Battle: "Decapitation Operation" to Cut the Two Males
In July of the third year of Wu De (620 AD), Li Shimin, the King of Qin, led more than 100,000 people from Tongguandong, marched separately, and quickly formed a siege of The Luoyang Wang Shichong clique.
Due to Wang Shichong's cruelty and inhumanity, the small court in Luoyang was already rebellious and disintegrated. Gongzhou County ordered Tang Gang and Deng Prefecture Haojie to surrender to the Tang Dynasty one after another, and The xianzhou governor Tian Zhan appointed by Wang Shichong led the twenty-five prefectures to descend to the Tang, while the Weizhou Assassin Shi Derui led the seven prefectures of Qi, Xia, Chen, and Sui to the Tang. In a hurry, Wang Shichong personally led Wan Qi and Li Shimin to fight at Mount Yao, but the result was a major defeat, and Wang Shichong fled back alone. At this point, the time was ripe for a general attack on Luoyang.
Soon, Li Shimin commanded various Tang armies to launch an attack on Luoyang Palace, and Wang Shichong also relied on Luoyang's strong city to resist to the death. Although the Tang army was well-equipped, it was still "attacking on all sides and working day and night" and was still "not conquering for more than ten years", ("Zizhi Tongjian Tang JiSI") The attack and defense of both sides entered an unprecedentedly fierce white-hot stage.
At this critical juncture of critical survival, Wang Shichong continued to resist while asking for help from Dou Jiande, who had divided Hebei. Dou Jiande weighed the pros and cons and immediately "promised to help." He immediately personally led 100,000 elite troops and rushed south to rescue Luoyang. Wang Shichong was overjoyed to hear the news, and sent his younger brother Xuzhou Xingtai Wang Shijie to join Dou Jiande and join forces with more than 100,000 troops, claiming that 300,000 Tun army was east of the Tiger Prison to confront the Tang army.
Li Shimin saw that although Dou Jiande had a large number of people, he fought on the road and had poor reaction ability, so he seized the fighter and led the elite Xuanjia Army to launch a "decapitation operation" against Dou Jiande. On May 1, Li Shimin personally led the main cavalry force to attack Dou Jiande's camp, rushing left and right, and the Xia army was in chaos. At the same time, Li Shimin ordered Cheng Zhijie, Qin Shubao, Yuwen Xin, and others to directly insert themselves behind the enemy and display the banner of the Tang army. When the generals of the Xia Army saw Tang Qi, they thought that the rear road had been cut off by the Tang Army, so the entire line collapsed. At this time, Dou Jiande was discussing military information with the generals, and he was caught off guard by some resistance and was captured by Li Shimin.
In this way, dou jiande, the leader of the hehehei rebel army, together with more than 50,000 officers and men of the Xia army who surrendered one after another, became a prisoner of Li Shimin's subordinates.
At the head of Luoyang City, Wang Shichong looked at Dou Jiande, who was tied up under the city, and wept in contrast, knowing that the hope of breaking the siege had been completely shattered. Seeing that the general trend had gone, and receiving Li Shimin's promise of "xu chen not dying", he could only surrender Kaesong. Li Shimin led the Tang army and finally entered the eastern capital Luoyang, which also marked a large area of Henan and Hebei, officially assigned to the territory of the Tang Dynasty.
Portrait of Li Shimin
Bottom line: Self-made tyrant
After Wang Shichong and Dou Jiande were escorted to Chang'an, Li Yuan, the emperor of Tang Gaozu, counted Wang Shichong's crimes and exiled Wang Shichong's family to Shudi. However, Wang Shichong was killed on the way by the Enemy Dingzhou Assassin Shi Dugu Xiu. As for Dou Jiande, Li Yuan was not so polite, and directly ordered the beheading in Chang'an, thus ending Dou Jiande's forty-nine-year-old life.
Li Yuan, who was full of pride, did not expect that the relatively simple disposal of Dou Jiande would indirectly open up the chaos of the Tang Dynasty for nearly three hundred years.
Analyzing dou Jiande's failure process, it is not difficult to find that the Tang army was able to quickly carry out "beheading", in addition to Li Shimin's courage and courage to take the first rank of general in the ten thousand armies, there was also an element of luck.
Among the two major separatist forces in Henan and Hebei, although Wang Shichong occupied the control of the Luoyang regime, he relied on more than 20,000 Jianghuai jin pawns, belonging to the southern forces living in the Central Plains, and the power base was not stable. In order to consolidate his rule, Wang Shichong implemented a reign of terror in his sphere of influence, especially in the city of Luoyang, guangxing prison, strictly ordering one person to flee, the whole family to be killed, and even the families of the generals who went out on the expedition were imprisoned to prevent the generals from defecting to the enemy, but the result was that the people's hearts were lost and the people rebelled. This also became a major reason for Wang Shichong's rapid defeat.
