Liu Bei has full will and determination, but for now, he does not have the strength to change the general trend of the world. This is where he is most helpless.
He could only say that he should put down the Taiping Dao uprising as quickly as possible, kill all the people he led as soon as possible, and demobilize and relocate all the civilians who were held hostage as much as possible, so as to prevent them from being slaughtered as military exploits and leaving corpses everywhere. , that’s too miserable.
Thinking of the Taiping Dao Rebellion, Liu Bei used to think that it was promoted by the overwhelming ambition of Zhang Jiao and others, or that it was secretly promoted by the dissatisfaction of the scholars who were imprisoned by the party.
However, based on his career as a scholar over the years, Liu Bei felt that there was no need to think of scholars as so scary.
Do they really have to be so awesome to be suppressed by Liu Hong and a group of eunuchs for more than ten years?
The scholars and the leaders of the Taiping Dao uprising actually couldn't urinate in the same pot. The scholars looked down on these "Yellow Turban Thieves" as much as they looked down on the eunuchs.
However, the leaders of the Taiping Dao uprising were by no means farmers or illiterate, but a group of powerful and petty officials who practiced Taoist Huang Lao's theory and prophecy theory.
Taoist Huang-Lao philosophy was once the official guiding ideology of the country in the early years of the Western Han Dynasty, and was later replaced by Confucianism. After being replaced by Confucianism, Huang-Lao philosophy gradually lost its strong character, and its inheritance fell into trouble. The prosperity of the past.
In the Eastern Han Dynasty, high-ranking scholars studied modern classics, which was mainly based on the Five Classics and Fourteen Schools of Law, while second- and third-rate scholars studied ancient classics and other Confucian classics that did not have academic officials, or legal classics.
Further down, the group of people who are not scholars, that is, the grassroots rulers of society represented by local powerful men, are widely influenced by Taoism, Yin Yang and Five Elements.
After the inheritance of hundreds of schools of thought was officially denied, they turned to the opposition one after another. Except for the legalists and military strategists who retained their place, the rest of the schools of thought all fell into the hands of the people, either cutting off their inheritance, or becoming a comforting existence for the rich at the bottom who had no way to rise. .
The local tyrants had money, land, tenants, and food, and were considered the most prominent figures in the local area. However, in the eyes of the scholars, they were still local old hats.
The scholars were all from Lao Luoyang and were quite noble, but these rich people came from other places to beg for food. They were not worthy of studying Confucianism, law and other official doctrines still used.
Their channels for advancement have been tightly strangled, and except for a few lucky ones such as Liu Bei, there is basically no possibility of advancement.
But when people have money and leisure, and have enough to eat and nothing to do, they naturally want to pursue culture and become a bit more stylish.
But they tried their best and couldn't find a way to learn Confucianism. In desperation, they had no choice but to find another way and learn things that the superior people did not learn.
For example, Taoist classics, Yin-Yang and Five Elements theories, etc., are used to enclose the land for self-interest and entertainment.
But after enjoying themselves to a certain extent, they also long for recognition, attention from the upper class, and even joining the upper class.
However, when they are convinced that this possibility is extremely slim, and when they have suffered too much suppression and malice from the top, they will be prompted to take extreme measures to gain recognition, and even become recognizers themselves.
Its leadership takes the Taoist Huang-Lao School and the Yin-Yang and Five Elements School as its main guiding ideology, and combines the two into one, giving the Yellow Turban Army an unprecedented large-scale cohesion.
Under the political situation of the late Han Dynasty when counties were the country, leaving a county was equivalent to entering another country. The people had not received any systematic education integrating family and country, and they lacked a common identity. If they were not in the same county, they would be like foreigners. There is no mutual trust at all.
Not stabbing each other would be nice.
Even the army has a strong local flavor. Even if the armies from different places are forcibly lumped together, there will be serious coordination problems even if they belong to the same dynasty.
Therefore, the Han Empire generally recruited troops on a regional basis, such as the Liangjiazi of the six counties, the Knights of Sanhe, the Youzhou sudden cavalry, and the Bingzhou soldiers and cavalry.
In such a situation where everyone had no consensus, the Taiping Dao Rebellion spread all over the eight states, uniting people in the eight states who could not necessarily understand each other with the same thought, for the same purpose One target and one enemy to fight.
It can be said that this is a very threatening and combative idea, and the organizational level and organizational nature of the Yellow Turban Army it created far exceeds most of the peasant uprisings that broke out in subsequent dynasties.
