Li Gu was resourceful, once wisely captured thieves, and achieved great political achievements, but he suffered military defeat again, but he did not receive much punishment, he wanted to resign, but he could not resign.
In the early years of the Later Han Dynasty, Li Gu went to Kaifeng Province to serve. At that time, there were many bandits in the Beijing area, and the Zhongmu area was particularly serious and could not be prohibited. After Li Gu arrived in office, he induced the people of the county to report their nests. There was a man named Liu Dexing, who served as a gyeonggi staff member many times during the Later Liang Dynasty, lived in Zhongmu, and was known for his talents, but he was not entrusted with important duties. Li Gu appointed him as the acting county chief. Ten days later, Li Gu asked thousands of guards to assist Liu Dexing and send troops to arrest the thieves. Liu Dexing lived up to his high expectations and led his troops to capture all the thieves. One of the chief thieves turned out to be a prefectural official, and the other was a goshitai official. Li Gu ordered people to search their homes and obtained a lot of gold and jade belongings, all of which were confiscated. From then on, there was no more evil for those who walked. The imperial court promoted Li Gu to the position of servant of the Ministry of Works, which was a compliment to him.
Li Gu appointed talents during the critical period, encouraged whistle-blowing, and uprooted the protective umbrella of thieves. The paradox is that the leader of the thieves turned out to be an official, and he really achieved the official and bandit family, regardless of each other. No wonder it could not be eliminated before, and the talent Liu Dexing could not be reused.
Later, the Later Han Dynasty's festival made Guo Wei march west, and Li Gu served as a water and land transport envoy to the southwest. After Guan You's pacification, Li Gu was reappointed as the Assassin of Chen Prefecture. A coup d'état took place in Korea, and the imperial court quickly recalled Li Gu. Other words. Li Gu was recalled as a member of the imperial court. And the imperial court wanted to send someone to assassinate Guo Wei. During the Later Han Dynasty, Guo Wei was in charge of the river, and Li Gu was in charge of the transport. At that time, the politics of the Later Han Dynasty were chaotic, and Guo Wei was already very prestigious, hiding different ambitions and wanting to be emperor. Guo Wei hinted at Li Gu many times, and Li Gu only replied that some courtiers should serve the emperor to the fullest, and there was nothing out of the ordinary. Therefore, Guo Wei knew that he was loyal to the imperial court. When Guo Wei mutinied, he established Hou Zhou and appointed Li Gu as prime minister. Li Gu not only gained a certain prestige in the imperial court, but also had a high voice among the people. Thousands of officials and people who had ruled over the Huaiyang area came to the imperial court and asked for permission from the imperial court to build a shrine for him. Li Gu was very modest and earnestly resigned, and only then was he able to put an end to the matter.
Why did the common people and local officials have a very good impression of him? It turned out that the government prohibited the sale of cowhide, the law was extremely strict, and those who violated it would be executed. Li Gu checked the amount of leather used each year, allowing one piece of cattle leather per year for every ten hectares of farmland, and the rest was left to the private use of the people. Not only that, Li Gu also played a role in abolishing the Tuntian affairs, assigning the people to the prefectures and counties, and letting them pay taxes and serve in the service, and eliminating all the old drawbacks. The locals applauded Li Gu's Qingming decree and considered him a good official. Li Gu's ancestors originally lived in Luoyang, Henan, and after the Yellow Nest Rebellion, the fields and houses had long been gone. Li Gu was born in other places, and after the nobles, he visited the old land, built monasteries, and built houses, and all those who could not be officials among the clan lived in the monasteries in the fields. The imperial court issued an edict to change the name of Qingfeng Township Gaoyangli to Xianxiang Township Xunderry. That is to say, whether from the perspective of political achievements or from the perspective of Li Gu's hometown governance, the imperial court gave him a high degree of recognition.
Li Gu achieved many political achievements, but in Later Zhou he broke his right arm, and resigned within ten days, but Later Zhou Gaozu Guo Wei did not allow it, exempting him from the number of ceremonies to visit the court, letting him handle government affairs in this department, rewarding him with a white vine and a palanquin, and summoning him to the Temple of Convenience to encourage him.
