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Atrocitology. Matthew White
Читать онлайн.Название Atrocitology
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780857861252
Автор произведения Matthew White
Издательство Ingram
When rival tribesmen assassinated the khan of that particular batch of Turks in 716, the An clan found itself on the wrong side of tribal intrigues and fled eastward, into the outlying provinces of the Chinese Empire, where it came under the protection of a friendly Turkish warlord. For a while, young Lushan lived at the edge of the law, until he was caught stealing sheep. Sentenced to death, the twenty-year-old thief tried to bargain with Governor Zhang Shougui even as the executioner raised the club to bash his skull in. “Does the great lord wish to destroy the barbarians?” he asked. “Why kill a brave warrior?” Seeing his point, the governor put An to use as a scout.
On the Way Up
In 733, when the Tang emperor transferred Governor Zhang to the northeast to replace a commander who had been defeated and killed by the Khitan (the local barbarians),a An Lushan followed. He proved adept at the fast cavalry raids that characterized frontier warfare. Although short-tempered and impetuous when dealing with subordinates, An was always good-natured and quite likeable when dealing with superiors. He rose through the ranks, becoming Zhang’s lieutenant and eventually his adopted son. Even so, An was going from stout, to stocky, to morbidly obese, and Zhang frequently chewed him out in public over it. Then, in 736, while Zhang was visiting the capital, An had to deal with an attack by the Khitan and Hsi (the other local barbarians) on his own and was badly defeated. When Zhang returned from the capital fuming, he sentenced An to death, but realizing this might not go over well, he expelled An from the army instead. Within a year, however, An was reinstated.1
In 742, the emperor gave An his own frontier province to defend. He kept a steady stream of tribute flowing from his frontier command back to the capital—camels, dogs, falcons, horses, and, best of all, bags of heads taken from Khitan chieftains. Some accused him of collecting these heads from enemy leaders he had lured into negotiations under a truce before springing a trap on them. But results mattered, and the emperor gave him two additional provinces to protect, making a solid fiefdom of three territories in the northeast, near the Great Wall. More would be added later.2
An Lushan became a frequent and welcome visitor at the palace in Chang’an, where he played the fat buffoon for the amusement of the courtiers. He became a special favorite of the emperor’s favorite young concubine, Yang Guifei. She even pretended to adopt him as a son in a mock ceremony where the monstrously obese An was presented to his new mom in a diaper. Rumors swirled that Lushan and Guifei were lovers, but she has been remembered across time as one of the four great beauties of Chinese history, while he couldn’t even walk without draping his arms over servants who held up his enormous bulk, so . . . ick.3
Based on the fabled love between the emperor and his lady, and the continued high regard the emperor felt for An, historians consider an affair unlikely. Yang Guifei had originally been married to one of the emperor’s sons (but not one of the sons who shows up later in this story), until the infatuated seventy-year-old emperor dissolved the marriage and stashed Yang in a nunnery for a couple of years to restore her lost virginity. The romance of Emperor Xuanzong and Yang Guifei became the stuff of legends.
Things Go Wrong
In 751, An Lushan led his army and Hsi allies against the Khitan, but after a long, dusty journey, the Hsi chieftain demanded a rest, so An had him killed. The Hsi contingent deserted, and on the way out, they warned the Khitan that the Chinese were coming. When the exhausted Chinese pressed on, they stumbled into a Khitan ambush and were slaughtered. An Lushan barely escaped with his battered army. Upon returning to camp, he executed several surviving officers, while others fled to the hills to wait for his anger to cool.4
When the emperor’s chief minister died in 752, he was succeeded by a cousin of Yang Guifei, Yang Guozhong, who immediately began to blame all of the problems of the empire on his predecessor. An Lushan, tarnished by his friendship with the previous minister, quickly got on the bad side of Minister Yang, who whispered rumors into the emperor’s ear. Emperor Xuanzong sent a trusted eunuch out to spy on An, but a healthy bribe made sure the emperor got a glowing report on the loyalty of his general. Even so, the emperor felt that An’s loyalty should be examined at close hand, and he summoned him back to court. An Lushan suspected that if he left his army and returned to the capital, he would be stripped of his authority at the very least, and possibly imprisoned, exiled, or killed. An thanked the emperor for the invitation, but said he wasn’t felling well. Then the emperor gave a bride to An’s son, along with an order for An Lushan to return and attend the wedding. An refused and, realizing that he was running out of excuses, rebelled. He issued a flimsy cover story that the emperor had secretly begged him to get rid of the prime minister, and in December 755 he set out for the capital with an army of 100,000, traveling by night, eating at daybreak.5
Suffering an irritating skin disease and nearly blind, An Lushan had lost whatever good humor he may have once had. He was prone to unreasonable rages during which he would have subordinates dismembered.6 After he pulled his army away from the border, his old territories rose in counter-revolt behind him, but that didn’t matter. All he cared about was reaching the capital. To keep his soldiers loyal, he allowed a quick rape, looting, and slaughter in each captured city, but always pressed on. In January, An’s army crossed the icy Yellow River and captured the secondary capital at Luoyang, where he proclaimed himself emperor.7
The main imperial army of 80,000 was gathering at Tongguan Pass, but An’s arrival drove its forward units back in disorder. Then the rebel advance stalled before the pass. The armies waited, but this delay gave palace eunuchs in Chang’an enough time to plot against the imperial generals. Maybe they had a good reason to plot, maybe they didn’t. Who knows? I mean, they’re palace eunuchs; plotting is what they do best. Regardless of the reason, they convinced Emperor Xuanzong to have his generals executed.
Finally, in July, after a huge battle of horsemen and archers, the imperial army was defeated and the pass lay open. Emperor Xuanzong fled the capital on a highway choked by desperate and demoralized imperial soldiers who were looking for a scapegoat. The prime minister, Yang Guozhong, was dragged from his wagon and stomped to death. Then the soldiers stopped the emperor’s caravan and demanded the death of the concubine, Yang Guifei, whom they suspected of being An Lushan’s accomplice and lover. Xuanzong reluctantly allowed it, and imperial soldiers hauled her away. She was strangled and dumped in a ditch, while the emperor continued on his way.8
The Next Generation
The flight of the emperor was as good as an abdication in the eyes of his ambitious third son, Suzong, who then declared himself emperor. Ex-emperor Xuanzong spent the rest of his life in closely guarded retirement.
After the rebels took the capital of Chang’an, An Lushan began to consolidate his power, but he had made far too many enemies within his own entourage to survive much longer. One of his advisers, having been flogged in punishment for some offense, conspired with An Lushan’s son, An Qingxu. They approached An Lushan’s favorite eunuch, whom Lushan had personally castrated many years earlier in a fit of anger. This eunuch stabbed An Lushan in his sleep with his own sword, but it took a lot of messy effort to cut through all of the layers of fat. An Lushan screamed and struggled, but eventually succumbed. He was buried under his tent, and the army was told he died of illness.9
Within a few months, an imperial counterattack recaptured the capital on behalf of the new emperor, Suzong.10 As the rebels fell back, An Qingxu was deposed by his lieutenant Shi Siming. An Qingxu was quickly put on trial for the murder of his father and strangled. Shi continued the rebellion for several years, followed by his son, and so on, until the last of his family was caught and killed.
In the end, the Tang dynasty survived only by bringing in outsiders like the Tibetans and Uighurs to fight their battles for them, for a price. China had to cede its western territories—the desert colonies in the Tarim Basin—to its new allies. The days when Chinese garrisons maintained direct control over the road to the west would not return for hundreds of years.
Poets’ War