In 621, Tang Wude was four years old. Shortly after the Tang Dynasty had just defeated Wang Shichong and Dou Jiande's strong enemies and basically unified the north, a surprising news came from the south: Xiao Qiao, the strongest separatist force in the south, was actually defeated by the Tang general Li Jing in one fell swoop!
When this news reached Chang'an, all the tang dynasty leaders, including Li Yuan, were deeply shocked by it. Because before that, almost no one thought that a Tang Dynasty partial division led by Li Jing could directly destroy the Xiao Milling regime. Moreover, after the xiao milling regime was destroyed, half of the south fell under the control of the Tang Dynasty. The general trend of the Tang Dynasty unifying the world is already unstoppable.
The Battle of Tang Pingxiao has always been regarded as one of the most important wars in the process of the Tang Dynasty's unification of the world. Moreover, this battle is also regarded as the rise of the legendary military god Li Jing. It was precisely because of this battle that Li Jing established enough prestige within the Tang army to become the top commander of the Tang army after Li Shimin. Later, I had the opportunity to lead the troops independently and create more legendary records.
But what many people may not know is that the real Battle of Tang Pingxiao Milling in history is actually a product of the superposition of many coincidences. If we relate to the context of the times at that time, there are already a lot of things outside the battlefield. It is not difficult for us to find that the story behind Li Jing's ability to win this battle is actually far more exciting than recorded in the history books!
Li Jing was originally a former sui dynasty minister, who was proficient in military affairs when he was a teenager and was recognized by many Sui dynasty high-level officials. However, because of his stubborn personality, he would not take sides, so until the fall of the Sui Dynasty, when Li Jing was nearly half a hundred years old, he was still only a middle-level official of the Sui Dynasty.
Later, in the last year of the Sui Dynasty, Li Jing happened to be an official on the border of Shanxi. At that time, Li Yuan, the ancestor of Tang Gaozu, was actively preparing for various matters of rebellion. After Li Jing learned of this incident, instead of joining Li Yuan's camp, he quietly disguised himself as a prisoner and rushed to Chang'an, hoping to report Li Yuan's illegal behavior to the sui dynasty central government. As a result, shortly after Li Jing arrived in Chang'an, Li Yuan directly attacked Chang'an, so that Li Jing's plan was completely put into vain.
After Li Yuan entered the city, he learned that Li Jing had wanted to report himself, and he was furious. He immediately ordered that Li Jing be killed. On the execution ground, in order to survive, Li Jing shouted, "The rebels, who were supposed to eliminate riots in the world, did not want to do great things, but beheaded the heroes with their personal grudges." At that time, Li Shimin also happened to be present, and after Li Shimin saw this, he interceded for Li Jing. In addition, Li Yuan did indeed have a heart for talent, so he pardoned Li Jing, and then assigned Li Jing to be an official under Li Shimin.
After arriving under Li Shimin, at the beginning, Li Jing only served as an aide, responsible for helping Li Shimin with advice. In the following year or so, Li Shimin defeated strong enemies such as Xue Ju and Liu Wuzhou. But in this process, Li Jing did not make much contribution, which seemed relatively mediocre.
The reason why this happened was not because Li Jing's ability was not good. Rather, it is because Li Jing himself is not a staff figure, he is a typical handsome talent. Li Jing was not a general like Qin Qiong, Cheng Yaojin, and others, and could directly go into battle to kill the enemy. Moreover, Li Jing has always pursued rapid warfare when fighting, and Li Shimin likes to play the set of defensive counterattack. Like to confront the enemy first, consume the enemy's supplies, and then find an opportunity to attack. Because of the different fighting styles, even if Li Jing came up with some ideas for Li Shimin, it was often difficult for Li Shimin to adopt them.
However, in the process, Li Shimin also gradually discovered Li Jing's talents and realized that Li Jing was not a simple staff member, but a commander-in-chief. This also laid the foundation for Li Jing to lead the army alone.
