In 630 AD, the fourth year of Zhenguan in the Tang Dynasty. After a heavy snowfall, the northern grasslands were completely covered in thick snow. As the leader of the Eastern Turks, Jieli Khan was in his own royal tent, eating steppe delicacies and enjoying a comfortable life.
But at this moment, an anxious voice suddenly came from outside the tent: around the Turkic king's tent, the main force of the Tang Dynasty army was found! Moreover, at this time, it was less than ten miles away from the Turkic king's tent!
After hearing this news, Jieli Khan was suddenly shocked and hurried to organize manpower to resist. But at this time, Tang Jun, who was already close at hand, where would he still give him a chance? Just when the Turkic king's tent had just become aware, the Tang army suddenly descended like a divine soldier descending from heaven. After a great battle, the Turkic king's tent was destroyed, and the Jieli Khan fled in panic. However, in the end, he was still captured by the Tang Dynasty general Zhang Baoxiang.
After this battle, the Eastern Turk regime was completely destroyed. The strong enemy in the northern steppe was defeated by the Tang army in a battle. For more than a hundred years, the northern steppe was directly under the control of the Tang Dynasty and incorporated into the actual control of the Empire, becoming the actual territory of the Tang Empire.
This war is the famous battle in history of the 'Tang Dynasty destroying the Eastern Turks'. The one who commanded this war was the god of war in the early Tang Dynasty, Li Jing!
The war that the Tang Dynasty destroyed the Eastern Turks, if you talk about it in detail, is actually far more wonderful than the history books. However, if we want to really explain the causes and consequences of this war, we have to start from the beginning.
As the commander of this war, Li Jing, the absolute god of war of the Tang Dynasty, was originally a Sui Dynasty official. In the last year of the Sui Dynasty, when Li Yuan raised troops from Taiyuan, Li Jing happened to be an official in Taiyuan at that time. When he learned that Li Yuan was going to rebel, Li Jing also took the initiative to go to Chang'an to expose Li Yuan. Unfortunately, just when Li Jing had just arrived in Chang'an, Li Yuan had already raised an army from Taiyuan and soon after invaded Chang'an.
After Li Yuan invaded Chang'an, he learned that Li Jing had wanted to expose himself, and immediately moved his killing heart, and at one point he had already pushed Li Jing to the execution ground. Thanks to Li Yuan still having a hint of love for talent, and then Li Shimin desperately pleaded, Li Yuan let Li Jing go. After that, Li Jing went to Li Shimin's command and became an aide.
For the next two years, Li Jing served as an aide under Li Shimin, but did not make much contribution. However, during this period, Li Shimin also found that Li Jing, unlike other staff members, was a real handsome man. More than a year later, just as Li Shimin was commanding the Tang army and preparing to go to war with Wang Shichong of Luoyang, Xiao Milling in the south took the opportunity to attack. Li Shimin immediately recommended Li Jing to Li Yuan and asked Li Jing to independently lead his troops to the south to deal with Xiao Milling.
After Li Jing arrived in the south, he really did not live up to the expectations of the Li family's father and son. After more than a year of fighting, Li Jing not only helped Li Xiaogong, a member of the Li family's clan, completely pacify the land of Bashu, but also successfully defeated Xiao Milling. Moreover, while defeating Xiao Milling, Li Jing also absorbed more than 100,000 troops under Xiao Milling's command.
After that, because Li Shimin's military achievements were too high, Li Yuan was afraid that he would threaten the position of the crown prince Li Jiancheng, so he began to deliberately limit Li Shimin's military power and prevent Li Shimin from participating in the war again. Therefore, after that, several hard battles of the Tang Dynasty to unify the south were basically fought by the combination of Li Jing and Li Xiaogong.
After defeating Xiao Milling, Li Jing and Li Xiaogong took advantage of the difficult situation and defeated Lin Shihong in Jiangxi. Later, Li Jing went to Lingnan to subdue the local Feng Ang. After feng ang was secured, the Tang Dynasty had basically completely unified the world. However, at this time, Fu Gongruo, the leader of the Jianghuai peasant army who had previously surrendered to the Tang Dynasty, once again rebelled. Li Jing was again quickly sent to the Jianghuai region to deal with the Auxiliary Gong. After arriving in the Jianghuai region, without even ending a round, Li Jing swept away the entire Jianghuai region.
If we say that in the process of unifying the world in the Tang Dynasty, the north was fought down by Li Shimin. Then the south, basically, can be said to have been beaten down by Li Jing.
After fighting these battles, Li Jing also became the most unique marshal within the Tang Army, second only to Li Shimin. However, at this time, Li Shimin was busy competing with Li Jiancheng for the position of crown prince, and Li Yuan also intended to limit his military power. Therefore, Li Jing became the most suitable commander-in-chief within the Li Tang regime to command large-scale wars.
