Summary:
Part I: The Jin Dynasty, a water-filled 100-episode "Dog Blood Drama"
Part II: The Eastern Jin Dynasty, a dynasty "renewed" by the family clan
The third part: the extinction of the concubine group, the side line sits in the village
Part IV: The "Glory of the King" Forced to ascend to the throne
Part V: Congenital deficiency, then let Zu Ti make up for it the day after tomorrow
Part VI: Dead Demon Head Shi Le
Part VII: The Endgame That Cannot Be Tampered With
In the previous part, we talked about how Qin Shi Huang and Meng Tian, Emperor Wu of Han and Huo Fuyi, two pairs of monarchs and courtiers, achieved each other and jointly sent the empire into the fast runway. Monty and Huo were lucky, they were like the sharpest steel on the blade. Ke Meng and Huo Changyou, but the Qin Emperor Han Wu was rare.
The male protagonist who appeared today is also a well-known "Northern Expedition Soldier". He was Liu Bang's heart-wrenching "Ande warrior guarding the four directions", but he had no choice but to live in the partial An Dynasty that "looked at the old Shenzhou with high north", serving a monarch who only loved Xiao Qixing and coveted the appearance of temporary power and prosperity. He is the ancestor of the Jin Dynasty who smells the chicken dancing.
When we read the history of the Great Unification Dynasty such as the Qin, Han, Tang, and Ming Dynasties, we will feel that the main line is clear, and the plot development is as addictive as reading Shuangwen. But as soon as you read the history of Jin, you will be dizzy. The love and killing between the peoples, the intricate relationship between the characters, and the change of power between you and me, make people feel like five hundred years have passed.
You know, the Jin Dynasty is a relatively short-lived dynasty, the Western Jin Dynasty (265-316) and the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317-420) add up to only a hundred years, since the first emperor of the Western Jin Dynasty Sima Yan after the imperial power fell, tigers, lions, cats and dogs all want to stand up and make big moves, which led to the intensification of centralized power, so that a small Jin "stage" crowded with all kinds of characters who did not dare to speak out of other dynasties, and squeezed the emperor who should be the protagonist to the end. Let a 20-episode historical drama shoot a 100-episode water-injected dog blood drama effect.
Although this article is opened for the purpose of writing Zu Di, it is necessary to spend some space to introduce the background of his era. Only when we understand the unique political characteristics of this dynasty can we understand that the end of Zu Ti's Northern Expedition was already "doomed", even if the gods of war such as Meng Tian and Huo Went sick crossed to the Eastern Jin Dynasty, the ending could not be "tampered with".
Zu Di was born in the second year of the establishment of the Western Jin Dynasty (266), was a "bear child" who did not love to learn when he was a child, and only after he became an adult did he study hard, and when he was in his 30s, he should have entered the age of "mid-life crisis" before he began to "smell the chicken dancing" and vowed to serve the motherland. This is more than ten years later than our post-10s children who have to learn to recognize words, learn logic, and learn English from kindergarten. But this rhythm did not prevent him from eventually reaching the peak of his life.
After Zu Ti entered the army, although he sat in the seats of many "high-ranking cadres" and was also involved in the "Rebellion of the Eight Kings", the cause that really made him live up to the original intention of "smelling the chicken dancing" began with the Yongjia Rebellion (311), when the western Jin capital Luoyang was captured by the Xiongnu army, and Zu Ti protected his relatives and townships to go south to avoid chaos. As a descendant of a large family in the north, along the way he gave up the carriage to the old, weak, sick and disabled, and distributed food and clothing to those in need, but he himself hiked over the mountains.
In 316 AD, the Western Jin Dynasty went offline; in 317, the Eastern Jin Dynasty appeared, and the capital was Jiankang (Nanjing).
Dressed in crowns to cross the south
The Eastern Jin Dynasty, a dynasty with the lowest sense of existence in Chinese history, produced Wang Xizhi, the "first line of the book under heaven", Xie An, a famous minister who made the former Qin millions of troops tremble and the grass and trees were soldiers, Tao Yuanming, who "the world is so big, I want to plant chrysanthemums", and Xie Lingyun, the originator of landscape poetry who "only one bucket high"...
