During the Xuanhe period of the Northern Song Dynasty, the empire was prosperous, but the hidden dangers under the prosperity have become an undercurrent. Internal crises such as financial difficulties, military diseases, and vicious party strife, as well as external crises such as the military threat from the northern Liao and Jin, made the empire gradually become a stormy trend. In order to "recover" the sixteen states of Yanyun as a strategic barrier, Song Huizong decided to join forces with Jin to destroy Liao. Although the Song-Jin alliance gradually encroached on the Liao state, the Jin state took this opportunity to get a glimpse of the weakness of the Northern Song Dynasty, coupled with the complex interest disputes between the two countries, the Jin state turned south to attack the Song dynasty. In the first year of Jingkang (1126), the Jin army besieged Bianjing for the second time, and Bianjing fell in November. The Northern Song Dynasty collapsed violently, and only three years passed from its prosperity to its demise.
When the Zhao royal family cried over the tragic experiences of Emperor Hui and Emperor Qin, and when those patriotic generals swore that they would be ashamed, how did the ordinary people of the Song Dynasty feel? Under the teaching of the idea of unification and centralization for thousands of years, the monarchs, ministers, fathers, sons, and the people must also be grief-stricken. Wrong. The fact is that the people made up a joke about what happened to the two emperors, for fear that the emperors were not tragic enough. Due to the developed culture, ministers and literati were accustomed to taking notes to record history, while the common people read fictional novels. In the early Song Dynasty, the small talk book was more famous, and there was a novel "The Legacy of Xuanhe of the Great Song Dynasty" that was earlier than the word book and still belonged to classical Chinese.
"The Legacy of Xuanhe of the Great Song Dynasty"
The reason why modern people pay attention to this novel is because it records the ins and outs of the Song Jiang Rebellion relatively completely, and records the names of Song Jiang and other 36 Tiangang, which laid the foundation for the later famous novel "Water Margin". However, Song Jiang's deeds are only a small part of "The Remains of Xuanhe of the Great Song Dynasty", and the stories recorded in "The Remains of Xuanhe of the Great Song Dynasty" are much richer than those of Song Jiang. He wrote not only about Wang Anshi, but also about several traitorous ministers appointed by Huizong of the Song Dynasty, from the emperor Chongxin Taoist priest to the lively Lantern Festival in Bianjing. The story of Li Shishi, a legendary prostitute of the Northern Song Dynasty, also comes from this book. But at the end of the book, the author turned his pen and began to write about the attack of the Jin army and the northern hunt of the second emperor. In the book, the author used his imagination to multiply the insults suffered by the two emperors several times, torturing them in every possible way, not caring at all that they were once the leaders of the Great Song Dynasty.
Detail of "Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival".
Such books can only appear in the Song Dynasty, and in any other feudal dynasty, it is a capital offense to ridicule the emperor of this dynasty. But this book was circulated among the people, and the emperors of the Southern Song Dynasty were helpless to take it, knowing that they had fabricated many insults to the royal family, but they could not prohibit it. If you want to investigate the origin of the plot in the book, you can go back to several other books. In the middle of the Southern Song Dynasty, there were already several books rumored to be written by Xin Qiji, which were called "The Records of the Southern Ember Chronicles", "The Records of Stealing Anger" and "The Continuation of Stealing Anger". Of course, the fact that Xin Qiji is the author is just a legend, and later generations believe that these books are more likely to have been written by some unambitious literati, but they just borrowed the name of Xin Qiji. These books are dedicated to describing the experiences of the two emperors in the Northern Hunt, ostensibly to arouse people's patriotic enthusiasm, but behind the scenes, they are more like revenge against the Northern Song Dynasty royal family, so that they can also taste the taste of shame.
Let's take a look at how these books orchestrate the experiences of the two emperors. Remember, the following story is not historical, but it reflects the sentiment of ordinary people.
