The road from Africa to Europe

Chapter 614
The existence of aristocratic families has gradually hindered the development of society. Because of the relationship between the aristocratic families, the dynasties after the Eastern Han Dynasty have always been short-lived dynasties, and the wars have been endless, which is very painful for the common people.

What also caused the common people the most pain was that in the process of changing dynasties, those aristocratic families often did not fall along with the dynasties.Because the emergence and replacement of dynasties have the shadow of aristocratic families, even if some aristocratic families fall in the war, there will naturally be aristocratic families to replace them.

In this way, a little bit of the aristocratic family became a behemoth that could determine the dynasty, and even the emperor had to give in many times.Then there are people who want to overthrow these behemoths. How to do it well is a very troublesome problem. You must know that the emergence of aristocratic families is inevitable.

It is said that the aristocratic family began to appear around the Han Dynasty. The reason why it appeared is how to be an official. It is known that the official system in the Shang and Zhou dynasties is the official system (1). Whatever official positions are left, the children and grandchildren will be those official positions, and they don't care about their abilities at all, even if they don't have much ability, as long as they have a good pregnancy.

In the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, how to be an official has changed to a certain extent: in addition to the original official system, the military merit system was added, that is, relying on fighting to change an individual's class. Among them, Daqin paid the most attention to military merit, and the result is obvious : The first emperor eventually ruled the world.

After the death of Qin II and the establishment of the Han Dynasty, how to be an official has changed. It has become a detection system, which means that local officials recommend some people to be officials. Of course, the recommended people also have special standards. One of the most important points is that the parties must be filial.This kind of ethos finally makes everyone feel: all goodness and filial piety come first.

Of course, if there is a dutiful son who can't read a few characters, he can't be recommended, because how can an official be illiterate?How to deal with official documents?This kind of old man would not be an official at all, which led to the fact that the common people basically believed that their ancestors were common people for generations.

This is because even after Confucius allowed more people to have the opportunity to receive education, most people are basically living on a subsistence level. It can be said that after a hard day’s work, they can only feed the family. Naturally, they cannot have time Opportunity to study, only those families with surplus food can make people read and write.

Of course, even so, it was considered an improvement in that era, because the number of people who could read and write expanded. You must know that in earlier eras, literacy belonged to the privilege of the nobility, and the spread of knowledge was only in the circle of nobility. Before the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period According to the poor family, there is no qualification at all, and then the poor family has the opportunity to acquire more knowledge.

The emergence of the detection system in the Han Dynasty meant that the person being recommended should thank the person who recommended him. Even if the other person would not care about it, the person concerned should still remember this friendship and wait for the opportunity to reciprocate.In ancient history, great emphasis was placed on reciprocation, which can be regarded as a matter of morality.

Therefore, after this kind of human relationship, some people have a lot of personal connections in their hands, and later they will find that their relatives and friends will get benefits because of this, because they don't worry that their relatives and friends will not have official positions.

If you have an official position, you will have power, and if you have power, you will have money. The influence of the family will be expanded a little bit, and the largest official position will basically be controlled by several families. Other families also have their own positions in the court. , the family appeared.

The aristocratic family has a good side, because they have collected classics for many years, and the family has storage that others cannot get, which leads to the fact that the young people in the family are all people who have read a lot of books, and some of them are officials in the court. There are quite a lot of opportunities to know more things, and a talent emerges. There are many smart people in the family. It can be said that it is because of them that the court is running well.

But the aristocratic family also has a particularly big shortcoming. The children of the aristocratic family love their own family, so the members of the aristocratic family like to bet on multiple sides. For example, the aristocratic family in the Three Kingdoms period, such as the famous Wolong Zhuge Liang in the Three Kingdoms period. Zhuge's family is like that kind of aristocratic family.

Zhuge's family made corresponding investments in Wei, Shu and Wu. The ancients recorded it like this: Zhuge Jin's younger brother Liang and his younger brother were born, and they were famous, each in one country.At that time, it was thought that Shu got its dragon, Wu got its tiger, and Wei got its dog.Born in Wei, he is as famous as Xia Houxuan.Jin was in Wu, and Wu Chao obeyed his Hongya.

Among the three Zhuge brothers, everyone is familiar with Zhuge Liang. Later, before Liu Bei died, he entrusted himself to this Mr. Wolong, and Mr. Wolong did not disappoint Liu Bei's trust, and died for the sake of the Kingdom of Shu.

Because Zhuge Liang's name is so famous that it blocks the brilliance of others. In fact, his two brothers have good records. The most mediocre one even gave birth to a son who is awesome. It is said that Zhuge's family is in a very good state.

This is the investment strategy of the family. No matter which side finally reaches the top, the investment of the family will not fail. The children of the family can still be officials, which is why the members of the family have been living well.

