In 220, Cao Pi used Cao Cao's power to usurp the Han Dynasty as emperor, replacing the Han Dynasty, known as Cao Wei in history, and the Han Dynasty, which had experienced 422 Spring and Autumn Periods, finally completely withered away.
At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, there was no shortage of amazing talents, why did the Cao clan stand out? More than a year later, the Tomb of the Cao Family found in the village of Yuanbaokeng in the south of Bozhou City can finally give us a glimpse of the magnificent history of Cao Wei.
The word "Cangtian is dead" is a brick
Bozhou, Anhui Province, is the Pei Guo County more than 2,000 years ago,
The "root system" of the Cao clan is located, the hometown of Cao Cao.
After archaeologists investigate, the large Eastern Han Tomb Group here is the Cao Cao Family Tomb, and the most archaeological value of which is the "Cangtian Nai Death" character brick excavated from Yuanbaokeng No. 1.
The owner of the tomb of Yuanbaokeng No. 1 is Cao Ding, who, according to the Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms, was the younger brother of Cao Teng, the attendant of Zhongchang, and cao Cao's uncle. The excavated bricks are inscribed with "
Cangtian is dead, Wang Furu...
"A total of more than twenty words, because of the age, the last two words have been blurred, and the connection roughly means,
A man named Wang Fu forced a man named Ying to build a tomb wall for the Cao clan, and Ying's grievances could not be extended.
He would have the opportunity to make Wang Fu, who insulted him, pay the price.
The font is carved with a thin stick before the brick blank is dried, as if it is hand-engraved after the workers' labor,
Improvisations by emotions.
"Cangtian is dead" is the slogan of the Yellow Turban Army's uprising at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, although the uprising was suppressed in less than a year, but the impact was very large. Amazingly, Cao Cao, the founder of Cao Wei,
He was born as an official eunuch, and then led troops to suppress the Yellow Turban Army, which is supposed to be incompatible with the Yellow Turban Army.
His family tomb "Cangtian is dead" character brick also unveiled its fate entanglement with the Yellow Turban Army.
"Do not respect the powerful, the people's hearts"
According to many historical records,
At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, eunuchs were a disaster, and they were "rich and ignorant" but "rich and ignorant", which was the most corrupt part of the imperial court.
Not only did he bully men and women, plunder the people's fat and people's anointing, and even connived with his relatives to forcibly occupy the good land, fish and meat of the people, the eunuchs were simply the most resentful of the people.
The Cao clan originally began with Cao Cao's father Cao Song.
Cao Song was originally a beggar, but later became the adopted son of the eunuch leader Zhongchang Shi Dachang Qiu Cao Teng, who was very good at amassing wealth, and then used the money he had collected to buy officials, and rose all the way to the rank of taiwei, ranking first among the three dukes.
Under the protection of his elders, Cao Cao entered Luoyang at the age of 19, and asked the northern lieutenant of Luoyang to maintain public order in Luoyang on a daily basis, equivalent to the current public security bureau chief. The Eastern Han Dynasty decree prohibited nocturnal travel, and those who violated the ban were "killed with sticks."
Shortly after Cao Cao took office, the eunuch Jian Shuo's uncle Jian Tu (蹇图) blatantly violated the prohibition, and he enforced the law and ordered Jian Tu to be beaten to death, thus offending Jian Shuo.
Hindered by Cao Cao's father's relationship, Jian Shuo could not take revenge with a heavy hand, so he had to transfer Cao Cao to Dunqiu as a county order, and The Ming Ascended and secretly descended.
In 184, the Yellow Turban Rebellion broke out, the leader was the three brothers surnamed Zhang, and the eldest Zhang Jiao called himself "General Tiangong".
Serving Huang Laodao, his army was all followers of taiping dao. When the people were poor and destitute, they formed mountain thieves and displaced people, and used "spells" and "runes" to treat the people, and the people regarded them as heavenly soldiers and gods.
The imperial court appointed Cao Cao as a knight lieutenant and went to Yingchuan to quell the rebellion,
He won the battle, broke the Yellow Turban Army, and then moved to Jinan with military merit, at the age of 29.
In order to show their social status, they wantonly withheld money from the people, built ancestral halls for their ancestors, and frequently performed illegal sacrifices, and the pomp and circumstance became larger and larger.
