Chapter 326: The Battle of Tangshan

As soon as Xiao Shili retreated to Shicheng, he retreated to the threshold of the Liaoxi Corridor, and Li Yancong and the soldiers and horses that had previously driven to Zunhua also went south to attack, and the large army of Tiance Tang Army from the west, north and south was connected.

After Yelu Lihu arrived in Luanzhou, he urgently summoned Xiao Zhili, Xiao Zhili asked Du Chongwei to guard the stone city, and rushed to Luanzhou alone, as soon as they met, Yelu Lihu pointed to his nose and asked: "Jurisdiction, if you dare to retreat without a fight, you are not afraid of my military law!" ”

Xiao Zhili knew that Yelu Lihu wanted to get rid of himself for a long time, but he was called here by him under the pretext of suffering, and he knew that there would be no good results. He withdrew from the army before, relying on believing in the judgment of Yelu Hugo, but there was no hard reason to come up with, it was estimated that reasoning at this time may not be useful, so he simply stiffened back and said: "Fight with soldiers, advance and retreat all depend on the judgment of the main general, I think the army should be withdrawn, so the retreat, that is, in the era of the Emperor of Heaven, there is no reason that only advance is not allowed to retreat!" ”

Yelu Lihu said angrily: "You are cowardly defeated and retreated, as if there is a reason for it!" If I don't kill you today, the law of my army will not exist! Come on, drag it out and cut it off! ”

Yelu was shocked, and ran over and shouted, "Li Hu! Kill the general before the battle, can you still fight this battle? ”

Sachel also hurriedly dissuaded, and said: "Tens of thousands of troops in Shicheng have been obeying his orders, and now they have suddenly killed Xiao Shili, just afraid that the former army will mutiny." ”

Han Deshu also said: "Exactly, now we have to fight, and it is ominous to kill, so it is better to send him a life and wait for the future to make meritorious contributions." ”

It was easy to say that Yelu Lihu was persuaded to stop, but the capital crime escaped. Living sin was inevitable, Yelu Li Hu was furious and ordered him to be pushed out and whipped twenty lashes, and then let him go back to lead the army.

Xiao Zhili was drawn to the ground. He couldn't ride a horse, so he could only lie on the horse's back, Yelu Wu sent him out, his eyes were tearful, Xiao Shili was disheartened, but he couldn't see the man crying, and gritted his teeth and said: "You can't die if you smoke twenty lashes." Privy what are you crying about! ”

Yelu Wu cried: "I'm not crying for you, I'm crying for my Khitan to die soon!" Li Huli wanted to be smoked and was instigated by Cha Cut. The Empress Dowager was deceived by the love of her parents and children, and she was determined to set up Li Hu and ruin the rivers and mountains of Liaodong, which were originally easy to unify! Now, even if Zhang Mai doesn't attack, our Daliao itself will collapse. Not to mention looking at the shape of the eyes shΓ¬ in front of the eyes. Zhang Mai will have a future! ”

He pulled Xiao Shili's shoulders and said, "Li Hu is wantonly messing around, but the country is in danger!" Governor, make your heart bigger, tolerate it for the time being, and don't delay the war. If we can try to save a little more vitality for the country now, we may have a glimmer of life in the future. ”

Xiao Shili looked up at the dark night sky and said, "House quality, I don't have as good a mind as you. The country...... Do whatever you want. I am a Khitan. The hatred with Zhang Mai is as deep as the sea, and he has no face to cast into heaven. Otherwise, under such a shape, I really want to surrender to the enemy! ”

He patted his horse and went back to Stone City.

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Yelu returned to the camp and said to Yelu Lihu, "Regent! The reason why you really led troops to the west was because you thought that the surprise attack on crossing the sea had achieved amazing feats, and now that the surprise attack on crossing the sea has failed, and your original goal has been achieved, why don't you start this class? ”

Yelu Li said angrily: "You and I are Xiao Shili, and you also come to escape without a fight? ”

Yelu Wu had to persuade again, Yelu Li Hu pointed to the tent door and said, "Get out!" ”

Even the Bodhisattva was on fire and left angrily.

Sachel said: "Although Xiao Shili is a person from the southern faction, he has always been good at fighting, and he has always guarded Yuguan, and he knows that the Tang people are false and real, and he must have made a judgment if he retreated without a fight this time." Luancheng Stone City is not a place to defend, so it is better to retreat to Yuguan. ”

Yelu Lihu drew a whip and struck it on Sachar's head, and said angrily, "You want me to be a coward too?" ”

Han Deshu shouted: "The regent ......" Before the words were spoken, he was also whipped on the head. Both of them were in pain and escaped from the tent.

