Chapter 26 Chapter 26 Jin Dynasty "Wise King" Jin Shizong

In the evaluation of emperors by Chinese historians, "Yao and Shun" is a supreme word, and those who can get this evaluation can be regarded as eternal sages.For example, Wei Xiaobao in the movie flattered Kangxi, and opened his mouth to say "Bird Raw Fish Soup (Yao, Shunyu Soup)", coaxing Kangxi into laughter all day long, which shows his high level of flattery. Most of the feudal emperors, if they were called "Yao and Shun" during their reign, nine times out of ten they would be flattered, and historians who stick to the straight book, in line with the attitude of being responsible for history, when evaluating the emperor, naturally Use the term Yao and Shun with caution.But there is such an emperor who won the title of "Little Yao and Shun", and behind him, most historians of all dynasties agree with this evaluation.This person is Wan Yanyong, the emperor of the Jin Dynasty, with the temple name Jin Shizong.

Why is Wan Yanyong called "Little Yao and Shun"?Speaking of him, we must talk about a turning point year for both the Southern Song Dynasty and the Jin Dynasty: AD 1161. It was in this year that Wan Yanliang, the reigning emperor of the Jin Dynasty at that time, launched the largest southern expedition of the Jin Dynasty since the establishment of the Southern Song Dynasty.The Jin army crossed the Huaihe River with a large army and approached Caishiji in the Southern Song Dynasty. However, it was stubbornly resisted by Yu Yunwen, the governor of the Southern Song Dynasty who was ordered in danger. , Huaixi and other fronts were defeated on all fronts, and the situation was out of control.The morale of the Jin army was low, and anti-war sentiment was pervasive, but Wan Yanliang, who refused to admit defeat, ruled the army tyrannically, arousing radical changes in the army.In November, a mutiny occurred in the Jin army, Wan Yanliang was killed in the mutiny, and the 600,000 Jin army on the front line fell apart. This southward invasion with all the power of the country ended in failure.

The Southern Song Dynasty survived this military disaster, but the Jin Kingdom in the north fell into chaos.Wan Yanliang's Northern Expedition took away almost all the troops of the Jin Dynasty.In the Central Plains, people who were dissatisfied with the rule of the Jin Dynasty rebelled one after another, and a large number of rebels appeared in Hebei and Shandong. At the same time, many Han officers in the Jin Dynasty also rebelled.Inside the Jin Dynasty regime, on the one hand, the Khitan army under the Jin Dynasty rebelled, and on the other hand, various royal families competed for the throne and killed each other.As a result, Wan Yanyong, the clan of the Jin Dynasty, succeeded to the throne, and this was Jin Shizong who was later called "Little Yao and Shun".

Wan Yanyong's succession to the throne is of great significance in the history of the relationship between Song and Jin Dynasties.Several generations of emperors before Wanyanyong all made it their basic national policy to go south to destroy the Song Dynasty and unify the whole country.After Wan Yanyong succeeded to the throne, he took the initiative to repair the Southern Song Dynasty. From his accession to the Jin Dynasty's demise, the Jin Dynasty never had a large-scale attack on the Southern Song Dynasty.And this was also a turning point in the power comparison between the Song and Jin Dynasties. Although Wan Yanliang's Northern Expedition did not cause much loss on the battlefield, it led to large-scale civil wars and civil strife in the Jin Dynasty. On the contrary, the voice of "recovering the Central Plains" in the Southern Song Dynasty was getting louder and louder, and two large-scale military operations took place, Fuli's Northern Expedition and Han Yuzhou's Northern Expedition. Wan Yanyong himself, who is the emperor.