Can the emperor fail to see the family's plans?Of course, it can be seen that the struggle between the imperial power and the family has been going on.It's just that most of the children of the aristocratic family are ministers in the court, and their power is too great to be suppressed by the emperor.

Some sane emperors can see the disadvantages of the detection system, which may make their emperor's throne unstable, but there has been no good way. The children of the family occupy the most important positions in the court, and the emperor is a seal at certain times.

There are not many things the emperor can do, what he can do is to use the problems among the aristocratic families to gain his own benefits, and he can also win over the children of the poor family, that is, to be a small official, and the first rank of the official will overwhelm people , had to go on like this, the wise emperor knew that he had to take his time.

From the beginning of the Eastern Han Dynasty, to the period of the Three Kingdoms, Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, the family finally stepped onto the political stage, and the children of the family have always played a significant role in the change of the dynasty. became a cancer.

The emperor began to think about how to weaken the privileges of the family, but he never found a better way, even if the emperor did not dare to get rid of the people of the family, because there are many smart people among the children of the family, what they want To keep your family going.

You must know that the members of the aristocratic family are very proud, thinking that their aristocratic family is better than the royal family, and one by one the royal family is pulled down from the altar, but it is the children of the aristocratic family who can still be officials even if they change emperors, so they feel that the aristocratic family It feels more awesome than the royal family.

Although there are many capable people in the family, after all, their children have been exposed to deeper things, and learning from their own family members can save them a lot of detours.

However, when exercising their responsibilities, the children of the aristocratic family are more concerned about how to benefit the family, which is unbearable. In addition, the aristocratic family is very proud: the emperor takes turns, but the aristocratic family will never fail. How can this be possible?The emperor was not satisfied with the situation.

But the emperor who wanted to restrict the family also found that he couldn't figure out how to restrict the family for a while. When one family fell, other families would naturally stand up.In the end, the emperors could only bear with it. Even the wise and mighty Emperor Guangwu had to adopt a soft policy towards the rich families of various families. Who made him rely on the rich families when he made his fortune?
In the end, an emperor thought of a way to deal with the aristocratic family, that is, during the period of Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty, he began to prepare large-scale imperial examinations. Unfortunately, Emperor Yang of Sui took too big a step, and he still had a bunch of officials who did not do anything. and die,

Even so, the situation of the collapse of the aristocratic family did not improve. The Tang Dynasty established after the fall of the Sui Dynasty decided to continue to implement the imperial examination system. In this way, the privileges of the aristocratic family were broken, and the imperial power was further strengthened after the establishment of the Tang Dynasty.

On the one hand, the emperor also wanted to use people from the family, who made the children of the family really capable, and on the other hand, stepped up the cultivation of the children of the poor family, so that they had more opportunities, which gradually weakened the power of the family, so the family gradually weakened.The aristocratic family began to decline, replaced by a large number of children from poor families.

Ling Xiao remembered that by the end of the Tang Dynasty, the various aristocratic families had come to an end, and gradually the children of the aristocratic families could only take part in the imperial examination.The days when one would naturally become an official as long as one could be reincarnated finally came to an end.

The decline of the aristocratic family does not mean that all the scholars have become elegant and gentlemen. The scholars are not united. After all, everyone has different ideas. This situation is very common. point.

The tofu-brained sweet party and salty party look down on each other, which may cause two people to be a little out of tune when they are together, and may cause two people to be less happy to get along with each other.

This kind of incompatibility is normal, it is a relatively small disagreement, and it is not a big problem. At most, you can't be friends you like, and you can't enjoy delicious food together, but generally you won't become enemies you hate.

But if the ideas of scholars are different, it is not the same as the dispute between the sweet party and the salty party. It belongs to the situation where the differences are relatively large. Not only can they not be friends, but they may also become enemies, and even start to fight each other. Holding a group and getting entangled in one place to deal with other people also started a party struggle.

Officials under party struggles have different camps, and the so-called camps are generally divided because of the personal relationship between officials in daily life. For example, if two officials are teachers and students, this relationship is basically divided into one camp. If they are not in the same camp , as a disciple, I am afraid that he will be scolded for deceiving his master and destroying his ancestors.

There is also a relationship that is not a teacher-student relationship, but belongs to the same region, for example, from Ludi, then a person with a relatively high official position from Ludi will become a leader and work for the benefits of the officials from Ludi.

This led to the formation of small teams soon, and in the officialdom there will inevitably be some friction for the sake of interests, which will gradually lead to the confrontation between the various small teams, and later the friction will intensify, and even become enemies.

