Late Tang

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At the time of the gold and iron horses in Liaodong, the Central Plains was also in turmoil.

Under the city of Qizhou, the grass army was divided into three parts. Shang Junchang led the fake Wang Xiancao and other ticket commanders westward to Shannan Road, while Wang Xiancao General Liu Yanzhang set up his own family and led his army south to Jiangxi.At the same time, Huang Chao failed to recruit Wang Xiancao's old army and chose to go north to fight back to his hometown.

Huang Chao returned to Caopu all the way, fought against Tianping Kang Chenghui, Taining Cui Yunqing, Ziqing Wang Jingwu, etc., and finally invaded Zhen [***].But even though Li Jing is not in Dengzhou, Kezhen [***] is not a place that Huang Chao can plunder casually.Wang Pu led the Tielin Army, Wang Zhong led the Pingri Army, and Guo Shunli's Black Banner Army ambushed and defeated the grass bandits in the Qiancheng territory of Qingzhou, killing more than [-] and taking more than [-] prisoners.

Then Huang Chao went south to fight against the Taining Army, and finally captured Yizhou for the third time. After looting extensively, Huang Chao fled westward for thousands of miles before Cui Yunqing and Kang Chenghui were encircled.

The two armies of Shang Junchang and Huang Chao joined forces again. The two armies will meet at Chaya Mountain at the junction of Yuzhou, Henan Province and Shannan Dongdao, and then join forces to attack Songzhou, an important town in the northeast.

Since Zhang Rui, the governor of Songzhou, gave his daughter to Li Jing, Songzhou and Zhen[***] cooperated vigorously, and Songzhou became an important distribution place for Zhen[***]'s commodities in Henan, which attracted prosperous commerce and trade.In particular, the salt transported from Zhen [***] to Songzhou was not only of good quality but also only half of the official salt, which attracted many salt merchants from Hedong, Henan, and even Shannanguan, Hebei.Coupled with all kinds of other hot businesses, Songzhou has far surpassed the prosperity when the grass bandits invaded last time.

The grass army attacked again, and the towns of the government and army were still left behind by Huang Chao, leaving the Bian Song area empty.Second, Songzhou is prosperous and prosperous. If you win Songzhou, you will be greatly supplemented, and even threaten the Eastern Capital and shake the Tang Dynasty.On the other hand, Huang Chao and Shang Jun had suffered under Li Jing's hands, and the governor of Songzhou was Li Jing's father-in-law. It would undoubtedly be better if Zhang Rui was taken down.

Songzhou was besieged, and Xuanwu Jiedu envoy Mu Renyu was forced to attack. As a result, Zeng Yuanyu was defeated and hid in the city, not daring to attack again.

At the time of Guan Jian, Zhang Zimian, the governor of Yingzhou in Xuanwu Town, led seven Yingzhou soldiers to help, and Shang Junchang and Huang Chao joined forces to resist.Under Zhang Zimian's command, there were more than [-] grass-killing troops in the seven thousand Yingzhou soldiers in this battle.The two deputy commanders, Du Wei and Cui Anqian, were about to arrive. Seeing that they could not win Songzhou, Huang Chao finally broke through and left. Shangjun went south, Huang Chao went north, and continued to go their own way.

After the Battle of Songzhou, it seemed that the imperial court received another good news about the suppression of bandits in more than a year, but the imperial court started to fight again.

Prime Minister Lu Xie believed that after the siege of Songzhou was relieved, Zhang Zimian's army should be under the command of recruiter Song Wei in accordance with the usual practice, so as to unify the power.

