Comparison of the strength of Wei, Shu and Wu in the Three Kingdoms period.

1, say territory first. The territory of Wei includes Youzhou, Jizhou, Qingzhou, Bingzhou, Xuzhou, Yanzhou, Yuzhou, Sizhou, Yongzhou and Liangzhou, which are basically equivalent to today's Hebei, Henan, Shandong, Shanxi, Liaoning, Shaanxi, Ningxia, Gansu and parts of Jiangsu, Anhui and Hubei, and may also include parts of Inner Mongolia.

Wu's territory includes Yangzhou, Jingzhou and Jiaozhou, among which Yangzhou, Jingzhou and Wei have * * *. Generally speaking, Wu's sphere of influence is now Jiangnan and South China, including southern Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Fujian, Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi and northern Vietnam. Although the place is not small, it is still not as good as Wei, when the development of the south was still insufficient.

There is only one state in Shu, Yizhou. Of course, Yizhou is quite large, including parts of southwest Shaanxi, Chongqing, Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan and Guangxi, collectively referred to as southwest. Comparing the maps, we can easily see the strength ratio of the three countries: among the three countries, Wei is the largest, Shu is the smallest, and the territory of Wu and Shu is only close to Wei.

2. Population. Jin Wenjing listed the population data when the Three Kingdoms perished: there were 280,000 households and 940,000 people in Shu; Wu * * * 523,000 households with 2.3 million people; Wei has 660,000 households and 4.43 million people. This ratio is even clearer. Wei is equivalent to two kingdoms of Wu and five kingdoms of Shu.

Population-related data are soldiers and officials. Of the 940,000 people in Shu,102,000 are soldiers and 40,000 are officials. Among the 2.3 million people of Wu, there are 230,000 soldiers and 32,000 officials. Wei did not have a detailed number of soldiers, and Jin Wenjing speculated that there were more than 400,000. A column of data, strength, there is no need to compare.

We just want to point out that although the population of Shu is less than half that of Wu, the number of officials exceeds that of Wu, which shows that their government ranks are bloated, and administrative efficiency and financial pressure will cause troubles to the rulers.

3. The nature of the army. The formation of the Three Kingdoms can be regarded as a game of eat small fish, a big fish among warlords. The big warlord annexed the small warlord, and finally decided three winners, namely, the monarch of the Three Kingdoms. However, there are still differences between these three warlords. Wei insisted on centralization, reorganized the private armed forces directly under the central government, and at the same time promoted the barracks system, actively forming an army subordinate to the state.

Wu, on the other hand, because his father and son were foreign regimes in the south of the Yangtze River, had to seek cooperation with local strongmen and cede some rights to them, making them too big to fail. Therefore, Wu's political system, on the surface, is centralized. In fact, it is similar to the joint regime of major powerful families, while the emperor of Wu is more like a shogun in Japan during the Warring States period or a feudal monarch in medieval Europe.

As for the army of Shu, it is incomparable with the former two. Unlike Cao Cao and Sun Quan, Liu Bei is not from a noble family. Jin Wenjing called him a "prodigal hero". To put it bluntly, he is a tramp. Because Liu Bei spent most of his life wandering and moving around, his army was an armed group composed of refugees. Moreover, in the eyes of the local people in Shu, Liu Bei's army is a standard foreigner's army, and Liu Bei's regime also belongs to the foreigner's regime, with poor combat effectiveness and ungrounded atmosphere.

4. Talent. If you believe the narrative in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, it is obvious that Shu has the most talents, and the best civil and military talents have basically gone to Liu Bei. In fact, on the contrary, the Cao Wei regime has an absolute advantage in talent. Cao Cao has trained at least two generations of talents for Wei, and the territory of Wei, the Central Plains and North China are all places where talents gather.

Wu is located in the south of the Yangtze River, and its literary talent is romantic. Lu Su, Zhou Yu, Lu Xun, etc. They were all first-class figures in the Three Kingdoms period. The problem lies in the lack of war generals who dare to do wrong.

The worst is Shu, what's more, Tiger General is a deified figure. Only one thing, Liu is nearly a generation older than Zhuge Liang. By the time Liu Bei visited the cottage, Zhuge Liang was invited, and Guan Yu and Zhang Fei were all over forty, although there were also outstanding performances afterwards, such as Zhang Fei's achievements in the battle of Hanzhong, and Guan Yu's "Drive Seven Armies, Magnificent China" (many of Guan Yu's other deeds were fictional in the Romance).

