Building a rolling dam is still a temporary solution rather than a permanent solution. Even if you spend a lot of effort and cost to build a large sand-blocking dam in the upper reaches of the Yellow River, it will still be of no avail, because the root cause of the Yellow River's troubles lies in sand, and the source of river sand is located in the middle of the Yellow River. More than 90% of the river sand in the Loess Plateau in the basin comes from here.
Among them, the province with the largest source of river sand is Shaanxi, which accounts for almost half of the amount of sand in the entire river basin. The amount of sand coming in every year is hundreds of millions of tons. The entire Loess Plateau has been "cut" into ravines everywhere. The reason why such a serious problem is caused Soil erosion is mainly caused by illegal reclamation and deforestation.
It is said that the people in the past planted trees and others will enjoy the shade. However, the current situation of the Yellow River is that trees are cut down in the upper reaches and the downstream suffers. But now is not the time to investigate regional responsibilities. The key is how to solve the problem of soil erosion. I stayed in Kaifeng for ten days. After dealing with the construction of river embankments and rolling dams, Wan Lei set off for Xi'an.
Xi'an, known as Chang'an in ancient times, is bordered by the Wei River to the north and the Qinling Mountains to the south. It is located in the Wei River Valley. The Zhou, Qin, Han, Sui, and Tang dynasties all built their capitals here. Especially during the Tang Dynasty, Chang'an City was almost the center of the world, with a population of more than one million. , this is a miracle for an agricultural society.
However, this miracle ended as the ecology of Shaanxi continued to deteriorate. In the Song Dynasty, due to the siltation of the canal, Xi'an lost the convenient transportation conditions necessary for it to be a capital. The Northern Song Dynasty chose to build its capital in the Henan area.
By the Yuan Dynasty, the population in the north had dropped sharply due to wars and massacres. The change was more than 30 years after the restoration of the Ming Dynasty. The population in the north was just over 24 million, and most of it was concentrated in plain areas such as Henan and Shandong. The population of Shaanxi was even It is not as good as Shanxi. When the Peking Army took over Shaanxi, it was known from the household registration statistics that the population was only more than two million, and the actual population was probably not much less.
In the division of provinces in the Ming Dynasty, Shaanxi Province was much larger, including not only the Hetao area, but also the Gansu area. Such a vast province only had a population of more than two million, which can be described as pitifully small. Just based on this A small population simply cannot form a capital, so Wan Lei has no plans to build a capital in Xi'an.
Although the beauty of Xishan has faded with the sun, a lean camel is bigger than a horse. Xi'an is still the largest city in the northwest. Especially during the Hongwu period of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang used Xi'an as a fortress to guard the northwest. He not only named his second son King of Qin to guard Xi'an , also ordered the construction of the large-scale Prince Qin's Palace and the expansion of Xi'an City.
If we look at the size of the city alone, Xi'an City looks even more majestic than Peking. The city wall is four feet high and five or six feet wide. The thickness is greater than the height. It can be said to be as solid as a mountain. It has a circumference of twelve kilometers. Not only is it dug a moat, each There is also a tall and majestic gate tower at the gate, and a towering drum tower and bell tower are built in the center of the city. From the whole point of view, this is a large fortress.
However, no matter how strong the fortress is, it will be destroyed by the fierce artillery attack of the Peking Army, let alone such a rammed earth city. Although the Qin Palace led the army to resist stubbornly, the Peking Army's First Group Army only took a few days. In a short time, they broke through the city defenses and captured the equally well-defended Prince Qin's Mansion, eventually occupying the entire city of Xi'an.
Xi'an City is now the headquarters of the Northwest Military Region, and there are thousands of soldiers stationed in the city. After entering the city, Wan Lei moved into the headquarters of the headquarters, met with Zhou Tianshou, and listened to the battle situation of the First Group Army.
Speaking of which, the Northwest Military Region is the most important military region in the north. It is responsible for a long defense line, from the Mongolian Plateau to the Gobi in the Western Regions to the edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. The area is the most complex and the environment is the most difficult. Therefore, Wan Lei put the most capable The general and the most capable First Army Group were sent here.
