Among the historical figures of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, there are zhu Wen, the tyrant who ended the Tang Dynasty, li keyong and Li Cunxun father and son who established the foundation of the tang dynasty, and Guo Wei and Chai Rong are even more heroes. However, speaking of historical popularity, Shi Jingyao, the first emperor of the ancient world, must not be ignored.
He was also the most criticized figure in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, and the title of Emperor of Er accompanied not only his personal shame, but also the disaster of the Central Plains Dynasty. Where did he get that title?
In fact, Shi Jingyao is not a Han Chinese, but a Shatuo person. According to the History of the New Five Dynasties, "his father, The Chicken, was originally from Xiyi and returned to the Tang Dynasty from the Evil Zhu Dynasty." "Zhu Xie was later given the surname Li, so when Li Keyong's son Li Cunxun and his adopted son Li Siyuan fought against Later Liang, Shi Jingyao was a general under his account.
He was usually silent and taciturn, and when he fought, he was unusually brave, and was deeply valued by Li Siyuan, and later became his son-in-law. In 916, Li Cunxun sent an army to Taiyuan, and at one point was broken by the enemy army and was under siege, Shi Jingyao rushed back and forth with more than ten relatives and rescued Li Cunxun.
When the Tang army entered Shandong the following year, Li Siyuan was not very ambushed, and it was only by relying on the cover of Shi Jingyao's personal risk of taking the bow and arrow hall that he escaped to heaven, which shows that he was still a relatively pure Shatuo warrior in his early years.
Things soon changed, and four years after Tang Tongguang, Li Siyuan was envolved on his way out to suppress the rebellion and was proclaimed emperor by his subordinates, but he did not seem to be determined to rebel, and even wanted to go back to Li Cunxun to show his feelings.
At this time, Shi Jingyao, who had always been reticent, jumped out and said: Is there a mutiny outside, and the general is alone? One sentence cut off Li Siyuan's retreat.
From the bottom of his heart, Shi Jingyao may have realized that if Li Siyuan did not rebel, he would either be killed by his soldiers or killed by Li Cunxun. And he and Li Siyuan are Weng's son-in-law, naturally grasshoppers on a rope, and they must not accept this consequence.
He petitioned to lead 300 cavalry to attack Bian Prefecture, and the result was a success, and Li Siyuan declared himself emperor for Emperor Mingzong of Later Tang. Relying on this miraculous feat, Shi Jingyao was suddenly promoted to the post of envoy of the Baoyi Army and deputy envoy of the guards of the Sixth Army, and was given the title of "Meritorious Servant of The Dedication to Building Strategy".
He also did not disappoint expectations, actively rectified corruption and lawless subordinates, and "served the government with honesty", so he was soon promoted to the commander of Xuanwu Army and The Guards Ma Bujun, becoming the most powerful general in the Later Tang regime.
If Emperor Mingzong's life expectancy of Li Siyuan was extended, Shi Jingyao could still be suppressed, but unfortunately history did not have ifs. In December of the fourth year of Changxing, Li Siyuan, a hero of his life, was scared to death by a mutiny, just like Hou Jingzhi to Gao Huan and Ran Min to Shi Hu in the past years, the death of the benefactor was the beginning of the release of himself.
The following year, Li Siyuan's third son Li Conghou took the throne, and his adopted son Li Congke disobeyed and launched a coup d'état, the history is always strikingly similar, the difference is only that Shi Jingyao participated in this coup, supported Li Congke to ascend to the throne, and successively established the second enemy emperor, and his status can be described as extraordinary.
But also because of this position, Li Congke was very suspicious of him, and Shi Jingyao was extremely eager to survive, and while he let his wife go to intercede with Empress Cao, he killed those subordinates who cried out to him or wanted to do things.
Rao was so, he was still worried in his heart, and he had a plan. He pretended to write a letter, resigned from the post of commander of the terracotta army, and transferred himself to another place, if Li Congke retained, it showed that he had put aside his suspicions, and if he agreed to explain that he wanted to expel him from the core, and then proceed.
As a result, Li Congke quickly agreed, first giving Shi Jingyao a bunch of false titles, and then urging him to go to Yun Prefecture to serve as an envoy to Jiedu. This move seriously irritated Shi Jingyao, making him understand that sooner or later he would tear his face.
But his own strength was not enough, he had to ask for foreign help, and he looked around and inside and outside, and he set his sights on the enemy's enemy, the Khitans. In 936, Shi Jingyao asked the Khitan for help, and Emperor Taizong of Liao, Yelü Deguang, was worried that there was nowhere to put the wild hope of going south, and the opportunity was sent to the door, which was naturally not polite.
He asked Shi Jingyao, who was ten years older than himself, to call himself Daddy, to demand 300,000 horses per year, and more importantly, to take the opportunity to cut off the strategic Yanyun 16 prefectures.
At the critical juncture when the Khitan army approached the city, Li Songke lost his dream like a salted fish, did not dare to go to war, and took Yuxi and his relatives to the head of the city and set himself on fire.
Shi Jingyao thus ascended to the throne and changed the name of the country to Jin, which was called Later Jin in history. Since ancient times, he may have been the first to win the country by recognizing his father, but not everyone is willing to follow him as a son.
For example, Datong Jiedu made Wu Jiao refuse to be killed, Chengde Jiedu made An Chongrong angry, and Tianxiong Jiedu made Fan Tingguang even simply rebel, which made Shi Jingyao more and more distrustful of the chancellor, and instead let the eunuchs take power, and the situation fell into chaos.
In the seventh year of Heavenly Blessing, he was full of fear and gave up. After his death, his nephew Shi Chonggui succeeded to the throne, and the Khitan people tried to enter the Kou conveniently, and now that the emperor is dead, there is no need to come back to Emperor Sun.
In the first month of the first year of Kaiyun (944), the Liao people drove straight in, and Shi Chonggui wanted to negotiate peace, but he could not get a response, so he had to harden his scalp. Fortunately, the Khitans were not well prepared, and the Later Jin army won two battles, and Shi Chonggui thought that he could sit back and relax and began to indulge in pleasure.
Therefore, when the Liao people once again went south to his uncle Marshal Du Chongwei to surrender to the enemy on the front line, he could only watch as the city of Bieliang was destroyed and his family became a prisoner, and then he was neatly sent to Jianzhou to cultivate land.
From an ethnic point of view, there is no shortage of voices condemning Shi Jingyao, but historical research is not equal to moral judgment, what we need to recognize is two facts, one is that Shi Jingyao's connection with the Khitan is the result of the power game within the post-Tang regime established by the Shatuo people, and the second is that the Yanyun Sixteen Prefectures, as the barrier of the Central Plains, have since changed hands, and the continuity of the subsequent regime is under the military front of the foreign tribes in the north.