Chapter 26: The Rise of the Great Tang

Page 1 of 3

“I was rash!” Yang Ze bowed respectfully to Chen Ying.

“The imperial court has its own difficulties,” Chen Ying said calmly. “Chang’an has no troops in reserve, and the treasury is empty. We simply cannot afford a war right now.”

Yang Ze let out a long, weary sigh and fell silent for a while. As the chief administrator of Lingzhou, he had watched the city suffer grievous casualties during its siege of more than three months. Whenever he encountered these surrendered Turks, he could hardly restrain the urge to kill them all. Yet he also understood that Chen Ying’s words were entirely reasonable.

An army moved on its provisions. As a temporary frontier stronghold in the north of the Great Tang, Lingzhou faced enormous difficulties in transporting grain. Of every ten measures sent from Chang’an, at least five or six would be consumed along the way. The reason the Lingzhou Protectorate commanded only four subordinate prefectures was mainly that the court’s logistical support could not keep up with a larger force.

Yet if the Turks launched a full-scale counterattack, the troops from those four subordinate prefectures would be utterly incapable of holding them back. A prolonged standoff would certainly impose an enormous burden on the Great Tang.

Only now did Yang Ze begin to take seriously this Chief Administrator Chen, who was as handsome as a woman. He had held a very poor opinion of Chen Ying, always assuming that a man so young could rise to the rank of fourth-grade military official only because of his family background and social standing. Yet for Chen Ying, still barely twenty, to remain calm and avoid acting rashly was exceedingly rare.

By temperament, Chen Ying himself would have loved nothing more than to hack his way through the enemy. But what then? War had always been an extension of politics. If something could not be gained on the battlefield, it might still be obtained at the negotiating table.

The Great Tang could not afford to fight now, but neither could the Turks. Had the health of Jieli Khan not deteriorated so sharply since the beginning of winter, the Turks would never have been so restrained. If, back when Liang Shidu entered the war, the Turks had launched a furious assault instead of finding themselves unable to attack Lingzhou by late October, the city would have changed hands long ago.

Chen Ying pointed toward Lingzhou and said, “In the fourth year of Emperor Hui of Han, Lingzhou County was established here under Beidi Commandery. The city has already existed for more than eight hundred years. The surrounding land is fertile, and the soil and water are abundant. Without war, it could support hundreds of thousands of people. Yet at present, Lingzhou has barely twenty thousand households, and the garrison cannot even provide its own grain. The court may find it difficult to come to our aid.”

With the second year of the Wude era approaching, the Great Tang and Wang Shichong were on the verge of clashing in the struggle for the Central Plain. In the years to come, the empire’s attention would shift entirely toward the heartland. To remote Lingzhou, Luoyang was more than ten times as important.

Yang Ze gave a long sigh. “The people of Lingzhou are living under great hardship. Men and women, old and young alike, labor bitterly from dawn to dusk. Everyone is frugal, and none bears the look of someone seeking an easy life. Yet should war break out, a whole year of hard work will have been wasted.”

“That is precisely why these prisoners are so valuable,” Chen Ying said. “They are hostages—and ransom. If the Turks dare approach the walls of Lingzhou, this commander will execute them all!”

Yang Ze stared at Chen Ying in astonishment. He wondered inwardly whether this dignified Loyal Martial General had actually been recruited from a bandit gang. Why did he speak exactly like a bandit?

What Yang Ze certainly did not know was that Chen Ying could not only say such things—he could carry them out as well.

Page 1 of 3

Page 2 of 3

In the end, Luo Shixin and Yugu Ni pursued the fleeing Turks for more than thirty miles, cutting them down all the way. Only when their horses were exhausted did they finally call off the pursuit and end the battle. A rough tally showed that the spoils were substantial: more than seven thousand enemy heads had been taken, along with over twelve thousand prisoners. Other supplies were scarce, but nearly thirty thousand warhorses had been captured, as well as an enormous quantity of weapons and armor.

What surprised Chen Ying most was that Luo Shixin had actually captured Yiwu Zhenmo of the Turks.

Chen Ying genuinely had no idea that Yiwu Zhenmo was one of the four great Yabghus of the Eastern Turkic Khaganate.

Seeing that Chen Ying did not attach the slightest importance to Yiwu Zhenmo, Yugu Ni hurried forward and said, “Chief Administrator, you should know that this man is one of the four great Yabghus of the Turkic Khaganate!”