"On May 15th, Li Ming, commander of the Fifth Division of the First Army, led a thousand troops out of Jiayuguan and fought a fierce battle with the outpost of the Mongolian Oara tribe in the Anding area. They annihilated more than 400 enemies and temporarily controlled the Gobi area. The Oara tribe only A tentative attack, and after the defeat, someone was sent to clarify the so-called 'misunderstanding'." Zhou Tianshou introduced.
"Mahamu, the leader of the Oara tribe who occupies the northern part of the desert, has always had ambitions and should not be underestimated. The Biexibali Kingdom, which occupies the western part of the desert, was originally a Tibetan state in the Ming Dynasty, and now it is colluding with the Tamerlane Khanate, so it needs to be paid more attention to. Now that the north is newly settled, it is best not to extend the front line too long. I suggest that we focus on holding on to Jiayuguan first," Wan Lei said.
The so-called Besibali Kingdom was actually split from the Chagatai Khanate, one of the four great Mongolian khanates. Since its capital was established in Besibali, the Ming Dynasty called it the Besibali Kingdom. In fact, it should have been called Besibali. It was called the Eastern Chagatai Khanate because it ruled the eastern part of the original Chagatai Khanate and stood side by side with the Western Chagatai Khanate, which ruled the western part of the Khanate.
The current Great Khan of the Eastern Chagatai Khanate is Shami Chagan, but the affairs of the country are in the hands of Duglat Emir Togada, a nobleman of the Duglat tribe. Togada has a good impression of the Ming Dynasty, but this is not the case. Strange, because he could get huge profits from the Ming Dynasty through tribute trade.
It is the Beiping Army that now occupies the Western Region, and those who are closer to the Beiping Army are the Oara tribe. Not only has Tushida lost the benefit of tribute trade, but some goods produced in the Beiping area have to be resold through the Oara tribe. The Oara tribe The huge profits made in this kind of middle trade naturally aroused strong dissatisfaction in Tushida, so his attitude towards the Peking Army was not very good, but this was not the main reason.
In fact, the situation in Central Asia to the west of the Western Regions is also very chaotic. As the Mongol khanates split and collapsed one after another, many separatist khanates emerged in Central Asia and North Asia, and the khanates attacked each other, like a mess. Putting aside everything else, taking the original Chagatai Khanate, the Western Chagatai Khanate in the west is even more tragic because it was replaced by the powerful Turkic minister Tamerlane.
Timur was a full-fledged careerist. Over the years, he not only controlled Western Chagatai, but also brought Eastern Chagatai into his control. After that, he successively conquered Persia, Khwarezm, Ilkhanate and Afghanistan once sent troops to the Golden Horde, dreaming of restoring the glory of the Mongol Empire, but it ended in failure.
Tamerlane, who had fought in the South and North for more than forty years, had long been greedy for the wealthy Central Plains. During the Hongwu period, he detained and tortured Ming Dynasty envoys many times.
Since last year, Tamerlane has assembled hundreds of thousands of troops in the western part of the desert, forcing the Eastern Chagatai Khanate to join his chariot, trying to take advantage of the chaos in the Ming Dynasty to attack the Central Plains together. The reason why Tushida has never been The main reason for sending envoys to contact the Peking Army was out of fear of Timur Khan.
Regarding Tamerlane's ambition, Wan Lei also learned a thing or two from the mouth of the Wala Lai envoy, but he was not afraid at all, because the Tamerlane Khanate was too far away from the Ming Dynasty and had to cross the Gobi Desert. Food supplies are difficult, and drinking water is in short supply. Even if there are a million troops, there will probably only be tens of thousands of horses left after walking this far.
Wan Lei asked the Peiping Army to actively shrink the front line and implement the policy of fortifying the wall and clearing the country. The purpose was to lengthen the front line and trap the enemy troops in the pain of running around. At the same time, he sent more troops to concentrate on Jiayuguan and strive to occupy the enemy outside the country. In short, the imperial army The enemy's strategy is one word - delay for as long as possible, and try not to engage in head-on combat with the incoming enemy.
Because the longer the delay is, the more beneficial it will be to the Peking Army. Not only is it difficult for the enemy to come from afar to supply supplies, but also because Timur is already over seventy years old, and a person who is half-footed in the coffin can be dragged away with a drag. Death. And once he dies, the huge khanate that he himself can control will inevitably have civil strife again, and then there will be nothing to fear.
