During the Zhidao period, the Song Dynasty established Hebei Road, which was located on the coast of the east, Taihang in the west, River in the south, Hebei province in the north, and the entire territory of Hebei Province in the south of Sanguan in the north, and Henan and north of the Yellow River in Shandong. It governed Daming Prefecture. It governed Daming Prefecture and Zhenzhou, Dezhou, Cangzhou, Xingzhou, Jizhou, Zhaozhou, Dingzhou, Xiangzhou, Chanzhou, Bazhou, Baozhou and other twenty-four prefectures, Deqing army, Baoshun army, Dingyuan army, Polu army, Pingrong army, and other 14 armies.

During the Xining period, Hebei Road was divided into two roads, the east road was still under the jurisdiction of Daming Prefecture, and the west road was under the jurisdiction of Zhending. The jurisdiction included some places north of the Yellow River in Hebei Province today, Shandong Province, and Henan Province.

After the fall of the Northern Song Dynasty, the Jin Dynasty retained the East and West Roads of Hebei, but the jurisdiction was slightly adjusted. After the fall of the Jin Dynasty, the Mongols and Yuan merged the East and West Roads of Hebei into the Secretariat, divided into Daming Road, Zhending Road, Hejian Road, Baozhou Road and Dadu Road. After the east and west troops entered Hebei, the offensive route was basically divided according to the east and west roads of the Song Dynasty.

Zhao Bing finally ended his journey to the tomb sacrifice at the end of November and embarked on the northward journey again. After the Battle of Daming, he led the two armies to make adjustments.

Tian Zhong was still led the Western Route Army, the Eighth Army, the Third Army, and the Fourth Army, and the Fifth Army were placed under its command, and were assigned to the Second Cavalry Division, the Third Cavalry Division and the Second Artillery Division; the Eastern Route Army was still led by Han Zhen as the general manager, and led the First, Second Army and the 12th and Thirteenth Army, which were joined by the Fourth Cavalry Division, the Fifth Cavalry Division and the Third Artillery Division. The border troops and state troops who were fighting with the two armies were temporarily staying in Daming, Linqing and other places.

After the division of the troops, the two armies marched north along Hebei East Road and Hebei West Road respectively, taking advantage of the victory to the death to advance northward, and recovered dozens of prefectures and counties including Xingzhou, Handan, Gaotang, and Hejian. Due to the rapid attack speed, it was difficult for subsequent officials and supplies to follow up. Therefore, Zhao Bing ordered the two armies to move in and rest in Handan and Hejian respectively to replenish their troops and supplies.

After leaving Gongyi, Xingying crossed the Yellow River in Zhengzhou and followed the Western Army's main road to advance north. In Zhao Bing's eyes, this road basically coincides with the National Highway 107 in later generations. However, the main road on the plain is much wider than that in later generations, with a width of twenty feet and a narrower place of more than ten feet. This width is equivalent to the six lanes in later generations.

The reason is not only the small population and low land utilization rate at present, but also the heavy dependence of ancient transportation on roads. Therefore, all dynasties attached great importance to the construction and maintenance of roads. The Mongolian Yuan Dynasty was vast and relied more on roads to transport materials, convey messages, and dispatch troops, so they did not spare any effort to build post roads.

At this time, there were not only those on the road that were heading north, but also on the endless stream of convoys and packs of supplies, as well as officials and state troops who went north to take over. Since most of the enemy troops had been defeated or fled north, they did not encounter harassment on the way. However, there were also scattered soldiers and bandits harassed and attacked plundering supplies. In remote and dangerous places, the Song army also sent troops to guard and patrol.

There seemed to be not many troops to escort, but relatively speaking, there were more than 20,000 people in all directions. When a small group of enemy troops saw it, they would circumvent their edge. In a few days, the camp arrived in Handan. Tian Zhong led the generals to welcome His Majesty and his party into the city. He had served in the imperial guards for a long time and knew the emperor's preferences, so he chose a large mansion in the city as a place to garrison.

It is said that this mansion was built by a small Han marquis who was granted the title of the Mongol Yuan in his early years. It covers an area of ​​more than 100 acres and has a garden built in four places. It is extremely luxurious. When the city was surrounded, it paid for money and grain to recruit hundreds of slaves to help defend the city. Of course, when the city was destroyed, it would inevitably be defeated and killed, its family was destroyed, and its house was also unearthed.

Although the house was in the city, in order to defend against bandits, high walls were built and corner towers and other military facilities were built. Tian Zhong also considered that the house was relatively independent and convenient for defense and alert, and was close to the military camp, which was conducive to ensuring the safety of driving, so he chose this place as a garrison.

Zhao Bing has never been picky about food and accommodation, can live in palaces, can also settle down in private houses and temples, and can sleep in the wilderness. However, the ministers who followed him are old after all, and have lost the wind, frost, snow and rain in the past in recent years. Even though he felt that he could tolerate it, his body was no longer happy.

In addition, Zhao Bing has not lived in Gongyi's Mausoleum these days, and she was not well placed to live in the wild. During the past ten days, Lu Xiufu and others felt exhausted. The two concubines who accompanied him were still better, and although Su Lan tried hard to support him, she also seemed sick and unenergetic. Of course, Zhao Bing hoped to live better and eat better, so she did not refuse.

