From time to time, you still have to upload some information, otherwise many plots won't understand where the internal connection is.

For example: Why did Zhang Jiuling target Niu Cyclamen, is it just because he can't look down on it?

Well, Niu Cyclamen was born as a small official, and it is normal for Zhang Jiuling to look down on it.

Then why does Zhang Jiuling also look down on Zhang Shouqi and want to stop him from paying homage?

It is said that before Zhang Jiuling resigned as prime minister, Zhang Shouling's qualifications, popularity, and military exploits were enough, why did Zhang Jiuling stop it?

This reason also explains why he disdains the cow cyclamen.

Therefore, when looking at history, we can't just stare at the words recorded in the history books. It can't be led by the ancients and historians, and the answer must be found in the context of historical facts.

Don't talk nonsense, get on the dry goods.

Let's take a look at the prime ministers of the Tang Dynasty from the Kaiyuan to Tianbao periods, with "groups" as the unit, because they are usually replaced together, and their tenure is generally 3-4 years (except for individual cases).

The first group: Zhang Shuo (this one is followed by another talk), Liu Youqiu, Wei Zhigu, Lu Xiangxian, Guo Yuanzhen.

These people were in the transition period of the first year of Kaiyuan, and they were in power for no more than 1 year, because the political situation was undecided at that time, so they were not included in the analysis.

Group 2: Yao Chong, Lu Huaishen

Yao Chong: Bang Lang was born, a veteran.

Lu Huaishen: Jinshi and the first, almost soy sauce.

Among them, there are no financial officials, but there are veterans (Yao Chong) trained during the Wu and Zhou dynasties

Group 3: Yuan Qianyao, Song Jing, Su Kun

Yuan Qianyao: Jinshi and first.

Song Jing: Jinshi and the first

Zhang said: An old minister in the Wu Zhou period

There are no financial officials, but Yuan Qianyao is the prime minister of soy sauce, and he basically doesn't do anything.

PS: "Lang Guan deserves to be talented, how can Brother Nu Lang be evil?" This is what Yuan Qianyao said, but now it can be inferred that Lao Yuan does not want to recommend Li Linfu, but that he is in a subordinate position in the power structure of the center, and he just says a witty thing to cover up his own powerlessness.

Group 4: Zhang Jiazhen, Su Yan, Yuan Qianyao, Zhang said

Zhang Jiazhen: Ming Jing Jinshi, Wu Zhou old minister

Su Yan: Jinshi and first, Wu Zhou entered the officialdom in the same year.

Zhang said: An old minister trained during the Wu Zhou period.

There are also no financial officials.

Group 5: Li Yuanhong, Du Xian

Li Yuanhong: Enyin started his family, and he is the great-grandson of Li Cang, the Duke of Yingguo.

Du Xianam: I have decades of local experience.

Group 6: Xiao Song, Yu Wenrong (short), Pei Guangting

Xiao Song: The door is in the shade, and the ancestor of Emperor Liang Ming Xiao Yue.

Yu Wenrong: Door Yin into the office, the grandson of Yuwen Festival in the service, a professional financial official.

Note that he is the first professional financial management prime minister since Kaiyuan, and he has vigorously promoted Li Linfu.

Pei Guangting: Hedong Pei's middle family room, the door shade into the office.

Group 7: Han Xiu (short), Pei Yaoqing, Zhang Jiuling, Li Linfu

Han Xiu: The system is promoted to the official (selected by the imperial court), a professional minister.

Pei Yaoqing: In the examination, Tongziju (equivalent to entering the office), has strong comprehensive ability and is partial to financial management.

Zhang Jiuling: Jinshi and the first, the representative of the minister, the partial minister.

Li Linfu: The door is in the shade, the comprehensive ability is strong, and the officials of the government are partial to financial management.

Group 8: Li Linfu, Niu Xianke

Niu Cyclamen: Born as a grassroots official, with rich experience at the grassroots level, and a faction of officials.

Group 9: Li Linfu, Li Shizhi

Li Shizhi: The door is in the shade, and the side will be in the phase.

Group 10: Li Linfu, Chen Xilie

Chen Xilie: The door is in the shade, and the soy sauce is played

Group 10: Chen Xilie, Yang Guozhong

Yang Guozhong: The petty official is in a position (nepotism), and Li Longji thinks that he is good at managing money.

The above is a preliminary arrangement, in fact, it can be subdivided.

Here's my personal analysis:

Before Yuwen was integrated into the prime minister in the fourteenth year of Kaiyuan, Datang's financial problems had not yet erupted. Therefore, among the people who entered the phase, there were Jinshi and the first ministers, as well as the pragmatists who gradually rose in the local area, and the old ministers cultivated during the Wu Zhou period.

In fact, the power structure is one master at a time, and most of them have prime ministers who play soy sauce, and Li Longji has more power when he is in politics, and his power is relatively loose.

Fourteen years after the opening of the Yuan Dynasty, the financial problems of the Tang court became a problem that the prime ministers had to consider. Pei Yaoqing, Li Linfu, Niu Cyclamen and even Yang Guozhong, their financial management ability is one of the main factors in worshipping the prime minister.

Therefore, the meaning of their existence and what they want to do are completely different, and even contradict each other at all.

This is the first contradiction in the center of the Tang Dynasty: the contradiction between the traditional Confucian bureaucracy and the financial management bureaucracy that came into being in response to the situation, and this contradiction is often irreconcilable.

The ideology of the bureaucrats of the Confucian school (taking Zhang Jiuling as an example) is to uphold the principle that the people are noble and the monarch is light, the small government should reduce fiscal expenditures, reduce the size of officials, reduce the interference of the central government in local affairs, reduce the cost of the legal system, and rule by virtue.

