This article is an intensive reading of Chinese history serial 231, "Five Dynasties History" serial 11 (click here to view the previous part), welcome to watch.
01, Wu Yue after Qian Wei
Wu Yue was a relatively stable country in the late Fifth Dynasty. Its rulers have done useful work for Su, Hangzhou, Jia (Xing), and Hu (Zhou) to become high-yield agricultural areas, and have also done a lot of grooming work for the beautiful lakes and mountains in the southeast. People have not forgotten their contributions to this day.
WuYue's founder Qian Wei died in the third year of the Later Tang Dynasty (932) at the age of 81. He was succeeded by his seventh son, Qian Yuanwan. Yuan Ou's original name was Chuan Wan, the character Ming Bao, and he was 46 years old when he ascended the throne. He followed his father to start a business, read poetry and books, received a relatively complete education, and was very filial to his father.
Yuan Wan set up the Xuanneng Academy, selected Wu Chinese, and appointed them. He ordered the fields to be cleared, and when the unclaimed wasteland was found, the taxes were removed. With this clause, the officials would not apportion this part of the tax to the peasants.
Qian Hongzuo, the sixth son of Qian Yuanhuan and the third monarch of Wuyue, once asked the Cang officials how much they had accumulated, and the Cang officials said that there were 10 years of military food, and Hongzuo ordered a tax exemption for 3 years.
Qian Yuanwan's seventh son, Qian Hongwei, the fourth monarch of Wuyue, reigned for a short time, because he paid great attention to limiting the power of the warriors, so he was deposed by the general Hu Jinsi.
After Qian Hongli (Qian Yuanjuan's ninth son) was installed, he saved the life of the deposed King Hongjun, tried to get rid of Hu Jinsi, and rewarded the peasants for reclaiming wasteland and exempting them from taxes.
It was suggested that Hongli investigate underreported adult men, increase taxes, and volunteer to take on the job. Hongli not only did not accept it, but also beat him up in public. The people were very happy to know about this.
Hongli reigned for 31 years (947-978). Finally, the land was automatically donated and incorporated into the Song Dynasty. Because Wu Yue insisted on not being called emperor and always subjecting to the Central Plains, after Hongchu returned to the Song, he was not as suspicious as other descending kings, and died after 10 years, and his descendants were also prominent in the Song.
Agricultural production in Wuyue has not been greatly damaged, and its development has been relatively smooth. This has a greater positive effect on the development of zhejiang province, Shanghai municipality and Suzhou in Jiangsu Province. According to the Records of Fan Zhongyan of the Song Dynasty, Wu Yue set up a water conservancy engineering unit in Suzhou called "Shu Qiandu". Unremitting efforts throughout the year have kept Suzhou rice yields at a high level. After Suzhou belonged to the Song Dynasty, the "Shallow Capital" was abolished, and the output was lower than that of Wu Yueshi.
When Wu Yue returned to the Song Dynasty, there were more than 550,000 households, and compared with the number of households in other areas at the end of the Five Dynasties and the beginning of the Northern Song Dynasty, Wu Yue was obviously the most densely populated area.
Qian Yuanxuan, the sixth son of Qian Wei, built a platform on the shore of Jiaxing South Lake as a place to climb and overlook. He took the poetic meaning of Tang Dumu's "Four Hundred and Eighty Temples in the Southern Dynasty, How Many Buildings in the Smoke and Rain" and named it Yanyu Lou. After several wars, the existing building was built by the Ming people, but it traced back to the source, after all, it was a matter of the fifth generation.
Yuan Xuan loved gardens and also built the South Garden in Suzhou, which was the predecessor of Canglang Pavilion. The South Garden has flowing water strange stones and hugging old trees, which is a typical Wuzhong garden.
In addition, Huanxiu Mountain Villa is also the former site of the Five Generations Golden Valley Garden. Of course, the famous garden has been subjected to vicissitudes and has been rebuilt many times. Although the top and eaves of the Yunyan Temple Pagoda on tiger hill outside Suzhou have been destroyed, the brick part is still a relic of the last five dynasties. This pagoda was built in the first year of the Later Zhou Dynasty (954) and is now one of the key cultural relics protection units in The Country. Many cultural relics were found during the renovation of the tower, one of which is a rare treasure of the Yue kiln celadon lotus bowl.
