After Sima Hao's Guanzhong soldiers repelled Sima Yue, they did not retreat, but stayed in Luoyang and did not want to leave. These generals were local warlords, who had been surrounded in Luoyang for a long time, and were widely criticized by public opinion, and were not welcomed, and gradually they could not stay in Luoyang. However, they were unwilling to give up the imperial power they had worked so hard to hand over to others, and wanted to coerce the Son of Heaven to order the princes, so they made a bold and reckless decision to take Sima Zhen and Sima Ying back to Chang'an together. Before leaving, just like Sima Yue's men and horses sacked Yecheng, he carried out a great raid on Luoyang City. Pity the Luoyang Palace, which has been operated by the Wei and Jin dynasties for several generations, countless treasures and goods have been looted once. Although they were both plundered by rebels, the nature and consequences of Yecheng and Luoyang were very different. In addition to being a military station, Yecheng is essentially just a county seat. The sacking of Yecheng was only a loss of some people and goods. And Luoyang is where the Jingshi is located, and it was looted, regardless of the population and wealth dozens of times that of Yecheng, the spiritual blow to the majesty of the Great Jin Dynasty alone is immeasurable.

After Sima Zhen was robbed to Chang'an, Sima Hao prepared to use Chang'an as the capital and Luoyang as the accompanying capital, known as Dongxitai. Sima Hao is now a monopoly family, in charge of the power alone, and he is holding the Son of Heaven on his own territory to order the princes, which is very happy and his ambition is greatly satisfied. Power is in hand, of course, to be used. Of course, what he cares about the most is the question of the prince.

Sima Ying, the emperor's younger brother who fled to Chang'an, lost his strength and prestige, like a lost dog. From the crusade against Sima Liang more than ten years ago, to the crusade against Sima Lun, and then to deal with Sima Jian, Sima Yi, and Sima Yue, Sima Hao and Sima Ying have always been on the same front. The reason why Sima Ying has always supported Sima Ying is entirely because Sima Ying is a close relative of the royal family and is powerful, but now that Sima Ying is gone, there is no need to be afraid of him anymore. And now Sima Ying's reputation is very bad and not good for him, so Sima Ying decided to abolish Sima Ying's title of imperial brother and set up another prince.

After Sima Zhen's descendants died, the closest blood relatives were his brothers. Sima Zhen's brothers were originally quite many. His father, Emperor Wu Sima Yan, had a total of twenty-six sons, and sadly, after all these years of attacking each other, there were only four left, including Sima Zhen. Except for Sima Ying, there are only two, and one of them is very mediocre. So there is only one candidate for the prince - that is, Sima Chi, the king of Yuzhang.

After appointing Sima Chi as the emperor's younger brother, in order to appease Sima Yue, whose strength cannot be underestimated, Sima Hao decided to invite him to assist him with him. Of course, Sima Yue would not be stupid enough to send Sima Hao to the door by himself. However, he was not willing to be satisfied with the status quo, and sent envoys to Chang'an to negotiate, promising that as long as he could send the emperor back to Luoyang, he would be willing to rule with Sima Hao.

Sima Hao thought he was powerful, but of course he didn't buy his account.

So Sima Yue launched a letter like a crusade against Sima Ying, and raised troops to recruit Sima Hao. The unauthorized hijacking of the emperor and not returning it, and the change of the capital, will undoubtedly cause resentment from the people of the world. Sima Yue's text seems to be from the perspective of justice, so there are many responders.

Sima Yue led the so-called righteous army to approach Chang'an. and used a discordant strategy to get Sima Hao to kill his own general. By the time Sima Hao understood, it was too late. He was afraid, knowing that it would be difficult to resist the "righteous army" on Sima Yue's side, so he took the initiative to sue for peace. With the outcome already clear, this time it was Sima Yue's turn not to buy it. In the end, Sima Yue invaded Chang'an and successfully brought Sima Zhen back to Luoyang. And Chang'an will inevitably be sacked.

Sima Ying and Sima Hao fled in a hurry. At this time, Sima Ying himself was still difficult to take care of, and of course he couldn't protect Sima Ying.

After the withdrawal of the Western Expeditionary Army, Sima Hao sneaked back to his Chang'an base camp. Due to the loss of Yecheng, Sima Ying had no base of her own, and it didn't take long for her to be ensnared and killed by Sima Yue. This pair of distant uncles and nephews who had been on the same front all along, and in the end, they could only fly separately when the catastrophe came. And Sima Hao, who was temporarily stable, did not escape Sima Yue's poisonous hands in the end.