Before proclaiming himself emperor, Wanyan Yong was an old acquaintance of the Southern Song Dynasty. He was the grandson of Wanyan Aguda, the founder of the Jin Dynasty. Compared with the bravery and ruthlessness of the generals at the founding of the Jin Dynasty, he focused on "attacking the heart".When leading the army to fight, his troops were the most disciplined and good at buying people's hearts. He often instigated generals who rebelled against the Song Dynasty to surrender voluntarily.After the establishment of the Jin Dynasty, he served as a local official for several terms, and made a lot of achievements in stabilizing the local area and managing people's livelihood.Wan Yanliang before him was a tyrant who was especially jealous of the clan and royal family. He killed a lot during his reign, but he was not only spared, but also got the important task of staying behind in Liaodong during Wanyan Liang's Northern Expedition, and because of this, he escaped. It is a lucky person to be proclaimed emperor.

But this lucky person had an extremely difficult life during Wan Yanliang's reign.In order to avoid Wan Yanliang's suspicion, he took the initiative to honor Wan Yanliang with a large amount of property, and even sent his wife Wu Talin to honor Wan Yanliang.His wife committed suicide on the way because she did not want to be humiliated.For decades like a day, he survived by swallowing his anger. What will an emperor who can endure, endure, and be gentle in his arms bring to the Jin Dynasty? When Wan Yanyong succeeded to the throne, what he faced was the mess left by Wan Yanliang: not to mention the unstable throne, the Khitan army rebelled in Liaodong, and there were also large-scale rebellions in Hebei and Shandong in the Central Plains. North Korea's treasury reserves were also squandered because of this southward invasion.Under the severe situation, Wan Yanyong first successfully recruited the rebellious Khitan army with a soft policy, and then dealt with the various rebels in the Central Plains, and defeated them one by one by buying and disintegrating them, stabilizing the situation in a short time.It is worth mentioning that the Taishan Gengjing Uprising Army joined by the great poet Xin Qiji was one of the most powerful uprising armies in the Central Plains. However, when Xin Qiji went south to get in touch with the Southern Song Dynasty government, he was bought by the Jin Dynasty. Zhang Anguo, inside and outside should be wiped out.After that, Xin Qiji led the warriors into the Jinying camp and killed the traitor Zhang Anguo.

After suppressing various rebel forces in the Jin Dynasty, Wanyanyong's rule became increasingly stable. In order to consolidate his control over the Central Plains, Wanyanyong made a decision-to move the capital.He moved the capital of the Jin Dynasty from Shangdu in Heilongjiang to Zhongdu (Beijing) in the Central Plains. Since then, the ruling center of the Jin Dynasty has moved southward in an all-round way. At this time, Wan Yanyong faced the most important problem, how to stabilize and restore the broken economy in the north. During Wan Yanyong's succession to the throne, the Jin Dynasty was in an extremely difficult period, especially economically.

After the Jin Dynasty entered the Central Plains, because it was still in the stage of slavery society, the rule of the Central Plains also had a lot of slavery characteristics.For example, excessive taxation was imposed, the aristocratic enclosure was rampant, and a large number of farmers were reduced to tenant farmers.During Wan Yanliang's previous reign, because of greed for pleasure, large-scale projects were carried out everywhere, and the Southern Song Dynasty was conquered, and the people's lives were miserable day by day.At this time, the Kingdom of Jin has reached the point where "all the people are poor and have no food and clothing".In the same year, Emperor Gaozong of the Southern Song Dynasty abdicated, and his nephew Song Xiaozong succeeded to the throne. In the early days of Song Xiaozong's succession, in order to rehabilitate the famous anti-golden general Yue Fei, he used a large number of officials from the main combat faction.In 1162 A.D., the Southern Song Dynasty, with Zhang Jun as its commander, marched northward. At first, they won successively. However, due to internal friction among the front-line generals of the Song army and the incompetent command of the commander, they retreated steadily under the counterattack of the Jin army.In the most difficult period, Wan Yanyong was lucky enough to survive the best opportunity of the Northern Expedition in the Southern Song Dynasty.

