The assassination of Mengyuan Yunnan King Yexian Timur was a move made by Zhao Yu long ago, and its purpose was to plunge Yunnan into turmoil in order to reduce the pressure on the Western Front. In order to complete this task, the Secretariat actually carried out it in such a tragic way, the whereabouts of the two groups of people are unknown, their lives and deaths are unknown, and the reserve team is still staying in Luzhou to spy on the news, and once it is determined that they are not dead, they are ready to take action again.

"Chief Zheng, withdraw the reserves. At the same time, mobilize all the forces that can be mobilized in Yunnan to find the whereabouts of the team members, I don't believe that they have all died! Zhao Yu thought for a while and said.

"Your Majesty, if Timur hadn't died first, wouldn't it be a waste of all the work done to withdraw the contingent now!" Zheng Huchen said urgently.

"There's no point in them staying there anymore. At present, the turmoil in Yunnan has started, and our goal has been achieved. Moreover, if he does not die, he will definitely strengthen the security force again, and it is difficult to have a chance. Zhao Yu said.

"Your Majesty, your subordinates failed to complete the task, please punish them!" Zheng Huchen felt that what the little emperor said was reasonable, nodded and pleaded guilty.

"How good are you!" Zhao Yu waved his hand and saluted, "Judging from the return of the reserve team, I tend to have succeeded. ”

"Your Majesty thinks that Timur is dead!" Zheng Huchen was a little surprised.

"Hmm. The report said that Timur had crossed the river in a boat of 2,000 stones, and that we had attacked him in a boat of 500 stones, on which 400 catties of gunpowder were placed. Zhao Yu said.

"Exactly!" Zheng Huchen nodded.

"Now that the rainy season has arrived, the river is swollen and the water is flowing very fast. Therefore, Timur's ship was not directly crossed by the current, but went down the river and docked at the downstream ferry, so that most of the ships of our side hit the stern of the enemy ship, but not the hull, right? Zhao Yu said, dipping his fingers in the tea and drawing a sketch on the table.

"Well, what Your Majesty said is good!" Zheng Huchen looked at it.

"Anyone who has been on a boat knows that the bow of the boat is more bumpy because the waves are broken, and the stern is much smoother. As everyone knows, the Mongols are not good at water, and Timur should be the same, so he will probably choose to sit on the stern. Zhao Yu continued to analyze, "The rudder of a ship of 2,000 stones is set on top of the void ship, but the ship of 500 stone is small and can crash under the helm of a large ship, even if there is no gunpowder, it is enough to break the stern." And the power of the explosion of 400 catties of gunpowder is enough to destroy this palace! ”

"Your Majesty's intention is that Timur's ship will be severely damaged!" Zheng Huchen said.

Not only that, but the ship was blown up at the tail of the water, and the river rushed in, and the ship tilted back, and before the people in the stern could escape, the whole ship sank into the river. Moreover, the river is in a hurry, and the ship has been hit hard and disintegrates in an instant after sinking into the water, and the people on board basically have no possibility of escaping. Therefore, as long as Timur is on the ship, he will definitely die, but it is a pity that a few of our warriors ......," Zhao Yu said with a gloomy face and a sad sigh at the end.

"Your Majesty, don't be sad, the members of this action team are all carefully selected, and the kung fu in the water is not bad, as long as they can jump into the water before the ship collides, it is still possible to escape." Seeing this, Zheng Huchen hurriedly explained.

"May God bless them and let them return safely!" Zhao Yu nodded and said, "You immediately send personnel to search along the river and set up contact points, and you must determine their whereabouts." The bones of the sacrificed corpses are properly buried, and I personally pay tribute; Those who are alive must try to rescue and return, and I will personally set up a banquet to catch the wind and ask for credit! ”

"The subordinates understand that after receiving the report, the subordinates have respectively informed the Sichuan and Yunnan stations to step up the search, and in addition, let the peripheral intelligence officers pay attention to collecting clues, and sent a caravan up the river, marking along the way to facilitate contact." Zheng Huchen said, "Your Majesty should not be overly anxious, they are deeply favored by the emperor and are willing to break their bones for Your Majesty!" ”

"Chief Zheng, you still can't deeply understand the significance of this operation." Zhao Yu Zhengse said, "The success of their operation can not only stabilize our western front and avoid being attacked on both sides, but also free up our hands to deal with the frontal enemy." And save us a lot of military expenses for the people's livelihood, so that Jiangnan can recuperate, their merits are immeasurable! ”

"Well, the subordinates have been taught. But the subordinates thought that the credit for this belonged to His Majesty! Zheng Huchen Shi Li said, "My subordinates know that although our dynasty has recovered Jiangnan and returned to Lin'an, it is still in crisis, and it has not fundamentally changed the situation that the enemy is strong and we are weak. Now that the dispute for the throne of Meng Yuan Khan has subsided, once they recover their vitality, they will re-try Jiangnan, and His Majesty will make a little trick and make the southwest fall back into civil strife with four or two thousand catties, which is equivalent to cutting off one of Meng Yuan's arms! ”

"Master Zheng has an overreputation, but you can have such an understanding of the current situation, which shows that your mind is still sober, and it is a hundred times stronger than those guys who shout every day to counterattack Jiangbei and recover the Central Plains." Zhao Hao smiled.

