Established a millennium family since King Wu defeated Zhou

Chapter 975: After Kaiyuan comes Tianbao

The fates of the King of Qi and the King of Wei are chilling.

  And this is just the beginning.

On that island far away from the land, there are countless princes and nobles.

In the spring of the 16th year of Kaiyuan, a large team of officials entered the three islands of Penglai.

This group of bureaucrats was basically composed of officials from the Three Law Departments and other Ministry of Justice. They came here with only one goal, which was to try those nobles who had committed serious crimes.

In the capital of Wei State, a brutal reckoning began.

This is a liquidation of vassal states by the Central Plains, which will serve as a template and have a great demonstration effect in the future.

The two prime ministers are in charge here.

There were countless noble families, including princes, dukes, county lords, marquises, earls, etc.

One by one, they were taken to the Mingtang. There was bright light outside and a dark future inside.

Some cried, some were sad, some were regretful, and some were mourning.

There are different kinds of people and different kinds of sorrow.

The trial lasted a very long time. At the request of Taiping and Luo Qianqiu, almost every major noble had a complaint.

By the spring of the eighteenth year of Kaiyuan, after two full years of trial, all the nobles on the three Penglai islands had been liquidated, and the number of people whose properties were confiscated and exiled reached as high as 100,000.

As for the main criminals sentenced to hanging and beheading, there were as many as 723 of them, basically all of them were prominent nobles and officials.

Their family members etc. do not count.

In reality, it’s a lot less than you might think.

The reason why Taiping wrote down the charges against each person was to express his attitude.

Those who had intended to establish their own kingdom and split the empire from the very beginning were basically sentenced to extermination of their entire clan.

Those who merely assisted in the rebellion were sentenced to anything from death to exile.

This attitude is very clear: if you rebel, you will die, but if you plan for independence, your entire clan will be exterminated.

After this purge, almost half of the nobles on the three Penglai Islands had met with disaster over the past few decades, leaving a terrifying power vacuum on the island.

For the Central Plains, it was a golden land, but for the vassal states, it was a disaster. The consequences of rebellion were clearly evident.

All the princes who had independent thoughts in their hearts suppressed them. The emperor of Luoyang, the sacred capital, could not tolerate such things at all.

After the trial, the imperial court destroyed the shipbuilding docks of the Penglai Three Islands and took all ship-related drawings and craftsmen back to the Central Plains, fundamentally cutting off the ability of the Penglai Three Islands to build ships again.

Given the current situation of the three Penglai Islands, it will take at least dozens or even hundreds of years to restore the shipbuilding capacity.

Not only that, the imperial court also stationed a rotating army on the three Penglai Islands, transferring personnel from the Andong Protectorate, with a rotation every five years. Most of the stationed soldiers were dispatched from the Jizi Peninsula.

No one knows how long the Central Plains' direct rule over the three Penglai Islands can last.

After all, the three Penglai Islands are isolated overseas.

It is not favorable to go through the Central Plains, and the storms at sea will still have a great impact on the Central Plains navy.

In the view of the prime ministers and most of the ministers, the imperial court would eventually send one or several princes to rule Penglai.

But at least in the short term, the three Penglai Islands will be shrouded in the shadow of the imperial court.

Penglai is not a region rich in resources. If the population increases again, it will even need support from the Central Plains. For the Central Plains, this is still a region that requires continuous output.

Fortunately, there is a gold mine here.

As long as the gold mine exists, Zhongyuan will not relax its control over this area.

In the 20th year of Kaiyuan, all vassal states gathered in Luoyang to offer the most sincere respect and the most precious tribute to the emperor.

Including the Yan State, which has always been unruly.

At this moment, a truth was materialized.

The dignity of the Emperor of the Tang Dynasty does not lie in his words, but in the reach of the sharp swords in the hands of the Tang army.

In the 21st year of Kaiyuan, due to years of war and the never-ending war against the Crescent Empire in the west, the court calculated and believed that the current model was too costly.

In order to continue to intimidate the vassal states and at the same time reduce the burden on the court, the court established military governors in various border states and counties to raise money and food from the locals to ensure the combat effectiveness of the army.

These Jiedushi quickly replaced the duties of the original Protectorate and Governor's Office.

Among them, the Anxi Jiedushi, Beiting Jiedushi, Longyou Jiedushi, Hexi Jiedushi, Anbei Jiedushi, Andong Jiedushi, Youzhou Jiedushi and Hedong Jiedushi had the strongest military forces, and each of them was an important frontier official.

