In 666 BC, Duke Xian of Jin, who loved Li Ji, decided to send his three sons, Prince Shensheng, Gongzi Zhong'er, and Yiwu, to a distant place, leaving Li Ji's son Xi Qi by his side. The courtiers thought that The purpose of The Jin Dynasty was to depose The Crown Prince Shensheng and establish Xi Qi as the new crown prince. But no one expected that secretly, Jin Xiangong was actually playing a big chess game with far-sighted considerations.
According to the relevant records of the Zuo Zhuan and the Chinese, Li Ji plotted to depose the crown prince Shensheng and replace him with Xi Qi, starting from the year xi qi was born, that is, in 666 BC.
This year's "Left Biography" wrote:
Li Ji (李姬嬖), who wanted to establish his son, bribed Wai Wai Liang Wu and Dong Guan Wu (東關嬖五), and made speech to The Duke (中略). Xia, the eldest son juqu wo, heavy ear ju Pucheng, Yi Wu ju qu. The sons of the crowd despise it. - "The Twenty-Eighth Year of Zuo Chuan Zhuang Gong"
According to the Zuo Chuan, in order to make her son Xi Qi the crown prince, Li Ji bribed liang wu and Dongguan wu, two of Jin Xiangong's close associates, Liang Wu and Dongguan Wu, who came forward to make suggestions to Jin Xiangong, and sent crown prince Shen sheng sheng zhenzong Yi Quwo, and Gongzi Zhong'er and Yiwu to garrison Pucheng and Qucheng in Bianyi.
What is the purpose of this?
The Chinese adds that Li Ji's plan was to separate the crown prince Shensheng far away, so as to facilitate his own rumors in front of the Jin Xiangong and to separate the father-son relationship between the Xiangong and Shensheng.
This assertion in the "Chinese" is likely to have been drawn by Li Ji 10 years later by framing Shen Sheng for casting poison on the Jin Dynasty, with the intention of pushing back the aftermath of The Emperor, which may not be in line with the actual situation at the time of the incident. If we interpret the division of the three princes from the perspective of the patriarchal system, the political message it conveys is likely to be as follows:
According to the provisions of the patriarchal system, the eldest son of the monarch has the right to inherit the throne, and he should live in the capital as a prince to serve the monarch, while waiting for the day when the palace car will be driven and the heir to the throne will be ascended. His brothers, the princes who did not have the power to inherit, were enfeoffed and became hereditary masters under the leadership of the monarch.
Since Shen Sheng was the crown prince, naturally there should be no fiefdom. The granting of Quwo meant that Shen Sheng had been regarded as another son rather than an heir to the throne of the Jin Dynasty—he had lost his right to inherit the throne of the Jin Dynasty.
Therefore, the "Records of History" wrote after Shen Sheng sealed Qu Wo:
The State of Jin knew that the crown prince was not standing. - "History of the Jin Dynasty"
As soon as the political signal that Crown Prince Shensheng might be deposed came out, the ministers did not firmly oppose it in front of The Duke of Jin—after all, Shensheng was only the son of the Duke of Xian, and Xi Qi was the son of his wife, Li Ji, and it was reasonable to depose the Prince of Jin—but many people still secretly expressed different degrees of concern, and they were worried that the Jin Dynasty would be in turmoil because of this time the abolition of the Crown Prince.
You know, before Jin Xiangong came to power, the Jin state had just ended its division and completed its unification, and no one wanted to relive the nightmare. Later, a coup d'état was launched, and Rick, the middle doctor who killed Li Ji and Xi Qi, also held a similar attitude.
At the time of the coup, Rick said this to his ally Pi Zheng:
Will the husband and the widow be guilty of the people? He will slander the people of the country by seducing the king by li ji, slander the prince and take advantage of it, confuse the king, believe and die, kill the innocent and laugh at the princes, so that the people will not hide evil in their hearts, and fear that they will be like a great river, and they will collapse and be unable to save the emperor. Therefore, those who will kill Xi Qi and establish a prince outside, in order to fix the people's worries, to the princes and to help, a few princes to care for righteousness, the people to please and worship, the country can be consolidated. - "Chinese Jin Yu II"
Xi Qi replaced Shen Sheng as the eldest son of a concubine, and Rick had nothing to say about it. However, Li Ji took extreme measures to frantically persecute Crown Prince Shensheng and the two princes, Zhong'er and Yiwu, causing great turmoil in the political arena of the Jin State, which made Rick and many Jin officials have a bad impression of her.
