Li Mi
In the rebellion at the end of the Sui Dynasty, Li Mi and his Wagang army once dominated the situation in the world, occupying most of the Sui Dynasty.
Even when the soldiers went to luoyang city, they almost stood on their own behalf of Sui,
However, only a year later, the Wagang army was completely destroyed, and Li Mi was also beheaded at Bears Ears Mountain.
Li Mi had hundreds of thousands of mercenaries, and there were famous generals such as Qin Qiong and Cheng Yaojin under his command, so why did they go to extinction in less than two years?
From "Tramp" to "Emperor"
To explore the reasons for the collapse of Li Mi and Wagang, we must start from the rise of the Wagang army.
Dissatisfied with the tyranny of the Sui Emperor, peasants revolted everywhere, and among them,
An uprising led by Zhai Rang in Wagangzhai was the predecessor of the Wagang Army, and the newly founded Wagang Army at this time had less than 10,000 people.
It was impossible to compete with other forces at all, but the arrival of Li Mi made the Wagang army grow rapidly and became a force to be reckoned with.
The monument to present-day Wagangzhai
After being expelled from the palace, Li Mi wandered from all walks of life until he was introduced to Wagangzhai by his friend Wang Quanbo and had a place to live.
Li Mi, who had just arrived, was soon appreciated by Zhai Rang for his familiarity with military books and courage, and was then enshrined as a military master.
Li Mi, who became a military division, soon commanded the rebels to win several small battles, and gradually gained a foothold in Wagang and had his own followers.
At this time, Li Mi, after experiencing the cold eyes of the Sui Emperor,
In Wagangzhai gradually found his own position and destination, he decided to pour all his efforts into the Wagang Army,
Determined to break out of a sky of your own.
Zhai Rang, the leader of Wagang, is a benevolent person, such a person is not suitable for leading soldiers, more suitable for being a civilian official,
He also had self-knowledge, and after seeing Li Mi's talent, he decided to abdicate and give way to Xian, and Li Mi took over the Wagang army.
The ruins of the Wagang Military Point In present-day Huaxian County
As a result, Li Mi became the leader of the Wagang Army, and under his leadership, the Wagang Army was invincible all the way, and successively captured Puyang, Tangyin and other places, one of the marching places.
The local people responded one after another, and the size of the Wagang Army expanded rapidly
。
Watching the gradual growth of the uprising team, Li Mi felt that the name of a Wagang army was no longer enough to describe the huge team.
So in 617 AD, he ascended the throne as "Duke of Wei", enfeoffed Zhai as the Shangzhu State, and changed his era name to "Yongping".
There are also three divisions and six guards, which have the appearance of a small imperial court.
This incident made Li Mi's reputation become more and more loud, and most of the prefectures and counties in Henan looked down at the wind and joined the Wagang Army.
Since then, the size of the Wagang Army has expanded from only 10,000 people to more than 100,000.
In one fell swoop, it became the strongest rebel force in the Central Plains, and absorbed such famous generals as Qin Qiong and Cheng Yaojin.
Cheng bites the gold
Logically, such a Wagang army will be like a bamboo,
In one fell swoop, he invaded the Sui capital, and then destroyed other rebel forces to unify the world.
However, in less than two years of glory, the Wagang Army was completely destroyed.
Ungrateful is unpopular
When we analyze it from the perspective of the hereafter, we will see that
In fact, among the reasons that led to the demise of Li Mi and the Wagang army, it was not the external reasons that dominated
It lies in Li Mi's personal decision-making mistakes and the fragmentation within the army.
Although Li Mi was familiar with military books and mastered 100,000 soldiers and horses, he was an out-and-out stupid person in terms of power and skill.
When Zhai Rang handed over the scepter representing power to Li Mi, it caused dissatisfaction among the military elders and Zhai Rang's brothers, especially after Li Mi "ascended the throne".
So they conspired to get rid of Li Mi, an outsider, and took the power into their own hands.
Schematic diagram of the division of the sui dynasty at the end of the year
But Li Mi decided to preemptively attack after learning about it.
He designed to kill Zhai Rang and a group of elderly figures, and monopolized power.
However, this move completely divided the already incompatible Wagang Army into two factions. Moreover, in the eyes of the generals, Li Mi's act of killing Zhai Rang made them see a treacherous villain who could only share hardships and not wealth.
Coupled with the fact that Li Mi was an outsider, the trend of division within the Wagang Army intensified.
After that, although Li Mi achieved absolute rule, it laid the foundation for future failures, and later when Li Mi was cornered, almost no one dared to accept him.
Because in their eyes, since Li Mi can kill Zhai Rang, it is possible to kill them.
It turns out that an ungrateful person is despised wherever he goes.
Schematic diagram of the operational situation of the Wagang Army
Become the "outcast" of the family door valve
In addition, there was a key reason that Li Mi did not have the support of the Guanlong noble group.
The Guanlong aristocratic group can be described as a prominent figure during the Sui Dynasty, and the predecessor of the Sui Dynasty, Northern Zhou, whose founder was from the group,
Moreover, the Sui Wen Emperor Yang Jian and the later Tang Gaozu Li Yuan were also from the Guanlong Clique, and it can be said that the Guanlong Clique influenced Chinese history for more than three hundred years.
