Treasure hunt begins in England

Chapter 583 Dusty War

The words engraved on the stone slabs are Chinese characters. As the radiating range of the ancient Chinese civilization circle, the appearance of Chinese characters here is not enough to shock Liang En.

After all, this place was built in the time when the Chamber of Secrets was built, that is, the Tang Dynasty was closely related to China, and the Chinese naturally left a lot of historical relics here.

To give a simple example, Suiye City, the birthplace of Li Bai, the great poet of the Tang Dynasty in China, is near Tokmak, hundreds of kilometers east of Liang En's current location.

Although this place was not the territory of ancient China, it was also one of the vassal states of China at that time. More importantly, the historically important Silk Road passed through here, and the appearance of Chinese characters was taken for granted.

"What's written on it?" Looking at these Chinese characters, Joan asked curiously. Although she had mastered some spoken Chinese knowledge after studying for this period of time, she still didn't know anything about writing.

"Let me see." After gently brushing off the dirt on the stone slab with a special brush, the lines of text gradually became clearer.

"On July 17th, [-], the [-]th year of Weishi Tianbao, Liu Shenwei, a veteran of the Jingzhao Mansion of the Tang Dynasty, traveled to the west of the river and lived in Khorasan. Due to the attack of foreign thieves and the disturbance of the country, I moved the remains of robes to the abandoned cave. And it was hidden in the wall, so I made up my mind to write a volume of the Prajna Paramita Heart Sutra and put it in the cave.

Vow to the eight divisions of the dragon and heaven, the long-term protection and help, the city god is safe and peaceful, and the people are healthy; the second wish is the robe, inheriting this good cause, not drowning in the nether world, all karmic obstacles in the world are eliminated, and the blessings are immeasurable, and they will be supported forever. "

"I know what it is—no, I know who they are." After a minute of silence, Liang En took a deep breath, and then said in a low tone. "They were soldiers of the Tang Dynasty who died in the Battle of Daros that year."

"This Liu Shenwei is very likely to be the remnant of Gao Xianzhi who was forced to stay on this land. He doesn't even know that the emperor of the Central Plains has changed, and Tianbao's reign is only 15 years old."

The Battle of Talas was a battle that resulted from the encounter between the army of the Anxi Protectorate of the Tang Dynasty, the army of the Arab Empire and the coalition forces of the Central Asian countries in Talas.

In the ninth year of Tianbao (750 A.D.), Gao Xianzhi was ordered to send an army to defeat the Cheshi Kingdom, which was attached to Tubo, and captured its king, Bo Te.This difficult expedition made Gao Xianzhi gain a great reputation in the Western Regions.

At this time, Huaxia has become the occupant of the Tarim region, the Ili River Basin and the Issyk-Kul region and the suzerain of Tashkent. He is the governor of Datang in Central Asia.

same year.Gao Xianzhi also defeated Shi Guo and Tu Qi Shi.Gao Xianzhi conquered Shi Kingdom on the grounds that Shi Kingdom "has no courtesies".Shi Guo asked to surrender, and Gao Xianzhi agreed.Not long after, Gao Xianzhi broke his promise and kidnapped the King of Shi and his followers, and searched for property at the same time.

In the first month of the tenth year of Tianbao (751), Gao Xianzhi entered the court and presented several captured kings in front of Xuanzong. Gao Xianzhi was awarded the right feather forest general and beheaded the king of Shiguo.

At this time Gao Xianzhi had reached the peak of his fighting career.Prince Shi, who escaped by chance, asked for help from Dashi in Black (Arab Abbasid Dynasty).

Gao Xianzhi took the initiative to attack Dashi first, and led the Tang coalition forces to make a long-distance attack, penetrating more than [-] miles, and finally encountered the main Arab army in Talas.

The above is all the accurate history that people know. As for the following history, it is hidden in the fog, and there is no one that can guarantee 100% accuracy.

Because no matter in the history books written by the Tang Dynasty or the contemporary ones in the Arab world, this battle, which is regarded by later generations (especially now) as a direct collision between the two dynasties, occupies less than a single page:

In the Arabian "History Encyclopedia", it only occupies 3 lines, in "Old Tang Book", it only occupies 2 columns, and in "Zi Zhi Tong Jian", there are only 4 columns.

The literati don't bother to record the details of the war. This is the case in China, and it is also the case in the Middle East. This makes it difficult for us to accurately restore the historical truth. For example, the number of Arab troops alone ranges from 2 to 30 .

Fortunately, people can infer some truths about that era from other historical materials. For example, the commander was General Ziad bin Saleh, not Governor Abu.

At the same time, the legendary hundreds of thousands of Khorasan troops do not exist. The core strength of the Arab army will not exceed 2, and the servant army will not exceed 4. After a long period of counter-insurgency wars, the state Not perfect.

The Arab heavy cavalry only exists in the story. There are indeed Turkic cavalry with horses and armor on the battlefield, but they are archers and cannot play a decisive role in the overall battle situation.

The Arabs are not waiting for work as some people say. The areas they are in are actually newly occupied areas, and even the main battle is directly transferred to Talas after the end of a fortified battle. Therefore, they are also equivalent to long-distance marches on the outside.

The most important point is that the Saleh Corps marched to the Daros area after receiving the information. That is to say, the governor Abu at the time knew the information of the Tang army's march and the location where it was about to arrive.

Another troublesome place is the time and place of the battle, which are not recorded in the "Historical Encyclopedia" and "New Book of Tang".

However, the records in the old Tang book are: "Leading [-] troops to go deep into Hudi, and fighting Dashi, Xianzhi was defeated. On the night of the meeting, the two armies were separated, Xianzhi was killed by Dashi, and only a few thousand survived."

From a literal point of view, the war seems to have only lasted for one day. The Tang army was defeated in the morning or noon of that day, and the remaining Tang army withdrew from the battle in the dark.

In the Zizhi Tongjian, it became "Xianzhi heard about it, and attacked Dashi with [-] people from Fan and Han, and penetrated more than [-] miles, to Talas City, and met Dashi. After five days of stalemate, Ge Luolu's tribe Rebellion, together with Dashi to attack the Tang army, Xianzhi was defeated, and the soldiers died almost completely, leaving only a few thousand people."

But after a simple analysis, you will find that the most common saying of a five-day stalemate is impossible. As an experienced commander, the reason why Gao Xianzhi leads troops to pay money quickly is to catch the enemy by surprise.

Therefore, after discovering the heavy Arab army group, he will immediately understand that his plan has failed. Under normal circumstances, he should launch a short and powerful assault to disperse the enemy, and then divide the troops into several groups to retreat alternately.

More importantly, the core of the Anxi Army is about 2 mounted heavy infantry and a small number of unarmored heavy cavalry, while the core of the Khorasan Army is 1 heavy infantry and 1 armored cavalry.

According to Joan of Arc, a fierce man who can not take off his armor for a week, once this kind of heavy infantry or heavy cavalry enters the battlefield, even if they take turns to fight, the battle will definitely end within a day, otherwise there is a high probability that they will fall directly on the battlefield.

This is especially true in field battles in sparsely-vegetated places like Central Asia. The heavily armed troops would not be active for more than half a day, otherwise more people would die from heatstroke and exhaustion than on the battlefield.

Therefore, in that war, it is very likely that both sides launched an offensive at the same time, but Gao Xianzhi's lack of military strength led to a stalemate between the two sides, until the Arabs finally defeated Gao Xianzhi's troops at night by relying on their numbers and intelligence advantages.

(End of this chapter)