In March of the eighth year of the reign of Emperor Kai of Sui (589 CE), Emperor Yang of Sui, who was determined to unify, endured for eight years, and finally issued an edict to attack the Southern Dynasty Chen, which had divided Jiangdong, and invited the drunken Chen Hou lord Chen Shubao to come to Chang'an for tea. In October of that year, yang guang, the king of jin (emperor of the Sui Dynasty), president of all the armies and horses, went down to Jiangdong with a thunderous momentum. In the edict in March, Yang Jian, as the emperor of a great power, satirized Lord Chen Hou in a rather dismissive tone: "According to the land of palms, the danger of the Creek Valley, the robbery of Lu Yan, the exhaustion of assets, the expulsion of inside and outside, and the labor of the people." ”
Chen Shubao reigned for eight years and did a lot of absurd things, the most famous of which was the Yushu Backyard Flower, and those stalkers were drunk and drunk all day. However, what interested people was that Yang Jian said that Chen Shubao only occupied a place with a big palm, and he dared to be a blessing and deceive the heavens and harm the people.
So is what Chen Shubao occupies really only the palm of his hand?
A brief introduction to the Southern Dynasty Chen. In 557, chen baxian, a tyrant of the Southern Dynasty, forced the young emperor of the Liang Dynasty, Xiao Fangzhi, to take the throne after hanging his fierce enemy Wang Monk. In 559, Chen Baxian's nephew Chen Xuan ascended the throne, reigned for seven years, and two years after his death, his son Chen Bozong's throne was usurped by his brother Chen Baozong. In 582, after Chen's death, his son Chen Shubao took the throne.
Among the Southern Four Dynasties, the Song Dynasty, The Qi, and Liang Chen, the Chen Dynasty's territory was the narrowest. At the height of the Southern Song Dynasty, the northern line was expanded to the yellow river line. After Emperor Ming of Song lost the four states of Huaibei, the Southern Dynasty basically used the Huai River as a line, extending west to Xiangyang and then to Qinling to confront the Northern Dynasty. Emperor Xiao Yan of Liangwu reigned for forty-eight years, and at his peak, the northern line of his territory was pushed to the line of Xuzhou in Jiangsu, and west through Dengzhou, Henan and then to Qinling.
Emperor Wu of Liang was dazed in his later years and mistakenly accepted the Eastern Wei rebel general Hou Jing in an attempt to regain the north. As a result, the North did not get it, and the Great Liang Empire he single-handedly built collapsed almost instantaneously. In 549 AD, the 86-year-old Bodhisattva Emperor starved to death in Taicheng, and jiangnan was in chaos. The two great powers in the north, western Wei (the predecessor of Northern Zhou) and eastern Wei (the predecessor of Northern Qi) in the east, naturally refused to let go of a good opportunity to expand their territory.
In contrast, the advantages of Western Wei were more obvious, because the Liang Dynasty territory that docked with Western Wei was Yizhou (Sichuan Basin), far from Jiangdong, which was the center of Liang Dynasty rule, and the second ruling center, Jiangling (Jingzhou, Hubei). The Western Wei ruler Yuwen Tai sent troops south across the Qin Mountains, and soon occupied Xichuan, known as the Kingdom of Tianfu. In 555, Western Wei joined forces with the Xiao brothers (Emperor Yuan's nephews) who had a vendetta against Emperor Xiao of Liang, and captured Jiangling, the capital of the Liang Dynasty, and killed Emperor Yuan. In addition to occupying Bashu and Ningzhong (southern part of Shu Han), Western Wei also occupied most of Hubei Province, and although Jiangling set up the State of Liang, it was only a puppet of Western Wei.
