Sooner or later, the Tatars and the Tang Empire will have a life-and-death battle. This is not a choice that the Tatars can choose, but the inevitability of the development of the Tang Empire.
Anda Khan is not stupid. He can tell from the expansion of the Tang Empire in recent years. Even if he led his people to withdraw from the Hetao area to the Western Regions, the war with the barbarians of the Southern Tang Dynasty will still break out!
When the Tang Empire occupied the northern grasslands and the northeastern region, if there was no subsequent western expedition, Anda Khan would dare to twist off his head and throw it into a latrine.
In order to be able to fight against the Tang Empire in the future, Ada Khan has been organizing troops to march westward in these years to accumulate more strength.
So far, he has led the Tatar army to continuously capture the territory of the Oara people and the Tubo people. This year, he also captured the Kazakh Khanate and the Yarkand Khanate.
Combined with this, the area actually controlled by the Tatars is larger than in any previous era, and their strength is stronger. However, this still does not give Anda Khan much peace of mind.
Because in the past war with the Tang Dynasty Army, Ada Khan learned deeply that the armies of those Southern Tang barbarians cannot be judged by common sense at all, especially their guns and cannons are too sharp and cannot be stopped by manpower.
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Fortunately, he had already accumulated a lot of craftsmen on hand by capturing craftsmen from the Tibet, Yarkand Khanate and Kazakh Khanate, and was able to build guns and weapons for the Tatars.
Although it is still a handmade matchlock gun and the quality is not very good, it is still usable.
As for the artillery, although it is also an old-fashioned front-loading shotgun with a small caliber, it is better than nothing!
However, with all these, he still felt that it was not enough, so he was ready to continue the western expedition, all the way to the west, and then hit Eastern Europe.
He didn't believe that those Southern Tang barbarians behind him could chase him all the way!
Anyway, the Tatars are all nomads. They can go wherever there is grassland, and the cavalry is also very mobile. If those Southern Tang barbarians really dare to chase them all the way, Anda Khan is confident of dragging them alive.
die.
There are thousands of kilometers of supply lines at every turn, and he doesn't believe that the barbarians of the Southern Tang Dynasty can solve it!
With this mentality, Anda Khan continued to send his troops westward after taking over Central Asia. If nothing unexpected happened, they would soon encounter the Safavid dynasty of the Persians, and then the Ottomans.
dynasty.
If you go south, you will encounter the Timurid Dynasty currently entrenched in northern India. There are many mountainous areas in the above-mentioned areas. Especially if you want to go south, the areas controlled by the Timurid Empire have quite a lot to offer.
They are all mountainous, and can directly destroy more than half of the Tatar cavalry's combat effectiveness.
As for the Persian region and the areas under Ottoman control, many of them are mountainous and desert terrain. In this fight, it is hard to say who will win and who will lose.
However, as long as Anda Khan was not so stupid as to give up his cavalry advantage and engage in some tough battles in the mountains, he probably would not have suffered much loss, and at most he would not have gained much.
Anda Khan was frightened by the development and expansion of the Tang Empire and went all the way to the west. Although it didn't sound good, he also got his own development opportunities.
At least, this is how a huge Tang Jin Kingdom appeared in the Western Regions and Central Asia!
Relatively speaking, other countries around the Tang Empire do not have such a situation. Whether it is Fusang, Annan or Myanmar, they are basically indifferent to the expansion of the Tang Dynasty.
The daimyo of Fuso, how can they care about the threat of the Tang Dynasty? They are still fighting to death. Almost every day, the daimyo are fighting, which makes them poorer and poorer.
The smaller the number, the Datang Fusang Affairs Office has made a very optimistic estimate that in about five years, the total population of the Fusang Islands will definitely be reduced to less than 3 million people.
In another ten years, it is estimated that there will only be about a million people left.
Now, the Fusang Affairs Office of the Tang Dynasty has begun to suggest that they can try to land in some areas of the Fusang Islands on a small scale, and then carry out large-scale immigration and administrative rule.
On the Annan side, the Northern and Southern Dynasties were now fighting life and death, and under the instigation of the Tang Empire, even Myanmar also participated.
In short, the Nanyang Peninsula is now in a state of chaos and fighting every day. The Portuguese who control Malacca have a headache. They are fighting every day and no local natives come to do business with the Portuguese. Because of these
The damn natives only want various weapons and nothing else.
The manufacturing cost of the Portuguese's weapons was quite high, and the quantity was small. They could not even equip their own army of indigenous servants, so how could they sell many of them to these indigenous people?
On the other hand, other islands in the Southeast Asia are much quieter, because nowadays, there is basically no formal political power on the islands in the Southeast Asia. In fact, there were some in the past, but after so many years, they were all killed by the Tang Dynasty navy or pirates.
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Nowadays, there are a lot of indigenous tribes and primitive kingdoms on various islands in Southeast Asia, but there are no formal and relatively large-scale countries.
