The sixteen kingdoms period was an era of division and division in the history of our country. Sixteen separate regimes, or sixteen states, were established in the north, and more than 70 monarchs were involved in a scuffle between the countries for more than 130 years. However, the only one who really made a difference, was praised by future generations, and unified the whole north, and could be called a ming king, could only be. The others were either tyrannical, incompetent, or even short-lived kings.
What was the Period of the Sixteen Kingdoms? What is its relationship with the Eastern Jin Dynasty and the Southern and Northern Dynasties? A lot of people confuse the relationship between them. If we understand the three concepts of time, we can understand the relationship between them. The Eastern Jin Dynasty (317-420) was a dynasty established by the Western Jin dynasty emperor Sima Rui moving south, and in the second year of the Yuan Xi Dynasty, that is, in 420, Liu Yu, the Duke of Song, abolished The Jin Gong Emperor and established Liu Song, the Eastern Jin Dynasty fell, and Chinese history entered the Period of the Northern and Southern Dynasties. The Southern and Northern Dynasties (420-589) are collectively referred to as the Southern and Northern Dynasties. In 420, Liu Yu established the Southern Song Dynasty (Liu Song), and by 589 the Sui Dynasty had destroyed the Song Dynasty Chen, and the Southern and Northern Dynasties had come to an end. The Southern Dynasty (420-589) was founded by the Han Chinese through the Song, Qi, Liang, and Chen dynasties. The Northern Dynasty was the Sixteen Kingdoms. The Sixteen Kingdoms (304-439), shortly after the Eastern Jin Dynasty moved south, the Sixteen Kingdoms took shape in the north, which lasted until 439, when the Northern Wei unified Northern China (excluding Liaodong) and returned to the Northern and Southern Dynasties. In a word, the Sixteen Kingdoms period began earlier than the Southern and Northern Dynasties (the beginning of the Eastern Jin Dynasty) and ended before the fall of the Southern and Northern Dynasties.
(Former Qin Jianjian)
What I want to say here is that the Ming Emperor during the Sixteen Kingdoms period was former Qin Emperor Jian Jian.
Jian Jian could not be compared with the ming emperors during the period of China's great unification, but he spent his life in the storm, developed agriculture, promoted national integration, unified the north, and had the intention to unify China, which gave him his due position in history. His experience and prestige are quite similar to those of Cao Cao during the Three Kingdoms period. Both of them annihilated the various separatist regimes by military means and unified the north, and if they had not lost a crucial battle and collapsed from then on, why could they not have unified China?! Cao Cao lost the Battle of Chibi, and Jian Jian suffered a defeat at the Battle of Shuishui. It is somewhat unfair that Jian Jian was not called a generation of tyrants like Cao Cao, which was caused by the chaos caused by the Sixteen Kingdoms period, and people somewhat "forgot" about him, which is also normal.
Jian Jian (苻健), born in 338, was the grandson of Former Qin's founding monarch Gong Hong, the son of Gong Xiong, and the nephew of Jian Jian. Jian Jian's father, Gong Xiong, was awarded the title of King of the East Sea for his meritorious service in assisting his eldest brother in starting a business. After The Death of Gong Xiong, Gong Jian attacked the Knight. When Jian Jian was very young, he liked Chinese, and his appearance was peculiar, and he was young and old. Before inheriting the King of the East Sea, at the age of 13, he was awarded the title of General of the Dragon Dragon, with extraordinary temperament. Before Jian Jian took the throne, he did an earth-shattering thing. In 353, Jian Jian fell ill and died, and his son ZhiSheng succeeded to the throne. He was one of the few tyrants in the world. Jian Jian raised the banner of righteousness to destroy his relatives, directly killed Zhi Sheng, and immediately ascended the throne, becoming the third monarch of the Former Qin Empire.
When Jian Jian ascended the throne, Former Qin was in chaos. Guanzhong was originally a region inhabited by various ethnic groups, and ethnic vendettas arose one after another. Former Qin founded the country in the midst of war, and the legal system was not perfect. The former lord Gongsheng also implemented a brutal rule, when floods and droughts occurred frequently, resulting in the rampant Qinchuan. After Jian Jian succeeded to the throne, he decisively beheaded 20 people, including Dong Rong and Zhao Shao, who helped Gong Sheng to do wrongdoing, and promoted and reused a number of shrewd and incorruptible Han scholars to participate in the government affairs, the most influential of which was Wang Meng, who was born in the cold door. Wang Meng was born into poverty, was rigorous, erudite and talented, and Jian Jian had the feeling that Liu Bei had met Zhuge Liang. He worshipped Wang Meng as a Zhongshu waiter.
