唐 후기 昭義軍 略史 (777-843) ― 전략적 수요에 따른 운영정책 변환과 將兵의 반응ㆍ대응 ―

Abstract

Since the foundation of both command and force structure in the 8th century, there was a double tyranny in working to the commandants who had held responsibilities to maintain, reorganize, and operate the Zhaoyi army. These were, namely, a spatial constant, which is terrain in inevitable connection with communication and traffic on the one hand, and a temporal variable, which is a demand emanating from Imperial defence strategy of whole dominion on the other hand. Because of the mutually inseparable importance of two regions as assigned operational zones, this army had been burdened with excessive operational responsibilities. Getting through the 780's serial rebellion and Yuanhuo era (810-820) transformation in central military planning-execution, they were constantly fatigued with mobilizations and deployments for campaigns in adjacent fronts. Even more pressure had been cumulatively added on this, with the opportunistic but intentional appointment of civil-literati officials as commandants in peacetime by central authorities, to re-prioritize the management policy toward fiscal soundness. Consequential grudges among soldiery caused not only occasional collapse and mass desertion, but also violent riots sporadically. With all these developments, as the founding generation of soldiers being phased out by both combat and natural losses, some recruitment attempts had been made for replacement. But this had only contributed to diminished unit cohesion. Lu Cong-Shi, who had lacked both personally-loyal core combatant and legitimacy as essential resources for execution of duty, tried to make a peculiar breakthrough when he had met with political crisis because of his father's passing, which traditionally required one to resign from a post. He attempted to accommodate himself to the Emperor Xuan-zong's intentions to militarily subdue the recalcitrant commandant Wang Cheng-zong of Chengde, by presenting his own plans for campaign. With the realization of this, he could expect to reverse the precarious situation in command, following military honors. But faced with adverse sentiment to an eunuch-leading military campaign in the court, especially among core policy making-privy council group, Xuanzong grudgingly yet shrewdly had decided to abandon the whole campaign by making a scapegoat of Lu. After that, with the culmination of 2nd Huaishi and Pinglu campaigns, the strategic need and significance of Zhaoyi command had been relatively decreased. Accordingly, newly appointed civil-literati commandants were quite successful in reducing deficit, dictated by adjustment of policy from central authorities. But as one can easily postulate, this could scarcely deal with the problems of discontent and weakened bond in force structure. Around the two Hebei command crisis of Zhangqing era, as its inherent geopolitical condition would make it into a useful deterrent to any ambitions of Hebei 3-commands over the Taihang mountain range, the strategic value of the Zhaoyi army increased again. To utilize this, the central authorities had decided to order Riu Wu, who already had been retaining distilled and sizeable core combatants, to be transferred there, as a usual and natural procedural measure of dominion-wide management-application of military force. Although the consolidation of force-soldiery could not be accomplished in his incumbency, those core combatants were also essential to the succession of command post to his son, Riu Cong-jian. The central authorities could hardly ignore this sizeable and formidable force and take a risk of multiple mobilization for yet another military campaign, in the aftermath of unsuccessful large-scale one from Zhangqing crisis, which diminished dominion-wide military readiness. Since the essential resource base which brought about the risk aversion as concessions was the very personally-loyal core combatants from Yunzhou, Riu Cong-jian strived to expand the material establishment to maintain and enlarge it. He took various measures which were fundamentally command-managed and chartered monopoly of indispensable materials such as iron and salt, which in turn quite intrusive to local/inter-regional market, all the while seeking and enforcing a series of proactive local-fiscal policies. Consequently, it sowed yet another seed of discord in his command area, since it had connected and intermingled the existing problems of gaps in industry-market between two regions which had resulted in role division, with the unit cohesion-bond differential, and unbalance between provision-welfare need for soldiery and pressure emanated from heavy tax with intrusive market policy, which in turn led to widespread strife among soldiers and civilians. Complementarily, compared with his father, Riu Cong-jian made considerably more efforts to build up extensive political connections with prominent high officials and eunuchs in court, almost to an extent to leave many suspicious accounts in official histories and chronicles to this day. Yet this might well have been effective, as it seemingly nullified an effort to transfer him to the other commands in the winter of 832-833. Further, right after the failed palace coup to remove eunuchs' influence in 835, he could even claim himself as a willing, loyal commandant who wanted to ‘cleanse the Imperial entourage’ by presenting successive public memoranda to the throne. This was very risky yet daring, efficacious move for him, since he too was considered very dubious with regard to the connections with ringleaders of incident, Li Xun and Zheng Zhu. Nevertheless, as 5 more years had been passing in Kaicheng era (836-840), with the normalization of situation and reassessment from opinion leaders, the crucial image of ‘loyal commandant’ who even dared to intervene court affairs, collapsed. Ample suspicions that he had made self-interested connections with Imperial favorites indiscriminately had never been washed out, while revealing his hypocrisy of pointing out those of others. Most of all, further accusations that he had been in concert with ‘the offender of the Emperor's body’ Li and Zheng, effectively overshadowed the pretexts and pretensions of loyalty. This was the fundamental reason why his renewed approach to the new Emperor, Wuzong, with the tribute of a fine horse, was promptly cut off. Following the nullification of extensive attempts to ‘connect’ with the court and throne, what had been left to Riu house was only the personally-loyal core combatants. With much fear, Riu Congjian and Riu Zhen had gravely misjudged the precarious situation by the prejudice that, without the insurance of succession by utilization of these forces as a threat and possible kinetic resistance, the whole familia could not be spared. But this was totally misled, considering the fact that many other similar precedents who could live on even to get some other commands afterwards, simply by turninig themselves in the court and relinquish any asserted rights to the command post. Above all, this could be scarcely a response with meaningful outcomes, since it was based on a presumption that central authorities could not bear a long, multi-campaigning season venture. With the advent of ‘Yuanhuo transformation’, the essential elements being centralized meticulous campaign-operation planning with execution and the Imperial agenda setting backed by personal will, the whole strategic conditions had been drastically, and adversely changed to any rebellious local commandants.