Two years later, when the Li Tang regime defeated Xue Ju and Liu Wuzhou successively, and relieved the troubles, it began to set its sights on Wang Shichong in Luoyang. In the third year of Wu De, Li Yuan appointed Li Shimin as commander-in-chief and recruited Wang Shichong. However, shortly after the battle between the Li Tang regime and Wang Shichong began, Xiao Milling in the south was eager to move and try to send a large army north to seek profit in chaos.
In order to stop Xiao Milling, Li Yuan needed to divide a part of his army and go south to contain Xiao Milling. It was at this time that Li Shimin recommended Li Jing to Li Yuan. Li Yuan also knew Li Jing's ability, so he asked Li Jing to command a part of the army and go south to provide support.
Note that at this time, Li Jing was only commanding a part of the soldiers and horses going south. At that time, although Li Jing's personal ability was recognized by Li Yuan and Li Shimin, his military merit and prestige were not enough to completely command the whole army, but could only command an army of more than 10,000 people.
However, this opportunity was enough for Li Jing.
At this time, Li Jing was already 50 years old. In his long life, because he could not engage in interpersonal relations, he had never been able to lead the army. But this time, a complete army was handed over to him and put under his command. This stage is already enough for Li Jing to show off and bloom out of his own light.
When Li Jing led his troops south, he first joined forces with Li Yan, the king of Lujiang, in the Ankang region of Shaanxi, defeated the local rebellious barbarian Deng Shiluo and opened up the passage for the Tang Dynasty to support the front. In this battle, although Li Jing only responded from the sidelines, most of the time he gave Li Yao ideas behind the scenes and let Li Jing lead the battle in the front. But this battle fully demonstrated Li Jing's military talent.
After that, Li Jing and Li Yan and other reinforcements led their troops to the front-line Xia Prefecture and made direct contact with Xiao Qiao. Xiazhou is today's Yichang area in Hubei Province, and the famous Battle of Yiling during the Three Kingdoms period was fought in Xiazhou.
After arriving in Xia Prefecture, although Li Jing led his troops to the battlefield, the next battle did not progress very smoothly. Because, at that time, the fortresses in Xia Prefecture were still under the control of xiao Milling's regime. Rushing to lead the troops to pounce on it is undoubtedly seeking a dead end. Therefore, Li Jing chose to stop for the time being, first looking for a suitable opportunity, and then fighting.
However, Li Jing's stagnation was suspected by Li Yuan, who was far away in Chang'an. Li Jing was originally a demoted general, and before he reported Li Yuan's previous convictions, Li Yuan naturally did not trust him so much. Coupled with the complicated war situation at that time, most of the main forces of the Tang army were pinned down on the battlefield of Luoyang. Once Li Jing really had two hearts and had contact with Xiao Milling, it eventually led to problems on the southern front, and Xiao Milling's army went north. Then the entire country of the Tang Dynasty may perish!
Just in case, Li Yuan immediately gave Xu Shao, the assassin of Xia Prefecture at that time, a secret order to Xu Shao to be executed secretly. Xu Shao is Li Yuan's true confidant, and the two were classmates when they were very young. In today's terms, the two are elementary school classmates, or the so-called small hair, and the feelings are very deep.
After receiving Li Yuan's order, Xu Shao finally weighed the pros and cons and refused to obey the order. Because Xu Shao was in Xia Prefecture, he knew more about the situation on this side of Xia Prefecture and knew that Li Jing really did not mean to delay time. In order to protect Li Jing's talent, Xu Shao did not hesitate to use himself as a guarantee, which allowed Li Yuan to temporarily let Li Jing go.
Without Xu Shao's desperate efforts to save him, Li Jing would have been cut down by Li Yuan before he had time to attack Xiao Milling.
On Li Jing's side, as the top military commander, after arriving in Xia Prefecture, Li Jing also analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of the Tang army and the Xiao Milling regime in all aspects. Shortly thereafter, Li Jing came to the conclusion that if he wanted to completely defeat Xiao Qiao, he must first solve the Bashu region.
At that time, although the Bashu region had nominally submitted to Li Yuan, there were often internal rebellions. In particular, the local barbarians did not obey the rule of the Li Tang regime at all. Therefore, the Li Tang regime simply could not attack Xiao Milling from the direction of the Bashu region.
