479th Spring and Autumn to the Warring States Period (II)

Before the alliance between Wei and Yan and Liaodong, the twenty vassal states of the Wei Xia Empire tacitly resisted all forms of land cession in order to curb the imperial family's reduction of feudal domains.

For example, the occupation of Chifeng City by Zhao and the occupation of Tongliao City by Yan are not part of land division and are more like boundary surveys during northward expansion. Another example is the control of the Wei State by the Yue State, which never dared to announce the merger of the two countries, and was forced to allow the Wei royal family to continue the inheritance in the form of a puppet.

Even if the three families of Henan were deliberately weakened in the past years, the rule of the Lu State in Henan Province was very tactful. In order to put an end to the merger, when the three families divided the Henan Province, the Lu State split the earldom to comfort the Zhou State and the Zhao State, and allowed the other prefectures and counties of the Henan Province to continue to exist independently under the Henan Province system. Until now, the political status of Henan Province is incompatible with the native Lu State, and the history of Henan Assassin of Henan Province appointed by Lu State must go through the form to report to the Imperial Kyoto. Moreover, the people of Henan Province generally resisted the oppression of the ruling class of the Lu State, and many people were reluctant to call themselves Lu people.

The colonies were allowed to be easier to belong to, and annexation was forbidden in Kyushu.

The feudal kingdom was afraid that the imperial family would cut down the feudal domain, and the imperial family was also afraid that the annexation would give birth to a strong feudal domain, and the psychology of throwing rats and jealousy led everyone to maintain a balance all the time.

Mao Jiuzhong changed the way he played in shock, and he kicked over the unspoken rules of Kyushu Shudi prohibiting mergers. Taking Chinese history as a mirror, this seems to be a drastic change from the Spring and Autumn Period to the Warring States Period. Before that, everyone admired the game of hegemony, only pursuing a rich country and a strong army, not merging the land of other countries, and not recording the people of other countries; After that, land annexation became more and more frequent, and all countries pursued to obtain their own land, and the weak countries gradually perished with less and less land, and the powerful countries snowballed stronger and stronger.

Some people are excited about the Seven Heroes of the Warring States period, but more people want to maintain the order of the king.

The Zunwang Zaoyi faction fiercely criticized the Liaodong alliance between Wei and Yan and demanded that Wei return its illegal occupation of Yan. However, how could the Wei interest group, which had finally obtained access to the sea, be willing to give up a large area of fertile coastal land?

Wei's insistence immediately ushered in waves of criticism. In short, Mao Jiuzhong won the Wei-Yan War, but his reputation was instantly ruined. Even, even Qi Jiguang, the prime minister of Wu Guocheng, was deeply affected, and not long after the alliance between Wei and Yan and Liaodong, Qi Jiguang announced his appointment in a depressed manner. Wu Weizhong, the former general of Qi Jiguang's ministry, shouldered the responsibility of the prime minister of Wu State, and quickly stated the political attitude of Wu State: "The ancestral rules cannot be broken, and the Liaodong Alliance is an illegal alliance. ”

How did Wei deal with this crisis?

Wei first misinterpreted the scope of Kyushu with sophistry, saying that the land ceded by Yan did not belong to traditional Chinese Kyushu, not to mention that the poor and weak Zhao and Song dynasties were the prosperous Tang Dynasty that the people had always been proud of, and the Central Plains could not be placed in counties and townships. Public opinion naturally refuted it, saying that the Liu Han Dynasty more than 1,700 years ago had already set up Youzhou Liaoxi County and Liaodong County in this land, how could the territory of Yanguo Liaoxi not belong to the traditional Kyushu?

Secondly, Wei Guo knew the truth of what was right, and claimed that this was the only case, and he would never spy on other Kyushu familiar lands. In order to show his sincerity, Wei stopped interfering in Zhao's internal affairs, and even took the initiative to send Wei Shunzong, the king of Zhao, who had fled to Wei on his own horse in the past, to Lu along the coastal road.

One is afraid of Mao Jiuzhong's reputation in a hundred battles, and the other is that Wei actively shows goodwill, and the sanctions of the imperial family and the nineteen feudal states have always stopped at public opinion condemnation and trade blockade, and failed to truly form a warlike coalition army. Perhaps in order to appease the hostility of various countries, Mao Jiuzhong immediately adjusted the direction of his troops and began to integrate the steppe tribes of the Mongolian Plateau.

