There is a sentence in the Analects of Learning, which is said to be said by Sage Kong: "Three years without changing the way of the Father, it can be described as filial piety." This sentence inspires generation after generation of Chinese, to inherit the legacy of their fathers, to work hard, and finally to realize the ambitions and dreams of their fathers, and also to realize the value of their own lives. However, it was such a positive saint's teaching that brought a young man who had a great future in the Eastern Jin Dynasty to a crooked road, an evil road, and a dead end, causing him to pay a heavy price for the annihilation of the martyred clan. What the hell is going on here?
At the beginning of the founding of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, it established a typical door valve political system in which the royal family and the scholar clan jointly ruled, that is, what people said at that time was "the king and the horse, the world is together". Under this system, the Wang clan of Langya (present-day Linyi, Shandong), the Yu clan of Yingchuan (present-day Yanling, Henan), the Huan clan of Yuguo (present-day Longkang Town, Huaiyuan, Anhui), and the Xie clan of Chen Commandery (present-day Taikang, Henan) successively ruled. Imperial power and phase power, through a delicate balance, realize the equalization of rights, and temporarily achieve the "peaceful coexistence" model.
Schematic diagram of the distribution of door valves of the two Jinshi clans
At the beginning of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, both the royal family and the gate valve clan had the impulse and action to try to expand their "share" of power, and even monopolize and monopolize the central authority. Emperor Yuan of Jin alienated Wang Dao and Wang Dun, and focused on strengthening imperial power by his confidants Diao Xie and Liu Kui, but as a result, they were either openly or implicitly resisted by the Gate Valve clan. Wang Dun, one of the representative figures of the Langya Wang family who was in power at that time, relied on the heavy army led by Gong, and even more openly rebelled and counterattacked. Diao Xie, Liu Kui, etc. were either killed or fled, and Emperor Yuan of Jin died of depression.
However, when Wang Dun tried to monopolize the central authority of the Langya Wang clan, he was resisted by the royal family and other gatekeeper clans. His second rebellion ultimately failed, and the Langya Wang clan had to cede the central authority to the newly rising foreign relative, the Yu family.
After the contest, the royal family and the door valve clan realized that they must compromise with each other, divide and share power, in order to maximize the protection of the interests of the royal family and the door valve family. Otherwise, infighting can only lead to a lose-lose ending. Therefore, the two sides tacitly agreed to the door valve political system of "Wang/Yu/Huan/Xie and Ma sharing the world". After decades of running this system, someone finally couldn't hold back and tried to challenge the existing system and establish a new system that was dominant, and he was Huan Wen.
Huan Wen (312-373), also known as Yuanzi (一作符子), was a Chinese poet. With the death or foreign appointment of Yu Liang and Yu Bing, the Yu family was slowly marginalized in the center. The power vacuum that emerged in the center provided a rare opportunity for Huan Wen, who was appointed as the general of Anxi in August of the first year of Yonghe (345), holding the festival, supervising the military forces of Jing, Si, Yong, Yi, Liang, and Ning, jingzhou, and controlling the military power of the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. At that time, The Jin Mu Emperor Sima Was young, the Empress Dowager Chu was in power, and her father Chu Qi and the famous scholar Yin Hao were in power. Huan Wen, citing the repeated defeats of Chu Qi, Yin Hao, and others in the Northern Expedition, gradually squeezed them out of the center. At this time, Huan Wen may have ambitions to covet the throne, but suffering from the low family rank, his prestige is not good, and it is difficult to convince the public, so he plans to expand the territory through the Northern Expedition and enhance his prestige.
Sima Tan, Emperor Mu of Jin
In the tenth year of Yonghe (354), the twelfth year of Yonghe (356), and the fourth year of Taihe (369), Huan Wen launched three Northern Expeditions. Although the first two Northern Expeditions were successful, they achieved no results. During the Third Northern Expedition, Huan Wen was defeated by the combined forces of Former Qin and Former Yan in the battles of Fangtou (in present-day southwest of Present-day Xun County, Henan) and Xiangyi (in present-day Western Yan County, Henan), with heavy losses. Embarrassed and enraged, Huan Wen deposed Emperor Sima Yi and installed Emperor Jianwen of Jin, while vigorously eliminating dissidents from the imperial court in order to intimidate the Eastern Jin dynasty's vassals.