After stabilizing the war situation, Wan Yanyong started the economic reform of the Jin Dynasty.The most important problem in the economy of the Jin Dynasty at that time was land conflicts.After the Jin Dynasty destroyed the Northern Song Dynasty, a large number of Jurchens moved southward. The Jin Dynasty adopted the policy of granting cultivated land by the state. The result of this was to deprive the Han people of the Central Plains a large number of land. , took the opportunity to enclose a large amount of land, and most of the local farmers became tenant farmers of the nobles of the Jin Dynasty. As a result, agriculture in the north almost stagnated.In addition, Wan Yanliang was collecting taxes from the south, and the tax collection was "very urgent", and the common people were even more overwhelmed.After Jin Shizong ascended the throne, he first had to solve land conflicts. In view of the large amount of land occupation, Wan Yanyong opened up a large number of forests and pastures occupied by the Jin Dynasty and the Song Dynasty, and distributed them to the people for farming to alleviate the land problem.At the same time, large-scale disarmament began. After Song and Jin repaired, he only left 60,000 elite troops on the Jianghuai border, and all the rest of the troops withdrew north.Especially during Wan Yanliang's Northern Expedition, the Han troops in the three provinces of Hebei, Henan, and Shandong that were forcibly conquered were all abolished, and the soldiers returned home to work as farmers.During Wan Yanliang's administration, a large number of farmers fled because of harsh taxes.After Wan Yanyong ascended the throne, he issued an edict to pardon all the fugitive peasants in Wan Yanliang's era, and all the fugitive peasants, as long as they are willing to return to their hometowns within the prescribed time limit, they will not be blamed.Regarding the land occupation behavior of the Jurchen nobles, Wan Yanyong introduced the "one set of land" system, that is, all Jurchen officials and nobles are only allowed to own land in one place, and the land under the name of other places is regarded as "adverse property". nationalize.All officials who falsely occupy official land, once found out, not only themselves will be punished, but also the officials under them will be implicated, so that the responsibility for supervising land annexation is "delegated to the individual".Regarding the problem of uneven distribution of taxes and corvees, Wan Yanyong also stipulated that the state should conduct an inspection of household registration and land every three years, and use this inspection as a basis for allocating corvees and poll taxes.At the same time, a reward policy was introduced: farmers who cultivated land and increased the yield per mu would not only be rewarded by the government, but also be exempted from taxes, otherwise they would be punished.All of the above are all correcting the various wrong policies after the Jin Dynasty entered the Central Plains.

While the economic reform was going on, the political reform was also in full swing, and the reform of official administration was the first to bear the brunt.After the Jin Dynasty entered the Central Plains, although it borrowed from the Song Dynasty's scientific examination system, the admission rate was extremely low, and it was difficult for officials with imperial examination backgrounds to enter the high-level ruling of the Jin Dynasty.After Wan Yanyong ascended the throne, he first carried out "enrollment expansion".In the imperial examination in 1164 AD, he stipulated that the admission should be based on talent, and even "no limit on the number of people".Two years later, Taixue was established to train specialized civil servants for the country, and prefectural schools were also set up locally.It is worth mentioning that it was during this period that Confucian classics were translated into Jurchen texts one after another. Wan Yanyong also selected outstanding children from the nobles to study in local and central imperial schools. Later, Jurchen was established. Clan Taixue and Jurchen Clan School.From then on, whether there is any experience in studying in Taixue has become a symbol of the identity of the Jurchen officials in the Jin Dynasty.The original habit of using the clan as an official was completely broken. Even if Jurchen officials wanted to be an official, proficiency in Chinese and being able to write Chinese characters became the most basic requirements. Literary talent was promoted.In the early days of Wanyanyong's administration, only about 10% of the Jurchen officials in the Jin Dynasty had imperial examination achievements, but at the end of Wanyanyong's administration, more than 90% of the Jurchen officials in the Jin Dynasty had imperial examination achievements.The large-scale Sinicization of the Jurchens began at this time.

