Chapter 10 Chapter 10: How the Spring and Autumn "Princes" Are Eradicated

The politics of the Spring and Autumn Period, from the perspective of the entire development, has one of the most important characteristics: the power is going down.During most of the Spring and Autumn period, although there were slogans of respecting the king and expelling barbarians, the result was that the emperor of Zhou almost existed in name only, and the monarchs increasingly did not regard the emperor as a cadre.During the 240 years of the Spring and Autumn Period, the monarchs became more and more arrogant to Zhou Tianzi.But everything has its retribution, and that’s exactly what happened. Such retribution soon fell on the monarchs. The monarchs who ruled one side as kings and hegemony, as the war for hegemony continued, they were also surprised to find that the rights in their hands , has been gradually deprived by the scholar-officials under them, and the process that they emptied the emperor of Zhou back then is now repeating itself on themselves.The reason why many big countries demanded to stop the war, so that it led to the meeting of Xiang Rong to eliminate soldiers, is an important reason, that is, the power of the country has been controlled by the scholar-officials under the monarch. For them, frequent wars can only give more Opportunities for people to make meritorious deeds, so as to disperse their own power, so peace has become the wish of most countries, from the common people to the actual power holders.This process of weakening the power of the monarch is the famous "government in private" in the evolution of power in the Spring and Autumn period.

The emergence of the situation of "government in private doors" has had a profound impact on the historical development of the entire Spring and Autumn Period. Even in the historical transition from the Spring and Autumn Period to the Warring States Period, the phenomenon of "politics in private doors" is also a historical precedent. Voice. The direct cause of the phenomenon of "government in private" is the expansion of the power of the scholar-bureaucrats under the monarch during the Spring and Autumn War, but the deep-seated reason is the political system of the vassal states during the Spring and Autumn Period.

Under the monarchs of the Spring and Autumn vassal states, they mainly include Qing and Dafu. The biggest characteristic of these people is that, like the princes, they own the territories and fiefdoms bestowed on them by the monarch.In their fiefdoms, they have independent political, economic, and military forces, and the rulers of these territorial fiefdoms are the families and clans of these ministers, that is to say, they are an independent political force in themselves, and their Its development and growth depended on the patriarchal legal system of the Western Zhou Dynasty that still existed at this time.The core content of the patriarchal legal system in the Western Zhou Dynasty in terms of administrative divisions is the so-called "Emperor established the country, and the princes established the family", that is, the emperor distributed the land to the princes, and the princes then distributed the land to the lower officials.Before the Western Zhou Dynasty, the power of the princes and officials was particularly limited, because there was no war at this time, it was difficult for them to obtain more fiefdoms through meritorious means, so they were far from being able to compete with the princes, and their voice in the entire politics was also very limited. It is very limited.However, starting from the Spring and Autumn Period, in more and more wars among the princes, in order to win over the officials below, the princes always used the method of allotment of land in exchange for their loyalty. As the scale of the war expanded, the more wars In the big countries that benefit from it, there are more and more senior ministers who have been rewarded, and the strength of the senior ministers has also expanded. The most typical of these are Qi, Chu, Jin, and the six ministers of Jin. The doctor finally took control of the political power. For a long period of time before King Zhuang of Chu, Ruo Ao was also in charge of the state power of Chu State. The so-called King Chu was basically a puppet.The situation in Qi State was even more chaotic. Before Qi Jinggong, three successive monarchs died in the power struggles of scholar-bureaucrats.By the end of the Spring and Autumn Period, a considerable number of these high officials who had grown up in previous battles had already emptied the monarch.On the one hand, there is a weakened monarch who is unable to entrust the enfeoffment. On the contrary, he must engage in internal struggles to eliminate the threat of the power of the ministers to the monarch's power. On the other hand, the full-fledged ministers also need enough time to consolidate their power.In this case, the contradictions between the vassal states have been replaced by the contradictions within the vassal states.At the end of the Spring and Autumn Period, the wars between the princes of the great powers had ceased, and the main battlefields had turned to newly emerging countries, such as Wu and Yue, countries that did not have this problem for the time being.

