Entering ChinaWhen it comes to the former Qin Emperor Fu Jian, some people’s impression of him is probably the embarrassing impression of the rumors after the Battle of Weishui. However, before the formation of the bleak scene of the grass and trees, Fu Jian not only had the talent to look down on the world, but also had the mind to make the former enemies grateful to Dade, and was the first to put forward the concept of equality that regarded China as the same, and Li Shimin, the emperor of the Tang Dynasty who created the rule of the Tang Dynasty Zhenguan more than 200 years later, had a cross-era trend of convergence of ideas. And it is such a character who finally fell into the “sea of suffering” of his own tolerance.
The former Qin monarch was known for his benevolence and righteousness
As the third monarch of the former Qin regime, Fu Jian’s rule came from the Fangtou group gathered by his grandfather Fu Hong in the Later Zhao era, when Fu Hong called himself “the Great General, the Great Shan Yu, and the Three Qin Kings”, and actually controlled the Di tribes living in the Guandong region at that time, as well as the powerful nobles and exiles in the Guanlong region. This early “Guanlong Group” took advantage of the situation in the late Zhao Dynasty to return to the Yongliang land west of Tongguan in the chaos of the world, and also made the Fu family pay great attention to the appeasement and co-optation of the leaders of various clans and the handsomes of the displaced people from the beginning.
In 357 AD, Fu Jian, then king of the East China Sea, seized the power of the former Qin from the tyrant Fu Sheng, and his important adviser was Wang Meng, a Han strategist who talked about lice (mén) at that time.
Fu Jian often described his relationship with Wang Meng as “Liu Xuande’s encounter with Zhuge Kongming”, and even worshiped Wang Meng later as “the envoy, the governor of the six states of Kanto, the military of the six states, the general of the chariot and cavalry, and the three divisions of the opening of the palace”, and almost handed over half of the country to his jurisdiction, which shows his trust in Wang Meng. In the following ten years, Fu Jian, with the full assistance of Wang Meng, “repaired and abolished his post, taught agriculture and mulberry, compassionate the poor and poor, worshiped the gods, established a school, and succeeded the peerless”, thus making “the Qin people happy”.
In the face of the chaos of the world’s disputes at that time, Fu Jian did not repay the hatred of the past, but chose to respect his former rivals, treat them sincerely after surrendering and submitting to them, and promised him an official title.
The Xiongnu Liu Weichen (Helian Bobo’s father) had repeatedly captured the Former Qin border and rebelled. When he first surrendered to Qin, Fu Jian allowed him to enter Saitian and Guanzhong when he was poor, and even dismissed the generals who did not obey the control and attacked the Huns. Later, Liu Weichen rebelled against Qin twice, and was finally captured by the former Qin general Deng Qiang in Mugen Mountain, and Fu Jian did not resent its capriciousness after bringing it back to Chang’an, but named him the Duke of Xiayang, and let him lead his original tribe, which was quite a shadow of Zhuge Liang’s appeasement of Meng Shu, and finally let Liu Weichen’s Xiongnu return to the former Qin regime.
This practice achieved a chain reaction, and Wuhuan Dugu and Xianbei Wuyigan each led tens of thousands of people to surrender to Qin, indicating that Fu Jian’s Huairou policy at that time had been responded to by the northern nomadic tribes.
In addition to the border nomadic tribes such as the Xiongnu, who suffered from elbows and armpits, Fu Jian was also quite open-minded about long-cherished enemies with henchmen. As early as the beginning of the founding of the Former Qin Dynasty, Yao Xiang of the Qiang nationality led his Qiang army to cross the river from the east of the river to the west of the river into Guanzhong, aiming at Chang’an, intending to eliminate the former Qin regime and dominate Guanlong, and was finally destroyed by the former Qin army. After Fu Jian ascended the throne, he not only reused Yao Xiang’s old subordinates and Xue Zan as the minister of the humerus, but also promoted Yao Xiang’s younger brother Yao Chang to General Yang Wu, and let him lead the army to serve the former Qin.
Fu Jian’s promotion and reuse of the core Yao family of the Qiang nationality is undoubtedly the attraction and appeasement of the entire Qiang group, which itself has great political risks, after all, it is extremely rare for Yao Chang to have actual control of the soldiers and horses in the past dynasties, but Fu Jian not only reused, but also made it play a major role in the counterinsurgency battle, such as quelling the Longyou rebellion, “(Qiqi) The tribe first belonged to Yao Yizhong, and when they heard Yao Changzhi, they all surrendered.” Yao Chang was also appointed by Fu Jian as the Taishou of Longdong to defend the former Qin Dynasty, reflecting Fu Jian’s political courage to make good use of people. During the Battle of Weishui, Fu Jian ordered Yao Chang to be the general of Long Xiang, supervising the military of Yi and Liangzhou, which was equivalent to entrusting the entire western rear to Yao Chang.
