AD 1385 was also the eighteenth year of Hongwu . The founding general of the Ming Dynasty Cao Guogong Li Wenzhong died of illness. After learning the news, Zhu Yuanzhang, who had always been regarded as cold-blooded and cruel, was very sad. Why did Zhu Yuanzhang favor Li Wenzhong? Just because Li Wenzhong is Zhu Yuanzhang's nephew.
In fact, in addition to this relationship, Li Wenzhong is also very talented. His writing is better than Lan Yu's, and he is not inferior to Xu Da in marching and fighting. This is why Zhu Yuanzhang values him. Today, let’s talk about Li Wenzhong’s story.
The Birth of the God of War
Speaking of the founding generals of the Ming Dynasty, many people are very familiar with Xu Da and Chang Yuchun , but they are not very familiar with Li Wenzhong. Li Wenzhong's mother is Zhu Yuanzhang's second sister Zhu Fo's daughter . Zhu Yuanzhang was born in an ordinary family in Fengyang, Anhui, and his life was not rich.
His second sister, Zhu Fonu, gave birth to Li Wenzhong after getting married. The family's life was also very hard. Later, due to successive years of disasters, life became even worse. When Li Wenzhong was 12 years old, he happened to catch up with a serious illness. epidemics and droughts.
Zhu Buddha died because she was infected with the epidemic and had no money for treatment. It was already the end of the rule of Yuan Dynasty . Due to the tyranny of the Yuan Dynasty, peasant uprisings continued in various places. Li Wenzhong's own mother passed away and there was only one father left in the family, so he discussed with his father to join his uncle Zhu Yuanzhang.
When his father heard that Zhu Yuanzhang had started recruiting troops in Chuzhou, he agreed to his son's request, so Li Wenzhong set off to Chuzhou. He would not have thought that his decision not only changed his own destiny.
Li Wenzhang played a great contribution in the process of Zhu Yuanzhang's conquest of the world. Along with Li Wenzhong, there was another relative of the Zhu family who defected to Zhu Yuanzhang. He was Zhu Yuanzhang's nephew Zhu Wenzheng ( Battle of Hongdu Defense is what he typed, not the blue jade in the movie and TV series).
After Li Wenzhong and his party arrived in Chuzhou, they successfully met Zhu Yuanzhang. Zhu Yuanzhang was very happy to see that his nephews had grown into young men. Previously, Li Wenzhong's father Li Zhen helped the Zhu family from time to time. Zhu Yuanzhang was very grateful to his brother-in-law.
Zhu Yuanzhang was very happy when he saw Li Wenzhong. When he learned that his sister had passed away, Zhu Yuanzhang once wanted Li Wen to change his surname to Zhu. Of course, Li Wenzhong's father definitely disagreed, and Zhu Yuanzhang was not angry, and even hired a teacher to teach Li Wenzhong.
In the five years from the age of 14 to 19, Li Wenzhong was like a sponge absorbing all kinds of knowledge crazily. He had a high level of understanding and was very smart. He could quickly remember things that the teacher taught once or twice. .
In this way, Li Wenzhong quickly became a young man with literary and military skills. Seeing that his proud nephew's abilities were getting stronger and stronger, Zhu Yuanzhang decided to let his nephew be trained in actual combat.
Li Wenzhong's military career
In 1357 AD, Zhu Yuanzhang sent Chang Yuchun to attack Chizhou. At this time, Zhu Yuanzhang's strong enemy Chen Youliang was also eyeing Chizhou, and the two sides naturally refused to give in to each other. Chen Youliang also had two brushes. Seeing that he couldn't resist, Chang Yuchun asked Zhu Yuanzhang for help. However, at that time, Zhu Yuanzhang's capable generals were all out fighting.
Xu Da was ordered to attack Changzhou , and another general Hu Dahai had already arrived at Huizhou . In this case, Zhu Yuanzhang decided to send Li Wenzhong to support Chang Yuchun. Faced with Zhu Yuanzhang's decision, many people expressed opposition, believing that Li Wenzhong lacked practical experience.
The opponent he faced was the cunning Chen Youliang again, but Zhu Yuanzhang firmly believed that Li Wenzhong would not let him down, and facts proved that Zhu Yuanzhang was right.
In the 17th year of the Yuan Dynasty, Li Wenzhong was ordered to lead troops to reinforce Chizhou. He encountered Chen Youliang's troops in the middle reaches of the Chizhou River. Li Wenzhong, who led his troops in battle for the first time, defeated Chen Youliang's troops.
After winning the battle, Li Wenzhong did not stay, but continued to march eastward, and cooperated with Chang Yu Yuchun to resolve the siege of Chizhou with overwhelming force. After that, Li Wenzhong continued to expand territory for Zhu Yuanzhang. Two of the battles greatly increased Li Wenzhong's reputation and made him a general as famous as Xu Da.
At that time, Zhang Shicheng saw that Zhu Yuanzhang and Chen Youliang were fighting fiercely, so he sent 200,000 troops to bypass Zhu Yuanzhang's rear and outflank the new city. After Li Wenzhong learned the news, he faced Zhang Shicheng's army head-on without having time to wait for reinforcements.
Li Wenzhong only had more than 10,000 troops under his command. In order to boost morale, Li Wenzhong held a mobilization meeting before the war to boost morale. Li Wenzhong said that he did not dare to fear death and would set an example.
The soldiers saw Li Wenzhong's belief that he would win and were infected. Sure enough, Li Wenzhong did what he swore to do. He rushed to the front and killed more than ten enemy generals. In the end, the Ming army won the battle with less. .
