China has been 5,000 years old, and the Eastern Jin Dynasty is the only one, which is more special than the Qin, Han, Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. Generally speaking, when the dynasty reaches the end of its life, its national strength is declining, there are many crises, and its strength is exhausted. However, at the end of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, the national strength was thriving and reached the peak of history, which is really rare.
At the end of the Han Dynasty, the Yellow Turban Uprising, the world was in turmoil, and the three kingdoms rose together. At the end of the Song Dynasty, neither the Northern Song nor the Southern Song Dynasty could cope with the southward movement of the nomadic cavalry, and the destruction of the country was inevitable. At the end of the Yuan and Ming dynasties, peasant uprisings raged, the financial system collapsed, and the collapse of the country followed.
At the end of the Qing Dynasty, even with the blessing of the Westernization Movement, it also fell into internal and external troubles. The emperor fled twice, and Jingshi was ravaged by Yidi twice. The late Qing Dynasty became synonymous with weakness and a history of humiliation.
The Eastern Jin Dynasty is very special, from the founding of the country to the death of the country, it is a unique existence. In 317, the Eastern Jin Dynasty was established, and its territory was only Jingzhou, Jiangzhou, Yangzhou, and Lingnan. The rest of the "overseas Chinese counties" and "internal relocation counties" are too small in scope, and even the state is in other southern states.
In 420, Liu Yu replaced the Eastern Jin Dynasty and abolished Emperor An of Jin and Emperor Gong of Jin. However, before the fall of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, it was able to destroy the northern powerhouses Hou Qin and Southern Yan, and swept away the nomadic cavalry. If together with "Cheng Han" and "Shu Shu", the Eastern Jin Dynasty destroyed a total of 4 secession regimes.
At the time of the fall of the Eastern Jin Dynasty (before the Guanzhong Rebellion as a node), the territory reached the peak of the Wei, Jin, and Southern Dynasties, and Guanzhong, Luoyang, Shandong, Henan, Lianghuai, Sichuan, Shu, Jingxiang, Jiangnan, and Lingnan were all the territories of the Eastern Jin Dynasty. It can be said that except for the Northern Wei Dynasty's occupation of Hebei and Hedong, and Helian Bobo's presence in northern Shaanxi, the Eastern Jin Dynasty almost took the country's land.
Before the fall of the country, the national strength reached its peak, the territory reached its peak, and the history of the Eastern Jin Dynasty was very special. It can be said that the Eastern Jin Dynasty was very powerful, far from being comparable to the Southern Song Dynasty and the Southern Ming Dynasty. Even though the Eastern Jin Dynasty had frequent civil strife, as long as the command was proper against the north, it was still invincible.
The answer is that the special political pattern of the Eastern Jin Dynasty was destined to perish at the height of its heyday, and the Eastern Jin Dynasty was weak but could survive.
First, the four forces of the Eastern Jin Dynasty checked and balanced each other to maintain the operation of the government.
The founding of the Eastern Jin Dynasty was not Sima Rui's fight against the country, but the negotiation of various forces to establish the country. As we all know, the foundation of the Eastern Jin Dynasty based on the south of the Yangtze River is the layout of Sima Yue, the king of the East China Sea, and Wang Yan of the Langya Wang, one of the "three caves of cunning rabbits".
In 311, Sima Yue died of illness during the Northern Expedition, and Wang Yan was incompetent, resulting in the annihilation of an army of 100,000. The main ministers of the imperial court, Wenwu, as well as the princes and kings of the Sima family, were all served by Shi Le in Ningping. In 317, Liu Yao led the Xiongnu cavalry to conquer Chang'an, captured Emperor Jin Chu, and the Western Jin Dynasty perished.
Sima Rui, a distant branch of the clan, is a chess piece in Sima Yue's Jiangnan. In the "Yongjia Rebellion", almost all of the Sima royal family died in the north, and only the distant branch "Five Horses Crossing the River". In this way, Sima Rui's foundation is very weak, and his ability and prestige are insufficient.
The founding emperor was incapacitated and his prestige was low, so where did the Eastern Jin Dynasty come from? It was the four forces that compromised with each other to cope with the current situation of internal and external troubles and maintain the operation of the government, but they also played games with each other.
These 4 forces can be divided into the Sima royal family, the northern scholar clan, the Jiangnan scholar clan, and the exile handsome. Among them, the Sima royal family is a banner, although it has no actual power, and it depends on the face of the gate valve, but it cannot fall down for the time being.