Among these four people, except for Tao Yuanming, the son of an official eunuch who was forced to grow up overnight, the other three were all related. Xie Lingyun's grandfather was the nephew of Xie An (from the Xie clan of Chen County), and his grandmother was the daughter of Wang Xizhi (from the Wang clan of Langya). The relationship between these people, on the surface, is that human genes naturally like to combine strong and powerful and choose the best, but the deeper reason lies in the political ecology of the Eastern Jin Dynasty - this is a dynasty controlled by the family clan, the door valve politics reached its peak, and even surpassed the imperial power, which is extremely rare in the entire history of China.
All this has to start from the "last life" of the Eastern Jin Dynasty and the Western Jin Dynasty.
Originally, Sima Yan, the founding emperor of the Jin Dynasty, was a monarch with a very strong personal influence, and the military and political power was in his own hands, which can be seen as a lower version of Qin Shi Huang. However, the old master was very confused about the matter of the heir, so that he changed the direction and pattern of The millennium of Chinese history after that. He passed the throne to his concubine Sima Zheng, the Emperor Hui of Jin, who uttered the famous phrase "Why don't you eat meat". The emperors of the Western Jin Dynasty (including the posthumous emperor) seemed to be very fond of passing the throne to the eldest son (if the eldest son died, it was passed on to the second son, and so on).
As a usurper of the "Wei" dynasty with an unjust name, it was very obedient to the Zhou rites on the issue of succession, in order to maintain the internal stability of Sima Zong's office. In the face of such a Jin Hui Emperor who had no talent and prestige, could not control the situation, and many people thought that he was "stupid", Empress Jia Nanfeng and Yang Jun, the father of the empress, easily provoked the internal battle of the royal family - the "Rebellion of the Eight Kings". At the same time, Liu Yuan, a Xiongnu who claimed to be a descendant of Liu Bang, took advantage of the chaos to establish the "Han Zhao" regime.
During the Rebellion of the Eight Kings and the reign of Han Zhao, three emperors were killed (there were only four emperors in the Western Jin Dynasty); seven of the eight kings sima princes were not allowed to die well and harmed their heirs; not to mention the death of all foreign relatives, even their "teammates" were tragically destroyed. The more famous ones are Shi Chong, who loves to fight with wealth, and Pan An, the first beautiful man, both of whom were killed by Sima Lun, who launched a coup d'état, because Jia Mi (Jia Nanfeng's nephew), who had a good relationship with them, and eventually ended up with a "cursed three tribes", even Pan An's 70-year-old mother did not let go. The "Rebellion of the Eight Kings" is not just a matter of children within the royal family grabbing candy to eat like the "Change of Xuanwumen", it detonated the future "Wuhu Chaos", which led to the division of China for nearly 300 years, and thousands of people who were forced to move south and lost their lives and families left only a string of cold numbers in the history books.
In this story of the Sima family beating each other, the main participants are almost all the characters closest to the royal family. For example, Sima Liang, the king of Runan, and Sima Lun, the king of Zhao, were the sons of Sima Yi, sima ran the king of Qi was the grandson of Sima Zhao, and Sima Wei the king of Chu, Sima Qi the king of Changsha, and Sima Ying, the king of Chengdu, were the sons of Sima Yan... Because only the heirs closest to the core of the imperial power have the strength and appeal to launch a coup d'état.
But no one expected that the big winner of the Rebellion of the Eight Kings was actually the Clan Shu Clan - Sima Yue, the King of the East Sea. He was the grandson of Sima Yi's fourth brother, so when he reached the generation of the reigning Emperor Hui of Jin, he could only be regarded as a distant relative. Sima Yue, as a Member of the Shu clan, in order to obtain more favorable "assists", chose to woo the famous and prestigious clan of Langya (present-day Linyi, Shandong), the Wang clan of Langya, and thus opened the prelude to "the king and the horse, the world together", and the prelude to the Eastern Jin Dynasty was played.
Although Sima Yue was the final winner of the Rebellion of the Eight Kings, everything he did was to make a wedding dress for another Sima Wangye who was also in the Shu clan. The prince who was hit by the pie was Sima Rui, the founding emperor of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, who continued his life for the Western Jin Dynasty for 103 years, migrated the culture of the Central Plains in the war to the south of the Anjiang River, and allowed the Chinese civilization to be well preserved.
