Chapter 5 4. Qiu Chi sent a letter to Chen Bozhi

Having said that, we need to go back and take a closer look at Emperor Wu of Liang Xiao Yan.When he debuted in his twenties, some people said that he "became a servant within thirty years, and it will be very expensive to come out (after thirty years old)." His friend Wang Rong even commented on him: "To rule the world, you must be here." people.” None of these praises were wrong.In fact, it is biased to evaluate Xiao Yan with either praise or derogation, but it is no exaggeration to say that Xiao Yan is the most critical figure in the history of the Southern Dynasties, and is also extremely unique among the twenty-seven emperors of the Southern Dynasties. one.

In the 170 years of the Southern Dynasty, 80 years had passed by the time Liang Wudi Xiao Yan came to the throne, exactly half of it.If we say that the early Liu Song used to be full of vitality because of Liu Yu's martial arts, and because of Yuan Jia's literary rule, he was once full of vigor, but at this time it can only be said to be depressed and downcast.In the thirty-nine years from Xiao Yan's birth to the establishment of the Liang Dynasty, there were eleven emperors, and the rulers changed every three years and every five years. The long Tang Yu Rebellion.At the imperial court, the rituals are broken and the music is broken, and the human relationship is ruined. It is rare for the people to have a day of peace, and people's minds change.Such a serious worry, reflected on the big chessboard of the world, becomes the increasingly cramped land and the increasingly "wretched" regime.

The stall in front of Xiao Yan was not easy to clean up. Xiao Yan was very smart. Although he took advantage of the internal problems in the Southern Qi Dynasty to seize power, he was well versed in the principle of "It is easy to win the world, but difficult to rule the world".On the day of receiving Zen, as soon as he got into the emperor's chariot, he said a sincere and earnest sentence to Fan Yun, an important minister and attendant who accompanied him: "Today, the so-called tenacious horses are riding six horses." Yun reacted very quickly, and immediately replied: "I also hope that Your Majesty will be more careful every day."

"Riding the six horses like a rotten rope" comes from "Shangshu·Song of the Five Sons".Taikang, the king of Xia, lost his country. His five younger brothers followed Dayu's teachings and wrote five precept poems. "Six Horses", admonishing rulers to always have a sense of crisis, be aware of their own shortcomings, and their attitude towards power should be one of reverence rather than indulgence.Xiao Yan would use the words of a subjugated nobleman as the opening speech of his career in power. Apart from being unexpected, people are also amazed at his incomparably sober mind.

Fan Yun, who is deeply respected by Xiao Yan, was born in the Han family, thirteen years older than him, and was an official in the same dynasty during the Southern Qi Dynasty, and they were all among the "Eight Friends of Jingling". They were both Xiao Ziliang's guest and even neighbors. The relationship is very close.After Xiao Yan eliminated Xiao Baojuan, he asked him to be his chief minister to consult with the army, strategize, and later he was promoted to servant. When Xiao Yan became Queen of Liang, she accepted a concubine named Yu from Xiao Baojuan, and loved her very much, which gradually hindered her from handling political affairs.Fan Yun privately remonstrated: "Back then Han Gaozu was a greedy and lustful person. When he entered the pass to pacify the Qin Dynasty, he did not take any money. Unfortunately for women, this is why Fan Zeng thinks he has great ambitions. Now that the Duke of Ming has just pacified the world, the people in the country hope to have a high reputation. How can it be dragged down by female sex?"

Xiao Yan was speechless, so Fan Yun took it upon himself to draft an order to bestow the Yu clan on General Wang Mao.Xiao Yan was a little helpless, but he could only appreciate the big brother's intentions, and in the end he acquiesced to Fan Yun's actions. Fan Yun's vigilance at the enthronement ceremony strengthened Xiao Yan's determination to revitalize Chao Gang.In the first year of Tianjian (502 A.D.), he issued an edict to revise the standards of ritual and music, and even participated in the formulation with his own rich knowledge of music.This move followed the rites and music that Confucianism emphasized, and it was also his first step in advocating the new atmosphere of "changing traditions and customs".

The second step of Emperor Liang Wu's reform of internal affairs was to order the deletion and revision in the same year, and the legal ordinance "Liang Law" was promulgated in the following year.Before the "Law of Liang", Liu Song and Southern Qi followed the Jin law formulated by Jia Chong of the Western Jin Dynasty, with similar clauses. During the reign of Emperor Wu of Qi, there were 20 volumes of "Yongming Law", but it was different from the old law of the previous dynasty. There is no big difference in the system.Emperor Wu of Liang’s criminal law reform this time, referring to the gains and losses of previous dynasties, combined with the current actual situation, compiled a total of 20 volumes of Chenglu, 30 volumes of orders, and 40 volumes of Ke. few.The new law emphasized "clear and cautious use of punishment". Later, some severe corporal punishments, such as nose cutting and tattooing, were gradually abolished, and various excessive punishments and taxes were reformed.Generally speaking, Nanliang’s criminal law is relatively lenient (of course, this also produced various disadvantages later, especially a certain degree of connivance for the nobles, but these problems were not obvious in the heyday of the dynasty), and then In addition, Emperor Wu of Liang, like Xiao Daocheng, advocated frugality, and the social customs of Nanliang have been greatly improved within a few years.

