Background of the Battle of Shuishui: The Western Jin Dynasty died at Wuhu
People are accustomed to attributing the demise of the Eastern Han Dynasty to "eunuch dictatorship", "seizure of power by foreign relatives", "Yellow Turban Rebellion", "Border Army Disaster", etc., but ignore a fact---- when the Eastern Han Dynasty was at its most chaotic, the eunuchs and foreign relatives with exclusive power had been eliminated, the Yellow Turban had subsided, and the Border Army did not pose a threat.
The demise of the Eastern Han Dynasty lies in the fact that the warlords disregarded the cangsheng for their own interests.
Similarly, the demise of the Western Jin Dynasty could not be attributed to Empress Jia Nanfeng's troubles with the imperial family. The "Rebellion of the Eight Kings" lasted from 291 AD to 316 AD, and in 300 AD, Jia Nanfeng died, and the unjust cases caused by her life were basically rehabilitated, and the Zhongyuan Qunxiong fought for another 16 years, and the later Wuhu were able to join.
When Fang Xuanling and others compiled the Book of Jin, they criticized Jia Nanfeng a lot, but commented that during the eight years she was in charge of the Western Jin Dynasty, the Western Jin Dynasty rarely appeared in the state of "Yanran in the sea" and "tranquility in the government and the wilderness".
Similar to the demise of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the essence of the Rebellion of the Eight Kings was the disintegration caused by the internal struggle for power and profit within the Han Dynasty.
After this turmoil, the social economy was seriously damaged, the people suffered a large number of casualties, and the ruling function of the Western Jin Dynasty was paralyzed. (He Ziquan, History of the Southern and Northern Dynasties of Wei and Jin)
The five major ethnic minorities of xiongnu, Xianbei, Xianbei, Xian, and Qiang seized the opportunity and swarmed back, giving the Western Jin Dynasty a fatal blow.
The Southern Xiongnu regime, together with the remaining ethnic minorities, defeated the Western Jin army continuously, and in 304 and 314 AD, it captured two Jin emperors successively, resulting in the demise of the Western Jin Dynasty, known in history as the "Yongjia Rebellion".
The great chaos in the north and the beginning of the era of great division have begun.
The North Before the Battle of Shuishui: Former Qin unified the North and was unprecedentedly powerful
In 357 BC, former Qin leader Jian Jian appointed Wang Meng, a native of Shouguang, Shandong, as his chancellor, and Wang Meng to rectify the administration of officials and strengthen centralized power for Former Qin, while at the same time persuading nongsang to build water conservancy, forming a situation of "Guanlong Qingyan, the people are happy". Former Qin was unprecedentedly powerful and unified the north in 373 BC.
At the time of the Battle of Shuishui, Former Qin mobilized 300,000 troops of the Yan clan, and the number of troops of all ethnic groups who obeyed orders reached 500,000 If you count the hundreds of thousands of people who conquered the Southern General and Jian Jian's younger brother Zhi Rong, the total number of Former Qin troops exceeded 1.1 million. As a battle, the number of Former Qin troops in the Battle of Shuishui was unprecedented. (Jin Shu Zhi Jian Zai Ji, Jin Shu Zhi Rong Zai Ji)
Former Qin's strength is basically the same as the reason why Wuhu was able to chaoticize:
1. The population of Wuhu within the Great Wall has increased sharply, and there is a dangerous balance between the strength of the Han people
The Central Plains regime initially tried to restrict the inward migration of the Hu people, and Liu Xiu, the Emperor of Han Guangwu, lifted these restrictions. The Hu people continued to move into the more livable Guannei, and during the Three Kingdoms and Western Jin Dynasties, the war caused a sharp decline in the han population in the north, and the rulers forced the Hu people to move inward in order to get more population and taxes. During the Western Jin Dynasty, there were millions of hukou in Guanzhong, half of which were ethnic minorities, and the Han population was no longer dominant (General History of China, History of the Southern and Northern Dynasties of Wei and Jin).
2. The Central Plains Dynasty was strong in force, oppressing the Hu people and the poor, and provoking resistance
Since Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, he has continued to exert pressure on the northern nomads, and the Han people have established an absolute advantage over the Wuhu. During the Three Kingdoms period, Cao Cao could easily defeat the Xiongnu, Wuhuan, and Xianbei with only a small number of troops. The Jin Zhi records that "the Han system from the Son of Heaven to the Hundred Officials all wear swords", and the style of martial arts makes the country's combat strength invincible, but it also oppresses the nomads with this. (Manuscripts of the History of Chinese Weapons, Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms, Records of Emperor Wu, Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms, Tales of the Xiongnu Wuhuan Xianbei)
The Hu people who migrated inward were oppressed by the feudal lords of the Western Jin Dynasty, and many became slaves. Shi Le, a Qiang, was the Later Zhao Emperor, and when he was young, he was a slave that Han landlords could buy, sell and slaughter at will. In this context, the Wuhu erupted into a powerful force, and they caused great disasters in the Central Plains.