While Dr. Qing is not going to lose his tail, in order to consolidate their position, they also need to redistribute the fief within their fief, which is the so-called redistribution of benefits.In the Spring and Autumn Period, the Qing officials were divided into "side chambers", "second sects" and "small sects" and other organizations.For example, the subordinates of the Jisun family in the state of Lu have the Gongsun family as their concubine; the Zhao Chuan family in the state of Jin are the concubine of the Zhao family.That is to say, under the situation at that time, from the three structures of princes-official officials-concubine, the country became more and more fragmented.These so-called concubine, because of their weaker strength, have become Doctor Qing's die-hard henchmen, and they have tied themselves to Doctor Qing's power system. The concubine has been hollowed out, the monarch has been hollowed out, and the seizure of power is not far away.

This kind of clan organization of Qing officials was called "family" at that time.The "family" here is not a traditional family, but the powerful clan of the scholar-officials, which is the basic power unit of the high officials.Doctor Qing's "concubine" and "second sect" and other organizations almost all exist in the "family" organization.This kind of organizational unit is like a sponge with strong absorption capacity. In the early Western Zhou Dynasty, it was only a small piece, but in the spring and autumn, it absorbed almost all the power in it, and the power expanded day by day. , by the end of the Spring and Autumn Period, it was enough to threaten the rule of the monarch.

As the leaders of the "family", the officials in their own "home", that is, the monarch, they are called the "lord" at home, and the power of this lord almost belongs to the "three powers in one".In patriarchal law, they are the heads of the clan; in politics, they are the kings of the land; in military terms, they are the commanders-in-chief of an army.At the end of the Spring and Autumn Period, the strength of many high officials even surpassed that of the monarch.Mozi, a member of a hundred schools of thought in the Warring States Period, once called Wu Wang Fuchai, Song Wangyan, Zhongshan Wangshang and other princes and Fan Jishe, Zhibo Yao, and Zhongxingyun the six monarchs. In the eyes of the emperor, these inflated scholar-bureaucrats seemed to have equal status with the monarch.

With an equal status to the monarch, the ministers and officials will naturally establish institutions that are equal to the monarch.In the "family" of Doctor Qing, the general trend of their ruling institutions from the Western Zhou Dynasty to the Spring and Autumn Period was from simple to complex, and finally to extremely complex. After a certain degree of complexity, they simply changed from a family to a country.In the late Spring and Autumn Period, the officials in their "family" were set up almost the same as the governments in the vassal states. For example, the Ji family, the official in charge of the Lu State, called the institutions in the Lu State court "foreign officials". Chao" refers to the institution in one's own home as "inner court", which can be described as two courts and one leader.In the "Inner Dynasty" of the Qing officials, the ministers who assist the Qing officials in handling various matters are commonly referred to as retainers. Relatively high official ranks are mainly responsible for handling the affairs of the fief and the central family for the officials. The status of these people is called "shi". Their rise is also an important part of the evolution of power in the Spring and Autumn Period.At the same time, the high officials also had their own independent armed forces, such as the Fan and Luan families of the Jin State, and the Tian family of the Qi State. Their main feature of their development for more than a hundred years was the continuous enhancement of their own armed forces.In the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period, Xike, a senior official of the Jin State, brought his own private armed forces to launch a war against the Song State.At the same time, Ruo Ao, a senior official of the state of Chu, also attacked the state of Qi with his own armed forces, once occupied Linzi, the capital of the state of Qi, and killed the official Qing Feng who was in power in the state of Qi.After the middle of the Spring and Autumn period, the fight between countries is not only the contradiction between the country and the country, but also the conflict between the ministers of different countries. Sometimes there are private wars between the ministers and the dispatch of troops. The scale is even more tragic than the national war.For example, in the war between Qingfeng, a doctor of Qi State, and Ruo Ao, a doctor of Chu State, the two sides fought in Linzi, the capital of Qi State. The total number of chariots used reached more than 1,800, and the total number of soldiers was nearly 100,000. This scale has exceeded the Spring and Autumn Period. Period of war between most of the great powers.In addition to pinching each other outside, different ministers and officials in various countries also frequently fought wars to seize power.For example, Qi State almost died because of 7 consecutive power seizure wars.With the expansion of the authority of the ministers, the land, population, and army size of those ministers are also increasing, and the power held by the retainers is also increasing. In order to prevent the retainers from following the example, learn to go Overhead leadership, officials and ministers are bound to carry out various administrative reforms in their "country". The purpose of the reforms is to firmly hold power in their own hands.

