Chapter 5 Section 2 The Feudal Mistakes of the Western Jin Dynasty

In the early Western Han Dynasty, except for the state of Wu, only princes and brothers could be named kings with the same surname.On the other hand, after the mid-Western Han Dynasty, the land conferred by the kingdom with only one county also became a custom.But these two rules were violated successively in the Western Jin Dynasty. In the first year of Taishi in the Western Jin Dynasty (265 A.D.), Sima Yan, Emperor Wu of Jin Dynasty, took the place of Wei Zili, and 27 people were crowned kings, but none of the princes was king. Called the clan king or clan king.Why should a large number of clans be entrusted as kings?There are two main reasons. The first is to strengthen the "Pan Shi Zong" and defend the imperial power. This was a common understanding at that time.In the absence of a prince to be king, the clan king is regarded as a reliable force to contain the forces of different surnames.The second is the special situation of the Western Jin Dynasty.Sima's work on behalf of Wei had already been completed in the hands of Sima Yi, Sima Shi, and Sima Zhao (hence the idiom "Sima Zhao's heart is known to all passers-by"), and many of Sima Yi's nephews made great contributions to it. However, Sima Yan just became a ready-made emperor, so he had to reward his uncles, uncles, uncles and uncles with the title of king.

It was a natural mistake to enfeoff the clan as king, because these people were too distant from the emperor's relatives, and it was difficult to play the role of defending the royal family. Do not hold local government.The number of households in the kingdom is at most 20,000, but it is equivalent to the two large counties in the Qin and Han Dynasties. Moreover, the rent and adjustment of the households, the Zongwang only eats 1/3, and the financial resources are not rich.The big mistake of Emperor Wu of Jin was to let King Zong go out of the town, that is, to appoint King Zong as the governor of an important state.This was supposed to be just a conciliatory measure.Because after the enfeoffment of Taishi, although the clan kings were able to contain the forces of different surnames, the contradiction between them and the imperial power gradually emerged.On the one hand, Sima Yan enshrined the princes as kings, and on the other hand, he suppressed them politically, so that the king Zong left Beijing to live in the country.At that time, going out of the vassal state to join the country was regarded as a difficult task. In order to ease the dissatisfaction of the Zongwang, he adopted appeasement measures such as increasing the number of households, "setting up the army in the country", and "making the military and the country serve as governors".However, these measures combined Zongwang's political status with military power to form a force that could rival the central government.

In the Western Jin Dynasty, there were about 20 prefectures in the whole country, which were the first-level administrative regions above the prefecture state.Among them, the important states also have a governor as the head of the military, and some governors also have several states under their jurisdiction, with a wide range of powers.The Zongwang who served as the governor not only holds the military talisman, but also manages civil affairs. He is domineering and domineering.In his later years, Sima Yan already felt the seriousness of the problem, and desperately thought of a good way to deal with it.

There is only one good strategy, and that is to increase the power of the prince and king to compete with the clan king. This is the strategy of using relatives to control sparseness that Jia Yi had proposed in the Han Dynasty.There are two specific measures: one is to let the princes and kings go to their own feudal states, and each prefecture is governed by the governor, so as to divide the power of the princes and governors; the other is to expand the princes and kings. The old rule that the county is the country.Therefore, the four counties of Shu County, Guanghan, Qianwei, and Wenshan (all in present-day Sichuan) were state-owned in Chengdu, with 70,000 households; In the second county (now the southeastern part of Hebei), although the state of Qin does not know the nine counties under its jurisdiction, there are as many as 80,000 households, and there may be three or four counties.Chu State, Huainan State, Changsha State, Yuzhang State, etc. all have about 50,000 households, and there should be two or three counties. This is a phenomenon that has not been seen for more than 400 years since Emperor Jing of the Han Dynasty.Compared with the royal family with only one county, a large country with 20,000 households, and a small country with only 5,000 households, there is a huge difference.

Before his death, Emperor Wu of Jin made such an arrangement in order to make the princes and kings form a powerful group to fight against the clan king group, but this last wish was finally shattered.Because the prince Wang also had the ambition to fight for the throne, the result was that one harm did not go away, but another harm came again.The conflict of interests between the two groups was inevitable, and finally, during the reign of the fatuous Emperor Hui and the headstrong Empress Jia, it led to the Eight Kings' Rebellion of fratricide.This bloody and cruel melee caused great damage to the Central Plains, and due to the dark rule of the Western Jin Dynasty, it led to wars among the ethnic groups. Sima Rui (ruirui), king of Langya, went to Jiangdong to establish the Eastern Jin regime in a peaceful corner, while the north was caught in turmoil for a long time among the Five Hu and Sixteen Kingdoms.

Comparing the evolution of the feudal system in the Han and Jin Dynasties, we can see that administrative divisions (a kingdom is also a special administrative division), the increase or decrease of its size can be used as a political means.In the Western Han Dynasty, the centralization of power was strengthened by reducing the territory of the kingdom, but in the Western Jin Dynasty, it was used to expand the territory of the kingdom to promote the decentralization of local areas. The feudalism of the Western Han Dynasty caused a civil strife, and the feudalism of the Western Jin Dynasty was also one of the important reasons that led to the collapse of the dynasty.The mistakes of the Han and Jin dynasties should leave a profound lesson for future generations, but not always. Some people still obsess over the restoration of the feudal vassal system.Tang Taizong is such a person.He originally planned to let the prince be the governor of the state, and implement it hereditary, and at the same time let some heroes do the same, but this idea was dissuaded by Wei Zheng and others, and was rejected by all the heroes, so it was not implemented.It can be seen that from Han to Jin, and from Jin to Tang, the consciousness of "feudalism" has not disappeared.Especially after Emperor Wu Zetian changed Tang to Zhou, some people believed that the system of prefectures and counties could not be stabilized for a long time.

The matter did not end here. The shadow of feudalism has always remained in people's hearts. Even when the Mongolian nobles entered the Central Plains, they also adopted the feudal system. "Leave the marquis and put it in the guard."Although the vassal kings of the Ming Dynasty had no feudal land, such as Yan Wang Zhu Di led troops to guard one side, which eventually caused a so-called "Battle of Jingnan".According to Wang Fuzhi, a great thinker in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, the pros and cons of feudalism and prefectures and counties are actually the least of the issues that need to be discussed. Someone repeats the old saying.

Although the idea of ​​promoting feudalism has never ceased, the lessons of the Han and Jin dynasties have been accepted by most people.Therefore, since the Qing Dynasty, the feudal system has been abolished forever, and the prince is only a false title without real land.The parallel system of prefectures and states since the Western Han Dynasty has also come to an end, and it has been transferred to the pure prefecture and county system of the Qin Dynasty.The feudalism in the early Han Dynasty and the early Jin Dynasty can be regarded as the two flashbacks of the feudal system. After these two twists and turns that seemed to come back to life, the feudal system completely withdrew from the stage of history. The last dynasty in Chinese history - the Qing Dynasty.