History of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms

Chapter 365: Worried 4
After Li Siyuan proclaimed himself emperor, this army regarded itself as the "founding meritorious army". Without "Emperor Mingzong entering Wei", how could there be "Emperor Mingzong entering Luoyang"?
Zhao Zaili even invited Li Siyuan to visit Weizhou, revisit the old place and reminisce about the past.

Li Siyuan also wanted to disintegrate the army at the first time, and appointed Zhao Zaili as the governor of Huazhou Yicheng Army, but failed. Then he promoted Huangfu Hui and other key members in name only, and gradually removed the leader of the army.

Now, Li Siyuan sent the prince Li Congrong and the general Fan Yanguang to further divide this army that had lost its backbone. While appointing Wu Zhen to replace Fang Zhiwen to garrison Lutai Army, he ordered 3,500 Weizhou Ya Army soldiers to garrison Lutai Army and move away from Weizhou.

However, the imperial court did not issue any weapons or armor to these 3,500 people. They only used bamboo poles to hold up flags as identification for each tribe. Then they went north unarmed and without a single piece of armor to resist the Khitan. Everyone was dejected and panicked, suspecting that the imperial court was first trying to lure the tiger away from the mountain and then execute the whole family...

Halfway through the journey, they suddenly heard that Meng Zhixiang of Xichuan had killed the military supervisor Li Yan (details will be described later), and the army became even more unstable. Rumors spread that Meng Zhixiang had already established his own territory in Shu and was plotting a rebellion. The court was afraid that the Weizhou Ya Army would cause trouble again to respond to Xichuan, so as to prevent the "Mingzong's entry into Wei" from happening again, so they wanted to trick them into the Lutai Army and kill them...

Just at this time, the imperial court replaced the commander-in-chief of the Lutai Army from Fang Zhiwen to Wu Zhen. This change made the rumors even more credible and spread widely.

Fang Zhiwen was also quite dissatisfied with this personnel transfer, so he used rumors to incite a mutiny and reached a conspiracy with the commander of the Wei Bo Ya army, the middle-level general Long Zhao, to set up a Hongmen Banquet and cooperate internally and externally.

After Wu Zhen arrived at Lutai Army, Fang Zhiwen did not hand over the seal immediately, but instead held a welcoming banquet to welcome Comrade Wu Zhen.

During the banquet, the generals gambled and made a lot of noise. Fang Zhiwen secretly left and passed a secret signal to the Wei Bo army. Long Yu then led the Wei Bo army to riot and killed Wu Zhen on the spot.

Seeing that the situation was not good, the cavalry commander An Shentong ran away, seized a boat, and successfully escaped to the west bank. He then summoned his cavalry troops and ordered the entire army to be on combat readiness. No one was allowed to act rashly without his orders.

When Fang Zhiwen saw An Shentong escape, he regretted it. Without the support of the cavalry, the mutiny would definitely fail! So he also wanted to escape to the west bank to cut off his relationship with Long Yu's Wei Bo Ya Army.

Wei Bo Yajun rushed forward and grabbed Fang Zhiwen's horse head, "General, if you don't want to be our leader, where are you going?"

Fang Zhiwen used his cunning to deceive them, saying, "The cavalry are all in Hexi. If we don't control them, how can we accomplish anything with just the infantry? I will go and subdue them right now."

The Wei Bo Ya army is very stupid and naive.

Fang Zhiwen pulled up the reins, flew aboard, and successfully crossed to the west bank. After landing, Fang Zhiwen pretended to be innocent, joined forces with An Shentong, and turned back to fight back against Wei Bo Ya's army.

Long Yu led his rebel army southward, intending to return to Weizhou, and Fang Zhiwen and An Shentong followed closely with their cavalry.

The rebels were all infantry without any weapons or armor. They turned pale with fear under the threat of the cavalry. They dared not stop for a moment and hurried on with torches all night, but ended up entering a swamp by mistake. The rebels were tortured by fear, fatigue and hunger for the whole night.

When the sun rose the next day, they discovered even more desperately that Fang Zhiwen and An Shentong had quietly completed their encirclement of them the previous night. When the first ray of sunlight shone in the early morning, An Shentong issued the order for a general attack.

