With the sound of beating drums, Zeng Gon, who was the object of the sacrifice flag, had a stiff face and a depressed face because of taking special drugs to relieve pain, and the moment when the blood splashed and the head fell to the ground in the thunderous cry one after another, it was also the time when the nearly 10,000 righteous soldiers at the peak of the lineup swore to fight again.

The reason is that he has just received an urgent report from the news of the northwest garrison, and the remnants of the Western Plains Barbarian have attracted the Southern Zhao soldiers to cross the border and plunder. And it just so happened that the latest batch of new soldiers from Chaoshan, about two battalions of rotating men and horses, also arrived at Bijinggang as scheduled and traced the water to Jiaozhou.

Therefore, in a short period of time when three times and five divisions were divided by two, the work of reorganizing and preparing for war was completed and the battalion was drawn out to fight; This kind of response efficiency and speed, even those in Jiaozhou City, who really want to make a gesture of continued comfort and dissuasion, are a little unable to react or caught off guard.

With Daluo City in the distance behind him, Zhou Huai'an couldn't help but breathe a sigh again, afraid that Wangyi, a big city with more than 100,000 mouths, would be drowned in blood again; Only this time there was no need to dirty the hands of the rebels; This is also the last letter of surrender handed over to the local subordinate armed forces led by Qu Chengyu to express their position and attitude.

Of course, the so-called Nanzhao invasion, which was the introduction to all this, was simply a false news that was deceived and concealed from the world.

Today's Nanzhaoman, after intermittent wars with the Tang Dynasty, is already unable to support the national strength and has fallen into the decline of "repeated overturns, national attrition"; In particular, after the crushing defeats in Cochin more than 10 years ago and in Nishicheon five years ago, it even reached the point of conscripting men under the age of 15 as soldiers and letting women work instead of men.

Therefore, after the Battle of the Dadu River five years ago, the newly succeeded Nanzhao King Longshun took the initiative to hand over the prince to Chang'an to apologize for his crimes under the threat of soldiers from Gao Yu, and served as a proton for the two countries to strike the army and negotiate peace.

In normal history, as long as more than ten years later, in the fourth year of Qianning (897), Zheng Maisi, a powerful minister surnamed Han surname, instructed the army to kill Yang Deng, the king of Nanzhao, Longshun, and coerced the young lord Shun Huazhen to control the government as a Qing Ping official.

In the second year of Emperor Zhaozong of the Tang Dynasty (902), Zheng Maihei, a powerful minister who felt that he was full-fledged, simply raised troops to kill the lord Shun Huazhen and more than 800 members of the Nanzhao royal family, destroyed Nanzhao and replaced him, and established the Great Changhe State.

In the third year of Tang Tiancheng (928) five generations later, Yang Ganzhen, a Qingping official from a large family in China, killed Zheng Longling, the emperor of Dachangheguo, destroyed Dachangheguo, and supported Zhao Shanzheng, a Qingping official, to establish Datianxingguo. In the fourth year of the Later Tang Dynasty (929), Yang Ganzhen abolished Zhao Shanzheng and became self-reliant, changed the name of the country to Dayining, and built the Yuan Dynasty.

Then there was the second year of Tianfu of the Later Jin Dynasty (937), Duan Siping, the envoy of Tonghai Jiedu, united the 37 departments of eastern Yunnan to march into Yangtho Bacheng to defeat the Yang family, and established the Dali regime of the Duan family, which was more familiar to later generations. During this period, with the fall of the regional tyrant of Nanzhao, these related southwestern barbarians were also chaotic, and they were unable to take care of the Han land for a long time.

This is the biggest difference and gap between the great unified dynasty of the Central Plains, which has a long history, and those who have been whirling or short-lived in the pan of the nine sides and the four empires, and the barbarian forces and local powers; Whether it was the Eastern and Western Turks of the early Tang Dynasty, Goguryeo, or the Nanzhao and Tubo in the middle and late periods, they could not escape this similar fate and ending.

