Baiyanchi, Qiongre Duojin As soon as he captured the city, Zhang Zhao arranged for Yin Yaozi to lead two thousand troops and horses to guard it, while he ran non-stop to Baiyanchi, which was more than fifty miles north of Yanzhou City.
"Your Majesty, there's so much salt! The salt in Minqin County, Liangzhou, is nothing compared to this.
If we have this salt pond, we in Longyou, Hexi Province, will no longer be short of salt, and the Jiedu Yamen will be able to collect a large amount of salt tax every year."
Shen Nianban, who did not go on the expedition last time, did so this time. Looking at the endless salt ponds and the white salt in front of him, he suddenly became uneasy.
It is not known how much salt the Baiyan Pond produces, but the tens of thousands of kilograms of salt seized so far is more than the Baiyan Pond in Minqin County in a year.
Of course, there is actually no shortage of salt in Longyou, Hexi Province. After Shanzhou, there is the West Sea (Qinghai Lake). You can get as much salt as you want.
However, the tribes near the West Sea have not yet surrendered, and there are no salt ponds and other facilities required for drying salt. Without large-scale investment, it is impossible to produce output immediately.
Coupled with the short salt exposure time due to the rugged road and cold weather, it still cannot be compared with the white salt pool.
Zhang Zhao was also very happy, but what he was happy about was not only the salt from Baiyanchi, but also the additional income from Longyou in Hexi Province.
But he is now sure that he does not need to attack Xiazhou, which is Tongwan City, which is scary to think about.
There was so much salt in the White Salt Pond that it was probably equivalent to more than 30% of the annual income of the Dingnan Army, so Zhang Zhao occupied the White Salt Pond and refused to leave, not afraid that Li Yiyin would not bring the Dingnan Army to fight him.
"Let all the Qingqi out, expel all the nearby Dangxiang tribes, and not allow them to go east. Drive them all north to Lingzhou and Youzhou.
Hu Cile led the Uighurs twenty miles north from Zuoying to guard against the Dangxiang people from going south from Youzhou, while the rest of the army repaired on the spot."
Just when Zhang Zhao was dispatching his troops, party members began to gather in Xiazhou City.
The Luoli, Yeli, Wu Yi, Yue Yi, Xueshan, Yawei, Nanshan and other tribal surnames all began to send troops, and the secret envoys sent by Pegasus to call back the Xifeng clan who attacked Qingzhou have also set off.
Li Yiyin killed cattle and sheep in Xiazhou City, rewarded the tribes with large sums of money, and promised weapons, armor, and tall horses to the rebels.
He then falsely claimed that the Central Plains court had ordered the Nanyang Army to send troops to attack the Guiyi Army, and the court's 50,000-strong army soon marched north from Pingning to join forces with them to attack Zhang Zhao.
Therefore, in a short period of time, Li Yiyin gathered more than 20,000 cavalry. Including thousands of Pingxia troops, almost 30,000 people had been assembled.
However, Li Yiyin was not as anxious as Zhang Zhao thought. He knew that it was useless to be anxious.
Because the Jiedushi of the Dingnan Army sounds like a whole, but in fact, this is just an illusion. The Dingnan Army is still an alliance of party tribes headed by the Li family of the Pingxia tribe.
Although the cohesion is stronger than that of the original six tribes, and the Pingxia tribe has much greater prestige among the Dangxiang tribes, it is still not comparable to the Guiyi Army.
Li Yiyin did not have the ability to gather all the troops and horses and send them out to fight immediately.
He must first have good food and drinks, and wait until the official appointments and wishes are made clear, so that the soldiers and horses he has recruited will have combat effectiveness.
King Zhang measured the mobilization level of the Xixia army in later generations, but he did not realize that the army was much more stretched than he thought.
More than 20,000 rebel troops occupied the Baiyan Pond. When the flowers all withered, the army of the Dingnan Army was still gathering in Tongwan City in Xiazhou.
Of course, in order for the Guiyi Army to figure out the movements of the Dingnan Army, and the Dingnan Army to figure out the true purpose of the Guiyi Army, the cavalry of the Youyi Army on both sides fought fiercely in the slightly rugged ravine plain from Yanzhou to Xiazhou.
stand up.
At the same time, Zhang Zhao and Li Yiyin did not forget to report each other to the court.
