After seeing the situation in Zezhou and confirming that Liang Jun had obvious advantages in fighting in the cold season, Han Bao immediately focused his reconnaissance on the Mongols in the north and only sent three people to Luzhou as planned.
And he took Shi Ruhai and others, as well as the brothers Zhang Shigui and Zhang Shimin, over the snow-covered Taihang Mountains to reach the territory of his old county in Hebei Province.
Even when he took charge of Jinyun Tower in the early days, Han Qian considered deploying secret spies to Liang and Shu. The main reason was that the resources at his disposal were too limited.
When the new war between Liang and Jin Dynasty broke out, Han Qian sent secret agents to sneak over and conduct reconnaissance on the situation in the southern part of the Jin Kingdom.
The business situation and the reaction of the Mongol people to the war between Liang and Jin have not been taken into account yet.
It is most convenient to go to Fukouxing and Jingxing to cross the Taihang Mountains to reach the Youji area, but these two passages were completely blocked by the confrontation between Liang and Jin soldiers and horses.
A large number of scouts from both countries were also scattered around the nearby peaks.
Han Bao and the others finally decided to take the White Trail, passing through Yizhou, passing through the area where the confrontation between the two countries was relatively loose, and sneaking all the way. After more than ten days, they arrived in Dingzhou, the northern area of Heshuo controlled by the Jin State.
Dingzhou, as well as Hengzhou to the south and Cangzhou to the southeast, were under the jurisdiction of the Chengde Army Jiedushifu of the Jin State. They were also the eastern front theater of the Jin State to guard against the southward invasion of the Mongol people.
Tangyi only knew the general situation of the Jin Kingdom and the towns in Heshuo before, and it was difficult to see the details. This required Han Bao to hide his identity along the way and also do everything possible to inquire about many details. When conditions allowed, he also needed to
Arrange for one or two people to lurk.
Comparing this with the intelligence collected before, Han Bao and the others had been able to figure out the general situation in the Heshuo area while sneaking around.
Wang Yuankui, the military envoy of the Chengde Army, married his daughter to the Jin crown prince Shi Chengzu as his concubine. She had been a close confidant of the prince Shi Chengzu for a long time, and because of this, he was able to go out to Zhenheng and other prefectures to resist the Mongol invasion from the south from the east.
However, King Lu Shi Jiyuan usurped the throne with the support of Queen Mother Zhang and Privy Councilor Liu Jun. Wang Yuankui did not immediately respond to the order of Shi Chengzu who was far away in Shuozhou to raise troops to rebel. He only sent troops to seal the shaft passage and refused to accept it.
The decree issued by King Lu from Taiyuan Mansion.
When the Liang army invaded the southern region of Jin, Liang Emperor Zhu Yu sent an envoy to Hengzhou to persuade Wang Yuankui to surrender to the Liang state. However, as soon as the envoy entered Hengzhou City, he was killed by Wang Yuankui. Wang Yuankui later handed the envoy's head to his retinue.
Bianjing to show his determination not to surrender to the Liang Kingdom.
During the Liang Army's attack on Zezhou, Wang Yuankui once asked King Lu to send troops from Taiyuan to attack Liang Army together with Cheng De's army to relieve the crisis in Zezhou. However, King Lu did not trust him, and Cheng De's troops did not dare to go deep alone, and were even
At that time, the Luzhou garrison blocked the outside of Jingxing.
Zezhou City fell, and the remaining Jin army in the south retreated to defend Luzhou City. Wang Yuankui wanted to lead the German army to reinforce Luzhou, but the Chengtian Army City inside Jingxing was captured by Liang Jun first.
The Chengde army's passage from Jingxing to the west through the Taihang Mountains was blocked, and Zhang Wenli, the defense commander of Zhao Yidu, saw that the Liang army was very sharp. Even if he did not surrender immediately to the Liang state, he was still waiting and watching the development of the situation. He not only refused to send troops to reinforce Luzhou, but also refused to send troops to reinforce Luzhou.