Speaking of the Mongolian Plateau, as the military tactics of hot weapons represented by the phalanx of Vietnamese warriors became more and more mature, the threat of the steppe cavalry also decreased. The reason why the Wei Xia Empire failed to formally annex the Mongolian Plateau was entirely because the vassal states of Yan, Wei, Jin, Zhou, and Tang were holding each other back, and no one wanted the other to take the Mongolian Plateau as their own. Because of the covert support of the vassal states, the Mongolian Plateau also presented a fragmented pattern, and there was no large power.

At the end of the Wei-Yan War, the Yan State exchanged the conditions for a complete withdrawal from the Mongolian Plateau for the guarantee of territory north of Lake Belga, and the Wei State soldiers suddenly covered all the steppe tribes. Moreover, there is no country in the eyes of the nobles, and in order to ensure the safety of their own territory, many nobles of the Yan Kingdom have taken the initiative to take refuge in Mao Jiuzhong, who has won a hundred battles. If it weren't for the fact that the eastern and southern coastal forces of Yan had the support of the maritime vassals, the top leaders of Yan would even dare to disregard national interests and conclude an offensive and defensive alliance with Wei and resist the "public opinion coercion" that demanded that Wei return Yan to Liaoxi.

With the cooperation of some Yan nobles, Mao Jiuzhong completely conquered the Mongolian Plateau in just two years.

Wei became even stronger.

The joint sanctions of the remaining vassal states pale in comparison.

By 1593, although the cabinets of the vassal states were still harshly criticizing the Wei state, the trade blockade gradually became a non-existent effect, and a large number of merchants unscrupulously sent strategic goods to the Wei state.

However, everyone underestimated Mao Jiuzhong's ambition.

In 1593, Mao Jiuzhong gathered the young and strong of the grassland tribes, with the Wei infantry cavalry as the core elite, and the grassland cavalry as cannon fodder or servant soldiers, and attacked the Western Regions.

Speaking of the Western Regions, the Wei Xia Empire's control over the Western Regions was far less than that of the Li Tang Dynasty. In the early days of the Wei Xia Dynasty, the royal family was busy cutting the feudal unification, and the feudal states were busy rebelling against the feudal domain, so they had no time to attack the Western Regions; In the later years of the Wei Xia Dynasty, the impact of geographical discoveries, trade and colonization caused the empire's center of gravity to shift to the sea, and it was too lazy to spend time conquering the desert. As for the Tang Dynasty, it only has the territory of Gansu Province and Ningxia Province, and its population size and economic scale cannot form an absolute advantage over the grassland tribes. In the early days of the Wei Xia Dynasty, the remnants of the Mengyuan Dynasty repeatedly raided the land of the Tang Dynasty to burn, kill and loot, which was really miserable; When the military tactics of hot weapons disintegrated the threat of the steppe tribes, the neighboring feudal states such as the Wei State, the Zhou State, and the Han State came to pull back the legs, and the Tang State was not allowed to calmly inherit the glory of the Li Tang Dynasty.

By 1593, through the continuous efforts of the ancestors, the Tang State annexed Qinghai Province to the south and indirectly puppeted Wusizang; To the west, it extended to the Hami region, and was in a stalemate with the Yarkand Khanate in the Turpan region. The Turpan region is basically the limit of the Wei Xia Empire's management of the Western Regions.

And Mao Jiuzhong is obviously unwilling to maintain such a pattern.

In 1593, Mao Jiuzhong drove the servant soldiers of the grassland tribe into the Western Regions. For trivial and frequent pursuits, Mao Jiuzhong was handed over to the grassland cavalry, which could not only reduce the population density of the conquered areas through killing, but also reduce the youth density of the grassland tribes in the conquered areas through war losses. Only when it was difficult to gnaw nails or fortified cities, Mao Jiuzhong dispatched the elite infantry of Wei to concentrate artillery to destroy the luck of the enemy chieftain.

Oirat Khanate, perished.

Yarkand Khanate, perished.

In just one western expedition, Mao Jiuzhong swept across the Western Regions, greatly increasing the western borders of the Weixia Empire.

