01
Historically, zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, in order to consolidate the world of the Zhu family, killed the founding heroes who had made meritorious contributions in fighting the country.
Among the 34 meritorious men appointed in the early Ming Dynasty, except for a few who died of illness before, very few others were able to die well.
Even xu da, the first hero of the founding of the country, ended up being given death.
The saying "birds are exhausted, good bows are hidden; cunning rabbits die, lackeys cook" originated in the late Spring and Autumn period more than 2,000 years ago, when Fan Li, a strategist of the Yue Kingdom, fled to Taihu Lake after helping the Yue King to destroy the State of Wu, and wrote a letter to another revival hero, Wen Zhi, to persuade him to leave.
The scene described in this classic quote has actually been staged many times in history. Liu Bang, the ancestor of Han Gao more than 1500 years before Zhu Yuanzhang, treated the founding heroes with cruelty and cruelty, no less than that of the younger Zhu Yuanzhang.
In December 202 BC, Xiang Yu, the king of Chu, was defeated in the Battle of Xiaxia and had no choice but to kill himself at Wujiang, and the Battle between Chu and Han, which lasted for 4 and a half years, ended in the victory of Liu Bang.
When Liu Bang established the Western Han Dynasty and became emperor, there were a total of 7 princes originally attached to liu bang.
They were: Han Xin the King of Chu, Yingbu the King of Huainan, Peng Yue the King of Liang, Han Xin the King of Han, Zhang Ao the King of Zhao, and Wu Rui the Prince of Hengshan and Zang Di the King of Yan, who were originally crowned by Xiang Yu.
The princes jointly invited Liu Bang to be emperor, of course, in order to let the emperor confirm his throne.
Among them, Han Xin, Peng Yue and Yingbu were known as the three famous generals of the early Han Dynasty.
The most famous and meritorious person is naturally Han Xin. Together with Xiao He and Zhang Liang, he was listed as the Three Masters of the Early Han Dynasty. At that time, people evaluated Han Xin as "the unparalleled warrior of the country" and "the supreme merit", and posterity regarded him as a soldier immortal. It can be said that without Han Xin's strategizing and amazing battlefield command, there would be no victory for Liu Bang over Xiang Yu.
Liu Bang was not at ease with these princes with different surnames, especially Han Xin, who was a high-ranking lord. As soon as Xiang Yu died, Liu Bang did it. He first seized Han Xin's military power, changed him from King of Qi to King of Chu, and greatly reduced his fiefdom.
Then he made excuses to say that he was plotting rebellion and arrested him.
Han Xin lamented on the spot: "Sure enough, as people say, the cunning rabbit dies, and the good dog cooks; the high bird is exhausted, the good bow is hidden; the enemy country is broken, and the plotter is killed." The world has been decided, I should cook! However, on that occasion, he was finally spared death and demoted from the King of Chu to the Marquis of Huaiyin.
After a few years, Liu Bang still couldn't help but be instigated by Chen Pingren, and Xiao He, Han Xin's most trusted person, personally came forward and tricked Han Xin into taking it down in the palace.
Subsequently, he was ordered by Liu Bang's wife Lü Hou to be taken to the bell chamber of the Changle Palace and killed. In order to cut the grass and remove the roots, Han Xin's entire family and relatives of the three ethnic groups were also killed.
02
After Han Xin was eliminated, Liu Bang's next target was Peng Yue, the king of Liang.
Peng Yue is now a native of Juye County, Shandong Province. Originally, he fished in the juye lake for a living, and later gathered a group of young to make a living by robbing the house.
Seeing that Chen Sheng and Wu Guang had made a name for themselves in Daze Township, some of his subordinates were also eager to try it, persuading Peng Yue to play the banner of rebellion like others and go out to break into the world. However, Peng Yue had his own opinion, he thought that now the two sides were like two dragons before they began to fight, the situation was unclear, or look at it.
A year later, Peng Yue gathered more than a hundred young people who followed him, and they asked Peng Yue to come out as the leader and lead them in rebellion. Under their repeated provocations, Peng Yue agreed.
So they met at sunrise the next morning to assemble, and whoever was late would be beheaded.
The next day, more than a dozen people were late, and the latest one was late until noon. Peng Yue wanted to establish his own authority and could not tolerate such a situation where orders did not work. So he ordered his men to kill the last man who came.
