus, Cui Yin 崔胤 (d. 904) secretly sought Zhu’s as sistance when he was removed as a Grand Counselor. Zhu’s memorial in Cui’s defense was enough to restore his position.108 In a similar case, after being demoted and exiled in the wake of a disastrous campaign against Li Keyong, Kong Wei 孔緯 (d. 895), a lineal descendant of Con fucius and jinshi degree holder, secured Zhu’s intervention and was spared from exile.109 Other court officials with close ties to Zhu included Zhang Jun 張濬 (d. 903) and Pei Shu 裴樞 (841-905).110 By the end of the ninth century, the shift of initiative to Zhu Wen (and thus Bianzhou) is visible in provincial appointments as well. Zhu’s patronage could determine the promotion and transfer of military commissioners.111 The drawn-out history of the emasculation of the imperial court in the late ninth century has already been ably described.112 Here I would point out that Zhu Wen’s growing power was inextricably intertwined with the fortunes of Bianzhou, his power base. From the perspective of Bianzhou, Zhu’s gradual rise to power (from subordinate rebel to Em-

106) JTS 20A.760-61. 107) JTS 20A.740. 108) JTS 177.4583. 109) JTS 179.4651. 110) JTS 20A.740-41 and 113.3357. A relationship with Zhu could also be dangerous. Assassins killed Pei Shu on Zhu’s orders, and threw his corpse into the Yellow River; see JTS 133.3358. 111) For the examples of Li Hanzhi 李罕之 (fl. 899) and Ding Hui 丁會 (fl. 899), see JTS 20A.764-65. 112) See Dalby, “Court Politics.”

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access Court and Region in Medieval China 111 peror) corresponded to a renewed military phase in its history, one represented graphically by the precipitous decline in both the number of appointments and the number of civilian military commissioners (see Figures 1 and 2). The significance of Bianzhou for Tang history depends ultimately on an evolution in its symbolic importance. As we shall see below, prior to the paroxysms of the 880s and 890s, bureaucrats pointed to Bianzhou because they believed it held lessons for how the Tang government should conduct its affairs. In other words, it was a bellwether for the state of the empire. The growing chaos after 875 gradually transformed the narrative arc to the rise of an imperial capital, which culmi- nated in its being designated the Northern Song capital.

Symbolic Bianzhou Economic and military factors were central to the developmental trajectory of Bianzhou, but Tang-era sources and the later history of the region in the Song period make clear that Bianzhou also had symbolic importance. Its ultimate elevation to imperial capital—initially for Zhu Wen’s Later Liang 後梁 dynasty in 907 and eventually in 960 for the Northern Song—necessarily followed from its complex history. But understanding this history requires an appreciation of how its symbolic value changed in the final century and a half of the Tang. In pursuing this symbolic history, it is important to remain mindful of the distinction between the post-960 perspective and the ninth-century perspective on the region. After 960, accounts of Bianzhou’s history understandably focus on the realization of its status as imperial center. For writers in the late eighth and ninth centuries, Bianzhou could represent either a support for an imperium centered elsewhere or a harbinger of dynastic catastrophe, but it was not framed as a center itself. In exploring this distinction, we should first address Bianzhou’s potential as an imperial capital. When later aspirants to imperial power based in Bianzhou needed to justify choosing it as a capital, they could point to a plausibly ancient history of the region housing a royal city. Although it certainly lacked the imperial legacy of cities such as Chang’an, Luoyang, or Jiankang (modern Nanjing), it had been a royal city prior to the Qin unification in the third century B.C. As Daliang

