The Battle of Shu in 263 finally turned into a very conspiratorial political struggle. The world uses the term "two soldiers competing for merit" to describe the power struggle that occurred between Zhong Hui and Deng Ai. However, Zhong Hui, who really rebelled, did not affect his sons and nephews in Luoyang, but Deng Ai, who did not raise his sword and gun at all, ended up in a very miserable situation, his children were executed by sitting down, and his grandchildren were sent to the frontier, and they were not completely rehabilitated until the fall of the Western Jin Dynasty.
Unlike zhong hui and Deng Ai's widespread circulation of "contending for merit", when the Western Jin Dynasty destroyed Wu, there was another "two-soldier contending for merit" between Wang Hun and Wang Mao, although Sima Yan quickly suppressed the dispute, but this matter was the same as the conflict between Zhong Hui and Deng Ai in previous years. One thing happening once may be an accident, but two times is inevitable. For the Western Jin Dynasty, an "accident" in history was a tragedy, and another occurrence was an out-and-out joke. This article tries to explain the causes that make up all of this and the deeper connotations it contains.
Wang Mao
By the way, the word 濬字 pronounces jùn, not "睿".
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > the second "two soldiers contending for merit" and the large-scale rehabilitation of the Western Jin Dynasty</h1>
In 280, in the final battle of the Jin Dynasty to destroy Wu, another "two soldiers' struggle" between Wang Hun and Wang Mao occurred, and here is a brief introduction to its experience.
At the time of the Battle of Wu, Wang Hun was the "Military Governor of Yangzhou" and the commander-in-chief of the entire campaign, and Wang Hun was the Assassin of Yizhou, nominally subject to Wang Hun's control. If you compare it to the Battle of Shu in 263, Wang Hun is equivalent to Zhong Hui, and Wang Hao plays the role of Deng Ai.
In the actual battle, Wang Hao, who was descending from Yizhou, did not stop his army at Moling according to the original plan, but directly took Jianye, forced Sun Hao to surrender, and seized the first merit of the Battle of Wu. This incident is similar to the contradiction between Zhong Hui and Deng Ai in the past years, and it also triggered a fierce conflict between Wang Hun and Wang Mao. Wang Mao's family had no record of being an official during the Cao Wei era, so it lacked a relationship with the Sima clan and was in a marginal position in the Sima clique. Wang Hun was from the Taiyuan Wang clan, whose father was Wang Chang, who was an important general of the State of Wei during the "Three Rebellions in Huainan", and his family was closely related to the Sima clan.
Wang Hun
The process of conflict between Wang Hun and Wang Mao is almost the same as that of Zhong Hui and Deng Ai. Wang Hun sang that Wang Hao was not disciplined in violating the edict and had the intention of plotting rebellion, and Yousi still proposed that Wang Mao be thrown into a prison cart. Fortunately, Sima Yan was more prudent and rejected this proposal, which did not provoke greater chaos, but only issued an edict of responsibility. Wang Mao was not convinced, and wrote to defend himself. Wang Hun also joined forces with the general to accuse Wang Hao of privately occupying the treasures of the Wu state, and Wang Hun once again went to the table to defend himself. The dispute between the two sides continued until the return of the Banshi to the Dynasty. There are two times that Yousi played it, wanting to trap Wang Mao for his sins. From this, we can note that, similar to the Zhong Hui incident, the "Yousi" who represented the official discourse power of the Jin Dynasty completely stood on the side of favoring Zhong Hui and Wang Hun and became an important factor in intensifying contradictions. This is precisely because the main body that constitutes the bureaucracy of the Jin Dynasty is the descendant of Cao Wei's heroes, and there is a common network of power and interests between them, and the struggle between Deng Ai and Wang Mao, as a heterogeneous force, with Zhong Hui and Wang Hun, violates the interests of this group, so they do everything possible to trap them in crime and prevent them from rising to the core of power with military merit.
