Chapter 4 Chapter 2 Twice Revisiting the Light——The "Feudal" Transformation of the County System

The tyranny of the Qin Dynasty caused the Chen Sheng and Wu Guang uprisings, and then the nobles of the old six countries, including Xiang Yu, also joined the anti-Qin team.Soon, the demise of the Qin Dynasty was like a ruin, and Xiang Yu also won the leadership of the uprising army, and established himself as the overlord of Western Chu. This big enfeoffment is a satisfaction for some people's feudal consciousness.People in the Warring States, Qin and Han Dynasties, the desire for meritorious service is to be entrusted, the little one is a prince, and the big one is a king.Although the Qin Dynasty was named a marquis, it did not establish a feudal city or build a marquis state. In other words, there was no feudalism, and the marquis could only pay taxes for food and clothing.Moreover, even the title of Marquis is very tightly controlled. A general like Meng Tian, ​​even though he has made many contributions to Qin Shihuang, cannot be named as a Marquis.After the fall of Qin Dynasty, Xiang Yu immediately restored the feudal system to cater to the wishes of some ruling forces.

However, this enfeoffment lasted for a short time, and due to the huge conflict of interests between the enfeoffers, it finally led to the famous Chu-Han dispute.This war lasted for four years. Han Wang Liu Bang defeated Xiang Yu and established the Western Han Dynasty.As soon as he ascended the throne of the emperor, Liu Bang immediately entrusted seven heroes and descended to be kings, and established seven kingdoms of princes with different surnames.This approach was not Liu Bang's original intention, it was just a last resort.Because these heroes had already held heavy troops and occupied important places through the Chu-Han War, and they were named monarchs and ministers with Liu Bang, but they were actually enemies, so they had to use feudal means in exchange for the loyalty of their subordinates.Therefore, the situation in the early Han Dynasty was that the ruler and his ministers shared the world.In fact, when the Chu and Han dynasties were competing in the Central Plains, Han Xin had already asked Liu Bang to make him the "false king of Qi".

How can you allow others to snore and sleep beside the couch? Of course Liu Bang was dissatisfied with half of the country being occupied by seven princes with different surnames, so in the second year he started to eliminate the kings with different surnames one by one.This is naturally a necessary measure to strengthen the centralized system of imperial autocracy. The question is what kind of alternative policy to adopt after the elimination of kings with different surnames.At that time, most people's understanding of the reasons for the rapid demise of the Qin Dynasty was attributed to the first emperor's abolition of the feudal system, so that he had no children to defend the central government.Dominated by this understanding, Liu Bang enfeoffed his children and relatives as princes and kings, and established a kingdom of princes with the same surname to replace the abolished kingdom of different surnames.By the last year of his reign, a total of nine kingdoms with the same surname had been established, while the kingdom with different surnames was the weakest one remaining, Changsha.The ten kingdoms accounted for more than half of the territory of the Western Han Dynasty, and there were only 15 counties directly under the emperor (Figure 2).

Although the implementation of the feudal system in the early Han Dynasty followed the will of the Zhou Dynasty in name, there was a big difference in essence.The feudalism of the Western Zhou Dynasty was divided into layers, while the feudalism of the Han Dynasty had only one layer of feudalism. Below the feudal kingdoms, there were still prefectures and counties. Each kingdom had three or four prefectures, five or six prefectures, so "Sui Shu·Geography" said: "The Emperor Gaozu of the Han Dynasty... corrected the mistakes of Qin County, the feudal princes, and cross-states and cities, surpassed the classics, but the system of prefectures and counties has not changed from Qin", which is not bad at all.Therefore, feudalism in the Han Dynasty was only a deformation of the prefecture and county system, and did not completely return to the feudal road of the Western Zhou Dynasty.In addition to the princes and kings, Liu Bang enfeoffed more than 100 meritorious officials such as Xiao He and Zhang Liang as princes, and established princes. These princes have the same status as counties, but they are directly under the central government.The administrative division system at this time is shown in the figure below:

