In 265, Sima Yi's grandson, Sima Yan the Emperor wu of Jin, successfully forced the Wei Yuan emperor Cao Yan to take the throne and established the Jin Dynasty. In the sixth year of Xianning (280 AD), the Jin Dynasty destroyed Eastern Wu, so that the land of Kyushu was once again reunified after the Three Kingdoms Of Han Dynasty.
What Sima Yan, the emperor of the Jin Dynasty, who was proud of the spring breeze to unify the country, and the meritorious nobles who were greatly rewarded could not imagine that the unification of the Western Jin court was only a flash in the pan, and the prosperity and prosperity they saw as disappeared in less than fifty years. So, what caused the unification of the Western Jin Dynasty not to last long?
Figure 1 Sima Yan (236–290)
When it comes to the causes that led to the demise of the Western Jin Dynasty, the first thing that people may think of is the Rebellion of the Eight Kings. It is said that after Sima Yan established the Jin Dynasty, he felt that Cao Wei was weak in strength due to the weakness of the princes of the clan, making it easy for the Sima family to replace them, and in order to avoid another drama of "Zen position", Sima Yan intended to reform the sub-feudal system. Sima Yan, who felt that outsiders (warriors) were unreliable and could only rely on relatives, sealed twenty-seven princes of his own family in one go. Moreover, contrary to the Han Dynasty's practice of weakening the local princes, it not only gave the princes the power to administer, but also made them master a large number of military armed forces, laying the groundwork for subsequent turmoil.
As soon as Sima Yan, the Emperor of Jinwu, died, this wave of his own family immediately made a fuss. First Sima Yi's son Sima Liang the Prince of Runan fought with Sima Yan's father-in-law Yang Jun, then Sima Liang was killed by Sima Yan's son Sima Wei the Prince of Chu, and then Sima Wei was killed by Jia Nanfeng (Jia Hou). Not long after, Jia Hou wanted to kill Sima Song, the prince who was not born of him, and Sima Lun, the prince of Zhao, who was pregnant with a ghost fetus, took the opportunity to lure Jia Hou to kill the prince.
After the prince was killed, he brought troops into the palace in the name of Jia Hou's killing of the prince, killed all the Jia clan and became the emperor himself, while the kings of other places with heavy troops naturally disobeyed, so the second stage of the Rebellion of the Eight Kings, which was more intense in the war, began, and the kings participated in the war, causing serious damage to the social economy of the Western Jin Dynasty, so that Zu Ti could not help but sigh: "The rebellion of the Jin Dynasty is not the same as the rebellion of the upper and lower levels." The king of the clan fought for power and destroyed himself, so he made Rong Di take advantage of the gap and poison flowed to the Central Plains. ”
Figure 2 Sima Zheng (259–307), also known as Emperor Hui of Jin
The mistakes made by Emperor Wu of Jin in the choice of heirs exacerbated the chaos in the Western Jin court. Because his heir was Sima Zheng, the Emperor hui of Jin, who was famous in history for "why not eat meat paste". Sima Zheng was the second son of Emperor Wu of Jin, and his mother was Empress Wuyuan Yang Yan. He had some problems with his intelligence, but because Emperor Wu's eldest son Sima Zheng died prematurely, Sima Zheng was made crown prince at the age of nine.
The Book of Jin once recorded that Emperor Wu of Jin had written a question to test the crown prince, and the crown princess Jia Nanfeng asked someone to prepare an answer for the prince, and when Emperor Wu of Jin saw it, he felt that although his son was not smart, his basic ability was still acceptable, so he was assured to pass the throne to him. Just imagine, Emperor Wu of Jin is also a generation of male lords, is it rare that he really does not understand how many pounds his son has? Its legend is located in Sima Zheng, perhaps for the following two reasons. First of all, Sima Yan also felt that Sima Zheng was "unable to serve the great unification" and was very bottomless in his heart, but when he told the empress his thoughts, Empress Yang, who was counting on "mothers and sons as precious", with a sentence of "standing up for a concubine to grow up is not a virtuous", how can you be moved" and push back, Sima Yan is helpless to this old tradition.
Figure 3 Sima Yi (179 – 7 September 251)
Second, although Sima Zheng was a bit stupid, he had a very clever son, Sima Song, and Emperor Wu of Jin once praised him for having the style of Sima Yi of Gaozu during the Shang Dynasty, and said: "Here should be the rejuvenation of my family." Emperor Wu of Jin made such a judgment that it did not matter if the crown prince was stupid, and the country would be revitalized when the emperor and grandson succeeded to the throne. However, Emperor Wu of Jin's ideas were too idealistic, ignoring the ugly and jealous crown princess Jia Nanfeng. Sure enough, in the future, Jia Nanfeng, fearing that Sima Suo, who was not from him, would endanger himself, framed him for rebellion and killed him.
