At this time, the pseudo-Yan emperor An Qingxu was in a bad situation.
After escaping from Luoyang, An Qingxu did not expect that the Tang army would attack so fast.
He hesitated for a while in Xiangzhou, whether to flee back to Taiyuan to join forces with Shi Siming, or to flee back to Pinglu and reorganize his army.
Unexpectedly, after such hesitation, Tang general Li Guangbi occupied Anyang City, cutting off An Qingxu's retreat.
Now there is no way to advance or retreat. An Qingxu wants to return to the north. Now he has two thousand elites brought from Luoyang with him. Anyang City cannot be avoided.
If we abandon these two thousand elites and return to the north, An Qingxu, the pseudo-Yan emperor, will be done with it.
Although An Qingxu was never An Lushan's intended successor, An Lushan had always been interested in his eldest son An Qingzong, who was held hostage in Chang'an, and wanted An Qingzong to inherit his power.
But things didn't go as planned. The emperor realized that An Lushan was planning to rebel, so he killed An Qingzong first.
An Qingxu was often scolded by his father when he was a child. Even as an adult, he would be beaten by An Lushan for the slightest disobedience. This also made An Qingxu's character very weird.
After killing his father and ascending the throne, An Qingxu did not manage the affairs of the puppet Yan, but handed over all military and political power to Yan Zhuang and the generals around him.
And because An Qingxu was a little fat, people in the Tang Dynasty called him "Pig'er". Everyone from Li Guangbi to ordinary soldiers looked down upon the pseudo-Yan emperor.
Now that Li Guangbi has occupied Anyang City, the Tang army has shouted the slogan of capturing An Qingxu alive, and has also sent soldiers to the countryside to search for traces of An Qingxu's men.
Although Li Guangbi was a famous general in the Tang Dynasty, after his troops entered Xiangzhou, military discipline deteriorated.
The reason is also very simple. After the recapture of Luoyang, the court's expenses suddenly increased.
It is necessary to repair the ancestral temples, palaces and government offices, all of which cost money.
What's worse is that the Bianhe River section of the Tongji Canal was blocked by Yin Ziqi's order when he attacked Suiyang. The water transportation of the Bianhe River has not been dredged yet.
The food and materials from Jianghuai need to dock at Bianzhou and be transported by horse-drawn carriage to Luoyang before they can continue to be transported by water to Chang'an.
Although this section of the road is not long, it greatly increases transportation costs and stagnates the once smooth financial transportation of the empire.
There are more places to spend money, but the speed of sending money is slow. The reward for liberating Luoyang has not yet been received. Guo Ziyi can only lead the army to hoard near Luoyang to prevent the army from mutiny.
Li Guangbi led this army to capture Anyang City, but he was also a clever woman who could not make a living without rice. If Li Guangbi had not been considerate and caring for the soldiers and was always upright, the soldiers would not have rebelled.
Although the soldiers did not rebel, they would take things themselves if the court could not give them.
Xiangzhou was one of the first places to respond to Anlushan's rebellion, and was regarded as a traitor by the imperial court.
Nowadays, most of the imperial troops come from the northwest and Guanzhong areas, and Xiangzhou belongs to Henan. These soldiers do not have any psychological pressure when they rob.
The troops originally sent out by Li Guangbi to search for An Qingxu turned into a robbery team out of the city. They had no intention of searching for An Qingxu and only searched for nearby wealthy cities and villages to rob.
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Regarding these matters, the rewards promised to the soldiers were not distributed on time. At this time, he was restraining military discipline and was afraid of a mutiny in the army, so Li Guangbi could only turn a blind eye.
The Tang army did not bother to search for An Qingxu and left him alone in Xiangzhou.
The actions of the Tang army also made Xiangzhou, who was already alienated from the Tang Dynasty, even more disgusted with the Tang Dynasty.
Many local wealthy families secretly helped An Qingxu, providing his army with shelter and sending food to his soldiers.
However, the weather was getting colder and colder, making it harder for the army to mobilize, so Xiangzhou became strangely quiet.
The situation in Henan as a whole has strangely come to a standstill, and the great victory of regaining Luoyang was quickly washed away by a large number of complicated daily tasks.
Zhang Xun, the new Luoyang stayer, was busy restoring public order in Luoyang and wiping out the remaining rebels in various parts of Henan.
After Zhang Duanyang took refuge with Zhang Xun, he quickly got the position of Cavalry Captain, and together with Nan Jiyun, he led troops to eliminate bandits near Luoyang.
Originally, the eastbound tour group had gone their separate ways. Zhou Shi and Yu Xiaoxiao went to Chang'an, leaving Li Daoyuan alone to continue eastward.
After the Battle of Suiyang, Li Daoyuan headed east from the Grand Canal and entered Jianghuai from Linhuai.
The Jianghuai water network is densely covered. After development in the Sui and Tang dynasties, it has become the richest place in the world.
Li Daoyuan sat on the boat and headed toward Yangzhou along the canal.
Although it has already entered winter, the tall reeds on the shore have turned yellow. Li Daoyuan came out of the cabin. Frost fell last night, and the withered yellow reeds were covered with crystal frost. This beautiful scenery made Li Daoyuan feel relaxed and happy.
After seeing the beautiful scenery, but not
Jianghuai is far away from the war in the Central Plains, but it is not a paradise on earth as Li Daoyuan thought.
The two important towns of Pengcheng (Xuzhou) and Linhuai (Suqian), together with the Huaihe River, blocked the attack of the puppet Yan army on Jianghuai.
