As a very active family in the late Three Kingdoms period, the Sima family can be said to have been wise and conspired with another family of the Three Kingdoms, Zhuge Ge, but what everyone rarely knows is that in fact, the Sima family has already stepped onto the stage of history before the beginning of the eastern Han Dynasty. Because at the beginning, the first person to recommend Cao Cao to serve as an official in the court was the then high official Sima Fang, and although Sima Fang did not have much merit in this life, he later raised eight future Cao Wei ministers known as Sima Bada, including Sima Yi, Sima Lang and others.
And Sima Lang is deeply respected by the people as the eldest brother of the Sima family among the eight children, when he was young, he once saved himself and his own family under Dong Zhuo's hands, and since then he has been a hero with a discerning eye, scattering his family wealth to leave Dong Zhuo to defect to Cao Cao, and cao Cao's hands are highly anticipated and trusted, but these things he did can be said to make him become Cao Cao's confidant, so that his family can step into the Cao family as the basis for replacing him later.
One: Scatter the family wealth and leave Dong Zhuo
After Sima Fang became an official, Dong Zhuo raised his troops into Luoyang and began to spend time and wine, and the Eighteen-Way Coalition Army at that time also began to attack him, and Although Dong Zhuo was strong, he was unable to defeat the coalition forces, so he took Emperor Xian of Han and prepared to run to Chang'an to make a comeback, and Sima Fang, as the minister of the imperial court at that time, was also blackmailed to go with him. But at this time, the world was already in chaos, and he knew in his heart that there was no way to go, so he let the eldest son Sima Lang return to his hometown with the rest of his family, and as a result, before the road could be completed, he was informed by the villain that Sima Lang wanted to flee to Dong Zhuo, so Dong Zhuo was furious, let the army arrest Sima Lang to the imperial court, and scolded him: You and my deceased child are one year old. Why do you still want to betray me? When Sima Lang heard that if he couldn't say why he came, he was afraid that he would be killed, so he began to pat Dong Zhuo's ass, praising Dong Zhuo, although he said that he had recommended talents and helped the imperial court to quell the rebellion, but as Dong Zhuo's merits and prestige increased, the soldiers under him did not abide by discipline, but began to kill innocents in the vicinity of the capital, causing the people to flee everywhere, which also made me feel afraid, so I also wanted to escape. When Dong Zhuo heard it, he thought that what he said was very reasonable, so he let him go.
However, although Sima Lang escaped a disaster, it was inevitable to accompany him to Chang'an, but he also knew that Dong Zhuo would definitely fail, and he was afraid that he would not be able to save the family at that time, so he made up his mind and bribed all the treasures in his family to Dong Zhuo's confidants, and the confidants were very satisfied with the money, so they secretly opened a back door for the Sima family so that they could return to their hometown safely and unharmed. After returning to his hometown, Sima Lang knew that this place would definitely be affected by the war, so he warned his neighbors to let them leave here with him and take refuge with his relatives, but unfortunately the townspeople did not heed this advice, but stayed in their hometown, and as a result, a few months later, the Dong coalition army arrived, and some bad soldiers took the opportunity to burn and loot around, at which time people admired Sima Lang's wisdom.
Second: Proposed to restore the system, which is deeply loved by the people and is heavily respected by Cao Cao
After leaving Dong Zhuo, Sima Lang had been hiding from the chaos of the war while teaching his younger brothers, so that their studies and family business were not abandoned, after which Cao Cao heard about the Sima family, so in order to repay Sima Fang's kindness, he took the family to his territory and kept Sima Lang as his deputy. Sima Lang's administration of government affairs was quite loosely recorded in the history books at that time, so many people were also happy about it, and when Cao Cao asked for labor to be recruited to repair the ships, there were even people who were worried that Sima Lang's men were insufficient, so they came back to share their worries. Cao Cao heard about this and trusted Sima Lang even more from then on.
After his promotion, Cao Cao had asked him what he wanted to do if he wanted to quell the unrest in his territory, and Sima Lang replied that the problem now was because the Qin Dynasty had abolished the feudal system and the territories in various places did not have their own standing soldiers just in case, and now they could let their subordinates receive soldiers and displaced people and train every day, so that they could not only resist the rebels such as mountain thieves but also intimidate those who had two hearts. At the same time, it is necessary to restore the well field system, because at this time the world is in chaos, the people are displaced, the land has long been abandoned, and the capable refugees have no land, so it is better to use these people to stabilize and pull down the land. Although the first opinion was not adopted by Cao Cao, each one made Cao Cao sigh that he really considered the problem from the perspective of the people.
After that, Sima Lang followed Cao Cao all the way to stabilize the situation in the rear and was deeply trusted by him, and his younger brothers, later Sima Yi Sima Fu and others, went all the way up because of his relationship, and were made military masters or ministers by Cao Cao, which also laid the foundation for the Sima family to gradually expand their power in the imperial court and finally replace the Cao family.