ABSTRACT
The later part of the Tang dynasty, distinguishes from other periods by the routine and systematic employment of eunuchs in the command and control of imperial armies. A capacity in which eunuchs served to control the late Tang military was as army supervisors, an office that Samuel B. Griffith once likened to that of political commissar in the Leninist armies of the twentieth century. From the An Lushan rebellion onward, the Tang court routinely and systematically assigned eunuchs to keep watch both on armies in the field and on the provincial garrison forces commanded by the military governors. Under the Tang, what had in former times been an irregular and informal practice was regularized as 'system' during the period of Wu Zetian's ascendancy. Despite their overall tone of hostility towards the eunuchs, the Tang dynastic histories and the Zizhi tongjian also contain discordant elements hinting at a more complex and multivalent reality.
