After a harmonious and pleasant lunch, after dismissing Changsun Wugui, Li Mingyu and Li Chengqian brothers and sisters, Zhang Yang and Li Shimin came to Li Shimin's bedroom Ganlu Hall to accept Li Shimin's routine political examination after each entry into the palace.

Since Zhang Yang first entered the palace alone after the New Year, every time he met Li Shimin, he would be called to Ganlu Palace by Li Shimin alone to inquire about his recent study as an official and as well as some matters in the court.

This is completely the training plan for the future prince. Of course, Zhang Yang cannot be the emperor. However, Li Shimin still hopes that Zhang Yang will be fully competent in his tens of years and can assist the current prince Li Chengqian in the future.

Otherwise, he would not have trained him like he did to his own son. Although he always said that his son-in-law was half a son, after all, he was half a son, and he was not a son-in-law. He didn't need to spend so much effort to cultivate an outsider.

This is not a matter of Zhang Yang's understanding and handling of these incidents recently. After Li Shimin was in a happy mood again, he took care of his current future son-in-law. It seems that his current future son-in-law is really worth cultivating.

Every time he competes with him, he can complete his exams very well, and he always puts forward some novel, constructive and feasible opinions, which has gained a lot, broadened his ideas and handled many events more perfectly.

When Li Shimin finished Zhang Yang's exam, Zhang Yang spoke to Li Shimin about his affairs:

"Your Majesty, my son-in-law recently heard the news from the business in my family. It seems that the rumors in the pass will become true last year! Please prepare early for your majesty."

Li Shimin suddenly heard Zhang Yang saying that the rumors about last year were about to come true, which made him not think of what rumors Zhang Yang was saying, so Li Shimin asked Zhang Yang with a little curiosity:

"Son-in-law. What rumor you said is going to come true last year? There were no rumors last year! Is there something going on? But I haven't heard any rumors recently!"

Regarding Li Shimin's question, Zhang Yang was prepared for the rumor last year. If he hadn't always known that the rumor would come true, while he was preparing, he asked the staff of his own business to observe the situation there and inquire about the news there. Otherwise, he would not have analyzed that the rumor would be as recorded in history.

In the same month and almost the same time, the same war was launched against the Tang Dynasty!

"Your Majesty, do you really remember it? It was the rumor that started circulating in Chang'an City shortly after my son-in-law first came to Chang'an City last year. It was the rumor that asked my master and the others to go to war!"

After Zhang Yang reminded him, Li Shimin immediately thought of the rumor at the end of last year and asked in surprise:

"No! Isn't that the "pseudo-Emperor" tried every means to transfer Shubao, Jingde and the others away from me so that we could gradually break it. Is it an excuse we could not refuse?

Why are rumors still coming true and becoming a reality? Why haven’t I got this information yet?”

"Your Majesty, this matter is really true. Please be sure to believe what your son-in-law is saying now.

This news was compiled by those businesses of Xiaozi's son-in-law. When the Turks were doing business, the news came after inquiring about it was summarized by the business names in the border. After sorting it out, it was taken to Chang'an City by someone and handed over to Xiaozi's son-in-law.

After I summarized these messages, classified them, and analyzed them, the conclusions drawn by the son-in-law…”

Zhang Yang knew that Li Shimin would not believe it, so he began to tell Li Shimin one by one the conclusions he analyzed so that Li Shimin could believe that what he said was a fact.

When Li Shimin heard Zhang Yang's analysis, he said a little furiously:

"You are sure that your analysis is correct, damn it!"

"Report to Your Majesty, the son-in-law can be sure. The son-in-law's analysis is correct. The Turks will definitely go south to attack the border in the future this autumn harvest!

You know that in last winter, not to mention the grasslands where the Turks in the north were located, there were also many places in the Datang Pass that were filled with heavy snow and snow disasters occurred, not to mention the Turks that were further north and colder in winter.

This year, the business owners of my family do business in the Turks. We can see that the snow disaster last winter was much more serious than we expected before the Chinese New Year, and the Turks suffered even greater losses.

As far as I know, due to severe cold and snow disasters throughout the winter last year, countless Turkish cattle and sheep were frozen to death. However, due to heavy snow, there were also many cattle and sheep that were hit by the cattle and sheep.

In addition, this year's spring came relatively late, so the time for the ice and snow melting in the Turks' place came even later, so the Turks did not suffer much recovery losses this summer, and it may even be short of food and grass to spend the winter this year.