Everyone thought it was just a joke, and they all laughed and said, Don't be late in the future.
Unexpectedly, Peng Yue didn't say a word, and he directly pulled the unlucky guy and killed him.
Then an altar was set up and all his men were commanded. Everyone was shocked to see Peng Yue so fiercely, and even one of them did not dare to look up at him. No one dared to disobey his orders from then on.
Peng Yue led the gang to set out and joined the Great Scuffle at the end of Qin, they attacked the city strategically, collected the scattered soldiers left by the various princes in the war, and the team soon grew to more than a thousand people.
In the anti-Qin war that rose up together, the Chu army led by Xiang Yu stood out and began to form a monopoly situation. After the leader destroyed the Qin state.
Xiang Yu proclaimed himself the Overlord of Western Chu and set his capital at Pengcheng (Xuzhou), and at the same time rewarded the generals who had contributed to the war against the Qin Dynasty, and also established the descendants of the nobles of the Six Kingdoms who had previously been destroyed by the Qin State as kings.
Peng Yue also contributed to the previous War of The Qin Rebellion, and already had an army of tens of thousands of people under his command. However, Xiang Yu ignored him and did not make any sub-sealing. This undoubtedly caused Peng Yue's dissatisfaction and resentment.
03
Liu Bang was crowned king of Han by Xiang Yu, and after years of operation, his strength became stronger and stronger.
Compared with Xiang Yu, who has courage and no strategy, and only blindly acts recklessly and does not know how to know that people are good at doing things, Liu Bang is much more cunning.
Liu Bang had Xiao He, Zhang Liang, and others to offer advice, and then recruited Han Xin, a military wizard who was originally in Xiang Yu's camp, and recruited a group of fierce generals.
In 206 BC, Liu Bang finally turned his face openly with Xiang Yu, and the Chu-Han War began.
At the beginning, Xiang Yu's side gathered the vast majority of soldiers and horses. As the war progressed, more and more forces turned to Liu Bang, the King of Han, and Xiang Yu became a loner.
The strategist Chen Ping could not stay with Xiang Yu, secretly went to liu bang, made many plans for him, and became Liu Bang's right-hand man.
Even Yingbu, the king of Jiujiang, who had been following Xiang Yu, rebelled against Chu and returned to Han, and in turn became the vanguard of the attack on Xiang Yu.
Peng Yue had originally made good friends with Liu Bang, and instead of attaching himself to Xiang Liang and Xiang Yu's uncle and nephew, who were the strongest, he looked at Liu Bang, who was still weak at that time. When Liu Bang attacked Juye from the north of Zhongshan Mountain, Peng Yue once took the initiative to assist him.
In July of that year, Tian Rong, the former king of qi during the Warring States period, was dissatisfied with Xiang Yu's division of the seal, established himself as the king of Qi, and rebelled against Xiang Yu.
After Liu Bang knew about it, he sent someone to give the general Yin Xin to Peng Yue, asking him to march into Dingtao and attack the Chu army. Xiang Yu ordered Xiao Gongjiao to lead an army to attack Peng Yue, but was defeated by Peng Yue.
After pacifying Guanzhong, Liu Bang led the Han army eastward in the spring of the following year and attacked the State of Chu. Peng Yue led more than 30,000 of his horses to join Liu Bang in Waihuang (Henan Minquan). Later, because of Peng Yue's merits in recovering the cities of Western Wei, he was appointed by Liu Bang as the Xiangguo of the State of Wei. Peng Yue held the military power of the Wei state and controlled Liangdi, which is now northeastern Henan.
In 205 BC, Liu Bang was defeated by Xiang Yu at Pengcheng and retreated westward towardSurabaya, where the Han army was annihilated by hundreds of thousands of people under the pursuit of the Chu army.
Those princes who had originally followed Liu Bang in their crusade against the Chu State saw that Liu Bang had suffered defeat, so they betrayed Liu Bang one after another and turned to Xiang Yu. Only Peng Yue alone led his men and horses north to garrison along the Yellow River.
04
After that, Peng Yue had been leading his troops to carry out guerrilla warfare behind Xiang Yu to harass, ambush the Chu army, and cut off the Chu army's back-up grain and grass supply at Liangdi.
