If there is one word that can accurately describe Heian Kyo during the Heian period, it would be the Great Quagmire.
Really, there's no better adjective than that.
The reason why Heiankyo became a quagmire was because the Japanese overestimated their capabilities.
Two or three hundred years ago, after a large number of envoys sent to the Tang Dynasty returned from the Tang Dynasty, they praised Chang'an and Luoyang as unparalleled in the world, and the Japanese king drooled with envy.
So on the advice of the envoys sent to the Tang Dynasty, the Japanese king decided to build a Chang'an city in the Japanese country and move all the powerful and wealthy households from all over the country. In this way, he could not only build a huge city but also control the local powerful people.
As a result, half way through the construction of Heianjing, the entire Japanese country's finances collapsed, and finally a beggar's version of Chang'an was built.
And even this Beggar's Edition didn't last long, because the Left and Right Capitals, built in imitation of the Eastern and Western Cities of the Tang Dynasty, were built directly on the swamp.
When they were first built, the houses were new and fine. However, after a year or two, not only were the houses soaked by the vapor from the swamp, the paved streets turned to mud again, but even the foundations of the palaces and a large number of private houses began to settle. Gradually, Ukyo could not There are people living there.
But at this time, many rich and powerful people from all over the country had moved here, and most of the people nearby came to Heianjing to seek life. All the people had to squeeze into Zuoking, causing Zuoking to be relatively crowded.
While Ukyo is built directly on a swamp, Zakyo is actually not much better, both located in a low-lying valley.
Moreover, the Japanese learned about the scale of Chang'an and Luoyang in the Tang Dynasty, but they did not fully learn the water supply and drainage, which caused a big problem in the drainage of Heianjing.
This is too 'wonderful'.
Building a city in a low-lying, humid area without much drainage system is simply a paradise for viruses and plagues.
So time has passed to the present day, and there are more than 100,000 people in Zakyo. The low-lying terrain and extremely crude drainage system make it difficult to drain away the accumulated water.
In such a small puddle-filled city, hundreds of thousands of people eat, drink, and litter, and all the domestic garbage and sewage continue to accumulate and seep downward, causing various diseases and plagues to spread widely, with outbreaks occurring every one or two years. .
Moreover, due to excessive crowding and the extensive use of wooden buildings, Sakyo's fire prevention situation was also very serious. Even the palace grounds were often on fire, resulting in the imperial family having to move around.
What a safe place in Beijing! When it rains, the country becomes flooded, when the sky is dry, it is easy to catch fire. The surge of water vapor makes feces and urine flow everywhere with the water. The stench of the scorching sun overflows, and plague and hunger are constantly attacking alternately.
Now everyone knows why Heian Kyo is so magical in Japanese culture. The feelings of One Hundred Ghosts Night Walk are all realistic!
Emperor Murakami has not returned to Heian Castle north of Sakyo Castle for a long time because he doesn't like the smell here.
In the main hall, a man and a woman sat on the left and right of Emperor Murakami's head.
The man is his elder brother and the previous emperor who gave him the Zen throne, Suzaku Hiroyuki. The female is Atsuko, the common mother of Emperor Murakami and Emperor Suzaku.
Atsuko is not a simple woman, because the few real powers that the emperors have these days are basically in her hands.
In order to firmly hold power, she ruthlessly forced Emperor Suzaku to abdicate the throne to Emperor Murakami.
But at this time, the Queen Mother, who had so much power but still wanted to hold it in her hands, had an unprecedented look of fear on her face.
At the very beginning, news came about the invasion of pirates from Goryeo, and the court was still preparing to send people to Goryeo to contact them in the spring.
But the members here are still arguing about whether they should take the initiative to send people there. Wang Jian has long wanted to communicate with him, and whether the communication is frequent will be revealed.
But at this time, news of the rebellion came from the Toyozen Kingdom of Nishikai Michichi, and they also defeated hundreds of soldiers in Dazaifu. This made the Queen Mother Atsuko, the left minister Fujiwara Minoru and the right minister Fujiwara Shisuke extremely anxious.
The Taira Shomon Rebellion and Fujiwara Juntomo's rebellion had only subsided not long ago, especially the Fujiwara Juntomo Rebellion ten years ago, which was marked by the capture of Dazaifu.
As for these two rebellions, the imperial court could not devote much power to quell them. They were quelled entirely by conflicts of interest and involvement among local forces.
The Suzaku Patriarch has been mentally disturbed since he was forced to take the Zen position by his mother Wenzi.
His IQ was already on the low side, and now he was deeply in the pain of being abandoned by his mother. Historically, he was going to die of depression next year. Therefore, the opinion of Emperor Suzaku now was not important at all, and was almost nothing.
