In classical Chinese drama, there is the story of "Zhao Taizu Three Times of the Southern Tang Dynasty", which is widely circulated among the people and widely welcomed by people. However, this story has not happened in history, in fact, it was not The Song Taizu Zhao Kuangyin who led the army to fight in the Southern Tang Dynasty three times, but Chai Rong of the Later Zhou Dynasty. Chai Rong led the Later Zhou army to attack the Southern Tang three times, eliminating the living forces of the Southern Tang army and forcing Li Jing, the lord of the Southern Tang Dynasty, to cede a large area of land in Huainan and northern Huaibei, so that the first great power in the south would turn from prosperity to decline. In the process, it is difficult to understand that Li Gu, the chancellor who actively contributed to this invasion, was deposed by Chai Rong at the beginning of the war, causing him to lose the idea of agreeing with the Famous Southern Tang minister Han Xizai to hunt Wu, which was also considered to be one of the reasons why later Zhou was unable to destroy the Southern Tang.
Li Gu, the chancellor, was one of the main imperial court ministers who prompted Later Zhou to send troops to Southern Tang, and was also an important minister left to Chai Rong by Later Zhou's taizu Guo Wei. Li Gu was friends with the famous Southern Tang minister Han Xizai, and when Han Xizai went south to Southern Wu to escape the war, Li Gu went to the Zhengyang Ferry port on the huai river to send him off. At that time, the two agreed with each other that Li Gu would go south to destroy Wu if he was the prime minister of the Central Plains, and Han Xizai would go north to the Central Plains if he was the prime minister of the Southern Wu. This was their agreement that Cao Cao and Sun Quan would hunt Wu before the Battle of Chibi, and it became one of the reasons why Li Gu actively promoted later Zhou's campaign against Wu. Later, Chai Rong accepted Li Gu's suggestion and agreed to send troops to attack the Southern Tang, kicking off the war. As a result, Li Gu served as the commander of the former army of Later Zhou with the position of prime minister, and gathered twelve famous generals of Later Zhou, including Wang Yanchao and Han Lingkun.
Li Gu led his army south from the Zhengyang Ferry where Han Xizai had crossed the river, and then defeated the Southern Tang army in succession, approaching the Southern Tang important town of Shouzhou. The Southern Tang Emperor Li Jing sent the general Liu Yanzhen (劉彦贞) to lead an army of 30,000 reinforcements, and sent troops to attack the crossing of Zhengyang County, hoping to trap the Later Zhou Army on the south bank of the Huaishui River and make it suffer from the enemy on its belly and back. After consulting with his subordinates, Li Gu decided to retreat to the crossing of Zhengyang County and wait for Chai Rong's rear army to arrive before making plans. Chai Rong objected after receiving this news and sent people to prevent Li Gu from withdrawing, but it was too late. Because Li Gu moved too fast and retreated in a hurry, there were plunders along the way and the remnants of Huaibei servants. Afterwards, Chai Rong was furious and dismissed Li Gu from his post as the former military commander and chancellor, and entrusted the affairs of the Southern Expedition to Li Chongjin to preside.
Judging from the historical records, Chai Rong attributed the charge of plundering the army along the way and leaving behind Huaibei servants to Li Gu as a reason to depose him of his position and military power. On the surface, it seems reasonable, but when you think about it, it feels suspicious. First of all, the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms were a time of chaos, and it was normal for armies to plunder along the way. If these armies had not plundered along the way, but had taken military discipline and loved the people, the chaotic world of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms would not have existed. Secondly, although Li Gu left hundreds of servants from Huaibei under the city of Shouzhou, it was not a loss to the powerful Hou Zhou, nor did it affect the combat effectiveness of the army. Third, Li Gu defended the zhengyang county ferry, and also cooperated with Li Chongjin's army, who rushed to support, to repel the reinforcements of the Southern Tang general Liu Yanzhen.
