The Tulong Army's first war experience in Jingxiang is over, but the war continues to spread throughout Jinghu.

Although Shi Tianze, who retreated to the north, was defeated in Laoyashanzhai, when he crossed the Han River, he used a group of warships looted by Mongolia to deal a severe blow to the Song army's naval army near Xiangyang.

At that time, the Song army's naval camp on the rocky beach of Hanshui threatened the Mongol army going south and north, Shi Tianze ordered ten warships to challenge, and withdrew immediately after the Song warships were dispatched to meet the attack. When the Song army returned to Shuizhai, they sent ships to provoke, so that the Song army and the navy finally became careless and ignored the enemy's provocations.

At this time, Shi Tianze led the temporarily formed naval fleet to suddenly attack and violently attack the Song army's water village, killing the Song army, which was originally good at water warfare, was defeated, all the warships were destroyed, and the camp was razed.

At the same time, the Mongol army penetrated deep into Huaixi and entered the territory of Huangpi, which was under the jurisdiction of the Huaixi Envoy Division, and burned and killed. The cities of Suizhou and Xinyang, located on the border of Song and Mongolia, were also attacked.

Suizhou Zhizhou heard rumors that as long as he sent people to the Mongolian military camp to pass through and offer gold, silver and jewelry, he would be protected from attack, so he hurriedly looted a batch of gold and silver, including gold bottles, gold plates and silver plates, as well as a large number of tea goods and cloths, and sent them to the camp of the Mongolian front commander Tachar.

Their attitude of appeasement and surrender profoundly affected the northern generals of the front-line states and counties, who were originally the generals of the Jin State, and soon the generals of the northern army of Gushi, Yongzhou and Yingtian all surrendered to the Mongols, and the Song Dynasty fought bloodily for several years to recover the prefectures and counties that were not easy to recover from Henan, and almost all of them were lost in an instant.

Ironically, after receiving the tribute from Suizhou, Tachar immediately ordered an attack on Suizhou City. When Suizhou Zhizhou panicked and wanted to escape, the state city was already surrounded by the Mongols. Fortunately, the soldiers of the city fought bravely and reluctantly repelled Tachar's army.

In addition to attacking Suizhou, the Mongols also laid siege to Xizhou, Guanghua and other places, and sent partial divisions to continuously put pressure on Xiangyang, which was heavily garrisoned by the Song army.

On 19 November, the Mongol cavalry crossed the Han River again and camped on the banks of the Tanxi River near Xiangyang, with a strength of about 6,000 or 7,000 cavalry. The next day, the Song general Yu Zhe rushed out of the city of Xiangyang to engage the enemy, but was defeated and lost thousands of men. On the third day, the Song army increased its forces and attacked again, defeated the enemy's cavalry, and forced it to retreat back to the north bank of the Han River.

In December, the Mongol army besieged Fancheng again, and the Song army attacked in three ways, and fought with the Mongol army in the northwest of Fancheng. Zhao Fan immediately reported the victory to the imperial court.

But soon the Mongols made a comeback, harassing the countryside near Xiangyang with their rangers.

Zheng Yunming kept writing letters to Zhao Fan in Xiangyang City, hoping to lead the army out to Xiangyang to defend the safety of the envoys.

"Honestly stay south!" Zhao Zhizhi in the war will not have a good attitude: "The imperial court will naturally arrange rescue troops,

Stay until you receive a new order from the Commander! ”

Zhao Fan has this self-confidence, and it is impossible for the imperial court to sit idly by and watch the spine of the world fall into the hands of Mongolia.

Of course, the imperial court will not sit idly by.

But there was only one reinforcement from Lin'an at the first time.

This is an old man who is fifty-seven years old and has never been on the battlefield since he was born.

On November 6 of the second year of Duanping, the imperial court officially issued an edict from Wei Liaoweng, the secretary of the Ministry of Rites, to supervise the soldiers and horses of Jinghu, and handed over all the soldiers and horses in the Jinghu area to the important ministers sent by the central government.

This Confucian scholar who made the world's scholars look up to him, and the leader of Shilin, who was admired by the people of the time, resolutely put down the brush in his hand and picked up the shiny pocket when the motherland needed it most.

And the Song Dynasty couldn't even find the staff assigned to him at this time. Although in the eyes of scholars at that time and later generations, Wei Liaoweng was a great scholar and a sincere gentleman. But in the eyes of the nobles and bureaucrats of Lin'an Mansion, Wei Liaoweng was just an old official of the official residence and the Ministry of Rites. Most of the staff he recruited according to the recommendation of his friends resigned for various reasons, in fact, he was nothing more than disgusted with Wei Liaoweng's lack of qualifications and lack of experience in commanding military horses.

And the military ministers he recruited to prepare to serve as the first-line commanders, or the close followers of the emperor of the palace. or the confidants of the local commander, they also ignored the new governor's requisition order, so that when Wei Liaoweng set off from Lin'an, the subordinate officials of the Jinghu Governor's Mansion had not yet been gathered.

The financial embarrassment made his burden even heavier, and the funds promised by the imperial court were 1,000 taels of gold, 50,000 taels of silver, and 5 million taels of banknotes, but only 3 million taels were actually received.

Wei Liaoweng, who lacked human and financial resources, also decided to launch a comprehensive rescue of Jinghu on the spot.

He first wrote a letter to Zhao Fan, the ambassador of Jinghu in Xiangyang, and asked him to make use of his good relations with the northerners' army for several years to advise Chang Jin and Xia Quan, the rebel leaders of De'an Province, who had surrendered to the Mongol army, to return to the Great Song Dynasty.