This is not the case that the entire Turkic cattle, sheep, food, grass and other items have soared this year, and it has exceeded the previous year's number.

This made the Turkic civilians and nobles complain now, and now they began to collect military supplies such as food and grass.

This shows that it may have big moves soon, and the Turks, especially the Eastern Turks, are in line with the Tang Dynasty. If he makes any moves, he can only go south to the border.

Although our people were doing business with the Turks, we found out that the official news was that due to the severe cold last winter, some tribes were in rebellion due to lack of food and grass. Recently, there were no more horse thieves in the trading area with the Turks, robbing the caravans that traded on both sides, killing many caravans that used to do business in the Tang Dynasty.

This hit the two-lease transactions, making it more difficult for the Turks to purchase urgently needed materials, and prices have risen even higher. They have tightened supplies, especially military supplies, and mobilized the army on an ordinary basis, intending to wipe out this group of horse thieves.

But to say that, these horse thieves basically robbed the caravans of our Tang Dynasty. Even the caravans of Xiaozi's family were broken into two, and their methods were extremely cruel. They were killed and they were not allowed to leave any living opportunities for all the robbery targets.

There were only a few robberies against the Turkic caravans. Even if there were occasional robberies, they were basically caravans from the tribes of the Tang Dynasty. For caravans that were not Datang, they did not want to kill all the caravans in the Tang Dynasty so much that they would not leave any living. They usually killed those who dared to resist and then snatch the goods.

Therefore, the son-in-law judged that this group of people was not a so-called small tribe who could not survive the heavy snowfall last winter and became a horse thief. Instead, it was a horse thief played by the Turkic army, otherwise there would be no trace of wind and noise.

Moreover, in addition to the lack of guards and defense measures of the caravans that were robbed the first few times, the targets that were robbed were large caravans with at least a few caravans doing joint business.

He has a large number of people and strict defense measures. He is not the target of ordinary horse thieves who are willing to rob, but he still robs. As usual, he was killed completely without leaving a single living slaughter.

In particular, the caravan that Xiaozi's family was robbed for the second time, but because the Turkic royal family came to us and placed a large number of orders, bought a lot of goods, and the profit was very rich. Even if the prices in the Tang Dynasty were counted as tens of thousands of yuan.

The profit is also tens of thousands of yuan, so our Zhang family business and several local large businesses joined forces to do the Turkic business this time. In order to prevent the horse thieves who have been active in the border areas between the Tang and the Turkic people recently.

Several of our businesses have recruited a lot of guards and brought a lot of friends, with a total of two or three thousand people, of which there are almost two thousand guards. There are also many masters.

With such a large caravan, and having prepared enough defense measures for prevention, this is not a target that any horse thieves can make. Even if the target is not just a horse thief can rob.

However, such a caravan with a large number of people, strong strength and well-equipped weapons and equipment was robbed by horse thieves shortly after entering the Turkic territory. When the reinforcements on the Tang Dynasty received the signal, the caravan with two or three thousand people had already been killed. Moreover, it was like those caravans in the past. Not only were the goods stolen, but they were also killed without leaving a single living place.

It should be known that this caravan had set up a rescue plan with reinforcements before leaving the customs, so the time between the caravan being robbed and the reinforcements arrived will not exceed half a day.

But for just half a day, such a powerful caravan was killed and no survivor was left. This was not something that horse thieves could do. Even if the Turkic army wanted to eat this caravan in such a short time, tens of thousands of elite troops would need to dispatch.

Even if Ma Thief has such strong strength and can eat the caravan in such a short time, it is impossible for him to not even have a living person to come out. You should know that there are many first-class experts in this caravan, and there are even half a step in the innate masters together, but these masters were also killed on the spot, which is a bit exaggerated!

Moreover, when our reinforcements searched the cleaned battlefield again, many evidence of Turkic guards participating in the robbery operation were found.

Especially in the hands of several caravan masters, several important evidence that Tuojie participated in this operation, including his identity certificates such as his waist card.

In other words, only the elite of the Turkic elites joined by the Turkic guards could mobilize less than 10,000 people, killing this caravan with many masters in half a day, all of which were killed, and none of them escaped. In half a day, the battlefield was cleaned up without leaving any supplies.