It can be said that from the perspective of the war situation, Li Gu not only made no mistakes, but also seized the first hand in the war against the Southern Tang Dynasty, which was a meritorious achievement. Whether it was an army plunder or a Huaibei servant, it was not a big deal, and deposing Li Gu for this crime obviously had the flavor of wanting to add to the crime. And Li Gu was the second most important minister left by Guo Wei after Feng Dao, and Chai Rong's operation was very excessive.
Lovers of history have been critical of Chai Rong's approach, and there is a great deal of debate over various claims. Some of the reasons for supporting the history books are also considerable part of the belief that Chai Rong wants to add to the sin. They believed that Chai Rong and Li Gu were in conflict in strategic thinking in the fight against the Southern Tang, and Chai Rong took advantage of this to take Li Gu. Judging from the records of various historical materials, this statement has a certain truth, but it is not complete.
As mentioned above, chai Rong's purpose in sending troops to the Southern Tang Was not to destroy the country, but to destroy the living forces of the Southern Tang and solve the worries of the Khitan and Northern Han in the Northern Expedition. Therefore, from a strategic point of view, Chai Rong did not intend to eat the Southern Tang in one go, but adopted the strategy of weakening and encroaching on annexation. Li Gu, on the other hand, had an agreement with Han Xizai to hunt Wu, so he was very confident that he would destroy the Southern Tang Dynasty with one blow. In fact, judging from the national strength of the Later Zhou Dynasty at that time, it was not difficult to eat the Southern Tang in one go, but it took a period of time to digest the achievements of the war after the war. There was indeed a contradiction between the emperor and the chancellor, and it was not impossible for Li Gu to be deposed because of this contradictory plan. However, from the historical point of view, Chai Rong and Li Gu did not have a fierce conflict, and the sudden withdrawal from the scene seemed very abrupt.
In the historical data, before the Battle of Gaoping, Chai Rong also had a fierce conflict with the old prime minister Feng Dao because of the problem of war strategy. Feng Dao then asked himself to resign from the post of chancellor and build a mausoleum for Guo Wei, the taizu of Later Zhou. However, Chai Rong only made Feng Dao a mountain envoy to Guo Wei and presided over Guo Wei's funeral, and did not agree to his resignation. It can be seen that Chai Rong's seizure of Li Gu's military power is not a simple contradiction in war tactics, but has a deeper reason. The contradiction in war strategy is only the fuse between the two men, and the core contradiction is still in Chai Rong himself. Combined with the operation recorded in the history books that Chai Rong repeatedly found various reasons to depose or seize the power of the heavy subjects, it can be seen that he took the opportunity to seize the power of Li Gu's troops, which is a typical manifestation of suspicion of his power.
Judging from the history books, although Chai Rong was praised as the first British lord of the five generations, there were still many gaps in his handling of people compared with his predecessor Guo Wei and his successor Zhao Kuangyin. His suspicions about his subordinates, his self-indulgence in governance, and nepotism are not uncommon. First of all, the rigidity in governing is a typical example, he can not tolerate opposition, and has always been self-centered. Whether it is a conflict with Feng Dao or the removal of Li Gu for reasons, behind it is that he believes that his strategy is superior. Judging from the historical effect, his strategy did play a very good role, but it does not mean that others are worse than him. And his self-indulgence also made him fall into a misunderstanding, and the arrangements of various suspicious ministers eventually left Zhao Kuangyin with the opportunity to rebel.
One of the biggest manifestations of Chai Ronggang's self-pity and jealousy of the heavy ministers was that he did not trust the old ministers, and the old ministers left to him before Guo Wei's death let him find various reasons to deal with them. Feng Dao, as an old minister of the Four Dynasties, was sent by him to repair the mausoleum, and after repairing the mausoleum, he died of illness. Li Gu succeeded Feng Dao as chancellor, and was a veteran of the Three Dynasties of later Jin, Later Han, and Later Zhou, who was extremely capable of politics and was Guo Wei's designated successor to Feng Dao. However, in the process of attacking the Southern Tang Dynasty, he was inexplicably seized of military power and then dismissed, and the reason for the resignation was actually wind paralysis. In fact, Chai Rong's southern expedition to the north was indispensable to Li Gu's staff, and he attacked the Southern Tang Three times, and the Northern Khitan and Northern Han Dynasties once, all of which were formulated by Li Gu. This is a typical use of people facing forward, not using people facing backwards, and it is not good to say that it is to unload and kill donkeys.
