Although the Wagang Army never had direct contact with the Tang Army from beginning to end, without their containment, who dared to say that the Tang Army would have been able to withstand the joint suppression of the Guanzhong and Shandong Sui Armies? At least Li Yuan admitted that the Wagang Army had created him strategic space and time.
Not only that, the Wagang Army also eliminated hundreds of thousands of main forces of the Sui Army, and "trained" a number of famous generals for Li Tang. As both a minesweeper father and a nursing mother, Wagangzhai can be described as Li Tang's regenerative parents.
Unfortunately, the Wagang Army did not wait for the day to share the results, and its founder Zhai Rang died early at the hands of his successor Li Mi, which made Wagangzhai cover a layer of ominous omens. Sure enough, less than a year after Zhai Rang's death, the Wagang army lost in the Battle of Yaoshan.
Zhai Rang's personal ability was a shortcoming, for which he not only bravely admitted, but also generously handed over the leadership of Wagangzhai to the latecomer Li Mi, and himself retreated to the second place. Compared with Wang Lun, the white-clothed xiucai of Liangshan, Zhai Rang's vision and temperament are really admirable.
But the problem is that Zhai Rang's atmosphere has not been able to shape the new atmosphere of Wagang Village, and he, like Wang Lun, still died at the hands of his brothers.
The trigger for the incident originated from two of Zhai Rang's subordinates, one named Wang Ruxin, who persuaded Zhai Rang to take over power from Li Mi by appointing himself as Ōtsuka Zai; the other was Zhai Rang's younger brother Zhai Hong, who said that since ancient times, who had given way to others?
How did Zhai Rang react to this? Neither the old and new Tang Books expressed it, and both the Zizhi Tongjian and Ye Shi both said that Zhai Rang refused with a smile and did not take this matter to heart at all.
However, these words still reached Li Mi's ears, and someone suggested to him that he should strike first and get rid of Zhai Rang.
Li Mi listened, and after the great victory of the Shizi River, he feasted on the soldiers and at the same time gave Zhai Rang a feast at the Hongmen Gate. During the banquet, Li Mizhi took Zhai Rang's entourage, and when he was drunk and his ears were hot, he handed Zhai Rang a good bow. Zhai Rang's attention was immediately attracted, he got up and kept playing, and just as he was pulling the bow hard, Li Mi's cronies slashed zhai Rang's neck from behind.
A good wedding feast turned into a bloody case, Zhai Rang's cronies, including Wang Ruxin and Zhai Hong's father and son, were all killed, and Xu Shiji was severely injured.
After the incident, Li Mi became the only core of Wagang village. However, after the incident, Wagangzhai lost its cohesion, and many of Zhai Rang's old departments, including Shan Xiongxin, Qin Qiong, Cheng Yaojin, and Luo Shixin, later surrendered to Wang Shichong. Therefore, most later generations believe that Li Mi's killing of Zhai Rang was the beginning of the disintegration of Wagang Village.
There are two questions worth exploring, one is why Zhai Rang's generosity has brought himself the disaster of killing himself? Second, is the split of Wagangzhai accidental or inevitable, and what kind of historical inevitability exists behind it?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="13" > Zhai Rang's "generosity" cannot solve the three major contradictions in the power structure of Wagangzhai</h1>
You may notice that I quietly put quotation marks around the word "generous." Personally, I believe that Zhai Rang's initiative to let Xian Xian is by no means "generous", but a weapon, a moral weapon for Zhai Rang and his cronies to fight back against Li Mi.
The first major contradiction in the power structure of Wagangzhai: Zhai Rang wanted to be the emperor
The weapon of morality is often barbaric, and it does not even give the opportunity to argue on anyone's head, but in fact it often does black and white upside down.
For example, is Zhai Rang really generous? You may be very surprised, people even gave up the position of the first hand, how many people in history can find this kind of mind? Moreover, when Zhai Rang was provoked, he could still adhere to the bottom line and did not take the initiative to provoke contradictions, was it not atmospheric enough?
It is true that Zhai Rang is more far-sighted than most people, but that is not generosity, but self-knowledge, and it is clear from his own expression that his starting point is to "step down" rather than "relinquish power".
"Resignation" is the transfer of responsibility, and "relinquishment" is the transfer of power. What did Zhai Rang say? He said, "The servant is not as ambitious as this." "This means, don't talk to me about the cause of the overlord, a country village man, you don't have this skill."
But Zhai Jean was not stupid, he knew what the dividend behind the overlord's business was. I don't have enough ability and I don't want to miss the dividend, what should I do? "Stepping down" Ah, push the responsibility to the capable people, themselves as a ready-made meal of the second-in-command, how cool it is.
Later, Zhai Rang's actions also verified his psychology, according to the record of the "Zizhi Tongjian", the outgoing Zhai Rang only had privileges in his heart, no obligations, and he disregarded the prohibition and died to earn gold for himself.
Isn't this too emperor?
Zhai Rang's Emperor Taishang was more nourishing than anyone else, because he still had the moral aura of Jean Xian on his head, which covered up all immoral behavior. For Li Mi, Zhai Let's personal behavior out of line is actually tolerable, but doing bad things through the aura of morality is disgusting!
The second biggest contradiction in the power structure of Wagangzhai: the two major groups of the old and new who hold the bull's ear
Li Mi was not afraid of Zhai Rang being the Emperor Taishang, and he was afraid that the "circle of friends" of the Emperor Taishang was too large.