In contrast, Dou Jiande was a native of Hebei, known for his faithfulness and righteousness, and finally fell into the grass and high chicken berth, which was quite a bit of the meaning of the good man who ruled Liangshan in the later Song Dynasty, so his prestige was quite high among the heroes of Hebei. In a series of battles with the Sui Dynasty, he also recruited talents, bought people's hearts, ate whale swallows, and smashed a loyal army that obeyed his orders and became an important foundation for ruling Hebei. Shi Zai "Jiande broke through every pingcheng line, obtained the wealth, and scattered the generals, and took nothing", (Old Book of Tang, Dou Jiande Biography) Dou Jiande did not like extravagance, eating only vegetables and coarse rice at each meal, and using only a dozen concubines. Thousands of palace women of the Sui Dynasty who had been wiped out of Yu Culture and later were also all dismissed.
It is worth mentioning that at this time, even the later victor Tang Gaozu Li Yuan had long been addicted to the sound and color of dogs and horses. Even the concubine's family can rely on Li Yuan's favor and the meritorious group to quarrel. And Li Yuan's sons also formed an intricate relationship of interests with the harem concubines, which to a certain extent played a role in fueling the later changes in Xuanwumen. In contrast, among the heroes of the late Sui and early Tang dynasties, Dou Jiande's morally perfect image is not only unique, but also a handful. As a result, in Hebei, "the officials of the counties and counties should not be subject to the government", from the title of king to the establishment of the government, Dou Jiande was also step by step and smooth.
Therefore, the Wang Shichong regime, which has lost the hearts of the people, can kill its leader. However, if Dou Jiande was also killed directly, it might have the adverse consequences of pulling the whole body together in the whole of Hebei.
However, Li Yuan, the emperor of Tang Gaozu, was obviously blinded by Li Shimin's record in capturing Dou Jiande in the first battle, underestimated the potential strength and willingness of the Dou Jiande clique, and not only sentenced Dou Jiande to death and beheaded him, but also forcibly recruited Fan Yuan, Dong Kangmai, Cao Zhan, Gao Gaoxian, Wang Xiaohu and other Dou Jiande generals to Chang'an with a single order, which made these generals terrified. They both lamented, "My subordinates are all favored by the King of Xia, and if I do not avenge them now, I will not be able to see the people of the world!" (Zizhi Tongjian Tang Ji V) Fearing an accident after entering Chang'an, he decided to re-ensuite.
Statue of Dou Jiande
Rebellion: The terrible price of frivolity
Li Yuan soon paid a heavy price for his frivolous behavior. In July of that year, Dou Jiande's generals found Liu Heimin, the Duke of Handong, who was first under Wang Shichong and then surrendered to Dou Jiande, and asked him to take the lead and formally raise an army to rebel.
Li Yuan hurriedly sent three thousand horsemen from Guanzhong to help, and ordered the general Qin Wutong stationed in Puzhou, Li Xuantong, the governor of Dingzhou, and Luo Yi, the governor of Youzhou, to lead a joint campaign against Liu Heimin. Liu Heimin's offensive was even more fierce, and within a month of his army, he captured the important town of Liting and captured the Tang Tun wei general Wang Xingmin. A few days later, The tang governor of Yanzhou and the former Wang Shichong responded to the rebellion of Xu Yuanlang, imprisoned the Tang general Sheng Yanshi, and was appointed by Liu Heimin as the marshal of Daxingtai.
At this point, the eight prefectures of Haoqiang, Such as Yan, Yun, Chen, Qi, Yi, Luo, Cao, and Dai, and Dou Jiande's old departments all raised troops to respond, and the situation became more and more eroded. Liu Heimin "greatly encouraged the army", and immediately attacked many prefectures and counties in Hebei, echoing gao kaidao and the Turks who rebelled against the Tang dynasty and the self-reliant governor of Weizhou, and the prefectures of Heng, Ding, You, and Yi in northern Hebei were also "salty".
In only half a year, Liu Heimin called himself the King of Handong and "restored the old realm of Jiande". According to historical records, Liu Heimin "managed to administer, learned from Jiande, and bravely overcame the battle" (Zizhi Tongjian Tang JiLIU) A Hebei regime that was more difficult to deal with than Dou Jiande appeared in front of the Li Tang Dynasty.
