Young Taizong's Winter Campaign of 619 李世民败刘武周, 宋金刚

Only a month later after the 20 year old Prince Li Shimin won his victory at Qianshuiyuan, report came in from the old Tang home base in Shanxi which warned that it were attacked by his old clan's nemesis.  The fierce agrarian rebels Liu Wuzhou and Song Jingang (both former rebels against the Sui,) had launched a major combined offensive with Gokturk backing against the Tang.

Liu Wuzhou was a Sui military governor who had served the Sui but sensing the 

waning of Sui power in 617, soon murdered the local Sui magistrates and rebelled. Like

many prominent rebels of the era, he purged the Sui officials and opened up

the granary for the peasants. To buttress his power base. He immediately looted the

local Sui palace and pledged his loot, and his service to the nearby Gokturk Khagan. 

Liu Wuzhou and Song Jingang were both fierce anti-government rebels who had

dealt serious defeats to Sui imperial forces. Originally, Li Yuan, the patriarch of the

Li clan was tasked with uprooting these rebels from northern China. Li's inability

to completely eradicate the Turkic- backed Liu Wuzhou was one of the main 

reasons he rebelled against the Sui government.

Liu Wuzhou and Song captured Shanxi's capital of Taiyuan in summer 619, expertly cutting off the city's water supply and forcing Li Shimin's younger brother, Li Yuanji, who had been in charge there to flee in panic. After taking Taiyuan and making it their capital, the two rebels continued their devastating offensive southward. Li Shimin's father, Li Yuan (Emperor Gaozu of Tang) initially sent a force against the him, but by winter 619, Liu and Song had crushed that army and taken over nearly all of modern Shanxi. What's worse, Liu's regime was completely backed by the looming Gokturk Khaganate.

For Liu Wuzhou's supplications to the Khagan, the Gokturk Khagan- Shibi Khan made Liu the "Dingyang Khan"— lit. "the Khan who rules over the Yang clan." It was created as a direct insult: (Yang was the name of Sui's imperial clan.) Shibi Khan also bestowed on Liu a great banner with a symbol of a wolf's head, as he had done so to his own local princes. Liu then declared himself emperor of the territory in modern Inner Mongolia, turning the entire region into a Gokturk vassal state. 

A troubled history: Shibi Khan remained an implacable foe to both the Sui and the 

Tang regimes. By the late 610s, the Sui and the Gokturks have heavily meddled in each 

other's affairs for over three decades. In the chaotic Gokturk civil war which split up the 

empire in two, the Sui under its founder Emperor Wen had supported various Gokturk 

princes against each other. However, after Wen's death, the fortune of northern China 

and that of the Gokturks were reversed. For the next two decades, the Gokturks would 

repeatedly support various anti-government rebels in northern China. During the 

chaotic years of 617-620, they would support more than a dozen 

rebels across northern China. Including the Li clan of Tang.

Conspiracy: In spring 619, Shibi Khan was planning a launch a major incursion into Chinese territory, and he had Liu and another rebel ruler, Liang Shidu the Emperor of Liang (modern Ordos Desert) to the immediate west of Tang's territories, to join him, but Shibi Khan soon died, and the Gokturk pincer attack never materialize. However, his anti- Tang proxy war policy was continued- and further expanded by his successors Chuluo Khagan and Illig Khagan in the 620s. Virtually all who warred against the Tang were supported by the Gokturk Khagans. Illig Khagan would take the proxy wars further in 626 by personally breaching into the Tang territory and summon Li to face him right outside the Tang capital of Chang An. 

Shocked at the development, Li Yuan considered abandoning the northern region- the former homeland of the fief of Tang altogether. However Prince Shimin strongly opposed doing so and offered to personally lead an army against the two rebels. Li Yuan agreed and commissioned him with an army.

LIGHTNING JABS IN THE FROST

 Li Shimin did not remove his armor or the horse saddle for 3 full days during the battle. 

Prince Shimin crossed the Yellow River, but just like at his previous battle of Qianshuiyuan in 618, Li Shimin refrained from committing to decisive battles, choosing rather to engage in prolonged skirmishes, probing actions, and duels while waiting his foes supplies to run out. This too, unnerved his enemies, whose morale plummeted in the harsh winter clime without them knowing if Li would offer battle. However Li shored up his own supplies and prepared for a decisive fatal blow. 

Telebiao 特勒骠: ridden into battle in 618. Li did not remove his armor or the horse saddle for 3 full days during the battle. The horse has yellow and white hair on its body and a black mouth. Its name is originally 特勤 Teqin, derived from the Turkic term Tegin: a name that usually referred to Junior Princes of the Ashina royal family. 

During the wait, Li would regularly dart across the region and crush any possible support for the rebel army. In the early spring of 620, Li suddenly appeared and utterly destroyed a Sui loyalist in the region that still held out against the Tang forces and was parlaying with Song's forces for an alliance. Later in the spring of 620, he waylayed a major supply column for Song's army. Severing the supply line to Song's forces. 

Having made his enemy wait in the darkness and swiftly jabbed away each of the foe's strength, the foe was left in a deadly stupor. In the summer 620, Li Shimin, believing Song Jingang's army to be worn out and completely ran out of food supplies, launched a major counterattack with a full bellied army. Li first concnetrated his attacks on Song's regional commanders, and then, after many have been blown away, closed in and attacked Song directly. 

Here is where Li's abilities as a vanguard general was shown prominently. Li defeated Song's prolapsing forces many times, each bitter blow rips apart bits of Song's defeated army, turning many former Song generals into Tang captives. 

Li Shimin gave a relentless chase, and once on top of his horse Telebiao fought and gave chase for 3 full days. Eventually, Song's forces disintegrated, and whole swaths of Song's former lieutenants surrendered to their Tang pursuers along with low ranking soldiers.

Aside from crushing Song's army, Li Shimin also met one of most loyal generals: the gruff Yuchi Jinde (Yuchi Gong) in these battles. Though at this point Yuchi Jinde had only been a ruffian and a lesser officer serving Song Jingang, under Li he would become one of Li's best champions and bodyguards, eventually securing Shimin's ascension as the Taizong Emperor in 626. Li's lightning jabs did it's work, and Song's army was destroyed. Northern China and western China now securely belonged to the Tang, and hundreds of thousands of Liu and Song's men were enrolled into Prince Shimin's army.

The respective territories of Tang of the Li clan (Pink), Wang Shichong's Zheng (Yellow), and Dou Jiande's Xia (Orange) in 620. The Li family of Tang controlled mostly the northwestern sectors of the realm, Wang controlled the resource rich central five point of the empire at Henan, while Dou controlled the equally populous and fiercely turbulent province of Hebei.

Upon hearing of Song's defeat, Liu immediately abandoned Taiyuan in panic and fled northward back to his Gokturk patrons while Song's army crumbled before Li Shimin's onslaught. Li Shimin relentlessly pursued him, expelling him first from Shanxi, then chased Liu's army further until all of the northern China- the home base of both Liu and Song fell into Tang hands and both rebels generals had to fled under the protection of the Eastern Gokturk Khagan. Liu would serve the Gokturk Khagan for some years before being executed by him. 

But the demands of the state did not provide Li with a respite from war. Within only months, fresh from his crushing victory over Liu Wuzhou, in August of 620 Li Shimin received orders from his father to crush Tang's entrenched foes in central China. Thus Li, with an army of 50,000 men, began his advance from Shanxi towards Luoyang. Here, the Tang made its bid for the most prosperous and most densely populated province of China.

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