History of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms

Chapter 19: The Destruction of Xu Ze
There is no party outside the party, and the emperor's mentality is strong; there is no faction inside the party, and there are all kinds of strange things. Where there are people, there is politics. Of course, the Xu thieves are not monolithic.

Pang Xun claimed that he had 200,000 soldiers and horses. Of course, there was a lot of water in this number, but there were still tens of thousands of people. After all, Wang Hongli alone had 30,000 soldiers and horses.

Among them, they can be roughly divided into two parts: the Xuzhou direct line, that is, Pang Xun's followers before he openly rebelled, about a thousand people; in addition, those who were recruited by Pang Xun after the rebellion were generally regarded as another faction.

Among them, the more than 1,000 direct descendants of Xuzhou can be further divided into "Guilin Conglong Faction", "Silver Knife Old Department Faction" and "Heroes Faction". The Guilin Conglong Faction, that is, the 500 garrison soldiers who initially launched the mutiny, are Pang Xun's most staunch supporters, the core of the core, the direct descendants of the direct descendants, the sons of the sons... The representatives of this group of grandsons are the "Four Dogs of the First Uprising" and the "Five Tigers of Xuzhou Thieves".

The above words are all summarized and concluded by myself. They are original and have not appeared in historical materials. All rights reserved. I hereby declare that any similarity is unlikely. I would be honored if they are borrowed.

The political struggle within the Xu bandits should have been quite intense, but there are very few historical records, and almost no direct positive records. We can only make logical inferences based on other details, in other words, just blind guesses.

As the power of Pang Xun's group expanded, the problem of uneven distribution of spoils arose. The "Four Dogs of the First Uprising" relied on their merits in being the first to be elected and received policy preference in the distribution of resources and profits. For example, Liang Pi was arranged to Suzhou.

Suzhou was the birthplace of Pang Xun's group and the best place to go. It was also the place where the first shot of the rebellion was fired. It was also from here that they attacked Xuzhou and established a revolutionary base.

In Xuzhou, Pang Xun sent his generals to expand the territory. The "Four Dogs of the First Uprising" basically picked up ready-made places, such as Liang Pi's Suzhou. And the "Five Tigers of Xuzhou" had to fight for it more or less with their own hands, such as Li Yuan and Wu Jiong in Sizhou.

It is also because of this that new talents outside the core of power will gradually accumulate military merits and their status in the group will rise steadily, such as Wang Hongli.

The dynamic changes in prestige broke the original political balance and shook the psychological balance of the generals. Conflicts between the generals began to grow.

Suzhou City is certainly more prosperous than Liuzi Village, so Yao Zhou, who is stationed in Liuzi Village, has a lot of opinions about Liang Pi, who is stationed in Suzhou. Especially last year, Yao Zhou took the initiative to attack and drove Kang Chengxun, who had not yet completed his assembly, back to Songzhou. Yao Zhou's reputation within the Xu bandits rose rapidly.

Although Li Yuan and Wu Jiong were slow to take over Sizhou, they were still working hard on the front line. Only Liang Pi was hiding safely in the rear, enjoying the comfort that his brothers had bought with their blood. Yao Zhou's hostility towards Liang Pi became more and more serious.

The personal relationship between the two was tense. Yao Zhou even compared Liang Pi to Pang Xun's "watchdog" because Suzhou was the southern gate of Xuzhou.

The conflict between these two strategic gatekeepers, who support each other, is becoming increasingly serious.

So when Yao Zhou was defeated by Kang Chengxun and fled to Suzhou, Liang Pi decisively took revenge and beheaded him.

Faced with a powerful enemy at the gates, the executives of Pangxun Group were not inspired to unite against the enemy, but to fight against each other.

Pang Xun replaced Liang Pi and appointed Zhang Xuanren as the new governor of Suzhou.

Amidst internal and external troubles, the dog-headed military strategist Zhou Zhong promptly pointed out a clear path for Pang Xun, which could kill two birds with one stone: establish a country and become emperor. In this way, he could not only improve his reputation in the base, but also command the world legitimately.

