Li Zhengji - Service Under Hou Xiyi

Service Under Hou Xiyi

By 762, however, Pinglu, which was cut off from Tang territory by the rebel Yan state and facing repeated attacks from Khitan and Xi tribes, was in a desperate situation. Hou Xiyi thus took the Pinglu army and attacked the Yan general Li Huaixian at Fanyang, and then, after battling with Li Huaixian, took his army south to the Shandong Peninsula, subsequently assisting other Tang generals Tian Shen'gong (田神功) and Neng Yuanhao (能元皓) in attacking Yan generals in the east. In 762, after Emperor Suzong's death, Emperor Suzong's son successor Emperor Daizong made Hou also the military governor of Ziqing Circuit (淄青, headquartered in modern Weifang, Shandong), governing six prefectures. (The Pinglu name thus eventually displaced the Ziqing name as the official designation of the circuit.) Subsequently, Hou led his Pinglu army in continued campaigns against the final Yan emperor Shi Chaoyi and participated in the campaign ending in Shi's destruction in 763. Li Huaiyu followed Hou in these campaigns and served with distinction, and Hou made him bingmashi (兵馬使), serving as Hou's assistant.

Meanwhile, though, Hou began to lose the support of his soldiers, because he favored hunting and games, as well as building Buddhist towers and temples, because these activities drained the circuit treasury and forced the soldiers into difficult labor. Meanwhile, he saw that Li Huaiyu was gaining the support of the soldiers and became apprehensive, and he relieved Li Huaiyu from his post even though Li Huaiyu had not had faults. In summer 765, on an occasion when Hou happened to have spent the night outside the city with sorcerers, the soldiers mutinied and closed the gates, disallowing his return. They supported Li Huaiyu as their new commander. Emperor Daizong made his son Li Miao (李邈) the Prince of Zheng the titular military governor of Pinglu, but made Li Huaiyu the acting military governor and changed his name to Zhengji (meaning, "one who corrects himself"). Li Zhengji, however, governed Pinglu effectively independent of the imperial government, in alliance with several other military governors who were acting similarly — Li Baochen, Tian Chengsi, Xue Song, Li Huaixian (all former Yan generals who submitted to Tang after Shi's fall), and Liang Chongyi. By this point, Pinglu consisted of 10 prefectures.