This work is a contribution to the column of the Museum of History, representing only the personal views of the author; this work is not a rigorous historical academic research, for reference only; unauthorized, prohibited second transmission, violators will be investigated.
This article is written by Jinfan Ranger
With Sima Yue's victory, the Rebellion of the Eight Kings finally came to an end. Many people were confused by this incident and jokingly called it "Sima Da Sima "Sima Da Sima ". But in fact, the so-called "Rebellion of the Eight Kings" involved not only eight clan kings, but only the eight clan kings recorded that had once controlled the central power, so the Book of Jin combined them in one chapter. If they studied carefully, some of them took the initiative to provoke chaos, and some of them were only passively involved, and in addition to the Kaizong King, foreign relatives and families were also involved, so they could not be simply regarded as an infighting in the clan room.
The first stage of the Rebellion of the Eight Kings was due to the fact that after Sima Yan's death, Yang Jun wanted to take full control of the position of auxiliary chancellor, so he took the initiative to provoke a fight with Sima Liang. During this period, Empress Jia Nanfeng, who was also a foreign relative but was suppressed by Yang Jun, united with the power of the clan to solve Yang Jun, and then used Sima Wei, the king of Chu, to kill Sima Liang, the king of Runan, and finally took sima Wei to collect him, successfully completing the counter-killing and controlling the supreme power.
[1] The first stage of the Rebellion of the Eight Kings
At this stage, the political struggle was mainly centered on the central power, and the army involved was mainly a forbidden army, which did not have an excessive impact on the localities.
The second stage of the Rebellion of the Eight Kings was due to the gradual adulthood of the crown prince Sima Suo, who began to have the intention of encroaching on imperial power. At this time, Jia Nanfeng, who was acting as the emperor, felt threatened, so he first solved Sima Song, causing a shock in the clan: Sima Song's death meant that the Jin Dynasty lost its most legitimate heir, and all powerful emperors began to covet the throne, causing greater turmoil.
[2] The second stage of the Rebellion of the Eight Kings
First of all, Sima Lun, the King of Zhao, executed Jia Nanfeng by liquidating Sima Song's death, and then he could not wait to claim the title of emperor, triggering a crusade against Sima Lun by the emperors led by Sima Ran, the king of Qi, and Sima Ying, the king of Chengdu. Sima Yan, the king of Hejian, originally sided with Sima Lun, and when he saw that Sima Ran and the others were in a huge position, he immediately jumped to the side of Sima Ran and others and became one of the three kings who opposed Sima Lun.
Under the crusade of the Three Kings, Sima Lun was forced to abdicate, and the power of the dynasty was transferred to Sima Ran. However, due to the sensitivity of Sima Ran's father Sima You the Prince of Qi in the position of heir, Sima Ran's power did not convince many of the emperors, the most prominent of which were Sima Ying and Sima Yuan among the three kings.
In order to find a reason for the crusade against Sima Ran, Sima Yuan planned to sell Sima Yan and solve Sima Ran in the name of revenge after Sima Ran solved Sima Yuan. However, no one expected that Sima Qi had completed the counter-killing, so a situation was formed in which Sima Qi and Sima Ying jointly attacked Sima Qi.
Sima Qi was very powerful, and the two-front battle did not fall behind, but Sima Yue, the king of the East China Sea, suddenly jumped back and sold Sima Qi to Sima Qi's general Zhang Fang, resulting in Sima Qi being burned to death by a live cannon, and then Sima Ying took control of the imperial government and became the heir of the Jin Dynasty.
Sima Yue did not get any benefits, but instead let Sima Ying pick peaches, and he was very dissatisfied, so he took Sima Zheng, the emperor of Jinhui, to attack Sima Ying. As a result, he was defeated in the Battle of Dangyin, causing Sima Zheng to also fall into the hands of Sima Ying.
Sima Yue's younger brother Sima Teng, together with Wang Jun, the governor of Youzhou, launched an attack on Sima Ying's base, Yicheng, and defeated Sima Ying, causing Sima Ying and Sima Zheng to fall into the hands of Zhang Fang, and the situation evolved into an east-west confrontation between Sima Yue and Sima Yue, and finally Sima Yue defeated Sima Yue and became the final winner.