Li Mi, although also from the Guanlong clique, was not supported because after the Sui Emperor ascended the throne, the division of interests within the Guanlong clique was redistributed.
Li Mi's family declined in this distribution, and naturally it was not supported
However, Li Mi did not have a chance to return to the sight of Guan Long's nobles, because at first he joined Yang Xuangan's rebel army.
This Yang Xuangan was the son of Yang Su, the founding hero of the Sui Dynasty, and was supported by the Guanlong nobles.
Li Miruo has been following him in the battle, and he may not get strong support.
The Wagang Army opened its warehouses to help the people
But unfortunately, this Yang Xuangan is a completely reckless man,
He only knows how to charge into the battlefield, and he knows nothing about the art of using soldiers, although he has the support of the door valve behind him, but he can't withstand his tossing and turning like this.
Gradually, Yang Xuangan was eliminated from the main force of the uprising, and Li Mi had to find another high position.
Fatal mistakes have left Yuan Qi seriously injured
Even though Li Mi was familiar with reading military books and had won many battles, he often walked by the river where there were not wet shoes, and Li Mi also had mistakes, but he did not expect,
This time, the decision-making mistake seriously injured the Wagang army, and since then it has been defeated one after another
This decision was to engage Ubun and the rebel army.
In 618, Yu Wenhua launched a mutiny and killed the Sui Emperor, and the Sui Dynasty declared its demise.
At this time, Li Mi had already placed his troops under luoyang and was ready to capture Luoyang in one fell swoop.
However, he heard the news that Emperor Wen of Sui had been killed by Yu Wenhua and killed him, so he watched the changes without moving.
Yu Culture and
After Yu Wenhua and his army left the city, they attacked Li Yangcang, making Li Mi think that Yu Wenhua and he had come to compete with him for the world.
At once, all his elite troops were thrown into the struggle against Yu Wenhua
。 But he was wrong, because Yu Wenhua and his party rebelled because they were homesick and eager to return to the Guanzhong region but the Sui Emperor did not allow it, so they rebelled.
Schematic map of the location of the granary in the last years of the Sui Dynasty
Although Li Mi did not know this, he also had every opportunity to avoid this war, because the soldiers who followed Yu Wenhua and his mind were not on fighting, and they were far from the Wagang Army in terms of numbers, and they could not pose a threat to Li Mi at all.
With Li Mi's military talent, he could not fail to see that these generals had no intention of fighting, but he still gave the order to attack.
This decision will make Li Mi regret it.
Yu Wenhua and his soldiers fought bravely and bloodily in the face of the tight pressure of the Wagang Army,
However, the gap in quantity was too large and the grain and grass were insufficient, and finally they could not resist the collapse of the army.
However, Li Mi also suffered heavy losses, and he himself almost died under the sword, but fortunately Qin Qiong risked his life to save his life.
Qin Qiong
Then he launched a fierce firefight with Wang Shichong in Luoyang City.
In this battle, Li Mi once again made a mistake, facing Wang Shichong's proposed method of exchanging cloth for grain and grass.
Li Mi actually agreed. In this way, the people and soldiers in the city had food, and they were even more reluctant to defect to Li Mi, and the angry Li Mi immediately sent troops to fight Wang Shichong to the death.
So the two sides fought a big battle at Yaoshan, in which the Wagang army was defeated and more than 100,000 people were captured.
Shan Xiongxin and other generals had no choice but to surrender, and Li Mi saw that the general situation had gone, so he had to lead the remnants of his troops to flee in a hurry
。 After this battle, the once-glorious Wagang army was completely destroyed, and Li Mi was also beheaded by the Tang army at Bears Ears Mountain shortly after.
Doomed loser?
But in addition to these reasons, there is another important reason that has been ignored by later historians, that is, the geographical environment. The Wagang Army was located in the Central Plains, and most of the camps were stationed in Henan.
As we all know, the Central Plains region is flat, and there are almost no particularly high peaks as grabens.
In this way, the Wagang Army is equivalent to four doors open, and it is possible to face the attack of the surrounding forces at any time. In this case, Li Mi had to arrange heavy guards around him to prevent other forces from raiding.
Geographical map of Wagang
It can be said that the factors of geographical environment have limited the development of the Wagang Army, and the long-term inability of Luoyang to attack has also seriously hindered the pace of the Wagang Army's conquest, because
Luoyang was geographically connected to Jianghuai in the south and Guanzhong in the north, which caused great trouble to the marching route of the Wagang Army
。 In addition, the Wagang army faced a situation in which there was Du Fuwei on the left and Dou Jiande on the right, and the Sui Dynasty army was stationed in Yangzhou, which could support Luoyang at any time. Under such a step-by-step approach,
If the Wagang army captures Luoyang, it will still have the strength of a battle, and if it cannot capture Luoyang, there will be no way back
Although the Wagang army was destroyed in the Battle of Yaoshan, it was also the result of the superposition of various factors in two years.
Li Mi killed Zhai Rang unpopularly, and the decision-making error led to a serious injury to the vitality, coupled with the limitations of the geographical environment,
It seems that from the very beginning, the end of Li Mi and Wagangjun was doomed.