Wenzi didn't want to ask for his opinion, so he directly asked the two left and right ministers: "There is trouble in Bunzen Kingdom now. Should we send troops? Otherwise, Dazaifu will be captured again and the world will be shocked again."
The right minister, Shisuke Fujiwara, said nothing because the power was in the hands of the left minister, Fujiwara Minori. Fujiwara Minori frowned.
During the Tenkei Rebellion ten years ago, whether it was the army that hunted down Ono Yoshiko or the army that conquered the west of General Fujiwara Tadafumi, they were all composed of disciples and samurai drawn from the two capitals and the homage groups from various places.
Although Fujiwara Juntomo's Tenkei Rebellion was quickly put down, the price was huge.
Because although the left minister, Fujiwara Minori, is the leader of the public minister, he is not the public minister himself.
Whenever these people are mobilized, they have to be appeased with official titles after they come back. Every appeasement means that Minister Zuo must make resource compromises with the subordinates, so Fujiwara Sanyori does not want to send troops.
The reason for this situation is that in the current Japanese state, after the collapse of the Bantian system, which is roughly equivalent to the equal land system, the court can no longer recruit military force from the people, and the original legions have become empty shells.
Currently, in the Japanese country, the only reliable force is the samurai tribe composed of the sons of various ministers and local samurai, as well as the armed immigrants who expanded the borders in Kanto.
The former probably implemented a manor system, similar to the Wubao tycoons of the Eastern Han Dynasty.
Later generations will implement a tax system that is responsible for the people, which is equivalent to a tax-sharing system. That is, all the land and farmers in this area will be contracted to you. You will be responsible for paying the agreed taxes to the court, and you can do whatever you want with the rest.
Therefore, the responsibility of sending troops falls on them, and they will naturally give benefits to others who ask for help.
And when these people get the benefits and their strength expands, the strength of the court will weaken. After all, the cake is only so big.
The left minister who held the real power refused to say anything, so Empress Dowager Atsuko turned her attention to Emperor Murakami in front of her.
Emperor Murakami, like his brother Emperor Suzaku, has little power in his hands, but he is the emperor after all, and his words are still somewhat effective. As long as he speaks, Fujiwara Minori can't ignore him too much.
Emperor Murakami's intelligence is relatively normal among the Imperial family. This is also because the endogamy system of the Imperial family has not reached the level of abnormality that it would be in the next few hundred years, so there are relatively few stupid and deformed children.
Although his back was to Empress Dowager Atsuko, Emperor Murakami clearly felt his mother's burning eyes falling on his back.
He opened his mouth and was about to say something, but suddenly he saw the extremely unkind look in the left minister Fujiwara Minori's eyes. When the words came to his lips, he immediately swallowed them back.
His mother, Atsuko, who listens to politics in the name of Emperor Suzaku, can certainly manipulate him, but left minister Fujiwara Minori and Emperor Murakami are also afraid!
The matter thus entered an awkward deadlock, and neither party could think of a way that would be acceptable to both parties.
This is called dishonorable in politics. Since they are dishonorable, someone will naturally teach them to be decent.
In the awkward silence, Yamataka Fujiwara Kentada rushed in hastily. He ignored the pretentious court etiquette, rushed in and started yelling:
"Zuofu, I have just received news that the soldiers of the Han family in the Central Plains have begun to cross the sea from Tsushima!
The rebellion in Saikaidō was not a rebellion of local samurai at all, but they were responding to the Central Plains soldiers.
Even those Goryeo pirates were driven to the mountain valley by the Central Plains army, because Wang's Goryeo had been destroyed last year, and the King of Goryeo had lost his country and his life! "
The news was so shocking that everyone in the house fell into a brief silence.
It took a while for Fujiwara Minori to come back to his senses. He took a sharp breath and said, "Please confirm the source of the information. If the Central Plains Dynasty is really attacking, we must order the whole world to resist."
. . . .
In November of the sixth year of Shaoming Dynasty in the Great Zhou Dynasty, 951 AD.
At this time, the entire northern country was in a state of snowflakes and freezing wind. Murong Nobunaga was originally planning to lead his army across the sea to attack the Japanese country in March or April of spring.
But none of this can withstand the rapid changes in the current situation. The most important thing is that I never expected that a country like Japan, with a population of three million and a not-so-small territory, would be so armed.
There were not many standing armies in the country, and all mobilization of force had to be undertaken by noble soldiers and border pioneer warriors.
For such a country, it must not be allowed to slowly mobilize all local forces. It must quickly annihilate a large number of effective forces before it can be easily governed.
So he only waited until November, and Murong Nobunaga ordered Chen Huixian to lead the navy to attack Henghai Town. With lightning speed, he captured Tsushima Island in front of North Korea and Japan.
