History of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms

Chapter 537: Divide Wei Bo Again
When Fan Yanguang rebelled in Weizhou, Yang Guangyuan led the expedition. Fan Yanguang lost the first battle and then retreated to Weizhou, staying in the city for more than a year. Yang Guangyuan fought for a long time without success and finally forced Fan Yanguang to surrender through political inducement, which made Yang Guangyuan, the commander-in-chief of the expedition, very embarrassed.

The second regret is that Weizhou has achieved nothing.

Faced with these two hatreds and the temptation of money and beauty, how could Yang Guangyuan forgive Fan Yanguang?
Yang Guangyuan reported: "Fan Yanguang is a fickle villain. How can we let him go? If we let him go now, he will either go north to the border or go south to the Huai River. We should eliminate him as soon as possible."

Shi Jingtang did not allow it.

So Yang Guangyuan settled for the second best option and said that if he didn't have to be killed, he should be controlled in Bianzhou or Luoyang instead of being dispersed to other places.

As long as he was not killed, Shi Jingtang agreed and allowed Fan Yanguang to move to Luoyang.

At that time, Yang Guangyuan was also the governor of Heyang, and his son Yang Chenggui was temporarily in charge of the prefecture. Yang Guangyuan instructed his son Yang Chenggui to think of a way to kill him.

Yang Chenggui understood what he meant and immediately led his troops to surround Fan Yanguang's residence and forced him to commit suicide.

Fan Yanguang held up the red-lettered iron certificate and the golden medal of immunity from death, wailing, "The emperor today has granted me the iron certificate of immortality and swore to the sun that he would never kill me. How could you and your son do this?"

Yang Chenggui bowed his head and pondered for a moment, "Okay, then the emperor wants you to move to Luoyang, you have to be obedient and pack up and leave."

"Please give me a few days to pack up."

"Stop talking nonsense, and get on the road tomorrow morning."

At dawn the next day, Yang Chenggui once again led his troops to surround Fan Yanguang's residence, forcibly took him away, walked him to the floating bridge, and ordered several strong men to push Fan Yanguang into the river to drown him.

"You are not decent, I will help you be decent."

Afterwards, Yang Guangyuan and his son reported: "Fan Yanguang committed suicide by drowning while moving."

Without any investigation, Shi Jingtang knew the truth of the matter and chose to tolerate it. He did not blame Yang Guangyuan and his son, but he also sighed for Fan Yanguang. The political veteran, the underworld boss, the four powerful kings, and the three giants of the last emperor who had once been as powerful as him ended up like this...

Shi Jingtang could not help but feel grief over the loss of his friend, so he issued an imperial decree to posthumously confer the title of Grand Tutor on Comrade Fan Yanguang and suspended court for two days to express his mourning.

Cao Qian, the military commander of the water transport, salvaged Fan Yanguang's body near Miaojiatan. Shi Jingtang ordered that Fan Yanguang be buried in his hometown of Xiangzhou.

It is said that on the day of the burial, just after the coffin was buried, the tomb suddenly collapsed for no reason, smashing Fan Yanguang's coffin and "breaking his head". In the end, the whole body could not be preserved.

When later generations evaluated him, they all felt sorry for him. They said that he was once a courteous and polite gentleman, who had countless fans and "received great reputation at the time." But he also had two stains. One was that when he was attacking the capital of Dingzhou, his general Liang Hantang seized the horse under the crotch of the capital, and Fan Yanguang framed Liang Hantang and took it; the other was that he murdered Mi Qiong and took her property and concubines.

He lost his integrity in his later years and launched the Weizhou Rebellion. Later generations did not blame him too much. After all, Shi Jingtang was also "fearful and rebellious", but Shi Jingtang succeeded and Fan Yanguang failed. The winner is the king and the loser is the bandit, which is understandable. Fan Yanguang was criticized for his shameful life after the failure of the rebellion, and finally died in humiliation. He was too unmanly. Look at Li Congke, who burned himself with his entire family. Although they all died, Li Congke died in a blaze of glory and was respected and sympathized by people, while Fan Yanguang was ridiculed.

