preface:
The Southern and Northern Dynasties began with the confrontation between Northern Wei and Liu Song in 420, and finally in 589, when the Sui Dynasty destroyed Southern Chen. Why did the Northern and Southern Dynasties, which lasted for more than 170 years, first unified the North by the weakest Northern Zhou, and then quickly replaced by the Sui Dynasty? So, which historical node plays an important role in the direction of history? The founder of The Western Wei and Northern Zhou, the Zhou Wen Emperor Yuwen Tai, the Zhou Wu Emperor Yuwen Yong who unified the north, and the Sui Wen Emperor Yang Jian, who unified the north and south, are three key figures worth considering.
Then, considering who is greater and who is smaller in the merits of these three characters, we must clarify three fundamental issues.
I. What was the fundamental reason for the eventual reunification of the Southern and Northern Dynasties?
Second, was the historical context of the Northern Zhou and Sui Dynasties followed?
Iii. What are the key exploits of each of the three emperors?
Recognizing these three problems, the historical status of the three emperors is light and heavy, and it is self-evident.
It is safe to say that the fundamental cause of reunification is neither political nor military, nor economic, but cultural integration.
Before the Southern and Northern Dynasties, it was the Sixteen Kingdoms of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, which was also a state of confrontation between the North and the South. We can think holistically.
The Eastern Jin Dynasty and the Southern Dynasty faced three great crises of extinction, one when Former Qin attacked the Eastern Jin Dynasty, one when the Northern Wei attacked the Southern Dynasty during the Qi Liang Yi Dynasty, and one when Liang died Chen Xing. These three crises were different from the later Sui dynasty that destroyed Southern Chen, and although the south was in danger, it all survived in the end.
Let's try to explain it with the most dangerous of these, the death of Chen Xing. At that time, Emperor Wu of Liang was old and dazed, and there were many social contradictions, and Hou Jing in the north took advantage of the void to enter, which triggered a huge turmoil in the Liang Dynasty, and the Northern Qi and Northern Zhou families took advantage of the fire and looting. Northern Zhou invaded Jiangling and destroyed the Liangyuan Emperor Jiangling regime. The Northern Qi army crossed the Yangtze River into Jiankang, and at one point it was about to capture Jiankang.
However, what was surprising was that Chen Baxian actually repelled Northern Qi in Jiangdong with a force of about 50,000 troops; his successor, Chen Wendi Chen Xuan, expanded his sphere of influence to the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, using the southern half of the river to revive the Han Dynasty again.
In terms of military affairs, Southern Chen's army was by no means an opponent of Northern Zhou and Northern Qi; on politics, the political system of the Southern Dynasty was basically no different from that of Northern Zhou and Northern Qi, and there was no advantage of Zhengshuo; in terms of economy, the Southern Dynasty was extremely weak at that time, and the state only had 2 million household registrations, only one-fifth of Northern Zhou and one-tenth of Northern Qi.
The reason why the Chen Dynasty was able to establish a state was that the integration of the Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Hu and Han Dynasties had not yet reached the final stage. To use a common saying, the dragon and tiger storms have not yet met, the contradictions within Northern Zhou and Northern Qi have not been well coordinated, and the contradictions between the two countries of Northern Zhou and Northern Qi have not been resolved, so the Chen Dynasty can be revived in a state of extreme weakness.
If we look back at the trend of the Northern Zhou and Northern Qi countries, we will also find that there is a clear reversal process in the Zhou Qi state. Northern Zhou was born out of the Western Wei Dynasty and was initially a weak state in a corner of Guanlong. Northern Qi was born out of eastern Wei and occupied the richest part of the north, with national strength and military strength far stronger than that of Northern Zhou.
In particular, at the beginning of the founding of the two countries, Gao Huan, the founder of Eastern Wei, launched five major wars in succession in fifteen years, each of which mobilized more than 100,000 people to attack Western Wei with a momentum of extermination and vitality, and although Yuwen Tai withstood Gao Huan's offensive, his sphere of influence had been limited to the west of Luoyang and could not touch the Central Plains.
