The system of officers and men originally originated from the policy that Xianbei people were soldiers and Han people were farmers in the Northern Wei Dynasty. The whole family of government soldiers can be exempted from compulsory labor, and being a soldier has become the patent of Xianbei people. On the contrary, the Han people have changed from the traditional three-armed system, that is, getting on the horse as a soldier and getting off the horse as a farmer, to a purely educated farmer. This policy obviously bears the color of ethnic segregation and discrimination.
In the late Northern Zhou Dynasty, due to the strategic confrontation with the Northern Qi Dynasty, there was a serious shortage of Xianbei people and they began to recruit Han people as government soldiers. When Emperor Wendi of Sui Dynasty was appointed Prime Minister of the Northern Zhou Dynasty, he ordered the Han people who were given Xianbei surname in the Western Wei Dynasty to restore their Han surname, and began to break the rule that Xianbei people were soldiers and Han people were farmers. In the tenth year of Emperor Kai of Sui Dynasty (590), Emperor Wendi of Sui Dynasty ordered the whole family of government soldiers to be included in the household registration of counties. The soldiers were still in the army, but they were under the command of the military government.
The Tang Dynasty followed the basic system of the Sui Dynasty, including the most important system of officers and men. After being perfected by Emperor Gaozu Li Yuan and Emperor Taizong Li Shimin, 633 government soldiers were set up nationwide to manage the government soldiers, and the system of government soldiers was combined with the system of land equalization, which not only reduced the financial burden of the government, but also ensured the quality of soldiers. The combination of agriculture and war made Tang Jun an invincible lion and the territory of the Tang Dynasty.
However, it was abolished in its heyday, and all this happened in the "Kaiyuan Shi Sheng" with the most powerful national strength in the Tang Dynasty, that is, during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty, Li Longji. What is the most fundamental and main reason?
According to a general and representative view, the collapse of the officers and men system originated in the middle and late period of the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty. Land annexation is becoming more and more serious, and the land equalization system has been destroyed, which has caused a large number of yeomen to lose their land, some to become slaves, and some to flee, resulting in the loss of a large number of soldiers, and the long-standing system of officers and men has lost its meaning.
But this statement is very suspicious, because until the census conducted in 742 AD, the number of households and households increased significantly compared with that in 732 (7.86 million, 45.43 million in 732, 8.52 million and 48.9 million in 742). Obviously, running away from home did not happen on a large scale.
In fact, as early as 749 AD, before Prime Minister Li officially terminated the official military system by administrative order, large-scale border guards had long been professionalized, that is to say, the root cause of the decline of the official military system should have appeared earlier.
So, when exactly? Maybe we can find some clues from the military action of Datang!
From the early Tang Dynasty to the middle Tang Dynasty, although the Tang Dynasty continued to use foreign troops in order to expand its territory, due to the absolute disadvantage of neighboring countries and ethnic groups, Tang Jun was the one who sent troops to attack most of the time, and was able to recruit soldiers and soldiers calmly, and recruited officers and soldiers or peasants to serve in the army for three years, which fully met the requirements. But by Xuanzong, on the one hand, due to the rise of Tubo and Bohai, the pressure was increasing.
On the other hand, Xuanzong's excessive reward for border work led to frequent border conflicts, and the change of the situation led to the transformation of military deployment from "virtual outside and real inside" to "virtual inside and real outside". A large number of elite troops were deployed at the border and stationed normally. In this way, soldiers can only be recruited locally, and because of frequent wars, soldiers have to be completely divorced from production and professionalized in order to effectively solve the national defense problems of the empire. Over time, the government soldiers who lost their functions naturally slowly neglected and eventually lost their functions completely.
To sum up, the most important and fundamental reason for the rise and fall of the officers and men system is the result of the evolution of the strategic situation facing the outside of the Tang Dynasty, that is, the overall situation of strategic offensive has changed into strategic defense, forcing the army to be professional. In contrast, the impact of the collapse of the land equalization system can be ignored, completely negligible.