In 260 AD, Cao Chao, the second of Cao Wei's "Three Young Emperors", raised an army under the condition that "Sima Zhao's heart is known to passers-by", and finally paid the price with his life. After Cao Chao's death, the people of the time usually called him by his title before he ascended the throne - noble townsman. For example, after the dust settled on this matter, Sima Zhao called Cao Chao a "noble countryman" when he defended himself in a book, and then Yu Chun also called Cao Chao a "noble countryman" when he satirized Jia Chong. Influenced by this, ancient historians also used this term. This way of addressing actually reflects the historical positioning of Cao Wei *** under the control of the Sima clan on Cao Chao's personal and behavior.
As the so-called "coffin closure theory", the determination of Cao Chao's funeral rites can be regarded as the beginning of this official historical positioning. It is worth noting that from the death of Cao Chao to his burial, there was a process from discussion to finalization of his funeral rites. From the participants in this discussion and their arguments, we can understand the change in Sima's views on Cao Chao's treatment and the historical background of this change. In fact, the funeral was part of the Sima Group's response to Cao's death. We can gain a more detailed understanding of the state of Cao Wei's Shaodi politics and the political situation at the time of the Wei and Jin dynasties from Sima's response to Cao Chao's death.
1. Cao Chao's death and Sima's response
Chen Shou proceeded from the perspective of being Sima Shi, and gently brought over the historical details of Cao Chao's death in an understated way, which is only in the "Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms"."May is ugly, noble township pawn, twenty years old".It's just 12 words. And Xi Chisel Tooth recorded Cao Chao's death more completely in the "Spring and Autumn Period of the Han Dynasty": Cao Chao and Wang Shen, Shangshu Wang Jing, and Wang Ye of the scattered cavalry often planned to raise troops, and Wang Shen and Wang Ye sued Sima Zhao about the matter. After that, Cao Chao led his servants to "come out of the noise" and fought with Jia Chong, the central protector of the Sima clan, in Nanque, and finally died at the hands of Cheng Ji. Cao Chao's rebellion has long been regarded as a military adventure in which the young emperor pinned his hopes on the emperor's authority. As Ye Shi said,"The usurper has become a minister, and it is not something that can be ordered by empty words, just like a noble townsman fighting with empty hands".Cao's defeat was inevitable. However, Cao Chao's death was not an inevitable product of Cao Wei's late politics under Sima's control, in other words, Cao Chao's death was more like an accident for Sima.
First of all, from the perspective of the political evolution of Cao Wei since the Gaopingling Incident, the Sima clan basically eliminated the anti-Sima forces with which Cao Wei was vying for power through a series of events such as the Gaopingling Incident (249 AD in the first ten years), the killing of Xiahou Xuan, Li Feng and others (254 AD in the sixth year of Jiaping), and the abolition of the Shao Emperor Cao Fang (254 AD in the sixth year of Jiaping), and cleared away the military forces that supported Cao or raised troops in the name of supporting Cao in Huainan by quelling the three rebellions in Huainan. The Sima clan had long been accustomed to gaining political gain by using the imperial power of Cao Wei rather than violently encroaching on it. At the same time, Sima's many exploits increased his prestige and provided legitimacy for him to maintain a political situation in which "the Ma clan is governed by the Ma clan and the sacrifices are few".
Secondly, from the political perspective of the young emperor of Cao Wei under the manipulation of the Sima clan, when the Sima clan found that the reigning young emperor had an anti-Sima trend, they were more inclined to depose the old emperor and set up a new emperor. Cao Fang, under the instigation of the "left and right ministers", hoped to seize the opportunity of Sima Zhao's attack on Jiang Wei's passing through Luoyang, and planned to attack and kill Sima Zhao in Pingxing and seize military power, so as to deter Sima Shi, who was a general at the time, and achieve the goal of strengthening imperial power. After the failure of Ping's optimistic scheme, Sima quickly took control of the situation and deposed Cao Fang in the name of Empress Guo.