And when the two countries were halfway through each other, that is, in the era of Emperor Wu of Northern Zhou and Emperor Wucheng of Northern Qi, the strength of the two countries was almost the same as that of each other.
At the end of Emperor Wu and the period of the Later Qi Dynasty, Northern Zhou had completely surpassed Northern Qi.
The mystery lies in the diametrically opposed Sinicization path of Northern Zhou and Northern Qi. Northern Zhou, under the presidency of Yuwen Tai, unswervingly took the road of Sinicization, so the government and people flourished, and the more they fought, the stronger they became. Northern Qi, on the other hand, struggled in the quagmire of Hu-Han contradictions and wasted its national strength. The details are elaborated in section III.
Generally speaking, the cultural conflict in which ethnic contradictions are directly embodied is the biggest gap between the countries of the northern and southern dynasties, and only after crossing this gap can the differences in culture, system, and national psychology between countries be erased, and it is only when it is the turn to win or lose with the army, money, grain, and strategy.
Jian Jian had a million troops, but internal discord was definitely unable to defeat the Eastern Jin Dynasty, which had only 80,000 soldiers. The Northern Wei Dynasty took advantage of the time and place, and finally because the pace of Sinicization was too fast, it hurt its own eggs and failed to take advantage of the civil strife in the Southern Dynasty to burn the war. When Hou Jing was in chaos, the Southern Dynasty was already dying, and the two kingdoms of Zhou Qi were fighting over the Hu-Han route, and the hemp rod hit the wolf at both ends, so Chen Chao picked up the leak.
Therefore, we say that the Sui Dynasty eventually destroyed Southern Chen, precisely because there was no cultural difference between the north and the south, only the difference in the emperor's surname, so unification was unstoppable. Understanding this truth, we can trace back from the Sui Dynasty, from the Northern Zhou Dynasty to the Sui Dynasty's Sinicization cause, in the end, has it been followed by the same, is it a vein? This is the premise for us to consider the historical merits of Yuwen Tai, Yuwen Yong and Yang Jian.
This question, we can also first throw out the answer, ok as well as affirmative.
The political entity of the Sui Dynasty almost copied the original people of Northern Zhou. Emperor Wen of Sui took power in the Northern Zhou Dynasty by means of a palace coup. His left and right hands such as Gao Hao, Yang Su, Niu Hong, Su Wei, Wang Yi, Yuan Ji, etc., military generals such as Han Baohu, He Ruobi, Liang Shiyan, Yuwen Xin, Yu Qingze, etc., Xun Old such as Wei Xiaokuan, Li Mu, Yu Yi, etc., were either the heirs of the old ministers of the Northern Zhou Dynasty, or the ministers of the Northern Zhou entrepreneurship. This is the same on personnel.
What about the political system? Commentators have taken on Mr. Chen Yinke's Sui system Sanyuan and said that the Sui system came from Northern Qi and Southern Chen, and the Northern Zhou system traces were the weakest.
Mr. Chen's conclusion does not affect the close connection between the Sui system and the Zhou system. The simplest fact is that the Sui Dynasty did not follow the reason for the Southern Chen system before the destruction of Southern Chen. The Zhou system did not immediately fade with the establishment of the Sui Dynasty. The Northern Zhou system is not all the so-called "Zhou Li" and the establishment of six officials, and the retro reform of the Northern Zhou Dynasty is only formal, and its institutional core is still the use of the old system of Han and Wei. On the basis of the use of the ancient system, the differentiation of the central institutions of the Northern Zhou Dynasty also laid a solid foundation for the emergence of the six-part system of three provinces in the Sui Dynasty.
The six officials of the central government of Northern Zhou can basically correspond to the six shangshu of the Sui Dynasty. The Tianguan Mansion is equivalent to the Sui Officials, the Prefecture Official's Mansion is equivalent to the Household Department, the Spring Official's Mansion is equivalent to the Ceremonial Department, the Xia Official's Mansion is equivalent to the BingBu, the Qiuguanfu is equivalent to the Punishment Department, and the Winter Official's Mansion is equivalent to the Ministry of Works.
