Bounded by the Hangu Pass, the six countries of the Warring States except Qin are located east of the Hangu Pass, so they are called the Six Kingdoms of Kanto. In just over ten years, the six kingdoms were cut off one by one, and the first emperor built Qin, which is regarded by historians as the first change in ancient and modern times, but from the perspective of the people of the time, harsh government and severe punishment, rampant conquest and violence, there is a fire of resistance under the ice, and the cry of "although there are three families in Chu, the death of Qin will be Chu" is endless.
Only fifteen years passed, and the first feudal dynasty on the land of China ended in a short life. The Western Han Dynasty established by Liu Bang finally gained a foothold and ushered in a series of prosperous situations. Also occupying the old land of the Six Kingdoms, why did the Qin dynasty fall down and everyone pushed it, but the rule of the Western Han Dynasty was solid, standing for a hundred years without falling?
Shi Gu changed to ancient times, and unified and divided the kings
1. The urgent government after the unification of the Qin Dynasty.
We often hear the term tiger and wolf division today, and it was first used to describe the strength of the Qin army.
History records that "the Qin people switched to extend the enemy, and the division of the Nine Kingdoms fled and did not dare to enter", which shows the unstoppable courage of the army of the Qin Dynasty. Such a mighty dynasty with strong gold and powerful soldiers died in just 21 years later by a small Chen Shu of "gangsters", and if you look into the reasons for this, is it just the "unbenevolent government" analyzed by Jia Yi?
The "Treatise on Guo Qin" contains: "Qin has been in the last days, and anti-Qin forces are everywhere. "So we have to wonder where this anti-Qin force came from.
It is recorded in the "Huainanzi": "Seven countries and different races, princes and laws, each with different customs". The six countries of the Kanto region, which have a history of thousands of years, have great differences in customs, culture, system, economy and Qin, and some historians have pointed out that there is a sub-ethnic distinction between the Shiqi people, the Yan people, and the Qin people. A unified nation with China as the main body has not yet been formed, and a sense of identity and culture has not yet been cultivated.
Against this background, in the discussion of the Qin regime, Prime Minister Wang Xuan said: "The princes were defeated at the beginning, Yan Qi Jing is far away, do not set up the king, there is nothing to fill, please appoint the sons." (These places in Yanqi are too far away to manage if they are not suppressed by kings.) ）
Coincidentally, Dr. Chun Yuyue also said, "The king of Yin Zhou is more than a thousand years old, and he is a meritorious disciple of Feng Zi, and he is a supporting branch." ...... Those who do not learn from the ancient and can last for a long time are not unheard of. (The reason why the Shang Zhou Dynasty was able to rule for a thousand years was because it implemented division and mutual support, and I have never heard of a long-lasting one that did not follow the ancient period.) ）
This was almost Qin Chen's unified voice, "everyone thought it was true", except for Li Si, no one refuted. But in order to open his "inheritance of all generations", the pattern of unification, it was naturally impossible to divide the power, and finally vetoed on the grounds of "the world is fighting bitterly, and there are princes", forcibly put the six countries of the Kanto on the system of extending the Qin state for a hundred years, and the means were thunderous, completely ignoring the huge cultural conflict between the six countries and Qin, thoroughly unifying currency, writing, weights and measures, and planning roads throughout the country, Daxing County and County.
This is simply unacceptable to the people of the Six Nations who have never had such a precedent. And Qin was a "brutal country" that destroyed their country, and the resistance was even stronger. This kind of forcible transfer of customs without time buffer, but instead replaced by atrocities and brutal punishments, will only further aggravate the conflict between the original Six Kingdoms and Qin, arouse the anger of revenge and revenge, and finally get out of control and finally burn the plain.
Daqin finally fell under the strong backlash of Kanto society. The anti-Qin war, to some extent, was not only anti-Qin state, but also anti-Qin system. Among the main forces of the rebellion were many people who were officials in Qin: "All the counties and counties killed their commanders to respond to Chen Shu." "I want to send troops to make the gong and Huan Chu general."