In order to prevent the Jiedushi from becoming too powerful, the imperial court required that the Jiedushi be replaced every five years, with the north-south and east-west being swapped. If one served as the Jiedushi of the Three Penglai Islands last time, he might be the Jiedushi of Anxi next time.

Secondly, a Jiedushi cannot hold multiple positions concurrently.

Unless there is a special decree to give someone greater power during the war, he can hold both positions concurrently.

In the 27th year of Kaiyuan, news came from the distant Western Regions that the army of the Crescent Empire had turned eastward again. The Sultan might have believed that the threat posed by the Tang Empire far exceeded that of the Eastern Roman Empire, so he had to deal with the Eastern Roman Empire first.

Perhaps it was because Constantinople, the Queen City of the West, was too strong, and the Romans were too strong to take it down in a short period of time when facing the destruction of their country and their families.

In short, those who had previously fought against the Tang Dynasty were just a few Pashas in the east of the Crescent Empire, but now it is a strategic shift for the entire Crescent Empire.

The Lord of Xuanmen asked for help from the Tang Dynasty, requesting the most supreme emperor of the Tang Dynasty to send the most powerful army to defend the faith of the Su King.

In the 29th year of Kaiyuan, after two years of preparation, a large number of young and strong generals each led a part of the army westward. The general commanding the army was named Wang Zhongsi, and under him were Feng Changqing, Gao Xianzhi, Geshu Han and others.

This was an army composed of various ethnic groups. There were 80,000 cavalrymen, 60,000 of whom were from foreign tribes. This was also a tradition in the Tang Dynasty army.

During the 30th year of Kaiyuan, within 10,000 miles from north to south and east to west of Luoyang, from the sky to the sea and to the land, there was no one that could be an enemy of the Tang Dynasty. The only enemy might be the Crescent Empire, but the Crescent Empire was now facing the attack of the Tang army on its own land.

Many vassal states came to the capital again.

The Tang Dynasty built a magnificent palace here, and its name was Wanxiang Palace.

There is a magnificent pillar of heaven in the center of Luoyang.

  Without magnificence, there is no authority!

Almost every envoy who came to the Tang Dynasty was shocked by this magnificent spectacle, and then they prostrated themselves on the ground and kowtowed to the supreme holiness of the Emperor of the Tang Dynasty.

At this greatest ceremony in history, the Tang dynasty's rulers and ministers believed that it was time to change the reign title.

Kaiyuan's mission has come to its end.

The Tang Dynasty needed a new era name to guide its future path.

Tianbao.

A dignified and wealthy name appeared before the eyes of the people of the Tang Dynasty. This reign title contained the wishes of the monarch and his ministers for the future.

We have done the utmost of what human power can do. What we can do next depends on what God wants us to do and what God gives us.

This is what the Tang Dynasty’s rulers and ministers were thinking.

The ultimate pride.

Anyone who sees the current Tang Dynasty will have such thoughts and feel proud.

If we say that the prosperous era of Zhenguan had some flaws, it was because it came after the war.

The prosperous era of Kaiyuan can be said to be perfect. Even if you look through all the history books, you will not find a prosperous era as perfect as Kaiyuan.

In front of Kaiyuan, all the prosperous times in history seemed a little dim.

Of course, this is not Taiping’s achievement alone.

This was an era of continuous heyday that began with Li Shimin, and the emergence of Luo Su pointed out a way for the Tang Dynasty to get out of its internal circulation, which led to the current unparalleled prosperous era.

Thirty years after Kaiyuan, it was the first year of Tianbao.

For the common people, the Tianbao era was not much different from the Kaiyuan period. The only thing that could be felt was that the number of envoys sent by the court to monitor local areas increased and became more and more diligent.

The reason is simple.

His Royal Highness Prince Luo once said, "If there is no law at home and no rule for the people, and if there is no enemy abroad and no external threats, the country will always perish.

Now the Tang Dynasty has almost no external enemies. There is no country in the world that can destroy the Tang Dynasty. The only outcome for the enemies of the Tang Dynasty is to die early or late.

The only thing that can cause a country to fail is internal problems.

As for what problems there might be internally, I think there is no need for me to say more, as all dynasties know about it.

  The Tang Dynasty has been established for more than a hundred years. Aren't the officials now extremely corrupt?

Even if I don't see it, I know it must be very serious, so it must be cracked down on. Ensuring the integrity of officials is the top priority.

  Are the local tyrants now encroaching upon the people's land?

Needless to say, I know there must be many, and many of them are clan relatives and in-laws, and all of them must be investigated.

  Are the heavy taxes and levies on the people starting to rise again?

These taxes are levied on ordinary people. Will they be able to survive?

