During the Sixteen Kingdoms period of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, the princes fought in a scuffle, and famous generals emerged. Famous Han generals such as Tao Kan, Zu Di, Huan Wen, Xie Ai, Ran Min, Wang Meng, Deng Qiang, Xie Xuan, Liu Gaozhi and others, and outstanding military generals such as Liu Yao, Shi Le, Shi Hu, Murong Chui, Yao Cang, and Helian Bobo also emerged among the Wuhu tribes. Although liu yu and Tuoba Jue, the founders of the Southern and Northern Dynasties, were active in the same period, they were generally not counted as figures of the Sixteen Kingdoms of the Eastern Jin Dynasty.
The Murong family, which established several Yan regimes, had a brilliant general: he was always victorious and undefeated in his military career, ranked among the martial temples of the Tang Dynasty and Song Dynasty, and was recognized as the first general of the Five Hus. He was the Huan King of Taiyuan of the Yan Kingdom: Murong Ke.
Murong Ke's military career may have had small setbacks at the combat level, and he was undefeated at the battle level, and he was also worthy of being a first-class famous general in the entire five thousand years of Chinese history.
In 338, at the Battle of Zhicheng, the 17-year-old Murong Ke led 2,000 cavalry to defeat hundreds of thousands of troops led by the Later Zhao Emperor Shi Hu, and beheaded more than 30,000 people.
In the same year, at the Battle of Miyun Mountain, Murong Ke led another 7,000 cavalry to ambush the 30,000 Zhao army led by the Zhao general Ma Qiu, annihilating all of them, and taking the Xianbei Duan tribe in one fell swoop.
In 341, the 20-year-old Murong Ke and his father Murong Hui the Prince of Yan led an army of 40,000 to goguryeo, and two other famous Yan generals, his uncle Murong Han and his brother Murong Chui, were the vanguard of the army, and they were invincible all the way to the capital of goguryeo, Maru, and the Goguryeo king Gao Zhao fled on horseback.
The Yan army excavated the tomb of the Goguryeo king, excavated the coffin of the former king of Goguryeo, and then burned the Goguryeo royal palace with a torch, demolished the walls of Marudu, captured Gao Zhao's mother and wife, the queen and empress of Goguryeo, and returned with a large number of royal treasures and more than 50,000 Goguryeo people.
In desperation, Gao Zhao, the king of Goguryeo, had no choice but to declare himself a vassal to the State of Yan, and then plundered a large number of treasures from the remaining territory to offer, and the State of Yan returned his father's coffin with his corpse. Murong Ke was ordered to defend Liaodong, and then took the goguryeo town of Southern Sucheng, and the frightened Goguryeo people no longer dared to covet the west.
In 344, the 23-year-old Murong Ke and his brother Murong Chui split up and attacked the Xianbei Yuwen clan;
In 346, the 25-year-old Murong Ke commanded 17,000 cavalry and attacked the Buyeo State. He commanded the armies, personally risked Yashi, and won a great victory, and the Buyeo king and more than 50,000 Buyeo soldiers and civilians were taken prisoner.
Murong Shi's Yan state also achieved the achievement of dominating Northeast Asia, completely eliminating worries and laying a solid foundation for the next Central Plains to chase deer.
At this time, Murong Ke was already the military god of the Great Yan who must conquer and win the battle, and his reputation in the country was high, and he was regarded by his brother Murong Juan, the successor of the Yan King, as the most powerful military and political assistant.
At the age of 30, Murong Ke led an army south, beheaded 7,000 people at the Battle of Liantai, captured the Wei emperor Ran Min, and then successively sought warlords such as Wang Wu and Lü Hu to unify Hebei.
At the age of 35, Murong Ke marched eastward, won a victory in the field battle, broke the enemy by 30,000, besieged the city for many years, attacked the Qi king Duan Gong, and pacified Shandong.
At the age of 39, Murong Ke was entrusted with the task of isolating himself, and during his reign, the State of Yan entered the peak of its power, winning a long tug-of-war with the Eastern Jin Dynasty, capturing Luoyang, and incorporating all parts of Henan into its territory, becoming the first powerful state at that time.
Murong Ke's famous Battle of Thorn City, hundreds of thousands of Zhao troops were attacked by his 2,000 horsemen and collapsed, only the Han general Ran Min ruled the army well, 30,000 horses and one army alone, stood out among the hundreds of thousands of retreating Zhao troops, and from then on Ran Min was reused by Shi Hu, repeatedly went out to conquer Kejie, and gradually grasped the power of the Later Zhao army before he could destroy Zhao and establish a state. Two top celebrities became famous at the same time, appeared on the stage of history, and it is also fate that they will become old enemies in the future.
Emperor Ran Wei: Ran Min
The Battle of Liantai between the two sides can be said to be the pinnacle of China's strongest brave general and the strongest intelligent general in the fourth century AD:
It was Ran Min who showed no less courage than Xiang Yu, the king of Western Chu, and single-handedly slashed more than three hundred enemies, just like the song of Xiang Yu's Battle of Wujiang, which was the only two cases in the history of cold weapons. Murong Ke also followed the strategy of the soldier Han Xin in the Battle of Xiaxia, and creatively invented the "serial horse" tactic, after the Chinese army retreated, the two wings of the encirclement attack completely annihilated Ran Min's army.
