Chapter 39 Lee Deok-yu's pinnacle in life

According to Li Deyu's plan, the success of the imperial court's crusade against Zhaoyi depends largely on Hebei's attitude.If Chengde and Wei Bo are willing to obey the imperial edict, the imperial court has already won half of the battle before it even started; up. What is intriguing is that Cheng De and Wei Bo have completely different reactions to the imperial edict. As soon as Chengde Jiedu envoy Wang Yuankui received the edict, he personally led an army south to Zhaozhou, and soon captured a fortress outside Xingzhou.However, until his vanguard entered Xingzhou for more than a month, Wei Bo's He Hongjing still stood still.

Wang Yuankui frequently submitted secret performances to the imperial court, saying that He Hongjing had both ends of the head, and he had to guard against it.After receiving the secret memorial, Li Deyu immediately said to Wu Zong: "Give He Hongjing an edict, saying that the imperial court is going to send Wang Zai (the commander in chief of the crusade against Zhaoyi) to lead the army to take Cizhou directly through Weibo. In this way, He Hongjing He must be worried that the imperial court will have his ideas, and he will get it without sending troops." Wu Zong acted according to the plan, and then ordered Wang Zai to lead his troops to Weibo.

Sure enough, as Li Deyu expected, He Hongjing was shocked when he got the news, and he didn't dare to delay any longer, so he hurriedly gathered troops and hurried northward, pointing at Cizhou. From July of the third year of Huichang to the beginning of the next year, the Zhaoyi army retreated steadily under the powerful offensive of the imperial army. Liu Zhen was terrified and had to submit two letters to surrender, but Li Deyu flatly refused. In the leap July of the fourth year of Huichang (844 A.D.), Gao Wenduan, Liu Zhen's confidant general, surrendered to the imperial court and provided a lot of vital military information.The imperial army used this information to win several battles and gradually formed a siege of Luzhou.In August, under the coercion of Wang Yuankui and He Hongjing, the three prefectures of Xing, Ming, and Ci, which were the wealth centers of Zhaoyi, surrendered one after another.So far, Liu Zhen's defeat is a foregone conclusion.

Seeing that Zhaoyi's situation was over, the two people around Liu Zhen began to look for a way out. They are Liu Zhen's trusted generals Guo Yi and Wang Xie. When instigating Liu Zhen to stand on his own feet, these two guys worked the hardest, but now that Liu Zhen is about to die, they certainly don't want to be buried with him. Guo and Wang decided to kill Liu Zhen and surrender to the court, and exchange his head for wealth. From Guo Yi and Wang Xie's point of view, Liu Zhen is young and cowardly, and it is easy to get rid of him, but the problem is that there is another powerful character beside Liu Zhen-his clan brother Liu Kuangzhou.

Before Liu Congjian died, he deliberately arranged for Liu Kuangzhou to serve as the military envoy of the Chinese army, with the purpose of letting him assist Liu Zhen.Therefore, if you want to get rid of Liu Zhen, you must first settle Liu Kuangzhou. For this reason, Guo Yi found an opportunity to say to Liu Zhen: "Thirteen Lang (Liu Kuangzhou's thirteenth) sits in the commander's mansion and has always been headstrong, so all the generals dare not offer advice to you, for fear of being suspected by him and offended. The root cause of the loss of the three provinces in Shandong lies here. According to what I see, only by asking Thirteen Lang to leave will the generals be able to be open and honest, and dare to propose a strategy to turn defeat into victory."

The young and inexperienced Liu Zhen believed it to be true, and immediately asked Liu Kuangzhou to resign voluntarily on the grounds of illness. Liu Kuangzhou was furious: "I am in the commander-in-chief's mansion, and the generals dare not have different plans. If I leave, our Liu family will be wiped out!" Liu Zhen thought that Liu Kuangzhou was alarmist and insisted on letting him go.In desperation, Liu Kuangzhou had no choice but to hand over the military power of the military envoy of the Chinese army, and sadly left the Jiedu envoy's mansion. As soon as he left, Liu Zhen's disaster came.

