Zhang Wenmu
Introduction to Dou Xian
Dou Xian (?-92 years), the word Bodu, a native of Pingling County, Fufeng County, that is, a native of Xianyang, Shaanxi, a famous general of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Emperor Zhang of the Han Dynasty canonized his sister as the queen, the brothers are lucky, the rewards are accumulated, and the favor is flourishing. He attacked the Northern Xiongnu with a general cavalry, defeated it, and then climbed Yanran Mountain, just like the story of Huo Quai, carved the stone to remember the merit, the history is called Yanran Le Shi, and then worshiped the general, and the status is higher than the three dukes. He led the troops out of the fortress again, broke the main force of the Northern Xiongnu, captured the Empress Dowager of the Northern Xiongnu, because of the military achievements, the power leaned towards the government and the opposition, and the heart of usurping the throne, after the Han and Emperor learned of the conspiracy, he arrested his cronies, confiscated the seal of the general, and forced him to commit suicide.
After writing "On Li Ling", I thought of Dou Xian. The "victory" of Dou Xian in the Eastern Han Dynasty to defeat the Northern Xiongnu caused an imbalance of power between the north and south of the desert, and the consequences were quite serious. Like Li Ling, the "son of a high-ranking cadre" in the Western Han Dynasty, Dou Xian's "son of a high-ranking cadre" in the Eastern Han Dynasty was keen on the famous and scholarly style of "sealing the stone with meritorious service, advocating and returning", and he misled the country!
In the Western Han Dynasty, Xianbei lived far away in Liaodong, and at the beginning of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the Xiongnu attacked in the north and south, and the Xiongnu weakened, and Xianbei took the opportunity to sit big. In the thirtieth year of Emperor Guangwu of the Eastern Han Dynasty (54 AD), Lord Xianbei led the people to return to Luoyang to pay tribute, and Liu Xiu named him king. During the Yongping period of the Ming Emperor of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Liaodong Taishou supported Xianbei to attack and kill the Northern Xiongnu, and when the Eastern Han Dynasty and the emperor, Dou Xian and Geng Kuizhi defeated the Northern Xiongnu and even "Mobei is empty" and therefore "sealed the stone with merit, advocated and returned" The feat of "Ming Gong sealed the stone, advocated and returned" after more than half a century, it evolved into a greater frontier crisis: after that, Xianbei according to the old land of the Xiongnu, and the remnant population of the Xiongnu was more than 100,000, Xianbei gradually became stronger, from the subordinate of the Central Plains royal court to a fierce enemy.
The front door drives the wolf, and the back door enters the tiger. Xianbei was determined to fill the strategic vacuum left by the Northern Xiongnu. The Book of Wei said that the Xianbei leader Tan Shihuai set up a royal court in Danhan Mountain, more than 300 miles north of Gaoliu (now northwest of Yanggao County, Shanxi), to unify the Xianbei tribes. "The sandalwood acacia is established, and it is for the court to sip on the water of Danhan Mountain for more than 300 miles north of Gaoliu, and the adults in the east and west are all returning." [3] After that, Xianbei "had a very prosperous army and horses, the south of the Han Dynasty, the north of the Han Dynasty, the north of the rejection of Ding's order, the east of Fuyu, the west of Wusun, all according to the Xiongnu homeland, more than 12,000 miles from east to west, more than 7,000 miles from north to south, covering mountains and rivers, water, salt ponds are very wide"[4], and even "Han troubles" [5].
But this is not the most terrible, what is even more terrifying is that the Xianbei leadership stood out in the later competition of the Sixteen Kingdoms,[6] and finally formed the backbone of the Western Wei and Northern Zhou regimes, that is, the "Guanlong Group"[7], in which highly Sinicized Hu leaders such as Yang Guang of the Sui Dynasty Yang Guang [8] and Tang Taizong Li Shimin were born, and they overthrew the Han regime with the Qin and Han civilizations as the background and became the founding leaders of the Sui and Tang dynasties.