Although the foundation of feudalism in the early Han Dynasty was still the system of prefectures and counties, the feudal vassal kings and lieutenants were theoretically the same as the emperor, and they were all "lords with soil", so they had two privileges similar to the feudal nature of the Zhou Dynasty: One is "self-appointment of officials", which means that officials can be appointed by themselves;In this way, the kingdom and the marquis have relative independence in terms of administration and finance. This situation posed a direct threat to the autocratic imperial power.When Liu Bang was alive, all the princes and kings with the same surname belonged to his children, and it was generally impossible to make troubles.When Empress Lu was in power, they were also able to unite to fight against Zhu Lu and promote Emperor Wen to ascend to the throne, which indeed played a certain role in defending.But after Emperor Wen, the relationship between the princes with the same surname and the emperor has been alienated, and everyone has the heart of imperialism, and the imperial power is naturally challenged.When Liu Bang first granted the kingdom of the same surname, he was afraid that it would not be able to suppress the royal family because of its lack of strength. Therefore, all the kingdoms were divided into several counties. "Wang Zhuan"), and even Qi State owned the land of seven counties.The land is big and the people are the people, and the people are the wealth. If there is a rebellion, it will pose a fatal threat to the central government.

In view of this situation, Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty accepted Jia Yi's suggestion that "many build princes and less power" ("Han Shu Jia Yi Biography"), and divided Qi into seven countries and Huainan into three countries, increasing the number of countries, while the domain However, it was greatly reduced, and its strength was seriously weakened.After Han Jingdi came to power, he adopted the method of "cutting the vassals" to directly seize the counties to which the kingdom belonged, further reducing the domains of the kingdoms.This move aroused serious dissatisfaction among the princes and kings, and finally triggered the chaos of the Seven Kingdoms of Wu and Chu.But at this time, the effect of "all building the princes" has been shown. Except for Wu and Chu, the other five countries are weak, so the Seven Kingdoms Rebellion was quickly put down.Emperor Jing took advantage of the victory to seize the branches and counties of the kingdoms, making all the kingdoms only one county. Food, clothing, rent and tax.The administrative division system becomes the following structure:

Since then, the county and the country were together called the county, which was the first-level administrative division of the Han Dynasty.Feudalism has existed in name only, and the system of parallel prefectures and states is no longer substantially different from the pure system of prefectures and counties. Although all kingdoms have only one county, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty still worried that the kingdom with more counties under its jurisdiction would be too powerful, so he adopted Zhu Fuyan's suggestion and used the "tweet method" to encroach on the kingdom's territory.The essence of the Tuen Law is that princes and kings can ennoble their children as princes, but the kingdoms they build must belong to the counties around the kingdom.In this way, the more feudal lords there were, the smaller the territory of the kingdom. By the end of the Western Han Dynasty, many kingdoms had only three or four counties left.

The vassal kingdoms of the Western Han Dynasty underwent very complicated changes in the past 200 years. By the second year of Emperor Ping of the Han Dynasty (AD 2), there were 20 kingdoms and 83 counties. Although the number of kingdoms accounted for 1/5 of the total counties, the 20 kingdoms There are only 123 counties in total, accounting for only 12/13 of the total number of 1587 counties in the entire Western Han Dynasty. The lessons of civil strife caused by feudalism in the early Han Dynasty were learned by later emperors, so the emperors of Cao Wei gave no power to the kings, and even made the kingdom actually a prison for the kings.However, Wei Zuo [zuo Zuo] was too short, which caused people in the Wei and Jin Dynasties to have doubts again, thinking that Cao Wei's replacement of Han and Sima's replacement of Wei were all due to the loss of power of the Han and Wei clans and the lack of power of the vassal kings.So the feudalism in the Jin Dynasty intensified more than that in the Han Dynasty, which caused a catastrophe.