The last cold rain in late autumn finally turned into a roadblock for Yunzheng's march. After leaving Wutai Mountain, the light rain fell for three days. During these three days, Yunzheng's army only traveled eighty miles.
After a large number of cavalry, mules and horses, and heavy baggage convoys passed by, the road turned into a quagmire. If Yun Zheng hadn't had the foresight to let the artillery carts go first, those Hongyi cannons weighing thousands of kilograms would have become a quagmire by now.
of iron knots.
Seeing the big green horse's hooves sinking into the mud again, Yun Zheng missed the cement roads of later generations.
In ancient times, delays were a common occurrence in wars. Sometimes a rain or snow, a small mudslide, a landslide or other accidents could cause such serious military errors.
In the army, there is a rule that those who fail to meet the deadline will be killed. In fact, this military rule is rarely adopted by the commander. If everyone is serious, the generals under his command will most likely be killed by the commander without having to fight.
Yun Zheng was already accustomed to the irresponsible way of giving orders in the Song Dynasty army.
Fortunately, this irreversible factor of human power is fair to both warring parties, otherwise, Yun Zheng would never tolerate such fatal sloppiness.
The only thing that could satisfy Yun Zheng on the march was the soldiers of the Song Dynasty. Watching them continue marching barefoot in the cold mud made Yun Zheng feel warm in his heart. Even the leaden gray clouds were not so bright.
Disgusted.
The towering Hengshan Mountain stretches along the northern border of Dai County. The Inner Great Wall winding on the top of the mountain is like a jade belt connecting beads, connecting Yanmen Mountain, Mantou Mountain, and Caoduo Mountain. It borders the Yanbei Plateau to the north and Pingxin to the south.
Ding Basin. The famous Yanmen Ancient Fortress is built on the steep Yanmen Ridge.
Yanmen Mountain was called Gouzhu Mountain in ancient times. The peaks here are tall and straight, and the terrain is dangerous. Since the Yanmen Pass was built, it has become more and more like "one man can guard the pass, and ten thousand people cannot open it".
It "strengthens the vassal guards of Tong on the outside, solidifies the key of Taiyuan on the inside, reaches the three passes at the root, and reaches the whole Jin Dynasty at the throat."
Legend has it that every spring, geese from the south fly north, carrying reed leaves in their mouths, flying to Yanmen and circling for a long time, until the leaves fall before they can pass. Therefore, there is a saying that "the geese fly out of Yanmen Mountain".
Xiongguan Yanmen ranks first among the "nine fortresses in the world". This is the praise given to him by the Lu family in the Spring and Autumn Period. Starting from King Wuling of Zhao during the Warring States Period, all dynasties regarded this place as a strategic location. Zhao established Yanmen County, and thereafter it was mostly
Yanmen is a county, road, and county garrison. The name Yanmen Pass dates back to the early Tang Dynasty. Due to the rise of the Turks in the north and frequent internal invasions, the Tang garrisoned troops in Yanmen Mountain and set up a gate at the commanding heights of the gate to defend it.
Every time he saw Yanmen Pass, Yun Zheng would sigh with emotion. This was a blessed place given to the Song Dynasty by God. Without this majestic pass, the ambitious Empress Dowager Xiao would not have conquered the Song Dynasty many times.
The people who fought in the Hebei war were all confused. Di Qing's army was blocked by Xiao Ruowang, the left-wing king of the Liao Dynasty, at the line of the Sanggan River in Zhuoshui. The military newspaper said that the Song and Liao armies were fighting so hard that the water of the Sanggan River changed.
It turned red, but Yunzheng was strolling leisurely on the road. According to the current itinerary, it would take two more days to reach Yanmen Pass.
Yun Zheng saw Chen Lin's anxious look but didn't care. A eunuch who wants to take charge of national affairs is inherently weird. The saying that the harem is not allowed to interfere in politics is not just for the concubines in the harem, it is also a restriction.
A ban imposed by the eunuchs.
Di Qing fought hard in Hebei, which he brought upon himself. When he made the plan, Di Qing said that he would attract all the Khitans from all over the world to Hebei, and eventually go to the sea to feed the fish.
Yun Zheng didn't understand why Di Qing did this. He seemed to dislike the Khitans very much. This dislike was revealed in his bones and was not a general dislike.
He originally wanted to ask, but when he saw Pang Ji, Han Qi and others looking like this, in order to show that he was not an idiot, Yun Zheng had no choice but to keep his mouth shut and not ask. Anyway, Di Qing might have attracted all the Khitans to Hebei.
The sex is not very big.
Even if a man-eating tiger like himself has not yet been dispatched, even if Yelu Hongji had a thousand courages, he would not dare to mobilize the entire country's troops to deal with Di Qing. What's more, the Khitan people know the principle of the law of the jungle, and they have no hidden power to bite people.
That's a piece of meat in one mouthful. This guy never drinks blood, only eats meat.
He was a neighbor to the west of the Khitan people. If no precautions were taken, sooner or later the things in the house would be stolen and taken back to his house.
Because of this strange reason, the Liao army is now clearly divided into three parts. The largest part is fighting Di Qing in Hebei. Most of the soldiers in this part are Han soldiers, with some of the most courageous Pishi troops of the Khitan people supported in the middle.
