The rise of the Later Jin Dynasty (Part I).
42 degrees north latitude - the life and death line of the Ming Dynasty" Section 26 Author: Wen Junxuan Nurhachi In order to gain the trust of the imperial court, not only did he not allow his subordinates to violate the border, but also helped liberate the people of Liaodong who were taken captive into the mountains many times.
In addition, Nurhachi also went to Beijing many times to pay tribute, and directly showed obedience to the emperor and courtiers, won the recognition of the imperial court, and was named the "Governor of Jianzhou", which was regarded as an official certification of his status as the lord of Jianzhou.
Li Chengliang and the imperial court's recognition and restraint of Nurhachi made them think that the Jianzhou Jurchen would not be too big to lose. However, Li Chengliang was sent into the wilderness, the border preparations in eastern Liaodong became more and more relaxed, and Nurhachi's momentum became more and more fierce.
Nurhachi defeated a coalition of nine tribes in the Battle of Gul Mountain, and this war was of great significance to Nurhachi, just like Genghis Khan's "Battle of the Thirteen Wings".
Nurhachi's war with nine rival tribes encompassed all the Southern Jurchen tribes except the Savage Jurchens. Among the fifteen tribes that participated in the war, except for the Horqin tribe, the rest were Jurchen tribes, including the Changbai Mountain Jurchen and the Mongolian Jurchen.
Liaodong is the place of yearning in everyone's hearts, and those who get Liaodong get the northeast. The greatest wish of many Northern Yuan ** subdued by the Ming Dynasty in the northeast was to settle them in Liaodong, and Zhu Di was able to persuade Duoyan Sanwei to join him, also because Sanwei was allowed to move south to the side of Liaodong.
The Liao River is the core river of eastern Liao, and the success of Jianzhou and Haixi Jurchen lies in their successful penetration into the Liao River basin. However, not all Jianzhou Jurchens and Haixi Jurchens did this.
The Jianzhou Sanwei originated from the alliance of the "Jurchen of the Five Kingdoms", of which the Huli Reform Department was the first to be named the "Jianzhou Wei" and went south to the Hunjiang River Valley near Liaodong.
Later, the "Jianzhou Left Guard" and "Jianzhou Right Guard" were established by the Ouduoli Division, which were originally equivalent to the branches of the Jianzhou Guard. After being forced to return to China from Korea, the left and right guards of Jianzhou also settled in the Hunjiang River valley.
Although the two tribes are close, there are differences after all. Jianzhouwei was the first to come to the Hunjiang River Valley, and at the same time, Mao Lianwei, who also belonged to the Huli Reform Department, was also driven over by North Korea, making the place a little crowded.
Therefore, Nurhachi's sixth ancestor, Mengtemu, moved to the Hunhe River valley on the west side of the Hunjiang River valley to develop, and eventually evolved into the later Jianzhou Left and Right Guards.
Although the difference between the Hunjiang River and the Hunhe River is only one word, they have worlds of different geographical attributes. The Hunjiang River is a tributary of the Yalu River, and the Hunhe River is a tributary of the Liao River. The importance of the Hunhe River is self-evident, it is the mother river of Shenyang, and it is an important symbol of Shenyang.
As early as the Ming Dynasty, the Hunhe River valley was named the place where the "King Shen" built a domain, and the scale of the guards stationed here was also the largest among the guards in Liaodong. After the Jianzhou Jurchens settled in the upper valley of the Hunhe River, Shenyang's military role mainly became to restrain Jianzhou.
Therefore, the Ming Dynasty built the Fushun Pass on the bank of the Hunhe River in the east of Shenyang, and exchanged markets with the Jianzhou Jurchens. And this means that which tribe in Jianzhou Jurchen is closest to Fushun Pass will have the best location.
There is a famous saying in the real estate world: "The factors that determine the value of real estate are the first is the location, the second is the location, and the third is the location". And this was also confirmed when the Jianzhou Jurchens were doing things in the early Ming Dynasty, and every time Jianzhou Wei took the lead in doing things, it would give the court a headache.
And in the later period, if there is something to do, it will be the chiefs of the left and right guards of Jianzhou who will give the court a headache. The reason behind this is that the location of the left and right guards of Jianzhou is better than that of Jianzhou Wei.
