Chapter 401 The Glory of the Ancient Empire

In the greenhouse in Bianjing, Zhao Pu was thoughtful.

Zhao Pu, who had been alone for ten years, knew the world very well.

Since the middle and late Tang Dynasty, it is no longer an empty talk, but a factual description that all the money and food in the world depend on the southeast.

And it is also true that Chang'an is no longer favored.

After the fall of the Tang Dynasty, none of the Liang, Tang, Jin, Han, Zhou, Fujian, Shu, Chu, Yue, etc. states had their capital in Chang'an.

The Shacha tribe, which was only descended from the Western Turks, took the name Tang and made its capital Luoyang.

But in Zhao Pu's view, Sha Chaotang may not like Luoyang that much, but more because of his righteousness.

After all, the royal family is a naturalized Hu who has no blood relationship with Li Tang. It would be somewhat unreasonable to take Tang as his name but establish a capital somewhere else.

In this regard, the emperor of Shachaotang was also worried about eating like Emperor Litang.

It is not a secret that the prefectures and counties fly to the capital and the envoys wait outside the Shangdong Gate to wait for them to come and then give them to them.

And as far as Zhao Pu knew, Li Cunxu also wanted to go to Bianliang to beg for food.

But in the end, considering that going to Bianliang to beg would expose Luoyang's lack of money and food and cause instability, he finally followed the advice of his subordinates to live frugally.

Just thinking about it, Zhao Pu felt that the light curtain's comment on the decline of Chang'an and Luoyang was somewhat reasonable.

Li Tang made his capital Chang'an and went to Luoyang to beg for food, and Shachao made his capital Luoyang and went to Bianliang to beg for food.

Now that the Song Dynasty established Bianliang, it seemed that it had taken advantage of all the water transportation, but the last words of the light screen also made Zhao Pu instantly alert:

The Jin Dynasty drove straight in.

Zhao Pu searched his memory and couldn't find the person with the gold name, so he turned the paper forward in his hand. On this paper, he scrawled the country name he saw in the light curtain.

Looking back again, the Song Dynasty was divided into the north and the south, and finally it was replaced by the Yuan Dynasty. Zhao Pu couldn't understand it even more for a while.

Subconsciously, he turned his attention to Zhao Kuangyin:

The officials won't give an explanation?

Zhao Kuangyin was so confused that he reluctantly waved his hands and refused to talk more, intending to think about it by himself.

The plan to move the capital has been brewing in his mind for some time.

Later generations talked about various reasons for establishing the capital. At first, Zhao Kuangyin just smiled:

What do you know about the important matter of moving the capital?

But watching the younger generation lay out the facts, explain the reasons and talk about the future, Zhao Kuangyin suddenly started to sweat a little:

What do I know about the important matter of moving the capital?

And looking at the younger brother opposite with his head lowered and unable to see his face clearly, Zhao Kuangyin suddenly became even more upset.

But this emotion did not show up in the end. Instead, he nodded cordially towards Zhao Pu:

"If Ze Ping has any questions, just stay and talk to me later."

…

"Two thighs..."

Du Ruhui talked about the straightforward but very appropriate description of later generations.

"The center of military, political and financial affairs..."

Fang Xuanling also appreciates this common word and concise description of later generations.

Then the two important ministers looked at each other and had some understanding in their hearts.

"The disaster of Anshi was caused by the move to Hu to bring Hebei under control. The thieves invaded and occupied this place, which made half of the Tang Dynasty rich, and disasters breed."

"I feel like I've lost my way to Hebei..." Du Ruhui said and then stopped, because what happened next was too easy to deduce.

If there are rebels, more troops will be needed, and if more troops are added, taxes will be increased. Hebei's inability to function depends entirely on the southeast.

The doubling of the corvée tax will cause resentment in the southeast and eventually lead to chaos...

How do you say the word "junior"?

"It's a death cycle..."

Wei Zheng took a breath and remembered the two simple but profound words of the sage:

"If you go in, you will be helpless, but if you go out, you will be invincible to foreign patients."

Li Shimin lightly annotated these two sentences of sages:

"Guoheng died within."

The younger generation's narration showed him the reasons for the fall of the Tang Dynasty from a very clear perspective:

Excessive cultivation of Guanzhong caused the Yellow River to become silted up, making water transportation inconvenient.

The Hu people moved inward, causing chaos in Hebei, and the Tang Dynasty lost half of its country.

When the people have nothing to eat, prosperity is like a castle in the air, ready to collapse at the touch of a finger.

But even so, Li Shimin still asked himself:

"How can Bianzhou become the capital?"

Li Shimin was not unfamiliar with this place. As later generations said, this was the hub of southeast water transportation.

During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, Chenliu was divided into Liangzhou and Kaifeng counties. Later, Liangzhou was changed to Bianzhou. Bianzhou was abolished during the Sui Dynasty, and its area was merged into Xingyang, Yingchuan and other counties.

It's just that after the founding of the Tang Dynasty, Bianzhou was resettled, and based on what later generations said, Li Shimin can clearly explain where it was located.

The first reaction was to question: Although Chang'an was not in danger, that was when Guanzhong was broken.

In Guanzhong, there is Longshan on the left and Tongguan on the right. Luoyang is also Chenggao on the left and Yaohan on the right. What about Bianzhou? There is no danger to the north.

Li Shimin felt that if he personally commanded the cavalry, it would take five days to fight from Zhuojun to Bianzhou.

And thinking about the Jingkang Rebellion that finally came true, Li Shimin shook his head repeatedly.

