The internal reasons for the Song Dynasty's kindness to the courtiers and the depreciation of military generals?
Why the Song Dynasty treated the civilian subjects well and suppressed the military generals was actually a choice and influence with a profound historical background. In the ancient feudal dictatorship system, the relationship between the monarch and the subject was extremely sensitive, and the king had the power to kill and seize the power of life and death to the subject, and the subject was called "accompanying the king like a companion tiger".
When the monarch is weak and the subject is strong, there will be a situation of "great power and deception of the lord". According to ancient books such as "Spring and Autumn" and "Zuo Chuan", in the 255 years from the year of Lu Yin to the twenty-seventh year of the Duke of Lu'ai, a total of 41 assassinations occurred, and among the more than 200 emperors in China's more than 2,000-year feudal society, as many as 70 emperors could not die, and a large part of them were murdered to death by powerful ministers.
For example, Cao Cao's descendant, Cao Cao, the Duke of GaoguiXiang, was killed by the then general Sima Zhaodang. For example, Yuwen Hu in the Northern Zhou Dynasty deposed the two emperors and killed the two emperors, and Shi Hu directly deposed Shi Le's crown prince Shi Hong in the Southern and Northern Dynasties period to establish himself as emperor, and even Jian Jian killed his uncle Fu Sheng to come to power.
In the Tang Dynasty, there were Princess Taiping deposed emperor Li Dan on the throne, and even Wu Zetian personally deposed his own son to establish himself as emperor, and even at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, there were Chen Youyou's sons who killed his old lord Xu Shouhui on the throne.
However, the emperors of the Song Dynasty rarely killed their ministers indiscriminately, which was indeed a special case in the relationship between monarchs and subjects in the era of feudal despotism.
Tracing back to the source, zhao Kuang, the founding emperor of the Song Dynasty, was born as a military general, and as a person who came over, he was well aware that since the five dynasties of the late Tang Dynasty, the feudal towns and warlords had supported the army and respected themselves, relied on the powerful force in their hands, annexed each other, and looked up to the great ding, resulting in the end of the "soldiers are arrogant and commander-in-chief, handsome and rebellious" The result of the change of power is not surprising.
Since the five generations, warlords in various places have divided their territories, the world has been in chaos, and internal rebellions have often occurred, such as in the Later Tang Dynasty, Li Cunxun, the Emperor zhuangzong of Later Tang, had already pacified the world, but unexpectedly internal changes occurred, and he was defeated by Li Siyuan's rebellion and died in the rebellion.
Another example is The last emperor of the Later Tang Dynasty, Li Congke, who was also killed by the rebellion since he rebelled, and Liu Zhiyuan, Guo Wei, and others who came to power through mutinies, even Zhao Kuangyin himself also gained the power of the Great Song Through the Chen Qiao Mutiny and the Yellow Robe, and he could not help but ask himself: "In the decades since the Tang Dynasty, the emperors have changed their surnames, the wars have been endless, and the people have been living on the ground, so why is it?"
In order to solve this problem, Zhao Kuangyin adopted the art of controlling the power of the soldiers with a cup of wine to the courtiers who could threaten his throne, and formulated a series of policies to treat the scholars and doctors to win the hearts and minds of the people, mainly in the following three aspects
First, "the rule of the world must rely on the literati" measures to revitalize the culture and suppress the armed forces.
In the Taizu era, the allusions of "the prime minister must use the reader" and "half of the Analects to rule the world" have been passed down to this day, which also shows that the founding emperor attaches importance to reading and respects the characteristics of the literati and doctors.
For example, in the economy, the preferential treatment given to civilian officials was unprecedented in the past dynasties. Taking Ouyang Xiu as an example, in his later years, he called himself a June 1 resident, and he liked to collect ancient books on weekdays, and collected a thousand volumes of gold stone inscriptions for three generations to correct, "people have no doubts." His epitaph reads: "I have a thousand volumes of ancient records, a collection of 10,000 volumes, a piano, a chess game, and a pot of wine. Because of self-reliance and aspiration. The state of pleasure and leisure in the text jumps out on the paper, which shows the ideal living conditions of the Song Dynasty intellectuals from another perspective.
At the same time, the status of civilian officials in the Song Dynasty was improved, and there were even records of the appointment of civilians as commanders in the army, and the placement of military generals under the control of the literati, and the military soldiers "saw that the ministers would stand up to the court and retreat." "It can be seen that the soldiers have a respectful attitude towards civilian officials.
