Five Dynasties River Mountains Fengyue

Chapter 267 The unexpected reason given by Wang Zhaoyuan

"Are you going again this time?"

Shi Congyun comforted: "There is no danger this time."

Zhao Shijian had no choice but to nod, "I don't understand these things, I thought you didn't need to go."

"Those arrogant soldiers, I can't stop them if I don't go, I'm afraid they will do some bad things." Shi Congyun embraced Zhao Shijian and kissed randomly.

The little wife pushed away in disgust: "Drool, you are serious."

"The current situation is not easy. So many people have died, and so much money and food have been consumed. The current situation is now. The Liao Kingdom in the north has also been cleaned up. This is a window period, and the opportunity is rare."

Speaking of which, he had picked up his beautiful wife and put it on his lap, "I guess it's been more than ten years, ten years."

"Um"

"In the past ten years, I have to take care of Shu, Southern Han, Southern Tang, and Wuyue. It seems very long, but in fact, I don't have much time. I am very anxious. It takes about two or three years to take care of a country." Shi Cong Yundao.

"This frequency is too fast, and it is a big problem for the people and the country not to bear it."

Zhao Shijian didn't speak, and listened to him quietly, a little breathless.

Shi Congyun is very worried about this issue. The northern Liao Kingdom has ended its frontier expansion stage and turned to the internal development and upward period. This kind of Liao Kingdom will not give them too much time. This is the scary thing about a big country. It can recover. I think It is very difficult to completely break down.

Killing 5 people is indeed hurtful, but it is not enough to disintegrate the Liao Kingdom. The Liao Kingdom has grown from a state in the Tang Dynasty to the scale it is today. It is not without losses like this during the battle. They can be adjusted through recuperation and continue to go south Looting, continue to attack the city.

So we can't wait, but in a short period of time, there will be too many and too frequent wars to wipe out all the separatist regimes in the south, which may make the people unbearable.

What he hopes most is that those separatist regimes can see the situation clearly, make [-] votes early if they should surrender, and then integrate their strength to deal with the North with all their strength.

People say that if the world is divided for a long time, it will be united, and if it is united for a long time, it will be divided.

But every time they separate and reunite, there will be rivers of blood, mountains of corpses, and countless deaths. The cost is very high, but why is there a reunification?Or why China always has such a unique cycle.

Unification is the general trend, and its significance lies in the fact that geographical location determines that without unification, powerful external threats cannot be dealt with, but every time the external threats disappear or weaken, the centripetal force weakens and begins to split.

China's location is not like Europe and many island countries, which are protected by natural barriers such as ocean barriers, inland seas, and desert separations.

Therefore, the scale of a war in this land of China is far from being comparable to other places. The reason is very simple. It is determined by geography. The cost of delivery is low, and the war is rarely cruel and large-scale.

Not to mention the sea, even if there is a large lake or river in the north of Yanshan Mountain, if the northern nomads want to go south, they must build boats to cross the river, then it will be more difficult for large-scale troops to go south, time-consuming and labor-intensive, and the pressure on the south will be great lighten.

Of course, such consequences may also lead to continuous civil wars in the South, making it difficult to unify. Without a strong foreign enemy threat, it is unnecessary to integrate forces to fight against the enemy, and it will be difficult to gain popular support.

Integrating the world at the moment is the most important thing.

"Go to bed late tonight, I'll be fine tomorrow anyway."

"Um"

By the end of January, the army was ready to go.

But before he could come up with an excuse, Shi Congyun was going to repeat the old trick, asking the Privy Council to find a few "fellow villagers" from the Shu region to file a complaint, and then let the Queen Mother issue an edict to save the people from suffering and promote justice.

But one afternoon, when Shi Congyun returned from handling political affairs with Empress Fu in the palace, his family told him that there was a guest from Shu, and they had something important to report to him.

Shi Congyun was surprised, and then summoned him.

It was the three people who came, dressed in the clothes of ordinary people. After seeing him, they knelt down one after another, and then carefully took out a moment of wax pills from their arms and presented them.

The guard next to him took it and handed it to Shi Congyun. Shi Congyun asked him to open it. Inside was a wax-sealed folded letter.

He took a closer look, and slowly recalled that this was actually a letter written by the Lord of Later Shu, Meng Chang, to the Northern Han.

Shi Congyun was surprised and delighted, and asked, "Who are you?"

The person in the middle said: "Reporting to the King of Qin, a certain Zhao Yantao, a native of Xingzhou Shunzheng (now Lueyang, Shaanxi), is a school of the Yixing Army in Xingzhou, and entered Shu with the late emperor.