This is still not Mao Jiuzhong's limit.

In 1594, Mao Jiuzhong was shocked and led his troops to continue the westward expedition.

Bukhara Khanate, perished.

Khiva Khanate, perished.

Kazakh Khanate, perished.

Persia, dismembered.

In the four years from 1594 to 1598, Mao Jiuzhong and his generals roamed Central Asia, and their troops were invincible. It was only at this time that the vassals of the Weixia Empire took a cold breath and understood Mao Jiuzhong's ambition: Mao Jiuzhong wanted to be Genghis Khan and rebuild the Mongol Empire!

It turned out that the weakness of Wei Shunzong, the king of Zhao, to Lu in the past was just an illusion, and Mao Jiuzhong actually wanted to annex the grassland tribes to enhance the strength of Wei, and then look back at the Central Plains to confront the feudal domains. Although Wei Xia started by overthrowing the Mongol Yuan and underestimated the Mongol cavalry of the Cold Weapon Era with the military might of the Yue Wuzu phalanx and the Wu Wushu phalanx, no one dared to really underestimate the threat of the Mongol Empire. Wei has a mature army of hot weapons, mature logistics construction, and an invincible commander like Mao Jiuzhong, if Wei is allowed to establish a new Mongol Empire, the vassal states of the Central Plains will never sleep.

The state of Wei must be contained!

The vassal states of the Central Plains were afraid that Wei would gradually annex with an invincible army and military might, and the royal family was even more afraid of the world, and from then on the surname Mao was not surnamed Wei. In the face of the threat of Wei, the vassal states of the Central Plains united as never before, except for the Tang State, which declared armed neutrality in fear of the Wei army, and the Yan State, which was divided in internal affairs, the imperial family and the 17 vassal states quickly signed a strategic cooperation agreement.

Soon, the opportunity came.

In 1598, Mao Jiusheng, the Duke of Wei, died, and his eldest son Mao Shangde succeeded him as the thirteenth Duke of Guo.

The vassal states of the Central Plains took the opportunity to divide the relationship between Mao Jiuzhong and Mao Shangde's uncle and nephew, and spread rumors that Mao Jiuzhong would usurp the throne when he returned from the war. This rumor actually can't stand scrutiny, Mao Jiuzhong rampant in West Asia, Central Asia and the Mongolian Plateau, and the number of strong soldiers is counted in hundreds of thousands, and he has already usurped the throne if he wants to. However, Mao Shangde is afraid, Mao Jiuzhong helped Mao Jiusheng usurp the throne in the past, who knows that he will not come again? So, at the suggestion of his close ministers, Mao Shangde changed the title of Count Mao Jiuzhong of Shuofang to Count Shengmeng, meaning that he was more powerful than the Mongol Empire.

At the same time, Mao Shangde sent an envoy to the royal family, hoping that the royal family would upgrade the Count of Shengmeng to the Duke of Shengmeng. The Wei domain was a dukedom and could only be divided into counts. If the royal family bestows the duke, the Duke of Shengmeng will suddenly be on the same level as the Duke of Wei, which is equivalent to the same clan and divided into two countries.

Mao Shangde's Shengmeng Earldom proposed details, and the Mongolian Plateau and the territory of the Western Regions were assigned to Wei, which was his selfishness; The newly conquered territories such as the Kazakh Khanate, the Khiva Khanate, the Bukhara Khanate, and Iran, knowing that Mao Shangde was unable to receive them, generously allocated them to the Count of Shengmeng. The Countdom of Shengmeng includes the real-world counties of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, part of Iran, and part of Afghanistan, which is much larger than the provinces directly under the crown and is perhaps the largest countdom in the world.

In all fairness, the idea of the Countdom of Shengmeng is quite good.

For Mao's Wei State, one case is divided into two points, and the future prospects are brilliant; As far as the vassal states of the Central Plains are concerned, just like the vassal states surnamed Wei are now attacking each other, when the Wei states are divided, the descendants of the two countries will gradually breed contradictions because of interests. As long as Mao Jiuzhong does not have the ability to harass the Central Plains with the help of the human resources of the conquered lands, what if he is allowed to be the Duke of Shengmeng?