The desert is empty in the north, and it is humble and humble; "Fleeing from the Huns, Xianbei is strong." [9] In the third year of Yongping (91 AD), "Beidan Yu Fu was broken by Geng Kui, the right lieutenant, and fled without knowing where", it may be that Dou Xian realized the danger that might arise from the imbalance of strategic forces in northern Xinjiang, and Dou Xianfu wrote that "it was the surrenderer of the Zuolu Li, Atong, who was the Beidan Yu"[10]. But at this time, it was too late for Jiang Xin to make up for the leak. Later, the Xianbei people who helped Dou Xian drive away the Northern Xiongnu "transferred to their places." There are still more than 100,000 remnants of the Xiongnu, all of whom call themselves Xianbei, and Xianbei has gradually flourished" [11]. The political naivety of Dou Xian's "ignoring the rules of the world" caused the imperial court to fall into "losing the party since the future", and his mistake "descended to the future generations, played as a common custom, and finally devoured the gods, the ruins of the emperor's house", and finally ended in the tragedy of the country with three points.
The serious consequences of driving out the Northern Xiongnu were not realized by Empress Dowager Dou and Dou Xian. Out of the same original intention as Sima Guang when he wrote the "Zizhi Tongjian", Fan Ye paid special attention to summarizing the experience in this area when writing the "Book of the Later Han":
And the effect of Dou Xian's three victories, ignoring the rules of the world, being misbeneficial, and acting prestigiously. Then he reverted to the north captive, contrary to his former court, and favored the two protectors, with his own blessings, abandoned the contempt of the heavenly father, and sat on the tree.
Fan Ye was so resentful in the end that he exclaimed:
Yongyan is loaded before, what a hatred and indignation! Since then, Jinglun has lost the prescription, and the side is different, which is a scab [12] poison, Hu Ke said! descended to future generations, playing was commonplace, and finally devoured the gods, the ruins of the emperor's house. Alack! The difference of thousands of miles, the prosperity comes from the beginning, the source of loss, and the centuries are not grinding. [13]
Mao Zedong said: "The Book of the Later Han Dynasty is not badly written, and many chapters are better than the Book of the Former Han." [14] Referring to the history of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Mao Zedong said: "The Eastern Han Dynasty is meaningless at both ends, and only Guangwu can read it." ”[15]
————
[1] Dou Xian: A native of Pingling (now northwest of Xianyang, Shaanxi), the word Bodu. Take the female brother as the queen and worship as the lang. When the emperor sought to attack the Huns, he worshiped the general of the chariot and cavalry, and broke the northern single in Yu Ji Mountain. Out of the plug more than 3,000 miles, then climb Yanran Mountain, carved stone Legong, Ji Hanweide and returned.
[2] Geng Kui: A native of Maoling (now Xingping County, Shaanxi), the character is Dinggong. When the emperor was the general of the left lieutenant, he hit the north single Yu, beheaded more than 5,000 levels below the famous king of the Yan clan, and returned more than 5,000 miles out of the fortress.
[3] (Jin) Chen Shou, "Three Kingdoms, Wei Shu, Karasuma Xianbei Dongyi Thirty", Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, 2002, p. 774.
[4] (Jin) Chen Shou, "Three Kingdoms, Wei Shu, Karasuma Xianbei Dongyi Thirty", Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, 2002, p. 774.
[5] (Jin) Chen Shou, "Three Kingdoms, Wei Shu, Karasuma Xianbei Dongyi Thirty", Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, 2002, p. 774.
