Zhu Chao accompanied me to watch short videos

Chapter 358 How the Aristocratic Family Was Formed

[Understand the historical knowledge and historical figures of the aristocratic families in one go]

This video took 336 hours to produce, and uses 26 minutes to explain why, before the Tang Dynasty, the aristocratic families were so powerful that they could control the people and defy imperial power.

The popular TV series "Tang Dynasty Strange Stories" repeatedly mentions the Fanyang Lu family, Qinghe Cui family, and Hedong Pei family. Who are these people? Why do people feel awe when they hear these names?

So in this video, let’s talk about these awe-inspiring aristocratic families.

In ancient China, there were two pillars outside the gates of the houses of high officials. The left one was called "valve" and the right one was called "yue". They were often used to post the achievements of the family. "Valve" became a symbol of being an official.

Therefore, in feudal society, families who have served as officials for generations are also called "aristocratic families", "aristocratic families" or "aristocratic families".

The aristocratic families and the aristocratic family system originated in the Eastern Han Dynasty, developed in the Three Kingdoms, initially formed in the Western Jin Dynasty, flourished in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, declined in the Southern Dynasties, and finally ended in the late Tang Dynasty. The aristocratic families were the big families in the society at that time. They lived in concentrated areas, had a large population and a large area, had their own retainers and staff, and often engaged in intermarriage, and had a high status in the local area.

Even the rulers dare not underestimate them. Facing such a powerful force, if the rulers cannot defeat or eliminate them, they can only choose to cooperate with them and accept them into their own system in order to gain their support and consolidate their position. Otherwise, it will be very difficult to rule.

The nobles entered politics not only to preserve their existing status and interests, but also to enhance their original status through the newly acquired power and make themselves stronger and stronger. Overall, this kind of cooperation is a win-win situation for them.

During the Western Han Dynasty, due to the lack of knowledge and the lack of a socially recognized assessment standard, the selection of officials mainly relied on recommendations, and examinations were only an auxiliary means.

In other words, the current officials were responsible for selecting the next official, which was the system of recommendation in the Han Dynasty, a bit like the recommendation system in the United States. The emperor and local officials were actually in a cooperative relationship, so when the emperor selected partners, the grassroots people were often selectively ignored because they had no channels to obtain knowledge.

In this way, the recommender and the recommended person became people in the same boat. The knowledge they controlled and the local economy colluded with each other and controlled the local official positions. Usually, the next official was selected while the current official was still working. Ordinary people had no chance to be recommended at all. Those who monopolized official positions became local tyrants in the future.

This group first appeared during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han, when the emperor could still suppress them by relocating them and confiscating their property. However, even so, after Wang Mang usurped the Han Dynasty, local tyrants were able to push Liu Xiu to a high position. A strong imperial power could certainly defeat local tyrants, but the existence of this group itself was an inevitable result of feudal society.

As long as the dynasty still exists and as long as there are people in the dynasty, even if the old forces are suppressed, new ones will always emerge. So Liu Xiu understood that instead of trying hard to eliminate local tyrants and cultivate a force that he could not control, it would be better to directly eliminate dissidents, eliminate the opposition, and support those who support him.

The rulers of the Jin Dynasty also thought about the same problem. For example, the Yellow Turban Rebellion at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty shattered the foundation of the Han Dynasty, but the new separatist regime still had little to do with the common people. Famous people like Cao Cao, Liu Bei, Zhuge Liang, and Sima Yi were all born as local tyrants.

So after Cao Pi usurped the throne, he immediately introduced a system of selecting officials called the Nine-Rank System, which was different from the recommendation system. It took away all the power of the governors of prefectures and counties, and each prefecture and county had a Zhongzheng official who was responsible for selecting local officials.

In fact, the Zhongzhengguan was also the representative of the local tyrants. The powerful families with the title of Zhongzhengguan gradually moved from the local to the central government, and those without this title would be swallowed up by others. In fact, Cao Pi did not want to suppress the tyrants, he just wanted to unite them.

At this time, powerful families like Wang of Langya and Xie of Chenjun of Yingchuan became aristocratic families, which could not only connect with the imperial court but also dominate a region. In this way, they could better control the local area.

During the Jin Dynasty, there was a saying that "Wang and Ma shared the world." This was referring to the Langya Wang family, a prominent family. This family was considered the best of the noble families, and the great calligrapher Wang Xizhi came from this family.

