Mavericks › Uprising Leaders
Wang Bo
Leader of the first major rising against the Sui, who raised the Changbai Mountain rebels in 611 with a song against the Korean war and was killed in 622
A mountain camp at night, with a beacon fire burning on a wooden platform at the upper left, several white tents on the slope and a red cloth tied to a rope; a wooden palisade with a gate stands at the right beyond a timber bridge over a rough river, under a clouded moon.
- Roles
- Uprising Leaders
Wang Bo came from Zouping in Qi commandery. In 611, as Emperor Yang of Sui gathered armies for war on Koguryo and the people of Shandong groaned under conscription, he and Meng Rang of the same commandery rose on Changbai Mountain. Calling himself the Man Who Knows the World, he wrote the Song Against Dying for Nothing in Liaodong, urging men not to march off to their deaths, and gathered tens of thousands of draft dodgers. He fought across Qi and Lu commanderies and was repeatedly beaten by the Sui general Zhang Xutuo. After the Sui collapsed he attached himself for a time to Yuwen Huaji, but in 619, when Dou Jiande besieged Liaocheng, he opened the gates to Dou and soon afterwards submitted to the Tang, which made him area commander of Qizhou. In 622, returning from a Tang campaign, he passed through Tanzhou, whose governor Li Yiman he had quarrelled with over supplies, and was seized and killed by Li's nephew Li Wuyi.
Life and times
Dates Birth unknown–622 CE