At this time, there were only a small number of left-behind personnel on Tsushima Island. Fearing that Murong Nobunaga would send troops to annihilate them, they immediately picked up the family members on Tsushima Island after occupying Toyoura County of Nagato State in the mountains of Japan. most.
However, they did not expect that Murong Nobunaga would move so fast. He was a little slow when running away, so Chen Hui caught him by the tail.
Akama Pass, not far from Shimonoseki City in Japan in later generations, is located on the north shore of the famous Shimonoseki Strait.
The Shimonoseki Strait is a narrow strait between the Japanese island of Kyushu and the Chinese region of Honshu.
The narrowest point of this strait is only 700 to 800 meters. Therefore, the Guancheng on both sides of the strait can control the strait very well. It has always been a battleground for Japanese military strategists.
If we can control both sides of the Shimonoseki Strait, or even just one side, we can separate Kyushu Island from the main island of Japan.
More than two hundred years later in history, an extremely crucial battle in the Genpei War broke out here, the Battle of Danoura. In this battle, the Taira clan lost their last strength and completely lost their ability to fight against the Genji clan.
Of course, the most famous thing for the Chinese people is another event in modern times. The famous prime minister Hefei Tianxiashou signed the Shimonoseki Treaty here, which was a humiliation and loss of power.
At this time, the Goryeo pirates occupied this key strait, and they also knew that they could not run rampant in Japan with only two to three thousand men and ten to twenty thousand family members.
Therefore, this group of pirates, who were originally the Goryeo navy, decisively supported Wang Yu, the eighth son of Wang Jian who was kidnapped by them, as king, and sent people to explain the situation to the Japanese court and ask the Japanese court to accept it.
The news quickly spread to Heianjing, and then spread throughout Japan.
How should I put it, thanks to the innate insecurity of the island peoples, although the Japanese country is armed with limited military equipment, its centripetal force is still very strong, much stronger than Wang's Goryeo.
Because anyone who lives on these islands knows that given their living environment, there is no vast land to deal with or territory to escape from, and when they encounter a powerful enemy, they have no other choice but to fight to the death.
There is a reason why the Goryeo pirates chose this way. At this time, the richest area in Japan was not in Sanyo, but in the area from Sanyo Road to Heiankyo.
In other words, even if the navy is dispatched to attack Japan at this time, it will not attack Iwami and Nagato. Instead, it will pass through the Shimonoseki Strait and continue eastward to the Seto Inland Sea, and finally choose to land in places such as Hiroshima or Osaka. .
Therefore, as soon as the Goryeo pirates occupied Chijian Pass, they began to ask the Japanese court for admission. Only by receiving reinforcements from Japan could they possibly fight against the Yan navy.
On November 17, Chen Hui pursued the Korean pirates one after another and arrived at Chijian Pass.
At this time, the Goryeo pirates had occupied Chijian Pass and concentrated their more than 200 large and small ships into the port protected by Shuizhaiguan City.
In a head-to-head fight, ten of these Goryeo pirate-sized armies would not be able to defeat the more than 10,000 Henghai Town soldiers under Chen Hui.
Therefore, the leader of the Goryeo pirates and the commander of the Goryeo navy, Hong Xiangdong, made a wise choice to shrink the navy.
He was forcing Chen Hui to go ashore, because if they continued eastward, the Yan navy was in danger of being pushed back.
And if they attack them, relying on the defense of Chijian Pass and the cold weather, they might be able to hold on until the Japanese supporting army arrives.
Of course, this was Hong Xiangdong's wishful thinking. After Chen Hui arrived at the Shimonoseki Strait, he ignored him at all. Instead, he directly led his troops to occupy Guancheng on the Kyushu Island side of the Shimonoseki Strait, and then began to contact Qin Pingsheng and Qin Pingtong. Father and son.
Then, under the leadership of the Japanese traitor father and son, on the eighth day of December, Chen Hui stormed into Dazaifu Mizuno Castle in the heavy snowfall, killing more than 300 officials from Dazaifu to Dazaifu.
This was a fortified city built by the Japanese state in the past to defend against the attack of the Tang Dynasty. I am afraid I never dreamed that its final fall did not go through a bloody battle at all.
Because a few hundred years ago, four legions and a total of 6,000 elite soldiers were stationed in Dazaifu, but now there are not many people guarding it at all.
Later, Chen Ke raised the flag of Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva's Six Dharma Sect in Dazaifu, which symbolized Murong Nobunaga's status as a Buddhist disciple, and used the name of religion to recruit poor warriors from Kyushu Island.
