Ma Xifan reigned for a long time, and did not die of illness until 947 AD, and then the foals of Chu began to officially compete for the groove.

Ma Xifan was 49 years old when he died, and his son was already an adult, but according to Ma Yin's deathbed will, the throne wanted his son to stay in the village, although Ma Xifan had no way, but he still did not violate his father's will, so before he died, he had spoken to pass the throne to his younger brother Ma Xiguang.

Ma Xiguang is the thirty-fifth son of Ma Yin, he is modest and cautious, and he is very loved by Ma Xifan, and he was appointed as the envoy of Wu'an Festival and the governor of Tiance Mansion very early, in fact, he is trained as a successor, and Ma Xifan officially passed the throne to him before his death, and it stands to reason that there should be no accidents.

However, Mahi was cowardly by nature and did not have much prestige, and could not fully control the situation. In addition, his elder brother, Wuping (ruled in Langzhou), made Ma Xicao the oldest and most prestigious among the remaining sons of Ma Yin, and it was most suitable for him to inherit the throne, so there were some people who supported Ma Xixu. So the court and China were divided into two factions and began to fight fiercely, and the final result was that the courtiers immediately became king according to Ma Xifan's last wish.

However, only three years later, Ma Xixu raised troops in Langzhou (present-day Changde, Hunan), and captured Tanzhou in November of the third year of Qianyou of the Later Han Dynasty (950), and Ma Xiguang was executed after his defeat.

However, after Ma Xicao became the queen, he had a conflict with his other younger brother Ma Xichong, and as a result, Ma Xichong launched a coup d'état, captured Ma Xicao and sent him to Hengshan to be imprisoned, and then established himself as the king of Chu.

However, Ma Xichong claimed the title of king in this way, and the courtiers were not satisfied. Ma Xicao's old troops in Langzhou even raised troops in the name of rebellion, and even the generals he sent to escort Ma Xicao betrayed him. turned his head and established Ma Xicao as the king of Hengshan, and then began to recruit troops and horses. kept claiming that he would return to Tanzhou to fight against the thieves.

At this time, Ma Xichong was greatly panicked, and in desperation, he had to go to the old enemy Nantang for help, which directly led to the destruction of the Chu State.

After receiving Ma Xichong's call for help, the lord of the Southern Tang Dynasty was overjoyed and immediately ordered Bian Hao to bring 10,000 soldiers and horses from Yuanzhou (now Yichun, Jiangxi Province) into the Chu realm, because before that, the former Chu king Ma Xicao also asked for help from the Southern Tang Dynasty, and both sides were luring wolves into the house. Therefore, Bian Hao did not encounter resistance at all along the way, and entered Tanzhou smoothly, and then controlled the situation in Tanzhou, and the state of Chu perished.

After Bian Hao entered Tanzhou, Ma Xichong was still lucky and bribed him, hoping to stay in Tanzhou, but Bian Hao ridiculed him and said: "Our Southern Tang Dynasty has been an enemy of your Ma family for sixty years, and we don't dare to have the idea of destroying your Chu State." Now that your brothers are killing each other and the country is besieging itself, there is no need to have any other plans. ”

Ma Xichong had no choice but to lead his cronies to board the ship and go to Jinling. Li Jing was named the envoy of the Yongtai Army Festival and lived in Yangzhou. Later, Ma Xicao was also brought to Jinling by Li Jing and died here.

Li Jing destroyed the state of Chu without fighting. The situation at that time was still very favorable for him.

Just a year before the destruction of Chu by the State of Wu, the Central Plains was in turmoil. First, Emperor Liu Chengyou of the Han Dynasty washed the court in blood and killed the ministers Yang Wei, Shi Hongzhao and others. Subsequently, Guo Wei, the privy envoy of the Later Han Dynasty, raised troops in Yedu, entered the Great Liang, and established himself as the emperor.

Although Guo Wei has a Dao Mingjun, he has just come to power, and people can't see his excellence.

And within a year after Guo Wei became emperor, he fought with Liu Chong of the Northern Han Dynasty and Murong Yanchao of Yanzhou.

Faced with the excellent situation on both fronts, the monarchs and ministers of the Southern Tang Dynasty were so happy that they got carried away. At a banquet, Li Jing's favorite minister Wei Cen even said to him: "The minister went to Weibo when he was young, and he still has a lot of affection for it, so please ask Your Majesty to set the day of the Central Plains and make the minister the envoy of Weibo." ”

Li Jing agreed with each other, and Wei Cen immediately knelt down to thank him. At this time, among the monarchs and ministers of the Southern Tang Dynasty, they were still intoxicated with the joy of being about to dominate the world. But in reality, with the rise of the next week, that day will never come.

