The end of the battle north of the Zhao camp was just right. The day of Ma Guangchun's capture had passed the white dew, and the autumn equinox was not long in coming, and according to expectations, the first harvest of Zhaoying Tuntian would be harvested around the autumn equinox. Although the Ma army returned to the camp and went back and forth between Huyang Town and Lutoudian for many days, they plundered the village houses but did not cause large-scale damage to the fields. It is roughly estimated that this round of harvest is still more than 40,000 stones, which can be described as a great supplement to Zhao Ying.

Zhao Dangshi repeatedly confirmed that among the three battalions of Hui, Revolution, and Mixed Battalions stranded in Tang County, the only Ma army unit that had the ability to fight alone in depth and independently was Ma Guangchun, and that the battle of Fanhecheng was a hearty victory, and the Zhao battalion basically no longer needed to worry about the ability to take advantage of the weakness of the Hui battalion, which was still under the pincer of Xiong Wencan, Zuo Liangyu and other officers and soldiers. Therefore, Zhao Dangshi decided to arrange a few soldiers and horses, continue to garrison the defense and return to the camp, and most of the rest of the soldiers turned to meet Cao Ying.

After nearly half a month of fighting in the north, by the end of the battle of Fanhecheng, the four major field battalions of Zhao Ying had been more or less lost. The situation of the camp is good, except for the arrest of Hui Dengxiang, the outpost officer of the four outposts, the sentries have not suffered much damage, Li Yanlang's outpost, Wu Mingfeng's left outpost, Xiong Wanjian's right outpost, and Hou Dagui's temporary command of the outpost are all combatable; The left post of Mao'an East in the Xiaojie camp was attacked by the Ma army of the camp because of the scattered in the battle of Fanhe City, suffered heavy losses, and could not continue to fight. Qihun camp is the most dilapidated, the whole battalion has three outposts, the outpost officer Jing Keqin was arrested, the left outpost officer Song Houzhen died in battle, and the soldiers who can fight at the second outpost are less than half, only Wei Shanhong and the right outpost are left with a single seedling; Not to mention the Feijie battalion, the sentry officer was killed in battle, and only 500 horsemen remained in the whole battalion. To sum up, not counting the Feijie battalion that had contained Cao Ying in the south, the remaining three battalions that Zhao Dangshi could transfer to the south totaled less than 3,500 soldiers. In the end, after discussion, Liuhou Dagui and Li Yanlang led the second outpost to cooperate with the Yu general Luo Dai to defend the first line of Huyang Town and Cen Pengcheng to choke the passage back to the camp to the south, and Zhao Dangshi personally led the other five outposts to the south.

"Expelle the Cao thief and restore Zaoyang."

This slogan put forward by Zhao Dangshi was widely circulated in the army. The operational objectives of this battle were very clear: first, to recapture the Zaoyang county town and surrounding strongholds occupied by Cao Ying, and second, to force Cao Ying to the south as much as possible. Of course, there were Chen Hongfan, Long Zaitian, Xiong Wencan, Zuo Liangyu and other officers and troops in the north, but Chen and Long were responsible for Xiying, Xiong and Zuo concentrated on suppressing them, and Zhao Dangshi did not dare to guarantee that once Cao Ying was released to the north, the impact of the northern Zhukou on the entire layout of the official army would be good or bad. In Jingzhou and Chengtian Prefectures further south, there were still many officers and soldiers such as Xu Chengming, Yang Shien, and Zhou Yuanru to defend them, and Zhao Ying cooperated with them to suppress Cao Ying, which was foolproof.

Cao Ying is known as a million people, but according to the information in Zhao Dangshi's hands, there are about 30,000 people and horses belonging to his battalion, of which nearly 10,000 are family members and craftsmen who accompany the army, and at most 20,000 can be sent to the battlefield as combat effectiveness. With these 20,000 people, there are only about 8,000 troops that can be counted as Cao Ying's descendants, and the rest are all miscellaneous departments that have recently attached to Cao Ying. These miscellaneous soldiers and horses, each with their own thoughts, are basically "fierce as a tiger in the wind, soft as a sheep in the headwind", and they only want to protect themselves. Cao Ying has been defeated repeatedly, and the back and forth was driven back and forth by the official army from Henan to Huguang, and from Huguang was driven back to Henan.

On the second day after the battle of Fanhecheng, Zhao Dangshi did not stop, with Qin Jinxiao as the striker, and first arrived at Hongyanpo, dozens of miles northeast of Zaoyang County. There, he joined up with Han Gon's Feijie battalion horse army, which had arrived from Pozi Temple, and continued to advance south. More than ten miles later, at the west entrance of the waist ditch, he met Cao Ying's patrol horse army of hundreds of people unexpectedly.