Yes, the rule of law comes at a cost, and that cost is not low. In the case that the ancient magnates basically did not abide by the law, the role of rule by virtue was not necessarily smaller than that of the legal system. This was an objective limitation of the feudal era.

And the thinking of the financial management officials has nothing to say, just one sentence: find a way to increase the central finances!

To increase finance, it is inevitable to take money from the people, to increase tax revenue, to open new institutions, and big government is inevitable.

At this time, a major problem encountered by Li Longji was that if the status quo of the Tang Dynasty was to be maintained, it was necessary to reuse financial management officials like Li Linfu. If we want to reform the various shortcomings of the Tang Dynasty, we must reuse Confucian officials like Zhang Jiuling.

However, it is a pity that even if Zhang Jiuling is in power for 20 more years and cuts An Lushan ahead of schedule, he will not be able to change the substantive disintegration of the grassroots society of the Tang Dynasty:

The basis of the government and the uniform land system no longer existed, the reform of the government administration that treated the symptoms but not the root cause could not be continued, there was no unique solution to the sharp contradictions of land annexation (as in the Northern Song Dynasty, the method of fighting poison with poison could not be implemented), and the economic and ecological imbalances caused by the increasing size of the capital.

If Zhang Jiuling continues to reign for 20 years, there is a chance that he will be ruined. This truth is just like Li Linfu's death from illness after four years as prime minister, and he will go down in history.

Li Longji can also see this, the reform of the Tang Dynasty is hopeless, just hold on. If you close your eyes, it will be dark, and if you don't go out of Chang'an, the world will be peaceful.

The fall from grace of Zhang Jiuling and others is inevitable. There is no hope for what they can do; What Li Longji urgently needs, they can't do.

Okay, let's turn the conversation back to the incident mentioned at the beginning: Why did Zhang Jiuling prevent Niu Xianke from ascending to the throne, just because the other party was not capable?

I don't think so, at least not exactly.

From the point of view of future generations, Yan Tingzhi's ability will never surpass that of Niu Xianke, and his credit will be even worse. What achievements Yan Tingzhi has, I have been looking for historical materials for a long time.

So why did Zhang Jiuling recommend Yan Tingzhi as prime minister?

First, both of them were born as scholars in the imperial examination; Second, both of them are ministers and their articles are well written. In other words, they are comrades-in-arms in the trenches and naturally become friends.

Zhang Jiuling said that Niu Xianke "doesn't know how to read", not that the other party can't read books, but that Niu Xianke can't write lyricist articles, and his literary literacy is very low. In comparison, Yan Tingzhi's literary accomplishment is several orders of magnitude higher, right?

Therefore, it is Zhang Jiuling's ideal to form a pattern of civil government governance during the Northern Song Dynasty and Song Renzong, and it cannot be said that there is a problem with his idea, because hundreds of years later, this pattern was really realized in the Northern Song Dynasty.

Zhang Jiuling grasped the historical trend of disintegrating crony politics downward, lowering the upper limit of aristocratic rights, and lowering the lower threshold for participating in politics.

But it cannot be said that there is no problem with his ideas, because this central political pattern has had a very serious, negative, and long-term impact.

The reason why Niu Cyclamen is not allowed to be the prime minister is because he is not a person who comes out of the "rules of the game", and this opening cannot be opened. The "rules of the game" in Zhang Jiuling's heart are the imperial examination.

In the same way, he objected to Zhang Shoujue's entry into the phase by the festival, which was the same reason, because Zhang Shouju was a border general (this was a tradition in the early Tang Dynasty).

Zhang Jiuling hopes to create a central group composed of people from the imperial examination and the traditional literati circle, which is his ideal.

Therefore, even if Niu Cyclamen is replaced by Xiao Fang's brain, Zhang Jiuling still wants to oppose it. Of course, if Niu Xianke continued to go to Hexi to work as a jiedu envoy after the imperial examination, he could also be accepted by Zhang Jiuling and others.

Li Longji thinks that Zhang Jiuling "formed a party", and he really didn't wronged him. The ambitions of Zhang Jiuling's party (which he may not have realized) are so great that they have almost spanned hundreds of years of civilian-bureaucratic political evolution.

Just looking at this, Li Longji didn't kill him, purely because he was short-sighted and not the master, of course, this is also Zhang Jiuling's luck.

This is the second contradiction in the center of the Tang Dynasty: the clear factional contradiction between the officials who came from the imperial examination and the "miscellaneous" officials such as the men and the shadows (including the low-level officials and the border generals).

Suppose that if An Lushan came to Chang'an to be the prime minister, would he be opposed? The answer is definitely not, although there will definitely be people in the Youzhou Group who will rebel.

Zhang Jiuling suppressed the border generals into the phase, in fact, the feudal town will be reversed sooner or later.

Moreover, this contradiction did not disappear because of the Anshi Rebellion, but was reflected in the "Niu Li Party Struggle" in the later Tang Xianzong period.

So the title of my book is "Elegy for the Tang Dynasty", because the old pattern of the Tang Dynasty is really hopeless, and there are contradictions from the inside out.

I want to write this book as a historical benchmark for the period from the end of the Kaiyuan Dynasty to the Anshi Rebellion, and the excavation of the historical context is very in-depth. Under this premise, try to ensure the smoothness and coolness of the plot.

And even if I come back to read this book ten years later, I still feel that there is merit, and I won't feel insulted by IQ when I brush it twice, and I won't become a spicy chicken that will vomit at a glance because of the passage of time.

This is what I'm working towards.