The local military and political system of the Northern Zhou Dynasty was also completely inherited by the Sui Dynasty. For example, the governor-general system. The Governor's Office was the first level of local administration in the Northern Zhou Dynasty, which managed both the army and the people, and also solved the problem of the flooding of states and counties since the Northern Dynasty. After the establishment of the Sui Dynasty, this system was basically still used.
We say that behind the similarities in the system must be the unity of ideas.
The core of the spirit of the Northern Zhou system was the Fuzhou Ritual. So what does it mean to repeat the ritual? It means Sinicization, it means winning the hearts and minds of the people, and it means occupying the commanding heights of the french rule.
Although the Yuwen clan of Northern Zhou was an orthodox Xianbei person, they honored the banner of Western Zhou with Hu into Han, and this Sinicization spirit and the source of Sinicization can be said to far surpass the Jian Jian of the Five Hu and Sixteen Kingdoms period, and also greatly surpassed Emperor Xiaowen of Northern Wei. It can be considered that Yuwen Tai and the Yuwen clan have completed sinicization spiritually.
This is also the reason why the Guan long group can be gathered.
We can also observe that before the Northern Zhou Dynasty, the Eastern Jin Dynasty and the Southern Dynasty had always referred to the Northern Five Hu States as Hu, Qi, Yu, Suoyu, etc., but after Liang Chen, even the official documents of the Southern Dynasty were mostly directly referred to by the name of the country, and there was no longer any insulting name.
This is obviously the direct impact of the unremitting Sinicization of the Northern Zhou, which not only changed the national attributes of the Yuwen clan, but also changed the national nature of the Northern Zhou, and more rarely, won the recognition of the Han nationality.
Therefore, throughout the sui dynasty and the Zhou Dynasty, it is completely similar to the political Zen concessions of the Han, Wei, and Jin Dynasties, without any national revenge, and the hostility of the Ran Min Tuhu era has completely disappeared.
After the establishment of the Sui Dynasty, the legal system for the Northern Zhou Dynasty was not abandoned, but shelved as a static history. The titles conferred by the Northern Zhou Dynasty were all recognized by the Sui Dynasty.
From this point of view, the Sui Dynasty, which inherited the legal system of the Northern Zhou Dynasty, if viewed in the large historical environment of the unification of the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the Sui Dynasty and the Northern Zhou Dynasty are actually one.
Well, all the previous discussions point to a direction, since Sui and Northern Zhou can be considered as a whole, then, evaluating the historical merits and two of the three emperors Yuwen Tai, Yuwen Yong, and Yang Jian, there is finally a possibility of practical operation.
3. What are the exploits of Yuwen Tai, Yuwen Yong, and Yang Jian?
Yuwen Tai ( 宇文泰 ), the founding emperor of Northern Zhou , posthumously honored as Taizu of Northern Zhou . Yuwen Tai was born in Wuchuan Town, one of the six towns of the Northern Wei Dynasty, and his life was not only a life of fighting, but also a life of chuang. The overall evaluation of Yuwen tai's characteristics can probably be said to be extremely strong in the overall situation, the military level is superb, and he has political foresight.
Yuwen Tai became the leader of the Guanlong clique at the age of twenty-seven, and he continuously resisted the fierce attacks of more than 100,000 troops of Gao Huan of Eastern Wei for more than ten years, stabilizing the situation around Guanlong with more than 40,000 troops. After Gao Huan's death, Eastern and Western Wei entered a brief period of calm, and Yuwen Tai grasped political reform on the one hand, adopting the method of restoring the Zhou Dynasty and performing the six officials, firing the first shot of Sinicization; on the other hand, grasping the military, in an extremely low-key way, the eastern front swallowed the anger of Eastern Wei and Northern Qi, while the southern front successively took hanzhong, Yizhou, Jingzhou and other large territories, changing the current situation of weak national strength. He also geniusly invented the fu military system, which remained until the early years of the Tang Dynasty and became the most powerful weapon for the zhou, Sui, and Tang dynasties to overcome martial arts.