Wang Meng was reused by Jian Jian and began to take a fierce medicine to cure the stubborn diseases of the state. Marquis Fan Shi of Guzang was a powerful marshal of the Yu clan who entered the Dingguan with Jian Jian. He was proud of his achievements, flew high, and was beheaded by Wang Meng. Jian Jian's wife, Qiangde, drank and committed murder, occupied the women of the people, and acted recklessly, and Wang Meng arrested him, beheaded him for public display, and displayed his corpse in the streets. Subsequently, Wang Meng cooperated with Deng Qiang in the imperial history and killed many outlaws and magnates one after another. As a result, inside and outside the capital, hundreds of officials were shocked, powerful and noble relatives were all honest and law-abiding, the social atmosphere was greatly improved, and there was a good order in which the road was not left behind and the houses were not closed at night, and the common people clapped their hands and celebrated. Jian Jian looked at it in his eyes and was happy in his heart. He said with deep feeling: "Now I know the benefits of the legal system in the world. ”
Jian Jian set up schools to run education on a large scale, improve the cultural quality of the people, and cultivate talents for governing the country. He studied Han culture from an early age, admired Confucian classics, and in order to reverse the backward concept of the Huan people who believed in force and despised cultural knowledge, he actively restored Taixue and local schools at all levels, extensively cultivated the Xuegong, recruited scholars with full stomachs to teach, and forced the children and grandchildren below the secretary of state to enroll in school. Jian Jian went to Taixue once a month to examine the scriptures of the students, evaluate the merits and demerits, and encourage them to study hard. He also hand-picked students with excellent academic qualities and served in the institutions of power at all levels. At the same time, it is stipulated that officials with more than one hundred stones must "learn a classic before they can become an art." Due to Jian Jian's vigorous advocacy and combination with the selection and appointment of officials, Former Qin soon had a tendency to persuade them to compete in their professions and cultivate honesty and shame. It not only cultivated the reserve contingent of bureaucrats and improved the cultural quality of the ruling class, but also promoted cultural exchanges and integration between ethnic groups. This move was particularly valuable in the north at that time.
In order to quickly reverse the depressed situation in which everything is in ruins and waiting to be rebuilt, He resolutely decided to stop the army and vigorously develop production. In 358 AD, when a large area of Former Qin was hit by a major drought, Jian Jian ordered that his diet be reduced, the song music be revoked, and the palace ladies below the imperial concubines of the harem changed their cloth clothes and no longer wore silk silk, and the civil and military officials also reduced their feng lu accordingly to show solidarity with the people. At the same time, it also instructed the development of mineral forests on the mountains and lifted the ban on restricting the fishing of rivers and lakes, so that the state and the people could share it together. Cease all military operations so that the people can recuperate. Due to the effective measures taken by Jian Jian, although it suffered a major drought, it did not cause a major famine disaster. At the same time, Jian Jian regarded the development of agriculture as a basic national policy, and former Qin's economy recovered rapidly, and a few years later, a new atmosphere of stability, peace, and peace, and people's abundant food and clothing appeared. According to historical records, at that time, from Chang'an to the capitals of various prefectures, there were tunnel pavilions, and tourists and traders took them along the way.
With the recovery of economic strength, Jian Jian successively conquered Former Yan and Former Liang, disintegrated the Dai state, and made Former Qin gain unprecedented strength. He continued to expand, eliminating the northern separatist regimes one by one, and within a few years, the territory of northern China, except for Liaodong, had been unified by him and regained control of the western region. At this time, Jian Jian did not consider consolidating the territory in the north, but proposed a plan to attack the Eastern Jin Dynasty and unify China. Wang Meng and his ministers strenuously opposed that the north was fragile, and it was necessary to accumulate strength, increase its strength, and then compete with the south, at which time the unification of the whole country would come to fruition. However, at this time, Jian Jian was guilty of complacency, adventurism, and even arrogance, and he was bent on attacking the Eastern Jin Dynasty.
Before attacking the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Jian Jian painfully lost his heavy subject Wang Meng. Before Wang Meng's death, Jian Jian obeyed him, but did not listen to the advice left by Wang Meng when he was dying: It is not advisable to go south when the national strength is not strong enough. After Wang Meng's death, Jian Jian trusted murong chui and the Qiang nobleman Yao Cang, who had defected from former Yan, which laid the groundwork for his downfall.
