A brief story about Chapter 10: Sima Yue, a distant relative of the weak royal family, was dissatisfied with Sima Hao and Sima Ying's equal division of power, so he took advantage of the discord between the two and united with Sima Ying to defeat Sima Ying, but was defeated by Sima Ying, Sima Yue fled back to the fiefdom, and once again united his younger brother and his subordinate ministers, colluded with the Xianbei, Qianren and other nomadic peoples, and attacked the powerful Sima Ying again, as a result, Sima Ying was defeated by the Xianbei cavalry, so he had to flee to Sima Hao for refuge, and put back the Xiongnu proton Liu Yuan, trying to rely on the Xiongnu power and make a comeback. Sima Yue took the opportunity to attack Sima Hao again.

This story illustrates that the desire of the vassal kings who are also royal relatives in the face of imperial power is not divided into blood, Sima Yue was born in the far branch of the royal family, even if the emperor has no children, the ministers elect the rulers of later generations, and it is not his turn to be the emperor, in the face of the struggle for the right to rule, the court is in chaos, Sima Yue, as a royal clan, although the blood is estranged, but also a member of the Sima family, so he took the opportunity of Sima Hao and Sima Ying's discord to unite Sima Hao and crusade against Sima Ying, when he defeated Sima Ying with the help of Xianbei forces, Naturally, he aimed the finger at Sima Hao.

It can be seen that Sima Yue's army is the continuation of the infighting of the aristocratic landlord class in the Western Jin Dynasty, and there is nothing to say, I think the focus of this story is that the powerful Sima Ying was defeated by the weak Sima Yue. Through the records in the history books, I guess that Sima Ying has at least more than 100,000 troops, and Sima Yue and Xianbei cavalry must be far less numerous than Sima Ying's soldiers in terms of numbers, at least the two armies should be evenly matched, but why Sima Ying was so defeated, I will say my own opinion here.

Sima Yue is a distant relative of the royal family and the grandson of Sima Yi's younger brother, so his rank in the princes and kings divided by Sima Yan is relatively low, but Wang Jun of Youzhou Thorn History has a good relationship with Sima Yue's younger brother Sima Teng, and Sima Ying knows that Wang Jun is not his own person, so he sent someone to replace Wang Jun as the Thorn History of Youzhou, Youzhou is today's Beijing, backed by Liaoning, in the Western Jin Dynasty, Liaoning belongs to the activity area of the nomadic Xianbei tribe, and the Xianbei tribe closest to Youzhou is called Duanbu, In order to maintain his position in the history of Youzhou Assassin, Wang Jun responded to Sima Yue's army and invited Xianbei Duan to send troops to help.

The coalition army led by Sima Yue was actually a group of rabble, but it defeated the powerful Sima Ying, and the main role was played by the cavalry of the Xianbei Duan, many people will think that Sima Ying will also have cavalry, why was it defeated by the cavalry of the Xianbei Duan, so let's talk about the difference between them.

When it comes to cavalry in history, we have to mention one riding tool, which is the stirrup. Many people will disagree, they will say that there were stirrups when the Three Kingdoms were there, many scenes in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms were fought on horses, and it was normal to have stirrups in the Western Jin Dynasty, and you would be very wrong, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms was written in the Ming Dynasty, and many of the scenes in it were actually designed by the author through some scenes in the Ming Dynasty, and the Romance of the Three Kingdoms is not a true history, and many of the stories written in it are popular and familiar to everyone, but this is not real history, In the book, there are often scenes of generals fighting on horseback, but it is difficult to see such a situation in the history of the Three Kingdoms.

In fact, the appearance of stirrups is much later than we imagined, at present in the murals of the tombs of the late Western Han Dynasty, the image of stirrups can be seen, but on the murals, there is no physical object, and because the mural is a plan, it is impossible to see whether it is a pair of stirrups, later, archaeologists in the early tombs of the Western Jin Dynasty, excavated a single stirrup, so, now the most mainstream view is that in the Three Kingdoms period should only be popular single stirrup, which was used by the cavalry soldiers at that time for the convenience of getting on the horse, And it is very likely to be wooden, because it is a single stirrup, there is no way for the cavalry to maintain balance when fighting on the horse, and it is a wooden stirrup, which is easy to damage, so it should be very difficult to say that the generals of the Three Kingdoms period, when fighting on horses, should be very difficult, and even say that riding horses is just for marching, and when fighting, they still dismount and fight again, which is not as expressive as written in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

The time when the stirrup appeared will not be later than the end of the Western Han Dynasty, and judging from the unearthed objects of the stirrups, many experts and scholars speculate that the earliest stirrups were made of wood, so it is difficult to find the real thing in the tomb. The stirrups unearthed from the tomb of Feng Sufu, the prime minister of the Northern Yan, are made of wood and copper, so they can be preserved to this day. Because of the wooden nature of one side, it was difficult for the generals of the Three Kingdoms period to fight on horseback, and even if they could fight each other, there was no way to fight for hundreds of rounds, at most a few rounds, and the superiority was suddenly revealed.

Then, that is to say, the cavalry of the Western Jin Dynasty is very likely to be equipped with only a single stirrup, because it is a single stirrup, the cavalry fights on the horse, which is actually very unstable, and very dangerous, if the cavalry charges on the horse, it is very likely that it will not enter the enemy formation, and he will fall from the horse because he cannot maintain his balance, even if he rushes into the enemy formation, it is very difficult to fight, so the cavalry combat power of the Western Jin Dynasty at that time was not strong.

