Then, Li sent troops to crusade against Shu and created another miracle, which lasted more than 70 days from sending troops to Shu's death. More importantly, Hubei warlords had already surrendered to Li, and Gao Jixing even went to see Li himself. At this moment, if we don't know the later history, people will inevitably feel that Li's unification of the world is close at hand.
However, history suddenly appeared at this time. Because no one expected that Li, a hero, would degenerate more and more like an idiot, and finally personally ruined his life and country.
According to the records of traditional history books, Li's depravity is mainly due to his complacency, indulging in pleasure, being bohemian all day long, and cherishing and reusing actors.
For example, Li, his queen, Liu, extorted money from soldiers and took the money from the state treasury for himself. Even when the country was in famine, they refused to give money for relief; For another example, Li granted actors many important positions, such as secretariat, and let them interfere in the military and political affairs at will, while those soldiers who fought bloody battles got nothing. ......
Li's series of actions eventually led to boiling public resentment, and the soldiers had to rebel collectively. In this sense, Li's depravity is entirely due to his complacency.
So, is this really a fact? The answer is obviously no.
At that time, after Li unified the North, there were about five power groups around him:
The first is the big brother of the buffer region. This force is represented by Shaanxi Fengxiang warlord Li, Shaanxi warlord Zhu and Hebei Dingzhou warlord Wang.
Although all three forces surrendered to Li, no one admitted that they were still warlords. Because these three military and political groups have never been forcibly reorganized, they have always maintained a relatively independent position. In a sense, these three warlords are just like Han Xin, Ying Bu and Liu Bang to Li.
The second greatest strength is the surrender of the back beam. Because the empire was beheaded, and then Li swept the whole area south of the Yellow River without bloodshed, that is to say, those senior generals surrendered to Li with a complete group army.
For Li, if he wants to pacify the north quickly, it is impossible to completely deprive these people of their rights, so he can only respect the vested interests of these rising generals and even give them Li. For example, Duan Ning later became Li Shaoqin, Huo later became Li, Yuan Xiang later became Li Shaoan, Du later became Li Shaoqian, Kang later became Li, and Wen Tao later became Li Shaochong.
In essence, these generals in the Back Beam are also small-scale warlords with certain independence. Their army is also independent, and they are all their own back beam army. Although Li can command them to a certain extent, they can't be directly merged or incorporated, at least not for the time being.
The third largest force is the elder and the important minister, represented by Li Siyuan. The so-called senior officials are in the era of Li Keyong, and they began to follow Li Keyong to farmland; Later, after Li Keyong's death, they followed Li to farmland. In terms of qualifications, most of these people are above Li, but in terms of strength and ability, they are not necessarily inferior to Li.
In a sense, elders and ministers are usually the forces that the emperor wants to destroy most, because this force is really difficult to control. For Li Lai, the same is true. The power of this veteran is not under his strong control.
The fourth power is the upstart hand-picked by Li. This power is represented by Guo Chongtao, Feng Dao and Kong Qian. Supposedly, this force should be a staunch supporter of Li, but the result is not like this. At least Guo Chongtao is not reliable at all.
Because, when these nouveau riche have certain military and political power, they can easily get together with the three forces in front, because based on their common interests, they all hope that the emperor has as little military and political power as possible, so that their power will naturally increase, so they don't want Li to monopolize power.
The fifth force is the imperial power, mainly Li's biological mother, mother, queen and eunuch group.
In a sense, Li's initial success was achieved with the support of the imperial power. Back in those days, when Li was king of Jin, it was because of their full support that Li was able to kill his uncle Li He who refused to listen to him, thus consolidating his rule.
Later, Li was able to rule the country because he always used a eunuch named Zhang. Later, after Li unified the world, these people also sat at the core of power and became a very powerful force.
For Li, the only thing he can really trust is the fifth force. As for the first four forces, he can't fully trust them, but he still has to find a way to weaken them. Because, if Li does not relieve these mercenary bosses of their military power, his imperial power will not be stable, and his later Tang empire will always be in the shadow of warlord subversion.
In this context, based on Li's interests, he naturally tried his best to expand the power of the imperial court, that is, to expand the power of his mother, mother, queen and eunuch group, so as to restrict it with the first four forces.
The problem is that at that time, Li's imperial power had occupied a dominant position in the central government. In other words, the imperial power has no room for expansion in the central government. If they want to continue to expand their power, they have to go to the local government to seize power. The question is, how did Li Can Xu Cun's biological mother, first mother, queen and eunuch get to the local office?
In this context, Li thought of actor politics, that is, by reusing actors to carve up the power of local military and political bosses.
In a sense, Li's actor politics is actually not essentially different from the eunuch politics adopted by emperors in previous dynasties, and it is an attempt to strengthen centralization by reusing people with no background at the bottom.
In fact, for the same purpose, Li wholeheartedly selected officials from the actors to serve as local secretaries and county officials and supervise local military and political leaders. Of course, this practice obviously harms the overall interests of the military industrial groups, especially the four major power groups mentioned above.
Because, a soldier put his head on his belt and risked his life to become a senior general, and those who came from opera suddenly became your prison army and had the power to control you. How do you feel? The point is, these people also want to deprive you of your personnel rights, economic rights, administrative rights and judicial power. How do you feel? I'm sure I'll think this is killing donkeys.
In this context, the local military and political leaders will naturally unite against it, so several soldiers who lost the bet made some reactionary remarks for a while, and the Weibo Military Region directly lost control; The key point is that when Li Siyuan crusaded against Weber, Weber's army made inflammatory remarks, and the forces represented by Li Siyuan also collapsed.
So, everyone shouted the slogan of asking the emperor for an explanation and marched to Luoyang in an orderly way. In this process, the leaders of various military regions responded in succession. Anyway, I've had enough! So Li's troops sent to various places were cut and killed spontaneously by everyone, so Li could only be defeated and killed.