In December of the first year of the Guangming Dynasty (880), Huang Chao led an army to capture Chang'an, and Emperor Li of Tang rushed to Shudi, following in the footsteps of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang. When he arrived in Xiegu, he accidentally met a person he had sent away, the former prime minister Zheng Bi.
After being deposed, Zheng Bi successively held idle posts such as prince guest and Rebbe Shangshu, and later under the recommendation of his friends in the DPRK and China, he was able to obtain the appointment of Fengxiang Longlong's Right Jiedushi, which was considered to have a decent home. It is said that as the party implicated and dismissed from office, he should have a stomach full of resentment towards the emperor, but when he saw Li Yan, who had lost the capital and seemed to be about to fall, the first thing he said was:
"It is we ministers who have misled Your Majesty so much so that the Ministers are sinners, please Your Majesty kill me!"
There is no schadenfreude, no forgiveness, just a sincere review of mistakes and a courageous commitment to responsibility.
"It's not Aiqing's fault."
Tang Xianzong was still sensible, at least clear that there was no practical point in talking about the issue of responsibility at this time.
"Please leave the chariot in the wind, and the subject will bow down and be loyal to His Majesty!"
Li Yan had his own opinion, he rejected Zheng Bi's kindness, but only proposed, now you help me guard Fengxiang, don't let the people of the Yellow Nest kill you. I went to Xingyuan myself, and I had other plans. Zheng Zheng understood the emperor's temper and did not force him to stay, but only made a request, asking for permission to do it cheaply.
The situation was difficult, this request was not excessive, Li Yan agreed, and then beat Ma Xi and rushed to Xingyuan. For him, this was just a chance encounter on the road, just a logical arrangement. He would never have imagined that this unintentional act of his would have a very important impact on history. Because he did not fully understand Zheng Bi, he did not know that this person's death was no longer just lip service, he was a person who did what he said.
The first thing Zheng Bi did after returning to Fengxiang was to summon the senior generals in the army to discuss the crusade against Huang Chao. Don't talk about it, I don't know, when we talked about it, Zheng Bi was directly fainted by the qi. The generals attending the meeting were completely oblivious to the proposal to retake the Beijing Division, and in addition to urging Zheng Bi to think in the long run, all they did was to constantly lament the strength of the Qi army, how quickly Chang'an was lost, how difficult it was for their own army, and so on. In short, we must not take the initiative to fight, and the battle will undoubtedly die.
Zheng Bi looked at these people in disappointment, and finally he couldn't hold back, and he shot the case and drank: Are you trying to persuade me to surrender the thief? After drinking, he directly fainted to the ground, broke his face, and woke up until the next morning, he could not say a word, which showed that he was really angry.
Just at this moment, the emissary of the Yellow Nest came to the door to summon him.
Because Zheng Bi was inconvenient to get up to see the guests, yuan Jingrou, the overseer, came forward to warmly greet the envoys of the Yellow Nest, and then negotiated the conditions, signed the surrender form (Yuan Jingrou signed the name of Zheng Jiedushi), announced the pardon and swore allegiance, and a set of procedures was completed, and the overseers and emissaries were very happy. So, eunuch Yuan proposed to have a meal together?
This meal changed everything. Because at the banquet, the soldiers of Fengfengxiang Military Town were all in tears at the moment when the music was played. When Sima Guang wrote this passage, he did not explicitly write the name of the piece, but it may not have been necessary to write it at all. Because the army's important banquet and drinking occasions are generally only one preferred repertoire, that is, the famous "Qin King Breaking Formation Music".
"The Broken Array Music of the King of Qin" is a military song composed by his generals to celebrate the triumph after Li Shimin, who was still the King of Qin, defeated the powerful enemy Liu Wuzhou. It is said that after Li Shimin ascended the throne, he personally adapted this piece of music.
Since then, this majestic and blood-boiling song has not only become the theme music of official large-scale events (such as banquets and sacrifices), but also a symbol of the strong and prosperous years of the Tang Dynasty. All the most glorious moments of Datang in the past three hundred years have been accompanied by this familiar melody without exception.
This time, however, this was an exception, so when the music was played, the soldiers immediately cried.
