Gou Jian's fortune-telling story

Is Gou Jian really a villain who burned the bridge?

This is actually hard to say.

The reason why we evaluate Gou Jian like this now is mainly because Fan Li, a courtier of Gou Jian, once evaluated him like this. He believes that Gou Jian can endure hardships when he is down and out, and can struggle with courtiers, but when he succeeds, he will not share his success with them. Based on this judgment, Fan Li chose to play dead and fled, and left a book to persuade Wen Zi to leave together. Wen Zi didn't listen to Fan Li's advice and was finally killed by Gou Jian. From the perspective of ordinary people, Gou Jian is really a villain. However, whether it is Gou Jian, Fan Li or Wen Zi, they are all politicians. They will not only consider morality, but also politics.

In the process of Gou Jian's defeat of Wu, He made great contributions. When Gou Jian was a groom in Wu, he accompanied him as a slave and supported the country instead of him. At this time, there is naturally no contradiction between the monarch and his subjects, and they seek a common cause. However, after defeating Wu, there will naturally be contradictions between the monarch and his subjects, and there will naturally be mutual suspicion if there are contradictions. Fan Li suspected that Gou Jian would hurt himself, so he chose to run away. Gou Jian suspected Wen Zi of rebellion, so he gave Wen Zi a capital punishment.

In fact, this chain of mutual suspicion between the monarch and his subjects is the monarch's chronic disease. As long as it is under the monarchy, no one can avoid mutual suspicion. A courtier suspects a gentleman, and a gentleman suspects a courtier. The courtiers didn't want to betray, but they were worried that the monarch would doubt himself and had to betray. The monarch didn't want to lay hands on the courtiers, but he was worried that the courtiers would betray him because of suspicion, so he had to sentence the courtiers to death. No one can guarantee that the other party really doesn't want to do it to themselves, so in the end, they have to do it first. Gou Jian only gave Wen Zi a dead gift without implicating his family, which is much better than those monarchs who are easy to implicate others.