"Therefore, Your Majesty has no objection to making peace with Meng Yuan, just to win time to prepare for war!" Zheng Huchen said.

"Actually, you and I both understand, and I think that Zhenjin also understands that our two countries will eventually have a war. However, limited to the current ability, they are not sure to defeat the opponent, so they all think that peace negotiation is the last helpless choice, that is, no matter how you talk about it, what you negotiate is just a piece of waste paper. Zhao Yu said, "Therefore, don't have any illusions about the peace talks, not only can the secretariat not relax its vigilance because of the peace talks, but the war may resume at any time, and this war is your life and death." ”

"Subordinates obey the holy commandment!" Zheng Huchen said.

It is precisely because of this that the assassination of Timur must be kept absolutely secret, the search must be carried out secretly, those who know it must not leak it, and the intelligence agents on the periphery should not tell him the inside story. To the outside world, it was said that Meng Yuan was tyrannical, which caused the dissatisfaction of the Dali Zhufan Division, and he was assassinated in anger; It can also be said that the real gold unloaded the mill to kill the donkey, and planned this assassination; You can also frame the other Mongol kings stationed in Dali, and they haven't done it before anyway. Zhao Yu told again.

"Your Majesty's intention is to muddy this pool of waters, let Mongolia continue to fight among themselves, attack and kill each other with the various divisions, consume their strength, and then include Dali in the territory of the Great Song Dynasty without a fight!" Zheng Huchen guessed the meaning of the little emperor while thinking.

"Yes, Taizu conquered the Southern Tang Dynasty and Houshu in the south, but did not conquer Dali, and the reasons are similar to the current ones. At present, Dali is occupied by Meng Yuan, which is a great threat to our rear, if the use of troops is indispensable to listen to people's noise, I can only make this decision. Zhao Hao said with a wry smile......

There are many sayings about why Zhao Kuangyin didn't attack Dali, and some people said that Zhao Kuangyin was too conservative and had no enterprising heart; Some say it's too cowardly; Some also said that the Song army's combat effectiveness was not good, and it could not defeat Dali at all; Some people even joked that Zhao Kuangyin was afraid of the six-vein divine sword of the lord of Dali, worried about being assassinated by him, and so on.

Zhao Yuji himself also talked nonsense to the post, and now that he thinks about it, it is all a joke, and there is no reliable one at all, which is really not in his position and does not know the difficulties. In fact, his ancestor also had suffering, and one of the reasons why Zhao Kuangyin was reluctant to send troops was because he took history as a mirror and proposed that "the Tang Dynasty died in Huangchao, and the disaster was based on Guilin", which summarized the lesson of the fall of the Tang Dynasty, that is, although the Tang Dynasty was destroyed due to the Huangchao uprising, the cause was a mutiny in order to defend against the garrison troops stationed in Guilin in Nanzhao, which caused the political situation to be corrupt and out of control.

According to the literature, during the Kaiyuan period of Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty, Pi Luo Ge, one of the six edicts in Yunnan, annexed the other five edicts, unified Yunnan, fixed the capital of Yamato City, and sent his grandson Fengjia to pay tribute to the Tang Dynasty and stay as a proton. Tang Xuanzong sealed Pi Luo Ge as the king of Yunnan, and gave the name Mengguiyi. After his illness and death, his son Ge Luofeng ascended the throne, after which the relationship between the Tang Dynasty and Nanzhao gradually deteriorated.

After Zhang Qiantuo, the Taishou of Yunnan in the Tang Dynasty, asked Ge Luofeng for a bribe and was refused, he held a grudge and "sent people to insult him, but still secretly played his crimes". Ge Luofeng was enraged, and in a fit of anger, he raised an army against the Tang Dynasty and killed Zhang Qiantuo. At the instigation of Yang Guozhong, Tang Xuanzong sent Yang's confidant Xian Yu Zhongtong to lead 100,000 elite soldiers across Lushui and engage in a fierce battle with Ge Luo Feng's troops in Baiyu City. As a result, the whole army fell, and countless people died in Lushui, and Ge Luofeng collected the corpses of the Tang army, gathered the corpses of the enemy, and sealed the high mound of the soil, which was shaped like a mountain of corpses.

Yang Guozhong not only concealed the truth, but "covered up his defeat and still recounted his military exploits", and once again gathered 100,000 elite soldiers and strong generals in the world, led by Li Mi to conquer Nanzhao. Due to the hot weather at that time, the army was extremely difficult to supply, and the people and horses were sleepy along the way. And Ge Luofeng lured the enemy to go deeper, waited for work, and defeated the Tang army in a battle on the bank of the Xi'er River, and the main general Li Mi was captured and killed, and the army was lost. After that, the alliance between Nanzhao and Tubo continued to harass the border of the Tang Dynasty, which became a major hidden disaster in the southwest of the Tang Dynasty.

