ABSTRACT
During the nearly three centuries from the collapse of the Western Jin to the reunification of China under the Sui, both north and south had given rise to a bewildering profusion of dynastic regimes. Dynasties replaced one another in rapid succession, sometimes by means of an internal military revolt or coup d’état (the usual pattern in the south) and sometimes through the conquest of one state by another (more common in the north). The fall of the Sui dynasty and its replacement by the Tang followed a different script, one that had first been acted out at the end of the third century BC, when the Qin dynasty had given way to Western Han. A similar performance occurred early in the first century AD, when the short-lived regime of Wang Mang was replaced by the Eastern Han, and some elements could be found in the Eastern Han collapse – though in this case it took nearly a century for a unified successor state to appear. After the founding of the Tang dynasty, the pattern would be repeated at least two more times, in the transitions from Tang to Song and Yuan to Ming (with the Ming-Qing transition also showing many of the same features). The typical sequence was a combination of natural disasters (floods, droughts) and government exactions stimulating grassroots “peasant” rebellions, sometimes of a sectarian nature, which brought down the old dynasty and gave rise to a number of regional warlord regimes. Eventually one of these regimes would succeed in crushing its rivals, establishing a new imperial government, and unifying the country. In the case of the transition from Sui to Tang, this process lasted a little more than ten years, from the first stirrings of revolt against Sui rule to the elimination of the last serious military challenge to the authority of the new dynasty. Tang success owed much to diplomatic efforts and the adroit manipulation of imperial ritual, supernatural portents, and other time-honored symbols of political legitimacy.1 It also helped that the Tang founders emerged from the northwestern aristocracy that constituted the core of the Sui political elite, and therefore enjoyed a very substantial advantage in attracting the support of other members of the same class. Above all, however, the initial consolidation of Tang rule was a military process; the Tang founders attracted support because they were able to overcome their rivals on the battlefield. This chapter will examine the military process and the role of Li Shimin, second son
of the first Tang ruler and later emperor himself, who was the principal Tang field commander and one of the most celebrated military leaders in all of Chinese history.
