Zhu Wen is very familiar to everyone, here is a brief introduction to the other two protagonists of this war, Zhu Xuan and Zhu Jin brothers.
In 882, Zhu Xuan served under Cao Cunshi under the Tianping Army. When Wei Bojiedu of the neighboring town caused Han Jian to attack Tianping, Cao Cun was killed in battle. Zhu Xuan took over the defense of Yun Prefecture, the capital of the Tianping Army, and did not let Han Jian attack Yun Prefecture. Emperor Xuanzong of Tang appointed Zhu Xuan as his retainer.
Zhu Jin was Zhu Xuan's cousin, and was appointed as a military academy when Zhu Xuan was serving as an envoy to the Tianping Army, and accompanied Zhu Xuan to guard Yun Prefecture. He bravely championed the three armies, had the ambition to devour the four sides, and secretly had the ambition to compete for the world with Zhu Xuan.
In 883, Emperor Xuan of Tang appointed Zhu Xuan as a plenipotentiary envoy. Han Jian continued to besiege Yun Prefecture, but the siege remained unattainable for 6 months, and Zhuge Shuang, who had previously been expelled by Han Jian, took the opportunity to retake Heyang, so Han Jian abandoned the siege and made peace with Zhu Xuan, and instead faced Zhuge Shuang, who was defeated and subsequently killed by his subordinates. Le Xingda took over from Weibo.
In the winter of 884, Zhu Xuan's attempt to take over Yicheng was unsuccessful: at that time, Yicheng Jiedu made An Shiru completely delegate power to the generals Xiahou Yan and Du Biao, and the soldiers were centrifuged. The general Zhang Xiao led a 2,000-strong army to attack Huazhou, the capital of Yicheng, forcing An Shiru to execute Xiahou Yan and Du Biao. Zhu Xuan wanted to control Yicheng and sent his cousin Zhu Yu to booby-trap Zhang Xiao. However, Zhu Wen took the lead and sent Zhu Zhen and Li Tangbin to take advantage of the surprise attack on Yicheng and capture An Shiru. Zhu Wen thus took over Yicheng, and Renbu left Hu Zhen as his empress.
In 886, Zhu Jin, with the support of Zhu Xuan, planned to annex the Taining army in the neighboring town of Yanzhou. He falsely proposed to Zik Rang to Taining Jiedu, and took the opportunity to lead troops into Yanzhou in the name of welcoming relatives, and then launched a surprise attack on the night of the kiss, expelled Qi Ke Rang, controlled the town of Taining, claimed to stay, and was soon officially appointed by the imperial court as an envoy of Taining Jiedushi, only twenty years old.
When Qin Zongquan was defeated, the alliance between Zhu Xuan, Zhu Jin, and Zhu Wen broke down. Zhu Wen had long wanted to plot tianping and Taining, but because Zhu Xuan and Zhu Jin had aided him, there had been no excuse to raise troops. At that time, Zhu Xuan and Zhu Jin greatly admired the bravery of the Bian army, so they secretly lured the soldiers and pawns to vote with heavy profits. Zhu Wen was also jealous of the bravery of Zhu Jin's brothers, and because of the increase in the number of elite soldiers in the towns of Yun and Yan, he also had the intention of annexing. He asked his subordinates to turn to Yun Yan for greed, and then wrote to Zhu Xuan, accusing him of recruiting traitors to the Fenjun army and verbally accusing Zhu Xuan.
"Bad Guy" Zhu Wen
Zhu Xuan replied with a sternly worded letter. Zhu Wen used this as an excuse to send Zhu Zhen and Ge Congzhou to attack Cao Prefecture under the jurisdiction of the Tianping Army and execute Shi Qiu Hongli. He also attacked Puzhou and fought against the Combined Forces of Yun Yan at Liu Qiao. The Combined Forces of Yun Yan were defeated, losing tens of thousands of people, Zou Wuqing and more than fifty other generals were captured, and Zhu Xuan and Zhu Jin fled back to Yun Prefecture alone.
Zhu Xuan sent his younger brother Zhu Han to rescue Puzhou, but was defeated by Zhu Zhen. Zhu Zhen captured Puzhou, and Zhu Yu, who was then the assassin of Puzhou, fled to Yun Prefecture. Zhu Zhen attacked Yun Prefecture again. Zhu Xuan asked Zhu Yu to bring a letter to Zhu Zhen, falsely claiming that the whole city had surrendered. When Zhu Zhen sent troops into the city at the suggestion of Zhu Yu, Xuanwu's army was ambushed by Zhu Xuan and suffered heavy casualties. Zhu Zhen's military strength was greatly damaged, and he had to withdraw his troops. Zhu Xuan then recaptured Cao Prefecture. In 889, Zhu Wen concentrated his forces in the east, and his main opponents were Zhu Xuan, Zhu Jin, and Shi Pu, the envoy of The Reformation Jiedu who had divided Xuzhou. In order to oppose Zhu Wen, Zhu Xuan and Zhu Jin sent troops to assist Shi Pu when the Bian army attacked Xuzhou.