Although Wang Mao was not punished for this, Sima Yan was pressured to significantly reduce Wang Mao's military achievements. Wang Mao was also worried that he would repeat the tragedy of Deng Ai, and he was always on guard in the face of Wang Hun to protect himself, which showed the depth of the contradiction at that time. Wang Mao had two grandsons, and after the establishment of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Sima Rui had repeatedly rewarded the descendants of the founding heroes of the Western Jin Dynasty to flaunt the legitimacy and authority of his rule, but the reward for Wang Mao's two grandsons has never been recorded in the annals of history.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >Why is Deng Ai's road to rehabilitation so difficult? </h1>
After the deaths of Zhong Hui and Deng Aidu, Sima Zhao had been king for 264 years. Sima Zhao sent Tang Bin to secretly go to Longyou to the military intelligence. That war zone was the military region that Deng Ai had been controlling, and when the commander was wrongfully killed, the Luoyang side immediately sent people to inspect it in case there was a possibility of mutiny. It can be seen that in Sima Zhao's heart, deng Ai was wronged, and he also knew it. However, it is strange that even so, Sima Zhao brutally oppressed Deng Ai's descendants. Deng Ai's son Deng Zhong was killed together in Shudi, all the sons who remained in Luoyang were killed, and his wife and grandson were assigned to the Western Regions. Not only that, Deng Aibu was actually the first achievement in the battle to destroy Shu. However, his troops' military exploits were forcibly deprived by Sima Zhao. All of this makes people sigh and wonder.
Deng Ai
And whether it was Zhong Hui who really rebelled, or Wei Ou who led the soldiers to kill Zhong Hui and Deng Ai. Sima Zhao, however, gave great praise and took a very unbelievable leniency to Zhong Hui's family. Not only that, But Deng Ai's future road to rehabilitation is also full of extreme hardships.
In the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Deng Ai's biography is recorded with "Wang Wuqiu Zhuge Zhong", that is to say, in the official mainstream cognition represented by Chen Shou, Deng Ai and Wang Ling, Yiqiu Jian, Zhuge Xu, and Zhong Hui are all traitors. However, in the first year of Sima Yan's reign (265), the Jin Dynasty issued an edict to rehabilitate Wang Ling. In the edict, Sima Yan believed that although Wang Ling had raised an army to overthrow Sima Shi, his purpose was to depose Cao Fang, which coincided with Sima Shi's practice later, so Wang Ling's rebellion actually became a politically correct move. This is simply a ridiculous reason that Sima Yan found instead for the sake of peace.
Coincidentally, also in the early years of the Tai Dynasty, Sima Yan, who had just ascended the throne, personally went to sima ling, the king of Langyue, and by the way, the word zhòu was pronounced. Zhuge Liang, who rebelled against Huainan in that year, once sent his son Zhuge Liang to the State of Wu as a hostage, and after the fall of the State of Wu, Zhuge Liang surrendered to the Jin Dynasty and did not want to go to Luoyang, and his sister married Sima Ling, so he has been living in the palace of Lang Yue. Sima Yan came to reconcile with him, and even when Zhuge Liang's sister gave her son Sima Xiao the word "Sizu", he still did not think so. This "Si Zu" was thinking about his grandfather Zhuge Birthday, who had originally started the army, which was already a blatant blow to Sima Yan's mouth. If you lose again, this Sima Xiao is the father of Sima Rui, the founding emperor of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, and he has a third brother, named Sima Rui, who was named King of Andong, and took the opportunity to avenge his grandfather Zhuge Zhi during the Rebellion of the Eight Kings, killing Wen Duan, who was already 54 years old.
Zhuge Birthday
On the side of Deng Ai, from the first year of the Tai Dynasty, some people have written to recommend that Deng Ai be rehabilitated, but it should be pointed out that the people who wrote the letter were either Deng Ai's generals or the generals of the Shu State, and did not occupy a greater right to speak in the court, those who were also the meritorious servants of the Wei State with Deng Ai, and now they are the founding ministers of the Jin Dynasty, but they maintain amazing consistency in this matter, that is, they do not say a word, and they are not keen on rehabilitating their former colleagues. It was not until the ninth year of the Tai Dynasty (273) that Sima Yan acknowledged Deng Ai's exploits to a certain extent, but he was always "guilty", only because he was tied up to capture him to get some leniency, and the edict made his grandson an official, changing his fate of being a slave in the Western Regions, but there was no pardon for Deng Ai, in fact, in the western Jin Dynasty, Deng Ai was not completely rehabilitated.