Historians have made many analyses of the causes of the outbreak of the Eight Kings Rebellion, and the three most mainstream views are, one of which was put forward by Mr. Lu Simian and Mr. Chen Yinke, which was caused by the sub-feudal system and the dismissal of the county soldiers; Mr. Wang Zhongji and Mr. Tang Changru believed that the system of the emperor leaving the town implemented by Sima Yan caused the emperors to be too powerful and difficult to return; Mr. Zhu Zongbin and Mr. Zhang Jinlong pointed out that because Sima Yan made mistakes in the choice of heirs, Sima Zheng could not control power, resulting in political turmoil.
So, from another point of view, is it that without these mistakes, the Rebellion of the Eight Kings would not have occurred? The answer is no.
First of all, let's talk about the sub-feudal system and the strike of the county soldiers. This view has been proven to be less credible, for a simple example, the emperor Fu Zhong, who had caused him great trouble in the previous Sima Yong crusade, was the requisitioned Prefecture and County Soldiers of Liangzhou and Qin Prefecture, which shows that the Prefecture and County Soldiers have not been abolished. As for the sub-feudal system, it also confirms that this system does not give the kings a lot of power: the vast majority of the feudal kings have only one county, cannot control local power, cannot have more than 5,000 troops, and all military-related actions also need to be approved by the central government.
Then the king of Zong went out of town. Some of the kings who were divided were governed by feudal states, some held high-ranking official positions in the central government, and some served as local governors, and the king who served as the governor was Zong Wang. This phenomenon, which has gradually begun since the end of the Wei Dynasty, is to make the more powerful military forces in the hands of the clan and avoid the military power falling into the hands of the powerful ministers, so as to provide sufficient guarantees for the imperial power; at the same time, the feudal state of the emperor is not enough to support a strong army, and the army of the clan kings out of the town still needs to be provided by the central government, and the central government also controls the dispatch of the army, so the central government's control over the local area is still relatively firm.
On the contrary, if Emperor Zong did not leave the town, the phenomenon of Cao Wei's dominance of the emperor might be repeated: the Western Jin Dynasty established this system in view of the lessons of Cao Wei's fall, in order to prevent the imperial power from falling. In fact, throughout Sima Yan's life, he was in a power struggle with the clan noble forces represented by Jia Chong, and once the local governors were handed over to the control of the family or military leaders, the emperors' control over the local army would undoubtedly be greatly reduced.
To put it bluntly, the resources and discourse power controlled by the family are extremely threatening to the imperial power, but for its own rule, the imperial power has to rely on the help of the family, so it can only rely on the power of the king and foreign relatives to balance the family. Compared with the family, the power of the clan and foreign relatives is relatively easy to control, and compared with the threat of the power of the clan lords, the rebellion of the clan is a risk acceptable to the imperial power, which is the original intention of establishing the system of the clan king out of town.
On the one hand, the Sima family quickly controlled the military and political power of the central and local governments, ensuring political stability during the Zen Dynasty; on the other hand, it did lead to the emergence of a relatively independent development of the power of the king in the ruling clique, which the Sima family had to bear.
To put it bluntly, two pieces of, you have to choose a chocolate flavor to eat.
The problem of clans did not begin to be resolved until the rise of a large number of small and medium-sized landlords in the Song Dynasty, when the family was weak enough to threaten the imperial power, and the Song Dynasty began to keep the clans in captivity, weakening the strength of the clan kings. In the Ming Dynasty, the emperors raised the kings as pigs so as not to threaten the imperial power.
Specific analysis of specific situations, the problems faced by different time points are different, and they cannot be generalized.
Finally, and most crucially, the question is: Was Sima Yan wrong in his choice of heir?
It was indeed wrong, but Sima Yan had no choice.
Sima Zheng did not have the ability to become emperor, and the imperial power had to be handed over to Jia Nanfeng and other emperors, which was constantly used by ambitious people and became a powerful weapon in political struggles. Sima Lun even directly usurped the throne and sat in the position of Sima Zheng, and Sima Zheng did not have effective means to counteract, and could only rely on the strength of The Emperor to sit back in the position of emperor again.
So suppose that if Sima You ascended to the throne, would all this change?
Obviously, it would not be, because an important reason why Sima Yan did not choose Sima You in the first place was that Sima You was deeply entangled with the shi family forces, and as Jia Chong's son-in-law, he received Jia Chong's support on the issue of heirs. Once Sima You came to power, the power of the family would be stronger, thus repulsing the imperial power, which Sima Yan did not want to see.