The reforms within the "family" of Dr. Chunqiu Qing began in the middle and late Spring and Autumn Period. The main purpose of the reforms was to establish their own absolute centralization.In the middle and late Spring and Autumn Period, the reform method of the Qing doctor was mainly to unify taxes and establish the absolute command of the army.The retainers under Doctor Qing generally do not have the power to independently command the army and control taxes. All power comes from the authorization of Doctor Qing. In this way, the embryonic form of a feudal centralized state was formed in this process. , Doctor Qing has the right to absolute control.In the spring and Autumn period at that time, the power of the Qing doctors became stronger day by day, and became the main force to overthrow the princes and monarchs. "In front of it, add another word-"country".

The rise of the Qing doctors also has a lot to do with the increasingly fierce slave riots in the late Spring and Autumn Period.With the disintegration of the traditional slavery class, large-scale slave riots occurred frequently. Under such a situation, the strength of the slave-owner aristocrats was further weakened. Buying people's hearts, reducing taxes, adopting new land lease relationships, etc., recruited a large number of fugitive slaves for their own use, and even some high officials even took the initiative to instigate slave rebellion, and then took the opportunity to profit from it.For example, Tian Huanzi of the Tian family in Qi State successfully killed the Gao family by instigating the rebellion of slaves in the territory of the political enemy Gao's territory, and took his territory and population into his own.But for the slaves who accounted for the vast majority of China's population at that time, they didn't understand the principles of ethics, and they didn't care who was orthodox. The only thing they knew was who was better for them. , It is easy to get the hearts of the people at the bottom.In the vassal states of the Spring and Autumn Period, those high-ranking officials who were inflated in strength and could not lose their tails, no matter what the evaluation behind them, they were all people with a very good reputation at that time, and they were popular with the people at the bottom. In the near future, they will get the country they dream of.

Another boosting force for the Qing officials to seize power is the scholars. Scholars are a class with a long history. They have existed since the beginning of slavery, but for a long time, Scholars have been a very low class.Another manifestation of the disintegration of rites and music in the Spring and Autumn Period is that the status of scholars rose unprecedentedly, and eventually became a sharp weapon for the Qing and official classes to seize power. During the Xia Dynasty and the Shang Dynasty, there were not many groups of scholars. They were just bodyguards kept by a few slave owners. Their status was only slightly higher than that of the slaves at the bottom, and even inferior to the common people in the city. and homesteaders.The rise of scholars began after the Western Zhou Dynasty replaced the Shang Dynasty.The Western Zhou regime at that time was a tribe at the end of primitive society.Most of the soldiers in the Western Zhou Dynasty were personal warriors of various chiefs in the late primitive society of the Western Zhou Dynasty.With the establishment of the Western Zhou Dynasty, the original chiefs of these primitive societies suddenly became new slave-owner nobles, and the status of scholars also increased.In the Western Zhou Dynasty, taxis already had the same status as ordinary people, but their true identities were still the private property of slave-owner nobles, but at that time, they already existed as a "mass product" and were no longer Xia Shang. The rare species of the period, the biggest difference between the enfeoffment of princes in the Western Zhou Dynasty and the Xia and Shang Dynasties is that each prince who was enfeoffed can not only obtain land, but also be given a large number of "scholars" who have served them for generations. They are all soldiers who have made great achievements on the battlefield.In this way, the scholars who were originally only one level higher than the slaves became the bottom of the slave owners in the Western Zhou Dynasty, although at this time the scholars already had their own land and property, and even had a higher social status than ordinary people. , but among the slave-owner nobles, they are still an unwelcome group.People want to be seen, and those who yearn for more rights, after the beginning of the Spring and Autumn Period, gradually found a master who can satisfy their wishes-the class of Qing Dafu.