By the end of the Ming Dynasty, the establishment of the Jianzhou Sanwei system had actually dispersed, and the Jianzhou Jurchens were divided into five tribes according to their respective places of residence. Among them, those who settled in the Hunjiang River Valley are: Wang Jiabu and Dong Ebu; Those who settled in the Hunhe River valley were: Zhechen Department, Hunhe Department, and Sukesuhu River Department, collectively known as the "Five Divisions of Jianzhou".
Each tribe corresponds to a river valley. Among them, the name Sukesuhu River is too long, and now it is shortened to "Suzi River", which is a tributary on the left bank of the Hunhe River. At that time, Mentemu settled in the valley of the Suzi River and built a "Hetuara City".
After the unification of the Jurchens, this walled city also became the first capital of the Later Jin.
The relationship between location and blood has a profound impact on the fate of a tribe. In the Sukesuhu River Division, Nurhachi and Nikan Wailan engaged in a power struggle, and the superior geographical location of the Hunhe River became the first bird to challenge the Ming Dynasty by the right guard of Jianzhou, which eventually led to its defeat by Li Chengliang.
In the Haixi Jurchens, the rise of the Hulun tribe was inseparable from Zhu Di's construction of a shipyard in Jilin, the operation of the Nuer Gandu Division, and the Ming Dynasty's checks and balances on Northeast Asia. Both Nurhachi and the rise of the Hercynian Jurchens benefited from the Ming Dynasty's operations in Northeast Asia.
The Ula tribe was the tribe of the son of the first lord of Hulun, and after the family was separated, the second son moved south to settle in the Hada River. The Hada River (Qing River) is a tributary of the Liao River, the Qing River flows west through the Changbai Mountains and then flows into the Liao River, and the Qing River flows through the Kaiyuan River of Liaoning Province together with the Hunhe River.
During the Ming Dynasty, Kaiyuan was the northern gate of the Ming Dynasty, where 30,000 guards were settled, and a guard station was also placed in Shenyang. Zhu Yuanzhang once named his son Zhu Song as the "King of Han" and stationed here.
If he did not move inward, he would hand over the task of fighting against the Haixi Jurchens to the Han Wang family. Along the Qing River and the Hunhe River, Nurhachi unified the five divisions of Jianzhou, and the Yehe tribe dominated the four divisions of Haixi, and a battle of the Jurchen kings was inevitable.
The Yehe River is an upstream tributary of the Hada River, and the two places were connected to the Ming Dynasty through the Hada River. In the late Ming Dynasty, the Yehe and Hada tribes attacked each other continuously, and the Ming Dynasty regarded the Hada tribe as orthodox, calling it the "North Pass" and the Yehe tribe as the "South Pass".
The Ming Dynasty set up border passes in Kaiyuan to balance the two tribes and control the ** between the tribes. During the Ming Dynasty, the edict issued by the imperial court was a frontier hard currency, which mostly meant that it had greater power, so the competition for the edict became the norm of tribal warfare.
In the early years of the Ming Dynasty, the imperial court gave Hada and Yehe two 999 edicts, and the number 500 became the key point, and the tribe with more than 500 edicts was the boss of Haixi.
The Ming Dynasty adopted a policy of division, and Li Chengliang repeatedly sent troops to attack the Yehe tribe in order to weaken its power and balance the Hada and Yehe tribes. However, with the dismissal of Li Chengliang, Ye Hebu quickly rose to become the overlord of the Haixi Jurchens.
On the other hand, Nurhachi unified the five prefectures, and the Changbai Mountain Jurchen and the Mongolian Jurchen became supporting roles and tricks. The Jurchens of Changbai Mountain were Jurchen tribes living around Tianchi, while the Mongol Jurchens were at war with Yehebu and Nurhachi Jurchens.
Although Tianchi is the birthplace of the three major rivers, it is important to know that there are more than three streams of water that flow down from the mountain. In addition to the headwaters of the Yalu and Tumen rivers, there are also streams formed in China, converging into nearly ten tributaries of the Songhua River.
