The first thousand one hundred and eighty-nine chapters The Tang Dynasty never win over the enemy, j
In the eleventh year of Xuanping, for the Tang Empire, this year was the same as in previous years. The main tone was to restore and develop the people's livelihood economy, and at the same time carry out many reforms in the cabinet's education, imperial examinations, officialdom, and economy.
Large-scale wars had already stopped in the eighth year of Xuanping. The empire's hundreds of thousands of troops were mainly stationed at the borders and guarding inland areas, while external expansion was mainly based on small-scale colonial wars.
Even the siege of Wandan, which caused a lot of fuss in the past few months, was actually just an inconspicuous small-scale conflict for the huge Tang Empire, and even the military leaders were too lazy to take a serious look at it.
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It was nothing more than a battle of a thousand men. This small-scale battle was nothing at all. For the military, its scale and significance were not even as large as those of domestic bandit suppression.
If there is any other action taken by the military in recent years, it should be the suppression of bandits. The army suppresses bandits and various illegal armed forces in the country, while the navy suppresses pirates.
War has not been the main subject in recent years. This can be seen from the declining proportion of military expenditures over the years!
In recent years, the theme has been to restore agricultural production that was destroyed by the war, while at the same time vigorously developing industry and commerce, especially new industries!
In the early years, the country was in chaos. The war for hegemony between the Tang Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty caused considerable damage to the national economy. Due to the war, many areas even experienced extreme population reductions.
Although the main subjects of the war were the Tang Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty, in fact the most destructive force was not the two sides, but the various monsters and monsters that emerged during the war, especially in the northern region, which emerged in the early years.
This is true for many careerists, especially in Shanxi, Henan, and Shaanxi-Gansu areas.
At its peak, there were more than a dozen rebel armies in the Shaanxi-Gansu region, and their scale was not small. The Ming army at that time was unable to do anything about them. In the end, it was the Tang army that entered the Shaanxi-Gansu region.
, is to clear out these large-scale rebel armies one by one.
The damage caused during the war was quite serious, and it will take time to slowly recover.
After several years of hard work, the large-scale destruction caused by the war, especially the damage to agricultural production, has finally been contained. Now, agricultural production in various places, especially in the north and northwest regions, has gradually returned to normal levels.
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Compared with agricultural production, which took several years to recover, the development of industry and commerce was relatively rapid. However, industry and commerce were industry and commerce, and agriculture was agriculture, and both were the core pillars of the empire and both were indispensable.
Food is the most important thing for the people, so it is impossible not to have enough to eat.
And if industry and commerce cannot develop, the empire will lack tax revenue and cannot maintain a large army equipped with advanced weapons. Naturally, this will not work.
Therefore, in the past few years, the focus of Li Xuan's work has always been to restore people's livelihood and develop industry and commerce. Compared with large-scale external expansion, although Li Xuan has this intention, almost everyone in the government and the public knows that the Holy Emperor wants to expand
Large-scale external expansion, but now, is not the time. At most, it is just a small-scale colonization.
Not only in the past few years, in fact, in Li Xuan's strategic plan, the next few years will also focus on self-development. Large-scale external expansion is actually not yet mature. After all, even if he wants to expand on a large scale now,
It's also very reluctant.
But after all, we have to embark on the road of external expansion. If we want to expand externally, we must first solve the threat from the north. Although the navy clamors for a southward strategy, in Li Xuan's view, the south does not matter whether it is Nanyang or Portuguese.
Neither of them can bring any real threat to the empire. The real threat lies in the north.
What's more, going south and going north are not mutually exclusive.
Because if you go south, as long as you don't send a large number of troops to the Indochina Peninsula, don't go to Malacca to fight the Portuguese, and just expand in the islands of Southeast Asia, you don't need to use a large amount of ground forces, and you don't even need to use the main fleet of the navy.
It only sent an army of tens of millions of people. According to the establishment of the Tang Army, it was not even a division.
As long as Li Xuan's brain didn't have a fever, he would not have foolishly sent hundreds of thousands of troops south to the Indochina Peninsula, and then fell into a huge quagmire, and finally been miserable, nor would he have completely fallen out with the Portuguese without being prepared.
, and then stick to Malacca.
This resulted in the emptiness of the northern border, and the Tatars found an opportunity to invade!
Going south is necessary, but going south does not require too much power from the empire. Those Nanyang natives are vulnerable. An army of several thousand people is enough to sweep across the islands in Nanyang. It is nothing more than a matter of sequence and subsequent maintenance of rule.
problem, but if it is just a pure military attack, as long as the navy is there and maintains maritime superiority, it will not take much effort to defeat the natives on each island one by one.
