The four founding emperors of the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the Song Dynasty, the Qi Liang, and the Chen Dynasty were very distinctive, basically the peak of their respective dynasties. So if you compare these four vertically, is there a difference between them? Without presumptuousness, let's start with the background of their respective times and see how their respective achievements are.
I. Liu Yu, Emperor Wu of the Song Dynasty: The first person of the Southern Dynasty who swallowed like a tiger
During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the most exquisite origins were paid attention to, and the warriors in the north and south basically influenced the political situation of the Eastern Jin Dynasty. The influence of the Langya wang clan even extended to the Liang Dynasty.
However, the origins of the four founding emperors of the Southern Dynasty were all southern cold people. Among them, the experience of Liu Yu, the Emperor of the Song Dynasty, is the most tortuous and representative, so Liu Yu, whether it is realm, achievement, and heart, can be regarded as the leader among the three martial arts and one high in the Southern Dynasty.
In his early years, Liu Yu was a junior officer of the Northern Jin Dynasty Army, and in the battle to quell the Sun En's uprising, he also had to charge with a long knife in his hand, which was a completely desperate role. At that time, the Eastern Jin Dynasty was still a world dominated by the warrior clan, and low-level officers similar to Liu Yu had no possibility of promotion.
At the end of the Jin Dynasty, infighting broke out among the Shi clan, and Huan Xuan, the last representative of the Huan clan, risked the world's great disobedience, openly usurped power by force, and established a pseudo-Chu regime, which aroused the public indignation of the world.
However, at this time, several large clans in the current axis had long lost the ability to save the political situation, and although Wang Xiezhu was in a high position, there was no room for armed confrontation. At this time, Liu Yu contacted the subordinate officers of the former Beifu Army at Jingkou, which had been dismantled at this time, and he Wu ji, Tan Shao, Xie Han, and others sent troops to counterattack Huan Xuan and stand out in the difficult situation.
Defeating Huan Xuan and re-establishing the Jinmuro Shrine was the real beginning of Liu Yu's career. After that, he went all the way up and gradually became the pillar of the Jin Dynasty's armed forces, and the remnants of the Beifu Army were also transferred from Liu Gaozhi's hands to Liu Yu's command. Under the situation that the clans of the various families were gradually de-armed, Liu Yuzhi's position could no longer be challenged.
After Liu Yu rebuilt the Northern Prefecture Army and reorganized his military strength, he seized the opportunity of the dissolution of the various states at the end of the Sixteen Kingdoms to seize the opportunity to go north, swallowing Murong's Southern Yan and Yao's Later Qin, and expanding his territory to Guanzhong and Shandong. At the same time, the internal complete elimination of Sun Enluxun and Xu Daofu and other rebel armies, and the western side of the Shu regime, which was the largest era for the Eastern Jin Dynasty and the Southern Dynasty, were the largest era for the territory of the Eastern Jin Dynasty and the Southern Dynasty.
Since the confrontation between the Eastern Jin Dynasty and the Northern Wuhu, although there has been no shortage of opportunities for more than a hundred years, such as the confrontation between Ran Wei and Former Yan, the collapse of Former Qin and other opportunities, they can take the opportunity of the Northern Expedition to restore the Central Plains. However, when the axis of the Wang Yu Huan Xie four high-ranking Hao clan, neither Liu Yu's courage, nor the restoration of the original heart of the Central Plains, so that the Rong cha moved repeatedly, but lacked confidence, never achieved such a record as Liu Yu's Northern Expedition.
Liu Yu's superiority lies in his courage. Whether it is to raise an army against Huan Xuan or to fight against a strong enemy in the north, it is all agreed to move, not afraid of difficulties, so it can repeatedly play the momentum of the strong in the weak.