Guo Yi and Wang Xie immediately planned to kill Liu Zhen, and at the same time hunted and killed all the men, women and children of the Liu clan-from Liu Kuangzhou to the baby in his infancy, none of them were spared.Later, Guo Yi and Wang Xie wiped out all of Liu Congjian's original cronies and old friends. On August 16, the news of Zhaoyi's pacification reached Chang'an, and the prime minister entered the court to congratulate him.Wu Zong asked Li Deyu: "How should Guo Yi be dealt with?" Li Deyu said: "Liu Zhen is just an ignorant child. The reason why he resisted the imperial court was instigated by Guo Yi and others. Selling the owner for glory, if this kind of person is not killed, why punish the evil!"

Wu Zong nodded: "I think so too." A few days later, Liu Zhen's head was sent to the capital. Guo Yi, Wang Xie and others were eagerly waiting for the court's reward, but they never expected that what they finally got was an arrest warrant from the court. Not more than half a month had passed since Liu Zhen was killed. Guo Yi, Wang Xie and other Zhaoyi veterans who participated in the murder of Liu Zhen were all kidnapped and sent to Chang'an, where they were all beheaded. In the Battle of Zhaoyi, the imperial court not only took back the direct jurisdiction over Zhaoyi, but also greatly deterred the three towns of Heshuo and all the vassals in the world. It can be said to be an out-and-out victory.

Since "Yuanhe Zhongxing", during the three dynasties of Mu, Jing, and Wen, the contest between the Li Tang Central Committee and the domineering vassals all ended in failure. Only this time, the victory was so beautiful that thousands of subjects loyal to Li Tang were all rejoicing. , elated. Undoubtedly, Li Deyu is the one who made the first contribution to regaining Zhaoyi this time. Without his strategizing, Li Tang's court could not have won this complete victory. As early as the beginning of the war, Li Deyu asked Wu Zong a question: For decades, the imperial court has frequently used troops against the feudal towns, why did they fail repeatedly?

The answer to this question is of course what Wu Zong Li Zhen wanted to know. Li Deyu said that this is because the imperial court's strategy of using troops has always had three major drawbacks. First, the emperor (including his close ministers) directly commanded the frontline operations, and often issued three or four edicts within a day, and even the prime minister did not know about it. Second, the eunuchs on the front line also issued orders according to their own will, which caused the front-line generals to advance and retreat without evidence and at a loss as to what to do. Third, the eunuchs of the supervising army often selected hundreds of the bravest soldiers in their respective armies to serve as their own guards, but threw the old, weak and remnant soldiers into battle.Moreover, every time there was a battle, the eunuchs of the supervising army would watch the battle on the high hill with their command flags. When they saw that the situation was slightly unfavorable, they took the lead in pulling out the flags and fleeing, causing the entire army to collapse.