However, Lu Xiangguo's opinion was not unanimously approved by the Zhengshitang, and the opponent was his opponent. Among the four prime ministers at this time, Zheng Tian was relatively the most upright.And Zheng Xiangguo, who has repeatedly proposed to remove Song Wei and propose to replace Song Wei with Cui Anqian and Zhang Zimian, thinks.Song Wei has already gone to Beijing to recuperate from his illness, so he is not suitable to be the envoy at all.Now Yang Fuguang, Cui Anqian, and Du Wei are all recruiting deputy envoys. He believes that Cui Anqian should be replaced by Song Wei.In addition, Zhang Zimian performed outstandingly several times, but Mu Renyu, the commander-in-chief of Zhongwu Town, dereliction of duty. It is not appropriate to continue to let Zhang Zimian belong to Mu Renyu!The imperial court should immediately appoint Cui Anqian as the envoy, and Zhang Zimian as the commander of the Xuanwu Army and be promoted to deputy envoy.

The factional conflicts were sharp, and the two refused to give in. The third prime minister, Wang Duo, saw that the faction of Tian Gonggong and Lu Xie was more powerful in the court.Seeing that even Wang Duo, who he had recommended to join the court, stood on the opposite side, Zheng Tian was so angry that he asked to resign and return to Chanchuan to recuperate.

Everyone can change this kind of trick, and Lu Xie and Wang Duo did not show weakness, and they also requested to be removed from office.All of a sudden, three of the colleagues in the Zhengshitang threatened to put down their picks, and the court was in danger of being paralyzed.

No way, even Tian Lingzi couldn't hold it anymore, so he had to invite the emperor Li Xuan back from the polo field, and the emperor had to suspend his beloved polo and come back to deal with the matter.Li Xuan then issued an edict: All the resignation applications of the three prime ministers were not approved.Then I had a muddle.Zhang Zimian was promoted to recruit deputy envoy, but his [-] elite soldiers had to be handed over to his general Zhang Guan, who was under the command of Xuanwu Town Festival Marshal Mu Renyu, and he went to serve in Cui Anqian's army alone.

In this way, Zhang Zimian won the battle and relieved the danger of Songzhou and Mu Renyu. He was deprived of his military power before he heard of the reward.The Tang court once again used facts to prove what Song Wei had said to Li Jing at the beginning, that it was indeed unfair in rewards and punishments.

Although the situation was chaotic, Shang Junchang cooperated with Huang Chao again before and robbed Songzhou once.But Mr. Shang did this because of his recruitment plan.Last time, it was because I ran too far to Qizhou, so I couldn't recruit security in the end.The purpose of attacking Songzhou this time was to make a big noise and attract the court to offer a higher price.Who would have imagined that they would lure Keiu and Cui Anqian away, and Mu Renyu would be surrounded by them. In the end, they were defeated by 7000 men led by Zhang Zimian, the governor of Yingzhou.

Although Song Zhou parted ways with Huang Chao again later, Mr. Shang never gave up the idea of ​​recruiting security.

Shang Junchang wrote letters to the two deputy commanders, Du Wei and Cui Anqian, hoping to recruit them and serve the court.It's a pity that both Du Qiang and Cui Anqian came from top-notch famous families, and they disdain grass thieves the most. Their letters of surrender were all withheld by the two of them, like stone sinking into the sea, without even a bubble.

However, after the Battle of Songzhou, the matter of Zhao'an finally picked up again.Shang Jun bypassed the two deputy commanders, Du Wei and Cui Anqian, and directly connected with Yang Fuguang, the deputy envoy and superintendent of the capital who was recruiting in Dengzhou. Finally, after several secret envoys exchanges between the two sides, they decided to cooperate in recruiting security. intention.

Lord Shang attached great importance to this recruitment. The last time Qizhou recruited people, it turned out to be a joke. The imperial court recruited the fake Wang Xianzhi.In order to express his sincerity in surrendering and to prevent Qizhou incidents from happening again, Lord Shang personally took several generals to Dengzhou to meet Yang Fuguang in secret to discuss the specific procedures for surrendering to officials.