A leader's leadership in a team comes from two aspects, one is the "power" given by the organization, and the other is his "prestige" to the team members. Power can be enforced through authorization, but prestige depends on the number of individual fans, and which one is a "lame leader".
Li Mi is a lame man!
Zhai Rang was able to start from scratch and create a team of 10,000 people, indicating that he was definitely not a straw bag. Li Mi is a foreigner, although the ability is second to Kill Zhai Rang, but after all, the foundation is shallow, suddenly from a migrant worker to the chairman, those old employees are inevitably dissatisfied.
More importantly, with the surge of the team, Li Mi must take out limited resources to invest in new members, this kind of thing if Zhai Let do, the old employees can only pinch their noses to bear, Li Mi will do it will pull a faction to fight a faction of suspicion.
In this way, Wagangzhai will inevitably give birth to a confrontation between the old and new factions.
Objectively speaking, Zhai Rang really has no motivation to seize power with Li Mi, but when his role is given by fans as a representative of the old school forces, can he still escape the power struggle?
Therefore, the tragedy of Zhai Rang is actually not the responsibility of Zhai Rang himself, nor the responsibility of Li Mi personally, but the conflict that will inevitably break out when the organization develops to a certain extent, and they are all wrapped up in the power trap by the interest groups behind them.
The third major contradiction in the power structure of Wagangzhai: the sequelae of forced purges
The contradiction in the power structure of Wagangzhai developed from the initial conflict between Zhai Rang's individual and the organization to the conflict between the two major interest groups, and then Li Mi planted a big mine for Wagangzhai by means of forced purges.
When things develop into factional struggles, the team is in a moment of crisis, how to solve it? From historical experience, there are basically three solutions:
The first, the assimilation effect, is the fusion of the weak forces with the strong forces.
This approach tends to work when the two factions present a large gap in power, and it is also a milder approach. For example, the team of Liu Xiu, the Guangwu Emperor, and the team of Li Tang's founding heroes. In these two teams, the two camps of the scholar group and the peasant class were mixed, but the scholar group always occupied the dominant position, so the internal friction of the team was very small.
The second is to part ways, and the two factions will take their own Yangguan Road.
The cooperation between Zhu Yuanzhang and the Red Turban Army eventually went its separate ways. The same is true of Liu Xiu's cooperation with Liu Xuan, who broke away from the mixed regime of the shi and peasants, created a force with the Haoqiang shi clique as the core, and from then on went to the "slippery road".
The third is forced purges, in which one faction annihilates the other by force.
There is no doubt that although the forced purge is the most concise and immediate, it is the most harmful to the team, and internal friction often pushes the team to extinction, such as the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
Each of the three solutions has its own advantages and disadvantages, depending entirely on the personal judgment of the team leader. Li Mi chose the third plan, although we can't say that his choice is necessarily wrong, but he must bear the evil consequences of this plan - Wagangzhai has gone to split!
Therefore, we cannot look at Zhai Rang's death from a moral point of view alone, which is the result of the problem of the power structure of Wagangzhai. Why, then, cannot these contradictions be resolved peacefully? This should be analyzed from the political ideas of the two factions in Wagangzhai.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="54" > Zhai Rang's death is not accidental, it is the inevitable result of the conflict between two major political ideas</h1>
The two major factions of Wagangzhai are not only the product of the order of joining the time, but also the product of the difference in identity.
Zhai Rang was originally a Fa Cao in the county, but after escaping from the crime, he fell into the grass and became a Kou. Shan Xiongxin's occupation is unknown, his ancestors were once a party Taishou, and the Shan clan can be regarded as a large family in Caozhou. Xu Shijie was born into a rich family, and his ancestors were also officials. These three people are the earliest entrepreneurial team in Wagangzhai, and they all have a common identity - the Landlord Class of the Xiaoshi Clan, or the Shu Group.
Li Mi's identity is much more prominent, his great-grandfather Li Bi was one of the Eight Pillar States of Western Wei, and Li Shi was a member of the most cattle Guanlong Gate Valve Group in the world.
Why did Wang Bodang change from Zhai Rang's old team to Li Mi's fan? Because he was born in the Langya Wang clan, although he did not belong to the Guan Long Group, he was also a high-gate household, and the two had a common language.
Among the later generals, Pei Renji, Yang Qing, Chai Xiaohe, Yuwen Kai, Liu Xu, Dugu Wudu, Liu Xie, and Yuan Wendu, who secretly communicated with Li Mi, were all sons of the Rich Family.
Therefore, I would like to interject that Wagangzhai is not what some people call a "peasant uprising", it is an out-and-out "warrior armed force". We can also clearly see a phenomenon, since Li Mi joined, the composition of Wagangzhai has undergone tremendous changes, and the disciples of the door valve have formed a trend of surpassing the forces of the Shu ethnic group with Li Mi as the center.
It is very clear that the struggle between the two major groups of Li Mi and Zhai Rang is essentially a conflict in political ideas between the Gate Valve forces and the Shu forces.
Looking through the history books, different classes have never reached an agreement on the issue of changing dynasties since ancient times. For example, Liu Bang of the Shu class and Xiang Yu of the aristocratic class, Liu Xiu of the noble class, and the Chimei Army and the Green Forest Army of the peasant class are all fighting for your life and death.
Therefore, the death of Zhai Rang is a historical fate!