The two wars in Yunnan made the central Tang Dynasty pay the price of 200,000 elite soldiers, when An Lushan led 150,000 troops from Fanyang three years later, and easily captured Chang'an and Luoyang, making the Tang Dynasty go into decline. Therefore, Zhao Kuangyin was worried about the recurrence of the disaster of Tianbao, so he took their old path and simply stopped at the Dadu River.

Another reason is the objective environment of the unstable founding of the country in the early Song Dynasty, after the Pingshu Dynasty, the great cause of reunification was not completed, and there was a strong enemy Khitan in the north, and the Southern Han, Southern Tang, and Wuyue regimes in the south, which did not allow it to use its limited military and financial resources to subjugate the minority areas in the southwest. This also forced the Song government to adopt a policy of contraction in the southwest in order to concentrate its forces against the north.

From a strategic point of view, if Zhao Kuangyin was hot-headed at that time, he would take advantage of the victory to march into Yunnan. At that time, although Shu was pacified, there were still more than 100,000 horses in Houshu who were not "disarmed", and it was very likely that there would be turmoil. In addition, marching into Yunnan is a dangerous move, and if you win by luck, you will inevitably suffer heavy losses and lose your vitality; If it is defeated, it will threaten the throne that Zhao Kuangyin has just seized by force, and the Northern Song Dynasty regime, which is still very immature.

From a tactical point of view, "the inconvenience of the local style, the depression of the fall, the miasma of the wounds, the lack of pay", Zhao Kuangyin, who was born in the army, is very keenly aware that this is the so-called death of the soldiers, the Jedi, the Tang Dynasty in its heyday can not be conquered, not to mention that it has only been established for five years, and it is really hard to say whether Dali can be conquered by 60,000 troops in the Sichuan and Shu areas, and it will even fall into a protracted war.

Therefore, whether or not to capture Yunnan is not only a tactical issue, but also a strategic issue related to the overall situation. At this time, the Song Dynasty's sphere of influence was mainly concentrated in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, while Yunnan was located in the southwest corner, far away from the Central Plains. The capture of Yunnan was completely inconsistent with Zhao Kuangyin's unified strategy of combining "first the south and then the north, first the easy and then the difficult" and "distant and close attack".

Zhao Kuangyin set his sights on the traditional "China" region, that is, the Southern Han Dynasty entrenched in Guangdong, the Southern Tang Dynasty in the Jiangnan region, the Northern Han Dynasty in Shanxi, and the Yanyun Sixteen Prefectures in the Khitan. After that, Zhao Guangyi, Taizong of the Song Dynasty, eliminated the Northern Han Dynasty, basically completed the "unification" except for the sixteen states of Yanyun, and did not use troops against Yunnan. The emperors of the two Song dynasties also followed this ancestral precept of Zhao Kuangyin, adopted the policy of guarding the inside and the outside, and maintained harmonious diplomatic relations with the Duan clan of Dali. The lord of Dali sent an envoy to pay tribute, and named him the envoy of Yunnan Jiedu and the king of Dali, and the two sides coexisted peacefully, and there was no major war.

What Zhao Yu is doing now is equivalent to rebuilding the Great Song Dynasty, but what he wants to do is to fight from the south to the north, and the main strategic direction is on the northern front, but the enemy army on the western front still poses a great threat to them, and has to deploy a large number of troops to defend. And to start a war, he also faced the same dilemma as Taizu, you must know that Mongolia attacked Dali three times in that year, and it took more than ten years to completely conquer it. And he has to face the two sides of Dali's Fan and Mongol attacks, and once he gets in, it will be difficult to pull out his feet, so the best way is to let them mess up and have no time to look east.

Of course, if Yunnan is ironclad, it will be difficult for Zhao Yu to make them mess up no matter what method he uses. But there are many tribes in Dali, and there has always been a tradition of rebellion, and if you don't agree with each other, you will start fighting, and Duan Yu, who knows the six-vein divine sword, was almost ousted from the throne that year. After the Mongols came, they also did not change their temper and rebelled at every turn.

After the conquest of Yunnan, Bao Heding, the marshal of the 37 departments of Yunnan, ruled for a long time, and also had a heart of betrayal, and had the intention of occupying Yunnan and seeking independence, so he was afraid that Hu Ge Chi would come to be the king, so he designed to poison him. After Kublai Khan killed him, he sent the kings to defend Yunnan, and it was not until many years later that Timur, the son of Khugechi, succeeded to the throne. This in turn aroused the dissatisfaction of the other two sect kings, and at the same time conscripted and sent troops from various Tibetan divisions to conquer Burma and Yunnan, resulting in heavy casualties and deepening ethnic contradictions.

With the sudden death of Kublai Khan, Zhenjin had to submit to his brothers and promise benefits in order to inherit the throne. And he naturally knew that the expansion of the power of the local suzerain would eventually threaten his rule, and a rift between the two sides had arisen. The various contradictions between them inside and outside left Zhao Hao room to play in trying to win Yunnan......