(According to the Book of Zhou? Biography of the Turks, "The guards are called Fuli, and Xia said that Xia said it is also a wolf; it is because of the wolf's birth, and his ambition is not forgotten. "It can be seen that among the hundreds of thousands of Turks, some of them were the escorts of Khan. It was originally a personal soldier of the Asina clan, that is, the wolf clan, so it was named "Fuli". This group of people made great contributions in the Turkic era of entrepreneurship. After the founding of the country, their status must be higher than that of ordinary soldiers, and they were all personal soldiers of the Turkic Khan, and countless masters.)

Since this group of horse thieves were pretended by Turkic guards, what the Turkic officials said about collecting materials and mobilizing troops to fight against these horse thieves was all lies.

Moreover, the mobilization of its hundreds of thousands of troops was impossible to target the suppression of horse thieves with less than 10,000 people. This mobilized the troops. Isn’t this even worse for the Turks, which were already tight on food and supplies, even worse!

In addition, the recent business name of the son-in-law in the Turks, he found that there were traces of the rebel Liang army in the Turks. This further confirmed the son-in-law's guess. This must be because the Turks planned to prepare for the arrival of the Tang Dynasty after the autumn harvest of the Tang Dynasty.

After all, the severe cold and snow disaster in last winter caused heavy losses to the entire Eastern Turks. It has not yet eased, but winter is about to enter. Faced with this shortage of food, the Eastern Turks Jie Li Khan and the Turks must have planned to come to the border of our Tang Dynasty two months before the arrival of winter. Taking advantage of the autumn harvest of the Tang Dynasty this year, everyone was silent and with this year's bumper grain harvest, they would snatch it up, which not only supplemented the losses of last winter, but also had enough food to allow them to spend the winter safely and comfortably.

His Majesty ascended the throne. It was because of the rebellion of King Li Yuanji of Qi that the "pseudo-Emperor" Li Jiancheng died unexpectedly. It must be that the internal situation was not very stable. In this case, if I were a Turkic, I would have a big war against the Tang Dynasty.

If he could suddenly gain something inside the pass, even if it was an unexpected gain, for the sake of the safety of the entire pass, His Majesty would definitely pay a large sum of gold and silver to the two khans to withdraw their troops.

Even if they do not invade the pass, they will have a lot of income if they plunder in several border prefectures. Judging from the bumper harvest this year, as long as the Turks plunder the grain from several border prefectures, it will be enough for them to spend this winter comfortably.

And as long as you can grasp the time well, before winter comes, after you complete the plunder and return to their own territory, even if you want to fight back, you can't do it. After you assemble the army, the entire Turks are in winter. At that time, heavy snow is very unfavorable for marching and fighting, not to mention that in that cold weather, people are very prone to getting sick.

This will delay the next year. There will definitely be no war in the beginning of spring next year, so it will only delay the summer. Once next summer, only God knows what will happen at that time.

Besides, your Majesty, you know that in recent years, the Turks have become accustomed to going south to the border. They will launch once or twice to the southward battle against the Tang Dynasty almost every year, and each time they have made them gain a lot. Faced with this severe wintering condition this year, the two khans of the Eastern Turks will definitely go south to the border like the previous emperor's reign and solve their wintering difficulties.

Besides, Your Majesty, don’t forget, what my son-in-law mentioned just now, the rebel Liang Shidu has also been active near the Eastern Turkic King's tent recently. You know this Liang Shidu, Your Majesty, is Jie Li Khan and Tuli Khan. This year, I don’t want to go south to the border, but with guys here, it’s basically impossible not to go south!”

After hearing Zhang Yang's words, Li Shimin carefully tasted Zhang Yang's long speech, and felt that this was the case. In his opinion, it was inevitable that the Eastern Turks would go south to attack the border under the leadership of the two khans. It was a matter of time, but it would definitely be after the autumn harvest. This would not be wrong. After all, only after the autumn harvest can the Turks go south to attack the border and plunder enough food for the winter.

As for Liang Shidu, Li Shimin, he also knows very well. Although this guy is weak, he is the longest-lived rebel thief from the former Sui Dynasty. He has not been wiped out by the Tang Dynasty. He knows that he is still capable.

However, when Li Shimin thought of what Liang Shidu did, he felt both angry and good at playing.

