The film and television world begins with the battle for the throne in Kowloon

Chapter 1122 Attacking Ji County
After a discussion, everyone felt relieved. Liaobei Road was the former territory of Goguryeo. In the past, it had a complete defense system to defend against the Central Plains dynasty. It should be no problem to hold off the enemy for a while, and Changsun Shunde was not a mediocre general.

In the winter war in the north, the biggest enemy is not the opponent, but the bad weather, which is extremely unfavorable to the attacker. Perhaps Shi Luodie intended to use the attack on Liaobei Road as bait to lure out the troops from Hebei so that they could be dealt with on the plains?
Therefore, all the ministers did not recommend sending troops. They just ordered the two places to strengthen their defenses and everything would wait until next year.

Li Yan nodded in agreement when he heard this. He had made up his mind to do whatever everyone said and follow the crowd without standing out. He knew that according to common sense, everyone's analysis was correct and the situation was indeed like this.

Since ancient times, there are five ways for the barbarians to invade Hebei. From west to east, they can go through the mountains from Zhangjiakou in the northwest, break through Juyongguan and then enter Youzhou; or go from Dushikou, follow the mountain path, pass Huanghuacheng and enter Youzhou;

Then there are the Gubeikou route in the north and the Songtingguan and Xifengkou routes in the northeast. Each route requires passing through many passes and is not very suitable for large cavalry groups to pass through. Shi Luodie has an army of 300,000 this time, and none of the routes are easy to take.

Not to mention the last Liaoxi passage, which is a narrow strip of land of several hundred miles, and is backed by mountains and the sea, and is located in the hinterland of Liaozhou. Once Shi Luodie's army enters here and is blocked on both ends by the Ming army, the Turks will have no choice but to jump into the sea.

With the brave general Changsun Shunde guarding Liaozhou, Shi Luodie could not be sure of his retreat.

But they never dreamed that Shi Luodie, played by the clone, had originally prepared a one-way ticket and had not considered the retreat or the problem of going back. These people entered the Central Plains to complete Li Yan's strategic goal.

In the name of disrupting the Central Plains, the aristocratic families that had occupied the Central Plains for hundreds of years were eliminated. In addition, in order to reduce the population of the grassland, the power of the Ashina clan with Shiluodie as the core was completely buried in the Central Plains, laying the foundation for the future north-south pattern.

Such a "torrent" that only charges but does not defend, only advances without considering retreat, can definitely erupt with unprecedented destructive power and is destined to turn the Central Plains upside down.

Ji County, Hebei Province, is the core town of Fanyang County, Youzhou. When Emperor Yang Guang of the Sui Dynasty conquered Goguryeo, he used it as a logistics support base. At the end of the Sui Dynasty, the world was in chaos, and Luo Yi relied on the large amount of materials stored here as capital to establish his own regime.

After enjoying twenty years of peace, this tall city was once again besieged by northern barbarians.

Two hundred thousand Turkic cavalrymen surrounded Ji County tightly, and balls of cow dung and chili peppers burned fiercely under the city. The black smoke that rose to the sky with a choking pungent smell rushed to the top of the city, making the soldiers on the city snot and tears flow continuously.

I couldn't even see the figures attacking the city below.

Horns were blown into the sky, and countless Hu soldiers wearing sheepskin coats and holding bows passed in front of the city in waves, and quickly rained arrows on the top of the city. A small number of catapults also threw stones and kerosene cans on the top of the city.

The Tang army soldiers on the city wall lay tightly behind the city wall, hiding.

The Turks pushed the wells and siege vehicles collected from the previous city and slowly approached the city. When the last wave of arrows fell, teams of Turks howled and screamed like ghosts and wolves, and rushed to the city wall desperately with ladders.

"Quick, the arrows have stopped, the Turks have begun to attack the city."

The soldiers defending the city shouted loudly: "Get up, stand up, carry out the rolling logs, radium stones, and gold juice, and throw them down to block the attack. And use your bows and arrows, shoot all the Turkic wolves to death under the city."

Under the loud urging of the generals, a large number of soldiers who had dodged the rain of arrows and stones like cannonballs quickly fought back. At the same time, they kept urging the conscripted civilians to pour a large amount of rolling logs and burning gold juice on the top of the city wall onto the ladders below the city.

A fierce offensive and defensive battle quickly began.

On a mound in the distance, the golden wolf-head banner of the Great Khan of the Turks was fluttering in the north wind.

Among the group of people under the banner, Shiluodi, wearing a white cloak, wearing the long-tailed eagle feather helmet that Jie Li had worn before, riding a tall and handsome white horse, holding a whip. Surrounded by a group of tribal leaders and high-ranking officials of the Khanate, he proudly watched the offensive and defensive battle in the distance.

It was the fifth day after the Battle of Pingzhou. After conquering Pingzhou and Lulong, the army looted and collected supplies, and then immediately entered Hebei. The army successively conquered Macheng, Shicheng, Yuyang, Sanhe, and Luxian, and arrived at Fanyang County in Youzhou.

Ji County is also the core town of Fanyang. Together with Zhuo County, which is dozens of miles away, it is the place where the Lu family of Fanyang, one of the Five Surnames and Seven Families, made their fortune.

The Turkic army divided its troops into two groups to capture the two core towns of Fanyang County together.

The Fanyang Lu family has lived in Ji and Zhuo counties for generations. Both counties were under the jurisdiction of Fanyang County. The nobles were called the county's name, so they were named "Fanyang Lu family". Zhuo County was originally the Zhuoyi of Yan State. In the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, it was one of the most prosperous cities in the world.