After Liu Bei occupied Yizhou, local talents were scarce. Secondly, even some talents are unwilling to be used by Liu Bei. Third, Jin Wenjing studied the history of the Three Kingdoms. Shu pointed out that the ministers of Shu were fighting among themselves. Liu Bei and Zhuge Liang were alive, but they were still able to control the situation. After their death, the internal affairs of Shu gradually fell into chaos and was hopeless.

Extended data:

In the early days of the establishment of Wei State in the History of the Three Kingdoms, Chen Qun, Minister of Wei State, once said that the population of Wei State at this time was "a big county compared with the prosperous times of Han Dynasty". According to Du You's General Code, when Liu Chan ascended the throne in 22 1 year, the population of Shu was 900,000, and when Shu perished in 263, the population increased to 940,000. This year, Guo Wei, who pacified Shu, "calculated" the population, and North China and Sichuan became * * *.

According to the Book of Jin, when Shu perished, the population of Wu was 2.3 million. In this way, the total population of China will not exceed 8 million. This is the number of people who recovered after the Three Kingdoms period entered a relatively peaceful period and resumed population production for a long time. Even in modern times, many researchers have put forward a more surprising conclusion: the population figures in historical materials are still filled with water.

In many fields, the central government only retains nominal control. In normal years, this situation is still harmonious, but once the country breaks out in war and natural disasters, the weakening of central control will inevitably lead to the increase of disaster destructive power. After all, aristocratic families will choose to hoard and protect themselves behind closed doors. The central government does not have enough economic capacity to provide relief, and the people have no choice but to rebel.

In fact, the Yellow Scarf Uprising which later spread throughout the Eastern Han Empire had much to do with the famine that lasted for many years. The yellow turban insurrectionary army quickly gathered hundreds of thousands of believers by giving favors and buying people's hearts. The result of the yellow turban insurrectionary uprising was a large-scale war in the north. This is a vicious circle of pain, and the sharp drop in population is one of the costs.

The worst stage of population decline in China during this period should start from Dong Zhuo's entry into Beijing and end in Battle of Red Cliffs. China in this period, it can be said that natural disasters and man-made disasters coexist. "Man-made disasters" are well known, and the powerful minister Dong Zhuo is an unreasonable person himself. His entry into Luoyang was a disaster for the whole Central Plains. He abused the people's resources, built large-scale buildings and extorted money, which made the Central Plains once bare and thousands of miles away.

His "interim government" does not know about construction, but only about destruction. For example, every time his soldiers patrol around Luoyang, when they come back, their horses are all looted women. Wherever they went, all the rich villages were slaughtered and all the materials were looted.

At this time, the natural weather in China has also entered an "abnormal" stage, and disasters have occurred all over the Central Plains. For example, the drought in Yuzhou, according to official records, starved to death more than 3 million people at a time. Later, Dong Zhuo fled Luoyang under the attack of Kanto governors and moved all the population of Luoyang to Chang 'an. As a result, only 65,438+10,000 people survived to Chang 'an, and most of them fell to their deaths on the road.

The north is so eroded that the south is not much better. Large-scale wars have taken place in the Liu family in Jingzhou, Sun Jiahe, which is not an enviable paradise in the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Later, Cao Cao went south to Jingzhou, which dealt a great blow to the Yangtze River.

The continuous sharp drop in population had an impact on the pattern at that time and the main policies of various rulers. Every far-sighted politician began to take population as the main goal in the later period of this war.

After Cao Cao killed Yuan Shao, he found out from the household registration book that there were 300,000 people in Jizhou, and even asked him to go to Yingtian. After Liu Bei went to Battle of Red Cliffs, he went west to Sichuan regardless of the danger that Sun Quan might copy his posterior route, because the local population of Jingzhou was dying, just as Pang Tong advised him after he defected to Liu Bei-"Jingzhou is barren and outmanned". Naturally, such a region cannot be regarded as the capital of hegemony.

After getting Sichuan, Liu Bei once had great influence, because Sichuan was cut off by the basin at that time, which was the least damaged area in China by the war. The local population of Sichuan, especially the Han nationality, are mostly refugees who fled here for a short time, and most of them are young adults who have the strength to escape. In addition to competing for population, many regimes have also begun to adopt policies to restore population.

According to many historical materials of the Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Tang Dynasty, the establishment of Sun Quan in Soochow began with the policy of forced marriage, that is, men must get married before 12 years old, or they will be prosecuted.

Cao Cao's policy of reclaiming farmland was also due to the sharp drop in population, especially the huge number of farmers, and the army simply did not have enough to eat. The most important influence is that although we regard Battle of Red Cliffs as the beginning of the tripartite confrontation, the civil war in China has not stopped since Battle of Red Cliffs. It was not until AD 222, after the battle of Yiling in Shu and Wu, that peace really entered.

