The predecessor of the Northern Wei Dynasty was the Daiguo established by the Tuoba Xianbei people, after the former Qin was strong in the north, the Daiguo was destroyed, the Battle of Weishui, the former Qin was defeated by the Eastern Jin Dynasty, the former Qin regime collapsed, and the regimes destroyed by the former Qin were restored one after another, including the Tuoba Xianbei dynasty.
In 386 A.D., Tuoba Jue restored the Dai regime, and soon after changed its name to the Wei regime, Tuoba Jue called himself the King of Wei, known as Tuoba Wei or Yuan Wei in history, and the regime he established was also known as the Northern Wei, and the Northern Wei gradually became stronger in the hands of Tuoba Jue, and was the second regime to unify the north during the Northern and Southern Dynasties.
The Northern Wei Dynasty successively defeated Gaoche, Rouran, Murong Xianbei and other regimes, and in 398 AD, Tuoba Jue moved the capital to Pingcheng (now Datong City, Shanxi), officially called the emperor, and was the Emperor Daowu of Taizu of the Northern Wei Dynasty.
The military town of the Northern Wei Dynasty was first set up in the first year of Emperor Daowu, that is, in 396~398 AD, developed in the Tianxing period of Emperor Daowu, that is, in 398~404 AD, and matured in the Taichang period of Emperor Taichang of the Ming and Yuan Dynasty (416~423 AD), and finally reached perfection in the year of Emperor Taiwu (428~431 AD).
This is a gradual process, the most famous of the Northern Wei military towns are the six towns, from west to east are: Woye Town, Huaishuo Town, Wuchuan Town, Fuming Town, Rouxuan Town, Huaihuang Town.
The geographical location of the six towns of the Northern Wei Dynasty
The geographical location of the six towns was: Woye Town in the north of present-day Wuyuan County in Inner Mongolia, Huaishuo Town in the southwest of present-day Guyang County in present-day Inner Mongolia, Wuchuan Town in the west of present-day Wuchuan County in present-day Inner Mongolia, Fuxi Town in the southeast of present-day Siziwangqi in Inner Mongolia, Rouxuan Town in present-day Xinghe County of Inner Mongolia, and Huaihuang Town in the north of present-day Zhangbei County in Hebei Province.
The six towns are all located in the north and northwest of Pingcheng, forming an arc-shaped defensive network to protect the security of Pingcheng (now Datong, Shanxi), the capital of the Northern Wei Dynasty.
There are three main reasons why the Northern Wei Dynasty set up six towns:
1. Strengthen military control over the occupied territories.
Military towns are a special form of military organization, which implements the governance of the integration of military and government, focuses on military purposes, and radiates force to the surrounding areas.
The setting of military towns is conducive to responding to sudden military conflicts more quickly in time and more conveniently in terms of geography to deal with military threats that arise in the surrounding area.
The Northern Wei Dynasty was equipped with a series of military towns, not only six towns, but also Jiuyuan Town, Lishi Town, Sanbao Town, Xingcheng Town, Hugao Town, Luo Town, Hanoi Town, Yunzhong Town, Baibi Town, Guang'a Town, Pingyuan Town and so on.
The military town of the Northern Wei Dynasty
The three emperors of the Northern Wei Dynasty who made the greatest contribution to the expansion of the territory were: Daowu Emperor Tuoba Jue, Ming Yuan Emperor Tuoba Hei, and Taiwu Emperor Tuoba Tao.
In the early days of the Northern Wei Dynasty, the policy of foreign expansion was pursued, and the surrounding regimes were constantly waged wars, successively destroying the Northern Yan regime in the northeast, the Houyan regime in Hebei, and the Huxia regime in the northwest, and conquering Gaoche and Rouran in the north.
In the face of its expanding territory, the Northern Wei Dynasty needed to adopt military and political control, and administratively, the Northern Wei Dynasty implemented a system of administrative district management at the prefecture, county, and county levels.
