In the sixth year of Baoyou (1258 AD), when Meng Ge divided his troops into three major invasions of the Southern Song Dynasty, the traitor Ding Daquan was first deposed because he concealed military information, and then died in exile. The eunuch Dong Songchen was also expelled from the court. Concubine Yan, who supported Ding Daquan and Dong Songchen, also fell ill and died in the first year of Jingding (1260 AD). The era of several ugly people controlling the government was over, but the Southern Song Dynasty had a more demonic and dark period of Jia Xiangdao's dictatorship.
Jia seems to be a person.
Jia Xiangdao, Zi Shixian, Taizhou (present-day Linhai, Zhejiang). His father, Jia Shi, served as an envoy to Huaidong. Since he was a child, he did not do his business properly and was a wanderer. Because his sister was selected as a noble concubine by Emperor Lizong of Song, he climbed the dragon and attached himself to the phoenix, entered the political arena as a "national uncle", and soon climbed to the position of envoy of the Two Huai Xuanfu, becoming an important military commander of the Southern Song Dynasty. When Meng Ge launched a large-scale invasion of the Southern Song Dynasty, Jia Xiangdao was appointed as the envoy of Jingxi, Hunan and Northern Sichuan, and Xuanfu of Sichuan, and also the governor of Jiangxi and Liangguang, and was fully responsible for resisting the Mongol invasion of the three roads, and was appointed as the right minister and privy envoy in the army. But he was afraid to fight.
Wu Qian, who was in the imperial court at the time, asked him to move the Shuai mansion from Hanyang to Huangzhou (Huanggang, Hubei) to prevent the Mongol army from invading Jiangxi from Tanzhou, and on the way to Huangzhou, he encountered a group of Mongol soldiers escorting the children of The Jin Dynasty to the north, and he was so frightened that he thought that his death was coming. Later, behind the backs of Song Lizong and other ministers such as Wu Qian, the chancellor, he privately made a humiliating peace agreement with Kublai Khan to claim subjects to the Mongols, cut off land, and accept coins.
After Kublai Khan's army was dismissed, Jia Rudao concealed from the imperial court the truth about the peace agreement with the Mongols privately, and lied about the great victory of the Song army, the siege of Ezhou, and the purging of Jiang and Han. Song Lizong was greatly pleased, thinking that Jia Xiangdao had really made a miracle to make "the clan society in danger and restore peace", and he specially issued a praise for the beauty and praised Jia Xiangdao
"The vassal of the humerus" makes "our people reborn by it, and the royal family is the same as the reconstruction".
Emperor Lizong of Song also issued an edict summoning Jia Xiangdao to enter the dynasty, ordering hundreds of officials to greet him on the outskirts of Hangzhou, and soon made him a young master and the Duke of Weiguo. A veritable "city scoundrel" and a shameless and fraudulent social treachery was regarded by the Southern Song Dynasty as the pillar and savior of the country. Jia Rudao also suddenly became the most powerful figure in the Southern Song Dynasty.
As soon as Jia Rudao grasped the power of the government, he spared no effort to eliminate dissent.
He believed that he was frightened on the way from Hanyang to Huangzhou, and that it was Zuo Cheng xiang Wu Qian who wanted to frame him and had always held a grudge in his heart, so as soon as he entered the dynasty, he used the excuse to drive Wu Qian out of the imperial court, and at the same time expelled all the officials who supported Wu Qian from the court on the charge of "party members". Jia Rudao also cracked down on and persecuted those generals who had shown disrespect to Jia Rudao.
He implemented the so-called "Intention Law", and under the pretext of verifying military expenditures, he described the official property taken by the generals who disrespected him in the course of fighting against the Mongol soldiers as "stolen goods", falsely accused him of "embezzling official money", dismissed the officials and exiled them, and some even went to prison to persecute them to death. After Xiang Shibi, who had made great contributions in the defense of Tanzhou, was deposed and demoted to Zhangzhou, Jia Rudao also inspected the golden valley he used when defending Tanzhou, insisted that he was corrupt, arrested him, and forced him to repay. After Xiang Shibi was forced to die, he detained his family members for compensation. Wang Jian, who had made outstanding achievements in the defense of Hezhou, was also not tolerated by Jia Xiangdao, and was transferred out of Huizhou and placed in idle places, making him depressed and die.
While purging dissidents and cracking down on the persecution of meritorious officials who resisted Mongolia, Jia Rudao took bribes and introduced those who were obedient to him and were keen on exploiting and seeking personal gain into the DPRK, occupying high positions, and also introduced a group of foreign relatives and sons as supervisors and county guards in various places. He especially liked those Daoist gentlemen who had no real talent and practical learning, but were extremely hypocritical, and let them hold various important positions. The carefulness of the late Song and early Yuan dynasties once revealed that Jia Xiangdao's preference for these Daoist masters was because of him
"When the country holds the great power alone, but fears that some people will divide their power, they will dedicate themselves to the important path of these people, called reverence for Taoism, but in fact, they are foolish and cowardly, "not to restrain their elbows."
