A brief story about the first chapter: Yang Jun relied on his status as a member of his family and relatives of the emperor to tamper with the deathbed edict of Emperor Sima Yan of the Jin Dynasty, so that he was so powerful that he was like fire and water with Empress Jia, who was also from a big family and greedy for power.

About this story, on the surface, it seems that a powerful minister wants to take advantage of the emperor's critical illness to take over the power of the court, but in fact, it reflects the desire and covetousness of the scholar landlord class for imperial power in the Western Jin Dynasty, including the later struggle between Empress Jia and Yang Jun.

As we all know, since the Shang Dynasty changed the law, our country has entered a feudal society, and in feudal society, the ruling class is naturally the feudal landlord class. In fact, the feudal landlord class is divided into three stages and rules our country in turn, these three stages are the aristocratic landlord class, the noble landlord class and the Shu landlord class.

The dynasty founded by the aristocratic landlord class ruled the entire country mainly on the basis of royal clans

, showing the emperor's division of his brothers and nephews.

The dynasty founded by the noble landlord class ruled the entire country mainly on the basis of the big clans

, which shows that most of the officials in the court and the central government are people of the same race.

The dynasty created by the landlord class of the Shu nationality ruled the entire country mainly on the basis of the children of the Han family, which was manifested in passing the imperial examination and becoming an official.

The advantages and disadvantages of these three classes are clear at a glance, the aristocratic landlord class is all based on their origins, and they are connected with the emperor's blood, which naturally threatens the imperial power, and the scholar landlord class relies on the prestige and strength of the family, once the prestige of a certain family exceeds that of the emperor, the imperial power will naturally fall next to it, and the landlord class of the Shu nationality will completely enter the official in the hands of the poor people themselves, as long as they go to participate in the imperial examination, they can be admitted to the official office, and they can go home to continue to work hard, and there will be no more blood and family differences, and the threat to the imperial power is also the least.

Seeing this, do you think that the landlord class of the scholar clan is a bit like the aristocratic landlord class, and a bit like the landlord class of the Shu clan, the family was originally a child of a poor family, because of the prestige and became an official, and when the prestige of the family reached the extreme, the status was comparable to that of the royal family, and it also threatened the imperial power.

In fact, the whole history is the bloody and tearful journey for which the people of all generations have sought democracy, equality, and civilized social system, and have struggled for it without ceasing; today, socialist China under the leadership of the Communist Party of China has finally realized the long-cherished wish of our ancestors for thousands of years. And the landlord class of the scholars in the feudal society has become a major turning point and an episode in the history of the entire feudal society.

And the Western Jin Dynasty is precisely the great unified dynasty created by the Shi landlord class, so since it was created by the Shi landlord class, why is there a family not only does not support the dynasty created by the same Shi landlord class? On the contrary, it will blindly infighting, and eventually lead to confrontation and war throughout the Northern and Southern Dynasties?

With these questions, we use the story of the Sixteen Kingdoms, starting from the Shang Dynasty reform, to talk about the evolution and rise and fall of the entire feudal dynasty in Chinese history.

From the Shang Dynasty to the rise of the Qin State, the annexation of the Six Kingdoms, until the dispute between Chu and Han, and then to the prosperity of the early Han Dynasty, this period of history is mainly by the aristocratic landlord class as the ruling class, and the aristocratic landlord class mainly relies on the blood relationship with the imperial power to establish the rule of the entire dynasty, that is to say, in the dynasty, the emperor's close relatives and cronies, hereditary officials, to control the overall situation of the entire country.

Because the aristocratic landlord class relies on blood, it is impossible for the rulers to let the common people (children of the Han family) enter the ruling class, especially in the early days when the aristocratic landlord class controls the power, and even relies on the severe law to govern the country and maintain its own rule, which is why the Qin State rules the country with Legalist thought, but because the rulers of the Qin Dynasty failed to keep pace with the times, after the unification of the six kingdoms in time, adjusted the severe decrees, and finally let the Qin Dynasty II die, Destroyed in a peasant uprising that could not bear the harsh punishment.

The Western Han Dynasty, which replaced the Qin Dynasty, learned the lessons of the Qin Dynasty's demise, and although it corrected the severe law in time, the Western Han aristocratic landlord class still chose Taoism as the ruling ideology in order to prevent the common people from entering the ruling class. The Taoist doctrine is to advocate the rule of inaction, and the people under its rule are naturally based on the way of heaven, as long as there is food to eat, they will never take risks, so that in the early years of the Western Han Dynasty, no matter how poor the court was, the country was still running smoothly, coupled with the eloquent Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty and Emperor Jing of the Han Dynasty, the Western Han Dynasty even entered the glorious stage of the rule of Wenjing. It seems to me that this was also the heyday of the aristocratic landlord class.

