A brief story about Chapter 7: Since Sima Lun grasped the power of the Western Jin Dynasty, Li Xiong, the son of Li Te, rebelled against Shu and established the Cheng Han Dynasty, while Sima Lun was busy usurping power and usurping the throne without restrictions.

In this story, after Sima Lun usurped the throne and became emperor, he indiscriminately conferred official titles and reused Sun Xiu, a son of the Han family, so that the government was chaotic. In fact, Sima Lun, who was promoted from the noble landlord class to the aristocratic landlord class, did not know the threat of the aristocratic landlord class and the noble landlord class to the imperial power, especially his own improper position, and naturally feared in his heart, in order to weaken the power of the aristocratic landlord class and the noble landlord class, a large number of officials and knights were also a no-brainer, but this method can only be to drink water to quench thirst, kill chickens and take eggs, so many high-ranking officials must need Houlu to feed, and there are too many officials, resulting in many politics, It seriously affected the efficiency of the imperial court, and Sima Lun's actions could only bring the Western Jin Dynasty into the quagmire of political disorder. Although Sima Lun reuses Sun Xiu, who was born in a poor family, Sun Xiu not only has no political talent, but will only use his power to accumulate wealth, and in the face of the strength of the family and the royal family, a child of a poor family is unable to deal with it at all, so a series of actions after Sima Lun usurped the throne will only anger the powerful family and the royal family, and the prelude to the chaos in the world is about to begin.

In the great unified dynasty of China's feudal society, it was not common to usurp the throne as the emperor as the imperial family, but in small dynasties, such things often happened. This also shows that in the unified feudal dynasty, the ruling class is relatively stable, and often the emergence of small dynasties is caused by the change of the ruling class, so in the general context, the ruling class is not stable, how can these small dynasties have a stable ruling class.

In fact, in the past dynasties of China's feudal society, only the period of the Sixteen Kingdoms and the period of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms appeared in the situation of a large number of small courts, but in the two periods when the royal family and clan sought power and usurped the throne frequently, only the Sixteen Kingdoms period was the most, and the period of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, although the feudal towns were divided and the heroes rose together, but the rulers of each small dynasty basically maintained a inheritance relationship between father and son or brother and brother. So let's talk about why during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, although the world was divided, there were few cases of clan usurpation.

Since the Tang Dynasty general Zhu Wen usurped the throne and established the Later Liang, the feudal towns formed in the middle and late Tang Dynasty saw the fall of the Tang Dynasty, and they also supported troops to stand on their own, forming a situation of five dynasties and ten kingdoms. At this time, the central dynasty could only control the Yellow River Valley, and in nearly 50 years, the Central Plains region appeared in turn after the Later Liang, Later Tang, Later Jin, Later Han, and later five dynasties, each dynasty survived for an average of about ten years.

In all parts of the country, there were ten secession local regimes: Former Shu, Later Shu, Southern Wu, Southern Tang, Wu Yue, Fujian, Ma Chu, Southern Han, Northern Han, and Nanping (Jingping). Note that the various regimes alternate, which means that these separatist regimes attack each other frequently, and they are extremely unstable internally, but even if they are internally unstable, there is basically no such thing as a clan seizing power.

This is because the period of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms appeared after the Sui Dynasty, when the ruling class of the feudal dynasty had become the landlord class of the Shu people. Even if it is a secessionist regime, most of the officials appointed by it are selected through the imperial examination, because there is an examination as a standard for becoming an official, and there is no official who can build a family that dominates the court, and at this time, about 500 years have passed since the Western Jin Dynasty, and the rulers of these separatist regimes have also seen the evil consequences of delegating power to the clan. Therefore, no matter how frequent the conquests were, no matter how much the court was striking, the rulers were very cautious about the appointment of the clan. Moreover, because the imperial examination does not distinguish between origin and family rank, since the opening of the imperial examination, everyone has read the books of sages and sages in order to enter the ranks, and has reached the point of never getting tired of it, so that the idea of loyalty to the monarch and patriotism advocated by Confucianism has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.

The rulers of the feudal dynasty have deeply realized how important it is to pass the imperial examination and reuse the Hanmen Shu clan to the eternal stability of their dynasty, so the imperial examination system continued to the end of China's feudal dynasty. Of course, the rulers of the five dynasties and ten countries also recognized the benefits of the imperial examination, so they spared no effort to open the imperial examination, and the rulers of some local regimes were deeply influenced by Confucianism, so that in some places, the secession regime directly adopted the small dynasty of the Central Plains as orthodoxy. Especially after Zhao Kuangyin replaced Hou Zhou, when he began to conquer these local regimes, some of them seized the regime, and even surrendered the whole country, and were willing to bow down and be vassals, so that Zhao Kuangyin only took more than ten years to reunify the world.

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As for why there is such a chaotic situation in history, and why are there frequent cases of royal family members usurping the throne in the sixteen countries? I would also like to share my views here.

