Nowadays, the armor of the armored soldiers of the Tang Dynasty weighs thirty-six kilograms, the deputy general's armor weighs forty kilograms, and Yunchu's armor weighs about fifty kilograms, plus sabers, crossbows, short blades, bucklers, throwing spears, and long swords.
Weapons, food bags, water bags, blankets, the average weight of an armored soldier is about 80 kilograms.
If one rides two horses on the plains, the weight of the armored soldiers is nothing. In mountainous areas, where the horses cannot walk, even with the help of auxiliary soldiers, the combat effectiveness of the armored soldiers will be greatly weakened.
A soldier who can carry a load of eighty kilograms and run ten miles on the plains and still have the strength to fight in the mountains can burst his lungs by running three to five miles in the mountains.
During the Tang Dynasty, Longyou Mountain was a densely forested environment, not to mention the entire southwest. Li Chengxiu, who had been to fight in the southwest, said that their general once led them to kill a five-foot-long giant.
python.
He also said that the poisonous bees there are half a finger long. Even ants that seem harmless to humans and animals in Guanzhong, but may be exterminated with a splash of urine or a pot of boiling water, can actually eat people in the southwest forest.
There are tigers in the mountains, various leopards and bears, and various wolves. Lynx can easily tear open a person's neck. There are pigs and dragons in the water, and there are big fish that eat people as food. He has even seen his own companions.
, he was taking a good bath in the river, but suddenly he convulsed and fell into the water. When he was pulled up, he found that he was dead.
Rhinos and elephants appear in herds there. These things seem to eat grass and move slowly. Once they are angered, rhinos will run faster than horses. Those who provoke them will not fight to death.
They won't give up, and elephants are very smart. They even know how to hide during the day and come to steal the camp at night... With such big hooves, even an armored soldier will be trampled into a can.
Meat in the deformed armor.
The grass is full of poisonous snakes, poisonous scorpions, poisonous centipedes, poisonous spiders, and even some toads are poisonous. When you sleep at night, you must plug your ears and eyes with cotton, otherwise, there will be those with many legs.
Centipedes regard their ears and eyes as a breeding ground for giving birth to children...
There are locusts everywhere on the trees and in the grass. When they smell people, they will elongate their bodies one by one. From a distance, they look like small branches. As long as people and horses pass under the tree, the things will follow them.
Falling like raindrops, a bullock can be sucked by these locusts and become a skinny mummy in one night.
Then there are mosquitoes. There are mosquitoes in Chang'an too. However, the mosquitoes in Chang'an are nothing compared to the mosquitoes in the southwest. The mosquitoes in some places in the southwest are as big as covering the sky and the sun. Not to mention, they are huge!
This is not the most terrifying thing. The climate there is humid. Sometimes there is no sunshine for a month or two, and the clothes are never dry. The feet will be rotten, and the crotch will be rotten. Some soldiers feel that the crotch is extremely itchy and unbearable, so they scratch it.
As a result, I caught a handful of skin.
Many soldiers were worried that one day they would grab a handful from their crotch and take off their balls and balls, which would be very miserable.
Therefore, when fighting in the southwest, the barbarians in the southwest are nothing. The main targets of the soldiers are the above-mentioned things. If the barbarians can be allowed to leave the mountains and enter the plains, a hundred armored cavalry can defeat ten thousand people.
"How do those barbarians fight against these things?" Yun Chu asked with a smile.
Li Chengxiu thought for a moment and said, "They seem to be used to it."
Yun Chu shook his head and said, "It's not because I'm used to it, but because you didn't see those people who died."
Li Chengxiu said: "Master, are you saying that they will die too?"
Yun Chu smiled and said: "This is natural. This is the reason why the population of those barbarians living in such a large area has not increased for countless years. If you stay in the southwest for a long time, you will find their villages.
The number of people basically remains at a constant state.
This is the habit you are talking about. After a long struggle with nature, they finally formed a fragile and constant relationship with nature. Only by maintaining such a large number of people can they obtain subsistence food from the forest, which is less than
Nature will swallow up these people. If there are more people than this, the forest will not be able to support that many people.
Every migration they make is actually an adventure. If they succeed, they will be able to live in peace. If they fail, they will be exterminated.
In the places they are familiar with, they know where to find food, where there is the salt they need, where the water is suitable for drinking, where there are the least poisonous insects, and even where the land is suitable for slash-and-burn farming.
Leaving a familiar place, they actually need to face the same dangers you face as the Tang army. They don’t have as much food as us, their equipment is not as good as ours, and they don’t have as many medicines as we do. Therefore, if they are also in a strange place,
Against nature in a unique environment, they have no advantage over us.
In your fight against the southwestern barbarians, you can't always find their people. In fact, it doesn't matter if you can't find them. As long as you drive them away from their familiar living environment, it will be a heavy blow to them."
Li Chengxiu thought for a moment and said, "Master, do you think we should stay for a while after finding their settlement instead of leaving when we find no one around?"
Yun Chu smiled and said: "What do you think of home? Do you think any place is suitable for settling down? The reason why home can be called home must be a place where all of us can live safely.