The emissary of the Yellow Nest could not understand the scene in front of him and froze on the spot. He really couldn't understand it, because he had never been a soldier in data. Seeing that the scene was once a little out of control, Sun Chu, who was accompanied by the curtain, rushed out to save the scene: "The soldiers are so sad because Xiang Gongfeng can't come to the banquet. ”
For Sun Chu's answer, the messenger was still satisfied, the banquet proceeded as usual, the wine was drunk, the meat was eaten, and the next morning the people left. But the aftermath of the matter continues to ferment. Somehow, this scene of the banquet spread to the people, and "all the folk hearers wept." As a result, the entire Fengxiang area was shaken, and the common people expressed their willingness to advance and retreat with the imperial court and the Fengxiang army and fight against HuangChao to the end.
When the news came, Feng Xiangjun did not dare to act rashly. If you throw the Yellow Nest without a fight, it is estimated that you will not be able to walk upright in the next life. Just when the whole army was entangled in a dilemma, Zheng Bi spoke: "I know that people's hearts are not tired of Tang, and Huang Chao will fail in a short time!" ”
So after a round of discussions on a large scale or a small scale, the Feng Xiang army finally reached an agreement: fight to the end. After sending his son Zheng Ningji to the emperor to submit to the emperor a table of his own handwriting in the blood of his fingers and showing his determination, Zheng Bi began a struggle alone, he scattered his family wealth to reward the generals, encouraged the army to train the army, and led the army and the people to repair the city and repair the weapons. After Feng Xiang's defense was guaranteed, he turned to the outside world, sent emissaries one by one to contact the neighboring emissaries, and then tried his best to persuade everyone to join forces to resist the Yellow Nest.
With his sincere efforts, all the military towns adjacent to Fengxiang were finally moved and agreed to send troops to assemble in Fengxiang.
After getting the emissaries of Jiedushi, Zheng Bi immediately threw himself into the work of collecting the soldiers of the Tang Army who had lost their command. He worked very hard and was very diligent, so soon tens of thousands of soldiers scattered all over Guanzhong gradually found an organization and gathered with Fengxiang. When Huang Chao sent a second emissary to urge Fengxiang to surrender as soon as possible, Fengxiang Already had nearly 100,000 defenders, strong fortifications, trusted allies, and a firm belief in fighting to the end.
Therefore, Zheng Bi ordered the execution of Huang Chao's emissaries in front of the whole army, and killed hundreds of captured surrenderers at the same time. He wanted to use the heads of these people to tell Huang Chao, to tell everyone: Zheng Bi here, the wind period soldiers and civilians here, vowed not to surrender.
In fact, Zheng Bi was not the only lone vassal, and the Yiwu Jiedushi made Wang Chucun, the Hezhong Jiedushi made Wang Chongrong, and the Hedong Jiedushi made Zheng Congchen also a staunch supporter of the Tang Dynasty.
In February of the first year of Zhonghe (881), Emperor Tang, who had arrived in Chengdu, began to rebuild the imperial court's chain of command. He not only restored Zheng Bi's status as prime minister, but also made Zheng Bi concurrently serve as the commander of all the armies and camps on all sides of the capital.
It is said that when Zheng Bi of Fengxiang received the relevant edict, he was surprised, and he never thought that "cheap work" would give him such a privilege. Zheng Bi was very impressed, so he immediately transformed this power into a strong cohesive force and combat effectiveness, and Gan Hun neatly appointed two people: Cheng Zongchu was made the deputy capital of Jingyuan Jiedu, and Tang Hongfu was made the marching Sima of The Former Shuo Fang Jiedu.
Although these two people were both emissaries of one side, to be honest, their sense of existence in the Korean and Chinese armies at that time was not very strong, and no one ever believed that these two people could do anything earth-shattering. However, Zheng Bi believed that he was sure that these two were loyal and reliable people, and that if they were given a chance, they would be able to achieve something. Therefore, in a skeptical gaze, Zheng Bi resolutely promoted the two and entrusted them with heavy responsibilities. The development of the aftermath showed that Zheng Bi did not look at the wrong person, and Cheng Zongchu and Tang Hongfu did not live up to Zheng Bi's hopes, until the last moment of his life.
