Emperor Xiao Yan of Liangwu was a very prominent emperor in Chinese history, and his reign time was countless among the emperors of previous dynasties, as the founder of an orthodox imperial dynasty and at the same time the actual mourner, the so-called "self-gain, self-loss", I am afraid that there is no one in the monarch, and his knowledge is probably not as good as other emperors.
In fact, the personal history of Emperor Wu of Liang is almost the history of Liang's imperial dynasty.
Xiao Yan's father, Xiao Shunzhi, was a brother of Xiao Daocheng, the Emperor of Qigao, and was within the scope of the Xiao clan of Lanling. Xiao Yan was a young and studious scholar, proficient in Confucianism and metaphysics, and was one of the "Eight Friends of the Western Residence" and became a celebrity in the concentration of celebrities. Born from the same clan as the Emperor, and famous, Xiao Yan was very calm on the eunuch road.
During the Southern and Northern Dynasties of the Wei and Jin Dynasties, although the shi clan could make progress in a flat stream, they had to play a role in the political situation, one was to serve on the near side of the emperor, and the other was to lead the army, and if they could combine these two power resources, there was a great future. Xiao Yan had already done it initially soon after he entered the shi. After the Marquis of Dongxia ascended the throne, Xiao Yan judged that he was "willing to sit in vain and entrust the courtiers." It is not safe in the DPRK, and he advises his brother Xiao Yi to stay in the local area and not to enter Beijing. He himself served in Xiangyang in the Yongzhou Assassin History, "submerging equipment, cutting more bamboo, sinking in Tanxi, and preparing for boats." Xiao Yi entered the capital as Shang Shu Ling and was soon killed. When the news came, Xiao Yan immediately summoned his staff to raise an army and push Xiao Baorong into the Son of Heaven for The Emperor qi and emperor. Because of the Southern Dynasty's "Jingzhou being in the upper echelons, and the Capital Soldiers in the imperial court", this gave Xiao Yan the strength to control the entire Jiangzuo. The following year Xiao Yan received Zen and replaced Southern Qi to establish the Liang Dynasty.
As a talented and ambitious monarch, Emperor Wu of Liang seemed to have done all the things that a Ming emperor should do after ascending the throne, such as establishing schools, practicing soil judgments, law orders, teaching peasants, reducing taxes, and so on, although some of them were not actually well enforced. Emperor Wu of Liang also came up with new ways to promote officials in the official system. For example, in the seventh year of the Tianjian (508), 125 generals were divided into 24 classes, that is, the official rank, the class was more expensive, and the same class was preceded by the advantages and disadvantages. In the third year of Chase (529), it was expanded to no. 240 and 44 classes, so that there were enough official ranks to meet the requirements of the officials' continuous promotion, so as to maintain their effectiveness. However, the promotion of such a loss of assessment is also prone to "those who are greedy and enterprising use goods to get through, and those who keep the Tao and retreat from the tao see nothing in poverty."
The unification of Hainei was Emperor Wu of Liang's wish, and he made several efforts to this end. As early as October of the fourth year of tianjian (505), it issued a large-scale northern expedition. The Northern Expeditionary Army "received new equipment and a very prosperous military appearance, and the Northerners thought that they had not seen it in hundreds of decades." However, Emperor Wu of Liang was nepotistic, and the chosen commander was his faint and incompetent brother Xiao Hong, which led to the defeat of the war, and the Liang army was seriously injured. In the fifth year of Tianjian, Wang Yuanying of Wei Zhongshan led his army to take advantage of the damaged Southern Liang army to besiege Zhong and leave the city, and could not be attacked for a long time. In the spring of the following year, due to the surge in spring waters on the Huai River, the Liang generals Wei Rui and Cao Jingzong took the opportunity to attack the Wei army camp and the bridge to transport grain with boat fire, curbing the momentum of the Wei army to the south and regaining the military balance between the north and the south.