With its own huge amount of manpower, material resources and resources, even if it suffers many losses and suffers heavy losses, it can always recover; But the opponent could not afford a few defeats, and it was difficult to sustain itself and fell into famine and civil strife. Therefore, in the end, through the disparity in national strength, any object that tried to challenge was ground to death.

After Nanzhao ceased his army many years ago due to internal troubles, the main enemy in Annam was located in the south of Guang and Rongzhi, and the Xiyuan Barbarians in the west of Yong and Gui, with Huang and Wei, Zhou, Nong and other major leaders each on one side; The Luo clan that was defeated before was just a new big chieftain who should rise from time to time.

Since the defeat of the army, which lost most of its strength and the disappearance of the current chieftain, it has long been disintegrated and disintegrated in the midst of the confrontation and hardship and civil strife between the neighbors in the mountains vying for territory, just as all sides have killed rivers of blood; There is no spare energy to attract the Southern Zhao soldiers into the army.

However, in the Northern Song Dynasty in later generations, there was a Nong Zhigao who was driven out by the Jiaozhi regime, who made the two roads in Guangnan rotten and besieged Guangzhou, and finally relied on the famous general Di Qing to re-pacify.

Soon after the Nong Zhigao rebellion was put down, the Song-Yue Xining War broke out between the Song Dynasty and the Jiaozhi Li Dynasty. After the war, Zhao Xu, the emperor of the Song Dynasty, on the grounds of "desolate distance" and "miasma", gave Guangyuan Prefecture to Jiaozhi on the grounds that Guangyuan Prefecture (now Daxin County, Guangxi Province to Langshan Qixi, Vietnam) was remote and difficult to defend.

This kind of exploit, known as the Emperor Song Dynasty and the prosperous era of land cutting, simply did not allow the French to fight a great victory in Zhennanguan, and the land compensation was paid by my Qing Dynasty.

According to the news coming out of the mountains one after another, these old barbarian clans, who occupy a large area of territory and minerals in the Yujiang (left and right) river basins, have no intention of going south out of the plains to confront the rebel army that is in the limelight; On the contrary, he has an attitude of ambition to win the territory and foundation left by the emerging force of Roche.

They even sent private messengers down the river to the newly built fortifications of the rebels at the mouth of the river and on the side of the mountain. On the one hand, he hoped to use the products in the mountains to trade with the newly rising rebel forces from Guangzhou to Huzhou, and on the other hand, he also provided a lot of evidence of collusion between Luo Shiman and Nanzhao.

Therefore, to create the illusion of a Nanzhao barbarian invasion, it is simply not too simple.

The next time flew by, and another month and a half passed.

On a small mound in the coastal plain in the southernmost part of the Thirteen Prefectures of Annam, in the territory of Tang Lam (present-day Thua Thien Hue Province in central Vietnam); Many shirtless natives were digging around a large pit. Baskets of freshly turned dirt and stones were brought out like water, and then stacked into low walls.

"Is this the bronze pillar in the south of Ma Fubo? It's been a thousand years in the blink of an eye. ”

Zhou Huai'an sighed as he looked at the dark green mottled object in front of him that had been revealed from the rocks and dirt, almost rusted into one with the earth.

Then, it was to renovate and protect the copper pillars, but fortunately, when the Xiyuan Barbarian Luo clan was defeated before, a large number of bronze artifacts were seized and there were still a lot of leftovers; Then routinely erect a monument on the side as a souvenir;

After all, looking for such relics that prove the sovereignty of China since ancient times, and leaving his mark on the side, is also one of the few leisure pleasures he has when he marches in Annam.

In fact, looking back at the beginning, Qu Chengyu looked better than Zhou Huai'an expected, so he didn't even have a chance to use some of the remedies prepared in advance and the mistakes behind the mountain, and the matter was already over, except that there seemed to be a lot of dead people.

