When Zhang Xiancun went to fight against the Queen's Kingdom, it was really not a show, he actually went to fight.
The decision to attack the Queen Kingdom when the Jing Navy was about to go out was determined by the situation of the Chu vassal state.
At the end of September in the ninth year of Shao Ming Dynasty, Zhang Xian lived in Dali City, completed the canonization and placement of the lords of caves and villages who were willing to surrender, and opened the civil and military subjects to recruit a large number of civil and military talents.
Of course, what supported him in completing this task was the strong support of his father Zhang Yan.
After receiving the eldest son's request, Zhang Yan, under the coquettishness of his granddaughter, first mobilized 300,000 yuan from the inner government and paid it in batches to the Yamen and the Ministry of Household Affairs.
Then the transshipment envoy Yamen issued an order to the Sichuan Provincial Transshipment Department, asking them to intercept the 100,000 yuan of salt, commercial and other taxes that were supposed to be escorted from Sichuan to Dali.
The Ministry of Household Affairs announced that Sichuan Province would collect 200,000 guan of taxes this year from the central government, including money, grain, cloth, etc., and transport them directly to the nearest gift to make up for the expenses of the Chu vassal state.
Zhang Xiancun was still very grateful, because he knew in his heart that after supporting his brother Murong Nobunaga, King of Yan, in his large-scale eastern expedition, his father no longer had much savings in his hands.
And because of the shortage of precious metals such as gold, silver, and copper, banks can no longer issue banknotes on a large scale.
Therefore, these 300,000 yuan were not given to Murong Nobunaga, part of which were directly issued additional banknotes, but actual gold and silver.
Therefore, even though it was only 300,000 yuan, Zhang Xiancun knew that it was really what his father, Zhang Shengren, had taken out through gritted teeth. Since it’s so hard to come by, I definitely still have to listen.
So what can quickly spread this sound throughout the country is naturally war.
This is an external reason. From an internal perspective, through these two activities, Zhang Xiancun has basically conquered the hearts of the Chu vassal nation. More than one million people have begun to be emotionally willing to accept his king.
Recently, every hillside and dam, from the head to the people below, have been saying good things about King Zhang.
This is a good sign. By taking out the extra cake, everyone finally gets a piece of the cake.
But apart from this, there is another thing missing, a war in which everyone participates.
To be precise, it was a victorious battle that brought people from top to bottom of the Chu vassal country together for glory and blood and sweat.
Therefore, based on internal and external needs, Zhang Xian immediately announced that he would punish the Queen Kingdom after completing the civil and military subjects.
The Queen's Kingdom, also called Lamphun Kingdom, was a country located in Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai in northern Thailand. It was established by the Mon people, with the Chiang Mai-Lamphun Basin as its main territory, and its capital was Lamphun Province, south of Chiang Mai.
This country was established very early. Before the Dai people went south, they were the dominant people here.
Because it was in the early days of slave society, there were still a lot of matrilineal clan traditions, and the king or the leader of the tribal alliance was mostly a woman, so it was called the Queen's Kingdom.
In history, Nanzhao sent 20,000 to 30,000 troops to attack many times. However, the Queen Kingdom was still in its heyday at that time and could send 10,000 to 20,000 troops to fight against Nanzhao. In addition, the mountains were high and the forests were dense. Although Nanzhao had more victories than fewer defeats, It has never been able to make the Queen Kingdom surrender.
But now, a regional power has appeared next door to the Queen's Kingdom, and that is the Angkor Dynasty established by Jayavarman after the land and water Chenla was reunified.
Although the Angkor Dynasty was unable to conquer the Queen's Kingdom, they cut off the trade routes between the Queen's Kingdom and Huanzhou (central Vietnam).
This trade route is an important channel for the Queen's Kingdom's foreign trade to exchange for salt, sugar, tea and ironware.
