Chronicles of the Two Jin Dynasties and the Northern and Southern Dynasties - (95) Chen Baxian (Part 2)
In the tenth month of the lunar calendar in the second year of the Taiping dynasty (557 AD), Chen Baxian ascended the throne in Jiankang and became emperor, changing the name of the country to Chen.
This regime can be regarded as a miracle in Chinese history – for example, it is the only dynasty with the same name as the country; for example, although it is the smallest of the four dynasties of the Southern Dynasty, it is still revered as an orthodox dynasty at the beginning of the country, even "ordered to be thousands of miles away from Jiankang".
If you go back to the scene of history, you can also see richer and more interesting details:
In August of the second year of the Taiping Dynasty, Chen Baxian obtained the "Zen Position" package of "adding yellow qi, sword footing to the temple, entering the dynasty without tendency, and worshiping without name"; in September, Chen Baxian was enfeoffed by the Duke of Yixing County; in October, Chen Baxian was promoted from Chen Gong to the throne; Xin Wei (two days later), Liang Jing Emperor Zen was located in Chen Wang, and Chen Baxian resigned three times and ascended the throne as emperor.
Since Wang Mang developed this set of usurpation packages of "Jia Jiu Xi - Feng Gong - Feng Wang - Title Emperor", Chen Ba was the fastest paced one. Especially from the prince to the emperor, he only took two days, which is unprecedented.
This reminds people of what Liu Yu did more than a hundred years ago when he replaced the Eastern Jin Dynasty. So what is the difference between the Jin and Song dynasties and the Liang and Chen dynasties?
The year before Liu Yu replaced Emperor Gong of Jin, he had just lost Chang'an; however, by this time the Eastern Jin Dynasty had already pushed the border to the Yellow River and recovered the former capital Luoyang. As an absolute political strongman of the Eastern Jin Dynasty and the first emperor of the Southern Dynasty, Liu Yu's popularity and strength had reached its peak at this time. Many people regret that if Liu Muzhi and Liu Yu only have one to live for five more years, maybe China will be reunified in advance.
And Chen Baxian here? Not to mention the unification of China, he was not even enough to unify Jiangnan. At this time, in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, there were both the puppet regime of Western Liang and the comrade-in-arms Wang Lin, who had fought alongside him. On the day he added nine tin, he also issued an order to attack Wang Lin. If you want to say that he is the lord of the people who are expected by everyone in Jiangnan, it is estimated that Chen Baxian himself does not believe it.
Let's say that Wang Lin, as the third person in the Battle of Pinghou Jing, second only to Wang Shengjie and Chen Baxian, he was quite influential in the Jianghan area. He defeated the Chen general Hou Andu twice, and even took him captive for more than half a year. Until Chen Baxian's death, Wang Lin was still his confidant in the upstream.
As for the direct threat to the north, Northern Qi, during Chen Baxian's reign, he only maintained a level of no war, and did not expand the territory and try to push the national border back to the north of the Yangtze River or even farther. It can be said that in the less than two years of his imperial career from his ascension to the throne in October of the first year of Yongding to his death in June of the third year, Chen Ba was quite lackluster at first.
Of course, there are also certain background factors for lackluster Chen, such as the national strength of Southern Chen at this time is really weak (it cannot even be called a "country", and the territory is not even larger than that of Eastern Wu during the Three Kingdoms), or for example, his reign time is too short, and Liu Yuyou is a fight.
In the less than two years that Chen Baxian had been emperor, he had done two inconspicuous but far-reaching things.
The first was to kill Xiao Fangzhi, the Emperor of Liangjing. This matter is actually not rare at all, starting from Liu Yu, the emperors of the Southern Dynasty generally have to kill the last emperor of the previous dynasty to complete the last coronation procedure for themselves. Compared with Xiao Daocheng and Xiao Yan, Chen Baxian endured Xiao Fangzhi for half a year before he started, and only killed Xiao Fangzhi alone, and did not harm the whole clan like the Xiao family, which was good.
