Tang Sai'er became the commander of an army of more than 400,000 for the first time, and he was also sincerely afraid in his heart, for fear that if something went wrong, his reputation for fifty years would be ruined.

Not only did she consult with Guo Ang on everything, but she also attached great importance to the staff team sent by the Ministry of National Defense.

On the use of automobiles, she even respected the opinions of Liu Jing, the chief officer of the automobile corps sent by Zhu Zhanji.

She has a high prestige, knows how to make good use of people, and never insists on going her own way, which also allows the entire command team to quickly run in.

In the past few months, Ming craftsmen have transported hundreds of diesel engines from China and loaded them on temporary flatbed boats, forming a naval army.

Dozens of planes were transported by train to Tanglin City, where they were assembled, and the small planes were able to take off and land on the roads of each city.

Together with cavalry, automobile troops, artillery, the entire army of the Ming Dynasty, a three-dimensional attack phalanx was formed.

Zheng Ying in the south, led by his army, had marched south of the Don River, and their goal was to defend the well-defended Donetsk mining area.

This is one of the most important strongholds of the Western Expedition, because the iron ore here has been allocated by the coalition forces, and every country does not want to lose the iron ore here.

Moscow, Lithuania, Poland, Rome, and the landlord Principality of Kiev established a three-tiered defense system on the banks of the Don River.

Not only that, in each mining area, they stockpiled abundant food and dug trenches hundreds of miles long, hoping to rely on numbers and terrain to offset the firepower advantage of the Ming army.

And in the north, Muscovy had abandoned all its field strongholds and entered the defense of cities.

They drove a large number of livestock westward and implemented the tactics of fortifying the Ming army.

It's a pity that for this war, the Ming Dynasty continuously transported grain from China, and after the grain arrived in Tanglin City, it was transported to the front line by water.

The Oka River and the Volga River, which brought abundant water to the Far West, became the grain transportation channels of the Ming Dynasty.

It's not that the coalition forces haven't thought about destroying the grain transportation channels of the Ming Dynasty, but the three-dimensional attack phalanx that is centuries ahead makes it impossible for them to sneak attack at all.

As long as the weather is good, Daming's plane has been patrolling the sky.

A small number of white people may still be able to hide the eyes and ears of the plane, but the number of people is small but they cannot cause large losses to the Ming people, and once the number is large, they will not be able to hide their figures, and they will be discovered by the Ming army.

At first, Muscovy would send some small operations to sabotage, but in the end, they realized that it was all food delivery.

It's not like the Ming Dynasty, there are barren forests and grasslands everywhere, and there are often no people for dozens of miles. Even if they are excluded, it is difficult for them to obtain supplies.

Moreover, what is more serious is that they found that the Ming people did not care about the gains and losses of one city and one place at all, and their only purpose seemed to be only to kill people.

From the banks of the Don River in the south to the city of Yaroslavl in the northeast of Moscow, the battle of thousands of kilometers began in mid-April, when the wildest battles of all time began.

This time, the strategic purpose of the Ming Dynasty is very clear, which is to kill and injure the living forces as much as possible, reduce the white population, and assimilate the ethnic group.

Except for the young woman, everyone was within the range of killing.

In this day and age, there are not many "peaceful" people, and everyone believes in right and wrong, and their hearts are different.

Therefore, for the orders of the imperial court, even Tang Sai'er did not have any patience. Although she didn't do it herself, she ordered more prisoners to be killed than anyone else.

The rolling iron flows all the way to the west, but there are two very clear routes.

Zheng Ying of the southern front is responsible for conquering the Donetsk iron ore area, which is now the largest iron mine in the world, and is a very important strategic reserve, which must be completely occupied by the Ming Dynasty.

Then, he will lead the army to besiege Kyiv, and in the plan of the General Staff, it will take half a year to capture the Great Plain of Ukraine.

The main target of the northern front was Moscow, eight hundred miles away, and the front was to be advanced all the way to the Baltic Sea.

There, Yang Zhihe, who came from the sea, would provide all kinds of supplies for the army.

Today, St. Petersburg is still a small fishing village, and it will be an important strategic point for the Ming in Eastern Europe at a time when no sea power could pose a threat to the Ming Dynasty.

The conquest of Europe, Zhu Zhanji did not think that he could achieve it overnight, it was not a matter of strength, but a matter of manpower.

Transporting hundreds of thousands of people to Europe and stretching thousands of kilometers of battle lines requires an astronomical amount of materials.

Daming will definitely not slow down its pace of development because of the war, let alone its own economic development.

Therefore, unless the war is stalemate and stalemate, the Ming Dynasty will not send more troops over.

With hundreds of thousands of people, it is almost impossible to conquer Europe in a year.