Sima Rui stood on the podium, received this far-reaching "jackpot" that could not be read in one breath, and excitedly delivered the acceptance speech, "This award does not belong to me alone, I want to share it with the most important person in my life." "This is not a passage I made up haphazardly. In 318, on the day Sima Rui ascended the throne, he invited another person to share the throne with him and share his highest honor. Obviously, this person was not Zu Di, but the greatest hero of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Wang Dao from the Langya Wang clan.
Sima Rui can be said to be a very timid and fearful person who acts passively. When the rebellion of the Eight Kings was too great to end, the King of Langya who inherited his father 's title (note the difference between the King of Langya and the King of Langya, the former being the prince of the feudal state in Langya, and the latter being the family clan of the king of Langya) Mingzhe protected himself and tried not to get involved in the struggle, and later at the behest of Sima Yue, he participated in the crusade against Sima Ying in Yicheng, and after the defeat of the army, fearing that he would harm himself, absconded out of the city, returned to Luoyang and immediately fled back to Langya with his family. It can be seen that Sima Rui pursues the creed of life first and a neat and tidy family. He didn't have much idea about conquering the world and sitting on the country, just be a harmless little prince.
Is there any prince in this world who does not want to be an emperor?
Three things can prove that Sima Rui was not concerned about "being an emperor".
The first is that Sima Yi, the seventeen-year-old, the last emperor of the Western Jin Dynasty, knew that he was doomed before the fall of Chang'an (the second capital of the Western Jin Dynasty), so he wrote to Sima Rui, saying that once he was out of the play, he hoped that Sima Rui could "take control of the old capital, and restore the mausoleum temple according to the old capital, so as to shame sima rui." This is equivalent to passing the throne to Sima Rui. But Sima Rui did not dare to pick up ah, even his hometown Langya did not dare to return, or did he dare to return to Chang'an? This is going to happen to other people, don't you start sewing dragon robes? At the end of 316, Sima Ye surrendered to Liu Yao, and the Western Jin Dynasty fell. In 317, Sima Rui ascended the throne as King of Jin (not emperor) with the support of emperors of Jin and the great tribes of the North and South. On April 23, 318, the news of Sima Ye's murder reached Jiankang, and it was three days later on April 26 that Sima Rui officially ascended the throne and became the first emperor of the Eastern Jin Dynasty. Looking at this timeline, Sima Rui does not grab half a beat, does not dare to cross the thunder pool, and is definitely a decent, cautious and conservative person.
The second thing is that the aforementioned Sima Rui invited Wang Dao to ascend the throne with him, but fortunately, Wang Dao remained humble from beginning to end, and although he was an extremely popular subject, he never inflated himself.
The third thing was that Wang Dao's cousin Wang Dunxing rebelled, and could have taken advantage of Sima Rui and become emperor himself, but he did not do it. Sima Rui later sent a message to Wang Dun, "If the Gong does not forget this dynasty, then the world can still be at peace; if not, it will be returned to Langya to avoid the Xian road." "It means that if you want to sit on the throne, then I will go back to Langya!"
How did Sima Rui, who did not have a bit of an imperial appearance, become an emperor and still be the founding emperor? Yes, he was actually forced to ascend to the throne. As early as 13 years before Sima Rui became emperor (305 AD), he was sent by Sima Yue to sit in Xia Pi (present-day Suining County, Jiangsu Province), and Wang Dao also followed him in military planning. Two years later, Sima Rui was sent to Jiankang (then called Jianye, later changed to Jiankang to avoid Sima Yi's secret), and Wang Dao moved south. The place they went to this time was the seat of the old clan of the State of Wu during the Three Kingdoms period. The general who surrendered to the last emperor of Eastern Wu, Sun Hao (Sun Quan's grandson), was Sima Rui's grandfather Sima Ling. It's really not a matter of not getting together. Faced with the old family feud, the old nobles left behind by the former Eastern Wu dynasty did not buy the new royal family's account. Therefore, for Sima Rui, who originally had no imperial ambition, how to establish himself in the new territory was the most important thing, as for the Northern Expedition, let it go with the fate!