However, these two cities and one river could not stop the fleeing people from pouring into Jianghuai.
It is said that the Jianghuai River and the Huaihe River are the inside and outside of each other. The Huaihe River is shallow and the Yangtze River is wide. These refugees did not have boats and relied on some rafts to cross the Huaihe River, but they were unable to cross the Yangtze River on these rafts.
A large number of refugees were stranded in the Huainan area, which is the area south of the Huaihe River and north of the Yangtze River (today's northern Jiangsu).
Today's Huainan Jiedushi is the great poet Gao Shi who came to power by pacifying the Yongwang Rebellion.
But as soon as the great poet took office, he encountered the hard work of resettling the victims.
The cold winter is coming soon. If these victims starve and freeze to death in Huainan, there must be a censor who will serve as Gao Shi, the military governor of Huainan.
However, Huainan is not as prosperous as Jiangnan, and it has to support the army in Linhuai. It has already been unable to make ends meet. Now it has to help so many victims, and the Huainan Jiedushi Mansion is powerless.
So when Li Daoyuan entered Huainan, what he saw was starvation and death everywhere, and victims everywhere were selling their sons and daughters.
The old boat owner is a Xumin from Huainan, that is, a fisherman who has lived on the boat for generations.
These fishermen all live on the boat, and their daily necessities, food, clothing, housing, and transportation are all on the boat. The boat is where they live.
The old boat owner's surname is Fan. This old boat was also passed down from his ancestors. It has been repaired and repaired for so many years. Thanks to Old Fan's powerful punting skills, it is the fastest boat on the entire lake.
Li Daoyuan's destination was Yangzhou. He spent money to rent a boat from Lao Fantou and headed to Yangzhou from a branch of Hongze Lake.
Old Fantou said while paddling the boat: "A few days ago, the water bandits in Hongze Lake took over the imperial boat transporting grain. The officers and soldiers are cleaning up these days. The public security is much better than before."
Li Daoyuan looked at the wide Hongze Lake and asked: "Are there many water bandits here?"
Old Fantou sighed and said: "There are too many, of course there are too many. If you don't survive, you will have to fall into the trap of the enemy."
"I heard that Qingzhou has a lot of talent. There is a place called Liangshanbo where thousands of water bandits gathered and robbed no matter whose ship it was."
Li Daoyuan also sighed. In troubled times, human life is worth less than grass. Huainan is no longer a place free from military disasters, but it is still implicated in military disasters.
Old Fantou added: "Originally, if you want to go to Yangzhou, you can just take the canal. However, water bandits have been rampant recently and the government has sealed the canal. It is much slower to go to Hongze Lake."
Li Daoyuan was sitting on the boat, blowing the winter wind on the lake, and one or two migratory birds that had not had time to fly south began to flutter miserably.
I really didn't expect that Huainan would be in this situation. Putting down the Anlushan Rebellion was not only a continuous war, but also drained the wealth of the entire country.
Yangzhou was the seat of Huainan Jiedushi, and the city was still prosperous.
Yangzhou is on the Yangtze River, a hub connecting Huainan and Jiangnan, and the starting point of the Grand Canal.
Nowadays, Huainan and Jiangnan bear more than half of the expenses of the Tang Dynasty. The Huainan Jiedushi needs to maintain public security in Huainan and maintain the smooth flow of the Grand Canal, the main artery of the empire. Gao Shi is wary, but the situation is getting worse and worse.
Gao Shi only felt physically and mentally exhausted. This frontier poet who once wrote "Don't worry about having no friends in the road ahead, and no one in the world knows you" has aged more than ten years after serving as the governor of Huainan for a few months.
In the Gao Shi Jiedushi's mansion, sitting below him was a thin, middle-aged official.
This official was wearing the green official robe of a middle- and low-level official, but he was drinking tea calmly in front of Gao Shi from the Jie Town.
"Yu Gui, now that the Bianhe River is silted up, you can report to the court and withhold some salt money and give it to us in Huainan. This winter will be over."
This thin, middle-aged official is Wu Qi, the current Jianghuai envoy and salt and iron envoy.
The main branch of the Jianghuai Salt Institute is located in Yangzhou. Wuqi wanted to implement the salt method in the Jianghuai area, so he naturally had to deal with Huainan Jiedushi like Gao Shi.
But Wu Qi said with a straight face: "Jie Shuai, this salt affairs is a major matter for the court. Every time a sum of salt money is collected, it goes into the Duzhi treasury of the Ministry of Household Affairs. Even if I report to the court, the salt money cannot be withheld."
Come down."
Gao Shi sighed. He wanted to borrow money from the Yantieyuan to help the victims, but Wu Qi still refused to take the money.
When Wu Qi saw Gao Shi sighing, he also sighed and said: "Jie Shuai, it's not that I won't give you money and food. The salt tax I collected in Jianghuai is countless. The court has already prepared to spend it, let alone Bianshui."
If there is siltation, even if the Bian River is cut off, the money and grain will have to be carried to Chang'an."
When Wu Qi said this, Gao Shi was speechless.
The imperial court's positioning of each state in the world was very clear.
The most important task of Jianghuai is to transport money and food to the Central Plains, and the purpose of all Jianghuai officials is also the same.
Fifth Qi was able to gain the emperor's trust because he could receive money from Jianghuai.
Once he fails to receive money, he will immediately lose the emperor's trust.
At the same time, Li Daoyuan entered Gaoyou Lake from Hongze Lake and entered Yangzhou territory.