Chapter 915 and the Tang Dynasty divide the world equally
Ever since Li Xuan personally led his army to defeat the Zhengde army in the Battle of Anping, the north has been basically pacified. Even though Zhang Yue is still in the west, for the Tang Dynasty, which already controls most of the area, destroying Zhang Yue
It's just a matter of time, and this time won't be too long, just one or two years at most.
Nowadays, most of Li Xuan's military affairs have been handed over to the Privy Council and the Naval Command, while his focus has shifted to the people's livelihood at home.
Militarily, there are probably three main enemies of the Tang Dynasty today. One is King Hui who is entrenched in Liaodong, the other is the Tatars on the grassland, and the other is Zhang Yue. Well, Zhang Yue also includes King Jing.
The Tatars don't care about the above three families for now, because the current situation is that the Tang Dynasty does not have many cavalry and basically cannot go deep into the grassland. The Tatars' attack and defense capabilities are too poor and they dare not rush into the pass. Therefore, the two sides
The war between the two countries is a long-term one, just like the past thousands of years, with stops and starts, and may last for decades.
As for King Hui of Liaodong, this person is a bit interesting. He now controls part of the original Ming army in Liaodong, and he also has the support of the Tatars and other tribes. Although the number of troops in his hands is not much, only about 50,000 to 60,000, but
The number of cavalry is quite large, a full 20,000, and he now controls Shanhaiguan.
At that time, the actions of the Third Army were still slow and failed to seize Shanhaiguan Pass!
However, King Hui does not dare to break into the pass now. If he dares to fight, he will not be able to break in. But if he insists on defending Shanhaiguan, the Third Army will not be able to do anything to him. After all, the Third Army needs to be stationed.
The place is too big. There is only one division on the front line of Shanhaiguan. The Eighth Infantry Division is stationed here. It lacks an infantry regiment and some artillery and other auxiliary forces. The total strength is about 10,000 people.
What's more important is that after the Anping Battle, the supplies available to the Third Army were actually very few. The generals on the front line were eager to split a cannon shell in half when fighting.
If this ammunition cannot be replenished, the Third Army will not be able to display its combat power even if it is powerful!
However, King Jing gathered all his main forces in Shanhaiguan, and had cavalry to support him. Shanhaiguan has always been easy to defend and difficult to attack, so the Eighth Infantry Division wanted to rely on less than 10,000 men and insufficient ammunition.
Under such circumstances, it is somewhat difficult to capture Shanhaiguan.
What the Eighth Infantry Division was doing now was actually similar to what the Ming army under King Jing's command was doing on the opposite side. It dug trenches, built fortifications, and assumed a posture of blocking Shanhaiguan.
In addition, what is interesting is that King Hui learned about the destruction of Youzhou City and the death of Emperor Shaowu earlier than King Jing in Sichuan, so he immediately ascended the throne and proclaimed himself emperor in Jinzhou, Liaodong. Of course, his throne
Not many people recognized him, and other residual Ming forces did not recognize him. The Tang Dynasty was a pseudo-emperor and did not recognize him as the successor of the Ming Dynasty at all.
Because Emperor Shaowu died and Emperor Shaowu had no children, in the official propaganda of the Tang Dynasty, the succession of the Ming royal family has been cut off, and the Ming Dynasty has become a thing of the past. Now the Tang Dynasty has begun to prepare the history of the Ming Dynasty.
It legally declared the fall of the Ming Dynasty and the legitimacy of the Tang Dynasty.
King Jing in Sichuan also ascended the throne and proclaimed himself emperor in Chengdu, Sichuan about ten days late. Therefore, there are currently two pseudo-emperors in Canming, and everyone says that the other is a pseudo-emperor. The Tang Dynasty itself has no
If you go to beat them, they will fall out first.
But for King Jing, strictly speaking, he himself is not important, the important thing is Zhang Yue!
Zhang Yue was the master of hundreds of thousands of supervisors, Huguang Army Training, and Sichuan Army Training, and King Jing, to put it harshly, was just a puppet supported by Zhang Yue.
With the initial pacification of the north, although there are still threats from Liaodong and the grasslands, the strategic focus of the Tang Dynasty has now shifted to Huguang and Sichuan.
At the same time that Li Xuan returned to the court, a large number of troops and various supplies had begun to gather towards the Huguang area!
Ship after ship was loaded with brand new artillery and numerous shells, transported all the way through the Yangtze River to Jiujiang, and then docked!
In addition, the Yangtze River Fleet has also been restored. A large number of inland river warships that originally belonged to the canal fleet began to be transferred to the Yangtze River Fleet. While Li Xuanhui was making noise, he also brought at least fifty inland river warships to the Yangtze River Fleet.
This has also enabled the number of river warships in the Yangtze River Fleet to have exceeded one hundred. Moreover, many shipyards under the rule of the Tang Dynasty are still working hard to build ships. In the future, the strength of the Yangtze River Fleet will continue to increase.
.
