2. Difficult brother "Cheng" and "Kang"
After Sima Shao, the Emperor of Jinming, ascended the throne, Heyuan Crown Princess Yu Wenjun was made empress, and his eldest son Sima Yan was made crown prince. Emperor Ming died, Sima Yan took the throne, this is the Jincheng Emperor, he was the eldest son of Emperor Ming, but he was only 5 years old at the time, naturally unable to deal with major state affairs. Although before Emperor Ming's death, he appointed Wang Dao to assist Yu Liang and other ministers such as Yu Wenjun's brother, but once Emperor Ming "rode the dragon to the guest" and Empress Yu became Empress Yu, the ministers of culture and martial arts collectively played: "The emperor is young, and the empress dowager should follow the old practice of Empress Deng Sui of the Eastern Han Dynasty. Empress Yu resigned again and again, and she really couldn't push it off, so she "came to the court to shoot ten thousand machines." When the empress dowager was in power, the most trusted person was naturally her own brother Yu Liang. As a result, Wang Dao and the other ministers of gu orders almost became a decoration, "the political affairs were decided by (Yu) Liang" ("Jin Shu Yu Liang Biography"). Yu Liang's prestige was not high, his foundation was not deep, and after monopolizing power, he was just embarrassed to use himself, and soon lost the hearts of the people. In the second year of Xianhe (327 AD), Yu Liang, despite the opposition of Wang Dao and others, wanted to deprive the general Su Jun of his military power and transferred him back to the capital to serve as a great sinong, which finally led to the second turmoil within the Eastern Jin Dynasty, the Su Jun Rebellion.
Sima Yan (December 321 – July 26, 342)
Under the banner of revenge against Yu Liang, the rebels defeated the officers and soldiers in a row, and in the spring of the following year, they captured the capital city of Jiankang, and Yu Liang fled west in a hurry. The rebels were "fierce and cruel" ("The Biography of Su Jun" ("Jin Shu Su Jun Biography"), setting fire to palaces and official temples, and plundering them. After attacking the inner city of the imperial capital, Taicheng, some soldiers broke into the imperial palace, and the weapons of those bright and hard states even beckoned to the throne, and did not scare the 8-year-old little emperor into fear! Fortunately, when the Wen and Wu officials scattered and fled, the servant Yu Yu (yin shà) always guarded the little emperor and loudly rebuked the chaotic soldiers: "General Su personally came to see the emperor, how dare you soldiers persecute the supreme being?" Indeed, Su Jun did not openly propose to depose the emperor and replace the emperor, so the soldiers did not dare to force it, but they broke into the harem in a chaotic manner--that what kind of empress dowager, is not the person we General Su hate the most--Yu Liang's sister?" What else is there to be polite to her! At this time, the harem suffered, and the concubines and empress dowager Yu Wenjun were robbed and plundered. The rebels also drove and whipped the captured civil and military officials and some of the generals of the Imperial Forest Army, forcing them to carry things up Mount Zhong, and finally stripped naked stripes, regardless of men and women, regardless of the officials and civilians. Poor people can only cover their lower bodies with broken mats or grass; they can't find even broken mats and grass, so they have to sit on the ground and cover their lower bodies with dirt. The sound of mourning and crying shook both inside and outside the capital. Su Jun divided his troops into four parts, "all that passed was destroyed." On the eighth day of March of that year, the 32-year-old empress dowager Yu Wenjun was "humiliated" and "collapsed with sorrow" ("Jin Shu And Empress Dowager Mingmu Yu Passed Down"). It should be noted that after Su Jun's army burned and plundered in and around the capital, it also wanted to restore order, so on the eighth day of February, in the name of the little emperor, he pardoned the world, but it was specially stated that only the Yu Liang brothers were not among the pardons, which showed the depth of Su Jun's resentment towards the Yu family. "Hate the house and the phoenix", the depth of the "persecution" suffered by Empress Dowager Yu Wenjun during this whole month can be imagined.