"Well, what my dear brother said is that I will send an order to Jiayuguan and ask all the soldiers to retreat to Guancheng. At the same time, I will dispatch five thousand troops and horses from northern Sichuan to support and ensure that Guancheng is not lost." Zhou Tianshou agreed, "But , our existing troops are too few, there are too many important places to be garrisoned, and we are stretched everywhere, so we should expand our troops."
"The expansion of the army is already underway, and now that North Korea has been decided, the Third Army does not need to leave a large army to garrison. I have asked Commander Li to dispatch 5,000 elite troops to the west to the Mongolian Plateau to coordinate the garrison to relieve the defense pressure on the First Army. .”
"That's good. On the Mongolian Plateau, not only are the Oara tribe eying you, but there is also the Golden Horde. They are really surrounded by enemies from all sides. Although we have 10,000 troops stationed to guard various places, there is no guarantee that everything will be safe. Even if 5,000 troops are stationed, we can solve the problem. It’s urgent.”
"The situation in the country is beginning to rise, and it is naturally difficult to fully control the situation on all sides. Therefore, I still need to worry more about the northwest border defense. I will try my best to use diplomatic means to reduce the pressure on border defense."
"In the past, weren't we in Peking City surrounded by enemies from all sides? Even though we were a single city, we were able to survive and thrive from the cracks. Now that we are in the north of the Yangtze River, with tens of millions of people, are we still afraid of those clowns?" Zhou Tianshou said with a look on his face. He smiled fearlessly.
"Haha, I'm right, no matter how hard the days are, our Peking Army has survived, and we will be invincible in the future." Wan Lei also smiled freely and changed the topic: "In addition to inspecting the army, I am here this time. , Mainly here to inspect the public sentiment, there are no particularly serious mass incidents in the Shaanxi-Gansu region, right?"
"There are few people in the Shaanxi-Gansu region. Apart from a small-scale famine caused by a long drought, there is generally nothing going on. The political training work is also proceeding in an orderly manner. Provisional governments have been established in various places and order has been completely restored. On the contrary, the local The northern Sichuan area where barbarians and caravans are entrenched has experienced repeated rebellions, which is really a headache." Zhou Tianshou frowned.
"Ignore it there for now and let the army retreat to Hanzhong."
"The army retreated to Hanzhong? Do we want to abandon Jiangbei?"
"It's not giving up, but putting it on hold temporarily. After the Fourth Army is formed, it won't be too late to clean it up in one fell swoop." Wan Lei said somewhat helplessly.
In fact, Sichuan and Shu have always been difficult to govern. There is a famous saying in the world: before the world is in chaos, Shu will be in chaos. The world has been governed before Shu is governed. This is not unreasonable, because Sichuan is located in the southwest corner and is surrounded by mountains. , easy to defend and difficult to attack; there is a basin with thousands of miles of fertile fields and convenient irrigation, which can almost become a country of its own. Therefore, once the world is in turmoil, some people in the Sichuan and Shu regions will set up an anti-separatist banner. To eliminate this separatist force, a lot of effort will be required. The price often requires all the efforts of the whole country to achieve it. This is the reason why the whole world is pacified, but the land of Shu can finally be pacified.
In addition, although the Han people dominate Shu, there are still many ethnic minorities living in the surrounding mountainous areas, which makes Sichuan more difficult to govern. Wan Lei also knows that with the strength of the Peking Army, Sichuan cannot be taken for the time being, so in order to avoid unnecessary internal strife , he ordered the army to temporarily withdraw from northern Sichuan and wait until the Fourth Army was established before sending troops in.
Of course, Wan Lei also wanted to use these barbarians to train his troops. After all, an army must be tempered by blood and fire to become an elite soldier, and the Fourth Army was mainly infantry. It was Wan Lei who wanted to cross the river south in the future. The preparations for liberating the whole country must be on par with the other three armies, both in terms of equipment and training.
"By the way, I still have an important matter to discuss with my brother. This matter is related to the destiny of the country." Seeing that Zhou Tianshou was silent for a while, Wan Lei said again.