In the spring of the thirteenth year of Zhenguan, the railway from Chang'an City to Gaochang was officially opened to traffic. As the strategic role of railways becomes more and more prominent, more and more people realize its importance.
The popular saying now is that wherever the railway is built, the control of the Tang Dynasty will be extended. Railways have gradually become a symbol of Datang. After all, wherever there are railways, there are Datang cavalry, and wherever there are Datang cavalry, they naturally belong to Datang.
After several years of accumulating strength, Li Er couldn't wait. On the second day after the railway opened to traffic, he sent a large army to regain the old land of the Han and Tang Dynasties...
At the beginning, Li Er planned to send Wang Zha to Li Jing. But Li Jing took the initiative to refuse, saying that he was old and frail and only wanted to write military documents in the mansion.
He has chosen to retreat bravely, and naturally he will not come out of the mountain again. Then Li Er wanted Li Ji to take action. But at this time, Li Ji was busy with the preliminary preparations for the expedition to Goguryeo and had no way to escape.
Other famous generals were either too old to fight long distances, or, like Li Xiaogong, remained neutral during the Xuanwu Gate Incident and were not trusted.
Li Er wasn't very reassured by Cheng Yaojin's behavior. Zhang Shigui and Chang He have to protect the imperial city. Hou Junji, who was originally from the Mesozoic Era, was very suitable. Unfortunately, he had already been kicked to the Japanese country to serve as a frontline for Li Chengqian.
Looking around, I couldn't find a suitable general to lead the army. Fortunately, Li Jing took the initiative at this time and recommended a general to Li Er.
This man's name was Su Dingfang. In his early years, he had accompanied Li Jing to defeat the Eastern Turks. During the Battle of Yinshan, he personally conquered Jieli Khan's golden account and made the contribution of being the first to conquer.
Li Er recruited Su Dingfang into the palace and tested his skills on the sand table and map in the side hall. Naturally, Su Dingfang would not miss the opportunity and presented his strategy to pacify the Western Regions to Li Er.
To be honest, the strategy is nothing amazing. It just relies on the powerful national power of the Tang Dynasty to directly crush it. But Li Er was very satisfied with this. As the saying goes, no one who is good at fighting has great achievements. Ingenious strategies are usually only used when a weak party fights a strong opponent, and the success rate is very low.
Compared with the strength of the Tang Dynasty, the small countries in the Western Region, and the Western Turks, the big boss behind the small countries, were essentially crushed.
At this time, playing it safe is far more important than using cunning tactics. As long as you don't make mistakes, and don't make big mistakes, there's basically no problem.
After the assessment, Li Er made an exception and promoted Su Dingfang as the chief general to pacify the Western Regions, and Li Yunze as the logistics commander, commanding 150,000 Tang troops to pacify the Western Regions.
When the news came out, Cheng Yaojin, who had been preparing for this for a long time, reportedly smashed several beloved vases at home.
All the trains from Chang'an City to the Western Regions were requisitioned and converted for military use. A large number of people and materials were loaded onto the trains and sent to Gaochang State thousands of miles away.
The ability to deliver materials and personnel that transcends the times is undoubtedly demonstrated at this moment. A single train can send thousands of people or millions of kilograms of supplies.
As for Chang'an City, it can send out dozens of times a day at least. Matching the delivery capacity is Datang's material production capacity, which is the highest in this era.
Regardless of any aspect of food, clothing, housing and transportation, Datang had terrifying productivity that people of this era could hardly imagine.
To give a simple example, while the herdsmen of the Western Turks were still wearing leather armor, the soldiers of the Tang Army had already increased the armor wearing rate of iron armor to more than 90%.
The remaining ones wore leather armor purely for convenience rather than lack of supply. With the hydraulic stamping machine obtained by Li Yunze, Datang could provide lighter and more defensive plate armor on a large scale.
The bows, arrows, knives and guns in the hands of the Western Turkic herdsmen have almost no chance of breaking through the armor when facing these plates.
Tang Jun will distribute an iron pot with every item. If it is damaged or lost, you can get a new one. But here in the Western Turks, iron pots are treasures that can be exchanged for cattle, sheep and horses.
When the Tang army went out to fight, they could eat meat for almost every meal, and there was an abundant supply of oil, salt, sugar and spices, not to mention staple foods.
On the Western Turk side, the food of the herdsmen was not even as good as the horses of the Tang army. Even the tents here of the Tang Army were gradually replaced by iron houses. When setting up camp, the logistics auxiliary soldiers and civilians were able to quickly build a large number of prefabricated houses. Each sergeant had thick and warm cotton clothes, quilts, leather boots and gloves. You can sleep happily when it's cold.
As for the Western Turkic herdsmen, when the weather is cold, they can only hug the lambs to keep warm. Under the guarantee of such abundant material supplies, it is almost impossible for the Tang army to fail as long as it is not destroyed.
The Tang Army is precisely the most powerful army in this era. Because sergeants can improve their status by virtue of their military exploits on the battlefield, they will not be robbed of their merits by generals.
At the same time, their families live a prosperous life and do not need to worry about fighting outside, while their families are starving to death at home.
That's right, I'm talking about the imperial army of the Song Dynasty and the military household of the Ming Dynasty. In the Song and Ming dynasties, the kind of thing where military men were suppressed by the civil servants to the point that they couldn't even do it, did not exist in the Han and Tang dynasties.