In the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, both sides used 700,000 troops in the battle of Yiling. Shu and Wu had 65,438+10,000 troops, but the real number was 80,000 in Shu and 65,438+10,000 in Wu. The characters in the novel are seriously "submerged", but the real characters are more worth pondering: a big battle related to the fate of two regimes, both sides only come up with so much. After that, the history of the Three Kingdoms entered a period of "peace" for a simple reason.

There are so few people, if we continue to kill each other, everyone will die.

The population recovery of the three countries began in 22 1 year. If before this year, the focus of attention between heroes of all walks of life was mainly on war, then for a long time, it was mainly on population.

On the issue of population restoration, the three countries of Wei Shuwu at that time all had their own policies. Wei's policy is to open up wasteland, combine a large number of soldiers with agriculture, and increase the labor force in the north. Wu's policy, on the one hand, is to recruit refugees from the north, on the other hand, it is to expand to the south and assimilate the "aboriginal" Shanyue nationality in the south. Sun Quan even organized troops to harass northern Jiangsu and Huainan for many times, and his main task was to rob the population.

As for Shu, neither Zhuge Liang, the "father-in-law" nor Liu Chan, the "helpless" one, is vague on the population issue. For example, in the border area between Shu and Wei, Shu has repeatedly instigated the border people of Wei to flee to Shu and resettle in different places. In addition to robbing each other of population, the three countries are also afraid of falling behind each other in having children. All three regimes in Wei Shuwu have introduced policies to encourage childbearing and force marriage.

Facts have proved that the Chinese nation has always had a strong self-healing ability. In this "peaceful competition" about population, the total population of China began to recover slowly.

The Cao Wei regime established by Cao Cao was at the forefront in population recovery. The population base of the Central Plains is stronger than other regions, and Cao Wei also attaches great importance to the "scientific and technological revolution" in terms of population growth. The reign of Cao Wei was another innovation period of agricultural production in China, such as the promotion of new farm tools such as improved waterwheels, which accelerated the speed of agricultural recovery.

At the beginning of Cao Pi's accession to the throne, Minister Du Shu once said that the total population of Cao Wei was less than one tenth of that of the Eastern Han Dynasty, which was already an optimistic figure. When Cao Wei destroyed Shu Han, the populations of both places were included. Excluding the population of Shuhan area, the population of Cao Wei was about 4 million at that time.

During the Shu and Han dynasties, the population was recorded in 236 AD, when the population just exceeded 900,000. After Cao Wei destroyed Shu Han, the number provided by Shu Han has reached 950 thousand. After the demise of Wu Dong, according to the statistics of the Wu government in ieee fellow, the population has reached 2 million.

In other words, in the heyday of Shu and Wu, the total population of the two countries was not as good as that of Wei in the north, and the final winner of the reunification of the three countries may be decided from this point.

The fastest period of population growth in China should be from the late Three Kingdoms period after the demise of Shu to the Taikang period in the Western Jin Dynasty. In the era of Emperor Wu of the Western Jin Dynasty, the total population of China has risen to160,000.

The reason for this scale is that after a long period of confrontation, the economies of the three countries have made great progress. Another reason is that after the demise of the Three Kingdoms, many hidden people and places were found by re-checking the household registration (for tax evasion). In the early Western Jin Dynasty, in order to ensure the national fiscal revenue, the policy of "re-naturalization" was adopted, that is, the original household registration in various places was invalidated, and the government re-counted and reduced taxes.

Many farmers who fled were re-recruited, so the population increased greatly. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the wounds caused by the civil war gradually healed.

The population decline and recovery from the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty to the Three Kingdoms period had a subtle influence on the future history of China. Under the situation of sharp decline in population all the year round, the three countries paid attention to attracting northern nomads into the Han area to increase their labor force, and a large number of northern nomads moved inward, which reached its peak at this time.

At the same time, the flow of population in the north also changed the power contrast between different ethnic groups, and the subsequent turmoil was also related to it. Although the population of China showed an upward trend during the Western Jin Dynasty, the losses caused by the long-term war could not be wiped out in just one or two decades. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, it is not surprising that the Western Jin adopted the wrong ruling policy and finally ended in extinction.

References:

The Three Kingdoms (the historical period from the Eastern Han Dynasty to the Western Jin Dynasty in China) _ Baidu Encyclopedia

Cao Wei (regime in the Three Kingdoms Period) _ Baidu Encyclopedia