Most of the ancient houses in China were wooden structures, which led to the relative maturity of fire fighting technology and technology at that time. Even so, there were several fires in the history of China, which were remembered by people. Among them, the fire with the greatest influence can even be called a precursor to the collapse of a dynasty, which was only the armory fire in the Western Jin Dynasty.
In the winter of the fifth year of Yuankang, there were bursts of smoke in the armory in the northeast of Luoyang City. After the fire broke out, Zhang Hua, then prime minister, strictly ordered the imperial guards guarding the armory not to move and had to rely on external manpower to rescue them. This delay caused the fire to burn all day, and smoke billowed over Luoyang city. It was not until late at night that the sudden fire was put out.
Why the armory caught fire is still unknown, buried in the dust of history without trace. Why is the armory so big? It is worth mentioning that the armory, as its name implies, is a warehouse for storing weapons and equipment, and has always been used as a storage place for a large number of weapons and equipment. According to historical records, there were equipment capable of equipping 2.08 million soldiers and a lot of oil in the arsenal at that time. The ordnance in the Western Jin Dynasty was maintained with wooden handles, wooden crossbows, shield cars and a lot of oil, which produced a fire that can be said to have lit up half of Luoyang City.
In addition to a large number of ordnance, the Western Jin Emperor also stored many treasures in the armory, such as the head of Wang Mang, the snake sword of Liu Bang, the clogs worn by Confucius and so on. Why did the emperor put the treasure in the armory? In fact, it is very simple, because the armory is the most closely guarded, even safer than the emperor's own home. But no one expected that this fire would burn all these treasures.
The impact of the armory fire is far-reaching. The armory fire lost the technical reserve of Central Plains ordnance. It also made the Eight Kings Rebellion and Five Rebellions in China at the end of the Jin Dynasty, and the Jin Army didn't have enough ordnance to fight with local forces and conference semifinals. It has been clearly recorded in the history books that at that time, the imperial court gave money and food to the generals, but there was no armament, and the generals needed to raise money themselves. It is not surprising that the Jin army has been losing ground.
It can be said that an arsenal fire in Luoyang burned the crumbling country of the Western Jin Dynasty to the edge of a cliff and even pushed it down. This fire not only dealt a heavy blow to the military, economy and politics of the Han nationality in the Central Plains, but also rewritten the territory and process of Chinese civilization.