Hello everyone, I am Xiao Milling, one of the anti-kings of the Eighteen Roads at the end of the Sui Dynasty. Although I may not be as well-known as leaders such as Dou Jiande, Yu Wenhua, and Wang Shichong, I also have an important contribution to this history.
At that time, I was born in 583 A.D., the third year of the opening of the Sui Dynasty. Emperor Wen of Sui Yang Jian, usurped the throne by virtue of his status as a relative and established the Sui Dynasty. However, in the Sui Dynasty at that time, the scope of rule was limited to the north, and the south was ruled by Southern Chen.
However, six years later, the Sui Dynasty went south and succeeded in destroying Nan Chen, which completely unified the Central Plains. I am such a person who has witnessed the changes of history.
At a turning point in my life, the unification of the world by the Sui Dynasty played a key role. I was born in the Lanling Xiao family, which was an influential family during the Northern and Southern Dynasties.
The Southern Qi and Southern Liang regimes during the Southern Dynasties were both established by our Xiao family. My great-grandfather was Xiao Jing, the first emperor of Western Liang. To tell my story, you need to start with a brief history of my family.
Otherwise, some of the later stories may confuse you. My family's ancestors can be traced back to Xiao He in the Western Han Dynasty, and he was one of the famous Three Masters of the early Han Dynasty.
From Xiao He, our family has been prosperous until the Northern and Southern Dynasties. At that time, another ancestor of my family, Xiao Daocheng, replaced the Liu Song regime and established the Southern Qi regime.
Twenty-three years later, another royal family, Xiao Yan, took his place and established the Southern Liang, and Xiao Yan was my Heavenly Ancestor.
After Jiangling was captured by the Western Wei, the Southern Liang began to move towards **. Some of them were controlled by the powerful minister Chen Baxian, and finally established Nanchen; In the other part, the Western Wei Dynasty supported a Xiao family to be the emperor and established the Western Liang.
This emperor who was supported by the Western Wei Dynasty was my great-grandfather Xiao Jing. From the day the Western Liang was established, my great-grandfather has been a puppet emperor. Later, the Western Wei Dynasty was replaced by the Northern Zhou Dynasty, and the Northern Zhou Dynasty was replaced by the Sui Dynasty, and in this process, our family was always in a state of control.
It was not until 587 AD that the Sui Dynasty destroyed the Chen Dynasty and at the same time abolished our title of Emperor and achieved the unification of the whole country. Our family has been a puppet emperor for three generations, and in the end we can only accept this result.
However, my grandfather Xiao Yan was not reconciled to this. When Yang resolutely decided to abolish the Western Liang, he led his troops to surrender to the Chen dynasty in an attempt to continue the bloodline of the Xiao family. However, just a year later, the Chen dynasty was pacified by the Sui army, and my grandfather was killed on charges of rebellion.
My grandfather's accusations brought me a sad childhood, until my aunt became the empress of Yang Guang, and I had a better life because of my status as a relative, and I was later promoted to the county magistrate of Luochuan.
However, in the thirteenth year of the Great Cause, I once again ushered in a turning point in my life, when the Sui Dynasty was in turmoil and wars were raging everywhere, and I was elected as the leader by the rebels near Luochuan.
Since the Lanling Xiao clan had established two regimes in the south, and I was a remnant of the imperial family of the previous dynasty, I joined forces with many places, and many places responded quickly, and my strength expanded rapidly.
In 618 AD, I officially called the emperor, restored the Liang Dynasty, and moved the capital to Jiangling, which was the capital of my Xiao family. At this time, I was already the most powerful separatist force in the Jiangnan region, from the Three Gorges in the west, to Jiaozhi in the south, and to the Hanshui in the north, all of which were my territory, and the number of soldiers under my command reached an astonishing 400,000!
At this moment, I have realized the dream of my ancestors to restore the country, and my territory is even larger than that of Southern Qi and Southern Liang back then. With such great strength, I have the ability to march north and compete with other forces for the world.
However, it was at this point that I discovered a serious shortcoming, and that was that my subordinates were not united enough. Although my men are powerful, it is difficult for me to command them effectively.
This is because I was elected by others at the time of the uprising. In just one year, the strength of my subordinates has grown rapidly, leading some generals to have independent ideas. Faced with this situation, I decided to clean up domestically and then expand outward.
