Wang Sitong

Wang Sitong (王思同) (892-May 9, 934) was a general of the Chinese Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period state Later Tang (and Later Tang's predecessor state Jin. In 934, when Li Congke, the adoptive brother of then-reigning emperor Li Conghou, rebelled against Li Conghou, Wang was put in command of the army against Li Congke, but was soon defeated and executed without Li Congke's approval.

Wang Sitong was born in 892, during the reign of Emperor Zhaozong of Tang. His father Wang Jingrou (王敬柔) was an officer of Lulong Circuit (盧龍, headquartered in modern Beijing), and his mother was a daughter of Liu Rengong, a late-Tang Dynasty warlord who would rule Lulong (although not yet at the time of Wang Sitong's birth — he would take over Lulong in 895, initially as a vassal of the major warlord Li Keyong the military governor (Jiedushi) of Hedong Circuit (河東, headquartered in modern Taiyuan, Shanxi), but later turning against Li and becoming an independent warlord).

In his youth, Wang Sitong served as an officer at his grandfather Liu's headquarters. In 907, Liu's son (Wang's uncle) Liu Shouguang carried out a coup, arresting Liu Rengong and putting him under house arrest. Wang, then 15, fled to Hedong with another uncle, Liu Shouqi (劉守奇), and the officer Li Chengyue (李承約). Li Keyong took them into his army and made them his officers.

After Tang fell (after its last emperor, Emperor Zhaozong's son Emperor Ai, was forced to yield the throne to the major warlord Zhu Quanzhong the military governor of Xuanwu Circuit (宣武, headquartered in modern Kaifeng, Henan), who established Later Liang), Li Keyong's Hedong Circuit became the center of a new state of Jin, ruled by Li Keyong and then his son Li Cunxu as prince. Wang Sitong continued to serve under Li Cunxu, whose Jin state eventually took over the region north of the Yellow River, causing the river to become the boundary between it and Later Liang, with which it engaged constant wars. During that war, Wang, at Li Cunxu's order, constructed a fortress at Yangliu (楊劉, in modern Liaocheng, Shandong), and thereafter was promoted to be a commander of 10 corps of troops known as the Shenwu (神武). It was in that role that Li Cunxu sent him in 921 to help Li Cunxu's ally Wang Du the military governor of Yiwu Circuit (義武, headquartered in modern Baoding, Hebei), against a Khitan Empire attack.

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