Within three days of the righteous army's expedition, there was an accident in Jiaozhou City. Some people raised troops in the inner city to rebel, raising the banner of avenging Zenggon, and brought in all the nearby rich people's settlements, and began to attack the government and set fire to the market.

Although this farcical rebellion was quickly suppressed by the superior number of Tutuan soldiers in the city, it was only a prelude to the beginning. For in the strongholds where these rebels originated, many important pieces of evidence were found; Including the source of weapons and materials pointing to many of the chiefs in the city, as well as the correspondence written by the former pseudo-capital protector Zeng Gon, and the letters of private collusion with the invading Xiyuanman.

Then, in the thick of blood that rolled from the heads of the people killed; The Wei clan and the Rao clan in the city, who had gone through the invasion of Nanzhao and the barbarian rebellion, and several regime changes were still standing, and the old clans and big surnames who had always stood behind the scenes and laughed at the corresponding price, together with more relatives, clansmen, tribesmen and family members who were vassals of them, fell under the butcher's knife raised by the emerging local heroes led by the Qu clan.

In the end, in addition to the many slaves and maids who were of other uses, only the women and the children who did not know what was going on were spared, but the fate that awaited them was to go to Guangzhou as criminal dependents, and thus spent the rest of their lives in a foreign land.

Although in the end there may be some male remnants of the dead species; For example, a clansman who is in a foreign country, or a distant branch of a clan who lives in a distant country, has been able to escape; But it has an impact on the subsequent situation and the situation; And even if any of them want to take risks to take revenge and counterattack in the future, they must first survive the rebellion and subordinate the armed forces, and those who can be liquidated and recourse to the new wealthy families who have ascended to the top.

The sequelae of this incident is that it has faintly caused the confrontation and separation between the new and old gentry and wealthy families in Jiaozhou, which can only be reconciled and balanced by the righteous army; And Qu Chengyu, who has attracted a lot of hatred as the initiator and leader of all this, has also been faintly cut off from a certain possibility of the future in Annam.

But as a positive effect and reaction in front of the eye, it is also very strong and immediate; For example, a series of measures to improve the people's livelihood and the economic environment, such as building roads and opening canals, collecting grain, scrapping customs and dismantling cards, redeeming slaves and maids, relieving the poor, checking household registration, measuring acres of land, and so on, have greatly reduced the resistance they have encountered both openly and covertly inside and outside Jiaozhou.

In other words, in this era, the degree of resistance and psychological threshold of the local gentry are actually maintained in the hands of the so-called "hometown wishes" and "public opinion" dominated (represented) by the gentry of the big clans in these places. As long as it can be cut and eradicated cleanly, it is possible to continue to maintain the rule by relying on the psychological deterrence caused by terrorist means alone.

Therefore, in the local area, the rebels re-sold a number of captured barbarians as mercenary slaves; After redeeming many slaves and maids in the city at the cost of being a citizen, the number of registered Dingkou in Jiaozhou City increased by as much as 20,000 or 30,000 at once.

Of course, the ransom offered by the rebels was not gratuitous; On the one hand, things that are too easy to get are not necessarily cherished, or that free things do not make people grateful for long; On the other hand, it is semi-compulsive to give them a process of adaptation and a chance to relearn the means of livelihood;

In this way, they will not become new social problems and hidden dangers because they have no livelihood to do. This is also the lesson learned and the mature model learned during the period of Chaoxun in various states and Guangzhou.

These slaves and maids, who were released as civil citizens, had to work for several years in the workshops or workshops to which the rebels belonged, and in the coastal granges and ports, before they could be regarded as the redemption funds paid for the liquidation of the land; Then, in this process, they originally lacked the means of livelihood, but they naturally became bound and implicated with the rebels, and in the future, they had a high probability of continuing to stay or become the rebels' supporters.

(End of chapter)