Emperor Wu of Jin divided the country, feudal lords regarded people and things as their own private property, and even the poor people of Han Nationality were treated as slaves. Some Han commoners and even social elites were also very dissatisfied with the Jin Dynasty, and the establishment of the Five Hu and Sixteen Kingdoms, without exception, contained the crystallization of at least one great han sage.
The Eastern Jin Dynasty successively sent Zu Ti, Huan Wen and other famous generals to the Northern Expedition, all of which returned without success.
At the beginning of the unification of Former Qin, several major ethnic minorities and Han people gathered the common strength.
The south before the Battle of Shuishui: The Eastern Jin Dynasty crossed south, the national strength was weak, and the internal open struggle was secret
The "yiguan" in "Yiguan Nandu" ostensibly means clothing and hats, referring to the civilized Nandu. These four characters are first from Liu Zhiji's "Stone Yili" of the Tang Dynasty, which refers to the events when Sima Rui, the emperor of the Jin Dynasty, established the Eastern Jin Dynasty:
Jin's world is also! From Luoyang to the south, Jiangzuo Qiao Lizhou County, there is no Mulberry Zi.
After the establishment of the Eastern Jin Dynasty in 318 AD, by the outbreak of the Battle of Shuishui in 383, the strength of the Eastern Jin Dynasty was slow to progress, mainly for three reasons:
Innately, there are few people and few soldiers
China's civilization originated in the Yellow River Basin, and the development of Jiangnan lagged behind. Sun Quan of Eastern Wu once troubled his entire imperial career because of this, and did not hesitate to send his general Wei Wen to the sea to search for Japan, Taiwan and other islands, in order to find a population to enrich the army and production. (According to the "history of Chinese Mouth", the population of the Western Jin Dynasty was 35 million, of which 24.5 million were in the north and 10.5 million in the south, less than one-half of the north))
Before the Battle of Shuishui, the Eastern Jin Dynasty was able to use it to resist the strength of the Former Qin army head-on, but the Northern Fu Army was only 80,000 people.
The day after tomorrow, the imperial court was not united
The fiasco of the Western Jin Dynasty did not make the Jin people realize the importance of unity.
The Eastern Jin Dynasty had just been established, and the strength of the imperial family in Jiangnan was not as good as that of the Door Valve Langya Wang, known as "The King and the Horse, the World Together", and the Wang Clan later rebelled. Outside the Wang clan, there were gatekeepers and powerful courtiers, who controlled the royal family, fought with each other, and weakened the power of the state.
In 354, the Eastern Jin general Huan Wen (桓文) briefly killed the Former Qin emperor Jian Jian (苻健) during the Northern Expedition. Wang Meng asked to see Huan Wen, and in the process of "talking about lice" that was well known in later generations, huan Wen was already stationed in Bashang, but he did not attack Chang'an, but raised Kou to respect himself. In fact, Huan Wen did have a plan to stand on his own, and in the face of personal interests, it was not worth mentioning that the restoration of the old country was not worth mentioning.
No wonder Wang Meng wanted to serve Jian Jian, and the Han social elite also turned to the ethnic minorities.
Sitting on the 800,000-strong army to throw whips and cut off the stream, Jian Jian finally drank and hated the Battle of Shuishui
The history of the Battle of Shuishui was widely circulated, and although the prime minister Wang Meng vigorously blocked jian's southern invasion before his death, some people of insight also believed that the natural dangers of the rivers were insurmountable. However, emperor Jian Jian of the Qi clan insisted that his army was large enough to "throw a whip and cut off the stream".
In the winter of 383, the Former Qin and Eastern Jin armies faced each other at Shuishui, and Jian Jian ordered the Former Qin army to retreat and wait for the Eastern Jin army to wait for the Eastern Jin army to wait for the shore so that it could attack it halfway.
After the Eastern Jin army crossed the river, it launched a surprise attack, and the Former Qin army that was still retreating was in chaos, and the famous Eastern Jin general Zhu Xu took the opportunity to shout "The Qin army is defeated." When the Former Qin Army heard this cry, it panicked instantly. Originally, many of the "Xiongnu, Xianbei, Qiangsihu" and Han armies that had been conquered by Jian Jian were not willing to participate in the war, and even took the opportunity to flee. The army that broke the historical scale of Jian Jian collapsed in this way. After the Battle of Shuishui, the north was divided again.