As a result, Xiang Yu was attacked on both sides and fought on both sides, and the main force of the Chu army rushed back and forth, tired of coping.
"Peng Yue Scratching Chu" relieved Liu Bang's pressure and avoided the fate of the Han army being annihilated by Xiang Yu.
Riding on Xiang Yu and Liu Bang in Xingyang, Peng Yue captured 17 cities including Suiyang and Waihuang. Forcing Xiang Yu to abandon Liu Bang in the west, he personally led an army to the east to recover the place occupied by Peng Yue.
Later, the Chu army had no time to pursue Peng Yue, and returned south to Yangxia (Taikang), preparing to return to the front line of fighting Liu Bang. Peng Yue also lost no time in attacking more than 20 cities near Changyi and sending more than 100,000 grains captured to Liu Bang as military food.
In 202 BC, in the crucial Battle of Xiaxia, Liu Bang initially had no chance of winning. Later, Liu Bang obeyed Zhang Liang's plan and used the title of king as bait, promising to make Peng Yue the King of Liang after the victory over the State of Chu, and to divide up a large area of land north of Suiyang to him. The coastal areas east of Chen Di were divided among the Qi kings Han Xin. Mobilize the enthusiasm of the two to eliminate the Chu state.
Peng Yue then led all his men and horses to meet Liu Bang's army. It was mainly relying on the combination of Han Xin and Peng Yue's two armies of soldiers and horses that there was a ten-sided ambush to defeat the powerful Xiang Yu.
After the fall of the Chu state, Peng Yue became the king of Liang as he wished, and the capital was in Dingtao. However, a few years later, Peng Yue, like Han Xin, was in the face of a catastrophe.
05
In the autumn of 197 BC, Liu Bang's general, Chen Feng of the Zhao State, rebelled in Dai County, and Liu Bang personally led an army to go on a crusade, and he asked Peng Yue to also send troops. Peng Yuetui said that he was ill and sent his subordinates to lead the army.
At that time, Han Xin also pushed back and did not go. Soon Han Xin was tricked into murder by Lü Hou and Xiao He. Less than 3 months after Han Xin was killed, Peng Yue's horse officer ran to the capital to falsely accuse Peng Yue of rebellion.
Liu Bang sent several emissaries, and Peng Yue, unguarded, unexpectedly arrested him. Liu Bang imprisoned Peng Yue in a prison in Luoyang, and after examination, he did not find any real evidence of his rebellion, so he placed a plausible charge of "anti-form has been committed". Liu Bang remembered Peng Yue's previous merits, pardoned him, deposed him as a commoner, and exiled him to Qingyi County, Shudi.
On the way to Sichuan, Peng Yue walked west to Zheng County, which is now Huazhou in Weinan City, when he happened to meet Lü Hou from Chang'an and prepare to go to Luoyang.
After Peng Yue saw Lü, he cried to her, explaining that he really did not have the crime of rebellion. He bitterly begged Lü Hou to intercede for himself in front of Liu Bang and let him return to his hometown of Juye, Shandong.
Lü Hou listened to Peng Yue's statement, and happily agreed, letting Peng Yue follow her back to the capital Luoyang.
Peng Yue was full of gratitude to Lü Hou, and he did not expect that he was casting a net.
As soon as this vicious woman returned to Luoyang, she said to Liu Bang: Peng Yue is a strong warrior, send him to Shudi, wouldn't he let the tiger return to the mountains and leave a curse on himself, it would be better to simply kill him? Liu Bang naturally hit it off and immediately agreed.
Lü Hou asked Peng Yue's men to falsely accuse him of plotting rebellion again.
Liu Bang approved the report made by Wang Tiankai to destroy the Peng Yue family, and Peng Yue was immediately killed, and all three of his clans were exterminated.
Peng Yue's body was also chopped into meat sauce and given to the princes to share in food, in order to knock on the mountain and shock the tiger as a warning.
A generation of famous generals, the founding heroes of the Western Han Dynasty, actually ended up in such a situation.
Peng Yue is considered to be the first ancient military expert in the history of war to use guerrilla tactics, and also played a great role in the outcome of the Chu-Han conflict.
The Tang Dynasty once rated the sixty-four ancient generals who were worthy of the Wu Temple, and "Peng Yue, the King of Han Liang", was among them.