In addition to Feng Dao and Li Gu, The Privy Counsellor left by Guo Wei made Wei Renpu gradually empty by Chai Rong. He first transferred Wei Renpu out of the Privy Council by way of promotion to chancellor, and had his confidant Wang Pu succeed him as privy councillor. He then appointed Fan Zhi and Wang Pu as privy councillors, which greatly weakened Wei Renpu's authority to administer the privy council. Therefore, among the four important ministers left by Guo Wei, only Wang Pu was not weakened and excluded because he was from the Chai Rong Royal Palace. If Wang Pu had not died prematurely, his arrangement would have been fine. However, Wang Pu died suddenly a few months before his death, which created a large power vacuum in the Privy Council. Zhao Kuangyin took advantage of this vacuum to collude with Vice Chancellor Wang Pu to lay the overall situation for the later Chen Qiao Mutiny.
In fact, Guo Wei's arrangements before his death were very reasonable, preventing various hidden dangers of a possible coup in advance. He appointed Feng Dao as chancellor and Li Gu as his successor, in order to prevent the sudden death of the elderly Feng Dao and the situation that no one was in charge of the imperial court. He arranged for Wang Pu to be the governor of Kaifeng in order to prepare chai Rong for his ascension to the throne, so that Chai Rong could control the political situation in the city of Bieliang in Tokyo. He arranged for Wei Renpu to be a privy councillor in order to control the armies of the various feudal towns and prevent them from supporting the army and respecting themselves. He married the two daughters of Fu Yanqing to Chai Rong in order to win the support of the military's first minister. He forced Zhang Yongde and Li Chongjin to be loyal to Chai Rong in order to unite the imperial family and foreign relatives and prevent the emergence of civil unrest.
It can be said that Guo Wei's operations laid a net of heaven and earth, and if Chai Rong did so, he would not have left Zhao Kuangyin with the opportunity to rebel at all. However, Chai Rong's suspicion and nepotism took the initiative to break this heavenly net, leaving Zhao Kuangyin with a good opportunity. After the deaths of Feng Dao and Wang Pu, Li Gu and Wei Renpu were again suspended, which gave Zhao Kuangyin the opportunity to take control of the city of Bieliang in Tokyo. Fearing that his young Chai Zongxun would become a puppet emperor after his death, he released Fu Yanqing and Li Chongjin and took away Zhang Yongde's military power, making Zhao Kuangyin a dominant figure in the forbidden army. It is precisely because of Chai Rong's self-made clever and self-absorbed personality that he made him faint in the arrangement of his death, burying the Jiangshan of the Later Zhou.
Chai Rong's dismissal of Li Gu during his attack on the Southern Tang Dynasty did not seem to have much influence, but it showed his narrow political views. It was under the influence of this political concept that he made all kinds of dim-witted operations. Zhao Kuangyin once sighed that if Wang Pu did not die, he would not have the opportunity to put on the dragon robe. Similarly, if Li Gu, who was on a par with Wang Pu, were to be prime minister, Zhao Kuangyin would not have the opportunity to collude with Wang Pu, let alone replace the chief officials of the three forbidden armies with his own. Therefore, the establishment of the Song Dynasty is not so much zhao kuangyin bullying the orphans and widows of the later Zhou, but rather that Chai Rong was smart and was mistaken by cleverness, and he did the thing of opening the door and stealing. Therefore, we can see that after the establishment of the Song Dynasty, Li Jun, Li Chongjin, and Wei Renpu hung up the image of Guo Wei when they remembered the Later Zhou, not chai Rong, who died.