The entire first year of Shenwu passed in an atmosphere of joy.
At the beginning of the year, the name was changed to Jianyuan and became independent. In the middle of the year, Wang's eldest son was born. No matter which of these two incidents they are, they are worthy of celebration by all the people.
The country is indeed full of joy, the king is wise, the ministers are honest and capable, the government is clear, and the lives of the people are much easier.
In a rising country, even the beggars at the bottom can still benefit a lot.
After all, people are living a better life. If you go to beg for a meal, your host will give you a lot of steamed buns, right?
The joyful atmosphere lasted from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.
After Lu Yuan also experienced the joy of the birth of his eldest son in August, he received a report from Chu Wei in early December of that year.
After several months, the future naval commander finally put up a good reputation as a naval officer.
After recruiting five thousand fishermen in the Dongting Lake area and recruiting some large and small merchant ships and fishing boats, the Dachu Navy finally had a name.
However, under such circumstances, the navy's combat power is destined to be low.
But it doesn't matter.
According to Chu Wei's plan, he is sending people to Ningguo to poach some navy generals with high-ranking officials and generous salaries. At the same time, he is also looking for some retired people or talents from navy families here in Dongting County.
In addition, he also started custom-making warships with some shipyards in Dongting County.
Although during the Qianyue period, most of the naval construction bases across the country were located in Xunyang in Yuzhang County or Wujiang near the sea.
But this just means that there are more shipyards in these two places and they can build bigger, better and more types of warships.
Dai Viet is close to the sea and relies on water, so travel mostly relies on the power of boats. Other counties also have needs for boats.
Even if most of these needs are met, the shipyards in Xunyang and Wujiang can meet them.
But if you are sailing to another county to do business and the ship breaks down on the way, does it also need to be repaired?
Xunyang and Wujiang are too far away. Some local businessmen do not do business there and do not want to go to other counties. So if they want to get some ships locally, will there be a need for shipbuilding?
Even the imperial navy patrols and garrisoned here. If the ship breaks down on weekdays, it can't be dragged back all the way and spend several months repairing a ship, right?
We even lost some small boats while on the water. If we want to make up for it with direct local supply, it is more convenient than supplying from behind, right?
In this regard, the imperial navy also had needs.
Therefore, for various reasons, there are some shipyards of different sizes in Dongting County, even the three prefectures of Xichuan County controlled by Lu Yuan, and the four prefectures of Xiangyang County.
Adding up all these shipyards, there are a total of thirteen shipyards.
Although these thirteen shipyards can only build some small warships carrying dozens of people.
But these small warships can initially meet the needs of the Dachu Navy in the past few years.
Moreover, Chu Wei has already made arrangements with these shipyards and even selected three larger shipyards with greater potential. Let them go to Ningguo to recruit more shipbuilding technicians and work hard to build warships that can carry hundreds or even hundreds of people.
As for money, the Chu Navy has the entire Chu State at its back, so there is no need to worry at all.
If you can build a ship, the navy will take over.
Inspired by this, these three shipyards have begun to send people to Ningguo to poach people. Not only them, but also some other more ambitious small shipyards, even if they were not requested by Chu Wei, began to think about this business.
Therefore, even without instructions, they began to send people to Ning State, even Zhou State, and Liang State to poach people.
?
Zhou Guo, Liang Guo?
Yes, don’t doubt it, these two countries also have navies and shipyards.
After all, these two countries also face the Yangtze River, and there are many waterways and lakes in the country. Liang State is even close to the sea, which naturally has a need for ships.
It's just that the definition of the navy of these two countries is the same as that of Lu Yuan's Da Chu navy, they are only defensive in nature.
There are only 30,000 to 50,000 people in the whole country. There is more than enough defense, but not enough progress.
Compared with the Yue State, which was a water country in the south of the Yangtze River, the Zhou and Liang States had more plains in the interior, and they all faced large landlocked countries. The pressure from land is greater, and energy can naturally only be focused on it.
Instead of spending a lot of money to build a navy that you don't really need, wouldn't it be nice to save the money and raise tens of thousands of soldiers and horses to compete with other countries?
For something like the navy, tens of thousands of people can be raised to provide enough defense.
It’s not like everyone is a Yue country and needs to rely on the navy to build a country.
It is precisely because of this mentality that in the world, although the navy of Zhou and Liang is actually not small, there are tens of thousands of them.