However, this top-secret news was not known to Xuanwu Jiedu envoy Mu Renyu. The commander who was almost captured by the grass bandits in the Songzhou battle was extremely sensitive at this time. He made a decisive decision and sent Qingqi to go on the way Set up an ambush and captured all Shang Junchang and his party who disguised themselves as a caravan and rushed to Dengzhou, and then shamelessly reported to the court. Several members of the grass thief general.

Yang Fuguang didn't expect such a thing to happen, he immediately played, explaining that Shang Junchang and others came to discuss surrender, and they were not captured by Mu Renyu on the battlefield.But his original secrecy has now become a weak point for Mu Renyu and his court backstage Tian Lingzi, Lu Xie and others to counterattack.

For a while, Mu Renyu and Yang Fuguang kept flying to Chang'an with memorials, arguing with each other, and the political affairs hall, with the participation of several eunuchs in the palace, broke out again.

After arguing and arguing, in the end the emperor Li Yan came to a conclusion very casually, Shangjunchang and others were considered Mu Renyu's military exploits, and then Shangjunchang, who wanted to recruit peace, was taken to Goujiling, a suburb of Chang'an, to be beheaded for public display.

When the news came back, Shang Rang, Cao Shixiong and others were furious.

Angry Shang Rang and others connected Keshan South to Anzhou, Suizhou and other places, and defeated the vanguard troops in Zhongwu and Xuanwu towns.Zhang Guan, who had just succeeded Zhang Zimian and commanded the [-] soldiers and horses, was defeated and fled back from Shen and Cai Erzhou trails.After the victory, the Cao army took advantage of the victory and advanced, and successively captured Fuzhou and Yingzhou.

Jingnan Jiedu envoy Yang Zhiwen was the Jingzhaoyin Yang Zhizhi who reported to the imperial court that after the locust swarms entered Chang'an, instead of harming the crops, they died hugging thorns one after another.Like his younger brother Yang Zhizhi, Yang Zhiwen is also a master at playing with pens, but his ability to deal with practical problems is terrible.

It was the dry season in mid-winter, and the Han River was narrow and shallow, and the movement of grass thieves going south was obvious.Yang Zhiwen's subordinates reminded him that Wang Xianzhi's men are not far from Jiangling, so they should not be taken lightly.However, Mr. Yang, who regards troubled times as governance, still believes that this kind of argument is full of defeatism and belongs to deceitful words to confuse the public, so he is not guarded at all.

On the first day of the first lunar month in the fourth year of Qianfu, Jiangling was under heavy snowfall. When Jiedu envoy Yang Zhiwen was celebrating the New Year with his subordinate officials, Wang Xianzhi's men suddenly appeared at the base of the city. The outer city of Jiangling was immediately captured by grass thieves because of unpreparedness. The generals of the Jingnan Army hurriedly retreated to the inner city, desperately resisting.

Finally, Li Fu, the governor of Shannan Dongdao, got the report and led his troops south to rescue.

When Li Fu went south, he brought a cavalry of 500 men, all in black clothes and armor. As soon as this cavalry went out to fight, it immediately broke through the interception of the grass bandits and killed the Chinese army.Li Fu took advantage of the situation to hide and kill, and the grass thief retreated in defeat.

This black-clothed army is the well-known Shatuo Black Crow Army, which is the forward of the Shatuo Army led by Shatuo General Li Changyan.

Shang Rang was terrified when he saw Shatuo's army coming.Although Sha Tuo was defeated by the imperial court's crusade of the Eight Towns army and horses two years ago, there were still thousands of soldiers and horses left. Li Guochang led them to Xichuan to help Luodiao servant Gao Pian deal with Nanzhao.

Now that Sha Tuo's army has arrived in Jiangling, it is very likely that the famous general Gao Pian has also arrived.

Shang Rang and others did not dare to confront Gao Pian at all, even though the world now calls Li Jing a famous general of his generation, who is unparalleled in combat.But two years ago, the title of the most famous general in the world was well-deservedly held by Luo Diao Shi Yu Gao Pian.This general who defeated Dangxiang, Uighur, and hundreds of thousands of troops in Nanzhao was a real famous general.

