A thousand-year-old family that began with the Battle of Makino

Chapter 1038: South Vietnam quickly fights Annan Shun, and the Southeast Sea pirates destroy the pirate ship

June, the 26th year of Great Chapinin
Li Cong Yun, who had just expelled the brothers Li Mingchang and Li Mingti from the previous royal family and ascended the throne to become the ruler of Nanyue, suddenly learned that the Central Plains dynasty had sent troops to Nanyue in the name of helping the Le Dynasty to suppress rebellion.

He was so frightened at the time that he sent Prime Minister Tao Ganmu with rich gifts to Daxia to ask the Celestial Empire to delay the war.

On the one hand, the army that was pacifying Qinghua Prefecture and Yanzhou in the south was urgently dispatched to the north to provide support.

June th

The envoys of Nanyue arrived in Hangzhou on a merchant ship and requested to pay tribute, but were rejected by the Xia court.

June 29
The Xia army broke through Lang Son from Xiping Prefecture on the west route of Guangnan and entered the border of Nanyue.

July th
The South Vietnamese army was forced to engage in battle, with 50,000 Vietnamese troops fighting against 20,000 Xia troops near the Bac River.

Although there was a huge disparity in military strength between the two sides, the Nanyue Kingdom still remained in the state of being separated from the Central Plains at the end of the Tang Dynasty.

The only elite soldiers available in the country were the several thousand imperial guards inherited from the Tang Dynasty, who were trusted by successive rulers of Nanyue. The rest were peasant soldiers who were temporarily recruited.

Among the 50,000 Vietnamese troops at this time, there were only a thousand imperial guards.

The defeat was like a landslide. The 50,000 Vietnamese troops were frightened and scattered on the spot by the more than 30 artillery pieces carried by the Xia army.

The Xia army then besieged Daluo City, an important town in Nanyue.

At this time, there were only a few thousand Vietnamese troops in Daluo City.

Facing the siege of tens of thousands of elite Xia troops, Daluo City, which was known as the second strongest city in Nanyue and second only to the capital Hualu, only held out for one day before it was captured by the Xia army.

July 13

The naval generals learned the lesson from the destruction of Southern Han and set sail south as soon as they received the order.

Finally, they arrived near the sea of ​​Hualu, the capital of Nanyue, before the army.

Subsequently, under the cover of ship guns, more than a thousand sailors of the Nanyang Navy successfully landed, captured the port of Hoa Lu, and attacked the watergate facing the harbor in the southwest, successfully entering Hoa Lu.

Li Gongyun heard the sound of artillery getting closer and closer. He was discussing with his military officers how to arrange defenses at Ruguan, north of Hualu, when he was surprised to hear that the Xia army had arrived in the city.

Even though he was a tough guy, he was one of the few heroes in South Vietnam.

At this time, he also felt aggrieved and angry, and shouted: "This heaven wants to kill me, how can there be an emperor who can only be emperor for three months?"

July 14, 26th year of the Great Chaupenin

Li Gongyun, the false ruler of Nanyue, brought more than 20 civil and military officials with him on a warship of the Xia army near the coast of Hualu, submitted a letter of surrender to Daxia and presented the Yellow Book of Nanyue.

July 16

Zhao Kuangyin, the land commander of Daxia, led his troops into Hualu with an unhappy look on his face, and took over the command of Shangguan Yu, the governor of the Nanyang Navy.

August
Emperor Bai Xi of Xia ordered Zhao Kuangyin to escort the false ruler of Nanyue, Li Gongyun, the young ruler of the previous dynasty, Li Longzha and more than a hundred other Nanyue monarchs and ministers back to their country and present the captives to Kaifeng.

September
The Nanyue Kingdom's entourage arrived in Kaifeng.

Bai Xi first rewarded the soldiers who went on the expedition, promoted Zhao Kuangyin to the position of Grand Commander, promoted Shangguan Yu, the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, and Duan Rongxian, the Commander-in-Chief of Guangdong and Guangxi, to the position of Commander-in-Chief of the Infantry.

The former Grand Commander Chai Rongen retired with honor and was given the title of "Yao Zhong, a hero who expanded the territory and protected the country" and the title of marshal.

In response to the Nanyue group, the false leader Li Gongyun and his followers were first beheaded at the Meridian Gate, and then the young leader Li Longzha was awarded the title of "King of Annan", granted a mansion in Kaifeng, and allowed to reside in the capital.

The former Kingdom of Annan was divided into Annan Road, with its capital in Ningping, which belonged to Guangnan Province and established the Annan Governor's Office.

The son of Prince of Yan, Bai Cheng, Prince of Changning, was promoted to Prince of Kang and stationed in Annan Road.

Although Annan was conquered, the pirates from Ryukyu who had been dispatched almost simultaneously with Annan had not yet been pacified.

As soon as the 500 warships of the Xia Army's navy appeared in the waters of Liuzhou, they engaged in a battle on the first day, lost dozens of ships, and then fled rapidly.

Because the pirates' ships have almost no heavy weapons, they are very light and much faster than the navy's warships carrying ten guns.

By the time Xia's army arrived at Keelung County, the seat of Liuzhou, the pirates had already fled into the Eastern Ocean and were nowhere to be found.

Li Minghui, who was in charge of the campaign against pirates, thought that he had won a great victory in this battle, so he wrote a letter to the court to report the victory while withdrawing his troops back to the Hangzhou military port.