After sweeping away Jianghuai, it coincided with the invasion of the Northern Turks. After that, Li Jing was quickly transferred to Shanxi and was responsible for local defense work. In the next two years, because the Tang Dynasty had been solving the problem of Li Jiancheng and Li Shimin's struggle, Li Jing's main responsibility was to passively defend rather than take the initiative. But during the passive defense, Li Jing still completed the task almost perfectly. During Li Jing's defense of Shanxi, the Turks never set foot in the hinterland of Shanxi for half a step.
During the two years that Li Jingshou was in Shanxi, there was a violent upheaval in the upper echelons of the Tang Dynasty. In June 626, these upheavals ended in a Xuanwumen Incident. After the Xuanwumen Incident, Li Shimin forced Li Yuan to take the throne for himself and ascended the throne as emperor. However, at the same time as chang'an was in civil unrest, the Turks in the north also got the news and took the opportunity to raise troops to the south.
When the Turks arrived outside Chang'an City, there were less than 20,000 defenders inside Chang'an City, and they could not stop the Turks' 200,000 troops. But at this critical juncture, Li Shimin played an empty city plan. First of all, Wei Chigong defeated the Turkic vanguard, and at the same time made a series of operations, so that the Turks mistakenly thought that there were many defenders in Chang'an City, and they were not afraid of them at all.
In the end, under li Shimin's operation, the Turks had a misunderstanding and finally did not attack Chang'an. Then, Li Shimin and the Turkic Jieli Khan concluded a pact on the Weishui Ben Bridge, which is the famous 'Weishui Alliance' in history.
When the Turks approached Chang'an, Li Jing, who was far away in Shanxi, was also urgently transferred back to Shaanxi. However, because most of the Tang army had not yet arrived in Chang'an at that time, although Li Jing and Li Shimin were both unworldly marshals, because there were no soldiers available, they could only watch the Turks plunder and go away.
This incident was later regarded by Li Shimin as the greatest shame in his life, and at the same time it was regarded as a shame by Li Jing. After the Turks withdrew, Li Shimin on the one hand began to rectify internal affairs, clean up the old departments of Li Jiancheng, and consolidate his rule in the country. On the other hand, the entire Tang Dynasty also began to actively prepare for war, ready at any time to go north to repay the shame of the Weishui Alliance.
Two years later, the opportunity came.
In the past two years, Li Shimin has completely resolved the domestic contradictions and sat firmly on the throne. In addition, the Tang Dynasty also placed a large number of troops on the border, which could attack at any time. Because At this time, Li Shimin was already an emperor, and it was impossible to easily ride the imperial conquest. Therefore, this task of commanding the Tang army naturally fell to Li Jing's head.
In addition, in these two years, the Tang Dynasty also did a lot of diplomatic work, with various favorable conditions, to plot against the steppe tribes that were originally dependent on the Turks. Under the rebellion of the Tang Dynasty, the steppe tribes such as Xue Yantuo, Uighurs, and Bayegu all broke away from the Eastern Turks and established themselves on their own. Even within the Eastern Turks, a trend of division began to appear. The second-in-command of the Eastern Turks, the Tuli Khan, also had a rebellious heart under the contact of the Tang Dynasty.
Just at this time, that winter, there was heavy snow on the northern grasslands! This heavy snow dealt a serious blow to the power of the Eastern Turk regime. For steppe nomads, cattle and sheep are the most important means of production. It is both food and property. However, after heavy snowfall on the grassland, the pasture was covered with heavy snow. Cattle and sheep starved to death without grass; when cattle and sheep died, the Turks had no food.
Internal divisions, heavy snowfall, vassal betrayal... When these things happened at the same time, the originally powerful Eastern Turk regime declined in an instant. But at the same time, this also became the best time for the Tang Dynasty to counterattack the Eastern Turks.
In August of the third year of Zhenguan, because the Turks attacked the Tang Border, Li Shimin finally found an excuse to tear up the previous Weishui Covenant and officially send a large army to fight north, and Li Jing was appointed by Li Shimin as the commander-in-chief of the war. The Six Roads Army, totaling more than 100,000 Tang troops, officially entered the grassland to fight.
After the war began, Li Jing set out from the direction of Mayi in Shanxi and attacked directly in the direction of the Turkic king's tent. Prior to this, the Tang Dynasty had already figured out the internal situation of the Turks, and even plotted against many key figures within the Turks. When Li Jing led his army into the steppe, some people on the Turkic side soon surrendered to Li Jing, and then led Li Jing to directly attack the Turkic center. Because Li Jing came too quickly, the Turks had no time to resist, and Jieli Khan could only flee to Erlianhot in a hurry.
