in 699, their aim of breaking up the Tibetans’ realm and destroying their power.  In the last year of Kao Tsung’s reign, 683, came the first of the wars of liberation of the northern Turks, known until then as the western Turks, against the Chinese.  And with the end of Kao Tsung’s reign began the decline of the T’ang regime.  Most of the historians attribute it to a woman, the later empress Wu.  She had been a concubine of T’ai Tsung, and after his death had become a Buddhist nun—­a frequent custom of the time—­until Kao Tsung fell in love with her and made her a concubine of his own.  In the end he actually divorced the empress and made the concubine empress (655).  She gained more and more influence, being placed on a par with the emperor and soon entirely eliminating him in practice; in 680 she removed the rightful heir to the throne and put her own son in his place; after Kao Tsung’s death in 683 she became regent for her son.  Soon afterward she dethroned him in favour of his twenty-two-year-old brother; in 690 she deposed him too and made herself empress in the “Chou dynasty” (690-701).  This officially ended the T’ang dynasty.

Matters, however, were not so simple as this might suggest.  For otherwise on the empress’s deposition there would not have been a mass of supporters moving heaven and earth to treat the new empress Wei (705-712) in the same fashion.  There is every reason to suppose that behind the empress Wu there was a group opposing the ruling clique.  In spite of everything, the T’ang government clique was very pro-Turkish, and many Turks and members of Toba families had government posts and, above all, important military commands.  No campaign of that period was undertaken without Turkish auxiliaries.  The fear seems to have been felt in some quarters that this T’ang group might pursue a military policy hostile to the gentry.  The T’ang group had its roots mainly in western China; thus the eastern Chinese gentry were inclined to be hostile to it.  The first act of the empress Wu had been to transfer the capital to Loyang in the east.  Thus, she tried to rely upon the co-operation of the eastern gentry which since the Northern Chou and Sui dynasties had been out of power.  While the western gentry brought their children into government positions by claiming family privileges (a son of a high official had the right to a certain position without having passed the regular examinations), the sons of the eastern gentry had to pass through the examinations.  Thus, there were differences in education and outlook between both groups which continued long after the death of the empress.  In addition, the eastern gentry, who supported the empress Wu and later the empress Wei, were closely associated with the foreign merchants of western Asia and the Buddhist Church to which they adhered.  In gratitude for help from the Buddhists, the empress Wu endowed them with enormous sums of money, and tried to make Buddhism a sort of state religion.  A similar development had taken place in the Toba and also in the Sui period.  Like these earlier rulers, the empress Wu seems to have aimed at combining spiritual leadership with her position as ruler of the empire.