The Book of Jin describes Jian Jian as panicked and so "all the grass and trees are soldiers"; the Jin Shu Xie Xuan Biography describes the fugitive Jian Jian who heard a little wind and crane sounds and thought it was a pursuing soldier, that is, the idiom "wind sound crane". The Battle of Shuishui not only saved the Eastern Jin Dynasty, which led to the division of the country into north and south in the next 200 years, but also made Jian Jian a well-known historical supporting role for women and children because of three idioms.
As a nomadic emperor, Jian Jian had the experience of personally fighting in his youth, but in the Battle of Shuishui, once the war was scorched, he began to panic, why was this? In fact, Jian Jian's panic was not difficult to understand.
During the Period of the Wuhu Chaohua Period, the people were bored with life, the people were tired of war, and the difficulties of people's livelihood after Wang Meng managed the north were alleviated, the Han and Hu people were tired of war, and Former Qin did not yet have a unified foundation.
Politically, although Former Qin had gathered more than a million troops, more than half of the army did not belong to the Qiang people, and they followed Qiang Jian with great eagerness, and as a subordinate of Former Qin, they even hoped that Former Qin would collapse so that they could get rid of control and seize more power.
In this way, in the Battle of Shuishui, Jian Jian was suspicious of the other side's army and his own army, and once the war could not be won quickly, he would naturally feel that "all the grass and trees were soldiers".
However, the foundation of the Eastern Jin Dynasty's victory in the Battle of Shuishui lies in the changes of the Jin people themselves.
The result of the Battle of Shuishui stemmed from the awakening of civilization's consciousness of self-protection
In this battle, the Eastern Jin Dynasty did not actually occupy the heavens and places, which was fundamentally different from the advantages of Eastern Wu in the Battle of Chibi:
1. The soldiers of the Eastern Jin Dynasty and the Northern Prefecture crossed the Huai River first;
2. The Sima clan, the Wang clan of the Gate Valve, the Xie clan and many large families of the Jin Dynasty were independent of each other, and the degree of unity was not as good as that of the Three Kingdoms Sun Liu Alliance.
The Battle of Shuishui won more with less, and the change in national thinking is the most important reason!
From Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty to the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Confucian culture has influenced for five hundred years. Society generally believes that "the people are noble and the king are light", and it does not matter who becomes the emperor; Cao Cao issued the "Wei Wu Three Edicts" on meritocracy, advocating that the selection of talents can be talented without virtue. In this context, not only do the large numbers not think that there is anything wrong with the rule of the Five Hus, but there are even many people who tend to inflame the power.
After the two last emperors of the Western Jin Dynasty were captured, they praised the Hu emperor infinitely for their lives, and even willingly became slaves. Qian Mu commented:
Men and women of kings and subjects, without the festival of honesty and shame, are not as good as the Hu people who are slightly involved in sinology and have a rough understanding of righteousness. (Outline of National History)
However, in the 70 years between the fall of the Western Jin Dynasty and the Battle of Shuishui, the Jin people began to deeply understand the differences in civilizations and the impact of the clash of civilizations on themselves.
The Han Chinese in the north found that the Hu regime treated itself as equals, even the elite were not trusted, and Mencius's statement that the king was light seemed to be debatable.
Under all kinds of suffering, a large number of Han Chinese people fled to the south, and some of them formed the "Beifu Army", that is, the main force of the Eastern Jin Army at the Battle of Shuishui. These soldiers suffered a lot of hardships and fought to the death to protect the Central Plains civilization in the south.
The elites were also deeply aware of the problem, and the initial idea of "serving the same for everyone" began to waver, and the belief in protecting the Jin regime grew. When the Former Qin army was stationed on the edge of the Shuishui River, the Eastern Jin Dynasty shi clan had a brief mood of hugging. Xie An, the prime minister of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, originally lived in seclusion in Dongshan and had no intention of doing things, but at this moment he also stepped forward to take command, leaving behind the idiom of "comeback".
It is generally believed that nationalism originated in modern times, when Napoleon swept through Europe and attacked Spain, the local people, in the midst of oppression, recognized the importance of the independence of civilization and launched a strong resistance, which had a fatal impact on the powerful France.
The same is true of the self-preservation sentiment of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, who, after decades of encounters, have awakened to the importance of protecting the civilization to which they belong.
The Englishman Adam Smith said in the first sentence of "The Wealth of Nations: On the Expenditure of the Monarch and the State"
The most important role of the monarchy and the state is to protect independent societies from external aggression and oppression.
Sometimes monarchs are unable to assume this role, and countries of elites and populace automatically activate this self-protection mechanism.