Tibet.

Chapter 1462: Another Expedition to Bolü (Part )

Just as the abolition order began to penetrate into all states across the country, Anxi's Enfeoffment Order also caused a huge uproar.

After Li Chenghua was appointed as the Surveillance Commissioner of Anxi Road, he summoned the kings or representatives of various small countries in Anxi to Qiuci and announced to them the imperial grace of the Tang Emperor. He allowed them to enfeoff their sons and daughters, and the court would recognize them and grant them corresponding titles.

The Enfeoffment Order was officially implemented in Anxi, and the entire Anxi was in an uproar.

The years in Anxi were long and peaceful. The kings had nothing to do but give birth to sons all day long. Each king had a large number of sons. It was very comfortable to have many wives and concubines when they were young, but troubles ensued when the sons grew up. Each of them clamored for land and property. In the past, this could be suppressed by etiquette and rules, but now the court encouraged division of the family, and recognized the kings after the division, and bestowed titles on them. The rules and etiquette were broken at once.

Why is the Enfeoffment Order an unsolvable conspiracy? Because it strikes directly at human nature. Even if the king sees that this is a strategy to weaken them, his sons and concubines will cry, make a fuss, and even threaten to commit suicide to force the king to implement the Enfeoffment Order.

They are all sons, why should only the eldest brother inherit the throne and wealth? Now that they have the chance, how can the princes not make trouble? If the king insists on it, it means a coup d'état.

So one month after the issuance of the Enfeoffment Order, a coup broke out in the State of Shule. The other six sons, except the eldest son, joined forces to kill their father and the eldest son and divided up the land, wealth and army.

On behalf of the Tang Dynasty court, Li Chenghua immediately recognized the thrones of his six sons, conferred titles of earl on them, and granted them earl seals.

The Shule coup was the straw that broke the camel's back. After seeing the consequences and the attitude of the Tang Dynasty, the kings of various countries had no choice but to surrender. They distributed their land and wealth to other sons and left the royal city to their eldest son.

The first consequence of the enfeoffment was that it was impossible to support so many troops. The sons certainly would not pay to support troops that did not obey them. They would rather recruit their own troops. As a result, the kingdom's army was greatly reduced or even disbanded.

The Kingdom of Kucha was divided into seven small countries, which was still not the result of a complete enfeoffment.

The original 8,000 Kucha troops were also split up, leaving only more than 1,000 troops in the royal city, and the number of officials was also reduced by more than half.

But now is not the time to implement the county system. Only when the Enfeoffment Order is deeply rooted will the time be truly ripe.

In early April, Anxi Governor Xi Wanli led an army of 15,000 and marched towards the Kingdom of Qishi.

Xi Wanli's appointment as the governor of Anxi marked another reform achievement in Anxi. The Anxi Governor's Office was changed from a Jinglüe Office to a Military Office, and the military and political affairs were separated. The political affairs were taken over by the Anxi Dao Surveillance Office.

With the transformation of the Hezhong Military Governorate and the Anxi Military Governorate into military governorates, the Jiedushi system, which had caused great turmoil in the middle Tang Dynasty, came to a complete end.

The Anxi Army's southern expedition to Tokharistan and Bolor was also a scheduled task for the imperial court this year.

Before returning to Chang'an, Li Chenghua sent people to collect information about the Tubo army's invasion of Tokharistan, Hezhong, and Big and Small Bolor. When Li Chenghua returned to Anxi, this information was on her desk.

This information can be said to be both good and bad. The good news is that Hezhong's infiltration into Bukhara had just begun, but it was forcefully eliminated by the Tang army.

On the other hand, the predatory nature of the Tibetan army made the Tocharian countries very wary of Tibet. So far, except for some religious exchanges, the Tibetan army has not been able to infiltrate any of the Tocharian countries, except for the Kingdom of Qishi.

The first to be hit by the bad news was the Kingdom of Qishi. The pro-Tang king and his family were killed. Tubo re-supported the pro-Tubo king to the throne and stationed 3,000 troops in the Kingdom of Qishi.

The second bad news was that Tubo rebuilt the city in Dabolü and stationed 7,000 to 8,000 troops.

Perhaps Tubo's target was not Anxi for the time being, so they did not attack Xiaobolü. Xiaobolü on the other side of the canyon also pretended to be ignorant, turning a blind eye to the Tubo army's continuous westward expansion and not reporting to Anxi. This resulted in Anxi knowing nothing about the Tubo army's westward expansion over the years.

Many things were coincidental. Just when Tubo had been preparing for many years and was about to start taking major actions against Tokharistan, the Tang army also launched an attack on the Tubo army.

The Tang army still took the Wakhan Corridor, marching westward along the Bami River. After arriving at the city of Hunduoduo, they turned downward, crossed thousands of miles of snow-capped mountains and canyons, and arrived at the Kingdom of Humi.

