Chapter 59 King Thirteen

Liu Qi had a total of fourteen sons, except for the later Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty Liu Che, the rest were named kings, and the history books collectively referred to these thirteen sons as "Jing Thirteen Kings".King Jing Shisan was born by five concubines of Emperor Jing of the Han Dynasty, so he is also called "Five Ancestors".The lives of these people are corrupt and corrupt, reflecting the dark side of a prosperous empire.In the era of autocracy, wealth and strength often meant the licentiousness of the ruling class, and autocratic power fueled the desires of the nobles.

King Jing Shisan has very different personalities. Some of the brothers are erudite and fond of antiquity, while others are brutal and cruel. The contrast in personality eventually leads them to different fates.Life is impermanent, not to mention the aristocrats in the ruling class in the autocratic era. Their misbehavior or respect for etiquette and culture are actually the products of autocratic privileges. We should clearly see that the deformed personalities of these people are actually caused by them. caused by a society in which rights are distributed unequally. Liu Fei, King of Yi in Jiangdu, was the son of Liu Qi and Cheng Ji. He was originally named the King of Runan in the second year of Emperor Jing's Yuan Dynasty (155 BC), and he was all in Cai.During the Wu-Chu Seven Kingdoms Rebellion, Liu Fei was only fifteen years old. This age is only a junior high school student who has just graduated. Father Liu Qi asked to lead the army.Liu Qi couldn't get through his son's hard work, so he finally gave his son a general seal and asked him to lead the army to fight against the Wu army. Presumably he should be one of Zhou Yafu's thirty-six generals.

The young Liu Fei stood out among other brothers because of his military exploits.Two years after the rebellion between Wu and Chu was pacified, Liu Fei was granted the title of king of Jiangdu, the old capital of Wu, Guangling, and was awarded several banners specially used by the emperor for travel.It seems that Liu Qi admires this son very much. Facts have proved that there is a difference between martial strength and martial arts. People with good martial arts are too arrogant and lack inner cultivation and self-cultivation; while people with good martial arts are very cultivated and often hide their abilities.Unfortunately, Liu Fei belongs to the former.

In the sixth year of Yuanguang (129 BC), Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, the Huns invaded Shanggu County. Liu Fei once again asked for an expedition, but Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty did not approve. After that, Liu Fei slowly began to decline.He wantonly built palaces, recruited all kinds of tyrants, was arrogant and arrogant, and showed off his force.Liu Fei tossed about for many years, sat on the throne of princes and kings for twenty-six years, and then died, and his son Liu Jian succeeded him. Although Liu Fei died, the story of their family's debauchery did not end.Liu Jian is a smart man. He already knew about Huainan King Liu An's conspiracy to rebel, so he has been secretly building weapons, just in case things in Huainan become serious and his country is annexed one day.

This kid often wears his father's general seal on his body, and often uses his father's set of emperor banners.The most contemptible thing was that Liu Jian had taken a fancy to his father, Liu Fei's favorite little wife, Nao Ji, and couldn't resist taking Nao Ji to his mourning hut at night to commit adultery before his father was buried.In addition, Liu Jian listened to the nonsense of the alchemist and raped all his sisters one by one. In fact, Liu Jian's promiscuity was very blatant when he was still the prince of Jiangdu. At that time, there was a man named Liang Fu from Handan who brought a stunning beauty and said that he would present it to Liu Fei. Jian fell in love with it, and was finally forcibly detained by him for his own enjoyment.Liang Fu was very angry about this, and exposed Liu Jian's crap to everyone, and finally angered Liu Jian and killed him.

When Liu Jian traveled to Zhangtai Palace, he let four women take a small boat, and then he ran to trample the boat overturned, watching the beauties and sisters fall into the water one after another, and he taunted the girls who fell into the water beside him, with a lewd smirk on his face .As long as the concubines in the palace made mistakes, Liu Jian would let them take off their clothes, beat drums naked, or put them on a tree, and sometimes it would take thirty days before they were dressed.In addition, Liu Jian often shaved the girls' hair, handcuffed them with iron chains, and asked these poor girls to pound rice with a lead pestle. Once they failed to pound the rice, he would beat them with a whip, and sometimes let wolves bite them. , he himself watched and laughed.What's even more disgusting is that once Liu Jian had a whim, he suddenly became interested in the mating of humans and animals, so he forced the maids to mate with rams and dogs naked.