In the fourth year of Tianjian (505 A.D.), Emperor Wu of Liang promulgated another edict, setting up one doctor in each of the "Five Classics" to open a lecture hall in Jiankang to promote Confucianism.The opening of the National Academy of Sciences to give lectures was done by Yuanjia and Yongming, the most prosperous dynasties in the previous dynasty, but they were not as large as the Liang Dynasty.There are often hundreds of lectures in the five halls, comparable to the public lectures given by famous professors today.There are different schools of thought and each has its own strengths. Even scholars engaged in the study of Confucianism in the Northern Wei Dynasty, such as Qinghe Cui Lingen and Fan Yang Lu Guang, came here one after another to gather disciples to give lectures.As the ruling center, Jiankang City seems to be a Confucianism teaching and research center in the world.

Regarding the conflict between the gentry and the Han, he adopted a two-pronged policy: on the one hand, he issued an edict to highlight the gentry's noble family, so as to gain the support of the gentry class, and required the verification of genealogy and strict prevention of offensive attacks, which effectively restricted the gentry The excessive expansion of the number reduces the burden on the government; on the other hand, he also pays attention to selecting talents from poor families, such as Fan Yun, Shen Yue, etc., are all Han people, and Shen Yue who wrote "Book of Songs" is Liu Yu's subordinate Everyone, the grandson of Shen Linzi, can be regarded as the old Han clan.Fan Yun was one of the most important ministers, but it was a pity that he died too early. He died of illness at the age of 53 in the second year of Tianjian.In order to fill the vacancy, Emperor Wu of Liang promoted Xu Mian and Zhou She, who were born in the Han nationality, to take charge of the secrets of the court.Both of them were under forty years old, and what Emperor Wu of Liang valued was their ability to handle affairs.It can be seen that in terms of employing people, Emperor Wu of Liang insisted on the policy of only being responsible.These are not counting the famous general Chen Qingzhi who has been kept by his side as a trusted entourage and later emerged on the battlefield.

After a series of "renovation" policies, the decayed Southern Qi was renovated from the inside out, and Emperor Wu of Liang had enough confidence and capital to realize his plan to forge ahead and rejuvenate the world. Emperor Wu of Liang's plan was preserved in the "Quan Liang Wen" in the form of "Northern Expedition Edict". , all the way out of Yiyang, captured Guanzhong, marched all the way, joined forces in Luoyang, captured Yuanke alive, and unified the world. In October of the fourth year of Tianjian, Emperor Wu of Liang appointed Xiao Hong, the king of Linchuan, the sixth younger brother, to supervise the military forces in the north and south of Yan, Xu, Qing, Ji, Yu, Si, and Huo Bazhou. The army stationed in Luokou (now northeast of Huainan, Anhui Province) and launched a large-scale northern expedition, with a total strength of hundreds of thousands.Since the failure of Emperor Song Wen's Northern Expedition for more than half a century, the Southern Dynasty has never launched such a powerful offensive, and even the Northern Wei Dynasty has to admit that this is "unprecedented in hundreds of years."

The start of the Northern Expedition was not smooth. One of Xiao Hong’s vanguards, Xuzhou Inspector Chang Yizhi, attacked Liangcheng, a border town in the northeast of Shouyang (now east of Shouxian County, Anhui), but he was defeated by Chen Bozhi, the Pingnan General of the Northern Wei Dynasty. . Chen Bozhi was a general of the Southern Dynasty, and unlike Xiao Baokui, who had a bloody feud with Emperor Wu of Liang, he had no reason to wholeheartedly work for the Northern Wei Dynasty and obstruct the progress of the Southern Liang Dynasty.Xiao Hong was quite accurate about this person's temperament, so he asked his secretary (that is, the important secretary) Qiu Chi to write a letter to Chen Bozhi, urging him to surrender. Qiu Chi is famous all over the world for his writing style, which was personally certified by Emperor Wu of Liang.His letter of persuading surrender is one of the Southern Dynasties articles that I admire most.We have said that Chen Bozhi is an uneducated old man with no morals (I repeated it twice before, and he is already a slave of three surnames—even though the Qi and Liang dynasties have the same surname and family, he is somewhat "wronged").Before the battle between the two armies, it is almost Mission Impossible to use letters to persuade such a guy to surrender, which is equivalent to playing the piano against a cow, and Qiu Chi has completed the task brilliantly! This beautiful article of reasoning and reasoning was written in March of the fifth year of Tianjian (AD 506): Chen Bozhi listened to his subordinates read the letter for him, and ignored his son who stayed in the north, so he took the 8,000 soldiers under his command and threw them from Liangcheng to Nanliang.His son Chen Huya was killed by the Northern Wei Dynasty. In less than two months, Liang Jun's vanguard captured Liangcheng and pointed at Shouyang.