The outcome of the return of the King of Qi to the vassal after Cao Fang was deposed and the political operation of the Sima clan within the framework of the Cao Wei system were the normal state of the succession of the imperial throne in the later period of Cao Wei. In contrast, Sima's military repression of military adventures and Cao Chao's death became an anomaly. Finally, we can judge from Sima Zhao's reaction of "being shocked and throwing himself to the ground" after learning of Cao Chao's death, that for Sima Zhao personally, Cao Chao's death was indeed an accident. For Sima, a safer way to deal with Cao Chao's rebellion was to suppress the mutiny, deposing him but preserving his life.
Cao Chao, as the only one of the three young emperors who "can not fall into the ancestral style", broke the political convention that the Sima clan had painstakingly constructed since the Gaopingling Incident at the cost of his life. For Sima, this accident has both pros and cons. Through military victories, the Sima clan completely declared its overwhelming superiority over the imperial power of Cao Wei, but there were also drawbacks. The killing of the monarch called into question the legitimacy of Sima's de facto rule, and this trampling on imperial power would also have a negative impact on Sima's rebuilding of imperial power after Wei. In addition, the charge of killing the monarch also put Sima's heavy political and moral burden. When the news of Cao Chao's death came, his words of "what the world says about me" were the fear of this inevitable ** pressure. As a result, Sima Shi is bound to need to make an appropriate response to Cao Chao's death in order to seek advantages and avoid disadvantages.
The overall goal is to bring the "derailed" political situation back on track, but this comes at a political cost. Cao Chao's death was the result of the collision of two forces, the monarch killer and the monarch he killed, and in order to calm the political twists and turns caused by Cao Chao's death, Sima also needed to solve two interrelated political problems: how to treat the murdered monarch and how to deal with the monarch killer. The solution of both of these problems is based on Sima's interpretation of the act of killing the king. In other words, Sima needed to rationalize the act of killing the monarch in order to clear his name. On the basis of justifying his actions, Sima needed to continue the political operation of his "writer's gate" within the political framework of the Cao Wei dynasty.
It should be pointed out that the solution of these two problems is premised on the denial of Cao Chao's historical status as emperor. Only by portraying Cao Chao as a faint monarch can the Sima clan transform themselves from a monarch killer into a loyal minister of the Great Wei who has a heart for the society, and only by denying Cao Chao's imperial lineage can the Sima clan appoint a weaker descendant of the Cao clan to play the role of the initiator of the Chan concession. Sima Zhao's subsequent political activities began with this as the central point.
Sima first manipulated the then Empress Dowager Guo (the titular mother of Cao Chao, the Duke of Gaogui Township after Emperor Cao Rong of Wei Ming) to make an official characterization of Cao Chao's death in the form of the Empress Dowager Order ("Chasing and Degrading the Duke of Gaoguixiang"). Empress Dowager Guo's stigmatizing description of Cao Chao's morality and praise for the great general Sima Zhao's exploits in this matter existed precisely to solve the problems caused by Cao Chao's death to the Sima clan.
2. The discussion of funeral rites and the adjustment of Sima's strategy
It is worth noting that at the end of the Empress Dowager Guo's order, Cao Chao's funeral ceremony was determined to be "buried with people's rites", which can be considered the inevitable result of Cao Chao's image of "rebelliousness" and "self-inflicted disaster" under the narrative logic of this text. However, the solution of political problems is often not once and for all, and the arrangement of Cao Chao's funeral in the order of Empress Dowager Guo is only a temporary solution to Cao Chao's death, and it has become the beginning of a political chain reaction. We can see some clues from the attitude of the people of the time towards Cao Chao's death. After Cao Chao was killed, Taichang Wang Xiang cried that "the old minister has no form", and Shangshu's right servant shot Chen Tai and Sima Yi's brother, Sima Fu, who was the Taifu at the time"The pillow corpse is in the stock, crying and mourning".Sima Fu even said "the crime of killing His Majesty's ministers" and demanded punishment. Chen Tai even refused to attend the "aftermath meeting" led by Sima Zhao at first, and ridiculed his uncle Xun Yi who came to invite him on Sima Zhao's orders with the phrase "Uncle is not as good as Tai".