These tributaries were further combined into two major water systems, the first Songhua River and the second Songhua River, and finally merged at the Baishan Reservoir in Jilin Province to become the main stream of the Songhua River. This confluence is also the watershed of the Changbai Mountains.
There are three parts of the Changbai Mountain Jurchen, including the Zhusheli Division, the Neyin and the Yalu River Division. Of course, the Yalu River is located on the north bank of the Yalu River, while the Neyin and Zhusheli parts are located on the Songhua River in Toudao and the Songhua River in Erdao, respectively.
After moving south, the Jianzhou Jurchens first settled in the Tumen River valley, and then, with the permission of the Ming Dynasty, moved south to the west of the Yalu River, and the three parts of the Changbai Mountains happened to straddle this migration route.
Therefore, some people will consider the three parts of Changbai Mountain to be part of the Jianzhou Jurchens, and refer to them as the "eight parts of Jianzhou". However, the Changbai Three Jurchens are definitely not the descendants of the Jurchens of the Five Kingdoms City.
No matter how close the blood relationship between the Changbai Mountain Jurchen and the Jianzhou Jurchen is, similarly, the location east of the watershed of the Changbai Mountain determines that after Nurhachi's rise, he will first annex the Changbai Mountain Jurchen to the north, and then compete with the Haixi Jurchen for hegemony.
In fact, the trigger for the battle of the Nine Coalition was Nurhachi's annexation of the Yalu River, which was closest to him. After the Haixi Jurchens saw this situation, they always thought that the strength of the Haixi Jurchens was stronger than the Jianzhou Jurchens, and if Nurhachi annexed all the three parts of Changbai Mountain, then no one could stop them.
The situation of the Changbai Mountain Jurchens has been clarified, so what is a "Mongolian Jurchen"? To put it simply, it is the Jurchen people who have been Mongolianized. In the northeast, the collision point of the two major forces of nomadism and fishing and hunting is located at the great turning point of the east and west flows of the Songhua River and the confluence of the Nenjiang River.
The southern part of the three-forked mouth where this waterway intersects now has a famous landmark, which is the famous "Chagan Lake" for winter fishing. At that time, the nomadic Liao monarch would come here every spring to hold a fishing and hunting activity called "Pounding Bowl" to strengthen the connection with the Jurchen tribes, just as the Qing Dynasty used the "Mulan Autumn Tree" to connect with the Mongol tribes.
This place, known as the mouth of the three rivers, has a special geographical location, which is the dividing line between the Songhua River Plain and the Nenjiang Plain, and is also an important place to divide the two major forces of nomadism and fishing and hunting.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the Haixi Jurchens, the Jianzhou Jurchens and the Changbai Mountain Jurchens all lived in the Changbai Mountains, so the Songhua River Plain in the west would naturally not be empty, so the Xibe Department and the Hexagram Lega Department settled there.
These two tribes are distributed on the east and west sides of the Songhua River Plain, and if they are divided according to the late Yuan and early Ming dynasties, they should be regarded as part of the Haixi Jurchens. If you travel back in time and help the Jurchens design a symmetrical battle, then the ideal battle state should be to first unify the four Haixi tribes, then annex the Xibe tribe and the Gualeta tribe, and then engage in a large-scale battle with the Jianzhou Jurchens and Changbai Mountain Jurchens led by Nurhachi.
However, although the Yehebu was powerful, it was impossible to annex the two Jurchen tribes in the plains, because the Mongol crusade targeted the Jurchens for blood replenishment.
The Hulun Jurchens, Jianzhou Jurchens and other tribes hiding in the mountains suffered relatively small losses, while the tribes located in the plains, such as the Xibe and Gualecha tribes, suffered and were swallowed up as a whole as a Mongol vassal, becoming part of the Horqin tribe that moved south to the Nenjiang steppe.
Therefore, these two tribes are called "Mongol Jurchens", which is also like Nurhachi's ancestors who moved back from Korea and their identity became "Korean Jurchens".
If Yehebe wanted to annex these two Mongolized Jurchen tribes, he would have to risk war with the Mongols. This is the Sanjiangkou, an important place that divides the two major forces of nomadism and fishing and hunting, and it is also an important node in the history of the Jurchens.