After the defeat of Hebei, Li Yuan, the emperor of Tang Gaozu, was forced to order Li Shimin the Prince of Qin and Li Yuanji the Prince of Qi to lead an army to conquest. On the eighth day of the first month of the fifth year of Wu De, Li Shimin led an army to arrive in Yuejia. Liu Hei min heard the news, gave up Xiangzhou, and surrendered to Huanzhou. Li Shimin and Liu Heimin fought repeatedly over Puzhou and Shuishui for more than 60 days, during which Li Shimin's brave general Luo Shixin was killed by Liu Heimin and suffered heavy losses. In the end, Li Shimin ordered the Tang army to dig the embankment, and the water surged forward, only to drown thousands of Liu Heimin's troops and take advantage of the situation to defeat them. Liu Heimin fled to the Turks with only Fan Yuan and more than two hundred other horses, so "Shandong Ping, the King of Qin also returned."
However, it was not long before Liu Heimin made a comeback with the support of the Turks, so his generals Cao Zhan, Dong Kangmai, and others raised troops to rebel and responded in groups. Unlike the previous time, the Turkic Jieli Khan led hundreds of thousands of elite horsemen to the south, invaded Hezhou and Wonju in a large-scale manner, posing a threat to the flanks of the Tang army, "from Jiexiu to Jinzhou, hundreds of miles, filling the valley." Liu Heimin took the opportunity to go south, lianke Yingzhou, Beizhou, Jizhou and other places, Li Yuan had to face the Turks and beg for peace, on the other hand, he sent Li Daoxuan, the king of Huaiyang, and Shi Wanbao, the former duke of Huaiyang, to recruit Liu Heimin, but the result was that "Wang Shi was defeated, Daoxuan died in battle, and Wanbao fled on light horseback." (Old Book of Tang, Biography of Liu Heimin) For a time, "the States of Hebei rebelled and fell to Hei min".
Hebei Prefecture changed hands again, and Li Yuan hurriedly sent Li Yuanji, the King of Qi, to lead an army to quell the rebellion, and as a result, Li Yuanji was afraid that Liu Hei was in a big position and "stayed late and could not advance", so Li Yuan had no choice but to send the crown prince Li Jiancheng to replace Li Yuanji as the commander of the Tang army.
Li Jiancheng's overseers attacked, and finally defeated Liu Heimin at Guantao, and later won a victory at YongjiQu, and in the end, Liu Heimin's own appointment of RaoZhou's assassin Zhuge Dewei counterattacked and tied Liu Heimin to Li Jiancheng. Liu Heimin and his brother Liu Shishan were beheaded at Huanzhou, and Hebei was finally pacified.
Portrait of Liu Heimin
Roots: The profound displacement of the historical center of gravity
In the process of the Tang Dynasty cutting off the masses and unifying the world, although there were also cases of Li Mi, Fu Gongruo and others surrendering and rebelling, but like Hebei, Dou Jiande and Liu Heimin were divided twice, and the three extraordinary events in Hebei that changed hands were the first time. Li Jiancheng, Li Shimin, and Li Yuanji, the three most talented sons of Li Yuan, each led an army to recruit the same object, which was even more unprecedented in the history of the founding of the Tang Dynasty. The complexity of the situation in Hebei, the strength of its strength, and the intensity of its resistance can be seen from this.
Why is that? The author believes that this is inseparable from the historical background of the Sui, Tang, and Yi Dynasties. After the Sui Dynasty unified the world, emperor Wen and Emperor Jue attached great importance to the management of the eastern region represented by Henan in Hebei In order to bridge the regional divide caused by hundreds of years of division. In particular, the construction of the Eastern Capital, and the construction of Huge granaries such as Luokou and Xingluo around Luoyang, laid a solid foundation for the increase of population and the recovery of the economy. Emperor Wen of Sui also sent his heavy minister Liu Yu to inspect "the fifty-two prefectures of Hebei, and more than 200 incompetent people were spared from the long officials, and the prefectures and counties were solemn, and they were not afraid." (Sui Shu Liu Yu Biography) Whenever there was a grain shortage in Guanzhong, Emperor Wen of Sui also personally led hundreds of thousands of officials and people to Luoyang to "eat".
The Sui Emperor even built the Grand Canal to transport supplies from the south to Luoyang and the surrounding areas, and the economic and cultural ties between the north and the south became increasingly close, and the status of the two rivers in the imperial map was also rising. Although from the Western Wei and Northern Zhou dynasties to the basis of Sui and Tang rule, the center of gravity of the Military Aristocracy of Guanlong was in Guanzhong and Chang'an, in the chaos at the end of the Sui Dynasty, it was not Liu Wuzhou, Xue Ju, Liang Shidu, Li Lu, and Li Yuan, who divided the northern and northwestern parts of the empire, but Yang Xuangan, Li Mi, Dou Jiande, Du Fuwei, and Fu Gongyuan who rose up in the east. In particular, Dou Jiande in Hebei, Li Miwagangjun in Henan, and Du Fuwei in Jianghuai became the "troika" that eventually toppling the foundation of the Sui Dynasty's rule.
