Chapter 34 The betrayers were strangled to death

Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty was a very successful emperor. It can be seen from his reign title "Daye" that he advocated the great cause of establishing virtues for generations to come.So as soon as he ascended the throne, he sent general Wei Yun to defeat Khitan.Two years later, large-scale development and operation of the Western Regions began.Chuluo Khan, who defeated the Western Turks, also defeated Tuyuhun, built his territory into four counties, and dispatched officials to govern it.The Western Regions had been pacified, so Emperor Sui Yang used money to lure merchants from the Western Regions to come to the court for trade, and ordered the counties and counties that the Western Regions merchants passed through to be hospitable, and to give them a lot of rewards when they left.On the fifteenth day of the first lunar month in the sixth year of Daye (610), he held Chen Baixi in Duanmen, Luoyang, to welcome the chiefs of the Western Regions. For a month, the sound of music spread for dozens of miles, all night long, and the lights illuminated the world. The cost is negligible.The custom of making Lantern Festival on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month also began in this year.Moreover, it also ordered to decorate the appearance of the city, requiring the shops to be neat and tidy, the curtains to be magnificent, the treasures to be abundant, and the people to wear fine clothes; The hanging satin is colorfully decorated.Merchants from various dynasties passed by, and the hotel owners wanted to invite them in for dinner. They didn’t need money for eating and drinking, and even lied: "I was rich in my dynasty, and guests never charged money for meals."However, Emperor Sui Yang worked so hard to create the "face project", after all, people still saw the flaws.Some Hu people saw that the trees on the street were wrapped in high-grade silk and satin, and said: "There are also many poor people in the Central Plains who are not fully clothed. Why don't you use these cloths to make clothes for them, but use them to wrap trees?" This move is nothing more than trying to brag about their merits and wealth to their neighbors and show off their political achievements.However, "although there are merits outside the wilderness, there is no defeat in the rescue area", such indiscriminate rewards will eventually be passed on to the people.However, this kind of face project is much less harmful to the people than launching a large-scale war against Goryeo.In the end, the Sui Dynasty was also planted in these three conquests against Goryeo, and eventually the country perished.

Goryeo was the most powerful neighboring country in the east of the Sui Dynasty. Emperor Wen of the Sui Dynasty had violated the border of the Sui Dynasty.Emperor Sui Yang ascended the throne and ordered the King of Koryo to come to court, but the King of Koryo did not agree, so in the eighth year of Daye (612) Emperor Yang of Sui used this as an excuse to send troops to Koryo.He first ordered workers to oversee the construction of 300 warships in Haikou, Donglai, and recruited civilians on a large scale. Hundreds of thousands of people filled the roads and transported war equipment and food day and night.And those shipbuilders stood in the water day and night, and their bodies from the waist down were full of maggots.For a time, there were countless dead, and the world was in turmoil.So Zouping Wang Bo, Qinghe Dou Jiande and others revolted, calling on the people to "suddenly hear the arrival of the officers and soldiers, and swing forward with swords, for example, if Liaodong dies, how can beheaded hurt?"The people were suffering from corvée, and they responded one after another. The imperial court sent people to suppress it, but "thieves swarmed up, innumerable", and the suppression has not continued.But Emperor Sui Yang didn't care about these few "thieves". He personally commanded the army, claiming to be two million, and went to Korea.It is said in history that "the prosperity of sending out teachers in modern times has never existed before".However, due to the long-distance battle, the morale of the soldiers was very low.On the way to battle, some threw away the heavy grain, and when they ran out of grain, they could no longer persist in fighting and had to retreat.On the way, they encountered an ambush by the Goryeo army, and they were defeated. In the end, only two or three thousand people returned.The first expedition failed.