Then the biggest historical contribution of Yuwentai is undoubtedly to set off a wave of Sinicization. Although Yuwen Tai was a humble man in the barbaric land of Beizhen, he had a clear understanding of the history of Sinicization since the Sixteen Kingdoms, and he also understood that the Sixteen Kingdoms had strong and arbitrary assets, because they did not get out of the narrow national contradictions, which led to defeat and death.
Yuwen Taifu Zhouli's political reform is actually a Sinicization reform that touches the soul. This kind of reform is quite different from the formal change that Emperor Xiaowen emphasized changing costumes, changing Chinese, and learning Chinese, but from the political concept to the ancestral source of Han culture, which suddenly won the respect and trust of the Guanlong Han people. The fundamental reason why the Guanlong clique was able to change from the initial aggregate of Xianbei and Zaohu Haoqiang to a political alliance of the Guanlong nationalities.
Mencius said that the country should not be endangered by mountains and streams, and the world should not be dominated by military revolution. It was precisely because Yuwen Tai found the ultimate weapon to unite and unite the majority of forces from the culture that he had a situation of increasing prosperity after that.
In this sense, Yuwen Taishi was the first major contributor to the Sinicization of the Northern Dynasty, and also the Dingding giant of the Northern Dynasty that was finally able to unify the Southern Dynasty.
Yuwen Yong (宇文邕), the third emperor of Northern Zhou and the fourth son of Yuwen Tai, was posthumously honored as Emperor Gaozu (高祖皇帝).
Emperor Wu of Zhou's greatest achievement was naturally to militarily wipe out Northern Qi. Compared with his father Yuwen Tai, Emperor Wu of Zhou had a more decisive personality and was more sinister. For the first ten years of his reign, he was under death threats from his powerful minister Yuwen Hu until he launched a palace coup and killed Yu Wenhu, and was not able to take the government personally.
From Yuwen Tai's death (556) to the eve of Northern Zhou's destruction of Qi (577), in more than twenty years, Northern Zhou's national strength went from being equal to Northern Qi to completing transcendence, which was beyond the reach of ordinary leaders. When Yuwen Hu was assisted by the Tianfu Official's office Ōtsuka Zai, the political situation was relatively stable and the economy was in natural development, but militarily it was defeated in succession at the Battle of Jinyang, the Battle of Zhuankou, and the Battle of Xiangzhou, and the military strength of Northern Zhou was greatly depleted.
After Emperor Wu of Zhou killed Yuwen Hu, he immediately began to reorganize the army, destroy Buddhism, and expand households, and the political, military, and cultural fronts were all pushed flat. These things, which we can see later, may seem easy, but in fact they are extremely testing emperor Wudi's ability to control. Which line is pushed overheated will affect the balance and lead to accidents. Emperor Wu of Zhou undoubtedly inherited his father's talent well in this regard, that is, taking his promotion of the extinction of Buddhism as an example, in order to make sufficient ideological preparations, Emperor Zhou Wu personally attended the Three Sects Debate Conference (Confucian Interpretation Dao), attacked the Interpretation Dao with open debate, and unified the argument for unifying culture and squeezing the productive forces occupied by Shamen.
The subsequent military campaign to destroy Qi further demonstrated Emperor Wu's strategic concept of not losing his father. The two Northern Expeditions launched by Emperor Wu of Zhou personally led a large army to attack the front line, reflecting the outstanding quality of being a military commander.
But to put it mildly, Emperor Wu of the Northern Zhou Dynasty was slightly inferior to his father in terms of realm. He did not do a good job of dissolving the Huhua atmosphere that still remained in the Northern Zhou Dynasty, and showed an attitude of disapproval of the Contradiction between Hu and Han, for example, he still spoke humble words on many occasions, and exposed the usual barbarism and brutality of the Hu family in family education.
