The Jin Dynasty is one of the nine great unified dynasties in Chinese history, divided into two periods, the Western Jin Dynasty and the Eastern Jin Dynasty. Belongs to one of the Six Dynasties. The Western Jin Dynasty paid a terrible price for the mistakes it had made, followed by a period of great turmoil in Wuhu Huanhua. So, what led to the demise of the Western Jin Dynasty? The Western Jin Dynasty perished, ostensibly because of the Rebellion of the Eight Kings. However, the Rebellion of the Seven Kingdoms of Wu and Chu during the period of Emperor Jing of Han was no less powerful than the Rebellion of the Eight Kings, so why did the Western Jin Dynasty die because of the Rebellion of the Eight Kings? The main thing was the resumption of the armed forces of the prefectures and counties and the feudal system.
At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the world was in chaos, and many warlords were from prefecture pastors and county guards. Therefore, when the Jin unified the world, in order to show that the world was already peaceful and there was no need for the prefecture and county to keep troops, the Western Jin disbanded all the armed forces of the prefecture and county, leaving only 120,000 troops, allowing veterans to participate in agricultural production and restore the imperial economy. On the surface, this may seem like a good thing, but if you add the restoration of the old feudal system, it is counterproductive.
Sima Yan
We know that Sima Yi's grandson Sima Yan came to the throne by forcing Cao to give up the throne. He had to make sure that something similar would not happen to him. Therefore, a group of people are needed to maintain their imperial power, and outsiders are unreliable, so they can only rely on their own families. Therefore, he divided a large number of princes with the same surname, which created a problem, after the abolition of the prefecture and county armament, the prefecture and county directly loyal to the emperor did not have soldiers, but let the princes and kings have soldiers in their own fiefdoms, what should they do once the princes rebelled?
Unfortunately, Sima Yan did not think of this, he thought that the world was already peaceful, there would be no more wars, and began to sound dogs and horses every day, there were more than 5,000 people in the harem, and even sponsored his uncle Wang Kai a large amount of gold and silver to fight with Shi Chong, the richest man at that time. Ministers only know how to talk every day, regardless of state affairs. How can this be long? Therefore, the Rebellion of the Eight Kings broke out 25 years after the founding of the Western Jin Dynasty. Due to the armed forces of the prefecture and the serious internal friction, the central government simply did not have enough troops to deal with the army of the princes, and the counterinsurgency became a game between the princes and kings, and the Western Jin government also declined in an instant. However, this decline gave the northern Hu people the opportunity to go south, and finally developed into the Five Hu Chaos.
Wuhu refers to Xiongnu, Xianbei, Qiang, Qiang, and Di. If you have to ask, why did the five nonsenses happen? The famous historian Mr. Huang Renyu's statement in China's great history and art is very straightforward, that is, cultural integration.
In fact, Wuhu did not invade the Chinese region in the Western Jin Dynasty, they began to contact the Central Plains through migration and invasion from the Eastern Han Dynasty. However, although it has been hundreds of years since the Hu people moved into the Central Plains, the Han people have always held a mentality that they are not of our race and their hearts must be different.
The Hu people's life in the Central Plains was not satisfactory, many were integrated into the army stationed at the border passes, and many became slave laborers of the Han family. Later, Shi Le, a member of the Qiang ethnic group who established the Later Zhao regime, was once sold into slavery, and even in the Wuhu era, Liu Kun, the representative of the Han people, wrote to Shi Le without shame, saying that you Hu people can't be the Son of Heaven anyway, so it's better to come to our Jin Dynasty to be a famous minister!
You have to know that Liu Kun wanted Shi Le to help him at that time. Maybe Liu Kun doesn't know that the trend of history has changed, the world is no longer the Han family, the problem of Hu-Han integration since the Eastern Han Dynasty, now finally the time to solve, although this solution process is very long and bloody. However, the Chinese nation must be reborn through such a nirvana, a new China, in order to show a new attitude, that is, the Sui and Tang dynasties.
We know that in the end, it was Sui that ended the chaos from the Wuhu period to the Northern and Southern Dynasties. During this period, there were actually many people who had the opportunity to complete, but these people did not succeed, and the final completion of the unification was Yang Jian, the Sui Emperor who was known as the most perfect emperor. If we look at the history of the Northern and Southern Dynasties, we will find that it has an ending very similar to the Three Kingdoms period, where the Tuoba clan operated hard in the north for more than 100 years in the Northern Wei Dynasty, but was finally won by Yang Jian to obtain the fruits of victory. The Sima clan won because the balance of society at that time was biased in favor of the Shi clan, so what was the reason behind Yang Jian's victory? Why did Sui end the chaos in the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties? The fundamental reason is that the most important contradictions in society at that time, that is, ethnic contradictions, class contradictions, and faith contradictions, were solved in Yang Jian's time. Of course, solving these problems is not the credit of Yang Jian alone, but the result of continuous exploration and efforts of several generations in the past 400 years. So what has happened during this period?