The Old History of the Five Dynasties mercilessly ridiculed Fan Yanguang:

"How is it that you are not a man at all!" - You are really not a man!
"After being beaten to death, he still had the audacity to be afraid of death. His death in Mengjin will be laughed at for thousands of years." - A laughing stock for thousands of years

After Fan Yanguan's death, the cursed money was transferred to its new owner, Yang Guangyuan, with interest.

This bald, one-armed macho actor Yang Guangyuan had already shown his arrogance and rebelliousness when he pacified Fan Yanguan in Weizhou. It was only a matter of time before he would rebel.

During the Tianfu years, the most common thing was rebellious rebels, just like the natural disasters that occurred year after year. Shi Jingtang was a very miserable emperor for seven years. He served the Khitan father like a son to the outside world and tolerated and pretended to be a grandson to the inside world. There were natural disasters everywhere, and traitors everywhere.

After Weizhou was pacified, Yang Guangyuan requested to go to Beijing to meet the emperor, and Shi Jingtang approved it.

Yang Guangyuan came to the capital for a simple reason: to clear out the "treacherous officials" in the court. In his opinion, the reason why he failed to make achievements on the front line was all because of the treacherous officials in the court. The treacherous officials he mentioned were the civil servants group including Sang Weihan and Li Song.

Since Guo Chongtao's death, the prime ministers of the Later Tang Dynasty rarely served as privy councilors to avoid excessive concentration of power. However, under the pressure of reality, Shi Jingtang made prime ministers Sang Weihan and Li Song serve as privy councilors. This made Liu Churang and the eunuchs very unhappy, and they always wanted to find an opportunity to get rid of the two.

When Yang Guangyuan was besieging Weizhou, Liu Churang often traveled between the front and the court for military affairs. As mentioned above, Yang Guangyuan often interfered in government affairs, and Shi Jingtang took a tolerant attitude towards this, while Sang Weihan, Li Song and other civil servants firmly opposed this and insisted on doing things according to the law and regulations. Many of Yang Guangyuan's unreasonable requests were blocked, which made Yang Guangyuan very annoyed.

Liu Churang took advantage of the situation and told Yang Guangyuan that it was all the prime ministers' bad ideas and they were the ones who misled the emperor. As a result, Yang Guangyuan hated the civil servant group including Sang Weihan and Li Song.

After Weizhou was pacified, Yang Guangyuan immediately wrote a secret letter accusing Sang Weihan and Li Song of dragging their feet and hindering his military operations, and holding them primarily responsible for the stalemate that had lasted for more than a year.

Yang Guangyuan controlled Weizhou and remotely controlled Luoyang and Heyang areas, and had a large number of troops under his command. This was the confidence that allowed him to make decisions for the court.

Shi Jingtang did not dare to offend him, so he dismissed the two of them from the position of Privy Councilor and appointed Liu Churang as the Privy Councilor.

Yang Guangyuan's arrogance had touched the bottom line of Shi Jingtang's court. You should know that Sang Weihan and other "pro-Liao" officials were appointed by the Khitan father as loyal ministers of the country. You must look at the owner before beating the dog. The owner of Sang Weihan and others was not Shi Jingtang, but Yelu Deguang.

Shi Jingtang was very worried about this and was afraid that Yang Guangyuan would lose control.

Sang Weihan gave Shi Jingtang advice and suggested that he weaken Yang Guangyuan's power by "dividing Weizhou". This method was used in the Later Liang Dynasty. Zhu Youzhen took advantage of Yang Shihou's death to split the Weizhou army into two, which led to the "Zhuangzong's entry into Wei".

As time went by, Sang Weihan once again proposed the risky move of splitting Wei Bo. This time, it was not just as simple as splitting the Wei Bo army into two, but on the basis of dismembering Wei Bo, a major reshuffle and blood transfusion was carried out in the entire Heshuo area, and Yang Guangyuan was moved to a town, greatly weakening the influence of the Heshuo area.

Is this trick useful?
(End of this chapter)