When Cao Chao was buried, the onlookers still regarded him as the Son of Heaven and hid their faces and wept. Obviously, Cao's identity as the Son of Heaven has not disappeared due to Sima's stigmatizing propaganda, which means that Sima's murder of the monarch will become a political stain on him for a long time. At the same time, the complete erasure of Cao Chao's imperial system in the form of "folk funeral" will only exacerbate the ill feelings of those who sympathize with Cao (or those who sympathize with Cao Chao) towards Sima. From this point of view, the Sima group had to make certain adjustments to the characterization of Cao Chao's historical status in the Empress Dowager Guo's order, and the results of this adjustment were reflected in the joint performance of Taifu Sima Fu, the general Sima Zhao, Taiwei Gao Rou, and Situ Zheng Chong not long after.
Before analyzing the content of "Playing the Funeral of the Noble Townsman and the King's Ceremony", we need to focus on the composition of the performers. The performance was led by Taifu Sima Fu, firstly, Taifu was the ceremonial "Shanggong", the class was before the third duke, and secondly, Sima Fu was the uncle of Sima Zhao, and from the perspective of clan relations, it should also be ranked before Sima Zhao. The most important thing is that Sima Fu has both the identity of "Wei Zhenshi" and a member of the Sima clan, and he can not only create an atmosphere of sincere begging for Cao Chao, but also strive for political resources for the Sima clan as much as possible. Sima Zhao retreated, presumably in order to reduce the world's ridicule of his coy. Gao Rou served as a subordinate of Prime Minister Cao Cao in his early years, and was famous for his direct advice during the time of Emperor Wei Ming. He decisively sided with Sima Yi in the Gaopingling Incident, seized Cao Shuang's military camp, and made great contributions to Sima's victory.
After that, Gao Rou also played the role of suing Gao Miao as a lieutenant when he deposed Cao Fang. Such an image of Cao Wei's old man who leaned towards the Sima clan can also win the hearts of the people of the Sima clan and guide people to support the Sima clan and support the Cao Wei regime on the same level. As for Situ Zheng Chong, he may have appeared in this performance as the role of the great Confucian and Cao Chao's "teacher" in this performance. Cao Chao was very interested in the study of scriptures, especially the "Book of Shang", and Zheng Chong once personally taught "Book of Shang" to Cao Chao. Sima used Zheng Chong's status as a close minister of Cao Chao to enhance the credibility of Cao Chao's misconduct. At the same time, Zheng Chong appeared as a "generation of Confucianism", portraying Cao Chao as an enemy of Confucian morality, and while continuing to stigmatize Cao Chao, he also strengthened the image of Sima as a defender of the famous religion.
In the performance of "Asking for the Burial of the Noble Township Princess", the Sima Group continued the characterization of Cao Chao as "rebellious" and "self-inflicted" in the "Decree on the Pursuit and Debasement of the Noble Township", but proposed amendments to the handling of the "civil funeral" in the Empress Dowager's order (which is essentially the historical positioning of Cao Chao). In the political context of the death of the old emperor and the absence of the new emperor at that time, Empress Dowager Guo became the highest representative of the imperial power of Cao Wei, and this revision was of course expressed in the form of "grace". However, as mentioned above, this kind of "grace" is actually an adjustment of Cao Chao's historical positioning by the Sima Group in order to win people's hearts. Upgrading the "people's funeral" to the "king's funeral" is actually to regard Cao Chao as equivalent to the existence of the previous abolished emperor - Cao Fang.
Cao Fang "returned to the domain", "the system is like the gift of the feudal state", and became an ordinary member of the clan. For Sima, who was criticized for demoting Cao Chao to a commoner, this was also a more conciliatory compromise. It should be pointed out that the subtlety of this adjustment is that it did not overturn the negative image of Cao Chao constructed by the Empress Dowager's order, nor did it change the policy of denying Cao Chao's imperial system previously determined by Sima, but used Sima's "unbearable" to promote the "benevolence" of the Empress Dowager, and then "upgraded" the "people's funeral" to "Wang Funeral", cleverly shaping himself into an image of being guilty of protecting Cao Chao and giving great tolerance to the rebels.