Starting from this piece of porcelain, we should point out that the porcelain industry in Zhejiang under Wu Yue's jurisdiction is extremely developed. For example, the secret color porcelain that is said to be excavated in the tomb of the Qian family includes a carved dragon sticker gold vase with a height of half a meter, and a large cylinder with a diameter of more than 60 centimeters.
Hangzhou was the center of Wu Yue's rule, and there are more scenic spots that were built in the five dynasties.
The three pagodas of Liuhe, Baochu and Leifeng were all built during the reign of the Qian clan (although the absolute date is in the early Song Dynasty, it was all before Wuyue Natu). Of course, the existing two pagodas of Liuhe and Baochu have been repeatedly rebuilt.
There are also several Buddhist temples, such as the Fajing Temple in Shangtianzhu and the Jingci Temple under huiri Peak in Nanping Mountain, which was also built in Wuyue and later rebuilt over generations. However, the statue of Feilaifeng still preserves three statues from the first year of the Later Zhou Guangshun (951) - Midas, Guanyin, and Dashizhi on the right rock wall of Qinglin Cave.
Lingyin Temple also has stone pagodas and stone scriptures from the last years of Wu Yue.
Judging from these temples, pagodas, gardens, and cultural relics, the Suzhou and Hangzhou areas of the Wuyue period were obviously much more beautifully dressed than those in the Tang Dynasty.
02, Meng Zhixiang father and son ruled the Later Shu
Meng Zhixiang (孟知祥字保胤), a native of Longgang, Xingzhou (邢州, in modern Xingtai, Hebei), was Li Keyong's niece and son-in-law. After Emperor Zhuang of Later Tang sent troops to destroy Former Shu, he sent him to the town to guard the Shu land. Later, there was a coup d'état in Later Tang, Emperor Zhuangzong was killed, and Emperor Mingzong Li Siyuan took the throne. After that, Meng Zhixiang and Later Tang Ruo were separated, as if they were the overlords of the divided side.
If Meng Zhixiang wants to divide one side, first of all, there must be generals and soldiers. Zhao Tingyin, Li Renhan, and Renhan's nephew Zhang Ye, who accompanied him into Shu, were all brave and good at war, but they were not handsome men who planned well.
In the first year of the Later Tang Dynasty (926), Zhao Jiliang was sent to Shu to search for wealth. Zhao Jiliang (赵季良), also spelled Dezhang, was a native of Jiyin (present-day Heze, Shandong), a strategist and an old friend of Meng Zhixiang. Zhixiang was overjoyed to see him coming, and left him behind. Zhao Jiliang was also very willing, and became the founding military division of Later Shu.
Guo Chongtao's Shu army consisted of 3,000 cavalry and 24,000 infantry. Meng Zhixiang expanded the army by 48,000 people, and even Guo Chongtao's 75,000 people.
Meng Zhixiang led, it turned out that only Xichuan. Dongchuan (東川; present-day Santai, Sichuan) also had the emissary Dong Zhang.
Later Tang's privy councillor An Chongzhi defended the two rivers, and in the fourth year of Tiancheng (929), langzhou (present-day Langzhong) and Guozhou (present-day Nanchong), which originally belonged to Dongchuan, were demarcated, and another Baoning army was set up. He intended to gradually divide the two rivers so that they would not have the power to oppose the imperial court.
Dong Zhang and Meng Zhixiang naturally refused to wait and die, Dong Zhang was in a hurry, and he first asked for cooperation with Meng Zhixiang. Meng Zhixiang sent Zhao Jiliang to Zizhou to contact the cooperation. After Zhao Jiliang returned to Chengdu, he talked about his views on Dong Zhang, saying that this person was "greedy and competitive, and his ambitions were big and short-sighted." Meng and Zhao thus decided to first unite with Dong Zhang to reject the imperial court, and then to annex Dongchuan to expand their territory.
Three years after Tang Changxing (932), Meng Zhixiang defeated Dong Zhang and occupied Dongchuan. Meng Zhixiang had two rivers, because his relatives and ancestral tombs were in the Central Plains, and he could not obviously break with the imperial court. Later Emperor Mingzong of Tang also wanted to maintain a relationship between the broken threads, and in the fourth year of Changxing (933), he appointed Meng Zhixiang as an envoy to the Eastern and Western Rivers and was crowned the King of Shu.