Let's look at the south first, what is the historical mission of the south? That is, the ruling class replaced the Shi clan rich family with a cold door. Reasons: First, the internal friction of the gate valve, and second, the corruption of the giant. Regarding the internal friction of the Shi Clan gate valve, we must start with the Eastern Jin Dynasty, and Sima Rui Nandu, the founder of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, actually passively obeyed the orders of the central government. He himself never thought of becoming an emperor, and later became an emperor mainly because of the situation and the persuasion of Wang Dao and others. Wang Wei was a gate valve clan at that time, and the establishment of the Eastern Jin Dynasty was mainly the result of Wang Dao's operation. So at that time, there was a saying that the king and the horse shared the world. Of course, in addition to the royal family, there were many clans who came from the north to the south to take refuge. With the joint support of these Northern Lai Shi and Jiangdong local Shi tribes, the Eastern Jin Dynasty was established.
But this also led to the problem that the imperial power of the Eastern Jin Dynasty was very fragile, and the emperor had to carefully maintain the balance between the imperial power and the gate. But this balance can easily be upset. If the Shi clan has strength, it also has ambition, and the imperial power is fragile, and the powerful Hao family naturally wants to replace it.
The first person to have this idea was Wang Dun, a cousin of Director Wang. Wang Dun rebelled twice, the first time using the side of the Qing monarch as an excuse to try to monopolize the imperial government, and the second time he was directly about to usurp the throne. But Wang Dun did not expect that when he wanted to subvert the dynasty, it was Wang Dao of the same clan who stood on his side. Director Wang knew that the Sima family had a righteous name, and although the world at that time was not the final say of the Sima family, it could not be decided by the Wang family. If Wang Dun wants to usurp the throne, he wants to stand on the opposite side of all the Jiangdong gate clans. Wang Dun's Rebellion was temporarily ended by Wang Dun's death.
The same was true of Xie An and Huan Wen later. In this way, the Eastern Jin Dynasty stumbled through 100 years in the contest between the Shi clan and the imperial power. However, the emperor could not always have loyal courtiers from the Shi clan like Wang Dao and Xie An. When the loyal clans no longer had the ability to defend the imperial power, the end of the Eastern Jin Dynasty would come. The Shi clan gate valve fell together with the Eastern Jin Dynasty in internal friction, which also gave the Hanmen generals the opportunity to enter the historical stage. It was not Wang Dun and Huan Wen who ended the Eastern Jin Dynasty who were ambitious Shi clan gatekeepers, but Liu Yu, who was born in the Han clan.
Let's take a look at the Liang Dynasty, the most prosperous of the Southern Dynasty. In the Liang Dynasty, the entire upper class was already rotten. During the Western Jin Dynasty, the clans were only talking about showing off their wealth, but by the Liang Dynasty, the arrogance, greed and corruption of the nobles had reached an unbearable level. At that time, Jiankang Ling, that is, the mayor of the capital, did not even know the horse, and the younger brother of Emperor Liang Wudi also committed adultery with the daughter of Emperor Liang Wudi, and this person even wanted to usurp the throne, and it was a fool's dream to rely on such a group of people to build a country. It is also time for such a clan to withdraw from the stage of history. The Chen Dynasty after the Liang Dynasty was the Chen Dynasty established entirely by the southern natives, and the history of the Shi clan ended at the end of Liang.
After understanding the reasons for the decline of the Shi Clan Gate Valve, let's take a look at how the Hanmen rose. Why did the Eastern Jin Dynasty, which was painstakingly managed by the wealthy families of all parties, finally fall into the hands of the cold family? The answer is that the Shi Clan High Gate lacks good generals.
The Eastern Jin Dynasty, like the Northern and Southern Dynasties, was a chaotic era, and troubled times had to rely on fists to speak. Since the Shi Clan High Gate lacked generals, it naturally gave the cold door a chance. So how did the cold door rise to prominence in these high-gate games? Let's take a look at the military system at that time.
In the Eastern Jin Dynasty, there were two major legions, one was the Xifu army in Jingzhou, and the other was the Beifu army formed by the Chuzi group. The Xifu army has always been controlled by Quan Chen, such as Wang Dun and Huan Wen are the commanders of the Xifu army, while the Beifu army was established by Xie An's nephew Xie Xuan. This army once crushed the army of Former Qin Fujian in the famous Battle of Shuishui. Liu Yu, the founder of the first regime of the Southern Dynasty, the Song Dynasty, was also from this army. The Beifu soldiers were the strongest soldiers at that time. We just said that the Shi clan Gaomen at that time lacked generals, so when Xie Xuan formed this army, he used a large number of Chu people who migrated from the north.
The Chu character here is not a good name, he is a scornful term for the people of the Northern Dynasty to the northerners in the territory of the Southern Dynasty. However, it was this group of contemptuous Chu people who finally defeated the Xifu soldiers controlled by the Shi clan Gaomen, and then overthrew the Eastern Jin regime. The last gate rebellion in the Eastern Jin Dynasty was launched by Huan Xuan, the son of the powerful minister Huan Wen, and it was Liu Yu, who was born in Chu, who suppressed this rebellion. The establishment of the Liu and Song dynasties meant the beginning of a southern dynasty dominated by the Hanmen class. From the Three Kingdoms to the Southern Dynasties, it is actually a history of the rise and fall of the Shi clan. The Shi clan men formed influence in the Eastern Han Dynasty, established power in the Western Jin Dynasty, and reached their peak in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, and finally fell in the Southern Dynasty. This is like what Liu Yuxi wrote in his poem: In the old days, Wang Xie Tang Qianyan flew into the homes of ordinary people. The humble class, or the common class, will henceforth become the protagonists of history.