Nearly 20,000 Mongol troops began to be assembled near Jiezhou City, and now Tuo Lei regretted a little, he should not have slaughtered Jiezhou so rashly, and set fire to Jiezhou City, if not, he would have obtained a lot of free labor to help them build fortifications, transport grain, and rely on the relatively strong walls of Jiezhou City to fight a decisive battle with the Song army. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

But now he regretted it a little late, after he ordered the slaughter of the entire Jiezhou City, there were only less than three hundred old and weak people left, who were responsible for collecting the corpses, and the Jiezhou City became a dilapidated empty city under one of his fires.

Now that he returned to the army, he even had to send a new army and the Han army to participate in the work of burying the corpses, otherwise so many corpses would be exposed in the wasteland outside the city, and the weather would gradually start to heat up, and it would soon rot, he didn't want to end up with a great plague among his army because of these rotting corpses, otherwise this battle would not have to be fought, and he would have to run back to Xixia to see his father Khan in disgrace.

Just when he was actively preparing to welcome the main force of the Song army to come to fight them, the horse ranger came to report to him, saying that after the Song army marched to Ganquan Town, which was forty miles away from Jiezhou City, it suddenly stopped and continued to advance, and stationed in Ganquan Town.

Tuo Lei immediately arranged for more scouts to go to Ganquan Town to investigate the situation of the Song army, hoping to find out why the Song army suddenly stopped marching and see what they wanted to do.

After Gao Huaiyuan garrisoned Ganquan Town, he no longer continued to advance forward, but set up a huge camp and built a barrier by the mountains and rivers.

At the same time, he transferred 200 veterans from the pro-army and sent them to the Jinzhou army under the command of Lu Youliang, all of whom served as commanders or escorts, and even directly promoted to the top position, which is equivalent to reorganizing this Jinzhou army.

And these people who can be soldiers in Gao Huaiyuan's army, at least they are all people who have military merits above the utility (middle and senior sergeants of the Song army), and they are all very strong, and they have immediately become the backbone of the main force in the army, with their leadership, at least when they are in battle, it is not easy to rout again, and this Jinzhou army has become a soldier and horse that can be used in battle.

As for the Chuzhou Army under Ma Zhong, although it has not been in the army for a long time, Huang Yan has already drawn out the soldiers under his original command and rushed into the army as a low-level officer, which is also an important reason why they can resist the impact of the enemy's cavalry and not rout when they are pursued by Harabars in the mountains.

As for the two thousand elite soldiers left by Yue Kun, they were still handed over to the leader of Zheng Bingjie, although Zheng Bingjie is not good at thinking, but he can be called a fierce general, he dares to meet the enemy on the battlefield, and the battle is very brave, so he is left by Gao Huaiyuan's side, Yue Kun is also much more relieved.

What's more, Zheng Bingjie also admired Gao Huaiyuan very much after the battle to quell the chaos, and it was his wish to stay by Gao Huaiyuan's side to do things, so although Gao Huaiyuan did not have many troops, on the whole, his combat effectiveness was still quite good after resting.

In order to confuse the Mongolian army's meticulous work and scouts, so that it could not find out the truth of the Song army, Gao Huaiyuan made a bad move, every night in the middle of the night will send hundreds or a thousand people, sneak out of the camp, run to the road to the Qifang Pass, and wait until dawn, after changing the flag, return to the camp with great fanfare, and then there will be some more tents in the camp.

In this way, although the Mongol army's meticulous work and scouts monitored the Song army's camp from afar every day, they could not figure out the strength of the Song army's current camp, and could only record the strength of the Song army from Qifang Pass and Xianren Pass every day, so as to add the strength of the Song army that they thought was to calculate the strength of the Song army.

After listening to the news that the scouts kept sending back, Tuo Lei could basically conclude that the reason why the Song army stopped advancing in the direction of Jiezhou was because they were worried about the lack of troops and were mobilizing more troops from the pass, in this case, he had to wait, because according to the scouts, the terrain of Ganquan Town, where the Song army was stationed, was complicated, and it was not suitable for large-scale combat operations at all, and if he wanted to take the initiative to attack, he could only send troops to attack the Song army in batches, which would only form a refueling tactic. The Song army could completely rely on the superiority in strength and eat his soldiers and horses in batches.

Therefore, after coming to the conclusion that the Song army was waiting for reinforcements, Tuo Lei had to wait for the arrival of the Song army in Jiezhou, and when the time came, he would defeat the main force of the Song army near Jiezhou City.

Tuo Lei and all his generals believed that as long as they could defeat this Song army, then the entire Song army's defense of Lizhou would basically collapse, and all that remained was for them to plunder within the Song realm.

But what Tuo Lei didn't expect was that as soon as the Song army stopped like this, it was seven days, and there was no intention of marching towards Jiezhou at all, and his more than 20,000 soldiers and horses, consumed every day, but it was an astronomical amount, because to prepare for a decisive battle with the Song army in Jiezhou, Tuo Lei had to gather his troops, so that they could not send rangers to loot around, and they could not loot, which meant that they had to eat their old books and rely on the grain and grass reserves to survive.

The Mongol army has always rarely carried a large amount of grain and straw to march when sending troops, and their habit is to rely on plundering and looting the enemy's materials to supplement their own consumption, so when they entered the Song Dynasty this time, they were not prepared to transport a large number of grain and materials from the rear to supplement the army's needs.

And the Mongolian soldiers' eating and drinking problems are easy to say, they can drink the mare's milk brought by the army, and they can eat the jerky they carry with them, but this is not a grassland after all, even if the Mongolian horses can tolerate extensive breeding, but after all, you still have to feed them grass! But here are all mountainous areas, water and grass are not very sufficient, to feed them so much war horse consumption, two or three days is no problem, but after a long time, they will have trouble, the forage is insufficient, it is necessary to feed the war horse, otherwise, the war horse will not have the spirit, and will seriously lose fat, when they use them, it will seriously affect the combat effectiveness, but the problem is that they are not enough food, people and horses have to eat, so a few days, The contradiction between the supply and demand of grain began to become prominent, so the Mongol army, which had gathered every day, had to start sending rangers again and began to plunder separately to relieve their food pressure.