After discovering the root cause of the problem, Li Jing first led the army and marched towards Shudi. At that time, in charge of this side of the land of Bashu was Li Yuan's cousin Li Xiaogong. After the founding of the Tang Dynasty, it was Li Xiaogong who led the army to tour the land of Bashu and nominally took over the land of Bashu to Li Tang. However, after this, there were often rebellions in the land of Bashu, which made Li Xiaogong so distraught that he was unable to attack Xiao Qiao again.
When Li Jing led his troops closer to Bashu, it coincided with the rebellion of the barbarian leaders in Kaizhou, leaving Li Xiaogong busy for a time. Kaizhou is the area of present-day Chongqing, and after Li Jing arrived, he quickly defeated this barbarian force, completely pacified Kaizhou, and helped Li Xiaogong regain control of the land of Bashu.
In this battle, Li Jing finally made a great contribution, which was to make up for Li Yuan's suspicions about him before. After Receiving the news, Li Yuan also changed his previous bad attitude and personally wrote a letter to Li Jing to express his trust in him.
After this battle, Li Jing finally gained Li Yuan's trust for the time being and had more room to show it. At the same time, Li Jing also conducted more analysis of the Xiao Milling regime and thoroughly formulated a complete strategic plan. However, Li Jing also knew at this time that the strategic focus of the Tang Dynasty at this time was not in the south, but in Luoyang. The strategic direction of the Tang Dynasty was also to go north first and then south. Therefore, until the Luoyang problem was resolved, the Tang Dynasty could not go all out to take action against the Xiao Milling regime.
But this did not prevent Li Jing from making a complete strategic plan first.
In the first month of the fourth year of Wu De, Li Jing wrote to Li Yuan, stating a complete strategic plan for pacifying Xiao Yuan's regime. By the time Li Jing wrote to Li Yuan, on the battlefield of Luoyang, Li Shimin had completed the strategic siege of Wang Shichong and completely besieged Wang Shichong inside luoyang. But at the same time, Wang Shichong asked Dou Jiande for help in Hebei, and Dou Jiande immediately sent a large army to the rescue in an attempt to pick the fruits of victory. At this time, the Li Tang regime, which was besieged by three powerful enemies at the same time by Wang Shichong, Dou Jiande, and Xiao Qiao, was on the verge of the most danger.
It was at this time that Li Yuan received a letter from Li Jing.
After Li Yuan received this letter, he was quite shocked by this. This is because Li Jing's strategic plan not only conforms to the overall strategic plan of the Tang Army, but also goes into great detail about the strategy of pacifying the Xiao Qiao regime. In this regard, Li Yuan showed a high degree of attention. At the same time as he saw this letter, Li Yuan knew that it was most appropriate to entrust the war in the south to Li Jing. Li Yuan immediately ordered that Li Xiaogong be appointed as the governor of Kui Prefecture and Li Jing as the commander of the march, and he and Li Xiaogong jointly led the troops. But at the same time, Li Jing was put in charge of military dispatch.
Here we need to explain more, Li Yuan's arrangement is also of great significance. Since Li Yuan started his army in Taiyuan, he had a problem, that is, he only trusted the members of the Li family's clan. It is no wonder, after all, the world was not yet unified at that time, and Li Yuan sat in the capital for many years. If it weren't for the Li family's clan room, it would be really difficult to trust. It was for this reason that Li Yuan made Li Xiaogong the commander and Li Jing his deputy. But at the same time, Li Yuan also knew that Li Jing was the one who was really talented, so he let Li Jing actually control the army.
After receiving Li Yuan's appointment, Li Jing obviously had more room to display. After that, Li Jing first called the sons of the chiefs of various tribes in the land of Bashu in the name of Li Xiaogong, granted them official positions, and let them work under his command. This move undoubtedly took hostages of various tribes and effectively guaranteed the internal stability of the Bashu region.
At the same time, Li Jing also began shipbuilding on a large scale and trained sailors. Li Jing knew very well that if he wanted to pacify Xiao Milling, a powerful water army, it was undoubtedly the best choice.
