Chinese civilization has a long history and contains the wisdom of countless ancestors, among which views such as "loyalty and filial piety" and "benevolence" have been advocated for thousands of years. In ancient times, loyalty meant loyalty to the monarch, while in modern times loyalty is loyalty to the motherland. While advocating loyalty, the traitor who has not the slightest loyalty naturally becomes the object of criticism, because a person who is not loyal to his country and monarch will be considered to have no other virtues, even if he surrenders to his side, he will sooner or later betray him again, and he is not worthy of trust and value.
Even if traitors are rejected by people, since ancient times, many people have chosen this path, some of them are desperate and forced to be helpless, and some of them are for the sake of selling their masters for glory and rewards. In any case, betrayal should be criticized, and it is true that most of the traitors in history did not end well. For example, Lü Bu, who served Ding Yuan and Dong Zhuo and killed them again, was rejected by the princes and eventually surrendered and was slaughtered; in addition, Xu You, who betrayed Yuan Shao and defected to Cao Cao, was also killed by Cao Cao after a few days of peace. Therefore, if you choose to be a traitor, you must accept the end of the possible extermination. However, compared with the Hou Jing we want to talk about today, Lü Bu and Xu You can actually be regarded as "good endings".
As a representative of the miserable traitor, Hou Jing left his name in history because he once caused the "Hou Jing Rebellion", and if he was a traitor, he could be said to be very professional, and he was not ashamed of it. In the fourth year of the Northern Wei Dynasty (503), Hou Jing was born in Shuozhou, which is the area around shuozhou city in present-day Shanxi Province, as a minority of the Xian people, he was actually surnamed Hou Bone, and his name was Wanjing. Since his youth, Hou Jing has loved to ride horses and shoot arrows, and is keen to fight with people.
After Hou Jing grew older, unrest broke out in Northern Wei, and he was born to fear that the world would not be chaotic, and he soon joined Erzhu Rong's rebel army. There, Hou Jing learned the art of leading soldiers to fight, and his ability improved rapidly. However, after Erzhu Rong's death, his subordinate Gao Huan eliminated the Erzhu family and established a puppet emperor, while he himself served as the grand chancellor to monopolize the imperial government. Seeing that Gao Huan had gained power, Hou Jing quickly snuggled up and surrendered to him, when Gao Huan was on the occasion of employing people, so he knew that Hou Jing could not trust him or divided his army into 100,000 troops, so he led the garrison in Henan.
After Gao Huan's death, Hou Jing despised his successor Gao Cheng and secretly contacted Western Wei Yuwentai, who was opposed to the Gao family of Eastern Wei. Yuwen Tai was aware of Hou Jing's threat and was very wary of him, and in desperation, Hou Jing contacted Emperor Wu of Liang to the south. At that time, Emperor Wu of Liang was bent on the Northern Expedition, and when he saw that a general like Hou Jing had taken the initiative to surrender, he was naturally overjoyed, and immediately made him the king of Henan and a great general. Later, Gao Cheng sent troops to attack Hou Jing, and Emperor Wu of Liang sent his nephew Xiao Yuanming to come to his aid, but the latter was defeated and captured.
At this time, Hou Jing forged a letter and expressed to Emperor Wu of Liang in the tone of Gao Cheng that he wanted to exchange Hou Jing for Xiao Yuanming, and Emperor Wu of Liang agreed. Upon receiving a reply, Hou Jing was furious and immediately decided to betray Liang Chao. At the beginning of the rebellion, Hou Jing took Shouyang as his base camp, attracted the people by light labor, and let the people marry his soldiers and horses, thus completing the binding. On the other hand, Hou Jing also secretly colluded with Emperor Liangwu's nephew Xiao Zhengde and expressed his willingness to support him as emperor.
After months of preparation, Hou Jing formally rebelled, and Emperor Wu of Liang sent Xiao Zhengde, but the latter had already colluded with Hou Jing. In less than a year, Hou Jing attacked Jiankang, the capital of the Liang Dynasty, and starved Emperor Wu of Liang, who had accepted him, to death. After Emperor Wu's death, his crown prince Xiao Gang was proclaimed the new emperor, and As for Xiao Zhengde, he had long been abandoned by Hou Jing after losing his usefulness. Hou Jing first declared himself the Governor of the Universe, but he felt dissatisfied, so he forced Xiao Gang to make himself the "Great General of the Universe".
Hou Jing, who had attained the throne, could be described as the original form, he expelled and slaughtered hundreds of civil and military officials, and his treatment of the people was also very cruel. It did not take long for the Cosmic General to be hou Jing's ambitions to expand again, and he simply ascended the throne himself as emperor, and the founding name was Han. Since ancient times, the real maintenance of imperial power has never been a gold-encrusted throne or an embroidered dragon costume, but the love and support of the people. Hou Jing, who acted perversely, soon attracted the princes from all over the country to send troops to requisition.
In the first year of Chengsheng (552), Chen Baxian and Wang Shengquan, two famous liang generals, led an army to defeat Hou Jing, who led his henchmen to flee by boat in a hurry, and even pushed the two children into the water on the way. Hou Jing originally planned to flow downstream into the sea, but was killed by the sheep carp who were not accustomed to his atrocities, and the body was sent to Wang Shengwei. In dealing with this chaotic thief who had been a traitor countless times in his life, Wang Shengdi did not have the slightest mercy, and he cut off his hands and sent them to the Eastern Wei Dynasty, which had been betrayed by him, and his head was "passed on", that is, "exhibited" everywhere.
In addition, Hou Jing's body was partially thrown on the streets of Jiankang for the people to share in, and Princess Liyang, who was forced by him to become his wife, also participated in the process of eating his flesh. After Hou Jing's head was circulated for a round, The Liangyuan Emperor Xiao Xuan ordered it to be boiled and painted and put in the state treasury for collection, which had the same "treatment" as Wang Mang, who usurped the Han Dynasty.
Hou Jing's experience cannot be described as tragic, but the bad things he has done are even more infuriating, so it is said that traitors are really a very risky "profession", or it is better not to be appropriate.