In the third year of Qianning (896), after the Caizhou warlord Yu Ma Yin took over the Wu'an army, he sent Li Qiong, Qin Yanhui, Zhang Tuying, Li Tang and other Caizhou generals to march east and west to eliminate local thieves in Hunan, and within two years, the five prefectures of Heng, Yong, Dao, Chen, and Lian all fell into Ma Yin's hands.
Ma Yin's successive victories in the north of the Lingbei were bound to shock Lingnan. In the third year of Gwanghwa (900), Liu Shizheng, who had divided Guizhou for several years, surrendered to Ma Yin with the five prefectures of Gui, Yi, Yan, Liu, and Xiang in the face of defeat in the resistance. In the second year of Tianyou (905), Deng Jinzhong, the assassin of Yuezhou, returned to Ma Yin and moved to Changsha.
Lei Man, who had divided Langzhou, was born in Wuling, "Dong Man", "this fisherman, has courage", gathered jingsi and Zhou Yue in the same township, "gathered thousands of barbarians", and snatched up the merchant brigade in Daze. After a game of fighting, Lei Man occupied the city of Langzhou Prefecture, and after the city fell, he killed the assassin Shi Cuiyi. In the end, the Tang court was forced to recognize its legitimacy by its strength, and in July of the first year of Gwanghwa (898), the imperial court divided the three prefectures under the jurisdiction of Jingnan Town, Li, Lang, and Li, and set up a Wuzhen army, stationed in Jieli Prefecture, with Lei Man as the envoy of the Wuzhen army, and added Pingzhangshi.
Ma Yin
Lei Man, who was born as a bandit, was able to rank in the rank of commander of the clan town, and this kind of outlier could only appear in the five generations of chaotic times. In December of the first year of Tianfu (903), Lei Man died of illness, and his son Lei Yanwei claimed to be a retainer. Lei Yanwei was a man who was "cunning and cruel, had a fatherly style, and often rode a boat to burn and plunder neighbors, between Jing and Hubei, and died until no one else."
After the establishment of Later Liang, in the first year of Kaiping (907), Lei Yanwei was expelled by his younger brother Lei Yangong, who attacked Ren Wuzhen Jiedushi and still attacked and plundered, causing disasters to Jing and Hu. In May of the second year of Kaiping (908), Zhu Wen ordered Ma Yin and Jingnan Jiedu of Hunan to make Gao Jichang join forces to recruit Lei Yangong and capture Langzhou, "Yan Gong Shan Tong fled", and defected to the Yang Wu regime in Huainan.
Ma Yin captured Lei Yangong's younger brother Lei Yanxiong and seven of his henchmen and sent them to Fenjing, "all beheaded under the Bridge". Ma Yin became the biggest beneficiary of this annexation war, taking Langzhou and Lizhou into his own territory, and asking the Later Liang court to change the Wuzhen army into the Yongshun army.
In the fourth year of Kaiping (910), the Ningyuan army that occupied the area around Rongzhou and Gaozhou made Pang Juzhao and Gaozhou defense make Liu Changlu, under the pressure of annexation by Liu Yin's forces in Lingnan, attach himself to Ma Yin, and more than a thousand of their relatives and soldiers moved to Changsha, and Ma Yin was able to take Rongzhou and Gaozhou and other places. However, in December of the first year of Qianhua (911), Rongzhou and Gaozhou were again captured by Liu Yan.
Zhu Wen
Song Yi, who had divided Chenzhou, and Pan Jinsheng, who occupied Puzhou, were both so-called "barbarian chieftains", and the two "took advantage of the deep dangers in which they lived" and repeatedly attacked Ma Yin's territory. Therefore, in the first year of Qianhua (911), Ma Yin sent the general Lü Shizhou to conquest and behead Pan Jinsheng at Wugang. The following year, Chenzhou and Puzhou were also annexed to Ma Yin.
From the beginning of Qianning's occupation of Tanzhou in the first year (894), for more than ten years, Ma Yin was a major separatist force in the south. In the management of the Ma military and political clique, Ma Yin paid special attention to showing loyalty to the Central Plains Dynasty, whether it was Li Tang or Zhu Liang. In the fourth year of Gwanghwa (901), he was appointed by the Tang Court as the envoy of the Wu'an Army, and the following year he was added the title of "Tongping Zhangshi" and obtained the independent use of human rights for officials in the territory, which meant that Ma Yin's division had been recognized by the Tang Court.
In the fourth year of Tang Tianyou (907), Zhu Wen usurped Tang Jianliang, and because Ma Yin had been persuaded to advance, he was crowned king of Chu by Zhu Liang. The mere title of "King of Chu" did not satisfy Ma Yin, and in the fourth year of Kaiping (910), Ma Yin went to Zhu Wen and asked for permission to open the Tiance Mansion in Changsha and place him under the command of officials in accordance with the precedent of Li Shimin, the King of Qin. Li Shimin opened the "Tiance Mansion" and then took the throne in a coup d'état, which was somewhat suspected of trespassing. However, after all, the whip is beyond reach, and Zhu Wen "tolerates the time and allows everything he asks for." Ma Yin opened the Tiance Mansion, "with the brother as the left phase and the existence as the right phase".
The Machu regime has always pursued the strategy of "serving the Heavenly Son from above and caring for the people from below", and no matter how the Tianzi of the Central Plains changes, Ma Chu has always maintained a deferential posture of "Naixin Royal Family" and "Repairing Duties and Paying Tribute to the Dynasty", in exchange for security guarantees. However, in essence, although Ma Yin did not claim the title of Emperor Jianyuan, the MaChu regime, which dominated Huxiang, was an independent separatist regime.
Ma Chu dominates Hunan
Later, in the second year of Tang Tiancheng (927), Emperor Mingzong of Tang enfeoffed Ma Yin as king of Chu. In this year, the MaChu regime began to nationalize, "King Yin of Chu started the country, established a palace, and placed hundreds of officials, all like the Son of Heaven, or slightly changed his name", in addition to not being called emperor, everything about Ma Yin, the king of Chu, was almost the same as the Son of Heaven, and the system of the Chu State also surpassed the general division of feudal towns since the late Tang Dynasty, as if it were a country.
At the end of the Tang Dynasty, the Caizhou military clique was rampant, cruel and tyrannical, and it can be said that it was infamous. Ma Yin, who was born in the "Cai Thief" group, after occupying Hunan, was able to achieve a good governance transformation and rest with the people, "resting the people and etiquette, Hunan Sui'an". In the first year of the Later Tang Dynasty (930), Ma Yin died of illness at the age of 79, which was a high life expectancy in that chaotic world, and where would the Chu state behind Ma Yin go?