Samcoth came out and sighed.

Han Deshu said: "Now the king is on fire, and he can't listen to what we say." ”

Sachel said: "No one provokes him, what is he angry about." The fire in the jurisdiction was deliberately embarrassed by the southern faction, and now it is drawn on our heads, what is this! ”

Han Deshu said in a low voice: "After all, the Tang Dynasty was proposed by the regent, and now that the army is not going well, can he not get angry?" ”

Sachel suddenly realized, and said, "It's just ...... Shili and Du Chongwei were forced back, and this battle was only afraid that it would not be easy to fight. "He has personally experienced the battle of Linhuang Mansion, and he still has lingering palpitations.

Han Deshu said: "Even if you can't win, you have to fight, otherwise you will have to retreat without a fight." If you have fought a battle, no matter if you win or lose, you can come back in the end. Let's just say that we went west out of Yuguan and taught the Tang people a hard lesson, plundered Tianjin, forced Youzhou, broke Luanzhou, destroyed Shicheng, and then won the class, right? ”

Sachel smiled wryly.

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Yelu Li Hu did not listen to the advice of his subordinates, and was determined to fight with the Tang Dynasty, and gathered troops on the same day, this time he claimed to have 500,000 troops in the west, in fact, even the people who escorted the grain were not counted as this number, and the leather room army that fell into his hands was only more than 10,000 people, and the rest of the Xi and Hui tribes were more than 20,000 troops, plus other troops including Du Chongwei in Xiao Zhili, barely 150,000, and some of them were still supervising the transportation of grain and grass in the western Liaoning corridor and guarding the passes, and the troops that could be mobilized at this time were only 120,000.

The Tang army closed on three sides and gathered 55,000 troops in the plain in front of the Yanshan Mountains - the Tang army was fighting on its own, the supply line was extremely short, and these more than 50,000 people were pure combat troops, and the Privy Council did not need to temporarily recruit people to support the front line.

The two sides moved their troops one by one, and the other gradually approached, and finally a skirmish took place. Xiao Shili was on the front line, trying his best to maintain the battle line, and the two sides had mutual victory and defeat, but the Tang army's unit casualty rate was much higher than that of the Liao army. For example, today, the Tang Dynasty is on the rise, and the morale, physique, and fighting spirit of the army are at their peak.

Further east from Yutian County, the terrain gradually narrows. In the vicinity of Shicheng County, there is not much room for maneuver between the north and the south. The war intensified, and eventually the two sides became entangled in the plains near Tangshan, where Li Shimin, Taizong of the Tang Dynasty, had stationed troops on his two expeditions to the east. Therefore, it was named Tangshan.

On this day, Yelu Lihu summoned the generals and said: "Let's have a good rest today, go out to battle tomorrow, and defeat the Tang army for me!" ”

On this day, the armies of both sides occupied their own positions in the plain in front of Yanshan Mountain and lined up in formation.

In the era of cold weapons, soldiers followed the generals, but with the progress of military technology. Some of the things are changing. After the reorganization of Yanjing last time, the troops of the Yanjing Military Region, at this time, a government, a battalion, and a team crisscrossed the battlefield. This area is a chariot group, this area is an infantry battalion, the fortifications are hidden behind, and the cavalry is interspersed. All of them are based on the terrain and the battle situation is arranged.

Yelu Lihu is still an old method of warfare. Part of the cavalry was divided to occupy various high points, the main force was Du Chongwei's infantry as the first part, the cavalry in Xiao Shili was the second part, and he led the army as the third part, and after the formation, he ordered an attack.

Du Chongwei, who was put in the position of cannon fodder, secretly complained, but still had to go into battle under the urging of the war drums.

Watching Du Chongwei's troops set off, Yelu Lihu smiled at Sacha and said, "Let these Han people take the lead and consume the strength of the Tang people." ”

The Tang army saw that the enemy took the initiative to attack. On the contrary, the Chinese army retreated slightly, but there was constant cavalry movement on both flanks. There was also no shield at the front of the Don army. Seeing that the enemy took the initiative to attack, he just squatted down and waited for the enemy to approach.

Xiao Shili saw that Du Chongwei's troops were grinding and timid, and said angrily: "Before the war, defeat is defeat, death is death, it is always refreshing, so flashing and shrinking, it makes people upset!" "Order the front cavalry to become a warlord, and those who dare to delay will be killed!

Du Chongwei's subordinates were forced, so they charged with all their might.

Looking at the approach of the two sides, the drums suddenly sounded in the Tang army's formation, followed by two cannon shots.

