Looking at the back of Neqi being escorted down, Liu Cheng let out a long breath and asked Chessan, "Do you think the Zaruts will accept our conditions?" ”

"Why they don't accept it!" Chesan smiled: "If the capture is only Neqi alone, it will be nothing, at most let the eldest son succeed to the throne in advance." Pen Fun Pavilion www.biquge.info maybe his eldest son would be glad that he could have become a Great Khan many years earlier. But the problem is that we still have hundreds of captives here, these are the strongest men in the Zarut department, if they are all at once, they will be broken, if the eldest son dares to refuse, just wait for civil strife! ”

"Could it be that they would rather have civil strife than cling to Dongyu's thigh? After all, their pastures are closer to Dongyu. ”

"Then we don't have anything to lose, do we? At least the captives are in our hands, and we have weakened the Zaruts! It's better than putting it back for nothing like Lord Yang did before, right? ”

"That's just as well!" Liu Cheng sighed: "In the final analysis, the strength is too weak, so we have to play these small tricks." ”

"Huh!" Chesang said with a smile: "Actually, my lord, your current situation is already very good, there are more than 10,000 Han soldiers, more than 10,000 cavalry in the two divisions of Chahar and Tumut, and three or four thousand cavalry in addition to the palace army of Madame and the Great Khan. Armor and artillery are complete. Besides, you have friendly troops on the north, west, and south, so you can concentrate on the east, and if necessary, you can borrow troops from your father-in-law. At the beginning, Dayan Khan, even after unifying the Mongol tribes, was not as good as you are now. ”

Liu Cheng didn't speak, just nodded, he knew in his heart that what Chesang said was right. For the Central Plains dynasties of the past dynasties, the greatest threat to them is often not those who invade the south as soon as they gain power, but those who are not in a hurry to invade the south after gaining power, but are busy crusading to the east, west, and north, flattening the grassland and then invading the south. The reason is that the core disks of these grassland hegemons are actually not large, no more than a million, less than hundreds of thousands, and their hegemony is only the result of one or two victories. If he invaded the south as soon as he gained power, even if he could win once or twice, the Central Plains Dynasty could contain him by uniting with other tribes hostile to him; And once it integrates many tribes on the grasslands of tens of thousands of miles from Baishan and Heishui in the east to the Tianshan Mountains in the west, not only will its own strength be greatly increased, but it will also be able to go south with all its strength without guarding against enemies in the east, west, and north, and the military pressure on the Central Plains will naturally be very different. Therefore, the Central Plains Dynasty, which had a little foresight in history, was extremely concerned about the war for hegemony on the grassland, for a very simple reason - if the grassland was unified, the Central Plains would be unlucky next. Although Dayan Khan unified the Mongol tribes in the north and south of the desert, the Oirats to the west and the Jurchens in Liaodong were still outside his control, and he had to leave troops on guard; And because Liu Cheng had solved the threat to the west and north in advance through diplomatic and military means, although he did not have many troops, he could concentrate to the east, and the situation naturally prevailed over Dayan Khan. The reason why Liu Cheng is so cautious is simply because there is a behemoth called Houjin behind these Mongolian tribes.

"Your Excellency!" Seeing that Liu Cheng was silent, Chesang knew that the other party was thinking about the issue of Houjin, and said in a low voice: "My lord, as you can see below, the most important thing at the moment is the Chechen Khan Shuo base, as long as he is pulled to our side, we can implement the strategy of the adult to contact the Jurchens in the East China Sea, and at that time, it will not be difficult to break the Jurchens." Until then, it's better to be quiet! ”

Chesang's words just hit Liu Cheng's mind, and deep down in his heart, he was extremely reluctant to directly send troops to Liaodong and confront Huang Taiji head-on. Later generations on the Internet attributed the Manchu victory to the corruption and incompetence of the ruling class in the late Ming Dynasty and the brutality of the fishing and hunting peoples, but ignored the fact that the Jurchen commanders guided their military operations according to the universal objective laws of war for most of the time during their rise. If Liu Cheng had doubts about this before the crossing, his military career after the crossing quickly dispelled his doubts in this regard, although in most cases the enemy had a numerical advantage, but in the specific battlefield it was often the Jurchens who had a numerical advantage, no doubt thanks to the skillful military dispatch and excellent organization of their commanders.

