A Good Landlord in the Tang Dynasty: Emperor Yuan Cong

Chapter 1188: Ministers and Lords, When War Rises, Lords Worry

After the chaotic morning court session, the emperor went directly to the Daming Palace.

The Daming Palace in Longshouyuan has been almost completed in the past few years, and the emperor specially requested that a tall observation tower be built here.

Climbing up the observation tower, looking out over Zhaoling Mausoleum, where Empress Changsun was buried, it had been more than four years since she passed away.

It is still cold in Chang'an in early spring.

Zhang Ananda silently put a mink coat on the emperor.
"What did I do wrong?" the emperor sighed.

"When your majesty first ascended the throne, the country was in ruins and the Turkic army was at the gates of the city. Over the years, your majesty has worked hard to govern the country, working day and night, which is why we have the prosperous Zhenguan era today.
In the first year of Zhenguan, there was famine in Guanzhong, and a dou of rice cost the same as a piece of silk. In the second year, there were locusts all over the country. In the third year, there was a flood. However, Your Majesty led the civil and military officials to work hard to pacify the people.

Now, from the east to the sea, to the south to the Five Ridges, all doors are open, and travelers do not carry food with them, but have to get their provisions on the roads.

All the foreign tribes were submissive.

The country is peaceful and the people are well-fed. Who wouldn't sing praises to the emperor? "

Zhang Ananda has been Li Shimin's old friend for twenty years and has been with him since he first started his rebellion.

"But I am about to go east to seal the throne, why is the star in Taiwei?"

Li Shimin had to pay attention to things related to heaven and the stars.

A comet that appears in the Taiwei position is called a comet, which is an inauspicious astronomical phenomenon.

The book "Spring and Autumn Wei" handed down from the Han Dynasty said that the explanation for the comet's impact on Taiwei astronomical phenomenon was that the emperor was in chaos.

"The comet Bogan enters Taiwei, and the emperor's clan and descendants will be in chaos, and the country will be destroyed."

"A comet enters the Taiwei Palace. Ministers plot against their lords. Wars will arise. The king will suffer disasters and his country will be in trouble."

These explanations from the ancients made Li Shimin deeply worried. When it came to these things, the emperor did not dare to say he did not believe them.

"Your Majesty, Prime Minister Ma has arrived." The eunuch reported.

Ma Zhou went up to the tower,

Li Shimin also asked about the star Betelgeux.

Ma Zhou said frankly, "Your Majesty has restored order and achieved greater success than any other emperor. You will soon complete the construction of Mount Tai, and the world will be very fortunate. Nowadays, comets are seen frequently, which may be inconsistent with the above.

In the past, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty hesitated for several years before he began to perform the Tai ceremony. I, your humble servant, would like to carefully select it. "

Li Shimin looked to the west.

Ma Zhou and Zhang Ananda, who were standing beside him, didn't know whether the emperor was looking at the tomb of Empress Wende in Zhaoling Mausoleum, or looking towards the Western Regions which were now in the whirlpool of public opinion.

"It seems that the time has not come yet, so let's suspend the Fengshan ceremony." Li Shimin sighed.

For Li Shimin, the Fengshan ceremony at Mount Tai was something he had always longed for.

This Fengshan also has a special and important meaning to him.

After all, he was not the crown prince. He gained the world by launching the Xuanwu Gate Palace Coup, killing his brothers and controlling his father.

He has been working diligently over the years, and in fact, he also wants to use actual performance to prove that he is the true emperor and the most suitable person to inherit the Tang Dynasty.

For this reason, he endured it even though Wei Zheng spit in his face again and again.

He tried his best to retain the old ministers of the retired emperor and the palace staff of Jiancheng and Yuanji, in order to unite the various forces and achieve some achievements.

Now, he can proudly say that he has done it.

But he also needed a Fengshan ceremony to prove his success to the world and to everyone.

He needed this ritual.

But all these years, it has not been carried out time and time again. After finally achieving the goals of civil and military virtues and making the world prosperous, it is time to offer sacrifices to the gods, but now something like this has happened again.

When many people said that this was a warning from God not to march eastward, Li Shimin had no choice but to give up.

Years ago, some guards shot five arrows at his palace at night, but they said they just didn't want to suffer the pain of parading.

Of course Li Shimin would not believe this reason.

