The Song Dynasty was known for its economic prosperity, advanced science and technology, and cultural development in history, and was praised as the peak of ancient Chinese civilization. In people's impressions, the Song Dynasty society was peaceful and prosperous, the political atmosphere was relaxed and free, the rulers were generous and benevolent, and a flourishing scene of flowers, Chen Yinke said: "The culture of the Chinese nation, which has evolved over thousands of years, was created in the world of Zhao and Song. ”
However, there are several questions that cannot be avoided: why did such a good dynasty have the most peasant uprisings in history? Why is its territory the smallest among the great unified dynasties of all generations? Why call a brother, a nephew, or a vassal to a neighbor? Why spend a lot of "yearly coins" every year to pay tribute to foreign countries to buy peace? Why did it lead to the unprecedented shame of Jingkang in Chinese history?
More importantly, after so many unbearable events, why can this dynasty still look at the history of the Qing Dynasty in a magnificent image? The reason is that this beauty exists in the pen of the literati, and history is written by the literati.
For the literati and scholars, the Song Dynasty was indeed a dream era of diamond brilliance, which was full of the glory of the literati and left the most beautiful memories for the literati of later generations.
The Song Dynasty's civil servants were the richest in any dynasty. Song Dynasty officials are calculated in terms of "guan", 1 guan is 1 two silver or 1000 yuan, of which one money is roughly equivalent to the current 8 mao, so the consistent money is equivalent to 800 yuan. The high-ranking officials of the Song Dynasty could get four hundred yuan per month, which was equivalent to 320,000 yuan, and this was not all, and other subsidies were even more than Feng Lu, such as catering subsidies, fuel subsidies, nanny subsidies, and so on. Officials at the level of suffragettes or privy councillors have a monthly income of more than one million yuan, and their life can be imagined.
Since not killing ministers was a national policy established at the beginning of the Song Dynasty, the words and deeds of officials were much freer than those of other dynasties, and in the Wutai poetry case, Su Shi slandered the imperial court with poetry, and although Song Shenzong hated him very much, he still let him escape with his life.
If it is a step forward that ministers can not die without words, then it is bottomless indulgence to dismiss officials who have committed crimes against humanity.
In the winter of the Southern Song Dynasty, the case of Lin Qianzhi of Qinzhou Zhizhou who mutilated children occurred. In order to cure his illness, he actually listened to the taoist monk's words and "strengthened the bones and bones with the flesh of a virgin", so he sent people to plunder children in Qinzhou and neighboring Hengzhou. The disappearance of a large number of children caused panic among the people, until the minions he sent were captured by the Hengzhou officials, and people learned that Lin Qianzhi, as a parent official, was actually a demon that devoured children. Such heinous atrocities horrified the Officials of the Guangxi Toast Department, who were still relatively barbaric at the time. However, Lin Qianzhi was an official of the imperial court, and they could not handle it, so they reported the case, and the Guangxi Pacification Department also felt troublesome, so they reported to the imperial court.
Logically, Lin Qianzhi's crime was extremely evil, heavenly reason was intolerable, and he should be executed according to the law, but the imperial court was unwilling to break the political rule of not killing the minister, so the felony was lightly sentenced, and Lin Qianzhi was only expelled from the country and assigned Jiyang. Lin Qianzhi was released after a few years after being exiled, and he was released in amnesty until the fall of the Southern Song Dynasty. After the fall of the country, he danced every day to make ink, entertained himself, and lived happily, according to the Song Dynasty notebook "Ghost Dong", Lin Qianzhi "ranked full of return, Song died, and entertained himself with Han Mo." "This kind of pampering and indulgence of officials is cruel to the people, but in the Song Dynasty, the people who lost their children had no reason, and there would never be officials to seek justice for them."