Zhang Zhao pulled Zhang Xichong to write a letter to Shi Jingtang, saying that Li Yiyin had usurped the imperial territory, and the Pingxia Dangxiang cavalry robbed the people of Yanzhou and robbed the raw salt of Huamachi, Baiyanchi and Qingyanchi. He was invited by Zhang Xichong to send troops to expel Dangxiang cavalry.
Li Yiyin also quickly sent three groups of envoys in succession to accuse Zhang Zhao of crossing the border and killing Yanzhou defense envoys without authorization, harassing Dangxiang herdsmen, and intending to swallow up Lingzhou and Yanzhou. His disobedience was clearly revealed.
He was also trusted by Lingwu Jiedu envoy Zhang Xichong and was willing to raise troops to expel the rebel army and restore peace to the people of Yanzhou.
However, when the secret envoys from both sides arrived at Kaifeng Mansion in Tokyo, they were immediately dumbfounded. It turned out that Shi Jingtang had personally led his army north to Yedu to confront An Chongrong.
The left-behind King Zheng, Shi Chonggui, was betrayed by An Congjin, the military governor of Shannan Province. He was so worried that he did not think about food and drinks. He was holding the blank official document left by Shi Jingtang and flaunting his official hat.
In particular, An Shenhui, the military governor of Dengzhou's Weisheng Army who was blocking An Cong's march north, had been promoted to the official position of Grand Tutor of the School.
No one cares about the affairs of the Guiyi Army and the Dingnan Army at all!
.....
In Yecheng, Shi Jingtang was also in dire straits now, because the outside of Yecheng was occupied by countless hungry people. They were crying outside the city day and night, begging Shi Jingtang, the emperor, to let them into Yecheng to survive.
It turns out that Zhenzhou, which was guarded by An Chongrong, is also the Zhengding area in later generations. This year, a large-scale locust plague occurred.
Therefore, even though it is the autumn harvest season, many farmers in Zhenzhou have no harvest and can only become victims of the disaster.
In order to disgust Shi Jingtang, An Chongrong used troops to disperse the victims southward and asked them to find Shi Jingtang for food.
An Chongrong's plan was that if Shi Jingtang didn't care about the hungry people, then he would say that Shi Jingtang was unkind and didn't even care about his people.
If Shi Jingtang was in charge, he would lead more than 60,000 forbidden troops to the north. Originally, the military rations were not sufficient. If Shi Jingtang was in charge of the hungry people, Yedu might not be able to stay any longer.
At least retreat to Xiangzhou or even Weizhou and Huazhou, which are not affected by the locust plague and have sufficient food. Then An Chongrong will have the opportunity to pursue them in tandem.
Unfortunately, the distance from Zhenzhou (Zhengding) to Yedu (south of Handan) is three hundred miles. More than 40,000 hungry people had nothing to eat, so they ate grass, roots and bark all the way south.
By the time they arrived in Yedu, thousands of people had starved to death. What was even worse was that Shi Jingtang didn't open the door at all.
With Shi Jingtang's intelligence, how could he not see through An Chongrong's tricks?
The son-emperor was shameless, and he was not a leader who loved the people. However, he was the emperor after all, so Shi Jingtang couldn't just drive away the hungry people. After thinking hard for a few days, he finally came up with a 'good' idea.
These hungry people came from Zhenzhou and basically gathered near the north gate of Yedu, and An Chongrong's army was behind the hungry people.
After Shi Jingtang found out that An Chongrong's army only numbered more than 20,000 people, he immediately ordered Du Chongwei to go north to fight An Chongrong.
However, the north gate of Yedu was blocked by hungry people. The fastest way to leave the city was through the north gate. The other gates had to go around for several miles. Shi Jingtang took the opportunity to pretend to be angry and kept urging Du Chongwei to go north.
This Du Chongwei was originally regarded as a non-thing among the Five Dynasties. The people called him the "Plague Lord" and regarded him as a plague.
This kind of person was so angry at being urged by Shi Jingtang that he didn't care whether the people were hungry or not.
He led more than 40,000 national protectors, saint protectors and other forbidden troops to open the north gate and slaughter the hungry people outside the city who could barely walk.
The men were hacked to death on the spot and thrown into the moat, and all the women who were still alive were taken away. The old, weak and young were simply trampled on horses.
