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The cunning rabbit died, the lackey cooked, since Fan Li, most of the founding heroes understood the truth of the meritorious lord.
Correspondingly to this was the concern of the founding emperors, who would kill if there was even the slightest sign of rebellion among these founding courtiers.
And the first to bear the brunt are often the military generals who lead the troops to fight.
Take Zhao Kuangyin, the founding king of the Song Dynasty, as an example, before releasing his military power with a glass of wine, he told the ministers around him that he could not sleep all night.
The courtier asked him why, and he said that he was worried about a repeat of the "Chen Qiao Incident" and did not want the monarchs to fight.
When the ministers heard this, they were terrified, lest a catastrophe come, and the next day they resigned one after another, so there was a saying of "releasing the soldiers with a glass of wine."
In fact, every founding emperor has a mentality similar to Zhao Kuangyin's "fear of the founding minister", but in a different way.
Such as Liu Bang, Zhu Yuanzhang, etc., waved a butcher's knife at the founding heroes; For example, Liu Xiu and Zhao Kuangyin, first salute and then soldier.
And their worries and a series of means are actually the trade-offs and competitions between imperial power and military power.
The generals went to stay
Most of the pioneers are temporary heroes, they all have different specialties, but they are not good at leading others and standing in the most central position.
Liu Bang, the founding king of the Han Dynasty, once said: "The husband plans and then moves, and the journey of a thousand miles is like a son's room;
"The town country is anxious, pay for food, and do not stop the grain road, I am not as good as Xiao He; A hundred victories, a hundred victories, I am not Han Xin's opponent."
Every founding emperor often knew his courtiers very well, and knowing people and making good use of them was a basic quality.
And they often have to lead troops to fight, so they know their soldiers very well.
The reverse is the same, able to cooperate well on the battlefield, this courtier naturally understands the emperor's mind well.
Therefore, if these meritorious ministers want to rebel, then they will inevitably become His Majesty's greatest enemies.
Just imagine, if Han Xin really betrayed Liu Bang, then how difficult would it be for Liu Bang to defeat Han Xin?
Maybe Liu Bang can still rely on the people around him to control it, but it must also be a lose-lose situation.
In the feudal era, no matter which dynasty, at the beginning of the founding of the state, there were rewards, or princes, or feudal towns.
Such rewards, often in a position of high authority, hold real power, and even control local military power, taxes, and so on.
In particular, if the military generals are not well managed, they are likely to become their own factions and threaten the imperial power.
Zhao Pu once said to Zhao Kuangyin that the reasons for the prosperity and decline of successive dynasties are all because of these reasons.
The reason why the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms were so chaotic was because the clan town was already above the center.
The Tang Dynasty collapsed because they could not deprive the clan of their military power, but could only watch them grow stronger and stronger.
As an emperor, you must balance these forces, or weaken their power, otherwise the river and mountains will be gone.
In order to avoid this situation, the founding emperors basically followed the principle of "no dictatorship and no heavy power" when formulating military systems and arranging soldiers.
First of all, the rules were made to death, and the military power in the hands of the generals was restrained in an all-round way, so as to prevent them from supporting the troops and self-respecting, and hatching a plan to rebel.
Like the "right to release troops with a cup of wine" mentioned at the beginning of the article, why can Zhao Kuangyin calmly invite a large group of courtiers to the banquet and directly express his concerns.
That's because before this banquet, Song Taizu had already gained control of the Central Forbidden Army, and the only thing that worried him was the issue of the domain.
His prime minister, Zhao Pu, also told him that if the issue of the Fanzhen was not resolved one day, the "Chen Qiao Mutiny" would most likely be repeated again.
Zhao Kuangyin himself also rebelled, and he certainly knew the crux in his heart.
But he didn't want to do things too desperately, and he still thought that Shi Shouxin and the others were his old friends, and with this sentiment in mind, he chose the method of first saluting and then soldiering.
And these generals already know that they have been suspected by the emperor, and there are no elite soldiers in their hands, and falling out with the emperor now is tantamount to seeking their own death.
Song Taizu also offered them rich conditions, and handing over military power to live the second half of their lives safely was also a good deal.
So between pushing the cup and changing the lamp, a struggle between imperial power and military power came to an end, and the final result was that the imperial power gained control.
In fact, successive dynasties have arranged for generals to stay, and there is a phenomenon of imperial power controlling military power.