At the same time, Zhu Xuan and Zhu Wen's arch-enemy Hedong Jiedu made Li Keyong allied. In 891, Li Ke used the discovery department to make An Zhijian of Xingzhou Jiedu fornicate with Zhu Wen, and wanted to replace him with his adopted son Li Cunxiao. An Zhijian was frightened and fled to Pinglu. Emperor Zhaozong of Tang appointed An Zhijian as the commander of the Shenwu Army. When An Zhijian led his army to Chang'an, Zhu Xuan ambushed him and sacrificed his head to Li Keyong.
In 891, Zhu Jin led an army of 30,000 to attack Shan Fu, but was defeated by the general Ding Hui (丁会) at Jinxiang. In this battle, the Taining army lost more than 20,000 soldiers. Zong Jiang and more than seventy other generals were captured by the Bian army, and Zhu Jin fled to Yanzhou on a single horse.
In 892, Zhu Wen ordered Ding to move thousands of families from Yanzhou to Xuzhou, and then ordered Zhu Kejang to lead his people to plunder the wheat in the towns of Yan and Yun. At the end of the year, Zhu Wen sent his eldest son Zhu Youyu to attack Puzhou, and then ordered him to move his troops to attack Xuzhou. Shi Pu held the city and at the same time asked Zhu Xuan and Zhu Jin for help.
"Bad Guy" Li Ke used
In 893, Zhu Jin personally led 20,000 soldiers and horses from Yun Prefecture and Yanzhou to rescue Xuzhou, and Zhu Wen took zhu Youyu as the vanguard to meet Zhu Jin, and the two armies fought at Shifoshan mountain south of the city. Zhu Jin killed the general Huo Cun, and even broke more than ten villages of the Bian army, so that Zhu Youyu was defeated and fled, and Zhu Jin entered and occupied the camp abandoned by Zhu Youyu. After Zhu Wen arrived, he did not know that Zhu Youyu had fled in defeat and sent an army into the camp, resulting in a large number of unsuspecting Xuanwu troops being attacked and killed by Zhu Jin. Zhu Wen escaped with his life, and Li Fan, the deputy envoy of Jiedu, was killed. Zhu Wen reacted and led his troops to chase after yun zhou soldiers, but did not catch up, so he temporarily stopped the army between the villages. At this time, Zhu Xuan was still nearby. On the twelfth day, Zhu Wen led his army back to Yun Prefecture, but was attacked by Zhu Jin's troops, and Zhu Wen fled south on horseback, escaping from the enemy's pursuit.
Despite the great defeat, Zhu Wen subsequently defeated Zhu Xuan and Zhu Jin's ally Shi Pu (朱瑾). Zhu Xuan sent emissaries to persuade Zhu Wen, but Zhu Wen was angry that Shi Pu had fornicated with Sun Ru and did not listen; Zhu Xuan, Zhu Jin, and Li Ke tried to rescue Shi Pu to no avail. Shi Pu was forced to set himself on fire, and Zhu Wen took over the probationary army.
Later, Pang Shigu moved his troops to attack Yanzhou, defeating Zhu Jin several times, and at the same time letting the vanguard Ge Congzhou lead troops to attack Qizhou. Zhu Xuan and Zhu Jin rescue Shi Zhuwei.
In 894, Zhu Wen personally led a large army to attack Yun Prefecture and garrisoned Yushan. Zhu Xuan and Zhu Jin joined forces and attacked in three ways, fighting with Zhu Wen in Dong'a. As the two armies were about to engage, the southeast winds rose, but then turned to the northwest. Zhu Wen ordered his soldiers to set fire to the wind, the smoke filled the sky, and took advantage of the situation to launch an attack. The Yu-Yan coalition forces were defeated and more than 10,000 people were killed. Soon, Ge Congzhou attacked Xintai again, capturing the Taining army generals Zhang Yue, Li Pepper and others. Due to the repeated defeats of the brothers Zhu Xuan and Zhu Jin, the two had to ask Li Keyong for help, and Li Keyong sent a small group of elite cavalry led by the three brothers An Fushun, An Fuqing, and An Fuqian to help.