For the time being, the Tang Empire only established colonial strongholds on islands in Southeast Asia and controlled ports. If it wanted to immigrate and rule, it would mainly focus on Luzon Island and Banten Island, two relatively mature islands.
In other places, large-scale immigration has not yet occurred.
Immigration is mainly carried out in the Southeast Asia region, especially on islands with imperfect infrastructure. The casualties are too great. Today, medicine is still not developed enough, and the empire is somewhat helpless about the situation on these islands.
Therefore, we can only generally put these places under the jurisdiction of Banten Prefecture and Luzon Prefecture, and build bastions and control the ports, but no large-scale immigration activities were carried out.
In this case, the difference between the actual area controlled by Banten Prefecture and its theoretical jurisdiction is also very large, because on the official territory of the Tang Empire, the jurisdiction of Banten Prefecture extends from Sumatra in the west to New Guinea in the east.
Islands, ranging from Timor Island in the south to Sulawesi Island in the north and various small and medium-sized islands in the above-mentioned areas.
However, the current actual control area of Banten Province is only the western area of Banten Island, and then a very few areas in the eastern part of Sumatra Island, plus Timor Island. As for other places, at most it only controls a port and built a
Just a bastion.
Its actual control area is not as large as Luzon Prefecture. The theoretical control area of Luzon Prefecture includes the entire Luzon Islands (Philippine Islands) and Borneo.
In terms of actual control area, it only covers all of Luzon and parts of Mindao.
Among them, Luzon Island is also the most successful area for the Tang Empire's overseas immigration development. So far, many immigrants from the mainland have successfully occupied the entire island and established villages and cultivated land by relying on hoes and matchlock guns.
farmland.
The advanced development experience of Luzon Island has begun to be extended to colonial activities on other islands. For example, in Mindao Island, the military has always been helpless to the local indigenous people in the face of the immigrant army of the Tang Empire.
, there is no resistance at all, so that the immigration development activities on Mindao Island are relatively smooth.
Looking at the entire surrounding area of the Datang Empire, there are actually no countries or forces that can pose any threat to the Datang Empire itself, and there are even few that can resist the annexation of the Datang Empire.
The only exception is the Tatars!
After these Tatars went to the Western Regions and Central Asia, their strength became more and more powerful, even so powerful that the current Tang Army felt a little helpless.
Although the Tang Army in the northwest region tried to attack the Tubo region, they did not use it indiscriminately. The main force of the Tatars did not engage in frontal combat with you at all, but chose the strategy of avoiding the battle frontally and harassing the flanks and rear.
Therefore, although they entered the Tubo area, they had to retreat in the end because the logistics could not support it.
Under this situation, the army has high hopes for the railway, and on the other hand, it is also trying its best to develop the cavalry!
In order to obtain more horses, the Army strongly demanded that the newly established Hefeng Province must prioritize the development of animal husbandry, especially horse breeding, because the military's demand for horses is very large.
But the training of cavalry is still relatively difficult. After all, the Tang Empire is not like the Tatars, where all the people are soldiers. Every Tatar man who has lived on horseback since childhood is a natural cavalry, and he also brings his own horses.
kind.
It was much more difficult for the Tang Empire to develop cavalry. Many of the recruits they recruited did not even know how to ride a horse, and they had to slowly develop equestrian skills. Even the breeding of horses was quite troublesome.
Until now, the top brass of the army are regretting it. They knew a long time ago that they would not have been so ruthless in the Northeast War. At least some people from the Chahar Tribe and the Duoyan Guards could be left behind, and they could be recruited as cavalry.
It doesn't matter if you let them graze, it will be very useful.
But it is a pity that in the vast three provinces of western Liaoning, eastern Liaoning and northeastern China, there are basically not many people from the Chahar tribe and the Duoyan Three Guards. They were either wiped out by the army or later immigrants.
Even if there were any left, they all ran further north or simply west to join the Tatars.
In comparison, their enemies, the Tatars, were much better than the Tang Empire!
They were killed too hard at first, and now they have to immigrate from the mainland to even find someone to graze their cattle. This also makes the army a little depressed.
But it's just a minor frustration. It wants land but not people. This is the basic policy of the empire's foreign expansion. It is impossible for the Army to change this policy in the Northeast region.
Besides, it was only difficult at the beginning. The empire had a population of 160 million, so finding several million people to engage in animal husbandry was not an easy task.
Since the establishment of the Hetao and Fengzhou prefectures, many people from Shaanxi, Shanxi, Hebei, and Shandong came to live. Most of them were organized by officials to engage in animal husbandry in the Hetao and Fengzhou areas.
Through various means, the Army barely continued to expand the cavalry force!
Even in order to expand the cavalry force, the Army has voluntarily eliminated some of its infantry units, thereby freeing up staff and funds to train cavalry units.
This allowed the Tang Army's cavalry to expand rapidly. Not counting divisional cavalry, but only counting independent cavalry, it had expanded from 50,000 cavalry many years ago to 100,000 cavalry now!