People and Things in Zizhi Tongjian (Shadow Emperor Mang)

After reading Wang Mang's part, I went to check baidu encyclopedia by the way, and found that the first label given to him in the encyclopedia was "Western Han Reformer", I was stunned at the time, I thought to myself, if a person can be called a reformer if he comes up with various policies without a head and a brain, then we can also become reformers by going to the street with our eyes closed.

I think Wang Mang's first label should be "Emperor of Shadows", he spent most of his life playing a "respectful and humble" person, because of his outstanding acting skills and unscrupulous means, he successfully climbed up step by step, and finally seized the power of the Han Dynasty.

From Wang Mang's point of view, we have to admit that his strategy was very successful, although Wang Mang and his family had endless glory and wealth as foreign relatives, but because Wang Mang's father, Wang Man, died early, he could not rely on his father to climb up like his other cousins. So he saved the country by playing the role of filial piety to the elders, taking care of his brother's widow and children to make the other elders in the family recognize him.

When his great uncle Wang Feng was seriously ill, he went directly to the door to take care of him, personally tasted medicine, was busy, and made himself disheveled, so Wang Feng was very moved, and before he died, he helped him get a position as a lieutenant from the emperor and the empress.

Wang Mang therefore seized the opportunity to continue his strategy, so his reputation became more prosperous, many people praised him, and soon after he was named the Marquis of Xindu by Emperor Hancheng (promoted to knight lieutenant, Guanglu Dafu, shizhong), he not only became a high official, but also self-marketing was also very successful, and his fame was greater than his elders with higher positions.

Wang Mang also experienced a low point in his life in stages, he was dismissed from his post during the Han Dynasty, and after returning to his hometown, he continued to adhere to the original strategy, and his son Wang Yue killed the slave, so he severely reprimanded him and forced Wang Yu to commit suicide. For the sake of fame, he can do everything to his son.

When emperor Han Ai died, because Emperor Han Ai had no sons, so before electing a new emperor, the power of the imperial government was basically in the hands of empress dowager Wang Zhengjun, and her first thought was to let her nephew Wang Mang come back to preside over the overall situation and make him the Grand Sima (大司馬).

However, empress dowager Wang Zhengjun did not expect that from then on, Wang Mang began to slowly improve his acting skills in the imperial court, while excluding dissidents, and slowly put the empress dowager in the air. On the other hand, in order to facilitate his own control of power, Wang Mang established a nine-year-old Hanping Emperor under his initiative, so the only person who could balance him was the empress dowager Wang Zhengjun.

However, the empress dowager was initially unaware of this crisis, because Wang Mang cultivated a group of confidants to cooperate with him in acting, such as Wang Shun, Wang Yi, Zhen Feng, Zhen Handan and others. Every time Wang Mang wanted to get something, he let this group of people play to the empress, and then the empress dowager saw that her nephew was really good and should be rewarded, so she issued an edict to seal the reward, Wang Mang first resolutely resigned, not the kind of polite resignation, but knelt down and cried bitterly about the kind of prevarication that he He De He could, and then pushed back and forth a few times, he pretended to be reluctant to accept the reward, so the empress dowager completely lost her guard against him, and later many things were directly decided by Wang Mang. Most of her power fell into Wang Mang's hands.

Wang Mang's routine was very effective, and it wasn't long before he used the same trick to get the empress dowager to make herself the Duke of An Han and Taifu. Of course, he should still perform a full set of plays, and he also let others go to the performance to ask for him to be crowned as a public official, and then the empress dowager issued a reward, and he resolutely resigned, and after several times and three times, he had to reluctantly accept.

The ministers in the imperial court who still had a slight sense of justice either feared resigning and running away, or they had already been killed or dismissed by Wang Mang, so that no one could hinder Wang Mang's acting career.

Although Wang Mang already has great power, he still insists on acting, and because there are too many plays, I can only simplify the list:

When there was a drought in the country, he took the lead in donating money and insisted on being a vegetarian.

In order to make his daughter empress, he first deliberately said that his daughter was not eligible to participate in the queen's audition, but let others play and say that they must choose her daughter as empress, and finally got their wish.

Take money to bribe the barbarians to submit to the imperial court, and when the messengers return, they will brag wildly, saying that now the world is governed very well, three grains of rice can grow in a grain of grain, and some can grow without even cultivating themselves, so the barbarians are all willing to submit to us.

As Emperor Hanping grew older, Wang Mang was worried that he would become unable to control him, so he used chronic poison in wine to trick Emperor Hanping into drinking, and died not long after. At the same time, Wang Mang also pretended to pray to heaven, praying that he could die in place of the emperor.

After the death of Emperor Hanping, Wang Mang created a new crown prince Liu Bao, who was only two years old at the time, which meant that he would let him succeed to the throne when he grew up, but Wang Mang deliberately let Liu Baby be locked in the house for a long time, only to give him food and drink, and forbade everyone to talk to him, so Liu Baby grew up in an abnormal environment and basically looked like a fool when he grew up.

After Wang Mang usurped the throne, he renamed Liu Bao as the Duke of Anding, and when the ceremony was held, he personally held Liu Bao's hand, crying that heaven forced him to become emperor, and he was also helpless, and the people present expressed great emotion when they saw it.

