The Rise of History’s Most Powerful Empire

After January, when all the high-ranking officials and nobles, the local wealthy families tried their best to gather all the soldiers they could muster in Luoyang City.

An elite army of hundreds of thousands of people appeared. This army was well equipped and wore weapons and armor accumulated by those aristocratic families for decades.

The composition of personnel is mostly composed of those families who have raised countless generations of family members and loyal servants. In terms of loyalty, they are extremely trustworthy for those noble families.

With this level of protection, coupled with the generosity of those gentry, they continued to donate grains that were already full of warehouses in their homes.

In addition, the wives and children of these soldiers are taken care of by those nobles who take care of their reputation and the loyalty of family servants. It can be said that they completely avoid worries about the future, so the morale is guaranteed and very high.

So from this aspect, we can see how deep-rooted the influence of these aristocratic families in the entire Han Dynasty is, and how much wealth they occupy.

This is only a short period of time, and only the private soldiers of some aristocratic families in the surrounding counties and counties of Luoyang were summoned. If all the aristocratic families in the whole Han Dynasty were gathered, all the private soldiers that could be mobilized would be gathered.

I am afraid that an army of more than 500,000 people can be formed, and unlike the ordinary county and county soldiers of the imperial court, who are lacking in military equipment, they all have some training foundation.

And well-equipped, relatively strong in combat and not afraid of death, this power is enough to shake the ruling foundation of any dynasty, and make that dynasty collapse overnight, turning into dust of history.

Of course, aristocratic families with such strength only survived the dynasties before the Sui and Tang dynasties. Dynasties before this tended to be military imperialist, aggressive and pioneering.

In the usual sense, "empire" is a historical concept. It generally contains three basic features: first, the unification of a vast country (small countries have no empire); second, autocratic rule or high centralization (democracy has no empire); third, strong military expansion (no expansion can not be an empire) .

However, no matter how rich and powerful the dynasties after Tang were, none of them could be called an empire.

The reason, Zhong Yu believes, is that after the Song Dynasty, the power of local governments was highly concentrated in the central government, and the literati gradually changed from practicing martial arts with swords to reciting poems and fighting against each other.

The gentry literati belonging to the ruling class gradually developed into weak scholars who were powerless. Without the bravery of warriors, the country will gradually lose its pioneering spirit and tend to be conservative!

So at that time, most of the gentry raised domestic servants with wooden sticks and no sharp weapons, and there were not many of them. At most, he sent ten or hundreds of them. Most of them were greedy for life and afraid of death, and had no loyalty.

It was like before the Sui and Tang Dynasties, they were all well-equipped and well-trained soldiers than the regular army of the imperial court, and the number of them was hundreds or thousands at every turn, which was even more than the local army to maintain law and order.

In this way, this army of more than 100,000 people marched towards Xiliang as the first wave of reinforcements against the Xiliang army's attack. Its main function was to maintain the immediate defense line and occupy more footholds.

Then there will be a second Boss reinforcement with a number of about 200,000, which will go to the Guanzhong area. With a large-scale counter-offensive after the battlefield has stabilized, those Kanto aristocratic families intend to take this opportunity to eradicate those Guanzhong aristocratic families in one fell swoop, so as to get rid of this serious trouble for all scholars in the world.

When the reinforcements arrived at Chang'an City, they were quickly distributed to various defensive battlefields, making the precarious defense line stabilized immediately after the Xiliang Army's 300,000-strong army stormed down. down.

The battlefield has entered a stalemate. Although it is impossible for the imperial court to counterattack with hundreds of thousands of people, it is impossible for the Xiliang army to break through the defensive front of the tens of thousands of well-equipped and stable troops.

Another month later, the second batch of gentry reinforcements, whose number reached 200,000, arrived at the Great Wall as quickly as possible under the concerted efforts of the gentry from all sides.

The battlefield of Chang'an City, which received reinforcements, immediately launched a large-scale counterattack. After a month of war consumption, both the defenders of the Great Wall and the siege army in Xiliang were exhausted.

At this time, a group of 200,000 freshmen has just been obtained, so how can they let go of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Don't take advantage of the opportunity when the Xiliang army is exhausted and preparing to cultivate, take the opportunity to sneak attack and defeat them in one fell swoop.

Do we have to wait until they have completed their cultivation and the army has regrouped and regained its peak combat effectiveness before waiting for their surging attack.

The 200,000 troops rolled over like a wave, and the Xiliang Army, which had already reached its limit, was easily submerged like a rock.

The Xiliang army with more than 200,000 troops left behind him was immediately defeated, and 100,000 people were beheaded. Only more than 100,000 people were left and fled to his hometown Liangzhou.

The imperial court took advantage of the victory to pursue and regained countless counties along the way. Finally, they confronted each other across the Weihe River in Tianshui County with the Xiliang Army who had regained its strength again.

In July of the first year of Zhongping, half a year had passed since Zhong Yu unified the entire south. Among them, the Han court finally discovered that a huge empire had risen in the south of itself, and it was not inferior to itself in terms of territory.

However, at this time, the Han court, which had been messed up by Xiliangzhi, could no longer take into account the situation in the south, so it could only station heavy troops in several important cities and guard them carefully.

Although he didn't think that the newly rising empire in the south would have the power to attack him. I'm afraid he, like most emerging empires, is busy building his own internal system and appeasing the local people.

All energy has been devoted to the construction of the country within the territory. How can there be any spare energy to attack the north? What about this powerful military?

You must know that most of the north is an endless plain, while the south just has no good horses, so it has no advantage in strategy.

So even though I was very angry and worried, I hated the rebellious thief in the south very much in my heart. But Emperor Ling wisely put all his strength into the Xiliang battlefield.

I look forward to quelling the rebellion in this place as soon as possible, so that I can concentrate all my energy on recovering and resisting the southern attack.

Under the command of this policy and strategy, the Xiliang Army, which had already fallen below, suddenly became precarious.

Batch after batch of reinforcements went to Xiliang, knowing that their lives were at stake, and the gentry resolutely led the local people in Xiliang to resist to the death.

However, the form of the battlefield will inevitably fall into a disadvantage. How can you resist the power of one state? The power of the eight states in the northern part of the Han Dynasty is far more prosperous than Xiliang!

The battle line retreated from Tianshui to the two counties of Jincheng in Longyou, and then retreated from these two counties to Wuwei County; although the number of troops has been supplemented, it has changed from just 200,000 at the beginning to more than 100,000, and then to the current five. Sixty thousand.

It could barely resist the attack of the 200,000 troops deployed by the imperial court in Xiliang. Xiliang has a small population, and its original registered population is only about 500,000 people. Even if the three counties in Guanzhong are included, the total population is only about one million people.

Before, the Xiliang rebellion took 200,000 of his men from the entire Xiliang Pass to join the army. In order to resist the attack of the rebels, the imperial court arrested tens of thousands of his people to serve as cannon fodder.

After this consumption, the population of Xiliang and Guanzhong has been greatly reduced. It is estimated that there are only 400,000 to 500,000 people, and the males do not know if there are still 30,000 to 40,000 people left.