Kaifeng, as the capital of the country, began with Houliang. Although the State of Wei during the Warring States period also designated this city as its capital, the State of Wei could only be regarded as a prince of one side, and even at that time, its influence in all aspects was only at the second-rate level.
Zhu Wen destroyed the Tang Dynasty and established a state in Beijing, that is, Kaifeng, known in history as Hou Liang. Later, the Jin, Han, Zhou, and Song dynasties all regarded this place as the capital of the country. After hundreds of years of construction, Beijing has become the most prosperous city in North China.
After the establishment of the Northern Song Dynasty, taxes were collected from the world in Beijing, which further created the prosperity of the place. Millions of people are gathered here, and the world is unparalleled. If Chang'an is a sign of the strength of the Tang Dynasty, then Fenjing is the representative of the prosperity of the Northern Song Dynasty. The standard of living of the ordinary peddlers and pawns in the city may exceed that of the ordinary European nobles.
In 1127, the Jin army marched south, breaking the two emperors in Beijing, and the Northern Song Dynasty was destroyed, and The capital was temporarily at a low ebb. The Jin Dynasty was a Hu regime established by the Jurchens, who were very good at learning Han culture, and Northern China was gradually restored, and the population of Beijing once again grew to more than one million.
With the deepening of the degree of Sinicization, the center of gravity of jurchen rule shifted south step by step. From Huining Province at the founding of the Country, to Yanjing, and then to Fenjing. In 1214, Emperor Xuanzong of Jin ordered the capital to be moved to Beijing, following the old path of the Northern Song Dynasty.
In the late Jin Dynasty, although the prosperity of Fenjing and the vast north China region was a little weaker than that of the Southern Song Dynasty, it was not very different from the Northern Song Dynasty. It can provide an income of 40 to 50 million yuan to the Jin court every year, which is enough to support the operation of the Jin state. However, the most fatal weakness of Fenjing still exists, that is, there is no danger to defend, and the enemy army is easy to attack the city.
It was this weakness that allowed the Jurchen army to conquer the Northern Song Dynasty. Nearly a hundred years later, the Mongol army also pounced on the capital city. Fortunately, the Jin army in the city was much stronger than the Northern Song Forbidden Army, and with its high walls, it was able to block the Mongol offensive.
In order to defend Fenjing, Jin Guo also tried his best. They implemented a policy of fortifying the walls and clearing the wilderness, forcing all the inhabitants of the cities and surrounding villages to move to the cities without leaving a single grain of grain for the Mongols. Together with the residents of the original city, they helped to defend the city, leaving no loopholes in the long walls.
There was a lack of large trees near Fenjing, and it was impossible to make large trebuchets and siege equipment. The residents of the city, under the threat of the Jin army, desperately resisted, so that the Mongols attacked for dozens of days, but saw no results. The Lord would have to abandon the siege and withdraw from the siege. If the Northern Song Dynasty had such a determination to defend the city, I am afraid it would not have died so early.
Surprisingly, the enemy on the ground had just receded, and another invisible enemy had killed more Fenjing people. The plague broke out in the capital and soon swept through the city, and before the people could celebrate the victory of the defense, they immediately fell into the shadow of death.
Plague is always accompanied by wars and disasters, dead bodies can seriously pollute water, air and food, and breed a large number of rats and other sources of transmission, and a slight laxity in sanitation measures will soon cause a large-scale plague.
The Mongols had a precedent for spreading the plague, and when they could not conquer the city, they would throw the corpses of dead animals or sick people into the city with a stone thrower, and when the plague had taken most of their lives, they would come back to seize the dying city. That's how the Black Death, which made Europeans smell, happened.
According to records, the number of plague deaths in the capital is more than 900,000, and many families have died, not even those who have buried their heads. In just a few tens of days, such a large number of people died, which is also rare in history.
Chinese were very familiar with the plague, and the plague that spread from the northern grasslands took the lives of hundreds of people in the Han Dynasty. Zhang Zhongjing, a famous doctor in the Eastern Han Dynasty, had many clan brothers die of plague. So he devoted his life to the book "On Typhoid Fever and Miscellaneous Diseases", which was the earliest medical book for plague.
With this medical book, coupled with the efforts of countless generations of doctors, the fatality rate of plague has been greatly reduced. As long as the government responds properly, the outbreak of plague can be controlled. However, jin jun only wants to defend the city and does not care about the lives of the people at all, and the epidemic prevention work is even more impossible to talk about. All this made the plague in the capital city even more terrible and fierce.
According to estimates, the original residents in the capital city, plus the villagers who moved in, are at least more than 2 million. A plague nearly halved the population, and the capital city was reduced to a purgatory on earth. Is it worth the price? Not worth it!
The Emperor of the Jin Dynasty could not stay in this purgatory and soon fled to Guide Province. The General Cui Li immediately surrendered, and the deaths of millions of people only extended the life of the Jin Dynasty by a few months. Jin annihilated the Song Dynasty, Fenjing suffered a disaster, Meng annihilated Jin, and Fenjing suffered another disaster. Every time the dynasty changes, it is accompanied by the mourning of countless li people.
In the end, the emperors of the Jin Dynasty did not escape the punishment of history, and the Mongols swept away the Yan royal family, just as they did with the Song Dynasty royal family a hundred years ago. Jin Aizong committed suicide in Caizhou, the Mongol and Southern Song armies divided his body, and the Jin Dynasty collapsed.