In 189 AD, Dong Zhuo li chen liu wang Liu Xie as emperor, which was the Han Xiandi Emperor. Soon, Dong Zhuo poisoned Empress He and dominated the government. Subsequently, the local masses divided themselves and stood on their own, against Dong Zhuo, and the Eastern Han Dynasty survived in name only.
In 589, Yang Jian sent Yang Guang to lead a large army to attack the Southern Chen capital Jiankang (present-day Nanjing), southern Chen fell, and the Sui Dynasty reunified the world.
After four hundred years of civil strife, there has never been such an era of chaos in the history of our country.
During the period of division in ancient China, regardless of whether there was an ethnic factor between the north and the south, the task of reunification was basically completed by the north in the end (Zhu Yuanzhang was the only exception), even if China's economic and cultural center moved south and the economic strength of the south surpassed that of the north.
In the four hundred years of the Three Kingdoms and the Two Jin Dynasties, the North had five southern expeditions, two of which were successful and three were unsuccessful.
Two successes
In 280 AD, the Western Jin Dynasty destroyed Wu.
In 589, the Sui Dynasty destroyed Southern Chen.
Three failures
In 208, Cao Cao was defeated at the Battle of Chibi
In 383, Jian Jian was defeated at the Battle of Shuishui
In 450, Tuoba Tao stopped at the Battle of Guabu (this battle Tuoba Tao actually won, but northern Wei was obviously not ready to unify the south at this time)
Success stories are always similar, failures are different.
The Battle of Shuishui and the Battle of the Western Jin Dynasty to destroy Wu are a hundred years apart, and Jian Jian had destroyed Wu zibi in the Western Jin Dynasty before attacking the Eastern Jin Dynasty, comparing the differences between the two, we should be able to more clearly understand why Jian Jian failed to establish a second "Great Qin Empire".
The land is not wide, the people are not enough to govern, and the simple heart of heaven and the great fortune of the Ming dynasty are in the ears. Patrolling in time, also writing the previous canon, if it is said, then the emperor has no provincial text?
Although Wang Meng advised Jian Jian not to march south on the grounds that "although the Jin Dynasty is secluded and ugly, Wu Yue is zheng Shuo Xiangcheng", Jian Jian still wanted to emulate the "Former Classic" and take it as his mission to "sweep through Liuhe". So what is the difference between the Southern Expedition of Jian Jian and the Destruction of Wu by the Western Jin Dynasty?
1. Former Qin and Western Jin relied on different political forces
In the struggle between the Cao clan and the Sima clan, the Sima family won the final victory through the prison of Jiaping, the suppression of the rebellion in Huainan and the killing of Cao Xian, and also won the support of the Shijia clan at that time, and the Cao clan essentially lost the support of the Shijia clan.
At the same time, Sima Shi destroyed the Shu Han in 263, and in 265, through Zen Rang, established the Jin Dynasty on behalf of Wei.
Huainan rebelled three times, and the heart was not chaotic, Cao Xi's death, and the four parties did not move.
The Sima family has a bad reputation today, but in history, there have also been times when "the world returns to the heart".
This is beyond the reach of Former Qin.
In 370 AD, Former Qin destroyed Former Yan;
In 371 AD, Former Qin destroyed Tuguhun;
In 373, Former Qin attacked Liangzhou and Yizhou, and the Eastern Jin army retreated to Badong.
In 379, Former Qin captured Xiangyang and Pengcheng.
At this point, the territory occupied by Former Qin was almost the same as that of the Western Jin Dynasty before the destruction of Wu, but at that time the Western Jin Dynasty was internally stable, while Former Qin was full of contradictions.
The inability to resolve ethnic contradictions was always the greatest internal threat to Former Qin, and Jian Jian was not unaware, but the preferential treatment policy he adopted towards all ethnic groups eventually buried his own Former Qin Empire. Former Yan's Murong Chui and Qiang's Yao Cang cut off Former Qin's wings when Qiangjian was defeated, giving Former Qin the most fatal blow.
At the same time, Jian Jian divided the Guanzhong Clan to various parts of the Kanto region in order to maintain stability in the East, but "the people of the distant migration race stayed fresh and humble, and once they were in a hurry, who should speak?" Later facts confirmed this prophecy of the secretary Waiter Zhao Zhen.