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access 112 Anthony DeBlasi

大梁, it became a royal city in the middle of the fourth century B.C., when King Hui of Wei moved his capital there under pressure from the growing kingdom of Qin. Thereafter the region retained its sense of being a regional center. It was important enough that no less than four local gazetteers were compiled for it between the Eastern Han and the Jin periods.113 The evocative power of the name Daliang continued into the Tang period. The most famous example of the continuing power of the Liang designation was Zhu Wen’s decision to take it as the name of his dynasty (the first of the Five Dynasties). There was, however, an example that has received much less attention. The first effort to make Bianzhou an imperial capital occurred 125 years before Zhu Wen, when the rebel Li Xilie waited until he had occupied Bianzhou before declaring himself emperor in 783.114 Significantly, besides appointing his own grand counselors, he renamed the city Daliangfu 大梁府 to signify its new exalted status.115 Although the combination of strategic location and a certain historical legacy already recommended Bianzhou as a potential imperial center in the 780s, the conditions were clearly not yet right for its political elevation. Li Xilie was soon defeated, and the Tang endured for more than a century and a quarter afterwards. But the episode is significant for a different reason: it occasioned an exchange that reveals how late eighth-century officials understood the relationship between Bianzhou and the center. Li’s adoption of imperial rhetoric—from the granting of official titles to the designation of the Bianzhou as a capital prefecture—offended even as it sowed confusion. In its narrative of the events, the Old Tang History recounts a confrontation between the famous lit- eratus Yan Zhenqing 顏真卿 (708-784) and Li Xilie’s agents. Yan had

113) None are fully extant. Fragments are collected in Liu Weiyi 劉緯毅, Han Tang fangzhi ji yi 漢唐方志輯佚 (Beijing: Beijing tushuguan, 1997), 8-12, 17-20, and 77-80. However, these works centered on Chenliu, which seems to have been the prefecture’s center prior to the Sui. Zhou Baozhu, “Sui Tang Bianzhou yu Xuanwu jun,” 60, argues that the region was a backwater in the early Six Dynasties but had become strategically important even before the Sui dynasty. 114) JTS 145.3945. 115) The term fu 府 was used to designate, besides other strategically important areas, the three status capitals during the Tang (Chang’an, Luoyang, and Taiyuan 太原); see Tang liu dian 唐六典, ed. Chen Zhongfu 陳仲夫 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1992), 30.740.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access Court and Region in Medieval China 113 been wooed and then arrested by Li. In the dramatic reconstruction of the meeting, Li’s envoys inform him that they bore an imperial order (chi 敕) sentencing him to death.116 Hearing the claim that this was an imperial order, Yan assumed they had come from the Tang court and asked when they had arrived from Chang’an. The envoys’ response that they had come from Daliang provoked Yan to anger, and he “rectified names” as he scolded them: “He is a perverse bandit, what ‘imperial order’ can there be?”117 Both dynastic histories, in closely parallel versions, tell us that the envoys strangled Yan Zhenqing to death following his outburst. For Yan, the claim that Bianzhou was an imperial center was ipso facto evidence of rebellion. The fortunes of the dynasty had not yet reached the point where a claim to the imperial dignity not located in Chang’an could be plausible. Yan Zhenqing’s forceful rebuke of Li Xilie then suggests that in the late eighth century, Bianzhou’s main symbolic function was as an indicator of the health of the empire. When civil officials looked at the region, they saw clear evidence of the superiority of civil values over military values. The troubled history of Bianzhou in the late eighth century certainly supplied negative examples, but after Xianzong’s reign, twenty years into the ninth century, officials could point to the success of civil officials stationed there to validate their faith in the Tang court and its values. Its unique significance was therefore closely tied to the cycles observed in the previous section, for it was in the alternation between administrators imbued with military training and those with civil credentials that the contrast could be usefully highlighted. The educated elite usually articulated this in terms of the relationship between strictness and leniency in government style and saw a correlation between loyalty and civil values.118 The elite’s perception of the issues at stake in Bianzhou appears in discussions of two of its most famous civilian military commissioners, Dong Jin and Linghu Chu.