I don't know whether to admire the Song Emperor's courage, or to laugh at him for being stupid in reading.

Is it good to be virtuous but not in danger?

How can we talk about morality without risk?

[The influence of climate has been throughout the history of human civilization, including different civilizations in the East and the West, and also includes the present day we live in.

Just as water transportation was the lifeblood of the entire empire in the feudal era, the Mediterranean was equally important to ancient Rome.

It's just that the Mediterranean is a natural creation, and its response to climate change is more dramatic.

This excellent bathtub allowed ancient Rome to create its own golden age, but in the end it also sounded its death knell.

Just as Emperor Huan and Emperor Ling witnessed the decline of the Han Empire, Marcus Aurelius, who lived in the same era, also witnessed the elegy of the ancient Roman Empire.

During this period, the population of ancient Rome reached an unprecedented 75 million, but then the situation began to take a sharp turn for the worse.

The Antonine Plague and the Cyprian Plague we mentioned earlier were just incidental, and the biggest cause was climate change.

Almost at the same time when Prime Minister Zhuge Liang was in the autumn wind at Wuzhangyuan, the warm period of ancient Rome officially ended, and the cold wave officially launched a counterattack against ancient Rome.

The warm, humid, and stable climate of the golden age of ancient Rome disappeared, replaced by a cold, dry, and capricious climate.

As in ancient China, the direct impact of such a climate is a sharp decline in grain harvests.

Remember Cyprian, the Carthaginian bishop who got the name of the Plague of Cyprian? The manuscript documents he left behind also recorded the climate changes in North Africa:

"Precipitation has become very scarce, the land has gradually become barren, and the growth rate of crops has also been much slower than before."

If the prosperity of the Tang Dynasty depended on Hebei and Jianghuai, then the prosperity of ancient Rome was based on Egypt, the God-given granary.

However, with climate change, the flow of the Nile River has also been cut in half, greatly reducing Egypt's grain output.

The sharp decline in agricultural output made ancient Rome stretched to its limits, and the plague of Cyprian made ancient Rome overwhelmed, and the civil strife that eventually triggered it completed the final blow to ancient Rome.

In 251, Sima Xuan Wangga, the Roman Emperor Decius was killed by the Goths in the Danube.

The following year, the son of Ardashir, the King of Kings, and the Emperor of the Sassanid Persian Empire, Shapur, successfully counterattacked Rome, occupied Syria, and looted Asia Minor.

At the same time, the Goths in the north were not idle. They went straight into the Aegean Sea and the Black Sea to plunder.

Seven years later, the commander of the Roman garrison in Gaul proclaimed himself emperor and broke away from the Roman Empire - this emperor probably had something in common with Zhao Dating.

Limited by the threats of the Franks and Alemanni in the north, Rome pinched its nose and recognized the independence of the Gallic Empire and formed an alliance with it.

But it was still beaten back by the Franks on the battlefield.

To be fair, facing the end of the golden age, some of the monarchs of Rome did try to prolong the life of this huge empire, but because the fundamental agriculture was hit hard by the climate, these systems were more or less unsatisfactory and induced all kinds of unpredictable changes.

In 293, in order to cope with the endless foreign invasions of the huge empire, the Roman Emperor Diocletian used the system of four emperors co-governance, dividing Rome into two parts, east and west, with two emperors in each part to control each other. This system quickly collapsed after the death of Diocletian, and that's how the East and West Rome came about.

In the following two hundred years, the problems faced by the emperors of Rome and China were similar: reduced agricultural production, numerous rebellions, vigorous conscription, and increasingly reduced agricultural production.

The difference is that the Roman emperor, faced with boiling public grievances and natural disasters, finally issued a decree of "abolishing all religions and making Christianity orthodox", which deeply bound the empire and the church.

It was not until the sixth century that this long period of low temperature finally ended, and ancient China began the brilliant and glorious Sui and Tang dynasties.

The same was true in ancient Rome. Emperor Justinian the Great vowed to restore the glory of Rome and launched a vigorous reconquest movement.

But the sudden large-scale volcanic eruption shattered Justinian's dream, the Mediterranean climate fell into disorder again, and a large-scale plague began to spread again. The dream of restoring the glory of Rome was shattered, and the power of the church flourished.

The sudden deterioration of the climate also forced the Arabs to leave the barren desert, starting a vigorous Islamic conquest, and completely crushing the dream of the revival of Rome. 】

"Seventy-five million people..."

Liu Bei was first shocked by the huge population base, and then he felt envious.

"Is the Mediterranean really better than the land river?"

Although he said so, Liu Bei knew it was nonsense.

After all, canals have been built continuously since the Spring and Autumn Period, and there are also large canals built in the Sui and Tang dynasties. In essence, it is not because the river transportation is not convenient enough...

But Liu Bei also remembered that when he was a child in his hometown of Zhuo County, he occasionally heard various legends about the unpredictable climate of the eastern sea swallowing people. Therefore, many people are born with a fear of the ocean, and he is no exception.

But now it seems that the Mediterranean should be different from the East China Sea that he feared when he was young.

"Its vast territory relies on the benefits of the Mediterranean, but ignores the dangers on the ground, so it is not surprising that foreign troubles are everywhere."

Kong Ming stared at the map thoughtfully.

Maps in later generations are often very brief, but important information is not missing. For example, the topography of ancient Rome can be roughly seen on this map.

The coastal areas are mountainous and hilly, and the north is vast. How are the so-called Goths, Franks, etc. different from the Hu people that Han Er faced?