And the second thing, almost negligible, but extremely intriguing, is the sacrificial temple.
It is known that Emperor Xiao Yan of Liangwu sacrificed himself three times to the Tongtai Temple and spent hundreds of millions of dollars to redeem him from the temple; but few people know that Chen Baxian, the Emperor of Chen Wu, also sacrificed himself to the Buddhist temple. However, his sacrificial Buddhist temple had a little more profound meaning than Xiao Yan.'
Three days after Xiao Fangzhi's death, the tail on the beam of the palace room was inexplicably purple smoke soaring into the sky, and people thought it was Xiangrui at that time; ten days later, the capital was earthquake.
After one, Chen Baxian came to the Great Solemn Temple and decided to give up his life. Of course, the next day, the courtiers invited the emperor out of the palace with a watch. No money was spent on the national treasury, much less money on the ministers.
If you go through the timeline before and after, you can probably guess why Chen Baxian sacrificed himself to the Buddhist temple- unlike Xiao Yan, who is a pure Buddhist enthusiast, Chen Baxian's sacrifice this time is not so much a dedication to the Buddhist cause as a political show after the murder of Xiao Fangzhi, after all, when the beijing earthquake occurred, Xiao Fangzhi's coffin may not have been carried away.
After that, Chen Baxian frequently visited the Buddhist Temple, and also followed Xiao Yan's example in convening an unhindered meeting. In his only year as emperor, he came to the temple three times, like a devout Buddhist.
We should understand Chen Baxian, after all, at this time he is already an old man who is about to enter the eternal night (he died in June of the following year). Whether as a politician or an ordinary old man, his heart is extremely lonely.
Politically, the Chen Dynasty was at this time the weakest of the three-legged state (you can think of it as the Shu Han dynasty of the Three Kingdoms period); militarily, the war against Wang Lin was repeatedly invincible, and there were one rebellion after another in the country; and in personal life, Chen Baxian already had only one son, Chen Chang, and was still a hostage in Northern Zhou.
Put yourself in the shoes of you, and you will also feel lost and helpless, and you may turn to Buddhism for psychological comfort?
This is Chen Baxian, who is called the empress, a real loner. His bloodline spread to Chen Chang and ended here, and although the Chen family in later generations spread all over the country or even the world, none of them were his chen baxian bloodlines. The Chen family, one of the four major families of the Republic of China, claimed to be a descendant of Chen Baxian, and it was even more completely untenable.
However, this did not affect Chen Baxian's historical position. As a tragic hero with great characteristics of the times in the post-Three Kingdoms period, although the unification of the world is an irreversible fate, Chen Baxian still painstakingly supports the acre and three points of Jiangnan and makes a final effort to preserve the "Zhonghua Zhengshuo".
It is precisely because of this that Mr. Lu Simian praised that "those who have never won the country are as upright as Emperor Chen Wu"; when the founding great man commented on the "Twenty-Four Histories", he asked posterity to read more "Chen Shu - Wudi Ji" to understand Chen Baxian's entrepreneurial experience; for example, today, tens of millions of people surnamed Chen are willing to call Chen Baxian as their ancestor.
Of course, there are also people who don't like Chen Baxian. For example, Wang Xian, the younger son of Wang Shengjian, shaved out Chen Baxian's body when he followed the Sui army to destroy Chen, and then drank Chen Baxian's ashes. In this way, Chen Baxian also became the only orthodox emperor who was drunk into his stomach.
In the year that Chen Baxian ascended the throne, a major event also occurred in the Northern Dynasty - the Western Wei Emperor was replaced by the Northern Zhou of the Yuwen family. However, just a few months later, when Chen Baxian had not yet completed his coronation, the emperor of Northern Zhou was strangely replaced. So, what's going on here?
We'll talk about it next time.