The king of the county, under the prince, is the next level of the prince. But that's a prince after all! The prince of the Great Song Dynasty only has two levels: relatives and counties.

And when he went on the expedition, Zhao Ji, the current reinstated Huizong, solemnly repeated it and never broke his promise.

Now, this glory is within reach for him.

But he knew that without Sun Hui, he would not have succeeded.

Just like the battle that took place outside Taiyuan a few days ago, the 50,000 Song army against the 100,000 Jin army, if it weren't for Sun Hui, it would be impossible to win such a big victory.

In this battle, the Song army annihilated nearly 100,000 Jin troops at the cost of nearly 8,000 casualties, and there were more than 40,000 Jin heads cut off alone, and there were more than 30,000 mutilated corpses of people who were burned to death by Sun Hui's fire.

However, after this battle, the Song army was also exhausted, so it did not attack the city immediately, but adopted the method of "shocking and attacking the heart" proposed by Sun Hui to force the Jin army to withdraw from Taiyuan City.

According to Sun Hui's judgment, after the main force of the Jin army was annihilated, the remaining 60,000 Jin troops in Taiyuan City would completely lose their fighting spirit, if they were given some hope, they would withdraw from Taiyuan City and return to the north, and the Song army would then follow up, and the Jin army guarding the northern region of the Song Dynasty that had been occupied was bound to retreat, so the sixteen states of Yanyun could go down in one go.

Sun Hui believes that with the current strength of the Song Dynasty, it is impossible to destroy the Jin State at once, and it is best to take this opportunity to regain the barrier against the Jin State after recovering the sixteen states of Yanyun, and then sign a peace treaty with the Jin State, and then develop Xu Tu after the national strength is full.

Zhang Shuye agreed with Sun Hui's opinion, although he didn't know that as a time-traveler and history enthusiast, Sun Hui's understanding of the strategic significance of the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun was no less than that of people in this era.

The sixteen states of Yanyun are dangerous places, easy to defend and difficult to attack. Among them, the seven prefectures of You, Ji, Ying, Mo, Zhuo, Tan and Shun are located in the southeast of the north branch of Taihang Mountain, and the rest of Kyushu is in the northwest of the mountain, which is an important horse breeding area. The geographical situation of China, to the Yellow River Valley, is the Great Plains. As soon as you get out of the Great Wall, it is the Great Plains. Therefore, to fight in the north, you must have cavalry. And China's response to the enemy outside the northern Cypriot is even more indispensable to cavalry. The horses needed for cavalry were produced in only two places in China. One in the northeast and one in the northwest. One is the so-called wild north of the thistle, and the other is the area of the Ganliang Hetao. It must be a cold place to raise a good horse. Horses can not be raised one by one, but must be raised in long mountains and valleys, with beautiful grass, sweet springs, and open fields, so that they can be raised in groups and used for cavalry to go out of the jam for long-distance pursuit. And these two places, when the country was founded in the early Song Dynasty, happened to be taken by Liao and the other by Western Xia, and they were not in the hands of China. There is still iron associated with horses, and the fine iron ore is also outside the northeast. Ma Zheng is the main condition that determines the strength of a country's army, there is no horseland is like a group of fighters without an engine factory, with silk silk cloth for horses, life and death can only be in the hands of others or crushed by the other party's consumption, the lack of horses in the Song Dynasty does not mean that Jiangnan can not raise horses but the horses produced are not as good as the horses in the north, and more importantly, the war horses produced in the agricultural areas can only make up the number (in fact, the number can not be made up, there were many horses in the early Song Dynasty, and less can only rely on infantry in the later period, resulting in small strategic projection capabilities, The mobility is not strong, and it cannot destroy the living forces of the other side, even if the enemy army escapes after winning the battle, it cannot catch up), not to mention competing with the people for food. First of all, the Song Dynasty lacked pastures for a large number of horses, because war horses were best kept free-range, and it was not possible to keep them in captivity. Secondly, horses grow in colder northern regions and are not adapted to warm and humid climates; Again, the cost of plowing the land and raising horses is high, especially for military horses. The cost of raising a war horse can feed six people, and only a few horses can produce a good horse, which makes it difficult for the Northern Song Dynasty, which has poor horse resources, to bear it, and cannot raise horses on a large scale, while in the northern grassland areas, raising horses is one of the basic survival methods of herdsmen. Although it is only a good horse that can only be produced in raising one or twenty horses, the cost of raising horses is low, and bad horses can be killed to eat meat or only provide grain for grazing land managers in the Han, Tang and Yuan dynasties. This was unthinkable for the Song Dynasty.

The loss of the northern barrier of the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun directly led to the Central Plains being exposed to the iron hooves of the northern ethnic minorities, which had a significant impact on the decay and even the demise of the Song Dynasty. The Yanyun Han people were in a pivotal position in the history of the Liao and Jin dynasties ruling northern China, and the Liao, Song, and Jin dynasties all adopted the practice of both wooing and rejecting them in their attitudes toward them. Liao used imperial examinations, official appointments, and marriages to make Han people loyal to him, but he did not trust most of the Yanyun Han people who were "not of my race" and placed them at the bottom of society; Out of discrimination against the "Huhua" Han Chinese, the Song referred to them as "fan" and "captive"; While reusing some of the Liao Han ministers, Jin politically excluded the Yanyun Han people from the ruling class after the Jurchens, Bohai peoples, and Khitans. As a result, the Yanyun Han people in the middle and late Liao periods not only became increasingly isolated in terms of national identity, but also did not have a fixed tendency in their political attitudes, not "heart to the Central Plains" as traditionally believed, but centered on interests, chose the side that was beneficial to them, and rebelled back and forth between the Liao, Song, and Jin, and their political attitudes were very flexible. First assisting the Liao in resisting the Song Dynasty, seeing that the Liao Mansion would be inclined to annex the Song Dynasty to protect itself, and then forced to attach the Jin Dynasty out of disappointment with the Song Dynasty, the Yanyun Han people played an extremely important role in promoting the development process of the three dynasties, the growth and decline of power, and the shape of the political pattern of northern China.

If there was one time when the Song Dynasty came closest to recovering the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun, it was the Battle of the Gaoliang River. In this battle, the Song army was overwhelmed at the beginning of the war. The army and people of Yanyun fell in anticipation, and the people of Youzhou even "greeted the king with cow wine", and the rule of the Liao State in the Yanyun area has basically collapsed. It's a pity that the Song army was defeated in the first battle of the Gaoliang River. The impact of this battle on both Song and Liao was extremely profound. From the side of the Song Dynasty, they never dared to make such a large-depth military breakthrough again - in other words, Zhao Guangyi's courage was frightened. For the Liao State, the psychological advantage over the Song army was completely established, and the soldiers and civilians in the Yanyun area no longer dared to place expectations on the Song army.

This influence was particularly evident during the Northern Expedition of Yongxi, and for the Song Dynasty, it only dared to adopt a step-by-step and steady approach in terms of strategy, and at the same time pinned its hopes on the response of the people of Yanyun. But they didn't expect that after the fiasco of the Gaoliang River, it would be impossible for the people of Yanyun to eat pot pulp to welcome the king as they did at the beginning. Therefore, in the process of Yongxi's Northern Expedition, there was no longer the scene of the Liao State officials and soldiers surrendering when they heard the wind, on the contrary, every city had to go through a bloody battle. Even if there is a surrender, it is a forced act after a terrible battle.