This guy was from Shuofang County, Xiazhou, Sui Dynasty. His family was wealthy and powerful. He was a wealthy family in the county for generations. After growing up, Liang Shidu joined the army and became a general of Yingyang Mansion of Shuofang of the Sui Dynasty because of his military achievements. Emperor Yang of Sui was dismissed from his official position in the late Daye of Sui and returned to his hometown. At that time, the world's anti-Sui Dynasty had become a tide, and the sky-high building of the Sui Empire had been shattered by the storm of the tide and was about to collapse.

In early February of the 13th year of Daye, Sui Dynasty, he had just returned to his hometown. Liang Shidu, who was dissatisfied with the court, joined dozens of party members to rebel, killed the county magistrate, occupied Shuofang County and raised the banner of anti-Sui Dynasty. He claimed to be the prime minister. Liang Shidu knew that he was alone and could not stand on his own, so he took the initiative to form the Turks that dominated the north and leaned on him as his backer.

The Sui general Zhang Shilong led his army to fight. The Liang army sent troops to fight, defeated the Sui army, took advantage of the situation to attack Diaoyin, Honghua, Yan'an and other counties, and their strength increased greatly. They had troops and territory, but they could not be without names. The Liang army then usurped the emperor in March of the 13th year of Daye, Sui, and established the "Liang" regime with surnames as the country's name.

Liang Shidu held an ascension ceremony in the south of the city to sacrifice to heaven and earth. When he was digging a pit and burying sacrifices to worship the earth god, he received a large seal, which Liang Shidu regarded as auspiciousness, so he named the year "Yonglong". The Turkic Shibi Khan was very supportive and sent envoys to present a wolf-headed flag, calling him Dadu Via Khan to help the emperor. With the support of the powerful Turkic Turks, Liang Shidu became more courageous, so he joined forces with the Turkic army to invade Henan and captured Yanchuan County.

It would be fine if he just surrendered to the Turks, but this guy was defeated repeatedly in battle against the Tang Dynasty. In early July of the first year of Wude in the Tang Dynasty, the Liang army invaded Lingzhou, the important town in the northwest, and was defeated by Lin Xingcan, the general of the Tang cavalry. In early March of the following year, the unwilling Liang army made a comeback and attacked Lingzhou for the second time, but was repelled by the Chief Yang Ze.

Seeing that the Liang Division was repeatedly hit by the use of troops to the west, they adjusted their combat plans and moved to the south. In mid-to-late August, the Liang Division led their troops to invade Yanzhou with thousands of Turkic cavalry and camped at Yezhuling in the south of Yanzhou. Duan Decao, the general manager of Yanzhou, was very disparate, so he blocked the enemy without fighting to defeat his spirit. After a long stalemate, the Liang Division was a little slackened. Duan Decao sent his deputy general manager Liang Li to lead the army to attack, commanding the light cavalry to act as a surprise force, and sneaked out of the rear of the Liang army to prepare for a surprise attack.

The Liang army commanded the army to fight against the Tang army opposite. The two sides fought fiercely. When the fierce battle was getting tired, Duan Decao led the light cavalry to make a big fuss and came from behind the Liang army. The exhausted Liang army was suddenly attacked by the iron cavalry of the new force, and was immediately defeated and rushed to escape. The Tang army chased for more than 200 miles north, seized the victory to break through Weizhou in Liang, and killed many prisoners.

After more than a month of rest, the Liang army was unwilling to fail, and led 5,000 infantry and cavalry to attack Yanzhou again to avenge the previous shame. As a result, they were defeated by the Tang army, killing more than 2,000 people. The Liang army led only more than 100 cavalry to escape.

After more than half a year of rest, the Liang army led the Turks and Jihu soldiers to attack Yanzhou Prefecture three times. Duan Decao was really his nemesis. For the third time, he defeated his coalition forces, and the Liang army lost more than a thousand people.

But he deserved to be unlucky. He originally came up with a plan that was enough to make the Tang Dynasty attacked from both sides and destroyed. His plan was shattered due to God's reasons.

After Liu Wuzhou was pillaged by Li Shimin, coupled with his general Zhang Ju, Liu Min led his troops to the Tang Dynasty one after another, lobbying the newly ascended Chu Luo Khan, and requesting the Turks to send troops to invade the south, and he was willing to be his guide.

Chuluo Khan adopted his suggestion and formulated a combat plan for five attacks to attack the Tang Dynasty. However, when he was about to send troops, Chuluo Khan died. This plan to attack Tang, which may have caused the newly established Tang Empire to be attacked from all sides and could not resist, was still in the womb. (To be continued)


Chapter completed!