In November of the first year of the Later Tang Dynasty (930) of the Five Dynasties Period, Ma Yin, the king of Chu, who was about to reach the end of his life, made a will for the succession system, stipulating that the inheritance of the Throne of Ma Chu followed the principle of brotherhood and brotherhood, "leaving the sons behind, brothers in succession", and "placing the sword in the ancestral hall" saying: "Those who disobey my orders will be killed!" ”
Why didn't Ma Yin choose the succession method of succession from father to son, but asked his sons to carry out horizontal inheritance between brothers? Perhaps the main reason was that he was worried that the Chu state would in the future be dominated by young lords and strong subjects would seize the throne. Among the sons, Ma Yin did not choose the eldest son, Ma Xizhen, but established the second son, Ma Xisheng, as the reserve. Ma Xisheng's voice is not ability, but because his mother Yuan Defei is Ma Yin's favorite concubine, and his son is precious because of his mother.
The Machu Kingdom dominates Hunan
However, Ma Xisheng is not a suitable successor. A year before he took over, Ma Yin sentenced Ma Xisheng to internal and external military affairs, and actually took charge of the military and political power of the Chu state. Gao Jichang, who had divided Jingnan, was very jealous of Ma Chu's capable minister Gao Yu, so he came up with a counter-plan, sent spies into Changsha, and spread rumors that "Ji Chang Chu used Gao Yu and was very happy, thinking that those who died of the Ma clan would be Yu Ye." Ma Xisheng seemed to easily believe this low-level rumor, seized Gao Yu's military power, and falsely passed on Ma Yin's order to kill Gao Yu. At that time, Ma Yin was already in a state of old age and illness and could not see things, so he could not do anything about his son's behavior, but only lamented that "I am absurd, and kill my old!" ”
Mahi sound
Ma Xisheng's murder of Gao Yu was not really a counter-plot of JingNan, the five generations of chaotic strong ministers and lords abounded, and he was just a powerful minister in his father's time. After Ma Yinxue's death, Ma Xi became an heir. What is very interesting is that Ma Xisheng only inherited the positions of his father Wu'an, Jingjiang and other military envoys, but did not take the Throne of Chu, so shrinking and low-key, which shows that this person is not ignorant. In the "New History of the Five Dynasties", it is said that Ma Xisheng was "a good eater of chickens" and was envious, "cooking fifty chickens for food on a daily basis", this kind of supernatural logic rumor has no credibility.
In the third year of Changxing (932), Ma Xisheng died and was posthumously honored as the King of Hengyang by the Later Tang court, and succeeded by his brother Ma Xifan. Ma Xifan inherited all of Ma Yin's previous official titles, and was made the King of Chu in the first year of the Tang Dynasty (934), still serving the Central Plains Dynasty. In the fourth year of the Later Jin Dynasty (939), the Later Jin Dynasty Emperor Shi Jingyao followed the story of the Later Tang Dynasty and crowned Ma Xifan as the general of Tiance, "Kaifu undertook the ruyin story". Mahifan seems to have completely bypassed Ma Xisheng and directly inherited Ma Yin.
In October of the seventh year of Tianfu (936), Ma Xifan built the Tiance Mansion outside the Derun Gate in the northwest of Changsha City, "as the sixteenth floor of Tiance and Guangzheng, and the five halls of Tiance and Qinzheng". Ma Xifan was a man who was extremely fond of imperial pomp and circumstance, and the Tiance Mansion was very ornately repaired, "the prosperity of the extreme building; the sills of the household fence were decorated with gold and jade, and hundreds of thousands of pounds of dan sand were used for painting the walls; the lichens were used for spring and summer, and the wooden cotton was used in autumn and winter."
The Tiance Fu treasure of the Machu regime
The name of Ma's "Tiance Fu" comes from the old practice of Li Shimin in the early Tang Dynasty, so Ma Xifan also followed Li Shimin's method of setting up a literary museum and establishing bachelors in Tiance Mansion, and built a team with both staff and literary attendants as 18 other scribes Liao Guangtu, Xu Zhongya, Li Gao, Tuoba Chang and other scribes as tiance fu scholars. MaHifan himself was "studious and poetic", and under the impetus of him and the Tiance Province's scholarly community, there was a brief literary boom in the Machu Kingdom.
If in the Chengping era, Ma Xifan's work as a "Wenzhi" prince may be quite good, but in the midst of chaos, Ma Xifan, who "has no far-reaching strategy", has opened the decline of Ma Chu. Wu Renchen's "Spring and Autumn of the Ten Kingdoms" commented that Ma Xifan was "a scholar of reading, a scholar of heaven and strategy, and a few choices under Liang Yuan", and the prosperity of Tiance Fu literature could be compared with the literature of Liang Yuan and Jian'an in the late Han Dynasty. At the same time, however, Mahibana had the fatal weakness of "being rigid in nature, extravagant and lascivious".