Li Longji is like his great-grandfather Li Shimin in every respect. His superior history shows that he is a decisive, intelligent and wise politician. The prosperous weather of the Tang Dynasty, which lasted for more than 30 years, benefited from his diligence and hard work. It's a pity that he didn't keep this kind of work momentum to the end. Let's take a look at his early and late changes and the serious consequences.
The first is to know people and choose people. As an emperor, there are many smart people under his command. It is difficult to find out from thousands of people who are really capable of governing and safeguarding the country. Li Longji undoubtedly has such a vision. From the early years of Kaiyuan, Li Longji appointed Yao Chong and Song Jing, two famous sages in the history of China, and delegated power to others. These two men have lived up to Xuanzong. Facts have proved that it was the ruling of these two sages that laid the foundation for the prosperous times. In the mid-Kaiyuan period, Zhang,,,, Han Xiu, Zhang Jiuling, etc. , capable or honest, or Geng Jie. Although these people don't have such outstanding achievements as Yao and Song, they are also capable officials.
But then I stopped working. Li, An Lushan and Yang were reused in the late Kaiyuan and Tianbao years. It was these three men who overthrew the incomparable prosperous Tang Dynasty and never recovered.
Li's accession to the throne of prime minister is the beginning of the road of being partial and lazy. At this time, Li Longji has been working hard to cultivate the empire for more than 20 years, and his once conscientious work has become lazy in political affairs. He doesn't want to be disturbed by those complicated political affairs, and he doesn't want to bother to balance them. As a result, Li, who was good at pandering, was in charge of the political affairs, while the righteous were excluded and suppressed, and greedy people flooded the court. The Qingming political style in the Kaiyuan period is gone forever, and the empire has gone from bad to worse since then.
It was Li Longji who single-handedly destroyed this peaceful and prosperous Anshi Rebellion and fed it step by step from a wolf cub to a ferocious beast. Li Longji, who ruthlessly destroyed the heroic power at the beginning of taking power, undoubtedly has a high degree of political acumen. However, the sensitivity to power once disappeared without a trace in the later period of his administration. The empire has a series of restrictive mechanisms for our times in the frontier, but Li Longji ignored these mechanisms and surrendered the most important territory and the most powerful power of the empire to An Lushan. On the eve of the "An Shi Rebellion", An Lushan controlled one third of the imperial war zones and dominated the military power, civil affairs and property of these places. Without Li Longji's generous gift to these forces, An Lushan, a humble man, would never have the ambition to covet the world, nor would he have such a powerful force to overthrow the Tang Dynasty.
If Li is still in charge of the state affairs, then Yang is simply making trouble for the world. This villain, starting from Yang Guifei's nepotism, tried to please Xuanzong and gain benefits. The empire, which had already set in the sun, was in his hands, but it declined at the speed of free fall, which created favorable objective conditions for An Lushan's rebellion.
Ironically, everyone knows that Yang's treachery and An Lushan's rebellion will be reversed, but they still regard them as their right-hand men, obedient and prized.
The second is to open up the road. The original Li Longji was modest, easy to train, and strict with himself. Prime Ministers Song Jing, Han Xiu and Zhang Jiuling are all courtiers who dare to speak out about the dispute. No matter how big or small, they can point out the emperor's fallacy, argue with reason and be firm. According to historical records, Li Longji "revered Song Jing, although he didn't like it, he also accommodated it (Zi Tongzhi Jian)". Han Xiu, who dares to speak out, makes Li Longji feel jealous. Every time he drinks and hunts for a little longer, he can't help asking around: "Does Han Xiu know I'm here?" Once or so, he defended him, saying that since the old man Han Xiu became prime minister, the emperor has lost weight. Xuanzong sighed: "Although I look thin, the world will be fat."
It is this attitude of speaking freely and accepting criticism and exhortation with an open mind that created the political clarity and openness and tolerance in the Kaiyuan period, inspired the vast social forces, and created the "Kaiyuan Prosperity" of the Han and Song Dynasties.
Unfortunately, this sincerity only lasted for more than 20 years in Li Longji. In the twenty-fourth year of Kaiyuan, Li Longji, who was used to singing praises, never wanted to hear any criticism or exhortation. He directly dismissed Zhang Jiuling, the prime minister who dared to speak out against each other. Li knew very well that in order to clear away these discordant voices for his master, he specially called the officials of the criticism and supervision department for a lecture and said to them, "Today, the sage is leading the way, and it is too late for us to follow, so there are still so many critical voices. Look at the ceremonial horse in front of the hall. Because it doesn't make any noise, it eats three kinds of materials. Anyone who dares to talk more in the future will say that he has no food. "
Since then, there has been no more exhortation. Li Longji lived in the dream of "world without thieves" until An Lushan smashed his dream.
In fact, even when the situation is extremely difficult, the empire has enough opportunities to set things right. However, it was Li Longji's partiality that ruined this opportunity. At that time, the imperial star Ge stuck to Tongguan and Li Guangbi counterattacked Hebei, and the Anshi Rebellion was exposed. And listen to Yang's slanderers, regardless of Geshuhan and repeated exhortations, determined to give up Tongguan northward, leading to the downfall of Geshuhan's army, and the rebels in An Lushan marched straight into the capital Chang 'an.
As a result, history not only recorded Li Longji, the majestic figure of Mount Tai, but also recorded Li Longji, who wept helplessly in front of Mawei Slope.
Reading history, reading the life of Li Longji, Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty, can't help sighing. This contrast of imperial life, which began in chaos and ended in endless, is extremely rare among hundreds of emperors in the history of China. The handsome boy who was once wise, bold and energetic has become an old man addicted to pleasure and confusion in the rotation of years. In his resume, there are both unparalleled prosperity and unbearable sadness in troubled times.
Taking the "An Shi Rebellion" as the watershed, the prosperous, prosperous and culturally developed Tang Dynasty is always a past tense. From then on, the Tang Dynasty never got out of the vicious circle of bloody chaos of vassal separatism and political chaos.
The Anshi Rebellion had a great influence on the whole historical process of China. After the Tang Dynasty, both the Song Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty learned the historical lessons of the rebellion of the military commanders in the Tang Dynasty, and both took the suppression of weapons as a national policy, and the martial spirit of the Han and Tang Dynasties was abandoned. A nation that was once open, enterprising, generous and heroic gradually became conservative, gradually lost its enterprising vitality in the pursuit of competition in all countries of the world, and gradually slipped into the abyss of decline.
Born in sorrow, died in happiness. Li Longji went his own way and suffered many hardships, but he stuck to his laurels and indulged in pleasure, dragging a powerful country and great nation into the abyss of chaos. His life, let later generations lament, should also be taken as a warning, from beginning to end cautious.