If this had not been the case, Jin Xiangong's Guards would not have collectively defected under the leadership of the Seven Doctors and supported the Rick coup. Xi Qi, who had just inherited the throne and suffered the scourge of killing himself, was actually affected by his mother and died.
Rick's words give us another room for imagination: if Li Ji stops in the process of taking the wife and does not do things so desperately, will Xi Qi be able to take over the supreme power smoothly?
If there was such a possibility, then when Shen Sheng had already avoided Qu Wo and Xi Qi had actually become the heir apparent, why did Li Ji frantically poison the three brothers Shen Sheng, Zhong'er, and Yi Wu?
To explain this, we must note this: if the sub-fief in 666 BC was simply to solve the problem of the ownership of the prince's title, then the Duke of Jin xian only needed to seal a separate Shensheng to Quwo.
But in fact, he did not, and the two princes of Zhong'er and Yiwu were also sealed at the same time, and the location of the sealing was Pucheng and Qucheng, which were important border towns in the Jin Dynasty. This shows that in addition to the replacement of the heir, there are also other political considerations hidden in the Jin Dynasty.
What is this consideration?
There is a fact that many people may ignore when reading this history, that is, the years after Li Ji married the Duke of Jin xian were also the period of the fastest external expansion in the history of the Jin state.
Throughout his life, The Duke of Jin "merged the country seventeen times, served the country thirty-eight, and won two victories in the battle" ("Han Feizi Nan II"), not only incorporating the entire southern part of Shanxi into the territory of the Jin state, but also crossing the Zhongtiao Mountains and invading Henan.
With such rapid territorial expansion, how can the rule of the newly occupied territories be consolidated? The solution to the Jin state's later hegemonic rival, the State of Chu, was to set up counties at strategic points on the border and important transportation lines, and to establish a vast area of counties and powerful county divisions under the direct leadership of the King of Chu as the domain of the State of Chu.
Later history proved that this local administrative system was the most advanced and efficient in the Spring and Autumn Period.
However, the establishment of a county was the first of the Chu state, because the Chu state was originally a southern barbarian prince who was outside the mainstream political culture of the Western Zhou Dynasty, and had no historical origin and traditional concepts, so it could create a new life.
Compared with it, the situation in the Jin Dynasty is completely different. Uncle Tang, the founder of the Jin Dynasty, was the younger brother of King Cheng of Zhou. I think that in that year, King Cheng sealed this young brother to Shanxi, on the one hand, to rely on his own blood relatives to carry out armed colonization in the north, on the other hand, to resist the invasion of ethnic minorities into the hinterland of the Central Plains. Since the Jin Dynasty was the vanguard of the Western Zhou Dynasty's expansion of territory, its territorial expansion methods would naturally be strongly influenced by the Western Zhou.
For the Jin Dynasty, the Western Zhou feudal was a ready-made "model house", imitating the testament of King Cheng and the Duke of Zhou, and following the principle of "kissing and favoring the lords" to divide the sons of the Dukes of the Jin State to the newly occupied areas to become feudal lords, so that they could become the fences of the Jin Dynasty, which was the right way.
However, taking this road, the Jin Gong gong faced a practical difficulty: the Gong clan of the Jin State was killed after the Gong Gong came to power, and there was no one available for the Gong Gong at present.
Killing his own fellow sect members, Jin Xiangong also had no choice but to suffer.
Before Gong Xian's father, Duke Wu of Jin, the State of Jin had a 67-year history of division: the eldest son of The Marquis of Jin controlled the capital Yicheng as the Marquis of Jin, and his younger son lineage was divided into Quwo as a doctor. Through the efforts of Quwo Huanshu, Quwo Zhuangbo and Duke Wu of Jin, it was not until 677 BC that the Quwo clan finally annexed Emperor Dazong and reunified the Jin state.