At present, the world's earliest double stirrups were unearthed in the Sixteen Kingdoms period of the Northern Yan Prime Minister Feng Sufu tomb, I speculate that the double stirrups are very likely to exist in the Western Jin Dynasty, or only exist in the nomads, to the end of the Sixteen Kingdoms, there are two stirrups, then obviously, the Sixteen Kingdoms period is the period when the two stirrups appeared, with the two stirrups, the cavalry sat firmly on the horses, and the battle was naturally free, and the danger factor was very low, the appearance of the double stirrups was a qualitative leap in the history of cold weapons. The period of the Sixteen Kingdoms is precisely the stage when the nomads entered the Central Plains, so the history of the Sixteen Kingdoms period is very important.

Feng Sufu is the younger brother of Feng Ba, the founding emperor of the Northern Yan, they are all Han people, but they have long been generals in the Western Yan and Houyan regimes created by the Xianbei people, and belong to the Xianbei Han people, from which I infer that the double stirrups are likely to be invented by the Xianbei people, so when Sima Ying's army of more than 100,000 people was rushed to pieces by the cavalry of the Xianbei Duanbu, I guess it is very likely that the cavalry of the Xianbei Duanbu has been equipped with two stirrups, because with the double stirrups, Sima Ying's army can only look at the Xianbei warriors on the horses as steady as Mount Tai, he had to flee in all directions, so with the help of the cavalry of the Xianbei Duanbu, Sima Yue defeated Sima Ying and Sima Hao in succession, and became the final winner of the Eight Kings Rebellion.

It is precisely because of the two stirrups that the Xianbei people can replace the Xiongnu who enslaved them back then and dominate the northern grasslands. Because of the migratory nature of the nomads, the nomads of the north

Two stirrups should have been used in mutual migration, so when the nomads went south in large numbers, the cavalry was very powerful, recall that many of the countries in the Sixteen Kingdoms were established by the Xianbei people, or had a direct relationship with the Xianbei people. For example, Beiyan, Hu Xia. Moreover, in the early period of the Sixteen Kingdoms, the Later Zhao who unified the Central Plains was a country built by the Qiang people, and its place of life was also in North China, so the cavalry of the Qiang people should also use double stirrups.

There is no record of the inventor of the stirrup, and the current mainstream view is that the northern nomads created it, originally just for the convenience of getting on the horse, I guess it is likely that the Xiongnu were the first to use the stirrup, which is why the Xiongnu were able to dominate the grassland. Speaking of stirrups, we might as well talk about the origin of stirrups,

The origin of the stirrup, now there are two theories, one is invented by the nomads, the other is the Han people in order to fight the nomads and invented, referring to the known unearthed cultural relics and excavated ancient tombs, my personal idea is that the possibility of the invention of the nomads is relatively large, because the earliest reason for the appearance of the stirrup is to make it easy to get on the horse, and the people of the nomads began to practice riding horses from a young age, in order to make it easy for the teenager to turn over on the horse, so the stirrup came into being. For the Han people, people who learn to ride horses are basically adults, in order to resist the invasion of nomads to learn to ride horses, so the knowledge of horse riding is limited, and it is unlikely that the stirrup can be invented, which is also my guess, and the fact depends on the unearthed cultural relics in the future.

In the Warring States period earlier than the Western Han Dynasty, King Wuling of Zhao carried out the reform of Hufu cavalry and archery in Zhao by learning the characteristics of nomads, but the cavalry at that time was mainly based on reconnaissance and mobility, and the two armies faced each other, and more relied on chariots as assault weapons, and the cavalry at that time needed to dismount and act as infantry combat. Therefore, during the Warring States period, it was impossible for stirrups to appear. At the end of the Qin Dynasty, during the Chu-Han War, there should be no stirrups, as the king of the Han Dynasty, Liu Bang, the history books recorded such a thing, that is, when he was defeated by Xiang Yu, he fled by car, because his son and daughter were in the car, resulting in the weight of the car was too large, and it was difficult to run fast, Liu Bang threw his children out of the carriage, and the driver Xiahou Ying carried Liu Bang's children back into the car, which shows that Liu Bang did not run away on horseback when he fled for his life, which fully shows that there was no stirrup at that time, if there was, running away on horseback was much faster than running away by car. In the Western Han Dynasty, because of repeated wars and trade with the Xiongnu, only stirrups were introduced to the Central Plains, and it was normal to appear on the murals of tombs at the end of the Western Han Dynasty.

I've always wondered how long it took to go from a single stirrup to a double stirrup, because when someone uses one stirrup to ride on a horse, when other people see it, can't they think of hanging another stirrup on the other side, wouldn't it be safer to ride? Perhaps the thinking of the ancients is really not as active as our modern people, especially the ancestors of the Han nation were imprisoned by feudal doctrines, and the consciousness of innovation and accepting new things could not keep up with the sinister living environment of the nomads. When the nomadic warriors rode on horses and galloped on the land of the Central Plains, the army of the Western Jin Dynasty, which was dominated by infantry. It can only rely on the water network in the Jiangnan region to block the iron horses of the nomads. This may also be another reason for the emergence of the North-South confrontation.

As Sima Yue relied on the Xianbei Duanbu cavalry to defeat the powerful imperial brother Sima Ying, the tribes of the various nomadic tribes in the north also saw that the army of the Western Jin Dynasty was powerless in the face of their cavalry, and naturally had the courage to start the journey of independent statehood, so Sima Yue's move was to lure the wolf into the house, although he relied on the power held by the Xianbei cavalry, but in the end he also died in front of the cavalry.