The front-line infantry gave way to more than eighty gaps, and the fortifiers pushed out more than eighty carts and quickly fixed them, on which were placed more than eighty dark green and faint things, which looked like copper pipes.

Yelu Lihu watched the battle with a clairvoyant mirror and exclaimed, "What is this?" ”

But I don't know that this is the Tang Army only half a year ago to develop and put into production of large-caliber copper firearms, the shape is stout, the mouth of the gun is a large bowl mouth, the breech is thick and long, the tail end is flat, although there is still a great distance from the artillery imagined by Zhang Mai, and the cost is still high, but it is already the limit of military technology in this era.

At this time, the Liao army forward approached a few steps closer, and faintly, someone in the rear of the Tang army shouted: "Prepare ......"

Yelu Li Hu said: "Tang people know how to pretend to be gods and ghosts!" Let the sons and daughters prepare! As soon as the Tang manpower is almost exhausted, let the horse and trample on it......"

Before he finished speaking, he suddenly heard dozens of loud bangs in a row, like thunder, which shocked Yelu Li Hu and almost swallowed it back in one breath!

The whole Khitan army was so frightened by this sudden earth-shattering noise that people screamed and neighed, and they all discussed: "What is that!" What is that! Thunder? "Did the Han people invite Thor?"

At the same time as the chatter, seventy-nine iron projectiles exploded into the Khitan forward formation, and at the same time, more than 200 mobile catapults and more than 100 bed crossbows in the rear were launched together, and hundreds of fireballs came into the air!

The cannonballs fired by the artillery collided head-on with the huge arrows fired from the bed crossbow, and those who were hit by the cannonballs were broken, and those who were hit by the bed crossbow were even worse, and three or four people were nailed into a string!

The fireball fell from the sky, and the fireball was mixed with explosives and oil refining bombs, and after landing, they burned when they encountered fire, and the oil refining bombs splashed out of the oil refining and burned into a lake of fire.

Two of the more than eighty guns were blown up, two were dumb, and the rest continued to reload and shoot after being poured and cooled, but the catapults operated almost continuously, and the subsequent fireballs, explosives and oil refining bombs continued to be projected!

Yelu Lihu led a grassland army in a state of prosperity and decline, but what he faced was a combination of a peak army of cold weapons and a force that stepped on the threshold of hot weapons! In all fairness, the casualties caused by the artillery unit this time were far inferior to the catapults and bed crossbows, but the power that erupted when they first appeared shocked the entire Khitan army!

"Whew, whewβ€”"

The artificial roar was sent out in front of the Tang army formation in the west, and the armored infantry of the four provinces marched in line, and at the same time, the left and right wings each gave way to several passages, and from each of them rushed out of the passage two thousand heavy armored cavalry, all wearing helmets, and the horses were wrapped in armor, and the ground was heavy, like a hammer striking, long knives and spears, straight through the formation!

"Datang - mighty - kill!"

At this time, Du Chongwei had been hit by artillery and smashed by oil refining bombs, and his whole person was already a blur of flesh and blood - on such a battlefield. Even if the commander hides in the middle of the soldiers, there is no sense of security at all!

Yelu Li Hu looked at it with his mouth stammered, his face was red, Xiao Shili seemed to have lost half of his soul, and suddenly understood the meaning of Yelu Huge's sentence "can't be beaten"!

The artillery died down. The artillery throwing gradually stopped, and the heavy cavalry entered the front line of the Liao army, which had been eroded.

Du Chongwei's troops collapsed on all fronts, the seriously injured struggled, the crying father who was not dead and called his mother, and thousands of people fled regardless of their legs. Reverse rush to the Khitan Chinese army.

The terrifying formation just now has already made the three armies of the Liao army frightened, if they are still in the state before Linhuang Mansion. With the courage of the elite of the leather room, he can fight to the death, but since the defeat of Linhuang Mansion, the fear of the Khitan people for Tiance Tang Qi has been implanted deep in their hearts. At this time, they were reminded of their terrifying memories by this dazzling scene, and then they were rushed by their own forwards, the Chinese army followed the chaos, and the heavy cavalry of the Tang army followed and killed. The Khitan Chinese army collapsed.

In the midst of the fight. The follow-up heavy infantry arrived, leaving no more enemies to fight wherever they went!

In the face of such an overwhelming situation, the Khitan rear army had begun to loosen before the battle, and Sacai was a person who had experienced the fiasco of Linhuang Mansion, and at this time, he was like a frightened bird, pulling Yelu Lihu's horse head and saying: "Great king! I can't beat it! Let's go! ”

As he spoke, he took his cronies and fled! Han Deshu's head shrank and fled, and Yelu Lihu lost his soul and retreated east under the support of his personal guards. As soon as the coach moved, the Khitan rear army was in chaos!