Unlike the historical record that the two emperors set off at the end of March and the beginning of April, the "Chronicles of the Southern Embers" sets the emperor's departure on March 17. On March 16, the Emperor's decree from the Northern Emperor arrived, scolding the emperors of the Southern Dynasty and bringing them to Yanjing. From that night onwards, the emperors could only eat one meal and drink water once a day, and several of the guards were also very ugly. The next day, the Empress Dowager Zheng of the Emperor was sick, and her stomach hurt so much that she was about to die, and the young emperor cried and begged the guards for medicine, but he could only get a bowl of hot water. On this day, they were forced to go on the road and slept in the wild temple. In practice, the emperors (especially the Emperor Taishang) were still well taken care of by the Jin people when they traveled north, and they moved with the large army. Emperor Taishang followed Zhu Li to the north from Hebei Road, and the Young Emperor followed Sticky Han to Shanxi. But in the novel, the emperors set off much simpler, and the Jin people only led four horses, respectively to the second emperor and the second queen, plus a few escort officers, and this is all there is to the team. The father and son did not walk separately, but went on the road together, both from Hebei to Yanjing. Of course, the queens would wear out their buttocks when they rode horses, so they had to find someone to ride a horse and clamp them under their armpits, which had an obscene meaning. In the novel, the lustful Chiho Kuniro also appears, and at this time his name is Gudu Lu. Along the way, he constantly threatened the young emperor to give Empress Zhu to him, and even took advantage of Empress Zhu's illness to help her touch her stomach to heal the disease, seeing that he was about to succeed, but was killed by the marshal's younger brother Zeli (i.e., the king of Gaitian) when he crossed the Yellow River. Seeing this paragraph, ill-intentioned readers must feel a little sorry for the dead Qianhu, after all, a good show can't be watched. Dan Zeli inherited the role of Gu Dulu in the novel, continued to molest the two queens, and insulted the emperors in every way, even denying them food, tying them to a pillar for the night, only slightly better to Empress Zhu (of course, also for a purpose). On March 27, Empress Zhu wanted to commit suicide by throwing herself into the water, but Zeli ordered her to be tied up with Empress Dowager Zheng and led behind the horse to hurry. That night, due to the rain, the emperors and queens who slept in the field were drenched and covered in mud. On March 29, Zeli took off his dirty clothes and asked Empress Zhu to help clean them, and the two queens could only obey the order. On the second day of the fourth lunar month, the emperors and queens saw other royal families from afar, including Emperor Roufu, Emperor Kangfu, and Xiangguo Gong, who were escorted north.
Map of the Song-Jin battle
One day, the emperors and queens arrived at a county, and the county official (a golden man) prepared wine and food, and entertained the emperors and queens with a feast. It turned out that this Jin man was lucky, his elder brother was a Wanhu, escorted the captives here, and gave Zhenzhen, the daughter of King Su, to his younger brother who was a county official, and this county official regarded the emperor of the Northern Song Dynasty as his own father-in-law family, so he would serve him well. There are also seventeen royal women in this county, all of whom have already been allocated. That night, Zeli specially gathered these royal women and asked them to persuade them to drink and sing. In order to insult the emperor even more, they tied up the emperor and queen in front of the women and let the soldiers pee and on them. Another day, passing through a small desolate county. A woman begged for money on the side of the road to take her with her. Originally. She was also a royal lady who was abandoned here because of illness. Zeli took her on the road, and at night he raped her in drunken booze. The emperors listened to the sound of prostitution all night, and they did not even dare to open their eyes. After that, Zeli also laughed at Empress Zhu, saying "You are not as good as her".
By this time, "Xin Qiji" had already insulted Zhao Song in the deepest way in this regard. The next step is to mock the imperial power.
One day, a document came from the north, which turned out to ask the emperors to write a table of reduction, and Zeli forced the emperors to write the most despicable table. On another day, the Second Emperor met the fallen king of the Liao State, Emperor Yelu Yanxi, and several former emperors discussed their experience of being a prisoner. Yelu Yanxi's wives and concubines and daughters have all been divided among the Jin. After a lot of hardship, the emperor and empress finally arrived in Yanjing, by this time they were no longer human, and they were covered with fishy stench and fleas. In historical facts, Yanjing is the base camp of the second prince, and the emperor of Jin was still in Shangjing in the northeast at this time. But in the novel, the Emperor of Jin is already waiting for Emperor Hui and Emperor Qin in Yanjing. In Yanjing, the emperors and queens continued to be insulted, and they lived in a small room in the left corridor of the Marshal's Palace. There were no tables or chairs in the house, just a few bricks. Sometimes they can only drink a little water a day, and sometimes they can eat a coarse meal. Sometimes, when I went to see the Jin people, the women were too sick to get up, so someone came and carried them behind their backs and forced them to go. After ten days of tossing, on the second day of the sixth month, Empress Zhu died of illness. Historically, Empress Zhu committed suicide in Shangjing, but the novelist couldn't wait to let her die of illness in Yanjing, a place that was more meaningful to the Song Dynasty. When Empress Zhu died, the young emperor pleaded in the house: "A certain wife is dead, what is the matter?" Under his pleading, a few people came and dragged Zhu Hou away with straw mats. This was already a great tragedy in the world, but the novelist was not enough, so the next day he let the three surviving people (parents and son) leave Yanjing and go to live in Ansu Army. The escort was led by a man named Ah Jiti, and thanks to his mercy on the emperor and let them rest for a few more days, Empress Dowager Zheng did not die on the road.
