The Chariot God of Gaoliang River, Worthy of the Name

"The Oath of the Golden Coffer? How is it that I never knew the empress dowager made such an agreement?" Zhao Kuangyin was so angry he laughed again. To inherit his throne, to have the throne pass from elder brother to younger, his brother had made up this so-called Oath of the Golden Coffer.

"The throne passing from elder brother to younger?" Ying Zheng exclaimed. "Before Duke Xiao's reforms, the eastern states regarded my Great Qin as barbarian tribes, yet even Great Qin followed a succession system in which the throne passed to a son if there was one, and only to a brother if there was no son."

"Great Song claimed to be the legitimate dynasty of the Central Plains. Even barbarians knew to pass the throne to their sons, yet Great Song came up with this ridiculous succession from elder brother to younger! Was it a woman's ignorance, or did Zhao Guangyi make it up himself?"

"Come to think of it, if Zhao Guangyi really did pass the throne to his younger brother after his death, I'd think a little better of him!"

["According to some sources, Zhao Guangyi was also a master of poison. Later generations even suspected that Zhao Kuangyin was poisoned to death by Zhao Guangyi while drinking with him."]

["Li Yu, the last ruler of Southern Tang, had a wife, Empress Zhou the Younger, who was a peerless beauty renowned throughout the realm. After Southern Tang fell, Zhao Guangyi bestowed upon her the title of Lady of Zheng. Every year, he entered the palace along with the other court ladies."]

["During Zhao Guangyi's reign, whenever Empress Zhou the Younger entered the palace, she would not come out for several days. After leaving, she would curse Li Yu roundly, leaving him washing his face with tears all day long."]

["As it turned out, the lustful Zhao Guangyi had not only forced himself on Empress Zhou the Younger during her visits to the palace, but had even ordered a painter to depict the scene."]

["Thus came the famous 'Painting of Xiling Taking Empress Zhou the Younger.'"]

"Shameless!"

"Winners become kings, losers become bandits. Zhao Guangyi forcing himself on a woman was not wrong in itself, but he actually had a painter stand by and paint it! He was an emperor! How could he appear in a painting like that? How was he any different from a barbarian?"

"Where is the Painting of Xiling Taking Empress Zhou the Younger? I have a friend who would like to appreciate it!"

"Zhao Song truly disgraced the name of Song!" The man who said this was Liu Yu, the founding emperor of Liu Song.

["After Li Yu learned of it, he went to the palace to confront Zhao Guangyi, only for Zhao Guangyi to bestow Qianji Poison upon him and poison him to death."]

["In 979, Zhao Guangyi personally led a campaign against Taiyuan and destroyed Northern Han, which had long allied with Liao against Song."]

["With this, the division of the Central Plains that had begun in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period finally came to an end."]

["Afterward, despite his ministers' opposition, he intended to press his victory with a northern campaign to recover the Sixteen Prefectures of Yan and Yun, which Shi Jingtang had ceded to the Khitan. The result was a crushing defeat."]

["Zhao Guangyi's army was defeated at the Gaoliang River, and he himself was struck by two arrows in the leg. In his panic, he could only switch to a donkey cart and flee."]

["Zhao Guangyi drove the donkey cart in a mad dash, racing more than two hundred li in a single night. He fled so fast that neither the Liao State's cavalry nor the Song army could find him. He was therefore awarded the titles of Chariot God of Gaoliang River, Donkey Cart War God, and Chariot Emperor of Song."]

"More than two hundred li in a donkey cart in one night? He shook off cavalry? No wonder later generations called him the Chariot God of Gaoliang River, the Donkey Cart War God, and the Chariot Emperor of Song! He deserved every title!"

"The emperors of Northern Song could do anything except fight!"

"The Zhao Household really wasn't suited to being emperors. If Zhao Guangyi had driven carts for a living, his talents would have been put to their best use!"

"Zhao Guangyi took two arrows in the leg and still fled for an entire night. That shows the Liao State's arrows had already pierced his gallbladder."

"I'm afraid Zhao Guangyi was an even better driver than Xiahou Ying!" Liu Bang said, looking at Lü Zhi as he tried to ease the mood.

Lü Zhi said coldly, "I think Emperor Taizong of Song was no worse than Your Majesty when it came to running away."

The mood turned cold again.