Han Gon took Zhao Chenglin to lead fifty cavalry to advance quickly, entangled the more than 100 Cao camp horse troops who were about to retreat, and outflanked the two wings with twenty cavalry each of Meng Aocao, and with just one flank charge, the opponent's array was completely dispersed. When Qin Jin's filial piety follow-up support came up, the battle was over. Cao Ying's hundred horsemen were almost wiped out by Han Gon and others, who had been gathering momentum for a long time, and only a dozen horsemen rushed away. The course of this short encounter was lackluster, but it is worth mentioning that the number of horses captured next to the corpses of dozens of Cao Ying knights was as high as 200.

"Xiang Wen thief Thomas, who was originally in Zhao Yingzhong, still felt that this was a big mistake, but now it seems that it is not an exaggeration." Qin Jinxiao's eyes moved, staring at the war horses that were taken away in front of him, and said with a mouth.

Han Gon untied the shackle under his armpit, stood beside him, and crossed his hands on his waist: "It's me Zhao Ying who has been short of horses for too long."

Cui Shuqiang also walked over, looked at the vigorous horses and smiled: "According to this situation, as long as we win the Cao thief, our Zhao Ying will have to run from time to time." ”

Qin Jinxiao smiled and said, "When the time comes, you are still waiting to win the Cao thief?" The two of you don't know anything about the north in the south, and you don't know that in the north, the war horses we have captured are several times more than that. ”

Han Gon and Cui Shuqiang listened and looked at each other in surprise. Meng Aocao, who returned from Fanhecheng, only brought back the situation that the lone army in the camp was destroyed and Zhao Dangshi led the main force south on the same day, and the time was in a hurry, and he did not know the details of the battle situation in the north and the aftermath. In fact, for Zhao Ying, the greatest achievement of the Battle of Fan Hecheng was not the capture alive of Ma Guangchun, the general of the Hui Ying, but the annihilation of the Hui Ying Ma army, and the capture of hundreds of experienced and resolute veteran knights and more than 2,000 horses.

There are many horses in the camp, as the strongest elite in the camp, Ma Guangchun's cavalry, the most basic configuration is a pack horse for daily operations and a war horse for killing the enemy, if it is a higher-level officer, there will be a pack horse, a number of war horses, in addition to some still have a certain number of horses specially used to carry heavy armor or other baggage. Take Guan San'er, who was also a prisoner of the same rank as Ma Guangchun, as an example, two war horses under his name were used for plain charging and mountain maneuvering, and the three pack horses were constantly transferred to ensure uninterrupted travel, and finally the two horses carried his two sets of heavy mountain armor and iron armor day and night, like a shadow.

Previously, Zhao Yingman was full of calculations, and there were barely 2,000 horses available in the whole battalion, but now the number has doubled, which is a great reinforcement. Before the war ended, Zhao Dangshi did not pass on these information to all the generals, and now Han Gon heard the news revealed by Qin Jinxiao, and he was really excited.

"I hope that I can squeeze some more horses from Cao Thief this time, so that I, Zhao Ying, will no longer have to suffer from that short foot and lack of feet!" As the top leader of the horse army in Zhao Ying, Han Gon felt the most deeply about the shortcomings of the lack of horses in the battalion. In the final analysis, the first to win is the first to win, and it is not easy to recover the decline by being one step behind. He can't call the shots in terms of advance and retreat at the strategic level, he only hopes that in terms of tactics, Zhao Ying will no longer be at a disadvantage because of the shortage of horse troops.

This is also an issue that Zhao Dangshi has been focusing on for a long time.

This time out of Cao Ying, each outpost came from different battalion heads, although Zhao Dangshi sat in the unified command, but in the end it still needs to be coordinated in advance. In order to wait for the right post of Wei Shanhong, the Qihun army that came from Cen Pengcheng, which was a little farther away, Zhao Dangshi ordered Qin Jinxiao to lead his troops first, and at the same time, the whole army was in the rake tooth ditch less than ten miles west of the Lutoudian Inspection Division. An hour ago, Wei Shanhong's department arrived smoothly, and after listening to his report on the situation of the troops, Zhao Dangshi wanted to pull out the army, and the military order was issued, and Fu Xunyu, who parted ways with Han Gon in Pozi Temple, also asked to see him at this time.

"Old man, it's been hard all the way." Zhao Dangshi stopped what he was doing and personally got up to greet Fu Xunyu, who was in the dust, which showed his attention.

After Fu Xunyu finished the salute, he told the story of going to Cao Ying, and when he heard him relay He Jin's words before he died, Zhao Dangshi, who was rarely happy and angry, was rare to see, and his eyes were red.

