In fact, Li Ning was very clear about Li Yuanhao's thoughts, and had even discussed it with the emperor many times in letters.
The emperor and his ministers had actually discussed it many times, but in the face of such arrangements, they seemed to be a little stretched and helpless.
Since the Khitan quietly established his regime in 906 AD, this nomadic tribe in the north has become a nightmare for many dynasties in the Central Plains.
During the chaotic period of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, although the Central Plains dynasty could not be said to have sufficient troops and food, it at least retained its warlike style. Therefore, at that time, the Khitan did not have enough ability to pose a threat.
But later. The emperor's stupid move as a policeman gave this nomadic tribe the power of the Han people. Since then, their national power has flourished and they quickly posed a threat to several regimes in the south.
The reason why there was such a rapid change was because that fool Shi Jingtang dedicated all the Sixteen Youyun Provinces to the Khitan and became the son-emperor of the Khitan.
Since then, Jinan has also possessed the productivity of the Central Plains farming civilization, and attached great importance to it, and even established a new system specifically for this purpose. And in the political situation, the talents and things of the Han people were integrated into the management of the Nanyuan system. Although the highest authority in the Nanyang system was still a nobleman from the Liao Kingdom, this was enough to unite the talents of the Han people and complete the processing of related matters. .
During this process, the strengthening of the North Campus system was rapidly improved because sufficient experience could be learned from the South Campus political system. As a result, the United Nations' management of the Wood Tribe was more effective, and the results were If Buddhism had not been widely introduced at this time, I am afraid that the ice of the Liao Kingdom would only be enough to unify all the small countries scattered in the Western Regions.
However, the Liao Kingdom obviously did not have such a strong desire. In comparison, the Song Dynasty, which had basically completed unification in the south, was their most worrisome enemy militarily. Therefore, the expansion eastward and westward had certain consequences in the south. With such an enemy, it seems unrealistic. Therefore, if it can cause some trouble to the Song Dynasty, the Liao Kingdom must be very happy.
Now that such a good opportunity is in front of them, how could it be easily ignored by them?
Regarding the benefits of one country, two systems, Li Ning, more than 1,000 years later, can still clearly feel that it is a political system that emerged to unite the interests of the majority of people, rather than to improve political efficiency and scientific operation. , but the compromise of interests is a basic component of politics. Therefore, Li Ning does not think there is anything to criticize in this regard.
The biggest problem he faces now is to find certain loopholes in such a system. If he cannot do this, it will be difficult to completely attack the United Nations from a political perspective. Under normal circumstances, if he cannot do this, To achieve this goal, you need to accumulate enough military advantages to take action against the United Nations. However, now, the fundamentals of the Song Dynasty are worse than those of the Liao State. Therefore, if you want to take action against the Liao State, you should worry about it first. It's your own head, not the enemy's head.
Under such circumstances, the threat posed by the Liao Kingdom was enough to make people panic.
In a situation where both politics and military were passive, no matter how smart the scholar-bureaucrats in the Song Dynasty were, they could not come up with ways to deal with the enemy just by relying on their competitors and racking their brains.
Therefore, if you have to come up with some way, or if you can come up with a way, I am afraid that it will not be able to be deployed for such a purpose. Therefore, if you want to gain an advantage in this dispute, then the range that can be chosen must no longer be In terms of defeating the Liao Kingdom, it lies in stabilizing him.
This is a reality that both Li Ning and the emperor have to accept. They clearly tell the emperor in letters every year that if it doesn't work, then they must find a way to stabilize the behemoth of the Liao Kingdom, because they have not fought for more than 30 years. Therefore, They did not dare to easily go south to invade the Song Dynasty, not to mention that once there was internal unrest among them, then the Xixia wolf would very likely pose a threat to them. For the Liao Kingdom, which was also a nomadic nation, those little tricks of Xixia It is very likely that they have already seen it, so it is impossible for them not to control the place.
Among the military books of the Central Plains Dynasty, there is a sentence that explains the most classic essence of the joint game, that is, to make yourself invincible and wait for the enemy to be victorious.
The people below me have been working silently, waiting silently, waiting for the weakness of the Song Dynasty to slowly show up, waiting for the time they think is ripe. Now they have arrived in the Song Dynasty, but who knows whether they will wait until the Liao Dynasty in the future. , so it is impossible for the monarchs and ministers of the Liao Kingdom not to be wary of the jackal around them, just like the Zub people, the Nvzhi people in their place, the country, or the dazzling tribes of the Northwest Zhaosi.