In addition to the dedication to the appointment of Xiongnu and Qiang tribal leaders, Fu Jian’s most famous life was his full acceptance of the former Yan Murong family. Former Yan is located in the eastern part of the Kanto, and the former Qin is equally divided into the northern world, its country is prosperous, for the former Qin is an absolute enemy country that cannot coexist, Fu Jian first accepted the surrender of “such as the dragon and tiger can not be copied” Murong Chui father and son family (Murong Chui was named the champion general, Murong Bao was the crown prince Xian Ma), and after the destruction of the Yan State, the former Yan Emperor Murong Wei (wěi).As the Xinxing Marquis, his brother Chong was the Taishou of Pingyang, Hong was the long history of the North, and even the Taifu Murong Ping, who brought disaster to the country and the people, also took the matter, almost preserved the entire Qianyan clan and even entrusted him with a big responsibility, which can be said to be unique in ancient Chinese history.
In the battle of attacking the Jin Dynasty before the Battle of Weishui, the former Qin army successively subdued many local high-ranking officials of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, such as Zhou Yu (xiāo) and Zhu Xu, and they were also well paid.
In Guanzhong, Fu Jian tried his best to integrate the Qiang, and Guanzhong Han people into the Qin people with regional identification, and at the same time Lu Shuihu (the ancestor of the Northern Liangfuqu clan) on the border of Liangzhou After the elimination of the former Yan regime, “the shepherds of the prefectures and the six Yi Qushuai all surrendered to Qin, one hundred and fifty-seven counties of Fande, two million households, and nine million nine million mouths”, the former Qin obtained a huge territory and human resources in the eastern part of the country, and “Murong Wei and the concubines of Yan, princes, hundred officials and more than 40,000 households in Xianbei were in Chang’an, and 150,000 households in Guanzhong were migrated to Guandong, Wuhuan was in Fengyi and Beidi, and Ding Ling Zhai Bin was in Xin’an and Mianchi”. It has not only strengthened the jurisdiction over the people of all ethnic groups, but also further realized the mixed situation of various ethnic groups living in misplace.
Faced with the situation of the Xianbei people, Ding Ling and Wuhuan and other Donghu and northern desert tribes permeating the hinterland of Guanzhong at that time, the Di elites represented by Yangping Gongfu Rong expressed strong worries, believing that they could not be tamed after all. In the face of this worry, Fu Jian said a famous sentence that is strikingly similar to that of Li Shimin, Taizong of the later Tang Dynasty:
“I am a family and I regard Yidi as a child. Thou shalt rest thy worries, and do not carry out thy worries. ”(What Li Shimin said is: Since ancient times, China has been noble, and I love it as one.) ）
This shows that Fu Jian’s worldview is different from that of the early monarchs of the northern minority regimes, believing that he can become the “Huayi co-master” who is exactly the same as the previous Chinese emperors, and intends to use his benevolence to eclectic the people of all ethnic groups in the world and create a unified country where all ethnic groups coexist in harmony.
After Wang Meng’s death, Fu Jian always stubbornly chose to use troops in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, in essence, to seize “orthodoxy” from the hands of the Eastern Jin Dynasty regime, and then unify China.
The indulgence is not good, and it will not be able to withstand Tang Taizong
Fu Jian fully demonstrated his magnanimity and broad-mindedness in dealing with the enemies of various ethnic groups, and temporarily gained their apparent affection, thus forming a huge military force, which was full of elites of the Di, Han, Qiang, Xianbei and Xiongnu ethnic groups in the government and the opposition, and was able to mobilize nearly one million allied troops of all ethnic groups, and his national power was almost unprecedented throughout the entire period of the Northern and Southern Dynasties. Beneath the glossy surface, however, there is actually an undercurrent of this grand alliance of nationalities built up by talent.
First of all, although Fu Jian proclaimed himself the “Huayi Communist”, he did not really include the Han people, who had an absolute numerical advantage, into the ruling base. Throughout the historical data, it can be seen that, except for Wang Meng, it is extremely difficult for Han officials to enter the decision-making circle of the important ministers of the Fu family, and most of them are still mainly low-level civil officials such as Shang Shulang, Sancai Changshou and local special drivers, and their main functions are mostly executive and consultants, and it is even more difficult to find Han generals at the military level. As a result of this situation, the former Qin Dynasty still ruled on the basis of a Di population of only a few hundred thousand, but suspended above the vast majority of Han Chinese.
Prime Minister Wang Meng’s last words to Fu Jian before his death were:
“Xianbei and Xiqiang, my enemies, will eventually be troubled, and they should be gradually eliminated so that the society can be harmed.”
What is more serious than the lack of a Han ruling foundation is that Fu Jian’s wide and vertical use of Xianbei and Qiang generals and local officials is too large and lacks checks and balances, which leads to a sharp increase in the strength of Xianbei and Qiang in the army, and even a large number of Xianbei and Qiang soldiers and horses are directly handed over to Murong Chui and Yao Chang for a long timeAlthough this seems to be a way for the generals to know each other, it actually contains a huge military risk – the re-transformation of the army into private soldiers, which eventually led to the ruling structure of the former Qin army to be led by Fu Jian’s personal prestige, with a small number of elite Di generals as the core, and then dominate the vast number of local servant armies of various tribes. This is not the same as the balanced military model of the Tang Dynasty, which was “dominated by the elite cavalry of the Han family, supplemented by the cavalry and archery of the Hu people”.
