Provincial Autonomy and Frontier Defense in Late Tang: The Case of the Lulong Army

We can group the forty or so military provinces into which Tang China was divided in the aftermath of the An Lushan Rebellion (755–63) in several broad categories on the basis of their region, function, and attitude toward the Tang court in Chang’an. Representing one extreme were several highly militarized provinces that enjoyed a very high degree of autonomy, paid no taxes to the center, and insisted on the right of hereditary succession to the office of military governor (jiedushi). The longest lasting of these autonomous provinces were the so-called “three garrisons of Hebei” (Hebei san zhen: Youzhou, Chengde, and Wei-Bo), whose military leaders traced their origins to the rebel armies of An Lushan (d. 757). Facing these recalcitrant provinces across a confrontation line that ran along the Taihang Mountains (Taihang shan) and over the Henan Plain was a string of loyalist provinces that also maintained powerful military forces. Those in Henan were especially sensitive because they guarded the Bian Canal (Bian he), the principal route for tax and tribute revenues from the rich Lower Yangzi region and therefore the logistical lifeline of the Tang court. The southern provinces that provided the economic underpinning for imperial power were only lightly garrisoned, and their governors tended to be civil officials rather than military men. Revenues from the south made it possible to sustain another group of heavily armed loyalist provinces, located in relatively poor areas north and west of Chang’an, whose primary responsibility was to protect the capital from the Tibetans.