Starting My Treasure Hunting In England

"I seem to have read somewhere that the reason why the Tang Dynasty army failed was because of the rebellion of the Geluolu people." Fan Meng suddenly said after Liang En told the archaeological content about that war.

"And after that war, the Garrolu occupied the Talas and began to expand, so from the perspective of pure beneficiaries, these people are indeed suspicious."

"It is indeed suspicious, but in fact their expansion is more likely to be the result of the Tang Dynasty army and the Arab army being both defeated after the war and losing their core mobile forces, so that they were able to fill the gap between the two great powers."

After listening to what Fan Meng said, Liang En carefully continued to search the ground and said, "As for the judgment, it's hard to say. After all, only "Zi Zhi Tong Jian" recorded this.

After the war, the relationship between the Tang Dynasty and the Geluolu people did not look like enemies. At least judging from the short period of contact between the two sides, it did not look like there had been a rebellion on the battlefield before. "

"What you said makes sense, but it's a pity that the historical records of both sides are too crude." Fan Meng shook his head with regret and said, "It is impossible to make an accurate judgment based on the information we have now. "

"You are right, and this is one of the most important meanings of archeology." Liang En said while probing the ground, "The history that humans can record is a very small part of the real history. , and those gaps in the historical record need to be filled by archeology."

It has to be said that the Tang Army soldier who hid these things was smart enough. In order to preserve the bones of the Pao Ze people, he made a secret room at the back and put a lot of the wealth he found in it to attract the attention of possible latecomers. .

Now it seems that his plan should have been successful. No matter whether it was the greedy Tsarist Russian officer or the subsequent batches of treasure hunters, they have not found the real thing hidden by this man.

Of course, this is also related to the fact that these urns are not eye-catching. For most people, the treasures in their eyes are gold, silver or gems, not urns.

Therefore, most of them go to try their luck in caves that have been proven to contain gold before, rather than waste time in this place where they know at a glance that there is no gold in it.

What Liang En is doing now is to conduct a large-scale search of this cave, because he just found that the stone slab seems to be a piece cut off from a rectangular stone slab.

Considering that there was no such convenient stone slab nearby, Liang En felt that there might be another important stone slab recording other contents in this place. Sure enough, after more than ten minutes, Liang En found his target.

Different from the first stone tablet, the second stone tablet contains some vernacular records. It is Liu Shenwei’s memoirs of the war. Although there are only a few hundred crooked words engraved on it, it restores the story of the Talas. The battlefield of war.

Liu Shenwei, a junior officer, stated in this record that after General Gao Xianzhi led everyone here, he first divided his forces to monitor the Arabs in Talas City, and then moved the main force westward to strive for a preemptive strike.

As a result, they encountered the main Arab force when they crossed the Talos River. After a simple confrontation for about half a day, the two sides attacked each other almost simultaneously and started a fierce battle.

At that time, the main force of the Anxi Protectorate in the middle of the battle line fought very well, even forcing the Arabs to retreat step by step. However, the problem was that the Geluolu people deployed on the flanks did not block the Arab cavalry.

You must know that nomadic people like the Geluolu people are closer to mercenaries in fighting. It is okay to fight with the wind, but when it comes to chewing hard bones, they will always subconsciously save themselves first.

As a result, the Tang army, whose flanks were exposed to the Arab front, was finally defeated because it could not hold up. Fortunately, Gao Xianzhi was able to maintain the core force, so thousands of people were able to fight and retreat, and returned to the Anxi Protectorate.

At the same time, the separated armies, including the siege troops and the outer covering troops, also began to gradually retreat, but most of them were defeated by the Arabs.

Liu Shenwei himself was a member of the scout unit sent to conduct battlefield interdiction missions before the battle. As a result, he was separated from the main force in the dark night after the defeat.

Fortunately, because he was good at acting alone, he was not captured or killed by the Arabs who cleaned up the battlefield afterwards, but persisted until the Arabs withdrew.

After that, he decided to stay here and picked up his family's blacksmithing skills and opened a blacksmith shop in Talas City, which was controlled by the Gallu people. Then he married a wife and had children and took root here.

As a nomadic people, the Geluolu people are not very good at managing cities, but there is no doubt that they have a huge demand for iron tools, so they will value blacksmiths.

Although Liu Shenwei himself was a Tang Dynasty, trade between the Tang Dynasty and Arabia resumed shortly after the Talas War, so it is not surprising that a Tang blacksmith is here.

Of course, the local Geluolu people may not know that he is a remnant of the Anxi Army, but the value of a blacksmith is enough for them to ignore these things.

The reason why Liu Shenwei chose to stay here rather than return to his hometown was partly because he came to Anxi as a recruiter and had almost nothing in his hometown and not much to miss.

On the other hand, the war that took away one of his eyes deeply stimulated him, so he hoped to stay here to collect the remains of Pao Ze and find an opportunity to send them home.

Unfortunately, when he was ready for everything, the Anshi Rebellion broke out. As the main force of the Anxi Army returned eastward and the civil war became protracted, the Longyou area was occupied by the rising Tubo people. At the same time, the Anshi Rebellion also seriously damaged the overall situation of the Tang Dynasty.

Under these two unfavorable factors, the crucial Silk Road was interrupted, and Liu Shenwei never waited for the caravan from the Tang Dynasty.

In desperation, he could only hide the ashes of these people in the cave, then spent a lot of time making a cave and put the belongings found on the battlefield in the Buddha statue.

This is not only to pray for the robes who died in the battle, but also to attract the attention of possible bandits and preserve the remains of those victims.

Now it seems that everything he did was of great value. At least the Tsarist Russian officer did not find and destroy these urns, but both the murals and the Buddha statues were looted.

"This should be the most important first-hand information about Talas in existence." Liang En sighed after reading the records on the stone tablet.

"Thanks to what this Tang Dynasty warrior did to Paoze, although we still don't know a lot of information, at least many important mysteries have been solved.

"Then what should we do next?" Fan Meng, who always considered himself a Chinese, asked after being silent for a few seconds. “Or—or contact the local archaeological department?”

"Let me make a phone call first and then talk about it." Looking at the situation in front of him, Liang En sighed and said. "Last time I returned something in the United States, I got a phone number. It's best to get in touch first before talking about what we're going to do next."