To be honest, since he left Lujiang, Xue Rengui always felt that his heart was not steady, Lujiang is a place of right and wrong, at least before all the money is in place, it is still very unstable, Su Hou Ye has the title of Qincha, in fact, he can't control the local military and politics of Lujiang, not to mention that Lujiang is not an important strategic place in the first place, and now it is not a war period, and Lujiang can't be fought in a war, so Lujiang doesn't have any army at all.

Although the Luzhou Thorn Shi is a guy who likes to pat on the back, there is no difference in government affairs, and Su Hou Ye seems to be quite optimistic about the Luzhou Thorn History, but it is the Lujiang County Order Wujiang, which does not look very reliable, there are only one or two hundred people in Lujiang who are able to catch this kind of people, and there are not as many as the three hundred guards brought by Su Hou Ye himself, Xue Rengui has also seen the more than two hundred people, bullying the common people is a good hand, if it really comes in handy, it will collapse at the touch of an iron, Xue Rengui feels that he is enough to defeat more than two hundred people alone.

However, he is the commander of the imperial court, it is an iron law that soldiers do not interfere in politics, and it is also an iron law that soldiers do not interfere in local military affairs, he can't make any effective sanctions against these people, at most, when they bully the people, he sends his subordinates to beat up those who are acting nonsense, in order to set an example, this kind of thing even Marquis Su did not interfere, Xue Rengui knew that what he could do was already the limit.

Once something happens, the local soldiers and horses in Lujiang County don't have to think about it at all, and the only reliable ones are the Meiling garrison and the Changsha battalion, where the army is settled in order to guard Lingnan, and it has always been a first-class combat readiness force, well-equipped and well-trained. The 20,000 garrisons in Meiling and the 30,000 troops in Changsha were enough to quell any chaos in the south of the Yangtze River, and of course there were prerequisites. That is, they have to be able to catch up.

Whether it is from Meiling to Lujiang or from Changsha to Lujiang, it is not possible to reach it in a short time, Xue Rengui has made calculations. Even if he sent a message from Lujiang for help as soon as he was engaged, the Meiling garrison and the Changsha army wanted to rush to Lujiang to rescue it was seven days later, and Su Houye only had three hundred available soldiers at hand, and once something happened, it would not be enough to see.

But at this time, the imperial court was preparing for the Northern Expedition to the steppe, and the first war was decided, and the interior of the Western Turks and Xue Yantuo was already in chaos, with the upper class being extravagant and corrupt, and the lower class being poor. The luxurious life of the nobles is not even comparable to the princely family of Chang'an City, and the life of the ordinary herdsmen of the lower class is not even as good as the beggars of the Tang Dynasty.

I heard that those Western Turks and Xue Yantuo's super-rich aristocrats, even the emperor of Chang'an City has to eat once a day of rock candy as three meals a day, the entire Tang Dynasty can be compared with those grassland giants only the emperor Li Yuan who lives deep in the inner palace, the wind of grassland comparison is flourishing, it is comparable to the Jin Dynasty Shi Chongwang Kai Doufu, Li Er Majesty Xià also opened the treasury to promote the grassland to compete for wealth, subtly, its foundation is destroyed. There is no way to return to heaven.

The huge wealth of the lower herdsmen - cattle, sheep and horses were plundered by the Central Plains merchant group, the Central Plains merchant group exchanged the herdsmen's cattle, sheep and horses for expensive but no practical handmade products, and the busiest thing for the major merchants in Chang'an every day was to transport countless silk porcelain handmade products and so on to the Western Turks and Xue Yantuo, which currently belong to the top luxury, Shu brocade, white sugar rock candy that ordinary people can not see, and the new production of the Su family was awarded as a tribute by the emperor Xià Biluochun tea. Cart by cart to the north, how many cattle, sheep and horses can be loaded together to exchange?

