Chapter 630: The North-South Dispute

[When the Jin Kingdom fell, the rift between the north and the south caused by the nearly three hundred years of confrontation between Liao, Song and Jin was already very obvious.

On the one hand, there were Jurchens like Monk Wanyan Chen who often read literature and history, liked to study "Primary School", "The Analects of Confucius" and "Spring and Autumn Annals", and regarded themselves as scholars.

On the other hand, when the Jin Kingdom collapsed, many Han officials died for it. They regarded the Jin Kingdom as the orthodoxy of the Central Plains and the Southern Song Dynasty as a foreign nation.

After the Battle of Sanfeng Mountain, Jin Aizong resisted in Bianjing for a year and then fled. He first went into exile and returned to Germany, and then garrisoned in Caizhou. However, this last stronghold was quickly destroyed by the Mongolian attack.

During the final Battle of Caizhou, Jin Aizong, who did not want to perish his country, committed suicide after passing the throne.

As for the Emperor Mo of Jin who came to the throne, it took less than an hour from the time he ascended the throne to the time he died in a deadly battle with the Mongols who destroyed the city, setting a record for the shortest reign of an emperor.

The Southern Song Dynasty did not contribute much in this battle, and the most important official captured in the end was a Han official of the Jin Kingdom, Privy Councilor Zhang Tiangang.

Since he is a Han Chinese, it is logical to enter the recruitment process after offering prisoners to the Ancestral Temple.

From the perspective of the Southern Song Dynasty, your Jin Kingdom is gone. I will promise you some high-ranking officials and generous salaries, and you will act as a reformer. Everyone will get the best of both worlds. Isn’t it beautiful?

As a result, Zhang Tiangang, a prisoner, did not accept this trick at all, and he spoke plausibly:

I was born in gold and work in gold, so I am naturally loyal to gold.

"The rise and fall of a country is like no other. How can the fall of my country be compared to your two emperors?"

These words were so heartbreaking that they made the prefect of Lin'an who was trying Zhang Tiangang furious and beat him half to death.

This matter was finally pushed to Song Lizong, so Song Lizong asked Zhang Tiangang if he was really not afraid of death?

Zhang Tiangang was also very indifferent, saying, "If a man is worried about death, why should he be afraid of it?" He only wants to die quickly to show integrity to all his ministers.

Judging from the records left by the Jin Kingdom, Zhang Tiangang always opposed the invasion of the Song Dynasty when he served in the Jin Kingdom, and advocated joining forces with Xia and Song Dynasty to resist the Mongols.

On the eve of the fall of the Jin Kingdom, some people suggested driving hungry people into the Song Dynasty to take advantage of the chaos to attack; some suggested that soldiers should practice Qigong to become invulnerable without eating food; others suggested that the cavalry wear liger masks to frighten the Mongolian horses to defeat the enemy, etc., all of which were recognized by Zhang Tiangang. If he refuses to refute, he can be regarded as a good official in the standard sense.

Emperor Lizong of the Song Dynasty loved his talent and promised that he would be exempted from the crime as long as he wrote a confession. However, Zhang Tiangang still rebuked him: Just kill him. What kind of confession should he write?

Although Zhang Tiangang left the last trace of dignity for the Kingdom of Jin, it can also be seen from his body that the identity of the north and the south was already very severe at that time.

Later, the Mongol Empire in the narrow sense fell due to internal strife and division among the khanates. The Yuan Dynasty established by Kublai Khan in his own territory ranked among the generals, with the Han at the bottom, which made the identity and material differences between the northern and southern Han people even more divided. serious.

From this point of view, although Emperor Hongwu was said by his instructors to be second only to Emperor Taizong in terms of military use, his contribution to bridging the rift between the north and the south was even more impressive.

When Lao Zhu later responded to Liu Sanwu's argument about the differences in governing the people between the north and the south, he said, "The land has a north and a south, and the people have no two minds. The emperors treat them equally, how can they be different from each other?" It can be said that it is very high-level.

But it was already the end of the 22nd year of Hongwu. Liu Sanwu, who was a Hanlin scholar at the time, believed that the north could only coerce. This shows how difficult the problems left by the fall of Song, Liao and Yuan were.

