Li Xuan has always been very clear that although he is called the Eternal Saint King and others shout "Long Live Long Live" every day, how can he live for ten thousand years?
According to contemporary medical standards, even if Li Xuan took good care of himself, he would still have a long life if he could live to be sixty or seventy years old, and he would definitely die by then.
And Li Xuan knew even more clearly that once he died, many problems would definitely arise in the Tang Empire. No matter who the successor was or what policies he implemented, there would be no way to prevent the collapse of the empire.
There is no way, the Tang Empire is too huge now. It's fine in the mainland, but it would be damned if it could keep so many overseas territories.
At most, it will just be postponed for a period of time, but it will definitely collapse in the end, maybe a few years after his death, maybe decades.
This kind of collapse cannot be stopped and can only be followed by the trend, so Li Xuan began to seal a large number of nobles and even his own sons overseas, so that even if the empire collapsed in the future, the land occupied by the empire would still be China.
At worst, we will have a global civil war on our own land in the future.
Li Xuan has this kind of plan for the fate of the entire empire, so you can't expect him to worry about other messy things.
Today, Li Xuan only has one idea: conquer the world!
Achieving the great cause of unifying the world, the first in human history, as for other things, you can put it on the back burner.
He is very aware of the many problems that have arisen after unifying the world, but he doesn't care at all.
When the time comes, it won't matter to him whether the overseas Chinese want to be independent, whether the conquered aliens rebel and become independent, or whether the royal family's internal strife leads to civil war in order to compete for the throne.
If he thinks so much, then instead of conquering the world, he might as well enjoy dancing all day long instead of worrying about military and political affairs every day.
People, you have to have some goals, and then keep moving forward towards this goal!
Otherwise, what's the difference between waiting to die and eating salted fish?
It's just that Li Xuan's goals are a bit bigger and exaggerated than ordinary people's goals.
Today's Datang Empire is like a car that keeps moving forward at high speed, and it only has an accelerator and no brakes.
Li Xuan took the steering wheel, stepped on the accelerator and kept racing forward. The other passengers, whether they were excited or intimidated, could only sit in the car and follow Li Xuan as he drove wildly.
Until you are shattered to pieces!
In October of the 29th year of Xuanping, after the 11th Squadron once again concluded its live-fire exercise, the Navy once again ordered the replacement of the remaining Shanxi-class battleships and other cruisers.
At the same time, in the Yili area of the Western Region, the largest formal battle in the past two years broke out between the Tang Dynasty's Western Expeditionary Army and the Tatar Eastern Front Army!
Lu Yuzhi of the Western Expeditionary Army personally led 30,000 cavalry and more than 30,000 cavalry troops under Wulihan's command to start a duel in Ili.
In the end, Wulihan was defeated and fled. More than half of the more than 30,000 cavalry were lost, leaving only 10,000 cavalry who fled in embarrassment.
This battle was the largest and only head-on confrontation between the two sides after the Tang Dynasty launched the Western Expedition. In order to completely seize the Western Region and prevent a large number of Tatar cavalry from retreating to the Central Asian plains, Lu Yuzhi deliberately showed the enemy
Weak, we only brought the cavalry, leaving the infantry, artillery and other units behind.
When it was rare for Uli that the Tang army only attacked with cavalry and no infantry or artillery accompanying them, he thought he had seized the opportunity and tried to completely defeat the cavalry troops of the Tang's Western Expeditionary Army through a cavalry duel, and then establish a strategic advantage.
Before this battle, both sides were full of confidence.
Lu Yuzhi has full confidence in his cavalry troops!
The same is true for Ulihan. They, the Tatars, relied on cavalry to make their fortune, and they are the best at cavalry combat.
But after the battle was finally won, the Tang cavalry was still superior and adopted the wall-mounting charge tactic, crushing the opposing Tatar cavalry in one fell swoop.
News of the victory in this battle soon spread to Jinling City.
When Li Xuan saw the news of the great victory in the Battle of Ili, he was not very moved.
The victory of this battle was reasonable. The Tang Dynasty's Western Expedition prepared for two years and fought steadily all the way. They successively captured the cities of Hami and Turpan and pushed their troops to the Ili area.
There is no way to retreat to Ulihan, and any further retreat will lead to the Kazakh Plain.
Pushing into the Kazakh plains, the Tatars could certainly protect themselves, but they could not stop the intrusion of the Tang cavalry.
At that time, the huge Kazakhstan and even the entire Central Asian plains will become a battlefield for the cavalry of both sides to fight. The Tatars are not willing to do this unless they have to.
Therefore, when Lu Yuzhi showed that the enemy was weak and only brought cavalry to fight, Wulihan would fight, otherwise he would have run away.
This time there was no conspiracy in the cavalry showdown between the two sides. It was just an upright cavalry showdown between the two sides. The result was that the Western Expeditionary Army of the Tang Dynasty won and the Tatars lost.
Next, there will be no resistance in the Western Regions. The Western Expeditionary Army can calmly and completely control the entire Western Regions, and then point its sword towards Central Asia!
As for the Tatars, they could only retreat to Central Asia, but Central Asia was vast, so they could only rely on cavalry to engage in mobile warfare. However, it was impossible to completely block the Tang Dynasty from Central Asia.