In terms of the political system, Wan Yanyong also made adjustments.In the Jin Dynasty before Wanyanyong, power was almost always out of the barrel of a gun. The generals in charge of the army were often powerful officials of the court, and even the central government could not control it.Wanyanyong himself was also enthroned by the support of the military group, but after he ascended the throne, Wanyanyong was determined to establish the absolute authority of the emperor.In the official system of the Jin Dynasty in the Wanyanyong era, the three official positions of Shangshuling, Zuoxiang, and Pingzhangshi were the prime ministers. The country set up 5 prime ministers, and the 5 prime ministers checked each other and distributed power equally to avoid the situation where one family dominates. In this way, the absolute power of the emperor was established.Like the Song Dynasty, the Jin Dynasty also began to "control military affairs with literature" from this time, using civilian officials to preside over military affairs. After the Jin Dynasty fought many times, more civilian officials began to serve as marshals. He became a "hawk dog" who obeyed more civil servants.Regarding the management of officials, Wan Yanyong took "diligence" as the yardstick for examining officials.Urging officials to be loyal to their posts, he even broke the seniority theory in the officialdom and promoted talented officials exceptionally.For example, Yicidao, who later became the prime minister, was originally just a small official in the government office. After Wan Yanyong heard about his talent, he immediately promoted him to 5 levels and promoted him to be a transfer envoy.It is worth mentioning that during the Wanyanyong period, the official retirement system was introduced for the first time, stipulating that officials must retire at the age of 60.In addition, every three years, local officials from all over the country must be transferred to Beijing to hold "Beijing lectures" with Beijing officials, that is, symposiums to exchange experience in local disputes, so as to understand local people's sentiments. Wan Yanyong's painstaking efforts were rewarded during his reign.In the early days of Wanyanyong's accession to the throne, the population in northern China was only 3 million households. By the end of his reign, the population had increased to 7.6 million households.If the population of the Southern Song Dynasty is included, this is the first time in Chinese history that the population has exceeded 100 million.The scene of the Jin Dynasty at this time was just like the record in the history books that "the world is in order, the officials are in charge, and the people live in peace". It can be described as a "harmonious society" in ancient China. Wan Yanyong was praised as "Little Yao and Shun", not only because of his political achievements, but also because of his character. As early as when the Northern Song Dynasty was destroyed, Wan Yanyong was a Jurchen nobleman known for his "gentleness" and "huairou".This is not only related to his character, but also related to his life experience.Although he is a nobleman, Wan Yanyong is a bitter child.He lost his father when he was 13 years old and was raised by his mother since childhood.Wan Yanyong's mother was a Bohai nobleman, and her family had a strong Sinicization, and Wan Yanyong's education was mainly based on Confucianism.After he came to the throne, he mainly took the Confucian way of governing the country as his policy.And because of his father's early death, Wan Yanyong, who was young, had a relatively low status among the Jurchen nobles, so naturally he couldn't be a pampered son.After he became an adult, he was appointed as a local official many times, and he had a deep understanding of the sufferings of the people.It is also because of this that all the measures he took after he ascended the throne hit the crux of the current situation. Among the successive emperors of the Jin Dynasty, Wan Yanyong was a rare kind person.Several emperors before Wanyanyong all launched large-scale massacres of royal family members.For example, Wan Yanliang killed more than 70 descendants of Jin Taizong in the early days of his accession to the throne, and even his own mother was bestowed to death by him.Wan Yanyong replaced Wan Yanliang when he ascended the throne. At the beginning of his ascension, many people worried that he would take revenge on him, especially He Shi Lie Zhining who had been loyal to Wan Yanliang back then.In the early days of Wanyanyong's accession to the throne, the governor had been leading troops to attack Wanyanyong. Wanyanyong sent 9 envoys to fight for him, but he killed them all.However, after the defeat of Heshi Lie Zhining, Wan Yanyong not only did not liquidate, but continued to entrust him with