Chapter 7 Shi Siming's rebellion

In the second month of the lunar calendar in 758 AD, Tang Suzong Li Heng changed the year name to "Qianyuan", and at the same time changed "Zai" which had been used for more than ten years to "Nian". At the beginning, Emperor Xuanzong of Tang Dynasty Li Longji changed the year to Zai in the third year of Tianbao (744 A.D.) in order to announce to the world that his great achievements of virtue were comparable to those of Yao and Shun (in Yao and Shun's era, "zai" was mostly used to indicate the year), but later happened However, the fact that Xuanzong ruthlessly ridiculed it also brought bad luck to the Li Tang Dynasty that was almost destroyed.

Therefore, from the moment Suzong Li Heng Lingwu came to the throne, he probably wanted to change the name of the calendar back, but one reason was that he had just ascended the throne and his power was unstable, and the other reason was that he was busy suppressing the rebellion and recovering the two capitals. So put the matter on hold for now.Until now, he was able to take the opportunity of changing the Yuan to change back the extremely tangled word "Zai". The new year name "Qianyuan" launched by Emperor Suzong, as the name suggests, means to start over and start all over again.

Obviously, the smooth restoration of the two capitals gave Suzong great confidence and hope.In his opinion, the small group of rebel forces headed by An Qingxu is at the end of the road, the world will soon be pacified, and Li Tang's revival is just around the corner! This new year name is undoubtedly the confession of this state of mind. Like Suzong Liheng, the civil and military officials of the Manchu Dynasty seemed to be full of optimism about this, and only a few people dared not take it lightly. Such as Li Guangbi. He had a strong premonition that someone who had just surrendered to the court would surely rebel again.

who? Shi Siming. As an old opponent on the battlefield, Li Guangbi knew Shi Siming very well.He knew that Shi Siming's surrender was just an expedient measure due to the current situation. Once the situation changed, he would definitely rebel again! After some deliberation, Li Guangbi expressed his worries to Suzong, and then offered advice to ask Suzong to send a person Shi Siming trusted to go to Fan Yang on behalf of the court to express condolences and take the opportunity to get rid of Shi Siming. The candidate recommended by Li Guangbi was Wu Cheng'en, and he suggested that Wu Cheng'en be appointed as Fan Yang's deputy envoy after the event was completed.

Wu Chengen's father was Shi Siming's old superior, and he was kind to Shi Siming.Two years ago, Wu Chengen, who was the prefect of Xindu at the time, surrendered Shi Siming with the whole city.Because of the relationship in the past, Shi Siming trusted Wu Chengen very much.After Suzong's court recovered the two capitals, Wu Cheng'en was one of his confidantes who urged Shi Siming to turn around. To get rid of Shi Siming, Wu Cheng'en is the best candidate. Li Heng adopted Li Guangbi's strategy and ordered Wu Cheng'en to go to Fanyang. In June of this year, Wu Chengen arrived in Youzhou (Fan Yang Zhisuo), and was warmly received by Shi Siming.After Wu Chengen announced the imperial edict, Shi Siming immediately arranged for him to live in his residence.At that time, Wu Cheng'en had a son who worked under Shi Siming's account, and Shi Siming specially asked him to visit his father.

That night, Wu Chengen and his son met.Wu Chengen immediately withdrew the people, closed the doors and windows, and said to his son excitedly: "I am ordered by the imperial court to get rid of this traitor. After this is done, I will be the Jiedushi here!" However, before Wu Chengen's son expressed the same excitement as his father, two sneers came from somewhere in the room. Two people had been lying in ambush under the dark bed for most of the night, waiting for Wu Chengen to show his feet. Of course, these two people were arranged by Shi Siming. In fact, as soon as Wu Chengen came to Fan Yang, Shi Siming had already become suspicious, but he remained calm and extremely attentive, with the purpose of paralyzing Wu Chengen.

Wu Chengen's plan was exposed.Afterwards, Shi Siming found a lot of things from his luggage: there was Li Guangbi's letter, which asked Wu Chengen to invite Ashina Chengqing to assassinate Shi Siming together, and at the same time, he planned to reward Ashina Chengqing after the incident was completed. The iron certificate for avoiding death, and there is also a booklet, which lists the names of the soldiers under Wu Chengen's Shi Siming who are planning to instigate rebellion. Shi Siming pointed to these things and asked Wu Chengen: "How can I feel sorry for you, what are you going to do?"

