The Western Jin Dynasty, as a great unified dynasty established by a Han nation in Chinese history, for thousands of years people can be described as no good feelings for it, looking at the entire dynasty, not only the rulers are incompetent, there has not even been a virtuous general, the entire dynasty has entered the chaotic situation of the lord's adultery and disobedience after the unification of the world.
In 291 AD, the "Rebellion of the Eight Kings" broke out, Emperor Hui was stupid, Jia's dictatorship, foreign relatives interfered in politics, and the privileges of the grandmasters, and the new dynasty of the Western Jin Dynasty not only did not establish a high-level political framework structure that adapted to the situation of the new unification, but also did not deal with contradictions such as "warriors" and "princes", which eventually led to the complete collapse of the infant dynasty.
The Rebellion of the Eight Kings caused serious damage to the Western Jin court, the brief peace and economic recovery brought about by the Taikang years were lost, and the empire began to fall apart.
At the same time, the Xiongnu, Qi, Qiang and other ethnic groups began to enter the Central Plains, and began to seize the living space of the Han people through war. Since then, a three-hundred-year-long era of "purgatory on earth" in northern China has begun...
After the Rebellion of the Eight Kings, the Western Jin Dynasty entered a period of internal and external troubles, and Sima Ying, the king of Chengdu, formed an alliance with the Xiongnu leader Liu Yuan in order to enter the Luoyang region to lead the Xiongnu army to gallop in the Central Plains, which became one of the scourges that threatened the rule of the Western Jin Dynasty after Sima Ying's death.
As the leader of the Xiongnu, Liu Yuan showed a unique interest in Han culture since childhood, talking about the classic works "Poems", "Books", "Records of History", and "Book of Han", and even learned from Confucian masters "The Biography of the Spring and Autumn Zuo Clan", and also took the opportunity to recruit many Han talents, laying the foundation for restoring the xiongnu's former hegemony.
In 304, Liu Yuan declared himself Shan Yu and rebelled against the Jin Dynasty. This foreign leader who had served the Sima clan finally showed his claws. Only 7 years later, his son Liu Cong succeeded his father, invaded Luoyang, captured Sima Chi, the Emperor of Jinhuai, and bloodied the Western Jin Dynasty.
The history books record that "tens of thousands of princes, ministers, warriors, and people were killed", and this turmoil was called "The Rebellion of Yongjia" by later generations.
After entering the Central Plains, Liu Cong gradually indulged in wine, and carried out a brutal massacre of heroes and heroes, and for a time the people in the Zhao Dynasty were panicked, coupled with eunuchs taking advantage of the opportunity to chaos the government, local taxes were heavy, officials were corrupt, the people were miserable, and the country was increasingly chaotic.
At the same time, the various ethnic groups in the north also took the opportunity to establish their own political power, the chaos of the times, the division of the regime, even the late Eastern Han Dynasty when the princes were fighting, they could not match it, and the history books collectively referred to this history as the "Five Hu and Sixteen Kingdoms Period".
There is a proverb: "You can take the world on horseback, but you can't rule the world on horseback", the warlords represented by Liu Yuan often lack the ability to govern politically, and it is difficult to rule the region to be stable and prosperous, and finally in the continuous melee, Liu Yuan's "Former Zhao" regime was also crushed by the iron hooves of the barbarians.
In 330, Shi Le, an old subordinate of Emperor Liu Yuan of the Han Dynasty, attacked and established the Later Zhao regime according to the three places of You, He, and Ji. He then annexed the four prefectures of Si, Yu, Xu, and Yan, and officially declared himself emperor in 330, and Later Zhao became another powerful minority regime after the Former Han Dynasty.
However, just after Shi Le's death, a serious gap arose between his nephew Shi Hu and his successor crown prince Shi Hong. Shi Hu was known for his brutality and had great contempt for the new emperor, Shi Hong. Not only did he rely on military power to coerce and induce Shi Hong, but he also secretly united with the Xianbei tribe and prepared to emulate Cao Cao and Sima Yi in "blackmailing the Son of Heaven to order him not to be subordinated.".
In 334, Shi Hu and Xianbei jointly defeated Later Zhao Zongshi Shisheng, deposed emperor Shi Hong, and proclaimed himself "Heavenly King", completely seizing power from Later Zhao.
After Shi Hu came to power, he launched a brutal rule over the people of Later Zhao, recruited the people to expand the emperor's palace, used the toiling masses, and executed many craftsmen who were not satisfied with themselves, and changed the construction plan again and again, so that the built palace was twice as large as the original palace.
In Yeying, Shi Hu built nine palaces to house harem concubines. Shi Hu also cultivated the skills of harem concubines riding and shooting, and even the guards around him were replaced by women to meet Shi Hu's strange quirks. Many women who did not want to enter the palace to accompany them were also brutally killed by Shi Hu's army.
Prince Shi Yong, in the name of Xiao Yong, was very favored by his father Shi Hu, but his cruelty and fornication were even worse than his father's.
