The biggest enemy of China's feudal dynasty in ancient times has always been those "Northern Di" who have emerged from stubble. At the end of the Qin Dynasty, the Xiongnu were able to take advantage of the rise of the Xiongnu; in the late Southern and Northern Dynasties, the Three Kingdoms stood tall and cultivated an unprecedentedly powerful Turk. Fortunately, they were opposed to the Han Dynasty and the Sui and Tang Dynasties, and the Civilization of the Central Plains not only defeated strong enemies, but also reached the peak.
Regarding the game with the Turks, most of us know the feat of Tang Taizong Li Shimin in destroying the Eastern Turks in a world war and being revered as the "Heavenly Khan", but few people know the achievements of the Sui Emperor Yang Jian's "Sage Khan".
The integration of Sui and Tang Dynasties, the brilliant achievements of the Tang Dynasty in opening up to the outside world, benefited from the foundation laid by the Sui Dynasty. Moreover, throughout the entire ancient history, the Sui Dynasty's strategy toward the Turks can be described as "unique": it did not adopt traditional military and diplomatic means, but combined with enwei, combined vertical and horizontal, divided and disintegrated, gradually infiltrated, through a set of three-dimensional combination fists, efficiently dismembered the strong enemies that had suffocated people. This approach is of great reference in any era.
During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the powerful steppe regime of Rouran appeared in the north. However, in the face of the Northern Wei Dynasty, which was nomadic and unified the north, Rouran never stirred up any storms, and was eventually overthrown by his own "forged slave" Turks.
Turkic luck is much better. During its rise, it coincided with the great situation in which the Northern Wei Dynasty was divided into two and the Central Plains were three-legged, which also allowed it to grow rapidly into another huge steppe empire after the Xiongnu, and its actual control area even exceeded that of the Xiongnu at its peak.
In terms of military power, the Turks at that time were recognized as the hegemons of East Asia, and the two major regimes in the Central Plains, Northern Zhou and Northern Qi, competed to befriend them, and the Yuwen clan of Northern Zhou even had to make peace with them and submit to them.
In 568, Emperor Yuwen Yong of the Northern Zhou Dynasty married the daughter of the Turkic Wooden Pole and was made empress; in 580, Yuwen Tai's granddaughter, Princess Qianjin, married Tuoba Khan. After Tuo Bao's death, she followed the Turkic custom of remarrying Theo, that is, Sha BaoLi Khan.
How humble was the Central Plains Dynasty at that time? During the reign of Tuo Bao Khan, Northern Zhou and Northern Qi rushed to spend heavy money to please the Turks, so that Tuo Bao boasted triumphantly: "I am often filial to my sons in the south, and I am poor!" ”
This is a great shame.
In 581 AD, Yang Jianjian Sui stopped paying tribute to the Turks, which made the other party, who had long been accustomed to lying and earning, extremely dissatisfied; at the same time, out of resentment against Yang Jian's usurpation of Zhou, Princess Qianjin also constantly instigated the southern invasion of Sha Baoli Khan; coupled with the serious natural disasters suffered from the grasslands at that time, a variety of factors superimposed, the Turks decided to join forces with the northern Qi Ying prefecture assassin Scott Baoning's troops to invade together.
At that time, the Turks "controlled hundreds of thousands of strings", and the Sui Dynasty was in its infancy and faced military pressure from the Chen Dynasty in the south. Therefore, the Sui Wen Emperor Yang Jian was more worried at first, and he "repaired the border to protect the edges, and the Great Wall was steep", that is, to take the traditional way of building the Great Wall to deal with it. Coincidentally, Changsun Sheng returned from the Turks at this time.
More than a year ago, Princess Qianjin married, and Changsun Sheng was selected as an emissary to escort her, and Northern Zhou originally wanted to rely on his superior riding and shooting skills to earn face in front of the Turks.
But unexpectedly, Changsun Sheng did not just earn enough face: he conquered the Turks with his magic skill of killing two birds with one stone, and was left in the steppe for more than a year, following the Turkic nobles including Sha Baoliu Khan every day to hunt and laugh. During this period, he deliberately befriended the leaders of the various tribes and found out the situation of the various departments; at the same time, he also took advantage of the safari to grasp all the turkic terrain and obtained the intelligence resources that were extremely difficult for the Central Plains to access.
After returning to Chang'an, Changsun Sheng systematically reported the situation of the Turks to Yang Jian and proposed strategies to deal with the enemy. He suggested that, on the basis of active defense in combination with military means, it is necessary to make full use of the current situation in which all the large and small Khans of the Turks stand side by side and are not monolithic with each other, adopt the strategic principle of "attacking from afar and attacking closely, separating from the strong and merging with the weak," to create and intensify contradictions, plot rebellions, and divide, thus causing internal Turkic divisions.
In 582, the Turks invaded on a large scale, and "400,000 men of the Five Khans of the Turks entered the Great Wall." The Sui army, which had long been prepared, stubbornly counterattacked and fought bloodily, successfully thwarting the enemy's momentum. (During this period, a shocking battle of 2,000 Daxi Changru against 100,000 Turks was staged)
At the same time, according to the suggestion of Changsun Sheng, the Sui Dynasty co-opted the Datou Khan in the west, deliberately elevating his treatment and causing Sha Bao to be slightly resentful; Changsun Sheng himself sneaked to the Turks and relied on his personal connections to install undercover agents inside the Turks: "Deep cloth confidants, temptations to attach."