Which civil servant in the Tang Dynasty dares to say that he should control military power with civility and let the sergeants eat grass to fight. If he wins the battle, the credit belongs to the civil servant. If he loses, the sergeants will take the blame. Then he will be beaten hard by the noble group in the court.
Here in the Tang Dynasty, even the family of Shi Xiu, who was called the ancestor of the Han Dynasty, would not dare to say such a thing.
One hundred and fifty thousand Tang troops fought on the front lines, and even more auxiliary soldiers and civilians provided them with logistical support. In order to feed these people, and even more importantly, to make them eat well, live well, and travel well, it takes a lot of energy.
Li Yunze has no difficulty at all in doing these things. In addition to his ability and experience, as well as the help of professionals trained in technical schools over the years, Li Yunze also has a supercomputer tablet as an auxiliary tool.
If you want to know something, just check the stored data. The territory here in the Western Region is vast, and it would be nothing if 150,000 Tang troops were spread there.
As they continued to move forward, the logistics supply line naturally gradually lengthened. Gaochang is no longer called Gaochang, and Li Er renamed it Yizhou.
At this time, this important location on the Silk Road became a large material storage center. The train transported countless supplies, fully demonstrating the terrifying production and transportation capabilities of the Tang Dynasty.
But if you leave Illinois and move forward, you will immediately fall from the primary industrial era to the level of the Middle Ages, relying entirely on horse-drawn carriages for transportation.
There is no shortage of carriages and draft horses, but the route is too long, and there is a huge queue every time the transport team sets off.
This day was another day for the transport team to set off. Three thousand Tang troops escorted a huge convoy transported by more than 10,000 auxiliary troops to Tingzhou hundreds of miles away.
Tingzhou is also a very famous place. It was originally called Luntai Kingdom, but it was destroyed by General Li Guangli of the Second Division during the Han Dynasty.
Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty set up a military garrison here, that is, the Luntai garrison. Since then, it has become the location of the Western Region Protectorate.
When the huge queue set off, Li Yunze signaled the military band beside the road to start playing. There is no doubt that this is pure music composed by Li Yunze himself, and he named it "Distant Journey".
Both the artistic conception and the sound are very consistent with the mood of the soldiers on the expedition. Every time soldiers and horses set off from Yizhou, Li Yunze would ask the military band to play this piece to see off the soldiers.
The Western Region is far away, and the soldiers came here far away from their hometowns in order to use iron and blood to restore the land of the Han Dynasty to China.
The majestic music shook the soul, and the soldiers rode their horses slowly with solemn expressions. The prisoners on the construction site outside the city also silently watched the Tang army march out, listening to the soul-shaking music, they felt nothing but envy in their hearts.
Compared with his own hard life, Tang Ren lived a life like a fairy. Su Dingfang advanced very quickly, and the forwards had now reached Suiye and were fighting fiercely with the Western Turks.
Along the way, he destroyed countless countries, attacked the Western Turks and many Zahu tribes, and captured a large number of prisoners.
Most of the prisoners were sent back to the Tang Dynasty to fill the gaps in the mines and plantations. Another part was left by Li Yunze to work overtime to build railways and highways.
Li Yunze estimated that by the end of the year, the railway would be built to reach Luntai and Cheshi Country, which would extend the logistics supply line to the front line for more than a thousand miles.
As for the Cheshi Kingdom, it is now under the jurisdiction of Luntai, and the name of this place will be called Urumqi in the future.
This is also a traffic artery on the northern route of the Silk Road. After seeing off the transport team and returning to the city, Li Yunze received an urgent telegram from Su Dingfang.
biqμgètν.netSu Dingxiang informed Li Yunze that Yibidulu Khan of the Western Turks sent an elite force to raid Yizhou.
There is no doubt that Yibidulu Khan also knows the art of war. First, Su Dingfang's main army was attracted to the distant four towns of Anxi and held there, and then the elite sneaking from Jinshan were allowed to cross the desert and directly attack Yizhou, the most important logistics town of the Tang Army.
As long as Yizhou can be captured, not only can a large amount of various materials be seized, but also the logistical supplies of the main force of the Tang Army on the front line can be cut off.
Yibiduulu Khan calculated clearly that Su Dingfang's main force was far away in the four towns of Anxi. Thousands of miles apart, it was at least more than a month later when we got the news. By then, Izhou had already been captured.
Obviously, Yibi Duolu Khan did not know that the Tang Army had telegrams that could deliver news instantly, nor did he know that the Tang Army had strong intelligence capabilities and learned the news early.
But even if he got the news, even if Su Dingfang desperately returned to the army for rescue, he wouldn't be able to get back in less than a month after such a long distance.
At this time, there were only four to five thousand Tang troops stationed in Yizhou, and there were tens of thousands of auxiliary soldiers and civilians, but their combat effectiveness was worrying.
Many people made urgent suggestions to Li Yunze, asking him to quickly recall the transport team he sent out before, so that he could increase the number of regular troops by at least 3,000 people.
But Li Yunze simply refused. The reason for his refusal seemed very strange to everyone.
"What if we recall him and scare the Turks away?" The reason for such rhetoric is not because Li Yunze is so confident that he can sweep through thousands of armies with just a stick.
But because he concluded that the Turks did not know the terrifying transportation capabilities of the railway.
"Su Dingfang's troops in front were too late to come back, but there are many Tang troops behind!"