Taking a step back, even if Sima You can ascend to the throne, can Sima Yan's sons have a good ending? After a hundred years, will Sima You pass the throne to his son Sima Ran, or will Sima Yan's sons?
The answer is self-evident, Sima Yan's sons will become a great threat to Sima You, will they be forced to rebel under the pressure of being liquidated, leading to a more ferocious "Rebellion of the Eight Kings"?
It was not that Sima You could not become emperor, but he could only queue up for the heir as Sima Shi's son and Sima Zhao's second son. In other words, he would either become the King of Jin after Sima Shi's death, thus becoming the Emperor of the Jin Dynasty, or he would become the new heir if Sima Yan lost the right to inherit after Sima Zhao's death.
If you do not follow this order, you will break the rules of the primogeniture system, and the primogeniture system is an important guarantee for the smooth succession of the feudal dynasty: because this is the most reliable quantitative criterion. The so-called "sage" really can't find a set of effective evaluation criteria, and it may also lead to multiple people meeting the requirements, which will cause more fierce competition. According to the primogeniture system, everyone queuing up in order is the most effective means to reduce disputes.
If Sima Yan had abandoned Sima Zheng and directly made Sima You emperor, what would Sima Yan's other younger brothers think? What would Sima Yan's sons think? The emperor himself broke the rules, and others obviously did not really recognize the legitimacy of the new emperor according to the rules, but thought: He can, why can't I?
Therefore, although he knew that Sima Zheng's ability was not good, Sima Yan could only choose him hard, and if he wanted to blame, he could only blame himself, and the eldest son gave birth to such a person, which was also unique in history.
Although Sima Zheng was chosen as emperor, at least with the assistance of Jia Nanfeng, the internal stability of the Jin Dynasty in the first decade proved that as long as there were no major problems in the central government, the feudal system of the Western Jin Dynasty was still effective, and the clan contradictions would not break out soon.
However, Sima Zheng's imperial power was carried out by Jia Nanfeng, and when the crown prince Sima Song gradually grew up and threatened Jia Nanfeng, the central government inevitably caused turmoil, which led to the beginning of the Rebellion of the Eight Kings.
The "Rebellion of the Eight Kings" was not caused by the so-called "unjustification of the country" and "born of injustice", but in the context of the gradual weakening of imperial power since the collapse of the Eastern Han Dynasty, whether it was Cao Wei or the Western Jin Dynasty, the emperor took many measures to maintain imperial power. These measures all had their rightful effect in the context of the times, but many years later, the system they established finally reversed itself, which was not a problem of the system, but a more macroscopic problem: the self-denial of history.
Throughout the ages, history has been constantly self-denying. The fact that a system can be effective and achieve its goals in the early stages of its establishment does not mean that the system can be implemented for a long time. In other words, no system can remain unchanged forever. Years later, when the system has drawbacks, the ruler will learn the lessons of his predecessors and reform the system, thus creating a new system, and then the new ruler will reform the new system again. History is constantly moving forward in this constant reform, and everyone involved in it is also a footprint in the progress of history, and many of them have no ready-made experience to refer to, so they can only formulate corresponding systems in light of the actual situation.
Historical figures have their historical limitations, and from the perspective of today's people, we can naturally find out many problems, but the reason why we can become today's people is precisely because many ancient people have promoted the development of history with their own experiences and lessons, so that there is a more superior and advanced system for today's people.
This will also be shown in our future stories.
Resources
[1] Fang Xuanling (Tang) et al. Book of Jin
[2] Sima Guang (Song) · Zizhi Tongjian
[3] Wang Zhongji, History of the Southern and Northern Dynasties of the Wei and Jin Dynasties
[4] Chen Yinke, Lectures on the History of the Southern and Northern Dynasties of the Wei and Jin Dynasties
[5] Zhu Zongbin, "Temptation of the Causes of the Outbreak of the "Rebellion of the Eight Kings""
[6] Lin Xiaosheng, "The Theory of the Causes of the Rebellion of the Eight Kings" And "Explanations and Doubts"
[7] Zhang Jinlong, "Examination of Several Questions Concerning the Causes of the Outbreak of the "Rebellion of the Eight Kings""
[8] Zhao Kunsheng, Liu Yuling, Guan Jun, "Politics at the End of the Jin Dynasty and the Rebellion of the Eight Kings"
[9] Zhou Yi, Gao Yuan, "New Interpretation of the Causes of the Rebellion of the Eight Kings" in the Western Jin Dynasty