It also refused to allow the Chengde (Zhenji) Army to use the road from Fukouxing in its jurisdiction to move westward.
At present, Jin's two major military towns in Hebei are almost in a state of separate formations.
At the end of December, Han Bao, Shi Ruhai, and Zhang Shigui followed a suspicious convoy along the valley into the depths of the mountainous area at the eastern foot of Taihang Mountain in the west of Dingzhou. At the end of an inconspicuous mountain road, they saw a shocking scene in front of them.
Called Han Bao, they were deeply shocked.
At the end of the mountain road is a valley with a radius of several miles and a broad terrain. There are streams flowing down from the top, converging into a lake at a corner of the valley, and flowing out from the wide stream below.
Although the streams, rivers and lakes are covered under ice and snow, the appearance of the river channels is still there.
Hundreds of houses were built in the valley, surrounded by tall fences and tightly guarded by soldiers to prevent villagers from approaching without reason.
Thousands of ragged hard laborers are transporting iron, coal and other ores from the mountains to the valleys.
If others saw this scene, they might think that this was just an iron smelting yard under the control of the German army.
Heshuo and other places have a history of smelting copper and iron for thousands of years. Countries such as Liang, Chu, Jin and Shu not only focused on iron smelting and casting, but also important military towns and military prefectures had certain copper and iron smelting and casting capabilities to meet the needs of the army.
As one of the five towns in the Jin Kingdom, Cheng Dejun had several iron mines and iron smelting yards under his command, which were quite sparse and ordinary.
However, Han Bao was lurking high in the valley, borrowing a bronze telescope to look into the smelting field. Cheng Dejun's smelting field clearly used the double-furnace iron-making method that Xuzhou had only popularized in recent years. It was really
It surprised them.
Several blast furnaces are built on the side of the stream. Looking at the structure of the ancillary buildings, they are clearly large water drains connected to the iron-making furnaces and used for blasting.
In the next few days, Han Bao, Shi Ruhai and others, in addition to sneaking into the smelting site for close reconnaissance, also kidnapped an engineer leader for interrogation, and then confirmed that the smelting site was actually a smelting site.
It was established by the police five years ago. In the early years, stone coal was mined, lime was burned, and green bricks were supplied to Dingzhou. Two years ago, the double-furnace method was used to refine refined iron to create a large number of armor and war equipment, which were supplied to the German generals.
.
Since the middle and late period of the previous dynasty, it has become normal for the Jiedushi, the head of the vassal town, to use eunuchs in the inner house.
Shi Chongsi established the Jin Kingdom, but he never had strong control over the towns in Heshuo. In order to win over him, he always allowed the governors of the towns in Heshuo to continue to use eunuchs as a special honor in their inner houses.
Through interrogation, we also know that Wang Jingrong, an internal official, served beside the Jin crown prince Shi Chengzu in his early years and had a good relationship with Wang Yuankui. In his early years, Wang Yuankui was just an ordinary general in the Jin army. He was able to gain the trust of the Jin crown prince Shi Chengzu and was able to serve as the commander of the Jin crown prince's bodyguard.
From marrying his daughter to the crown prince of Jin as his concubine, until he was appointed as the governor of the Chengde Army, Wang Jinrong made great contributions behind the scenes and made great contributions.
When Wang Yuankui was appointed as the military governor of the Chengde Army, Wang Jingrong followed Wang Yuankui to Henggli. He was also Wang Yuankui's most trusted direct eunuch.
After confirming that everything was correct, Han Bao asked Shi Ruhai to break the prisoner's neck, push him into the ravine to make it look like he had slipped and fell to death, and then quietly withdrew into a farmhouse outside Dingzhou City.
He wrote down what he saw and heard in these days in a secret letter, and immediately returned to Tangyi.
The manpower around Han Bao was limited, and there were seven or eight people lurking along the way. As a stable communication channel had not yet been established in Liang and Jin Dynasties, a letter wanted to be sent to Tangyi Zhizhifu, so he
It is extremely difficult to send someone to hide one's identity across more than two thousand miles of mountains and rivers in Liang and Jin Dynasties.
