preface
Regarding Li Jiancheng, the founding prince of the Tang Dynasty, the public's general perception of him is limited to the impression that in the Xuanwumen Revolution, he failed to fight for power with Li Shimin and was killed.
In the legends and interpretations of later generations, Li Jiancheng was a mediocre, timid and cowardly person, but he only took the position of prince by taking the identity of the eldest son of the concubine, while his second brother Li Shimin was so wise and divine.
In short, the significance of Li Jiancheng's existence is to serve as a background board for Li Shimin, but as the saying goes, "History is a little girl dressed up by others."
In fact, Li Jiancheng's negative stereotypes are entirely due to Li Shimin, and when we restore a historically true Li Jiancheng, we will find that things are not what we imagined.
The eldest son of Xianming, who was trusted and relied on by Li Yuan
In 589, Li Jiancheng was born in the famous Guanlong military aristocrat Longxi Li clan, his father Li Yuan was the Duke of Tang at that time, and his great-grandfather Li Hu was one of the Eight Pillar States of Western Wei.
When Li Yuan was young, he married Dou Shi, the granddaughter of Yuwen Tai, the de facto ruler of Western Wei, and gave birth to Li Jiancheng, Li Shimin, and Li Yuanji successively.
In 605, Yang Guang succeeded to the throne as emperor, but due to his construction of the Grand Canal, his abuse of national power, and the failure of the Three Expeditions to Goguryeo, the people revolted.
Li Yuan saw that the world was in chaos and the situation of the demise of the Sui Dynasty was irreversible, so he had the idea of replacing it.
At that time, Li Yuan stayed in Taiyuan, in order to expand his power, in 613, Li Jiancheng was sent to live in Hedong near the Guanzhong region, secretly recruiting talented people in order to be useful in the future, li Jiancheng was only 24 years old.
The young Li Jiancheng lived up to his trust and recruited many talents, including Xue Wanche, Feng Li, and Ma Sanbao, and The Wenchen had Wang Jue and Wei Zheng, and many of the talents recruited by Li Jiancheng made important contributions to the later Tang Dynasty.
In 617 AD, peasant revolts in various places were raging, and in the face of the dangerous situation of the Sui Dynasty, the Li Yuan family was eager to move, and Li Yuan sent secret envoys to Hedong on the one hand to urge Li Jiancheng to come to Taiyuan, and on the other hand, secretly formed a Turkic alliance to relieve the worries of the future.
The Turks demanded that Li Yuan stand on his own, Li Yuan resolutely refused, And Li Shimin and others also advised him many times, but Li Yuan still did not spit out, in Li Yuan's heart, the most trusted thing was his eldest son Li Jiancheng, Li Jiancheng did not express his position, Li Yuan would not easily send troops, after all, rebellion is a felony of losing his head.
In June 617, Li Jiancheng, who was longing for Li Yuan, finally arrived in Taiyuan, and Li Jiancheng did not follow the clouds, but calmly and accurately analyzed the current situation.
He persuaded Li Yuan to depose Yang Guang, support the acting king Yang You, and then send troops to pass on the county of Tan County, so that the division was famous, and at the same time expressed his position to the Turks, so that The Chinese and foreign countries would return to their hearts.
With the support of Li Jiancheng, Li Yuancai decided to raise an army and sent Li Jiancheng to lead an army to capture the West River, an obstacle to the westward advance into Chang'an.
Li Jiancheng's army only brought three days of military food, and because Li Jiancheng's rebel army was not trained and had poor military capabilities, he enacted military law and rectified the three armies.
The melons, fruits and vegetables planted by the people on the side of the road must be eaten by paying money, and the food and wine they obtained were also shared with the soldiers, and on the marching road, Li Jiancheng shared happiness and hardship with the soldiers and harvested the hearts of the army.
When the army marched to Xihe City, Li Jiancheng personally went to inform him of his intentions, moved with affection, knew the reason, and the people in the city surrendered one after another, and Li Jiancheng successfully achieved the goal of surrendering without a fight for the first time.
