Chapter 287: Population Issues in the Tang Dynasty (One Update)

The war finally ended, and the surviving Xia army soldiers finally breathed a sigh of relief. There were many heroes in Yan and Zhao men. They had seen fierce and cruel people. The Turks were fierce enough, right? Since the end of the Sui Dynasty, they have invaded Hexi, Xihe, Hedong, Hetao, Youzhou, Yingzhou, and Pingzhou. From the border between the west and the east, there were back gardens where Turkic cavalry ravaged.

Looking through the war history in the past few years, you will definitely be surprised to find that the two thousand miles long areas from Wuzhou to Yunzhou and Shunzhou rarely encounter Turkic invasions. The reason is actually very simple. It is not that Hebei is too poor and the Turkic people have no oil and water, but that Hebei people are too tough.

From the old man with white hair to the children who had just been higher than the wheel, they swung their knife and dared to chop each other with the Turks. Of course, the combat effectiveness of the Hebei people was not much higher. The loss ratio between the two sides was about three to one. However, relatively speaking, Hebei became a useless place for the Turks.

As the number of people comes, they will not be able to gain any advantage. As the number of people comes, the things they grab are not enough to eat and chew. As for the women in Hebei, they are also very tough. They are not sheep that can be ravaged by others. They bite with their teeth, stab with scissors, and smash them with stones. When they think about the advantage, they should first consider whether their life is hard enough.

However, the surviving soldiers of the Hebei Xia army at this moment, all looked at the young general who was riding on the horse with an indescribable face. Especially the indifference on the young general's face made them shivering from the bottom of their hearts.

Have they ever seen such a terrifying tiger and wolf army? The headless corpses everywhere and the murderous aura of the blood-stained soldiers made their eyelids twitch! Compared with them, the Turks were simply a scumbag. Hebei people were also very smart. They knew that their archery skills were far inferior to those of the Turks in terms of riding skills, but they could not resist them. They dared to fight desperately, just like the pig-Turk tactics, which was accurate at one time. They used the madness and fearlessness to keep the Turks away.

These Hebei prisoners were very honest at this moment. They were afraid that Chen Ying would kill all of them in order to establish his authority. Killing prisoners was not a good reputation. It is undeniable that this was the best way to deter the enemy. Xue Rengui was very famous in later generations, such as generals who set foot on the Tianshan Mountain with three arrows and surrendered to the horse. However, behind this great reputation was the lives of tens of thousands of Xueyantuo people, as a price.

Chen Ying had no intention of executing these Xia army prisoners. Not only did he not kill prisoners, but he even tried his best to treat the wounded soldiers in Hebei.

"What are you guys standing there? You guys are just here to help?" A dark-faced general shouted impatiently: "You are the damn master, so many corpses are piled up here, and the weather is so hot that it is easy to cause plague..."

When they heard the word plague, the prisoners seemed to possess their souls. They rushed forward to find tools, or cut off swords, axes, and dig holes to prepare to bury the corpse.

However, at this time, Chen Ying said angrily: "Don't bury the body first, burn it first, and then bury it!"

The weather was so hot. After only more than two hours, all the corpses on the battlefield had corpses. Although Chen Ying knew that even the fur was not counted, he knew that once the corpse rotted, a large number of bacteria or viruses would breed, which would easily cause plagues. Once the plague appears in Hebei, with the medical and health conditions of this era, it would definitely be a fatal catastrophe.

The prisoners followed the Tang army's medical soldiers to treat the wounded soldiers and began to treat the wounded, looking for firewood and making the burning piles of corpses. The entire battlefield calmed down. However, these Tang soldiers were not idle. They walked to the corpse with knives and axes, raised their swords and fell, and chopped off the head of the corpse.

The Tang army calculated the merits with their heads, and every head on these corpses was a military merit. This was an undisputed achievement. With more than 30,000 generals, tens of thousands of Xia army soldiers were defeated, and each soldier could make a three-turn military merit. Although the meaning of the three-turn military merits was absolutely different from that of the soldiers, they could all exchange money and land.

The smelly heads were all white silver and yellow copper coins in the eyes of the Tang army soldiers.

"These bunch of lan kids are really a fucking loser. I don't know how to do it lightly!" A Tang army soldier complained, "Another waste of military merit!"

There is no way. The Tang army's way of calculating military merits is to kill the whole head with a knife or be shot to death by a crossbow. It doesn't matter. The key is that the Modao Army was too excited to kill. Many people slashed half of them from the temple. In this way, the head level was incomplete and they could not calculate the merits.

In fact, it is not the case that causes this situation, but rather a common phenomenon. Especially when the cavalry army charged with hook and sickle, the bodies of countless Xia army soldiers were stepped by more than 40,000 horse hooves. It is okay to step on the driving part of the corpse, but it is extremely painful to step on the head.

Li Shentong and Feng Deyi went to Mingzhou City. At this moment, Liu Tong and Xunxiang had basically controlled Mingzhou City. At this moment, Li Shentong and Feng Deyi led their troops to come over, probably just accepted it smoothly, but Chen Ying did not join in the fun.

However, Chen Ying's eyebrows were not stretched out. His eyebrows were twisted into the word "chuan", and his face was so gloomy that it could be wrinkled out of water.

"General Chen seems to have something to worry about?" Just as Chen Ying didn't know what he was thinking, a voice suddenly sounded.

Chen Ying turned around and looked in the voice. But he saw that the Right Guard led Wei Wenzhong to come behind Chen Ying at some point.

"Oh..." Chen Ying sighed, revealing a strong sense of helplessness and fatigue: "Nothing, I'm just a little depressed!"

Wei Wenzhong said: "General, you are the leader of the three armies now. At this moment, countless generals are watching you. No matter how many casualties the left guards lead, we finally won a big victory..."

Before Wei Wenzhong finished speaking, Chen Ying interrupted him and said, "Do you think we won a big victory?"

"Isn't it a victory?" Wei Wenzhong asked very strangely: "The captives arrested more than 50,000 people, and the beheadings were more than 25,000."

In fact, the number of people killed in the Xia army was far more than 25,000, or even 35,000. Although Wei Wenzhong did not get a definite record, he also knew that at least one-third of the Xia army soldiers had their heads damaged and were extremely recognizable.

"This is a war without a winner!" Chen Yingyou sighed and said, "We did not win, the Xia army did not win. We fought in Hebei with blood flowing. However, in this war, both sides were my Chinese people, and the ones who died were also my Chinese people. There was no question of winning. If you want to win, the biggest winner was the Turks."

Wei Wenzhong couldn't understand Chen Ying's words, but in fact he couldn't understand them.

This is not Chen Ying's exaggeration, but in fact it is exactly the case. If it weren't for the great chaos at the end of the Sui Dynasty, the Sui Dynasty had a population of more than 60 million, and by the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, only one-quarter would have been left, I'm afraid the Tang Dynasty would not have restricted its expansion due to population problems.

In later generations, some people said that the Tang Dynasty was a governance issue, but in fact, it was a population issue. During the heyday of the Tang Dynasty, even Iran and some parts of Afghanistan today belonged to the territory of the Tang Dynasty, but the population at that time was only more than 20 million. As for the average population of the entire territory during the Tang Dynasty, the average population of the entire territory was only 0.1687 per square kilometer. There was no population in a hundred miles.

However, in the Battle of Hebei, more than 50,000 people died, which means that more than 50,000 families have lost their pillars.

Just looking at the numbers on the paper, I don’t feel it. However, once I saw with my own eyes that there were dense and broken limbs and broken arms everywhere, and corpses everywhere, Chen Ying felt very uncomfortable.
Chapter completed!