The improper position made the Sima family's court full of compromises from the beginning. The Sima family itself was from a family lineage, and Sima Yi gradually took control of Cao Wei's government through the Gaopingling Incident, but some of the powerful factions in Cao Wei did not pay for it, and even rebelled many times. Therefore, the later Sima Shi, Sima Zhao, on the one hand, suppressed the rebellious forces, on the other hand, in order to expand his own power, constantly won people's hearts and minds through rewards. Therefore, after Sima Yan established the country, in addition to giving these warriors more rewards, he also indulged them extraordinarily. As a result, the trend of extravagance and corruption prevailed, and at the same time, the unscrupulous scholars no longer cared about state affairs, but instead had a good style of talk.
Figure 4 Shi Chong (249–300), courtesy name Ji Lun, nicknamed Qi Nu
The corruption and extravagance of the Jin Dynasty was most famous for Shi Chongwang Kai's struggle for wealth, but Sima Yan, the Emperor of JinWu, not only did not stop this bad atmosphere, but instead adopted an attitude of encouragement and indulgence. According to the "New Sayings of the World", in addition to fighting with Wang Kaifu, Shi Chong also used beauty to persuade people to drink when holding banquets, and if the secretaries of state drank endlessly, they would behead beautiful people. Once, when Wang Dao and the great general Wang Dun attended a banquet, Wang Dao could not drink, but in order not to let the toasting woman be killed, he still drank it. Wang Dun himself could drink alcohol, but he did not drink, that is, "every great general, he will not drink, so as to see how it changes." Unexpectedly, Shi Chong beheaded three people in a row, but Wang Dun was "the same color as ever, and he still refused to drink." Wang Dao, who was beside him, could not bear to see the women being killed, so he persuaded Wang Dun to drink it, but Wang Dun said: "Suicide Of the Yi family, He Pre-Qing is concerned." (The people who killed him had nothing to do with you)
If the secretaries of state and nobles had been extravagant, but diligent in government affairs, the Western Jin Dynasty might not have perished so quickly. But when the warriors were in power and had no scruples, they enjoyed a luxurious life on the one hand, and on the other hand, they began to talk about "Xuanfeng". Everyone is proud of talking, shame and handling government affairs. So much so that later, when the Western Jin Dynasty fell, the leader of the Qing Tan sect, Wang Yan, a heavy minister, sighed before he was killed: "Woohoo! Although Wu Cao is not as good as the ancients, if the ancestors are still floating and vain, and they work hard to conquer the world, they still can't be today. ”
Figure 5 Territory of the Western Jin Dynasty
Finally, the erroneous ethnic policy accelerated the process of the fall of the Western Jin Dynasty. Since the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, ethnic minorities outside the Country have begun to migrate inland, mainly including Xiongnu, Xianbei, Xianbei, Qiang, Qiang and other ethnic groups. The number of ethnic minorities who migrated inland was large, and they mixed with the Han people after they moved in, and although many tribes were more or less Sinicized, some of the ethnic groups that migrated inland were still in a barbaric state. After several years of reproduction, by the time of the Western Jin Dynasty, it had reached the state of "more than a million people in Guanzhong, with a small number of them, and half of rongdi".
However, at that time, the Han ministers and secretaries of state used these internally migrated tribes as slaves, and even many officials and nobles at that time plundered the Hu people in large numbers and sold them to the east as slaves. Later, Shi Le, who established Later Zhao and dominated the north, was once captured and sold as a slave by Sima Teng, the assassin of Hezhou, which made the contradiction between Hu and Han extremely acute. At that time, Liu Xuan, the Xiongnu Zuoxian King, was very eager for Han culture, studied hard, and was proficient in "Poetry" and "Books", but in that case, he also said: "Jin is without a way, and slaves are royal to me." As for the low-level Hu people, they are even more "resentful and poisoned by the bone marrow." The Rebellion of the Eight Kings led to a significant decrease in the population of the Han chinese in the north, and the kings of the Sima family invoked the power of foreign nationalities, which finally led to a comprehensive rebellion of the internally migrating ethnic groups, and the rapid demise of the Western Jin Dynasty, and the tragedy of the era of the Wuhu Chaohua also began.