In the first year of the reign of Emperor Xiaowu of Jin (373), Huan Wen became seriously ill. He repeatedly sent people to force the imperial court to add his "nine tin" gifts in order to gradually promote the "Zen concessions". Xie An and Wang Tanzhi, who were in the center, ostensibly used the poor sentence of the "Nine Tins" written by them as an excuse, and ordered the writers to repeatedly "revise", but in fact they used this to perfunctorily delay. A few months later, Huan Wen died of illness. His "emperor's dream" eventually became illusory.
Before Huan Wen died, in view of the young age of his sons and the embarrassment of their duties, he handed over political and military power to his younger brother Huan Chong, and the title of Duke of Nan Commandery (南郡, in present-day Jiangling, Hubei) was inherited by Huan Wen's beloved youngest son, Huan Xuan, who was 5 years old at the time. Huan Chong has a quiet nature, has no intention of power struggle, and actively avoids Jingzhou, and the center is run by Xie An. They will be united, the political situation will be stable for a while, and thus the Victory in the Great Patriotic War, the Battle of Shuishui.
After Huan Chong's death, the Huan family declined day by day. At this time, Huan Xuan slowly grew up. He looks strange and artistic, and often thinks of himself as a hero Haojie. However, in view of Huan Wen's suspicion of usurping the throne in his later years, the Eastern Jin Dynasty monarchs were also deeply wary of Huan Xuan, who had great ambitions, and did not dare to appoint him. It was not until the sixteenth year of Taiyuan (391) that the 23-year-old Huan Xuan was appointed crown prince to wash horses. A few years later, he was appointed as the Taishou of Yixing (義興, in modern Yixing, Jiangsu). The depressed Huan Xuan sighed and said, "The father is the uncle of Kyushu, and the son is the chief of the five lakes!" Humiliated, Huan Xuan simply abandoned the official and returned to the fiefdom of Nan County. While passing through Jiankang, Huan Xuan was humiliated by the ruling chancellor Sima Daozi, and his heart became more and more resentful.
Huan Xuan stills
Huan Xuan, who returned to Nan Commandery, was initially suppressed by King Chen of Jingzhou. After Wang Chen's death, Huan Xuan bribed Emperor Xiaowu's favored nun Zhi Miaoyin to promote Yin Zhongkan to serve as the Assassin of Jingzhou. Yin Zhong was respectful of Huan Xuan and did not restrain him. Huan Xuan took the opportunity to accumulate strength and plot big things. At this time, sima Daozi, in order to strengthen the centralization of power, the contradictions with Wang Gong and other local powerful factions intensified. Under the command of Huan Xuan, Wang Gong, Yin Zhongkan, Huan Xuan, and others elected Wang Gong as the leader of the alliance in the name of Sima Daozi and raised an army to Que. After Wang Gong's army was defeated and killed, Yin Zhongkan, Yang Qi, and others pushed Huan Xuan as their ally and continued to compete with the imperial court.
Eastern Jin Dynasty army
With the expansion of Huan Xuan's ambitions and the stirring up of discord in the imperial court, Huan Xuan soon met with Yin Zhongkan and Yang Qi. After a fierce battle, Yin Zhongkan and Yang Qi were defeated and killed, and Huan Xuan took advantage of the situation to force the imperial court to appoint himself as the governor of the eight prefectures, such as Jing and Jiang, and the history of Jiangzhou, and in fact recognized the Huan family's control over the Jingzhou area. At this point, Huan Xuan realized that he already had the strength to win the world, and his ambitions were expanding more and more. He plotted day and night with his henchmen in an attempt to fight.
Eastern Jin Dynasty courtiers
As the contradictions between Huan Xuan and Sima Daozi and Sima Yuanxian, who were in charge of the center, intensified, in the first year of Yuan Xing (402), Sima Yuanxian ordered a crusade against Huan Xuan, and Huan Xuan raised an army to the east in response. The Korean army was repeatedly defeated, and Huan Xuan quickly captured Jiankang. Huan Xuan (桓玄) exiled Sima Daozi (who was executed a few months later), killed Sima Yuanxian and his henchmen, made himself the governor of the capital, the military and chancellor of China and foreign countries, and was in charge of state affairs; and held internal and external positions with Huan clan members and cronies. Since then, the government of the Eastern Jin Dynasty fell into the hands of Huan Xuan.