The one on the left is Sun Yu, the strike envoy of the Xingguo Army of the Kingdom of Shu, and the one on the right is Yang Juan, a colleague. "

"Oh, since you are from Shu, why do you want to come here?" Shi Congyun asked.

The three of them expressed indignation: "Previously, Li Hao, the prime minister of the country, suggested to the king that the Great Zhou is strong and has won countless battles for years. The King of Qin is not even a match for the Khitan people. Shu land disaster.

However, there is a traitor under the lord of the country, who urged the lord to fight the Great Zhou, and sent me to go north to contact the Han State in the north, and wanted to attack the Great Zhou from the north to the south.

The few of us are originally from the north, and we know best that the Northern Han Dynasty is just a place with a big butt, and it is all supported by the Khitan people. The Khitan people are no match for the King of Qin. He still thinks that a dog contacting the Khitan people is some kind of clever plan?
Wouldn't it be a way to kill us if we went, so we came here to report to King Qin."

Shi Congyun immediately understood the ins and outs, and then laughed loudly: "Damn, I have a reason to send troops."

Then he asked curiously, "Who came up with this idea?"

"I know Wang Zhaoyuan, a member of the Privy Council."

"Wang Zhaoyuan" Shi Congyun thought carefully. He had never heard of this name, but he knew that the Privy Council was the prime minister's military affairs of one country. , even more important than the three provinces.

Because it manages a country’s major military affairs, the Ministry of War used to do it, but the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms fought too many wars, and the Ministry of War’s standards were too low, and the response was not enough, so the Privy Council of the same level as the three provinces was directly in charge of military affairs.

It stands to reason that it should be a very important historical figure. The prime minister is a major military event in a country, why doesn't he have any impression of it?

"What kind of person is it?" Shi Congyun asked.

Speaking of Wang Zhaoyuan, the three of them showed disdain on their faces: "Reporting to King Qin, he is a monk from Shu."

"Monk?" Shi Congyun was even more surprised that a monk could still be a privy envoy.

"He used to be a monk." Sun Yulian explained: "He used to be a monk, and later he took refuge in Dongdu monk Zhiji as a boy.

After the first emperor entered Shu, he rewarded those monks for dinner. Wang Zhaoyuan was favored by the first emperor and stayed to serve the lord.After the king succeeded to the throne, let him be in charge of the privy envoy.

Those of us who followed Gaozu all the way to kill and get official salaries, he is a Shu native who does nothing, actually became a privy secretary, and even made up his own mind to send me to death."

The more people talked, the more angry they became, but Shi Congyun heard something. The three of them specially emphasized that Wang Zhaoyuan was from Shu.

I have more confidence in this attack on Shu.

So he arranged for people to take the three of them down, take them to dinner, and settle down in the army, and let them serve as guides for conquering Shu.

Back then when Zhao Kuangyin conquered Shu, he gave an order to win over the northerners. Shi Congyun always felt that Lao Zhao did not do well, and the Shu people are also human. Why did you only win over the northerners?

Now I have some aftertaste, this is the disintegration and intensification of conflicts.

There must be great contradictions in Shu now.

Whether it is the former Shu or the later Shu, they were all established by outsiders. The current vassal emperor Meng’s family is from Hebei. The people who came to him to complain were from Shanxi and Shaanxi; Li Hao, the prime minister of Shu, was from Guanzhong and Hezhong.

Most of Shu's power and wealth are monopolized by them.

These people felt that they led troops into Shu, they should be in power, and they should enjoy the support of the people of Shu.

The people of Sichuan don't think so, even if they support it a little bit, surely many people will think why they support you outsiders?Why fight and die for these outsiders?

If you submit to the Great Zhou court and the Great Zhou imperial palace is in the Central Plains, then you only have to pay taxes to the court, and it is still enshrined by the world.

But supporting a separate imperial court in Shu would cost even more, taxes and corvees, expenses for hundreds of officials, building the palace, not to mention a large number of troops, even if the maids who want to enter the palace, Meng Chang of Hou Shu likes Fengyue, and the court ladies in his palace Tens of thousands, but they were all "selected" from the people.

The land of Dazhou is several times that of Shu, not to mention the power, there are only more than 1000 court ladies in the Daliang Palace (this is related to Guo Wei, Guo Wei loves the people very much, and greatly cuts royal expenses).

Those are all borne by the people of Shu.

So whether the people of Shu are willing to fight for their lord is a big question.

There must be a gap between these foreign kings and hegemons and the local people. As long as they are treated differently and win over one side, they can be disintegrated from the inside, and the battle will be much easier.

Zhao Kuangyin chose the group of northerners, that is, the generals and soldiers who entered Shu at the beginning, probably from Shaanxi, Shanxi, Guanzhong, and Hebei. He may think that those people were important officials and generals in the later Tang Dynasty, with many talents.