Fu Jian’s tolerance for potential threats had already reached the point of indulgence, which had been evident long before Fu Jian unified the North. In the early years, after the rebellion of the Qin clan Fu You was killed, the accomplices Fu Liu and Fu Shuang were exposed, but Qin Wangjian “is a pair of mothers and brothers.” Liu, Ken’s beloved son, hides and doesn’t ask”, which eventually led to the outbreak of the rebellion of the four sons. After Fu Jian heard this, he actually had illusions about these brothers, and persuaded them:
“If you don’t levy it now, you should quit the army, and everyone will be in their place, and everything will be the same.”
It can be seen that Fu Jian is indiscriminately gracious and lacks the toughness to govern the country.
The Former Qin army under Fu Jian’s rule was only more than 100,000 in the early days, and before the Battle of Weishui, it swelled to “more than 600,000 soldiers and 270,000 cavalry”, of which the vast majority of the army was soldiers and horses from various ethnic groups other than the Di people, and its temporary patchwork and chaos can be imagined. Under such circumstances, the Di armed forces are the central nervous system on which Fu Jian depends, and they are the cornerstone that must not be missed.
It is under this premise that Fu Jian made another ridiculous mistake. Fu Jian, who was extremely confident in the Di soldiers and horses, chose to use his core military strength as the vanguard to attack the Huaihe defense line of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, and instead put a large number of Xianbei and Qiang servant troops in the rear to assist. Four years before the Battle of Weishui (379), the 60,000 soldiers and horses of the Di nationality led by Peng Chao were killed by Xie Xuan’s Beifu soldiers in Xuyi and Huaiyin. Four years later, in the Battle of Weishui, Fu Jian repeated the mistake of the past, and let the elite of the Di nationality led by Fu Rong and Liang Cheng serve as the vanguard to fight against the Eastern Jin Dynasty, and finally lost in the two battles of Luojian and Weishui, and the elite of the Di nationality was lost. At that time, Yao Chang led the elite of the Qiang tribe in the rear of the northwest, and the 30,000 Xianbei elites led by Murong Chui were also unique.
And when the down-and-out Fu Jian returned to Chang’an and wanted to regroup, he found that the situation in Guanzhong had long been rotten. In the early years, the Xianbei, Ding Ling and other tribes who migrated to Chang’an were “all over the city”, and they heard that Fu Jian was about to move, but Fu Jian was about to move because of the “variety of Zhudi” as early as two years ago, “divided into 150,000 households in Sanyuan, Jiuzhi, Wudu, Wang, and Yongdi, so that all the clans and relatives led them and scattered them in Fangzhen, such as the ancient princes”, and personally scattered their own Di households to Luoyang, Yecheng, Helong, Jicheng and other big cities in the East, so that their basic disks were completely scattered and submerged in the vast sea of oriental tribes. The Xianbei and Xiqiang people, who were waiting to be restored, rose up at any time, which also happened to respond to the prophetic song of Fu Jian’s farewell to the migration of the Di people with Zhao Cheng:
“Ade, Ade, Uncle Bolao is Qiu Sui, with a long tail and short wings and can’t fly.
The distant (氐) species of people stay fresh, once the urgency of the words of who!
In fact, the disobedience of the Xianbei and Qiang people was revealed long before the Battle of Weishui, such as “Murong Huan’s son Feng, eleven years old, Yin has the will to take revenge.” Xianbei and Ding Ling have dry air, they all lean over to make friends with them”, and Fu Jian actually laughed at this sign. Before the battle of Weishui, the courtiers did not want Fu Jian to attack the Eastern Jin Dynasty, and Murong Chui, Yao Chang and others persuaded Fu Jian to conquer the Eastern Jin Dynasty in the south.
When we look back at the anecdote of Fu Jian and his two favorite generals (who are also burials), we may be able to see the uniqueness of his character.
In the battle of Weishui, Fu Jian said to Yao Chang: “In the past, I built a business with Longxiang, and I did not try to give people lightly, so I encouraged him!” Its meaning is similar to today’s successful boss telling his subordinates: “I came from this position to the boss, come on, I’m optimistic about you!” No wonder Zuo General Dou Chong said: “The king has no jokes, and this ominous expedition is also!” At this time, Fu Jian actually had a kind of freedom and detachment that regarded his subordinates as entrepreneurial partners.
And when Fu Jian let Murong Chui go and was advised by others, Fu Jian actually replied:
“However, I have promised it, and the puppet still does not break his word, but what is the situation? If the Mandate of Heaven is abolished, it cannot be moved by the intellect. ”
At this time, Fu Jian became a Buddhist monarch who followed the will of heaven.Such a talented, well-known and multi-faceted king, but overly conceited Buddhist, although he has a broad mind and a national concept of inclusiveness, he is good for small benevolence, regardless of big plans, and he should finally be caught by people!
