Characters

"Why should I, who guard the frontiers, bow before the ministers of the palace?"

Of mixed Sogdian and Turkic origin, An Lushan rose from the frontier as a soldier of enormous physical size and cunning charm. He flattered his way into the affection of the aged Emperor Xuanzong and his consort Yang Guifei — who reportedly adopted the grotesquely fat general as her 'son' — and was rewarded with command of three of the empire's most powerful military regions, controlling nearly 200,000 of its best troops. In 755, fearing the hostility of the chief minister Yang Guozhong (Yang Guifei's cousin) and grasping his own strength, he rebelled, marched south, took Luoyang, and proclaimed himself emperor of a new Yan dynasty. But his triumph curdled: growing obese, half-blind from illness, and murderously paranoid, he became a terror to his own household. In January 757 he was stabbed to death in his bed by his own son, An Qingxu — the first of the betrayals that would consume the rebellion he had unleashed.

"The throne of Yan is not yet lost while I hold a sword."

An Lushan's old comrade from the frontier, of Turkic origin, Shi Siming was one of the ablest of the rebel commanders. When the rebellion faltered after An Lushan's murder and the weakness of his son An Qingxu, Shi Siming murdered An Qingxu, seized the Yan throne, and breathed new life into the rebel cause — retaking Luoyang and inflicting the humiliating defeat on the vast, divided Tang army at Xiangzhou in 759. Harsh, suspicious, and cruel, he ruled his followers by terror. It proved his undoing: in 761, planning to disinherit his eldest son Shi Chaoyi, he was murdered by that very son in a repetition of An Lushan's fate. His death fatally weakened the rebellion, which never recovered its momentum under the incompetent Shi Chaoyi.

"My father's throne is mine by right."

A son of An Lushan, An Qingxu murdered his increasingly tyrannical and paranoid father in his bed in January 757 — with the help of a eunuch and a general — and seized the Yan throne. But he had none of his father's ability or force of personality. Weak, indecisive, and given to drink, he swiftly lost the loyalty of the hardened rebel commanders. He was besieged by a huge Tang army at Yecheng in 759, and though the disunity of the Tang generals let him survive the siege, he was soon afterward murdered in turn by his father's comrade Shi Siming, who took over the rebel cause. His brief, feeble reign marked the first collapse of the rebellion into fratricidal chaos.

"I have lost my kingdom for a smile."

The emperor whose long reign was both the summit and the ruin of the Tang golden age. In his early decades Xuanzong presided over a brilliant flowering of prosperity, poetry, and power — the age of the poets Li Bai and Du Fu. But in his old age he grew weary of government, fell under the spell of his beautiful young consort Yang Guifei, and let power slip to her worthless relatives and to favourites like the very An Lushan who would destroy him. When the rebellion came and Chang'an fell, the aged emperor fled toward Sichuan — only to have his own guard mutiny at the Mawei post station and force him to consent to the strangling of Yang Guifei, the great love of his life. Broken by grief and disaster, he abdicated in favour of his son Suzong and died in lonely retirement in 762, the tragic symbol of a golden age destroyed by its own complacency.

"In life or death, I am the emperor's."

One of the 'Four Great Beauties' of Chinese history, Yang Guifei was the beloved consort of the aged Emperor Xuanzong, and her story became the great romantic tragedy of the age. Her rise brought her grasping family to power — above all her cousin Yang Guozhong, whose feud with An Lushan helped ignite the rebellion — and her hold over the besotted emperor came to symbolise the corruption and complacency that ruined the golden age. When Chang'an fell and the court fled, the imperial guard mutinied at the Mawei post station, killed Yang Guozhong, and refused to march on until the emperor gave up Yang Guifei as well. Xuanzong, powerless, consented, and she was strangled with a silk cord — dying, by legend, with dignity, at thirty-seven. Her death became one of the most retold tragedies in Chinese literature, a symbol of love, beauty, and the terrible price of a fallen empire.

"Loyalty and patience will restore the Mandate of Heaven."

The greatest loyalist general of the war and the saviour of the Tang dynasty, Guo Ziyi combined military skill with a rare political tact that let him survive an emperor's chronic suspicion. He led the campaigns that retook both imperial capitals in 757 — securing the fearsome Uyghur cavalry as allies — and repeatedly rescued the dynasty from disaster over the following years, on the battlefield and through his personal prestige with the Uyghurs. Unlike so many able Tang generals, who were destroyed by court intrigue or their own ambition, Guo Ziyi remained unshakeably loyal even when dismissed, slandered, and passed over, always returning when the dynasty needed him. He lived to a great age laden with honours, revered ever after as the model of the loyal minister-general, and became a folk symbol of good fortune, long life, and a flourishing family.

"I would rather die a loyal ghost than live a traitor's life."

A civil official turned soldier, Zhang Xun conducted the most famous and terrible defensive stand of the war. Holding first Yongqiu and then the vital city of Suiyang, he blocked the rebel advance into the rich Yangtze and Huai river regions whose taxes sustained the Tang war effort — winning renown for his cunning, such as tricking the enemy into wasting their arrows on straw dummies. At Suiyang in 757 he held out for ten months against overwhelming odds, until his garrison had eaten the horses, the rats, the leather of their armour, and finally, in the extremity of starvation, the people of the city — beginning, it was said, with his own concubine, whom he killed to feed his men. The city fell and Zhang Xun was executed, defiant to the end. He became one of the most honoured — and most morally troubling — heroes in Chinese history, worshipped for his loyalty even as later ages recoiled from the horror of the siege.

"A city well held is worth ten thousand horsemen."

Of Khitan descent, Li Guangbi was, with Guo Ziyi, one of the two great Tang commanders who saved the dynasty — and by many measures the finer battlefield tactician. He masterminded brilliant defensive victories, most famously the defence of Taiyuan, where with a small force and ingenious use of tunnels and stratagems he held the city against a vastly larger rebel army. He fought throughout the war, sharing in the reconquest of the capitals and the grinding campaigns in the north, and was ranked the foremost general of the age for his skill. But unlike the politically deft Guo Ziyi, Li Guangbi fell foul of court intrigue and the suspicion of eunuchs late in the war; disgraced and fearful, he died in 764, a reminder of how the dynasty devoured even the men who saved it.