When the Tang Dynasty rebuilt the command system, Huang Chao was not idle, he first sent troops to capture Dengzhou, set up a defensive line to block the Tang army that came from the south to qin wang, and then sent Shang Rang and Wang Fan to lead 50,000 elites straight to Fengxiang.
Huang Chao's intention was obvious, that is, to destroy the tang army's front-line general headquarters, so that the Guanzhong Tang army, which had a certain scale of resistance, once again returned to a leaderless state, so that he could surrender or destroy them one by one. Therefore, this upcoming war was very important for both the Tang Dynasty and the Great Qi, and both sides were bound to win.
When Shang Rang commanded the 50,000 Qi army to the Longweipi area and saw the Tang army on the high post opposite, he almost burst out in joy. Because as far as the eye could see, it was the Tang army that was scattered in a sparse way, and the number of thousands of people who had survived was only a few thousand, and the banners set up in the array looked more than the soldiers that Zheng Bi brought out of the array. According to Shang Rang's combat experience in recent years, Zheng Bi was obviously bluffing.
A student is a student, it is useless!
The battle had not really begun, and Shang Rang and Wang Fan had already reached a consensus that even if the 50,000 people under their command were stepped on with their feet, they would be able to win by stepping on them. Therefore, without waiting for the rear army led by Huang Chao's nephew Lin Yan to arrive at the battlefield, Shang Rang led his troops to suppress it. As expected, Zheng Bi's soldiers collapsed as soon as they touched it, and they ran away. The Qi soldiers were even more excited to see this and began to chase after them (the number of enemies killed was directly linked to the reward). Since the Tang army had been evacuated when it was arrayed, it was even more dispersed after retreating, so that the pursuing Qi army array was scattered in a short time.
Seeing that the enemy had scattered in a line and ran into the ambush range one by one, Zheng Bi sent out a signal. Tang Hongfu, who had already been ambushed at a key point, suddenly came out with an ambush and attacked the flank of the Qi army. Immediately afterward, the general Li Changyan and others began to methodically shrink the ambush circle and systematically drove the Qi army to the predetermined battlefield of Longweipi.
After unremitting efforts, at dusk, the Tang army completed the siege and the battle began.
At first, Shang Rang and Wang Fan, who reacted to the situation, launched several counterattacks with a large number of people, intending to break out of the siege, but after a few rounds of fighting between you and me, the experienced two quickly realized that this possibility did not exist. Although the number of his own side was superior, because he was completely trapped in the division and encirclement of the Tang Army, he could not form a joint force, so he was able to move
As a result, the situation was left with only one possibility of fiasco.
There was no miracle, no fluke, the Qi army in Longweipi, under the shusheng Zheng Bi ushered in the largest battle since the occupation of Chang'an, a mess, in the words of the history books, one by one accumulated tens of miles of corpses, accurate to the number is the loss of 20,000 people, the loss of armor and ordnance is innumerable. It is reported that due to the defeat, the Qi army's general Wang Fan could not even save his own son, and his son was captured by the Tang army and finally cut down.
The news of Zheng Bi's victory soon reached Chengdu and reached Li Yan's ears, and the young emperor did not intend to hide his inner excitement and joy at all, and in front of the prime ministers, the emperor lu xia sighed: "Zhen Qi does not know enough about Zheng Bi, this reader is so brave!" ”
The Great Victory of Longwei Pi not only gave the imperial court the confidence to retake Chang'an, but also gave the local jiedu a choice to continue to support the Tang Dynasty. Especially after receiving a message from Zheng Qi, Jingyuan Cheng Zongchu, Qin Prefecture Qiu Gongyu, Yan Yan Li Xiaogong, and Xia Zhou Tuoba Sigong successively openly expressed their support for the emperor and opposed Huang Chao. After the statements of these people, more and more feudal towns began to prepare for the formation of the Qinwang Army, and sent emissaries to Chengdu to meet and greet them.
The Great Victory of Longwei Pi can be said to have pulled The Tang back on the brink of life and death, and the Tang Army also began to launch a counterattack against the peasant army, and Huang Chao could not imagine that a song of cheering music at the banquet would make the Great Qi turn from prosperity to decline.