Originally, if Sima Hao had been holding on to the base camp of Chang'an with peace of mind, Sima Yue would not be able to do anything to him for a while. But in terms of understanding current affairs, he is far worse than Sima Yue. When Sima Hao was in Chang'an to support the Son of Heaven, he invited Sima Yue to come to Chang'an to assist the government, but Sima Yue did not agree; Now Sima Yue, who has the Son of Heaven in Luoyang, repays his own way and invites Sima Hao to enter Luoyang to assist him with himself.

This is obviously a repetition of his old tricks, but at this time, Sima Hao seemed to be stunned by the defeat, holding illusions, and gladly responded to the call, but before he arrived in Luoyang, he was assassinated by Sima Yue.

Since then, Sima Yue has been in charge of the government alone. There was no other Sima royal family that could make waves.

From the death of Emperor Wu Sima Yan and the beginning of Sima Zhen's accession to the throne, the kings of Sima began to make trouble, and successively experienced Sima Liang, King of Runan, Sima Wei, King of Chu, Sima Lun, King of Zhao, Sima Jian, King of Qi, Sima Yi, King of Changsha, Sima Ying, King of Chengdu, Sima Hao, King of Hejian, and Sima Yue, King of the East China Sea, known as the Rebellion of the Eight Kings in history. The Rebellion of the Eight Kings is just a general term, because the Sima royal family has dozens of kings, large and small, together with some low-ranking princes, together with hundreds of princes, most of whom were directly or indirectly involved in the coup, such as the aforementioned King Sima Wei of Liang, Sima Yun, King of Huainan, Ma Xuan of Dong'an Company, and so on. It is not an exaggeration to say that it is a rebellion of the kings. It is called the Rebellion of the Eight Kings because these Eight Kings are the most active, powerful, or dominant forces in each of the troubles.

The role of the princes and kings is to defend their own dynasty, and the side effect is that it is easy to lose the tail. The division of princes and kings with the same surname is an issue that cannot be avoided by the perpetrators of each dynasty, and the practices of each dynasty are different. There are two general directions: one is to divide the seal, and the other is not to divide the seal. And it's almost a cycle, one and the other.

In the pre-Qin era, all the feudal princes were divided, and they developed to the end, so that the five tyrants and seven heroes put Zhou Tianzi in the air; In view of this, Qin Shi Huang completely abolished the division of princes after the establishment of the Qin Dynasty and changed to the county system. But what he didn't expect was that the county system was still in the exploratory stage, and people couldn't adapt to it for a while. Due to the lack of princes and kings, no one really helped the imperial court to suppress the uprisings in various places, and the Qin Dynasty perished after only two years; Liu Bang established the Han Dynasty, learned the lessons of the short life of the Qin Dynasty, and wantonly divided the princes and kings to defend the imperial court. These princes and kings did play a role in defending one side for the Liu family, but at the same time, they also formed a trend that could not be defeated, so that it caused the rebellion of the Seven Kingdoms of Wu and Chu, forcing the later Emperor Jing and Emperor Wu to go to great lengths to cut down the domain; After the establishment of Cao Wei, he saw with his own eyes the chaos in the world caused by the melee of the princes at the end of the Han Dynasty, so he decided to strengthen the centralization of power. This is the same way of thinking as the Qin Dynasty, and in the end it is also the same ending as the Qin Dynasty. Cao Pi's descendants were powerless in the face of the hegemony of Sima Yi's father and son, and only existed for more than forty years.

Sima Yan may have summed up the lessons of previous generations, compared the two, and found that the advantages of separating the princes with the same surname outweigh the disadvantages, after all, his own family is his own family after all. So the Sima family was sealed, but the rights of the princes and kings were somewhat restrained compared to the Han Dynasty. The princes and kings enjoyed the taxes of the fiefdom in proportion, and could also have their own armies, but the size of the armies would be limited, from large to small countries, divided into three classes: the large countries placed the upper, middle, and lower armies, a total of 5,000 people; The sub-kingdom placed two armies, three thousand men; A small country has an army, a thousand people. Moreover, the fiefs of each prince and king are not fixed, and the court can change the title according to the merits and demerits of each prince and king. This is obviously a lesson learned from the rebellion of the Seven Kingdoms of the Han Dynasty, restricting the princes and kings from consolidating their power.