Through the analysis of the political background and the content of the text of the musician of the "Funeral of the Noble Township Gong Yiwang", we can summarize the political goals that Sima hopes to achieve from this performance. The Sima clan hoped to use this funeral discussion to appease the anti-Sima sentiments that had been bred by Cao Chao's death to the greatest extent, and then heal the rift in the Cao Wei political system caused by Cao Chao's death, so as to continue to gain political prestige within the institutional framework of the Cao Wei dynasty and move towards the ultimate goal of transmutation. "Playing and Asking for the Burial of the Noble Township Duke to the King's Ceremony" is also the answer given by Sima Shi on how to deal with the murdered king.
3. The Funeral Ceremony and Liu He's Memory
In addition to arguing the necessity of chasing and degrading Cao Chao from the perspectives of Cao Chao's negative image and the requirements of etiquette, the "Decree on the Pursuit and Debasement of the Noble Township" also adopts the way of citing the story of the previous dynasty to enhance its persuasiveness: "The king of Changyi in the former Han Dynasty was abolished as a concubine, and it is appropriate to bury him with civil rites here." In "Singing and Inviting the Burial of the Noble Township Princes to the King's Ceremony", you can also see "according to the story of the crime of the king of Changyi in the Han Dynasty, and bury it with the people's rites"."Noble Township ......The burial is a folk ceremony, and honesty is an old ceremony".and so on. King Changyi refers to Liu He, who was deposed by Huo Guang for "fornication" after briefly ascending to the throne in the Western Han Dynasty. These two texts constantly imply that Liu He's deposition as a concubine provided a precedent for the Cao Wei dynasty to deal with Cao Chao, and this precedent seems to be naturally correct in this system of discourse that blessed political power.
According to the Book of Han, volume 63, "The Biography of Wu Wuzi, the Biography of Liu Ji, King of Changyi"."General (Huo) Guang ......Abolished (Liu) He returned to his homeland and gave Tang Muyi 2,000 households", although "the country was removed, it was Shanyang County".But Liu He's treatment of owning Tang Muyi after being deposed was far from being comparable to that of the common people. It can be seen that the understanding that "the king of Changyi is a concubine with his crimes" does not conform to historical facts.
As for the statement that "according to the story of the crime and abolition of the king of Changyi in the Han Dynasty, the burial of it with the people's rites" is even more inexplicable, according to the "Book of Han" volume 8 "Emperor Xuan Ji", after Emperor Xuan ascended the throne in March of the third year of Yuankang (63 BC), Liu He was named the Marquis of Haidu, and the "Book of Han" volume 63 "The Biography of Wu Wuzi and the Biography of Liu Ji of Changyi Wang" used "Xu" to express Liu He's death. Since Liu He died as the Marquis of Haidu, the funeral ceremony was naturally a marquis. From the above analysis, we can draw the conclusion that in the "Decree on the Pursuit and Debasement of the Noble Township Prince" and the "Invitation to Funeral the Noble Township Prince's Ceremony", the historical memory of Liu He has been distorted while being evoked, and this distortion is mainly focused on the identity of Liu He after he was deposed and Liu He's funeral ceremony. Next, we will turn the focus of our analysis to the mechanism of Liu He's memory evocation and distortion.
For a long time, Cao Chao has been showing people the image of "talent and wisdom, good to ask questions", and Sima Shi has done everything to stigmatize it, and the image of Liu He's "absurdity and confusion, loss of imperial courtesy, and chaos with the Han system" recorded (or constructed) in the Book of Han is quite similar to the negative image of Cao Chao that Sima focused on promoting at this time. It is this similarity that evokes Liu He from a vast historical memory pool and makes him play the role of a reference in Cao Chao's funeral discussions. Liu He symbolizes the inevitable connection between misconduct and the deprivation of the legitimacy of the imperial system. As mentioned above, Sima started from denying Cao Chao's imperial lineage and beautifying his own act of killing the monarch, hoping to erase Cao Chao's historical status as the emperor and position Cao Chao as a concubine who "plotted great rebellion". In this way, the distortion of Liu He's memory is driven by two forces, one is the similarity between Liu He's negative image and Sima's negative image of Cao Chao, and the other is Sima's historical positioning of his concubines after Cao Chao's death (before adjustment). The driving force behind the grafting of the two elements of "Liu He" and "Waste as a Shuren" was Sima's political interests.