Emperor Wu's greatest achievement was to destroy Northern Qi by force and maintain the smooth development of Northern Zhou. Although this feat is eye-catching, in terms of realm and source flow, it is inferior to that of Emperor Yuwen Tai of Zhou.
Emperor Wen of Sui, Yang Jian, son of Yang Zhong, one of the twelve generals of Northern Zhou. Yang Jian married Dugu Jialuo, the daughter of Dugu Xin, one of the Eight Pillar States of Western Wei, and his daughter Yang Lihua married Emperor Zhou Xuan, the son of Emperor Wu of Zhou, as empress, and was a brother-in-law of Emperor Ming of Northern Zhou, and was also the prince of Emperor Wu of Zhou.
When Emperor Xuan of Zhou died violently, a political crisis arose in Northern Zhou. Because since Yuwen Hu and Yuwen Yong, the Yuwen clan of Northern Zhou has been greatly exploiting the forces of foreign surnames in an attempt to maintain the power of the Guanlong nobles, especially in the division between Hu and Han, which has led to the self-endangerment of many large people. Therefore, in the case of the death of Emperor Xuan of Zhou, the suspicion of the lord shaoguo, and the lack of power of the emperor, the nobles collectively rebelled against the water and sided with Yang Jian, the grandfather of the state.
Yang Jian relied on his own Xiangfu team to consolidate political power, and on the other hand, relied on the Northern Zhou anti-water veteran to quell the three-party rebellion, and quickly stabilized the situation in a short period of time. It has to be said that this is also an extremely high level of politics.
Yang Jian's political vision was also extremely broad, he usurped the power of Northern Zhou, but resolutely continued to adhere to Yuwen Tai's established national policy, continued to Sinicize internally, and refrained from radical military operations abroad.
Of course, the Sinicization of the Yuwentai era was established, and the Sinicization of the Yang Jian era did not seem to be established, because the ruler of the empire was the Han emperor. However, at this time, the Sinicization reflected the skills of the rulers, there were still a large number of humble people in the Guanlong clique, and Yang Jian's politics was to eliminate the cultural differences of different ethnic groups, which was actually an extremely complicated and long-term work.
If we were to be radical like Emperor Xiaowen and forbid Hu language, Hu Feng, and Hu Clothing, perhaps we would re-intensify the contradictions and embark on the old road of northern Qi's demise. If we let it go unchecked and are not good at leveling the differences between Hu and Han, will there be a second Yang Jian within the Sui Dynasty?
We have observed that after Yang Jian ascended the throne, the rebellions of Liang Shiyan, Liu Fang, Yuwen Xin and others were actually the last remnants of the Hu-Han conflict.
Fortunately, Yang Jian handled these contradictions well and steadily adhered to the path opened by Yuwen Tai, making the sui dynasty's ruling base far wider than that of Emperor Wu of Zhou.
Of course, Emperor Wen of Sui was not as brave as Emperor Wu of Zhou in the military field. It took Emperor Wu of Zhou four years to complete the unification of the north. The Sui Dynasty, with tens of times the strength of the Chen Dynasty, prepared for eight years before it finally dared to destroy Chen.
Sui annihilated Chen in a political sense than Northern Zhou annihilated Qi, but as mentioned in the first section, Sui and Chen have completely erased cultural differences, the Chen Dynasty has lost all aspects of the strength to resist the Northern Dynasty, and sui and Chen are actually militarily victorious without war, replaced by mediocre lords, and can still complete the task of mixing the north and the south.
Therefore, the merit of Emperor Wen of Sui was to accurately align the rudder of the fusion of Hu and Han in the torrent of history, so that the correct course since Yuwen Tai did not yaw.
From the perspective of history, Yuwen Taisheng is pioneering and hongyuan, Zhou Wudi is accelerating historical development in courageous pioneering, and Sui Wendi is moving toward prosperity. In the first place, it is naturally the Zhou Wen Emperor Yuwen Tai.