The intentions were good, but the results were very different. The reason why Sima Yan dared to set up this stupid son as the prince was that he felt that the Sima family had a large number of people, and everyone was of one mind, and they could jointly protect the great Jin dynasty. But in fact, not to mention the distant clans, even their own sons are all working separately and have their own hearts. No one really wants to protect this stupid brother. Sima Yan was still able to deter all the princes and kings during his reign, and after his death, no one took his stupid son seriously. The princes and kings are secretly expanding their power, and they have long exceeded the size of their own armies. For their own interests, the princes and kings are fighting for their own interests, under the banner of morality, measuring each other's strength, ganging up, fighting for life and death, and destroying a good and decent Dajin country to a precarious situation.

People who don't know about the Jin family will feel that there are too many Sima kings and it is difficult to distinguish them. If you segregate these eight kings according to their generations and blood relatives, it will be much clearer.

In terms of seniority: Sima Liang, King of Runan, and Sima Lun, King of Zhao, have the highest seniority, and are the uncles of Emperor Wu Sima Yan; Sima Hao, the king of Hejian, and Sima Yue, the king of the East China Sea, were the brothers of Emperor Wu; Sima Wei, King of Chu, Sima Jian, King of Qi, Sima Yi, King of Changsha, and Sima Ying, King of Chengdu, are the sons and nephews of Emperor Wu.

According to the blood kinship with the royal family, if the four generations of Sima Yi - Sima Zhao - Sima Yan - Sima Zhen are the central axis, Sima Wei, King of Chu, Sima Yi, King of Changsha, and Sima Ying, King of Chengdu, are the sons of Sima Yan, that is, close relatives of the royal family; Sima Jian, the king of Qi, is the nephew of Sima Yan and the grandson of Sima Zhao; Sima Liang, the king of Runan, and Sima Lun, the king of Zhao, were the sons of Sima Yi; Sima Hao, the king of Hejian, and Sima Yue, the king of the East China Sea, were the most estranged and were the nephews of Sima Yi.

In addition to generations and blood relatives, there are also differences between the eight kings in terms of loyalty, treachery, good and evil, and the degree of chaos, and they cannot be generalized. In order of the severity of the nature: the most serious chaos is Sima Lun, the king of Zhao. No matter what, the other seven kings are still nominally loyal to Sima Zhen as the monarch, and he directly usurped the throne and became the emperor, which is really a great rebellion and a great crime; Sima Yue, the king of the East China Sea, launched the largest mutiny, although he took Sima Zhen back to Luoyang from Chang'an under the banner of justice, but the damage caused was very large, and he also introduced Xianbei soldiers, and as the last minister, he did not have the heart to assist, but there were traces of disobedience, and later he was suspected of poisoning Sima Zhen. Later, when the Huns besieged Luoyang, they led a heavy army to leave the emperor at that time and go to defend Xuchang, so that the imperial court was isolated and helpless, and the city was finally broken. In fact, he was the last driving force behind the destruction of the Jin family, so he was ranked second; Sima Hao, the king of Hejian, as a distant clan, is very restless, and has been actively planning and actively participating in many large-scale melees, and there is also a hijacking of the emperor to move the capital, which can be ranked third; Sima Ying, the king of Chengdu, launched several large-scale mutins. As a prince, he did not enter the court, and he was far away in Yecheng to exercise power and dictatorship, and let hundreds of officials run back and forth to play to him. The Huns were enabled to participate in the battle of the princes, and when they confronted the royal division, they did not consider the safety of Sima Zhen, and detained Sima Zhen in Yecheng, which was personally conquered by the emperor, should be ranked fourth; If time goes by, even if he does not follow in Sima Lun's footsteps and usurp the throne directly, he is likely to do the same thing as his great-grandfather Sima Yi did with Cao Wei, and even he may not be the crown prince himself, but he actually took the initiative to initiate fewer mutinies, so he ranked fifth; Sima Wei, the king of Chu, was authoritarian and domineering, at the mercy of Empress Jia, and killed Sima Liang and Wei Qian two auxiliary ministers, who were of a bad nature and ranked sixth; Sima Yi, the king of Changsha, also participated in many mutinies, but he did not seem to have any traces of disobedience, and ranked seventh; Finally, there is Sima Liang, the king of Runan. Although he is suspected of abusing power, he is an auxiliary minister appointed by the first emperor, and he really has no second heart for the imperial court, even if many samurai break into the door, he is still not afraid of the shadow of the attitude, and he has never taken the initiative to send troops to attack anyone from beginning to end. The slaughter was truly deplorable, so it was the least chaotic.