Chapter 504: Expedition to Qiuzi

The desert wind kicked up gusts of dust, and the sand slid down the sand slope with a loud sound. This is the so-called "Mingsha".

To the east of Qiuzi, there is a Mingsha Mountain. Whenever the wind blows, the sound of sand here is deafening.

The sound of the sand covered many sounds, such as the sound of the wind, such as the sonorous sound of the iron armor when the army marched under the sand mountain.

At this time, at the foot of Mingsha Mountain, a Tang army was marching slowly.

This is a coalition army composed of the Anxi Protectorate Army, the Right Guard Army, and the Gaochang, Yanqi, and Hui armies, numbering as many as 20,000 people. This army has Zuo Xiaowei's general Ashina Sheer as the general of the march, Anxi Duhu, Xizhou Assassin Guo Xiaoke as the deputy commander of the march, in addition, there are a number of generals such as Su Haizheng, Shang Yin Fengyu Xue Wanbei and so on.

In the winter of the twenty-first year of Zhenguan of the Tang Dynasty, King Qiuzi crusaded against the die, and his younger brother inherited the throne. Anxi protected Guo Xiaoke, and when he saw that the time was ripe, he proposed to use troops against Qiuzi. After thinking about it for a while, Li Shimin readily agreed with Guo Xiaoke's opinion.

But this turtle is not the same as Yanqi. Yanqi is one of the less powerful countries in the Western Regions, and this Qiuzi has long been a staunch ally of the Western Turks in the Western Regions, and his strength is stronger, even stronger than Gaochang back then. Therefore, with the military strength of the Anxi Metropolitan Protectorate alone, it is impossible to defeat Qiuzi. Therefore, Li Shimin transferred Ashina Sheer's Zuo Xiaowei army to Xizhou, and together with the Anxi army, attacked Qiuzi.

At the same time as the transfer of the army, Li Shimin also issued a crusade against him, saying that Qiuzi lost his courtesy and invaded his neighbors, and I should start an army to attack him.

When this inscription reached Qiuci, the king of Qiuci panicked greatly, and contacted the Western Turks to flank the Yue and the secret department, echoing each other, and waiting for the Tang army.

And after Ashina Sheer led the army to Yanqi, he immediately led the army to kill Qiuzi. However, if you want to attack Qiuzi, you must first remove the moon and secret parts on its flanks.

Crossing the Mingsha Mountain and heading northwest, the target of the attack was the second division of the moon and the dense.

"General Qiyu, I am thirty miles northwest and encounter a Turkic ranger! Now that the opponent has been completely annihilated, it is expanding the reconnaissance range to the northwest! "As he crossed Mingsha Mountain, a scout quickly whipped up a puff of sand and dust, came to Ashina Sheer, and reported to him.

Hearing this, Ashina Sheer sent an order to the soldiers around him: "Inform General Guo and order him to lead the cavalry to set off first, and go to the northwest to attack the second division of the moon and the city, and strive to catch them off guard!" ”

When the soldier heard this, he clasped his fists and immediately rode away.

Ashina Sheer raised his horsewhip and shouted in a thick Chinese dialect: "Speed up the march!" ”

After the army passed through Mingsha Mountain, Guo Xiaoke broke away from the brigade with a team of 5,000 cavalry and took the first step. The rest were mostly infantry, and there were less than a thousand cavalry. In terms of marching, it was naturally a step slower.

Guo Xiaoke led the army to gallop rapidly for nearly two hours, and there was not a single Turkic ranger along the way, presumably cleaned up by those scouts. When Guo Xiaoke was hurrying with all his might, the three cavalry scouts came to him and reported to Guo Xiaoke that they had discovered the location of the secret department.

It turned out that after the Turks learned that the Tang army had dispatched a large army, they would send hundreds of cavalry to reconnoiter within a radius of 100 miles every day. When the scouts encountered these rangers, the army was still more than a hundred miles away from the secret area. Guo Xiaoke galloped down this time, and he was only more than ten miles away from the secret department.

"General, rest assured, the villain has cleared all the Turkic rangers in this vicinity! However, according to the villain, this Turk saw that his scouts had not returned for a long time, so he must be suspicious, and hoped that the general would act as soon as possible! The scout advised Guo Xiaoke after giving him orders.

Guo Xiaoke snorted coldly: "General Ben is still talking to you?" ”

Although the scout was aggrieved, he quickly confessed.