Shi Congyun never thought of trying to win them over. It is normal for Zhao Kuangyin to have that kind of view, because limited by the times, he himself has seen farther.

There is no difference between the people there, the key lies in the environment.People in Shanxi and Shaanxi were fierce and aggressive most of the time in history. Most of the heroes of Han and Tang came from that area, which was determined by the environment. That area in the north is next to nomads, and they have been fighting against nomads all year round. Live.

But let an old man from Shaanxi live peacefully in the Qinling Mountains for decades, and he will not dare to fight, and he doesn't want to fight. Will his descendants know what iron blood is?
In the same way, if you pull out the Shu soldiers and let them go to the north to fight the nomads for a few years, they will definitely become strong soldiers who can fight.

After all, everyone is the same, the key is that the environment is different.

Zhao Kuangyin probably thought that the soldiers of the later Tang Dynasty would be able to fight, and to win them over, Shi Congyun felt that after decades of comfort, they could still fight.

Li Yangui and Liu Renshan were all great generals in the past, and they were not as vicious as before when they fought against him.

In his opinion, the key is the hearts of the people. If the people of Sichuan are with him and are willing to follow him and fight for him, then how can there be no shortage of people.

At that time, he can directly recruit troops from Shu, go north out of the Qinling Mountains, and go north to fight with the party members for a few years, and he can also become a strong army, so that the pressure on the east of Taihang Mountain will be greatly reduced.

On the same day, Shi Congyun hurriedly brought this great news into the palace to share with Empress Fu.

Afterwards, Empress Fu issued an edict in the name of the regent queen mother, announcing to the world that the ruler of the Kingdom of Shu had plotted against the law and secretly united with the Northern Han Dynasty, intending to attack the Great Zhou on both sides.

As soon as the edict came out, the capital was shocked.

The Great Zhou defeated the Liao Kingdom last year, but now a small Shu Kingdom dared to jump up and say that they would beat them. For a while, the soldiers of the Imperial Army were furious, and the people were filled with righteous indignation, and they all said that they would send troops to attack Shu.

This matter was being discussed in the streets and alleys, and Shi Congyun even hinted to Lu Duoxun, a scholar of the Imperial Academy, to get some "public opinion" from him.

Lu Duoxun was an old friend of him, and he was also very smart. He immediately led his students, but he did not know where to find a group of scholars, gathered thousands of people outside Donghuamen, and petitioned the court, saying that the Kingdom of Shu had no eyes. Zunji, who doesn't know the heights of the sky and the earth, dares to speak out and wants to beat them. As a big country in the Central Plains, he should raise troops to fight against them.

After that, many military generals also petitioned in the court, saying that they should not be cowardly in the face of Shu's provocation, but should retaliate, although Shu has not bitten yet.

When Lian Shi Congyun went out with his wife, he could hear the common people talking about Shu's plan to attack them on the street. He felt that Da Zhou should send troops immediately and not be used to it.

Shi Congyun really didn't expect that even public opinion in the public would support sending troops this time, and what he didn't even expect was what would Wang Zhaoyuan, a member of the Privy Council of Shu Kingdom, and their lord think?

Still feel that "If you don't kill the thieves, the king's industry will also die. If you just sit and wait for death, who will cut it?" So why don't you fight them?
Shi Congyun couldn't guess what Meng Chang and Wang Zhaoyuan were thinking, but this undoubtedly gave Da Zhou an excellent reason to send troops, and it could also unite the hearts of the people. The soldiers and civilians are full of indignation, you want to hit me!That Lao Tzu is the first to act first.

After several days of preparation, at the court meeting in early February, the Empress Dowager Regent was dressed in a splendid attire, glamorous and dignified, and took out the imperial edict with the seal of the three provinces and the Privy Council, and read it out in front of many ministers, without even letting the eunuchs come. .

First, he listed the crimes of the Shu Kingdom, and then reprimanded them for overestimating their capabilities. Finally, he announced that Da Zhou would send out a righteous army to attack the Wudao Shu Kingdom. Recruit envoys face to face, lead the army, order generals, and choose a day to go out.

With an edict, a major event was immediately settled.

Later, Tao Gu, Lu Duoxun, and Temporary Jurun of the Imperial Academy issued a call to action, informing the world of Shu's fault and the reason for sending troops in the Great Zhou Dynasty.

This set of operations is like flowing water, and Shi Congyun has become more and more fluent in using it.

Afterwards, the capital cheered, and the morale of the generals was high. On the one hand, they only defeated the Liao Kingdom last year, which made them full of confidence.

At the beginning of February, Li Chuyun and Li Hanchao also returned to the capital, and Shi Congyun immediately made arrangements for the overall war
(End of this chapter)