It is no wonder that many people feel that the price of meat in the entire Datang has dropped a lot recently, especially around Chang'an City. Almost every household can afford to buy meat, and Li Ermaxi used these sturdy cattle and sheep on the grassland to promote animal husbandry in the Central Plains. Grasslands should be opened in places suitable for animal husbandry, and those who are willing to adopt cattle and sheep can also go to the government to adopt cattle and sheep. Horses were naturally sent to horse farms for breeding optimization, and the huge steppe occupied by the entire Xue Yantuo and the Western Turks became a continuous supply base for meat food in the Tang Dynasty.

At the beginning, these herdsmen could still support with a strong number of cattle, sheep and horses, and fanatically pursued the advanced civilization products of the Tang Dynasty, those that looked fun and good-looking were actually useless wooden handicrafts were particularly popular, and the Datang merchant group fried these things to dozens of times and hundreds of times the price, and a Trojan horse could be exchanged for a sheep, what is the ratio of this to huàn? This is how wealth has been plundered, and it is easier than fighting a war, I don't know how many times.

Gradually, the herdsmen were a little difficult to support, they found that the number of cattle, sheep and horses and the subsequent increase in the number were no longer able to support them to continue to buy expensive handicrafts produced in the Tang Dynasty and those extravagant sugar and tea, but the upper class nobles of the steppe who had tasted the sweetness and gradually began to corrupt could not leave the huge taxes and countless "filial piety" brought by the royal court, and they could not do without these things.

After the merchants of the Tang Dynasty "cried" that it was difficult to return to their original costs and decided not to return to the Tang Dynasty, Ashina was in a hurry, and summoned the ambassador of the Tang Embassy in the Western Turks as soon as possible, and asked him to come forward to persuade the merchants to stay, and then personally went out to the major tribes to persuade those

The tribal leaders asked their people to vigorously support Datang products, and they couldn't let this money bag leave, as soon as they left, all we have now will be gone! So the ten arrow tribes began to act, and the task was assigned to each small tribe, and each small tribe was evenly distributed to the herdsmen, as if paying taxes must complete this task, and the merchants of the Tang Dynasty and the Western Turkic nobles colluded together and formed an alliance of interests.

Of course, it was not without opposition, at first the opposition was not very small, but as a result, the Zongheng Division planned a "delisting" action to express dissatisfaction, and a month later, the leaders of the ten arrow tribes gathered in the royal court to cry to Ashina Ni, asking Datang to come back to do business, otherwise they really can't go on, they can't accept the mare's milk full of fishy smell, can't accept a smell of roast mutton, they want Datang's tea, they want Datang's food!

Zongheng Division was victorious, the opposition forces within the Western Turks were defeated, and since then, the Tang merchants have become uncrowned kings in the territory of the Western Turks. The Tang ambassador angrily broke into the royal court to ask for an explanation, and Ashina was in a hurry. hurriedly assigned troops to deal with these robbers, but the Western Turkic cavalry, which had not fought for a long time, could not fight those tough horse thieves for a while.

The speed of the decline of combat effectiveness is also visible.

This time. The Tang ambassador once again made a request, and in the future, the matter of protecting the merchants of the Tang Dynasty was handed over to the Tang Dynasty army stationed in the Western Turks, and the 3,000-strong army stationed in the West Turks finally came in handy at this time, unlike those corrupt Western Turkic iron cavalry, the garrison of the Tang Dynasty became stronger and stronger day by day in an almost meat-eating environment, and the garrison that originally stipulated a rotation of one year became a two-year rotation, which resulted in the dissatisfaction of most of the army, under the pressure of the military. The imperial court announced a rotation every year and a half.

Datang 3,000 iron cavalry dispatched 1,000 people, spent half a month tracking down these horse thieves, found them on the edge of a river, after a fight, beheaded more than 1,000, and killed and injured no more than 100; There is also an episode, the leader of this gang of horse thieves is a clear-headed figure who was excluded from a tribe of ten arrows before and was aware of the threat of the Tang Dynasty. The leader trembled and ordered that all of his tribe be slaughtered, leaving no one behind.

The Western Turkic garrison of the Tang Dynasty became the most powerful of the Tang cavalry.