In the final analysis, the cooperation between scholars and ministers was caused by the emptied monarchs themselves.As the "weakest nobleman", scholars are still "usable items" in the eyes of the monarch, and they can be thrown away as much as they want. Therefore, in the early Spring and Autumn Period, these scholars were often used by the monarchs to reward their subordinates. doctor.Some of the more outstanding scholars became the retainers of Doctor Qing.Although in terms of administrative relations, this is a "relegation" from the central government to the localities, but in terms of identity, this is rather a chicken head than an oxtail.The scholars who became the "chicken heads" of Doctor Qing's family quickly became like a fish in water. With their outstanding abilities, they gradually became the most important force for Doctor Qing. Doctors pay great attention to attracting scholars. For those retainers who work for them, they not only give them a promotion in status, absolute trust and honor, but also use intermarriage and other methods to strengthen the relationship between the two parties.The earliest intermarriage between scholars and high officials occurred in the Ji clan of Lu State. In this process, it is broken step by step. In the hierarchical system of the Spring and Autumn Period at that time, the status of scholars was lower than that of high officials and higher than that of ordinary people, and they belonged to the backbone of Spring and Autumn society.In the state of Jin at that time, during the period of Duke Wen of Jin and Chonger, for the first time, a situation where scholars controlled the land appeared. "Zuo Zhuan" even recorded that "scholars had slave children" during the period of Duke Huan of Lu.In other words, at this time, taxis not only owned enough land, but also had slaves they could drive, and became the newly rich class throughout the Spring and Autumn Period.Most of these possessions of scholars are firmly tied to the "home" of Doctor Qing, and they are appendages of the internal centralized system of Doctor Qing's group.The improvement of economic status has also further enhanced the strength of the scholars.In the Spring and Autumn Period, when taxis participated in battles, they prepared their own weapons and provisions. When Doctor Qing was relatively weak, they could only serve as cannon fodder. In the power game between the monarchs, scholars have become the most important straw that bends the balance. In the early Spring and Autumn Period, although the scholars owned their own land and wealth, their role was only to fight for the nobles of the slave owners. Slave owners will also take the opportunity to recover their land and population.The world is so cold, and the scholars controlled by the slave nobles will naturally lose a large number of scholars. In order to gain absolute trust and power, important positions such as housekeepers in the "family" of Qing doctors are all held by "scholars" with low status. For scholars, this is a strong incentive: although it is only Qing The retainers of the doctor, but once the "home" of the doctor becomes the country, then as retainers, they can also become civil servants and become high-status "qings".This kind of temptation is undoubtedly very huge for taxis who have been discriminated against for a long time.This is more attractive than land and money. Therefore, in the late Spring and Autumn Period, the pursuit of scholars changed from the original "executing the king's order" for the slave-owner nobles to "accompanying ministers administering the king's order" during this period.In other words, under the banner of "executing the king's order", the real practice is "accompanying ministers".Moreover, there are also many taxis who, in the long-term accumulation, with the improvement of their strength, began to resist the doctor above them.For example, when Yang Gao, the retainer of the Ji family in Lu State, betrayed his master, his subordinates already had a small government of their own, and he raised a large number of retainers. The battle between him and the Ji family was extremely fierce, which shows that at that time Taxi already has quite a strong strength.Moreover, many taxis began to freely choose their owners after their status was promoted.For example, the famous "dead man Yu Rang" in the Jin Dynasty was originally a retainer of the Fan family. Because the Fan family was very contemptuous of him, he left the Fan family and went to another Qing official, the Zhi family, because the Zhi family gave him His lofty courtesy and treatment made him swear to work for the Zhi family afterwards.The concept of good birds choosing trees to live in was formed during this period.In the late Spring and Autumn period, there were two kinds of changes in the scholars. One was that they were no longer at the bottom of the slave-owner