A Millennium Aristocratic Family Starting from the Shang Dynasty

Chapter 688 Hehuang and the Western Regions

After the demise of DTZ, the Tang Dynasty court once again turned its attention to the domestic people's livelihood, paid attention to the people, and provided them with rest and recuperation.

After the demise of DTZ, the Tang Dynasty's prestige was at its peak, but the country's foundation did not improve much. What is the country’s heritage? Population, cultivated land area, and other factors include various craftsmen, skills, etc.

Only with the population can there be enough soldiers, and enough talents can be born from it. Only with the people can the land be cultivated, and only the court can have taxes. These are the foundation of a feudal country.

Only with superb craftsmen can we provide a large number of high-quality weapons and agricultural tools, which can improve soldiers' combat effectiveness and agricultural level.

Time passes by like running water.

Datang temporarily stopped the war and began to recuperate.

Wang Xuanji sat in Hehuang, Hexi, and began to vigorously develop agriculture and animal husbandry. The land of Hehuang in Hexi was a rare land in the Central Plains Dynasty that could be cultivated and grazed. Moreover, this land connected the Western Region to the west, controlled Shuofang to the north, and bounded the plateau to the south. , overlooking Guanlong in the east.

The status is very important. As long as it is a dynasty based on Chang'an Guanzhong, it must pay attention to this place.

Once this place is lost, the enemy will be able to condescendingly enter Longyou and threaten Guanzhong.

With this water conservancy irrigation system, the farmland in Hehuang, Hexi Province has achieved bumper harvests for four consecutive years. In the eighth year of Zhenguan, the tax revenue amounted to two million stones of grain, as well as a large number of cattle, horses and livestock.

But in front of him, there was one thing that Li Shimin couldn't bear.

Wang Xuanji vigorously promoted cattle farming and horse farming here in order to save manpower.

This water conservancy and irrigation system has successfully covered millions of acres of farmland in Hehuang and Hexi.

If Hexi and Hehuang are fully developed, it will not be a problem to feed millions of people. Now the combined population of Hehuang and Hexi is only one million, and there are many barbarians among them.

At the same time, as the people of Guanzhong thrived here, many of the miscellaneous people who originally lived here were expelled, killed, or surrendered.

If you want to firmly control the land of Hexi and Hehuang, you must have at least two to three million Tang people here.

At the same time, a large number of waterwheels were built in irrigation systems in various places. Even in some areas where waterwheels could not be built, he also ordered people to build livestock turning water pumps.

Because of the insufficient population, Wang Xuanji began to use a large number of livestock here, because there were enough pastures, military horse farms, and no shortage of war horses, cattle, sheep, and livestock.

With food, many things can start.

Wang Xuanjing took advantage of the drought to immigrate the people from Guanzhong to Hehuang. After several years of business, these Guanzhong victims have successfully taken root here.

The prosperity of Hehuang and Hexi made the Tang Dynasty very happy. After all, they had food in hand and did not panic.

Because the Hehuang land had abundant water resources, Wang Xuanji led people to explore the landforms and then built a large number of water diversion channels to irrigate farmland.

There are already more than a large state in the Central Plains.

Since becoming Tian Khan, very few barbarians from other countries have dared to disobey the orders of the Emperor of the Tang Dynasty.

Although the Xueyantuo and Huihe tribes on the grassland have been somewhat dirty in recent years, they are still very respectful to the Tang Dynasty and dare not overstep the line.

But Tuyuhun, who felt that he was powerful, began to constantly test the bottom line of the Tang Dynasty. Wang Xuanji developed smoothly in the land west of Hehuang and Hehuang, making it the base for the Central Plains imperial court to the west. All kinds of money, food and war horses were so rich that people were envious.

Tuyuhun is one of them.

Tuyuhun was originally from Xianbei. Under the attack of Daqian, the Xianbei people had been living a miserable life. Later, after the establishment of Liu Song Dynasty, the Xianbei people lived a good life for a while, but they were soon hammered again.

With the decline of the Xianbei people, the Turks began to rise, and the Xianbei people had no choice but to migrate. Some of them entered the Central Plains and integrated into the Xia, while others went west and integrated into the Western Regions, and some went further west.

Tuyuhun is a branch of the Xianbei people, and this Xianbei people have always maintained their independence, and they have also conquered some countries in the Western Regions, and their lives are pretty good.

When it was at its most powerful, it reached Ruoqiang in the west, Qilian Mountains and Hexi Corridor in the north, Hehuang in the south, Shuofang in the east, and even the northwest of Bashu was controlled by it.

After the rise of the Tang Dynasty, Tuyuhun's sphere of influence began to shrink significantly.

Now Hexi and Shuofang have become the territory of the Tang Dynasty, and the same is true for Bashu. Most of the land of Hehuang is also occupied by the Tang Dynasty, and the scope of Tuyuhun has been reduced by more than half.

Originally, Tuyuhun was afraid of doing anything because of the prestige of the Tang Dynasty in destroying the Turks. However, later they saw that the lands of Hehuang and Hexi became richer and richer in the hands of the Tang Dynasty, while Tuyuhun himself was still poor. This made them increasingly want to control the Hehuang area. Take back the land of Huang.

In the past few years, because there has been no movement from the Tang army, most of the matters involving the Fanbangs were left to the Fanbangs to negotiate and resolve on their own. They only conducted arbitration and did not even send out an army once. This gave Tuyuhun the illusion that the Tang Dynasty could not in this way.

So he began to test the Tang Dynasty's bottom line little by little.

King Tuyuhun first asked some of the herdsmen to pretend to be bandits. Horse bandits invaded Liangzhou and Wuwei and robbed cattle, sheep and food.

Then they robbed and ran away. Wang Xuanji was unable to defend all areas due to insufficient troops in his hands, which allowed Tuyuhun to take advantage.

After seeing that the Tang army was exhausted, the Tuyuhun king felt that the Tang Dynasty was nothing more than this, so he stopped paying tribute to the Tang Dynasty.

After hearing the news, a light flashed in Li Shimin's eyes.

Regarding Tuyuhun, Li Shimin had long wanted to deal with him. This tribe did not keep its word and rebelled at times during the Sui Dynasty.

The Sui army attacked, but Tuyuhun could not resist it, so he began to surrender to the Sui Dynasty. When the Sui army withdrew, Tuyuhun began to cause chaos again. After several times, the Sui Dynasty could not completely conquer Tuyuhun.

In the Tang Dynasty, after Tuyuhun had been honest for a period of time, this trend began to appear again.

Li Shimin had always wanted to find a chance to deal with him. You must know that Hehuang and Hexi were important areas in the Tang Dynasty. How could others sleep soundly beside the couch.

It's just that after the Tang Dynasty established a complete tribute system after conquering DTZ, it was inconvenient to directly attack small foreign countries.

Once he did this, everyone in other small foreign countries would be in danger, and the set of rules he had established would fall apart. Therefore, even though he wanted to attack Tuyuhun, Li Shimin still endured it.

As a result, he did not try to attack Tuyuhun, but Tuyuhun began to provoke Datang.

Li Shimin immediately issued an edict, ordering King Tuyuhuntu to come to Beijing to pay tribute, and asked him to restrain his troops and compensate for the losses of the Tang Dynasty. As a result, King Tuyuhuntu did not take the edict seriously at all, and directly refused the tribute from the Tang envoy, and even Block the road between Hexi and the Western Regions.

Li Shimin was immediately furious and issued an edict to summon all the tribes and states to send troops to jointly attack Tuyuhun.

(End of this chapter)