The combination of civil and military affairs and complementarity is the traditional way of governing the country, and the two must not be abandoned, but in the Song Dynasty, the status of civil and military officials was seriously distorted, the status of civilian officials was supreme, and military generals were like slaves of civilian officials. From the eighth year of the Qing calendar to the fifth year of the Emperor's reign, when the famous general Di Qing was appointed as the governor of Dingzhou, Han Qi was appointed as the governor of Dingzhou and the envoy to pacify Dingzhou. Once, Di Qing's subordinate Jiao Yong was arrested by Han Qi for making a mistake, and Di Qing rushed to plead, he stood under the steps and did not dare to come forward, but only pleaded with Han Qi in the hall: "Jiao Yong is brave in battle, and is a good boy with military merit." However, after Hearing this, Han Qi sneered, "The person who is named after the Title outside the Donghua Gate is a good boy!" Then in front of Di Qing's face, he killed Jiao Yong, Di Qing was terrified, trembling, but did not dare to leave, until someone reminded Han Qi that Di Qing was still standing under the hall, and he let Di Qing go back.
Wang's "Memoirs" records this event: "... Qing Jiubu Jiao used to escort soldiers through Dingzhou, Qing stayed to drink alcohol, and the pawns were not in order because of the complaint, and Wei Gong ordered them to be captured and wanted to be punished. When you hear about it, you tend to save it. Duke Wei did not summon him, and Qing Chu stood at the foot of the steps, pleading with Wei Gong: "Jiao Yong has military merit. Wei Gongyue said, "Those who sing outside the Donghua Gate are good children, so why should they be good children?" 'Stand up and look at him with a curse.' Green is very wary. Jiuzhi, or " , "Governor Tachibana" for a long time. 'Qing Nai dares to retreat. ”
Di Qing was also very angry about this, and often said to people: "Han Shumi's official position is the same as mine, and I am one less jinshi and first ear." However, in the general environment of the Song Dynasty, he had no way to degrade the military generals so much, how could the Song Dynasty's army resist foreign humiliation?
Why did the Song Dynasty emphasize literature and suppress martial arts so much? Because the world of Zhao and Song was usurped by Zhou Zhou, and thus the country was not right, and the eating appearance of bullying orphans and widows was particularly ugly, they were particularly afraid of the pen that the readers wrote in the Spring and Autumn Period. Qin Shi Huang was insulted for offending the readers and was insulted for a thousand years of lessons, of course, Zhao Shi knew it, so they adopted a policy of redemption for the literati in exchange for their praise in the history of the Qing Dynasty. Zhao Kuangyin ascended to the throne with the usurpation of power by the warriors, and he naturally knew very well that after the military generals had real power, they might pose a threat to the regime, so they guarded against the warriors particularly strictly, and therefore set up a military system of "internal and external phase system" and "strong cadres and weak branches", and tried their best to disperse the military power and suppress the status of the military generals.
The Song Dynasty was far weaker than the Tang Dynasty, but the number of officials was far more than that of the Tang Dynasty, and during the xuanzong period of the Tang Dynasty, there were about 18,000 officials, while the number of officials during the Song Renzong period reached 48,337, more than three times that of the Tang Xuanzong era.
Song Dynasty officials not only had a large number, but also enjoyed an appallingly high salary, with an annual income of about 35,000 yuan in Kaifeng Fuyin, and 13 horses of good quality silk in winter and spring, 1 yarn in summer, and 30 silk in autumn. This income, which is comparable to the financial income of a state in the Song Dynasty, can really be said to be anointed by all the people to enshrine one person's body.
According to the data recorded in the historical records, during the tang taizong period, the annual income of a yipin official was about 1.7 million yuan, and this was only a month of Feng Lu for the same grade of officials in the Song Dynasty. Those Tang Dynasty courtiers who created the mighty style of the world, if they knew that those obscene peers who knelt down when they saw Fan Bang later actually took such a high feng lu, they did not know how they would feel.
