At night, the Tang army rested in the canyon for the night. Guo Song found Zhang Yun and his guide Sai Ke. In the marching tent, Guo Song pointed to the map of the Yili Valley and asked: "Is it possible to kill the enemy garrison from another path?"
Camp place?”
Seko hesitated and said: "There is a small road, but it has to go over mountains and ridges. People can go there, but horses can't."
Zhang Yun understood his lord's intention, and he quickly said: "You can march from inside the forest, and you won't be able to find it outside."
Guo Song pondered for a moment and said: "But with twenty thousand troops marching, it would be difficult to conceal it."
"Reporting to the envoy, the humble position means that you can hide in the forest when you are only thirty miles away from the enemy's camp, and you can march at night. The humble position has been tested, and as long as the horse is not galloping, it will not disturb many birds.
"
Now the biggest advantage of the Tang army is that they know the enemy and themselves, while the opponent knows themselves and does not know the enemy. Guo Song considered using this advantage to deal with the enemy.
Guo Song pondered for a moment and finally nodded. Zhang Yun's plan seemed to be the best one at the moment.
He then said to Zhang Yun: "You continue to lead the scout battalion to explore the road ahead, especially to kill the enemy's scouts, so that the enemy cannot discover our presence!"
"I humbly obey orders!"
Zhang Yun hurried away with Seko. Not long after, he led 270 soldiers from the scout battalion to leave the army and head south first, while Seko stayed behind and continued to serve as a guide for the army.
Early the next morning, the Tang Army continued to set off. Judging from the information they currently have, the camp of 10,000 Geluolu troops is located about 150 miles east of the Baiyang River exit. It is still relatively far away from the Tang Army. The Tang Army is at least still
It's three days' journey.
.........
That afternoon, Guo Song received information from Zhang Yun's men. Ge Luolu's camp was thirty miles away. If they went further, they would encounter the tent of Ge Luolu herdsmen. Their current location is
The westernmost part of the pastoral area.
Guo Song immediately ordered the army to stop advancing and sent two thousand troops to escort the camel team and retreat fifty miles away.
When night fell, the army entered the pine forest to the north and marched slowly through the pine forest. Zhang Yun was right. Their slow march did not disturb the birds, making the team's march in the pine forest very concealed, and they marched deep in the pine forest.
, the big trees here are very tall, each one is more than ten feet high. There are thick pine needles under the feet, and the sound they make is relatively low, so it cannot disturb the birds at high places.
The 20,000-strong army moved silently through the pine forest, bringing with them more than a hundred camels, which carried the Tang army's cyclone cannon.
At five o'clock, they finally arrived at the north of the enemy's camp. Through the woods, they could see the camp more than ten miles away at the foot of the mountain. The north bank of the Yili River was relatively narrow, only about twenty miles wide, while the south bank was very open and wide.
For more than a hundred or even hundreds of miles, there is endless grassland.
The herdsmen are mainly distributed on the south bank of the Yili River, and the military camps are on the north bank. The dense tents are stationed in the wilderness, with no camp fences and no protection around them. The Geluolu people obviously did not expect that the Tang army would come, otherwise they would not
It's so relaxing.
Ge Luolu only dug a circle of trenches around the camp, mainly to prevent wild beasts from invading. There were patrol soldiers inside the camp, but they were not many in number, and there were no patrol soldiers outside.
It was already the fifth watch, and it would be dawn in another hour. Guo Song gently waved his hand and ordered: "Use the burning ball!"
The soldiers unloaded a hundred cyclone cannons from more than a hundred camels. The Tang army also carried fire thunders. However, in the current situation, Guo Song did not plan to use fire thunders, but decided to use burning balls. Burning balls are a tradition of the Han army.
To make arson weapons, soak the fire cloth with kerosene and then dry it in the sun, then wrap it into a ball with a diameter of about one meter.
It's just that the Hexi Army's burning balls have been improved. They coated the gunpowder with fire cloth and wrapped it layer by layer. There are at least seven or eight kilograms of gunpowder in a burning ball. It will burn more violently and burn cleanly.
Like most incendiary balls, they only burned half before going out.
The biggest advantage of this kind of burning ball is that it is extremely elastic. Although the shooting range is only more than a hundred steps, it can bounce up to a mile away.
Hundreds of soldiers sneaked into the enemy's tent two hundred steps away and crawled in the grass. They quickly set up the cyclone cannon and placed burning balls on the ejection plate. It was made of copper and fired violently like a crossbow.
Shoot, launch the burning ball on the board. A burning ball weighs thirty kilograms and can be launched seventy steps away.
