After hearing what Li Shimin said.
Li Chengqian suddenly smiled bitterly.
Of course he knew what Li Shimin meant when he said this to him.
I remember that at the end of the Sui Dynasty, the world was in chaos.
For a time, there were many heroes, and many heroes came together to establish Tang, Qin, Liang, Dingyang, Xia and many other local governments, and established separate regimes.
Xue Ju was one of the famous heroes in the late Sui Dynasty. After revolting against the Sui Dynasty, he called himself the Overlord of the Western Qin Dynasty.
Li Shimin's defeat by Xue Ju seems to be related to the struggle between the Li and Tang royal families.
But we can't put all the responsibility on it.
At the beginning, Li Chengqian didn't know how powerful Xue Ju was.
It wasn't until later when he heard Liu Hongji mention this matter that he really understood how terrifying Xue Ju was.
To put it bluntly, if this guy hadn't died suddenly of illness, it was unknown whether the Tang Dynasty would be "alive".
History books describe Xue Ju as being tall and majestic, good at writing and martial arts, and brave and good at shooting.
Moreover, this guy was not only brave at the time, but his family was also very rich. It was said that he had a fortune of tens of millions.
With such own hardware and strong family conditions, this guy is destined to do great things.
After the troubled times, he naturally transformed from an ordinary citizen to a hero who dominated the northern borderlands.
Thirteen years after the founding of the Sui Dynasty, it was time to catch up with the famine, so Xue Ju raised troops in Jincheng to establish the country, claiming to be the overlord of the Western Qin Dynasty, and the founding year was named Qin Xing.
Soon, the nearby Sui generals Huangfu Wan and Qiang Zhonglisu from Minshan led their troops to surrender.
Xue Ju has now become a leader, occupying the territory of Longxi, and has more than 130,000 troops.
After Li Yuan captured Chang'an, he did not make his idea of proclaiming emperor public, and still made the grandson of Emperor Sui Yang his puppet.
However, at this time, Li Yuan had begun to look across the country and began to prepare for the establishment of his own empire.
In the first battle, he set his sights on Gansu.
Gansu at that time was the Western Qin Kingdom established by Xue Ju with Lanzhou as its capital.
Li Yuan sent his most capable son Li Shimin and asked him to personally lead troops to attack Xue Ju.
In May 618 AD, Li Shimin and Xue Jujun met.
As I said before, Li Shimin is not an ordinary person. He has always had his own unique talents in war.
He knew Xue Ju's strength and knew that if he faced off head-on, he would end up killing a thousand enemies and losing eight hundred to himself.
And Li Shimin obviously wouldn't do such a thing.
So, he seized on the fact that Xue Ju had more troops and less food.
He decided to avoid the enemy's attack and ordered his soldiers to dig into the ditch and fortify the wall. He adopted a defensive strategy and planned to drag Xue Ju's army directly across.
But the ideal is very full, and the reality is very skinny.
At that time, Li Jiancheng also listened to the words of people around him and quietly cut off Li Shimin's food and grass.
So after a period of stalemate with Xue Ju, Li Shimin also ran out of food.
Under such a situation, Li Shimin was forced to have no choice but to lead his men to a decisive battle with Xue Ju in advance.
But as I said before, Xue Ju is not an ordinary person. His military ability is no worse than that of Li Shimin.
After this battle, the Tang Dynasty's disadvantage of low morale due to lack of food and grass became apparent.
As soon as the two sides fought, the Tang Dynasty side fell directly into decline.
This is how Li Shimin's biggest humiliation and failure occurred in his military career.
According to historical records, in the battle of Qianshuiyuan, fifty-six out of ten soldiers of the Tang Dynasty died.
Generals Murong Luohu, Li Anyuan and Liu Hongji were all trapped in the formation and captured by the enemy.
If Qin Qiong and Qin Shubao hadn't fought tooth and nail, Li Shimin would have been captured alive by the enemy.
After the victory, Xue Ju collected the dead of Tang soldiers as Jingguan.
In other words, Xue Ju piled the corpses of Tang soldiers into a mountain as a landscape for everyone to visit.
From this, it is not difficult to see how many Tang soldiers died in battle and how tragic Li Shimin's defeat was.
It can be said that after this battle, Li Shimin completely realized that there was no possibility of coexistence between him and Li Jiancheng.
After that, the two brothers completely broke up and fell into an endless fight.
Also after this war, Xue Ju's men proposed the strategy of taking advantage of the victory to attack Chang'an.
It can be said that in the Tang Dynasty at that time, due to Li Shimin's failure, the morale of the entire army was sluggish to a minimum.
If Xue Ju can really lead his troops to attack, not only Chang'an will be in danger.
Whether the Tang Dynasty can be established, and even future history, will inevitably be rewritten.
But just when Xue Ju was preparing to mobilize a massive army to defeat the Tang Dynasty in one go, Xue Ju suddenly fell ill and died.
With his death, the war situation between Xue Ju and Datang also reversed.
Li Shimin learned from the previous lesson that Li Jiancheng had manipulated the grain route and began to prepare grain and grass by himself.
In the same year, he launched a counterattack against Xue Ju.
In this battle, Li Shimin vented all his anger on Xue Ju's old men.
A few months later, the Western Qin regime established by Xue Ju was destroyed in one fell swoop, allowing Datang to obtain Qin, a place rich in powerful soldiers.
And Li Shimin was awarded the title of King of Qin because of this.
Of course, after this, Li Shimin and Li Jiancheng started a life-and-death imperial battle.
It was not until the subsequent Xuanwu Gate Incident and Li Shimin officially ascended to the throne that this royal dispute finally stopped...
…
Look at Li Shimin's appearance.
Li Chengqian pursed his lips and said, "To be honest, it doesn't matter to me whether I can be the prince or whether I can inherit the country left by my father."
"In the beginning, I didn't want to be the prince because the fight between my father and my uncle was too bloody, so I was afraid of dying in this game."
Li Chengqian looked at Li Shimin and said, "For me, I am satisfied if I can watch my father grow old, my mother grow old, and I can see my brothers and sisters getting more and more."
"But it seems that everything is as my father said. This royal family is a quagmire. The more you struggle to get out, the deeper you will sink."
"As I played games again and again, was assassinated again and again, and was framed again and again, I am no longer afraid of death."
After saying this, Li Chengqian was silent for a while.
After a long time, he spoke again: "I know that the person who cut off my food and grass is Zheng Jiaji of the Zheng family, and the person behind the scenes is Qingque."
"That man named Zheng, I can kill him whenever I want."
"But I can't touch Qingque, and I can't kill him either. He is the biological brother of my compatriot."
"What I want now is nothing more than family harmony."
After finishing his words, Li Chengqian took a deep breath: "I have been holding these words in my heart for a long time, but I just never said them to my father."
"I really don't want to point the knife in my hand at my own family one day."
"I don't want to think that one day, my father will order me to be deposed or to kill me."
"I know that not only will I be sad, but my father will be sad as well."
"Grandpa is like this. Ever since he broke into the Xuanwu Sect, there hasn't been a day that he hasn't lived in pain."
Li Chengqian raised his head and smiled: "Okay, Father, I have finished what I have to say. As for what Father will do with me, that is Father's business."
After saying this, he turned around and walked out of the palace.
Li Shimin was the only one standing there blankly, staring at his son's leaving back in a daze.
turn out to be……
This is what he is thinking...