In fact, there was an even more serious case of treason last fall.

When he was in Jiucheng Palace, a Turkic guard officer planned to attack the palace at night and assassinate the emperor.

The leader of this incident was the Eastern Turkic Ashina royal family. After they surrendered in the fourth year of Zhenguan, they stayed in Chang'an as imperial guards.

After the assassination attempt failed, he confessed that he was dissatisfied with his long-term service as General of the Central Army without any promotion, so he planned to assassinate the emperor, and then fled to Mobei to join the Xueyantuo as a token of his surrender.

He secretly allied himself with more than 40 Turkic guards, and taking advantage of his position as a General of the Central Army, he hid outside the palace at night, preparing to take advantage of the opportunity when the Prince of Jin came out of the palace and opened the door to avoid the guards at the fourth drum, and then rushed into the palace to assassinate the emperor.

Fortunately, there was a strong wind that night, and Jin Wang Li Zhi did not leave the palace at the fourth drum as usual. The rebellious Turkic guards had no chance. Fearing that they would be exposed after dawn, they had to force their way into the palace, draw their bows and shoot randomly. In a melee, they shot and killed dozens of imperial guards.

The two sides fought fiercely for a long time. Finally, the Turkic rebel guards were defeated and rushed into the imperial stables, stole more than 30 imperial horses and fled north. However, not long after the incident, the imperial palace sent out hundreds of cavalry to pursue them and captured all the fleeing rebel Turkic guards.
Afterwards, they were all executed. At that time, this incident caused quite a stir, especially the court's attitude towards the Turks and other Hu people who surrendered to the court.

Not long after this incident, the 8,000-member Khitan tribe from Liangzhou and Helanzhou defected to Mobei.

Although Liu Demin, deputy ambassador of the Anxi Army, Yuwen Chengdu, envoy of the Luntai Zhensai Army, and Guo Xiaoke, governor of Shazhou, sent troops to pursue them,

He won a stunning victory in the north of Liangzhou, defeated the Khitan army, and successfully brought them back to Liangzhou.

The Minister of War Li Ji led the Shanyu Protectorate, You, Bing and other troops to the north of the Great Wall, crossed the Yinshan Mountains to defend against the Xueyantuo and went south. He also ordered the Khan of the Eastern Turkic Khanate Li Simo, as well as the left and right wise kings She'er and Ashina Zhong, to lead the Eastern Turkic troops to join the expedition.

But they didn't fight.

Xueyantuo Khan Yinan sent his eldest son to lead tens of thousands of Tiele troops south to meet the Qibi tribe. However, before the Qibi tribe left the border of Liangzhou, they were defeated by the Anxi army and surrendered again.

Li Ji and his men came out from all directions.

Yi Nan's eldest son walked halfway, but seeing that the situation was not right, he retreated.

However, although we did not fight with Xueyantuo last year,
However, the escape of Qibi to the north and the rebellion in Jiucheng Palace were all influenced by Xueyantuo. After these two events, the imperial court had begun to discuss whether to use military force against Mobei and teach Xueyantuo a lesson with force. It would be best to destroy Xueyantuo and support Huihe to replace Xueyantuo, or to divide Mobei.

However, the series of events last year had more impact than just this.

There was another impact that many people did not expect. First, the emperor allowed the Eastern Turks to restore their country and asked Simo to lead the Eastern Turks to migrate to the land north of Yinshan Mountain and south of Daqi to roam.

Although this happened a few years ago, the tribes that migrated north, especially the Turkic tribes that had previously moved south to submit to the Central Plains and settled in Hebei, Hedong, Shuofang, Hetao, Daibei, etc.,

After they went to the north of Yinshan Mountain, they were dissatisfied with many things and wanted to move back.

In fact, every year many Turkic tribes or parts of the Turkic people would secretly return. They would cross the Yin Mountains, cross the Great Wall, and return to their original places of resettlement.

But the problem is that the imperial court has already resettled some of the Han immigrants in those areas.

Even if the immigrants had not yet been resettled, the imperial court would not give land to the Turks again, because this involved a change in the imperial court's national policy.

The local authorities asked these Turks to go back, but many of them refused to leave, which caused many conflicts and a tense situation.

After the Jiucheng Palace incident and Qibi's defection,

The imperial court became even less trusting of these Hu people, so it resolutely demanded that all the Turks who had sneaked south be driven back.

