The Western Jin Dynasty

The Western Jin Dynasty

The Western Jin Dynasty (266-316) was a unified dynasty after the Three Kingdoms period in Chinese history, with Luoyang as its capital. From the founding of Emperor Wu of Jin Dynasty, it was passed on to the four emperors. In the 51st year of guozuo, it was called Jin Dynasty together with the later Eastern Jin Dynasty. The Western Jin Dynasty was a short period of unification in the long split period of the Wei, Jin, southern and Northern Dynasties, which was called "a flash in the pan".

At the end of the Three Kingdoms period, Sima Yi, Sima Shi and Sima Zhao were all powerful officials of Cao Wei. After the death of Sima Zhao, his son Sima Yan replaced Cao Wei in 265 to establish a new regime, changed the name of the state to Jin, and established the capital of Luoyang. In the year of Jin 280, Sun Wu was defeated, ending the separation of the Three Kingdoms and reunifying China. According to modern scholars, in the first year of Yongkang (300 AD), China's population has returned to 35 million, forming a "prosperous Taikang era"..

The external situation in the Western Jin Dynasty was that a large number of nomadic tribes moved in. The foreigners in Guanzhong and Liangzhou accounted for half of the local population. These foreigners were taken as slaves by the aristocratic families. After the extermination of Wu, the whole country of the Western Jin Dynasty was immersed in the atmosphere of luxury and corruption. Emperor Wu of Jin Dynasty was born into a noble family. After a long period of development, his family had formed a huge group of powerful people. His political style was dark, corrupt and perverted the law, and bribery was popular, which laid the foundation for the subjugation of the Western Jin Dynasty and the Sixteen Kingdoms of Wuhu. After the rebellion of the eight kings, the vitality of the Western Jin Dynasty was greatly damaged, and all the nationalities who moved in took the opportunity to raise their troops, resulting in the chaos of the five kingdoms. In 313, Emperor Jin moved his capital to Chang'an. In 316, Chang'an was lost and the Western Jin Dynasty was destroyed. The following year, Sima Rui, the royal family, became emperor in Jiankang, which was called the Eastern Jin Dynasty in history.

In the Western Jin Dynasty, it was famous for its high-temperature firing celadon, which imitated the casting bronzes. The Western Jin Dynasty also had a high level of education. Wang Shuhe, a famous doctor, wrote the pulse classic, Pei Xiu, a geographer, compiled the map of Yugong region, and Chen Shou, a famous historical work, the annals of the Three Kingdoms.

history

The rise of Sima

In the later period of Cao Wei, politics became increasingly corrupt and class contradictions became more and more acute. At the same time, the opposition and struggle between the two groups led by Cao Shuang and Sima Yi appeared in the ruling class. In the first year of Jiaping (249 AD), Cao Shuang and others accompanied Cao Fang out of the south of Luoyang to pay a visit to the mausoleum of Wei and Ming Dynasties. Sima Yi took the opportunity to launch a coup in Luoyang and seized the power of the imperial court, which is known as the "coup of Gaoping mausoleum".

In the third year of Jiaping (251 AD), Sima Yi died and his son Sima Shi continued to take power. In the sixth year of Jiaping (254 AD), Sima Shi abolished Cao Fang and established Cao Mao as emperor. The next year, Sima Shi died and his younger brother Sima Zhao was in power. In the second year of Ganlu (257), Zhuge, the great general of Zhengdong, rebelled. Sima Zhao led the emperor to the East and surrounded Shouchun. The next year, Shouchun was broken and Zhuge's birthday was killed. After several rounds of struggle to kill Wang Ling, Li Feng, Xia Hou Xuan, Wu Qiu Jian and Zhuge birthday, the internal and external forces loyal to Cao Wei were largely cut off.

In the fifth year of Ganlu (260 AD), Cao Mao was unwilling to be a puppet, so he led hundreds of servants to attack Sima Zhao and was killed. Sima Zhao established Cao Huan as emperor, and the regime was completely controlled by Sima.

In 263 A.D., Sima Zhao launched the war of exterminating Shu Han, and sent Zhong Hui, Deng AI and Zhuge Xu to attack Hanzhong in three ways: East, middle and West. In the Shu Han Dynasty, Jiang Wei was the leader of the Resistance Army, which was in a stalemate with the Wei army. Deng AI then led his elite troops to Yinping, captured Fucheng and marched into Chengdu. After hearing the news, Jiang Wei led his troops to surrender to Zhonghui. After the mutiny failed, he committed suicide and died.

In December of the second year of Xianxi reign (February 8, 266), Cao Huan Chan, the emperor of the Wei Dynasty, was located in simayan. He was Emperor Wu of the Jin Dynasty. When Cao Wei perished, the Western Jin Dynasty began.

The Jin Dynasty itself inherited the separatist regime from the late Eastern Han Dynasty to the Cao Wei Dynasty, and the influence of the local aristocratic families was far more than that of the emperors. For example, Sima himself was a powerful official of the aristocratic family. He controlled the court of the Wei Dynasty and usurped the Wei Dynasty. So after Sima Yan succeeded in usurping Wei, in order to avoid other families and powerful officials from following suit, he enfeoffed the members of each clan as kings, and used them as a local force to safeguard the royal family. At the same time, it issued the "land occupation order" to limit the area and quantity of land owned by aristocratic families.

Unify the world

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The battle of Jin against Wu

In 269 A.D., Sima Yan sent Yanghu to guard Jingzhou, an important military town. After Yanghu was stationed in Jingzhou, he reduced taxes and stabilized people's hearts. Jingzhou was the closest to Shicheng, an important town in the east Wu Dynasty. The Jin army adopted the strategy of "winning by virtue of goodness" and extended great benefits to the Wu army. Because of SUN Hao's extravagance, soldiers in the army often couldn't get military pay. Yanghu ordered people to send wine and meat to the Wu army, and destroyed the Wu army. From time to time, Wu Jun came to surrender, and Yang Hu ordered that Wu Jun should come to welcome him and go to see him off. The hearts of the generals of the Soochow Dynasty have gradually moved towards the Jin army.