However, when they really need to contribute, they are lazy and follow the rules, and among the outstanding cases left behind, there are dozens of cases of theft that have not been solved so far, and the thieves are rampant to the extreme, pretending to be loyal elders and township models.
On weekdays, not only the high-gate compound, fresh clothes and food, but also use the money obtained from looting to give small favors to the people, "fame and fortune".
Successive ministers of state have let it go unchecked, and even colluded with the same stream, but after Cao Cao arrived, he "ruled the law as before"
He drastically sorted out the "obscenity", destroyed all the non-compliant ancestral halls, and found that those who withheld the people and made indiscriminate sacrifices were severely punished, and more than a dozen senior officials were dismissed at once; he also took his henchmen to privately inspect, find out the identity of the thief, and design a net to be exhausted, and finally "the political and religious activities are carried out, and one county is cleared."
Compared with other local officials who knock the people to the bone and suck the marrow, Jinan can be described as living and working in peace and contentment.
When Cao Cao was trying his best to win the hearts and minds of the people, he suddenly resigned from his post and returned to his hometown due to illness. On the one hand, Cao Cao refused to violate his conscience to pander to the magnates, which invisibly offended them, and although he had won the praise of the people in Jinan before, he also stepped on the bottom line of the powerful and powerful, and in order not to implicate his family, he could only give up his rights and stay away from politics.
He built a house in the east of the city of Chenxian, reading in spring and summer, and hunting in autumn and winter.
"Strategic and far-sighted"
The turning point came in 189, the Han Ling Emperor died, Dong Zhuo entered Beijing,
Li Chenliu was made emperor of Han, and acted perversely, so Cao Cao "scattered his family wealth and joined the righteous soldiers",
Calling on the heroes of the world to form a coalition army, He served as the acting general Fenwu and Yuan Shao to jointly attack Dong Zhuo. Unfortunately, the coalition forces had different intentions, and there was friction between each other, which was difficult to achieve, and it was soon disbanded, but Cao Cao attracted many generals to follow him because of his strict management of the army and his own military ability in this incident.
After the war, he was also represented by Yuan Shao as the Taishou of Dong Commandery.
The Yellow Turbans made a comeback soon after their defeat. In 192, the Yellow Turban Army captured Yanzhou, and Liu Dai was killed in battle, and Bao Xinte, the Chancellor of Jibei, welcomed Cao Cao to fight against the Yellow Turban Army for yanzhou's new assassination history. Cao Cao attacked immediately after arriving in Yanzhou, but the Yellow Turban soldiers were numerous, but they repeatedly fell behind, and since the frontal resistance could not be achieved, Cao Cao started to think about the supply in the rear
。 Since the Yellow Turban Army fought with Gongsun Zhan, supplies were extremely scarce, coupled with the fact that the army carried a large number of family members and was very low mobility, Cao Cao seized this weakness and sent hundreds of elite surprise attacks on the Yellow Turban Army.
Unable to resist, the Yellow Turban Army sent a letter to Cao Cao as they retreated to Qingzhou, believing that cao Cao's destruction of the ancestral hall of the Han dynasty when he was the minister of Jinan was against the Han Chamber, and that they were "fellow" with the Yellow Turban Army who believed in the "Taiping Dao" and should be consulted with them.
Cao Cao also calculated the plan, he regarded himself as the "Tao", took over the forces of the Heavenly Master Dao, and lured the Yellow Turban Army.
The foundation of the Yellow Turban Army is religious belief, as long as it is a believer, it is its own family, and
Many generals in the Yellow Turban Army had long had a good feeling for him, and Cao Cao simply accepted the title of "real person" and successfully captured hundreds of thousands of Qingzhou Yellow Turban troops.
He incorporated these Taoists into his army, while his family members were placed in the rear of the battlefield, and the cultivated land provided food and grass for the army. The Yellow Turban Army was able to eat a full meal and easily reunite with their families, and they regarded Cao Cao as the "savior" sent down from heaven, "Zhang Jiao's second".
The absorbed Yellow Turban Army became the mainstay of Cao Cao's army, which was his confidence in chasing the Central Plains, and it was also the cornerstone of the establishment of Cao Wei.
It can be said that without them replacing the Han Dynasty, it is not necessarily Cao Wei.
The most important thing about a country is the will of the people and the foresight of those in power, just like Cao Wei's long-term plan for Hongye.