After sorting out the doubts analyzed before, we can find a real Yang Wengan incident:
On the third day of the first month of June in the seventh year of Wu De (624 AD), Li Yuan left Chang'an for the summer at Renzhi Palace, Li Shimin accompanied Li Yuanji, and Li Jiancheng stayed in Chang'an Town. At this time, Li Yuanji, who had formed a party with Li Jiancheng, already had the idea of physically eliminating Li Shimin, because Li Jiancheng's obstruction was not put into practice. At this time, Li Yuanji even advised Li Jiancheng to take the opportunity to get rid of Li Shimin.
▲ In the TV series "The Rule of Zhenguan", Li Yuan, Li Shimin and Li Yuanji
Yang Wengan, the governor of Gyeongju at the time, originally held the position of janissary of the Eastern Palace and was closely related to Li Jiancheng. In the past, Li Jiancheng had privately instructed him to recruit warriors to give to him as a private army.
Ordinary people still need to plan a trip, as a tianzi Li Yuan wants to go out to escape the summer, including safety, sitting and many other matters need to be considered and arranged in advance. As the crown prince and shouldering the heavy responsibility of Sitting in the Capital Division during Li Yuan's travels, Li Jiancheng, of course, learned the news at the beginning of Li Yuan's plan to go to the summer. In Li Jiancheng's view, Li Yuan's outing naturally gave him the time and space to carry out illegal measures such as recruiting Xiao Yong. Therefore, when Li Yuan and the others arrived at Renzhi Palace, Li Jiancheng (again) sent Erzhu Huan and Qiao Gongshan, two high-ranking officers in the Eastern Palace, to deliver armor to Yang Wengan.
The matter of transporting armor is not big, but it is not small, whether it is the source of armor or the route of transportation, it needs to be planned in advance. Therefore, Li Shimin, who planted his own eyeliner around Li Jiancheng through bribery and other means, naturally knew about this plan in advance, and then was able to plan and implement his own conspiracy against this plan. As a result, Erzhu Huan and Qiao Gongshan, who had been bribed by Li Shimin, ran to Renzhi Palace halfway to report the incident to Li Yuan, saying that Li Jiancheng had instructed Yang Wengan to rebel and was preparing to cooperate with Li Yuan inside and outside. At the same time, a man named Du Fengju, who had been bribed by Li Shimin, in Ningzhou (near Renzhi Palace) came to report the incident.
Since Gyeongju was not far from The Inji Palace, if this was true, then Li Yuan's situation would be very dangerous, and he was shocked and angry, so he found a reason to send someone to summon Li Jiancheng to the Inji Palace. When Li Jiancheng, who heard the news, was afraid to go, an aide named Xu Shimo advised him to rebel, but in the end he followed the advice of another aide, Zhao Hongzhi, and went to Renzhi Palace to ask Li Yuan for his guilt.
▲ In the TV series "The Rule of Zhenguan", Li Yuan was shocked and angry after hearing that Yang Wengan was plotting against him
Li Yuan immediately imprisoned Li Jiancheng, and then sent the chancellor Yuwen Ying to summon Yang Wengan (naturally for other reasons), but Yu Wenying, who was bribed by Li Shimin, saw Yang Wengan and told him the truth. On June 24, Yang Wengan simply rebelled.
Li Yuan was not lightly frightened when he heard the news, and on the one hand, he sent people to go on a crusade, and on the other hand, he summoned Li Shimin to come and ask him to lead an army to attack Yang Wengan. Li Shimin said that Yang Wengan was not worried, and it was enough to send a general to go. Li Yuan believed that since this matter implicated the crown prince Li Jiancheng, there would probably be many people who responded, and insisted on letting Li Shimin go, and promised him that after the counter-rebellion returned, he would make him crown prince, demote Li Jiancheng to the king of Shu, and through bargaining to get the desired promise from Li Yuan's mouth, Li Shimin set out to put down the rebellion. This is the matter of June 26.
That night, Li Yuan, worried that if it was difficult to make it, it would be difficult to deal with at the Renzhi Palace at night, so he left the Renzhi Palace and went to camp outside the mountain, and returned the next day during the day.
After Li Shimin set out, Li Yuanji and his concubines kept interceding with Li Jiancheng, and the chancellor Feng Lun also relieved him, but li Yuan changed his mind, making him realize that Li Jiancheng's act of instructing people to transport armor was just an ordinary violation of the law and had no motive for rebellion, and further realized that this ordinary illegal act was seriously a rebellion that could be eliminated politically in one fell swoop, and in order to cut off the possibility that Li Shimin would take the opportunity to further ghost in the beijing division, Li Yuandang would even release Li Jiancheng back to Chang'an. Continue to hold the town.