The interruption of the trade routes made the Queen's Kingdom increasingly poor. Three years ago, in order to reopen the trade routes, they chose to take risks and launch a war. However, they were quickly defeated by the Angkor Dynasty, and their strength further declined sharply.
Therefore, for Zhang Xiancun's Chu vassal state, the Queen's Kingdom, which was in decline, was a very good target for attack.
It is not as powerful as the Jinghai Navy, and it is not as powerful as the Angkor Dynasty. Its population and wealth are concentrated in a small area of the Chiang Mai-Lamphun Basin, which is very convenient for plunder.
At the same time, the tribal residents in the south of the Chu Kingdom are also very familiar with the road to Nanben. There are also ready-made trade routes around them, and it only takes about forty days to go there.
What's even more exaggerated is that the reasons for the crusade are all ready-made.
It turned out that during the process of Zhang Xiancun's destruction of Dali, three of the ten Black Teeth tribes in the south, close to all things in the future, were no longer willing to pay tribute to the powerful powers in the north, and instead sought to unite with the Queen's Kingdom, which the Queen's Kingdom also boldly accepted. them.
You said that such fat meat has given up even the justice of sending troops, almost feeding it to the mouth. If you don't beat it, you will be sorry for God's arrangement.
Zhang Xiancun does not need the Queen's territory for the time being, but the precious metals, grain, livestock and population they have accumulated are still in great need of the entire Chu vassal state.
At the end of September, Zhang Xian gathered 15,000 elite troops at Mannai Road (Jinghong). With the little black bear Zhang Liechao as his commander, he followed the trade route in the dense forest and rushed to the essence of the Queen's Kingdom in less than twenty days. of the Chiang Mai-Lamphun Basin.
At this time, the main weapons of the Queen's army were wooden spears, various polished stone axes, stone hammers, animal bone arrowheads quenched with jungle venom, iron knives, etc. Only officers had them, and armor was basically non-existent.
The important thing is that they never imagined that the Chu army would attack, and they had no preparation at all. When the Chu army arrived, everyone was still in an extremely confused state.
Little Black Bear directly stationed his troops in Nanben City and came to an encirclement point for reinforcements. He first defeated more than 10,000 troops who came to relieve the siege, and then defeated thousands of troops who came out of the city. He beheaded more than 4,000 people and captured Lamphun Mansion in one battle.
Hundreds of noble leaders of the Queen's kingdom were captured. Except for the Queen, who was not found, almost all the upper echelons of Lamphun Mansion were captured.
At the end of October, the little black bear defeated the last tens of thousands of troops recruited by the Queen's Kingdom, completely destroying their ability to resist, and then began to pack up and go home.
In just over a month, 15,000 Chu troops plundered more than 100 kilograms of refined gold and more than 40 pieces of nugget gold from Nanben Mansion, with a total weight of more than 1,500 kilograms.
The reason why the harvest was so huge was because Chiang Mai and other places were the main gold producing areas in Thailand in later generations. The Queen Kingdom occupied this place and naturally accumulated a large amount of gold.
In addition to gold, the Chu army plundered a total of 60,000 shi of grain, more than 600 cattle, more than 50,000 sheep, and more than 30,000 young men and women.
In addition, there are more than 70 training elephants. Don’t underestimate this. Elephants are very important assets in the country at this time, including the Chu vassal state.
Although the elephant army was just child's play in front of the Central Plains dynasty, for the southern countries, they did not have enough firepower to quickly cause damage to the elephants, so the impact of the elephant army would be multiplied.
At the same time, elephants are the best companions for walking in the jungle. They have strong carrying capacity and can also be used to open roads in the jungle. The food they need is available everywhere in the jungle, and even people can feed themselves with them.
Finally, elephants were a very important source of meat at this time. Although the meat quality was far inferior to that of cattle and sheep, it was not meat. At the same time, elephant skin was also very good leather, and ivory was even more valuable.
