One night after Yangzhou was besieged for half a year, it was dark and dark, and the wind and rain were mixed. Lü Yongzhi led three hundred death squads to ambush under the city, climbed the city tower when the defenders changed guards, opened the city gate and enlarged the army into the city, and the exhausted defenders did not even notice. Qin Yan and Bi Shiduo saw that the general situation had gone, and fled out of Kaihua Gate to Dongtang. Yang Xingmi swung into the huainan town of Yangzhou, and the first thing he did after entering the city was to claim to be the queen of Huainan. Because Gao Biao was killed by Huainan Jiedushi, the imperial court had not yet appointed the new Emissary of Jiedushi, and Gao Biao was also Yang Xingmi's benevolent father-in-law, and Yang Xingmi naturally refused to let him be the acting emissary of Jiedushi.
However, Yang Xingmi's stay was self-appointed, and the imperial court did not recognize it, nor did it have legitimacy, so his troubles had just begun. Once Gao Biao died, Huainan Jiedu made this piece of fat naturally everyone want to take it for themselves, and the game between the imperial court and the warlords in huainan was very fierce. If Yang Xingmi wanted to get this piece of fat meat, he must first be strong, make raw rice into mature rice, and use the fait accompli to force the imperial court to recognize his status.
Yang Xingmi's approach was to make a high-profile sacrifice to Gao Biao, who was killed, and immediately after entering the city, he sent someone to find the remains of Gao Biao's family and bury them solemnly. In addition, in order to win the hearts and minds of the remnants of Gao Biao, he also ordered the arrest of several Gao Biao generals who had defected to Qin Yan, reprimanded them for disloyalty and injustice, killed the lord Gao Biao, and dragged them out to reward them with a knife.
In short, at this time, Yang Xingmi tried his best to dress himself up as Gao Biao's most loyal subordinate, and high-profile to flaunt his fierce loyalty to Gao Biao. This move really touched a lot of Gao Biao's old department, and everyone was willing to follow Yang Xingmi as the lord of Huainan, which was his cleverness.
After the smoke of the war dissipated, the hundreds of thousands of people in the past, rich in the world, known as the "Yang Yi Yi Yi Two" of the southeast metropolis, the First Tier City of the Tang Dynasty Yangzhou only a few hundred households remained, most of them were hungry and no one looked. The city is like hell, and the whole city is like a bombed Syria.
Seeing such a tragic situation, Yang Xingmi felt that Yangzhou was difficult to hold, to eat or drink, to guard a ruin with bird meaning. As a result, Yang Xingmi had the idea of retiring from the army again.
However, Yang Xingmi would not have thought that he would not be able to leave, and a strong army was advancing rapidly towards Yangzhou.
On the dusty official road, the cavalry of the brigade roared by, the dust raised by the horses' hooves covered the sky, the word "Qin" embroidered on the military flag was particularly eye-catching, and the men and horses of the brigade went straight to the direction of Yangzhou...
Could it be that Qin Yan, the undead little strong, has made a comeback?
This Qin was not Qin Yan, but Qin Zongheng, who had committed crimes from the Central Plains, and his brother was Qin Zongquan, the remnant of huangchao and the warlord leader who was occupying Cai Prefecture (蔡州, in modern Runan, Henan).
Qin Zongquan was originally a general of Huang Chao's army, but after Huang Chao's defeat, he pulled up his troops and left for Cai Prefecture, where he long ravaged cai prefecture and Chen prefecture (present-day Huaiyang, Henan), attracting many Tang armies to encircle and suppress. In order to open up a new battlefield and get rid of the predicament, this time Qin Zongquan specially sent his most trusted brother Qin Zongheng to lead troops to Huainan in an attempt to capture Yangzhou to prepare a place for the "strategic transfer" of the eldest brother.
After entering the winter, the Qin army arrived outside the city and occupied the Shugang camp abandoned by Yang Xingmi, and a large number of grain and grass that had not yet been transported into the city all fell into the hands of the Qin army. Qin Zongheng also threatened to induce Yang Xingmi's sworn enemies Qin Yan and Bi Shiduo to besiege Yangzhou together, and Yang Xingmi saw that the situation was unfavorable to him, so he insisted on not fighting.
To say that Yang Xingmi's luck was really good against the sky, just when he was at a loss, Qin Zongquan's messenger arrived. He ordered his brother to quickly return to the Central Plains to relieve the siege and help him deal with Zhu Wen. It turned out that Qin Zongquan and his sworn enemy Zhu Wen broke out into a fierce battle, Qin Zongquan was in a bad state, even lost the battle, seeing that Cai Zhou's old nest was not safe, he was forced to urgently summon his brother back to help him.