In Zhu Zhanji's plan, it would take three years to flatten the whole of Europe and shed a river of blood in Europe.

The strategic objectives of the General Staff were clear, Marshal Tang Sayer was experienced, and the army did not rush to achieve results, but strictly complied with the tactical requirements and carried out a slow all-round advance.

At this rate of advance, the navy, cavalry, air force, automobile army, and artillery corps can all cooperate closely, and will not give the enemy any opportunity at all.

Vladimir, the gateway city of Moscow, is now ruled by the Novgorodians.

Novgorod was one of the largest powers of the Rus' nation, they owned two Novgorod principalities, occupied the regions north of Moscow and south of Moscow.

However, now Nizhny Novgorod has been occupied by Ming soldiers and has become the command center of this western expedition.

The city became the last bastion of the Novgorodians in the south, and they built a four-tiered defense system centered on the Great Golden Gate.

On the fourth day of the fifth month, the Ming soldiers arrived in the city and did not rush to fight.

The cannons, which had been transferred by cars and horses, were removed from the rubber wheels and installed one by one in areas that could not be attacked by the Novgorodians.

It took the Ming soldiers two days to arrange the attack formation, and the first salvo of fifty cannons that could be fired flat made the Novgorodians in the city completely desperate.

Because these cannons were not firing the stone projectiles they were familiar with, but a kind of shell that would not explode until they reached their position.

Neither the strong walls nor the soldiers in the trenches could withstand the attack of this new artillery.

The Great Golden Gate, known as the strongest fortress in Vladimir, completely collapsed after less than ten shells.

And the walls, on which Novgorod had high hopes, collapsed directly in front of artillery fire.

They couldn't understand why the artillery of the Ming people was so violent, not to mention the collapse of the city wall, just the shock after the explosion of the cannonball could make the soldiers incapacitated.

The impregnable defense line in their eyes collapsed directly, and it was not only the city walls that collapsed, but also the hearts of the people.

The attack of the Ming soldiers had not yet begun, and countless soldiers had already killed their leader and began to flee westward.

And in Ryazan, 400 miles southeast of Moscow, it was here that the first Rus' city to conquer was when Batu went west.

Two hundred years have passed, but the people here still remember the war that almost wiped out their race.

Under the pressure of Muscovy, the Ryazan people had to build a tight defense system in the forests along the Oka River, but in their hearts, they did not want to fight the Ming people.

As soon as Guo Ang, who was the main attacker here, arrived on the east bank of the Oka River, he encountered a large number of Ryazan serfs who took the initiative to join him.

Today's Rus are still in the most barbaric period, not to mention the Ming people, even the Europeans look down on them.

And in these Rus' Grand Duchyes centered on Muscovy, in addition to the nobility, they were slaves, and the nobility had the power of life and death over the slaves.

And these slaves, their loyalty to the nobility is very limited, and after knowing that they can live a "good life" by taking refuge in the Ming Dynasty, they took the initiative to take refuge one by one.

Under their leadership, the Ming bypassed the tight defensive line along the Oka River, and in the downstream area, twenty-six flatbed boats stopped on two river surfaces to form two pontoon bridges and crossed the Oka River.

The city of Ryazan was built on the plains of the Oka River, and for defense, their city was surrounded by dense forests, with fertile fields in the middle.

Artillery is very powerful in the city, but in the forest, it can play a much smaller role.

With these serfs leading the way, in just three days, the city had already changed hands.

The defeat of the two Grand Duchyes of Ryazan and Vladimir meant that Moscow had become an isolated city in front of it.

On June 16, Guo Ang of the Northern Route Army cleared Kolomna of its stubborn enemies and bombed the city to rubble.

On 18 June, he joined Tansail with the triangle of the Moskva and Yauza rivers, which also meant that they had cleared most of the resistance from the south-east side of Moscow.

Since its founding in the 12th century, Moscow has been the center of the entire Rus' city-state. This fortified city is also a sacred place in the hearts of the entire Rus' people, who submitted to the Golden Horde two hundred years ago, but now even the power of the Golden Horde is ruled by the White Horde.

The decline of the Mongol and Yuan power allowed the Turks and Rus' to occupy a dominant position.

But the White Tent was not without contradictions, in fact, before the Ming Dynasty attacked, the Turks who believed in the Green Religion and the Rus' who believed in the Orthodox Christianity were the biggest enemies.

But now, the Tatars and Turks in the south were defeated by Zheng Ying, and the Rus' in the north are now only four city-states.

In the Kremlin, Ivan III, known as the Great of the Generation, is now only a twenty-five-year-old young man, and in the face of the unstoppable Ming army, most of the Rus' nobility has begun to migrate westward.

Ivan III was also ready to retreat, but with the fortified city of Moscow, he still had to resist, otherwise he would lose everyone's support.