116) Note that XTS 153.4860 describes the document as a zhao 詔. For another version of the events, see the record of conduct written for Yan by Yin Liang 殷亮, “Yan Lugong xingzhuang,” QTW 514.5230-31 (23b-24a). 117) JTS 128.3596. 118) This was not limited to Tang commentators. Liu Xu often made similar observations. For one early Tang example, see the evaluation of Li Daoguang 李道廣 (fl. 696) who served as prefect of Bianzhou under the Empress Wu, JTS 98.3073.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access 114 Anthony DeBlasi

Dong Jin’s importance was amplified by the brutal aftermath of his death, events well known because Han Yu barely escaped the carnage. Although the singular nature of the events of 799 have made them stand out ever since, Han’s writings make clear that he was already thinking about the broader significance of Dong’s tenure even before the disaster of the mutiny.119 Because Dong himself came to Bianzhou on the heels of a series of rebellions there, it was natural for Han to contrast Dong’s administration with those of his predecessors. His 798 “Record of Bian- zhou’s Eastern and Western Water Gates” (汴州東西水門記) credits Dong with the construction of water gates in the Bianzhou walls and places that accomplishment in the context of Dong’s success in stabiliz- ing the prefecture and securing the livelihood of its people:

At the time, His Honor from Longxi received the commission to lead the command. He then proceeded directly from Luoyang in a single cart to take up his duties, whereupon he saved it from the peril [of rebellion] and eliminated its de- fects. He was neither severe nor strict, and [the region] was permeated with the effects of grand harmony. The spirits responded with auspicious signs and good fortune, and the five grains ripened in abundance. The people afterward [lived amid] plenty, and the strength of the people was not exhausted. The military su- pervisors and assistant magistrates consulted and planned, then they constructed water gates and created an outer wall for the area. This was to settle the atmo- sphere and to defend against bandits. The flows of the Yellow River seethed and roared, and the soaring towers stood high and imposing; he thereupon renovated them, but it was not to attract casual visitors. With regard to the Son of Heaven’s military might, only His Honor of Longxi could proclaim it; as for the Son of Heav- en’s civil virtue, only His Honor of Longxi could declare it.120 維隴西公受命作藩, 爰自京洛單車來臨, 遂拯其危, 遂去其疵. 弗肅弗厲, 薫為太和, 神應祥福, 五穀穰熟, 既庶而豐, 人力有餘. 監軍是咨, 司馬是謀, 乃作水門, 為邦之郛, 以固風氣, 以閈冦偷. 黄流渾渾, 飛閣渠渠, 因而飾之, 匪為觀遊. 天子之武, 維隴西公是布, 天子之文, 維隴西公是宣.

Han Yu here links the state of the Bianzhou command directly to the accomplishments of the emperor through the medium of his trusted

119) My discussion here is limited to the analytical aspects of Han’s views of the situation. For a sensitive reading of the emotional impact of the 799 events and their aftermath on Han, see Anna M. Shields, “The Limits of Knowledge: Three Han Yu Letters to Friends, 799-802,” T’ang Studies 22 (2004), esp. 48-59. 120) Han Changli quanji, 13.203.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access Court and Region in Medieval China 115 official’s actions in bringing the region to peace and prosperity. Han recognized that the emperor wielded two crucial tools (military might and civil values), but he implies that it took an official of Dong Jin’s character to activate them in the region. That Han saw the state of Bianzhou as indicative of the quality of central governance is evident in two poems he composed in the wake of the tragic events following Dong Jin’s death. At that point his optimism had evaporated and was replaced in his second poem with a veiled critique of the court’s response to the situation:

汴州亂 The Chaos in Bianzhou (Second of Two) 二母從子走者為誰 Who is that mother following her son in flight? 大夫夫人留後兒 the grandee’s wife and the viceroy’s son.121 昨日乗車騎大馬 Yesterday they boarded a cart and mounted a great steed, 坐者起趨乗者下 those sitting rose for them, while those riding got off [to make room]. 廟堂不肯用干戈 Since the court is unwilling to resort to arms, 嗚呼奈汝母子何 alas! What is to be done for the mother and son?

