There is a saying that it is difficult to return, and there is a truth called the inevitability of history and even the theory of dynastic cycles.

Bao Hong was a prophet in the lower reaches of history, while Liu Bowen and Gao Gong did not have foresight, but their own political sensitivities allowed them to perceive the problems.

In fact, it is not difficult to perceive this problem at all, and the point is that all kinds of problem-solving operations cannot eliminate the problem, which also leads to the fact that although the length is different, there is still no government that can escape the cycle of dynastic cyclicalism.

From the Warring States period to the Qin Dynasty to the Western Han Dynasty, the state forcibly smashed the original clan organization (clan feudalism, etc.), atomized each person and family, and then rearranged and controlled. Under this system, the ideal social form was a scattered group of small self-sufficient homesteaders, which constituted the most basic ruling unit of the dynasty.

The state, through its subordinate bureaucrats, eventually took direct control of each small family, levied taxes, imposed servitude, and provided them with order and the necessities of life that the yeoman families could not produce on their own, such as salt, iron, etc. In this way, the control and mobilization capacity of the regime will be guaranteed to the greatest extent, and there will be no social forces outside the control of the government at the top and bottom of the dynasty.

But from the emperor to the imperial officials, they had to face the fact that it was impossible to maintain society in a state of scattered small families of yeoman farmers, because it was in direct violation of the laws of economic development. Small, subsistence farming families are doomed to low productivity, while large families that can use a lot of manpower to intensively produce on large areas of farmland are more efficient in agricultural production and thus have an advantage in the production competition.

Therefore, as long as the state does not intervene actively, scattered small farmers will naturally tend to form larger groups around the nucleus of large families through blood ties. This is the "Haoqiang" that has always given the Qin and Han governments a headache. The wealthy clans, on the other hand, had formed considerable power because they had gathered a considerable population, but this strength was outside the direct control of the imperial government.

Their powerful clans, their arbitrary distortions, their annexation of land, and their enslavement of the poor made them a dangerous force that dismantled the small peasant society and thus undermined the foundations of the empire. This is intolerable to the Empire. The existence of the Hao clan is a challenge from civil society to the direct control of the government over society, which cannot be tolerated by any official regime.

Therefore, cracking down on Haoqiang has always been a major priority of the Western Han government.

The Western Han Dynasty used cool officials to set up assassins to directly attack the lawless and powerful, and received certain results, but the most effective way to curb the development of the powerful and powerful forces was to implement the "migration tomb" system. So that the local Haoqiang can not fully develop and grow.

After the emperor of the Western Han Dynasty succeeded to the throne, he began to prepare a mausoleum for himself, and to match, in the early period of the Western Han Dynasty, "the two thousand stones, the rich and the wealthy and the wealthy and the family in the tombs" were formed in the Fengling Yi of the emperor's cemetery. With such a practice of cutting the leeks of the wealthy clan at every turn, it is trying to make the wealthy families in various places unable to fully develop and grow.

However, the general trend cannot be reversed, and with social stability and economic development, there are more and more "heroes".

The government of the Western Han Dynasty had to face the reality: the emergence of Haoqiang could not be stopped, and it could only accept its existence.

As a result, Emperor Yuan of the Han Dynasty began, and the system of migrating powerful tombs came to an end. The rulers of the Western Han Dynasty finally faced up to the reality of the blooming of wealthy clans everywhere. Emperor Yuan of the Han Dynasty later compromised and retreated to the Hao clan, although it alleviated the contradiction between the imperial court and the Hao clan, but it contributed to the development of the Hao clan.

Haoqiang's development directly brought about the above-mentioned consequences: the annexation of land, the servitude of the poor, and the disintegration of small peasant society. Due to land annexation, a large number of peasants went bankrupt and became slaves, which became an incomprehensible disease in the middle and late Western Han Dynasty.

In the end, these problems are the fundamental reasons why the contradictions in the country are irreconcilable and eventually detonate completely.

Land annexation, enslavement of the poor, disintegration of the small peasant society, and most importantly, ultimately the peasants will not be able to support themselves even if they lease land for cultivation, and what should they do if they have no food to eat? Rebel and take the land back!

It can be said that not only the current Haoqiang, but also the families of the Wei, Jin, Sui and Tang dynasties, the landlords of the Ming Dynasty, etc., are all the same thing, and the rulers have been trying to solve this problem, but they have not been able to cure this problem at all.

Even if the Sui and Tang dynasties killed the strengthened version of the powerful family through the imperial examinations, the landlord of the basic unit of the powerful family is still deep-rooted.

At the end of the Western Han Dynasty, Wang Mang's usurpation of the Han Dynasty was also the result of this contradiction that could not be resolved. This is also the most difficult problem that Wang Mang has faced since he came to power. In the face of serious social problems, the Western Han Dynasty had already tried to directly restrict Haoqiang's annexation of land, and it had no more effect except to attract Haoqiang's opposition and counterattack. To this end, Wang Mang adopted the "Wang Tian" and "private" measures of the curve.

The resistance of those whose interests are violated is to be expected. Wang Mang's dream of relying on Confucian ideals to resolve social contradictions was shattered.