Now he regrets very much that he shouldn't have fought against the Ming people for the sake of the farm in Nizhny Novgorod.

But if he wanted to escape, he would not know that the entire Rus' city-state was united during his reign and formed the Rus' nation.

During his reign, the principalities of Yaroslavl and Rostov, Vyatka, Veliya Perm, Tver, Novgorod and other principalities were finally merged into a unitary state.

Ivan III later ceased paying tribute to the Golden Horde, and he co-opted and bought the Kazan Khanate, the Astrakhan Khanate, the Nogai Khanate, the Shaybani State, and the Crimean Khanate, thus ending the two-and-a-half-century rule of the Golden Horde, and destroying the Golden Horde at the beginning of the sixteenth century.

As a result, he was the first Grand Duke in history to be crowned an all-Russian monarch and was even hailed as Ivan the Great.

But now, he is still a young man, although he has many ambitions, but in the face of the invincible enemy of the Ming Dynasty, he is also afraid.

The weapons of the Ming are advanced, but the Muscovites are outnumbered. Relying on the stone walls of Moscow, the Muscovites were able to resist stubbornly.

It was nothing else that restricted the Ming attack, but expensive shells, each of which had to be transported from the Ming Dynasty for a journey of more than 10,000 kilometers.

Suffice it to say that although there were trains, they only reached the city of Donlin in the Ural Mountains, and then they had to be transported through the Volga and Oka rivers.

And the cost of delivering one shell to Moscow is almost the cost of three shells.

From June to September, the war stalemate was maintained in the absence of shells.

However, during this time, Don Sayr led an army of 30,000 men to attack Novgorod, which belonged to the Hanseatic League.

At this time, the Hanseatic League sent a councillor to negotiate with the army. They came up with a copy of the Hanseatic League's agreement with Monte and prayed to Donsail to surrender on condition that they preserve their wealth.

At the same time, Yang Zhihe's representatives also landed from the Baltic Sea, and they not only brought a large number of supplies, but also secretly negotiated the relationship between the Hanseatic League and the Ming Dynasty.

After meeting with representatives of the Hanseatic League, Donsail agreed to the terms of their surrender, and from then on, the two principalities of Novgorod and Pskov submitted to the Ming Dynasty.

Under their influence, the Moscow to the Baltic region, with the exception of a small group of forces belonging to the principality of Lithuania that were still engaged in guerrilla warfare, most of the forces laid down their arms.

The Hanseatic convoy became the Ming transporters, transporting large quantities of supplies to Moscow.

However, there is still a shortage of shells.

In mid-September, a large number of artillery shells finally arrived in Moscow with difficulty, and by this time, Tang Sayer had also returned to Moscow, ready to completely destroy Moscow before the onset of winter.

When the Ming army had enough shells, the fortified city of Moscow was also destroyed by artillery fire.

No matter how many soldiers used earth and demolished houses to repair the ruined walls, the speed of construction could never match the speed of destruction.

There was a numerical inferiority, and the Ming people preferred to exchange shells for the lives of their soldiers.

Covered with artillery fire, after the front was reduced to ruins, the soldiers advanced slowly, little by little, encroaching on the Muscovites' territory.

Blocks were in ruins, and enemy defenses were shrinking.

On October 6, Ivan finally ordered a retreat, and more than half a million young men in the city retreated in the direction of Smolensk in the west, carrying grain, gold and silver.

In the past, Lithuania and Moscow fought for the city for centuries, and the abundant coal mines here became a resource for both sides.

It wasn't until twenty years ago that the two sides laid down their arms and worked together to develop coal mines and make steel.

Not only will Muscovy refuse to give up the last of these lands, but the Lithuanians will not back down for the sake of these coal mines.

If it loses here, the Principality of Lithuania, like the Principality of Moscow, will lose the ability to resist.

Ivan had been worried during the retreat, because of the gap in weapons, they had been scared by the Ming people.

But to everyone's surprise, the Ming army did not chase, only a cavalry force of no more than 50,000 people, and pursued at the end of the ranks.

Although tens of thousands of soldiers lost their lives, this loss was not unbearable for the Rus.

Tang Sayer raised the Ming dragon flag in the Kremlin, and a large number of soldiers also lived in warm houses.

According to the law of the Ming Dynasty, whenever a new city is captured, the first thing to be cleared is the church in the city. As long as it is not a Confucian, Buddhist and Taoist church, it can never appear in a city belonging to the Ming Dynasty.

This move was opposed by the remaining clergy, but Tang Sayer did not have the slightest mercy, and with a single order, all the clergy were killed, and dozens of luxurious churches were all blown up by explosives.

Then, the Ming soldiers settled down, and they even took out silver coins to recruit those serfs to cut grass in the fields.

They had no idea of pursuing and were already preparing for the winter.