On June 12, the emperors and queens arrived at the Ansu army and searched before entering the city gate. The novelist specifically pointed out that the umbilical abdomen of the Empress Dowager Zheng was also searched, and the Emperor Taishang added another humiliation.
Sketch map of Bianjing City in the Northern Song Dynasty
In the Ansu Army, they were held in small houses. At this time, a group of Khitan generals in the Ansu army suddenly moved to kill the Jin generals, but they almost burned the Zhao father and son to death in the hut. They had just survived, but after General Jin suppressed the Khitan incident, he decided that the Zhao father and son were also involved in the conspiracy. Dry, the young emperor was first whipped, his teeth shattered, blood spat out of his mouth, and then he was tied up and imprisoned overnight. The Jin people finally agreed to whip the young emperor with another fifty lashes, and then escorted them to Yunzhou. In Yunzhou, they were initially locked up in a dirt enclosure, and later they got a house. They survived another rebellion, and suddenly good days came. At this time, the King of Heaven suddenly appeared. Historically, the king of the Golden Man was named Seri, which is the Zeli who once appeared in the novel. But the novelist apparently treats King Gaitian and Zeli as two people, so Zeli becomes the archetype of the bad guy, and King Gaitian plays the role of the good guy. King Gaitian married one of the emperor's concubines, Concubine Wei, who was the mother of King Kang (Song Gaozong). This is obviously not a historical fact, but in the eyes of novelists, it is also a novel idea that Song Gaozong Zhao Gou's mother became the concubine of the Jin people. After King Gaitian arrived in Yunzhou, the lives of the two emperors improved, and they survived the winter without any problems. However, on the twenty-third day of the first month of the second year, King Gaitian and Mrs. Wei left Yunzhou, and the treatment of the emperors took a sharp turn for the worse, and they regained their status as prisoners. In February, a new colleague arrived in Yunzhou, and his father died in the war with the Southern Song Dynasty. He decided to torture the second emperor to avenge his father. However, on the ninth day of the third month before the second emperor was tossed to death, the Jin Emperor suddenly issued an edict to transfer the second emperor to a place called Xixizhou further north. After that, the two emperors were dying and struggling on the steppes of Inner Mongolia north of Yunzhou, and the date is no longer meaningful and no one knows. They finally came to the small town of Xixizhou, which was dilapidated to just over 300 people. After spending the winter in Xixizhou, the second emperor was again transferred to the city of the Five Kingdoms.
