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 with hundreds of thousands of people appeared. This army was well-equipped and wore weapons and armor accumulated by those aristocratic families for decades.
Most of the personnel are composed of families who have raised sons and loyal servants for countless generations. In terms of loyalty, they are extremely trustworthy for those noble families.
With this layer of protection, and the nobles generously donating their money, they continued to donate the food that was already filling their warehouses.
In addition, the wives, children, and families of these soldiers are all taken care of by nobles who care about their reputation and the loyalty of their family servants. It can be said that they are completely free from worries, so their 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 was, and how much wealth they occupied.
This is only a short period of time, and the private soldiers gathered are only the private soldiers of some aristocratic families in the surrounding counties and counties of Luoyang. If all the private soldiers that can be mobilized are gathered from the aristocratic families in the entire Han Dynasty.
I am afraid that it can form an army with more than 500,000 people, and unlike the ordinary county soldiers in the imperial court, they all have some training foundation.
Moreover, they are well-equipped, relatively powerful in combat, and are not afraid of death. This power is enough to shake the foundation of any dynasty's rule, and make that dynasty collapse overnight and turn into dust of history.
Of course, aristocratic families with such strength only existed in the dynasties before the Sui and Tang Dynasties. Dynasties before this were often military imperialists, extremely aggressive and pioneering.
In the usual sense, "empire" is a historical concept. It generally contains three basic characteristics: first, unifying a vast territory (a small country does not have an empire); second, autocratic rule or a high degree of centralization (a democracy does not have an empire); third, powerful military expansion (an empire cannot exist without expansion) .
No matter how rich and powerful the dynasties after the Tang Dynasty were, none of them could be called an empire.
Investigating the reason, Zhong Yu believes that the main reason is that after the Song Dynasty, local political power was highly concentrated in the central government, and the literati began to slowly change from the previous practice of swords and martial arts to reciting poems and writing poems.
The gentry literati who belonged to the ruling class slowly developed into weak scholars with no physical strength. Without the bravery of its warriors, the country gradually lost its pioneering spirit and tended to be conservative!
Therefore, most of the nobles at that time had servants who were armed with wooden sticks and had no sharp weapons, and the number of them was not large. At most, he only sent ten or hundreds of people. Most of them were greedy for life and afraid of death, and had no loyalty.
Just like before the Sui and Tang Dynasties, they maintained soldiers who were better equipped and better trained than the regular army of the imperial court, and their number could often number in the hundreds or even thousands, which was simply more numerous than the local army maintaining law and order.
In this way, this 100,000-strong army marched towards Xiliang as the first wave of reinforcements to resist the Xiliang army's attack. Its main function was just to maintain the immediate defense line and occupy more footholds.
Then there will be a second wave of noble reinforcements, numbering about 200,000, which will head to the Guanzhong area. Carrying out a large-scale counterattack after the battlefield stabilized, those Guandong aristocratic families planned to take this opportunity to eradicate the Guanzhong aristocratic families in one fell swoop, so as to eliminate this serious problem for all scholars in the world.
When the reinforcements arrived at Chang'an City, they were quickly dispersed to various defensive battlefields. After another expansion of the Xiliang Army, an army of more than 300,000 people stormed the shaky defense line and immediately stabilized it. Come down.
The battlefield situation has entered a stalemate stage. Although it is impossible for the imperial court to counterattack with hundreds of thousands of people, it is even more impossible for the Xiliang Army to break through the defensive front of these hundreds of thousands of well-equipped and stable troops.
Another month later, the second batch of gentry reinforcements, numbering 200,000, reached the Great Wall as quickly as possible under the concerted efforts of the gentry from all sides.
After receiving reinforcements, the Chang'an City battlefield immediately began a large-scale counterattack. After a month of war, both the defenders of the Great Wall and the siege forces in Xiliang were exhausted.
At this time, a group of 200,000 new troops had just been obtained. How could we let this golden opportunity pass? Don't take advantage of the opportunity when the Xiliang army is exhausted and preparing to recuperate, and take the opportunity to make a sneak attack and defeat them in one fell swoop.
Do we have to wait until they have completed their training and the army has once again regrouped and regained its peak combat effectiveness before waiting for their surging attack
The 200,000-strong army rolled over like a wave, and the Xiliang Army, which had already reached its limit, was easily submerged like a rock.
The Xiliang army that still had more than 200,000 of his troops was immediately defeated, and 100,000 of them were beheaded. Only more than 100,000 of them were left and fled to his hometown of Liangzhou, preparing to recruit troops again, regroup and counterattack.
The imperial court took advantage of the victory and pursued it, regaining countless counties along the way. Finally, they faced each other across the Wei River in Tianshui County with the Xiliang Army, which had regained its strength again.
In July of the first year of Zhongping, more than half a year had passed since Zhong Yu unified the entire south. Among them, the Han Dynasty finally discovered that a huge empire had arisen in the south, and its territory was no less than its own.
However, at this time, the Han Dynasty court, which was already troubled by Xiliang's chaos, could no longer take into account the situation in the south. It could only garrison heavy troops in several important cities and guard them carefully.
Although he didn't quite think that the newly rising empire in the south would have enough power to attack him. I am afraid that like most newly emerging empires, he is busy building his own internal system and appeasing the local people.
A country that has devoted all its energy to the construction of its territory, how can it still have the energy to attack the north? How can it have such a powerful military
You know, most of the north is boundless plains, but the south just doesn't have good horses, so it doesn't have a strategic advantage.
So even though I was very angry and worried, in my heart I hated this rebellious thief in the south. But Emperor Ling still 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 situation of the Xiliang Army, which had already fallen below, suddenly became precarious.
Reinforcements arrived in batches after batches of Xiliang. Knowing that their lives were at stake for the gentry, they resolutely led the local people in Xiliang to resist to the death.
But the situation on the battlefield is still inevitably at a disadvantage. How can you resist with the power of one state? The power of the eight states in the north 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 from these two counties to Wuwei County; although the number of troops was increased, it still increased from just 200,000 at the beginning to more than 100,000, and now to 5 Sixty thousand.
They could only barely resist the attack of 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. Even if the three counties of Guanzhong are included, the total population is only about one million.
Previously, Xiliang rebelled and coerced 200,000 men from the entire Xiliang Pass to join the army. In order to resist the rebel attack, the imperial court captured tens of thousands of his people to serve as cannon fodder.
After all this consumption, the population of Xiliang and Guanzhong has been greatly reduced. It is estimated that there are only 450,000 people, and the male is not sure if there are 300,000 to 40000 people left.
(End of chapter)