Recreating the prosperous Tang begins with summoning players

Chapter 459
Xiangzhou.

At this time, the situation of the puppet Emperor An Qingxu was not very good.

After escaping from Luoyang, An Qingxu did not expect Tang Jun to attack so fast.

He hesitated in Xiangzhou, whether to flee back to Taiyuan and join forces with Shi Siming, or to flee back to Pinglu to rectify the army.

Unexpectedly, with such hesitation, Tang General Li Guangbi occupied Anyang City, cutting off An Qingxu's retreat.

Now it was a bit of a dilemma, An Qingxu was going back to the north, and now there were two thousand elites brought out from Luoyang by his side, and Anyang City was absolutely unavoidable.

If he left these two thousand elites and returned to the north, An Qingxu, the pseudo-emperor of Yan, would have come to an end.

Although An Qingxu had never been An Lushan's favorite successor, An Lushan had always taken a fancy to the eldest son An Qingzong who was held hostage in Chang'an, and wanted An Qingzong to inherit his power.

But the sky failed, and the emperor realized that An Lushan was going to rebel, so he killed An Qingzong first.

An Qingxu was often scolded by his father when he was a child, and even as an adult, he would be beaten up by An Lushan for the slightest disobedience, which also made An Qingxu's personality very weird.

After killing his father and ascending the throne, An Qingxu didn't manage the government of the puppet Yan too much, but handed over all the power of the general and government to Yan Zhuang and the generals around him.

And because An Qingxu's body was a bit fat, everyone in the Tang Dynasty called him a "pig". From Li Guangbi to ordinary soldiers, everyone looked down on this puppet Emperor Yan.

Now that Li Guangbi is occupying Anyang City, the Tang army has shouted the slogan of capturing An Qingxu alive, and sent soldiers to the countryside to search for traces of An Qingxu's men and horses.

Although Li Guangbi was a famous general in the Tang Dynasty, after his troops entered Xiangzhou, military discipline deteriorated.

The reason is also very simple. After the recovery of Luoyang, the imperial court's expenses suddenly increased.

It is necessary to repair the ancestral temple and the country, repair the palace and the yamen, all of which will cost money.

What's worse is that the Bianhe section of the Tongji Canal was blocked when Yin Ziqi attacked Suiyang, and the water transportation of the Bianhe River has not yet been dredged.

The grain and materials from the Jianghuai River need to be docked in Bianzhou and transported to Luoyang by horse-drawn carriage before they can be transported by water to Chang'an.

Although this section of the road is not long, it has greatly increased the transportation cost and stagnated the once comfortable imperial financial transmission.

There are many places to spend money, but the speed of sending money is slow. The reward for the restoration of Luoyang has not yet come down, and Guo Ziyi can only lead the army to store up on the edge of Luoyang to prevent the army from mutinying.

Li Guangbi led this army to capture Anyang City, but he is also a clever woman who can't cook without rice. If Li Guangbi didn't take good care of the soldiers and was always upright, the soldiers didn't rebel.

Although the soldiers didn't rebel, the soldiers will take things that your court can't give you.

Xiangzhou was one of the first places to respond to the Anlushan rebellion, and was also regarded as a thief by the court.

Most of the imperial court's troops now come from the Northwest and Guanzhong regions, and Xiangzhou belongs to the land of Henan. These soldiers did not have any psychological pressure to rob.

The army that was originally sent by Li Guangbi to search for An Qingxu has also turned into a team that went out of the city to rob. They had no intention of searching for An Qingxu at all, and only searched for nearby wealthy cities and villages to rob.

Regarding these matters, the rewards promised to the soldiers were not distributed on time, and he was restraining military discipline at this time and was afraid of mutiny in the army, so Li Guangbi could only turn a blind eye.

Tang Jun didn't care about searching for An Qingxu, so he let him stay in Xiangzhou.

And Tang Jun's actions also made Xiangzhou, who was already alienated from the Tang court, even more disgusted with Datang.

Many local wealthy families secretly helped An Qingxu, providing shelter for his army and sending food to his soldiers.

However, the weather was getting colder and the army was more difficult to mobilize, so Xiangzhou became strangely quiet.

The situation in Henan has come to a standstill strangely, and the great victory of recovering Luoyang was quickly diluted by a lot of complicated daily work.

The new Luoyang left-behind Zhang Xun is busy restoring Luoyang law and order and destroying the remaining rebels in various parts of Henan.

After Zhang Duanyang took refuge in Zhang Xun, he quickly got the position of a cavalry captain, and together with Nan Jiyun led troops to wipe out the bandits near Luoyang.

Originally, the eastbound tour group had gone their separate ways. Zhou Shi and Yu Xiaoxiao went to Chang'an, leaving Li Daoyuan alone to continue eastward.

After the battle of Suiyang, Li Daoyuan went east from the Grand Canal, and entered Jianghuai from Linhuai.

The Jianghuai water network is densely covered. After the development of the Sui and Tang dynasties, it is already the most affluent place in the world.

Li Daoyuan sat on the boat and headed for Yangzhou along the canal.

Although it's already winter, the tall reeds on the shore have turned yellow, Li Daoyuan came out of the cabin, it was frosty last night, and the withered yellow reeds were covered with crystal frost, such a beautiful scenery made Li Daoyuan feel refreshed.

After watching the beautiful scenery, but not

Jianghuai is far away from the Great War in the Central Plains, but it is not a paradise on earth as Li Daoyuan thought.

