Political and Military Activities
In 763 Trisong Detsän sent an army of 200,000 men to the border with Tang China, defeating the forces there and then continuing on to take Chang'an, the Chinese capital, forcing the Tang Emperor to flee the capital. In 783 a peace treaty was negotiated between China and Tibet giving Tibet all lands in the Kokonor region. At that time, the Tang Empire had started its decline due to the Anshi Rebellion.
The King also formed an alliance with King Imobsun of Siam in 778, joining forces to attack the Chinese in Sichuan.
Trisong Detsän next sought to expand westward, reaching the Oxus River and threatening the Arab Caliph, Harun al-Rashid. The Caliph was concerned enough to establish an alliance with the Chinese emperor, and perhaps this alone prevented Tibet from taking control of the Middle East and points beyond. Through the remainder of his reign the King would be preoccupied with Arab wars in the west, taking pressure off his Chinese opponents to the east and north, until his rule ended in 797.
Read more about this topic: Trisong Detsen
Famous quotes containing the words political, military and/or activities:
“In a town-meeting, the great secret of political science was uncovered, and the problem solved, how to give every individual his fair weight in the government, without any disorder from numbers. In a town-meeting, the roots of society were reached. Here the rich gave counsel, but the poor also; and moreover, the just and the unjust.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“War both needs and generates certain virtues; not the highest, but what may be called the preliminary virtues, as valour, veracity, the spirit of obedience, the habit of discipline. Any of these, and of others like them, when possessed by a nation, and no matter how generated, will give them a military advantage, and make them more likely to stay in the race of nations.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“Minds do not act together in public; they simply stick together; and when their private activities are resumed, they fly apart again.”
—Frank Moore Colby (1865–1925)