[6] In the twentieth year of Jian'an (215 AD), Cao Cao attacked the four counties of Yunzhong, Dingxiang, Wuyuan, and Shuofang (in the area from the east of the present-day Hetao area to the northwest of Shanxi), and the county placed one county to unify the old people, and merged it into a new county, which was established in Xin County, Shanxi. In the twenty-first year of Jian'an (216 A.D.), the Xiongnu called the kitchen spring single in the capital of Liuzhi, Cao Cao was divided into more than 30,000 Xiongnu for the five departments, placed the five marshals, and sent the Han people as the five Sima to supervise. During this period, the sinicization of the Xiongnu aristocracy was accelerated. The most noble of them came from the Xiongnu Tu Ge (Xiu Tu Ge, Xiu Tu) race, and after claiming to be the royal family of the Han Dynasty, he was the captain of the five departments for generations. Liu Yuan, the commander of the left department, is the grandson of Yu Luo, the son of Liu Bao, he studied the scriptures and history with the Han Confucian scholars, and lived in Luoyang as a Xiongnu servant in the Western Jin Dynasty, and had a lot of dealings with the Luoyang bureaucracy. In the first year of Emperor Hui Yongxi (290 AD), Liu Yuan was appointed as the governor of the five Xiongnu divisions of Jianwei's general. Jian Bozan, Editor-in-Chief, Outline of Chinese History, Volume II, People's Publishing House, 1965, p. 30.
[7] The "Guanlong Group", also known as the "Guanlong Six Towns Group" or the "Six Towns Huhan Guanlong Group", is a concept proposed by Chen Yinke to explain the characteristics of the Western Wei, Northern Zhou, Sui, and Tang regimes. The forces of the powerful landlords in Guanlong and Hedong were all attached to Yuwentai in the battle for the Eastern and Western Wei. In order to unify the military generals of the six northern towns and the power of the Guanlong Hao clan, Yuwentai formed the Guanlong military aristocratic group with the Eight Pillars as the core, the generals and the Kaifu as the main members, and the government military system as the basis, which is generally called the "Guanlong Group". This is a group that has been established by relying on armed forces and combining Hu and Han. In the Western Wei, Northern Zhou, Sui and early Tang dynasties, they all held a dominant position. Its heyday was in the Northern Zhou Dynasty and Sui Dynasty, and it basically ended in the Wu Zetian period.
[8] Only with the experience of hundreds of years of separation and war between the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties can we understand the worries of Emperor Yang of Sui in rushing to open the Grand Canal; If you have experienced hundreds of years of war in the Warring States Period, you will agree with the mature opinions of Sima Qian and Wang Fuzhi in the judgment of the Qin system. Qin Shi Huang and Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty were both "people who had just experienced the history of the division of the country and the endless struggle of the whole world", and with such experience, Qin Shi Huang and Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty would have abhorred the empty arguments of the feudal liberal "public knowledge" of their time - Sima Qian criticized that the person who said this was "no different from eating with the ear", meaning that "this is no different from eating with the ear" - and carried out the most severe blow to them, so that they would have the intention of establishing a new system to end the world. The princes are even more determined to denounce the "trend of history." Zhang Wenmu, "Strategic Notes: People", Ocean Press, 2018, p. 459.
[9] Book of the Later Han Dynasty, Vol. 120 "Liechuan Xianbei", edited by Xu Jialu, The Complete Translation of the Twenty-Four Histories of the Later Han Dynasty (Volume 3), Chinese Dictionary Publishing House, 2004, p. 1809.
[10] Book of the Later Han Dynasty, vol. 75, "Liebiography: Yuan An", edited by Xu Jialu, The Complete Translation of the Twenty-Four Historical Records of the Later Han Dynasty (Volume 2), Chinese Dictionary Publishing House, 2004, p. 1001.
[11 Book of the Later Han Dynasty, Vol. 120 "Liechuan Xianbei", Xu Jialu (ed.), The Complete Translation of the Twenty-four Historical Records of the Later Han Dynasty (Volume 3), Chinese Dictionary Publishing House, 2004, p. 1804.
[12] 疢 (chèn), a thermotoxic disease.
[13] Book of the Later Han Dynasty, Vol. 19, "The Biography of the Southern Xiongnu", edited by Xu Jialu, The Complete Translation of the Twenty-Four History: The Book of the Later Han Dynasty (Volume 3), Chinese Dictionary Publishing House, 2004, pp. 1796~1797.
[14] The Literature Research Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, ed., Mao Zedong Annals (1949-1976), Vol. 5, Central Literature Publishing House, 2013, p. 484.
[15] Xue Zeshi, "Listening to Mao Zedong's History", Central Literature Publishing House, 2003, p. 105.