▲ In the TV series "The Rule of Zhenguan", the crown prince Li Jiancheng listened to the advice of his staff and lightly asked Li Yuan to plead his guilt
After Yang Wengan was killed and Yuwen Ying was captured, on the one hand, li Yuan, who believed that Li Shimin was behind it, but lacked relevant evidence, on the one hand, in order to explain (after all, Li Jiancheng's unauthorized delivery of armor to local officers was illegal), on the other hand, in order to warn Li Shimin, he (at the same time) characterized the nature of the matter as a brotherly discord, and blamed it on Yun Wang Jue in the Eastern Palace, Wei Ting, and The Tiance Fu soldier Cao Cao joined the army du yan, and exiled all three. (Among them, the first two were officials of Li Jiancheng's Eastern Palace, and Du Yan was a subordinate official of Li Shimin's Tiance Mansion))
Li Shimin was not convinced by this, but at this time he already knew that his plot had been discovered by Li Yuan, and in order to get out of it as soon as possible, he did not object to this seemingly unfair punishment of himself, and only privately sent someone to send Du Yan three hundred and two gold. (For this matter, see the Old Book of Tang and the New Book of Tang in the Biography of Du Yan, in which the former says that Li Shimin "knows that drowning is not a crime, and the latter says that Li Shimin "knows his slander.") ）
After Li Shimin led his army into Ningzhou, Yang Wengan's troops all collapsed. On July 5, Yang Wengan was killed by his own men, and Yuwen Ying was captured by Li Shimin and beheaded after being sent to Chang'an to be questioned by Li Yuan.
The above is the process of yang Wengan's incident.
▲ In the TV series "The Rule of Zhenguan", Li Shimin in the Yang Wengan incident
illustrate:
Except for the red character part, the rest of the text is all copied from the relevant content of the "Yang Wengan Incident (I)", that is to say, it is a copy of the relevant part of the Zizhi Tongjian as the basis, and the historical records of the Yang Wengan Incident supplemented by the Old Book of Tang and the New Book of Tang.
From this, we can find that such a supplement to the relevant content of the Yang Wengan Incident that occurred under the table is very consistent with the record of the contents of the Yang Wengan Incident on the table in the historical records, and can be justified by itself, and can be explained relatively perfectly in both reason and fact. Of course, the only problem remains, that is, for the content under such a table, we cannot find enough relevant historical materials to prove it beyond doubt.
But in this article, this hypothesis will still be taken as the truth, not only for the reasons already mentioned above and here, but also because only such a hypothesis, and only on this basis, can we explain the sharp turn of events in Li Shimin's subsequent situation.
Attached: Li Shimin's Yang Wengan Incident
As mentioned earlier, although Li Shimin once had a glorious scenery and showed an aggressive trend in this battle for the crown prince, he never posed a fundamental threat to Li Jiancheng's position as crown prince. "Spring River Plumbing Duck Prophet", as a party, Li Shimin naturally has a personal feeling for this.
At this time, Li Shimin, because of the basic completion of the unification war of the Li-Tang Dynasty, had little opportunity to continue to maintain his superficial offensive posture through military achievements, and internally because of Li Yuan's natural and increasingly balanced alliance with Li Jiancheng, he was increasingly deprived of the possibility of reversing qiankun by changing the attitude of his father, the supreme decision-maker.
Under such circumstances, Li Jiancheng's ordinary violation gave Li Shimin, who was an outstanding military expert, a great opportunity. Through the bribery of Erzhu Huan and Qiao Gongshan, Du Fengju, and Yu Wenying, he tried to design the nature of the incident from Li Jiancheng's ordinary violation to Li Jiancheng's iron case of rebellion—what this design would mean if it succeeded needless to say.
Because of the reaction of Li Yuanji and others, especially Feng Lun, from the reaction of Li Shimin after succeeding to the throne after learning of Feng Lun's position in this incident, it can be seen that he played an important and even crucial role in the dissolution of Li Yuan' camp, and Li Shimin's design ultimately failed.
▲ In the TV series "The Rule of Zhenguan", after the Yang Wengan incident, Li Yuanji tried his best to persuade Li Yuan
As far as the outcome of the Yang Wengan Incident was concerned, Li Shimin's losses were not particularly serious, at least not as serious as Li Jiancheng's, because Du Yan's weight in the Qin Palace was far from being comparable to that of Wang Jue and Wei Ting in the Eastern Palace. But in fact, this is not the case: soon, Li Shimin's situation will take a sharp turn for the worse.
Note: All images in this article are from the Internet.
This article is written by sbsh