, their mission is what the Song Army wanted to do five years ago - to block it with all their strength. As long as they can block the Song Army at the line of Sanggan River, it will be a great victory.
There is a flat plain outside Yanmen Pass, which is most suitable for cavalry to gallop. Due to the notorious reputation of Yunzheng, the Khitans deployed a large number of mobile cavalry here. The Liao Kingdom did not seem to expect these cavalry to defend the city, but deployed them all in the wild, even if the weather was bad
It was getting colder, so they just camped close to the city to look for support. They had no intention of going into the city to escape the wind and rain.
The Liao people have built a large number of gates at Heishan Pass in recent years. The two military defeats at Heishan Pass made the Khitans full of doubts about whether they could defeat Wu Zang and Pang in the field. Even the Pishi Army admitted that
As long as the Liao people mounted their war horses, they were no match for the Xixia people.
Yun Zheng hated the fact that the Liao people placed their military camp outside the city, which caused a huge flaw in his original plan.
In the past five years, Yun Zheng relied on the bandits in the Taihang Mountains to completely understand the defense situation in Xijing. If the Liao people did not randomly direct the cavalry outside the city, Yun Zheng believed that he could completely defeat the Liao people in the shortest time.
After the Khitans in Xijing were killed, the newly developed kerosene bombs were already impatient.
Nowadays, the wealthy Song Dynasty has spent 70% of the country's finances on improving the equipment of the army. With such huge financial support, the Song army finally has a hint of iron-bloodedness. Although the iron-bloodedness is only on the surface now, Yun Zheng
I believe that as long as they experience this war, those soldiers who are armed with armor and high-quality weapons will definitely change.
I actually came to Yanmen Pass a little early. Although it was already the time outside Yanmen Pass when the geese were calling and the frost was rising, the heavy snow had not yet fallen, so it was not a suitable day for the Song Dynasty's army to march.
It is said that the Hu people can withstand the bitter cold. This is bullshit. Everyone is made of flesh and blood, and their body temperature is 36-7 degrees. If they are thrown naked into the ice and snow, the Hu people cannot persist longer than Song Bing. On the contrary, they
The probability of freezing to death is higher.
Li Chang has experimented with this matter. This guy didn't do many good things at Yanmen Pass. He often made himself look like the Japanese by doing various experiments.
When Yun Zheng said that winter was the best time to enter Xijing, Li Chang immediately took it to heart.
Only then will the land be frozen hard, the swamps disappear, and the Song army's large number of carriages can run on the flat grassland. At that time, the grass and trees will wither, and the Liao people will not be able to find many suitable places to hide their shadows.
, there are only a few pastures in winter. Yun Zheng does not believe that the Liao people dare to abandon those pastures and go to other places to spend the winter. If they do that, there will be no need for the Song army to conquer them, and they will all be starved the next year.
die.
Li Chang was a rigorous student. In the spirit of rigorous scholarship, he verified the advantages of attacking the grasslands in winter as mentioned by Yun Zheng. After more than a year of verification, he labeled Yun Zheng's suggestions.
A feasible label. And he wrote a long memorial to the court to explain it.
I don’t know which bastard said after seeing the memorial that the Northerners were cold-resistant and the Song army was not able to withstand the cold and fighting in winter would be disadvantageous to the Song Dynasty. After Li Chang found out about such nonsense, in order to prove the authenticity of this sentence, he asked the young army to
After capturing dozens of Liao cavalry and dozens of death row prisoners for heinous crimes from Taiyuan Prefecture, he began his heinous frostbite experiment at Yanmen Pass.
His method was extremely simple and crude. It started with one-on-one, with a barbarian and a death row prisoner tied to a wooden stake and left to freeze. Then it was seen who could hold on longer. As a result, the first person to freeze to death was the death row prisoner.
After getting this data, he started a large-scale test, so ten barbarians and ten death row prisoners were tied to pillars. The result this time surprised him. Among the survivors, most of them were from the Song Dynasty!
Then there was another large-scale test. Four groups of tests were conducted, and the final conclusion was very unexpected. The Song people and the Hu people were tied in terms of cold resistance.
When Li Chang informed the court of his data and sent a special letter to the talkative bastard explaining the matter, Li Chang's reputation was ruined, and the reputation of human slaughter spread like wildfire. The talkative guy was never seen again.
Li Changzheng didn't even dare to look at it.
During that time, not to mention others being afraid of Li Chang, Yun Zheng himself was afraid. He had seen many dead bodies. He had never seen a gentle scribe inspecting the dead bodies tied to the pillars one by one on a morning when the dripping water turned into ice.
The dead body has completely turned blue, with a weird smile on its face. It looks weird no matter how you look at it. (People who freeze to death have smiling faces)
But Li Chang didn't dislike it at all. After he tried the feathers on these hard corpses and found that they were no longer breathing, he began to ask his own soldiers when these people froze to death last night.
His behavior of looking at corpses as if he were looking at crops suddenly made his reputation in the army rise a lot.
From then on, Yun Zheng no longer agreed with the saying that scribes have soft hearts.
Yun Zheng was somewhat surprised to see Li Chang outside Yanmen Pass. This guy was the prefect of Tangzhou. Coming to Yanmen Pass was purely against the rules. Cross-border visits were not tolerated by the laws of the Song Dynasty. (To be continued)