In 1099 AD, in the Western Xia Imperial Palace, Empress Xiao Liang was lying on her side on the table, the corners of her mouth were constantly spitting blood outwards, and her eyes were half open, and her life was over. When she died, I don't know if she ever regretted it...
On the side, Li Qianshun of Xia Chongzong, the envoys of the Liao State, and the ministers of the guards stood there with the posture of victors, and the whole hall was extremely desolate. This woman who has controlled the Xia Dynasty for thirteen years has finally come to an end.
Empress Dowager Xiaoliang
With a cry, a baby girl was born in the Liang Mansion of the Western Xia XiangGuo, the male master of the Liang Mansion, when the imperial chancellor Liang Yi buried, cheered and rejoiced, and the whole liang mansion rejoiced at the arrival of this little life.
The aunt is the empress dowager, the father is the courtier, the cousin is the emperor of the dynasty (still a puppet at this time), and the girl can be said to have come to this world with a golden spoon. And her rich identity is also doomed to the fate of her life, born in such a family, although she has no worries about food and clothing, she will eventually become a tool of power.
Western Xia Mausoleum
In 1083, Xiao Liang's aunt, Empress Dowager Liang at the time, reluctantly restored Emperor Xia Huizong Li Bingchang to the throne and married Li Bingchang at the same time. In this way, Xiao Liang married her cousin Li Bingchang and became the empress of the dynasty according to the life route that the family had planned for her long ago. Xiao Liang's aunt and father still firmly controlled the government.
In the same year, Xiao Liang gave birth to Li Bingchang's eldest son, Li Qianshun, later Xia Chongzong. Empress Liang was very fond of this grandson, and the position of the Xiao Liang clan was more stable.
In 1085, Xiao Liang's father Liang Yibu died of illness, and Xiao Liang's brother Liang Yikui took over his father's position and continued to control the imperial government with his aunt Empress Liang. In October of the same year, the tyrannical Empress Dowager Liang also died of illness, and the party's power was transferred to Xiao Liang and her brother Liang Yikui.
In less than a year, the Liang family lost two patrons in succession, which was undoubtedly not a test for the little Liang brothers and sisters of the newly taken over the party, and the struggle between the imperial family and the later party within the Western Xia ruling clique became more and more fierce, competing for power with each other. The soft and incompetent Li Bingchang was unable to handle the political struggle between the two sides and was constantly angry.
In July 1086, Li Bingchang died of depression, and was succeeded by Li Qianshun at the age of 3, assisted by his uncle Liang Yikui and his mother Empress Xiaoliang. In this way, the power of the Western Xia State was returned to the Liang clique, and a new pair of Liang brothers and sisters replaced the previous Liang siblings and continued to control the government.
Empress Xiaoliang and her brother Liang Yiqi relied on the prestige of the Liang family's "one door and two queens" to attract courtiers and fly around, and they attacked dissident forces, and many of the former emperor's old cronies and old courtiers were ruthlessly attacked and persecuted, or degraded and killed. At this time, the military and political power of the Western Xia was divided between the imperial representatives A Wu, the party representative Ren Duo Baozhong, and the Hou clan representative Liang Clan, and the three major families fought among themselves for power, and the Western Xia regime was turbulent.
Domestic contradictions continued, and Empress Xiaoliang's road to power was very difficult, so she followed the example of her aunt Empress Dowager Liang and used military merit to consolidate her position and rights. The Liao state could not afford to provoke her, so she frequently launched wars against the Song Dynasty.
In May 1087, Liang Yikui colluded with Tubo to jointly invade the Song Dynasty's Dingxi City (present-day southwest of Dingxi, Gansu), and after the victory, both sides took what they needed. The two sides led a total of 200,000 troops to march into the Song Dynasty with absolute superiority. The war began, and xia and Tibet won the battle. However, Liang Yikui was not a qualified general, and the two sides were also destroyed by the pure reinforcements of Song Junfan due to the lack of unified deployment and command. Tubo was defeated, Liang Yikui returned without success, and also took the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers.
The defeat of the war has caused more and more people in China to oppose the Xiaoliang brothers and sisters, and the contradictions between the three major families have become increasingly intense. In order to consolidate their power, the brothers and sisters continued to send troops to invade the borders of the Song Dynasty, sending troops as high as six or seven times in a year. However, the fact is that the national strength of Western Xia has not yet been restored, coupled with the fact that the military ability of the Xiaoliang brothers and sisters is less than one-tenth of that of the Great Liang brothers and sisters, the Western Xia has won fewer victories and lost more, the national strength is also constantly depleted, and the people on the border of Song and Xia have suffered from the disasters brought about by the war and are miserable. The domestic crowd was indignant and attacked en masse.
At this time, the Emperor of the Northern Song Dynasty was Zhao Xu of song Zhezong, and due to the young age of Song Zhezong, major state affairs were decided by his grandmother, Empress Gao. Gao Shi was a very good leader, did not like to fight, and in the face of constant harassment from the Western Xia, he only let the border soldiers hold out. The compromise of the Song Dynasty gave Liang Yikui the opportunity to flaunt his might, believing that the Song Dynasty was afraid of him.
In the face of increasing doubts within the dynasty, in 1089, Empress Xiaoliang and Song truced, and the Song returned the four villages of Mizhi, Yelu, Anjiang, and Futu to the Xia Kingdom, which returned the captured Song population of Yongle City to the Song Dynasty. And Liang Yikui is also working intensively to make plans for his future. While impeaching officials who opposed him, he constantly expanded his own power, repeatedly falsely transmitted the empress dowager's will, monopolized military power, and even openly accused his sister Empress Xiaoliang in public, with no one in sight, and the relationship between brothers and sisters appeared estranged.