Therefore, under the layout of Wang Dao, carrots and sticks were used, while recruiting local famous and prestigious families, while quelling the rebellion, and finally helping Sima Rui gain a firm foothold in Jiangnan. After the Yongjia Rebellion, a large number of Central Plains people took refuge in the south, and Wang Dao took the opportunity to recruit sages, expand the talent pool, resolve the contradictions between the old and new nobles, and lay a stable personnel foundation for the unification of the Eastern Jin Dynasty in the future. Therefore, Sima Rui's Jiangshan was "sent" to him by Wang Dao, and Wang Dao was the pillar of Sima Rui's life. As for the Northern Expedition? Oh, not to be south-logged is good!
Wang Dao (Wang Xizhi's cousin) calligraphy
Zu Ti's Northern Expedition was not supported from the very beginning by the highest power hub. However, although Sima Rui was unwilling to go north, he was not willing to openly oppose it, so he sent Zu Ti thousands of people with grain and 3,000 pieces of cloth, and asked him to recruit his own soldiers and build his own weapons. This is equivalent to the highest leadership allowing department managers to open up new lines of business, but the profit and loss are at their own risk, and the company does not give support or obstruction. If the average person encounters this situation, he will already be cold. I regain lost ground for you, but you don't pay attention? But Zu Ti, who was more than 30 years old to "smell the chicken dancing", did not lose heart, but began the most inspirational life.
Any seemingly impossible task will have a breakthrough. For example, during the Warring States period, King Wuling of Zhao implemented the "Hufu Riding Shooting", in order to rush out of a way to live in the midst of a voice of opposition, he first chose a place in the north of the Zhao Kingdom that had deeper exchanges with the nomads and was more likely to accept the Shangwu culture to carry out the pilot. Similarly, Zu Ti also found a breakthrough, that is, to "start" from the hundreds of clans he had led south. He crossed the river north from Jingkou (present-day Zhenjiang, Jiangsu Province) with his first men, and slammed his oars (the source of the idiom "hit the middle stream") in the middle of the river, vowing to recover the Central Plains. After crossing the river, he temporarily lived in Jiangyin and began to build weapons, and recruited more than 2,000 soldiers.
After completing the early "capital accumulation", the next step is to continue to expand the force. After all, the northern expedition could not be completed by a few thousand people. How to expand? Zu Ti also saw another opportunity, that is, there were many displaced people north of the Yangtze River, and in order to save their lives, they and the local aborigines used Wubao as a base and established many armed organizations. These organizations ostensibly obey sima rui's orders, but in fact they all establish themselves as kings, and Sima Rui has no time to "take care of" these people. So Zu Di thought of many ways to absorb them. For example, sending people to "brainwash" and "draw a big pie" to the leaders of these organizations, first earning him a hundred million and then saying that it is far better than sticking to this half-mountain. In this process, even if there were several crises in the middle, Zu Ti calmly coped, the control ability was very good, coupled with Wang Han, Huan Xuan and other gods assisted, Zu Ti finally gained a firm foothold in Yuzhou and opened up the channel of the Northern Expedition.
The biggest obstacle encountered by Zu Ti's Northern Expedition was the Later Zhao regime created by Shi Le, the leader of the Qi clan. In 320 AD, Zu Di's army and Later Zhao's army faced off for more than forty days in pengpiwu (present-day southern Kaifeng County, Henan Province) in the east and west of Taiwan, and both sides held their breath to see who would fall first.
In the case that it was difficult to distinguish between victory and defeat, Zu Di once again used his "genius director cell" to send someone to play a drama to make the opponent mistakenly think that the Eastern Jin Army had enough grain and grass to fight a protracted battle. Zu Di also had people rob the other side of the grain, forced back Later Zhao, and then took advantage of the victory to pursue and occupy the territory, and later sent troops to attack Later Zhao many times, so that Shi Le's strength in Henan was rapidly reduced.
In Henan, in addition to Hou Zhao's obstruction, there were also a number of tit-for-tat separatist groups. They often met each other, and Zu Ti became an intermediary to help them mediate conflicts. In the end, these people all chose Zu Di as their common "big brother" and together recovered most of the land in the central plains south of the Yellow River.
At that time, some Wubao lords were forced to send the sons of the clan to Houzhao as hostages under pressure. Instead of being angry, Zu Ti expressed understanding, and pretended to send people to attack these forts, creating the illusion of being an enemy of them, in order to dispel Shi Le's suspicions. In order to show their gratitude, these forts often helped Zu Di spy on military intelligence and successfully helped the Northern Expeditionary Army to break through Hou Zhao repeatedly.