Thinking that a good man would not suffer from immediate losses, Shang Rang and others gave up the siege of Jiangling's inner city and escaped from the siege.In order to vent out the anger that has not been fully vented in his heart, he also set a fire on the captured outer city when he left, burning this famous ancient city beyond recognition.

According to the official statement of the imperial court, the fire and the previous looting by the grass army reduced the population of Jingzhou, a metropolis in Central China, which claims to have 30 household registrations, by [-] to [-] percent.

In the Tang Dynasty, the prefectures were one level higher than the prefectures. For example, Chang'an, the capital city, was Jingzhao Mansion, Henan Mansion was the eastern capital, and Taiyuan Mansion was Jinyang, the northern capital.The Jiangling Mansion was promoted from Jingzhou to a mansion. Up to this point, the entire Tang Dynasty was counted as Jingzhao, Henan, Taiyuan, Fengxiang, Chengdu, Hezhong, Jiangling, Xingyuan, Xingde, and Xingtang.And it gradually became a system, where the capital, the capital, and the state where the emperor lived were promoted to the state.

As a metropolis in the land of the Han River, Jiangling Mansion was small in size, but it had a huge population in the late Tang Dynasty.Especially after the Anshi Rebellion, there were many old people in the Central Plains, and the common people in Xiangdeng, the clothes and crowns of the two capitals, all threw themselves into Jiangxiang, so Jingnan Jingyi was ten times its original.This means that the population of Jiangling has increased tenfold compared to that in the early Tang Dynasty.Jiangling was originally a big city. At the beginning of the Sui Dynasty, Jiangling was the capital of the Xiliang Kingdom, and at the end of the Sui Dynasty, it was the capital of Jiangnan Xiaoxiao.

At the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, it was set up as Jingzhou in the Qing Dynasty, and it was changed to Jiangling County in Tianbao.In the first year of Tang Suzong's Shangyuan (758), Jingzhou was the southern capital, and the state was called Jiangling Mansion.

Jiangling City became the southern capital of the Tang Dynasty. After more than a hundred years, Jiangling has 30 households and more than one million people, which is no less than the metropolises like Chang'an and Luoyang.

But because of Yang Zhizhi's incompetence, such a big city was easily breached by grass thieves, and the population dropped by more than [-] households.The metropolis in central China was turned into ruins in an instant.

However, Shang Rang and others did not become arrogant for a long time. After fleeing from Jiangling, they were finally caught by Cui Anqian, the new commander in Shenzhou.

The timid grass thieves who had just lost their real leader and were frightened by Gao Pian and the Shatuo people in Jiangling met Cui Anqian, who had just taken office, was full of fighting spirit, and planned meticulously.After a great battle, the grass bandits were defeated again, more than [-] people were killed in battle, and more than [-] people were captured and surrendered.Shang Rang and others were seriously injured, so they had to flee southeast.

Cui Anqian, who had won the battle, was unwilling to give the thieves any chance, so he took advantage of the victory to pursue them, and with the commander-in-chief of the recruiter, he sent messengers to mobilize soldiers and horses from various towns to chase and intercept them, weaving them into a huge Luo, ready to wipe them all out.

At the same time, Gao Pian and Sha Tuo's army, which had frightened Shang Rang and others before, had indeed arrived in Jingnan.Not long ago, Chief Dragon, the first emperor of Dali Kingdom, who had fought against Datang for 16 years, finally died in the front line of the confrontation with Gao Pian. The new emperor retreated, and southern Xinjiang was peaceful.Tian Lingzi transferred his brother Chen Jingxuan to take over the post of Xichuan Jiedushi, and finally transferred the most powerful general from Xichuan to Jingnan to accept the post of Jingnan Jiedushi of Yang Zhizhi who had just been defeated. .