The staff at the front station had already controlled the house, took over the alert, arranged a variety of facilities, allocated residences, and moved in after the camp reached the station. Zhao Bing was also exhausted every day, and Tian Zhong had a wink. He briefly reported the situation in the city and the development of the war, so he retreated and asked His Majesty to rest earlier.

After two days of rest in the city, the heads of the army and local governors of the east and west routes rushed to Handan to attend the meeting, summarizing the previous stage of combat and governance experience, and discussing the next military action plan. Zhao Bing may either summon him separately or receive him collectively, and listen to their work reports first in order to discuss the next plan in a targeted manner.

During the talks, Zhao Bing heard the most that the generals were puzzled by the generals' orders to go to rest. They thought that in the good situation, they should move northward and approach the city of Dadu, but they had to give up the hard-earned victory and stop moving forward. At first glance, what they said was not unreasonable, and they all came into three aspects:

First, the current Yuan army is defeated like a mountain and loses its depression. It is often the sound of cannons and leaves the city and fleeing, which is a good opportunity to recover lost territory; second, if the Mongolian Yuan side is resting for a long time, mobilizes troops and reorganizes its military, which will cause many difficulties for the next step of combat; third, it is November now, and it is about to enter the coldest season in the north, and our army is mostly from Jiangnan, which is not suitable for fighting in the cold areas, which is not conducive to re-fighting.

Zhao Bing understood their opinions very well. When the rest order was issued, some generals also wrote a letter to request a shorter rest time and start the next battle as soon as possible, and to arrive at Dadu as soon as possible while the enemy reinforcements had not arrived, conquering the city. He understood that what the generals were worried about was the grassland army in the northern part of the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty, which was not only the birthplace of the Mongolian Empire, but also had a large number of core troops with strong combat power.

According to the collected information, the Yuan army stationed in Mobei included more than 20 thousand households of the Hala Chi Army, as well as the Asu Army of the personal army's Forewar Command Department, the remaining guards and horses, and the Mongolian army's 10,000 households of the Mongolian Army. As well as the princes of the kings, the princess of the Wang Gu tribe, and the princess of Chi Qileis.

As long as the court officials in the court participated in the Battle of Jiangnan, they all knew that the Mongolian Yuan army stationed in Mobei was not only a large number, but also an elite army of the Yuan army. Their quality was far greater than that of the guards and Wanhu troops stationed in North China and South China. Whenever they participated in the war, the Song army was almost defeated, and they were extremely cruel and massacred the city at any time, which left an indelible shadow on many people.

Therefore, avoiding the current field battle with the Mongol-Yuan Iron Cavalry is actually the real reason why the generals wanted to cancel the rest. Zhao Bing did not agree with this. He knew that many people in history believed that the civilization of barbaric nations was often regarded as the root cause of the loss of combat effectiveness in the context of the East Asian continent.

In addition, there are various literary works in later generations who always like to say something, advocating the wildness of wolves, saying that once nomadic peoples enter the Central Plains, their wolf nature will disappear, as if Chineseization is a combat power attenuator. But he knew that this was just a one-sided view of the problem. In history, in the Western world, the famous "Whip of God" the Huns have always maintained their barbaric lifestyle and rejected Romanization, but it still inevitably caused the Huns to decay quickly.

This undoubtedly shows that the barbarians also had their own way of being extravagant. So when King Attila died suddenly, the unknown Gepids quickly defeated the hegemony of the Huns to pieces in the Battle of Niedaohe. Then Attila's son attacked the Eastern Roman Empire and was hung on the head of the city of Constantinople.

On the contrary, after the complete demise of the Huns, some of the Huns who defected to the Byzantine Empire were used by the empire as professional heavy cavalry. Although they were highly Romanized in living habits, they did not have privileges because they lived in Byzantine territory and had to exchange their bravery for capital for survival, but their martial virtues were quickly restored, even surpassing the era of the Huns.

Even in the late Yuan Dynasty in history, although it was still decades away from the present, there were still two million Mongolian herders in the Mongolian grasslands at that time, which was still an important source of troops for the Yuan Dynasty. However, these Mongolian soldiers who were not infected by the Chineseization were vulnerable to the Red Turban Army holding wooden sticks and bamboo guns, and even the Battle of Shahe could have occurred. The embarrassing situation was that the army, which was claimed to have as many as 300,000, was reimbursed because of a bombing.

In contrast, the Qing Dynasty, which started as a nomadic nation, solved this dilemma better. Since the end of the Kangxi Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty has recruited a large number of Solon soldiers from Heilongjiang, and the Xibe soldiers from the northeast of the northeast as the source of troops to supplement the Eight Banners of the Continent. These poor and simple Mangyuan warriors were trained to exert strong combat power.

These Mangyuan warriors became the key to maintaining the military power of the Qing Dynasty for a relatively long time. Therefore, some people thought that it was the Qing Dynasty who vigorously promoted the sinicization after entering the Central Plains, which led to the Eight Banners Army losing its wildness and the courage of its founding country, becoming synonymous with corruption and depravity, and also laid the groundwork for the demise of the Qing Dynasty.

But Zhao Bing thought that nomads living in the grassland could maintain their combat effectiveness without enjoying the Central Plains Flower World, and wouldn’t they have sharply reduced...
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