A Millennium Aristocratic Family Starting from the Shang Dynasty

Chapter 582 Join the top wealthy families

During the Great Qian Dynasty, or any period, strata always existed.

The difference is that in the early period of the Great Qian Dynasty, the ruling class had a strong control and could give ordinary people more room for advancement. However, in the later period of the Great Qian Dynasty, the middle and upper classes were basically controlled by families with classics, nobles, and officials. .

In fact, the three types of families, the Confucian classics family, the noble family, and the official family, have merged with each other, and then they have become a completely different kind of family from before.

They passed on blood, classics and Taoism as the link, and became a powerful family.

They have official power and can obtain official positions through classics assessment, filial piety and integrity, scholar promotion, title inheritance, official status, etc. Even if ordinary people go to the academy to study, they can't compete with them.

The top wealthy family among them is still headed by Wu Xing Qi Wang.

The five surnames and Qiwang are respectively the Li family in Longxi, the Xu family in Handan, the Wang family in Langya, the Han family in Anyang, the Zhang family in Yingchuan, the Xu family in Nanyang and the Han family in Kuaiji.

The Li family in Longxi rose up from Li Xiao and served as a general. The Xu family in Handan and the Xu family in Nanyang were both once royal families, but they later became a public family and started their own lineage. The Langya Wang family originated from the Zhou Dynasty and was a member of the Zhou Dynasty. After the surrender, the family name was changed to Wang.

The Han family in Anyang was descended from Han Xin, the Zhang family in Yingchuan was the prime minister Zhang Liang, and the Han family in Kuaiji came from the public lineage of the Huaiguo period.

These families have repeatedly served as high-ranking officials in the imperial court, at the level of three princes and nine ministers. They are the families with the highest status besides the royal family.

These aristocratic families would probably laugh out loud when they saw it during the Western Jin and Eastern Jin Dynasties. Bah, you don’t even have a fiefdom, manor, or servants, but you’re still a noble family? Do you need to take the imperial examination to become an official? Bah, any aristocratic family is not as good as Hansu.

Raising their status is completely a pawn used by the royal family to suppress the Guanlong nobles.

In addition to these top families, the next ones are those who have served as high-ranking officials in the Jiuqing, and the next ones are those who have served as prefects.

There are not even thousands of servants in the family, so he is embarrassed to tell others that he is from a first-class family.

During the Western Jin Dynasty, every aristocratic family had land and servants, and they were directly recommended for official positions. Any one of the top aristocratic families could recruit tens of thousands of servants.

Daqian's current Five Surnames and Seven Hopes are like this. Even though the imperial court has always suppressed wealthy families, the imperial court's system is still no match for their selfishness.

These wealthy families can be regarded as real history. The top families in the Western Jin Dynasty are far from being comparable to those of the Tang Dynasty.

Of course, these top wealthy families can only be arrogant locally, and the court is still controlled by the royal family. It's just that now that the destiny of Daqian has ended, each place is in charge of its own affairs, and the court is beyond its reach.

During the Tang Dynasty, the five surnames Qiwang were only famous. There were many famous people in the family and they controlled some public opinion. However, they did not have a fiefdom, no private soldiers, and only some political resources.

In fact, their power was not great. Historically, the emperors of the Tang Dynasty would kill them whenever they asked. The first wife of Emperor Gaozong Li Zhi of the Tang Dynasty was from the Wang family of Taiyuan, but she was eventually killed. What did the Wang family of Taiyuan say?

They once made great contributions to Da Qian, but now they think more about themselves.

Although these five surnames and seven hopes are not as good as the top aristocratic families that have grown to their final form during the Western Jin Dynasty and the Eastern Jin Dynasty, they are still very powerful.

These aristocratic families can use their family officials to facilitate their own affairs.

Rights come from the bottom up. It’s not that if you say something from above, it will be implemented immediately below. Power also has nothing to do with family status. In real history, at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, it was not just Yuan Shao and Yuan Shu who were the fourth and third princes. Yang Xiu was also the fourth and third prince, even more than the Yuan family. But why could one Yuan family support two princes, accounting for almost half of them? A world?

That's because there is another sentence under the name of the Yuan family, the four generations and the three masters, which means that the disciples and old officials are all over the world. Officials from the Yuan family accounted for one-third of the officialdom of the Eastern Han Dynasty.

The Yuan family can benefit the younger brothers below and allow them to serve as officials. Those disciples and former officials are naturally willing to contribute to the Yuan family and are willing to be their lackeys.

If you can't bring benefits to your younger brother, and you can't give official positions to your disciples, then no one will listen to you, not to mention your family's family status, even the tenth generation.

Do you think being a lackey insults your character? Many people who want to be in this position have no chance to do so.

Do you think anyone can be a dog?

These top wealthy families have formed a huge network of relationships, using in-laws, teachers, etc. as ties to form a large network.

If the world is at peace, this monopoly will be almost impossible to break, because those talented scholars from poor families have been absorbed into this network of in-laws and relationships.

Some scholars who came from ordinary people once vigorously criticized this phenomenon, and then someone ridiculed: "A child from a poor family studied hard for ten years in a cold window. If he is talented, he will naturally be favored by noble ladies. After that, he will rise to the top and serve in the place, and he will get two thousand stones." With a high position, the family will naturally be prominent.”

"The reason you are complaining now is that you are not good enough and no noble lady can look up to you!" To put it bluntly, no one wants to be treated like a dog.

In fact, this is what those Confucian sects do. Those outstanding people are absorbed into them and then become part of this network.

Even though the royal family does not agree with this, it cannot stop it, because if you stop it, those poor people will not only not be grateful to you, but will even think that you are ruining their future.

This is human nature, what can the royal family do? Prohibit the marriage of talented scholars and Confucian scholars? Even if the royal family was mentally retarded, they would not issue such an order.

Since the rise of the Confucian classics family, the expansion of this network of relationships has been unstoppable, not even by the imperial court, and Daqian's government has also slipped into the abyss step by step.

The best way to break this relationship is to kill these people, have a Heyin Incident, or Huangchao Uprising.

In real history, monsters like the Western Jin Dynasty clans eventually fell into despair due to wars again and again.

The Heyin Incident, Hou Jing's Rebellion, the fall of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, etc., a series of wars, caused damage that even the powerful families could not bear.

This is the situation in the world now. The Confucian classics families have tacitly isolated Luoyang, and the court's orders can only be around Luoyang.

It's just that the current Daqian world is not just a confederation of Confucian classics. Liu Yu's request for an official position made the royal family aware of the peasant soldiers' ambitions, and many peasant soldiers also gained fame and became the heads of a county.

In addition, there were pioneering nobles who had been entrusted by the royal family. Although these pioneering nobles did not have many talents in Confucianism, they had the largest number of soldiers and horses. They naturally wanted to go further.

(End of this chapter)