The poor queen's kingdom may only have a total of 200,000 to 300,000 people. At this time, more than one-tenth of the population was kidnapped, and all of them were young adults. In addition, about one-tenth of the population was killed. The population loss was quite serious.
Nearly 50% of the wealth was plundered and 10% or 20% was destroyed. It was definitely a catastrophe that broke the bones.
Almost in an instant, this small country that was originally able to endure hardships came to the edge of national subjugation and annihilation.
On the way back home, Little Black Bear sent another two thousand elite soldiers to take a detour and suddenly attacked the territory of the Black Tooth Ten Division and conducted an indiscriminate sweep of them.
The killings continued until ten elders escorted the entire family of the three tribesmen who had colluded with the Queen Kingdom to Mangnaidao (Jinghong) and executed them in front of more than ten thousand Chu troops. Then the Chu army stopped killing.
Then the little black bear extorted 30 elephants, 80 oxen, 1,000 sheep, and 200 kilograms of gold and silver from ten tribes before letting them go.
After that, the ten tribes of Black Teeth were extremely obedient and never dared to disobey orders.
. . . .
In December, Dali City is filled with people and people are jubilant. This is the most important indicator whether one is a human king or an animal leader.
That is whether you can fight, and whether you can protect your ethnic group while also meeting your own development needs by robbing other ethnic groups.
This war against the Queen's Kingdom undoubtedly perfectly demonstrated this side of Zhang Xiancun.
From the perspective of the people of the former Dali and now the people of the Chu vassal, the Queen's Kingdom, a southern 'big country' that had conquered Nanzhao several times and spent countless money and food, was not only overthrown by King Zhang in one battle, but also plundered in a short time. The large population is enough to prove that this king is very reliable.
This kind of prestige built through war is very solid, just like Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. If other emperors were as aggressive as him, they would have been wiped out by the whole country long ago.
But Liu Xiaozhu relied on his huge reputation for overthrowing the Huns, and even without falling over, he was still able to enter the ranks of the emperors of the ages.
Today, Zhang Xiancun has achieved this in a small way. Therefore, in an instant, his image was more quickly accepted by the people of Chu vassal, and the influence of the Duan family in Dali was quickly dissipated.
And there is another thing that is beyond Zhang Xiancun's expectation, that is, at this time, people from various countries in Thailand are very popular slaves in the Central Plains.
The word Siam in Sanskrit means slave.
The Kunlun slaves who were popular in the Tang Dynasty in history actually came from two places, large and small countries in Thailand in later generations. The Salientra dynasty occupied Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula and part of Java.
If you think about it, you will know that, not to mention that Africa is thousands of miles away from the Tang Dynasty, black Africans, with their bad habits of being lazy, unruly and sneaky, are not qualified to join the wealthy families of the Tang Dynasty and become slaves.
Only those races in Southeast Asia who are short in stature, have dark skin, are deeply influenced by Indian culture and are quite submissive, and whose looks are barely acceptable to the people of the Tang Dynasty, are the legendary Kunlun slaves who are hardworking, obedient and docile.
Even at that time, many people on the Indian mainland were robbed and sold to the Tang Dynasty and Tibet. They were also a good source of tame slaves.
Therefore, when the 20,000 to 30,000 somewhat dark prisoners of war from the Queen's Kingdom appeared in Dali City, the vassals of the Chu vassal, the owners of the cave villages, and the original merchants all rushed to buy them from the army.
In just one morning, nearly 20,000 people were bought, and Zhang Xiancun quickly recovered more than 100,000 yuan of silver.
King Zhang has made a lot of money this time. Not only has he won the hearts of the people in the country and established his prestige, but he has also quickly recovered his capital and even made a considerable profit.
Along the way, I also exercised and harmonized the Chu vassal army from the north and the south, and the cooperation between the vassals and local officials greatly improved their combat effectiveness.
Overjoyed, Zhang Xiancun announced that all prefectures and counties would halve the spring and autumn taxes next year, which attracted cheers from the audience, and people crawling on the ground and shouting long live all over the city.