Militarily, the Northern Wei Dynasty set up military towns and let its own trusted generals to lead them to deal with the military threat in the conquered areas.
"Zizhi Tongjian Volume 123 Song Ji V" Emperor Wen Yuanjia 16 December Hu San Province Note: Beizhen, that is, the town where the main broken high car is placed, is also in the north of Pingcheng, so it is called Beizhen.
After the Northern Wei Dynasty broke the high car, set up the North Town, located in the north of Pingcheng, this North Town includes the six towns of the Northern Wei Dynasty, after the Northern Wei Dynasty occupied the territory of the high car, set up a military town on this place, in order to strengthen management.
2. The need to resettle naturalized ethnic minorities.
"Zizhi Tongjian Volume 136 Qi Ji II" Emperor Wu Yongming 2nd year May Article Hu San Province Note: Wei Shizu broke the worm, and placed the people in Monan, east to Weiyuan, west and Wuyuan Yin Mountain, actually 3,000 miles, divided into six towns, now Wuchuan, Fuming, Huaishuo, Huaihuang, Rouxuan, Yuyi.
Emperor Taiwu of Wei Shizu Tuoba Tao defeated Rou and then settled the surrendered Rouran people in Monan, and set up six towns to settle in the area of three thousand miles from the east to the Wuyuan Yin Mountain in the west, and these six towns were Wuchuan, Fuming, Huaishuo, Huaihuang, Rouxuan, and Yuyi.
Expansion of the Northern Wei Dynasty
The ethnic composition of the Northern Wei Dynasty is quite complex, mainly Tuoba Xianbei, and others include Murong Xianbei, Xiongnu, Rouran, Gaoche, Di, Qiang, Qian, Sogdian, Lushuihu and so on.
In order to settle these ethnic minorities who had defected to the Northern Wei Dynasty, the rulers of the Northern Wei Dynasty moved these people to the area around the Six Towns to fill the population.
In 429 A.D., Emperor Taiwu of the Northern Wei Dynasty Tuoba Tao broke Rouran, and the number of people who surrendered to the Northern Wei Dynasty reached more than 30 thousand, and according to the calculation of 5 people, these people had 1.5 million people.
These people included the Rouran, Gaoche, and other ethnic groups who were subject to Rouran, and Tuoba Tao placed these people in the area of the six towns of Monan, east to Weiyuan (northwest of present-day Fengning, Hebei) and west to Yinshan (present-day Yinshan Mountain Range in Inner Mongolia), and these people became part of the population of the six towns.
3. Guard the border and resist the invasion of foreign enemies.
After Tuoba moved the capital to Pingcheng, the Northern Wei Dynasty's control over Rouran declined, and Rouran began to harass the Northern Wei Dynasty continuously.
Soon after Tuoba Jue established the Northern Wei Dynasty, he led the army to defeat Rouran, at this time Rouran was not strong, and then Tuoba Jue focused on chasing the Central Plains, and moved the capital to Pingcheng, no time to look north, Rouran took the opportunity to develop and grow in the northern grassland.
Rouran Shelun Khan annexed the remnants of the Xiongnu and Gaoche tribes, unified the Mobei grassland, and became the most powerful force in the north, and when the Northern Wei Dynasty almost occupied the north, Rouran became the most powerful enemy in the north of the Northern Wei Dynasty.
The war between the Northern Wei Dynasty and Rouran
After that, Rouran often harassed the border of the Northern Wei Dynasty, and at first the Northern Wei Dynasty sent a large army from the capital Pingcheng to meet it and expel it from the country, but this was not a long-term solution.
In order to disturb the border, the Northern Wei Dynasty began to set up military towns in the north and northwest of Pingcheng to defend against the attack of Rouran, and when the military town was mature, the Northern Wei Dynasty did not need to send troops from Pingcheng to meet it, only needed to send troops from the military town.