To put it bluntly, even if the natives are very fierce now, the worst case scenario is not to fight them yet, but to block them with the navy first, and then slowly deal with them when we have time!
These natives lacked the necessary counterattack force, so they did not pose any actual threat to the empire.
The Portuguese's words are more practical. They came all the way to East Asia just to seek money. As long as they don't stimulate them too much and maintain trade between the two sides, although there will be all kinds of intrigues and conflicts, they want to completely fall out.
, that’s really not easy.
Besides, even if they fall out, it doesn't matter much. Even with the small population of the Portuguese, they can only engage in petty armed conflicts with the Tang Empire in various colonies. It is impossible to attack the empire.
What kind of actual threat does it pose? Is it possible that they can still land on the mainland of the empire?
Even if you give them a hundred courages!
For the current Tang Empire, it is easier to go south than to go north!
The enemies that can threaten the empire and bring life and death crisis to the empire are always in the north!
No matter it’s the past, present, or future!
Throughout thousands of years of history, the nomads in the north have always been a serious problem for the Chinese nation. These nomads are just like the grass in the grassland. If you cut off one crop, a large one will grow back the next spring, even if it is burned directly.
It's of no use either.
History a few years ago has proven that relying solely on military strikes is of little use. At most, it can only achieve short-term peace. However, if you want to completely solve the problem in the north, you need to eradicate the root cause.
Military strikes are only the foundation, and subsequent rule is the foundation.
How the later Qing dynasty solved the grassland problem can be summarized in two simple points. The first point is to win over the nomads through marriages, titles, etc. Note that this win over is to win over the aristocracy, not all nomadic peoples.
If the first point is just an ordinary method, then the second point is even more powerful, which is to promote religion, provide free money to help nomads build a large number of lamasery temples, and then satisfy a large number of nomads to become lamas, and being a lama has
What is it for?
Lamas cannot marry and have children!
Therefore, when the Great Wall was built in the Ming Dynasty and temples were built in the Qing Dynasty, the effect is obvious. During the Qing Dynasty, the grassland nomads did not experience any large-scale wars or natural disasters. Instead of increasing, the population dropped by about
Thirty percent.
Very effective!
Li Xuan felt that the Qing Dynasty's handling method was good, but it was still not thorough enough, and it needed to win over and attack at the same time!
But for the Tang Empire, is it necessary to win over?
unnecessary!
The Tang Empire never wins over its enemies, and killing them directly is the solution for the Tang Empire!
If you don’t accept it, do it!
Regarding the issue of the northern grasslands, Li Xuan is also preparing to imitate the method of handling the Goryeo Peninsula. He will first carry out a wave of military strikes to kill their troops and suppress their resistance, and then carry out immigration and marriage to create a great racial integration!
If the few million nomads were thrown into the Tang Empire with a population of over 150 million, they would at best make a splash and then disappear.
China has been playing with fusion for thousands of years, and this is the ultimate weapon to solve the problem!
In addition, in order to prevent new problems from arising after integration, or from nomadic people from other places migrating, occupying the grasslands, and becoming new enemies of the empire, we cannot simply deal with people, but must also implement measures on the vast grassland areas.
The simplest way to effectively govern is to promote part of the planting industry and urbanization.
As long as they start farming, as long as they have cities, the grasslands will no longer be a place where they can come and go freely!
Of course, if you want to completely solve the grassland problem, you must also have a prerequisite, that is, you can defeat or even completely eliminate the Tatar army under Anda Khan militarily.
If the Tatar army cannot be defeated, then it is impossible to talk about various policies for ruling the steppe.
And is today's Tang Army capable of defeating Anta Khan's Tatar army?
One word, difficult!
If we want to talk about defense, there is no problem at all. Relying on the Great Wall and the many cities in the border towns, the field troops, reserve troops and even militia troops of the Tang Army have established a complete Great Wall defense line, reaching Jiayuguan in the west.
East all the way to the Yalu River.
Most of the Great Wall defense lines are similar to those in the Zhengde period of the pre-Ming Dynasty, with little change. Even the defense zones actually followed the nine-border policy of the pre-Ming Dynasty, dividing the entire northern defense line into several defense zones.
There are seven major defense areas, including Gansu, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Hebei, Liaoxi, and Liaodong. Each major defense area has a military garrison, and each army has varying numbers of troops. These troops are composed of main forces and reserve divisions.
, more than 100,000 main troops and nearly 200,000 reserve division troops, a total of nearly 300,000 troops, together formed the northern defense line of the entire Datang Empire!
Compared with the Tatars, who required the empire to invest 300,000 troops to maintain the defense line of the Great Wall, the threat posed by the Portuguese to the empire was almost negligible!