The second lies in the high vision. The Great Noble Clans of the Eastern Jin Dynasty jointly ruled the power, but none of them had the ability to suppress the generations and dominate the top, because they did not get rid of the political situation of the Eastern Jin Dynasty itself and were busy with infighting. Even Huan Wen's generation only regarded the Northern Expedition as a political achievement of infighting, and did not really participate in the Northern Expedition War, but was repeatedly defeated in battles. Only Liu Yu really regarded the Northern Expedition as a cause, and with the strength of the Northern Expedition, he completely overpowered the political influence of the Jiang zuoshi clan, and this vision was actually supported by courage.
The third is that the strain is extraordinary. Liu Yu fought all his life, but the key wars were fought differently. Fighting Huan Xuan was a hasty uprising, purely relying on bravery and courage to win the battle; fighting the Southern Yan with infantry to attack the enemy country from afar, and using the cavalry of the Ke Murong clan in the Jedi; fighting the Northern Wei, suddenly using the hands of the heavens, and torturing the Northern Wei cavalry with the blood of the moon, and achieving an irreproducible myth in the history of medieval tactics; the Northern Expedition after the Qin Dynasty adopted a multi-way parallel advance and a sharp-edge raid strategy, and fought a large battle that was unique in the Southern Dynasty; Pingchen Shu, the three routes of internal and external Zhongshui played a lost fist, and the two levels of the strategic campaign were completely crushed. The emperors of the Southern Dynasty, He once had such a level.
Second, Emperor Xiao Daocheng of Qigao: The founding emperor who was born insufficient
Although Xiao Daocheng came from the Western Han Dynasty after Xiao He, he was actually a fake family tree created by himself, he was from the Xiao clan of Nanlanling, and he was also a proper Southern Han clan.
Let's briefly review Xiao Daocheng's path to founding the country. Xiao Dao was a middle- and lower-ranking officer of Liu Song, who had held a military position in Qingxu Fangzhen for many years, and did not have much ability and reputation.
In the process of deposing the emperor and the Ming emperor before the Song Dynasty, the Song Ming Emperor seized the throne by force, and a serious civil war broke out with Liu Zixun, the prince of Jin'an, the son of Emperor Xiaowu of Song, and the Song Ming Emperor started with Fang Zhen, and there was no reliable support for the powerful faction in the whole country, so he had to use the inferior Xiao Daocheng to let him lead an army to suppress Liu Zixun's rebellion.
Xiao Daocheng won successive victories with weak troops in this civil war, and finally flattened Liu Zixun's forces and became the most reliable military general of the Song Ming Emperor. Later, Emperor Ming of Song intended to go north to seize the old land of Qingxu, but was defeated, and Xiao Daocheng was reused by virtue of his superior military ability, leading his troops to resist Northern Wei along the Huai River. The Qingxu armed forces, which were originally in Huaibei, moved south one after another, and gradually gathered around Xiao Daocheng. Under Xiao Daocheng's deliberate acceptance, a loose military and political group gradually formed.
Emperor Ming of Song was very jealous of Xiao Daocheng's growing power, and once wanted to kill Xiao Daocheng, but until his death, he hesitated to do so, probably for fear of provoking a rebellion. After Emperor Ming's death, his son Emperor Fu was incapacitated and incompetent, and was eventually attacked and killed by Xiao Daocheng in a coup d'état, and the Song Dynasty was killed.
Xiao Daocheng died after only two years as emperor. Such a short period of time left him without time to deal with a number of issues that were fundamental to the country. The biggest problem of the Southern Dynasty at the end of the Song Dynasty and the beginning of the Qi Dynasty was the strong factional force, and the warriors in the Yong and Jing areas on the northwest border had always had the tradition of following the rebellion of the king of the clan, forming their own lineage, and quite diverging from the central government. The Qingxu Armed Group in Huaibei is the birthplace of Xiao Daocheng, and it is also a family of its own. The indigenous power of Emperor Jiang Zuoyi was a traditional force in the left and right centers. Xiao Daocheng's ascension to the throne was short, and he had no determination or strategy to sort out the various forces, even if it was the dispute between his eldest son Xiao Zhao and his second son Xiao Ling for the throne, he could not make up his mind, and the weakness of the emperor's charm was evident.