Therefore, if the Song Dynasty chose this strategy, the Liao people would have to consider it carefully, because it further guaranteed the possibility of war between the two sides, and among the various thoughts that this possibility could cause, worries would slowly spread. In the minds of the Liao monarchs and ministers, the problem may be more favorable to the Song Dynasty than imagined now. What the Song Dynasty was most worried about was that the group of northern barbarians rushed over to fight them to the death. As long as they thought about it seriously, The Song Dynasty, the master of Central Plains civilization, no longer had to worry about losing to its opponent in terms of wisdom.
But when Li Ning really came to Beijing, a rumor he heard made him worried. Among the various rumors circulating in the room and the information collected by his subordinates for him, one of them was that he The last thing you want to see is for someone to propose a core strategy at this time.
If you want to surround the barbarians in the north, then the core is indeed a very effective strategy. Both the Han Dynasty and the Tang Dynasty have made historical practice in this regard and achieved final victory.
However, the scholar-officials of the Song Dynasty saw many flaws in this process. The alliance formed through marriage might really be able to maintain peace for a certain period of time, but after all, it was not a long-term solution. Therefore, the scholar-officials of the Song Dynasty At this time, the importance of integrity had begun to be emphasized, so they were unwilling to marry Han children to the north like Wang Zhaojun.
However, if this road does not work, what other roads can be taken? And will those who agree to go down this path make it easier for those who think this way? You must know that many of the Song Dynasty's court were pragmatic officials. They could be as cunning as Xia Song, or as loyal as Pang Ji.
Their opinions are often conflicting, but they often constitute the main part of the government. Those so-called gentleman politicians do not have much say at this time.
And how many of these people will support the peace and pro-progress policy? If it weren't for Li Ning, he wouldn't believe it. He even believed that the proposer of this strategy came from this group of people, and the reason why such discussions circulated in the market was because these people wanted to see the depth of the water.
Li Ning quickly realized that the emperor's daughters were actually still very young. The eldest princess was born only last year, and she was probably not even one year old yet. Li Ning couldn't remember the birthday of the eldest princess, but he knew that this girl would cause trouble in the future. The princess who had been involved in many affairs was indeed the emperor's favorite. The emperor would never agree to marry her to the north, even if the marriage was agreed upon.
Then, there is only one way to conclude a contract.
During the Changyuan Alliance 30 years ago, 300,000 years old coins were used to keep the Liao Kingdom honest. If they were given an additional 200,000 yuan, maybe this period of peace could continue to be maintained. In the original history, a few years After that, the negotiations between the Liao State and the Song Dynasty ended like this.
However, in this history, things seemed to have changed slightly.
The latest news provided by the correspondence between the Privy Council and the State is that the Emperor of the Northern Dynasties once wrote a very modest letter to the officials, but in it he clearly expressed his curiosity about the affairs of the Guangmu Division.
One of the things that worries the officials the most is that the Emperor of the Northern Dynasties proposed that during the two wars of the Guangmu Division and the war against Xixia, the Song Dynasty was likely to have insufficient military strength. Therefore, the Liao Kingdom, a nominal brother Of course, the letters did not mention these words in name, and there would be no similar expressions. On the contrary, the emperor of the Northern Dynasties reaffirmed the revolutionary friendship between the two countries very knowingly, as if they had really faced it together. The same enemies were common, but the intentions he wanted to express worried the officials, because the emperor of the Northern Dynasties really wanted to find some common enemies to beat up in order to gain some benefits like the Song Dynasty in the process. His It means that he hopes to send troops to participate in the Guangmu Division's campaign, and even help the Song Dynasty to settle Xixia. The premise is that he needs money.
At this time, Alexander probably didn't know that on the other side of the distant kingdom of heaven, there were people who were already familiar with the Greek engineering and military system, and regarded their own army as a bargaining chip in economic exchange, used to open up frontiers for nominally friendly countries. earth.
Such a dangerous and active attempt does not mean that it will yield good results, because the scholar-bureaucrats in the Song Dynasty who pursued stability will definitely actively stop it, but if the stoppage fails, all the consequences it will bring will be It would be a very imaginative fear.
And a terrifying scene happened on this day. After crossing the river for a period of time, around September 15th, a strange solar eclipse actually appeared in the sky.
This is usually seen as a bad omen in Greece. However, the priest Aristander told the soldiers that this was a good omen, because it was not Apollo, the Greek patron god of the sun, but the moon goddess Astarte, whom the Persians worshiped, whose light was obscured. These words may have been spoken to Aristander by Alexander, who was good at dealing with superstitious people. The king's wisdom always outweighed his own superstition. Undoubtedly, the appearance of the lunar eclipse would also have a huge impact on Alexander himself, but in his mind, the desire to conquer would always prevail, and no matter what happened, he would always concentrate on his army. Among Alexander's many qualities, the most noteworthy is his ability to always overcome superstition with wisdom.