The horns of the various departments of the Tang Army sounded loudly!

This is not a signal for combat!

This is the sound of chasing the dead and chasing the north!

The light cavalry crossed the infantry formation. Connected to the scene that the heavy cavalry had created, it was divided into dozens of teams of men and horses, like white lines, black lines, and gray lines, like mercury leaking into the Khitan rebellion, rushing to kill the counterattackers, killing the fugitives, and tearing all the Hulu! Stampeing all enemies!

Yelu Lihu was so killed that he didn't even go into Luanzhou, and fled directly into Yuguan.

And at the rear, the sappers of the Tang army packed up their equipment, and the auxiliaries rushed forward with knives, cleaned up the battlefield, received prisoners, rested on heavy horses, recaptured the city on heavy steps, and the light cavalry swept all the ground west of Yuguan, recovering all the territories that had been temporarily lost in the past month or so!

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This night, Yuguan was full of crying, not crying for the dead comrades-in-arms, but crying for the hopeless future!

This battle lost the last bit of courage in the hearts of the Khitan people.

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Yelu Li Hu sat in the Yuguan Marshal's Mansion, like a lost soul, like a lost soul, and became unshaven overnight, and his eyes were distracted. People who were more violent than anyone else before the war become extremely cowardly once they lose.

No one dared to come forward to ask him for a long time, for fear of touching the mold and dying in his hands, and finally Yelu said: "The matter has come to this, and it is useless to say anything else." Fortunately, Yuguan is still there! Although the firearms of the Tang people are powerful, they may not be able to kill them in a hurry. Learning from the pain, the endgame can still be saved. ”

Seeing that Yelu Lihu did not react, the generals breathed a sigh of relief, and expressed their opinions one after another, and Xiao Shili, who was seriously injured in his left leg, listened impatiently, and stationed a cane and said, "I'll go to patrol the city." ”

At this time, Han Deshu stood up and said: "We provoked this battle, and now it is unfortunate...... Unfortunately did not win the war, do you send an envoy to probe the tone of the Tang people and see what they mean? Again, you can also probe the reality of the other party. ”

Yelu nodded and said, "Send a messenger to come over, you should do it." Just who's going to go? ”

The generals in the hall looked at each other, and no one answered. Tiance's tough attitude towards the Khitan is known to the world, even if he does not die, he will be humiliated, and the battlefield is vivid, and everyone has palpitations.

Han Deshu rolled his eyes and said: "Now that the army is cold, you can't just send someone who can't be done, so as not to fall into the prestige of our army, you must appoint an important minister." General Sachat, why don't you go and explore the reality of the Tang people? ”

Sasha shuddered and said angrily: "I am the deputy commander of the first army, how can I move lightly!" Whoever builds yΓ¬, who goes! ”

The Khitan generals said yes one after another, and they all shouted: "Yes! Right! Whoever builds yΓ¬, who goes! ”

Han Deshu's face was embarrassed, but the more he was like this, the more the Khitan generals forced him, and in the end, he had no choice but to agree. He begged a few Khitans to accompany him out, but no one was willing, so he had to take a few of his henchmen out of the customs, hold up a small flag, and go to the Tang army.

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After Han Deshu left, Yeluwu was uneasy. He had been gone for several days and had not returned, and there was no news at all.

And the Tang army did not attack the city, but was only besieged outside Yuguan, and I didn't know what it was waiting for.

After five days like this, Han Deshu still did not come back.

Yeluwu sensed that something was wrong, and went through the things about Han Deshu in his mind, and figured them out with the worst thoughts, and shouted violently: "This Han Deshu! I'm afraid that if I go to the enemy, I won't come back...... Yes! Not good! Not good! Big things are not good! ”

Left and right asked: "Privy, what's wrong?" ”

Yelu Wu shouted: "The Han clan has surrendered to the enemy, but I am afraid that it is not today...... He...... Not good! I'm afraid there will be changes in the country! ”

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Far East. Liaojin.

On this day, a sailor guarding the water gate woke up after taking a nap, suddenly pushed his companion who was still sleeping next to him and said, "Hey, look! What is that? ”

At sea level, one point, two points, three points gradually appeared......

There are more and more black spots, and the last thing that catches your eye is a fleet!

"Oh! What's going on, how can there be a fleet at a time like this? ”

β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€”β€” (To be continued......)