The high status of the literati created good conditions for them to write down the ruling opinions with insight, and once the literati of the Song Dynasty were admitted to the imperial examination, their status could be doubled, and people at that time generally believed that even if they recovered the Sixteen Prefectures of Youyun, they would not be as glorious as the Yuan. At that time, the literati all had privileges, and once they were examined, they could immediately get 200,000 yuan of makeup money, as a coil, they could also directly become officials, and their status was much higher than that of the military generals who came to power through martial arts, and the core of which was the political strategy of the Song Dynasty to support civilian officials.
Second, the ruling concept of "ruling the world with scholars".
The Song Dynasty actively promoted the examination system, and all scholars, farmers, industrialists, and merchants, and all those who had a certain culture could take the examination, thus expanding the scope of taking the examination. In the Tang Dynasty, there were a maximum of thirty places in the first list, while in the Song Dynasty, there were as many as four or five hundred. In the second year of Emperor Taizong's Taiping Revival (977), the number of students admitted to the imperial examination reached 500, and the number of students admitted increased significantly. Among the 133 prime ministers of the Song Dynasty recorded in the Song Shi Zai Auxiliary Table, as many as 123 were born by keju.
Among the above quotations, there are many famous courtiers of the Song Dynasty, such as Han Wei, Peng Ruli, Su Rui, Ye Mengde, Lü Gongzhuo, Fan Zuyu, Hong Zun, Zhao Ruyu, Su Shi, Zheng Xingyi, etc.
The Song Dynasty monarchs selected a large number of literati with an open attitude, indicating the Song Dynasty monarchs' respect for knowledge and their thirst for talents. The proposal of many systems, including the medical welfare system, does require the wisdom of Bó Lè and the wisdom of the talents to plan together, and through the joint efforts of these people, the correct decisions can be made to consolidate the Great Song Dynasty.
This model actually made the civil official politics of the Song Dynasty very stable, and the civilian politics of the Song Dynasty established a solid civilian official group and a community of civilian interests, and they realized the continuation of the interests of the civil officials of the Song Dynasty.
Third, the ancestral family law of "no killing of scholars and doctors and those who write to the speakers".
The relevant provisions on the family law of the ancestors of the Song Dynasty list eight items, namely, the law of having relatives, the law of the chief, the law of ruling the inside, the law of treating foreign relatives, the law of thriftiness, the law of diligence, the law of courtesy, and the law of leniency. Among them, the law of leniency refers to how to deal with the relationship between kings and subjects, and its original purpose is to reproduce the harmonious relationship between kings and subjects in the "ancestral prosperity" of "magnanimity and great morale".
Compared with the book-burning pits and literary prisons that have appeared in Chinese history, the political environment of the Song Dynasty was relaxed and harmonious, and the courtiers were diligent in thinking and daring to advise books and things. Since there is no danger of his own life in the advice of his subjects, it is possible to commit yan zhizhi's advice: "Every time he is grateful for the affairs of the world, he fights hard, and for a while the scholar and doctor are vigorous and respectful", forming a situation in which the courtiers rule the world with the emperor with the heart of fists and fists.
A typical example is a group of literati and doctors represented by Fan Zhongyan, who stress the Confucian spirit of helping the world, advocate a positive attitude toward joining the WTO, attach importance to the welfare of the people by means of medicine and other means, "if you are not a good doctor, you are a good doctor" and "you are a good doctor who takes the world as the most important".
IV. Conclusion
Mr. Deng Guangming, an expert in Song history, once said: "The Song Dynasty was the highest stage of the development of China's feudal society, and the height reached by the material civilization and spiritual civilization during the two Song Dynasties can be said to be unprecedented in the entire historical period of China's feudal society." This sentence can be said to put the Song Dynasty on the first chair of the ancient Chinese feudal dynasty, and Yu shen feels the same way about this.
The economic, cultural, scientific, technological, artistic and other aspects of the Song Dynasty have been publicly discussed as the number one position in China's feudal Duhui, but many people do not understand the priority of the Song Dynasty's leading politics. It is true that the political performance of the Song Dynasty was very weak, internally superior and externally difficult, partial to Peace and Tranquility, but as the core of the ancient Chinese emperor's ruling regime, the civil official system developed to the highest bee in the Song Dynasty.
That is to say, due to the full development of the civil service system, the political core of the Song Dynasty was quite mature, and it was also unattainable by other dynasties.
The civil bureaucracy of the Song Dynasty replaced the political system of the military generals and civilian subjects since the Tang Dynasty, and this measure directly changed the social depth of China's imperial examination system.
The imperial examination system became a political system that could affect the whole society, especially song Taizong's expansion of the number of candidates in the imperial examination system, which directly changed the employment structure of the imperial court, and the han disciples became the mainstream. The whole Chinese society officially entered the society of the imperial examination, and never returned to the previous family society of five surnames and seven hopes, and from this point of view, the administration of the Song Dynasty was still of decisive significance.