From Zhenguan four years to now, Zhenguan ten years. In the past six years, the army has changed four times, and the super cavalry of 12,000 people has been tempered in that environment. After a year and a half of all-carnivorous environment, three thousand lean men came back, each with big shoulders and round waists. The tiger's back is bear's waist, and you have to be able to fight as much as you can. Later, when dealing with Tuyuhun and Tubo, these cavalry participated in the battle, and the 3,000 garrisons except for relatives to transport some fruits and vegetarian food, all the expenses were conveniently provided by the Western Turks, and even the military salaries.

The Western Turkic iron cavalry from the beginning of the fierce and good warfare to the later corruption and degeneration, so that in the sixth year of Zhenguan, the Tang embassy sent a report to the imperial court on the murder of the Tang Dynasty merchants, showing that the people he sent saw with his own eyes that the Western Turkic government's army of thieves "stayed and watched, did not think about the march of the army, but actually camped for their own convenience, and wanted to be safe, or the soldiers and armor were incomplete, or the war horses were not prepared, and they took advantage of the situation to lead the sun, and sat on the wrecked plane."

In terms of daily life, the report of Zhenguan in the ninth year shows that the Western Turks are all soldiers, soldiers in wartime, herdsmen or farmers in peacetime, and in the past, "they are soldiers when they go out, and they are for the people when they enter, and they have not tasted the two things of farming and warfare", but since the fourth year of Zhenguan, in the past five years, there have been "many reasons for eating food and appetite, and the people who sell their accounts have to eat the delicacies of the Han family for every meal, and the money and grain obtained by cattle, sheep and horses are not enough to eat more food several times, that is, they are exhausted, and they sell the livestock raised by the family every season, and they have no surplus, so that the family is scarce and hungry, is still exaggerated, and there are even more people who sell war horses cheaply to get money for grain and meat, and there are countless people."

As for the daily training of the army, in the first few years, there was intermittent training, diligent training in cavalry and archery, but the officers at the top were the first to be corrupted, which led to the corruption of the soldiers below, and the Tang military camp deliberately separated the Western Turkic standing army from a long distance to avoid getting too close to them, contaminated with some habits, and lost the stimulation of the Tang generals, and the Western Turkic army was rapidly corrupted, "the elite iron cavalry is becoming scarce day by day, most of the cavalry has not practiced riding and archery for a long time, and the ability to gallop and shoot arrows is almost gone, and the combat power is greatly declined."

To sum up, the Tang monarchs and ministers finally realized that the time had come to clean up Xue Yantuo and the Western Turks at the lowest cost, and the military was eager to fight, Li Er Majesty finally ordered the staff headquarters to authorize Li Shiji to plan a decisive battle on the grassland, and the northern grassland was decided in a war, completely swept away the troubles, and built the northern grassland into a livestock base according to the current model of the Eastern Turkic homeland.

The war is about to start soon, Xue Rengui knows that this war is estimated to be played in the end, depending on the time, but it is indeed impossible to invite troops from the imperial court to go south, Su Hou is bent on quickly solving the Jiangnan incident, and it is estimated that he himself wants to go to the battlefield, this is a good time to make military achievements, Xue Yantuo and the Western Turks have long been tossed one day is not as good as one day, the days of the steppe cavalry are more comfortable than those of the Han family, and the combat power is greatly declining, not extinguished at this time, but when?

This also leads to Su Hou has no one around him to protect, no one to use, with the whole army day and night to Chang'an, Chang'an's slave transport team will also speed up to the south to meet Xue Rengui's army, and then go south to Lujiang together, Xue Rengui knows that he is Su Hou's last army that can be trusted, so he must rush back as quickly as possible, protect Su Hou, and completely relieve the uneasy factors in Jiangnan under Su Hou's planning, and then go north to ask for war, at that time, it is estimated that the imperial army has finished fighting Mo Nan, went to Mobei.

In the decisive battle of Mobei that year, the Huns who were invincible moved west for thousands of miles and did not dare to return to the grassland...... That's definitely the honor of a lifetime......

Xue Rengui longed for that kind of glory too much, but he didn't know that a nirvana net against him had been quietly thrown towards him...... (To be continued......)