After pointing out these three major drawbacks, Li Deyu immediately consulted with the privy envoy Yang Qinyi to formulate a set of countermeasures, and then handed it over to the emperor to issue an order for implementation. This set of countermeasures includes, first, prohibiting eunuchs from all walks of life to intervene in military affairs, and at the same time stipulating that each supervising army can only select ten soldiers as guards; Issue an edict to command operations. During the entire process of fighting Zhaoyi, Li Deyu's propositions were strictly implemented from the center to the front.In this way, the orders issued by the imperial court to the front lines became both practical and concise, which gave the front generals a lot of decision-making power and room for freedom, so they were able to win repeatedly on the battlefield. It has only been a few years since Li Yu ascended the throne, and the "eunuchs' chaos" and "separatist regimes" that have plagued the empire for many years have been contained to a great extent, which is really commendable.However, it is regrettable that only two of the three major political chronic diseases were controlled during Wuzong's reign, and the remaining "clique disputes" not only did not disappear, but were intensified. This is actually not surprising, because Li Deyu, the prime minister at the time, was himself the leader of crony factions, and he was the initiator of faction disputes. The successful recovery of Zhaoyi brought Li Deyu unprecedented political capital and pushed him to the pinnacle of his career in one fell swoop.Not long after Zhaoyi was pacified, Wu Zong named Li Deyu Taiwei and Zhao Guogong.Although he refused repeatedly on the surface, he finally accepted it with a smile. At this moment, the one thing that Li Deyu, who has achieved great success and is an extremely personable minister, wants to do the most is of course to settle accounts with those two old rivals. In fact, Li Deyu had already foreseen his own victory when the Battle of Zhaoyi had just started, so he had already laid the groundwork for what he wanted to do in the future. At that time, Li Zongmin was serving as a guest of the prince and was sitting on the bench in Luoyang, the eastern capital. Li Deyu felt that the old boy was living too carelessly, so he labeled him "Traffic Liu Congjian" and expelled him from the eastern capital. Relegated to the governor of Huzhou (now Zhejiang). Li Zongmin can't remember when he had friendship with Liu Congjian, but now Li Deyu is proud of his official career, saying that if you have it, you will have it, and if you don't, you will have it.Li Zongmin could only lament his fate, and obediently packed up his bags and went to Huzhou.The only thing he can comfort himself is that Huzhou is still a place with beautiful mountains and clear waters, and life is not too sad. However, Li Zongmin didn't know that his disaster was just beginning. As long as Li Deyu is in power for a day, he will never make his life easier. In September of the fourth year of Huichang, that is, just one month after Zhaoyi was pacified, Li Deyu began to calculate the general ledger.He said to Wu Zong: "Liu Congjian occupied Zhaoyi for ten years, and when he entered the court during the Taihe period, Niu Sengru and Li Zongmin were in power, but they not only did not detain him, but also granted him the central official position of "Tongping Zhangshi". , finally caused a serious disaster, and it was put down with all the power of the world. After all, Niu Sengru and Li Zongmin are the culprits!" In fact, Wu Zong also knew that these remarks were nonsense-at that time, Liu Congjian did not rebel or rebel, which prime minister had reason to detain him? However, even if he knew that Li Deyu was talking nonsense, Li Zhen would help him.Because Li Zhen himself has never had a good impression of Niu Dang, let alone Li Deyu's contribution to the court, it is also appropriate to help him vent his old grievances. Once the charge has been made, the second step is to collect evidence. After Luzhou was restored, Li Deyu immediately sent people to search Liu Congjian's letters during his lifetime, hoping to find one or two correspondences with Niu Sengru and Li Zongmin. However, the result was nothing. Li Deyu was not discouraged. In this world, the easiest thing to make is a handle on someone. He then coerced Zheng Qing, Liu Congjian's military secretary (Kongmu officer), to testify, saying: "Every time Liu Congjian received a letter from Niu Sengru and Li Zongmin, he burned it immediately after reading it, so he can't find it now." With the witnesses, the next step is physical evidence. Li Deyu also instructed Henan Shaoyin Lu Shu to write him a letter, which said: "When Liu Zhen was defeated, I heard with my own ears Niu Sengru's sighs and grief." At that time, Niu Sengru was the crown prince, Taifu, and Dongdu stayed behind, and he was a colleague of Lu Shu, so it was Lu Shu who exposed it, which is highly credible. Finally, Li Deyu presented Zheng Qing's confession and Lu Shu's letter to the emperor. There is no doubt that the emperor Li Zhen immediately became furious, and immediately demoted Niu Sengru to Prince Shaobao, a few days later he was demoted to Tingzhou (now Changting County, Fujian) governor, and a month later he was demoted to Xun Li Zongmin was first demoted to be the governor of Zhangzhou (now in Fujian), then the governor of Zhangzhou, and finally exiled to Fengzhou (now Fengkai County, Guangdong). In the four-year winter of Huichang, when the sinful ministers Niu Sengru and Li Zongmin were running on the road of exile with a station that was getting farther and farther, Li Deyu, an extremely personable minister and full of ambition, was writing poems in his prime minister's mansion, which was as warm as spring. Drink and enjoy the beautiful snow scenery outside the window. Li Deyu felt infinitely emotional - after fighting these two old opponents for so many years, he finally had the last laugh. Now, everything has been settled.From now on, I can finally be a peace prime minister with peace of mind.As for these two old rivals, let them die in that savage land full of miasma. Health, they can't go back to Chang'an. If they die, they don't expect to be buried in Chang'an. Let their bodies rot quietly in pain and despair, and let their souls wander endlessly in the ends of the earth!