If we look at it from a relatively high perspective, we can find that Taipingdao has not truly united a social class that can be relied upon as its basic base.
For Taiping Dao, it is impossible for the upper-class scholar group to unite in place.
They are vested interests. They have too many interests and have high self-esteem. If they want to gain their support, Zhang Jiao cannot afford the price.
So the target left for them to fight for is very clear.
Either unite with the people at the bottom, or unite with the landlords and powerful people. These are people who are dissatisfied with the current system. If you seize their needs, claim to be able to meet their needs, and mobilize their strength, you may be able to achieve success.
The common people at the bottom need land, and the landlords and powerful landlords need official positions, knowledge, and more land wealth. These are visible things that can be given to them with grit of teeth.
But there is no Taiping Dao. Taiping Dao only unites themselves - the Taiping Taoists.
The composition of the Taiping Taoists is complex, ranging from beggars who are so poor that they are about to starve to death, to the eunuchs who are rich and oily emperors, and they are all included. What unites these people is Taiping Tao's own philosophy.
That’s not to say it’s impossible to do this, but to be successful, Taipingdao needs more believers and their ideas need to be accepted by more people.
There are more than 50 million people in the Eastern Han Dynasty. Not to say that most people can accept it, at least it cannot be believed by just a few hundred thousand people. In that case, not only will there not be enough manpower, but also it will not be able to form a broad understanding.
This is very dangerous for a new regime.
So after all, if you want the rebellion to be successful, you still need to unite a certain social class with sufficient strength.
The common people at the bottom have a numerical advantage, and the powerful landlords have a financial advantage. If any one of them unites, they have the possibility of success.
Zhang Jiao did not realize this. He only relied on more than 400,000 Taiping Taoists, and he felt that since I was the best in the world, he could rebel. Although the members were spread across the upper and lower classes, they were not fully accepted by any class in society.
While Taipingdao unites its believers, it also uses the slogan "Heaven is Dead" and Huang Tiandang Li to push the vast majority of people in society who do not think so for the time being to its own opposition.
Therefore, it is not incomprehensible that the Yellow Turban Army went from being an insurgent force on Taiping Road to becoming synonymous with bandits and robbers in the later period, carrying out indiscriminate attacks on the entire society.
Taipingdao's failure was doomed from the moment they started their uprising.
An uprising that was doomed to fail, a vague uprising with no clear political and economic agenda, and an uprising that made no mention of equalizing the wealth and poverty of the land, inexplicably became an epoch-making uprising. The drama at the beginning of the play.
Liu Bei and Zhang Jiao have no personal grudges, let alone hatred. They just feel sorry for this.
If it hadn't been for Zhang Jiao, if it hadn't been for Taipingdao, would the result have been better?
There are no ifs in history, and Liu Bei has neither the power nor the desire to prevent an oppressed person from resisting his oppressors. If he did not know the results of the Taiping Tao Uprising, he would not have done anything special or felt anything.
But as a person who knows everything, he doesn't want too many people to die in this fruitless war. The input-output ratio is really too low and not cost-effective.
The chaos of the late Han Dynasty began. War and the collapse of order caused more than half of the population to die in this chaotic world that had no end in sight. The poor people's desire to have enough to eat turned into fuel for careerists. The entire country was burned to the point of death.
No matter how broken the order is, it is more suitable for a person to survive than a chaotic world without order. It is the saying that it is better to live than to die.
Would it be better if we could go another way?
Liu Bei had his own ideas.
Before realizing this idea, he had only one goal - to let more people survive before he had the ability to change the world.
If the scale of the Yellow Turban Army was not so large, the scope and duration of the impact were not so long, and more people survived, even if they were just lingering, would it be better?
He doesn't have the ability to change everything yet, but despite this, he also wants more people to survive, so that as many people as possible can survive as much as possible who would otherwise die.
After crossing the hurdle of certain death, can those poor people survive?
Even if I live one more year, half a year, or only three months.
He wants people to live, and he wants more people to survive.
Just survive!
With such a wish, Liu Bei spent the last month of the fifth year of Guanghe. Compared with his stability, there was violent turmoil in the entire court.
Liu Hong appointed Taiwei Yang Cilu to take charge of the Shangshu affairs together with Situ Yuan Wei. This decision aroused thousands of waves. At first, not only the ancient literature school felt inexplicable panic, but also the modern literature school felt inexplicable.
At first they all felt that they were going to send it and that they were all going to be doomed, but in a twist of events, Yang Ci, the loser, and Yuan Wei, the victor, were actually in charge of the Secretariat together with Yuan Wei, the victor, and both had the power to make final decisions on national affairs. .
Both of them are Sangong, and they both record ministerial affairs. They have equal status, regardless of superiority or inferiority. This will naturally have a different impact on the political situation.
After a brief period of panic, the Ancient Literature School gradually came to their senses and realized that this was part of the emperor's power. The emperor had never really been on their side, just as they had never really been on the emperor's side.
How can there be any real friendship between the emperor and his ministers when they are engaged in a hundred battles every day?
After a brief period of confusion, the Jinwen School realized something, and what followed was ecstasy.
Liu Bei's guess was correct. The Modern Literature School was almost beaten to death by waves of Ancient Literature School. He finally took a breath and had no intention of caring about whether this was a deliberate move by the imperial power.
They have only one idea——
Live and make the betrayer pay.
They decided to give the Ancient Literature School and the traitors some color and let them know what the consequences would be for bullying them.
The Ancient Literature School and Yuan and Xun were unprepared for such a situation.
They had not expected all this in advance, nor had they expected that the emperor's political level had suddenly improved so much, and that a wave of operations had successfully created a situation where two tigers were fighting against each other. bystander.
As the struggle deepens, he will inevitably become the crucial arbiter. Once he becomes the arbiter, it will mean the revival and return of imperial power. This is a very dangerous situation for them.
The Ancient Literature School tried their best to prevent the emperor from appointing Yang Ci and wanted the emperor to withdraw his appointment, but once again they could not even see the emperor's face - Liu Hong claimed to be ill.
And what is very strange is that the emperor clearly still maintains the policy of restricting the modern literature school, but inexplicably lifts the restrictions on several families. These families are all good friends with the Yang family. This is equivalent to Strengthen Yang's political power.
This incident essentially announced that the party's policy of imprisonment was no longer a map cannon for large-scale and all-round strikes, but became a tool.
A political tool to realize the emperor's personal political ambitions.
There is no doubt that although the Modern Literature School is completely at a disadvantage academically and is politically constrained in every way, a skinny camel is bigger than a horse, and they still maintain a certain level of political power and appeal.
As a highly respected leader of the Modern Literature School, Yang Ci still retained his prestige even if he was defeated for a time. And now that he was appointed Minister, he once again became the leader and political core of the Modern Literature School, and the object of high hopes from everyone.
The Modern Literature School was able to temporarily integrate all thoughts under his call. As long as he is alive, the Modern Literature School will never fall and will definitely launch a fierce struggle with the Ancient Literature School.
In particular, the back-stabbing Yuan and Xun families have become a thorn in the side of the Modern Literature School.
It no longer matters whether the emperor is manipulating the situation. The modern literature school and the ancient literature school can no longer unite to fight against the imperial power. The two sides have completely broken their faces.
Now the Jinwen school just wants revenge.
Great revenge!
This magical move by the emperor and the eunuch group completely disrupted the future political and academic layout of the ancient literature school. Many of the things they had discussed at previous meetings were facing uncertainty.
For example, their plan to push the second batch of "Fei Shiyi" and "Guwen Shangshu" into official academic status met with fierce resistance.
(End of chapter)
