The nineteenth year of Xuanping was definitely the year of the greatest changes after the Tang Empire unified China.

And this change is not simply a military victory, territorial expansion, the restoration of people's livelihood, or any political innovation, technological progress, but a huge change in the whole society.

This year, people began to travel by train and boat, and the travel time between Jinling City and Shanghai was compressed into one day!

In order to compete with the Feng Shipping Company and defend the name of the first shipping company in China, the Lady of the Yangtze River Shipping Company took the risk of continuous sailing day and night, and did not hesitate to risk the damage of the steam engine and even the destruction of the ship, creating a record for the sailing time of Jinling City to Shanghai.

They kept the average speed at more than 12 knots in less than 18 hours with the sails in full swing and the steam engine at full power, and they made history!

On the Jingzhen line, the Zhili Railway Company began to shout out the slogan of "one day round trip", people start from Jinling City in the morning, arrive at Zhenjiang at noon, and then take the train back to Jinling City, and be able to return to Jinling City in the evening, completing the one-day round-trip journey!

This year, a large number of factories began to apply higher efficiency, lower cost high-pressure industrial steam engines, and produced more and cheaper goods, and then spread the market.

Thanks to the development of steam engine technology, the cost of power in factories that have already adopted high-pressure steam engines has fallen by at least more than half, which reduces the commodity

In this year, the Tang Dynasty newspaper officially announced that the heroic Tang Dynasty had recovered most of the territory south of Heilongjiang, and the blessings of the Son of Heaven would be sprinkled all over this land, so that this land that had been occupied by barbarians for a long time would return to the glory of Chinese civilization.

Not only did the empire control all the territory south of the Heilongjiang River, but migrants were gradually moving into the northeast, and the military announced that it would continue to advance northward, one by one as far as the Arctic Ocean on the map.

In this year, the Tang Army tried to launch a medium-scale offensive in the northwest region to test the attitude of the Tatars and their strength, about 10,000 cavalry crossed the Jiayu Pass and attacked the Tubo region that had been completely controlled by the Tatars.

Immediately afterwards, instead of taking military action to retaliate, the Tatars took the initiative to send envoys to sue for peace with the empire, for which they were willing to pay a huge price, not only sent a number of Tatar nobles and Tatars from the Western Regions, Central Asia and other places plundered many princesses and other foreign nobles, but also countless gold, silver, cattle and sheep and even the most valuable strategic materials 'horses', but also expressed their willingness to continue to serve the Tang Dynasty as the suzerain, continue to take the 'Tang Jinguo' as the country name, Altan Khan to ' The king of Shunyi regarded himself as a tributary every year, and they would rather pay a huge price, all they wanted was that the empire would not send troops to attack them.

The wise and great Son of Heaven had an insight into the conspiracy of these barbarians and knew that this was nothing more than a delaying tactic by the Tatars, who were trying to paralyze the Tang Empire so that they could draw more troops to the west.

According to the news circulating in the northwest region, the Tatars have become addicted to playing the western expedition, and when the Eastern Chagatai Khanate was forced to surrender, they could not take care of themselves and were forced to submit, and now the Tatars are fighting with the Kazakh Khanate and the Yarkand Khanate further west, as for why they are fighting with the two khanates in the west at the same time, and why, Altan Khan feels that he is too awesome, and he can single-handedly fight the two opposite families!

Therefore, now the main cavalry of the Tatars is in the west, fighting with the Kazakh Khanate and the Yarkand Khanate, which is behind the empire after a vote, facing the dilemma of fighting on two fronts, the Altan Khan is also simply, anyway, the Tang Empire can't be beaten, simply sue for peace, as for the lost goods on the eastern front, just grab more from the west.

That's why Altan Khan took the initiative to sue for peace!

On the part of the empire, considering the current supply difficulties in the northwest region, the Northwest Railway will not be able to see until several years later, and it will be too expensive and difficult to maintain a large army for a long time.

At the same time, it is also in consideration of the misfortune to the west, let the Tatars go to Central Asia and even West Asia and Eastern Europe first, and use the hands of the Tatars to kill the local barbarian natives such as the Kazakh Khanate, the Yarkand Khanate, and even the Persian Safavid Dynasty and the Ottoman Empire further west.

It is normal to alleviate the resistance encountered by the empire during its large-scale westward expeditions in the future, and to destroy the country wherever the Tatars go with the urine of foreign races.