In addition, he also calculated the reason for his recent bad luck: Xuzhou's mountains and rivers cannot accommodate two tigers, and Xuzhou cannot accommodate two commanders, so you must kill the hostage Cui Yanzeng. Cui Yanzeng was the former governor of Wuning Army and was stationed in Xuzhou. He lost Xuzhou while serving as the governor of Xu and Si, and has been held hostage by the bandits ever since.

Under Zhou Zhong's persuasion, Pang Xun killed Cui Yanzeng, and then killed Wen Tinghao in a frenzy, and beheaded all the captured military generals and eunuchs who supervised the army. He also cut off the hands and feet of Huainan Li Xiang and the military supervisor Guo Houben and sent them to Kang Chengxun.

Pang Xun then summoned his men and gave a speech, announcing that from now on, we will no longer be acting on behalf of heaven, we will truly be rebelling!

All the generals cheered. Next, Pang Xun ordered all the men in Xuzhou to gather at the stadium, close the city gates, and send search teams to search every house. If anyone dared to hide a man, the whole family would be killed! Using this bloody and terrifying method, Pang Xun actually got 30,000 men.

Then flags were made and weapons were distributed.

Under the leadership of Zhou Zhong, his trusted generals jointly recommended Pang Xun as General Tiance and King of the Assembly.

Pang Xun only accepted the title of General Tiance.

【Xu Zei's Doomsday】

Objectively speaking, Pang Xun and his 500 direct garrison soldiers have certain combat effectiveness, as we have analyzed and emphasized before. In terms of military accomplishment alone, Pang Xun can be regarded as an excellent commander of a reinforced regiment, and commanding two to three thousand people is easy. Several of his important subordinates, such as the "Four Dogs of the First Uprising" and most of the "Five Tigers of Xu Ze", are also fully qualified for the position of commander, and fighting a thousand people is no problem.

However, Pang Xun was clearly unable to lead an army of more than 100,000. He and his team had great limitations in terms of their vision, realm, and perspective. They were good at tactics but not at strategy.

Senior leaders are greedy for pleasure and have no ambition to make progress; middle-level leaders are busy fighting for power and venting their personal anger.

Pang Xun's strategy was to attack from near to far, from weak to strong, and to throw a right hook. He would first march north to attack the Northern Front Army in Fengxian, then circle south in a clockwise direction to strike back at Kang Chengxun in the west.

Therefore, Pang Xun "personally led the army" and rushed to Fengxian overnight. The northern army was mainly composed of towns in Shandong and Hebei. They were disorganized and had low fighting spirit. They had always been on the defensive to prevent Pang Xun's forces from expanding northward. They were not very enthusiastic about going south to quell the rebellion and their fighting power was very low. They were the soft persimmon in the imperial army to quell the rebellion.

Pang Xun fully demonstrated his superb professional skills as a regiment commander, and launched a night attack and ambush, achieving victory in Fengxian County, forcing the Northern Army to retreat.

Pang Xun was very proud and sent a letter to Xuzhou. In the letter, he actually called the government troops "traitors". His arrogance and rebelliousness were evident on the paper.

The people in Xuzhou were celebrating, and Pang Xun's father even wrote a letter to encourage his son to forge ahead bravely and create greater glory.

So Pang Xun took advantage of the victory and headed south, using his right hook tactics to compete with Kang Chengxun's main force.

Pang Xun led his troops to Xiao County and issued a general attack order to each camp: Six days later, at dawn, attack Liuzizhai together!

As a result, everyone knew Pang Xun's battle plan a week in advance, including Kang Chengxun.

What does Kang Chengxun think? There must be something fishy about this matter. How could such a high-level military secret be passed down to the grassroots level? Pang Xun is either crazy or stupid.

The Huainan soldiers in the rebel army (formerly Li Xiang and Guo Houben's troops) were captured before and forced to join the rebels. Now, they continue to defect from the rebel camp and tell the rebels all the truth inside the rebel army.

Kang Chengxun then realized that Pang Xun was not crazy, but simply mentally retarded. So he customized an ambush plan for him.

The result is predictable. Pang Xun was defeated miserably, and in order to escape for his life, Pang Xun had to put on a costume show, change into the rags of peasants, and flee in the chaos of the army.

(End of this chapter)