After crossing the Tigris, the Macedonians began to advance along the east bank of the river, with the Gordiana Mountains (or what Xenophon calls the Kadusia Mountains) on the left flank of the army. Four days later, they encountered Darius's 1,000-man cavalry outpost. Prior to this, Darius had ravaged the land here, so it was difficult for the Macedonians to obtain supplies here.
Although Alexander had conquered so much land by this time, Darius had lost only a small part of his vast empire. Compared with the resources provided by the vast land from the Euphrates River to the Indus and Chakosati rivers, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt are nothing at all. The people of these lands were equally brave and loyal to Darius. But for the past two years, the Persian great king had done nothing but raise another army from the entire empire's population. Neither attempted to prevent Alexander from occupying the frontier provinces, disrupting the Macedonian sieges, blocking the mountain passes on his way, nor supporting his own fleet in the Aegean Sea, which was the easiest and easiest of all these operations. Urgent. What's more, Darius not only allowed Alexander to pass through all the mountain passes, but also did not even impose any obstruction on his crossing of two wide and fast rivers. In addition, he could easily turn the land into red earth, making it impossible for Alexander to go deeper. But in the end, due to the incompetence of Darius's military strategy (or lack of strategy at all), the Macedonians were able to enjoy abundant supplies along the way, accumulate huge wealth, and enter Assyria with excellent material conditions and morale of the army. . He ignored countless opportunities to destroy the Macedonian army and put all his hopes on the line. If he lost this battle, he would lose his empire forever.
There is no doubt that all of the above points must have been thoroughly discussed by Persian strategists, and although they may have disagreed with each other, these figures themselves must have been intelligent and capable people. But having said that, all of these people had full confidence in their numerical superiority in the open field (especially the cavalry) and firmly believed that they could destroy Alexander's small army. Therefore, they decided that the best strategy was to allow Alexander to enter Mesopotamia and then deliver a fatal blow to him from a place so far away that he could not safely retreat. According to their final conclusion, the farther Alexander was from home, the more dangerous it would be, so they allowed him to safely cross the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Above all, if Alexander had been defeated near the Tigris, he would have been driven into the Armenian hills or into Mesopotamia, where the Persian army could easily pursue him and utterly destroy him; and even if Darius again Defeated, he retreated to Babylon
The road is also clear.
Alexander, who had been on the throne for five years by this time, had become master of Greece, conducting a successful campaign against the barbarians on the Danube, punishing the Illyrians, and teaching the Greeks a lesson with the destruction of Thebes. Don't make him angry. After that, he conquered Asia Minor, climbed over the mountains, crossed the river, defeated Darius in a fierce battle, and completely destroyed the army of the Persian king. In addition, he conducted the greatest sieges of the ancient world, conquered Syria, Phoenicia, and Egypt, more than 100 fortified towns, built several cities, drove the Persian fleet out of the Aegean, and conquered the entire Mediterranean coast , going deep into the heart of the Persian Empire, leaving the natural dangers of the two great rivers behind. Although delayed by sieges and the establishment of governments, Alexander had marched more than 6,000 miles, certainly carrying a train of baggage as large as a modern army. But his real mission has just begun, and the final battle for dominance in Asia is about to begin.
Darius had lost his previous decisiveness. The king was an excellent ruler in peace, but his own great enemy in war, and appears to have been mentally paralyzed after his family was captured at the Battle of Issus. Alexander took Darius's family as hostages, which was enough to ensure that Darius had some degree of restricted movement. Although Alexander was an extremely noble man, he decided to make the most of these families, both for Darius and for his own army. If he suffered a serious defeat, these hostages could be of unlimited use. In addition, there were more reasons why Alexander kept Darius's family in the military camp instead of sending them to the rear cities. For these families, their personal safety can only be best guaranteed when surrounded by Macedonian soldiers. They also knew very well that the battle was about to break out. How could they protect themselves if Darius failed and was forced to flee again? For Alexander, keeping these hostages with him and treating them with the highest honors was enough to make himself more dazzling and important among the long-term friends and subjects of the Persian king, making him more important in controlling these people. Strength increased a hundred times. At some point between the battles of Arbela, Darius's wife, Queen Statilla, died of illness. Some historians claim that the cause of death was dystocia, but if this was the cause of the tragedy, it was too late. Therefore, the real cause of death may be the fatigue of the trek or the shame of being captured and longing for home. Alexander is also said to have done everything possible to bury the queen with dignity, demonstrating a natural ability to win the favor of his people. These may all be true. Had this not been the case, Alexander's political opponents would have been critical of him.
However, the news Li Ning received was not the case.