In this way, Jia Rudao was able to manipulate everything in the government.
Emperor Duzong of Song succeeded to the throne, and Jia Xiangdao had exclusive power.
In the fifth year of Jingding (1264 AD), Emperor Lizong of Song fell ill and died, and Emperor Duzong of Song succeeded to the throne. Because Song Duzong was supported by Jia Rudao, he had special respect for Jia Rudao, calling him a "master", and the imperial officials called him "Zhou Gong", and Jia Rudao was also more arbitrary, repeatedly using his resignation to blackmail Song Duzong. Because Song Duzong regarded him as the patron of his own country, he repeatedly retained him, and even sent his ministers to pass on the holy will four or five times a day, and sent eunuchs to sleep outside Jia Rudao's mansion at night to guard him and prevent him from resigning. Later, he also enfeoffed Jia Xiangdao as an important matter for the Pingzhang military state, and went to the feast on the third day of January, three days and one dynasty.
Although Jia Rudao accepted the official position of Pingzhang Junguo's important affairs, he did not go to the DPRK at all, and asked the small official to carry the documents to his home to submit. All internal and external governments, large and small, must be nodded by him before they can be promulgated. The impeachment of the Taiwanese counsel, the recommendations of various governments, and all the affairs of the capital, Qixian, and Caoyun did not dare to put them into practice without first reporting to Jia Rudao. All officials who did not conform to him were deposed. Officials scrambled to bribe him for a good job. Anyone who wants to get the position of commander, superintendent, county sheriff, etc., must have a lot of bribes. The government of the Southern Song Dynasty can really be said to be dark at this time.
In the fifteen years from the last year of The reign of Emperor Lizong of Song to the reign of Emperor Duzong of Song, although Jia Xiangdao was an extremely popular subject and had power at home and abroad, the wandering nature he had cultivated since childhood not only did not converge, but developed more with the expansion of power. At that time, although the attacks of the Yuan soldiers (Kublai Khan established the Yuan Dynasty after seizing the Mongol Khan's throne) were intensifying, Jia Rudao turned a deaf ear, did not talk about military affairs, and spent all day with a group of boring literati who sang and sang poems and whitewashed Taiping. He built many pavilions in the West Lake and the scenic Geling. He called the pavilion built in Geling "Semi-Leisure Hall" and the garden "Yakuza Garden", indicating his leisurely self-sufficiency and enjoyment. He was like the evil boy in the city, and when he saw the folk beauty, he tried to get the ruin in the house. In addition, he also raised dozens of singers and nuns, fooled around with him all day, and often gambled with the gamblers he had befriended in his youth. Raising crickets and fighting crickets is also a hobby of Jia Xiangdao, and he also wrote a book called the Cricket Sutra, which records his experience in raising crickets and fighting crickets.
Because Jia Xiangdao monopolized the imperial program and ignored the emergency of the government and border defense, and only singed with the singers all day long on the "Semi-Idle Hall" and the cruise ships in the West Lake, some people used the phrase "there is no prime minister in the DPRK, and there is a flat chapter on the lake" to brilliantly expose the corruption situation that no one in the government and government at that time handled. Someone also inscribed a poem;
"On the boat on the mountain Loutai Lake, Pingzhang was lazy after getting drunk. Yushu Mo reported that Fan Cheng was anxious, and the new moth eyebrow was a teenager. ”
This poem exposes Jia Rudao's ugly behavior of only caring for sexual pleasures and ignoring the border urgent report.
Jia Xiangdao not only lived a life of wanton wandering himself, but also introduced the puppet into the palace, making Song Lizong, who was already desolate, more enthusiastic about playing and feasting. The Song Duzong that Jia Rudao supported was even more of an absurd and faint emperor. He loves wine all day. Jia Xiangdao also tried his best to make Song Duzong indulge in wine and ignore military and political affairs. Anyone who spoke in the DPRK about the invasion of the Yuan soldiers was immediately dismissed from the DPRK. An official daughter told Song Duzong about Xiangyang being surrounded by Yuan soldiers for three years, and Jia Rudao actually executed her for other reasons, so that no one dared to talk to Song Duzong about the critical situation after that. Song Duzong also single-mindedly relied on Jia Rudao to take charge of military and political affairs, and he was drunk and dreamed of death, wantonly having fun.
Due to the continuous invasion of the Mongol army in the Southern Song Dynasty for many years, the territory was shrinking day by day, and the finances had long been increasingly exhausted. During the period of Jia Xiangdao's dictatorship, the indulgence and extravagance of the ruling clique made the southern Song Dynasty's finances collapse. At that time, Liu Kezhuang once said,
"Insufficient financial resources" is "an incurable disease today."