Guo Xiaoke said coldly: "Don't hurry up and lead the way!" ”

Led by scouts, the army soon reached the outskirts of the secret barracks. It is said that it is a military camp, and according to the custom of the Turkic camp, it is nothing more than a settlement of white tents. Horses, cattle and sheep and other livestock were guarded outside the barracks.

Standing less than a mile away from the Chumi military camp, looking at the Chumi military camp, Guo Xiaoke raised his horse lance violently and shouted loudly: "Brothers, rush with me!" ”

Behind Guo Xiaoke, a cavalry rider poured towards the Chumi tribe like a flood.

This Guo Xiaoke is also a fierce general, he waved his horse lance and rushed to the front. When the two Turkic soldiers heard the commotion, they had just taken a look at the tent when they saw a bearded man with a horse lance rushing towards him. Under the powerful impact, the horse lance pierced a person in one fell swoop, and the body was still hanging on the horse lance.

Guo Xiaoke pulled out his horse lance and shouted, "Kill—"

"Kill—"

A chorus of harmony rang out all around.

Most of these Tang cavalry were Turkic cavalry brought by Ashina Sheer, and they knew the tactics of the Turkic cavalry and could take corresponding restraint measures. And those Han cavalry, equipped with this Mingguang armor and sophisticated long lance horizontal knife, in terms of weapons and equipment, I don't know how much more than these Western Turks, often the opponent's bow and arrow shot by less than one stone, landed on the Mingguang armor, drilled an arrow into it, and injured the flesh and skin.

In addition to the surprise attack of the Tang army, many secret soldiers knew that it was too late to get on their horses, so they were beheaded by the Tang soldiers who passed by on horseback. As we all know, the strength of these nomads lies in the strength of their cavalry, and the cavalry did not get on the horse and became infantry, which was not much worse than the infantry of the Han people.

After a little resistance, the warriors grabbed their horses and fled south.

Seeing this, Guo Xiaoke immediately integrated the team and chased those secret soldiers to the north.

The people who were left behind to surrender looked at each other and felt lucky. He hurriedly mounted his horse and fled westward.

To the south is to go to the Yuebu and Qiuzi, and to the west is to return to the Western Turks.

Guo Xiaoke chased after those routs and kept a certain distance. He also knew that these secret soldiers did not flee to the west but to the south, which means that the south is the military camp of the Moon Division. Therefore, he chased the rout soldiers to the death, and if he did not annihilate them, he hoped to use these rout soldiers to attack the military camp of the Moon Division.

As Guo Xiaoke expected, the south side is indeed the Chuyue military camp.

However, the Chuyue military camp had already been prepared, and the warriors were ready with scimitars in their hands and winding bows and arrows.

However, what they didn't expect was that there were six or seven hundred secret soldiers as pioneers, rushing towards their camp, and Tang Qi was following them, killing fiercely.

The general of this month was also decisive, and ordered the soldiers to release arrows, and after shooting the secret soldiers who rushed to the front, there were the remaining soldiers who rushed to the Tang army that came to kill them.

Like two beasts colliding with each other, the two cavalry were strangled together.

Guo Xiaoke took the lead, roared, stabbed out the horse lance in his hand, and pierced a Western Turkic soldier who rushed towards him, and then swept again, sweeping one person off the horse. Not to be outdone, the rest of the soldiers roared loudly, using the weapons in their hands to harvest the lives of the opposing soldiers.

At this moment, the cruelty of war in the era of cold weapons is undoubtedly reflected. There was a bloody scene everywhere, and the ground with a few wild grasses was soon stained red with blood. The clashing of weapons, the shouts of human beings, and the neighing of horses echoed in the desert.

After nearly an hour of fierce fighting, the Tang army finally defeated this Western Turkic army. After nearly a thousand beheadings, the remaining soldiers fled west or south.

Guo Xiaoke led his troops to pursue westward, and shot many soldiers with bows and arrows in the back. After chasing thirty miles away, he led the troops back.

At this time, the main force of the Tang army led by Ashina Sheer arrived at the camp of the original secret people and captured a large number of cattle, sheep and horses.