In the first month of 1092, Liang Yidi received assistance from Tubo and began to harass the Song Dynasty, burning and plundering the Song border, and after the Song Dynasty attacked, Liang Yikui was defeated and returned. In October of the same year, Liang Yikui attacked the Song Dynasty again, but Empress Xiaoliang did not give her brother Liang Yikui the right to fight, and subsequently, Empress Xiaoliang personally marched, and the Song Dynasty general Zhang Rao responded to the battle, and finally western Xia was defeated, and Empress Xiaoliang was almost taken prisoner, known in history as the "Battle of Hundenburg".
The Battle of Hondborg was a milestone in the Song army's bid for the strategic initiative. After that, the Song Dynasty gradually grasped the initiative in the war, and although the Song and Xia still had their own victories and losses, the Song Dynasty pressed forward step by step, and the territory of the Western Xia was gradually eroded, but it was finally a foregone conclusion.
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Liang Yikui resented Empress Xiaoliang for not granting military power, so he stepped up his usurpation activities. At this time, Empress Xiaoliang also saw her brother's different heart, so she took the lead and made it stronger. Empress Xiaoliang, with the help of the imperial family and nobles, killed Liang Yikui in 1094 on charges of usurping power and plotting rebellion, and killed his entire family.
And Empress Xiaoliang killed Liang Yikui, in addition to Liang Yikui and her own dissent, a more important reason is that Empress Xiaoliang wants to consolidate her position, years of war, making a mess within the country, opposing the party's opinions more and more, Empress Xiaoliang must find a scapegoat to bear this result.
Power is a sharp sword, and it is really sad that under the drive of power, brothers and sisters have turned from close relatives to enemies regardless of blood relations.
In the previous Liang Group, Liang Yiburi followed suit all his life, bowing down to his sister Empress Liang, and the sister and brother were united and cooperative. And this year's Liang brothers and sisters, the political means are not as good as the previous session, the ability is not good, and they still look down on each other. Both of them grew up in a honeypot, both grew up under the protection of their parents, and they could not stand alone, and it is not surprising that this result is now.
After the execution of Liang Yidi, Empress Xiaoliang began to monopolize power and continued to invade the borders of the Song Dynasty, which was really a warlike woman.
At this time in the Song Dynasty, the empress dowager Gao, who was in power, had died, and Zhao Xu, the Emperor of Song, was pro-government. Zhao Xu changed his grandmother Gao's operational policy of "sticking to no war" and rebuilt the wartime government and theater command system to counterattack Western Xia.
From the end of 1096 to the end of 1098, in two years, Western Xia fought against the Song many times, and the results were roughly as follows:
At the end of 1096, at the Battle of Yan'an Province, Empress Xiaoliang held Emperor Li Bingchang hostage and gathered 500,000 troops to march in an attempt to crush the military forces of the Song Dynasty's Yanyan Road, but failed;
He then attacked Jin Mingzhai (金明寨, in modern Ansainan, Shaanxi), killing 3,000 Song people with hundreds of thousands of men;
At the beginning of 1097, he turned back to continue to attack Yanlu, and fought with the Song army at Tiandu Mountain, and western Xia was defeated;
In the winter of 1098, Empress Xiaoliang personally led an army of 400,000 to attack the Song Dynasty's Pingxia City (present-day Guyuanjing, Ningxia), attacking for 13 days, killing and wounding tens of thousands, and failing to break the city. During the retreat, he was severely damaged by the Song army's ambush, and under the mediation of the Liao Dynasty, the Song Dynasty agreed to the Western Xia's request for peace;
Empress Xiaoliang lost the support of Liang Yikui, and she was repeatedly defeated in battles, and many Western Xia generals also abandoned Xia to surrender to the Song, at this time, her situation was extremely difficult, and she fought against the entire imperial court with her body.
In 1099, Xia Chongzong Li Qianshun turned 16 years old, reaching the age of pro-government, and Empress Xiaoliang did not want to return the government, Li Qianshun was very dissatisfied with her mother's approach, this woman once disregarded her son's life and death, for the sake of power, holding Li Qianshun hostage to fight against Song, which was really hateful.
The monarch of the Liao state at that time was the Liao Daozong Yelü Hongji, and he did not have any good feelings for the Western Xia, the little Liang Queen. There was a covenant between the Song and The Liao, the "Alliance of the Zen Temple", and the Liao and Song dynasties were about a brotherly country, and the two sides would no longer go to war. Empress Xiaoliang repeatedly requested the Liao state to send troops to the Song Dynasty, and after seeing that the Liao state had not given a substantive response, Empress Xiaoliang spoke out and rebuked the Liao Daozong Yelü Hongji, completely angering the Liao Daozong. Subsequently, an emissary was sent to Western Xia, and this time it was different from the past, it was an envoy with the purpose of poisoning Empress Xiaoliang.
The emissary's assassination of the empress dowager of a country sounds absurd and seems difficult to complete, and the result is just the opposite. When the emissaries of the Liao State gave Empress Xiaoliang a bottle of wine in the name of "offering wine", no one in the court even spoke for her, even her son Li Qianshun, who was looking at her and seemed to be saying, "Empress Mother, this is a piece of the heart of the emissaries of the Liao Kingdom, you drink it." When she shouted "Come on people", none of the guards around her stepped forward. At this time, Empress Xiaoliang seemed to understand, stopped struggling, calmly drank the bottle of wine, and lay on the table on her side, and all the people in the hall smiled satisfactorily.
At this point, the Liang clique, which had controlled western Xia for 33 years, was over.