At the end of the first lunar month, Cui An sneaked in, and the officers and soldiers of various routes blocked the grass army such as 'Wang Xianzhi' and Shang Rang in Huangmei County, east of Qizhou.

Under the command of Cui Anqian, Du Wei, Gao Pian, Li Guochang, Zhang Zimian and other experienced generals of the Tang army, the Tang army in various towns fiercely attacked 'Wang Xianzhi'.Although the grass army at this time has a lot of soldiers and horses, it is always dominated by hungry people along the road, and there are not many really experienced old grass thieves.The quality is not as good as Tang Jun, and after being surrounded and losing their mobility, under such a powerful attack, they gradually fell into chaos.

After barely parrying for a while, they soon lost their ability to resist, and the battle situation turned into a one-sided massacre.

Under the waving of Tang Jun's sword, the flying flesh and blood intertwined with the shrill screams, shaking the sky, rendering the wilderness of Huangmei into a scene of purgatory.

At nightfall, the massacre-style battle finally came to an end. Over [-] corpses were already lying on the outskirts of Huangmei County.Although most of these corpses were just civilians who had just come in, this was a great victory for the generals of the Tang Army.

Because of the lessons learned from the Songwei Yizhou battle, Cui Anqian did not dare to be sloppy, and immediately began to search for the whereabouts of the bandit leaders.The result was satisfactory. After careful inspection and identification, Wang Xianzhi's blood-stained corpse was also found out from the pile of dead people.Then, his head was ceremoniously cut off, put into a box after simple embalming treatment, and was ready to be sent to Chang'an for inspection!

Looking at Wang Xianzhi's staring eyes in the box, Cui Anqian felt a burst of relief and pride from the bottom of his heart.Song Wei, the former recruitment envoy, led the "Grass Army" that killed tens of 10 people who were unjust. After he took office, it took less than two months for him to be close to success!The number one thief leader, Wang Xianzhi, had already been shot to death. The grass bandits ran rampant for a while, and there was only one solitary yellow nest left. It shouldn't be difficult to solve it, right?

Except for a few thieves like Shang Rang, a large number of other generals under Wang Xianzhi have either been killed or surrendered.

Among the three grass thieves, Wang Xianzhi, the most famous, has already died twice, and important generals like Shang Junchang have also died. Others such as Liu Hanhong and Bi Shiduo have surrendered one after another.Another strand of Liu Yanzhang, who split from Wang Xianzhi, was wiped out by General Gao Pian from Xichuan not long ago, and Wang Ying, who had made a big noise in western Zhejiang, was also wiped out by Zhen [***]!

Now, there is only a small yellow nest left, and its destruction is just around the corner.

Chief Long Shilong, an old friend of Nanzhao, finally died. This 18-year reign, at the beginning, he refused to change his name because he had repeated a word with Emperor Taizong Li Shimin and Emperor Xuanzong Li Longji, so the Tang Dynasty refused to give it to him. Canonized, and finally rebelled against the Tang Dynasty in anger, and brazenly changed the name of the country to Dali Kingdom and became the first emperor of Nanmanzi. In 18 years, the whole country with a scale of more than 20 invaded the border of the Tang Dynasty six times. beat.Now he is finally dead, and his son who ascended the throne is only a teenager.Now it has reached a peace agreement with the Tang Dynasty.

As for Li Jing, the youngest famous general in the Tang Dynasty, news of success is spreading frequently. He led his army across the sea into the Northern Liao Expedition. He won many battles and regained most of Liaodong Island.It even occupied Pingzhou, Youzhou Town, where the imperial court had never had an educational system for more than a hundred years.

With Li Jing's current offensive, it is very hopeful to win Liaodong, or even Liaoxi, and then recover the entire old land of the Anton Governor's Mansion.

The revival of the Tang Dynasty seems to be just around the corner! (To be continued.)