Li Jing's ability to govern the country is not half a star compared with Guo Wei's father and son. Guo Wei's father and son govern the country, whether it is civil governance or martial arts, both hands are hard.

And Li Jing is so-so in Wenzhi, if he is measured by the standard of a normal person, Li Jing's character is still very good, but for an emperor, he really has nothing to do.

Li Jing read poetry and books to the fullest, and most of the people used by the DPRK and China were well-educated, and politically they could not be called corrupt.

At that time, the main ministers in power in the Southern Tang Dynasty were Feng Yanji, Feng Yanlu, Wei Cen, Chen Jue, Cha Wenhui and other five people, collectively known as the "Five Ghosts", this title should come from the slander of political enemies, because these five people did not see any evil deeds that brought disaster to the country and the people, and the people of the Southern Tang Dynasty lived a relatively good life in Li Jing's dynasty.

But these ministers also have no talent for governing the country, and the really talented Han Xizai, Li Jianxun and others have not been reused by Li Jing. Li Jing's own desire for power is not strong, and if the country's political affairs can be pushed out, he will run back to the palace to make poems, and the level of making poems is quite high.

For example, he once filled in a poem "Ying Changtian", the text of which is as follows - a hook of the early moon is in the mirror, and the cicada sideburns and phoenixes are lazy.

The heavy curtain is quiet, the floors are different, and the melancholy falling flowers are uncertain. The willow embankment is a grass path, and the dream is broken and the golden well. I woke up even more last night, and I was sick after spring sorrow.

Li Jing's poems are probably in this style, and it can be seen that he is a very literary, but he can't see the emperor's bearing in the poem.

To say that Li Jing's political incompetence was not enough to bring down the Southern Tang Dynasty, but his military incompetence brought serious consequences to the country. The affairs of Fujian have been mentioned before, let's talk about what happened to the Southern Tang Dynasty in Hunan. Li Jing used a side pickaxe to take Hunan lightly, and then used him to defend Hunan.

Bian Hao is not brutal, the last time the Southern Tang Dynasty destroyed Fujian, Bian Hao was also one of the main generals, because after conquering Jianzhou, he could save the lives of the captives, so he was called "Bian Buddha". This time, the Southern Tang Dynasty destroyed Chu, and it was he who led the army, after entering Tanzhou. The shops on the street can be open as usual, and there is a famine in Hunan. He also opened the granary of the Ma family to relieve the hungry. Therefore, it is called "Side Bodhisattva".

When Bian Hao was first appointed as the envoy of the Wu'an Festival, the Hunan people had high hopes for him, but at this time, the envoy sent by the Southern Tang Dynasty also came, and transported the gold, silver, jewelry, and exotic stones of Hunan to Jinling, and at the same time sent officials to Hunan to collect taxes, and was very harsh, and at this time, as the highest governor of Hunan, Bian Hao did not say a word, but blindly did Buddhist things in Tanzhou. This one comes. The people of Hunan were disappointed and changed their names to call him "Monk Bian".

Bian Hao's military talent is also very limited, after the Southern Tang Dynasty destroyed Chu, although the Ma family power has been eradicated, but Ma Xicao's old department Liu Yan is still entrenched in Langzhou (now Changde, Hunan) with tens of thousands of people, Li Jing had ordered Bian Hao to take measures against it, but Bian Hao found some people from Langzhou to investigate, these people said that Liu Yan'an guarded himself, there was no sign of chaos.

Bian Ho believed it. Not only did he not take action against Langzhou, but he didn't even take the necessary precautions, but in October of the second year of Zhou Guangshun (952), Liu Yan really raised troops in Langzhou. He sent his subordinates Wang Kui and Zhou Xingfeng to lead troops to attack Tanzhou (now Changsha, Hunan), and they reached the city of Tanzhou in only ten days.

Ben Ho was defenseless against this and had to abandon the city and flee. He's gone. The guards of the Southern Tang Dynasty in Hunan also fled one after another, and as a result, the entire territory of Hunan was easily taken back by Liu Yan. This time. It was only a few months before the Southern Tang Dynasty destroyed Chu.