Without these foundations, how can we call home?”
Li Chengxiu said: "If we stick to their settlement, sooner or later they will come to rob us?"
Yun Chu sighed and said: "The biggest weakness of the barbarians is that they do not have overnight food. If they are lucky enough to find a place that can feed them, they will naturally not come back. If not, they will naturally come back. Otherwise, they will die.
I think that on weekdays, they must be doing everything they can to expand the scope of their lives, trying their best to search for all the places that can provide them with living materials. They can't find them on weekdays, so why should they do it during the war?
Can it be found?
This makes no sense from a probability perspective."
Li Chengxiu said: "Master, if you go to the southwest this time, I will ask you to come."
Yun Chu smiled and said: "Not only are you going, Yun Jin, Wen Huan, Guang Si, Sisi, you all are going. This is an excellent opportunity to expand your horizons and experience nature."
Li Chengxiu asked: "Sister Sisi, are you going too?"
Yunchu sighed and said: "I don't know why, but this child just likes to play with poisons, and he never tires of it. He often wants to go to Southwest and Lingnan, thinking about getting more poisons to study. If I don't take her, I will be very sad.
Worried that she would go secretly.
However, it is too early to say this.
After a while, you can put Master's halberd representing the Shangzhu Kingdom on the roof, so that others will not think that our family is timid after hearing the war. After all, we are also a military family of the Tang Dynasty."
Nine times of military merit will lead you to the Kingdom of Shangzhu! You can put an iron halberd on the lintel to show off.
Yun Chu had great military exploits. He had the same big halberd with three handles. Normally, Yun Chu would never stick this thing on the roof because he was worried about being struck by lightning during thunderstorms. Now, it was time to stick it up.
The flags hung on the three great halberds are different. The one on the far left is a tattered fifth-grade General Dingyuan flag, and the one on the right is a tattered fourth-grade General Xuanwei flag. Only the official flag is hung on it.
In the middle hangs a brand new flag of General Yunhui from the third rank.
The first two flags were both flags that Yun Chu had used in the army, but the middle flag was the honor awarded by the emperor after he returned from hundreds of battles.
When the three flags were flying on Yunchu's mansion, the family's generals and guards began to put on armor when they came in and out. Moreover, the soldiers in the Yun clan also put on armor and left home one after another to go to Yun's mansion.
Report.
The soldiers from Chang'an and Wannian counties have already begun to assemble at the call of the sergeant. Once the imperial military order is issued, they can form an army immediately.
At the same time, Yunchu's petition for war had already flown to Luoyang, and Southwest suffered a disastrous defeat. It would be a shame for the Tang Dynasty if no one in the army dared to petition for military service.
Ever since the news of the disastrous defeat in the Southwest War reached Luoyang, Li Zhi's one eye was like the eye of a poisonous snake. He looked at everything and everyone with a cold look. He never thought that his eight thousand elite cavalry had gone to the Southwest.
He killed all the barbarians like chopping melons and vegetables, but brought him endless humiliation.
Since he went to Mount Tai to enshrine himself, the generals of the Tang Dynasty gave him two terrible answers in two consecutive battles.
Although Xue Rengui severely damaged the Khitan and Xi people's coalition forces in the Wild Boar Plains, most of the troops from these two groups had fled to the Baishan and Blackwater areas, and dispersed into the vast snowy plains in units of 500 people. The army wanted to continue to expand its results.
It has become much more difficult. To this day, there is still no good news from Xue Rengui about completely pacifying the Khitan and Xi Ren rebellion.
Fortunately, there was a mountain of memorials for petitioning for war, which made Li Zhi feel a little better. So many memorials for petitioning for battle showed that no warrior in the Tang Dynasty was timid about fighting.
Wu Mei saw that Li Zhi was struggling to read the petitions for war with one eye, so she whispered: "The barbarians in the southwest have only a minor disease called scabies, and they are not worth your majesty's anger."
Li Zhi raised his head and looked at Wu Mei and said: "Scabies? When I was young, my illness was considered to be scabies, but what about now?"
Wu Mei said: "Just send good generals to destroy them as soon as possible."
Li Zhi waved his arm vigorously, pointed to the petitions for war all over the ground and said: "There are many people here petitioning for war, but there are no petitions for war from Wang Fangyi and Cheng Wuting who are most familiar with the war in the southwest?
What does this mean? It means that the two of them are not sure about annihilating these barbarians. They are so cowardly that they are worthy of being our General of the Tang Dynasty?"
Wu Mei pondered for a moment, then took out a document from her sleeve and handed it to the emperor: "Your Majesty, Yun Chu invites you to fight."
Li Zhi first glanced at the lacquer seal on the memorial, then looked at Wu Mei and said, "Why, now you even have to read the documents from the Ministry of War first?"
Wu Mei said: "Your Majesty is suffering from illness, so I have to think more about your Majesty."
Li Zhi used his silver knife to pick up the fire paint, and while opening Yun Chu's memorial, he said: "I am still alive."