When the Western Jin Dynasty was about to fall, the northern gentry migrated south and united with the local gentry in Jiangdong to support Sima Rui, the King of Langya, to seize the throne, which later became the Eastern Jin Dynasty. At that time, the power of the gentry was unprecedentedly strong. How powerful was it?

They accounted for more than 80% of the officials in the court, which also led to the decline of imperial power. The emperor could only consolidate his position by balancing the forces of all parties.

What about the Sixteen Kingdoms in the north? Because of the wars and the change of emperors, the Hu people were in power, and those nobles without male offspring could only protect themselves and were not so concerned about national affairs. This indirectly led to the chaos among the countries and they could never be unified.

During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, Emperor Wu of the Southern Song Dynasty, Liu Yu, began to suppress the gentry and strengthen the imperial power. He made commoners serve as officials, let royal family members serve as local officials, and took back the military power of the gentry.

This policy was inherited and improved by the subsequent Southern Dynasties, which is one of the reasons why most of the children of the gentry in the Southern Dynasties were civil officials. The proportion of officials from the gentry in the ruling class also declined all the way.

In the early days of Liu Song, this proportion was about 70%, but by the time of the Chen Dynasty, it was only more than 50%.

Although the Hou Jing Rebellion in the late Southern Liang Dynasty dealt a heavy blow to the Southern Dynasty gentry, the impact of this policy cannot be ignored.

However, one point must be emphasized, which is also misunderstood by many people: during this period, the class known as the "poor family", that is, the family with lower family power, did not replace the position of the gentry in the ruling group.

Among the two classes, the gentry and the common people, the gentry have always occupied a dominant position, with the lowest proportion being over 50%.

The advantage of the gentry did not disappear, it was just not as obvious as it was in the Eastern Jin Dynasty.

Although the emperors of the Southern Dynasties were busy weakening the gentry, the gentry's strong political influence and social status could not be eliminated. Therefore, even in the Southern Dynasties, the emperors still had to cooperate with the gentry to maintain their throne.

Let's talk about the Northern Dynasty, which was opposed to the Southern Dynasty. As the founder of the Northern Wei Dynasty, officials from the gentry accounted for about 1/3 of the total officials in the early days of the founding of the country.

However, after the Northern Wei unified the north in 431 and 439 AD, the founding emperor Tuoba Tao began to involve the gentry in political decision-making on a large scale.

In addition, the Hu tribes in the Northern Wei Dynasty also followed the example of the Han people and gradually developed into families of varying sizes, active in the ruling class. Therefore, this proportion quickly soared to more than 60%.

Especially after Emperor Xiaowen of the Northern Wei Dynasty began to implement the Sinicization Reform, this proportion went up directly, even reaching 80%. This proportion is very close to the highest peak reached by the Southern Dynasty gentry during the Eastern Jin Dynasty.

In the late Northern Wei Dynasty, the court was in chaos, and power fell into the hands of the Xianbei chieftain Erzhu Rong. In the Heyin Incident, he killed more than 2000 princes, nobles, and officials, and almost killed the entire court.

The nobles of the Northern Dynasty suffered a heavy blow. Not long after, the Northern Wei Dynasty split into the Eastern Wei and Western Wei, which were then replaced by the Northern Qi and Northern Zhou respectively.

In this environment of confrontation between the East and the West, both sides fought with great pleasure. This gave those who were born in poverty or ordinary people the opportunity to turn their lives around through military merit.

As a result, the proportion of gentry in the leadership of Eastern Wei and Northern Qi declined, while the proportion in Northwestern and Northern Zhou was slightly higher.

One of the important reasons for this was Yuwen Tai, a powerful official of the Northern Zhou Dynasty, who successfully improved his status by establishing the military system and forming the Guanlong political group.

When the northern Hu royal family and Han gentry were absorbed into the newly established regime, the fate of the families in the Southern and Northern Dynasties was basically similar. Although they could never return to the glorious days of the past, they still had absolute say in different regimes.

When the Sui Dynasty ended the chaos between the North and the South, there was no large-scale killing, and the proportion of those children of aristocratic families serving as officials was similar to that of the Northern Dynasties. After the Li Tang Dynasty replaced the Sui Dynasty, in the early Tang Dynasty, the proportion of Guanlong and Shandong gentry was also over 60%.

On the premise of ensuring the core position of the Guanlong Group, Emperor Taizong of Tang, Li Shimin, began to actively attract the nobles and commoners from Shandong and the south to participate in politics in order to stabilize his rule. He also ordered people to compile a book called "Clan Records", which demoted the Qinghe Cui family of Shandong, which was originally ranked first, to third place, and put the royal family first.