In the early years of Xiande, Li Gujia was a right servant and a scholar of Jixian Temple. He accompanied Later Zhou Shizong on his expedition to Taiyuan, and after being in distress, he was able to escape. Zhou Shizong's army met at Gaoping and the thief army, and the two armies fought in a melee. Li Gu hid in the valley with his troops, and only came out two days later to catch up with the emperor. Later Zhou Shizong comforted him and did not mean to blame. Later, Emperor Shizong of Zhou was to march to Taiyuan and ordered Li Gu to mobilize military food first, and to succeed Fu Yanqing in sentencing Taiyuan to the government. After the class, Sejong promoted Li Gu to the rank of Sikong and Menxia Shilang to supervise the revision of the history of the country. Li Gu was about to make some achievements in his official position, saying that the things described by Shi Guan were based on the living notes, and since the funeral, he had abandoned the post of Shi Guan, and shangyan requested that Duan Ming's Privy Counsellor edit his words and deeds as a calendar of the inner court and hand it over to Shi Guan. Li Gu could not only supervise the revision of history, but also govern the Yellow River. When the Yellow River broke, the imperial court dispatched young and middle-aged people from more than a dozen prefectures to block the breach and ordered Li Gu to supervise the project. Li Gu supervised the work of the people and completed the task on schedule.
However, in a battle, Li Gu took the initiative to retreat without authorization, resulting in the loss of the war. In the winter of the second year of Xiande's reign, the imperial court discussed the conquest of southern Tang, and appointed Li Gu as the former military commander of Huainan Province, and also served as the governor of Lu and Shou prefectures. The Zhongwu Army made Wang Yanchao a deputy, and Han Lingkun's twelve generals were his retinue. Li Gu's power is not small, and there are many soldiers and generals with him, and he has the power to make temporary decisions. He led his troops across the Huai River from Zhengyang, and the vanguard Bai Yanyu defeated thousands of Wu troops at Laiyuan, defeated more than a thousand people at The Town of Shankou, attacked Shangyao, defeated more than a thousand people, captured dozens of low-ranking officers on the other side, and besieged Shouchun for a long time. Southern Tang sent the general Liu Yanzhen to the rescue. Li Gu summoned the general Zuo Zhi and said, "Now that the reinforcements have come a long way, two hundred miles away from Shouyang, the warship is about to reach Zhengyang." Our army has no water warfare equipment, and if the bridge is cut off and our troops are isolated, it will be attacked by the enemy on its back. It is better to retreat to the pontoon bridge and wait for the chariot to arrive. At the beginning, when Later Zhou Shizong arrived at the siege town, he had already heard of this plan and hurriedly sent his internal attendants to rush forward on stagecoaches to stop it. However, it was already too late, Li Gu had already surrendered to Zhengyang, and burned the grain and grass, and when he returned to the division, the officers and soldiers plundered each other, causing hundreds of people in Huaibei to fall into Shouchun. Later Emperor Shizong of Later Zhou was furious when he heard this, and quickly ordered Li Chongjin to lead an army to fight and appoint Li Gu as the governor of Shouzhou. In fact, Later Zhou Shizong had already demoted Li Gu's official position.
In the autumn of that year, perhaps because of the blow of defeat, or perhaps because of the humiliation of degrading officials, Li Gu suffered a stroke after returning to the imperial court, took a hundred days of leave, and repeatedly asked for retirement. The court rewarded him, but was not allowed to retire. Whenever there was a major military event, the emperor sent eunuchs to the palace to inquire about him.
Li Gu was resourceful, able to outwit thieves, and served as an official for one term, benefiting one side, but when judging the war situation, there was a misjudgment, resulting in failure. However, he was not much punished and still played the role of a wise man in the DPRK. His stroke allowed him to live in the capital for a long time, not to be sent abroad, and became the later Duke of Zhao. From this point of view, his illness is also a favorable weapon for his career promotion.