It’s no wonder that at the beginning of the war, the Eastern Han Dynasty was retreating steadily and was defeated like a mountain. It was almost impossible to contain the Yellow Turban Army’s advance.
Zhang Jiao was indeed a talented person, but the sharp social conflicts in the late Eastern Han Dynasty were the main reason for this situation.
But from the bottom of his heart, Liu Bei didn't want the Taiping Dao Uprising to break out, although he knew that there was a high probability that he would not be able to prevent it from happening.
To be honest, this kind of thing is done for the ambition of some people. The general public who really need to improve their situation are the group of people who sacrifice the most and get the least reward.
And even if it is such a small reward, the uprising must be successful. If it fails, there will be nothing - and one hundred thousand heads will be chopped off by the butcher Huangfu Song to build the Jingguan.
It can be said that they got nothing.
From the beginning, they were destined to get nothing.
Although the Taiping Dao uprising cannot escape the flavor of demagoguery, its main components are ordinary people who have lost hope in life.
Zhang Jiao must have noticed the widespread dissatisfaction with the Han Dynasty in society when he launched this uprising, so he thought he could succeed.
But what understanding of reality do the majority of participants have?
Their average level of education beyond prenatal education is not enough to give them any knowledge. They are simply deceived by the magic stick's rhetoric. They believe in their destiny, but they are really hungry and uncomfortable. In order to eat enough, they have to do it for the magic stick personally. Just charge into battle out of ambition.
The scale was extremely large, the scope was extremely wide, and an extremely large number of people died for it, and their deaths were extremely tragic.
Is there any significance to this uprising?
some.
This uprising dealt a heavy blow to the ruling power of the decadent Eastern Han Dynasty. The central government became weaker and local centrifugal forces became stronger. The split and collapse of the Eastern Han Dynasty became increasingly inevitable, and the trend of manorialization of the local economy became more and more obvious.
But all this was meant to happen.
The Eastern Han Dynasty was already on this road, and the demons and monsters in the Luoyang court were accelerating this process from top to bottom. The Taiping Road uprising was nothing more than a different angle, from bottom to top. Speeds up the process.
After the Taiping Dao uprising, did Liu Hong become a wise king?
Have the eunuchs restrained their behavior?
Have corrupt officials disappeared?
Has the gentry stopped monopolizing knowledge?
Have powerful landlords stopped annexing land?
Have the lives of the general public become better?
No, nothing has changed, it has just accelerated. The situation has become worse and more out of control. No one wants to restore the situation in a good direction, but instead pushes all of this to continue to develop more and more excessively.
The Eastern Han Dynasty was still teetering on the edge of collapse. It was not until Liu Hong was dying and the man representing destruction entered Luoyang and finally burned Luoyang with a fire that everything finally came to a total collapse.
Is everything getting better?
Liu Bei didn't want to think too much about big principles, he only looked at the most direct results.
After the collapse of the authority of the Luoyang court, are the lives of people all over the world better or worse? Are fewer people dying or more people dying?
At this moment, no one knows this conclusion except Liu Bei, who is the only one who knows.
He also knew that the doomed failure of Taipingdao would not only fail to alert the imperial rulers, nor allow them to adjust their policies, but would instead make them further believe that they were destined by fate, were invincible, and were incomparably correct.
They will only get worse!
They will only think - look, the rebels were completely wiped out by us, we won, we have not lost our destiny, and the blessing of destiny is still there!
The rulers in the late Eastern Han Dynasty would not truly reflect at all!
They don’t believe in science, they only believe in destiny!
They will never think that there is something wrong with their policies because of the armed resistance of the people. They will only become more intoxicated by the results of successful suppression again and again, and become more convinced that they are right!
If we are wrong, why can we suppress it successfully?
Unless they are physically exterminated with one strike, all immature resistance will only intensify their unfounded and deep arrogance!
So Liu Bei knew that the path taken by that group of people was not a good one. Since it had been proven that this path was unworkable, he should not have made such a big sacrifice in exchange for a more tragic ending.
We should find a way to find another way.
Liu Bei wants to follow his own path, and he has gradually found a path that he can go on.
The first step on this path is to gain important political and social status. The second step is to find ways to reduce the impact of the Taiping Dao Uprising on the whole society.
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PS: After thinking about it, let’s increase it to five updates today, and officially resume three updates from tomorrow.
(End of chapter)
