I believe that when people were very young, they all heard the story of Sima Guang smashing the cylinder. In the history of the mainland, Sima Guang is undoubtedly a person with a particularly wise image. In fact, after Sima Guangguan worshipped the prime minister, the first thing he did was to kill a woman. In order to kill this person named Ah Yun, Sima Guang waited for 17 years.
Ah Yun was originally the daughter of an ordinary farmer in Dengzhou, and she has been living with her mother since her father died early. On her thirteenth birthday, her mother, who had been with her for many years, also died of a serious illness. Helpless, Ah Yun can only live at the only uncle's house. But what she did not expect was that her uncle was very greedy for money, and in order to earn two more money, his uncle forcibly promised her to Wei Dabao, an old bachelor in the village. Wei Dabao was famous in the village for his ugly appearance, so how could Ah Yun be willing to marry the old and ugly rural Laihan? As the wedding date approached, Ah Yun became more and more resistant to the marriage. One night, Ah Yun sneaked to Wei Dabao's house.
Quietly sneaking into Wei Dabao's house, she raised her knife at her fiancé on the bed and waved it wildly. But because she was so thin and weak, she failed to kill her fiancé more than a dozen times in a row. In the end, Wei Dabao only lost a finger, but Ah Yun was arrested and detained by the local government for committing a crime. The facts of Ah Yun's case are clear, and the local government quickly cracked the case. According to the laws of the Great Song Dynasty, Ah Yun should be beheaded for murdering her husband. But at that time, the official in charge of auditing Ah Yun's case at Dali Temple was named Xu Zun.
Xu Zun, who had learned about the case, believed that Ah Yun was still serving the funeral when he was betrothed. Therefore, the marriage that her uncle had engaged her was of course invalid, and then Ah Yun did not count as murdering her husband, not to mention that Wei Dabao had not yet died because of this. In the end, Xu Zun reviewed the file at Dali Temple and signed Ah Yun's opinion of innocence. Soon, the file on Xu Zun's opinion was signed and sent to the Punishment Department. Officials in the Ministry of Punishment believed that even if Ah Yun's marriage was not established, then she had committed intentional homicide and caused substantial harm. According to the Great Song Law, he should also be sentenced to death.
The conclusions reached by the Punishment Department and the Dali Temple were inconsistent, and Song Shenzong, who immediately learned of the matter, handed the case over to Sima Guang and Wang Anshi, and the two Great Song scholars decided. On the personal relationship between Wang Anshi and Sima Guang, they are not bad, and both of them recognize each other's character and knowledge. But in terms of governing the country, the two people's philosophy is in the opposite direction. Sima Guang supported the lawful beheading of Ah Yun, but Wang Anshi's opinion coincided with Xu Zun's, who believed that Ah Yun's sin did not lead to death. At this time, Wang Anshi represented a banner of the Northern Song Dynasty's reform faction, while Sima Guang on the other side opposed the change of law and was considered a conservative faction of the Northern Song Dynasty. Because of the Ah Yun case, the two bachelors disagreed, and then the reformers and conservatives began to argue fiercely in the court.
In the end, the Ayun case became the fuse between the two factions, and it even sublimated the debate over whether the Northern Song Dynasty should change the law. In fact, on the eve of the case, Emperor Shenzong issued an edict: Anyone who commits the crime of murder, and the victim is injured, and the offender turns himself in after the official trial, will be dealt with according to the two grades of the murder sentence. This is equivalent to Emperor Shenzong changing the laws of the Northern Song Dynasty, and he also supports the change of laws. The focus of the dispute between Wang Anshi and Sima Guang began to rise from the case itself to the judgment of the case, whether it should be decided by the emperor's holy will or by the laws of the Great Song Dynasty.
In this way, the two sides could not stand each other, and Emperor Shenzong could not make a final decision, Ah Yun's case was delayed again and again, and Ah Yun himself had been detained by the government. Then the amnesty was granted, Ah Yun was released, and she returned to her ordinary life. In 1085, Emperor Shenzong died and Emperor Zhezong succeeded to the throne, 17 years after the time of Ah Yun's case. Sima Guangguan, who was in his sixties, was promoted to the post of prime minister. As soon as Sima Guang came to power, he impatiently overturned the case and sentenced Ah Yun to death. Ah Yun, who returned to an ordinary life, was once again arrested by the Ministry of Punishment and sentenced to death. With Sima Guang's victory in the Ayun case, Wang Anshi's party lost power in the Northern Song Dynasty, and the Northern Song Dynasty's change of law ended in failure.
For the Northern Song Dynasty, Sima Guang's concept was too conservative, but Wang Anshi's change was too radical. In fact, the Northern Song Dynasty was too rich, which was the most fundamental resistance to the change of law. Because the Song people were already rich, the essence of the change was actually to divide the land and money equally, emphasizing the centralization of power between the Song law and the monarch of the Great Song. No one wants to change the already rich pattern of life, in fact, the Northern Song Dynasty needs a moderate reformer. Only boiling frogs in warm water can make the Northern Song Dynasty change unconsciously. The success of the change is based on two points, one is the support of military forces, and the other is to start in the "ruined" environment. The most well-known law changers in history are Shang Martin, Wang Anshi, and Zhang Juzheng, but the final outcome of these three is not good, and there is only one person who successfully changed the law, that is, the Qing Dynasty monarch Yongzheng, who has mastered the military power.