Li Jiancheng went from Pingding West River to Banshi in only nine days. Li Yuan said very happily:
"Using soldiers in this way can run rampant in the world."
Immediately, Li Jiancheng was made the Duke of Longxi, and the left leader was the governor of Dadu. After Li Jiancheng successfully opened the road to the west, Li Yuan's main army rushed to Guanzhong.
Along the way, Li Jiancheng attacked the city continuously, and three months later Li Yuan entered Chang'an, supporting the daiwang Yang You as the son of heaven, Honoring Yang Guang as the Emperor Taishang, Li Yuan as the King of Tang, and Li Jiancheng as the Son of the Tang King.
From Li Yuan's army to his entry into Chang'an, Li Jiancheng was the absolute strategic core, and he single-handedly promoted Li Yuan to raise troops, and li Shimin led the left and right armies to march into Chang'an, and the two were on a par with each other in military influence.
However, in Li Yuan's view, the successor to the great unification, in addition to excellent military ability, but also have enough political wisdom and love for the people, it is obvious that Li Jiancheng has this quality, coupled with the status of the eldest son, Li Jiancheng is Li Yuan's successor.
Sitting in Guanzhong, Datang regained the strategic stabilizer of the world
In May 618, Yang Youchan was located in Li Yuan, and Li Yuan was proclaimed emperor and established the Tang Dynasty, and Li Yuan was the ancestor of Tang Gaozu. After that, Li Jiancheng was made crown prince, the second son Li Shimin was made the King of Qin, and the fourth son, Li Yuanji, was the King of Qi.
Although the Tang Dynasty was established, but at present, the local masses are rising together, the princes are divided, in order to complete the national unification, Li Yuan began to carry out a series of strategic deployments.
The crown prince Li Jiancheng stayed in Chang'an, was enfeoffed with Shangshu Ling, presided over internal affairs, and ensured the political stability of the core areas of Guanzhong, and Li Shimin led the main army of the Tang Dynasty out of Guanzhong in the west to pacify the princes of various provinces.
From 619 to 621, Li Jiancheng successively quelled the rebellion of Li Lu, the king of Liang, recovered the counties of Hexi, and suppressed the frontier rebellion of the Hu chief liu Qicheng, in order to prevent Hu Bing from rebelling again, Li Jiancheng brutally executed more than 6,000 Hu soldiers, and at the same time Li Jiancheng led a large army to guard Puzhou and guard against the Turks.
During the time when Li Shimin was galloping through the Central Plains and the Southern Expedition to the Northern War, Li Jiancheng repaired politics internally, suppressed rebellions externally, shocked the Turks, and stabilized the rear area of the Tang Dynasty, but his second brother, Li Shimin, who was ten years younger than him, was even more dazzling.
From June 618 to 624 CE, Li Shimin pacified Xue Ju and Xue Rengao's father and son, defeated Liu Wuzhou and Song Jingang, who colluded with the Turks to invade Hedong, and then concentrated on the central plains and Jiangnan.
He successively recruited Shandong Luo Yi and other separatist forces, pacified wang Shichong in the central plains and Dou Jiande in Hebei, and then marched south to pacify Xiao Milling in Jiangling and Feng Ang in the Lingnan region, and the Tang army unified Henan, Hebei, and Shandong under the command of Li Shimin.
Compared with Li Shimin's high profile, Li Jiancheng is much more low-key. In June 622, Liu Heimin led the Turkic army to rebel in Shandong, and the crown prince's aide Wei Zheng saw that Although Li Jiancheng was the eldest son, his merits were inferior to Li Shimin's, he suggested that Li Jiancheng go to the battle to make meritorious contributions.
Li Jiancheng followed Wei Zheng's advice and took the initiative to ask Liu Heimin to be recruited, so Li Yuan sent Li Jiancheng and Li Yuanji to lead an army, and in December, Li Jiancheng won a great victory, captured Liu Heimin, and pacified Shandong.
Although Li Jiancheng, through the suppression of Liu Heimin, accumulated a certain amount of military merit and political capital for himself.