In yet another text confronting Dong’s time in Bianzhou, his record (xingzhuang 行狀) of Dong Jin’s life, Han Yu emphasized the connection between Dong’s character and the transformation of the prefecture. By Han’s testimony, people in Bianzhou who met Dong believed he was a benevolent man (ren ren 仁人) and within a short time, “official mat- ters were repaired, popular customs were transformed, excellent grain was produced, white magpies assembled, azure crows came to roost, and excellent melons ripened together on the vine” (職事修, 人俗化, 嘉禾生, 白鵲集, 蒼烏來巢, 嘉瓜同帶聯實).122 Although the issue is only implied in the description of the events in Bianzhou, earlier Han Yu made clear that one of Dong’s most important qualities was his loyalty. To highlight this, Han used the long-established trope of the virtuous official reproaching a rebel when he described Dong’s efforts to dissuade

121) Various commentaries identify the mother and son as the wife and child of Lu Changyuan, the commander described above who fell victim to cannibalism. 122) Han Changli quanji, 37.440. Han submitted a separate memorial on Dong’s behalf describing the superior harvest in Bianzhou and ascribing it to the emperor’s virtue: “Zou Bianzhou de ji shu jiagua shu” 奏汴州得嘉禾嘉瓜狀,“yiwen” 遺文, 523.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access 116 Anthony DeBlasi

Li Huaiguang 李懷光 (729-785) from rebelling by appealing to his sense of loyalty.123 Nor was Han Yu the only one to see the significance of Dong Jin’s tenure in Bianzhou. Liu Zongyuan 柳宗元 (773-819) also noted how Dong’s ability to balance firmness and gentleness (gang rou 剛柔) enabled him to transform the command.124 Quan Deyu 權德輿 (759-818) echoed the same themes in his spirit-path inscription (shendao beiming 神道碑銘) for Dong:

The emperor considered Chenliu [Bianzhou] the crossroads of the empire. Only an important official could oversee it and instill governance there. After His Honor received his commission, with one or two secretaries, he clothed himself in the robes of a scholar and advanced [to his post] without waiting for reports [on conditions there] or taking a guard. He was lenient and easy-going, and, while unno- ticed, his influence circulated.125 With the [formidableness of the] great wall and the [insight of the divinatory] turtle shell accumulated in his heart,126 [he in- spired] the fierce generals to submit for their crimes and the people of Qi to rejoice in his accomplishments. The regional lords [i.e., the other military commissioners] on all four sides gravitated toward His Honor. After occupying his post for four years, he had achieved good government, but his strength waned. He repeatedly sought to return to court and thereupon laid out in detail his accomplishments and failures requesting an edict concerning the future. His Highness found the succession a difficult problem, one that would last a long time. Woe! When the people of the jurisdiction got His Honor, they were well ordered. When they lost him, they descended into chaos.127 上以為陳留天下之郊也. 非素重臣不可以率先賦政. 公旣受命, 與一二從事記室, 儒服而前, 不待裏言, 不恃悍衞. 寛信夷易, 闇然風行. 長城大蔡, 藴在靈府, 悍將伏罪, 齊人樂業, 四隣諸侯, 折中於公. 居四年政成力疾, 累求入覲, 因條陳利病, 請制於未然. 上難其繼, 以致没代. 噫夫, 一邦之人, 得公而理, 失公而亂.

123) Han Changli quanji, 37.438. 124) Liu Zongyuan, “Song Yang Ning langzhong shi huan Bian Song shi houxu” 送楊凝朗中使還汴宋詩後序, Liu Hedong quanji 柳河東全集 (Beijing: Zhongguo shudian, 1991), 22.253. 125) An allusion to the Doctrine of the Mean’s description of the Gentleman’s moral way in section 33: “The Way of the Gentleman is unseen but daily becomes more manifest.” Ruan Yuan 阮元 et al., Shisanjing zhushu 十三經注疏 (rpt. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980),.1635a.. 126) An uncertain translation of an obscure phrase: 長城大蔡, 蘊在靈府. 127) “Tang gu … Dong gong shendao beiming,” 唐故 … 董公神道碑銘, QTW 499.5083 (3a- b).