The northern scholars, represented by the Langya Wang clan, the Taiyuan Wang clan, the Chenjun Xie clan, the Qian Guohuan clan, and the Yingchuan Yu clan, are the martyred scholars. It stands to reason that the Jiangnan Shi clan should exclude them as "lost dogs", but the situation is not so simple.
The existence of the homeless people gave the northern scholars a bargaining chip. The northern scholars controlled the government on the condition that they did not infringe on the economic interests of the Jiangnan scholars, did not occupy their estates, and did not develop their land. In addition, the northern scholars prevented the displaced people from crossing the river, which was the most worrying thing for the Jiangnan scholars.
When the displaced people cross the river, the interests of the Jiangnan Shi people are not guaranteed. In this way, if you want to keep the industry, the Jiangnan Shi clan must accept the northern Shi clan, otherwise once Xi Jian, Zu Ti, Zu Yue, Su Jun, and Guo Mo cross the river to the south, these big families will be unlucky.
The royal family, the northern and southern scholars, and the homeless marshals can check and balance each other, and no one has obvious advantages. The homeless people did not have a strong core and could not cross the river, but their strong fighting ability was the key to resisting the southward advance of the northern nomadic cavalry, and the nobles had to compromise appropriately and win them over.
Second, after the mutual game, the Hanmen won and relied on the exile army to sweep the world.
The triangular structure is the most stable existence, but there will always be people who want to break the balance and dominate the family. The same is true of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, where the royal family, the scholars, and the homeless marshals are slowly moving towards a new centralization of power in the game with each other. Because only a strong political power can integrate resources and then unify the world.
The royal family took the lead in launching a challenge, trying to end the pattern of "king and horse, sharing the world" and pulling the gate valve politics back into the imperial politics. However, the efforts of the imperial family were ineffective, and instead led to a further decline of imperial power, and the gate valve still controlled the government.
In order to strengthen the imperial power, Sima Rui crossed the river and demolished the bridge, reusing Dai Yuan, Liu Kui, Diao Xie and other cronies, allowing them to grasp the central power, as well as sit in the local area, and fight against the Langya Wang clan. In addition, the slaves and maids were freed, the tenants were used as soldiers, the armed forces directly under the royal family were formed, and the cheese of the gate valve was moved.
In 322, Wang Dun took the "Qing Jun's side" as the banner and demanded the killing of Dai Yuan, Liu Kui, and Diao Xie, and led his troops to kill Xiangjing Jiankang. At this time, the gate lord sympathized with and supported Wang Dun, and Sima Rui was defeated and died depressed.
In 324, Wang Dun rebelled for the second time, and Sima Shao, the emperor of the Ming Dynasty of the Jin Dynasty, relied on the exile armies of Xi Jian and Su Jun to fight, and Wang Dun died of illness halfway through, quelling the rebellion. However, Sima Shao's reuse of the homeless people also annoyed the gate valve, and he died violently soon after, just in the prime of life.
The two Wangdun rebellions further weakened the authority of the royal family, and the exile commander lacked cohesion, so the gate valve held power. The Langya Wang clan, the Yingchuan Yu clan, the Qian Guohuan clan, and the Chen Jun Xie clan were in power one after another, and the emperor was the ornament.
Between the gate valves, it is also a mutual game. Among them, Gu, Lu, Zhu, and Zhang of Jiangnan Gate are low-key, and they only want to keep their own one-third of an acre of land, and they don't want to meddle in government affairs. Yixing Zhou and Wuxing Shen are strong commanders in the armed forces, and they like to come out and act as thugs between the royal family and the gate valve.
In the rebellion of Wang Dun, the Zhou family supported the Sima family, and was sent by Wang Dun to Shen Chong to exterminate the clan. The Wuxing Shen clan was also kicked out in the Wang Dun Rebellion, and once broke away from the gate valve, although it kept the clan (Wang Dao, Wang Biao's layout).
The game of the northern gate valve is almost a lose-lose situation. The influence of the Langya Wang clan on the government weakened, and the Yingchuan Yu clan was almost wiped out by Huan Wen; Huan Wen wanted to be the emperor, but was "dragged to death" by Xie An and Wang Tanzhi. Xie An had a large pattern, and after the Battle of Weishui, he took the initiative to withdraw and let Emperor Xiaowu Sima Yao take power.
Who knows, Sima Yao is not the emperor's material, he didn't talk about infighting with Sima Daozi, and verbally stimulated the concubine, died in the harem, and no one was held responsible. After Sima Yao's death, Emperor An was more ignorant than Emperor Hui, and the government was in a mess, which gave Huan Xuan a chance to rise.