The people have been exhausted by the harsh plunder. In order to solve the financial crisis, Jia Rudao adopted two methods: "buying public land" and printing and distributing coins without restrictions, and even more unscrupulously squeezed the people's fat and people's ointment.
"Buy Public Land"
The purchase of public land was implemented from the second year of Emperor Jingding of the Song Dynasty (1261 AD).
Originally, it was stipulated that those who occupied more than 200 mu of land in the villages of Lianghuai Road would be sent by the government to buy one-third, and even the home of 100 mu would not be exempted from it in the future. The government paid the purchased land with paper money and discounts such as "official" and "degree" as a reward, because the paper money was seriously depreciated at that time, as cheap as dung, and the "official" was no longer worth anything on the eve of the fall of the Southern Song Dynasty. The government built official villages on these purchased lands, one in each township, and appointed rich landlords to serve as "zhuang officials", and every year directly levied official rents from tenants, and paid official warehouses to supplement military salaries. This is the so-called "Jingding Xing Gongtian" method.
The essence of the implementation of the "public land" law is that the government, in the face of financial collapse and no way to get out of the military salary, is not satisfied with collecting land endowments, but directly takes the land rent paid by the tenant farmers to the landlords into the hands of the official government, and expands the income of the official government's land endowment. Therefore, the implementation of the "public land" law has been strongly resisted and opposed by the powerful landlords in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and the landlords of Jiangsu and Zhejiang are all resentful of this.
In the fourth year of Emperor Xianchun of the Song Dynasty (1268 AD), the Southern Song government abolished the Zhuangguan and instead summoned people to let tenants cultivate and cultivate themselves, and transport themselves, but they still could not appease the grievances of the landlords in Jiangsu and Zhejiang. The ruling foundation of the Southern Song Dynasty was fundamentally shaken by the practice of buying public land.
Indiscriminate issuance of banknotes
The problem of indiscriminate issuance of paper money began to appear in the middle of the Southern Song Dynasty.
During the reign of Emperor Xiaozong of Song (1174-1189 AD), only 24 million taels were issued. During the kaixi period of Emperor Ningzong of Song (1205-1207 AD), it increased to 140 million taels. By the time of Emperor Shaoding of the Song Dynasty (1228-1233 AD), the amount of paper money issued had soared to about 300 million taels. After the outbreak of the Song-Mongol War, due to the southern Song Dynasty's indiscriminate issuance of paper money to cope with increasingly large military expenditures, in the sixth year of Chunyou (1246 AD), the issuance of the Shaoding year had doubled to 650 million taels.
After Jia Rudao's dictatorship, the Southern Song Dynasty relied on the indiscriminate issuance of paper money to survive. Initially, it was issued with an additional 150,000 taels per day, and later it continued to expand the circulation, and the paper money was issued in large quantities without cash reserves, which made the paper money depreciate rapidly. In the first year of Emperor Lizong of Song 's reign (1234 AD), Liu Kezhuang said that paper money was "as cheap as dung". By the time of Jia Rudao's dictatorship, with the unlimited indiscriminate issuance of paper money, the depreciation of paper money was even more severe, and the soaring prices were more serious, which made the well market depressed and the social economy in a state of collapse. At that time, the students wrote to Jia Xiangdao
"Tread green and green, do not think about the depression of Lu Alley; Drunkenness and drunkenness, let alone the rise of prices",
This statement reflects the socio-economic depression and soaring prices at that time.
The depreciation of paper money and the soaring prices not only put the people's lives in trouble, but also caused the soldiers who lived on the government salaries to fall into a situation of hunger and cold, and the soldiers of the army had to go to war with the Yuan soldiers hungry. The damage to the morale of the Southern Song Dynasty is also conceivable.
In addition to buying public land and indiscriminately issuing paper money, Jia Xiangdao also implemented the "Jingding Presumptive Method" during the Jingding period (1260-1264 AD).
"The Law of Jingding Deduction"
Jia Rudao ordered all roads to re-clear the fields and mu, and the method was to use the county unified capital and the capital to unify the capital, to select "those who are rich and fair," to redefine the taxes on the fields and mu, and to put them in the atlas, nominally to "enable the people to have fixed property, to have fixed taxes on property, and to have fixed taxes in taxes." In fact, it was to increase the income from the fields. At that time, someone wrote a poem sarcastically:
"Three points of the world and two points of death, just like the country and the mountains." Even if a hill is added to an acre, it should not be like the old feudal territory. ”
Conclusion
Jia Rudao's various perverse actions during the dictatorship made the southern Song Dynasty's government "ignore everything", the political organs were nearly paralyzed, the social economy collapsed, the government finances were exhausted, the people complained, the landlord class was also alienated from the Southern Song Dynasty, the military strength against the Yuan soldiers was weakened, and the border situation was more critical. Although the Southern Song Dynasty was given a chance to survive because of the victory of The Diaoyu City in Sichuan, it not only failed to use this opportunity to slightly improve the situation of peril, but fell into a desperate situation facing extinction.