Because the world is in chaos at this time, and the others are exhausted, it is a good time for me to sit and reap the benefits.
For more than a year, I used the truce and boycott as an excuse to let the soldiers go home to cultivate and strengthen the country. At the same time, I will weaken the army in the hands of the generals and deal with them one by one.
Although there were foreign enemies who might take advantage of this opportunity to attack me, I was not worried at the time because the south was relatively peaceful, while the north was in chaos. In the fourteenth year of the Great Cause, Yu Wenhua staged a coup d'état in Jiangdu, killing Yang Guang, and the world fell apart because of this.
Prior to this, Li Yuan was fighting for Guanzhong with Xue Ju in the west, and Li Mi led the Wagang army to fight against Wang Shichong. After Yang Guang's death, Li Mi, in order to avoid being attacked on his back, first reconciled with Wang Shichong, and then went to attack Yu Wenhua in Jiangdu.
In the end, Yu Wenhua was defeated by Li Mi, but was killed by Dou Jiande during his escape. However, Li Mi's Wagang army also suffered heavy losses in the battle and was stopped by the rejuvenated Wang Shichong.
In the chaotic north, who will draw strength against me? The Yangtze River is in danger behind me, even if someone wants to fight my idea, if they don't send hundreds of thousands of troops, what can they do to me?
However, even if I was cautious, I missed a little. While I was busy with internal affairs and consolidating power, another great war broke out in the north. The cause of this great war was that after Li Yuan unified Guanzhong, he began to expand outward, and he first launched an attack on Wang Shichong in Luoyang.
Wang Shichong's strength naturally could not be compared with Li Yuan, so he could only ask Dou Jiande in Shandong for help. Dou Jiande is not stupid, he understands the truth of cold lips and teeth, but he also wants to reap the benefits, so he did not send troops immediately, but waited until Li Yuan's second son Li Shimin forced Wang Shichong to the point that there was only one Luoyang City left, and then led troops to rescue.
However, Dou Jiande still underestimated Li Shimin's strength. In the following battle, Li Shimin easily defeated Dou Jiande's army of more than 100,000 with only a few thousand people, and even he himself was captured alive.
Of course, these battles in the north have nothing to do with me. What really concerns me is the other effect of this war. In order to prevent me from going north to fight him for territory, Li Yuan sent several armies in an attempt to defend me by attacking, so that I could not move.
Li Yuan didn't expect much success in this war, but just hoped to contain me. But neither I nor he expected that the general sent by Li Yuan would be the same as Li Shimin, a peerless general who shocked the world!
He is Li Jing, who is known as the god of war.
Li Yuan's three-way army pressed the border, and I urgently mobilized more than 100,000 troops from Jiangnan and Lingnan to defend. However, Li Xiaogong and Li Jing's Bashu naval army went against the current and approached my capital, Jiangling.
I thought that the Yangtze River was so powerful that it would be impossible for them to attack, but Li Jing, with the courage of a famous general, led the Tang Dynasty naval army to make a surprise attack, which disrupted my deployment for a while.
Even though I defended with all my might, I couldn't withstand their onslaught.
In order to consolidate my power, I had to disband my army, but when Li Jing led the army to besiege Jiangling, there were only a few thousand old and weak soldiers left in the city, and there was no way to resist. In order to protect the people in the city, I had no choice but to surrender in Kaesong.
The irony of fate, however, is that a few days later, the Lingnan army that I had ordered to come to the rescue arrived in Gangneung, and this army numbered more than 100,000 men, and if they had arrived a few days earlier, Li Jing's army could have been wiped out outside the city of Gangneung.
But now, these soldiers can only surrender with me, because Gangneung Fortress has fallen.
I was in Chang'an**, and I originally thought that I would be able to leave a life after the surrender of Kaicheng, but Li Yuan attacked me directly, and I was only thirty-nine years old that year. From the Luochuan County Order to King Liang, and then to being killed by Li Yuan, it only took more than four years for all this to happen, which is really impressive.
Looking back on my life, I think the biggest reason for my failure was the instability of internal forces. If I can stabilize the hundreds of thousands of troops under my command from the beginning, I will definitely unify Jiangnan very easily, and then go north to fight for the world.
In that case, the matter of Li Yuan and their family would not have happened.
In the face of the powerful Li Yuan, Wang Shichong and Li Mi, I am just a small county commander, and with such a low starting point, it seems reasonable to fail.