This place is flat and fertile, and is a well-known fertile land. The map of "Du Kang" of Yan State presented by Jing Ke when he assassinated the King of Qin is located in this area. The Lu family of Fanyang has been farming and studying here for generations, and their descendants have multiplied and become a world-famous family.

The real ancestor of the Fanyang Lu family was the famous Confucian scholar Lu Zhi of the Eastern Han Dynasty, one of the 28 great Confucian scholars in history who were honored in the Confucius Temple. From the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties to the Sui Dynasty, the descendants of Lu Zhi were all from official families and scholarly families. The Fanyang Lu family has always been "a family with a high reputation and a prosperous family in the world" and "a family with high etiquette and high praise in the world".

From Lu Xuan to his great-grandson, there were 18 people in the family, living together and sharing the same wealth. There were people who were famous officials and recorded in historical records, and there were countless people who served as officials. The daughters of the imperial family also wanted to marry the Lu family of Fanyang. History said that "three masters in one family were an honor for the world."

Today, the Lu family, which started in Fan Yang, has developed more than a dozen branches from its two ancestral branches in the north and south, spreading all over the world. Fan Yang can be said to be the ancestral home of the Lu family for a thousand years, and it is also the holy place of the Lu family all over the world.

The northern states and counties with Fan Yang as the core, including Guizhou, Yanzhou, Danzhou, Jizhou, Changzhou, Wozhou, Yizhou, Binzhou, Xuanzhou, Shenzhou, and Weizhou, were all territories of the Lu family. Most of the high-ranking officials in the counties and prefectures in each state came from the Lu family.

It can be said that the land of Youyan is the foundation of the Lu family, and their words are more effective than those of the emperor.

During the Tang Dynasty, Li Shimin mentioned the famous surnames in the world: "Cui, Lu, Wang, and Xie." The Lu family of Fanyang was known together with the Cui families of Qinghe and Boling, and were regarded as the top families in the world.

First it was Luo Yi, then Dou Jiande, and finally Li Tang. No matter which family occupied this place, they had to respectfully invite people from the two families to come out and support themselves, otherwise they would not be able to maintain their power.

Li Yan also sighed, during the Sui and Tang Dynasties, it can be said that whoever controls Cui and Lu controls Hebei, and whoever controls Hebei controls half of the world. The vast Hebei Province, the north is the territory of the Lu family, and the south is the territory of the Cui family, and the two families tacitly divided this place.

As the two great families grew more prosperous, the wealth and land of Hebei were also taken over by the two families. According to Li Yan's reading of the internal treasury data, more than 80% of the land in Hebei belonged to dozens of noble families, large and small, with Cui Lu as the core.

Of course, the farmers on these lands naturally became their tenants.

The ultimate demise of the Tang Dynasty was the Huang Chao Uprising, but the root cause was the An-Shi Rebellion. The cause of the An-Shi Rebellion was that Li Longji abandoned the military household system and implemented the recruitment system, and changed the military household that was originally only in charge of the soldiers into a Jiedushi who held both military, political and financial powers.

The Fubing system is a system of combining soldiers with farmers and soldiers based on the equal-field system and the military farming system. The court set up a number of "military fu" in various parts of the country. The "fubing" were selected by the local military fu from the farmers in the prefectures and counties where they were located. They were enlisted at the age of 20 and exempted at the age of 60.

They would work in peacetime and train during the slack season, and when it was time to go to war or serve in the army, they would bring their weapons and food and rush to the assembly point to join the war.

After the war, he returned to the countryside and continued his military and agricultural work.

The advantage of this system is that the soldiers will not leave the land, which saves a lot of money and food for maintaining the soldiers. Secondly, the soldiers can be easily dispersed and return to the fields to avoid a situation where the tail is too big to be cut off. The disadvantage is that the combat effectiveness is not strong, and more numbers are needed to make up for the lack of quality of individual soldiers.

Although some combat effectiveness was sacrificed, it was exchanged for long-term stability of the country. This system was implemented during most periods of ancient dynasties.

The volunteer system is a professional military system, in which the court or some forces openly recruit civilians into the army, make fighting their profession, train them for a long time, and provide them with military pay, weapons and equipment. The generals under the volunteer system are also employed for a long time.

The recruits were carefully selected and had strong combat effectiveness. The disadvantage was that they had poor mobility and were prone to forming local separatist regimes, posing a threat to the central government.

Both have their own advantages and disadvantages. For a unified dynasty, security and stability are more important than anything else, so most dynasties would choose the relatively inefficient military system as the main one, and use the recruitment system as a long-term supplement.

This was the case in the Tang Dynasty. The forces of the local Zhechoufu were all based on the Fubing system, including the border towns in the north. In the capital Chang'an, there were a large number of imperial guards directly under the court or the emperor, such as the Three Guards and Five Fu in the North and South Yamen.

The Lieutenant Generals of each prefecture also had direct control over recruiting soldiers.

A small number of elite troops guard the capital, while the majority of loose forces guard the local areas. In this way, a strong trunk and weak branches form a relatively solid and stable system.

This was the limit of what could be achieved in the feudal era before productivity and the production system based on it underwent fundamental changes.

But there is a prerequisite for this, that is, the soldiers who are combined with farmers must have a large amount of land to cultivate. Once the land is seriously annexed, these landless farmers will lose the basis for their survival, and this military system will not be able to maintain.

The aristocratic families' large-scale annexation of land was fundamentally undermining the foundation of this system. The military system began to collapse, and the dynasty that depended on it would naturally not be able to survive.

(End of this chapter)