On the way to the Five Kingdoms City, Empress Dowager Zheng couldn't help but toss and died. In a hurry, the escort officer could only dig a hole with a knife on the side of the road, and without even new clothes, he buried them in his clothes. There were only 50 to 70 families in the Five Kingdoms City, and the two emperors were raised in a dirt pit, and they all became singles without wives. The life of the city of the Five Kingdoms is one meal a day, one meal of wine and one meal of meat a year. The emperors lived miserably here. This novel is mixed with the people's schadenfreude over the Zhao and Song official families, as well as the imagination of the Jin people. In fact, the Jin people did not want to torture the Zhao family, but just moved the emperor's family from the south according to their tradition, and let them go to the north to fend for themselves and fend for themselves. The Jin people did not completely persecute the women of the Zhao family, but only took possession of them according to the rules of the nomads. But in the imagination of the Song people, the Jin people appeared to be even more vicious and deliberately persecuted. However, the "novelists" of the Song Dynasty welcomed this persecution, intensified the persecution in fiction, and did not care about Zhao's face at all. Regarding the death of the two emperors, the novelist also went to great length. The Emperor Taishang and the Young Emperor lived in the Five Kingdoms City for a long time, and then they were moved to a place called Junzhou and lived in an earthen pit. The Emperor Taishang fell ill and died here. Just when the young emperor was crying, Ah Jiti suddenly came and told him not to cry and bury the emperor in the pit quickly. The young emperor did not understand why the dead were buried in the dwellings of the living, and Ajiti explained that there was no cemetery in Junzhou, and people were burned with fire after death, and after half of it was burned, they were carried to a large stone pit in the north of the city with a wooden pole, and the big stone pit had a kind of water, which was thicker than the oil in the south, and could be used to light lamps, which was produced by corpses. From this narrative, it can be seen that the Song Dynasty people imagined the oil exposed in the ground, and feared the cremation custom. The idea of burning the Emperor Taishang and turning it into lamp oil is the last insult to the dead. While they were talking, a group of people suddenly came and snatched the body of the Emperor Taishang, they rushed to the stone pit, set the body on fire in the weeds, burned it halfway, doused it with water, pierced the body with a wooden pole, dragged it into the pit, and fell to the bottom of the pit. Due to the long life of the young emperor, his whereabouts and death method are as follows: After the death of the Taishang Emperor, the young emperor was moved to live in Yuanchangzhou, which had slightly better conditions. Later, it passed through Luzhou, Shouzhou, and Yizhou to Yanjing. Here and the Liao State Tianzuo Emperor Yelu Yanxi is locked up.
Liaojin northern situation map
Historically, Emperor Tianzuo died of illness in the sixth year of Jintianhui (1128 AD), but in the novel he lived to the same life as the young emperor. The reason why this plot is probably designed is to appear more dramatic: the two generations of Song and Liao dynasties of the fallen kings meet again. The young emperor's life in Yanjing was good and bad, and when the Jin State negotiated peace with the Song Dynasty, his conditions were improved, but after the usurpation of the throne by King Hailing of Jin, King Hailing always wanted to attack the south, so the young emperor became a prisoner again. Wan Yan Liang asked Emperor Tianzuo and the Young Emperor to practice horseback riding and fighting, but the Young Emperor was unable to keep up with his long-term nutrition and suffered from tremors in his hands and feet, but he was still forced to practice. After a period of training, Wan Yanliang took them to the martial arts arena, a big parade of horses, and the two emperors of the Liao State of the Song Dynasty each led a team of men and horses to participate in the exercise, and they got all thin horses. During the exercise, suddenly a team of men and horses came out, and a man in brown clothes shot an arrow at Emperor Tianzuo, who pierced his heart and died. The young emperor fell from his horse in fright, but a man dressed in purple still shot the young emperor to death with a single arrow. Then, in the gallop of thousands of horses, the bodies of the two emperors were trampled into the mud and nowhere to be found. This paragraph is very much in line with the Han Confucian concept of heavenly punishment, full of coincidences, and the dignity of the Song royal family is stripped to nothing, and to this day, people can still feel the resentment and curse that comes to their faces. In ancient Chinese history, the Zhao and Song dynasties were the most tolerant dynasty, but the emperor was still cursed as such. Instead of using sympathetic tones to spread the story of the two people, the people wrote such vicious jokes, which shows how big the gap between the ruler and the ruled was in ancient China.
Ancient Chinese history has always oscillated in a giant pendulum. At one end of the pendulum, there is the teaching of "loyalty and patriotism", and the patriotism is distorted into unlimited obedience to power, no resistance is allowed, and the people are all living in a muddy way. At this time, the authority of the emperor was unlimited and could not be questioned. But once the imperial power fell, the people immediately became the most vicious of curses, hating endless insults and insults to the former power, and if possible, even tearing the former royal family to shreds, this is to the other end of the pendulum. Between these two ends, there is a lack of an intermediate state - "family and country feelings". The so-called "feelings of family and country" have been oscillating for 2,000 years in this immaturity of the left and right. Most emperors also knew that the infinite obedience they enjoyed did not come from love, but from force, so when they were in office, they would do everything possible to firmly control power, try to make people understand the fate of disloyalty, use violent methods to maintain the rigid stability of society, and postpone the day of fragility as much as possible. In most cases, the ruled can only vent their grievances with their backyards. In reality, even if the ruler is so incompetent, the people still can't get rid of it. So, after the Jin people left, the Zhao and Song royal families became rulers again......