Wang Mang's entire usurpation process was still very steady, and he was also very patient, at the beginning he asked the empress dowager to give him a title of "false emperor", and the empress dowager agreed, and at this time she had to agree if she did not agree, and the empress dowager had basically been vacated.

The title of "false emperor" was used for a long time, and the people of the world basically saw Wang Mang, and Dongjun Taishou Zhai Yi took the lead in rebelling, Wang Mang was very panicked at first, and he couldn't eat the food, but there was no way but to send troops to quell the chaos, and he didn't expect to calm down very smoothly.

This time, Wang Mang's confidence soared, and he decided to become the true emperor, and then he performed a Zen concession ceremony and established a new dynasty. He went to ask his aunt (Empress Dowager Wang Zhengjun) to ask for the Han Dynasty's imperial jade seal, and the empress dowager was half dead, and at first she did not want to hand it over, but afraid that Wang Mang would be hard, he angrily took out the jade seal and threw it on the ground and handed it over.

During his reign, Wang Mang generally did three major things, one was to disrupt internal affairs, the second was to disrupt diplomacy, and the third was to brag (acting).

In terms of internal affairs, because Wang Mang is an "actor", he does not understand the feasibility of the economic and political system at all, and the monetary policy has been changed countless times, causing economic chaos and superimposing severe punishment policies, resulting in many people going bankrupt and going to jail. There is also the Wangtian system, which is also a utopian but unrealistic system. There are also some reforms that have eaten enough to support the same, that is, randomly changing place names, such as changing Chang'an to Chang'an. Due to the confusion of the policy, Wang Mang later had no money to pay officials' salaries, and officials in various places could only rely on their own magic to make money by skillfully plundering and exploiting the people.

In terms of diplomacy, Wang Mang only pursued fame, but at the same time despised the barbarians, and went to change the names and print letters to the barbarians every three to five minutes. For the obedient barbarians, they gave them a lot of money, but they insulted the barbarians in name, so the Xiongnu and other barbarians also slowly found that the imperial court was unreliable, and began to gradually rebel and invade the border, and the border that had been peaceful for a long time was destroyed by the barbarians, and the population was sharply reduced.

In terms of bragging, Wang Mang believes that he is a talent that can be compared with the Three Emperors and Five Emperors, and he must vigorously publicize it so that everyone in the world knows, and the officials below must also report some xiangrui deeds from time to time, if someone dares to report that the rise of thieves is caused by wrong policies, he will be very angry and refuse to believe. Even when the world was in chaos and many people were starving to death, some officials lied to Wang Mang that now the people could still afford white rice and meat soup, and he still chose to believe it.

In addition, because Wang Mang thought of his own entrepreneurial experience, he was afraid that he would also encounter a subordinate like himself, so he was very defensive of the minister, and many things were personally handled, so he often stayed up late to work and was busy until dawn.

However, this did not prevent his defeat, and in 23 AD, the Green Forest Army invaded Chang'an, Wang Mang was killed, and his head was cut off and hung in the downtown area.

What did Wang Mang leave behind for the whole of China?

He disrupted domestic and foreign affairs, led to barbarians taking advantage of the opportunity to invade the Han Dynasty, led to a large-scale peasant uprising, and led to warlord wars.

Of course, the most bitter chaos in the world is the common people, and when Wang Mang was still there, the common people were tossed half to death by his various chaotic policies. After Wang Mang's death, the common people were even more miserable, and various peasant rebels and warlords took turns to ravage them, which can be said to be miserable to death.

The whole of China was devastated, and Liu Xiu, the Emperor of Han Guangwu, fought for about fifteen years, and society was basically calmed down.

At this time, the total population of China was only about 20% or 30% of the total population before Wang Mang came to power, and he killed countless people with his own strength.

The last question is, why was Wang Mang able to seize the world so smoothly?

In fact, this evil result was already sown when the Han Dynasty was founded, because the matter of foreign relatives participating in politics and interfering in politics has always existed, but in the late Western Han Dynasty, the emperors starting from the Han Yuan Emperor were more and more incompetent, so they gradually caused such a result.

For example, Emperor Hancheng, seeing that there were more natural disasters, thought that the heavens were not satisfied, and his heart was worried. Then the following person suggested that it would work to find someone to commit suicide to apologize to heaven, and he actually believed it, and then forced Cheng Xiangfang to commit suicide. Emperor Hancheng was obsessed with female sex, the harem was chaotic, and in the end, not even a son who could inherit the throne was left, and some of them may have been secretly killed.

After Emperor Hancheng's nephew Emperor Han ai succeeded to the throne, it was even more exaggerated, Emperor Han not only did not leave a son, but also engaged in Dong Xian's homosexuality, leaving a well-known word called "the habit of breaking sleeves", and every day he thought of various reasons to give Dong Xian the title of official, and other ministers could not stop it. On the other hand, he was also subject to his birth mother, Empress Fu, whose daily work allowed the emperor to give officials to their relatives and elevate his status, and the emperor was weak and incompetent in front of his mother, and could only obey.

Because Empress Fu's family was becoming more and more stubborn, another empress dowager, Wang Zhengjun, immediately supported Wang Mang after the death of Emperor Han Ai, so from this aspect, the source of Wang Mang's tragedy was induced by the Liu family itself.

Thanks for reading.