At the end of the Tianjian, Emperor Wu of Liang planned to build a weir to divert Huai water to irrigate Shouyang City, but despite the obstruction of the Qunchen, he enlisted 200,000 soldiers and civilians to build it, and as a result, "the weir will merge, the Huai water will drift and the disaster will be restored." Rebuilt, "Soldier Dead Seventeen Eight". In the autumn after the yancheng three years later, "the Huaishui flooded, the weir was broken, rushed to the sea, and killed tens of thousands of people", so that Emperor Wu of Liang finally had to abandon this plan. In October of the second year of Datong (528), Ding Hai, taking advantage of the Great Chaos of Northern Wei, sent the General Chen Qingzhiwei of the Eastern Palace to the North with the opportunity of the Beihai King Yuanhao, the Linhuai King Yuanyu, and the Ru'nan Wang Yuanyue to return to the north. Chen Qingzhi only took 7,000 soldiers, but he attacked Xingcheng, Kaocheng, Xingyang, and Hujiao all the way, repeatedly defeated the Wei army, and within 140 days, "ping thirty-two cities, forty-seven battles, and no advance", entered Luoyang in May of the following year, and Yuan Hao ascended the throne as emperor of Northern Wei. However, Emperor Wu of Liang was not prepared for this, so Chen Qingzhi had no follow-up reinforcements, and two months later, Erzhu Rong counterattacked and entered Luoyang to kill Yuan Hao. Chen Qingzhi led the remnants of the army to encounter another flood at Song Mountain, and the soldiers died and scattered, and they could only flee back alone, and the Liang Dynasty also lost a great opportunity.
The consumption of war and the cost of worshipping Buddhas were huge expenses, so how did Emperor Wu of Liang deal with economic problems? According to the record: "The people cannot be killed, and everything is displaced, or depends on the surname, or gathers in the tunfeng", etc., but is not the source of taxes for the government less? Emperor Wu of Liang declared: "I do not eat the food of the state except for public banquets, and I do not eat the food of the state for many years, and even the people of the palace do not eat the food of the state, and accumulate years." Whoever is built, regardless of the material official, and the craftsman of the state, is employed to make it a success." So where did Emperor Wu of Liang's money come from? He revealed: "It is quite convenient to get rich in the near future", and it is said that "the people get their benefits, the country gets their benefits, I get its benefits, and I do all the merits." In fact, the source of his wealth is the rule, office, residence, and wantonness throughout the territory, all of which are related to commerce, and the profits and taxes obtained from them are the convenient way for him to get rich. This is related to the fact that Jiangzuo's commodity economy is more developed than that of the north, and partly explains why the south does not rely much on the field system, because the land occupation system of the Jin Dynasty has been very diluted by this point.
He himself also paid attention to "frugality", such as "one meal a day, no fresh food, only bean soup and rice"; For example, "do not drink, do not listen to the sound", not only their own "clothes and cloth", the harem noble concubines below "all do not drag the ground, there is no brocade" and so on. But none of this earned him a reputation as a wise monarch in history. It was because of his improper handling that he caused the chaos of Houjing, and thus ruined the Liang Dynasty and his controversial worship of Buddhism.
The most impressive achievement of the Liang Dynasty was still in culture, because Emperor Wu of Liang "specialized in dressing and liturgy", which was also related to the demonstration and promotion of the imperial family headed by him. Emperor Wu of Liang did not have great achievements in governing the country, but he was very effective in his management and very diligent. He was proficient in literature, history, and scripture, and also had profound attainments in Buddhism, and was also versatile, "Chess and Yipin, Yin and Yang, Wei Hou, Divination, Divination, Caoli, Ruler, Riding and Shooting, all of which are wonderful." His children were also well received. Prince Xiao Tong of Zhaoming "read several lines and went down, and all eyes remembered." Each feast on the ancestral path, give the poem to ten rhymes. Or the fate of the drama rhyme endowment, all belong to the thought, nothing easy", and "the overview of the time, the snare of Yingmao", the compilation of the "Anthology" 30 volumes passed down. At that time, there was no clan in Jiangzuo that could be compared with the Lanling Xiao clan in terms of culture and scholarship, that is, the children of the Xiao clan who defected to the Northern Dynasty during the Southern and Northern Dynasties because of the change of dynasties were either studious and good at literature, or had a temperament and enjoyed fame, of which Xiao Ren and Xiao Dayuan were famous scholars. At the same time, the cultural undertakings of the Liang Dynasty reached the peak of the Southern Dynasty in all aspects.