When Sima needed to "grace" Cao Chao through funeral rituals in order to create his own image of being social and magnanimous, Liu He's image was further used or distorted. From Sima's point of view, the more this kind of "grace" is built on the unshakable "old rites", the more it can highlight the degree of his efforts to "extrajudicial grace" for Cao Chao. It is no wonder that Sima Fu and others swore that the ending of "funeral with people's rites" in Liu He's story was adjusted.
Fourth, the recognition of the harvest and the responsibility of killing the king
In order to further create a loyal and magnanimous image, Sima Zhao once again resigned from the position of Xiangguo, the title of the Duke of Jin and the gift of Jiuxi, which had been done before to show self-criticism and self-punishment for his failure to "save the chaos" (of course, this is just an expression of political gestures, and after a month, Sima Zhao took advantage of the opportunity to support Cao Huan to obtain the position of Xiangguo, the title of Duke of Jin and the gift of Jiuxi). Subsequently, Sima Zhao proceeded from the perspective of "Kelu" and "dealt with" the "**" who killed Cao Chao. In his "Concert of Harvest", Sima Zhao responded to the demands of some people in the court for punishment (whether it is out of loyalty to the Cao family or the maintenance of imperial power), but this punishment must be based on safeguarding Sima's own interests, so Sima Zhao's attitude towards the direct killer of the monarch, the main messenger and the behind-the-scenes controller can be described as a world of difference.
Sima Zhao constructed himself as a loyal minister who was forced to fight back for the Great Wei Sheji and Empress Dowager Guo, so that he changed from a behind-the-scenes controller who was called "the head of the emperor killer" by Zhao Yi to a minister who "hated iron but not steel", a strategy that we can call "whitewashing". And the direct commander, Jia Chong, who was the central protector at the time, was "invisible" in the song. In fact, whether as the commander of the Battle of Nanque or as the instigator of Chengji's murder of the monarch, Jia Chong could not escape the blame for Cao Chao's death, and his responsibility was even higher than that of Chengji. Chen Tai's attitude of "punishing Jia to thank the world" is the best proof.
Until after the founding of the Western Jin Dynasty, Yu Chun also brought out Cao Chao's death when arguing with Jia Chong, and asked him "where is the noble townshipman", which shows that this matter has always been a political stain widely criticized by Jia Chong. However, unlike the Chengji brothers, Jia Chong's father, Jia Kui, was born in a humble background, but he had both military strategies and officials, and successively served as the commander of various places, and had quite a lot of political achievements, and was called "the true history of thorns" by Cao Pi, Emperor Wen of Wei. Emperor Cao Rong and Cao Chao of Wei Ming were fortunate enough to have Jia Kui's ancestral service, which shows that under the discourse system of the Cao Wei Dynasty, Jia Kui appeared as a typical magistrate. In this way, Jia Chong, who turned to the Sima clan, will naturally be protected as a typical example of joining the Sima clan (from this point of view, his eagerness to kill Cao Chao and make meritorious service to the Sima clan has a certain "convert's fanaticism" nature). It is precisely because Jia Chong was crucial to Sima's efforts to establish his own political network from the circle of Cao Wei's relatives that it is possible to understand Sima Zhao's "favoritism" strategy for Jia Chong. Sima's silent protection of Jia Chong is a tacit killing of Chen Tai and others who advocate and punish Jia Chong, and this shows his authority more than polemics.
As for the direct perpetrator of the act of killing the king, Cheng Ji, he became a victim of the Sima clan to appease the Cao clan. In the face of Chengji, Sima Zhao turned into a fulfiller of "governing the country according to law", and sentenced his parents and wives to be beheaded in strict accordance with the punishment of great rebellion in science and law. This strategy can be referred to as "scrutiny". In this way, stimulated by Jia Chong's words "If Sima's family affairs fail, how can you wait for you to have a kind of thing", the Chengji brothers, who attacked Cao Chao, turned into the scapegoat pushed to the front by the Sima Group, and also lost the lives of the family. The strategy of whitewashing, protecting, and strictly investigating is the final answer to the problem of dealing with monarch killers.