2. The general trend of the Chu-Han dispute
Chen Shu's "Wang Hou Will Xiangning Has a Feeling" opened the prelude to the anti-Qin dynasty, and later generations often regarded it as the first peasant uprising in history, giving it a lofty significance, but ignoring that he was pulling the banner of "Great Chu Xing" and "Restoration of the Chu State and Social Grass".
This is the torrent of the times, and the anti-Qin must be called by the old nobles of the Six Kingdoms, among which the Chu people are the most ferocious. For example, Chen Sheng was called King of Chu, Zhao Xie was called King of Zhao, and Han Cheng was called King Han, and these old Kanto surnames sprang up like mushrooms for a while.
Qing scholar Zhao Yiyan said: "Cover people's feelings and habits to see feudal stories in previous lives, and they must not be dramatized", and Mr. Qian Mu also pointed out in "History of Qin and Han": "The remnants of feudalism and the shadows of the Warring States still exist in the minds of the people." "The system of division and sealing has stretched for thousands of years in this land, and the twenty years of unification are just a prosperous dream. The historical remnants of feudal kings still have great influence.
In the strong inertia of direct division and sealing, Xiang Yu, who was the first to fight, had to "pretend to establish princes and then destroy Qin", and after destroying Qin, he "established himself as the overlord of Western Chu, Wang Jiu County, and Dupengcheng", and quickly crowned eighteen kings, which shows that "splitting the land and dividing the seal" was the historical trend at that time.
Xiang Yu was from the Chu aristocracy, and the ruling group also used the old Chu people, and they themselves carried a class antipathy to the Qin system, although they briefly adapted to the times, but more with a political blueprint to return to the Spring and Autumn Warring States period to split the land and become kings.
Liu Bang was different, and for him, the title of king was not only a helplessness to follow the trend of history, but also a political means to unite and win over the powerful groups against Xiang Yu. During the Chu-Han dispute, Wu Sheng once said to Han Xin: "The power of the two kings today is under the feet. If you throw the right foot, the king wins, and the left throw wins the king of Xiang. (The victory of Xiang Yu and Liu Bang depends entirely on your backwards, and whoever you fall to will win.) ）。
Han Xin once said: "If you are a meritorious hero with the city of the world, why not be convinced" (If you divide the meritorious hero into princes, who will not be willing to work for you?) It can be seen that to win over such a person who holds military power with great importance, the crowning of the king is the best bait stimulus.
Almost all of the kings that Liu Bang had to seal successively. For example, King Zhao Zhang Er and King Yan Zangxuan, if they are not sealed, they will fall to Chu; Another example is Peng Yue, the king of Liang, who is himself a commander of a legion with heavy troops, and will not convert to Han without being crowned king.
3. The alternation of different surnames Wang and the same surname Wang in the early years of the Western Han Dynasty
After the establishment of the Western Han Dynasty, it began to summarize the historical lessons of the Qin dynasty.
Huan Tan summed it up: "Do not appoint princes by anyone", Jia Yi also said: "abolish the king's way and establish private rights", and even believed that "splitting the land and dividing the people" could save the Qin Dynasty's life, and Liu Bang also believed that the main reason for Qin's death was that "stealing the title of emperor, and the children are pifu, there is no flesh and bone inside to supplement the roots, and there is no guard of the wings of the soil domain outside." (That is, there is no division of children with the same surname, and they cannot be used as supporters).
Therefore, the death of Qin has a lot to do with the undivided seal, at least for the Han people. Then it is imperative to divide the seal after the establishment of the Han Dynasty, but in Liu Bang's heart, the best target of the division is not the king with a different surname established during the Chu-Han dispute.
In fact, Liu Bang was more aware of the potential separatist harm to the title of king of the opposite sex than anyone else, and when the Western Han Dynasty was not yet established, he took a series of measures to curb the power of the kings, such as seizing power from Han Xin, who held military power, several times, and as soon as the war ended, he worried about the "heroes and lords" and began to cut off the kings with different surnames.