Nurhachi started from a broken small tribal leader, and in a generation, he jumped from a small tribal leader with a few hundred warriors at best to the strongest military leader in Northeast Asia with tens of thousands of troops and thousands of miles. There are more barbarians in the old forests in the northeast who are not afraid of death and can fight, and the East China Sea Jurchen, whose location is further north and the environment is harsher, is much more difficult than Nurhachi's Jianzhou Jurchen who is not afraid of death, why are they all defeated generals of the Ming army before Nurhachi? Why is the final winner of the infighting among the Jurchen tribes none other than the Nurhachi family? The army at the end of the Ming Dynasty was indeed very corrupt, but corruption does not mean that it cannot fight, although the famous generals of the Ming army who died under Nurhachi did not make less money, but they were all experienced in a hundred battles and made great achievements, it can't be said that they were wise and martial when they fought the Japanese invaders, pacified the rebellion of Yang Yinglong, and fought the traps, and they were corrupt and incompetent puss when they met the Jurchens, right? Liu Cheng himself has been on the battlefield, spears are like forests, arrows are raining down, no matter if you are an overlord who can lift the crown, or a swordsman who is unparalleled in the world, the role of personal force is minimal, if there are not dozens or hundreds of high-level martial arts and strong soldiers around him, it is not uncommon to cut down the enemy's miscellaneous soldiers with a knife, let alone win a hundred battles. The battles commanded by Nurhachi's father and son are more than hundreds, and at least thirty or fifty times, if they can win so many times by brute bravery, the only explanation is that their family is the reincarnation of Super Saiyans. Rather than believing this, Liu Cheng still felt that the explanation of believing that they were first-rate commanders was more reliable.

Moreover, under the command of Nurhachi and his son, that army won numerous victories over a period of more than 60 years (counting from Nurhachi's unification of the Jurchen tribes in 1584), and this confidence accumulated over the years from victory-self-confidence, and then from self-confidence-victory, is very terrifying. On ancient battlefields, soldiers usually fought each other in dense formations, and could be killed at any time; The field of vision is extremely narrow, and the area that can be seen is only one or two meters square in front of you, and the mental and physical forces are under tremendous pressure, and many times the victory or defeat depends on which side can hold out for half a minute longer. Although Liu Cheng has been invincible since he started his army, after all, it has only been a short period of two or three years, and most of the soldiers under his command have been standing under the banner of hostility not long ago, and the gap in this regard has widened. Liu Cheng himself estimated that if he and Huang Taiji were on the same level as others, even if Huang Taiji's command and dispatch level dropped to the same level as himself, the possibility of losing would be two or three percent more.

In addition, the situation in Chongzhen's six years was also extremely unfavorable to the Ming army. After two generations of painstaking management, the Later Jin had taken control of a large area of the Songliao Plain, turning the Korean and Mongol left flanks into its vassals, while the Ming army had retreated to the exit of the Liaoxi Corridor, and the town of Dongjiang, which was originally located in southern Liaoning and on the sea, no longer existed, and the rest had been put under the command of the Later Jin. In this way, there were only two counteroffensive routes left for the Ming army: 1. From western Liaoxi to the north; 2. Starting from Shanxi, cross the eastern part of the Mongolian Plateau and enter the Songliao Plain from the gap in the Great Khing'an Mountains. These two offensive lines have the following problems: 1. The two lines are too far apart, and there are huge geographical obstacles between them, and it is almost impossible to respond. 2. The logistics of the line starting from Shanxi are difficult to guarantee, and most of the eastern parts of the Mongolian Plateau are already dependent on Houjin, which will become a hidden danger; 3. The width of the attack on the route out of the Western Liaoning Corridor was too narrow, and there was not enough space to deploy troops. Because for the defending side, the most difficult thing is to determine the main direction of the enemy's attack, so that there can be a focused deployment of troops. The Ming army has now been blocked in the western Liaoning corridor, Jinzhou and Songshan are the most cutting-edge fortresses, and their width is 15-20 miles, that is to say, the route of the Ming army to the north in western Liaoning is actually two: one out of the mountain customs and then along the Daling River valley through Jianchang (now under the jurisdiction of Huludao), Chaoyang turned to the east, across the Yiwulu Mountain to the northeast town of Liaoyang; One is along the Bohai Sea, Shanhaiguan - Suizhong - Ningyuan - Jinxi - Songshan - Jinzhou. As long as Huang Taiji is not a fool, he knows to build a fortress at the exit of these two roads, leaving a small number of troops to garrison, if the Ming army attacks him, he can slowly mobilize in the rear, and then send troops to rescue, given that defense is a stronger form of combat than attack, the victory of the Houjin army is a high probability event. On the other hand, after the Later Jin took control of Mongolia and Korea and solved the Dongjiang Town in southern Liaoning, he could choose to strike at any point from Xuanda to Shanhaiguan for more than a thousand miles, and the Ming Dynasty was unable to organize an effective defense at all, and the offensive and defensive momentum was undoubtedly revealed.