But this topic goes too far. The Jin people perished, the Mongols went south, and the last romantic man of the Southern Song Dynasty finally stood up. 】

〖It was a little better during the Northern Song Dynasty and Liao Dynasty. After the fall of the Northern Song Dynasty, it was really a mess. Wan Yangou took the lead in appointing and disapproving the northern Han people. After that, the Jin Kingdom was ruled by the Jin people and the Han people ruled the Han Dynasty. Among them, those who got along well It’s not surprising that Jin Guo has a sense of belonging.

It’s not that the Jin Kingdom was great, it was the Southern Song Dynasty that was terrible!

It seems that the people of the Southern Song Dynasty knew very well that Zhang Tiangang only mentioned the second emperor without naming him, so he jumped around.

Do I still know which second emperor it is? The real-life version of the Soviet joke is yes.

This problem that has been divided by hundreds of years of war cannot be solved by Hongwu. Even if Emperor Yongle took over, wouldn't the North-South game still run through the entire Ming Dynasty?

But at least it is only a regional dispute between southerners and northerners, and it is no longer a dispute over identity between southerners and Han people. From this point alone, Hongwu Yongle's achievements are already commendable.

From the Anshi Rebellion to the fall of the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty, Hebei, the land where China was founded, was destroyed by wars and massacres over a period of six hundred years. The population was not as large as Shanxi. The Ming Dynasty did not say that the economic center moved southward, but rather to the north. This leg was broken, but Nanfang's leg was the only one that could still be used.

Mongolia ended the Song, Liao, Jin, Xixia, Dali and various local separatist regimes in the snowy areas and was still powerful, but the price was too heavy.

Not only that, Mongolia was shattered wherever it hit; it hit Ancient Rus and split it into three parts, Belarus, Russia and Ukraine; it hit Central Asia and shattered the Turkic identity and laid the foundation for the five Central Asian countries; it hit the Middle East and ended the last generation. The Caliphate caused the Great Food Cult to lose its last co-owner, let alone China. Lao Zhu was tough enough not to leave the problem to future generations, and did not let us fight each other endlessly like the Arabs or Slavs today.

Wasn't Xixia all killed? The Western Xia texts have all been lost, I remember.

The complete demise of Xixia has nothing to do with the Yuan Dynasty. At least the Buddhist scriptures of Xixia that have been excavated today can be traced back to the reign of Emperor Hongzhi, the God of War. It can be inferred that the demise of Xixia people was the result of assimilation by the Ming Dynasty. 〗

"Are we... very old?"

Tomorrow subconsciously touched his beard, and even picked up two bunches and pulled them forward, trying to see if there were more white beards.

Empress Ma, who was standing next to him, could see clearly that her husband's mouth was grinning so hard that he couldn't close it. If she wasn't here, she might have laughed three times to express her happiness.

But since she was here...

"Don't worry, Your Majesty. You can wait until Luo Guanzhong is invited here to check what he wrote and what the young man said to find out whether what he said was true or not. You can know whether the name 'Old Zhu' is nonsense..."

But when she said the last part, Empress Ma herself was a little overjoyed.

Seeing the empress burst into laughter, Zhu Yuanzhang shook his beard and pretended not to hear the address:

"The words recorded by this young man are indeed like what we can say."

"I have also heard the name Liu Sanwu. He is well-known in Jingjiang Prefecture and has been recommended by someone."

As for the result of the recommendation, Zhu Yuanzhang directly skipped it and said:

"He can be ranked among the Hanlin scholars in eight or nine years... Maybe what this young man said is really our future."

"This junior... knows our difficulties."

At this time, he was not too excited, but just patted his thigh, as if someone had mentioned his depression inadvertently, and he wished that he could be in front of him, holding his hand to ask...holding his hand to talk.

After restraining her smile, Empress Ma also pulled the emperor to comfort her:

"If this is true, your husband will eventually succeed in his work, and you should be happy."

"People are gone but politics continue, and there is this Emperor Yongle to carry on the past and open up the future. How can it not be a blessing?"