Wu Chengen was so frightened that his face paled, so he kowtowed non-stop: "I'm guilty! I deserve to die! This is all Li Guangbi's conspiracy." The next day, Shi Siming gathered all the civil and military officials of Fan Yang and the people of Youzhou, facing the west, weeping bitterly: "I surrendered to the court with 130,000 people, why do you want to kill your majesty?" On this day, Shi Siming beat Wu Chengen and his son to death in public, and executed more than 200 civil and military officials who were involved with Wu Chengen, and then complained to Emperor Suzong.Suzong hurriedly pushed the responsibility to the ground, and sent an envoy to Xuanwei to say: "This is not the intention of the imperial court and Guangbi, it is all done by Cheng En, and the killing is very good!"

Shi Siming couldn't swallow this bad breath, so he asked his staff member Geng Renzhi to submit the form again. There was a sentence in it: "Your Majesty will not punish and kill Li Guangbi for my minister, so I have to lead my troops to Taiyuan to kill him!" But the words were secretly deleted by Geng Renzhi who insisted on returning to Tang.When Shi Siming found out, the form had been sent.In a fit of rage, Shi Siming killed this confidant who had followed him for nearly thirty years, and then raised the banner of rebellion again. Since An Qingxu fled to Yecheng, although his territory and strength were much smaller than before, he still occupied more than 60 cities in seven counties, and there were enough money, food, soldiers, etc., so An Qingxu reverted to his old ways. Indulge in sensuality, wantonly build palaces and buildings, and hand over all government affairs to confidant ministers Gao Shang and Zhang Tongru.

An Qingxu didn't care about government affairs, so Gao and Zhang naturally wanted to seize the opportunity to control the power, so they fought openly and secretly every day, and soon made the small court of the Yan Dynasty in exile in Yecheng a mess.General Cai Xide was quite straightforward and outspoken. He couldn't understand what the two were doing, so he repeatedly spoke to An Qingxu, thus offending Zhang Tongru, who was killed by Zhang Tongru soon after.When Cai Xide died, his subordinates were greatly disappointed. Thousands of people fled Yecheng successively, and the remaining generals were also full of resentment and gradually alienated from the court.Later, An Qingxu handed over the military power to Cui Qianyou, and appointed him "the military envoy of the world, the general internal and external soldiers".Cui Qianyou was headstrong, cruel and easy to kill, and the soldiers were very dissatisfied with him, so the morale of the army gradually became weaker and weaker.