If it weren't for particularly critical information, Han Bao and the others wouldn't have sent someone back to Tangyi alone to deliver the letter...
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The secret letter Han Bao wrote in Dingzhou was sent back to Huaiyang in early February of the fifth year of Yanyou.
There are no hidden stakes in the middle to support people along the way, and there is no replacement manpower. They have to do everything possible to avoid attracting attention. They cannot ride horses. Most of the time, they have to walk on foot to avoid crowds. When encountering city defenses, they have to detour through mountains and rivers, and they have to deal with it.
Mountain bandits and road bandits.
An ordinary person might not be able to walk back to Tangyi from Dingzhou in half a year.
The scouts who followed Han Bao northward were all elite soldiers in the army. Even so, it was extremely fast to deliver the letter to Tangyi after traveling for a month and a half.
"This Wang Jingrong should also be a former subordinate of the Shenling Division, and the double-furnace iron-making techniques should have been secretly passed on to Dingzhou by Yao Xishui and the others..."
The secret message from Han Bao was translated by Xi Yi and sent to Han Qian's desk immediately.
In early February, the weather in Tangyi was no longer so cold.
At noon, Han Qian was wearing a thin coat and sitting in the courtyard of the Yamen's back house. The sun was shining on his body, which was very comfortable.
He took the translated copy, frowned at it for a while, and said:
"The previous dynasty was destroyed at the hands of Emperor Zhu Wen of the Liang Dynasty. The Liang army wiped out the remnants of the previous dynasty and spared no effort in attacking them. However, before the collapse of the previous dynasty, the three regions of Shu, Chu and Jin, although they were separatist and hegemonic, they had always been under the rule of the former dynasty.
The center of the dynasty is Zhengshuo. After the fall of the previous dynasty, he was very restrained and tolerant in sorting out the remaining forces, but did not kill them all. Shenling Division still has roots in the Jin Kingdom. That is a certain thing, but it cannot be confirmed yet.
, how deeply involved Wang Yuankui, the military commander of the Chengde Army, was involved."
Not only the four kingdoms of Liang, Jin, Chu and Shu, but also the Liu family of the Qingyuan Army (Jinghai Jiedushi) who occupied Lingnan in the south, and the Wang family of the Mighty Army Jiedushi who occupied eastern Fujian, were all local separatist forces extended from the previous dynasty as Zhengshuo.
Wan Honglou was particularly eager to get the prescription for miasma wine from Han Qian. Han Qian suspected that they were closely connected with the remnants of the Shenling Division within the Jing Haijun or the Weiwu Army, but he did not expect that they were closely connected with the Shenling Division of the Jin Kingdom.
The remaining forces of Lingsi are even more closely connected, and they actually sent the part of the "Book of Heavenly Craftsmen" they received from him directly to Dingzhou five or six years ago.
In Dingzhou, the double-furnace iron-making method was tried out two years ago. This is outside the content of "The First Edition of Tianshengshu Shu". It can be seen that late Honglou has been paying close attention to the trends in Xuzhou in recent years, so it was very early.
He stole the method of making iron in double furnaces.
Han Qian didn't care much about any of this.
He attaches great importance to confidentiality, but he will not not expand the scale of production or promote the application scope of new technologies just for the sake of confidentiality.
It was difficult for Wanhonglou to penetrate into his side, but the iron smelting and foundry in Longya Mountain alone currently employed nearly two thousand craftsmen. Han Qian obviously did not treat them all as prisoners and supervised them. At this time, it was applied on a large scale, and at the same time
Not to mention that a particularly cumbersome new process was stolen, Han Qian would not be too surprised.
At this time, he was more concerned about the involvement of Wang Yuankui, the commander of the Chengdu Army, and Shenlingsi, and what role he would play in the Liang-Jin War. This was most likely to be directly related to the development of the situation in the north and even the entire Central Plains region...