But compared to the reputation, compared to the Yue navy that had a crowd of hundreds of thousands, sometimes even hundreds of thousands, it was still far behind and was not known to everyone.
But a poor reputation does not mean that the shipyard technicians of the two countries have poor skills.
These two countries have been able to rely on their navy to resist Yue for so many years. Can they say that they have no effort at all?
Their warships are actually pretty good, and their navy also has quite a few talents.
Once these people are recruited back, the shipbuilding level of Dachu's shipyards will definitely rise several levels, or even leap forward.
At that time, Chu Wei will recruit enough talents who are proficient in water warfare, and in a few years, they will train a group of elite soldiers who are accustomed to water warfare.
The Great Chu Navy Master is settled.
…
Frequent good news came from the navy, adding a sense of joy to the end of Shenwu's first year.
But this is not the end.
In the last few days of the new year, several guests from the southwest brought another gift for the New Year.
Inside the Antarctic Palace.
Lu Yuan sat on the throne, looking at the two people in official uniforms of foreign races who were prostrating themselves below him. He pondered for a long time before asking: "As far as I know, your Shizong and Milu have always been the country of Dachanghe." A vassal country, serving this country for hundreds of years.
You and other barbarian countries are loose in nature and do not follow the etiquette and laws of the king.
Although they both belong to Yangzhou, they have always been at odds with me from Dongyang.
You are fine now, why do you think of turning your back on Da Chang and the country, and come to find me, Da Chu, and want to annex you?
Don't talk to me about yearning for a great power or admiring Wang Hua. Tell me honestly what is going on.
Otherwise, if we don't understand the details, I will never take you in.
Da Changhe is not a weak country, but for your two small countries to offend such a big country, this deal is not worth it. "
Yes, the two people in front of me are from the southwest. They are the envoys of Shizong and Milu Eryi Kingdom under the rule of Dachanghe Kingdom.
Now the envoys from the two countries came to find Da Chu, precisely to break away from Da Changhe and join the affairs of Chu.
It was precisely because of such important events that Lu Yuan had to take time out to meet these two people at this critical time at the end of the year.
After hearing what the King of Chu said so seriously, the following two envoys looked at each other. Finally, the envoy from Shizong Kingdom had to tell the truth: "Back to your Majesty, as your Majesty said, we, a small country, have always been attached to Great Nagawa Country.
Moreover, we, the Southwest Yi people, are also at odds with the Dongyang people, and are indeed not very willing to join us.
There are other reasons for coming here to ask the king to take you in. "
Yangzhou is very big. There are about sixteen or seventeen counties in the whole state.
A long time ago, many tribes lived in Yangzhou, including Yi in the southwest, Qiang and Man in the west, Yue and Miao in the south, and Man and Yue in the east.
Throughout Yangzhou, there are several mainstream clans, and there are even more numerous other tribes, large and small.
Between these different ethnic groups, large and small tribes, their habits and cultures are different, and the differences in life can be called two worlds.
In this case, the various clans naturally cannot urinate together.
The reason why Yangzhou is in its current situation today is actually due to the continuous development of the ancestors of the past generations, that is, a group of Dongyang people headed by the Linhai family, who were the first to come into contact with the mainstream culture of the three ancient emperors.
After thousands of years of conquest, the original Yue people, or Dongyang people, wiped out and defeated the Barbarians, Miao, Qiang, and Yue tribes one after another, and established prefectures and counties one after another on their homeland.
When we arrived in Qianyue, we even used Yue as the name of our country. This shows that these places were so deeply influenced by the king that there were no other barbarians left.
However, these areas do not include Southwest Yi.
Because as of the time before the Etsu period.
Dai Viet's development of Yangzhou has just reached Xichuan, Dongting, and Yulin counties.
Within these three counties, the Man, Miao, Qiang, Yue and other ethnic groups are still deeply rooted.
Although prefectures and counties have been established locally, it still takes a long time to slowly assimilate and eliminate the millions of foreigners in the three counties.
According to usual practice, this time will take hundreds of years, even thousands of years.
Therefore, before these three counties are digested, Dai Viet naturally does not have the energy to develop Southwest Yi.
After all, the Yi countries in the southwest are quite powerful. Together they have six or seven counties, and there are several innate masters.
It is not that easy for Dai Viet to defeat them.
So.
The barbarian countries in the southwest basically formed a small circle on their own, and they played their own games in the southwest of Yangzhou.
If the outside world does not come to disturb them, they will not take the initiative to find trouble from the outside world, and they will live in peace with the Yue Kingdom.