Will they rebel if they can't survive?

Last year, a rebellion broke out in Shandong. Weren't you wondering why I didn't reward the local officials?

Because I know that it was the officials who forced the people to rebel, so after that, I sent the Shandong Provincial Inspector to check the situation of the local officials. As expected, the local officials raised the tax three times.

In the government office of Mozhou, an account book was even found, which recorded the receivables from the 34th year of Kaiyuan.

How ridiculous! How ridiculous!

The taxes were collected after the 34th year of Kaiyuan. Do you think these officials should be put to death?

These parasites hidden within the Tang Dynasty are more terrifying than external enemies.

If the Tang Dynasty was a building, these termites would be gnawing at its foundation.

Without paying attention, the foundation was damaged, and by the time it was discovered, it was too late, and the empire eventually collapsed. "

King Luo's attitude can be seen from here. In the absence of external threats, he turned his attention to the unlawful officials within the country and regarded them as more terrifying enemies than external enemies.

A vigorous campaign to rectify the administration of officials was launched from top to bottom.

……

In the sixth year of Tianbao, good news came back from the distant western frontier.

The Tang army, the Western Region army, and the Xuanmen army, a total of 180,000 people, fought against the Crescent Empire's 250,000 elite troops and won a great victory.

This battle almost sealed the complete victory of the Chinese Empire in Central Asia. From then on, the Crescent Empire no longer had the ability to compete with the Tang Dynasty in Central Asia.

If enough time was required to gather the local ethnic groups and change the local beliefs, the coalition forces would continue to attack westwards.

However, the purpose of the Zhu Xia regime was not simply to conquer by force, but to achieve cultural conquest and to establish a complete taxation system in the local area, so it was necessary to deeply cultivate the local area.

The empires that ruled here in the past basically all adopted a tax-farming system. This system was too bad and had no control over the grassroots. The Tang Dynasty simply looked down on it and believed that to rule, it must have actual control.

This is a very long job.

However, the Tang Dynasty had a large population. Even if one-eighth of the population migrated to Central Asia, it would instantly overwhelm the local indigenous people and form a replacement in population proportion.

However, before migrating the population, they need to develop here for a period of time in advance, otherwise the people who come here will starve to death. After receiving the victory report, Luoyang quickly issued new instructions to the 120,000 troops sent by the Tang Dynasty.

"Form a military alliance with the Eastern Roman Empire and attack the Crescent Empire from both the east and the west. We must beat the fallen dog and never give the Crescent Empire any chance."

Any emerging empire has a flourishing destiny, and now the Tang Dynasty wants to cut off Xinyue's destiny and bring this rising ethnic group to an irretrievable end.

"Contact the Persian Restorationists and have the Persians revolt behind the Crescent Empire. Promise them that after the Crescent Empire is destroyed, the Supreme Emperor of the Tang Dynasty will restore the Persian Empire and become the new suzerain of Persia to protect them from harm."

With the current strength of the Tang Dynasty, the words spoken by the Tang Emperor are a gift to Persia.

Even if Persia was restored, it was just a kingdom with a population of over one million. For the Tang Dynasty with a population of 80 million, this was nothing. For the emperor of the Tang Dynasty, accepting such a vassal state was just a normal thing.

The facts did not go beyond the expectations of the Tang Dynasty's rulers and ministers.

When the exiled Persian nobles, princes and princesses learned that the Tang Dynasty was willing to help them restore their country, they treated Taiping as if she were their mother and a god.

Many of the Persian nobles who were exiled in various parts of Central Asia returned to Persia. Some of them returned with an army of thousands of people, the standard weapons of the Tang Dynasty, and the priests of the Xuanmen.

As an ancient country with a very prosperous culture, Persia is different from those countries that rise and fall rapidly. Such countries all have a kind of belief within them, which is the initial national consciousness.

In this era, it is called, human heart!

Whether a country can be restored depends on whether it has the people's support. To put it simply, it depends on whether the people whose country has been destroyed miss it.

If there are a lot of people who miss it, it can be restored.

For example, the Han Dynasty.

Of course, Persia had people with strong will, but this kind of people's will was not enough to restore their country in the face of the Crescent Empire, which was at its peak.

When all those who miss Persia are wiped out by the Crescent Moon, Persia will have completely lost the hearts of the people.

But now with the help of the Tang Dynasty, the situation is different. Persia has enough ability to resist the attack of the Crescent Moon.

The rebellion in Persia would affect the largest tax-collecting area in the Crescent and would cause the Crescent's economy to collapse. This is why Taiping chose Persia.