Just when the rulers and ministers of Daxia believed that the south was stable and the seas and rivers were peaceful, pirates appeared again in the southeast and plundered Qiongzhou Island in Guangnan West Road, looting thousands of civilians on the island.

A county in Qiongzhou disappeared directly from the territory of Daxia. Bai Xi was very angry, and the civil servants in the court took the opportunity to impeach Li Minghui for taking credit for his achievements.

It was also because of this incident that the competition between Shangguan Yu and Li Minghui for the position of naval commander ended up with Shangguan Yu being promoted and Li Minghui being imprisoned.

September 23
Emperor Xia Bai Xi personally appointed Shangguan Yu as the "Southeast Coastal Bandit Suppression Troops Commander", who was fully responsible for eliminating the southeastern sea pirates.

February, 27th year of the Great Chaupenin
The southeastern coast was not yet stable, and Bai Xi was the first to collapse.

February 22
Emperor Bai Xi of Daxia died of illness in Chengde Hall of the Dasong Palace at the age of seventy-four.

The fifty-four-year-old Crown Prince Bai Mu, in the presence of all his ministers and in accordance with the imperial edict, ascended the throne in front of the coffin, and appointed Prince of Qin Bai Feng as the Crown Prince and Prince of Qin's wife Su as the Crown Princess.

The royal family of Daxia was different from the royal families of other dynasties. Men generally lived longer than women, so it was rare for the king to be young and the mother to be strong.

February 28
Daxia held a rare grand court meeting to discuss the late emperor's posthumous title, temple name, and mausoleum.

In the end, Bai Xi was posthumously named "Emperor Shenwu Zhaosu Dingxiao", temple name "Zhuangzong", and buried in "Yong'an Mausoleum".

At the same time, it was agreed that the next year's reign title would be "Thang Long".

As for why "Zhuangzong" was used instead of "Taizong", it was because Northern Xia already had the temple name Taizong, and in order to avoid the taboo of the ancestor, Zhuangzong was used.

Also because there were three Xia Dynasties in history, historians called Dayu's Xia the "Early Xia", Bai Zhai's Xia the "Northern Xia", and Baijian's Xia the "Later Xia".

May
The coffin of the late emperor was buried in a mound. After arranging for the crown prince to govern the country, the kings to assist him, and the regent ministers, the new emperor Bai Mu followed the ancestral system and entered the mourning palace.

Daxia entered the stage of temporary regency council from the stage of Donggong prime minister.

As the country entered a period of silence, Shangguan Yu, who had already received intelligence and planned to encircle and suppress Wu Dadan's pirate group, had to stop his strategy and wait for the emperor to come out.

However, Shangguan Yu did not do nothing. Instead, he took advantage of this period of time to improve the new warship according to the characteristics of the pirate ship being fast and thin.

A batch of small artillery pieces were specially ordered from the artillery manufacturer. Their caliber was two-thirds smaller than that of conventional artillery pieces and their weight was also reduced by more than half.

At the same time, chain bombs were invented, which were specifically used to destroy pirate masts.

He placed these small cannons on fast, pointed sailing ships, built a total of one hundred ships, and named them "pirate ships."

September of the first year of Thang Long in the Xia Dynasty
The country once again entered the stage of emperor's personal rule, and the strategy proposed by Shangguan Yu was immediately approved by the new emperor Bai Mu.

September 19

Shangguan Yu led 6,000 sailors on 350 warships, including 50 new warships, 200 old warships, and 100 anti-piracy ships.

October
Xia Jun's naval division successfully captured the pirate Wu Dadan's troops near the waters of Mayi Kingdom in the South China Sea.

A pirate fleet of more than 600 ships was plundering the coast of Mayi Country and preparing to return to the Ryukyu stronghold.

Seeing the Xia army's naval division rushing towards them like wolves and tigers, the pirate ship knew it was no match for the enemy, so it repeated its old tricks, turned around without hesitation, and fled to the south.

However, the anti-pirate ship was specially prepared for pirates and carried very little cargo, only ten small cannons and the required ammunition, as well as more than 300 sailors.

Even the supplies for the voyage were placed on other large ships, with only enough for one or two days.

The pirate ship spread its sails, flew in the sea breeze, and quickly circled in front of the pirate fleet, blocking their way horizontally.

Hundreds of pirate ships were lined up horizontally, hundreds of cannons fired at the same time, and five out of ten of the leading pirate ships were lost. Their morale plummeted, and they turned around one after another, causing the formation to become chaotic and the ships to collide with each other.

In this way, the pirate ships blocked the way, and the gunboats behind followed to reap the rewards one by one.

In just two hours, only dozens of pirate ships were left in the entire sea, hoisting white flags and requesting surrender.

At this point, the Wu Dadan pirate group, which had wreaked havoc on the southeastern coast of Daxia for two or three years, and once occupied two coastal states and several counties, with thousands of warships and tens of thousands of pirates, was destroyed.

Moreover, the emergence of pirate ships made it increasingly difficult for pirates to escape at sea.

The Daxia Navy also manufactured a large number of anti-piracy ships and equipped them with the South and North Ocean Navy Divisions, to the point where one gunboat was equipped with two anti-piracy ships and one supply ship.

The smallest naval organizational unit thus formed.

A small fleet of almost ten gunboats can successfully guard the entire route.

The Great Xia Navy was invincible and did whatever it wanted in the sea areas within its sight.

(End of this chapter)