Revisiting Future Path

449th Spring and Autumn to the Warring States Period (2)

Before the Weiyan Liaodong alliance, the twenty vassal states of the Weixia Empire tacitly resisted all forms of cession of territories in order to contain the imperial family's cutting of the vassal.

For example, Zhao's occupation of Chifeng City and Yan's occupation of Tongliao City are not part of the division of land, but more like border demarcation during the northward expansion. Another example is Yue State’s control over Wei State. Yue State has never dared to announce the merger of the two countries and was forced to allow the Wei royal family to continue its inheritance in the form of puppets.

Even if the three branches of the royal family were deliberately weakened in Henan in the past, Lu's rule in Henan province was very tactful. In order to put an end to both parties, when the three parties divided up the Henan province, the State of Lu split the counties to comfort Zhou and Zhao, while allowing other provinces and counties in Henan to continue to exist independently under the Henan provincial system. Until now, the political status of Henan Province has been incompatible with Lu's native territory. Every Henan provincial governor appointed by Lu must be reported to the royal family in Kyoto. Moreover, the people in Henan Province generally resist the oppression of the ruling class of Lu, and many people are unwilling to call themselves Lu people.

The colony allowed easier belonging, and Kyushu's reclaimed land prohibited annexation.

The vassal state is afraid that the royal family will cut the vassal, and the royal family is also afraid that mergers will give rise to a strong vassal.

Mao Jiuzhong changed the game in amazement, he kicked over the unspoken rules of Kyushu's ban on mergers. Taking Chinese history as a mirror, this seems to be a dramatic transition from Spring and Autumn to the Warring States Period. Prior to this, everyone admired the game of hegemony, only pursuing a rich country and a strong army, and did not annex the land of other countries, and did not record the people of other countries. After that, cessions and mergers suddenly became frequent, and all countries sought to obtain the land for their people and the land for weak countries. Less and less and gradually perish, the powerful countries are **** stronger and stronger.

Some people are excited about the Seven Heroes of the Warring States Period, but more people hope to maintain the order of the king and the barbarian.

The faction of respecting the king and fighting against the barbarian fiercely criticized Wei and Yan for the Liaodong alliance and demanded that Wei return the illegally occupied land in Yan. However, how could the Wei Guo interest group, who had finally gotten to the sea, be willing to give up large tracts of fertile coastal land?

Wei Guo's persistence immediately ushered in waves of criticism. In short, Mao Jiuzhong won the Wei-Yan war, but his reputation was instantly bad. Even Qi Jiguang, the prime minister of the Kingdom of Wu, was very tired. Soon after the alliance between Wei, Yan and Liaodong, Qi Jiguang was depressed and declared his official post. The former Ministry of Qi Jiguang took Wu Weizhong as the prime minister of the State of Wu and quickly stated Wu’s political attitude: “The rules of the ancestors are unbreakable, and the Liaodong alliance is an illegal agreement.”

How did Wei Guo deal with this wave of crises?

The Wei State first misinterpreted the scope of Kyushu in a cunning way, saying that the land ceded by the Yan Kingdom did not belong to the traditional Chinese Kyushu. Not to mention that the poor and weak Zhao Song Dynasty was the prosperous Tang where the people have always been proud, and the Central Plains could not be set up as a county. Hometown. Public opinion naturally refuted it, saying that the Liu Han Dynasty had established Youzhou Liaoxi County and Liaodong County on this land more than 1,700 years ago. How can the Yan Kingdom Liaoxi site not belong to the traditional Kyushu?

Secondly, Wei Guo knows the truth so far, claiming that this is only one case, and he will never spy on other Kyushu cultivated land. In order to show his sincerity, Wei stopped interfering in Zhao's internal affairs, and even took the initiative to send King Wei Shunzong of Zhao, who fled to Wei on his own back, to Lu on the coastal road.