Of course, the rapprochement with the Tatars does not exclude the relationship between dozens of foreign women sent by Altan Khan, in addition to the Tatar people's own aristocratic women, well, including one of Altan Khan's granddaughters, there are also many princesses from different countries and nationalities, each with different customs, and so on.

And Altan Khan also spent a lot of effort in order to curry favor with the Son of Heaven, at least he understood Li Xuan's aesthetics, and the women he sent over were all in line with the aesthetics of the Son of Heaven.

Under the combination of many circumstances, the Tang Empire reluctantly accepted Altan Khan's request for peace.

However, it is only a superficial promise, in fact, the Northwest Railway is still under construction, and the army is also hoarding grain, grass and ammunition in the northwest region again, when the army is ready, then the next attack is inevitable.

As for the peace treaty and the like, alas, what, anyway, it is not the first time that the Tang Empire has torn up the peace treaty with the Tatars, and it has already been torn up once during the Battle of Hetao, and it is not a big problem to tear up the second time.

This year, the Navy announced that the round-the-world fleet they had sent three years ago had successfully completed its first round-the-world voyage, and that the expedition fleet had set off from Shanghai that year, passed through Fuso, and went all the way east, and successively arrived at Midway, the Sandalwood Islands, and the west coast of North America.

Then the fleet went south along the western coastline of North America, entered Central America, then South America, and finally bypassed the southernmost tip of South America.

The expedition fleet then sailed north along the eastern coast of South America, but it was not long before it was met by the Portuguese, who controlled the coastline of Brazil, and although the Portuguese and the Tang Empire were in a cooperative relationship, the cooperation was accompanied by competition, and the Portuguese did not welcome the ships of the Tang Empire in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans.

When the Portuguese rejected the Datang expedition fleet to enter the port for supplies, and even rejected the offer of the Datang expedition fleet to anchor outside the port and then buy supplies with money.

In the face of this rude provocation of the Portuguese, the expedition fleet was forced to carry out 'active offensive self-defense', by shelling this port of the Portuguese to show the friendship of the Tang Empire, and sent more than 200 people to land with bullets to cordially comfort the local Portuguese garrison, killing and wounding hundreds of people, this is the harvest of the friendship of the Portuguese, successfully obtained food and fresh water and other supplies.

After that, in order to avoid trouble, the expedition team directly changed course, abandoned the plan to go to the east coast of North America, and prepared to cross the South Atlantic directly.

In the end, they successfully reached the west coast of Africa, then bypassed the Cape of Good Hope, and entered the Indian Ocean, which was nothing curious for the Tang Empire, they did not go to India, but crossed the Indian Ocean, using the ocean current to go directly to Australia, and after arriving in Australia, they returned north into the South Sea, and finally returned to the port of Shanghai.

The whole circumnavigation voyage lasted about three years, and the reason why it took so much time was that in addition to sailing, they had to spend a lot of time searching for supplies, repairing ships, and also needing to explore the land they encountered along the way.

And complete a very important task, that is, in all the places you encounter along the way, whether it is an island or a mainland or something, all of them are erected a stone monument, all of which are the territory of the Tang Dynasty!

This time the Yellow Ball voyage, on the surface, did not bring any economic benefits, and even had no pioneering significance, because the Europeans had already explored the round-the-world route, but it was still very important for the Tang Empire.

This will play a very important role in the future actions of the Tang Empire on a global scale.

Based on the continued exploration of the Pacific Ocean and the Americas, the Navy has officially proposed that it is time to begin colonizing the Americas.

Now the empire has colonized Midway and Honolulu, although there is no formal administrative area of overseas territories, but only the military district of the navy has been administered, but there is no doubt that these two places are already part of the empire's territory.

The Tang Navy-led immigration program has successively immigrated nearly 3,000 people to the Honolulu Islands, and established small ports there, and it is expected that in the near future, these two places will also set up formal administrative regions like other overseas territories, becoming one of the many overseas territories of the empire.

Not now, of course!

At present, the Sandalwood Islands are still too far away from the mainland, and for the sake of ease of management, they are only managed in the name of a naval base for the time being.

And this place, but also the future Tang Empire to the Americas of the bridgehead, the navy attaches great importance to it, although there are only 3,000 immigrants in the local area, but the navy has set up a complete detachment here, that is, the sandalwood detachment.