In addition to contacting these allies who also wanted the Crescent Empire to die, the imperial court decided, after careful consideration, to set up vassal states in Central Asia.

It is impossible to extend such a long front line from the Central Plains to Central Asia. Any logistics will be eaten up on the way before reaching the front line.

Even if the imperial court did not say it, in fact, the army that was marching westward was semi-independent from the imperial court, because those troops did not need the imperial court to provide them with food and fodder at all.

I can only say that it is fortunate that there is Luo’s Bank and paper money in the Tang Dynasty now.

After the army's victory, the rewards awarded by the court were all paid in paper money. In a sense, this was a kind of restriction on the troops stationed abroad.

But this restraint is not strong.

Because soldiers could use paper money to purchase supplies directly from the Hu and Han merchants traveling to the Central Plains, these merchants were quite supportive of the credit of the Tang Dynasty's paper money.

Of course, when buying things in this way, the value of the banknotes will definitely be discounted, and the merchants will make a considerable profit from it.

Paper money circulated throughout East Asia. Even in the West where paper money was not circulated, some merchants kept it. Its function was somewhat similar to that of foreign exchange reserves in later generations, which were used to purchase things after the Tang Dynasty.

For example, a merchant sold a bag of tea to Tang soldiers in Central Asia for twelve cents. When he came to the Central Plains with paper money, he only needed seven cents to buy a bag of tea, making a net profit of five cents, which was a huge profit.

Under the joint attack of the Tang Dynasty in politics, economy, military and diplomacy, the Crescent Empire's national power became unstable almost instantly. It was obviously a prosperous and great country, but it had a sense of being shaky.

It can be said that the Crescent people, who had hardly encountered any major crisis since the Crescent Conquest, actually smelled the crisis of extinction.

For a moment, the Sultan of the Crescent Moon was confused.

He didn't understand why the situation had suddenly come to this point. Just ten years ago, everything was going well.

The Roman Empire, which once dominated the world, was retreating step by step under the banner of the crescent moon.

As for other ethnic groups that once had a glorious history, they have either been destroyed or are about to perish under the scimitar of the crescent moon.

But everything changed when the Eastern Tang Empire began to set its sights on Central Asia.

failure.

A disastrous failure.

These words and war reports, which had never appeared many times before, appeared on his desk.

"Great Lord, please tell your most loyal servant, where the future of Xinyue lies?"

……

No one knows where the future of Xinyue lies.

But the future of Persia has never been clearer than it is now.

Even the Tang Dynasty soldiers who followed the Persian prince to Persia were surprised by the speed at which the Persian Restoration Army's power grew. It was like a call to action and everyone responded.

This situation reflects the reality that under the rule of the Crescent, the old Persian land is far less prosperous than it once was.

The crescent moon is generally disliked here, and the biggest reason is probably because the crescent moon belief is too different from traditional Persian beliefs.

Moreover, as the party being ruled in a tough manner, it is certain that there is rejection in their hearts.

At this time, the Tang Dynasty came.

As an empire that has long been famous, whether it is the current Tang Dynasty or the former countries, the prosperous times of the country have been passed down in places like Persia.

To Persia, the Crescent was the uncultured barbarians, while the Tang was the aristocrats in gorgeous clothes.

In particular, the Emperor of the Tang Dynasty promised to help Persia restore its nation. As long as Persia became a vassal state of the Tang Dynasty in the future, the Tang Dynasty would not interfere in Persia’s internal affairs and would allow Persia to govern itself.

  What kind of favor is this?

The Persians shouted in Persia.

With the arrival of the Tang Dynasty, Persia will be saved.

With the arrival of the Tang Dynasty, the sky became blue again, and even the water in the Persian Gulf became clear.

This is the Tang Dynasty, whose every move can touch the hearts of countless countries.

For the Eastern Roman Empire, the sudden appearance of the Tang Dynasty was like a savior. Under the impact of the Crescent Moon, the Eastern Roman Empire was on the verge of collapse, but now it suddenly got a chance to catch its breath, and even to some extent, it had the opportunity to counterattack the Old Continent.

The lands lost by the empire seemed to be waiting for the empire's eagle flag to fly in the sky again, carrying the empire's past glory and splendor.

When facing the Tang Dynasty, Persia took the lead. After Taiping presented the Persian prince with a crown decorated with jewels, the new Persian king knelt in front of the Xuanmen Temple and was baptized.

"From now on, I will abandon all my previous beliefs and serve the only god in the world devoutly, the noble and supreme Su Wang Shang Huang Tian."

In the Western world, conversion is still a common thing.