In 1366, Li Wenzhong led the army alone to capture Hangzhou, which greatly damaged Zhang Shicheng's vitality. The next year, he sent troops to Fujian and made great achievements. Before the world was settled, Li Wenzhong once again led his troops and was ordered to go on an expedition to Beiyuan . This time Li Wenzhong and Xu Da fought side by side.
The two soldiers were divided into two groups. Li Wenzhong led about 100,000 soldiers and horses to attack the city and capture the territory. They traveled to Yingchang at starry night and finally captured more than 3,000 people, including Yuan Zhaozong's son and concubines.
Since then, Li Wenzhong has become the God of War. Especially after experiencing Zhu Wenzheng's rebellion, Zhu Yuanzhang trusted Li Wenzhong more and recognized Li Wenzhong as his adopted son, and the relationship between the two took a further step.
The Decline of the God of War of Wen Tao and Military Strategy
In 1370 AD, Zhu Yuanzhang rewarded people for their merits. Li Wenzhong, who was only 32 years old, was named Cao Guogong. This time, Zhu Yuanzhang awarded six Dukes in total. Li Wenzhong ranked , Li Shanchang, Xu Da and Chang Under the spring.
After Zhu Yuanzhang established the Ming Dynasty , in order to maintain his rule and clear the external environment, Li Wenzhong and Xu Da, the first founding general of the Ming Dynasty, led their troops northward.
They captured more than a hundred people, including the Young Master of the Yuan Dynasty and members of the Yuan Dynasty royal family. In this battle, Li Wenzhong showed that his ability to fight as a soldier was not inferior to that of Xu Da.
In addition, even in the days when he was leading troops to fight, Li Wenzhong still did not give up learning how to govern the country and use troops. We all know that Lan Yu was a very talented general in the early Ming Dynasty, but Li Wenzhong's cultural level was not inferior to Lan Yu.
Li Wenzhong began to fight on the battlefield at the age of 19. By the age of 31, he had become the Left Governor of the Ming Dynasty. He served as the Left Governor and was also in charge of the Imperial College. Imperial College was the highest institution of higher learning in the Ming Dynasty that provided cultural talents for the country. If Li Wenzhong did not have sufficient cultural knowledge reserves, he would not be able to take on this important task.
Through the above-mentioned battles with Chen Youliang and Zhang Shicheng, we can also see that Li Wenzhong's greatest advantage is not his bravery but his strategy, and Lan Yu is far behind in this regard. In "History of the Ming Dynasty ", there are countless examples of Li Wenzhong using strategies to defeat more with less. This is why he has the evaluation of "being stronger when encountering a powerful enemy".
Zhu Yuanzhang fought for more than ten years and watched his opponents Chen Youliang and Zhang Shicheng fall in front of him one by one. Li Wenzhong also grew rapidly in these more than ten years and became a general with both literary and military skills.
He was very happy in his heart. After all, he was his adopted son and nephew, and his feelings were thicker than water. However, after the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang became more and more suspicious and started killing some meritorious officials.
Li Wenzhong often warned him about this, but he was also angrily reprimanded by Zhu Yuanzhang. For example, after the Hu Weiyong case occurred, because the number of people involved was too large, Li Wenzhong could not bear to watch Zhu Yuanzhang kill innocent people indiscriminately, so he wrote many times to remonstrate.
Zhu Yuanzhang was furious and scolded Li Wenzhong in front of all the civil and military officials. He was even so angry that he wanted to kill Li Wenzhong. Fortunately, Queen Ma persuaded Zhu Yuanzhang to calm down, but he lost his official position and stayed in seclusion at home.
In his later years, Li Wenzhong fell ill and died in 1384 AD. Such a "useless ending" made people sigh. Zhu Yuanzhang was very sad when he learned that his nephew Li Wenzhong had passed away. He felt that the imperial doctors who treated Li Wenzhong had not done their best, so he killed all the imperial doctors who treated Li Wenzhong.
Even the family members of these imperial doctors were implicated, with more than a hundred people affected. In addition, according to relevant historical records in "History of the Ming Dynasty", Zhu Yuanzhang once suspected that Huaian Hou Huazhong poisoned Li Wenzhong.
In anger, he did not even follow the judicial procedures of the Ming Dynasty to investigate and interrogate Huai'an Hou Hua, so he directly cut off his title and exiled his family to a remote town in Sichuan.
The emperor was so angry that he shed a river of blood. This also shows that Li Wenzhong held a very important position in Zhu Yuanzhang's heart. At the same time, when Li Wenzhong was buried, Zhu Yuanzhang posthumously named Li Wenzhong the King of Qiyang. What is even more unexpected is that he also granted Li Wenzhong access to the Ancestral Temple. .
It is extremely rare for a duke to enjoy such high treatment, let alone in the Ming Dynasty, in the entire feudal history of our country. Later, Zhu Yuanzhang ordered Li Jinglong (Li Wenzhong's son) to inherit his father's title.
As we all know, Zhu Yuanzhang was a very suspicious person, and he was eager to take back all the power in the hands of powerful officials. However, he treated Li Wenzhong like this, which shows how important the latter is to the former.
In general, although Li Wenzhong and Zhu Yuanzhang are related, his achievements are all made by himself on the battlefield with real swords and guns. It is a pity that his son Li Jinglong did not open the gate of Nanjing to welcome Zhu Di's army during the Battle of Jingnan.
Father, heroic son, Bear, probably Li Wenzhong didn’t expect that his son would be so useless, right? What do you think of this?