While supporting such a bloated bureaucratic and literati group, the Song Dynasty also used a large amount of "year coins" every year to pay tribute to Liao, Jin, and Western Xia to obtain Gou An, so the financial expenditure was extremely large. However, a large number of literati did not produce and pay taxes, and since the founding of the Song Dynasty, they encouraged scholars and masters to "choose good farmhouses", buy land property widely, and pursue the land policy of "no establishment of the field system" and "no suppression of annexation", which led to serious land annexation, and as a result, this financial pressure eventually fell on the already poor people. The imperial court plundered wealth through a variety of harsh taxes and miscellaneous taxes and indiscriminate paper money (jiaozi), and the local officials had to ask for extra money, filling their own pockets, and the burden of ordinary people was so heavy that they lamented that "they have been working hard all year round, and their wives are frozen, and they cannot get enough to eat for a day." "When they really couldn't make a living, they frequently rebelled, and the larger ones were Wang Xiaobo, Fang La, Yang Mi and other uprisings, and the small scale was even more numerous, including the well-known Song Jiang Uprising.
During the Fang La Uprising, the Song Dynasty scholar Fang Spoon personally experienced this disaster. Afterwards, he wrote the book "Qingxi Kou Rail", which recorded the incident in detail and analyzed the causes of the disaster.
According to Fang Spoon's account, during the reign of Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty, the Politics of the Northern Song Dynasty was corrupt and the society was dark, and the government was controlled by Cai Jingtongguan and his gang, who constantly seduced and flattered Emperor Huizong of Song in order to consolidate their position. Tong Guan opened the Zuozuo Bureau in Suzhou and Hangzhou, which specially purchased exquisite and luxurious imperial items for Emperor Huizong of Song. Together with Cai Jing and Tong Guan, Zhu Xun, who was known as the "Six Thieves", deliberately flattered the art-obsessed emperor, and collected all kinds of exotic flowers and stones in Jiangnan to offer, called "Huashi Gang", and under their temptation, Emperor Huizong of Song became more and more extravagant and corrupt, and demanded too much from the people.
In order to transport the "Huashi Gang", a large amount of manpower and material resources needed to be used, so the people who built the bureau intercepted the grain and wages transported to the state roads on the canal, requisitioned civilian merchant ships at will, and escorted the Xu officials like wolves and tigers, taking the opportunity to extort the states and counties along the way, and even the boatmen who punched the boats were also foxes and tigers, and they were overbearing, and people dared not speak out.
Some particularly large heavy stones could not be transported in the canals, but could only take the sea route, and if they encountered wind and waves, the ship was sunk and many servants were killed.
The strange stones that Emperor Huizong of Song loved were either in the deep mountains and ravines or in the vast rivers and lakes, and it was extremely difficult to collect and transport, but the emperor tried every means to get them, and the time limit was limited, and once he could not do so, the handler would be severely punished. At that time, in the homes of the people, if the people who were in charge of the bureaucracy found that there was a rockery that the emperor might like to enjoy, they immediately sent someone to the door and covered it with a yellow paw, indicating that this was a royal object, and no one was allowed to touch it, but they did not come to take it away immediately, but only ordered the family to take care of it carefully, and if they were not careful, they would be convicted. When it comes to the shipment, in order to move these flowers and stones out, it is inevitable to tear down the walls and destroy people's houses, so that the people of Jiangnan do not dare to place stone and wood antiques in their homes, for fear of bringing disaster.
In order to transport the "Huashi Gang", the imperial court sent a large number of civilians to serve in the army, and many died on the way. In order to pay for the huge expenses of the "Huashi Gang", the government levied tyrannical taxes on the people, and the people were forced to sell their farms and even their children to pay taxes until they lost their homes.
In Fang Spoon's pen, "The world's superintendents and pastors are nothing more than private people, where they are greedy, and the people are not happy." "A dark scene of the people living in misery, the greed and coolness of the officials. Under the brutal oppression of the imperial court, it was far more than Fang La's family who raised the flag to rebel at that time, and Song Jiang, Qiu Daoren, Lü Shinan, Shen Shigong, Zhu Xin, Wu Bang and other ringing horses were mentioned in the Qingxi Kou Rail. If you really can't live, or if you have a deep hatred, who wants to go to the mountains and forests in a desperate way?