And over time, this control would become stronger and stronger, and in the relationship between generals and soldiers, the emperor made small tricks.
Divide the soldiers
In history, almost every dynasty, when encountering war, was personally dispatched by the emperor himself. After the battle, the soldiers returned to the border where they were stationed, while the generals returned to their posts.
This was further developed during the Song Dynasty, when the "more slaughtering law" had already begun to be implemented in the barracks.
The so-called "more slaughtering method" means separating soldiers and generals, stationing the forbidden army in the Beijing division and the forbidden army guarding various places, according to the date of the imperial court, and rotating the garrison place according to the time.
This arrangement realized the impermanence of the army and the impermanent soldier, so that the generals would not have more contact with the soldiers, avoiding the risk of clan and town separation and soldiers' uprisings.
Of course, neither the generals nor the soldiers were familiar, so no one was convinced by the other, and the impact of this policy was mixed for the entire imperial court.
First of all, it avoided supporting troops with self-respect, but to a large extent, it weakened the cohesion of the army, which is one of the reasons why the Song Dynasty often lost when defending against foreign enemies.
By the Qing Dynasty, these nomadic rulers were also aware of the problem.
The Kangxi Emperor once told the university scholars that it was not a good thing for a group of soldiers to stay in one place for a long time, and it was not a good thing to hold military power.
Over time, these generals will become arrogant and easily cause turmoil in the country. Think of Wu Sangui, Geng Jingzhong and others, this is how they rose up and rebelled.
To solve this problem, Kangxi's advice was that the generals should return to the capital from time to time to meet the emperor in order to intimidate the generals and make them fear the emperor.
Later, in order to prevent soldiers and officials from living in the frontier for a long time and forming their own forces, the Qing Dynasty formulated a system of reconciling military attachés with a limited number of years.
It can be seen that the emperor was wary of the generals to such a precautionary point.
On the whole, the various measures designated by these emperors, without exception, firmly grasped the power of military mobilization and use in their own hands, and did not allow anyone to interfere or interfere.
In the eyes of the emperor, generals were actually just tools trained by the royal family to manage the army and replace them in battles.
In terms of how to limit, the royal family stipulated that only encounters could temporarily gain power to lead the army to fight.
This power is often embodied in the symbolic credentials of imperial power, such as tiger talismans, tiger cards, etc., not only that, but also a seal letter written by the royal family, and the combination of the two allows generals to mobilize the army.
After the war, the generals also lost the power to command the army, which is called "no heavy power".
And another insurance is to separate the soldiers, the farther away the soldiers, the happier the royal family.
Because this is basically impossible to produce a situation where Wuchen privately raises wings.
But such measures came at the expense of the army's combat effectiveness, and to some extent, the rulers of the dynasty dug their own graves, as evidenced by the repeated defeats of the Song and Qing dynasties.
In terms of army and military power, the emperor has done a lot of measures, and it stands to reason that he should sit back and relax.
However, with the strengthening of centralized power, the military supervision system has gradually become an established military system.
And this arrangement is actually just a precautionary measure, more a symbol of the strengthening of imperial power.
The system of supervising the army has a long history, and there were already rudiments of fighting in the pre-Qin period, and it really became a system in the Han Dynasty.
The central forbidden army mentioned above is the focus of the royal family, one is the closest to the royal family, and the other is that it is the elite of the entire dynasty.
The royal family had to protect itself for its own safety. During the reign of Emperor Wudi of Han, the envoys of the overseers began to supervise the Northern Army, and when Prince Jing rebelled, a complete system of monitoring the forbidden army was formally formed.
In addition to setting up a forbidden army in the center, in Emperor Wudi of Han and even behind him, the army in various places popularized the military supervision institution.
In the Wang Mang and Eastern Han dynasties, the system of supervising the army became more prevalent, and in the Sui Dynasty, in addition to his own work, the imperial history also served as the superintendent in wartime.
Then came to the Tang Dynasty, during which the personnel of the superintendent changed from part-time to full-time, and the emperor also set up a special supervising embassy.
However, at the beginning, the status of the military supervisor was not high, and the scope of activities and capabilities were also greatly limited.
During the Kaiyuan and Tianbao years, the military supervisors were no longer temporarily sent generals, but were replaced by eunuchs to supervise the army.
Over time, the status and temperament of these military envoys were almost equal, and to a certain extent, the occurrence and spread of the division of the clan and town were curbed.