In a sense, the military town of the Northern Wei Dynasty was actually the garrison of the border guards of the Northern Wei Dynasty, and the military town implemented the integration of military and government, engaged in agriculture and livestock in peacetime, and all the people were soldiers in wartime to resist the invasion of foreign enemies such as Rouran.
Generally speaking, the ruling class of the six towns is mainly the Xianbei aristocracy and the Xianbei Han Haoqiang.
The ruling class includes, but is limited to: the Gaoche people, the Xiongnu, and the Rouran people who surrendered to the Northern Wei Dynasty, as well as the criminals and their families who were sent to the Six Towns by the Northern Wei Dynasty.
The uprising of the Six Towns of the Northern Wei Dynasty is regarded as a landmark event of the fall of the Northern Wei Dynasty, and the fuse of the uprising was the attack on Huaihuang Town in 523 AD.
In the same year, the people of Woye Town broke the Liuhan Baling and led the people to revolt, opening the prelude to the Six Towns Uprising, and the uprising quickly formed a trend of burning the plains, and other military towns and soldiers and civilians responded one after another, forming a large-scale Six Towns Uprising.
So the question is, what was the cause of the Six Towns uprising? There are three main reasons for this:
The decline in the status of the six towns of the Northern Wei Dynasty
1. The chaos caused by the decline of the status of the six towns.
The main purpose of the Northern Wei Dynasty to set up the six towns was to prevent Rouran, and on the northern grasslands, only Rouran openly opposed the Northern Wei Dynasty, and the rest of the ethnic groups were subordinated to the Northern Wei Dynasty.
Rouran constantly disturbed the border, which was also one of the reasons why the Northern Wei Dynasty set up military towns.
In the war with the Northern Wei Dynasty, Rouran did not completely gain the upper hand, in 425~429 AD, Taizu Wu Tuoba Tao attacked Rouran in a big way, penetrated deep into the territory of Rouran, and defeated Rouran.
After this battle, more than 300,000 people (1.5 million people) of Rouran and Gaoche belonged to the Northern Wei Dynasty, which greatly reduced the strength of Rouran, and Rouran Khan died of depression.
Since then, Rouran and the Northern Wei Dynasty are still fighting and stopping, during which although the two sides have made peace, but it is extremely short-lived, starting from 460 AD, probably because the Northern Wei Dynasty is too strong, Rouran began to focus on the management of the Western Regions.
After Rouran annexed Gaochang and attacked Dunhuang, during which there was still an intermittent war with the Northern Wei Dynasty until 487 A.D., when the original Rouran Ele (Gaoche) deputy Fuluo Department Afu Zhiluo rate of more than 10 thousand fell out of Rouran's control and moved westward to establish the Gaoche State.
Since then, Gaoche and Rouran have continued to engage in a tug-of-war war, and Rouran began to turn from prosperity to decline, and was unable to harass the Northern Wei Dynasty on a large scale.
What does Rouran's foreign war have to do with the six towns of the Northern Wei Dynasty?
Of course it does.
When Rouran aimed the key offensive direction at the Northern Wei Dynasty, he attacked the Northern Wei Dynasty from the direction of the Six Towns, and if the Northern Wei Dynasty wanted to defend Rouran, it would inevitably attach importance to the status of the Six Towns and improve the treatment of the Six Towns.
Rou then focused on the Western Regions
When Rouran weakened and no longer attacked the Northern Wei Dynasty, or attacked the Northern Wei Dynasty less, the Six Towns lost their original important position, and the Northern Wei Dynasty's investment in the Six Towns would decrease, and the treatment of the Six Towns would also decline.
When the Northern Wei Dynasty attached great importance to the six towns, the children of the Xianbei Gaomen were the town generals, not only the treatment was good, but also there were many opportunities for promotion, and the Xianbei nobles at that time were proud to be able to become the town of the six towns.