After the two armies met, Ashina Sheer said to Guo Xiaoke: "General Guo is worthy of being a tiger general of the Tang Dynasty, leading the troops to break two formations in a row and beheading nearly 2,000, which is really the first merit of this battle!" ”

Guo Xiaoke smiled, looking as a matter of course. Ashina Sheer was not angry, but looked at Guo Xiaoke and said: "Although two formations have been broken in a row today, the second part of the secret place is still threatening the flank of our army, if our army wants to attack Qiuzi, it will definitely be attacked by these two parts." So the chief decided to break these two first, and then attack Qiuzi! ”

Hearing Ashina Sheer's analysis of the military situation, Guo Xiaoke did not dare to slack off and listened carefully. At the end, he said: "My 20,000-strong army is on an expedition to the Western Regions, and the nearest place where grain and grass are supplied is Yanqi, which is also hundreds of miles. The daily consumption of 20,000 troops is very huge, so the last general thinks that this battle should be quickly resolved, and if it is dragged by the second department of the secret place, it will be extremely unfavorable to our army! ”

Ashina Sheer nodded: "That's right!" Therefore, I am going to spread scouts and use cavalry as a maneuver, and as soon as the scouts detect the enemy's movements, the cavalry will immediately go out to attack the enemy chieftain! ”

In the previous two battles, the Tang army lost more than 400 cavalry, but captured nearly 2,000 horses, which were directly equipped with infantry, adding 2,000 cavalry. After all, almost everyone in the Tang Dynasty infantry can ride horses, even if they can't fight right away, they can also use horses as a substitute.

But there is still time, enough for those soldiers who can't fight right away to learn seven, seven, eight, eight.

After the two battles, the second division of the secret place retreated to the northwest of Qiuzi, except for the collision of rangers and scouts, there was no shadow of the main force at all. At this time, it was already the first month of the twenty-second year of Zhenguan, and in the desert, the snow was falling into ice, the wind was biting, the iron clothes on the body, and the weapons in the hands seemed to be covered with a thin layer of ice. In such an environment, if the Tang Army attacks, its combat effectiveness will be greatly weakened.

So, throughout the first month and February, there were no battles other than the battles of the rangers and scouts. However, Qiuzi also sent a cavalry over, glanced at it from a distance, and saw the Tang army on horseback, and immediately fled away.

By mid-March, the weather is warming up, the snow is melting, the rivers are swollen, and the grass on the banks is sprouting.

Finally, the scouts found a thousand-person cavalry in the Moon Division, and more than 6,000 Tang cavalry immediately set off to kill the cavalry in the Moon Division. After Guo Xiaoke led the cavalry to set off first, Ashina Sheer suddenly felt that something was wrong, why did this cavalry seem to be waiting for him! For the sake of safety, just in case, Xue Wanbei was sent to lead 8,000 foot soldiers to march quickly and follow Guo Xiaoke.

Later, Guo Xiaoke's experience proved that Ashina Sheer's caution was very correct. When Guo Xiaoke's cavalry fought with this Yuebu cavalry, the other party could retreat westward until they reached a gentle slope.

At this time, the second coalition army behind the gentle slope climbed up the hillside, and then rushed down. Behind the Tang army, a cavalry also appeared, cutting off the Tang army's retreat.

Faced with this situation, Guo Xiaoke seemed to stabilize the morale of the army, and also organized the soldiers to launch a counter-charge, and strangled with the secret alliance troops at the moon that rushed down from the hillside.

At first, Guo Xiaoke was able to control the situation, but as the two tribes had more and more troops, later, the entire battlefield was chaotic and stalemate.

At this time, Xue Wanbei led eight thousand foot soldiers to kill.

When the Tang army saw the arrival of reinforcements, their morale was greatly boosted.

After nearly two hours of fierce fighting, the Tang army finally defeated nearly 20,000 allied troops at the cost of more than 1,600 killed, beheaded more than 4,000 people, and captured more than 7,000 people. The rest fled.

The reason why the Tang army suffered such serious losses was caused by Guo Xiaoke's ambush by the enemy.

After this battle, the power of the two tribes was greatly reduced.

Then, Ashina Sheer led the cavalry to fight two battles with the two tribes, and drove the two tribes of Chuyue and Mi to the west for more than 200 miles, until the two tribes returned to the Western Turkic steppe, then they gave up the pursuit, and turned south, and divided the troops from the north and west into five ways to attack Qiuzi.

In addition to Ashina Sheer, Guo Xiaoke, and Xue Wanbei, Yizhou Thorn Shi Han Wei and Shazhou Thorn Shi Su Haizheng, each led the cavalry into the territory of Qiuzi.