In this battle, Murong Ke used tens of thousands of cavalry to duel ran Min's more than 10,000 infantry, and in the first battle, he lost ten battles and ten defeats, and then won by relying on the superiority of troops and cavalry, which seemed to slightly lose the standard of famous generals, and was suspected of winning or not being victorious.
However, it can be compared with the battle under Han Xinxia, which was fought with 300,000 Han troops and 100,000 Chu troops, and there were 300,000 Liu Bang troops behind him, just as they were defeated by Xiang Yu's Chinese army, and it was also by relying on two wings of attack and great superiority in strength that they were defeated; then Han Xin besieged the remnants of the Chu army with less than 100,000 remaining 100,000 troops and few soldiers, and was still successfully broken through by Xiang Yu, and did not affect the prestige of a generation of soldiers.
In the face of Xiang Yu and Ran Min, who were the most powerful generals in the history of cold weapons in a thousand years, as excellent wise generals, Han Xin and Murong Ke's performance was also considered to be exhausted, and there was no need to be harsh.
It is true that Murong Ke was very strong in the field, and the performance of siege warfare was relatively lacking, and it took a year to conquer Guanggu and a month to attack Luoyang, which was guarded by five hundred Jin troops. His military style was more of a regular flow of soldiers who trained elite soldiers, which was inferior to that of his younger brother Murong Chui.
After all, Murong Chui defeated the famous Eastern Jin general Huan Wen and Liu Jiaozhi in a decisive battle, and his opponents had a stronger gold content, and in his later years, his tactics against Western Yan and Northern Wei had already entered the realm of military warfare.
Emperor Wucheng of Yan: Murong Chui
However, the Later Yan army under Murong Chui had many bad records of harming the people and disturbing the people; the Western Yan army under Murong Chong's rule was even more known for its brutality.
On the contrary, the Former Yan army under Murong Ke's rule was the master of the kings of the Wuhu era, and the historians who cherished ink like gold used words such as "strict military orders, and Qiu Hao did not commit crimes" to describe it.
The Book of Jin and Murong Juan's Records: [Murong Juan) sent Murong Shu to Zhongshan, and Murong Commented on Attacking Wang Wuyu at Lukou. In TangCheng, Ran Min held Bai Tong and Zhongshan Taishou Hou Gong firmly. He left Murong Biao to attack him and attack Changshan. Commenting on Nan'an, Wang Wu sent his general Zheng Shengyuan to evaluate. Commenting on the counterattack, slashing it, Hou Gong over the city and descending. Ke jin ke zhongshan, cut white with. The orders of the army are strict, and the generals do not commit any crimes. 】
Zizhi Tongjian Jin Ji 21: [(Murong) entered Zhongshan, moved dozens of his generals and local tycoons, and the rest were blocked; The military orders are strict, and Qiu does not violate them. 】
The final demise of the Former Yan regime was rooted in the common flaws of the Wuhu regime, which was that it relied too much on outstanding figures and the foundation of the regime was extremely unstable
Not long after Murong Ke's death, Former Yan had gone from being the world's largest power to being deceived by Huan Wen's tens of thousands of troops and horses, and he was helpless against this and almost rolled back to Liaodong. It was easy for Murong Chui to save the situation, but emperor Yongchen forced him away, and was immediately destroyed by King Jian of Qiang.
Not to mention, it had only been a few years since there were three of the four worlds, sitting on a million troops to committing suicide on the Five Generals Mountain? In his later years, Yao Xing slacked off from the government, and Later Qin also changed from a northwest hegemon to a soft persimmon that was deceived by everyone.
As long as Murong Chui was still alive, even the fiasco of 70,000 lost at the Battle of Shanhepo would still not affect the prestige of the Yan army, and Tuoba Jue and other heroes would look far away. As soon as he died, Tuoba Jue immediately gathered hundreds of thousands of nomads to break through the Great Wall, instantly swept through Northern China, and eventually led to the decline of the Yan Kingdom, and the Murong family could no longer be active in the historical stage as an imperial family.
Murong Ke's descendants will be famous. His seventh grandson Murong Shaozong was a famous general of Eastern Wei, who defeated hou jing, the demon king of the mixed world, at the Battle of Woyang, and took Henan, and with this merit, he and Murong Ke were enshrined in the Tang Dynasty's Wumiao 64 Generals.
The eighth grandson Murong Sanzang was a famous general of the Northern Qi and Sui Dynasties, conquering Lingnan, quelling rebellions, herding and defending the side, and repeatedly making military achievements.
In the early years of the Song Dynasty, a descendant, Murong Yanzhao, was a founding general of the Northern Song Dynasty, successively serving as the emissary of the Huainan and Zhenning armies, and the deputy capital of the palace, and the deputy commander of the forbidden army, Zhao Kuangyin, and assisted him in launching the "Chen Qiao Mutiny".
Zhongshu Ling of the Northern Song Dynasty, King of Henan: Murong Yanzhao
After the establishment of the Song Dynasty, Murong Yanzhao was made the supreme commander of the Forbidden Army, led a large army to destroy the two separatist regimes of Jingnan and Hunan, and posthumously became the King of Henan. Throughout his life, Zhao Kuangyin called Murong Yanzhao his elder brother and trusted him greatly, and many of his descendants served as assassins and generals.
This can also be regarded as a blessing for Murong Ke's virtue before his death, and it is worthy of Wang Meng's reputation as a son of the sages of the Spring and Autumn Period when he sacrificed in front of his tomb, and the ancient legacy of love.