But things must be reversed, with the strength of the country, a number of individuals in the aristocratic landlord class are also strong, and due to the passage of time, the blood relationship will naturally appear gradually estranged from the problem, because the blood is connected and estranged, the internal contradictions of the ruling class emerge, the aristocratic landlord class naturally began to covet the imperial power, so in the period of Emperor Jing of the Han Dynasty, the rebellion of the Seven Kingdoms of Wu and Chu finally broke out, although it was quickly quelled, but in the face of the nobles who prospered with the strength of the country, seriously threatened the imperial power, and the people were because of the idea of inaction, Indifferent to the rebellion of the nobility, in the face of such a situation, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, who succeeded to the throne, learned from the pain, and immediately issued a decree to weaken the power of the nobles, and adopted Confucianism instead of Taoism to become the ruling ideology of the dynasty after the Western Han Dynasty. The power of the aristocratic landlord class was gradually weakened.

Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty deposed the hundred schools of thought, and Confucianism was naturally more suitable for the feudal ruling class, because the benevolence it advocated was applicable to all strata of the dynasty, and the ideological control of the people was more in line with the standards required by the feudal emperor. Because the king must also have benevolence to the people, and the people must have benevolence to the king, the standard for the selection of officials in the dynasty is also benevolence.

So how do you show that a ruler has benevolence? Of course, it depends on whether a person is filial piety and honesty, only if you are filial piety and honesty, then you can reflect your benevolence, and you can naturally be an official and a minister, enter the ruling class to maintain the imperial power, and the ruler naively thinks that such a person to maintain the imperial power will naturally be loyal to the monarch and patriotic, and there will be no more aristocratic chaos.

Then the question arises, how to evaluate the standards of filial piety and integrity? The rulers of the Western Han Dynasty adopted a simple and easy method, that is, from the counties and counties across the country to find a high reputation, both filial piety and honest people to become officials, referred to as filial piety, these filial piety and honesty people are also called scholars, because of the heart of benevolence, for the feudal dynasty must do their best, and there is no blood relationship with the royal family, will not directly threaten the imperial power, naturally very favored and relied on by the authorities, gradually entered the ruling class, became the cornerstone of the Han Dynasty's rule.

However, with the development of time, because of the high prestige and the introduction of people into the court is naturally rare, far from enough for the people in power, then the people in power are bound to let the people who have been filial piety and honesty to recommend the prestige, have a benevolent heart, and then entrust the reuse, when these people enter the ruling class of the dynasty, for the people who recommended themselves back then, they must be grateful to Dade, so when they have the opportunity to recommend others to become officials, more people choose to know the grace of the newspaper, Continue to recommend and promote your benefactors, benefactors' nephews, and your own students. After a person enters the official office, his family, nephews, and students have the opportunity to enter the official office, so that in the Eastern Han Dynasty, there are frequent generations of a family serving as a senior official in the court, and the local county officials are only produced from a few families, so that no matter the Eastern Han Dynasty up to the court, down to the locality, all by several families to grasp the power, and gradually form a family family, also known as the Shi family.

Of course, the emergence of any thing must have a germination, a heyday, and a decline period, and the emergence of the noble landlord class will inevitably go through these three stages.

Let's go back and talk about the aristocratic landlord class, which began with the division of the princes of the slave society dynasty, with the princely states of the late Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States period gradually became bigger, and let the Qin Dynasty that unified the six countries see the threat of the aristocratic landlord class relying on blood to the imperial power, Qin Shi Huang did not have the royal family, because there was no support from the nobles, which eventually led to the rapid demise of the Qin Dynasty, the emerging Western Han Dynasty learned the lessons of the Qin Dynasty, and from the beginning of the founding of the country, a large number of noble landlords were divided, because there was a strong emperor, The dynasty entered a strong stage, but the threat of the aristocratic landlord class to the imperial power was innate, and the emperors of later generations spared no effort to weaken it, so in the Eastern Han Dynasty, the control of the aristocratic landlord class over the dynasty was very weak.

After Emperor Wu of the Western Han Dynasty, although the landlord class of the scholar clan began to form, the strength was still very weak, that is to say, after Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, the aristocratic landlord class of the Western Han Dynasty began to decline, and the landlord class of the scholar clan was in infancy, so it was necessary to have a ruling class that was both like a nobleman and a scholar, as a transition, then a relative came into being, a relative is the mother's family of the emperor's wife, is he a nobleman? Definitely not, but he is related to the emperor, is he a scholar? Naturally, it is not, but the relatives who have entered the ruling class must also be filial and honest. As for the matter of filial piety, you don't have to think about whether he is cheating or not, anyway, the ruler believes that he can become an official and enter the ruling class.

With the development of time, in the late Western Han Dynasty, the relatives became the ruling class of the entire central dynasty, and Wang Mang became naturally logical in the Han Dynasty, but because the relatives were neither the aristocratic landlord class nor the scholar landlord class, at best it was a deformity of the scholar landlord class, and early death was inevitable. Emperor Guangwu of the Han Dynasty, as a representative of the aristocratic landlord class, re-became the ruling class and successfully restored the Han family, known as the Eastern Han Dynasty in history, but the authorities of the Eastern Han Dynasty clearly realized that although they were born in the aristocratic landlord class, the aristocratic landlord class had a great threat to the imperial power, and it could never be reused, only weakened, and the relatives were less threatening than others, and they could be used selectively, only those officials who were born in filial piety and the eunuchs who were half male and half female around them could be reused. This made the cornerstone of the rule of the Eastern Han Dynasty appear three groups of people: relatives, eunuchs, and scholars.