The Song Dynasty gave people the impression of being weak but tolerant and gentle, but in fact, the Song Dynasty was indeed gentle to the literati, but its rule over the people at the bottom was very harsh, without the slightest mercy, when suppressing rebellions, it often killed tens of thousands of people, and also built a Jingguan to intimidate the people, and the scene was bloody and terrifying. The Song army fought extremely harshly in foreign wars, but suppressed the peasant uprising with great ferocity. According to the "Qingxi Kou Rail", when Fang La raised an army, the incident occurred very suddenly, and soon became a Liaoyuan situation. Since the Song Dynasty had already made an agreement with Jin to jointly attack the Liao, the army was transferred to the north. After receiving the alarm of Fang La's rebellion, he was not caught off guard, but quickly swung his troops south, the action was fierce, almost destroying the trend of decay, and in less than two years, the uprising was extinguished, and the officers and soldiers eventually killed millions of people. Why did the Song Dynasty behave so differently in both the two scenes? It can only be explained that the literati believe that foreign enemies only want money and land, which has nothing to do with the fundamentals, and that the peasant revolt will take their lives, so surrendering to the outside world and suppressing it internally is the national policy of the Song Dynasty, and whoever dares to oppose this national policy, not to mention ordinary people, that is, literati and doctors, can also be killed.
When the Jin soldiers approached the city of Bieliang, there was a tai student named Chen Dong, who threw himself into the pen and served the country with his own example, organized everyone to petition and participate in the war, which was very inspiring and received widespread support, and Chen Dong also rose to fame and became famous for a while. However, this made Song Gaozong, who was originally a bird of fright, feel uneasy, for fear of threatening his rule. After crossing the south, forced by Chen Dong's prestige, Zhao Zhuo had to seal him an official position, but Chen Dong wrote three times in a row, actively leading the battle, and asked him to dismiss the traitors. This greatly violated Zhao Shuo's taboo, and even the general Yue Fei died because of it, let alone a scholar? As a result, he was killed under an excuse. Later historians commented: "The East did not know the program, especially for the sake of the country, to die for it." ”
The criminal law of the Song Dynasty was also extremely cruel, and torture like Ling Chi, although it had already appeared before the Song Dynasty, was an extralegal punishment, or existed in the criminal law of nomadic regimes such as the Liao State, and in the Han Dynasty in the Central Plains, the first to include Ling Chi in the criminal law was the Song Dynasty, and it was during the reign of Song Renzong, who was known for his benevolence, if at the beginning this kind of torture was only used for the most heinous criminals, and then it was abused. According to the "Tongkao Penal Examination": "Ling Chi's law, before Zhaoling, although the murderous thieves did not try to use it lightly, Xi Fengjian was prosperous and the spoken people were punished by this punishment. This means that before Song Renzong, the use of Ling Chi's punishment was still relatively cautious, but later, even if he was not careful to speak and was too arrogant, he would be punished by Ling Chi. It can be seen that the Song Dynasty punished the people cruelly.
Because the literati group, which accounted for a small number of people, swallowed huge social wealth, the living resources of the vast number of people in the Song Dynasty were extremely scarce, so that in order to compete for the right to survive, they fell into a serious internal entanglement, and even often suffered tragedies of cannibalism. The Southern Song Dynasty minister Hong Mai's "Yi Jian Zhi" recorded such a terrible event: "At the beginning of Xuanhe, there were officials who ran for election, and they put the officials in charge of the office, but it was too early, and the road was pedestrian Shangxi, the provincial gate was not opened, and gu went to the tea house to rest."
In the middle of the mansion, there were two or three servants, and when they saw that they were out of date, they would be the officials of the village who had just traveled to Beijing. When the winter moon is fang, this guest wears brown fur, and the body is fattened, so the design is drawn. The dense leather strip was thrown into the curtain, and the ground was dropped, and the breath was hanging down, and the group of evil boasted: "Hugh on clothes, only this flesh, straight a few pieces of money." "To go to Xiao Shangyao, not to kill immediately."