Because Northern Qi wanted to face the most core area of the Liang Dynasty, it could conquer the territory, that is, the Jianghuai area south of the Huai River and north of the Yangtze River. The Northern Qi soldiers once crossed the Yangtze River, but were beaten up by the powerful Chen Baxian under the capital city, and the Southern Dynasty turned the crisis into safety. However, for the Southern Dynasty Chen, the loss of the land in jiangbei and the direct exposure of the capital Nanjing to the Northern Qi army were very dangerous. In the fifth year of Emperor Xuanjian of Chen (573 AD), Emperor Xuan sent an army of 100,000 troops to the Northern Expedition, which was the last Northern Expedition of Taijian in the history of the Southern Dynasty. The results were very rich, Chen Jun completely recovered the land north of the Huainan River, and Emperor Xuan of Chen thought that he had enough capital to break the wrist of Northern Zhou who destroyed Northern Qi. However, the Northern Zhou state was on the rise, and it was not at all comparable to the Chen Dynasty who was "embers of the fall of the Liang clan (Northern Zhou's famous general Wei Xiaokuan)". Emperor Xuan of Chen did not listen to the words of the strategist Mao Xi and forcibly fought against the Zhou army, and as a result, Lü Liang fought a battle in which lü liang was destroyed, and the land north of the Huainan River that was easily fought was gained and lost, and the national strength was greatly reduced, and ten years later the Sui Dynasty, which replaced Northern Zhou, collapsed.
But even so, the territory of the Chen Dynasty was still not too small. The core areas of the Chen Dynasty remained the east, including the south of the Yangtze River in Jiangsu Province, Shanghai, the south of the Yangtze River in Anhui Province, Zhejiang Province, Fujian Province, Jiangxi Province, Hunan Province, south of the Yangtze River in Hubei Province, eastern Guizhou Province, Guangdong Province (including Hong Kong and Macao), Guangxi, Hainan Province, and now northern Vietnam (Jiaozhou).
Compared with the Song Dynasty, the Chen Dynasty lost Jianghuai, Jingxiang, and Xichuan, which were all densely populated and economically developed areas. In terms of area, the area of the Chen Dynasty was about 1.33 million square kilometers at its peak, which was about 2.76 million square kilometers less than that of the Southern Dynasty, almost half.
Due to the development of Eastern Wu, Eastern Jin Dynasty and Song Qiliang, agriculture in jiangdong was very developed and rich in special products. The output of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai, Anhui and Gansu alone is equivalent to the output of Yizhou in Northern Zhou, as well as the output of Shanxi, Hebei and Shandong, which are the core ruling areas of Northern Qi.
Hunan, west of Jiangxi, is not as agricultural as Jiangdong, but Hunan's advantage is that it is rich in mountain and forest resources. According to the "Biography of Chen Shu Huajiao", "Kyauk from the lower officials, good at camping industry, Xiangchuan land out of many places, the income into the imperial court, grain transport bamboo, commissioned a lot of losses; as for the genus of oil honey preserved vegetables, do not do it." He also conquered Chuandong, gave more copper drums and raw mouths, and sent them to the Beijing Division. "The situation in Guizhou, Liangguang, Fujian, and Jiaozhou is similar to that of Hunan, with a small population but many resources, enough for the Chen Dynasty.
Of course, in terms of comprehensive strength, the Sui Dynasty, which combined the strength of the Northern Zhou and Northern Qi, was obviously several times stronger than the Chen Dynasty. But the gap between Sui and Chen was not heaven and earth. Three hundred years ago, the Western Jin Dynasty combined the forces of Cao Wei and Shu Han to deal with Eastern Wu, whose territory was almost identical to that of the Chen Dynasty, and it took a full 15 years to destroy Wu. The difficulty of destroying Wu cares that Wu Liang will still be there, and the Wu lord Sun Hao is cruel but not faint, and is the lord who can fight. Emperor Xuan of Chen was "ambitious and careless", inferior to his brother Emperor Wen of Chen in terms of military expansion, but was able to defend one side of the land (similar to Sun Ce and Sun Quan). If Chen Yan could live to 589, no matter how strong Yang's solid strength was, it would be difficult to destroy Chen in one battle.
The root cause of the demise of the Chen Dynasty was not Chen Shubao's "place of palm", but his ignorance and killing his loyal subjects (degrading Mao Xi, killing Zhang Hua). When the Sui army crossed the river, the Sui minister Xue Daoheng said that this trip would be chen, for four reasons: one was that the three hundred generals in the world would be unified, the second was that Shu Bao was absurd and arrogant, the third was that Shu Bao appointed villains, and the generals were not good talents, and the fourth was that I had no way out. The fifth is that our big country is a small country, its armor is not more than 100,000, and it must be divided into various places along the river, so Chen will die.