Until the attack of the Rangai, the Cannes coalition army and the Yelushuo ancient tribe, the two armies only advanced four or five hundred miles to the north, and the accompanying 200,000 Liao prisoners were scattered under the supervision of the Ming army and began to build military fortresses.

According to the instructions of Baili Wuji, each fortress was a circular building with a diameter of two miles, one zhang and seven feet high, with three layers of shooting holes from seven feet above, and small batteries were set up on the city wall, and each city was equipped with 800 musketeers, 16 cannons, and a reserve of food and ammunition that could hold on for six months.

With these fortified cities, even if the Obstruction Rangers can cut off or even outflank the rear routes of the New Army, with these fortified cities separated by hundreds of miles, the New Army can quickly turn back and counterattack within one day and open up the supply lines again.

Baili Wuji is not worried about the combat strength of the new army, but he is deeply afraid that the new army will be besieged by the blocking army using the vast desert in the north, so he would rather sacrifice time than fight steadily in order to complete the battle.

In fact, the ancestor of the Tatars, that is, the Mongols of later generations, were mainly engaged in nomadism, supplemented by hunting, and were still in the era of slavery. Its homeland is concentrated south of Lake Baikal, between the Ulugu and Tuvula rivers.

At the end of the Tang Dynasty, the tribe had not yet been able to form a unified tribe and could not compete with the Khitan, and in 918 (the third year of the Liao Dynasty), the tribe had sent an envoy to pay tribute to the Liao Sui. In 924 (the third year of Liao Tianzan), Abaoji went westward, and all the tribes were "looking at the wind and surrendering", and three tribes were relocated.

After that, the various ministries often sent tributes to Liao. The tribute is horse, camel, mink, mouse skin and other things. Soon, because the Liao royal family was insatiable. Constantly increase the annual tribute of the tribes, and the tribes are miserable, so they rebel and obey. Become the most difficult tribe in Liao to subdue.

The most important reason for this is that the territory of Zhubu is too vast, often hundreds of miles without people, the Liao army has not been able to form an effective logistics system at that time, and often the grain and straw needed for the supply of men and horses are solved on the spot in the form of "grass and valley", so it is difficult to deal with nomads like Zhubu completely.

It is often as soon as the Liao army arrives. The tribes of Bubu heard the wind and fled, and when the Liao army withdrew, they still returned to their original places. Business as usual.

Even several tribes united a little and sent a small group of men and horses to attack the back of the Liao army, which made the Liao army miserable.

It was precisely because of the continuous conquest with the Liao army that the various tribes of Zhubu began to truly establish a tribal alliance. Elect a leader. Calling it the "Great King of Obstruction", he set up his administrative office on the west bank of the Ulugu River and set up Zhenzhou on the east bank, and hoarded a large number of troops to prevent the sudden invasion of the Liao army.

Baili Wuji has the experience of later generations, and naturally can understand the horror of the ranger infested in the depths of the desert, so he has the will to let Yunyang and Ding Sijin build fortresses every hundred miles.

If the rangers are like ghosts in the desert, then these fortresses are the spirit monuments. There are grenades, muskets, artillery far, medium and near, high and low crossfire configurations and the laying of mines around the fort. The price it took for the rangers to conquer the fortress was quite terrifying.

And the other way of the new army. That is, Baili Yibu is different, he went west along the Huang River, reached the end of the Huang River, turned northwest, and rushed straight to Zhubu Zhenzhou.

In fact, the victory or defeat of this war does not depend on the level of the new army's combat strength, but on logistics, the new army's 300,000 troops marched thousands of miles, which tested the Ming country's logistics supply ability, which was quite difficult for this era.

Fortunately, Baili Wuji has continued to build official roads over the years, connecting the north, south, east and west, so that the ordnance resources south of the Yangtze River can continue to move north. Moreover, because the whale swallowed the Zhou State, it was convenient to quickly mobilize the materials to the north of Fengzhou.

But after Fengzhou, you can only rely on one fortress per hundred li as a supply point.

In this Northern Expedition, the Ming State issued imperial court bonds to raise funds, and recruited the people to serve as people's husbands, and the main source of people's husbands was still the people of the former Zhou State north of the Yangtze River.

The living standards of the people of the Ming Kingdom are much higher than those in the north, and they are no longer attracted by the people's salaries, only the people of the former Zhou Kingdom in the north are still flocking to sign up for this.

It is precisely because of this, but after millions of people were recruited, the government and the opposition of the former Zhou State quickly settled down, and the requisition of millions of people solved the problem of eating for millions of families, which Baili Wuji did not expect in advance.

Seeing this benefit, Baili Wuji ordered the expansion of the requisitioned posts, expanding the upper limit of the requisitioned people to 2 million, and ordered that if the expropriated people were willing to stay in the northern blockade, they could get three acres of land per capita for free.

Two million households are already more than 10% of the registered taxpayer population for the original Zhou State, and it is difficult to solve the livelihood of this population living at the lowest end, and it is difficult for the society to be unstable.

At the beginning of April, a battle report came from the coalition forces of Langgai and Juansi, which said: "When the 100,000 allied troops crossed the Xuelinge River in the south, they were strongly blocked by the 100,000 blocking army. ”

Seeing this battle report, Baili Wuji smiled, he knew that it was too normal for the coalition army to be blocked when crossing the Xue Lingge River in the south, once the coalition army successfully crossed the river, it would be a flat river to the palace of the Great Prince, and the Hinder army would definitely not let the coalition army cross the river lightly.

And the war report said that the coalition army was "fighting bloodily", this word Baili Wuji naturally categorically did not believe it, and the two clans of Lang Gai and Zhijia chose to surrender when they faced the catastrophe of annihilation under the blow of the Ming army, which does not mean that they are really willing to surrender to the Ming State, but it is just a cheap plan forced by the form.

Baili Wuji guessed that this was just a delaying tactic by the coalition army, and the coalition army wanted to sit on the north bank of the Xue Lingge River and watch the tiger fight, if the Ming army had the advantage in the future, then they would naturally cross the river and establish meritorious deeds in order to ask for rewards from the Ming state; If the Ming army is unfavorable, they will naturally lead the army back to the north, and from then on, they will break away from the rule of the Central Plains court again, and live a leisurely life from the north, after all, the Central Plains is too far away from the land of the two tribes, and it is even unknown that they may even collude with the Obstruction Army to defeat the Ming Army of the Northern Expedition in one fell swoop.

Baili Wuji threw the battle report aside, he didn't plan to pin his hopes on the alliance of the two clans, and let them send troops south just to cover the northern expedition of the three-way new army and attract the attention of the obstruction army, but now that the coalition army has reached the north bank of the Xue Lingge River, this goal has been achieved, as for whether the coalition army will attack with all its strength according to its own will, Baili Wuji does not care.

In mid-April, Yelu Shuogu led 80,000 tribal troops to the east bank of the Tuwura River, and was also stationed on the east bank to confront the Obstruction Army, which was called "waiting for the emperor's new will." (To be continued......)