The news that the puppet Yan Dynasty was centrifuged up and down and that the generals were not in harmony soon spread to Chang'an. Suzong Li Heng was tempted. Originally, he wanted to hand over the task of eliminating An Qingxu to Shi Siming, but now that Shi Siming has rebelled, Suzong can only do it himself.At this moment, there are many internal contradictions in the rebel army, and it is the best time to completely annihilate them. On September 21st of the first year of Qianyuan, Emperor Suzong issued an edict, ordering Shuofang Jiedu Envoy Guo Ziyi, Hedong Jiedu Envoy Li Guangbi, Beiting Jiedu Envoy Li Siye, Guannei Jiedu Envoy Wang Sili, etc. Gather more than 200,000 infantry and cavalry, and march towards Yecheng from all directions from now on, preparing to annihilate An Qingxu in one fell swoop. What is puzzling is that Suzong Liheng did not set up a marshal for the more than 200,000 troops, but set up a so-called "commissioner to observe the military appearance and comfort". This fresh title was an invention of Sukjong.The person holding this position is the special envoy of the Son of Heaven, who has the highest command power to govern and dispatch the Nine Route Army, no different from a marshal. The person who was honored with this post was the eunuch Yu Chaoen. The reason why such an important post was entrusted to an eunuch, Li Heng explained: Guo Ziyi and Li Guangbi are both meritorious officials, and it is not good for anyone to rule over the other, so it is better not to set up a marshal, and just come to "observe the military capacity envoy" to solve the problem up. The reason is naturally high-sounding. And usually we all know that high-sounding reasons are often not real reasons. The real reason is - Li Heng is afraid. These days, there are too many people who want to be emperor.Just a cat or a dog from the countryside, yelling at hundreds of brothers, pulling a piece of cloth with words, will spontaneously have the desire to conquer the world, let alone handing over 200,000 soldiers and horses to a Jiedu envoy !What's more, there will be a steady stream of follow-up troops that will be assembled one after another.What is this concept?This is all the power of the world concentrated in one hand!A few years ago, Anlu Mountain almost overthrew the entire Li Tang with only the three towns in Hebei. If you say that a certain Jiedu envoy today has the military power in the world overnight, he will not have the ambition to be emperor, and he will not suddenly turn around. Li Heng really couldn't believe it when he fought back. Therefore, Li Heng can only hand over this terrible power to the eunuch.This kind of servant who takes serving people as his profession has been with the emperor day and night for many years, in any case, it makes the emperor feel more at ease than those generals who take fighting and killing as their profession. Since the reasons are so sufficient, it is sufficient to show that the reason why Tang Suzong Li Heng handed over the military power to the eunuchs was by no means a whim, but the result of careful consideration. However, Suzong Li Heng did not seem to have thought that it would be difficult to convince the public to let an eunuch who had lived in the deep palace for a long time lead the nine experienced envoys. No matter how capable Yu Chaoen was, he still lacked what he should have. military experience. A layman leads an expert, and the result can be imagined. Therefore, from the moment when Emperor Suzong appointed Yu Chaoen as the envoy to watch the army and handed over the hundreds of thousands of troops to attack An Qingxu into his hands, the outcome of the Battle of Yecheng was already doomed. In October, Guo Ziyi led an army across the Yellow River and attacked Huojia (now Huojia County, Henan Province).An Taiqing withdrew to Weizhou (now Weihui City, Henan Province) with his remnants, Guo Ziyi took advantage of the victory and marched to surround it. When An Qingxu heard the news, he immediately led a total of 70,000 troops to help with generals Cui Qianyou and Tian Ganzhen.Guo Ziyi ordered three thousand archers to set up an ambush in the camp, and then led his troops to fight An Qingxu, and then pretended to be defeated.An Qingxu was overjoyed and ordered to pursue him.When Guo Ziyi led his troops to retreat into the camp, the Yan army pursued them closely, and the ambush archer suddenly appeared, and arrows rained down instantly.The Yan army retreated in a hurry, Guo Ziyi counterattacked with his troops, defeated the Yan army, captured and killed An Qingxu's younger brother An Qinghe, and then conquered Weizhou in one fell swoop. An Qingxu fled all the way to Yecheng. Seeing that the Tang army was chasing him, he gathered the remnants and organized a hasty counterattack in the area of ​​Shousigang (southwest of Anyang City, Henan Province), but was defeated by Guo Ziyi again.The Yan army was killed 30,000 people and captured more than 1,000 people.An Qingxu fled back to Yecheng in a hurry.Two hundred thousand Tang troops immediately besieged him. An Qingxu knew that this time there was more danger than good. Now there is only one person in the world who can save him, and that is Shi Siming. An Qingxu immediately sent an envoy to ask Shi Siming for help, and claimed that he was willing to give him the throne of the Yan Dynasty, and only asked him to send troops to rescue. Shi Siming smiled when he received An Qingxu's distress letter. He sneered. However, the sneer was the sneer, and Shi Siming dispatched troops in time. Yecheng is Fan Yang's barrier. If Yecheng is lost, Fan Yang will be exposed under the eyes of Tang Jun, so Shi Siming must rescue Yecheng. Of course, what Shi Siming wanted to save was only Yecheng, not including An Qingxu. Shi Siming personally led an army of 130,000 to the south, ordered the vanguard general Li Guiren to lead 10,000 riders and stationed in Fuyang (now Cixian, Hebei), and then captured Weizhou (now Hebei, Hebei) from the Tang army in December of this year. Daming County), and then stood still in Weizhou City. Fuyang, where forward Li Guiren was stationed, was only sixty miles away from Yecheng, but the order he received was: only wave the flag and shout, and no rash actions are allowed. Shi Siming's attitude is obvious - wait for An Qingxu and Tang Jun to fight with the snipe and clam, and lose both sides in the fight, and then he will strike later and reap the benefits of the fisherman!