Humi State is a grain-producing country and also the last resting place for the Tang army. More than 300 miles to the east is the Qishi State.

The Tang army of 15,000 cavalry and 20,000 camels traveled through the mountains. Although the Kunlun Mountains and the Pamir Mountains are also more than 4,000 meters above sea level, they have one advantage over the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, that is, they are mainly high mountain valley terrain. If you cross the snow-capped mountains, the altitude is 4,000 to 5,000 meters, the climate is cold, and breathing is difficult. But if you walk in the river valley, the altitude suddenly drops to 1,000 to 2,000 meters, with sufficient oxygen, fresh air, abundant vegetation, and many rivers, making the march more comfortable.

In fact, going through the Humi Kingdom was a detour and added thousands of miles of distance, but the biggest advantage was that we basically marched in river valleys all the way, with only a small section of snow-capped mountains and plateaus.

The Tang army rested in the Humi Kingdom for three days, then turned east and marched towards the Qishi Kingdom along a river valley.

Li Ye had walked this road before. After enduring a winter of food shortage in the Kingdom of Kushi, Li Ye brought dozens of people to the Kingdom of Humi to buy food, where he met Guru Padmasambhava.

This river valley of several hundred miles was the only way from the Kingdom of Qishi to Tokharistan, and the Tibetans attached great importance to it. Fifty miles away from the Kingdom of Qishi, two fortresses stood in front, blocking the way of the Tang army.

As soon as several Tang scouts approached, they were discovered by the Tibetan soldiers in the stone fort. Rocks flew everywhere and one Tang scout was hit in the face by a flying rock, which broke his nose and covered his face with blood. He was rescued by several other Tang soldiers.

Xi Wanli stood on a large rock and used his clairvoyance to observe the Tubo military fortress a few hundred steps away. The Tubo military fortress was located on a high place, overlooking the surrounding area. The fortress was built with large stones and was quite solid. It was divided into an upper and lower side. There seemed to be soldiers on the top platform of the third floor.

"General, they have lit the beacon fire!"

Xi Wanli put down his telescope, lit a smoke signal on a nearby fortress, and rushed straight to the top of the valley.

It was relatively easy to take down these two fortresses. Xi Wanli immediately ordered his deputy general Li Feilei: "Send three sharpshooters and heavy crossbowmen to blow down the fortresses with arrow mines!"

In fact, artillery is the most suitable weapon to deal with this kind of fortress, but the improved artillery sent to Anxi is still on the way. Anxi still uses long-braid artillery, which the army generally does not like. They prefer arrow torpedoes, which are convenient, practical and powerful.

Immediately, three heavy crossbowmen rushed forward, each with two assistants, who were responsible for stringing and firing the crossbow.

About 250 steps away from the fortress, they found a cover point. Three of them lay on a large rock, raised their crossbows and aimed at the window on the middle level of the fortress on the right, and assisted the soldiers to light the fuse.

"Crack! Crack! Crack!" Three heavy arrows were shot out at the same time, accurately hitting the window. Three explosions sounded in the fortress on the right, and then thick smoke billowed out of the window.

Immediately afterwards, three more crossbow arrows were shot out, also accurately entering from the middle-level window, and violent explosions were heard again in the fortress.

"Boom!"

The two explosions caused the fortress on the right to no longer hold up and it collapsed.

The three sharpshooters were about to shoot at a fortress on the left, but Li Feilei, the deputy general, shouted, "Don't shoot, the enemy has already run away!"

The sharpshooter put down his heavy crossbow, and dozens of Tang soldiers rushed over to check. After a moment, they shouted, "All the Tibetan soldiers have run away!"

Commander General Xi Wanli rushed forward to check. The fortress on the left was empty, with a lot of food and more than a dozen plateau donkeys inside. The Tibetan soldiers had indeed all run away.

The fortress on the right collapsed and there was blood everywhere. It seemed that many people were killed or crushed in the explosion.

The soldiers worked together to dismantle the fortress and cleared out a total of 38 bodies of Tibetan soldiers.

But Xi Wanli was more interested in the equipment of the Tibetan soldiers: short swords, armor-piercing weapons, and shields, which were basically the same as ten years ago. They also had no bows and arrows, and they still used leather bags to throw stones.

Of course, it was not that the Tubo army could not make bows and arrows, but the arrows shot from ordinary bows could not penetrate the armor of the Tang army soldiers and had almost no lethality. After countless actual combats, the Tubo soldiers still chose the traditional stone throwing method. At least if the stones hit the head, the enemy would faint.

After dealing with more than thirty corpses and taking a short rest, the 15,000 Tang troops continued along the river valley to attack Shangmi, the capital of the Qishi State, which was dozens of miles away.

(End of this chapter)