Xiao Daocheng was the weakest of the Southern Dynasty emperors. There are two reasons for this, one is the most unremarkable road to nation-building, with the Taifu mutiny coming to power, and then quelling several small-scale rebellions, with almost no threatening challenges. Second, the reign of the emperor was extremely short, and it did not have any impact on Southern Qi, nor did it solve the political problems that restricted the political situation of the Southern Dynasty.
To sum up, the situation at the end of the Song Dynasty was chaotic, and naturally there would be a powerful faction to clean up the chaos, and Xiao Daocheng was lucky enough to come to power at the right time, on the challenge, on the difficulty of getting the throne, on the personal charm, he was the lowest of the four founding emperors of the Southern Dynasty.
Third, Emperor Xiao Yan of Liangwu: A good hand of cards is played poorly
The life of Emperor Xiao Yan of Liangwu is the most legendary.
His family's Xiao family is the same as Xiao Dao's cost, but it is far away.
Xiao Yan was a man of great popularity, a literary talent and martial arts, and was a first-class figure in the last years of Southern Qi. Xiao Yan was one of the eight friends of Xiao Ziliang's Western Residence, the King of Jinling, and sang and expounded the scriptures with the top literati at that time, which was a temporary prosperity.
Compared with Liu Yu, Xiao Yan's temperament is not comparable, and his martial arts may be inferior, but his literary talent, political strategy, and vision are more superior than Liu Yu's.
Xiao Yan took charge of Yongzhou at the end of Southern Qi, and both he and his brother Xiao Yi were local power factions. Emperor Qi's Emperor Xiao Baoxuan killed the powerful factions everywhere, Xiao Yi was unfortunately killed, Xiao Yan, with thousands of people in Yongzhou, resolutely rebelled against Qi, and after several major battles, Dike Jingzhou, Yingzhou, Jiangzhou and Yangzhou defeated the Qi Dynasty army and seized the world, which was more difficult than Xiao Daocheng's Taifu mutiny.
However, Xiao Yan's superiority is not only reflected in the founding process of the country.
After the middle of the Liu Song Dynasty, the Northern Wei gradually rose, the Southern Dynasty gradually lost the land of Henan and Huaibei, and the Shandong Peninsula was also lost. At the end of the Song Dynasty and the Southern Qi, there were almost no victories against the Northern Wei. This military decline continued until the early years of the Liang Dynasty, when Northern Wei took advantage of the unstable foothold of Southern Liang to launch an all-out attack on Yizhou, Jingzhou, and Qingxu, and for a time the Liang Dynasty was full of alarms on the border of thousands of miles from east to west, and the newly born Liang Dynasty was almost extinguished by Northern Wei.
At the critical moment, Emperor Wu of Liang, with extraordinary strategy, used famous generals such as Cao Jingzong, Wei Rui, and Ma Xianbay, and adopted a strategic arrangement with Lianghuai as the focus and Jing Yi as a supplement, to launch a local counterattack against Northern Wei. The Northern Wei Dynasty's seemingly long, mighty offensive was quickly disrupted by the Targeted Counterattack of the Liang Dynasty. In order to cope with the strong counterattack of the Liang Dynasty, the Northern Wei suspended the attacks on Yizhou and Jingzhou, and transferred the main force to the Huai River line to attack the Liang army.
Although the Liang Dynasty once lost Shouyang due to lack of preparation, the Liang Dynasty won successive brilliant victories at the Battle of Hefei and the Battle of Zhongli, which not only stabilized the defense line, but also greatly dealt a blow to the arrogant southward march of the Wei army since the end of the Song Dynasty. Since then, the situation in the north and south has stabilized.