aristocrats, but instead became the backbone of the emerging class of officials. Since then, he has remained invincible in the battle.The second is that scholars are no longer a product that slave owners can transfer at will. On the contrary, they have an independent status, they can choose their own masters to be loyal to, and they also have enough strength to resist after being treated unfairly by their masters.For the ministers eager to seize power, scholars are not only the force they fear, but also the object they are eager to win over.From the point of view of common interests, scholars and officials have the same interests. They are all new classes born out of the old system. The traditional monarchs and slave owners are their common enemies.This kind of interest relationship also made them form a united front. In the subsequent power seizure movement, scholars actually played a mainstay role.And in this process, the class of scholars themselves is also in the process of differentiation and disintegration. The nations, without land and population, have no ambitions in their lives.However, at that time, scholars included not only those warriors who stood upright with swords, but also rangers with high martial arts skills, and also included a large number of cultural groups. Almost all the schools of thought in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods appeared as "scholars" .Their origins are also more mixed. For example, Confucius, his ancestors were great nobles in the state of Lu, but he became a scholar in his generation, which is tantamount to ruin.Another example is Zi Gong, a disciple of Confucius. He was originally an ordinary commoner, but after becoming rich through business, he became a scholar, and his wealth surpassed that of the enemy.Another disciple of Confucius, Zilu, was even more miserable. He was born as a self-cultivator, and later became a high-ranking official in the State of Lu. These clear facts indicate the process of the complete collapse of the patriarchal legal society in the Western Zhou Dynasty. A deep foreshadowing. The biggest impact on the ethical guidelines of the Spring and Autumn Period is that a large number of scholars without any aristocratic background and humble origins, there are people who continue to rise to the top, become high-ranking officials in vassal states, retainers of noble officials, and establish their own immortal achievements. It is not just these people themselves The "personal inspirational story" is a huge change in the entire Chinese society. Since then, gaps have appeared in the strict hierarchical system of Chinese society.In this troubled world, even a humble little person may become a master above the nobles. This era when anyone can succeed is the era of great change in Chinese history.The most severely impacted is the Chinese official system established since the Xia Dynasty, that is, the hereditary system of officials.For example, Confucius, he and his students were officials in the state of Lu, but their official positions were not hereditary.Due to the official system, the division of the national administrative system has also undergone major changes.In the early Spring and Autumn Period, there was no distinction between "civilian officials" and "military officials" among officials, and they usually combined civil and military affairs.With the emergence of shi, especially the differentiation of shi's identity, a large number of shi entered the upper echelon of power, and the division of traditional Chinese administrative positions also began to differentiate, and the distinction between civil and military positions became increasingly obvious.For example, in the states of Lu and Qi in the late Spring and Autumn Period, the distinction between civil officials and military commanders first appeared, and officials of the same level have since then had different divisions of labor between civil and military positions.More importantly, because of the activity of a large number of scholars, a group of armed forces that were born outside the patriarchal system and did not have any hereditary official positions appeared in various countries at that time. important guarantee.The collapse of the patriarchal system and the establishment of a new centralized system all started from this point.With the increasing power of the ministers, the monarch was emptied. In the late Spring and Autumn period, in countries such as Jin, their national power was mainly in the hands of the ministers who were in power.The real role of the Qing doctors is the monarch, and the scholars who are subordinate to the Qing doctor, that is, the Qing doctor's retainers, have also become the original Qing doctor.But these people hope to gain status more. For this status, a coup d'état that overthrows the original monarch on a large scale becomes inevitable.