De'an is located in the center of the entire Jinghu defense area, and if the rebellion in De'an Province can be solved bloodlessly first, it can cause a lot of trouble to the Mongols who are attacking from all sides.

Then he wrote a letter to Zheng Yunming, the governor of the Jinghu Command Envoy Sizhi Yingtian, who was stationed at the foot of Laoya Mountain in the south of Xiangyang, ordering him to lead his troops to Yingzhou to prevent De'an's rebels from suddenly attacking Yingzhou to occupy the Hanshui Pass and block the imperial court's support for Xiangyang.

He also sent an official letter to Huang Bogu, the deputy envoy for the establishment of the Yangtze River, ordering him to strengthen the defense of the river and strictly prevent the Mongol cavalry from seizing civilian boats and smuggling across the river.

Worried about the unstable situation in Ezhou, he specially appointed a general named Yang Yi to rush to the Ezhou River to command the defense.

In the end, he did something that was of profound significance to the development of later history, and the importance of this event was not known at the time.

Wei Liaoweng ordered people to carry the list of 200 governors and send them to all parts of Jinghu along the river to post them, the content was the invasion of the northern Tatars, hoping that the powerful families in various places would take action, recruit Ding Zhuang, handle unity, and fight with the enemy in order to protect Sangzi, and if there is a winning official government, they will be rewarded.

At the time, this was just a normal reaction of the imperial court in the event of an enemy invasion, but it had a completely different effect from the previous policies.

After all the preparations were completed, Wei Liaoweng ordered the various units of the Song army stationed downstream, such as Li Hu, the commander of Zhenjiang, Wang Jian, the commander of Jiankang, and Yang Fuxing, the deputy commander of Quanjiang Prefecture, to go to Xiangyang to rescue, and the troops in the hands of these people were only more than 10,000 people.

The imperial court did not attach much importance to the Governor's Office, and the Duanping Emperor almost gave him his talents prepared for the later political affairs hall: he ordered Wu Qian, the champion of the Jiading Ten Year Gold List, to serve as Wei Liaoweng's staff officers, and Zhao Shanhan and Ma Guangzu to serve as senators.

It's just that the funds are still not sufficient.

Finally, on December 14, the imperial court ordered the Jinghu army to resign to Emperor Duanping, and began his journey to supervise the entire Jinghu theater with his shogunate, guards, and subordinate officials.

At this time, what this world-famous university scholar did not know was that a disaster that could shake the foundation of the Great Song Dynasty was waiting for him.

On December 20, the main force of the Tulong Army had entered Yingzhou to garrison.

During this month's recuperation period, Zheng Yunming did several things.

He recruited new recruits from the civilians who had fled to Laoyashanzhai and Shatou to make up for the shortfall in battle damage. Anyway, now is the season of war and chaos, and no one is in the mood to really investigate whether the army is overstaffed, as long as it can provide food and salary, the court will not ask how many people are recruited.

So he secretly increased the number of the Tulong Army to 8,000 people.

It's just that although there is no one to manage the number of the Tulong army, but there is no local commander who can take care of the excess food and salary, the Mongols are attacking Jinghu everywhere after the autumn, and the autumn harvest and tax and grain collection in the entire Jinghu area have been greatly damaged, not to mention Zheng Yunming's troops, even the troops of Xiangyang and Jiangling are only barely supporting by the treasury of previous years.

Zheng Yunming had no choice but to use the old method to fight the autumn wind of local tyrants and inferior gentry.

Liu Tingmei in front of him was organizing the Zhuang Ding tenants to fight with the Mongols, of course he was embarrassed and couldn't ask for money now.

Fortunately, several big households on the south bank of the Yangtze River, Cao Wenqi from Ezhou, Zhang Yu from Dongting, Song Weiting from Zhijiang County, and Jia Gongliang from Yidu County are still living a leisurely life at home.

Zheng Yunming wrote letters separately and sent fine schools to the local tyrants along the river, with the central idea of asking for money.

Cao Wenqi looked at the words "urgent people in danger", "important military affairs" and "Jianghu reluctance" in the letters, and his eyes were all phantoms of Zheng Guanren smiling and taking money out of his pocket.

Cao Wenqi's estate was downstream, and it was hardly disturbed by the Mongol army, so he started the trial production of enamel porcelain much more smoothly than Liu Tingmei. In July, the first batch of qualified enamel porcelain was sent out of the kiln and quickly sent to Jiangnan for sale.

Although the atmosphere of the war was already very tense at this time, Cao Dahu was a big family after all, and he tried every means to dredge the channel, and the fleet arrived in Lin'an Mansion within a month.

The merchant treasure cargo ships from the Nanyang countries to Mingzhou can only come twice a year in April and July because of the sea breeze season. And most of the transportation is Nanyang specialty spices, rhubarb, nutmeg and so on. Whether there is enamel porcelain depends on whether there is a stock in the market in Nanyang. The enamel porcelain in the Nanyang market is transported from the port of Dashiguo across the entire southern ocean, which is very risky, and many enamel porcelain sank into the warm turquoise waters of the southern sea on the way.

Therefore, the enamel porcelain that can come to China thousands of miles away and appear in the shops of Lin'an Mansion is of course a treasure among the treasures.

As soon as Cao Wenqi's batch of enamel porcelain arrived, it immediately set off a storm in the Fan goods market in Lin'an.

Smelling the wind, the large and small treasure merchants and Chinese people in Lin'an gathered in front of Cao Wenqi's Lin'an shop, trying to find out the origin of this batch of big food porcelain.

(All the best for 2014)