At the same time, the Tang general Li Ji also sent troops from the direction of Datong, and encountered the main Turkic forces in the northern region of Hohhot. After a great battle, Li Ji led his troops to defeat the main Turkic force, and the Turks could not be defeated. After this battle, the army of the Turkic regime was beaten to the point that only tens of thousands of people remained.
After two consecutive defeats, the Turks were no longer able to fight the Tang army. Therefore, Jieli Khan immediately sent envoys to Chang'an, expressing his willingness to submit to the Tang Dynasty and completely surrender. At this point, the shame of the Weishui Alliance three years ago, Li Shimin was completely revenge.
However, Li Shimin did not intend to let the Turks go, and Li Jing did not intend to stop there.
As the top military commanders, Li Shimin and Li Jing both understood the ideas of the Turks. The Turkic title of vassal at this time was undoubtedly only a temporary measure. Jieli Khan simply wanted to submit to the Tang Dynasty first, and then flee to the north of the desert. After a few years of cultivation, after regaining strength, nature can make a comeback again.
However, even after guessing the Turks' ideas, Li Shimin still agreed to the Turks' request. He even took the initiative to send an envoy, Tang Jian, to the Turks to canonize Jieli Khan.
The reason why Li Shimin made such a decision was naturally not because he wanted to spare the Turks, but to buy time for Li Jing. Here is one more explanation: the armies of the ancient Central Plains regime, fighting against the nomadic peoples in the north, were actually dominant most of the time. Because the Central Plains regime was more productive, weapon forging was far stronger than that of the nomadic regime. Therefore, when the two sides fought head-on, the armies of the Central Plains regime, especially the Central Plains cavalry, were actually more dominant.
But at the same time, compared with the steppe cavalry, when fighting in the steppe, the Central Plains army actually has a greater weakness.
This weakness is distance and supply.
The Central Plains army was often accustomed to relying on sufficient supplies to fight. When fighting on the steppe, it is almost impossible to maintain a stable supply line. In addition, fighting on the home side of the nomads, as long as the nomadic regime is closed and not fighting, it is also difficult to find the main force of the nomads in the vast grassland. After all, in ancient times, there was no Beidou navigation, and trying to find a Turkic army on the steppe was really like finding a needle in a haystack.
It was for this reason that Li Shimin sent envoys to the Turks. Li Shimin's real intention was not to accept the submission of the Turks, but to find out the bottom line of the Turkic king's account, drag down the Jieli Khan, so that the main Turkic forces would not flee to the north of the desert in time, and create opportunities for Li Jing.
In this regard, Li Jing naturally deeply understood Li Shimin's meaning. After that, Li Jing personally led 10,000 elites, and with only twenty days of rations, he launched an attack on the Turkic king's tent. Because of the arrival of the Tang envoys, the Turkic Jieli Khan did let down his guard, and did not think that the Tang army would sneak attack at this time. When Su Dingfang, the vanguard of the Tang army, led the Tang army to no more than seven miles away from the Turkic king's tent, the Turks found out. Embarrassed and angry, Jieli Khan immediately wanted to take Tang Jian, the Tang dynasty envoy, as a hostage, but found that the Tang envoys had already fled.
After this surprise attack, the entire Turkic king's tent was annihilated by Li Jing in a battle. Most of the Turkic officials were captured by Li Jing. Although Jieli Khan led a small number of elites and escaped, he was stopped by Li Ji's army attacking from the other direction, and finally captured by the Tang general Zhang Baoxiang.
After this battle, the Eastern Turk regime was swept away by the Tang army. After that, the Tang army established the Turkic number two figure, Tuli Khan, as a puppet, and continued to rule the Turks, while also continuing to divide and suppress the northern steppes. After this great war, the Eastern Turks never posed any threat to the Tang Dynasty, and the Tang Dynasty also completely expanded its sphere of influence to the northern steppes, officially becoming the hegemon of the entire East Asian region.
Li Jing's campaign to destroy the Eastern Turks, in simple terms, was actually to bring the three words of 'stability, accuracy, and ruthlessness' to the extreme. Before the war, it first relied on diplomatic, economic and other means to carry out all-round attacks; then it found out the internal situation of the enemy and carried out division and disintegration; after the battle began, it perfectly used its own intelligence to carry out the most effective strike on the enemy, sending troops quickly and settling the battle in the shortest possible time.
Such a Li Jing really deserves the evaluation of the four words of 'using soldiers as gods'.
From this story of Li Jing, it is not difficult for us to get an inspiration: correctly understanding the meaning of the boss is really a very important thing. For example, if Li Jing had not been able to grasp Li Shimin's intentions at that time, and really thought that the Tang Dynasty would negotiate peace with the Turks and let the main Turkic forces flee back to the north of the desert, then it would be difficult for the Tang Dynasty to have a peaceful life on the northern border in the next few decades. Whether the giant Tang In the back can still exist, I am afraid it is a problem.