Shaoding, the guest tied the skin slightly slowly, wanted to sneak, afraid of getting lost, hesitated, overheard the big Yin calling, but rushed out, even called killing. The crowd of evil people was unexpected, extremely embarrassed, but they were still self-assured, saying: "Officials and people are harmful to the wind!" "The Russian and the Great Yin Zhi, suing in front of the horse, immediately dispatched the thief Cao to take over, and sent the bathroom board to examine, and got three corpses, still not cold, covering the person who killed yesterday night." So he hunted down a family and put it in the law, and the flesh of the people, all the evil teenagers bought the clouds. ”
The translation of this passage into the vernacular is as follows: In the early years of emperor Xuanhe of the Northern Song Dynasty, an official from other places came to the capital to participate in the promotion and selection, and he went to the official department according to the rules to submit materials. But that day he got up too early, he went out before dawn, there were no pedestrians on the road, and the officials had not yet opened the door to work, so he found a teahouse to rest and wait.
There is also a bathhouse inside this tea house. There were only two or three small squatters in the bathhouse, and when they saw that this official did not know the work and rest time of the people in the capital, they expected that he was a village official who came to the capital for the first time and was not familiar with the place of life here. It was the cold winter moon, and when they saw the official, wearing an expensive brown fur coat and fat body, they had a bad intention and were ready to harm him. They secretly took out a condom made of leather strips, and suddenly threw it from behind the official, put it around his neck, strangled him hard, and dragged him into the curtain as they strangled him. They dragged the officials into the room and threw them on the ground, looking like they had died of exhaustion. These evildoers said happily, "Let's not talk about this fur coat, but even his fat body can sell for a few dollars." "But it was still early in the morning, and they didn't kill this man right away."
After a while, the leather condom around the official's neck was a little loose, and the official also eased up. He thought about running, but he was afraid of running out and getting lost. Just at this moment, he suddenly heard the sound of a gong on the street traveling, obviously sending this big officer to the honor guard team. The official suddenly flew out, rushing into the street while shouting, "Killed!" Killed! The gangsters were caught off guard and were very panicked for a while, but they still forced themselves to calm down and came out and said, "This official has a psychotic attack!" ”
Soon the officer had arrived, and the official ran to the officer's horse to tell him what had just happened. The officer immediately ordered the arresters to arrest all the thieves, and searched the bathhouse, pried open the floor, and found that there were three corpses inside, and the bodies were not stiff, all of which were killed last night. So the family was arrested and brought to justice.
These vicious cases were not isolated in the Song Dynasty, and other similar tragedies were recorded in the historical data, and more than one of these cases was recorded in the Yi Jianzhi.
In people's minds, the civilization and indoctrination of the Song Dynasty dominated the world at that time, and the economy was prosperous and the society was rich. However, the frequent anti-human atrocities revealed that there were serious social problems in the Song Dynasty, and behind the prosperity, there was another creepy dark world, and even such a tragic case would occur in the first good district of the capital at the foot of Tianzi, and the living conditions of ordinary people in other areas could be imagined. In this so-called rich dynasty, the people's living materials are so scarce that a valuable coat and a fat body can make the gangsters want to kill people, although these are the atrocities of the wicked, but if they are not poor and crazy, who will do such rebellious deeds.
For the literati, the Song Dynasty was a beautiful era that had never existed before, and it was not too much to call it a paradise, so they waved a large pen of grace and vigorously praised it, but for the people living in that era, it was nothing less than a dark hell, for Chinese civilization, the pride and glory created since the Han and Tang Dynasties were ruined by this dynasty, and in the following hundreds of years, it deteriorated and fell continuously, until the establishment of New China in 1949, which reversed the decline.
The pictures are from online public channels, the copyright belongs to the original author, if there is any infringement, it will be deleted immediately