In 378, Jian Jian sent his sons Gong Pi and Murong Chui and Yao Cang to lead an army of more than 100,000 troops to attack Xiangyang in the Eastern Jin Dynasty in several ways. For Xiangyang, the mountain rain is about to come and the wind is full of buildings, and the black clouds are pressing down on the city to destroy. However, the defending official, Liang Prefecture Assassin Shi Zhuxu, led the army and people to resist to the death. Zhu Xu's mother, Han Shi, heard that Former Qin's army was about to arrive and personally climbed the city wall to check whether it was strong. When they reached the northwest corner, they thought it was not strong enough, so they led the maids and more than 100 adult women in the city to build a wall diagonally inside the city wall. After the arrival of Former Qin's army, the city wall in the northwest corner was indeed breached, and the soldiers and civilians moved to the new city wall to defend, and the Xiangyang people then called this section of the city wall "Lady Wall". In the Battle of Xiangyang, Zhu Xuning did not surrender, and jianbi qingye fought a protracted war with Former Qin. It took Former Qin nearly a year, with several times the strength of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, to capture Xiangyang and capture Zhu Xu.
(Eastern Jin Dynasty scribe Xie An)
The attack on Xiangyang was a prelude to Former Qin's deeper attack on the Eastern Jin Dynasty. After the victory at the Battle of Xiangyang, in 382 AD, Jian Jian decided to attack the Eastern Jin Dynasty again and summoned his ministers to discuss strategies. Unexpectedly, the ministers expressed their opposition. The ministers believed that a small Xiangyang city had been attacked for almost a year, how could it conquer the entire Eastern Jin Dynasty, not to mention that the Eastern Jin Dynasty did not invade the north, and there were even more Yangtze River grabens that were difficult to overcome, as well as heavy generals such as Xie An and Huan Chong. Jian Jian could not listen, and the next day ordered that Murong Rong and Murong Chui be sent as the vanguard, and Yao Cang would be the general of Long Jun, commanding the men and horses of Yizhou and Liang Prefecture and preparing to send troops to attack Jin. When Murong Chui's two nephews heard the news, they secretly rejoiced: "The emperor is too proud, it seems that this is a good opportunity for us to restore the Yan kingdom!" ”
In August 383, Jian Jian personally led an army of 870,000 from Chang'an, marching south, singing all the way to Shuishui. The famous Battle of Shuishui in history began. The Former Qin army and the Eastern Jin army led by Xie An confronted each other on both sides of the Shuishui River. Jian Jian sent Zhu Xu to persuade the Jin army to surrender, but Zhu Xu informed the Jin army of the details of the Qin army. The Jin army sometimes sneaked in, and before the war, it damaged more than 10,000 Qin troops. Climbing the Shouyang City Tower, Jian Jian saw that the Jin army camp was strict and orderly, and looked at the grass and trees on the Bagong Mountain in the distance, thinking that they were all Jin troops, and his heart was afraid. At that time, the Qin army was deployed in a watery position, and the Jin army asked the Qin army to retreat a little and let the Jin army cross the water for a decisive battle. Jian Jian thought that he could take advantage of the Jin army's half-crossing to carry out a sneak attack, so he agreed. Unexpectedly, the Qin army was a ragtag crowd that had been forcibly recruited, the people's hearts were floating, the generals were tired of war, and the former Jin general Zhu Xu took the opportunity to shout: "The Qin army has been defeated, the Qin army has been defeated!" As a result, the Qin army did not stop retreating, the Eastern Jin army took advantage of the victory to pursue, and the Qin army was chaotic, and the result was a big defeat. On the way to escape, Jian Jian heard the sound of the wind and cranes, and they all thought that the Jin army was coming after them, and they were not lightly frightened.
(Lady Building)
The Battle of Shuishui was a famous example of the Eastern Jin Dynasty's victory over more with few victories, but it was the Battle of The Curtain Digging between Jian Jian and Former Qin. Before and after the Battle of Shuishui, the two sides played games and tossed and turned, and four idioms were actually born: throwing whips and breaking the stream, going to gamble on the villa, grass and trees, and the sound of the wind and cranes, which made people sigh at the war situation at that time.
After the Battle of Shuishui, Former Qin Was seriously injured, and the previously conquered Xianbei, Qiang and other tribal chiefs raised troops to rebel and established a divided regime. Murong Chui fled back to former Yan's homeland, and Yao Cang and others of the Qiang clan also re-emerged, and Ding Zero and Karasuma continued to rebel. The North is back in tatters. Jian Jian fled to Mount Wujiang, and Yao Cang sent troops to surround him, tie him up and send him to Xinping. Yao Cang asked Jian Jian for the Imperial Jade Seal. Jian Jian scolded, "The National Seal has been sent to the Jin Dynasty, how can it be given to you, an ungrateful traitor?" Yao Cang also asked Jian Jian to give him the throne Zen, and Jian Jian scolded: "Zen Dynasty is a matter between the sages, you Yao Cang something, dare to compare yourself to the ancient sages!" Yao Chang was ashamed and indignant, and sent someone to kill Jian Jian at the Xinping Buddhist Temple. A generation of overlords, from now on to the west! @Toutiao History@Toutiao Culture Channel@Toutiao Book Club@Meiwen#Media People Weekly##历史杂谈 #