He also issued an order to prohibit intermarriage between these families. A prime minister named Li Yifu was rejected when he proposed marriage for his son to the Cui family of Shandong. As a result, he suggested to the emperor to prohibit intermarriage between such noble families. So the emperor issued a marriage ban, which was actually an order to forcibly break the marriage relationship between secular families.

However, at that time, people still attached great importance to family background. Therefore, this policy did not achieve the expected effect. Instead, it made the Shandong nobles such as Cui, Lu, and Wang, who were already very self-righteous, even more arrogant and unwilling to marry into other families.

Although the emperor issued an order prohibiting marriage with Shandong gentry, ministers like Wei Zheng and Fang Xuanling were still keen on marrying with them, which made the reputation of Shandong gentry still very high.

Under the constant suppression of imperial power, the proportion of old aristocratic families from the Eastern Jin and Southern and Northern Dynasties serving as officials dropped significantly, while the proportion of new generation families soared.

Its essence is the process of one family replacing another. Even so, this can only mean that the dominant position of these aristocratic families in political and social life has not changed, and the entire social structure is still dominated by these aristocratic families.

According to statistics, there were 366 prime ministers in the entire Tang Dynasty, among which 18 descendants of the top 187 families, such as the Zhaojun Li family, the Longxi Li family, the Boling Cui family, the Qinghe Cui family, the Fanyang Lu family, and the Xingyang Zheng family, served as prime ministers, accounting for more than half of the total number. If the requirements are relaxed and the members of the second-level aristocratic families serving as prime ministers in the Tang Dynasty are included, the proportion will be even higher.

Throughout the Tang Dynasty, the lowest proportion of officials from the gentry in the ruling class occurred after the An-Shi Rebellion. The An-Shi Rebellion dealt a heavy blow to the gentry, but even so, they still accounted for more than half of the officials in the court.

Some friends may ask: Since the Sui and Tang dynasties abolished the Nine-Rank System and implemented the imperial examination system, why is the proportion of the gentry still so high? This involves the issue of the Tang Dynasty's official selection system.

In fact, the Tang Dynasty did not rely entirely on the imperial examination to select officials. There were other ways. We will not discuss them in detail here, let's just talk about the imperial examination system.

Ordinary people can participate in the imperial examination, but don't forget that those children of aristocratic families who have read books and know poetry and songs can also sign up. They have enjoyed a variety of high-quality resources since childhood, such as politics, economy, education, etc. This starting point and advantage are not comparable to ordinary people. To give the simplest example, if you want to take the imperial examination, you must study first.

The teachers hired by the children of wealthy families are incomparable to ordinary people, and the children of wealthy families can improve their academic performance at any cost, but ordinary people do not have this condition.

So, even if everyone seems to be standing on the same starting line to take the exam, and it seems fair and just, what is the reality?

Educational resources have been heavily tilted towards the children of aristocratic families. Therefore, the result of the imperial examination system is that most of the people who passed the imperial examination in the Tang Dynasty were children of aristocratic families. These people entered the officialdom through the imperial examination and occupied various important positions. According to statistics, among the officials who came from the imperial examination in the entire Tang Dynasty, children of aristocratic families accounted for nearly 70%.

The emergence of the imperial examination system was undoubtedly an opportunity for ordinary people and poor families. Compared with the practice of the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, which only valued family background, it was a great improvement.

However, when the imperial examination system was first implemented, its role in this regard was not as obvious as people expected.

However, as the old powers gradually fell, new aristocrats rose up. By the late Tang Dynasty, these powers once again used the same means to restrict the selection of imperial examinations, and as a result, the proportion of aristocratic families in the court officials reached almost 90%.

It can be seen that we have returned to that familiar cycle, but this time it ends at the cost of blood and violence.

Huang Chao took the imperial examination three times in a row, but was replaced by the sons of aristocratic families each time. He wrote indignantly: "Wait until September 8th in autumn, when my flower blooms, all other flowers will die.

The fragrance of incense permeated Chang'an, and the whole city was covered with golden armor. "He then chose to return to his hometown and devote himself to the private salt trade. In 875 AD, Huang Chao and Wang Xianzhi jointly launched a massive uprising. Their troops were invincible and their number quickly grew to 30.

In fact, six years before Huang Chao's uprising, Qiu Fu and Pang Xun's uprisings had already occurred. Under the monopoly of the aristocratic families, a huge gap formed between the nobles and the common people in the Tang Dynasty.