The two major sinners in Chinese history, one almost wiped out the Han Chinese, and the other almost carved up China. The title highlights two embarrassing figures in history whose actions have plunged entire countries into great crisis. Do the names of these two sinners represent the deadliest political and military blunder in Chinese history?
Sima Yan usurped Wei to establish the Western Jin Dynasty, ending the chaotic situation during the Three Kingdoms period and achieving a brief unification. But the uniformity of this layer of window paper was already full of holes in him from the beginning. In order to consolidate his power, he divided a large number of princes with the same surname, in order to rely on them to protect the imperial power.
This is undoubtedly a stupid decision. As an emperor, he actually relied on the power of these vassal kings to maintain the imperial court, and the funny thing is that after these princes and kings got real power, why were they willing to be his lackeys? Internal contradictions continued to intensify, which soon led to the outbreak of the Eight Kings Rebellion. And the other mediocre emperor, Jia Nanfeng, is incompetent in governing that leads to the lack of popular support. Under internal and external troubles, the national strength of the Western Jin Dynasty rapidly declined.
At the same time, the northern region was already inhabited by a large number of Hu people. Years of war made them realize that an opportunity was coming. Liu Yuan is one example. He was originally held hostage in Luoyang City, but he took advantage of the chaos to flee back to his hometown to strengthen his power. During the Eight Kings Rebellion, he led his army to become emperor and established the Han and Zhao regimes. Soon in 311, Luoyang was captured, marking the fall of the Western Jin Dynasty and the prelude to the Wuhu Rebellion.
During this period, the north completely fell under the control of the barbarian Hu people. They originally regarded the Han people as a thorn in their side, and when they got the opportunity, they carried out crazy looting of the Han people**, and their number quickly plummeted by 10 million.
Under the Hu regime, the status of the Han people was as low as livestock, and they were killed at the slightest misfortune, and even eaten by the Han people as food supplies. This was undoubtedly the darkest period in the history of the Chinese nation, and the northern region was full of the shadows of killing and chaos.
In these years of purgatory on earth, it is not difficult for us to imagine what kind of torture and pain those innocent people will endure. In the face of death, in the face of the tragic killing of their loved ones, and with what despair and fear they will spend day and night. The most brutal side of human nature is repeated every moment in this land, which makes people shudder.
It was not until 300 years later, in 589, that Emperor Wen of Sui reunified this ** country and put an end to the Wuhu Rebellion, but countless Han people suffered during this period. Under the iron hooves of the Hu people, the Han nationality was once almost extinct, and the population plummeted by nearly 10 million, reducing it to an ethnic minority in the vast land. They survived a long period of turmoil and chaos.
The cause of all this, the Western Jin Dynasty could not escape responsibility. In particular, the wrong decision of the Sima Yan family directly led to a deep disaster for the nation, and in order to consolidate their rule, they led the wolf into the house, leading to the collapse of the country and the destruction of the family.
If it weren't for Yang Jian's later establishment of the Sui Dynasty, I am afraid that the Han people would have been extinct in the north. It was the mediocrity and incompetence of the Sima dynasty that caused the people to suffer immensely and almost lost the country left by their ancestors.
Moreover, when we recount the humiliating history of the late Qing Dynasty, we will think of another sinner who brought endless suffering to the Chinese nation - the Empress Dowager Cixi. A harem woman almost led the Qing Dynasty to the abyss of destruction, and what she did was even more foolish.
Cixi was born in a family of eight surnames in the Manchu Dynasty and was a well-deserved royal noble. She was favored into the palace by chance, and never conceived a prince in her life, but because she adopted her nephew Zaichun (that is, Emperor Tongzhi), she won the position of queen mother. After the early death of Emperor Tongzhi, she became the supreme ruler who listened to the government, and the three-year-old Guangxu Emperor was strictly regent, depriving him of all opportunities to exercise power.
After the outbreak of the Sino-French War, Cixi's mediocrity was officially exposed. In 1884, the Qing army won a great victory at Zhennan Pass, and the French army was in a desperate situation. This is the best opportunity to deal a fatal blow to the French army and win the Sino-French War.
However, at this critical juncture, Cixi insisted on an armistice, advocating "taking advantage of victory and negotiating peace" with the French. In the end, instead of recovering the lost territory, they signed an unequal treaty that benefited the French and allowed them to further invade China.
During the First Sino-Japanese War, Cixi was even more mediocre to the extreme. In front of the iron hooves of the Japanese army, she put the life and death of the country out of the way, completely ignoring the major affairs of the military state, and only wanted to hold a birthday banquet in a lively manner. She even publicly threatened: "Whoever has made me unhappy recently, I will also make him unhappy for life." It can be seen how many soldiers' lives she can sacrifice for her own temporary entertainment. In the end, there is no doubt that the defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War led China to sign countless unequal treaties.
In the face of the reversal of the situation in which the young Emperor Guangxu advocated changing the law and trying to become stronger, this old woman once again tried her best to suppress and obstruct it. Fearing that the new ideas would shake her power, she immediately staged a coup d'état and placed Guangxu, who advocated change, under house arrest. In the end, the revolution was lost and unfinished, and the power of the West became more and more rampant.
It can be said that the Empress Dowager Cixi is incompetent and extremely ignorant. For the sake of her own power and pleasure, she disregarded the country's social welfare. By the outbreak of the Xinhai Revolution in 1911, it was only a matter of time before China became a semi-colony of the Western powers.
This downfall, the disaster of the Manchu dynasty, the disaster of the country, Cixi's guilt is irrefutable. At the same time, it also buried the history of thousands of years of feudal dynasties in China, and opened a semi-colonial period of darkness and suffering.
Whether it was the fall of the Western Jin Dynasty or the fall of the late Qing Dynasty, Sima and Cixi played the role of sinners. One almost made the Han people extinct, and the other almost shattered China's mountains and rivers. They are ignorant and short-sighted, and they put the nation-state at risk for their own selfish desires. In the end, all kinds of mistakes and omissions were accumulated, which led to irreparable heavy disasters.
History is full of infinite possibilities, and the nation will move towards a brilliant and colorful future. However, the crimes they committed have pushed the trajectory of history into the dark abyss. There are no eggs under the nest, and all the tragedies they face are caused by their own hands.
Life has an end, and history is endless. We cannot predict where the fate of the nation will be, and we cannot avoid the creation of new sinners there. However, all these lessons and pains should not be forgotten. They will serve as a wake-up call to future generations not to repeat the mistakes of the past. As the saying goes, reading history makes people wise. If those who are in power lose morality and political turmoil, they will push the nation into a catastrophe; The same is true of the king, and the same is true of the minister. This is the eternal iron law of history.