After Huan Xuan came to power, he was initially able to depose the traitor, promote Junxian, pay attention to the people's livelihood, and win the hearts of the people. However, he excommunicated dissidents, was extremely poor and extravagant, had impermanent decrees, and gradually lost the will of the people.
Huan Xuan stepped up his plans to crown Huan Xuan as emperor: he ordered his followers to concoct in advance an edict to grant Huan Xuan the title of "Nine Xi", and Huan Xuan forced Emperor An of Jin to issue an edict, crowning himself as Xiang Guo and King of Chu, and adding "Nine Xi". Huan Xuan repeatedly pretended to resign, and even went up to request the return of the domain; and then instructed the henchmen to correct the edict to retain it. In addition, Huan Xuan also tried every means to find the so-called "Xiangrui" to find the basis for the Mandate of Heaven for the Huan Dynasty.
On November 18, 403, the first year of the tycoon's reign, Huan Xuan took the pre-written edict of the Zen throne and forced Emperor An of Jin to copy it by hand. On the twenty-first day, the "Zen Concession" ceremony was held. On December 3, Huan Xuan officially ascended the throne as emperor, changed the name of the country to Chu, and changed the name of the country to Yuan Yongshi. At this point, the "emperor dream" of Huan Wen and Huan Xuan's father and son has finally become a reality.
Huan Xuan, who claimed to be the empress, did not think about how to exert himself to consolidate his rule, but instead became more and more arrogant and extravagant, and there was no way to hunt. He also recruited civil servants extensively and built a large number of civil engineering projects, so that the people were tired and the people's grievances boiled over. The former general Liu Yu of the Northern Prefecture took the opportunity to raise a righteous campaign against Huan Xuan on February 27, 404, the first year of the Yongshi Dynasty (404). Soldiers and civilians everywhere responded one after another, and Huan Xuan was killed on the way to defeat and escape, at the age of 36. The Huan clan members of the Huan clan, such as The Xuzhou Thorn Shi Huanxiu of Zhenshou Jingkou (present-day Zhenjiang, Jiangsu), and the Qingzhou Thorn Shi Huanhong of Zhenshou Guangling (present-day Yangzhou, Jiangsu), were all defeated and killed at the beginning of Liu Yu's and other uprisings. Huan Shikang and others, along with Huan Xuan, were killed by Feng Qian, the capital of Yizhou. Huan Xuan's cousin Huan Qian and others fled to Qin Yaoxing and Shu County. In the sixth year (410) of the Reign of Emperor Yixi of Jin, Huan Qian led an army to attack Jingzhou, but was defeated and beheaded by Liu Daogui. At this point, the Huan family, which had been prosperous for a while and was able to rank among the "four major families", was completely destroyed due to the failure of Huan Xuan's usurpation of the throne.
Stills of Liu Yu
Although Huan Xuan inherited and realized Huan Wen's "will", he violated the etiquette of his parents and children's advice, and finally pushed himself and the family into the abyss of annihilation. In terms of ability, Huan Wen and Huan Xuan's father and son Wen Tao Wu Strategy, achieved a career, can be called a tyrant. Some of their deeds can also be called benefiting the country and the people. However, their ambitions are inflated, their desires are difficult to fill, they disregard the great righteousness of the country and the nation, and they draw on the satisfaction of personal self-interest. They are obsessed with force, and in order to realize their personal ambitions, they do not hesitate to bring the country and the people into the whirlpool of war and chaos again and again. Huan Xuan's title of emperor and the destruction of Jin Jianchu were not to blame. After all, the world is the world of the people under the world, and only the virtuous live in it! However, Huan Xuande is not worthy of the position, does not think of exerting efforts to govern, benefiting the people, and instead draws on the exclusion of dissidents, and is poor and extravagant. What he did not only subverted the door valve political system of "kings and horses, sharing the whole world" established at the beginning of the founding of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, but also caused opposition from many door valve families and lost the hearts of the people, resulting in the boiling of public resentment. Huan Chu's rapid extinction was expected.
(Tang) Fang Xuanling et al.: Book of Jin, Zhonghua Bookstore, 1974.
Wang Zhongji: History of the Southern and Northern Dynasties of Wei and Jin, Shanghai People's Publishing House, 2016.
Bai Shouyi and He Ziquan: General History of China (Volume V), Shanghai People's Publishing House, 2004.
Tian Yuqing: The Politics of Gate Valves in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Peking University Press, 2005.
(Author: Haoran Wenshi Gaosheng)
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