Yeon Gaesomun
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- For the historical drama, see Yeon Gaesomun (TV series).
| Yeon Gaesomun | |
|---|---|
| Hangul: |
연개소문
|
| Hanja: |
淵蓋蘇文
|
| Revised Romanization: | Yeon Gaesomun |
| McCune-Reischauer: | Yŏn Kaesomun |
Yeon Gaesomun (603? - 665), was the military dictator in the waning days of Goguryeo, the most powerful among the Three Kingdoms of ancient Korea. Historians generally credit Yeon's military leadership as having prevented the asborption of the entire Korean peninsula by Tang China.
Yeon is remembered for a series of military victories over the invading Tang Chinese forces under Taizong and his son Gaozong. The failure against Yeon's Goguryeo was the only military defeat that Taizong ever suffered on the battlefield.
Later Confucian scholars have criticized Yeon for the coup and the regicide that brought him to power. His execution of King Yeongnyu and the subsequent installation of King Bojang in 642 served as a pretext for Tang's invasions. While unsuccessful while Yeon was alive, the Tang, allied with Silla, defeated Goguryeo once Yeon died.
General Yeon Gaesomun is described to have been a mild-mannered, respectful, and charismatic man in the few sources that have been excavated in Korea. In Tang sources, however, Yeon has often been portrayed as arrogant and brutal. According to lore, Yeon would have men prostrate themselves so that he might use their backs to mount or dismount his horse. It is also said, however, that Yeon Gaesomun had great respect for all of his men and fellow Goguryeo people. The stereotypical image of a dictator may have triggered the idea that Yeon Gaesomun was a cruel and merciless murderer. The lore and the Tang account of Yeon were both an attempt by the Tang to ruin the valiant general's legacy.
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[edit] Background
Yeon Gaesomun was the first and eldest son of Yeon Tae-Jo, the Mangniji of Goguryeo during the reigns of Kings Pyeongwon of Goguryeo and Yeongyang of Goguryeo. Information about Yeon Gaesomun comes largely from the Samguk Sagi's accounts of Kings Yeongnyu and Bojang (Goguryeo vols. 8-10) and its biography of Yeon Gaesomun (vol. 49), surviving tomb engravings belonging to his sons Yeon Namsaeng and Yeon Namgeon, and the biographies of those same sons that appear in the Xin Tangshu (New History of Tang).
Chinese sources give Yeon Gaesomun's surname as Cheon 泉 (Chinese, Quan). This divergence is likely a result of Yeon (Chinese, Yuan) being the given name of Tang Gaozu (Li Yuan 李淵), founder and first emperor of Tang, and thus taboo to apply to another by Chinese tradition (see naming taboo). He is also sometimes referred to as Gaegeum (개금/蓋金).
Very little is known of Yeon's early days, until he became the commander of the western district (西部), where he oversaw the building of the Cheolli Jangseong, a defensive wall against China.
[edit] Overthrow of the throne
Yeon Gaesomun's 642 coup d'etat came as the culimnation of a lengthy power struggle within the Goguryeo aristocracy between those who favored a policy of appeasement toward the Tang China and those hard-liners who advocated military confrontation. Yeon belonged to the camp of hard-liners, and this stance set him on a collision course with King Yeongnyu, who favored appeasement.
King Yeongnu ultimately plotted to murder Yeon, but Yeon struck first. In 642, Yeon arranged a lavish banquet in which the most powerful nobles were invited. When the invitees were all present, Yeon's soldiers ambushed those nobles aligned with King Yeongu and his appeasement policy. Yeon then proceeded to the palace to murder the king as well.
After placing Bojang (r. 642-668), nephew of Yeongnyu, on the Goguryeo throne, Yeon appointed himself Dae Mangniji (莫離支, an obscure office of Tang times associated with commander of military affairs), and in this role went on to assume de facto control over Goguryeo affairs of state until his death around 666.
His role in the murder of the Goguryeo king was taken as the primary pretext for the failed Tang invasion of 645.
[edit] Wars with China
He supported Taoism at the expense of Buddhism, and in 643 sent emissaries to the Tang court to request Taoist sages, eight of whom were brought to Goguryeo. This gesture is considered by some historians as an effort to pacify the Tang and buy time to prepare for a Tang invasion that Yeon thought inevitable, given Taizong's expansionist ambitions.
Relations with Tang deteriorated, as Goguryeo increased interference with Tang's diplomatic contacts with the southern Korean kingdom of Silla. This led to a massive invasion in the winter of 645, personally led by Taizong. After taking several border cities, Taizong's enormous army was stymied at the Ansi Fortress by the resistance of Yang Man-chun. Taizong, caught between Yang's forces in the front and Yeon's counter-attacking forces closing in behind him--as well as suffering from the unforgiving Mancurian winter--was forced to turn back.
After Taizong's initial failure, the conquest of Goguryeo became an obsession with Taizong and his son Gaozong. They invaded Goguryeo numerous times but Yeon turned the Tang back every time--perhaps most notably during Yeon's celebrated annihilation of the Tang forces in 662 at the Sasu River (蛇水) where the invading general and all 13 of his sons died heroically in the battle.
[edit] Death
The most likely date of Yeon's death is that recorded on the tomb stele of Namsaeng, Yeon Gaesomun's eldest son: the twenty-fourth year of the reign of Bojang (665). However, the Samguk Sagi records the year as 666, and the Japanese history Nihonshoki gives the year as the twenty-third year of the reign of King Bojang (664).
He apparently died of natural causes. After his death, the country was weakened by a succession struggle between his brother and three sons, and in 668 fell relativley swiftly to the Silla-Tang armies.
Yeon Gaesomun had at least three sons, (eldest to youngest) Yeon Namsaeng, Yeon Namgeon, and Yeon Namsan. After their father's death the sons engaged in a violent political struggle for power, with the second son the apparent victor. Yeon Namsaeng ultimately sought refuge and aid in Tang and aided that power in its campaign of 668 that sealed Goguryeo's fall. Some sources say the later would-be king of Goguryeo, Anseung, was the son of Yeon Jeongto, the younger brother of Yeon Gaesomun.