In 895, Zhu Wen sent his adopted son Zhu Yougong to besiege Yanzhou. Zhu Xuan personally led a horse from Yun Prefecture to help, but was defeated by Zhu Yougong in Gaowu, and all the grain he was escorting was robbed. Both An Fushun and An Fuqing were captured by the Bian army. Zhu Wen defeated Zhu Xuan and forced him to return to Yun Prefecture.
Map of the division of the town at the end of the Tang Dynasty
Zhu Wen then personally attacked Yanzhou. Zhu Xuan's generals He Xuan and He Huaibao led more than 10,000 people to aid Zhu Jin, but they were intercepted by the Bian army in the south of Juye. Yun Zhou's reinforcements were defeated, and more than 3,000 people, including He Hu and He Huaibao, were captured. Zhu Wen surrendered He Xuan and beheaded the rest of the captives, and then the banshi returned to The Bian. Soon, Zhu Wen ordered Pang Shigu and Ge Congzhou to attack Yun Prefecture. Zhu Jin held the city and did not dare to fight. Ge Congzhou then led his troops to Gao wu, falsely claiming to resist the reinforcements of the Tianping Army and the Hedong Army, but sneaked back to the camp under Yanzhou City in the middle of the night. Zhu Jin did indeed go out of the city to attack, and was defeated by Ge Congzhou. The Yanzhou army suffered more than a thousand casualties, and Sun Hanjun was also captured by the Yanzhou army.
Later in the same year, Zhu Xuan once again attempted to relieve the siege of Yanzhou, sending his generals He Gui, Liu Cun, and Li Ke to attack He Huaibao, which had been captured by Zhu Wen. When Zhu Wen heard the news, he ambushed them again, slaughtered the soldiers of the Tianping Army, captured He Gui, Liu Cun, and He Huaibao, and showed the three generals to Zhu Jin, saying: "Your cousin has already been defeated, why don't you surrender?" Zhu Jin agreed to surrender, but demanded that Zhu Qiong, another cousin of Zhu Wen, who had previously led Qi Prefecture to surrender, take over the command of the Taining army. When Zhu Qiong was preparing to enter the city, Zhu Jin ambushed him. Zhu Wen's morale was damaged and he withdrew.
Zhu Xuan and Zhu Jin again asked Li Keyong for help, and Li Keyong sent Shi Yu and Li Chengsi to command three thousand cavalry to the south to rescue Yun Yan, and then he borrowed from Wei Bojiedu's envoy Luo Hongxin and ordered Li Cunxin to lead an army of 30,000 to garrison Xinxian to support Zhu Xuan and Zhu Jin's brothers. The Hedong army broke through the siege of Yanzhou at Rencheng. However, Li Cunxin plundered in Xinxian County, angering Luo Hongxin and being defeated by Luo Hongxin. Luo Hongxin has since broken off friendship with Li Ke and instead becomes attached to Zhu Wen. Li Chengsi and Shi Yu were cut off from returning home and could not return north. Li Keyong was also unable to continue sending reinforcements.
In 897, Zhu Wenbu besieged Yun Prefecture again with Ge Congzhou and Pang Shigu. Zhu Xuan ran out of food and decided to dig a deep moat around the city to avoid a battle with Zhu Wen. As a result, Pang Shigu took advantage of the night to build a pontoon bridge to cross the river and capture the city, and Zhu Xuan was forced to flee. When he fled to Zhongdu, he hid in the homes of the townspeople, who arrested him and his wife Rong shi and handed them over to Ge Congzhou. Zhu Wen executed Zhu Xuan in Bian Prefecture, the capital of Xuanwu Army, and took his wife.
Zhu Wen's sphere of influence
At that time, Zhu Jin was collecting grain with Li Chengsi and Shi Yu in the Xuzhou area, leaving only Kang Huaiying to guard Yanzhou. Ge Congzhou took advantage of the false attack on Yanzhou. Kang Huaiying conspired with Zhu Jin's son and generals such as Xin Qi and Yan Bao to surrender the city to the Bian army. The Ziqing Festival forced Wang Shifan to submit to Zhu Wen. At this point, all the forces in the eastern part of Xuanwu Town were annexed by Zhu Wen.
After the fall of Yanzhou, Zhu Jin, together with Li Chengsi and Shi Yu, led the remnants of the north to Yi Prefecture, but shi Yin refused to do so, and then transferred to Haizhou. But the Bian army was in hot pursuit. Zhu Jin had to lead his troops across the Huai River and surrender to Yang Xingmi in Huainan Jiedu. Yang Xingmi personally greeted Gaoyou, took Zhu Jin as the deputy envoy of the Huainan march, and cited him as the envoy of Wuning Jiedushi.