In the second year after Emperor Mingzong of Tang's death (934), in the leap month, Meng Zhixiangcai took the throne as emperor, with the state name Shu and the year name Mingde. In July of the same year, he died. He was emperor for only a few months in Shu, and the temple name was Gaozu.
His son Meng Chang ascended the throne, and Meng Chang was the lord of Later Shu. He reigned for 30 years, until the third year of the Song Taizu Qiande (965) when the army defeated the Song.
Meng Zhixiang and his ministers were both later Tang bureaucrats, including those who had descended from Later Liang to Tang. Although there is no shortage of talents in this group, such as Zhao Jiliang, they generally do not have outstanding insight and courage, and it is impossible to create a regime with a new atmosphere. What Meng Zhixiang was able to do was to clean up the mess of Wang's former Shu and restore Shu to a state of moderate prosperity and rough security.
Wang Yan and Meng Chang were the kings of the Shu state before and after, but Meng Chang and his people had both a luxurious and absurd side, as well as a shrewd and capable side who tried to improve political affairs, and they were really not like Wang Yan.
Meng Chang, whose original name was Renzan and the character Baoyuan, was only 16 years old when he ascended the throne. This "lord of partial hegemony" is not very good. The general ministers were all Meng Zhixiang's old subordinates. Among them, although there were loyal people like Zhao Jiliang, there were also those who did not take this little emperor seriously.
During the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, after the death of the old emperor, it was extremely common to bully the ministers into orphans and widows and replace them. It is obviously not easy for Meng Chang to prevent such incidents, but he has a very clever performance.
As soon as Meng Chang ascended the throne, the general Li Renhan put forward a request to be in charge of the Sixth Army. He sent people not only to the Privy Council to make demands, but also to the Academy to see if the orders were drafted according to his request. The move was aggressive.
Meng Chang actually did not move, first accepted the conditions, appointed Li Renhan as a Zhongshu Order, sentenced the sixth military, and then waited for him to enter the palace to meet him, so that the samurai could catch him and kill him on the spot.
Another general, Li Zhao, went to Chengdu to meet Xinjun, dragged his feet along the way, and had a banquet with relatives, and when he arrived in Chengdu, he pretended to be sick on his feet, walked on crutches, saw Meng Chang, and refused to kneel. As soon as Li Renhan died, he was so frightened that his soul was out of his body, so he immediately threw away his crutches and knelt down.
Meng Chang encouraged his subordinates to talk about state affairs at the court. Someone wrote a book to discuss things, and Meng Chang read it and thought it was wrong. Left and right to ask the person who wrote the book to be called out to criticize. He quoted the story of Emperor Taizong of Tang and rejected the left and right claims.
He also wrote his own proverbs and issued them to magistrates, advising them not to exploit the people excessively. He also said that Wang Yan, the lord of the Former Shu Dynasty, should be regarded as a lesson for the past, saying that he should learn the lesson of Wang Yan's demise of the country because of his arrogance and extravagance.
Judging from these places, Meng Chang can be said to be a rather talented monarch with certainty. But his understanding and practice are very inconsistent, taking extravagance and lavishness as a warning, but there are many extravagant and lascivious deeds; some unreliable old people have been eradicated, while at the same time a number of decadent upstarts have been fostered.
Therefore, he has a dark side. This side, the more later, the more dominant it is. This is the tragedy of the Meng Shu kingdom.
Meng Chang himself also had a lot of things that hurt the people and money. He once built a new palace, ordered the selection of folk beauties, and enriched the harem. For a while, the people of Shuzhong panicked, and those who had daughters were afraid of being selected, and hurriedly begged for someone to be a matchmaker and marry off their daughters. It was called "Surprise Marriage" at the time.
Meng Chang's life and living are extremely luxurious, and the drowning vessels used are decorated with seven treasures. After the death of Shu, When Song Taizu saw this thing, he immediately ordered it to be destroyed, and said, "How can you not die after enjoying such a place?" ”
Looking at the situation in all aspects, we can say the following about the country of Later Shu: Its politics is not good, but it is not too bad; the environment is stable, and the situation of division of territory makes the Central Plains imperial court unable to extract a single grain of Shu, and the economic development conditions are relatively good; the cultural inheritance of the Tang and Former Shu situations, along with the Southern Tang and Wuyue, is the most culturally developed region.