After receiving the military order, Qin Zongheng's deputy commander Sun Ru was unwilling to go back, saying that he would not leave because of illness. Qin Zongheng repeatedly urged him to leave, Sun Ru always pushed three times and four blocks, and finally could not drag on, simply killed Qin Zongheng at a banquet, sent his head to Kaifeng to ask Zhu Wen for credit, betrayed Qin Zongquan and threw himself into Zhu Wen's arms.
Sun Ru, a native of Luoyang, Henan, did not learn any techniques in his early years, bullied men and women in the township, although there was a Confucian character in his name, in fact, he had nothing to do with Confucianism, and was a rogue villain full of evil. As an adult, Sun Ru joined the Zhongwu Army and was mixed with the position of a junior petty officer.
After the outbreak of the Huangchao Rebellion, Sun Ru, who was not willing to be lonely, pulled up his own men and horses and threw themselves into the rebel general Qin Zongquan as a general. Huang Chao's army marched westward into Tongguan, and Emperor Qin sent Sun Ru to attack the eastern capital Luoyang, which remained behind to defend Li Hanzhi and flee. After Sun Ru destroyed the city, he set fire to the Dongdu Palace and wantonly slaughtered the officials and people of Luoyang. The various Tang armies were not Sun Ru's opponents at all, they were defeated at the touch of a button, and only his former colleague, Xuanwu Jun, made Zhu Wen not afraid of Sun Ru, and had defeated Sun Ru many times.
Sun Ru was very jealous of Zhu Wen, and simply shrank to Heyang (present-day Mengzhou, Henan) to hold out, and later heard that his eldest brother Qin Zongquan was also defeated by Zhu Wen, where Sun Ru still had the heart to love war, he burned the city of Heyang, killed the people in the city and threw the corpses of the Yellow River, and the whole army went east.
After Qin Zongquan fled to Cai Prefecture, in order to break the embattled stalemate, he sent his younger brother Qin Zongheng and Sun Ru to lead troops south to Jianghuai in an attempt to capture Yangzhou, so the opening scene appeared.
Sun Ru was a very ambitious man, he was obedient to the Qin brothers on the surface, but deep down he had his own small calculations. He was not willing to look up to people all his life, and he was eager to build his own grand cause. He once said to people privately: The eldest husband can't fight hard, why should he be willing to submit to others, and he can't be rich when he is alive, and who will build a temple for you when he dies?
Sun Ru had been waiting for an opportunity, and when he drew his sword and stabbed Qin Zongheng, he was convinced that his opportunity had come.
The reason why Sun Ru did not want to return to Cai Prefecture was that he had taken a fancy to the treasure land of Yangzhou, and after betraying Qin Zongquan, he on the one hand to curry favor with Zhu Wen, who controlled the real power of the Tang Dynasty; on the other hand, he expanded his armaments and prepared to compete with Yang Xingmi for the throne of Huainan hegemony. During this time, Sun Ru was very active, attacking everywhere in the Huainan region, sneaking up on Gaoyou and expelling Zhang Shenjian, and after breaking the city, the old rules of the army ransacked and slaughtered the city, razing Gaoyou to the ground.
Zhang Shenjian led seven hundred remnants of defeated soldiers into Yangzhou to defect to Yang Xingmi, Zhang Shenjian was after all a person of Bi Shiduo, Yang Xingmi did not trust them in his heart, not my race, his heart will be different. Sun Ru besieged the city with heavy troops, the isolated city of Yangzhou was in turmoil, Zhang Shenjian brought troops to vote at this time, and Yang Xingmi had to be cautious about these uninvited guests.
But then again, after all, Zhang Shenjian had been an ally in the same trench and had dealt with Qin Yan and others together, and Yang Xingmi could not fail to express it, so he arranged a banquet for Zhang Shenjian to receive the wind.
At this time, the offensive of Sun Ru's army outside the city was becoming more and more fierce, but inside the city was a strange atmosphere of song and swallow dance, the festival made the red lights in the yamen hang high, fine wine and food, singing and dancing, and Zhang Shenjian between cups and cups was drunk...
The banquet soon reached a climax, and the eerie atmosphere was suffocating.
Everyone looked at Yang Xingmi, who had a solemn face, only to see that he was holding a wine glass in his hand, intriguingly lifting and putting it down, putting it down and lifting it...
exegesis:
Stayed behind: The agent position set up when the Tang Dynasty festival envoy and observation envoy are absent, similar to the agent moderation envoy.