In view of such a bloody history of cannibalism, The Duke of Jin was deeply suspicious of the collateral relatives left behind by his great-grandfather Qu Wo Huan and his grandfather Qu Wo Zhuang Bo.
So in 669 BC, he accepted the suggestion of the grand master Shi Bao and used iron blood to cleanse the Huan and Zhuang clans. Except for a few people who luckily fled to the state of Yu, the Gong clans of the same surname in the Jin state suffered a devastating blow in this great purge.
Mr. Li Mengcun and Li Shangshi wrote in the book "History of the Jin Dynasty":
Judging from the situation of the kingdoms at that time, although the people with different surnames had the ability to be kings among the princely states, they could not think of themselves as kings. On the contrary, those who were able to usurp the throne and establish themselves as monarchs were all uncles and nephews of the Gong clan. Therefore, in order to eliminate the worries of the Gong clan forcing the monarch, the Duke of Jin Xian profoundly realized that the appointment of a different surname was more conducive to maintaining his own rule than the appointment of a gong clan with the same surname. He also deeply understood that only by reusing the power of foreign surnames to cut off the power of the gong clan close to him could he keep his throne. - "History of the Jin Dynasty"
Judging from the later historical development, Jin Xiangong did vigorously promote nobles with different surnames.
In 661 BC, the Jin Dynasty Emperor Xiangong personally marched and destroyed the three small states of Huo, Wei, and Geng in one fell swoop. After the war, Gong Xian gave the newly occupied Geng and Wei to Zhao Su and Bi Wan, who had made meritorious contributions in the battle, respectively, and appointed them as foreign doctors of the Jin state.
From the map, these two fiefs are in the western part of the capital, Daiyi, along the east bank of the Yellow River. Geng Di supervised Shaoliang Du, Wei Di controlled Pujin Du, and the purpose of this layout of Jin Xiangong may be to use the two feudal lords of Zhao and Wei to prevent the eastward advance of the Qin state.
Promoting a nobleman with a different surname was a chess piece for Jin Xiangong to promote territorial expansion, but he was not only one piece of chess. In 666 BC, the three princes Shensheng, Zhong'er and Yiwu were another chess player of the Jin Dynasty.
When Liang Wu and Dongguan Wu proposed to The Duke of Jin that the three princes be divided, they said:
"Qu Wo, Junzhi Zongye; Pu and Erqu, Junzhijiangye; cannot be without a master." If Zongyi has no master, the people are not powerful; if there is no master in xinjiang, then the heart of Rong; the heart of Rong, the people are slow to govern, and the troubles of the country are also. If the eldest son is the lord of Qu Wo, and the heavy ear and the lord of Yi Wu are Pu and Qu, they can threaten the people and fear the rong, and the king will be destroyed. Envoy Ju Yue: "Di Zhi Guang mo, Yu Jin is the capital." Jin's enlightenment is not appropriate! "What the Marquis of Jin said--"Zuo Chuan Zhuang Gong Twenty-Eight Years"
Feng Shensheng lived in Quwo, deterred potential opposition forces within the Jin state, let the two brothers Zhong'er and Yiwu sit on the frontier, and supported the expansion of the Jin state to expand the territory, this suggestion accurately hit the biggest anxiety of the Jin Dynasty's foreign expansion policy - the establishment of a feudal monarch, which was not available.
Therefore, the reason why Li Ji was able to successfully expel the three princes from the capital was not entirely because The Duke of Jin loved her, but more importantly, the Duke of Jin wanted to reconstruct the power of the Jin state with the same surname, so that they and the doctors with different surnames could balance each other and jointly serve the expansion strategy of the Jin state.
It is likely that for this reason, Sima Qian, in the Jin Shijia, directly described the separation of the three princes as the proposition of the Jin Xiangong himself, rather than Li Ji's proposal.
bibliography:
Yang Bojun's "Spring and Autumn Left Commentary"
Takikawa Ziyan "Notes on the History of the Society"
Xu Yuanchen's "Chinese Collection"
Li Shangshi and Li Mengcun, History of the Jin Dynasty
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The text | Prince of Jin
Typography | cream belly
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