That's why it is so unexpected and unusual for Shizong and Milu to suddenly send envoys to their door and say they want to annex Chu.
Lu Yuan did not dare to agree hastily before he understood the details inside.
And now, it's time for them to give an explanation.
After expressing his sincere words, the envoy from the Shizong Kingdom continued: "This is the reason why our two countries came to request annexation. It is really a last resort because civil strife broke out in the Great Chowa Kingdom."
"Civil unrest?"
Lu Yuan was startled when he heard the news.
"Yes, it's civil strife." The envoy from Shizong Kingdom nodded, and then explained: "Just last year..."
In the main hall, as the envoy from the Shizong Kingdom narrated, and the envoy from the Milu Kingdom next to him added from time to time, Lu Yuan finally figured out the reason why they came to request the attachment.
It turned out that just last year, in the ninth year of Hongdao's reign, a rebellion broke out in the Daochangwa Kingdom.
A large vassal state under the rule of Daochangheguo, Wuman Kingdom, rebelled.
Here I want to talk about the political system of Dachowa Kingdom, or the entire southwestern country.
Due to the lack of respect for kings and barbarism and backwardness, although there are countries in the entire Southwest Yi region, these countries are more like tribes, just named as countries.
For example, the two countries of Shizong and Milu that came to request annexation are actually from two tribes, namely the Shizong tribe and the Milu tribe. However, now they have turned into tribal countries and established a Just an official of the monarch.
But in essence, they are still a tribal nation, and they still play the tribal way.
There are chiefs of various lines within the country. These chiefs have an official name and manage the affairs of their respective tribes. Then they jointly respect the largest chief as the king.
With this crude and backward system, there is naturally no centralization of power, nor any sense of identity.
Throughout the southwest region, this kind of tribal-state gameplay, and the identification of tribes and ethnic groups, are very popular.
Therefore, although there are Nanzhao, Dali, Dachang and the three major Yi kingdoms in the southwest, the territory controlled by the core tribes of these three major Yi kingdoms is only half a county.
And they used this half of the county to radiate outward, and the tribes, large and small, regarded them as vassal states, or Jisi areas, and formed their own governance system.
Therefore, his status in these three kingdoms is probably similar to that of the Emperor Zhou in Lu Yuan's previous life. He was nominally the co-lord of the world, with major princes under him, and these princes were the bosses in their respective regions.
When the emperor is strong, the princes and states respect the emperor. And if the emperor is weak, he will disrespect the king's orders and even rise up to rebel.
This is the case with the country of Da Changhe. In his country, under the emperor, there are still twenty-seven small countries. Among these small countries, there are three large vassal states, similar to Fang Bo's status.
They are the Wuman Kingdom, which is appointed to be in charge of the affairs of the seven eastern countries, the Huichuan Kingdom, which is in charge of the affairs of the five northern countries, and the Nongdong Kingdom, which is in charge of the affairs of the four southern countries.
From the above regional division, it can be seen that among the three Fangbo vassal states, Wuman Kingdom is the strongest and controls the affairs of the seven countries.
This is also true.
The area under the control of Daochangwa Country covers approximately two counties.
Half of the county is under their own control. There are as many as one million citizens under the direct jurisdiction, and they have raised 50,000 elite soldiers. The royal family in the country has innate masters, and they are extremely powerful.
The remaining one-and-a-half-county, half-county and eleven kingdoms, is directly controlled by Dachowa Kingdom. This adds up to nearly a million people, and can provide Dachowa Kingdom with about 100,000 barbarian soldiers.
The remaining county is divided between Wuman, Huichuan and Nongdong.
Among them, the Wuman Kingdom has the most divisions, with nearly half a county.
In this half of the county, nearly half of the territory is under the direct jurisdiction of the Wuman Kingdom.
If it were Da Chu's side, it would probably be the territory of the two mansions.
Although it is not big, based on the territory of these two provinces, the Wuman Kingdom has as many as 500,000 directly governed citizens and has raised 20,000 elite soldiers.
In the southwest area, under the three major Yi countries, they are considered to be extremely powerful.
The remaining two countries, Huichuan and Nondong, are much weaker. They have only one government territory directly under their jurisdiction. They have more than 200,000 citizens and only 10,000 elite soldiers.
It's considered a general level.
As for the thirteen small Yi countries below these three large Fang countries, their strength is even weaker. There are basically only three to five counties, or even one county, with a population of no more than 100,000 at most, and perhaps only 10,000 or 20,000 at the least.
