The usurpation of power by the Sima Yi family can be divided into three steps, which are carried out by three people, the important person in the first step is Sima Yi, the second step is Sima Shi, and the third step is Sima Zhao, compared with Sima Yi, who has been hidden for many years in the front and Sima Shi, who is calm and capable, Sima Zhao is indeed a more arrogant person.
The sentence "Sima Zhao's people are well known to passers-by" shows Sima Zhao's arrogance to the fullest, so how crazy was Sima Zhao at that time, and would Cao Zhao say such a thing? Let's talk about it in detail.
The first two founders of the Sima family
To say that the usurpation process of the Sima family, it must be mentioned that the founder Sima Yi, I think that if Sima Yi had not lived a long time and survived the death of the three generations of Cao Wei's male lords, then the Sima family would not have been able to usurp the throne smoothly, even if Sima Yi had already survived cao Cao, Cao Pi and Cao Rui, after Cao Fang ascended the throne, Sima Yi's life was still not necessarily very good.
At that time, there was still a representative figure of the imperial family, Cao Shuang, and the power of the DPRK was basically in the hands of Cao Shuang, but Cao Shuang was also a foolish person, on the one hand, he wanted to suppress Sima Yi, on the other hand, he did not know how to win over the rest of the ministers of the DPRK, but also suppressed them together, such an operation was tantamount to death.
The Sima family was already a well-established and prestigious family at that time, with great influence in the dprk, and now Cao Shuang had offended almost everyone, and those ministers who had been suppressed could only pin their hopes on Sima Yi, and everyone supported Sima Yi, so that Sima Shi could raise three thousand dead soldiers under Cao Shuang's eyes, and finally take advantage of his lack of preparation to launch the Gaopingling coup, which caught Cao Shuang by surprise.
In this way, a generation of powerful ministers Cao Shuang came to an end, Sima Yi opened the preamble to the Usurpation of power by the Sima family, and the ministers themselves were more supportive of Sima Yi, so at this time the power of the dynasty was in the hands of the Sima family, but there were still some folk forces and local powerful people who always disobeyed the Sima family, so these things were handed over to Sima Shi, the ruler of the Sima family later.
After Sima Yi's death, the calm and capable Sima Shi took over his father's power baton and continued to hold power in the dynasty, at that time Sun Wu and Shu Han had not yet been destroyed by the State of Wei, Shu Han was weak and not afraid, Sun Wu was more arrogant, so Sima Shi launched a southern expedition against him, and as a result, the southern expedition failed, causing a great sensation, but even if the southern expedition failed, the strength of the Sima family was still not affected.
It was just that some local magnates and strong people were more and more unaccustomed to the Sima family's flying and fierce, and began to attack thieves, such as Wu QiuJian, Wen Qin and others were eager to try, and later they were all harshly taught a lesson by Sima Shi, seeing that the power of the Sima family was getting stronger and stronger, Cao Wei Emperor Cao Fang could not hold his breath, he and Zhongshu Ling Li Feng and others conspired to get rid of Sima Shi, and as a result, their plan had not yet been implemented, it had already been known to Sima Shi, and finally Cao Fang was directly forced by Sima Shi to abolish Empress Guo and establish Cao Fu as the new emperor.
Things have developed to this point, the power of the Sima family has been raised to a higher level under the efforts of Sima Shi, even the emperor can easily abolish, then is it not just around the corner to replace him? Sima Shi planned to continue to clean up those forces that were dissatisfied with him, such as Wen Qin's son Wen Yuan, and others, but as a result of this expedition, Sima Shi died of an eye attack.
Before Sima Shi died, he was still thinking about the great cause of the Sima family, and he immediately contacted his brother Sima Zhao to see him and handed over the Great General Seal to Sima Zhao, and with this Great General Seal, Sima Zhao could continue to command the soldiers and horses in Sima Shi's hands, so that he could continue to influence the imperial government.
How crazy is Sima Zhao?
