"Is it possible!" exclaimed Hsuan Tsung, now an aged monarch, in amazement at the ingratitude of his vassal and at the impending catastrophe. The defense at the Pass of Tung Kwan collapsed. The emperor was forced to flee from the capital one rainy morning, with his favorite mistress and a handful of his faithful servants. The soldiers escorting Hsuan Tsung blamed Yang Kuo-chung for the disaster, and he and all his kin were massacred. Yang Kuei-fei herself did not escape. She was ruthlessly snatched from the arms of her imperial lover, and was strangled and buried on the roadside without ceremony. The emperor abdicated in favor of his son, and proceeded mournfully to Ssuchuan, the land of Shuh.
The new emperor, Su Tsung, mustered a strong army under General Kuo Tsu-i to oppose the foes. Confusion was added by the revolt of Prince Ling, the sixteenth son of Hsuan Tsung, who challenged the authority of his brother from his stronghold in the southern provinces, though this uprising was promptly suppressed. An Lu-shan was driven from Chang-an in 757, and was shortly murdered by his own son, who was in turn killed by An Lu-shan's general, Shi Ssu-ming, another Kitan Tartar, who assumed the imperial title and retained the northern provinces in his iron grip. But Shi Ssu-ming himself was soon assassinated by his son, and the rebellion came finally to an end in 762. We need not follow the history longer. In that very year the former emperor, Hsuan Tsung, who had returned from exile to a lonely palace in Chang-an, died, broken-hearted.
Such was the era. It had, on the one hand, internal peace, prosperity, cosmopolitan culture, profuse hospitalities and literary patronage; on the other, distant
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