"Today, I took the time to inform Inspector Liu to change the slogan of the crusade against Cao Thief." After a short silence, Zhao Dangshi slowly turned around and nodded at Zhou Wenhe, "Add a sentence of 'revenge' at the end, do you hear?" "Today's Zhao Ying, the troika of internal affairs, diplomacy, and military is running in parallel, and while it is gradually moving on the right track, Zhao Dangshi is also slowly turning his attention to ideological propaganda.

At the end of the Qin Dynasty, Chen Sheng and Wu Guang revealed Daze Township, and the sentence "The prince will be Xiangning has a kind of" shook the ancient and modern; The Yellow Turban Uprising in the Eastern Han Dynasty, the words "the sky is dead, the yellow sky should stand" are also deafening; At the end of the Sui Dynasty, "Zhishilang" Wang Bo made "The Song of the Death of the Waves of Liaodong Boundless", which advocated the anti-Sui righteousness; Even in the Song Dynasty, Li Shun, Wang Xiaobo, Zhong Xiang, Yang Qi and other generations would also use "I am sick and rich and poor, and now you are equal", "I practice the law, I should be equal to the noble and low, and the rich and poor" and so on; More recently, at the end of the Yuan Dynasty before the founding of this dynasty, "the stone man has one eye, instigating the Yellow River to rebel in the world" has spread widely, which has strengthened the heart of the heroes against the Yuan. The rest of the world, and so on, are not too numerous to mention. Sometimes, in just one sentence, the effect is enough for a million soldiers.

Zhao Dangshi, who was a man of two lifetimes, naturally knew the importance of the "pen". It's just that at present, due to many factors, Zhao Dangshi has no energy to take care of this area, so as many times before, he will first conduct small-scale pilot experiments and summarize experience. This time, the slogan of "expelling Cao thief and restoring Zaoyang" was drawn up by him asking the inspector Liu Xiaohong, and it is difficult to say what effect it has caused, because there is the military law of the inspection department, at least for the time being, a soldier is randomly pulled out in the Zhao camp, and no one can not recite this catchy short sentence. At this stage, Zhao Dangshi is already very satisfied.

"Expelle the Cao thief, restore Zaoyang, and take revenge?" Zhou Wenhe read it again.

"Not bad." Zhao Dangshi resolutely said, "King Zuojin has a great kindness to me, and the king of troubled times has a comradeship with me, and now they both die for me, and their righteousness is thin and cloudy." He also said, "A gentleman is righteous as a quality, righteousness is heavy, loss of righteousness is light, righteousness is proud, and betrayal of righteousness is ashamed." He is righteous to me, pro-me, and hateful to me, and it is my duty to do so! ”

"A gentleman is righteous as a quality, righteousness is heavy, loss of righteousness is light, righteousness is proud, and betrayal of righteousness is ashamed......" Fu Xunyu lightly recited this famous sentence of Mr. Lu Jiuyuan of Xiangshan in the Southern Song Dynasty, and couldn't help but be in awe of Zhao Dangshi.

After instructing Zhou Wenhe, Zhao Dangshifu said to Fu Xunyu: "Where is Li Zhangpan?" ”

Fu Xunyu replied: "Wait outside the tent for the lord to summon you." ”

Zhao Dangshi nodded and said: "Li Zhangpan and my battalion Li Sentinel are brothers, he comes to my camp, I will treat him well......" At this point, he paused, "Before seeing Li Zhangpan, there are two more things to tell the old man." ”

Fu Xunyu reacted quickly, and said busily: "The lord has something to do, but the command is, and his subordinates will never give up!" "A companion is like a tiger, even though Zhao Dangshi speaks politely, how dare Fu Xunyu pretend to be deaf and dumb. Zhao Dangshi obviously took into account the fact that he didn't have time to breathe, so his tone was tactful, but if he climbed up the pole and showed some embarrassment to Zhao Dangshi, it would definitely do more harm than good in the future.

Zhao Dangshi was quite satisfied with his performance, and said with a smile: "There is an old man in foreign affairs, and I don't have to worry about it." Then his expression straightened, "I have two important things in my hands. One in the north and one in the south, each needs to be artificial. As he spoke, in a few words, he said the general content of the "two important things" in his mouth, and continued, "What does Foreign Envoy Fu think, do you want to go north, or go south again?" ”

Fu Xunyu thought for a while, but said: "I'm used to seeing the scenery in the south, and I want to go to the north." ”

Zhao Dangshi smiled behind his back: "People call you 'Mr. Tiger Courage', and you really live up to your name." It's a cliché in the south, so let Deputy Envoy Li go. Whether it works out in the north or not, it's all up to you. "The foreign envoy is craught, and talents are rare, and only Fu Xunyu and Li Bi can be on the stage, and a foreign envoy and a deputy foreign envoy have to do everything themselves. However, everything is difficult at the beginning, and Fu Xunyu firmly believes that under his leadership, the Department of Foreign Affairs will eventually flourish and become a pivotal pillar in Zhao Yingzhong.