important tasks and appointed him as the commander of Liaodong.When Wan Yanliang was in power, Zhang Xuansu, the transfer envoy of Dongdong Road, sued Wan Yanyong for treason.It was this black case that forced Wan Yanyong to use his wife to honor Wan Yanliang, which caused Wan Yanyong's wife to commit suicide angrily.With such hatred for killing his wife, Wan Yanyong not only did not blame Zhang Xuansu, but instead promoted Zhang Xuansu to be the Secretary of the Household Department.It was this Zhang Xuansu who, during his tenure as Minister of the Household Department, proposed a number of reform measures, especially presided over the repair of the Yellow River that had flooded since the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, so that the people along the Yellow River could live and work in peace and contentment.At the same time, at the beginning of his accession to the throne, Wan Yanyong issued an edict, pardoning the crimes of most of Wan Yanliang's cronies, expressing that the past is not to blame.During his reign, there was never a case that implicated the nine clans. Among the nine emperors of the Jin Dynasty, this was the most lenient period in law enforcement. And what makes historians talk about it more is Wan Yanyong's frugality.For example, when he moved the capital, he planned to build a large-scale palace according to the rules, but Wan Yanyong canceled the project and simply maintained the old palace from the Liao Dynasty.Not long after he moved in, a fire broke out in the palace, and two halls were burned. Due to the country's financial difficulties, Wan Yanyong postponed the maintenance of the palace.It was not until two years later that the country's finances improved that it began to repair.But when it was being repaired, Zhang Baoyu, who was in charge of the work, wanted to refer to the palaces of the Kaifeng Imperial City, so he went to Kaifeng for inspection. King of pleasure?Live frugally and eat even more frugally.Wan Yanyong's first decree after he ascended the throne was to reduce the food in the palace by half, and start with himself.And he ate more and more frugally. In his later years, each meal only had 4 dishes, which was "80% less" than when he took the throne.Not only did he live a hard life, but he also asked his children to live a hard life.In 1169 A.D., someone reported that his sons King Yue and King Sui conquered civilians and built palaces. Wan Yanyong was so angry that he immediately suspended the salaries of the two princes until they cried and confessed their mistakes.The prince also complained to him, saying that the income of the East Palace was too little, and it was not enough to reward his servants.After Wan Yanyong heard the news, he immediately stopped the salaries of all the officials in the Prince's Mansion on the grounds that they misled the Prince and lured him into extravagance.His ascetic life began from the early years of his accession to his death. In 1189 AD, Wan Yanyong died of illness in Zhongdu at the age of 67.After the news of his death came out, according to historical records, there were "crying" among the people at that time.Behind him, Yuan Taizu Kublai Khan said: "The nine emperors of the Jin Dynasty, but Shizong is one." Zhu Xi, a great Confucian in the Southern Song Dynasty who was not far from Wanyanyong's time, also called him a "model of benevolence and virtue."One month before his death, the Ministry of Household Affairs reported that the road from Zhongdu to Guanwai was inconvenient, and suggested building a new bridge outside Zhongdu.Wan Yanyong approved the plan, and in the third year after his death, the bridge was completed, which is today's Lugou Bridge. Historians of the past dynasties have praised Wan Yanyong a lot, but overkill, the decline of the Jin Dynasty was precisely the foreshadowing planted during Wan Yanyong's reign. The Jin Dynasty started on horseback. Before Wanyanyong, although the process of Sinicization had already begun, it still retained the tough style of nomads, especially in terms of overall military strength, it was overwhelming the Southern Song Dynasty.The core idea of ​​Wan Yanyong's various reform measures is "Confucianization".When it comes to politics specifically, it emphasizes civility over martial arts.The strength of the military power of the Jin Dynasty was based on its unique military system-Meng'anmou restraint.After the establishment of the Jin Dynasty, as the Jurchens turned to farming, the Meng'anmou restraint originally based on nomadic tribes had long existed in name only.When Wan Yanyong was in power, he once wanted to restore the restraint of Meng'an Mou, and in order to strengthen the military power of the Central Plains, he moved a large number of Liaodong Jurchens to Han.But things backfired. The originally powerful