Later, Huan Xuan usurped the Eastern Jin Dynasty and established "Huan Chu". However, the "Beifu Army" formed by the displaced people was already very powerful, and under the management of Xie An, Xie Xuan, Liu Gaozhi, and Liu Yu, it was enough to determine the development of the current situation.
In 404, Liu Yu raised troops in Beijing and formed the "King Qin" legion. At this time, Liu Yu only had 7 people, but he quickly gathered the Beifu soldiers and got hundreds of people, plus the participation of the masses along the way, the strength of more than 2,000 troops. For this point, Liu Yu insisted on taking down Huan Xuan and destroying the Huan family.
Liu Yu was born in a poor family, relied on the rise of the "Beifu soldiers", and finally swept the heroes and basically completed the unification. Under the blow of Liu Yu, the gate lord clan suffered heavy losses, although it still has influence, but it is far worse than the Eastern Jin Dynasty. The Southern Dynasty was a politics of imperial power, not a politics of gatekeepers.
Third, the chaos in the north gave the Eastern Jin Dynasty an environment for development and growth.
The Eastern Jin Dynasty was infighting, and the royal family, the gate valve, and the exile marshal played with each other, all hoping to take power themselves, and then integrate the forces of all parties to restore the Central Plains. That is to say, they fought with each other, not for the sake of "fighting for the sake of fighting", but with lofty goals, especially the homeless handsome, which was destined to develop in the direction of strength and prosperity in the Eastern Jin Dynasty.
Huan Wen, Xie An, and Liu Yu all carefully governed the country, and they also pushed to "land breaking", trying to transfer the population, finance and taxation to the state and weaken the power of the gate valve. Moreover, Huan Wen and Liu Yu once departed from the track of selecting officials in the "Nine Grades of Zhongzheng System", appointing meritocracy, and heroes did not ask where they came from.
From the founding of the People's Republic of China in 317 to the establishment of the "Southern Song Dynasty" by Liu Yu in 420, the Eastern Jin Dynasty was either in internal fighting or on the way to internal fighting. In 103, the Eastern Jin Dynasty did not have a smooth life, but it was very lucky. At this time, if it weren't for the chaos in the north, the Eastern Jin Dynasty would not have had time to integrate resources and quickly perish.
In 317, Sima Rui was still busy quelling civil strife and almost lost Jingzhou. At this time, the Xiongnu "Han Zhao" basically unified the north, but the perverse actions of Liu Cong and Liu Cang's father and son provoked the "Jin Zhun Rebellion", not only the Pingyang Xiongnu Liu clan was wiped out, but the north also fell into a melee again.
The two Wangdun Rebellions, and later the Su Jun Rebellion, plunged the Eastern Jin Dynasty into civil war. However, Shi Le and Liu Yao in the north fought each other and had no time to pay attention to Jiangnan, so the Eastern Jin Dynasty could calmly quell the rebellion and carry out post-war reconstruction.
Huan Wen dictatorship, coveting imperial power, the Eastern Jin Dynasty once again came to the verge of power reshuffle. At this time, Former Yan and Former Qin attacked and killed each other, Murong Chui fled, and Fu Jian was busy with unification, and he had no time to attack the Eastern Jin Dynasty.
The rebellion of Sun En, Lu Xun, and the rebellion of Huan Xuan, the south of the Yangtze River is full of wolf smoke. At this time, the situation in the north was even worse, after the Battle of Weishui, the former Qin fell apart, and the Later Qin, Later Yan, Northern Wei, and Helian Xia fought each other, and they fought happily.
It can be said that in the era of the Sixteen Kingdoms of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, both the north and the south were playing regional competitions to see who would integrate resources first and then win in the national competition. The Eastern Jin Dynasty undoubtedly took the lead in completing the integration, Liu Yu rose, and eliminated the Later Qin and Southern Yan.
Liu Yu was in power, and the Eastern Jin Dynasty reached its peak, but the Sima royal family also declined to the bottom. In this way, after Liu Yu took Guanzhong and eliminated Yao Qin, he entered the stage of changing the dynasty.
The Eastern Jin Dynasty was strong, and before it perished, it could also destroy Xianbei Murong's Southern Yan, as well as Yao Qin, and press Tuoba Xianbei's Northern Wei to hang and beat. As for Helian Bo's "Hu Xia", he didn't dare to provoke Liu Yu at all, if it weren't for the vicious conflict between Shen Tianzi and Wang Zhen, and the infighting between the Guanzhong and Beifu departments, Helian Xia would not have a chance.