In addition, among the thirteen kings of Jing, Liu Sheng, the King Jing of Zhongshan who was born by Jia Ji, was born in Lunu, the capital of Zhongshan, in the Hebei area.Liu Sheng is very famous, because at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, there was a warlord named Liu Bei who claimed to be his descendant. Of course, this cannot be tested. The reason is that Liu Sheng’s fertility is particularly strong, and he has many energetic sons. Shi Qian recorded that Liu Sheng had more than 120 sons and grandchildren, and Ban Gu pointed out that there were 120 sons. Liu Sheng was an alcoholic and lustful man with many wives and concubines, and he was arguing with his brother Zhao Wang Liu Pengzu all day long about this matter.He said to Liu Pengzu: "Brother, you are the king of Zhao. It is enough to let the subordinates take care of those political affairs. When you are a king, you should eat, drink, play and enjoy women all day long." When Liu Pengzu heard this, he became angry. , the younger brother not only messes with himself, but also instigates others to mess with him, so he sternly reprimanded his younger brother, saying: "The king of Zhongshan is promiscuous all day long, and he doesn't help the emperor govern the people. He doesn't look like a vassal." After reading my brother's reply, Liu Sheng smiled, disapproving.

Liu Shun, the son of Emperor Jing's concubine Wang Erjian, was enshrined in Changshan Kingdom. Wang Erman was the younger sister of Emperor Wu's mother Wang Zhi, so Liu Shun and Liu Che were very close.During Emperor Wu's reign, Liu Shun was arrogant and licentious and always violated the law, but Liu Che always protected his younger brother.Liu Shun had a son named Liu Fen with a concubine Ji whom he didn't love. Liu Fen was always neglected by his father because his mother was not favored.Liu Shun's queen herself was fertile and gave birth to the prince Liu Bo, but because Liu Shun concubine had a group of concubines, and her concubine sons Liu Ping and Liu Shang, she was jealous all the time and often joined forces with her sons to let Liu Shun hang out together, ignoring her he.

When Liu Shun was seriously ill, his concubines were always rushing to serve him, but his queen never paid any attention to him, at most she just occasionally flashed a figure in front of him to meet him.Liu Bo never helped him taste medicine, never served him.Liu Shun's family is quite strange. Liu Shun doesn't like the concubine Liu Po, and the legitimate Liu Bo doesn't like his father.Liu Shun didn't give Liu Fen any property before he died, and Liu Bo and his mother didn't care for his younger brother. Liu Yan is holding back his anger, this is too bullying, isn't it!So when the imperial court sent envoys to inspect Liu Shun's funeral, Liu Dian reported Liu Bo, not only listing all kinds of unfilial behaviors of him and his mother when their father was seriously ill, but also reporting that Liu Bo often raped women and drank for pleasure in private. , gambling, playing chess, taking care of prisoners, and doing many indecent things.

After Liu Che heard about it, he sent his minister Zhang Qian to thoroughly investigate the matter. Zhang Qian wanted to interrogate all the women Liu Bo had raped while he was in mourning, but Liu Bo refused to hand them over. The officials of the people, and let go of many court criminals. The ministers all demanded that Liu Bo's mother and son be executed, but Liu Che was closer to his younger brother after all, so he took care of his nephew and sister-in-law, and exempted them from the death penalty on the grounds that the younger sister-in-law was not of high quality and the nephew was poorly educated, and sent them to live in Fangling. .