Jurchen army gradually degraded in combat effectiveness because of the long-term peace that followed.At the same time, Wan Yanyong reformed the imperial examination system, using the imperial examination as the main criterion for the selection of officials, especially among the Jurchens.This made joining the army and fighting wars no longer the best choice for the Jurchens. More and more Jurchens began to focus on the imperial examinations, abandoning martial arts and focusing on literature.In the upper echelons of the Jurchen aristocracy, the original habit of advocating bravery has also become advocating reciting poems, enjoying the moon, and writing poems and articles.The original national habits began to degenerate greatly from this time on.What is particularly inappropriate is that Wanyanyong did not consider establishing a new military system to ensure the country's strong military strength when the Meng'an Mouke system was weakened.When fighting against Mongolia in the late Jin Dynasty, most of the armies under the original military system were vulnerable, and the only few strong armies were formed by temporary recruitment.The rapid economic development of the Jin Dynasty was directly proportional to the rapid decline of the Jin Dynasty's army.The most influential in history in the late Jin Dynasty was its achievements in poetry, and outstanding writers such as Yuan Haowen emerged.After Wan Yanyong's death, problems such as political corruption and national weakness began to surface in the Jin Dynasty. The late Jin Dynasty has indeed become a "copycat version" of the Southern Song Dynasty. The 27 years of Wan Yanyong's reign happened to be the 27 years of the integration of the Jurchen and Han ethnic groups.Because of Wan Yanyong's economic reform measures, especially the curb on land annexation and emphasis on farming, the ethnic conflicts between the Jurchen and the Han ethnic groups were greatly reduced, and the exchanges between the Han and Jurchen ethnic groups became increasingly close, and even a large number of intermarriages occurred.From the mid-to-late period of Wanyanyong's reign, almost all the upper-level Jurchen officials in the Jin Dynasty were proficient in Han culture, and even Jin Shizong's prince Wanyan Yungong himself could speak Chinese.This kind of national integration is a good thing, but it was from this time that the Jin Dynasty entered a period of "no military training".During Wan Yanyong's reign, he repeatedly disarmed the army on a large scale, and learned from the Song Dynasty, he "raised wages" for officials many times, intending to "encourage" scholars.The huge gap in status and treatment between civil and military officials makes generals an increasingly unpopular role.For example, Wan Yanyong once rectified Meng'an Mou restraint, and the number of people under his control gradually shrank.In the top ranks of the ruling group of the Jin Dynasty, senior officials also prefer to write poems and lyrics, and pursue a leisurely and comfortable life.The vigor and power of the tiger when the Northern Song Dynasty was destroyed has disappeared by now.In the army of the Jin Dynasty, the number of Jurchen soldiers became less and less. When the war broke out with Mongolia, most of the troops composed of Jurchen soldiers were vulnerable. Instead, it was people such as Wanyan Chen who really played the role of defending the country. The loyal and filial army under the monk's command is mainly Han. During Wanyanyong's reign, there was no military conflict with the Southern Song Dynasty except for the war at the beginning of his accession, and the two sides maintained peace for decades.However, the borders of the Jin Dynasty were not peaceful during this period, and the main border troubles had shifted from the Yangtze River Basin to the northwest.At this time, the Mongolian tribes in the northwest had begun to grow stronger, and harassed the northwest border of the Jin Dynasty from time to time.For Mongolian tribes, Wan Yanyong adopted a policy of attack.Every three years, a large-scale attack on the Mongolian tribes, nominally called "Jading", was launched to curb the Mongolian invasion.But at this time, the military strength of the Jin Dynasty had weakened, and Wan Yanyong's several large-scale disarmaments made the Jin Dynasty's army already unable to do what it wanted.In order to show their merits, the frontier troops of the Jin Dynasty bullied the weak and feared the strong, and only picked the weakest Mongolian tribes to attack.As a result, the border troubles were not resolved, but the hatred between the two sides became deeper and deeper.In 1162 A.D., after Wan Yanyong ascended the throne, Yasugai, the chief of the Borjijin tribe in Mongolia, also had a new child, and this child was the gravedigger of the Jin Dynasty—Tiemuzhen.