der Huang Ch'ao. All of them were
opposed to the gentry, and the great slaughter of the gentry of the
capital, shortly before the beginning of Chu's rule, had been welcomed
by Chu and his followers. The gentry therefore would not co-operate with
Chu and preferred to join the Turk Li K'o-yung. But Chu could not
confidently rely on his old comrades. They were jealous of his success
in gaining the place they all coveted, and were ready to join in any
independent enterprise as opportunity offered. All of them, moreover, as
soon as they were given any administrative post, busied themselves with
the acquisition of money and wealth as quickly as possible. These abuses
not only ate into the revenues of the state but actually produced a
common front between the peasantry and the remnants of the gentry
against the upstarts.

In 917, after Li K'o-yung's death, the Sha-t'o Turks beat off an attack
from the Kitan, and so were safe for a time from the northern menace.
They then marched against the Liang state, where a crisis had been
produced in 912 after the murder of Chu Ch'uean-chung by one of his sons.
The Liang generals saw no reason why they should fight for the dynasty,
and all of them went over to the enemy. Thus the "Later T'ang dynasty"
(923-936) came into power in North China, under the son of Li K'o-yung.

The dominant element at this time was quite clearly the Chinese gentry,
especially in western and central China. The Sha-t'o themselves must
have been extraordinarily few in number, probably little more than
100,000 men. Most of them, moreover, were politically passive, being
simple soldiers. Only the ruling family and its following played any
active part, together with a few families related to it by marriage. The
whole state was regarded by the Sha-t'o rulers as a sort of family
enterprise, members of the family being placed in the most important
positions. As there were not enough of them, they adopted into the
family large numbers of aliens of all nationalities. Military posts were
given to faithful members of Li K'o-yung's or his successor's bodyguard,
and also to domestic servants and other clients of the family. Thus,
while in the Later Liang state elements from the peasantry had risen in
the world, some of these neo-gentry reaching the top of the social
pyramid in the centuries that followed, in the Sha-t'o state some of its
warriors, drawn from the most various peoples, entered the gentry class
through their p