In the eyes of the world, the Sui Dynasty Emperor Yang Guang was an absurd and smelly guy, while Tang Taizong Li Shimin was the emperor of the tang dynasty. On the surface, the historical evaluations of the two men are very different. In fact, compared with Li Shimin, the Sui Dynasty Emperor's Wenzhi martial arts were not inferior, and even more so in some aspects. There is a strong contrast, one is the success of the king and the defeat of the coward, and the other is that history has always been written by the victors.
At the age of 20, the Sui Emperor commanded an army of 510,000 people, and in one fell swoop pacified the Southern Dynasty Chen State in the south of the Anjiang River, ending the chaotic era of the division of the Southern and Northern Dynasties, and completing a great unification in Chinese history.
Li Shimin was well versed in military and political affairs since childhood, and since he followed his father's rebellion, he commanded the army to conquer the north and conquer the north, and was particularly proud of the founding of the Tang Dynasty.
Historically, the Sui Emperor had more ambitions than Emperor Taizong of Tang. Soon after he became emperor, he embarked on the century project - the excavation of the Grand Canal! Although the excavation of the Grand Canal was an act of disinterest and abuse of national strength, it played a huge role in consolidating the rule of the Central Plains and shifting the center of gravity of China's economy from Guanzhong to the Central Plains to the south. To this day, the Grand Canal still plays an important role in connecting the north and the south. The excavation of the Grand Canal is actually the Sui Emperor making wedding clothes for future generations, the Sui people planting trees, and the Tang people cooling down.
Although the imperial examination system, which has influenced China so far, is also the pioneering work of the Sui Dynasty Emperor, although the examination system has natural drawbacks, its emphasis on learning rather than the selection of officials has provided opportunities for lower-level intellectuals to participate in politics, greatly expanded the ruling base of the feudal state, and its great influence on the prosperity and development of the feudal dynasty is far from being comparable to other political systems. Li Shimin's achievements in the imperial examination were relatively lacking, and during his reign, all he did was to further improve the political system of the Sui Dynasty, such as the imperial examination and the six departments of the three provinces. During the reign of the Sui Dynasty Emperor, the people of the world were tossed and turned, and the people of the world were displaced and miserable; Tang Taizong followed the advice and formulated a policy of recuperation with the people. Li Shu, who preferred to be a peaceful dog and not a chaotic man, suddenly lived a stable life of hunger and cold from hunger and cold, how could he not be grateful to Shu Zero, and Qi claimed to praise the emperor and the sages?
As soon as people talked about the pioneering efforts of the Tang Dynasty, they were excited to beat chicken blood, but they did not know that as soon as the Sui Emperor ascended the throne, he defeated the Khitan and immediately attacked Tuguhun, opened up thousands of miles of territory to the west, and incorporated most of today's Qinghai Province into the territory, completing the feats of no ancients before and fewer people. After that, the Sui Emperor personally led a team to the Hexi Corridor and toured west to Zhangye County in the northwest. The Sui Dynasty Emperor threatened the northwest frontier, and until the fall of the dynasty, there were still a large number of vassal states submitted to the Sui.
The most proof of Tang Taizong's martial arts was the decisive victory over the Turks. However, Tang Taizong did not blindly use force to conquer, but used both soft and hard, and used both restraint and care. This move enabled him to gain greater respect from the frontier peoples and earn him the title of "Heavenly Khan". In order to establish an international order dominated by the Sui Dynasty and to increase the dynasty's right to speak in the world political structure, the Sui Emperor devoted all his strength to conquering Goryeo, thus laying the seeds of the disaster of national subjugation. Emperor Taizong of Tang faithfully inherited the legacy of the Sui Emperor and personally conquered Goryeo and returned. Although Emperor Taizong of Tang was not as good as the Sui Emperor, his political wisdom was clearly superior.
The main reason why the Sui Emperor failed to become a saintly prince who was admired by the world was that he regarded himself too highly and could not listen to the advice of his subordinates. What is very different from him is that Tang Taizong's most admired historian is that he knows people and is kind and obedient.
Full of losses and humble benefits - it is precisely because of Tang Taizong's good advice that a large number of advisors emerged in the early Tang Dynasty. History proves that as a politician, only by having a broad mind and being good at listening to criticism can he be conducive to forging ahead and governing in a close manner.
In fact, after the enlightened rule of Emperor Wen of Sui, there were many capable people in the government and the public, but the Sui Emperor was jealous of the sages in the court, and like a thief, he stared at the ambitions of the powerful ministers. He self-righteously believed that the minister only wanted to gain political fame by consulting, and that when the minister advised him, he would find all kinds of excuses to punish him. The blockade of the way of speech makes it difficult to reach the next situation, so that the major national policies formulated by it are often divorced from reality and become unrealistic, and it is not surprising that the death of the country is ridiculed by posterity.
Forgetting the war will be dangerous, and if you are belligerent, you will die, and the Sui Emperor will either build a large number of civil engineering projects or shout and kill, which is tantamount to death. It is precisely because of his appearance as a textbook that Li Shimin deeply reflected on the historical lessons of the death of the Sui Dynasty II, paid attention to the people's livelihood, and vigorously restored the social economy destroyed by the war.
Both the Sui Emperor and Tang Taizong's means of ascending to the throne belonged to the death of See Guang, but the Sui Emperor was nailed to the pillar of shame, and Tang Taizong escaped the disaster. The reason is nothing more than that with the great aura of prosperity of the "rule of Zhenguan", Li Shimin's murder of his brother and the persecution of his father were chosen by later historians for collective amnesia.