Is Yang Guang really a cruel and bad king?

Yang Guang, Emperor Yang Di of the Sui Dynasty, the second emperor of the Sui Dynasty and the king of national subjugation. In the folk, Yang Guang was described as a bad king who killed his father and brother. He has committed countless crimes. However, romance is romance after all. When we open the history of the late Sui Dynasty, we can see the other side of Yang Guang. Abroad, Yang Guang and Qin Shihuang were even called emperors in the history of China. So, how did this completely contradictory conclusion come from? Let's take a look at the real Yang Guang in history. How to evaluate it is up to you.

A talented and handsome young man.

According to the Records of Emperor Yang-ti, Emperor Yang-ti loves youth. He has long heard that Wu and Hui in Nanping, Xiongnu and Kundi in the north all have unique acoustic achievements.

What do you mean? In other words, when Yang Guang was young, he had a loving heart, and at the same time, he also made outstanding military achievements. He is the only one of his brothers.

In fact, when he was young, Yang Guang was really a talented and handsome boy. He is not only gifted from an early age, but also polite, self-denial, diligent and self-disciplined, and his personal character is flawless. In the eyes of his father, Emperor Wendi of Sui Dynasty, Yang Guang is the best candidate to inherit the great cause. Prince Yong Yang himself died even worse. He asked a fortune teller to see how long his father would live. After repeatedly offending Emperor Wen, he completely lost the trust of Emperor Wen, and the position of Prince naturally fell to Yang Guang. It can be said that Yang Guang's ascent to the throne of the prince is entirely due to his own moral and military achievements and Yong Yang's self-help.

When I first reached the top, I was fascinated by infrastructure.

After the death of Emperor Wendi, Yang Guang ascended the throne smoothly. We know that the Sui Dynasty was reunified after nearly 400 years of great division in China. Emperor Wendi worked hard to stabilize the national situation and laid a rich foundation for the Sui Dynasty. Yang Guang, on the other hand, is a very ambitious person, hoping to build a great cause of the Millennium on the basis of his parents, and even create a prosperous time that has never been seen before in history, which is also in line with Yang Guang's confident and proud personality since childhood.

Therefore, after Yang Guang ascended the throne, he couldn't wait to implement his ideals and ambitions, and the means was to build large-scale buildings and build super projects, which was called the infrastructure madman. In a short period of seven years, we built the East Capital, dug the Grand Canal, built Chidao, built the Great Wall, built palaces and built dragon boats. He did everything he could think of at once, thanks to the wealth left by Emperor Wen's frugality, otherwise, just like the Qin Dynasty, the construction of the Great Wall would directly arouse the people's rebellion and eventually lead to national subjugation.

Xiao Qiang, who can't be killed in Northeast China

If Yang Guang's construction of a series of huge projects only increased the burden on the people, and China people have always been easy to manage, as long as they can eat enough, they will never rebel, while Sanzheng Goguryeo completely aroused the rebellion and became Yang Guang's death warrant.

In fact, during the reign of Emperor Wendi of Sui Dynasty, there was an army expedition to Koguryo, but before the army reached the battlefield, it encountered bad weather and typhoon, and finally suffered heavy losses and had to retreat. In Yang Guang's mind, his great cause must not tolerate this little Koguryo rebellion, and the territory of the empire must not be flawed.

Therefore, Yang Guang, who is full of self-confidence, began to collect Koguryo in person after completing a series of huge projects. In Yang Guang's eyes, Koguryo is as simple as swatting a fly to death. He believes that as long as his millions of amphibious troops drive to Liaodong, the enemy will fall apart and he will achieve great things in the future.

Three-sign Koguryo diagram

But the fact is that Koguryo is small, but it has strong fighting capacity, so it can be called the invincible Xiao Qiang. In addition, the supply line of the Sui Dynasty was too long, and all three expeditions failed. At this time, the domestic smoke has already filled the air, and the people can no longer stand the emperor's joy and waste the people's money. If people only invest in a series of projects, but fighting will kill people, no one wants to watch their children go with the emperor again and again. Thus, the expedition to Koguryo ignited the bonfire of the demise of the Sui Dynasty.