In this sense, although the Li Tang Dynasty was able to go out of Tongguan and unify the world because of its possession of Guanzhong and Chang'an, this was only the result of the various forces in the east reaping the benefits after they were internally attrition. The Guanzhong region did not have the advantage of crushing the power of the eastern region. Various indications show that from the Two Rivers to Jianghuai, the entire eastern region has become a new war stage and historical center of gravity for the Sui and Tang Empires.
Another point that needs to be emphasized is that Hebei is still the key to the exchanges between the northern steppe peoples and the Central Plains. After the fall of the two Jin Dynasties, the Xiongnu, Xianbei, Turkic, Khitan and Xi ethnic groups flocked to Hebei, and the ethnic and cultural composition of Hebei became increasingly complex. In the last year of the Sui Dynasty, the Central Plains Dynasty declined, and the Turks and other foreign tribes took the Hebei region as a key infiltration area, and their strength grew rapidly. At this time, Shi Zai turks "controlled the strings and millions, rong di was strong, and ancient did not have it". (New Book of Tang, Turkic Biography) Under the support and influence of the Turks, the people of Hebei became increasingly fierce, which is also a major reason why the Tang Dynasty was unable to tame Hebei from Dou Jiande to Liu Heimin.
The improper handling of the Dou Jiande clique in Hebei and the subsequent misplaced policies caused a serious historical dilemma for the Tang Dynasty.
A direct and most damaging result is that the Tang Dynasty did not fully recognize the evolution trend of the historical trend, and continued to persistently implement the Guanzhong-based policy in the face of Hebei's fierce folk customs and complicated situation. Specifically, it is to implement the strategy of advancing from the east to the west, and emphasizing the inside and the outside.
The so-called internal emphasis on external lightness is to deploy nearly half of the troops of the more than 600 military governments in the country in Guanzhong to defend the security of the capital, while the Hebei region implements a passive conservative policy. The Tang Dynasty established the capital Chang'an, with Chang'an and Guanzhong as the core, surrounded by powerful ethnic groups such as the Western Turks, Uighurs, Tubo, and Nanzhao. In order to protect the security of the capital and expand the territory, the northwest naturally became the focus of the empire.com. From the early days of Emperor Taizong to Emperor Gaozong, in addition to the Tang army's attack on the Eastern Turks and the conquest of Goryeo, it was difficult to see the Tang Dynasty's strategic move towards the northeast frontier, and the empire used more human and material resources for the conquest of the northwest region.
The destruction of the Western Turks, the destruction of Gaochang, the submission of Tuguhun, and the containment of Tibetan expansion, a series of victories laid the foundation for the Tang Emperor's status as the "Heavenly Khan" from Northeast Asia to Central Asia. However, in the real center of gravity of the empire, the northeastern region represented by Hebei, the Tang Dynasty did not exert much force and its defenses were relatively weak. After the fall of the Eastern Turks, the Turks descended to a large number of households. In line with Huairou's original intention, Emperor Taizong of Tang "said that the lord Yan Boyu, Shuo Fangdi, from Youzhou belonged to lingzhou, and the four prefectures of Jianshun, You, Hua, and Chang were the governor's palaces... It was the Tuli Khan who made him the governor of Shunzhou and ordered his subordinates to lead his old ministry." (New Book of Tang and Turkic Biography)
Large numbers of Turkic and other ethnic minorities were relocated to central and northern Hebei. The Tang Dynasty originally hoped to educate its people and let them abandon nomadism and live an agricultural life, but the infiltration of a large number of Hu people intensified the Huization in Hebei region, and the Han style gradually disappeared, forming a people's style of fighting bravery and fierceness from top to bottom. Due to the collapse of the Juntian system and the prefectural military system, the armed forces that the central government of the Tang Dynasty were able to grasp were shrinking day by day, and it was becoming more and more difficult to cope with the complex ethnic situation in Hebei, so it had to rely more on the establishment of emissaries in Hebei to take charge of foreign defense. In this way, Fanyang and Pinglu, located in the north-central part of Hebei, rose to become two major military towns in the northeast of the empire, and their power was also increasing. From the emissaries to the grass-roots soldiers, there are also many Hu people.