From the Shang Dynasty to the Three Kingdoms, although it is said that the aristocratic landlord class is the ruling class of the feudal dynasty, from Qin Xiaogong to Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, the rulers of the Central Plains Dynasty are rarely mediocre, and even after Qin Shi Huang unified the world, he no longer divided the clan as the king, and during the Chu-Han War, Liu Bang was the prince and king under Xiang Yu, after Liu Bang established the Western Han Dynasty, he only saw the harm of the princes and kings with different surnames, but he never expected that the princes and kings with the same surname also threatened the imperial power, and the ensuing rebellion of the Seven Kingdoms of Wu and Chu was the action of the royal family to usurp power, but was soon defeated by the wise Emperor Jing of the Han Dynasty, so in the period after Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, the aristocratic landlord class was feared by the rulers, and has been in the process of being constantly weakened, especially after the Eastern Han Dynasty, relatives, eunuchs, scholars, the separation of powers, maintained the smooth operation of the entire Eastern Han Dynasty, and the aristocratic landlord class was suppressed by the rulers of the previous dynasties after Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, in fact, it has existed in name only, which is why in the dynasty where the aristocratic landlord class is the ruling class, There was basically no usurpation of the throne by royal relatives.

The next period of the Three Kingdoms is a period of transition from the aristocratic landlord class to the noble landlord class, the power of the aristocratic landlord class has been weakened, and the rulers of the Three Kingdoms are either reusing the Hanmen Shu clan or reusing the family family, and there is no possibility of the royal family usurping power.

After the return of the Three Kingdoms to the Jin Dynasty, the ruling class completely became the landlord class of the Shi clan, but the landlord class of the Shi clan as the ruling class had its own inherent shortcomings, that is, the maintenance of the family power by the family was much higher than the maintenance of the entire feudal unified dynasty. And after the family also gained a certain amount of power and prestige, it must become a great threat to the feudal rulers. Even this threat has surpassed the threat to imperial power from the aristocratic landlord class.

Similarly, Sima Yan, as the founder of the Western Jin Dynasty, inevitably recognized the reliability of the royal family, so he re-strengthened the power of the aristocratic landlord class. Because as the founder of the Great Unification Dynasty, Liu Bang, the founding emperor of the Western Han Dynasty, had wantonly divided the royal family as kings, and these powerful princes and kings exterminated the Lu family, which seriously threatened the imperial power, and maintained the Liu imperial lineage. And Liu Xiu, the founding emperor of the Eastern Han Dynasty, who was born in the royal family, also raised troops to destroy the new dynasty after the Western Han Dynasty was usurped by Wang Mang, continuing the rule of the Han Dynasty.

However, Sima Yan failed to see that the descendants after Liu Bang were quite talented and capable, and they succeeded in curbing the expansion and strengthening of the aristocratic landlord class. On the other hand, he himself set up a mentally handicapped prince, I don't know if Sima Yan saw the rebellion of the Seven Kingdoms of Wu and Chu, whether he knew that the strength of the Lu family in the early Han Dynasty was completely weaker than that of the Western Jin Dynasty, and whether he knew the gap between his mentally handicapped son and Emperor Jing of the Han Dynasty, we don't know, history has become inevitable.

Sima Yan's short-sightedness made the two ruling classes within the Western Jin Dynasty exist at the same time, and at the same time, in the Western Jin Dynasty to the north, there were frequent national problems that had accumulated for thousands of years, that is to say, the aristocratic landlord class and the scholar landlord class in the Western Jin Dynasty were like fire and water, and the local nomads and settled peoples were full of contradictions, and the ruler was a mentally handicapped, so it seems that the Western Jin Dynasty was not short-lived, which is a strange thing.

It is precisely because there are two ruling classes within the Western Jin Dynasty, so when the nomads establish a separatist regime in the northern land, they must choose a ruling class as the pillar of their own power, because the secession regime created by the nomads needs to face a complex struggle environment, and they have to entrust the royal family and clan to make the imperial regime permanent in order to make the imperial regime permanent in the country, but in fact, once the hostile forces outside the country are weakened, coupled with the lack of ability or qualifications of the ruler, These powerful royal clansmen, relying on their pure bloodlines and great achievements, naturally seek power and usurp the throne and become the rulers of the separatist regime, so during the period of the Sixteen Kingdoms, the usurpation of the royal family abounds, especially in several countries in the early period of the Sixteen Kingdoms, the usurpation of the clan has become the norm, and in the later period of the Sixteen Kingdoms, this situation began to decrease, which shows that the nomads began to accept the etiquette system and culture of the Central Plains people, and the rulers also began to pay attention to the containment of the royal family.

In the unified feudal dynasty, as a royal family and usurped the throne as the emperor, I thought about it and thought about it, only Tang Taizong Li Shimin and Ming Chengzu Zhu Di. The two of them were able to usurp the throne successfully, entirely because in the pioneering period of the feudal dynasty, it was often necessary for the royal clan to lead the troops to fight and charge into battle, which made some royal clansmen hold great power, and Li Shimin and Zhu Di belonged to this situation, plus the ability and prestige of the rulers at that time were far inferior to the two, and it was natural for the two to seek power and usurp the throne as vassal kings. Therefore, in the feudal dynasty of great unification, only in the early stage of the dynasty can there be a situation of clan usurpation, in fact, the Qing Dynasty's Dolgon also has the ability to ascend the throne and call the emperor, but for various reasons he did not do so, but also after his death, he was respected by the Shunzhi Emperor as the emperor of sincerity and righteousness, and the temple name is Qingchengzong.

As a member of the royal family, Sima Lun usurped the throne and became emperor, but his ability and talent were far inferior to Li Shimin and Zhu Di, and the problems he faced were far more difficult than the two, and Sima Lun's defeat was just around the corner.