As mentioned earlier, Zhong Hui and Wei Ou represent a cultural tradition and ideology, and Deng Ai represents a culture that is incompatible with it. The contradiction between Zhong Hui and Deng Ai is actually a contradiction between the children of meritorious men within the Sima clique (that is, the representatives of the Shi clan) and the officials of low birth (that is, the representatives of the Han clan). The children of the Shi clan and the Sima family have long had close ties and similar cultural orientations, which are based on the combination of the same interests, which constitute the backbone of the Sima clique and are the core force that supports the Sima clan to complete the Jin Dynasty Wei. Therefore, in this conflict, Sima Zhao could only choose to protect the sons of heroes who were more important in their position.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > the hidden meaning of the western Jin dynasty's rehabilitation and its later influence</h1>
Wang Ling himself had deep ties with the Sima family and the Western Jin bureaucracy, he was the nephew of Wang Yun of the Eastern Han Dynasty, born in the Taiyuan Wang clan, not far from the Sima family's Hanoi, his son Wang Guang was also a famous soldier, although Wang Shu and Wang Guang were killed, but their old in-laws were still the force that the Sima clan needed to rely on. Zhuge Shi was also the leader of the Wei People, and in Zhong Hui's eyes, Zhuge Shi was the leader of the Shi clan who was called Xiahou Xuan. The Lang evil Zhuge clan was a famous and prestigious family with wide influence during the Han and Jin dynasties. In the process of The Jin Dynasty and Wei Dynasty, the first thing the Sima family had to consider was to win more supporters, and in this case, the Shi clan could undoubtedly bring more political influence. In contrast, which also involved the Huainan rebellion, Sima Shi never thought of rehabilitating Yuqiu Jian, and Deng Ai was the same reason, the difference in ideology caused the distribution of discourse power in the court, and it is not surprising that the figures belonging to different ideological groups showed obvious hostility to each other.
Xiahou Xuan
The contradictions between Zhong Hui and Deng Ai, the struggle for merit between Wang Hun and Wang Mao, the restoration of the reputation of Wang Shu and Zhuge Shi, the long-delayed issue of Deng Ai's rehabilitation, and the series of seemingly unrelated and independent events of the Descendants of the Eastern Jin Dynasty who have not seen Wang Ai's descendants are actually hidden by a main line, that is, the sons of Cao Wei Gongxun, who are closely related to the Sima family and have a common cultural background and ideology, occupy the core of the Sima clique, and they exclude external forces from different camps such as Deng Ai and Wang Mao. to consolidate their vested rights and interests, and to protect the right to speak and authority in the court.
From the beginning of Sima Yi's Gaopingling Rebellion, the Sima family united all the warriors who were powerless in Cao Shuang's political reforms, which was the political factor that enabled the Sima family to rise. Later, with the sima family's step by step, the warriors became more and more reliable to tie up with the Sima family's ship, and even later it was difficult to distinguish who was the main commander of the ship. There is a Jin dynasty, the politics of the warrior clan is the dominant ideology that runs through it, whether it is the unified Western Jin Dynasty or the Eastern Jin Dynasty in a quiet corner, it is always the representative of the Shi clan who controls the court, and even the emperor of the Sima family has said that "the king and the horse share the world". The "Rebellion of the Eight Kings", which eventually led to the destruction of the Western Jin Dynasty, was also a concentrated and explicit manifestation of a series of conflicts triggered by this kind of scholar politics.
Resources:
The deeds of Zhong Hui, Deng Ai, Wang Ling, etc. are mainly referred to in the Book of Wei, and the Book of Jin is used for the large-scale rehabilitation of Wang Hun, Wang Mao, and the Western Jin Dynasty.
All character images are selected from the characters in the game.