Thus, the great social upheaval of the two Han Dynasty in the name of anti-recklessness began. All strata of the people, who felt that their own interests had been lost, the governors of prefectures and counties, the common people, and even the slave and maid groups rose up in all directions.

In fact, this wave is not much different from the current situation in essence, and even the local powerful forces are far above those in the late Western Han Dynasty.

How so? Or is it more than that?

The political players living in the Western Han Dynasty and the new reckless chaos are a group of poor worms in the fog of history: in their textbooks, there is no similar historical experience to learn from, so they have to use trial and error to blind. Nerds who hold righteous ideals, old aristocrats who play selfish calculations, cattle herders and other people who go with the flow have appeared on the stage to try this "Zhenlong" chess game, but they are either angry or roundabout, greedy or stupid, either they don't know how to compromise at all, or they compromise without principle, and in the end they are all eaten by jackals.

Until a cunning and ruthless, tough but compromising fox appeared, the troubled times came to an end temporarily. He is Liu Xiu, Emperor Guangwu of the Han Dynasty. In the new chaos, Liu Xiu won the approval of most carnivores with his fox-like power skills and forbearance and compromise when necessary, and finally established the Eastern Han Dynasty that "shared the world" with Haoqiang.

Therefore, although the system often says that the destiny of heaven is returned, the child of destiny, in fact, in essence, this heaven is not heaven or anything, and it can even be said that it purely refers to Haoqiang, the essential determinant of social change.

In the winter of 23 A.D., Liu Xiu, who was born in the broken royal family of Nanyang, was ordered by Liu Xuan, the first emperor, to go north single-handedly to manage the chaos in Hebei. At that time, Liu Xiu's family background was miserable, and on the way to escape, he encountered a heavy wind and rain by the Hutuo River, and he fell to Feng Yi's salary, Deng Yuying (the two are the leading figures in the "Yuntai Twenty-eight Generals"), Liu Xiu burned clothes on the stove, and barely satisfied his hunger with a little wheat rice. Thanks to the willingness of Xindu and Herong counties to accept him (Xindu is too Shou Ren Guang is also from Nanyang), he barely gained a foothold in Hebei.

Liu Xiu, who stood firm, had the opportunity to play a favorable card in his hand and persuade a group of Hebei heroes to participate in the shares: as the orthodox representative of the plenipotentiary representative of the original regime, he won the support of Geng Guo and Geng Yi of Shanggu County, and obtained the support of Yuyang Taishou Peng Pet as a fellow villager in Nanyang, so as to receive the support of the two counties of Shanggu and Yuyang, which are known as the "elite soldiers of the world"; With the identity of the clan, he deliberately handed over Liu Yang, the powerful figure of Hebei, who had more than 100,000 supporters, and married Liu Yang's niece Guo Shengtong as his wife.

Under the unanimous support of Hebei's powerful factions, Liu Xiu's group swelled rapidly, successively defeating Handan's separatist Wang Lang (another powerful group), and more than ten grassroots forces represented by Tongma, and founded the country as emperor in 25 AD, establishing the Eastern Han Dynasty. Later, he seized the Red Mei Army and the two powerful groups of Changshi and Kui Huan to the death, and hung the army to the west to conquer Guanzhong and Longxi, and the soldiers were tired and lacked food, and completely annihilated the Red Mei Army in the Battle of Kundi and Yiyang in 27 AD, and captured the Red Mei leader Fan Chong and the cattle herding baby emperor Liu Penzi who he supported.

Therefore, the so-called single-handedly going wherever and where to vote, all kinds of giving people and horses to women, in essence, is nothing more than an exchange of interests.

The reason why such Emperor Guangwu was able to revive the Eastern Han Dynasty was because of the assistance of the powerful landlords of Nanyang, where he was born, and the powerful clan forces of Hebei. This is fundamentally different from Gaozu Liu Bang and the common people who killed dogs to create the former Han Dynasty. Therefore, it is generally believed that the Eastern Han Dynasty was a powerful and powerful coalition power. Compared with the Western Han Dynasty, where the only emperor held strong power, the imperial power in the Eastern Han Dynasty was weaker, and it had the significance of joint administration with the powerful clans.

Looking back, even if it is a compromise, how can it persist for so many hundred years?

In fact, it involves the simplest and crudest mitigation of land annexation, which is to cut down a group of people and redistribute them.

The Western Han Dynasty's Xiling Tomb is essentially the same, but this is somewhat of a spectrum, the most simple and crude is that after the peasant uprising, a group of landlords were hacked to death, and a bunch of land was redistributed to let them continue to annex.

And now it has reached the stage of irreconcilable contradictions, and Emperor Ling of Han's methods seem to be sharp, but in fact, in essence, not only did not alleviate this contradiction, but promoted the stimulation of this contradiction.

Originally, after the outbreak of the Yellow Turban Uprising, it was true that a large amount of land was vacated for people to redistribute, so whether these lands were redistributed to civilians or returned to the state, it would take some time for Haoqiang to continue the operation of land annexation.

As a result, these lands did not operate like this at all, directly because of the relationship between the current government decrees, which is equivalent to directly assigning to the rebel armies in various places, which is purely an evolved version of land annexation, and the rebel armies of all walks of life are essentially a strengthened version of the super powerful with land, private soldiers, etc., and when they finish digesting their own things, it is self-evident who they will target next.