Study On Military Official System And Personnel Change During The Five Dynasties And The Early Song Dynasty

The idea of shangjun(赏郡) was popular under the background of frequent chaos caused by war in the late Tang Dynasty. Shangjun was that the position of chieh-tu shih, fang-yii shih, t’uan-lien shih and tz’u-shih in Regions(chou 州) as rewards of the military officers’ corresponding military exploits, and the governors’ order of promotion was tz’u-shih, t’uan-lien shih, fang-yu shih and chieh-tu shih. So the military officers took up the absolute advantage in the chieh-tu shihs whom appointed by Chu Wen, and Mo-ti’s reformation brought little effect according to this structure. The military governors appointed by the Later Liang Dynasty were completely accepted by Li Ts’un-hsu after the destruction of Chu family’s regime. The radical measures include appointing his sons and brothers as the chieh-tu shih, overloading the chieh-tu shihs by army supervisors that occupied by eunuchs which Chuang-tsung adopted to strengthen his power invaded the interests of some political groups like "Daibei group". These led to the failure of him. Li Ssu-yuan abolished the policies above and appointed the military governors widely from each group, he also strengthened the deterrence to the local and foreign enemy through the compilation of imperial guards. All these consolidated his political power.The generals of imperial guards began to have additional official titles that includes chieh-tu shih, fang-yu shih, t’uan-lien shih and tz’u-shih which effected by the factors like the idea of shangjun, hierarchical order. Take chieh-tu shih’s for example, the modes of its holding posts had yaoling(遥领) and jianling(兼领). On one hand, this system brought extra interests and honor for the incumbents; on the other hand, they also could be dismissed military appointment and appointed as shiren(实任) chieh-tu shih and the purpose was keeping absolute control to imperial guards by emperor. The rulers follow this convention on the personnel transfer of generals of imperial guards after the establishment of Sung Dynasty. They also abolish the highest level of military appointments and decreased the generals of imperial guards’ grade on the institution. They brought the ma-chun tu yu-hou and pu-chiin tu yu-hou pu-chun and so on which were newly established into the promotion channel of generals of imperial guards and increased the degree hierarchy of generals’ promotion. The process of this reform was very slow because of the factors like wars. It formed the promotion order that was called "guanjunbawei"(管军八位) finally during the period from Sung Chen-tsung to the early domination of Sung Jen-tsung. The factor which effected the upsize of generals greater was time than the reward to military exploits. Meanwhile, the generals of imperial guards’grade correspond strictly with the position of chieh-tu shih, fang-yu shih, t’uan-lien shih and tz’u-shih among the upper level during the Five Dynasties. One imperial guards’position could collocate some grades of chieh-tu shih, kuan-ch’a shih, fang-yu shih, t’uan-lien shih and tz’u-shih, and this can provide more selection for the rulers. The chieh-tu shih became a simple official title during incumbents’ withdraw from the stage of regional ruling, and turned into post qualification of tu-pu shu in the frontier defense military area.At the back of the institutional change and political idea was the relationship between imperial authority and military exploit class that not only using each other but also struggling with the other. The idea of shangjun was the benefit distribution between the imperial power and military exploit class. This class made effort to keep their family extraction by political marriage among their families and providing good position to begin official career for their sons and brothers. But these efforts were proved to be a failure with the inhibition of imperial power, biological metabolism, political alteration and so on. The emperor emphasized to promote the development of his inheritance officials to take charge of affairs of state and replace the people from old military exploit class step by step. Inheritance officials of the previous dynasty had transformed into old exploit class and become the objects to be guarded by rulers when the new dynasty was established. Sung T’ai-tssung began to teach his inheritance officials with loyalty and filial piety. The absolute liege relationship dispersed in the imperial court with the expansion of inheritance officials politic. The inheritance officials exited from the stage of politic gradually with the awake of intellectuals, the rise of new scholar-bureaucrat. Factors like the number of inheritance officials fall sharply and the emperor was too young had accelerated this process. The politic of the Northern Sung Dynasty achieved to be refreshed.