Sima Shi completed the second step of the Sima family's usurpation of the throne, and the next thing was to be handed over to Sima Zhao, although Sima Zhao did not have a father and brother, but he was by no means an idle person, after Sima Shi's death, Cao Xi immediately appointed Sima Zhaozhen to guard Xu Du, hoping to take this opportunity to weaken the actual power of the Sima family.
As a result, Sima Zhao did not listen to Cao Zhao's orders at all, led the army directly back to the Beijing Division, and gave Cao Zhao a way to get off the horse, Cao Zhao was very scared after seeing Sima Zhao leading the army back, and there was no way but to appoint Sima Zhao to take over Sima Shi's position, in this way, Sima Zhao turned the danger into a disaster and smoothly took over the baton of Sima Shi's power transfer.
In order to force Cao Zhao to take the initiative to give up the throne, Sima Zhao used a very clever means, which was the same method that Cao Cao used to treat Emperor Xian of Han, and now Sima Zhao had learned from it and planned to use it on Cao Cao's descendants.
Sima Zhaoming already controlled the power of the court, but he still did not directly force Cao Xi to abdicate, for the sake of his own reputation, Sima Zhao chose a more moderate way, he put pressure on the ministers of the court, let them ask Cao Xi to seal himself as the Duke of Jin when they were in the dynasty, and added nine tin, nine tin is a symbol of power, Sima Zhao did this is to deliberately give Cao Xi some color to see, let him recognize his situation, and take the initiative to zen to Sima Zhao as soon as possible.
However, Cao Xian also seemed to be more greedy for imperial power, so after nine consecutive canonizations of Sima Zhao as the Duke of Jin, and Jia Jiu Xi was rejected by Sima Zhao, Cao Xian was actually ashamed and angry, planning to break the net of fish and die in a battle, he found three ministers who he felt reliable, said a sentence "Sima Zhao's heart, everyone knows it", and then discussed with everyone the plan to assassinate Sima Zhao, and as a result, after the discussion was completed, two of them ran to Sima Zhao to file a complaint.
It was obvious that Cao Ji's plan could not be implemented, not only that, after Sima Zhao knew Cao Xian's ambitions, he naturally would not let him go, Sima Zhao instructed Cheng Ji to kill Cao Xi, and later he bit back, making Cheng Ji a substitute ghost, not only preserving his reputation, but also successfully eliminating Cao Ji, the disobedient emperor.
The chancellor witnessed all these acts of Sima Zhao, although it was very uncomfortable, but no one dared to say anything, it can be said that at this time Sima Zhao had completely controlled the State of Wei, and it was easy to usurp the throne, but Sima Zhao did not directly usurp the throne, but established Cao Zhao as a puppet emperor. Sima Zhao waited for a better opportunity to usurp the throne again in order to give an account to the world.
This Sima Zhao believed that the best opportunity was to establish the merit of destroying the country, that is, in this historical background, with Sima Zhao's decision to arrange the Zhong Hui and Deng Ai to destroy the Shu Han historical events, after the destruction of the Shu Han, the prestige of the Sima family had reached its peak, and there was no problem in usurping the throne at this time.
However, Sima Zhao still did not usurp the throne, he left this opportunity to his son Sima Yan, after Sima Zhao's death, Cao Yan was very knowledgeable to give the throne to Sima Yan, Sima Yan established the State of Jin, posthumously named Sima Zhao as Emperor Wen, the temple name Taizu, Cao Yan, the puppet emperor, was named Chen Liu Wang by Sima Yan, exactly the same as the Han Xiandi emperor at that time.
epilogue
To say how crazy Sima Zhao is, in fact, it is not counted, he already had real power at that time, there was arrogant capital and strength, he did that just to force Cao Zhao to take the throne early, but Cao Zhao was also a guy who did not measure up to his own strength, in the case of his own strength was obviously inferior to Sima Zhao, he also had to take the risk, and finally buried his life in vain, but accelerated the pace of Sima Zhao's usurpation!
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