2. The preparation time for the Southern Expedition is different
Sima Shi destroyed Shu Han in 263; Dai Wei declared emperor in 265; And Yanghu (陽祜镇) xiangyang (襄阳) plotted to attack Wu in 269. That is to say, the Western Jin Dynasty prepared for ten years to destroy Wu, and we look at Yang Hu's combat strategy:
Leading Liang Yi's troops to land and water, the people of Jingchu entered the neighboring Jiangling, Pingnan and Yuzhou pointed directly to Xiakou, Xu, Yang, Qing, Yan and Moling, drumming with doubt, many sides with mistakes, with a corner of Wu, the people under the day, the situation is scattered, and all the preparations are urgent. The Bahan qi soldiers out of their emptiness, and one fall is shaken up and down.
Although at the time of the annihilation of Wu, Yang Huye was already dead, and Jia Chong became the commander, but the five-way military strategy remained unchanged, and Yang Hu could be called a strategic master of destroying Wu.
On the other hand, the battle of The Eastern Jin Dynasty was extremely poorly prepared. It should be said that the Western Jin Dynasty's destruction of Wu was a natural success, while the Southern Expedition of Jian Jian was followed by the trend after the occupation of Bashu, underestimating the strength of the Eastern Jin Dynasty.
Shi Zaijian's grand master's birth is only seen in a hundred years, "millions of people, water and land advance, second to Xiangcheng." From Xiangcheng to Chang'an, thousands of miles of flags, head and tail. "Such a large-scale army, after the partial combat defeat of the collapse of the Shuishui Front, actually disintegrated completely, and the defeat of Zhijian was simply incredible. Or we can say that it is very likely that the hundreds of thousands of troops in Jianjian are just new recruits who have been driven, have no combat effectiveness, and are the icing on the cake after winning the battle, and once the army is defeated, it will fall like a mountain and cannot be cleaned up.
In fact, Cao Cao's southern expedition is very similar to Cao Cao's defeat at Chibi, but cao cao can still reorganize heshan after his defeat, and the reason is internal stability, which Is not possessed by Cao Jian, and it is also his most fatal weakness.
3. Eastern Wu and Eastern Jin Dynasty were different in national strength
After Sun Quan, the regime of Eastern Wu was still in turmoil, and it had already become a trend of disintegration before the Western Jin Dynasty and the Southern Expedition. After the fall of the Shu Han Dynasty, the Western Jin Dynasty occupied the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, and the enemy of the downstream river was invincible to Eastern Wu, and the death of Eastern Wu was actually only a matter of time.
Unlike the Eastern Jin Dynasty, unlike the Eastern Wu, which lived in a corner of Jiangnan, the Eastern Jin Dynasty still occupied half of the country. Eastern Wu only had the Yangtze River, while the Eastern Jin Dynasty had long been in a tug-of-war with the northern regime and the land of Jianghuai, and had the favorable conditions of "guarding the river must guard Huai". At the same time, the Eastern Jin Dynasty had several northern expeditions and three occupations of Luoyang, and it can be said that the Eastern Jin Dynasty was the most powerful of all the regimes that divided Jiangdong, compared with Eastern Wu, Song Qi Liang Chen, Southern Song, Southern Ming, etc., the Eastern Jin Dynasty stood on its own in Jiangzuo.
The eastern Jin dynasty clan was powerful, but its Northern Expedition was often not in the Northern Expedition itself, but in order to control the government on this ground, otherwise, the Northern Expedition of the Eastern Jin Dynasty was actually possible to succeed.
The unification of the north and the kindness of all ethnic groups eased the ethnic contradictions after the Yongjia Rebellion, but the defeat of Zhijian in Shuishui stemmed from the fact that the contradictions between the various ethnic groups in the north were far from being eliminated. The demise of Former Qin intensified the civil strife in northern China even more than before, and Yao Cang's Later Qin, Murong Chui's Later Yan, Tuoba Jue's Northern Wei, Helian Bobo's Hu Xia, and so on continued to conquer the Central Plains, until the Northern Wei Emperor Tuoba Tao once again unified the north, temporarily ending this chaos.
In 450, when Tuoba Tao was drinking the Yangtze River at the Battle of Guabu, he realized the sharpness of ethnic contradictions within the regime, and he finally led his army to return to the north after defeating Liu Yilong's Northern Expedition.
The integration of the nationalities also had to wait until the Wei Xiaowen Emperor Tuoba Hong moved the capital to Luoyang and the Sinicization of Xianbei.