Later, Zhang Xiancun ordered people to pack the gold nuggets and send them all to Luoyang, the sacred capital, to honor his father Zhang Shengren.
Along with these nuggets, there are hundreds of Kunlun slaves, boys and girls, who will serve as future maids and chamberlains in the palace.
. . . .
Jing Haijun and Wu Changwen were working together everywhere, one moment pretending to send troops to suppress someone, the next moment they pretended to be sincere and reasonable.
All he did was to collect the 200,000 yuan requested by South Korean Duke Zhang Zhaojun.
All the Wu family's gold, silver, brocade and silk, etc. add up to only 130,000 to 40,000 guan. The rest are food, armor, weapons, etc. that must be retained, so Wu Changwen must find someone to "finance".
So, is anyone willing to pay with Wu Changwen?
have! Because Wu Changwen is not lacking in cleverness.
He spread the word that if the South Korean Duke wanted 200,000 guan, the Jing Navy in Jiaozhou could gain a semi-independent status like the Qingyuan Army in Zhangzhou.
So as long as he collects this money, Wu Changwen can get the title of Duke of Jiaozhou or Annan and the positions of governor of Jiaozhou and military supervisor of Jiaozhou.
Other investors can be recommended by him and obtain civil and military official positions such as chief historians and town envoys in other states.
What is this equivalent to? This is equivalent to coming to relieve the Shi Shijun and the Wu family who have entered the chicken competition finals. As soon as the imperial edict is issued, everyone will go their separate ways and seize the prefectures and counties that have voluntarily given up before. Come back and live your own life.
Therefore, some families are tempted by Wu Changwen's tactics. After so many years of fighting, it is inevitable that some people do not want to continue fighting.
Of course, there are also those who don't believe it, or maybe it's not that they don't believe it, but they are dissatisfied with the Wu family continuing to dominate everyone.
But this was only a headache for Wu Changwen. Zhang Zhaojun's plan succeeded anyway.
Because Wu Changwen did this, the other ten envoys immediately thought that Wu Changwen had taken the imperial court's path. They immediately put down their wariness about the imperial court and concentrated on trying to persuade Wu Changwen.
. . . .
In the sacred capital of Luoyang, the Zhenguan Hall of Ziwei Palace was brightly lit. Hundreds of bachelors from Zhaowu and Qionglin in the inner court, as well as Hanlin bachelors from the outer court, were summoned by the emperor to the hall.
Together with the emperor, they carefully sorted out all the recorded information about Annan during the hundreds of years of the Tang Dynasty in the vast records and albums.
The reason why he mobilized so many troops and mobilized people was because Zhang Yan knew in his heart that Annan's escape from the control of the imperial court could be said to be the most disastrous loss in China in thousands of years.
The total losses in the Northeast, South Tibet, Yili, and Mongolia were not as great as the loss of Annan.
If in future generations, the Republic can own the land of Annan, with our ability, it will be an economic powerhouse no less important than the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta.
More importantly, the Republic's hand can directly reach into the heart of Southeast Asia.
We can even directly become a part of ASEAN, be the leader within ASEAN, and firmly control this huge market.
By the way, Japan and South Korea were strangled by their necks so that they did not dare to act like dogs unscrupulously, and even when they were dissatisfied, they could easily blow the kangaroo's head off.
Therefore, before solving the problem of Jing Haijun, Zhang Yan must have a deep understanding of what is the reason that caused Jing Haijun to be lost at this time and never come back?
After waiting for most of the night, the report finally came out, with a result that surprised Zhang Hao.
The biggest question why Jing Haijun repeatedly clamors for independence is why they want to hand over the fruits of their hard work to the country.
This is like a bastard who is not valued much in a big family and goes out to start a business. Although he does rely on the family's strength to some extent, he does not think so. He thinks that everything he has obtained is due to his blood and sweat. Got it.