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access Court and Region in Medieval China 117

Here again the governance of Bianzhou appears as the focus of imperial efforts to bring the empire to order. Quan frames Dong Jin’s success in terms of the triumph of civil values over martial ones, as his own generals and the surrounding military commissioners (the “regional lords” of the inscription) respond to the official in the robes of a scholar by mod- erating their arrogance. The Old Tang History preserved this interpretation in its own biography of Dong, when it described the court’s decision to appoint harsh subordinates because Dong was perceived as too soft. As the biography takes pains to point out, the irony lay in the fact that only Dong’s influence pacified the troops. As soon as he died, the harsh- ness of his subordinates alienated the troops, who then rebelled.128 Four decades later, most likely in 840,129 Liu Yuxi echoed these themes when he composed his preface to Linghu Chu’s literary collection. Ling hu had also spent time as the Military Commissioner in Bianzhou, and Liu Yuxi used Linghu’s tenure there to make an argument for the importance of civil values. Although this genre of writing certainly called for a certain amount of flattery of its subject, Linghu’s reputation as a civil official with serious literary credentials was beyond dispute. Indeed, by Song times, his entire family was recognized for its literary accomplishments and examination prowess.130 Of interest here is less Liu’s relationship to Linghu himself and more the way his framing of Linghu’s service in Bianzhou was a redefinition of the notion of merit.131 He begins his description by noting that since the command was surrounded by fighting on all sides, the expectation was that commissioners there must have concrete accomplishments (gong 功). In the context, this could be read as a call for the appointment of someone with practical military experience. Instead, Liu undermines that expectation by em- phasizing the success that Linghu Chu enjoyed in the command by rely- ing on moral influence instead of force and coercion. According to Liu,

128) JTS 145.3936-37. 129) Luo Liantian 羅聯添, Tangdai shiwen liu jia nianpu 唐代詩文六家年譜 (Taibei: Xue- hai chubanshe, 1986), 396. 130) Wang Dang 王讜, Tang Yulin jiaozheng 唐語林校證 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1987), 3.421 (no. 281). 131) Liu had a long relationship with Linghu. In addition to the wall inscription cited earlier and this preface, Liu also composed matching verse with Linghu. For some examples, see Liu Yuxi ji jianzheng, waiji 1.1042-45, 1.1066-67, 1083-84, and 1085-86.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access 118 Anthony DeBlasi

Linghu’s commitment to values such as honesty, deference, and even- handedness enabled him to completely transform Bianzhou’s moral culture. In the preface, the contrast with the previous administrators in the area, who had relied on the “harsh enforcement of law,” undergirds Liu’s (and Linghu’s) advocacy of a civil model of regional governance.132 Once again, the Old Tang History echoed the ninth-century framing of Bianzhou as an indicator of the health of the realm when it reiterated Liu’s point. The biography of Linghu Chu made explicit comparison between Linghu’s administration as being an age of order and those of the Han brothers (Hong and Chong).133 More than he could have realized, Liu Yuxi was prophetic when he declared that after Linghu’s changes, “there were none who returned to their old habits.” Linghu’s tenure in the post, which began in 824, coming on the heels of the more autonomous Han brothers, initiated a period of more than five decades when examination holders held the post of commissioner in Bianzhou. Al- though he wrote his preface for Linghu Chu’s collection in 840 and therefore already had an inkling of the significant change that had taken place, even when he wrote the wall inscription for the office of prefect of Bianzhou in 827, Liu Yuxi was already expressing his sense that an indelible change had occurred there.134 The important point is not that Liu Yuxi had predicted the future when writing texts that surely had net- working value for him. My interest in these texts lies in the particular way they presented the issues at stake in governing Bianzhou. In making the case for the superiority of civil values over martial ones, the educated elite drew on long-standing tropes for support. We see, for example, the way they looked on popular acclaim as symptomatic of good governance. Among civil officials, this aspect of Dong Jin’s time in Bianzhou quickly became a standard part of the story. According to Han Yu, Dong’s entry into the outskirts of Bianzhou prompted the troops to cheer, adults to shout, old men to cry, and women to weep.135

