Hou Jing, a member of the Qi people, was originally a military official in the town of Northern Wei, Xiao Yong was good at war, and the northern chaos at the end of Wei was great, but he followed Erzhu Rong to chase deer to the Central Plains, and used his meritorious promotion as the history of Dingzhou. After Erzhu Rong was killed in civil unrest, Hou Jing defected to Gao Huan. Hou Jing's army was strictly organized, and the treasures obtained from the raid were all given to the soldiers. Gao Huan relied on him to fight against the Western Wei "half of himself", causing him to have 100,000 troops and despotic Henan for fourteen years. In 547, Gao Huan died, and his son Gao Cheng took the throne. Hou Jing's relationship with Gao Cheng was not very good, and he was reluctant to be summoned by Gao Cheng to Go to Yi, so Gao Cheng sent the general Murong Shaozong to lead an army to beg Hou Jing. So Hou Jing asked Western Wei and Liang for help, respectively.
Yuwen Tai, the Western Wei chancellor, listened to the opinion of Wang Yue of the Left Of the Line and believed that Hou Jing could not be trusted. Therefore, Western Wei recruited Hou Jing to enter the dynasty on the one hand, and on the other hand, ordered the generals to defend themselves deeply, and distributed various armies, occupying 7 prefectures and 12 towns of Hou Jing. Hou Jing's only gain at this time was through his devotion, and the Western Wei general Ren Yue led more than a thousand people to him.
Emperor Wu of Liang, known for his ambition to unify the world, launched a northern expedition in October of the fourth year of Tianjian (505). From the second year of the common era (521) to the second year of Datong (536), taking advantage of the internal turmoil of the Northern Wei Dynasty, he repeatedly sent various armies to the north, attacked the city strategically, and recruited rebels. Therefore, when Hou Jing took the army and demanded ownership with the lands of Henan, Emperor Wu of Liang felt that the opportunity was rare and was happy to accept it. Not no one in the Liang court expressed doubts about Hou Jing, and the officials led by Shangshu's servant Xie Ju all believed that Hou Jing should not be accepted. However, Emperor Wu of Liang, because he did not dream much before Hou Jing asked for surrender, he happened to have a dream that "the central plains herders and guards all descend from their land", so he rejected the public opinion, made Hou Jing the king of Henan, and oversaw the military forces of the south and north of Henan, so that Hou Jing had a foothold. But Emperor Wu of Liang's wishful thinking eventually became a bitter wine brewed by himself.
Therefore, Emperor Wu of Liang took the opportunity of Hou Jing's rebellion against Eastern Wei and sent Liang Sizhou's assassin Shi Yang Yaren to lead an army to Rushui and occupy the city of Hanging. In August of the first year of the Taiqing Dynasty (547), Emperor Wu of Liang issued an edict with Xiao Yuanming, the Marquis of Zhenyang, as the governor of The Capital, to lead a major attack on Eastern Wei, and Eastern Wei sent Murong Shaozong's army to fight. Xiao Yuanming, a nephew of Emperor Wu of Liang, was a pro-noble man who did not know the army, and did not take the advice of the left and right generals, and also ignored Hou Jing's admonition that the Liang army could not go deeper with the enemy lightly, and as a result, he was surrounded by the Eastern Wei army and was defeated. Xiao Yuanming and most of his generals were captured by Eastern Wei, and tens of thousands of Liang soldiers were lost. Then the Eastern Wei army turned its troops to Hou Jing, and the two armies faced each other for several months, and although Hou Jing had many small victories, the army ran out of food. Hou Jing wanted to retreat south, so he deceived the generals that their families had been killed by Gao Cheng. After hearing the news, Murong Shaozong shouted to Hou Jing's soldiers in front of the battle, saying that their families were all right, and that when they returned to Eastern Wei, the officials were as old as ever, and they swore an oath to the Beidou. Hou Jing's generals were reluctant to cross the south, and the army was in turmoil, either surrendering or dispersing. Hou Jing could only flee into Liang Territory with hundreds of remnants of his soldiers. After Hou Jing entered the city in order to trick Wei Dian of Liang into opening the Shouyang City Gate, Emperor Wu of Liang appointed him as the Assassin of Southern Yu Prefecture. Under the attack of the Eastern Wei army, the Liang army lost the cities of Hanging Urn and other cities one after another, and retreated to the huai river line. Hou Jing became a lone chess piece on the border between Liang and Northern Qi of Eastern Wei.