["A state could not go a single day without a ruler. Unable to find Zhao Guangyi, the Song army wanted to put Zhao Kuangyin's son Zhao Dezhao on the throne. When Zhao Guangyi learned of this, he actually took out his anger over the defeat at the Gaoliang River on Zhao Dezhao."]

["As a result, not long after the army returned, Zhao Dezhao committed suicide out of fear of punishment."]

Zhao Kuangyin: You lost a battle and blamed my son? My son died so unjustly!

["Two years later, Zhao Kuangyin's fourth son, Zhao Defang, also died at the age of twenty-two. The cause of death was unknown; the historical records contained only three characters: 'He died of illness in his sleep.'"]

Zhao Kuangyin: Ha ha... died of illness in his sleep!

["In 982, Zhao Guangyi used the pretext that his younger brother Zhao Tingmei was plotting treason to demote him to Duke of Fuling County and exile him to Fangzhou."]

["Not long afterward, Zhao Tingmei died there for no apparent reason."]

["After Zhao Dezhao, Zhao Defang, and Zhao Tingmei died one after another, there was no one left to succeed under the Oath of the Golden Coffer."]

"What an Oath of the Golden Coffer! Kill everyone but himself, and the agreement was void."

"Once again, I've been sickened by the shamelessness of a Song Dynasty emperor!"

["From then on, Zhao Guangyi had eliminated every rival who could contend with him for the throne."]

["Many people believe the Humiliation of Jingkang was Emperor Taizong of Song's retribution. He murdered his brother and usurped the throne, forcibly seized another man's wife, and lusted after grand achievements. Tell me, who but this wretched Chariot God of Gaoliang River could claim the title of the most shameless emperor in history?"]

"Retribution! It was retribution!"

"Neither Emperor Taizu nor Emperor Taizong of Song was any good. One bullied orphans and widows, while the other not only bullied women but also killed his nephews and younger brother. They deserved their retribution!"

[There's another title missing for Zhao the Second: leader of the Axe Gang!]

[I heard Zhao Guangyi fought the Liao State twice. The first time, he lost an army of a hundred thousand and fled in a donkey cart. The second time, he didn't dare go to the front, instead directing the campaign remotely from the imperial palace and ordering the officers and soldiers at the front to obey his commands. But the battlefield changed from one moment to the next, and by following Zhao Guangyi's orders, the Northern Song army suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of Liao. Those two great battles wiped out the resources Emperor Shizong of Zhou, Chai Rong, and Emperor Taizu of Song, Zhao Kuangyin, had built up. From then on, Great Song became Great Coward and no longer dared fight the Liao State.]

[I'm dying laughing. If Zhao Guangyi hadn't commanded so blindly, the Song army might not have lost those two northern campaigns.]

[He fought the Liao State twice. The first time, he led the campaign personally and ran away; the second time, he stayed in the palace and gave orders from afar. If Zhao Guangyi had read even one military treatise, he wouldn't have been so absurd!]

[Maybe Zhao Guangyi read too many military treatises and thought they were nothing special, so he was sure he could do it himself.]

"The officers and soldiers at the front were terribly unlucky to have an emperor like that!"

"Only today did I learn that battles could be fought like this!"

"The Liao and Jin states were so lucky to have an opponent like Great Song!"

The Xiongnu, Xianbei, Rouran, and other northern nomadic peoples from different eras learned of Zhao Guangyi's actions and finally understood why the Song Dynasty was so easy to fight. They all envied the Liao and Jin states.

If they could, they wanted to trade opponents with Liao and Jin.

The generals of certain dynasties were thankful that their own emperors were different from Zhao Guangyi.

[Can you imagine? Northern Song had only been founded twenty years earlier, and its founding army had only served two generations. By Taizong's reign, the whole army had been wiped out.]

[Founding armies, among the armies of every dynasty, might not have been the strongest, but they definitely had the highest morale. They had fought their way out of mountains of corpses and seas of blood, witnessed the founding of a dynasty, and every one of them was full of confidence. Then they ran into a master who was terrible at it but loved to play.]

The founding emperors of the various dynasties agreed with this comment.

Chai Rong and Zhao Kuangyin had cursed everything they could think of and no longer knew what else to curse.

The elite troops their two generations had built up were simply thrown away by Zhao Guangyi in battle.

They did not know that later generations had a term for it: "threw it away."