In Xiangyang, Sima Yan ordered Yanghu to exert influence on the Wu army with benevolence, while training the water army and building warships in Yizhou on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. After 10 years of full preparation, in 279 ad, the Jin army began to launch a war against Wu. 200000 Jin troops went straight to the east of Wu, along the river to the East, and directly attacked the capital of Wu army. The eastern Wu garrison nailed countless sharp iron cones with a length of more than ten feet in Wuxia, and blocked the river with thick iron chains at the narrow part of the river. The Jin army first put bamboo rafts into the Yangtze River. On the boat, the Jin army carried innumerable long flames watered with sesame oil to light the torch. The raging fire could break the iron chain. In this way, the defense facilities of Dongwu Changjiang River were eliminated one by one.

When the Jin army attacked the eastern Wu, in order to attract the Wu troops guarding Jianye, Anton General Wang Hun led the Jin army all the way to Jianye from north to south. SUN Hao ordered the prime minister Zhang Ti to lead the main force to cross the river north to meet Wang Hun. As a result, the Jin army along the east side of the river seized Jianye. SUN Hao came out and Wu perished.

Because Emperor Wu of Jin Dynasty was well prepared, had the right time and had the right strategy, he won all the victories in the war against Wu in just four months. From then on, all the counties, prefectures and counties of Soochow were formally incorporated into the territory of Jin. The tripartite confrontation is over. Sima Yan unified the whole country and ended 80 years of division.

The rule of Taikang

After the annihilation of Wu, Sima Yan took Luoyang as the center and took a series of measures throughout the country to make the people get rid of the hardships of war and chaos and set the country on the road of development.

The imperial court took measures to promote agricultural production by encouraging reclamation, building water conservancy, expanding labor force and strengthening supervision. In 267 ad, Emperor Wu of Jin Dynasty issued an edict to encourage agricultural production. According to historical records, in the fifth year of Taishi (A.D. 270), Wang Hong, the prefect of Jijun County, conscientiously performed the imperial court's will, sympathized with the people, provided good guidance, and supervised the reclamation of more than 5000 hectares. At that time, there was famine in other counties, but there was no shortage in Jijun. Therefore, Sima Yan issued a special edict to praise and bestow a thousand Dendrobium.

Later, Sima Yan also ordered the construction of new canals, Fushou canals and youpi canals to irrigate 1500 hectares of good farmland. In the first year of Taikang, Sima Yan promulgated the household mode and carried out the occupation of farmland law and the class farmland law. The peasants under the system of occupying land and studying land belong to individual small-scale peasants. The grain they produce and obtain belongs to themselves except for paying land rent. The implementation of this system has greatly improved the enthusiasm of farmers in production.

Through the implementation of the above measures, agricultural production developed rapidly, and a prosperous scene appeared. History books say that "when the time is right, there is nothing in the world, taxes are average, and people are happy with their jobs." Reflecting the situation of economic and social development in Heluo area at that time, it is described that "cattle and horses were wild, surplus grain was planted in Mu, traveling in thatched cottages, and people met like relatives. Those who are short of it will get their money from the road. " So there is a saying that "there is no poor man in the world". "At the right time, there is nothing in the world, taxes are average, and people are happy with their work."

With the development of economy, the population is also growing rapidly. According to the records of Geography in the book of Jin, in the first year of Taikang (A.D. 280), there were "2.459.8840 households and 16.1638.63 households" in China. In 282, the third year after the promulgation of the land occupation and land study laws, there were "3.77 million households" in China. According to modern scholars' conjecture, the population has recovered to 35 million from the Western Jin Dynasty to the first year of Yongkang (300 AD).

In order to maintain political stability and safeguard the interests of the ruling class, Sima Yan also announced the system of official occupation of land and shade people as tenants and food and clothing customers in the first year of Taikang (AD 280). According to the law, officials rank first to ninth, and each takes up the land with high or low rank. The first grade can occupy 50 hectares of land, and each lower grade will decrease by 5 hectares. And each with the level of product, shade its relatives, shade its customers, many and nine families, less three generations. Clansmen, state guests, sages and descendants of scholars also had such privileges. The privilege extended to the descendants of scholars, which was the expansion of the scope of aristocratic landlords in Qin and Han Dynasties, especially the extension of Confucianism.

These measures in the Western Jin Dynasty undoubtedly gave more preferential treatment to the aristocratic landlords in politics and economy, and also helped to balance the interests of the ruling class. However, the privilege of the gentry landlords was too great, which contributed to their corruption in life and politics, and affected the interests of the common landlords and farmers.

While emphasizing the development of production, Sima Yan opposed luxury and practiced frugality. On one occasion, Cheng Ju, a medical officer of Taiyuan hospital, presented Sima Yan with a "pheasant head fur" with dazzling color and full of pheasant hair. Sima Yan brought this "pheasant head fur" to the court hall, which was appreciated by the civil and military officials of the Manchu Dynasty. The court officials were amazed when they saw it. Unexpectedly, Emperor Wu of Jin Dynasty burned the pheasant head fur to ashes with a torch. Sima Yan believed that this kind of strange clothes violated his ban on extravagance and waste, so he wanted to burn them in public. He also issued an edict saying that anyone who dares to violate this provision in the future must be convicted.

But it didn't last long, and the royal family of the Western Jin Dynasty gradually decayed. Aristocratic families are greedy

Chinese PinYin : Xi Jin