For a time, screams were heard outside Yedu City, shouting for heaven and earth, and voices claiming injustice. Du Chongwei killed thousands of hungry people before he killed An Chongrong.
....
More than sixty miles away, An Chongrong learned from a scout that Du Chongwei had killed thousands of hungry people, and was immediately shocked by Du Chongwei's cruelty.
However, he didn't think too much, feeling that since Du Chongwei had already gone north, his strategy of driving the hungry people into the vanguard was no longer effective, so he should hurry south for a decisive battle.
However, An Chongrong did not expect, or simply ignored, that most of his Chengde soldiers were from Zhenzhou!
Although the close relatives of the soldiers were not regarded as hungry people driven south, many of them were distant relatives from the countryside.
When they heard that thousands of hungry people were killed by Du Chongwei outside the north gate of Yedu, they did not seek revenge on Du Chongwei as An Chongrong thought. Instead, they hated An Chongrong even more for forcing the hungry people to go south.
At nightfall, Du Ying, secretary of An Chongrong's Jiedu shogunate, was wiping his eyes with water over and over again.
Because he was afraid that others would see that he had cried, his maternal grandfather's family was among the hungry people driven south by An Chongrong.
As a poor scholar, he certainly did not have the ability to protect his entire family after a massive locust plague in his entire town.
The secretary is not the chief secretary, the chief secretary is the confidant of the commander-in-chief, and the secretary is just an official who handles some documents.
An Chongrong, who came from Daibei Wuxun, was of course interested in brave soldiers, but he did not respect the local scholars in Zhenzhou so much. He often beat and scolded them, and even killed them with a knife when they made them angry.
In fact, let alone a small official like him, when An Chongrong raised his troops, Jia Zhang, the horse infantry commander of Jiedu Youjun, believed that it was unwise to fight against the whole world with one town, so he advised An Chongrong to stop.
As a result, An Chongrong thought that he was disturbing the morale of the army, so he immediately ordered the tooth soldiers to hammer Jia Zhang to death in front of everyone.
Even the commander of the first army would kill him at his will. How could an official like Du Ying dare to seek help from An Chongrong because of his family's affairs?
However, Du Ying did not dare to go to An Chongrong, but he dared to go to another person, Zhao Yanzhi, the military envoy of Chengde Army Jiedu Yameni.
The military envoy in Jiedu Yamen was the second person in the Chengde Army after An Chongrong. Zhao Yanzhi was a native of the Chengde Army, that is, from Zhenzhou.
An Chongrong was just an out-of-town commander who came with his troops, and he often had to rely on local troops. Therefore, Zhao Yanzhi controlled 8,000 of the 20,000 German troops, which was considered a powerful force in the local faction.
After Du Ying washed his eyes, he did not go to Zhao Yanzhi directly, but went to the military camp.
Du Ying had read several books and knew the power of prophecies. He ran around the military camp spreading rumors that Hedong had the spirit of an emperor.
Du Ying said to the generals, "There is a certain destiny in the world, and the emperor's energy is in Hedong. Therefore, the kings of the two dynasties all originated from Hedong."
Zhenzhou is small and remote, how can it be compared with Hedong? It also has no royal aura. If today's emperor starts from Hedong and has great luck, we will be defeated!'
The soldiers and generals in Zhenzhou were originally willing to give An Chongrong a fight. After all, this was the fifth generation. Aren't the soldiers just looking forward to making trouble? What's the benefit of not making trouble?
If this succeeds, and Marshal An Jie enters Tokyo and becomes emperor, wouldn't everyone become as noble as the people of Hedong?
However, An Chongrong drove the hungry people of Zhenzhou southward and allowed them to be killed by Du Chongwei, which really hurt the hearts of Zhenzhou soldiers and generals.
Coupled with Du Ying's instigation, the people below all thought that the rebellion was in vain, and the morale of the military began to turmoil.
－－－－－－Digression－－－－－
In the previous chapter, some book friends said that there was a problem with my iron output in the Tang Dynasty. I have read several opinions, but I personally feel that considering the era in which the Tang Dynasty lived, the annual output of nearly 20,000 tons of iron was a bit exaggerated. Of course, it may also be the case.
Tiger underestimated the ancients. Well, this kind of data seems reasonable anyway, so everyone can interpret it according to their own interpretation.
This chapter has been completed!