The two important towns of Pengcheng (Xuzhou) and Linhuai (Suqian), together with a Huai River, blocked the attack of the puppet Yan army on Jianghuai.

However, the two cities and one river cannot stop the fleeing people from pouring into the Jianghuai River.

The so-called Jianghuai River and Huaihe River are the exterior and interior of each other. The Huaihe River is shallow and the Yangtze River is wide.

A large number of refugees stranded in the Huainan area, that is, the area south of the Huai River and north of the Yangtze River (now northern Jiangsu).

Today's Huainan Jiedushi is relying on Gao Shi, a great poet who put down the Yongwang Rebellion.

It's just that as soon as this great poet took office, he encountered the drudgery of resettling the victims.

The cold winter is coming soon. If these victims starve to death and freeze to death in Huainan, there must be a censor who participated in Gao Shi, the Huainan Jiedushi.

However, Huainan was not as rich as Jiangnan, and it was difficult to make ends meet even to support the troops in Linhuai. Now that there were so many disaster victims, the Huainan Jiedu Shifu was helpless.

So when Li Daoyuan entered Huainan, what he saw was starving and dying everywhere, and there were victims selling children and women everywhere.

The old ship owner is Xu Min from Huainan, that is, fishermen who have lived on the boat for generations.

These fishermen take the boat as their home, and they live on the boat for basic necessities of life. This boat is where they live.

The old owner's surname is Fan, and this old boat has been passed down from his ancestors. After so many years of repairing and repairing, it is the fastest boat on the entire lake thanks to Fan's excellent punting skills.

Li Daoyuan's destination was Yangzhou, and he rented Lao Fantou's boat with money to go to Yangzhou from a branch of Hongze Lake.

Lao Fantou said while punting the boat: "A few days ago, the water bandits in Hongze Lake took over the ship that the imperial court transported grain. These days, the officers and soldiers are clearing up. The law and order is much better than before."

Li Daoyuan looked at the wide Hongze Lake and asked, "Are there a lot of water bandits here?"

Old Fan sighed and said: "There are many, of course there are many, I can't survive anymore, I can only turn into bandits."

"I heard that there are many people in Qingzhou. There are thousands of water bandits gathered in a place called Liangshanbo, no matter whose boat it is."

Li Daoyuan also sighed, human life is worthless in troubled times, this Huainan is already a place without military disasters, and it is still implicated by military disasters.

Old Fantou said again: "Originally, if you go to Yangzhou, you can just take the canal, but recently water bandits are rampant, and the government has sealed off the canal, so it's much slower to go to Hongze Lake."

Li Daoyuan was sitting on the boat, blowing the winter wind on the lake, and one or two migratory birds that hadn't had time to fly south fluttered miserably.

I really didn't expect Huainan to be in this situation. The pacification of the Anlu Mountain Rebellion was not only a continuous war, but also emptied the wealth of the entire country.

The governor of Huainan Jiedushi is located in Yangzhou, which is still prosperous.

Yangzhou is on the edge of the Yangtze River, the hub connecting Huainan and Jiangnan, and also the starting point of the Grand Canal.

Now Huainan Jiangnan bears more than half of the expenditure of the Tang court. The Huainan Jiedushi needs to maintain the law and order in Huainan, and also maintain the smoothness of the Grand Canal, the main artery of the empire. Gao Shi is trembling, but the situation is getting worse and worse.

Gao Shi only felt physically and mentally exhausted. This frontier poet who once wrote "Mo Chou has no confidant in the future, no one in the world does not know the king", has aged more than ten years after serving in Huainan Jiedu for a few months.

In Gaoshi's Jiedushi mansion, sitting below him is a thin middle-aged official.

This official was wearing the green official robes of middle and low-level officials, but he was drinking tea calmly in front of Gao Shi in Jiezhen.

"Yugui, now that the Bian River is silted up, you should report to the court and withhold some salt money for us in Huainan, and this winter will pass."

This emaciated middle-aged official is Wu Qi, who is now Jianghuai Zuyong envoy and salt and iron envoy.

The head office of the Jianghuai Salt Institute is located in Yangzhou, and Wuqi wants to implement the salt law in the Jianghuai area, so it is inevitable that he will have to deal with Huainan Jiedu envoys like Gao Shi.

Fifth Qi said with a straight face: "Jieshuai, this salt business is a major matter of the court. Every time the salt money is collected, it goes into the Duzhi Treasury of the Ministry of Households. Even if I go to the court, the salt money will not be retained. Come down."

Gao Shi sighed, he wanted to borrow money from Yantieyuan to help the victims, but Fifth Qi still refused to take the money.

Seeing Gao Shi sighing, Fifth Qi also sighed and said: "Jieshuai, it's not that I don't give you money and food. I collected a lot of salt tax in Jianghuai. The court has already prepared to spend it, let alone Bianshui. Blockage means that the Bian River will be cut off, and the money and food will have to be carried to Chang'an."

When Fifth Qi said this, Gao Shi had nothing to say.

The imperial court's positioning of the Daozhou states in the world is very clear.

The most important task of Jianghuai is to send money and food to the Central Plains, and the purpose of all Jianghuai officials is also the same.

Fifth Qi was able to get the emperor's reliance because he could receive money from Jianghuai.

Once he can't receive the money, he will immediately lose the emperor's trust.

At the same time, Li Daoyuan entered Gaoyou Lake from Hongze Lake, and had already entered the boundary of Yangzhou.

(End of this chapter)