In addition, Cheng Ji also had a dissolute son under his knees, who was enshrined in the State of Lu, that is, King Liu Yu of Lu.At the beginning, he was crowned king together with Liu De, the king of Hejian, in the second year of the Yuan Dynasty of Emperor Jing.This person is not good at talking, and he has a stuttering problem. He especially likes dogs, horses and livestock on weekdays. In addition, he especially likes to build palaces and gardens, and he is addicted to music in his later years. The above mentioned the deeds of the five princes and kings among the Thirteen Kings of Jing. If you look closely, they all have one common characteristic. They all lived arrogantly and extravagantly, and they were all obsessed with sensuality and horses and horses instead of concentrating on governing.From this we can see that with the development of social economy and the accumulation of national wealth in the Wenjing period, the corruption of the upper class of the ruling class has become very obvious.It is unimaginable to put this kind of thing on the princes and kings of the Liu Bang period.The times change the fate of people. In the era of prosperity, everyone is easily confused by the illusion of prosperity, and finally indulges himself.The extravagance and licentiousness of the princes and kings will ruin the future of the empire step by step. There are many descendants of Liu Qi, and apart from those who only know sensuality, there are also those who have made considerable contributions to the cultural cause. Let’s talk about Lu Gong Wang Liu Yu first.As mentioned above, Liu Yu himself is also a generation of arrogant and extravagant people, not a serious person, especially because he likes to build palaces, which cost a lot of money.But it was precisely because of this that he accidentally demolished the old residence of Confucius when wantonly expanding the palace. As a result, he accidentally discovered a large number of ancient scriptures in the walls of the old residence of Confucius, including "Spring and Autumn", "Book of Filial Piety" and so on.These bamboo slips later promoted the development of Confucianism during Emperor Wu's reign, and at the same time made Liu Che aware of the huge collection of books among the people, which set off an upsurge in collecting and sorting books in the government, stimulated the prosperity of social culture, and saved the pre-Qin culture. remains. Speaking of Liu Qi's sons who love Confucianism, one must mention Hejian King Liu De, who was sealed to the Hejian Kingdom in the second year of Emperor Jing's Yuan Dynasty.He is highly educated in Confucianism, erudite and fond of ancient times, and loves to collect books.As long as he gets any rare books from the people, he will keep them, find someone to copy the books carefully and send them to the original owner, and at the same time give them gold and silk, so as to encourage others to provide him with more and better books . It is precisely because Liu Debo is studious and generous that many people are willing to give him books.His family has as many ancient books as the government, and what he collects are all pre-Qin classics such as "Zhou Guan", "Shang Shu", "Book of Rites", "Lao Tzu" and "Mencius".Unlike Liu An, the king of Huainan, although Liu An also loves to collect books, his collection is not of high value, and basically all of them are monsters.In the eyes of the ancients, these books are not good books to help people understand the way of governing the country. Liu De admired Confucianism, so he usually wore the clothes of Confucian scholars, and imitated Confucian scholars in every word and deed. At that time, many Confucian scholars in Shandong (referring to the east of Xiaoshan, generally referring to the area east of Guanzhong) followed him.Liu De once presented an article on rites and music when meeting Liu Che, expounding the main points of Confucianism in front of Liu Che concisely, and the speech was very concise and brilliant. In the fifth year of Emperor Wu Yuanguang (130 BC), Liu De passed away. Lieutenant Chang Li summed up his life by saying: "He has a good character, is gentle, respectful and thrifty, is friendly with others, knows every detail, and often helps widows and widows." The name is "xian", according to the explanation of "posthumous law": "wisdom and wisdom are dedicated." It can be seen that later generations have a high evaluation of him. But looking at the Thirteen Kings, the licentious still accounted for the majority.For example, Liu Rui, the king of Jiaoxi, was also crowned king after the Wu Chu Seven Kingdoms Rebellion was put down.Liu Rui was violent, violent, and impotent. Every time he had sex with a woman, he would suffer from it for several months.Liu Rui once had a young bodyguard who liked him very much, but Liu Rui found out that this young man was having an affair with Liu Rui's concubines, which made Liu Rui very angry.He thought to himself that he was still holding fire all day long, but his wives were willing to hook up with others.The more he thought about it, the more angry he got angry from the bottom of his heart, and the evil grew out of his guts. He brutally killed the guard, the concubines who had committed adultery with him, and the children they gave birth to. Liu Rui often disobeyed the emperor's orders, and all the ministers in the central government shouted to kill him, but Liu Che couldn't bear to do it all the time, which made Liu Rui even worse and ran amok.Liu Che couldn't bear the remonstrance of his officials, and finally cut off half of the land of Jiaoxi Kingdom.Liu Rui was very dissatisfied with this, so he began to ignore the state affairs all day long, causing the warehouse to leak and property to be damaged.At the same time, Liu Rui did not allow officials to collect taxes from the people, let alone pay taxes to the central government.Liu Rui gave up on Jiaoxi Kingdom to vent his dissatisfaction with Liu Che. In addition to not governing the country well, Liu Rui is always at odds with the officials sent by the court. As long as they are the prime ministers sent by the central government or high-ranking officials with more than two thousand shi, Liu Rui will collect their faults one by one and report them. If you don't make a mistake, find a way to poison them to death.Liu Rui was very quick with his tongue, and all the officials who came to persuade him came excitedly