At that stage, the two sides will wrestle in various aspects, and even use methods such as framing and coercion to slander the opponent, just wanting the members of the opponent's team to be dismissed from office. This kind of struggle will last for many years, endlessly. The most famous representatives of party struggle during the Ming Dynasty: Donglin Party and Eunuch Party.

The conflict between the two is super fierce. The members of the Donglin Party really wanted to fight against the eunuchs at the beginning. In the eyes of scholars, those eunuchs are villains. They completely forget the helplessness of eunuchs. Who would risk their lives to eunuch themselves?

The life of the eunuchs is not very good, which also causes those eunuchs to be psychologically different from normal people, but because they are the closest to the emperor, they are the emperor's favorite people, plus the existence of the East and the West, resulting in some officials attached to Yu eunuchs.

Officials who have feuded with each other usually want to get their opponents down, so they dare to do anything. When Song heard this, she didn't know what to say. She always thought that someone like Li Jiare was a very bad person.

But now I know that those bad things are just small things in the face of real party struggles.As bad guys, Li Shitou's family has no status and structure, so they can only be regarded as petty troubles if they go bad. Of course, for her, those calculations are definitely a disaster.Thinking of this, she shook her body, this world is too dangerous.

She shook her head and soon realized that it was a life for nothing. Although she was a little short-sighted, she still understood why Ling Xiao talked to her at this time, just to avoid lightning.

She never thought of what would happen if a bad person had a status and a structure. She felt that it would be more troublesome to be bad, and there would be more people involved.The number of harming others has increased, which is really troublesome.

Ling Xiao looked at Mrs. Song and the original owner, and asked: "If someone wants to plot against an official, but the other party is an old fox who refuses to be fooled at all, then how would you deal with this situation?"

The original owner didn't know what was going on, and Mrs. Song didn't know what to do. They frowned and shook their heads, and looked at Ling Xiao, wanting Ling Xiao to take a good look at the situation and not delay it.

Ling Xiao then said: "In the end, the other party thought of a way. Since this family didn't find the problem, then go to his family to find the problem. If there is still no known problem, what should we do?"

Speaking of this, Ling Xiao picked up the tea bowl, and the two women on the opposite side looked ignorant and puzzled.Did not understand at all.It made Ling Xiao a little embarrassed, these two didn't have the slightest political literacy, and they didn't know anything if something happened.

Of course, Ling Xiao can't blame them for their incompetence. You must know that women in ancient times could receive education, but not many could engage in politics. This is because female compatriots are more peaceful by nature.

Even if there is any conflict with each other, they will at most make a small move, and basically cannot accept the kind of behavior that wants to kill and exterminate the family, and naturally they will not do that kind of thing. This is the characteristic of many women.

Ling Xiao looked at the two people and said: "It is absolutely possible to do this. If that person has no fault worthy of impeachment, he will create a big fault. There is another possibility: he started the calculation early and bought the person. Let the opponent take the bait.

And if that unlucky guy didn't see it, he would be dead. The two women here couldn't believe it was true. They were deliberately planting or luring others to commit crimes. So it's so scary?
Looking at the two women with earthy faces, Ling Xiao knew that he would stop here, don't scare the two of them, and then changed the subject and talked about family issues. After hearing this, Song's eyes were wide open. The children of officials and eunuchs will surely live the good life they dream of.

It was only later that I learned that the children of those officials and eunuchs had a hard time. They had to greet their elders sooner or later, and they had to learn a lot of skills: piano, chess, calligraphy and painting. These are compulsory skills for noble men and women.

Later, after listening to Ling Xiao's words, I realized that it was not the case. The officials of the imperial court were not very easy to do. If they were not good, they would be scolded and then dismissed. This is easy to say, not to be an official.

The problem is that some emperors also like to ransack the families of ministers and exterminate their clans. This leads officials to extend their personal connections in order to ensure the continuation of the family. marriage.

It's hard to say what the children's future life will be like. Mrs. Song knew that after those noble ladies got married, there were also women who were kicked out of their husband's house because of accidents in their natal family. They also had no choice.

After hearing this, Mrs. Song tossed and turned, didn't sleep well all night, and came out with two dark circles under her eyes. After seeing Mrs. Song's appearance, Ling Xiao smiled slightly. She naturally understood what Mrs. Song was thinking.

Originally, she was only thinking that her two sons would be successful, but later she realized that the danger would also increase if they were successful.

But Ling Xiao didn't say anything at first, and let the former bishop's two children study. Of course, the younger one was too young, and he would get up and play around after sitting for a while. Ling Xiao didn't force him to study, because he was too young.

　(1) There was a Xia Dynasty before that, but there were no historical texts, and Yin Shang left many oracle bone inscriptions, and Zhou even left books such as Book of Rites and Yi.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)