If we want to say that China has the darkest historical period, then there are undoubtedly two periods that must be mentioned as one is the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, and the other is the Five Hu and Sixteen Kingdoms.
Regarding the historical record of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, the historian's evaluation is that Zhu Wen is already a disgusting scum, but he is a fairly good person in that era, which is the terrible Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms. However, the terror of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms is still inferior to that of the Five Hu and Sixteen Kingdoms.
Why? Because the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms were still factors of violent conflict left over from the Tang Dynasty, everyone was fighting in their own nests, but the Sixteen Kingdoms period was mixed with contradictions between the north and the south, ethnic contradictions, and various contradictions between the central and local governments. Ethnic contradictions, in particular, led to wars turning into massacres, and it was a terrible era without right or wrong, and killing became the only means of releasing pressure. Let's go into this history.
In the past, when we read textbooks, we had a basic understanding of the history of China's great dynasties, from Qin Shi Huang to the later Xuantong Emperor, we can say a rough idea. But apart from the history of these great dynasties, we are somewhat ambiguous about some of the divisive epochs.
For example, in the middle of the Tang Dynasty and the Song Dynasty, what kind of history happened, we are basically unclear, but when you recite it, you can still say Liang, Tang, Jin, Han, Zhou, these five generations.
However, when we talk about the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the Southern and Northern Dynasties, everyone can't tell the history of this stage of the Southern and Northern Dynasties. Because, according to historical records, during this period, five Hu entered the Central Plains, and then sixteen countries appeared. Even, according to the current research of historians, it is possible that there were not only sixteen countries at that time, but there may have been more than twenty regimes, but there is a lack of documentary records, and the statistics are unknown now.
And what is even more bizarre is that when it comes to the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, we can clearly know the order of dynastic changes. But when Li shook the Five Hu and Sixteen Kingdoms, we had no idea how this history evolved, and at the same time we didn't know who ended the ethnic conflict of the dancing of the demons?
All in all, the only characteristic of this epoch is chaos, and the most terrifying thing about this period is ethnic conflict.
In modern society, all ethnic groups are one family, and everyone will not divide each other, let alone fight and make trouble. However, this stage of national unity comes from the long process of national integration, and the process of national integration is bound to be accompanied by stress reactions and painful periods, and the sad thing is that the period of the Five Hu and Sixteen Kingdoms is the period of pain, the most serious stage.
First of all, it must be emphasized that there are no absolute good and bad people in this period, because all people have lost their morality and ethics.
The cause of this great chaos can be traced back to the Three Kingdoms period, when the 50 million people of the Han Dynasty went through a frenzied slaughter of the city, and less than 7 million people were left. Therefore, in order to maintain the continuous war for many years, including Zhuge Liang, Cao Cao and Sun Quan, they were all frantically immigrating.
These immigrants were all kinds of Hu people, for example, the Eastern Wu immigrants were Shanyue people, Zhuge Liang's immigrants were Southern Barbarians and Qiang people, and Cao Cao's immigrants were Xiongnu. Through this migration, the three countries barely managed to maintain the structure of the state, otherwise they would collapse due to the lack of people.
But this kind of migration also led to serious consequences, that is, a large number of Hu people entered the Central Plains, which would have been a very good thing, after all, to promote ethnic integration. But unfortunately, the rulers, including Cao Cao, did not complete the task of ethnic integration, they simply let the Hu people work, and as a result, the historical cognition, cultural identity, and even basic customs and traditions of the two sides did not match.
At that time, Cao Cao's way of maintaining his rule was to directly divide and rule, let the ethnic minorities fight among themselves, and then send a county official to solve the problem of rule. But by the time of the Western Jin Dynasty, this phenomenon could not be stopped.
Emperor Wu of Jin was unable to resolve the Hu-Han conflict, so he could only unilaterally emphasize the dominant position of the Han people, for example, there was a great talent at that time, Liu Yuan, who was bent on the Western Jin Dynasty, because its national attributes had always been excluded.
When the Western Jin Dynasty was strong, it was naturally no problem, but Emperor Wu of Jin operated blindly, and as soon as the emperor appointed forty kings, his son did not give strength, resulting in a great struggle of eight kings. As a result, the tragedy of the Three Kingdoms period was repeated, the army in the Central Plains was exhausted, the strength of the Han people was basically exhausted, and the eight princes began to ask for foreign assistance. Liu Yuan, who had been refused to join the central government, took the opportunity to rise up with the Xiongnu, joined the central chaos as a foreign aid, and took advantage of the chaos to establish the Han Zhao regime.
In this great chaos, the Huns were oppressed, so their countermeasures were very fierce, including not only the elimination of the Western Jin regime, but also the crazy massacre of the nobles and landlords of the Western Jin Dynasty, and there are historical records that the number of one-time massacres was as high as 50,000.
It was already appalling, but it was just the beginning. Because Liu Yuan's success attracted the attention of the Wuhu leaders, they also rebelled one after another and suppressed the Han people.
The second person to stand up was the famous slave emperor Shi Le, who liked to slaughter the Han army on the one hand, and on the other hand, liked to capture Han women and use them as food. History books call them two-legged sheep, edible or usable, and are excellent marching items.
Of course, this Qiang regime was too perverted, so it was jointly destroyed by the major nationalities. Moreover, while rebelling against the brutality of the Qi people, there was once a famous figure, this person was Ran Min, the King of Wu Mourning.
This person was abandoned when he was fighting with the members of the Imperial Family, so he put forward the slogan of national contradictions to win support, and as a result, three orders to kill Hu were issued, and then the ethnic contradictions were frantically intensified. During this period, as many as 200,000 people were killed and killed by the people of all ethnic groups.
Of course, the development of history has triumphed and declined, and the same national integration, after the conflict reaches its extreme, the peoples will appear in the midst of extreme suffering and conventional reason.
In this process, a famous figure who called for national integration stepped forward, and this person was the Great Qin Heavenly King Jian Jian. It should be said that this person was the most charismatic figure of the Five Hu and Sixteen Kingdoms period, and all the peoples under his command could obtain high-ranking officials Houlu, and he liked to accept his opponents the most. At that time, the north was all ruled by him, and he also had an army of 900,000 under his command, and he had every means to end the chaos. But unfortunately, he lost in the great north-south brawl.
After that, the history was basically dominated by ethnic integration, in which there was a reform of Emperor Xiaowen of the Northern Wei Dynasty, and the Sinicization policy became more and more stable. Later, it was the Northern Zhou regime Northern Zhou Wu Emperor, and the Sinicization policy continued to advance. In the end, the integration of nationalities formed a foregone conclusion, Emperor Wen of Sui came into being, and the Five Hu and Sixteen Kingdoms eventually moved towards unification.
This was the crazy era of that year, a period of madness in which ethnic contradictions were the mainstay, and all nationalities lost their minds, and even the history books were unwilling to record too much.
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