tang dynasty was a golden age of china its explosive rise from the ashes of sui dynasty heralded a period of intense economic prosperity cultural development and military might but halfway through the dynasty's lifespan everything came to a screeching halt because the unlu sun rebellion erupted and devastated all of china many historians agree that the events mark the long downward spiral of the dynasty until its eventual collapse what's rarely talked about however is the why and how the dynasty actually fell so in this video we will look at the long and painful process of the dynasties demise this video is part of a small series on the fall of tang dynasty the chaotic 5 dynasties and 10 kingdoms period that followed and the rise of the song dynasty so watch out for the other videos when they come out unlu sans rebellion was launched in 755 the main cause of this rebellion was political infighting and the government putting too much power in the hands of the few anlusan who was one of the emperor's favorite officials was being ashed out by his rivals so rather than just wait for them to strip him off his power and get him executed he decided to roll the dice and try to take the empire for himself i have covered this rebellion in more details in the previous episodes so you can go back and watch it if you want to know more in short this conflict which lasted for 8 years left up to 35 million chinese citizens of the tongue dynasty unaccounted for or almost 70 of the population the discrepancy can be partly explained by the change in census-taking method but still lower estimates put the figure at around 13 million dead or up to 20 of the empire's population one of the main causes of this incident is the emperor giving unlu sun too much power as jetus or military governor so what did the next emperor do to quell the rebellion by giving them more power and this is the first stepping stone to the dynasty's gallows to end the rebellion the emperor negotiated peace with the remnants of unlu sun's followers and gave them de facto control over their territory in return for their nominal submission it means that they have control over their own territories economy military and successor effectively becoming their own kingdoms they can do pretty much whatever they want as long as they serve as fountain or buffer states and defend the empire from external invasions these northern territories would remain autonomous until the end of the dynasty the jedus in other areas don't have as much freedom but they also progressively became more powerful so around half a century later emperor sienzong tried to reign in the powers of the jedus he was relatively successful but he did so by making an arguably even worse mistake he empowered the eunuchs as counterbalance and the move backfired big time for him it is believed that shinzon's death in 820 was caused by the eunuchs after his death almost all successive emperors were picked by them this became the second reason for tong dynasty's collapse the emperors were not picked for their ability but for their pliability to the eunuch swims by then the tongue emperors had practically lost control of both the inner and outer court to tie this to a previous episode i talked about how in the 820s the renowned korean admiral changboku who was working in the tang dynasty was shocked to discover that there were many stellar citizens being sold as slaves in northeastern china in 823 the chinese emperor at the time mutsung ordered the banning of slavery but his order had little effect on the northeastern jetus so changboku had to end it himself check out that episode to know more about his life one of the later emperors emperor wenzong tried to fix the situation but his plot against the eunuchs in 835 was discovered and neutralized this failed conspiracy called the sweet dew incident led to the eunuch gaining even more power than ever before with these two conditions in place the recipe for disaster had all its ingredients but the tang dynasty had a few more decades of life yet as it teetered on the brink it was still able to defeat the kingdom of nanson which is located in the present-day yunnan province the kingdom attacks annan in the mid 850s to 860s which is north vietnam today at the time northern vietnam was still part of china but it won't remain as one for much longer the critical event that finally brought the imperial court to its knees was huang's house rebellion but he wasn't the first one who started the rebellion wang shinzo a salt smuggler started the ball rolling in 874 and he had some legitimate grievances the eastern part of the empire was struck by a wave of droughts and floods and instead of alleviating the people suffering the bureaucratic structure neglected their plight and collected even more attacks to fund their war somewhere else the new emperor zhong actually made an imperial edict to provide tax relief to the victims but it wasn't followed through by the officials caught between the famine and corrupt officials the peasants exploded into a rebellion and wang shinzo was there to lead them as they won a few of their initial engagements around the area of what is now considered as the province of santong their forces began to grow eventually in 875 huangtan joined the rebel force like huang shinzo huang tal was also assault smuggler but in addition to that a failed imperial examinee with a mean streak in 877 they had become powerful enough to get the government to negotiate with them the officials were able to get the emperor to offer wang shinzo a pardon and to commission him as an official if he surrenders this is actually a pretty common thing in imperial china rather than defeating rebellions completely the emperor often pardon the rebels and incorporate them into the imperial army obviously this happens more often when the empire is in a weak state and they will be making a lot more of this type of negotiation in the coming decades the rebel leader wang shinzo was about to accept the proposal and everything could have ended there but huangsho who wasn't going to be given a commission made a big fuss about it and accused his leader of betraying the course of the rebellion next is scuffle broke out and the negotiation ended after this the rebel army separated into two with huang's hong kong south to subjugate more areas and coerce local officials to negotiate with the imperial court to commission him obviously this rebellion was no longer about justice wang shinzo was killed in central china in 878 in the process of conquering the south according to some arab sources huangsha committed a massacre in the city of guangzhou killing up to hundreds of thousands of muslims jews christians and zoroastrians along with the local inhabitants however historians suspect that the number was highly inflated nevertheless foreign presence greatly diminished due to the chaos instead of helping end this crisis other jaidos also ceased upon the opportunity to expand their influence they don't want to help each other for the fear that other jedus will come in and take their territory while they are away fighting the rebellion the imperial court being inept also couldn't provide significant support for the military governors so there weren't much incentive for them to risk their life and property for the empire as a side note there was a soldier's mutiny in the unknown region in 880 and they kicked out the jedus power was then transferred to the local elites who governed in the name of the tongue empire in 905 the vietnamese who family would became the jedus of the region and it effectively became independent but that's a separate story with the lack of coordinated action against one tall they eventually captured the empire's capital tangan and he declared himself the emperor of chi dynasty in 881 but since the emperor managed to escape obviously nobody listened to him and now that he declared himself an emperor he had practically thrown a large bullseye on himself in the year 882 two important leaders emerged in the fight against huangtong li ka yong and zuwan li ka yong was a military commander of turkic satwood descent he had rebelled against the town earlier in 787 but he was pardoned and given official post as for zhuwan he was subordinate to juan tall but he assassinated his military supervisor and defected to the empire side because he knew they were losing the two of them will eventually establish some of the most important dynasties of the five dynasties and ten kingdoms period the seize of the chaotic period to come was virtually sown when various commanders defeated huang tall in 884 and the rebel leader committed suicide zohan being the capital d douchebag that he was tried to assassinate li kyung too right after that victory he failed to kill him but this event established a lifelong enmity between the two even though huangso had gone the rebellion continued as another rebel took up the mantle of leadership to one who was rewarded with a princess had become the imperial son-in-law so he continued to fight the rebels and the other jedus and military warlords the situation was very similar to the end of the han dynasty when the three kingdoms was being formed as the warlords fought each other for supremacy zhuwan who had the emperor under his control had the obvious advantage in this contest around this time japan which had been sending regular diplomatic missions to tang china decided to stop sending their envoys because of the complete mess that neighbor is in the tang emperor zorton obviously didn't enjoy being turned into a puppet and duhan was paranoid of him so he killed the emperor and replaced him with a younger one emperor i in 904 but by then he's already had enough of this charade in 907 he just forced the young emperor to abdicate to him and established the later liang dynasty thus he kicked off the five dynasties and ten kingdoms period as many other leaders also followed suits and declared themselves to be kings and emperors on the next episode we will unweave the highly complicated 5 dynasties and 10 kingdoms period so remember to subscribe to know what happens next before i go i would also like to thank all our patrons on patreon for supporting the channel and all you viewers for liking and sharing the video until next time stay cool my bros