After a failure, Emperor Sui Yang did not give up, and again in the ninth year of Daye (613), he drove to Korea again. This time, as soon as he arrived at the front line, Yang Su's son Yang Xuangan rebelled in the rear, and Luoyang was besieged by heavy troops.When Yang Guang heard the news, he hurriedly withdrew his troops to rescue Luoyang.Military resources, equipment, attack tools and camps were all discarded on the front line.The second expedition came to an anticlimactic end. Of course, Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty was not reconciled, so after quelling Yang Xuangan's rebellion, in February of the tenth year of Daye (614), he issued an edict to send troops from all over the world to attack Goryeo for the third time.But at this time, civil upheavals continued, people's hearts were scattered, soldiers fled one after another along the way, and the number of troops was getting smaller and smaller.And many of the recruited troops failed to arrive, some fled halfway, some were blocked by rebels on the way, and rebelled together with the locals on the spot.But this time near Pyongyang, the navy of the Sui Dynasty defeated the Goryeo army. Goryeo was in dire straits due to several wars, and sent envoys to ask for surrender. Emperor Sui Yang took advantage of this step to stop the army.The three expeditions to Goryeo ended in vain, and at this time the Sui Dynasty was on the verge of collapse.

In the twelfth year of Daye (616), Emperor Sui Yang arrived in Yangzhou for the third time despite the objections of his subjects.Because Yang Xuangan had burned all the dragon boat water halls when he rebelled, he issued an edict to remanufacture thousands of large and small boats, with more magnificent and refined shapes than before.At this time, the world was extremely corrupt, not only the people rebelled, but even honorable ministers raised troops under clever guise, disregarded the imperial restraint, and occupied important cities and towns.In the thirteenth year of Daye (617), Li Yuan captured Chang'an, the capital city, and welcomed Yang You, the grandson of Emperor Yang of Sui Dynasty, as emperor.Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty already understood in his heart that the chaos in the world could not be dealt with, so he had no intention of returning to the north, and stayed in Yangzhou for a long time to drink and have fun with more than a thousand concubines and concubines.But the boredom in his heart could not be dispelled by this kind of lewd life, every day he had to be gently rocked by several concubines to fall asleep.Even so, he insisted on being optimistic, and Empress Xiao advised him that thieves would gather outside, and that the country should be the most important thing.He said: "How much life can be, it's useless to think about it, don't talk about those annoying things." He comforted Empress Xiao: "So many people want to drive me out and replace me as the emperor. I was just driven out. You can also be the Lord of the Great Wall, and you can also be the second Empress Shen, let’s have a drink, so why worry about it.” The Lord of the Great Wall is the title given by Chen Empress after he surrendered to the Sui Dynasty, and Empress Shen is his queen.Emperor Sui Yang knew very well that he was about to suffer the fate of subjugation like Chen Houzhu.However, he could not help but fear for his own life.One day, Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty stared blankly at the mirror, and then said to the queen, "Who will cut off such a good head and neck!" The queen was shocked and asked why she said this.Emperor Sui Yang smiled wryly and said: "The high and the low, the bitter and the happy, go back and forth, what is there to be sad about?" Just in case, he even took the poison on his body to avoid being tortured and dying.

But that day is still to come.The world was in chaos, Yangzhou was in constant turmoil, the food was gradually exhausted, and most of the imperial guards were from Guanzhong.Some courtiers reported to Emperor Sui Yang that the palace guards wanted to rebel, but Emperor Yang was furious and beheaded the palace guards.Then some people complained, and even Empress Xiao persuaded the palace people not to risk their lives to speak out: "Once the affairs of the world have come to this point, the situation is hopeless. There is no need to play it, it will only worry the emperor." Daye fourteen years (618 In March of 2011, Emperor Sui Yang's confidant Yu Wenhuaji launched a mutiny, and Emperor Sui Yang was finally strangled to death at the age of fifty.After his death, Empress Xiao asked the court ladies to remove the bed and make a coffin to hold the body. Yu Wenhuaji buried him under Wu Gongtai in the west of Yangzhou.Later, in the fifth year of Zhenguan (631), he was buried in Leitang.In May of the same year, Li Yuan forced Yang You to abdicate and proclaim himself emperor, Gaozu of Tang Dynasty.The Sui Dynasty perished.