While Li Jing was making preparations, great progress was also made on the northern battlefield. By the time Li Jing wrote the book, Li Shimin had basically completed the siege of Luoyang. In February, Dou Jiande attacked, and Li Shimin led three thousand elites to preemptively occupy the Tiger Prison Pass and block Dou Jiande's army. In March, Li Shimin defeated Dou Jiande in a battle. After that, Li Shimin took the captured Dou Jiande to Luoyang. After Wang Shichong saw that Dou Jiande was captured, he could only surrender. In May, Wang Shichong officially surrendered. At this point, the Tang Dynasty defeated the two powers in the First World War, and nominally completely unified the entire north.
When Li Shimin defeated the two powerful enemies in the northern battlefield, Li Jing's side had already made preparations. Previously, Li Jing had always been mainly defensive and prepared, because the main force of the Tang army was on the luoyang battlefield before. But with the end of the war in the north, the Tang army could draw more elite troops to the south. Li Jing knew that the time had come to pacify xiao milling's regime!
In September, when the main force of the Tang army finally arrived at the southern front, Li Yuan officially ordered that the four major armies attack at the same time and wage war against Xiao Milling's regime!
Compared with Dou Jiande or Wang Shichong, the Xiao Qiao regime was actually more powerful. Not only is the territory very large, easy to defend and difficult to attack, but the total strength of xiao Milling's regime is more than 400,000, which is stronger than Wang Shichong and Dou Jiande! However, after careful analysis, Li Jing discovered the weaknesses of the Xiao Milling regime.
Xiao Qiao was a descendant of the imperial family of the Southern Liang regime during the Southern and Northern Dynasties. In the last years of the Sui Dynasty, Xiao Milling was originally only a county commander and did not have the ability to raise troops. However, because the local powerful lieutenant wanted to rebel and lacked a leader with a prominent family, Xiao Qiao was pushed out. After Xiao Milling raised an army, relying on the Xiao family's reputation in the south, he quickly occupied a large amount of territory. But at the same time, Xiao Milling also had a lot of arrogant generals under him. In particular, the several generals who had supported Xiao Milling before were even more self-respecting, and did not pay attention to Xiao Milling at all.
In order to solve these arrogant generals, Xiao Milling came up with an excellent strategy, that is, to directly disband most of the army.
This strategy sounds strange, but it is actually very clever. Because the world was very chaotic at that time, the crowds rose up everywhere. Xiao Milling's territory is easy to defend and difficult to attack, and there is more Yangtze River in the north to rely on. If it was just defensive, there would be no need for that many troops. Disbanding most of the army and going home would not only strengthen the country's strength, but also eliminate the military power of its generals in one fell swoop.
After the implementation of this plan, many generals who originally supported the army and respected themselves suddenly became the commander of the light pole, and could only be left to Xiao Milling's hands. Xiao Milling then cleaned the interior, and although the results were remarkable, it also completely lost the hearts and minds of the military. As a result, many generals began to deviate from Germany and even directly surrendered to the Tang Dynasty. Therefore, at this time, within the Xiao Milling regime, it is the time when people's hearts are floating.
In addition, Xiao Mill's previous defensive strategy was also mainly to pay attention to the south. Because in the north of Xiao Milling's territory, there is a natural danger of the Yangtze River. With very few troops, it can block the strong enemy in the north. Therefore, Xiao Milling placed more than 100,000 remaining main troops in Jiangnan to prevent Lin Shihong from attacking jiangnan.
Xiao Milling's arrangement was actually foolproof. But who would have thought that in the Battle of Luoyang, Li Shimin would defeat both powers at the same time, and the Tang Dynasty would quickly unify the entire north? When the news reached Xiao Milling's side, although Xiao Milling realized that the problem was very big, he still did not dare to mobilize the defenders in the south, and could only start recruiting troops from the local level again.
Recruiting takes time.
Such a Xiao Milling regime, although nominally with 400,000 troops, was very powerful. But in Li Jing's eyes, he was vulnerable.