132) Liu, “Tang gu xiangguo zeng sikong Linghu gong ji xu” 唐故相國贈司空令狐公集序, Liu Yuxi ji jianzheng, 19.498. For further discussion of this text, see Anthony DeBlasi, Reform in the Balance: The Defense of Literary Culture in Mid-Tang China (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 2002), 38. 133) JTS 172.4461. XTS 166.5099-100 makes the same point. 134) Liu Yuxi ji jianzheng, 8.188-89. 135) Han Changli quanji, 37.440.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access Court and Region in Medieval China 119

In one of the essays, “Questioning a Farmer” (Xun meng 訊甿), in his series On Causes (Yin lun 因論), Liu Yuxi’s farmer spoke for a different constituency affected by Dong Jin’s appointment: refugees from the chaos in Bianzhou. Liu quotes the farmer explaining that refugees were re- turning to Bianzhou simply on the reputation of Dong Jin, before he could actually do anything to restore order.136 What we have here is the fitting of the Bianzhou narrative into a very old template, one that had its origin in remote antiquity. By harnessing this template, elite writers such as Han Yu and Liu Yuxi were revealing the lessons they took from Bianzhou, lessons that reinforced their bias that civil officials were central to the Tang order. Of course, our knowledge of how the world looked from Bianzhou is limited. We have no surviving Tang gazetteers from Bianzhou and an- ecdotal literature is sparse as well. The authors discussed above were central government officials and the types of texts they wrote were, by definition, focused on the officials who administered it. The rhetoric employed in these texts is not uniquely associated with Bianzhou. Bianzhou was an important example for them because of its particular military history and its strategic location, but the dynamic of good government depending on officials’ loyalty to the center and prioritiz- ing civil values could be (and was) applied across the empire. That is to be expected among a group still committed to the Tang dynasty and its political traditions, however strained they had become. It took the com- plete marginalization of the Tang court under Zhu Wen in the last two decades of the dynasty for the imperial potential of Bianzhou to trump Bianzhou’s value as a gauge of Tang restoration.

Conclusion In the preceding pages, I have depicted conditions in the strategically important prefecture of Bianzhou during the late eighth and ninth centuries. Its place in the empire and the glory of its later history require an approach that locates Bianzhou in a matrix of different historical perspectives. The Tang prefecture (and eventual Song capital) must be

136) Liu Yuxi ji jianzheng, 6.156.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access 120 Anthony DeBlasi understood on at least two interrelated levels. The growth of its city, the diversification of its economic base, and its strategic location certainly provide necessary conditions for its eventual rise to the center of the national political stage. Yet in the context of understanding the history of the second half of the Tang dynasty, Bianzhou plays a uniquely important role. It provides a concrete example by which we can evaluate the level of court authority beyond the capital. The data concerning the appointment of military commissioners in Bianzhou illustrates that the Tang enjoyed a prolonged period of relative control over one of the most strategically important transportation hubs in the empire late into the ninth century. This may suggest why it is quite difficult to find despair concerning the prospects of the Tang empire among the educated elite until very late. The common portrayal of the ninth-century restoration emphasizes Emperor Xianzong’s role and implicitly suggests that it un- raveled soon after his death, with the court descending into dysfunc- tional factionalism and eunuch machinations, but the Bianzhou case suggests that that is misleading. The restoration of court authority in Bianzhou occurred after Xianzong’s reign and lasted well past the mid- century events usually cited as examples of court impotence (such as the Sweet Dew Incident of 835). The capital elite then could reasonably look to Bianzhou and see the validation of Tang values and institutions. For fifty years past the death of Xianzong, bureaucratic process func- tioned in Bianzhou in a way that gave civil officials reasons for optimism in the face of successive political challenges. Bianzhou’s later status as an imperial capital should not obscure this specifically Tang story.

T’oung Pao 102-1-3 (2016) 74-120

Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:24:58PM via free access