In the Ming Dynasty, the system of military supervision became more stringent, and its organizational structure was divided into two systems, one was the supervision of eunuchs and the other was supervision by civil servants.
At this point, the military supervision system developed to the extreme, and the imperial power's control over military power became more and more solid, which is why by the end of the feudal dynasty, large-scale rebellions of soldiers were rarely found in the history books.
The wings of military power have been cut by the imperial power, and they cannot fly at all.
In addition to strengthening institutional control, successive emperors also controlled military power culturally and ideologically.
Punish someone as a warning to others
In the feudal era, the emphasis was on the supremacy of monarchy.
The supreme power of the emperor was obtained either by fists or by intrigue.
But often after ascending the throne, they will attribute this to God, saying that the previous dynasty has exhausted its energy, and the next dynasty is the real one in power.
The emperor said so, and the civil and military officials could only do so.
This is reflected in "Water Margin", when in the "Water Po Liang Mountain", Song Jiang also used similar means to obtain a piece called "Tianshi" in order to enhance his prestige.
There is a line engraved on it, describing the "one hundred single eight generals" as "heavenly generals", led by Song Jiang, the biggest advantage is that no matter the level of official position, martial arts, or merit, no one will say anything.
This is the will of God, do you dare to disobey it?
But that's not necessarily what these pioneers thought.
These people, some of whom grew up with the founding emperor, and some of whom were brothers who lived and died with the founding emperor, were familiar with each other.
For example, Chen Sheng, he once said that the prince will have a kind of Xiangning, and when Chen Sheng was farming, he once said to his friends that when he became rich, he must remember him.
But as soon as he rebelled and became Queen Chen, he mercilessly killed a fellow peasant who exposed his secret, why did he do this?
In fact, it was these old guys who spoke unobtrusively, which had a certain impact on King Chen's prestige.
When the founding emperor did not ascend the throne, he could still be called brothers, but once he ascended the throne, he could no longer be like before.
It's good to meet a kind-hearted emperor, and if you meet a ruthless emperor, that's a dead end.
Every founding emperor was unwilling to mention his past, let alone see his brothers shouting and drinking to him, and let his majesty disappear.
Every founding king hopes that his rivers and mountains will prosper forever.
What is the big trouble for henchmen? Every founding emperor would stare at those heroes, because no one knew them better than them, and as long as they were alive, their old ministry would not dare to rebel.
Once Emperor Taishang dies, Emperor Taishang's son Sun Zi can live as a hero of Emperor Taishang?
Most of the people who founded the country had problems with pride in their achievements, or inadvertently interfered in the affairs of the emperor.
No matter how close the founding heroes were, they could not compare to the closeness of the emperors to their descendants.
For the sake of future generations, those ruthless emperors will attack those who have made outstanding achievements, and Zhu Yuanzhang is a typical example.
After Zhu Yuanzhang established the state, he soon used the cases of Hu Weiyong and Lan Yu to execute many meritorious ministers.
The cruelty was so severe that even his own son Zhu Biao could not stand it.
Zhu Biao was the prince favored by Emperor Ming, and in order to educate him, Zhu Yuanzhang picked up a thorn rod, used a sharp sword to cut the thorns on the thorn stick, and told Zhu Biao: "I will help you cut the thorns on the thorn rod, and then return it to you." ”
What this means is that he will kill the wicked for his son and put the internal affairs in order, and the country will be run by the son from now on.
Zhu Biao was relatively kind, and it was based on this that Zhu Yuanzhang was worried that his son would not be able to deal with these people, so he gave those ministers a dismount.
Unexpectedly, he killed so many meritorious ministers that his grandson Emperor Jianwen fell into a dilemma where no one could use him.
Compared with Liu Bang and Zhu Yuanzhang, although Zhao Kuangyin was afraid that the founding hero would take away his own rivers and mountains, he still chose to pay tribute first and then soldier, which is why he was called "Renjun".
Throughout the feudal dynasty, although the military power was sometimes higher than the imperial power, most of the time, due to the centralized system and the dictatorial nature of the imperial power itself.
This dooms the emperors to force military power into their own tools, and as for the founding emperors of the previous dynasties, they are afraid of heroes, saying that they are "afraid", rather than a suspicion and a protective color.
With the passage of time, the strengthening of imperial power, the beheading of meritorious figures, or the seizure of military power is inevitable.