Just like the two envoys in front of me, Shizong and Milu. Shizong has four counties and 80,000 citizens. The Milu Kingdom is smaller, with only three counties and 70,000 citizens.
Even with the full mobilization of the two countries, they could only send out 10,000 or 20,000 troops. They were really small countries.
These two countries are located in the eastern part of the Great Changhe Kingdom and are under the control of the Wuman Kingdom.
After doing this calculation, the situation on the southwestern Yi side becomes much clearer.
The entire Dachanghe Kingdom, or in other words Dali and Nanzhao, were essentially a feudal system in which large tribes controlled medium-sized tribes, and then medium-sized tribes controlled small tribes. This was a layer-by-layer feudal system.
Normally, this layer-by-layer system of enfeoffment is still very stable as long as there are no problems at the top level.
But that's just normal.
Things are unpredictable and things are changing. Is there anything in the world that remains the same?
Just the year before last, things had changed.
First of all, the leader of the Wuman Kingdom did not go to Xiangcheng, the capital of the Great Changhe Kingdom, to attend the regular court meeting at the end of each year, and then he did not send an envoy to explain what was going on.
When Dachang Heguo sent envoys to hold him accountable, he was even more humiliated by the leader of Wuman Kingdom, who declared that Wuman Kingdom would break away from Dachanghe Kingdom from now on.
From then on, the seven kingdoms in the east of the Ling Dynasty became one.
Faced with this kind of naked rebellion, as the overlord of the Kunhai region, can the Dachanghe Kingdom endure it?
This is naturally intolerable.
Therefore, Da Chang Heguo decisively sent out troops and sent 20,000 elites. At the same time, he summoned all the subordinate countries and gathered 100,000 soldiers and horses to attack the Wuman Kingdom.
With this powerful army, Da Changhe Guo is confident, and Xiao Wuman is absolutely unstoppable.
Then……
Then shocking news spread back to Xiangcheng.
The 100,000-strong army sent to conquer Wuman was defeated in Qujiachuan. The entire army was almost wiped out, and only a few thousand remnant soldiers escaped.
The news brought back by these remnant soldiers was that there was an innate master in the Wuman Kingdom. Moreover, the Nongdong Kingdom in the south, at some point, had joined forces with the Wuman Kingdom, and they stabbed each other in the back on the battlefield.
It was precisely because of the appearance of the Xiantian Grandmaster and the rebellion of the Nongdong Kingdom that the crusade army suffered such a defeat.
What makes Dachang Heguo even more uncomfortable is that after the merger of Wuman and Nongdong, a hundred thousand troops have been assembled, and at this time they are led by an innate master.
On the other hand, their 100,000-strong army was wiped out. Although Xiangcheng still had 10,000 elite soldiers, the eleven small countries directly under it still obeyed orders, and Huichuan's attitude was quite respectful.
But even counting these, after the previous disastrous defeat, Daochanghe Country could only muster 100,000 troops at most.
Even if you include the innate grandmaster of the royal family, his strength is at most on par with the rebels.
Under the entanglement between the two sides, no one can do anything to the other.
So the war continued for a long time.
It has been fighting from the end of last year to now. More than a year has passed, and there is no end.
Under such circumstances, it is easy to say that big countries such as Dachanghe, Wuman, and Nongdong have a strong foundation and can still hold on.
But small countries like Shizong and Milu cannot survive.
Originally, in times of peace, they had to pay tribute to Wuman, Dachang and the two suzerain states. Under double-layer exploitation, the pressure was great.
After a year of busy work, there is not much food left.
At this time, we had been fighting for a year, and the country had sent troops, people, money and food. Not to mention not much harvest, it had also delayed farming, gathering, hunting and herding.
Under such heavy bleeding, he naturally complained endlessly and had the idea of finding a way out.
Just in time.
The ruling area of Dachanghe Kingdom is located between the two counties of Dongting and Xichuan. At the same time, part of it is connected to Yulin County. It can be regarded as a Yi people country directly facing the Dongyang people.
Shizong and Milu are located to the east of this place, close to Shaoyang Mansion in Dongting County, and they usually do business with the Dongyang people of Shaoyang Mansion.
So after hearing that the Great Chu Kingdom was established and even the emperor who forced the Dongyang people back had such a prestigious and powerful power.
The two countries gave birth to an attached mind.
Then the messenger arrived in front of him.