By the later period, the six towns had lost their role as a military town, especially when Emperor Xiaowen moved the capital to Luoyang, and Pingcheng was no longer the capital, the status of the six towns declined even more.
After that, the six towns were marginalized, and their treatment declined, becoming the most ordinary frontier of the Northern Wei Dynasty.
However, it was the soldiers and generals of the Six Towns who could not bear the extreme decline in status, so the Six Towns Uprising broke out.
2. The turmoil caused by the problem of displaced people in the six towns.
As mentioned earlier, the ethnic composition of the six towns is extremely complex, there are a lot of ethnic minority townspeople, Tuoba Tao resettled 300,000 people in the Monan area for more than 3,000 miles at one time, and many of them were resettled in the six towns.
These surrendered ethnic minorities were the lowest level of the people in the Six Towns, engaged in agriculture and livestock production, and the Six Towns were borderlands, the land was barren, and they could not be self-sufficient at all, and needed food and materials from the central government of the Northern Wei Dynasty to survive.
In the last years of the Northern Wei Dynasty, disasters continued, there were a large number of hungry people, and the six towns also had insufficient food, and the people at the bottom could not survive, so they naturally rebelled.
Six towns revolted
Take the fuse of the Six Towns Uprising as an example, the townspeople of Huaihuang Town asked to open a warehouse for hunger relief, but the town general Jing refused, the townspeople had nothing to eat, and the town general still did not agree to open a warehouse for hunger relief, and there was only one way left, which was to rebel.
One of the most critical figures in the Six Towns Uprising was Po Liuhan Baling, who was a Xiongnu, a Fertile Town, with a low status and an oppressed low-level people.
It can be seen that the uprising originally started from the people at the bottom of the six towns, and most of the people who participated in the suppression were the generals and heroes of the six towns.
The final failure of the Six Towns Uprising was suppressed by the Northern Wei government, Rouran, and the Six Towns Haoqiang, so the Six Towns Uprising was essentially an uprising of displaced people or an uprising of the townspeople.
3. The contradictions caused by the relocation of the capital of Emperor Xiaowen of the Northern Wei Dynasty and the reform of Sinicization.
Emperor Xiaowen of the Northern Wei Dynasty was the most fiercely sinicized monarch in the history of the Northern Wei Dynasty, and the Northern Wei Dynasty has been imperceptibly sinicized, but it is rare to see such a radical sinicization as Emperor Xiaowen.
After Emperor Xiaowen moved the capital to Luoyang, Pingcheng was no longer the capital, and the six towns were further marginalized.
Emperor Xiaowen changed the Xianbei surname to the Han surname, wore Han clothes, intermarried with the Han people, and abandoned the Xianbei political system with the Han political system, all of which stimulated the Xianbei conservatives, including the ruling class of the six towns.
Emperor Xiaowen moved his capital to Luoyang
Don't talk about others, even Emperor Xiaowen's own prince Yuan Sui did not accept the reform, Yuan Sui took advantage of Emperor Xiaowen to move the capital, his own town to guard Jin Yong City, tried to abandon the city back to the old capital Pingcheng, and killed the prince in the concubine Gao Daoyue, after Emperor Xiaowen heard about it, the staff was not ashamed, abolished as a concubine, after Wu Sui still did not want to repent, tried to rebel, was given death by Emperor Xiaowen.
In addition to the prince's opposition to reform and rebellion, a large number of Northern Wei clans and Xianbei nobles such as Hengzhou Assassin Shi Mutai, Dingzhou Assassin Shi Lu Rui, and Zhenbei General Yuan Siyu were dissatisfied with Emperor Xiaowen's closeness to the Han nobles, and attempted to rebel, which was later pacified.
Even the old nobles in the Xianbei court were dissatisfied with Emperor Xiaowen's extreme reforms, not to mention the declining status of the townspeople and generals of the Six Towns, and when the contradictions were aroused to a certain extent, the Six Towns Uprising naturally occurred.