One was afraid of Mao Jiuzhong’s prestige, and the other was Wei Guo actively showed his favor. The sanctions imposed by the imperial family and the nineteen vassal states always stopped at public condemnation and trade blockade, failing to form a combatable coalition. Perhaps in order to calm the hostility of various countries, Mao Jiuzhong immediately adjusted the direction of his troops and began to integrate the grassland tribes of the Mongolian plateau.

Speaking of the Mongolian Plateau, as the military tactics of hot weapons represented by the phalanx of Vietnamese soldiers become more and more mature, the threat of steppe cavalry also decreases. The reason why the Wei-Xia Empire failed to formally annex the Mongolian Plateau was entirely because the vassals of Yan, Wei, Jin, Zhou, and Tang were all hindering each other, and no one wanted the other to take the Mongolian plateau as their own. Because of the secret support of various vassal states, the Mongolian Plateau also showed a fragmented pattern, without a large power.

At the end of the Wei-Yan War, the State of Yan exchanged the terms of complete withdrawal from the Mongolian plateau in exchange for the guarantee of the northern territory of Lake Berga, and the State of Wei immediately covered all the grassland tribes. In addition, the nobles have no country in their eyes. In order to ensure the safety of their territories, many nobles of the Yan Kingdom took the initiative to seek refuge in Mao Jiuzhong, who was victorious in all battles. If it were not for the maritime vassal powers in the eastern and southern coasts of Yan, the senior officials of Yan even dared to form an offensive and defensive alliance with Wei in disregard of national interests, and resisted the "public opinion coercion" that asked Wei to return Yan to western Liaoning.

With the cooperation of part of the nobles of the Yan Kingdom, Mao Jiuzhong completely conquered the Mongolian plateau in just two years.

Wei State is even stronger.

The joint sanctions imposed by the remaining vassal states have become increasingly pale.

In 1593, although the cabinets of the various feudal vassals still severely criticized the State of Wei, the trade blockade gradually became useless, and a large number of merchants unscrupulously sent strategic materials to the State of Wei.

However, everyone underestimated Mao Jiuzhong's ambition.

In 1593, Mao Jiuzhong gathered the grassland tribes young and strong, with the Wei state foot cavalry as the core elite, and the grassland cavalry as cannon fodder or servant soldiers, and sent his troops to the Western Regions.

Speaking of the Western Regions, the Weixia Empire's control over the Western Regions is far inferior to that of the Li Tang Dynasty. In the early Wei Xia dynasty, the royal family was busy cutting down the vassal and unifying the vassal state, and the vassal kingdoms were busy resisting the cutting down of the vassal, and there was no time to attack the Western Regions. In the late Wei Xia dynasty, the great geographical discovery impacted, trade and colonization caused the empire to shift its focus to the ocean, and it was too lazy to conquer the desert. . In the case of the Tang vassal state, it has only the provinces of Gansu and Ningxia, and neither the population scale nor the economic scale can form an absolute advantage over the grassland tribes. In the early Wei Xia dynasty, the remnants of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty repeatedly raided the inland of the Tang Dynasty, burned, killed and looted, which was really miserable; when the military tactics of hot weapons disintegrated the threat of the grassland tribes, the neighboring vassals such as Wei, Zhou and Han came back. , Tang Guo is not allowed to calmly inherit the glory of Li Tang Dynasty.

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

And Mao Jiuzhong is obviously unwilling to maintain this pattern.

In 1593, Mao Jiuzhong drove the grassland tribe servants into the Western Regions. The trivial and frequent pursuit and suppression, Mao Jiuzhong was handed over to the steppe cavalry to reduce the population density of the conquered areas through killing, and to reduce the density of the grassland tribes in the conquered areas through war losses. Only when encountering difficult nails or fortified cities, Mao Jiuzhong dispatched Wei's elite steppers to concentrate artillery to destroy the fluke of the enemy chief.

The Oirat Khanate, perished.

The Yeerqiang Khanate was destroyed.

With only one western expedition, Mao Jiuzhong swept the Western Regions and greatly increased the western border of the Wei Xia Empire.

This is still not the limit of Mao Jiuzhong.

In 1594, Mao Jiuzhong abruptly led his troops to continue the westward march.