In just a few years, the Southern Tang Dynasty waged war against its two southern neighbors, Min and Chu, respectively. The chances were all very good, but the results were messy.

At the same time, because of the continuous use of troops, the little money left by Li Yu was completely ruined, and he had no choice but to increase taxes to the domestic people, and a large number of officials took the opportunity to engage in corruption on a large scale.

Li Jing was generous, and his anti-corruption efforts were not strong, and the officials had no scruples about him, so they began to collude with each other, and they were greedy for ink on a large scale, completely destroying the clean and honest wind left by Li Yu.

The people in China were also extremely dissatisfied with this, and the contradictions in all quarters were intensified by the defeats in these two wars.

It was only at this time that Li Jing remembered what his father had said to him when he was dying, telling him to "be good friends with neighbors, keep the community, and never learn from Emperor Yang of Sui. ”

Li Jing recalled it with great remorse, and at this time someone advised him: "May Your Majesty not use troops again in the next few decades, maybe the country can be well-off." Li Jing immediately said: "How many decades?

I don't want to use soldiers for the rest of my life. However, just over a year after the end of the Hunan Incident, Later Zhou Taizu Guo Wei died, and the ambitious Zhou Shizong Chai Rong became the emperor, so it was impossible for Li Jing to not use troops.

The contradiction between the Southern Tang Dynasty and the Later Zhou Dynasty has a long history, as early as that year, when Guo Wei led his troops to Guanzhong to crusade against the rebellion of the Three Towns (see the Five Dynasties Fengyun Scroll for details), Li Jing had sent troops to intervene.

Later, Murong Yanchao rebelled in Yanzhou, and Li Jing sent troops to respond on the southern front. Although the scale of these two Southern Tang troops was small, they all belonged to the kind of robbery type that took advantage of the fire, and the nature was still relatively bad, so it also made the Hou Zhou side feel very disgusted.

However, these two exchanges were not the root cause of the contradictions between them, and the real reason for the inevitable war between the two countries was due to their special position in the political map at that time.

As a big country in the Central Plains, Hou Zhou has always regarded itself as the Central Plains Zhengshuo and has a subjective will to dominate the world.

As the first big country in the south and the second most powerful country in the world, the Southern Tang Dynasty has always regarded itself as the orthodox successor of Li Tang, and it also has a strong desire to restore the sect of this dynasty.

The territory of these two countries is closely connected, and the border between east and west is more than 2,000 miles long, and it is almost a situation of the north and south dynasties. In this case, a war between the two countries is certainly inevitable.

In fact, Wang Pu also identified the Southern Tang Dynasty as the primary enemy in "Pingbian Ce", and pointed out the specific means to defeat the Southern Tang Dynasty.

He believed that the Southern Tang Dynasty had a vast territory and occupied a large amount of land on the north and south banks of the Yangtze River and the south bank of the Huai River, and that the country was relatively wealthy, and it was difficult to completely eliminate it at one time.

The southern people are weak, as long as the Zhou army is dispatched, the Southern Tang Dynasty must send a large number of troops to rescue, then the national strength will naturally be consumed, and this is repeated many times, and when the national strength of the Southern Tang Dynasty drops to a certain extent, a large army can be sent to completely eliminate it in one fell swoop.

You can see it. Wang Pu's strategic concept is indeed unique. Because at this time, the combat capability of the Zhou army was significantly stronger than that of the Tang army. Therefore, as long as Hou Zhou sent troops into the Southern Tang Dynasty, the Southern Tang Dynasty must go all out to defend it. Otherwise, it would not be able to resist the attack of the Zhou army. But in this way, it will consume a lot of its own national strength, and it will be passive. This is indeed an excellent strategy for Hou Zhou to use less force and gain more results, so it has also become Chai Rong's basic strategy for using troops against the Southern Tang Dynasty.

On the first day of November in the second year of Zhou Xiande (955), Chai Rong officially appointed Prime Minister Li Gu as the former military camp of Huainan Province, and Wang Yanchao, the envoy of the Zhongwu Army, was deployed as the deputy deployment, and led the guards and horses to command Han Lingkun and other twelve generals to attack the Southern Tang Dynasty.

Chai Rong sent troops this time. The first target was set at Shouzhou (present-day Shou County, Anhui). Shouzhou is located in the middle of the Jianghuai Plain, controlling the two river basins of Huai and Huai, and has been a battleground for soldiers since ancient times, and the ancient battlefield of the famous battle of Huaishui in history is here.