Especially when different countries formed alliances, conversions often took place. The Persian prince, who was deeply influenced by this idea, immediately converted himself after accepting the title from the Emperor of the Tang Dynasty.

Not only did he convert himself, he also required all Persian nobles to convert and serve King Su devoutly. He then asked the emperor to give him a princess so that "Persia can bathe in the glory of the Tang Dynasty", "she will become the most honorable queen of Persia", and "Persia will submit to the Tang Dynasty".

Granting a princess to demonstrate trust is a tradition of the Tang Dynasty. Many daughters of Li Yuan and Li Shimin were married to meritorious officials, such as Qibi Heli and other chieftains of the surrendered tribes.

However, those who married real princesses usually worked in the imperial court and were the emperor's most trusted ministers.

Externally, women were usually chosen from the royal family and canonized as princesses to marry off.

Generally speaking, apart from being far away from home, the political treatment for this kind of marriage is very good. After all, the Tang Dynasty was the powerful party, and marrying a princess there was to exert influence.

After the imperial court decided to divide vassal states in Central Asia, some princes had already been enfeoffed there. After Taiping received the letter from the King of Persia asking for marriage, he directly issued an edict to confer the title of princess on a county lady and then married her to the King of Persia.

This is the end.

The battle line to overthrow the New Moon has been completely established and consolidated.

The Crescent Empire was under attack from inside and outside, from east to west, and there was no peace anywhere. The Sultan's request for peace was ignored. The vassal states under the Tang Dynasty were mainly responsible for collecting taxes and preparing food and fodder locally, while the Tang Dynasty's army confronted the Crescent Empire's army head-on.

The Tang Empire was the only one in the world that could wage war on two fronts at the same time, while guarding the kingdom of the three Penglai Islands and winning against the Crescent Empire in the west.

Although the Crescent Empire was also relatively powerful, it was far inferior to the Tang Empire.

Now they have to face the Anxi army of the Eastern Roman Empire and the Tang Dynasty at the same time.

That's right.

In the subsequent wars, the Tang Dynasty only sent troops from Anxi and Beiting, totaling 54,000 people.

Together with the 40,000 troops commanded by Xuanmen, the total number is nearly 100,000, which is the main force for the expedition against Xinyue.

Coupled with the fact that the Persian Restoration Army grew wildly like weeds, the Crescent's rule collapsed like a falling domino, almost within a few years.

Persia played a huge role in this.

After all, the Tang Dynasty was too far away from Central Asia and West Asia, and it was too difficult to project its power, so it could only exert pressure in the eastern part of the Crescent. After the restoration of Persia, its strength expanded rapidly.

It can be said that the situation has changed. The Crescent Empire, which suffered heavy losses, was defeated. In the wars with the Tang Dynasty and the Eastern Roman Empire, the Crescent Empire, which had lost all its elite troops, was no match for the Persian Empire.

One after another, war reports came to the Central Plains across thousands of miles.

In the twelfth year of Tianbao, Feng Changqing captured and killed the Crescent Sultan.

The war came to an end.

This was the longest war since the founding of the Tang Dynasty. If we count from the time when the first group of soldiers set out on the Western Expedition, the war had lasted for more than 20 years.

The Tang Dynasty deployed about 400,000 troops to Central Asia.

During these twenty years, the imperial court spent about 1.8 billion strings of cash on war.

After the court had paper money, its annual revenue averaged about 100 million strings of cash.

The war of more than 20 years not only wiped out all the annual revenue of the past years, but also consumed a lot of previous accumulation.

The reason for this is naturally because the distance is too far, the troops are too many, and the required results are too great.

But the results are also gratifying.

A flourishing empire, at its peak, was completely thrown into the abyss by the Tang Dynasty. Within visible range, there is really no country that can pose a threat to the Tang Dynasty.

Persia became a vassal state of the Tang Dynasty.

The vast areas east of Persia and west of the Western Regions are all lands that the Tang Dynasty can develop in the future. There are fertile lands and large tracts of grassland here.

Once this place is developed, the profits and living space gained will be far beyond what the current expenditure can match.

----

The history books named this protracted war "War of the Extinct Crescent Moon". Two huge empires fought over a territory of 5,000 miles. The Tang Empire launched a war of annihilation against another empire on land beyond its sphere of influence. What confidence and arrogance this was, it reminds people of the war in which Rome destroyed Parthia. However, unlike Rome, which only plundered wealth, the Tang Empire had greater ambitions. Even though the power of the center of the empire could not radiate here, the emperor of the empire still let the territories manage this place, so it became the land of Xia. ——"Global History·Sui and Tang Volume 5"

(End of this chapter)