After Eastern Wei regained the lost territory, it sent envoys to Liang willing to reconcile, and asked the captured Xiao Yuanming to communicate with Emperor Wu of Liang. This exchange of envoys aroused Hou Jing's suspicions, and Hou Jing forged Eastern Wei documents and sent them to Jiankang, asking for Hou Jing to be exchanged for Xiao Yuanming, the Marquis of Zhenyang. When the Liang court was deliberating, Fu Qi, a scholar of zhongshu, said that "Hou Jing returned to righteousness with poverty and abandoned it ominously", and moreover, Hou Jing was experienced in hundreds of battles, and he was willing to tie his hands and suffer. Zhu Yi and others believed that Hou Jing was a defeated general who could subdue him with one force. So Emperor Wu of Liang replied, "Zhenyang Dan arrived, and Hou Jingxi returned." After Hou Jing saw the letter, he decided to oppose Liang and recruited the residents of the city as non-commissioned officers, and the children of the people were all matched with soldiers.
In August of the second year of the Taiqing Dynasty (548), Hou Jing raised an army on the side of the Qing Emperor in Yuzhou under the name of Zhu Yi and others. When the news that Matou City was trapped by Hou Jing and that Taishou Liu Shenmao had been surrendered reached Jiankang, Emperor Wu of Liang also laughed and said that Hou Jing "what can I do, I will answer it with a folded campfire", so he sent the troops to ask for the scenery in four ways. But what Emperor Wu of Liang did not expect was that Hou Jinghui bought Xiao Zhengde.
First, Hou Jing was suppressed by the Liang army's troops, and Wang Wei of The Land offered Hou Jing to seduce Xiao Zhengde, saying, "If you are widowed, you will be trapped." It is better to abandon Huainan, decide to go east, and ride lightly to cover Jiankang; Linhe rebelled against it, the king attacked outside, and the world was not determined. Soldiers are expensive and fast, and it is advisable to approach the road immediately." Therefore, Hou Jing went to Hefei while making a noise, and actually attacked Jiankang; on the other hand, he repaired the book to Xiao Zhengde, saying that now the traitors are in chaos, the government decrees are reversed, and you who were originally the second prince have also been deposed, so I raised my own army to help the great king Yunyun for Cangsheng. Xiao Zhengde was overjoyed, thinking that Heaven helped, and promised it.
In October of that year, Hou Jing promoted Xiao Zhengde to be the Son of Heaven and changed the yuan to zhengping in the first year. It can be said that without Xiao Zhengde, Hou Jing would not be able to pose a major threat to Jiankang, and perhaps his army would not even be able to cross the Yangtze River. Later, Hou Jing was worried that Xiao Zhengde had changed, and he killed Xiao Zhengde. Hou Jing's army after crossing the river only had hundreds of horses and thousands of soldiers. After Hou Jing crossed the river from the quarry, the people in the capital did not know it, and the soldiers rushed to fight under the city. After Hou Jing captured the surrounding outskirts of Shicheng, Baixiacheng, and Dongfucheng, he concentrated his forces to besiege Jiankangtai City, where Emperor Wu of Liang lived. The walls of the City were high and deep, and the soldiers and horses of the Various Qin Kings also arrived at the outskirts of Jiankang one after another, so the two sides attacked and defended each other and held each other for several months. In the meantime, Hou Jing recruited slaves and spared them. Therefore, "in three days, thousands of slaves came out of the scene, and the scenery was generously cared for with the army, and everyone was grateful and died for it." The number of Hou Jingjun also gradually expanded to more than 100,000. On the side of the Liang army, the Qinwang army arrived in turn to build a fence camp on the Huai River. Although the armies were in the millions and battalions, they had different orders and blocked each other. There was a shortage of food in Taicheng, rats and finches were exhausted, and there was an epidemic of disease. On the day of the siege of the city, there were more than 100,000 men and women, 30,000 armored people, and even those who were sick and exhausted, the corpses were full of roads, no one buried, and only two or three thousand cowards could climb the city. Hou Jingjun also ran out of food, so he stormed Taicheng in a hundred ways, successively building various siege vehicles, burning the city gate, building tushan, and deciding xuanwu lake to irrigate the city. In March of the third year of the Taiqing Dynasty (549), Taicheng was captured.
After entering Taicheng, Hou Jing made himself the governor of Dadu and the chancellor, and ordered the disbandment of various reinforcements, and then sent troops to occupy all parts of the north and south of the great river. In May of the same year, Emperor Wu of Liang died of hunger and illness, and Xiao Gang the Prince of Hou Jingli was made emperor, Xiao Gang was killed in the second year of Dabao (551), and more than 20 other princes such as Xiao Daqi, the Prince of Lai, were also killed. Hou Jing also made Emperor Wu's grandson Xiao Dong the Prince of Yuzhang emperor, seeking to force him to take the throne of Zen, and changed the yuan title to a hundred officials, with the state name of Han.