In the south, Zheng Ying faced a much more difficult war than Tang Sai'er, and in half a year, he still could not completely wipe out the coalition forces in the Donetsk area.

This is not because Zheng Ying is incompetent, but because of the different strategic positions of the north and the south.

The Rus' principalities in the north had no room for turning around at all, and their country, the national capital, was directly exposed to the guns of the Ming Dynasty.

But in the south, the discovery of iron ore in Donetsk made all the countries of the coalition army heavy troops and the front line, and fought to the death with the Ming army.

In this era, in Eastern Europe, the most powerful was not Moscow, but the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

In later generations, the country was a small regional country, and many people had not heard of their names, but in this era, they were extremely powerful.

In the thirteenth century, the Mongol Yuan people marched westward, and the first to resist and drive away the Mongol Yuan people was the combined army of Poland and Lithuania.

The Grand Duchy of Lithuania developed rapidly in the process of driving out the Mongol Yuan. They expanded into the homeland of Kievan Rus' and other Slavic lands, encompassing what would become Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, and Belarus, as well as parts of Estonia, Poland, Moldova, and Russia.

They were so populous and powerful that they occupied large areas of grain production, and even the Holy Roman Empire did not dare to fight them.

But they have everything, just a lack of metal ores. The Principality of Kiev was annexed by them a hundred years ago, and now such a huge iron ore has been discovered that it has become an unloseable territory for Lithuania.

And their capital, Vilnius, was far behind, so they could place a large number of troops on this line.

This place was once occupied by the Ming Dynasty, and many defense systems have been built, and now in order to fight against the Ming Dynasty, along the Don River and the Dnieper River, they have spared no effort to build a labyrinth-like defense system.

The Zheng family experienced last year's turmoil, and Zheng Hong was beheaded. Although Zheng Ying wants to make meritorious contributions, she is more afraid of making mistakes. At a time when Zhu Zhanji repeatedly emphasized that soldiers' lives were above all else, he did not dare to use soldiers' lives to build up his military exploits.

Therefore, in the south, although he has now cleared several cities, there is no good way to break through the defense of Donetsk.

This piece of land of several thousand square kilometers has six mining areas, and there are farmland, water conservancy, and communication between the mining areas, and there is a strict defense system outside them.

If he doesn't break through here, he won't dare to attack Kyiv on a large scale, if the army falls into a passive situation of attacking back and forth, resulting in defeat, the Zheng family is afraid that it will be over.

His safety is also correct, because this is not only Zheng Ying's business, even the generals of the General Staff, in the face of this situation, there is no good way.

The number of Ming soldiers was already much smaller, hundreds of thousands of troops, only 80,000 were Ming elites, and the rest were auxiliary armies of various ethnic groups, many of them did not even have flintlock pistols, and their combat effectiveness could be imagined.

Seeing that the enemy's mining area was still producing a large amount of steel every day, Zheng Ying and the others were anxious.

If Donetsk is not captured before the onset of winter, it will have a very big impact on the fighting next year.

It was also at this time that Guo Ang sent two thousand Rus' serfs from the Northern Theater of Operations.

These serfs all voluntarily followed the Ming Dynasty, and for the sake of a better life for their families, they were willing to act as the vanguard of the Ming Dynasty.

Of course, Da Ming didn't expect them to capture the entire mining area, but they just wanted to use the mining area to require a large number of miners and serfs to let them mix in.

In October, the capital of the Crimean Khanate, Bakhchisaray, was broken by Zheng Ying, and a large number of serfs lost their land and were driven out of the Crimean peninsula.

More than 5,000 people fled to the Donetsk mines, where they were forced to work in various parts of the mines by Lithuanian, Polish, and Holy Roman Empire soldiers.

Since then, information about the layout of the battle line and the transfer of personnel in the mining area has been continuously sent.

When the first heavy snow fell, the Ming army captured the Yenakievo mine, which was located in the center of the mining area.

This mining area belongs to the Holy Roman Empire, and since the Ming Dynasty has now blocked the mining area, they can't ship it even if they smelt steel, so production here has almost stopped for a while.

Moreover, the overwhelming military offensive of the Ming army also completely frightened their soldiers, they were not Kieves, nor Lithuanians, so they had the idea of retreating.

However, because of the military alliance, now they can only stay here and advance and retreat with the other soldiers.

However, the mentality is different, and the will to resist is also different. Therefore, after finding out the ownership of this mining area and the enthusiasm of the soldiers for defense, Daming chose the target here.

And the results of the battle were also naturally smooth.

The whole mining area is like a complete set of machines, and Yenakiyevo is still in the center, and when this mining area is occupied by the Ming Dynasty, the defense system of the entire mining area is completely disorganized.

It's like the first domino to be pushed......