In 351 AD, Fu Jian, the leader of the Di tribe, entered Guanzhong under the banner of the general of the Eastern Jin Dynasty and the Western Expedition. He was very kind to the people, exempted them from taxes, and won the support of the people in Guanzhong.
As a result, he proclaimed himself the Great Qin Heavenly King in Chang'an. In the second year, he officially proclaimed himself emperor and established the Former Qin regime, with the country name Great Qin, known as Former Qin in history. After Fu Jian became emperor, he broke off diplomatic relations with the Eastern Jin Dynasty.
In 354, Huan Wen, a powerful minister of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, made a northern expedition to the former Qin, but Fu Jian adopted the strategy of fortifying the walls and clearing the wilderness, which caused the Jin army to be short of food and forced to retreat. In 355, Fu Jian, the ancestor of the former Qin, died at the age of 39.
In the same year, his son Fu Sheng ascended the throne and was known as King Yueli in history. However, Fu Sheng was a brutal emperor who killed people like hemp, and if he saw anyone who didn't like him, he would kill him immediately.
In 357, Fu Sheng's cousin Fu Jian, in the face of Fu Sheng's indiscriminate killing of ministers, united with Fu Fa, the king of Qinghe, to launch a coup d'état, and the two led their troops into the palace and abolished Yue Li Wang Fu Sheng, who reigned for only two years.
After that, Fu Jian ascended the throne under the persuasion of his ministers, and he surrendered himself to the emperor as the king of heaven, known as the former king of Qin. In 358, after the accession to the throne of Fu Jian, the emperor of the Former Qin, in the face of the chaos of the court, he reused the Han scholar Wang Meng to carry out political reforms in the Former Qin.
With the assistance of Wang Meng, the former Qin state flourished, laying the foundation for the later unification of the north by the former Qin. In 369, Murong Chui, the king of Wu of Former Yan, surrendered to Former Qin due to being ostracized.
However, Wang Meng was wary of him, and he persuaded Fu Jian to get rid of him as soon as possible, but Fu Jian refused. In 370, Fu Jian, the former king of Qin, sent Wang Meng to attack Qianyan.
In this battle, Wang Meng defeated 300,000 Yan troops with 60,000 Qin troops, and took advantage of the victory to capture Yecheng, the capital of Qianyan, and Murong Wei, the former Yan emperor, was also captured.
In 371, the former Qin Emperor Fu Jian sent the clan Fu Ya to destroy the former Qiu Chi Kingdom. In 375, Wang Meng died of illness due to overwork at the age of 51. Before he died, he told Fu Jian that although the Eastern Jin Dynasty was located in the south of the Yangtze River, it was orthodox in China, and the upper and lower levels were peaceful, and after his death, Fu Jian must not try to destroy the Eastern Jin Dynasty.
In 376, the former Qin Heavenly King Fu Jian sent Gou Chang to destroy Qianliang. In the same year, he took advantage of the civil strife in the Dynasty to send Deng Qiang and Fu Luo to destroy the Dynasty, so far, Fu Jian unified the north, leaving only the Eastern Jin Dynasty regime in the Jiangnan region.
In 382, Fu Jian, the former king of Qin, sent Lü Guang to conquer the Western Regions. In this battle, Lü Guang defeated the 36 countries of the Western Regions and successfully incorporated the Western Regions into the territory of the former Qin. This is the first time that the Central Plains regime has occupied the Western Regions for decades since the Western Jin Dynasty, and so far, the former Qin has entered the extreme.
In the same year, eight years after Wang Meng's death, Fu Jian thought that the time was ripe and discussed with his ministers about the destruction of the Jin. The Xianbei Murong Trai and the Qiang Yao Chang both supported the destruction of the Jin Dynasty, but Fu Jian's brother Fu Rong strongly opposed it.
In the end, Fu Jian relied on his millions of strong soldiers and decided to attack the Eastern Jin Dynasty. In 383, Fu Jian sent Fu Rong with an army of 250,000 as the vanguard, and personally led 600,000 infantry and 270,000 cavalry, a total of 1.12 million troops, to attack the Eastern Jin Dynasty in an all-round way.
The Eastern Jin Dynasty court, with Xie Xuan as the vanguard, led 80,000 Beifu soldiers with strong combat effectiveness after 7 years of training to meet the Qin army. In this battle, the Jin army took the initiative to attack before the former Qin million army was assembled, and finally defeated the former Qin army, and the former Qin king Fu Jian was also wounded by an arrow and fled back to Chang'an in a hurry.
This is the famous Battle of Weishui in history. After this battle, the vitality of the former Qin was greatly damaged, and the Xianbei, Qiang and other tribes that had been unified before raised troops to rebel, which made the already unified north fall into a situation of fragmentation.
In that year, Murong Chui, a Xianbei man, returned to his hometown from the way of fleeing, established the Houyan regime, and began an attack on Yecheng, where the eldest son of the former Qin Shu, Fu Pi, was stationed. At the same time, Murong Hong, Murong Chui's nephew, gathered the Xianbei people in the Guanzhong region and established the Western Yan regime.
Yao Chang, a Qiang national, established the Later Qin regime. In the same year, Fu Jian, the former king of Qin, personally led 20,000 cavalry to defeat Yao Chang, but was eventually defeated and forced to retreat to Chang'an.
In 385, the Later Qin Emperor Yao Chang and the Western Yan regime besieged Chang'an, and the former Qin Emperor Fu Jian personally supervised the battle. However, Chang'an fell into a food shortage, and Fu Jian had no choice but to take hundreds of cavalry out to Wujiang Mountain, but was captured and killed by Yao Chang at Wujiang Mountain, at the age of 48, reigning for 28 years.
After learning of Fu Jian's death, Fu Pi, the eldest son of the former Qin Shu, went to Jinyang to proclaim himself emperor, that is, the former Qin Aiping Emperor, and named the famous general Fu Su as the king of the East China Sea. However, due to the fear of being the king of the East China Sea**, in 386, Fu Pi led thousands of cavalry to the south to Dongyuan, but was intercepted by the famous general Feng Gai of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, and finally died at the age of 33.
In the same year, the Guanlong people supported the former Qin Heavenly King Fu Jian's ascended the throne from Sun Nan'an Wang Fu Deng, that is, the former Qin Taizong, he was called the emperor, and constantly fought against the Later Qin, the Later Yan and the Western Yan.
In 394, Former Qin Taizong Fu Deng took the opportunity of the death of Emperor Yao Chang of Later Qin and personally led a large army to launch an expedition against Later Qin. However, in the Battle of the Abandoned Bridge, he was attacked head-on by the new Emperor Yao Xing of the Later Qin Dynasty, and was finally captured and executed at the age of 52, ruling for a total of 9 years.
In the same year, Fu Deng's son Fu Chong became emperor after defecting to Huangzhong, but his reign lasted only 4 months before he was killed by the monarch of Western Qin. Since then, the Former Qin regime, which lasted 43 years and went through six emperors, has come to an end.