"The opposite is done, and the fruit is guessed", the Turks really won the plan. For example, in the invasion in 582 AD, the Turks once broke through the Hexi defensive line, and all six animals were exhausted, and just as they were taking advantage of the victory to pursue, Datou deliberately contradicted Sha Bao, and Changsun Sheng also created rumors in the rear of the Turks through the son of Sha Baoluo, and the Turkic army could only retreat.
After carrying the first wave of offensives, the Sui Dynasty launched a comprehensive division strategy against the Turks. In just a few years, the once-mighty Turks were divided into two, east-west opposition:
Datou Khan was first co-opted by the Sui Dynasty, and then Apo Khan was also thrown into a vendetta against Sha Baoliu by the eldest son Sheng.
In 583, Sha Baoliu secretly attacked Apoya and killed his mother, and the two sides completely turned their faces;
Subsequently, Apoxi fled and defected to Datou, and the two gathered 100,000 iron horsemen to march eastward, and beat each other with Sha Baoluo for many years;
Subsequently, Apo's younger brother Khan of The Khan of Greed and Sha Baoliu's cousin Di Qincha also defected to Apo, and Sha Baoli's strength was greatly weakened.
In this way, the Turkic Empire, which once spanned the steppes and tens of thousands of miles from east to west, was divided into two, forming the Western Turks with Datou as the core and the Eastern Turks centered on Sha Baoluo.
According to the history books, the two sides "continued to send troops to Chang'an to ask for help"; a year ago, the Turks who had suppressed the Central Plains with a large army suddenly fell into the quagmire of civil strife, and could no longer launch a decent war against the Sui, from prosperity to decline, and the Sui Dynasty also won valuable time to restore national strength and build a new empire.
In 584 AD, under the pressure of the Western Turks and the Sui Dynasty, the once arrogant Sha Baoluo could not bear it, so he had to take the initiative to request to submit to the Sui Dynasty.
Let's not forget that Changsun Sheng's strategy is to "separate from the strong and merge the weak", and at this time, the strength of Datou is getting stronger and stronger, and the balance between the Eastern and Western Turks has been broken. Therefore, in order to contain the Western Turks, Yang Jian established a relationship with Sha Baoluo by making Princess Qianjin change her surname to Yang and recognize herself as her father;
Subsequently, the Sui army personally went down to beat the Western Turks, successfully helping the Eastern Turks through the precarious situation, and also making Sha Baoluo more and more determined to submit to the Sui Dynasty.
After years of accumulating strength, by 589 AD, the Sui Dynasty destroyed Chen and unified the world, and the military pressure in the south disappeared; while the Eastern Turk Sha Baoluo was dead, the reigning Dulan Khan, with a different attitude towards the Sui Dynasty, coupled with the instigation of Princess Dayi (that is, Princess Qianjin), in 593 AD, Dulan "did not repair the tribute, quite a side trouble", and the relationship between the two sides deteriorated.
But this was nothing less than a piece of cake for the Sui Dynasty at this time, not to mention that The eldest Sun Sheng was still there. In the pull and incitement through peace and affection, the Eastern Turk minor khan Tuli Khan and Dulan turned against each other and were in the same water and fire.
In 599, Dulan allied with the Western Turk Datou Khan and launched a surprise attack on the Tuli forces, and the two sides fought a bloody battle outside the Great Wall, and the defeated Tuli was taken into Chang'an by Changsun Sheng, and Yang Jian was made the Khan of Qimin.
Subsequently, qimin's headquarters was placed in Shuozhou (Hetao area), and Changsun Sheng built Dali City to support it. At the same time, the Sui army, led by Gao Hao and Yang Su, counterattacked Datou and Dulan, and both won a big victory, successfully curbing the momentum of the other side.
At the end of 599, Dulan was killed by his subordinates, and the Western Turk Datou Khan established himself as The Khan of Buga in an attempt to unify the Turks. Yang Jian divided his troops into two routes, Yang Guang and Yang Su out of the LingWu Dao, and Yang Yu and Shi Wanzai out of The Mayi Dao to strike at Datou.
The strength of both sides is no longer what it used to be. Under the offensive of the Sui army, Datou fled west in a hurry, and the weak Qimin Khan took control of the Eastern Turks, and he said to Yang Jian: "The Great Sui Sage Khan has compassion for the people, as if the sky is endless, and the earth is full of loads. Dyed dry like dead wood more leaves, dry bone more flesh, thousands of generations, often for the Great Sui Dynasty sheep and horses also. ”
Dye dry is the name of Qimin. For more than a decade, the Eastern Turks continued to be obedient and subservient to the Sui Dynasty. Until the late period of Yang Guang's reign, due to the diminishing strength of the two sides and the mistakes of Pei Zhi's policy of being responsible for external affairs, The Qimin Khan's son Shibi Khan rebelled and surrounded the Sui Emperor at Yanmen in 615 AD.
After that, due to the intensification of civil strife in the Sui Dynasty, the Eastern Turks rose again, claimed to control millions of strings, and supported various tyrants in the north, balanced the Central Plains, and even borrowed power from the Li Tang Dynasty at the beginning of the uprising. It was not until after Li Shimin's reign that this scourge was solved in one fell swoop.
The Sui Dynasty's strategy toward the Turks was extremely clever. It is neither as stubborn and complete as during the Southern and Northern Dynasties, nor is it purely superior to the military like most dynasties, but it walks on two legs: relying on strong strength to strike militaryly, and at the same time, through differentiation, support, division, and provocation, the Turks are trapped in infighting, like self-destructed martial arts, and unable to form cohesion. This wisdom experience is still worth learning today.
Of course, the biggest premise of this successful experience is that you must be strong enough and united enough, and both are indispensable.