The Khanate of Bukhara, perished.

Khiva Khanate, perished.

The Kazakh Khanate, perished.

Persia, dismembered.

In the four years from 1594 to 1598, Mao Jiuzhong and his generals went rampant in Central Asia, and their forces were invincible. It was only then that the vassals of the Wei Xia Empire took a cold breath and understood Mao Jiuzhong's ambition: Mao Jiuzhong wanted to become Gith Khan and rebuild the Mongol Empire!

It turns out that in the past, the showing of weakness that King Wei Shunzong of the Zhao Kingdom handed over to the Lu Kingdom was just an illusion. Mao Jiuzhong actually wanted to annex the grassland tribes to enhance the strength of the Wei Kingdom, and then look back at the Central Plains to fight against the various vassals. Although Wei Xiaji started by overthrowing the Mongol Yuan, and underestimated the Mongolian cavalry of the Cold Weapon era with the military power of the Yue and Wu soldiers phalanx, no one dared to really underestimate the threat of the Mongol Empire. Wei has a mature hot-weapon army and mature logistical construction. There is also an invincible commander like Mao Jiuzhong. If Wei is allowed to establish a brand-new Mongolian empire, the Central Plains vassals will never sleep.

Wei must be contained!

The vassal states of the Central Plains were afraid that Wei would gradually annex with the invincible military might, and the royal family was even more afraid that the surname Mao would not be surnamed Wei from now on. In the face of the threat of the Wei state, the vassal states of the Central Plains united as never before. Except for the Tang State, which feared Wei’s military front and declared armed neutrality, and the State of Yan, which had a divided internal affairs, the royal family and the seventeen vassal states quickly signed a strategic cooperation agreement.

Soon, the opportunity came.

In 1598, Wei Guoguo Guoguo Mao Jiusheng passed away, his eldest son Mao Shangde succeeded as the thirteenth Guoguo.

The vassal states of the Central Plains took the opportunity to divorce the relationship between Mao Jiuzhong and Mao Shangde's uncle and nephew, spreading rumors that Mao Jiuzhong would usurp the throne after returning from the war. This rumor can't stand scrutiny. Mao Jiuzhong traveled across West Asia, Central Asia, and the Mongolian plateau. The powerful army was counted at hundreds of thousands. He wanted to usurp the throne long ago. However, Mao Shangde was scared. Mao Jiuzhong had helped Mao Jiusheng usurp the throne in the past years. How do you know that he will not come again? Therefore, at the suggestion of his neighbors, Mao Shangde changed the title of Mao Jiuzhong, Earl of Shuofang, as Earl of Shengmeng, meaning that he was better than the Mongol Empire.

At the same time, Mao Shangde sent envoys to the royal family, hoping that the royal family would upgrade the Earl of Victory to the Duke of Victory. Wei Fan is a duke country and can only be divided into earls. If the royal family gives the duke to the duke, the Duke of Shengmeng will immediately be equal to the duke of Wei, and the two will be divided into the same case.

Mao Shangde’s Count of Victory and Mongolia proposed the details. The Mongolian Plateau and the Western Regions should be assigned to the State of Wei. This is his selfish intention; the newly conquered territories such as the Kazakh Khanate, the Khiva Khanate, the Bukhara Khanate, and Iran. Knowing that they were unable to receive it, they were generously allocated to the Earl of Shengmeng. The Earl of Victory Country includes Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, part of Iran, and part of Afghanistan in the real world. It is larger than the province of the Royal Family, and may be the largest earl country in the world.

In all fairness, the idea of ​​the Earl of Victory is quite good.

In the case of the Wei state of Mao, two divisions per se, the future prospects are brilliant; for the vassal states of the Central Plains, it is just like the vassal states of the Wei surname are attacking each other endlessly. When the state of Wei is divided, the descendants of the two countries will surely be profitable. Contradictions gradually breed. As long as Mao Jiuzhong is unable to use the human resources of the conquered land to harass the Central Plains, what about allowing him to be the Duke of Shengmeng?

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