When Hou Jing led his army to Jiankang, he gave strict orders not to offend the people, and he also suspended the city's assessment and land rent. Later, Taicheng could not be attacked for a long time, and Liang Qin's army gathered outside, fearing that the army would be scattered, so the arsonists killed and plundered. Once military discipline is corrupted, it will be difficult to straighten out again, and it will be even more difficult to clean up when fighting and using soldiers. After Hou Jing attacked Jiankang, he arbitrarily dispatched them, plundering their children and poisoning the people. In addition, in the whole course of the war, it will always bring all kinds of harm to society and the people, and all this is caused by Hou Jing. Therefore, the Wu people were indignant and refused to defend each city fence. Originally, although Hou Jing had made himself a blessing after entering the city, he could blackmail tianzi to order the princes to always suppress a group of Liang Dynasty officials to obey him. But after he became emperor himself, the excuse was gone. As the Son of Heaven, Hou Jing only remembered his father's name, and after this situation was passed out, "everyone laughed at it", so Wang Wei had to find "Marquis Of Han Situ as the ancestor, and Hou Jin of the Jin Dynasty as the seventh ancestor". In the era of the door valve, Hou Jing's birth made the sacred aura on the emperor's head disappear. This loss of political resources quickly produces a psychological reversal. When Hou Jing's army first besieged Taicheng, the Liang Dynasty's 300,000 reinforcements were discouraged, and Hou Jing claimed that the emperor was only three months old, and his soldiers saw the officers and soldiers, and before they could line up, they "all raised banners and begged to surrender, and Jing could not be controlled." In February of the third year of Dabao (552), Hou Jing, who had rebelled and left, had no choice but to flee by boat from Hudu with dozens of his henchmen and was captured and killed in a place called Hu Douzhou. Hou Jing's body was sent to Jiankang to be exposed in the city, and the resentment of the people under the capital was concentrated on him, his flesh was slaughtered, his bones were burned, and Wang Wei and others were also killed.
The impact of Hou Jing's rebellion went far beyond ordinary historical events. First, the Liang Dynasty was overthrown. Not only that, but the balance between the Southern and Northern Dynasties was completely broken. At that time, in the confrontation between the north and the south, although the comprehensive economic strength of the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River was slightly greater than the comprehensive economic strength of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, if the north was in a state of division, the south would still have considerable advantages, such as the Sixteen Kingdoms period of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, basically the Eastern Jin Dynasty was dominant, so there were repeated Northern Expeditions. After the Northern Wei Unified the North, the South continued to put down coups, so the dividing line between the North and the South was pressed south step by step. During the turmoil at the end of Wei, Emperor Wu of Liang did not seize the opportunity, but the ensuing split and confrontation between Eastern Wei and Western Wei, Northern Qi and Northern Zhou, made the overall strength of the Liang Dynasty surpass either of the two regimes in the north, and it was still possible to make a difference. It should be said that Emperor Wu of Liang also saw this, so he wanted to use Hou Jing, but because of improper handling, he suffered from it. After Hou Jingping, Xiao Xuan, Xiao Yan, and others also colluded with the Northern Army and killed each other. As a result, the territory was greatly reduced, "the prefecture and county were too half into Wei, from below Baling to Jiankang, and the edge was limited to the Yangtze River." The border of Jingzhou is as far north as Wuning, the west is rejected by the narrow mouth, and the Lingnan is restored to Xiao Bo's stronghold, the cultural track is the same, thousands of miles away, and every household is registered, and it is not profitable for 30,000" 2. Such a small territory has lost the resource base to support the unification of China, coupled with the damage caused by the Hou Jing Rebellion to the south's social economy, which cannot be compensated in the short term, which has become a turning point for the north to overwhelm the south.
Secondly, it caused the largest destruction of the Eastern Jin dynasty and the Southern Dynasty, because although there were dynastic changes in the past, there were often times when soldiers met each other, but they were not as good as this time in scope and time. This turmoil not only seriously damaged the social economy of the richest areas in Jiangnan, but also incidentally destroyed the social structure attached to this economic system, that is, the foundation on which the door valve depended was destroyed, and the door valve really declined. This was due to the mass death of the warriors themselves, who died not only directly in the war, but also from the resulting famine and disease. According to statistics, at the beginning of the Chen Dynasty, there were 20 members of the imperial family and general ministers who were from a minority chieftain or a Han ethnic group, accounting for 87% of all of them. "Before Hou Jingchao, 9 of these 20 people were not in the army, of the 11 people who were in the renshi, 3 were taishou, 1 was a county commander, 2 were county commanders, 4 were military lords and soldiers, and 1 was a direct descendant of the Eastern Palace, all of which belonged to insignificant middle and lower-level officials." Among the highest ruling groups of the Liang Dynasty, 85% belonged to the Gaomen clan. Comparing the two, we can see the consequences of Hou Jing's rebellion.