King Han Xin of Chu was sealed, first deposed and then killed. Less than six years later, Han Wang Xin, Huainan King Yingbu, and Liang King Peng Yue were killed, Yan, Zhao, and Dai Wang were deposed, and the only surviving was Wu Rui the King of Changsha, still because his country was weak and partial, and the Western Han needed him to pacify the south, and then he also cut the country because he had no vises.
Historian Chen Suzhen pointed out that to establish the Han Dynasty, it was necessary to "inherit the system of Qin", and also to comfort the old eastern country and reconcile regional cultural differences, which was the demand of the era for the Western Han Dynasty.
After cutting off the heterogeneous king, Liu Bang sealed the Liu clan relatives one by one in the Guandong homeland, established a kingdom, gave them great autonomy, and "ruled according to the Han law", through such relatively gentle measures, gave the people of the six countries an acceptable process.
Since then, the Han Dynasty has established a local system of parallel counties and states. That is, locally, in addition to the counties directly under the central government, there were also divided princely kingdoms, and at the same time, with the Taoist idea of "Huang Lao does nothing, the people return to purity" as the guideline for governing the country, the Han Dynasty began to operate on a slow right track.
From Emperor Wen of Han to Emperor Wudi of Han, it took three generations to cut the domain
As early as when Liu Bang divided his children, he realized the potential hidden danger of separatism. At that time, Liu Li, the king of Wu, was only twenty years old, and Liu Bang warned him: "He who is unrighteous, and who raises troops against the Son of Heaven, will fight with the world." And with the development of time, blood relations continue to drift apart, and this trend of division finally surfaces. At that time, of the 54 counties in the country, the princely kingdoms had jurisdiction over 40 counties, and the central government had jurisdiction over only 15.
And the princes also "did not listen to the edict of the Son of Heaven", which seriously threatened the central government, and Jia Yi published the "Public Security Policy", proposing the method of "building the princes and reducing their strength" to weaken the power of the princes.
Since Emperor Wen, corresponding measures have been adopted, dividing the state of Qi into six and the state of Huainan into three. Emperor Jing mistakenly wrote a book to cut the domain, pointing out that "what is cut today is also the opposite, and what is not cut is also the opposite." Cutting it, its anti-urgency, the calamity is small; Emperor Jing adopted his advice, which eventually led to the Rebellion of the Seven Kings led by Liu Li, but the central forces were strong enough at the time that the rebellion was quelled in less than three months.
Emperor Jing took the opportunity to reduce the autonomy of the princely states, "the princes were not allowed to return to governing the country", and "reduced their officials", gradually making the status of the feudal state almost equal to that of Han County.
The time of Emperor Wu was a period of unprecedented prosperity and development of Western Han society, and the ideological and cultural "exclusive Confucianism" also unified the national consciousness. Emperor Wu adopted the Tui'en decree of his lord father, which further reduced the fiefdoms of the princes and princes, and promulgated the "Zuo Guan Law" and "Supplementary Benefit Law", which isolated the kingdom. In the end, on the grounds that the sacrificial "shochu" was not in good condition, he seized the title of 106 marquises.
At this point, the problem of princes around the main theme of the history of the early Western Han Dynasty was completely solved, and although the princes existed, they had to pay taxes on food, clothing, and their status was no different from that of Han County. The parallel system of counties and states in the early Han Dynasty evolved into the county system.
Conclusion
The development of history is governed by internal general laws, and to complete the transformation of one system into another, there must be a slow transition period. Two thousand years ago, when the land was divided into counties and counties across the country and the system was violently changed, the Qin Dynasty adopted radical measures in a vain attempt to turn the head of a thousand years in just twenty years, and naturally received a corresponding counterattack.
The Western Han Dynasty that followed was able to adapt to the times, reconcile local and regional contradictions, start with the parallel system of counties and states, and finally go through a century-long buffer period to make the wheel of history move towards a vertical county system.
Bibliography:
"The Consciousness and Ethnic Identity of the Warring States Qin and Han Dynasties"
"Discussion on the Historical Inevitability of the Parallel System of the Early Han Dynasty"
"The Place of the Eastern County and the Control Policy of the Kanto in the Early Han Dynasty"
#历史开讲 #