Su Jun's rebellion
In May, the Jin generals Tao Kan and Wen Yu led the QinWang army from upstream down the Yangtze River to the east. Su Jun was ready to resist defending stone city northwest of Jiankang, so he forced the little emperor to move to stone city as well. On a rainy day, the road was muddy and difficult to navigate, the Jincheng Emperor mourned and cried and was forcibly carried to the "royal car", and the harem was also full of crying. After arriving in Stone City, Su Jun placed the Little Emperor in a warehouse, and every day he would run over and point at the Little Emperor's nose and scold him. Later, although Su Jun was killed in a confrontation with the Qin Wangjun, Su Jun's younger brother Su Yi led the rest of his brother and continued to confront the Qin Wangjun. Although Emperor Jincheng was almost imprisoned, he was accompanied by several loyal ministers, including the Right Guard general Liu Chao and Zhong Ya. In an extremely difficult and dangerous environment, Liu Chao also respectfully taught the little emperor Confucian classics such as the Book of Filial Piety and the Analects. In the first month of the following year, as the rebel army gradually disintegrated, Liu Chao and Zhong Ya conspired to take the little emperor to defect to the Qin Wang army, but unexpectedly, the matter leaked, and Su Yi sent people to arrest Liu and Zhong. Emperor Jincheng, who had lost his parents, hugged the two of them and cried out in pain, "Return my servants and the Right Guard General!" "But what's the use, Liu Chao and Zhong Ya were still killed by Su Yi." In February, The Qin Army attacked Taicheng, captured Su Yi, and quelled the civil unrest, and the little emperor, who had been imprisoned for more than a year, regained his freedom. Since the palace had been burned to ashes, the Jin Dynasty Emperor had to live temporarily in Jianping Garden. He lived for nearly four years, until December of the seventh year of Xianhe (332 AD), when Sima Yan, the emperor of Jincheng, moved into the newly built palace, when he was 12 years old and reigned for seven years.
Sima Yan's days after that were relatively calm: although there were some internal turmoil and some external wars, fortunately, the scale was not large, and it did not cause any major impact. On the first day of the first lunar month of the first year of Xiankang (335 AD), the 15-year-old Jincheng Emperor held a crowning ceremony to show that he had grown up, so he pardoned and changed the yuan; on February 19, 2012, Xiankang prepared a dowry to marry Du Lingyang, the daughter of du Li, the former Marquis of Duyang, as empress, and once again granted amnesty to the world, and the wen and military officials also congratulated him; in March of the seventh year of Xiankang, the 21-year-old Empress Du died; in June of the eighth year of Xiankang (342 AD), the 22-year-old young emperor Sima Yan, who had reigned for 17 years, also died. It is said that although this Empress Dulingyang was born chuchu and moving, she had "bright eyes" and not "bright teeth", because her mouth was bare and she did not have a single tooth. Because of this, the families of the people who came to propose marriage in Xingchong were finally discouraged and dispelled their original ideas. On the day that the Jin Cheng Emperor sent the bride price, 16-year-old Du Lingyang suddenly grew a mouth full of white teeth overnight. Empress Du had no sons, but a concubine surnamed Zhou bore two sons for Emperor Cheng: Sima Pi and Sima Yi, both of whom later became emperors of the Eastern Jin Dynasty. Among the concubines of the Jin Dynasty, second only to "noble concubines" and "lady", she died of illness in the third year of the reign of the eldest son Sima Pi, in the first year of the reign of Sima Pi (363 AD). This Lady of the Zhou clan was much luckier than Empress Du, one because she lived to be in her early 40s, almost double that of Empress Du; second, after her son became emperor, she was honored as an "imperial concubine", and the treatment of ceremonial clothes, daily life and other aspects was exactly the same as that of the empress dowager.
(Cold in the Heights: The Emperor and His Descendants Series No. 123)