He also ordered Khan Simo, the left and right wise kings, and the six governors to discipline their subordinates.

Li Simo was quite loyal, and the two wise kings obeyed his orders, but their orders caused dissatisfaction among many Turkic tribesmen.
From the north of Yinshan Mountain to the Great Sandy Land, although it is very wide from east to west, from the north and west of Liangzhou to Jinshan, and then to the north and east of Youzhou to Khitan and Xi,

But the problem is that although the land is vast, after so many East Turkic tribes were moved back, six military governorates were set up, but the pastures of each tribe became smaller and worse.

This made many Turks dissatisfied with the Khan Simo, thinking that he was just a watchdog of the Tang emperor and never considered the Turks. Some asked the court to let them move south, while others asked Simo to ask the Khan to give them the Hetao region.

Some people simply say that the Great Wall should be used as the boundary, saying that the area outside the Great Wall was once the former territory of the Eastern Turks.

These ideas are somewhat dangerous.

A few years ago, after the demise of Jie Li and the surrender of Tuli Khan and others, the entire East Turkic Khanate was leaderless and in disarray. It was conquered by the Tang Dynasty. The Tang Dynasty's overwhelming military force, coupled with the Tang Dynasty court's subsequent appeasement policy, allowed these East Turkic nobles and tribesmen who had lost their country to remain relatively stable.

There was a ten-year honeymoon period.

But now contradictions have accumulated, conflicts have intensified, and mutual distrust between the two sides has become increasingly intense.

Some Eastern Turkic nobles had already seen clearly that the Tang Dynasty asked them to move to the south of the Qi border and restore their country, which was actually to take back the better territories in the northern border and let them move to the north to resist the Xueyantuo.

"King Bin,
What do you think about the current situation in the Western Region and Huaiyu's decisions in the Western Region?"

Ma Zhou looked towards the Western Regions, where his brother-in-law was still fighting and guarding the area.

Although he had made so many contributions, some people in the court used the comet to attack him.

"Your Majesty, Prime Minister Wu led the army to the west last year and successfully completed the mission of capturing Yu Gushe and destroying Gaochang. He did it very well and his achievements are great."

"Your Majesty also saw in his ability that he allowed him to stay in the Western Regions and serve as the Grand Protector of Anxi."

"The Western Regions are thousands of miles away from Chang'an. The court actually controls only the three states of Yi, Xi and Ting. The two states of Xi and Ting were only established after the Western Expedition last year. There are only 32,000 soldiers, and 3,000 of them are Western Region Hu people."

"The situation in the Western Regions is quite complicated. After capturing Yugushe and destroying Gaochang, the situation did not become stable. First, Yehu Helu united with the eight tribes to rebel, and then the little Khan Buzhen attacked Beiting and rebelled.

In addition, the two powerful tribes of Nushiki and Asiqie kept causing rebellions.
It was not easy for the Minister of War to handle the situation decisively, and it was later proven to be very timely and correct. "

Li Shimin nodded,
"I never thought that the khans of the Western Regions, Yehu Shijin, would be so capricious. Fortunately, Huaiyu is in the Western Regions. If it were someone else, the situation would have been ruined."

"However, many officials have impeached Wu Huaiyu for his radical actions and for starting a war without authorization. Especially for the fact that he sent troops to attack the capital of the Shi Kingdom and captured the kings of the Shi Kingdom."

"Your Majesty, the kings of Shi State have been sent to Chang'an. There is solid evidence that they have joined forces with Axi to rebel. I think that under the circumstances at that time, they first rebelled and then protected Axi and Ji Jin. Since Prime Minister Wu has the ability to capture their capital and their king, then this choice is correct.
If Wu Xiang had failed to conquer Shiguo, resulting in the loss of troops and generals, and the damage to the prestige of the court, this would indeed be a crime, but he won the battle, and won beautifully, and established the prestige of the court among the Nine-Sogdians, which is a merit. "

"Then there are people who impeach Wu Huaiyu, saying that he appointed his cronies in the Western Regions. Not only did he let his adopted sons serve as garrison commanders of various towns, he even wanted his adopted son Shi Shouxin to be the king of Shi State and the governor of Dayuan. What do you think of this?"

(End of this chapter)