Du Shanguo repeated Yugu Ni’s words to Chen Ying, but Chen Ying still failed to grasp their significance.

Yang Ze, however, was beside himself with delight.

“It is only one prisoner. Is there really any need to make such a fuss?” Chen Ying said with an indifferent smile as he watched everyone celebrating wildly. “You people are terribly ignorant.”

“Chief Administrator Chen, you do not understand,” Yang Ze explained. “The Yabghu of the Turks is second only to the khan in rank. If we compare it to the official system of the Great Tang, the Yabghu is equivalent to the Crown Prince. He is eligible to inherit the khan’s throne.”

“Good heavens! That powerful?” Chen Ying thought to himself. “This is a fortune!”

...

At Huaiyuan, in the Turkic royal encampment, Jieli Khan finally received the news on New Year’s Eve of the first year of the Wude era that Yabghu Ashina Yiwu Zhenmo had been defeated and captured.

As the saying went, good men died young while calamities lived for centuries. Qilifu She had fled faster than anyone else, and with Bulugen fighting desperately to protect him, he had finally escaped Luo Shixin’s pursuit.

When Qilifu She reached Wild Boar Ridge, he gathered the remnants of his forces. Yiwu Zhenmo had originally commanded more than seventeen thousand mounted archers, while the Tujue cavalry numbered nearly ten thousand, making over twenty-six thousand men in all. Adding Qilifu She’s own troops, barely ten thousand men and horses returned to Wild Boar Ridge.

Qilifu She showed no restraint whatsoever. He assembled the scattered survivors and interrogated them one by one, rewarding those who submitted and killing those who resisted. In the space of a single night, he had swallowed up every last one of Yiwu Zhenmo’s followers, leaving nothing behind.

When he reported the matter to Jieli Khan, the Battle of Lingzhou in the first year of Wude was transformed into a tale of Yiwu Zhenmo’s arrogance and carelessness. He had acted recklessly, ignored Qilifu She’s loyal advice, and suffered a devastating blow from the Tang army. At the critical moment, Yiwu Zhenmo had lost his nerve and retreated first, shattering the army’s morale and turning an orderly withdrawal into a rout.

Page 2 of 3

Page 3 of 3

Had Qilifu She not arrived in time and risked his life to hold back the Tang pursuit, not a single one of Yiwu Zhenmo’s more than twenty-six thousand men would have returned.

As he recounted the affair, Qilifu She shed tears and blood alike. Seeing him drenched in gore, with scarcely a patch of uninjured flesh upon him, Jieli Khan flew into a rage.

“Yiwu Zhenmo feared the enemy and fled. His crime deserves death. His entire family shall be enslaved, and his forces shall be placed under Qilifu She’s command.”

With Jieli Khan’s formal decision, Qilifu She, once merely one of the four great Yabghus of the Turks and now one of the remaining three, not only absorbed more than five thousand of Yiwu Zhenmo’s soldiers but also acquired more than sixteen thousand of his surviving followers. In the blink of an eye, Qilifu She found himself commanding more than ten thousand troops—sixteen thousand surviving retainers in all.

Qilifu She had actually emerged as the greatest winner.

By this time, Jieli Khan had already sent envoys to Chang’an to question Li Yuan and ask whether he truly intended to provoke a war of national survival between the Turks and the Great Tang. Yet now it seemed that the Great Tang was not afraid of an all-out war with the Turks.

Could the Great Tang really have grown so powerful that it no longer feared the Turks?

Did the Great Tang possess such formidable strength? Two of the four great Turkic Yabghus had already suffered defeat one after another. Would it take all thirty thousand of his auxiliary troops personally entering the fray before the situation could be turned around?

Jieli Khan had originally believed that the Great Tang, newly established after the collapse of the Sui, would be plagued by unstable loyalties and depleted finances.

Could it be that, after the Sui, the Great Tang was rising once more?

The possibility seemed entirely plausible. In the final years of the Northern Zhou, the Turks had repeatedly invaded the southern frontier. Yang Jian, then serving as Chancellor and Grand General of the Pillar of the State, had been exhausted by the constant struggle. Yet who could have imagined that, within only a few years, Yang Jian would usurp the throne, establish the Sui dynasty, march south to destroy the Chen kingdom and unify the realm, then strike north against the Turks with overwhelming force?

As one of the world’s greatest traditional powers, the Chinese realm could naturally restore its strength and rise again within a few years.

“We cannot act recklessly now. We must reconsider our entire strategy toward the Great Tang.”

Page 3 of 3