After Li Jing sent his troops, he commanded the Tang army all the way along the Yangtze River and down the river. I want to take advantage of Xiao Milling's domestic emptiness and directly solve Xiao Milling. After learning that the Tang army was going south, although Xiao Milling realized that the problem was a bit big, he didn't care too much at that time.
It wasn't that Xiao Milling was playing himself, but because it was September and October. At this time, the Yangtze River is the time when the river surges. In Xiao Milling's view, even if the Tang Army was strong, it would not be stronger than the Yangtze River. Even if you attack, you can only wait until the water potential of the Yangtze River slows down the next year before you can attack. In particular, If Li Jing's corps wanted to attack, it must pass through the Three Gorges area. However, during the rainstorm, the Three Gorges, the water flow is turbulent, it is difficult to march. Therefore, in Xiao Milling's view, It was impossible for Li Jing to risk attacking from the direction of the Three Gorges at this time.
It was this judgment that made Xiao Milling finally lose his life.
At this time, Li Jing had already prejudged Xiao Milling's prediction. Therefore, he vigorously defied the consensus of the people and led the water army under his command to cross the Three Gorges. After Li Jing crossed the Three Gorges, Xiao Qiao finally panicked. After that, Xiao Milling immediately began to organize a defensive line along the river, and at the same time, the hundreds of thousands of elites originally deployed in Jiangnan were urgently called back. But his movements, after all, were still slower than Li Jing's marching speed.
In October, Li Jing led his troops all the way to Yichang, like a divine soldier descending from heaven. At this time, Xiao Milling had urgently deployed tens of thousands of troops to garrison the Yichang area. However, after Li Jing arrived in Yichang, he directly defeated this army with lightning speed. After Yichang was destroyed, Jiangling, where Xiao Milling was located, was already in no danger. Shortly thereafter, Li Jing led his army to Jiangling City and surrounded Jiangling.
At this time, there were only thousands of defenders in Jiangling City, and they could not withstand the siege of the Tang army at all. And the hundreds of thousands of troops in Jiangnan have not yet returned at this time. Xiao Milling saw that the general trend had gone, and in order to save the people of Gangneung City from war, he directly surrendered Kaesong.
Ironically, just a few days after Xiao Qiao surrendered, the more than 100,000 troops in Jiangnan finally arrived in Jiangling. However, at this time, Xiao Qiao had already surrendered, so these more than 100,000 troops fell directly into the hands of Li Xiaogong and Li Jing. Since then, the two have absorbed all the armies of Xiao Milling's regime and become the strongest Tang army in the south. Therefore, after the Tang army unified the south, basically Li Jing and Li Xiaogong fought down.
From the fact that Li Jing was in the war in which He pacified Xiao Milling, it is not difficult for us to see that the reason why Li Jing was able to win was, on the one hand, because Li Jing really knew himself and knew the other, and he thoroughly understood the situation of Xiao Milling's regime. Therefore, the most reasonable battle plan can be formulated. On the other hand, it is also because Li Jing is proficient in rapid combat and understands the principle of the speed of soldiers. After finding out the enemy's falsehood, quickly dispatch troops and defeat the other party at the first time, so that you can create such a legendary record.
On the surface, Li Jing pingding Xiao Milling, although it was a lot of accidental superposition, had a lot of non-repeatability. If the Water in the Three Gorges was stronger at that time, the Tang army would have been directly drowned; if Xiao Milling had deployed a large army in the south, he would have returned a few days earlier; if the Tang army had not won a complete victory in the Battle of Yichang, but had been delayed in the Yichang area... The consequences of this war will be very different. If that were the case, it would not be the collapse of Xiao Qiao's regime, but the total annihilation of Li Jing's army.
But in fact, the reason why Li Jing dared to take risks was actually because he had already thoroughly explored the situation within Xiao Milling's regime. A good commander-in-chief must formulate a good strategic plan at the right time after finding out the enemy's situation, and this is the way to win.
Know yourself and know the other, never lose a hundred battles, and then the soldiers are fast. There are many people who understand these principles in the art of war, but there are probably not so many people who can do it.