and left in despair.Moreover, Liu Rui is also good at covering up mistakes, which puts those officials sent by the imperial court to serve in Jiaoxi into a dilemma: if they obey Liu Rui, the imperial court will deal with them; Just want to recruit them. From this point of view, Liu Rui has become a hot potato that no one dares to take over, let alone clean up.With many hobbies, he often disguised himself as a commoner and went to other counties to play, leaving his own country without authorization, and felt that he was too chic. In the third year of Emperor Wu Yuanfeng (108 BC), Liu Rui, who had been king of Jiaoxi for forty-seven years, died probably because of impotence. He had no heirs and was finally expelled from the country. Let’s talk about Zhao Wang Liu Pengzu. This person has a strong taste. Nao Ji, who was passed down twice between Liu Fei and Liu Jian’s father and son, was later acquired by Liu Pengzu. Xinhuan completely forgot about the other concubines, and devoted herself to pampering Naoji.It seems that Nao Ji is a stunning beauty, but she has been passed on three times among the brothers, uncles and nephews of the old Liu family, and it seems that her integrity is not very good. Liu Pengzu was first named King of Guangchuan in the second year of Emperor Jingyuan.After the rebellion failed by Zhao Wang Liu Sui during the Wu-Chu Rebellion, Liu Pengzu was renamed Zhao Wang.Liu Pengzu is a standard two-faced person. He looks like a dog in front of others. He speaks ficklely, is humble and flattering. He also teaches Liu Sheng not to be promiscuous. When Liu Pengzu framed others, he had to play tricks. He liked to make a fuss about laws and regulations and take advantage of loopholes in the law.As long as the imperial court sent officials to the State of Zhao, he would personally put on the black clothes worn only by the subordinates, greet the envoys from the central government, and clean the house for them himself, taking the opportunity to observe the words and deeds of the envoys; he deliberately chatted with them Taboo topics, as long as the other party’s words are slightly inappropriate, they will be recorded. When the officials sent by the government want to deal with some matters, Liu Pengzu will use these records to threaten the other party. If the other party does not submit, he will use it to report other side.Therefore, during Liu Pengzu's tenure as King Zhao for more than fifty years, there were basically no prime ministers or high-ranking officials with more than two thousand shi who served with him for more than two years. They were driven away because they were convicted, and officials were killed , light punishment, it can be seen that Liu Pengzu's methods are indeed insidious. In addition to bullying officials, Liu Pengzu often oppressed the common people.He recruited a group of gangsters under his command, and went to various markets to collect protection fees from businessmen all day long. His personal income was more than the tax the central government received in Zhao.Therefore, Liu Pengzu can be regarded as extremely rich, and he spent all his money on playing with women and rewarding his son. In addition, everyone at that time knew that King Zhao had eccentricities. He didn't love the palace and didn't believe in ghosts and gods, but he especially liked "law enforcement".He wrote to the Son of Heaven, volunteered to take over the security work of Zhao State, and then led soldiers to patrol Handan City every night to catch thieves. All the merchants who came and went knew how vicious Liu Pengzu was when he dealt with the "thieves", so he never dared to stay overnight in Handan City overnight. If the upper beam is not upright and the lower beam is crooked, Liu Pengzu can marry his brother's wife, and his own prince Liu Dan will follow him to mess around and have incest with his compatriots and sisters.In the end, Liu Dan was reported by his disciple Jiang Chong, and King Zhao changed his name to be the prince. Overview Among the thirteen kings of Jing, these princes and kings with different personalities, whether they are cruel or studious, there is no doubt that they are all enjoying privileges that ordinary people cannot obtain.Liu De was able to obtain the collection of books, Liu Yu was able to demolish the old residence of Confucius at will, Liu Rui and Liu Pengzu were able to commit crimes and indulge in extravagance...all because they belonged to the ruling class of an autocratic society. With the prosperity and development of the country and society in the Wenjing period, the material life of the ruling class became more and more superior, because a large part of the social production in the autocratic era was consumed by the ruling class.During the Wenjing period, social production increased significantly, so the government gave more and more privileges and care to the princes and kings, and the distance from the people became farther and farther.The "grassroots" atmosphere brought by the entire Han Empire from Liu Bang's period is gone, and the simplicity and frugality of Emperor Wen's era have also disappeared. The Liu family has completely transformed into a pampered and arrogant upstart. But if you think about it carefully, this is an inevitable phenomenon that the Han regime in the Central Plains developed to the middle stage.The stable and uniform development of society makes the ruling class unable to see any crisis and needs to change, which means that the empire will start to fester from the top, because the main life of the ruling class has changed from solving problems to eating, drinking and having fun.Of course, the luck of history lies in the fact that Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty later implemented the Tune Order according to Zhu Fuyan’s method, and the kingdom’s problem was completely solved. The yellow pus from this festering failed to shake the foundation of the Western Han Empire, but it was built on a comfortable social environment. If the corruption of the ruling class in China is not curbed in time in the early stage of its development, then all this will inevitably lead to the instability of the regime and the collapse of the comfortable social environment.The rise and fall of a dynasty is actually a turmoil-ease-turbulence process. Turbulence makes people chase after ease, and ease breeds future social turmoil. This is the law of historical development.