We cannot harshly ask Emperor Liangwu to carry out the Northern Expedition like Emperor Wu of Song, after all, the two emperors faced different enemies. During Liu Yu's time, there were many northern states, and Northern Wei, Later Qin, Great Xia, and Southern Yan balanced each other and became enemies of each other, and the northern power was greatly weakened. Therefore, Liu Yu was able to break through each of them, and even broke through the nations. By the time of Emperor Wu of Liang, Northern Wei had unified the north for many years, and after several major wars with Liu Song, not only consolidated the land of Henan, but also explored the combat routines of the southern army in frequent wars, was familiar with the route of the southward advance, and was familiar with the fortress groups and defensive postures in various campaign directions in the south. What is even more frightening is that the Northern Wei Empire has become a highly feudal mature empire after Sinicization, with a strong national defense mobilization ability and military support system, and its strength far exceeds that of southern Yan and Later Qin, and it is difficult to quickly defeat northern Wei, even if Liu Yu is reborn.
However, Emperor Wu of Liang was still in the impossible, always strategizing and never forgetting the Northern Expedition. Taking advantage of the Northern Wei Six Towns Uprising and the split between Eastern and Western Wei, he sent troops to the Northern Expedition many times, especially in the Battle of Chen Qingzhi's Northern Expedition, and the Liang army actually took advantage of the falsehood to break into Luoyang and break the Northern Dynasty into a cold sweat, which was also quite rare.
This was the first half of Emperor Wu of Liang's reign, which was basically based on victory.
However, we cannot ignore his loss.
Xiao Yan was the second-longest-lived emperor in Chinese history, living to be 86 years old. In the more than ten years after Chen Qingzhi's Northern Expedition, he had entered the age of ancient rarity, his health was weakened, his energy was greatly reduced, and he had lost his due political acumen for the government of his own country, the changes in the political situation in the north, and the changes in the military situation.
He devoted excessive energy to correcting the relationship between Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Confucianism, and vigorously promoted Buddhism, causing ideological confusion. He also made the mistake of overcorrection in the policy of the clan. Both generations of Song and Qi carried out inhumane massacres, and Emperor Wu of Liang punished the weak clan of Southern Qi and gave great tolerance and preferential treatment to the sons of Xiao Liangzong, not only giving Xiao's sons a huge amount of wealth, but also regaining the old way of the king of the clan in charge of the army, so that his sons, grandsons, and nephews successively went to Jingzhou, Yizhou, Yongzhou and other major states to serve as assassins, and took charge of the military and political power of a prefecture, and the fact that the king of the clan supported the army against the central government in the Liu Song dynasty had taken shape.
The most unfortunate thing is that Emperor Wu of Liang also made a mistake in the issue of heirs. After the death of his eldest son Xiao Tong, he was afraid that the eldest grandson would cause chaos among his older sons, so he abandoned the concubine system and made his third son, King Jin'an, crown prince. This move directly led to the dissatisfaction of the eldest grandsons and youngest sons, who all had ambitions for the throne. This problem was mixed with the issue of the king of the clan commanding the army, and became the bane of the division of the country at the end of Liang.
After the outbreak of Hou Jing's rebellion in Eastern Wei, Emperor Wu of Liang mistakenly believed that this would be another good opportunity for the Northern Expedition, and he sent Xiao Yuanming to northern Hanshan while accepting Hou Jing's surrender.
In fact, at the time of Hou Jing's rebellion, the Eastern Wei national strength was at its peak, and the Eastern Wei army was extremely strong in combat, and it was undoubtedly a mistake to carry out the Northern Expedition at such a time. Xiao Yuanming was a clumsy boy and was not suitable for the position of commander, and as a result, Liang Jun suffered a fierce defeat at Hanshan. Stimulated by this battle, Hou Jing had the ambition to replace the Liang Dynasty, and he launched a rebellion with only 800 remnants of his troops, causing a chaos that lasted for four or five years and caused tragic population losses. Both Emperor Wu of Liang's father and son were captured by Hou Jing at Jiankangtai City, and this sudden defeat also completely triggered the internal unrest of the Liang Dynasty.
Before Emperor Wu of Liang was captured, he said that he had gained it and lost it, and he hated it.