However, in the six-year-long Tang Dynasty war to unify the whole country, Li Shimin, as the military commander of the unification war, had enough strength and capital to gradually tilt the political balance that originally belonged to Li Jiancheng.
In the change of Xuanwu Gate, Li Jiancheng was brutally killed
Because Li Shimin had long been in foreign conquests to establish military merit and control of power, he was very dissatisfied with the appointment of Li Jiancheng as crown prince, and in 625 AD, Li Shimin was promoted to the title of Zhongshu Ling, and was almost on a par with Li Jiancheng in terms of administrative powers.
Moreover, there were many supporters in the Qin Dynasty, such as Fang Xuanling, Du Ruyi, Changsun Wuji, Wei Chi Jingde, Hou Junji, and others, forming a Qin Wang Party that competed with the princelings, and Li Shimin also tried his best to replace it.
In 624, shortly after the unification of the Tang Dynasty, he sent people to falsely accuse the crown prince of colluding with the generals to rebel, and Li Yuan was very aware of the calculations behind this matter.
In the end, Li Yuan chose to fight fifty boards each, and exiled Wang Jue, Wei Ting, and Du Yan, an aide to the Eastern Palace, on the grounds of brotherly discord, but Li Yuan did not resolve the fundamental contradiction between the brothers.
Since then, the Qin Palace and the Eastern Palace have been in constant friction, and Li Jiancheng, who has always been confident, feels a strong political threat from Li Shimin and the Qin Palace.
Therefore, Li Jiancheng decided to cut off his wings, and in the name of the crown prince, suggested that Li Yuan expel Fang Xuanling and Du Ruyi from the Qin palace and strictly order them not to meet, after which many key staff members of the Qin palace were dismissed from office and released, leaving only the eldest son Wuji, Gao Shilian, Wei Chigong, and Zhang Gongjin in the palace.
In the face of Li Jiancheng's oppression, the crowd felt that they could not live forever, so they advised Li Shimin to take action as soon as possible to kill Li Jiancheng and force Li Yuan to abdicate, and Li Shimin thought for a long time and decided to act.
When Li Jiancheng was still planning to squeeze Li Shimin step by step, he did not know that he had become a turtle in an urn, and Li Jiancheng never dreamed that Li Shimin would dare to overthrow him as a prince in the form of a military bloody coup.
In the early morning of June 4, the crown prince Li Jiancheng and the Qi king Li Yuanji were summoned to the palace, and Li Shimin led Qin Qiong, Wei Chigong, Cheng Zhijie, Hou Junji and others to set up an ambush at Xuanwu Gate in advance.
Li Shimin immediately raised his troops while shouting and chasing after him, and shot Li Jiancheng with an arrow, and poor Li Jiancheng, the crown prince, had been supervising the country for many years, and he became a ghost under the knife in the morning and night.
Feng Li, Xue Wanche, Xie Shufang and other generals of the Eastern Palace and the Qi Palace learned of Li Jiancheng's murder, and led 2,000 soldiers and horses to attack Xuanwu Gate and behead the Xuanwu Gate guards Jing Junhong and Lü Shiheng.
Li Shimin and the others were shocked, cut off the heads of Li Jiancheng and Li Yuanji, and the Soldiers and Horses of the Eastern Palace immediately lost their fighting spirit. In this coup, not only Li Jiancheng was killed, but all five of his sons were also killed, and Li Jiancheng's entire family was expelled from the royal family.
brief summary
It seems to the editor that for the tragedy of Li Jiancheng, Gaozu Li Yuan has an unshirkable responsibility, Li Yuan admires Li Jiancheng, and makes him the crown prince, but he is afraid that the prince's wings will gradually become uncontrollable, and he vigorously promotes and supports Li Shimin, and uses Li Shimin to restrain Li Jiancheng.
However, in the end, Li Shimin formed a trend of not falling behind, causing Li Yuan to lose control of him, and soon after Li Jiancheng's death, Li Yuan was forced to abdicate, and the Tang Dynasty fell into the hands of Li Shimin.