Don't look at Zu Ti's various tricks and tricks in the military struggle, but he is actually a very cherished talent and very loving boss. He always treated people who were unfamiliar with him or those of low status with courtesy, and rewarded soldiers for their slightest merit. He advised Nongsang to take the lead in developing production, so that the people could have a vegetable and a meal, but his life was extremely simple; he buried the dead bones and soothed people's hearts, but he could not repair the grave of his mother who remained in his hometown. Zu Di won the hearts of the people, and even Sima Rui, the Emperor of Jinyuan, who had ignored him in the past, promoted him to the rank of general of Zhenxi. Seeing that Zu Ti's power was getting stronger and stronger, Shi Le did not dare to invade the south again, and not only sent people to repair his mother's grave and request mutual market, but also killed the rebel generals of the Eastern Jin Dynasty and showed his overtures to Zu Ti. Zu Ti later reconciled with Shi Le, and the border was temporarily at peace.
According to this rhythm of development, even if the Eastern Jin Dynasty cannot restore the former glory of the old ancestors, it can also be separated from the northern nationalities, and when I taoguang and cultivate obscurity, one day I will be able to restore my great rivers and mountains. But the problem is, Zu Ti is only a courtier after all. "Holding heavy troops in hand" and "mastering the lord with high merit" are taboos at any time. This is also why we admire Qin Shi Huang for daring to give Wang Qi an army of 600,000 troops, and to Give Meng Tian an army of 300,000 for a long time, and Emperor Wu of Han dared to absolutely trust Huo Toyi, even if his military feats could be proud of the entire history of China.
Zu Di's ending is actually predictable. Because his personal prestige was too high, the imperial court appointed Dai Yuan to leave the town of Hefei to contain Zu Ti. Zu Di was very unhappy in his heart. Soon, internal contradictions broke out in the imperial court, and he feared that once there was civil unrest, the Northern Expedition would be difficult to succeed. Although he was angry and angry, he commanded the work with illness. The fortress south of the city had not yet been built, and Zu Ti died of illness at the age of fifty-six. The local people, like bereaved parents, built ancestral halls for him.
It was Shi Le who laughed to the end.
The imperial court sent Zu Ti's younger brother Zu Yue to succeed his brother. Soon, a large area of land recovered by Zu Di was attacked by Later Zhao.
Many people read this ending and sighed. If Zu Di ignored the disputes in the imperial court, insisted on eight more years and ten years, and survived Shi Le, how good it would be, maybe the Northern Expedition would become it. Although history does not have ifs, sometimes it can give answers.
In 349, 28 years after Zu Ti's death, Shi Le's nephew, the usurper Shi Hu, died, and the north fell into chaos. In 354, Huan Wen, another hero of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, began the Three Northern Expeditions, and although the first and third major defeats were made, the Second Northern Expedition recovered the former capital Luoyang and also restored the imperial tomb of the former emperor. Although there are still many uncertainties, I dare not say that the Central Plains have been completely recovered, but at least it is a key step in the success of the Northern Expedition! If it doesn't work, we have to go to a pit.
But the Eastern Jin court thought of various excuses to refuse to go north. Why? Because the Central Plains is the Central Plains of the Western Jin Dynasty, the world of the orthodox Sima Clan, the Eastern Jin Dynasty was originally the imperial power that Sima Clan had taken away from the, if you abandon your own Jiangnan base camp and rush to run to the Central Plains territory of other people's homes, then everything will be beaten back to its original form, who will be willing? Therefore, even if Zu Ti's Northern Expedition was successful, it can be concluded that the imperial court would most likely not move his family to Luoyang or Chang'an, and Zu Ti would still be depressed.
Therefore, this world has never lacked Meng Tian Huo to get sick, nor is there a shortage of Zu Di Yue Fei, what is missing is the Qin Emperor Han Wu Tang Zong Song Zu, what is missing is Song Renzong, who is full of Manchu Wen Wu Xuan, but few people know who the emperor is; what is missing is the Qianlong Emperor who lost the Western Regions for a thousand years after the Anshi Rebellion, and finally took back and renamed Xinjiang...