[The following takes place in the early 7th century, during the founding of the Chinese Tang Dynasty. For context, Pingyang was the daughter of General Li Yuan, a garrison commander in 7th century China. He ended up leading a rebellion against the despotic reigning emperor of China, Yangdi, and did so with the direct help and support of both his son and his daughter, Pingyang, when she was not yet twenty years old.]
Pingyang made her way to her family’s estate in the province of Hu. There, she found the people starving – not only was war afoot, but a severe drought had brought widespread famine. So Pingyang opened the food stores to the hungry masses, an act that forever endeared her to them. It also indebted them to her, a clever move for a woman who would soon need to raise her own army.
[…]
Just a few months later, Pingyang’s father’s forces and those of her brother were embroiled in a bloody conflict with the emperor’s army. Realizing that survival depended on superior numbers, Pingyang wanted to augment their troops with her own.
She started recruiting soldiers from among the people she’d just saved from starvation, enlisting the fittest and ablest to join her so-called Army of the Lady. Then she cast a wider net, reportedly ordering a young servant to try to convince a local highway robber and his merry band to join her cause. She then sent out other servants to track down addition bandits and ask them to join her as well. Why these brigands agreed is unclear, but Pingyang did have the benefit of being on the side that seemed likely to win. She made alliances with the largest and most capable of the disparate rebel groups operating in Hu. She even convinced imperial allies to desert Yangdi, including the emperor’s prime minister and a general with more than 10,000 troops under his command. Within months, Pingyang had amassed more than 70,000 troops under the banner of the Army of the Lady; they swept through the countryside and went on to take the capital of Hu.
Source:
McRobbie, Linda Rodriguez. “Pingyang, the Princess Who Led an Army.” Princesses Behaving Badly: Real Stories From History-- Without the Fairy-Tale Endings. MJF Books, 2013. 22-3. Print.
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