Fortunately, the talent of the commander was not the only factor that determined the victory, otherwise Hannibal and Pyrrhus would not have lost to the Romans. After all, no matter how awesome Huang Taiji's talent is, it will also be limited by its resources and internal and external political conditions, to put it bluntly, war is just a continuation of politics, and genius generals are just politicians' **** throughout the ages, and there are many great commanders who have won hundreds of battles on the battlefield throughout the ages, but finally lost the empire and their own heads. As a newly rising power, Houjin was not only a threat to the Ming Dynasty, but also a threat to the Mongols, the Jurchens of the East China Sea, North Korea and other forces in Northeast Asia. The key to victory in the Ming-Jin War was not in Jinzhou or Songshan, but in the Jurchens of the East China Sea and in Mobei, and only by threatening the Songliao Plain, the core part of the Later Jin regime, could it be forced to withdraw its forces from the frontal front in western Liaoning, and force it to fight on two or three sides, and only then would the situation of the war turn for the better. In order to achieve this goal, there are many difficulties to overcome, and there is a heavy price to pay, but those are only tactical details, and after the strategy is drawn up, those should be the things that the subordinate officers think about how to achieve it.

This was the result of Liu Cheng's careful thinking about the battle situation during the siege of Holinger, and he revealed some of his ideas to Yang Sichang in order to win the support of the other party, but concealed the details of the implementation. Because he is deeply suspicious of the level of secrecy of the imperial high-level, if you study a little research on the actions of the Later Jin army in the history of the war in the late Ming Dynasty, you will find that many of its actions are very targeted and predictable, which is only two possibilities: 1. Among the generals of the Later Jin, there are archmages of the prophecy system; 2. They are very good at intelligence work. Liu Cheng didn't want his army to be a victim of the stupidity of some of the empire's top brassips.

Che Sang looked at Liu Cheng who was frowning, as a confidant, he knew very well how ambitious this general's ambition and vision were, and the longer he followed Liu Cheng, the more surprised he was by the breadth of Liu Cheng's knowledge, and there seemed to be a strange world hidden in that smooth brain. As if there was nothing in this world that he didn't know, always looking far away, always one step ahead, Chesang once wanted to speculate about the origin of these insights, but in the end it ended in failure, and finally he gave a quite Buddhist answer - the reincarnation of the Bodhisattva, born with Su Hui, is naturally different. What could be more ambitious as a monk than to follow a man who was born with wisdom?

The sound of exchanging sentry orders came from outside the window, which woke Liu Cheng up from his thoughts, and he walked to the window and looked downstairs. I saw that the two sentries were changing the guard, and the moonlight shone on the iron armor on their bodies, adding a little chill. It's already March, if it's already the season of willows and peach and plum smiles in Jiangnan, right? But in this naturalized city outside the plug, after dark, the wind is still like a knife, and the skin is about to crack, and it is no wonder that Jiangnan is rich in merry talents and beautiful flowers; And here there is only Tie Erlang, a heroine. Thinking of this, Liu Cheng couldn't help but look at a bright window on the third floor opposite, which was the residence of his wife and children, his heart was warm, and his face couldn't help but be a little softer.

"My lord, I thought that the Chechen Khan Shuo base still had to be slowly figured out! Hurry up but don't get there! ”

Chesang's voice pulled Liu Cheng back from his reverie, and his gaze turned to Chesang, and in the lama's gaze he could see the fiery enthusiasm. What this person wants is the prosperity of the Gelug sect, and what he wants is the blessing of reincarnation. It's good, as long as you ask for something, it's easy to say, I'm afraid that you are a person who has no desires and no desires. Thinking of this, a smile appeared on Liu Cheng's face: "Why do you say that?" ”

"Your Excellency, do you know? How many iron pots has Chechen Taiji bought from us in the past four months? Nine thousand, is he going to change his career to become a chef? (To be continued.) )