With the decline of the central power of the Tang Dynasty, the feudal towns gradually evolved from pioneers and defenders of the empire's frontiers to threats and saboteurs of the empire's security. In the fourteenth year of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang (755 AD), An Lushan, who was also the envoy of the three towns of Fanyang, Hedong, and Pinglu, raised an army to rebel and led 150,000 troops of the Khitan, Xi, and Tongluo tribes to the south, opening the prelude to the Anshi Rebellion. After eight years of bitter fighting, the Tang Dynasty poured out the strength of the country and finally put down the rebellion, but since then the national strength has been exhausted and collapsed, and the advantages gained in the early period of the empire in the game of various ethnic groups in the northeast and northwest no longer exist - Tubo even once invaded the city of Chang'an, established a puppet emperor, and the face of the "Heavenly Khan" was crushed by foreign races.
Guanzhong and Chang'an, on the other hand, have changed politically and militarily from the empire's solid rear to the front line against the foreign races in the northwest; economically, with the increase of population and the lack of resources, they have changed from self-sufficiency to relying on canal supplies in the southeast region, becoming a heavy burden on the empire. After the Tang Dynasty, Guanzhong's strategic resources were exhausted, and Chang'an never became the capital of any dynasty again. The economic center and the center of gravity of the Central Plains Dynasty gradually shifted to the southeast with the development of the Grand Canal. Its main external threats also shifted from the Turks, Uighurs, and Tubo in the west to the Khitans, Mongols, and Jurchens in the northeast.
After the Anshi Rebellion was quelled, Hebei, the source of which was not returned to the control of the Tang Dynasty, was instead divided up by the rebel generals of An shi who were ostensibly submissive, becoming a state within a state that did not pay taxes and established itself as a king. The plague of Fanzhen recurred like an ulcer until the fall of the Tang Dynasty.
Schematic map of Hebei Fanzhen
Yu Xu: The tragic fate of cannibalism
The repeated wars against Dou Jiande and Liu Heimin's clique also brought about a by-product result, that is, they intensified the internal contradictions of the Li Tang Dynasty and directly contributed to the outbreak of the Xuanwumen Rebellion.
In the process of Li Tang Dynasty's Taiyuan dynasty, Dingding Guanzhong, and the elimination of Qunxiong, Li Jiancheng, Li Shimin, and Li Yuanji all had their own merits, but Li Shimin, the King of Qin, had the greatest merit. Li Yuan once promised Li Shimin: "If things are successful, then all the world will be caused by Ru, and Ru should be the prince." Although Li Shimin later stopped his resignation, with the expansion of power and the accumulation of merit, this promise undoubtedly aroused Li Shimin's ambition to seize the throne.
In the Battle of Tiger Prison, Li Shimin's two fierce enemies, Wang Shichong and Dou Jiande, were in the limelight for a while, which inevitably aroused the suspicion of Gaozu Li Yuan and crown prince Li Jiancheng.
Seeing that Liu Heimin, who had been driven to the Turks by his younger brother Li Shimin, had made a comeback, Wei Hui, who was still the crown prince washing horses at this time, persuaded Li Jiancheng: "The King of Qin has covered the world, and The Chinese and foreign countries have returned to their hearts, and His Highness has only been in the Eastern Palace as an elder, and has not made great contributions to subduing Hainei." Now that Liu Heimin had scattered and died, the number was less than 10,000, and if a large army came, it would definitely be able to be destroyed. His Highness should strive for the opportunity to lead the troops out on the expedition, seek fame, and at the same time marry Shandong Haojie, so that he can sit firmly in the position of prince. By the time it is, "The prince is please walk on top." In order to curb Li Shimin's merits and power, Li Yuan completely disregarded Li Shimin's previous efforts to recruit Liu Heimin and regarded Pingding Hebei as a weight for the crown prince to sit on the throne of power, so he agreed to Li Jiancheng's army to recruit Liu Heimin and won the final victory.
However, the two brothers, who have made great achievements in their respective achievements, are even more intolerant. Since then, the two sides have planted their own henchmen and secretly worked hard, and four years later, a earth-shattering change was staged at Xuanwu Gate. Li Shimin killed his older brother Li Jiancheng and younger brother Li Yuanji, becoming the final victor in the battle for the throne. The Xuanwumen Revolution was also the first evil case in the history of the Tang Dynasty, in fact declaring that the king of the domain could compete for the throne by force. Since then, palace coups have been repeated in the Tang Dynasty like maggots on the tarsal bone, until their demise.
According to historical records, until the five dynasties after the fall of the Tang Dynasty, there were still people in Hebei who paid tribute to Dou Jiande. In this way, Dou Jiande was consistent with the turmoil of the Tang Dynasty in the past three hundred years, and could not help but sigh with his descendants.