This was Wang Pu's poisonous plan for Murong Nobunaga. Although Chinese characters and Tang pronunciation are now commonly used in the Japanese country, it is only among the high-level people. The obscure and vulgar Japanese language is still popular among ordinary people.
If you want to rule here, you must eventually launch an operation to train the people and rectify the sound in the Japanese country so that Tangyin can be used up and down.
But it will definitely not be promoted at the beginning, so it can only be done slowly. Therefore, a group of Japanese devils are urgently needed to help with the work.
These poor samurai from Kyushu came in handy because they were far away from the Kinai region and had limited loyalty to the so-called court and the emperor.
Secondly, the Japanese language on Kyushu Island is also relatively difficult for other Japanese people to communicate. It is a stage where it is usable but not sufficient.
This can force most Japanese people to choose between Kyushu dialect and Tangyin. Anyway, if they want to change their pronunciation, it is better to do it in one step.
On December 20, Chen Hui recruited more than a thousand poor warriors from Kyushu Island in just ten days. There was no way, these warriors who were far away from the political center were too poor.
They are said to be samurai, but in fact they are just miserable people who drink wild vegetable porridge every day, pick up a broken iron knife, and dream of winning a class jump through their own death.
Of course, some were dissatisfied and believed that the loyal ministers of the Heian Kyo court should still serve. They quickly gathered in Satsuma, Osumi, Hyuga and other countries in the southern part of Kyushu Island.
It's just that the cold weather and powerful enemies stopped them from continuing to clamor. Chen Hui was busy building Dazaifu into a base for marching eastward, and was too lazy to wipe out the two thousand rebels who didn't even have armor. clown.
In the seventh year of Shaoming Dynasty in the Great Zhou Dynasty, AD 952, on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, on the Lantern Festival, Murong Nobunaga of Fushan received the military report from Chen Hui, and he immediately became determined.
Even Dazaifu, an important town in Japan similar to the Protectorate, has no defense force. It seems that Japan's military equipment has indeed been weakened to the extreme.
Later, Murong Nobunaga tried his best to send the navy through the wind and snow, and continuously sent supplies to Dazaifu and Shimonoseki Strait, allowing Chen Hao to firmly occupy Dazaifu Mizuno Castle.
While continuing to kill pigs and sheep at Busan Port, he wanted to feed the soldiers until they were strong, and then directly conquer the Japanese country.
At the same time, the Japanese court in Ping'an Capital had also fully understood the situation.
In the name of the emperor, Minister of the Left Fujiwara Minori appointed Hong Xiangdong, a Korean pirate, to guard Akama Pass, telling him to hold on to Akama Pass.
Because after Fujiwara Sanyori convened civil and military discussions, he believed that the navy of the Yan Kingdom could not be allowed to enter the Seto Inland Sea.
In the eyes of the Japanese, the navy of the Yan Kingdom was obviously stronger than their own. If they were allowed to enter the Seto Inland Sea, the Yan army would be free to choose where to land. The Japanese court would not be able to guard against it.
It would be better to block them outside the Shimonoseki Strait and use the geographical advantage to defeat them.
At the same time, Fujiwara Sanyori also began to issue an edict to recruit troops to protect the country in the name of the emperor, preparing to recruit at least 50,000 samurai troops to resist the invasion of the Yan people.
Even the Kanto samurai and armed immigrant groups guarding the border as far away as Kanto, as well as the pirate groups in the Seto Inland Sea, have received recruitment orders.
This was indeed a moment of life and death. Powerful men from all over the country who had followed the emperor for hundreds or thousands of years began to respond one after another.
Suddenly, a large number of bandits and pirates came down from nowhere and came ashore. They all went to Heiankyo and ate Fujiwara Minori's white rice, which made the somewhat fussy left minister very distressed.
But almost at the same time, Murong Nobunaga also believed that the first battle should be fought in the Shimonoseki Strait after military discussions.
Because he did not come to Japan to grab a handful and leave, nor did he come to plunder, but to put down roots.
In order to take root, it is necessary to wipe out the upper class that is still struggling in the Japanese country. Therefore, he does not seek to occupy much land at all, but pursues as much damage as possible.
If Japan had curled up and not given him a chance, Murong Nobunaga would have had to break egg shells everywhere after entering the Seto Inland Sea. How could it be so convenient to do a big thing directly in the Shimonoseki Strait?
You said, isn't this a coincidence?
I'm really sorry. There was a drinking party after a business trip yesterday, so I drank straight away.
Regarding this book, there are about seventy chapters left, totaling 223,000 words, and it is about to end. This month, Tiger’s update speed may not be too fast. I will try my best to update about 5,000 words every day, because I still have to think about it. What to write in the next book?
(End of chapter)