Hundreds of soldiers ignited the fire sticks at the same time and ignited the burning ball. With a sound of "Boom!", the burning ball turned into a fireball. A hundred cyclone cannons fired at the same time. A hundred red fireballs flew out and shot into the
Inside Geluolu Camp.
At this time, Guo Song ordered, "Rocket Cavalry attack!"
Three thousand Tang Army cavalry rushed out from the forest, rushed all the way to the ditch, and fired gunpowder arrows into the camp together. Balls of fire shot into the camp. At this time, the Geluolu Camp was filled with flames and fierce flames.
There was a raging fire and thick smoke. The Geluolu soldiers woke up from their sleep, yelled and ran away desperately. Many people were barefoot and didn't even wear shoes. The sheep and horse pens to the west had been opened by Tang Army soldiers.
Thousands of war horses were driven towards the west.
"Attack the whole army and kill the enemy!"
Guo Song issued a killing order, "Kill -" the Tang Army cavalry in the forest shouted angrily and rushed out. Except for the heavy armored infantry, the other Tang Army soldiers were killed, including 12,000 cavalry and 6,000 infantry.
.
The Tang Army's cavalry chased and killed the fleeing Ge Luolu soldiers. Many Tang Army's cavalry rushed into the two-foot-deep Yili River and killed the enemy soldiers who fled to the other side.
This was a one-sided massacre. The Geluolu people were not ready for war with the Tang army, but the Tang army took the initiative to find them. The Tang army chased them for more than 20 miles and killed all the last batch of soldiers.
.
It was getting daylight, and the north bank of the Yili River was littered with corpses. Many soldiers were floating on the river and were carried downstream by the river. The fire in the big tents was finally extinguished. More than a thousand big tents were burned to a white ground, which could be seen everywhere in the camp.
Burnt corpses.
The soldiers of the Tang Army began to clean the battlefield, piled up the corpses, set them on fire, and dug pits to bury them. All kinds of weapons that had not been burned were piled together. The weapons of the Geluolu people were crude and the Tang Army soldiers looked down upon them. However, they only had several thousand kilograms of pig iron, and there were
There are many gold coins, tens of thousands of them.
The spoils from the annihilation of the Geluolu people were not big, only 10,000 horses and hundreds of thousands of sheep. However, Gongyue City also stored a batch of supplies. Guo Song ordered Luo Daxiao to lead 5,000 cavalry to capture Gongyue City.
After cleaning the battlefield, the Tang army continued to march eastward and began to drive away the herdsmen. Many of the resisters were killed by the Tang army.
Thousands of households of Geluolu herdsmen had only been here for more than ten days, but they were forcibly driven away by the army. They packed up their belongings, drove their cattle and sheep, and headed east in tears.
Although Guo Song issued a killing order to Ge Luolu's army, he was by no means a cruel commander. Basically, the Tang army would not kill Ge Luolu's old, weak, women and children, nor would they rob them of their belongings. They would just remove them from Iraq.
Expelled from Li River Valley.
However, like the Tubo herdsmen in Anxi, these herdsmen also shouldered the important task of supporting 10,000 soldiers. Each household raised 70 sheep and 10 cattle for the army, adding up to more than 300,000 sheep and 40,000
Many cattle and sheep belonging to the military were seized by the Tang army as trophies.
Two days later, Guo Song led the army to Gongyue City. Gongyue City is located on the north bank of the Yili River. It is built on a high place with a dangerous terrain. The city wall is tall and strong, easy to defend and difficult to attack. It is the only stronghold of the Tang army in the Yili River Valley, but
There are three thousand troops stationed.
When Luo Daxiao led his army to kill, hundreds of Geluolu soldiers stationed here had already escaped first. They found a large number of corpses of Geluolu soldiers floating in the river. They realized the danger and dropped them in the warehouse.
, fled in panic.
When the five thousand Tang troops arrived, there were no defenders in the city. The tents in the city were filled with a large amount of supplies, food, tents, sheepskins, milk wine, tea, cheese, salt, medicine and a small amount of armor, enough to keep ten thousand soldiers.
After spending more than half a year, Tang Jun accidentally discovered 200,000 gold coins.
This is the gold coin used by the Sogdians in the river, and it is also the currency of the Geluolu people. These gold coins are estimated to be the military salary of an army of 10,000 people.
Guo Song walked up the city wall of Gongyue City and looked to the east. The Yili River stretched into the distance like a jade belt, with snow-capped mountains on both sides. This was the Huo City of later generations, the open area of the Yili River Valley, and the endless grassland.
, all kinds of flowers are in full bloom on the grassland, and large tracts of fruit trees are also in bloom. There is a beautiful scene of colorful purples and reds everywhere.
How could such a beautiful land be left to the Geluolu people?