What followed was a massacre without suspense. A small number of rebels managed to break through and fled back to the camp on the east bank, but An Shentong had already burned it to a scorched earth. The rebels were caught in a dilemma and collapsed instantly. In the end, less than 30% of them survived. The survivors fled into the valley and then fled to Dingzhou. Not long after, the king of Dingzhou betrayed his country and surrendered to the enemy. The survivors of the Wei Bo Ya army did not escape the fate of being killed.

General Fan Yanguang was still on the way when he heard that the Lutai army had mutinied. He immediately called in the main force of the Yicheng army from Huazhou to reinforce Weizhou. Li Siyuan issued an edict: All 3,500 Weizhou Ya soldiers who had rebelled against the Lutai army were to be executed!
When the imperial edict was sent to Weizhou City, a brutal massacre began. More than 10,000 men, women, and children were driven to the lime kiln and beheaded. The Yongji Canal once again became a river of blood.

Afterwards, in order to appease Fang Zhiwen, Li Siyuan gave him the title of prime minister (Tongpingzhangshi).

Fang Zhiwen, the instigator of the mutiny, was promoted to a higher position, while the ordinary soldiers who participated in the riot were executed along with their entire family. Now that we understand Li Siyuan's situation, we can understand the contradiction between weakness and strength.

7. Xuanwu Army of Bianzhou
In October of the second year of Tiancheng (927), Li Siyuan suddenly left the capital and traveled east to Bianzhou.

Generally speaking, the emperor could not leave the capital easily unless there was something extremely important that concerned the life and death of the empire, such as hunting (Li Cunxu) or having a secret meeting with his lover (Wang Zongyan).

Apart from the superficial reasons of cherishing the people's strength and not wanting to disturb the local people, the more important reason was the fear of disturbing the princes.

Li Siyuan's trip to Bianzhou was probably to "get a free meal". Last year, Li Cunxu proposed to go to Bianzhou due to the shortage of food and grass in Luoyang, but was dissuaded by his ministers. It is very likely that Li Siyuan's trip to Bianzhou after he came to power was due to the same problem.

However, there are all kinds of rumors about this eastern tour.

For example, there is a saying that Li Siyuan wanted to lead the army in person and annex Huainan, so he moved the command center eastward. This statement makes sense. Zhuangzong took Bashu, Mingzong took Huainan, and completed the great cause of unifying the Tang Empire;

There is another saying that Li Siyuan was going to deal with a senior official in the East who intended to rebel.

These two versions are the most widely circulated. Zhu Shouyin, the governor of Xuanwu Army in Bianzhou, was frightened by the second version.

Because Zhu Shouyin was a genuine "remnant of Li Cunxu" and one of Li Cunxu's important trusted henchmen, the loss of Deshengjiacheng brought immeasurable losses to the Later Tang Dynasty. Li Siyuan secretly reported to Li Cunxu and demanded that Zhu Shouyin be beheaded according to military law. However, Li Cunxu not only did not punish Zhu Shouyin, but also promoted him to a higher position. This caused Li Siyuan and other meritorious generals to be extremely dissatisfied.

Later, Li Siyuan was suspected by Li Cunxu and was placed under house arrest in Luoyang. His life was hanging by a thread. It was Zhu Shouyin who was responsible for taking care of Li Siyuan's daily life (24-hour close surveillance). During this period, Zhu Shouyin also tactfully extorted bribes from Li Siyuan.

After Li Siyuan became emperor, he did not purge Zhu Shouyin, but let him stay in Bianzhou. So when I talked about Li Cunxu's suspicion and house arrest of Li Siyuan in the previous article, I mentioned that the process of Li Siyuan's ascension to the throne is also a historical mystery, with many puzzling parts. I firmly believe that this period of history has also been carefully whitewashed by later generations.

Now, Li Siyuan suddenly mobilized troops to gather in Bianzhou. Zhu Shouyin was sure that he was the high-ranking official in the rumors, and in panic, he called his staff to discuss a solution.

His staff told him that since they were going to die anyway, it would be better to climb the city wall and resist, which would give them a glimmer of hope. Zhu Shouyin agreed with him, so he closed the city gates and prepared to fight to the death.

(End of this chapter)