Yang guang's last years

After Koguryo's expedition failed, Yang Guang, who was proud, confident and brilliant, disappeared, and he buried his head deeply in the gentle years of Jiangdu. He doesn't believe that the world is against him. If anyone dares to tell the truth, it may be that Yang is too proud and confident to accept his failure, not to mention that the people have abandoned him.

Emperor Yang Di went to Yangzhou.

He disguised himself as an ostrich and chose to indulge himself in the rich and gentle Jiangnan environment. Jiangdu is the place where he once made a fortune, and he also believes that this is his blessed land. With Jiangdu's army, when the north was surging, he even thought of simply dividing the south of the Yangtze River and coming back to the Southern and Northern Dynasties.

But the gap between reality and ideal is always so far. He didn't know that at this time, the common people and his soldiers were of one mind, and no one wanted to go back to the troubled times when the north and the south were divided, not to mention that most of his soldiers were northerners. Finally, after losing everyone's heart, his soldiers ended his life with their own belts. The prosperous Sui Dynasty also came to an end.

Yang guang's final conclusion

For his life, the final conclusion is embodied in his temple name: Emperor Yang. However, the name of this temple was changed in the Tang Dynasty. What is the real name of Yang Guang's temple? Emperor sui shizu Ming? , referred to as sui.

As for the historical records of the early Tang Dynasty, there are many controversies now, which tend to beautify the Tang Dynasty and belittle the Sui Dynasty. Li Shimin, Emperor Taizong, had a bad attitude towards history books, and he was also famous for tampering with them. And Yang Guang's crimes are concentrated in extravagance, waste of money, and bohemian, almost as famous as Shang Zhouwang.

To be fair, those big projects that Yang Guang did in the early stage were actually beneficial to the country and the people, but the expedition to Koguryo was something that had to be done. One is to solve the border problem, and the other is to avenge the failure of Wendi's expedition, including several expeditions to Goguryeo in the Tang Dynasty. It was not until the Emperor Gaozong's period that Goguryeo was completely eliminated, indicating that Goguryeo was indeed a menace to the Sui and Tang Dynasties.

Tang Zheng Koguryo

Yang Guang's later work in Jiangdu has indeed lost the nature and enterprising spirit of an emperor, which can be said to be entirely due to his own personality and growth experience. Yang Guangsheng grew up too smoothly in the royal family, and the experience of never failing has created his strong self-confidence. Faced with successive blows, he couldn't accept his failure, so he lost his enterprising spirit and chose to bury his head in the sand.

The rumor about Yang Guang's killing his father comes from romance and speculation, with the aim of further vilifying him. As the legal heir, Yang Guang had no reason to seize the throne in this way, not to mention that Emperor Wendi was seriously ill at that time. The death of Yang Yong after Yang Guang succeeded to the throne was really a routine operation of emperors in feudal society. It is estimated that no one can tolerate the former prince, eldest son and younger brother living in the world as a potential threat.

Xuanwu gate incident

After the establishment of the Tang Dynasty, in order to highlight the greatness of the Tang Dynasty, it not only changed Yang Guang's temple name, but also further vilified Yang Guang and completely denied his achievements. Later, Li Shimin launched the Xuanwu Gate Rebellion, killed his brother and younger brother, and placed his father under house arrest, which made him an immortal emperor. As the saying goes, Li Shimin's position is not right, but he stepped on the shoulders of the Sui Dynasty to create a prosperous Tang Dynasty, and finally let future generations forgive what he did, while Yang Guang has always been labeled as a heartless and bad king.

Therefore, for Emperor Yang Guang of Yang Di, we can't deny his achievements, but he made great strides and did things beyond the endurance limit of the Sui Dynasty, which just ended hundreds of years of turmoil. But his personality defect made him choose to let himself go after failure and eventually fall behind? Sin is in the present, and merit is in the future? The ending.