Li Shimin was one of the most warlike emperors in Chinese history, and even Genghis Khan was very supportive of him, saying: "Those who want to secure the state and establish the country must know the Tang Dynasty's art of war." "People today who read history will find such a reality, that is, the Han Dynasty and the Xiongnu fought for so many years, the national treasury was empty, the people were tired, and they could not completely and completely eliminate the Xiongnu, but the Tang Dynasty was different, and the Tang Dynasty destroyed the Eastern Turks.
Why? In addition to many objective reasons, on the subjective side, it should be seen that as the emperor of the Tang Dynasty and the supreme leader of all aspects, Li Shimin is good at summarizing and learning, and this has become the most important reason for his invincibility and victory over the Eastern Turks.
Careful people will always find such a phenomenon, that is, after Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty launched a war against the Xiongnu, he put the time of the attack on the spring and autumn of each year, which made the Xiongnu very afraid. The reason is that at this time their livestock are always produced, some of the livestock that have recently been born cannot walk, it is not easy to transfer, and the mother is also very weak. The Huns were good at guerrilla warfare and evasion, and at this time, not only did they not want to fight, guerrilla warfare was unsuccessful, and they were slow to hide. In this regard, there is a passage in the Book of Han that is very interesting:
"At the age of three, Emperor Wu collapsed. In the past, the Han soldiers went deep into the poor pursuit for more than twenty years, and the Xiongnu were pregnant and lazy, and they were extremely bitter. Since the following are often desired and intrigued. ”
This passage is said in today's vernacular when Emperor Wudi of Han was alive, and the Han army chased the Xiongnu for more than twenty years, causing many Xiongnu women, as well as cattle and sheep with big bellies, to abort, which was simply very hard. Therefore, the Xiongnu, from the following, hoped to reunite with the Han Dynasty and end the state of war.
The Huns' claim that they wanted to be close to each other should be true, but whether they could end the war with them was a question. The reason is that the people on the grassland have a single way of life, and if they are more vulnerable in the event of natural disasters, when they have no food or drink, they will still come to the Central Plains to rob. For the Central Plains Dynasty at that time, the colder the weather, the more dangerous the frontier would be, which is the truth. It was precisely because the Han Dynasty saw through this that they pursued the Huns for many years and beat their weaknesses.
Interestingly, why women are afraid, people are not like cattle and sheep, they can choose the time to live, and avoid that period of time. But for the Huns, this can never be done, on the one hand, because the war urgently needs to develop the population, women can get pregnant is a great credit, so it is to be able to conceive, do not take into account the problem of time; on the other hand, for the nomads, every autumn, people idle, winter food is stored, living conditions will be better, energetic, women will be prone to pregnancy, and if pushed down by time, life is exactly in the autumn of the following year. Therefore, at this time, fighting wars is very bitter for them, and "inertia" has become a common phenomenon.
The practices of the Han Dynasty were seen by Li Shimin and used in the Tang Dynasty's war against the Eastern Turks. At that time, the Turks were very cattle, strong soldiers, and the Tang Dynasty people always courted them, but they did not seem to care about the Tang Dynasty's flattery, and always took advantage of the fact that the Tang Dynasty regime was not yet fully stable, creating some friction and even launching wars. After the Weishui Alliance, Tang Taizong took a series of political and economic measures to enhance national strength and actively prepare for war militarily in order to completely relieve the Turkic threat. He violated the rules of the previous dynasty that no subordinates were allowed to bring weapons to the temple, and every day he led hundreds of soldiers and soldiers to learn martial arts archery in the Xiande Hall, and soon cultivated an elite army that could recruit good warriors. At the same time, the troops were stationed in the border area between today's Ningxia and western Inner Mongolia, ready for war.
Coincidentally, in this year, the Turks suffered a snow disaster, the people were tired and thin, many sheep and horses were frozen to death and starved to death, coupled with successive years of conquest and internal management mechanism problems, Xue Yantuo, Huiyi, Bayegu, and Tongluo ministries also took the opportunity to rebel en masse, and jointly promoted Xue Yantuo's leader Yi Nan as Zhenzhu Khan and accepted the tang dynasty's canonization; the Eastern Turk sub-khan Tuli Khan, because of his long-term suppression and exclusion by Jieli Khan, also secretly contacted Tang and expressed his willingness to submit.
At this time, the conditions for Tang to counterattack the Turks were ripe. However, Li Shimin did not rush to send troops and has been waiting. In November, the Turks could not live any longer, and when they came to the area of Jiuquan in present-day Gansu to plunder, Li Shimin ordered the defenders there to clear the field and use the city to block the Turkic cavalry, and finally the Turks returned without success. It should be said that in the background of the departure of the Turks, the Tang army was a perfect opportunity to move, but Li Shimin still did not move and had to wait. It was not until the end of the year that more than 100,000 troops were subjected to Li Jing's festival and counterattacked the Turks in 6 ways.
Li Jing fought this battle in the first month of 630, he raided Dingxiang, attacked Yinshan at night, launched an all-out attack on the border defenses of thousands of miles, and the Turkic army collapsed everywhere, annihilating more than 10,000 people and capturing more than 100,000 men and women. After Jieli Khan was defeated at Yinshan, Emperor Cang fled west from Yunzhong with the intention of defecting to Murong Fuyun, the king of Tuguhun, or Li Wentai, the king of Gaochang. Halfway through, most of the generals defected. His son Dieloshi also became separated from him. Soon, Jieli Khan, who had only dozens of cavalry left around him, bumped head-on into Li Daozong's Datong army. After a fierce battle, the Tang general Zhang Baoxiang captured Jieli Khan.
After the battle, it was exactly March, and according to the distinction of the four seasons of the year, the entire war was fought in the spring, and the Eastern Turk Khaganate was destroyed at the end of the spring. Emperor Taizong of Tang placed the Turks "all their tribes, conformed to their local customs, and lived in empty lands" in the frontier areas to implement "autonomy", and nearly 10,000 families were relocated to the capital city of Chang'an. Compared with the "pregnancy and laziness recorded in the Book of Han, the Turks have not yet come and felt the pain of war, everything is over, and this is precisely where Tang Taizong's greatest wisdom - the results of learning - seems to have the benevolence of "long pain is not as good as short pain". It is said that qing is better than blue out of blue, and in the war against the Eastern Turks, Tang Taizong's performance is nearly perfect on the basis of his predecessors.
In this regard, what we want to say is that war must have a law to follow, especially history is a war against the nations of the north, and the key to whether it can be won decisively lies not in the war itself, but in the insight and familiarity with its production and lifestyle, and more from the law of life and life itself. At this time, looking back at Genghis Khan's words of praise for Tang Taizong, it is clear that there is a voice outside the words - those who govern the country must first learn to use soldiers.