5. Sima's response and the Wei and Jin dynasties.
Cao Wei's rebellion was Cao Wei**'s last armed anti-Sima campaign. Sima's response to this matter has also become a window for us to observe the Wei and Jin dynasties. With the death of Cao Chao, those who cherished the Cao clan lost the last leader who had hope and willingness to compete with the Sima clan for the de facto dominance of the dynasty, and the Sima clan's rule was now a foregone conclusion. The political focus also shifted from seizing power to consolidating its own political authority and pacifying the opposition, laying a sound political foundation for the imminent establishment of the Jin regime. Since the Gao Pingling Incident, the Sima clan has indeed extinguished one anti-Sima group after another, but the price paid is not small. For example, Sima Shi was frightened by Wen Yuan's attack when he was begging Qiu Jian, and died in Xuchang soon after. Sima Yi's death is also believed to be related to the ghosts of Wang Ling and Jia Kui. Of course, this kind of account is related to the fact that the Jin Book contains many gods and ghosts, but Sima Yi's advanced age when he went to Huainan took a big risk.
At the same time, Wang Ling's confession of the "loyal minister of the Great Wei" and the ending of the "Yi Three Clans" when he passed through Jia Kui Temple after the capture brought an additional psychological burden to Sima Yi. Sima's cruel methods against political opponents not only failed to expand their own ruling base, but on the contrary, they continued to make enemies for Sima. Sima's victory "did not give them the opportunity to settle their hearts to enjoy, but forced them to face a new struggle and win a new victory......As a result of the struggle, more opposition forces have been brought in". Li Feng and Zhang Ji plotted to abolish Minister Yi, and it was Cao Shuang's cousin Xiahou Xuan who came out to replace the position of General Sima Shi, and Xiahou Xuan was precisely after the Gaopingling Incident. After Cao Fang, the death of his father Zhang Ji became the fuse of Cao Fangping's optimistic plan; The relationship between Biqiu Jian and Li Feng and Xiahou Xuan was one of the important reasons for his army; The friendly relationship between Zhuge Dan and Deng Yang (Cao Shuang's party, who died in the Gaopingling Incident), Xiahou Xuan, and the ending of the first two generals in the Huainan region made them go from "not feeling at ease" to finally embark on the road of armed confrontation against the Sima clan.
Under the influence of this serial nature, Sima paid a huge price for the "counterinsurgency", which in turn affected the progress of its Chan Dynasty. In this context, the Sima clan must have hoped to break this chain and open up a relatively stable political situation for themselves and the soon-to-be-established Jin dynasty. This stability was based on the political rapprochement between Sima's private party and those sympathetic to Cao Wei, not on the former's political purge of the latter. The political network through which the Sima clan established the Jin dynasty was largely derived from the Cao Wei dynasty, and "the Sima family did not in fact have the objective conditions for large-scale political purges."
In fact, until the establishment of the Western Jin Dynasty, the political divide between Sima's private party and those sympathetic to Cao Wei still existed for a long time, "the history after entering the Jin Dynasty will show that the Chan Dynasty is not the end of the political struggle, and the two opposing forces at the end of the Wei Dynasty will perform a new and continuous struggle in the Jin Wu Emperor Dynasty", "The political forces of the pro-Cao clan still clearly existed on the eve of the Chan Dynasty, in the early years of the Jin Dynasty, and even ten years after entering the Jin Dynasty." The homogenization of labels such as "celebrities", "Su people" and "pro-Cao clan" has the problem of replacing the individuality of historical figures with the commonality of political groups, but the problems pointed out are still instructive. After the Sima clan obtained a political position sufficient to ensure its own seizure of power, it did not need to purge those who were pro-Cao, but only needed to use preferential and coercive means to prevent them from becoming Sima's enemies, and the way to deal with Cao Chao's death can also enrich our understanding of Sima's political orientation of "wide on the outside and taboo on the inside".
Hotspot Engine Program