According to historical records, the prince had the "quirk" of beheading the people's daughters snatched from the harem, and he also liked to pass the decapitated heads to the ministers for them to look at. For the body, Shi Yu cooked it in the name of "pity".
Shi Hao's brutal personality soon led him to clash with his father Shi Hu, and the two soon turned against each other, and Shi Hao's plan to kill his father to establish himself was leaked and then exterminated by his father, and none of the twenty-six members of the family were spared.
After Shi Tao's death, Shi Hu made Shi Xuan crown prince, and Shi Hu became ill-fated with the crown prince Shi Xuan because he spoiled his young son Shi Tao. Soon Shi Hu tortured and killed the crown prince Shi Xuan on the top of the main hall, and when Shi Xuan died, the iron hook pierced the skull, the tongue was split, the pupils were bleeding, and the hands and feet were cut off, and the death was very tragic.
In order to deal with the Eastern Jin Dynasty regime in Nandu, Shi Hu also levied heavy taxes on the people, implemented strict conscription regulations, not only expropriated the men in the people's homes, but also imposed taxes, promulgated severe punishments, died in battle, and executed countless people.
During this period, there was also a spectacular product of human history - "two-legged sheep", "two-legged sheep" is the ethnic minority's contempt for Han women, they have been robbed from the north into the military camp, the outstanding posture as military prostitutes, the inferior posture as human flesh.
In 349 AD, the tyrannical Shi Hu ascended the throne as emperor when his life was in danger, and Li Shishi was made the crown prince, and soon fell ill and died, and the people in the north could not easily get out of the tyranny of the Shi family, but the chaotic world returned with Shi Hu's illness and death.
In the same year of Shi Hu's death, the Hu general Gong Hong led his troops to surrender to the Eastern Jin Dynasty, and was soon poisoned by the rebel general Ma Qiu. His son Jian Jian succeeded him in 350 to seize the Guanzhong region, establish the "Former Qin" regime, and officially break with the Eastern Jin dynasty court.
Former Qin experienced the rule of emperors Jian Jian and Zhi Sheng, and by the time of Jian Jian, he had already sat on thousands of miles of rivers and mountains. Jian Jian reformed the military, promoted Confucianism, strengthened the centralization of power, and made the former Qin state rich and strong. By 376, Jian Jian had successively destroyed the Yan, Qiu, and Dai kingdoms of the Xianbei tribe and unified the north.
In 383, in order to unify the south, Jian Jian led 600,000 people to fight a decisive battle with the Eastern Jin Army at Shuishui, because the south was mostly people fleeing from the north to the south, they were well aware of the brutality and bloodshed of the barbarians.
Facing the Former Qin army moving south, the Eastern Jin Dynasty made concerted efforts, and the Former Qin army was resisted by the Eastern Jin Dynasty, and returned with a big defeat and heavy losses, and there was no longer the strength to go south.
It is often just so coincidental that during the Battle of Shuishui, The Town Guard luoyang's Gong Zhong and the Town Guarding Chengdu's Zhi Luo successively rebelled, and Jian Jian had no choice but to lead a hundred thousand troops to engage it, and the war inside and outside Former Qin was raging, and the political situation was turbulent.
In order to stabilize the regime, after the defeat of the war, Jian Jian launched a large-scale migration to the country, moving 100,000 residents of the Kanto region to the border towns, on the way, wives and children were scattered, families were broken, and many people died of old age and illness, and the cries of the wailing continued for hundreds of miles.
The above tragedies lasted for a full 100 years, according to rough statistics, during this period, the number of deaths in the land of China reached nearly 10 million, of which 60% of the deaths of illness, starvation, and fatigue caused by death, because the tragic situation occurred in the northern regions ruled by ethnic minorities, so this history is also known as the "Wuhu Chaohua" period in historiography.
Looking back at this history today, we cannot help but wonder: How should we view this history? From a macroscopic point of view, this is actually a civilizational interaction of the Chinese nation, and ethnic minority rulers Liu Yuan, Shi Le, Jian Jian and others all attach great importance to Han culture and take the initiative to learn Han culture.
Jia Sixun recorded in the "Qi Min Zhi Shu" that the veterinary medicine of the Hu people at that time, the techniques of making felt, cheese, puff pastry, etc. were also introduced to the south. It can be seen that not only the Hu people are influenced by the Han culture, but also the Han people are also influenced by the Hu culture.
During this period, hu and Han cultures promoted each other's development, laying a material ideological foundation for the prosperity of the Southern and Northern Dynasties and even the Sui and Tang Dynasties.
But history often cannot be viewed from a macro perspective, and when we look at these more than a hundred years again, we will find that warlords have divided themselves into kings, years of war and killing, and great social and economic damage. The once prosperous and rich land of the north was filled with centuries of plunder, attack, slaughter, harsh taxes, and corpses...
The grand "interaction of civilizations" cannot be an excuse for the destruction of countless lives, who have endured a hundred years of despair, who have come into the world crying, cursing to live, and dying in mourning. When we look back at history and lament the achievements of civilization brought about by the mutualization of Hu and Han, we should remember the silent majority in those dark years...