The final result, no matter who wins or loses, will turn the whole of Central Asia into ruins!
It would be impossible for the two countries with the most powerful armies on the contemporary earth to compete in this place without reducing Central Asia to rubble.
After delivering the good news, Li Xuan summoned several officials from the cabinet, naturally to discuss administrative issues in the Western Regions.
Now the empire has established Tumi Province in the Western Region, but this Tumi Province actually only occupies a part of the Western Region, and there is also the huge Turpan Plateau.
Regarding the Turpan Plateau, the Tang Empire has not taken any drastic actions in the past ten years. It has generally continued the policies of the Yuan and Ming dynasties in the past, that is, by canonizing monks and nobles in the Turpan area in exchange for fame.
ownership of this area.
For this reason, in the early years of the Tang Dynasty, on the basis of the Ming Dynasty's Wusi Zangxing Capital Commanding Department, Duogan Xingdu Commanding Department, and Orisi Military and Civilian Marshal's Office, the Wusizang Affairs Office, Duogan Xingdu Commanding Department, and Duogan Affairs Office were established.
There are three major government offices: Ganshi Affairs Office and Orisi Affairs Office.
However, it was just a name change, and there were basically no other changes. Even the garrison was only a small number of people dispatched in name, and no actual military control was formed.
Not to mention internal affairs.
In the past, it was just a temporary compromise for the sake of stability, and because it was not easy to conduct a large-scale invasion in that poor place on the Turpan Plateau.
In the mid-term, because the Tatars are on the border, it is even more necessary to maintain the stability of the Turpan Plateau.
But things are different now. The Tatars have been driven to Central Asia, and the Tang Empire has been able to free up its hands and completely incorporate the Turpan Plateau area into the administrative rule of the empire.
Therefore, after receiving the report of Lu Yuzhi's victory in Yili, Li Xuan took advantage of the situation and asked Yu Shufang to come up with a plan to completely solve the Turpan Plateau as soon as possible.
The empire also had a plan for this, and took out the old plan and revised it, and finally it was finalized.
What is the plan? It is to establish a province!
It is planned to abolish the three major affairs offices, merge them to establish Turpan Province, and then establish administrative agencies at all levels of prefectures, counties, towns and villages.
All administrative governance is based on that of other provinces and will not be treated in any special way.
In order to ensure the smooth implementation of the decree, the Army will send a large number of troops into the Turpan Plateau, and then clean it up first to kill the messy aristocratic leaders in the area, paving the way for the subsequent entry of administrative officials.
The Tang Empire was quite proficient in doing this kind of thing, and the same was true in the southwestern provinces back then. The local chieftains held great power, but the Tang Dynasty directly tried to reform the land and return it to the locals.
At that time, many chieftains and nobles resisted in various ways, but this resistance was doomed to be in vain, because before the administrative officials moved in, the Tang Army first cleaned up the area and slaughtered all the rebellious chieftains.
Today's Turpan province is established with similar methods.
Directly destroy the local ruling class through military means. As for ordinary people, they will not care whether the master above them is a Tang Dynasty official or a local monk and noble.
This matter was basically not difficult. The Tang Army did not conduct large-scale mobilization for this purpose, and directly transferred troops from surrounding provinces to the plateau.
There are not many troops, only more than 30,000 people in total.
But these more than 30,000 people are enough. After all, there is no large-scale resistance force in the local area. It would be more troublesome to dispatch more troops.
Because supplies are troublesome!
The establishment of a province in Turpan was quickly decided, and the troops would set off soon, but it would still take time to completely resolve the issue.
Because the road is far away, the road to the plateau is not that easy to walk. In addition, it is already late autumn, so it is impossible to send troops into the mountains now. The march is estimated to be next year. If everything goes well, it is expected to be roughly ready next autumn.
Stabilize.
The establishment of Turpan as a province was only a small matter for the huge Tang Empire.
Whether it succeeds or fails, it actually has little impact on the current situation.
Not to mention the Turpan incident, even the Tumi Province and subsequent wars throughout Central Asia actually had a limited impact on the Tang Empire.
With the current size of the Tang Empire, it is basically difficult for external affairs to affect the Tang Dynasty itself on a large scale. Even if the Western Expedition failed and Lu Yuzhi's entire army was wiped out, for the Tang Empire, it was still considered
Without any serious injuries, the Tang Army would be able to send another 200,000 troops to the Western Regions in just a few months.
What can really affect the overall situation of the Tang Dynasty now is the internal affairs of the Tang Dynasty itself.
Various policy changes have an impact that far exceeds changes in external things.
For example, in the winter of this year, the governor of Beihai Province once again made a promise, saying that several gold and silver mines had been discovered in Beihai Province. In order to mine these precious metal minerals, he requested that a batch of steam engines and other mechanical equipment be allocated.
Everyone knows that the Beihai side is just asking for a batch of steam engines and other mechanical equipment, but in fact it is to seek the status of a local province and lift the technical blockade of the Import and Export Committee.
In the past, Li Xuan would directly reject this kind of compromise, but this time, Li Xuan chose to remain silent. He was prepared to see the reaction of the government and the opposition.
Li Xuan chose to stay in the middle and not make a move, which made many people rush towards Beihai Province like sharks seeing blood!