Seeing that his family seemed to have taken away a large portion of the dividends without much effort, he felt increasingly uncomfortable. In the end, keeping all the results to himself became his biggest wish.
Therefore, when the country was prosperous, such as the Tang Dynasty, Annan Jiaozhou became a key city for maritime trade and the largest base for Kunlun slaves to be imported into the Tang Dynasty.
The Tang army went south from here, either through war or purchase, to obtain a large number of Kunlun slaves, and then conducted unified training in Jiaozhou City, and finally resold them to the Central Plains.
In this process, the entire Han immigrant group in Annan benefited. Coupled with the prosperity brought by maritime trade, they were naturally willing to support the country.
However, after Nanzhao captured Annan several times and the decline of the Tang Dynasty, Kunlun slaves could no longer be used.
The geographical location of Jiaozhou is not as good as that of Guangzhou in the north. Naturally, many functions have been siphoned away by Guangzhou, and it has declined very quickly.
Across thousands of mountains and rivers, the original benefits are gone, and taxes have to be transported to the Central Plains every year. Both sides are damaged when entering and exiting, and dissatisfaction breeds extremely quickly.
In order not to continue to pay taxes to the court, the best way is to cause trouble.
This is an economic reason, and the cultural reason is even more exaggerated.
Since Annan is separated from Guangxi and Guangdong by high mountains and mountains, transportation is very inconvenient. It has always been a place where the imperial court exiled criminal officials and criminals. It can be said that the Han people here are basically resentful of the imperial court.
At the same time, since the Warring States Period, the Central Plains people began to drive the Baiyue people in the Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas southward. After more than a thousand years of continuous expulsion and integration, those who are willing to be like the Han people have basically been integrated.
Those Baiyue survivors who were unwilling to integrate basically fled to Annan, which was further away from the Central Plains, and settled here to mix with the more primitive local indigenous people.
Well, now they are all alive. The criminals, criminals and their descendants are mixed with the descendants of Baiyue who were expelled along the way, and their resentment is boiling over.
Of course they are honest when it's good for them, but when it's not good for them, they will start causing trouble as soon as they join forces.
Not only the descendants of Baiyue used Dai Viet as a sign, but the Han people also did the same.
Of course, Guangdong and Guangxi were actually places where criminals and criminal officials were exiled. However, due to the existence of the Ling Canal, as long as the imperial court occupied Guilin and other places, it could easily invade Guangzhou from the Li River, just like how Zhang Zhou destroyed the Southern Han Dynasty this time. , use tyrannical force to dispel these grievances.
At the same time, because the terrain cannot be relied upon and the transportation is relatively convenient, the Guangdong and Guangxi regions have actually been continuously accepting the culture from the Central Plains, playing the role of a cultural inheritor.
But Annan, the Red River that runs through the territory originated from Yunnan. When the Central Plains court could not firmly control the Yunnan-Guizhou region, the Red River and these rivers flowing from northwest to southeast not only could not be an aid to the crusade against Annan, but were a resistance.
In history, most of the expeditions by the Central Plains dynasties suffered disastrous defeats along the Bai Teng River.
Therefore, it is very difficult to attack Annan at this time.
At the same time, the closed geographical environment easily breeds an independent mentality. In addition, it is surrounded by a bunch of barbarian small states, which also encourages the mentality of the Annan Han people that I am the king in the south of the world.
They do not want to continue to be the trash can of the Central Plains Dynasty, and they want to be the Little China outside of Ca Mau.
To sum up, Annan's problem is that there is no benefit in obeying the imperial court economically, there is no favorable impression of the Central Plains imperial court in terms of ethnic experience, and culturally it is easy to breed self-consciousness.
After understanding this, Zhang Hao knew clearly that to recover Annan, the military would only be an auxiliary. If he wanted to do it once and for all, he would have to think of other ways.
(End of chapter)