Judging from the map, if the capital of the Later Zhou Dynasty and the capital of the Southern Tang Dynasty are connected into a straight line, Shouzhou is almost above this straight line, and the importance of its geographical location is self-evident.

However, despite the importance of Shouzhou's location, the Southern Tang Dynasty still did not pay enough attention to it. At that time, because of the dry season of the Huai River every winter, the water level would drop sharply. At its shallowest hour, residents on both sides of the river can wade through the water. In order to prevent the Central Plains from attacking it during the dry season, the Southern Tang Dynasty stationed troops on the south bank of the Huai River all the year round, which was called "putting shallowness".

But after the defeat of the Southern Tang Dynasty in the Chu State. State funds are stretched, and Wu Tingshao, the superintendent of Shouzhou, said to Li Jing on the table: "The state has used troops year after year, and the funds are insufficient. Put the "shallow" army there and not fight a single battle all year round. It is useless, not to mention, but also to waste the country's money and food. Just remove it. ”

At this time, Li Jing was regretting that he had worked hard for many years in vain, and after hearing this, he immediately approved the withdrawal of this army. This move is tantamount to automatically dismantling the first line of defense against Hou Zhou, which is tantamount to digging a self-grave in nature.

At the beginning of December, Li Gu led the southern expeditionary army of the Later Zhou Dynasty, came to the front line of the Huai River, built a pontoon bridge at Zhengyang (the crossing of the Huai River, southeast of present-day Yingshang County, Anhui), crossed the Huai River very calmly, and after a short rest, continued to advance southward. During this period, he was not hindered by the Tang Army.

On December 10, the Zhou army had entered the city of Shouzhou, where they defeated more than 2,000 Tang troops, and then began to attack the city. Because before that, the Southern Tang Dynasty had seriously underestimated the threat from the Central Plains, and its preparedness was even more insufficient. Therefore, after the Zhou army really entered, the whole country was frightened and panicked, and there was chaos.

Fortunately, Liu Renzhen, the envoy of the Qinghuai Army who was in Shouzhou at that time, can be called a rare general. led the Tang army and actively defended, which blocked the offensive of the Zhou army.

Liu Renzhen, whose name is Shouhui, his father Liu Jin, was originally one of the thirty-six heroes who started from Yang Xingmi, and belonged to the rebel class fighters of the older generation in Huainan, so Liu Renzhen can also be regarded as a general. Liu Renzhen was born in the third year of Guanghua in the Tang Dynasty (900 AD), and he was also an old veteran in Huainan. After Li Yu usurped the country, Liu Renzhen was transferred to work in the forbidden army, and later moved to Ezhou (now Wuhan) as the envoy of the festival, and soon after was transferred to the envoy of the Shouzhou festival, and has been working in Shouzhou since then.

Liu Renzhen has been smart and studious since childhood, and when he grew up, he was proficient in Confucianism, and he was familiar with military books and war strategies, and was a typical all-round talent. Earlier, when the Shouzhou Supervisor Wu Dinh Shao requested the withdrawal of the "shallow" troops,

Liu Renzhen tried his best to write a letter saying that he could not, believing that judging from his experience in the war for many years, there would be a battle between the Later Zhou and the Southern Tang Dynasty, and if the "shallow" troops were withdrawn now, it would be tantamount to self-destruction of the Great Wall.

This opinion is undoubtedly very correct, but Li Jing has a characteristic that he writes poems and makes wonderful words, but he does things with stupid tricks, and he is naturally immune to correct opinions, so he does not adopt them. When the Later Zhou army really attacked, the Southern Tang monarchs and ministers were panicked because they were defenseless.

At this time, Liu Renzhen became unhurried, and organized the troops for external defense as if nothing happened, with the demeanor of a general.

However, Nantang can only manage the city of Shouzhou by relying on Liu Renzhen, a person who understands, and the situation outside the city is still not optimistic.

On December 15, the vanguard of the Later Zhou Dynasty commanded Bai Yanyu and defeated more than 1,000 Tang troops at Shankou Town, east of Shouzhou City.

Immediately after that, on the third day of the first month of the following year (956), the Zhou army defeated more than 1,000 Tang troops again in Shangyao (now Shangyao Town, northeast of Huainan City, Anhui).

Only three days later, the Later Zhou Emperor Chai Rong, inspired by this successive victories, issued an edict to take up the three armies of horses and infantry and personally conquer Huainan. (To be continued.) )