Only a brief mention of economic prosperity is mentioned here. In the thirteenth year of Guangzheng (950), 1 bucket of rice in Shuzhong only sold for 3 yuan, the burden of the people's conscription was very light, and the grain stored in the government treasury was very rich. When the flowers bloom in September, they look like a splendid embroidery. Outside the city, the riverside, everywhere pavilions, tourists gathered, very lively. At this time, the Central Plains were in the last years of the Later Han Dynasty, chaotic and dark, compared to Shuzhong, quite different!
In the third year of Song Qiande (965), after the Song Dynasty was destroyed, Shu was destroyed, and Meng Chang surrendered. After Meng Chang surrendered, the family moved north to Beijing. When he met Taizu of Song, he was ostensibly treated quite favorably and was given the title of Duke of Qin. However, after 7 days, he "died of illness" (919-965). His mother, Empress Li, did not cry and died of hunger strike.
According to legend, when the Lord left Chengdu, the Shu people wept and sent him, and the reason why he could not be spared death was probably this.
The Shu people's remembrance of Meng Chang was not limited to the beginning of the Song Dynasty's destruction of Shu, and 28 years later, Li Shun, the leader of the peasant revolt in Shu, claimed to be an orphan of Meng Chang, which is very strong evidence.
#pgc-card .pgc-card-href { text-decoration: none; outline: none; display: block; width: 100%; height: 100%; } #pgc-card .pgc-card-href:hover { text-decoration: none; } /*pc 样式*/ .pgc-card { box-sizing: border-box; height: 164px; border: 1px solid #e8e8e8; position: relative; padding: 20px 94px 12px 180px; overflow: hidden; } .pgc-card::after { content: " "; display: block; border-left: 1px solid #e8e8e8; height: 120px; position: absolute; right: 76px; top: 20px; } .pgc-cover { position: absolute; width: 162px; height: 162px; top: 0; left: 0; background-size: cover; } .pgc-content { overflow: hidden; position: relative; top: 50%; -webkit-transform: translateY(-50%); transform: translateY(-50%); } .pgc-content-title { font-size: 18px; color: #222; line-height: 1; font-weight: bold; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap; } .pgc-content-desc { font-size: 14px; color: #444; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; padding-top: 9px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 1.2em; display: -webkit-inline-box; -webkit-line-clamp: 2; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; } .pgc-content-price { font-size: 22px; color: #f85959; padding-top: 18px; line-height: 1em; } .pgc-card-buy { width: 75px; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 50px; color: #406599; font-size: 14px; text-align: center; } .pgc-buy-text { padding-top: 10px; } .pgc-icon-buy { height: 23px; width: 20px; display: inline-block; background: url(https://lf6-cdn-tos.bytescm.com/obj/cdn-static-resource/pgc/v2/pgc_tpl/static/image/commodity_buy_f2b4d1a.png); }
Classic General History of China (16 volumes) ¥168 purchase
The content of this article is compiled from the "Five Dynasties History" of the Chinese reading book "Classic Chinese General History" jointly created by China International Broadcasting Publishing House and "Reading History".
There are 16 books in the complete set of "Classic Chinese General History", namely: "Xia Shang History", "Western Zhou History", "Spring and Autumn History", "Warring States History", "Qin and Han History (Part I)", "Qin and Han History (Part 2)", "Three Kingdoms History", "Two Jin And Northern And Southern Dynasties History", "Sui and Tang History (Part 1)", "Sui and Tang History (Part 2)", "Five Dynasties History", "Song Dynasty History", "Yuan Dynasty History", "Ming Dynasty History", "Early Qing Dynasty History", "Late Qing History".
This set of books was carefully compiled by more than a dozen older historians born in the first half of the last century and took several years to compile. From the historical migration of xia and shang to the late Qing dynasty, the panoramic depiction of 5,000 years of Chinese history is professional and authoritative, and it is easy to understand, suitable for all ages, passing down classics, and it is worth learning and cherishing.