History of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms

Chapter 591 The Most Powerful Country in the Universe - Goryeo 2
This is political common sense. In the Goryeo Kingdom, the old king died and the new king ascended the throne. The country was in a state of uncertainty, and the meritorious elders, royal family members, etc. all coveted the supreme power, which seriously threatened the rule of the new king and caused serious internal troubles.

As the founding monarch of Goryeo, Wang Jian used the old routine of political marriage to gain broad support, and he himself was the key tool. He married into major families in the country, worked tirelessly as a bridegroom, and became a true "national son-in-law."

This was an effective way for Wang Jian to integrate political resources from all sides, but the side effects were also fatal. Wang Jian had many fathers-in-law, many wives, and many children.

After Wang Jian's death, the relatives by marriage were indeed jumping up and down. These fathers-in-law all wanted their grandsons to ascend the throne. The grandfathers fought openly and secretly, framed each other, and even sent assassins into the palace to kill the king. Wang Wu once personally killed an assassin.

A son's status is determined by his mother's. These concubines who came from wealthy families had their mother's families' power divided into different levels, and their status in the palace naturally also varied.

Since Wang Jian took the "bridegroom route", it is easy to understand that the earlier he married his wife, the weaker her family was, and the later she married, the richer she was. For example, his first wife was an ordinary woman from the people.

It is said that this woman was a commoner from Luozhou. One day, when she was washing clothes by the river, she met Wang Jian, who was still a general. Then the two of them had an indescribable relationship. What is very dramatic is that Wang Jian is a scumbag. He knew that this was an ordinary commoner girl whose family had no money or power, so he did not plan to marry her. He just coveted the momentary physical pleasure and stopped there after the affair.

Even during the intimate moment, Wang Jian was particularly careful not to let the woman get pregnant, but in that era, there were no good safety measures, so Wang Jian chose a relatively stupid and primitive contraceptive method, but in the end the woman still got pregnant. For details, please refer to the historical records:

"…she did not want to get pregnant, so she announced it to the bed, and the empress (referring to the woman, Queen Zhuanghe) sucked it, and she became pregnant and gave birth to a child…"

No need to translate, I understand. I admire you.

In short, don't think about denying it. Wang Jian was blackmailed by this woman and had to take responsibility for his one-night stand. So this woman became Wang Jian's first wife, and the child she was pregnant with was Wang Wu, Wang Jian's eldest son.

Later, when Wang Jian married again, he obviously would not look for women from ordinary families. Basically, they would look for women from powerful and wealthy families such as generals and high-ranking officials.

Therefore, Wang Jian's harem was also undercurrent. He himself was not sure whether his eldest son Wang Wu could succeed to the throne smoothly. Even until his death, he did not dare to publicly designate Wang Wu as his successor, fearing that it would cause unrest. Finally, when he was dying, he very subtly tested the attitude of Park Su-hee, a founding hero.

Park Su-hee was a founding hero of Wang Jian, a skilled warrior with numerous achievements. Park Su-hee was to Wang Jian what Guan Yu was to Liu Bei. Park Su-hee expressed her support for her eldest son Wang Wu, and Wang Jian closed his eyes with relief and left us forever.

It was also with the support of this meritorious minister that Wang Wu ascended to the pinnacle of power in the Goryeo Kingdom.

However, Wang Wu's grandfathers and half-brothers did not give up. They used all kinds of means to fight for power, assassinations, coups... There were undercurrents in Goryeo and it was full of crises.

The temple is small but the demons are strong; the pond is shallow but the turtles are numerous. This tiny place has complicated interest relations and entangled interest groups... It is no less than the Central Plains.

So, under such circumstances, how could Wang Wu mobilize the weaklings of the country to provoke the Khitan tigers and wolves?
Shi Chonggui was disappointed after hearing Guo Renyu's report, but he was still unwilling to accept it, so he sent another envoy to ask Wang Wu the truth, hoping to get his sincere answer and clear attitude. After all, this would be a war of annihilation that would determine the fate of the Three Kingdoms, and as allies, they had to be honest with each other. Wang Wu hesitated, talked about other things, answered irrelevant questions, avoided the main issues, and talked nonsense. Shi Chonggui was desperate. It seemed that the Koreans' purpose was to cheat for food and drink, and they were unreliable.

On the Khitan side, under the shadow of two failures, the "Empress Dowager Party" of the "Support Jin" faction rose, and the "Emperor Party" of the "Destroy Jin" faction was in a worrying situation. Empress Dowager Shulü might once again sideline Yelü Deguang and rule the country from behind the scenes, or simply depose Yelü Deguang and rule the country as the emperor.

Yelu Deguang was about to lose all his previous efforts, so he had no choice but to fight a desperate battle and launch another invasion to the south. This would also be the biggest gamble of his life, and he could only succeed and not fail.

So what was the reason for starting the war? How did Yelu Deguang withstand the pressure of two failures and break through the layers of resistance from the "Support Jin Clique"?
Reasons are like water in a sponge. If you squeeze them, there will always be some.

1. Goryeo spies

Strike while the iron is hot, let’s first talk about the most powerful country in the universe, Goryeo, which is more likely to cause trouble than to accomplish anything.

In the early contacts between Goryeo's Wang Jian and his son Wang Wu and the Later Jin regime, they did not go through regular diplomatic personnel, nor did they use regular diplomatic channels. Instead, the person responsible for acting as an intermediary to pass messages back and forth was actually a monk from the Western Regions - the Hu monk Wa Luo.

While Shi Chonggui was in close contact with Goryeo's King Wu, the Khitans captured spies from the Later Jin Dynasty in Yunzhou.

Interestingly, there is no record of this incident in the historical records of the Central Plains, and the History of Liao only records one sentence: "In December...Yunzhou Jiedushi Yelu Kong'a captured a Jin spy."

It couldn't be any shorter, with time, place, and people accounting for almost all of the three elements. The description of the incident was just four words: "We captured the spies of the Later Jin Dynasty." How many spies were there, what their mission was, how to deal with them, and all the key issues were not revealed.

Maybe they were really responsible for contacting Goryeo, maybe they had other secret missions, or more likely they were not spies at all. In that era, "enemy spy" was a tried and tested panacea. Any foreign business traveler could be defined as a spy, even citizens of the country.

As mentioned earlier, before Yelu Deguang launched the Jin-Liao War, there was a rumor that Yelu Dinian captured a spy from the Later Jin Dynasty in Shangjing. The "History of Liao Dynasty: The Chronicle of Emperor Taizong" even said in a serious tone that "he knew he had two minds." This incident also became one of the reasons for the Khitan to move south.

This time, the Khitans used the same old trick again and claimed that they had captured a spy from the Later Jin Dynasty.

Due to the lack of historical data, we can use our imagination and make reasonable inferences. It is certainly possible that Shi Chonggui really sent spies to the Sixteen Prefectures of Youyun to collect intelligence; it is also possible that this was another bag of laundry detergent in the hands of the Khitans.

If he was really a spy responsible for contacting Goryeo to jointly attack Khitan, then Goryeo really screwed Shi Chonggui over badly, and he was more of a hindrance than a help.

(End of this chapter)