Whether the Yangtze River Fleet is strong or not is the key to the safety of Yangtze River shipping, and it is also the key to the success of the Tang Army's operations in Huguang!
The battle in Huguang is being steadily arranged by the Privy Council and the Naval Command. According to their scheduled plans, small and medium-sized battles will continue to be launched in recent months to test the strength of Zhang Yue's troops, and in the final battle
, is to prepare for winter.
Because the Tang Dynasty needed at least three months to complete the preparation of troops and various supplies.
It is a blessing to be able to prepare everything in December in winter. If some accident happens and delays the time, it is very possible that it will be postponed to January.
After all, the battle in Huguang will also be a huge decisive battle. If the implementation is not fully prepared, it will easily capsize in the gutter. Now the Tang Dynasty has an absolute strategic advantage, so they are not willing to be too impatient.
, I would rather take my time and be fully prepared before launching an offensive.
Many military affairs were carried out in an orderly manner and Li Xuan did not need to worry too much, but in terms of internal affairs, to be honest, Li Xuan was worried.
He didn't realize it when he didn't take over the northern provinces before, but now, Li Xuan has discovered that there are a lot of troubles in the northern provinces!
Every three days there would be reports that certain places were affected by disasters, some were droughts, some were floods, some were locusts that traveled thousands of miles, and as soon as these places were conquered, there were numerous rebellions.
It was completely different from when we first captured Jiangnan!
When it captured Jiangnan, the Tang Dynasty successfully took control of the area. There were no riots, no natural or man-made disasters, etc. However, it is different in the northern provinces now.
In the past few years, the Ming Dynasty, in order to raise military funds to exterminate the puppet Tang Dynasty, followed Zhang Yue in setting up taxes on thieves' wages, business donations and other taxes in several northern provinces. Although Zhang Yue levied these taxes in Huguang, Sichuan and other places, although it was not possible
What can be avoided will still increase the burden on a large number of ordinary people, but Zhang Yue collects the money directly with his own hands, without going through the local government offices below. Therefore, although the burden on the people has become much greater, it is still barely there.
a situation that can be maintained.
In addition, Zhang Yue will also use various relatively mild and indirect methods to collect money from the gentry. Of course, it is not possible to use the name of tax collection, but in the name of donations and the like. Zhang Yue's methods are gentle, and those
The gentry also reciprocated favors and gave more or less alms.
However, in several provinces in the north, Zhengde set up a levy for thieves, and when business donations were collected, they were not collected directly, but distributed to various local yamen. When the local yamen collected taxes, they naturally would not ask the gentry to collect them, but instead
They would look for ordinary people to collect the money, and in the actual process of collecting it, one tael of thieves' pay would often end up being several taels of money.
In just a few years, the leveling of thieves' wages has enriched countless officials of the Ming Dynasty and killed countless common people!
Under such a situation, the Shandong, Henan, Hebei, Shanxi, Shaanxi and other provinces that the Tang Dynasty took over were actually a huge mess!
People's livelihood is difficult. Under the difficult circumstances of people's livelihood, all kinds of monsters and snake gods emerge. They always think that they are the next eternal sage and carry out various rebellions with full confidence.
The Fourth Army has only been marching westward along the Yellow River for a few months, but apart from the battles with Ming Dynasty officers and soldiers, they have actually fought dozens of battles with various chaotic rebels, some of which only have a few hundred people.
, but the large ones only have tens of thousands of people.
When an infantry regiment of the Fourth Army marched into Zezhou, Shanxi, they discovered that Zezhou had completely fallen into the hands of a rebel army, and even the city had been occupied.
Then these rebels were still shouting something. Their leader had already proclaimed himself emperor and wanted to divide the world equally with Li Xuan using the Yangtze River as the boundary. This made the leading colonel quite speechless. What the hell is this forest so big?
There are birds.
As a result, they didn't even try to persuade them to surrender. They just pulled out the artillery and blasted them, and the army of more than 10,000 refugees dispersed in one fell swoop.
Things here in Zezhou are just a microcosm. There are more rebellions in several northern provinces than Li Xuan expected, and they are much more. I don’t know how the Ming army came over in recent years. Faced with such
There are so many rebellions, so I guess they are too busy suppressing them everywhere!
Now it is the Army of the Tang Dynasty. Although the Army of the Tang Dynasty is powerful in combat, it cannot keep suppressing it like this. Suppressing it every day is tiring!
Li Xuan wants to fundamentally change this situation, and there is only one way to improve the situation, and that is to improve the local people's livelihood.
If the people don't have enough to eat, they will definitely rebel.
After eating, few people except those careerists were willing to rebel.
In fact, the domestic immigration policy is, to a certain extent, intended to solve the current problems in the above-mentioned provinces. There are too many people but little land, and land annexation is serious. It is normal for the people to be unable to survive.
However, immigration alone is not enough. Li Xuan felt that it was necessary to take drastic measures in the above-mentioned places.
Otherwise, if the turmoil continues like this, even if we want to restore people's livelihood, we will not be able to restore it.