Tang Studies 20-21 (2002-03) A Study in Court Factionalism: The Politics of Tang Taizong ANDREW EISENBERG NORTHEASTERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY This essay examines the latter half of the reign of Tang Taizong JSJ&TR from approximately 636 until his death in 649. While Taizong was famous in East Asia as an exemplary emperor, immortalized in the didactic work, Zhenguan zhengyao iSlBScil, on the other hand the post-636 period of his reign was notable for its fractious court factional struggles. Here I shall argue that the court discord of the post-636 period was the result of a conscious effort by Taizong himself to factionalize and manipulate the court as a means to accentuate the personal power of the throne. In the context of a dynastic imperial polity, or a patrimonial regime, this was a well-known political tactic.1 Based on the way Taizong M y thanks to the Center for East Asian Studies, University of Chicago, for granting me access to their research facilities. 1 In Legalist texts such as Hanfeizi and the Shen Buhai fragments collected by Herrlee G. Creel, the king is instructed on a number of tactics to use to keep his leading courtiers off balance and unable to unite among themselves or to gain insight into the mind of their king. The intellectual perspectives used to guide and legitimate political action at the Chinese court were not limited to Confucianism (which indeed objected to factional competition), but were derived from a variety of Legalist and so-called Huang-Lao perspectives, as well, which argued for the necessity of the throne to manipulate the court. Both Chen Yinke and Howard Wechsler have noted the tendency of the Tang court to organize political activities around factional groupings, though, Wechsler disagreed with Chen regarding the factors that held the factions together as cohesive court groupings. But neither Chen nor Wechsler discussed the issue from the perspective of the throne being the instigator of some of these factional struggles . Wechsler's essay, "Factionalism in Early Tang Government/' in Perspectives on the Tang, ed. Wright and Twitchett (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1973), 87-120, sums up the debate as it stood in 1973. Norbert Elias (The Court 39 Eisenberg: The Politics of Tang Taizong structured aspects of this factional tactic (playing off the heir apparent against his next eldest son) makes it probable that he was emulating the manner in which his father, Gaozu SSffl, had played himself (Li Shimin ^ffiS) off against his eldest brother and the heir apparent, Jiancheng Mrf&, from the early 620s until the Xuanwumen Incident of 626, when Taizong killed his eldest brother and seized the position of heir apparent, with the post-facto blessing of his father, Gaozu.2 In Taizong's case, however, the effort to manipulate factions created around his two sons collapsed in 643, creating a political crisis at the court and costing the throne significant political capital. We shall then see that from 645-46, in particular, Taizong engaged in an extraordinary number of mobile personal appearances : at the frontlines of the Liaodong campaign of 645, the early 646 month-long sojourn at Bingzhou (south of modern Taiyuan), and then finally his triumphant personal summit in the ninth luSociety [New York: Pantheon Books, 1983], 119-20) has argued that courtiers are manipulated "... largely against each other, so that they cancel out in their effect on the king. In a broader sense this applies to the whole dominion. In a narrower sense it applies directly to the court... Here, not only does each individual compete with every other for prestige, but different groups struggle with each other.. This sets the king... a very specific task... he must constantly ensure that the conflicting tendencies of court people act in his own favor... In this way the king divided and ruled/' In another part of his discussion, Elias refers to the king as a "kind of umpire" (p. 273). Elias' discussion of the European court has been subject to revisionist criticism, particularly from Jeroen Duindam, in his Myths of Power. In my opinion the validity of this critique is mixed. Based on the evidence presented in his own text, Duindam's critique does...