The occurrence of Hou Jing's rebellion could have been avoided, and in just a few years, Emperor Wu of Liang might have been able to die, and the history books would surely leave the back of a relatively clear and relatively powerful emperor, just like Emperor Wu of Han and Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty. Unfortunately, you can't live because of your own sins.
Chen Baxian, Emperor Wu of Chen: The most difficult founding lord
Chen Ba was first a native of Jiangdong and a military general.
Compared with the previous ones, he came from a lower background and had a more difficult start-up process.
Chen Baxian had been wandering among low-ranking officers in his early years. During the rebellion of Hou Jing at the end of Liang, he ushered in an opportunity. He insisted on holding up the political banner of leading troops and serving the king, cracked down on the separatist forces in Guangzhou, and won the respect of all parties.
Chen Baxian was extremely open-minded and good at winning talents from the hostile camp and collecting them for his own use. His generals Hou Andu, Hou Yao, Zhang Zhaoda, and others were all captive generals.
Chen Baxian gradually rose in the rebellion in the Lingnan Rebellion at the end of Liang, accumulating an army of about 50,000 people, and then he went north to rescue the city of Jiankang, which was occupied by Hou Jing, and declared that he accepted the leadership of Emperor Yuan of Liang in Jiangling. This act of talking about the overall situation won him greater prestige, and also gradually stepped onto the political commanding heights in the struggle for the end of Liang.
Chen Baxian and the Liang general Wang Shengquan joined forces to eliminate Hou Jing and restore the imperial city of Jiankang, and his prestige reached its peak. At this time, the liang yuan emperor's regime in Jiangling was destroyed by western Wei, and Wang Shengquan tried to accept Xiao Yuanming, who had been sent back by Northern Qi, and deposed the liang jing emperor who had originally supported him, which annoyed Chen Baxian, who raised troops to attack and kill Wang Shengxian, insisted on supporting Emperor Jing of Liang as the main force, and carried out a resolute military counterattack against Northern Qi.
The hardened Chen Baxian finally and fortunately repelled the Northern Qi army and horses and established the Chen Dynasty. But the situation he faces is too difficult. At that time, because of Hou Jing's rebellion, the Western Wei and Northern Qi countries in the north took advantage of the fire and looting, and the Chen Dynasty's national defense line had retreated to the Yangtze River, and the natural danger was shared with the enemy. The defensive situation was very unfavorable, and the Northern Army threatened along the river at every turn. Yizhou in the west was also seized by Western Wei.
There were also serious divisions within the Southern Dynasty. Wang Lin, the former general of the Liang Dynasty, occupied nearly half of the territory west of Jiangxia, and repeatedly sent troops down the river to the east in an attempt to duel with the Chen Dynasty.
While painstakingly supporting the Yangtze River defense line, Chen Baxian sent troops to fight Wang Lin in a decisive battle, and the danger of the national situation seriously tested Chen Baxian's ability and confidence.
However, under such circumstances, Chen Baxian once again thwarted the southern expedition of The Northern Qi's 100,000-strong army, and when the enemy army was already approaching Jiankang City, he staged an earth-shattering reversal, eliminating nearly 100,000 Northern Qi troops, so that the Northern Dynasty did not dare to easily go south. Wang Lin in the west was also unable to advance under the blows of Chen Jun, and the impetuous Wang Lin was finally defeated by Chen Jun in the Battle of Wuhu, and half of the Southern Dynasty finally recovered into a complete territory in the hands of Chen Baxian after more than 10 years of fierce civil war.
Chen Baxian became emperor for only more than two years, from the time he started his army to go north, to the establishment of the Chen Dynasty, until his death, it can be said that he has been in a very severe situation, he is facing enemies stronger than one, and he has never gained an advantage in strength. Although Chen Baxian did not win the Northern Expedition of Emperor Wu of Song and the Battle of Zhong Li of Liang Dynasty, his spirit of running east and west and never saying defeat was exclusive, not to mention more than the founding kings of the first three dynasties.