Chapter 371: Choice

"I have sworn before that I will fight for my kingdom and my people until the last drop of blood is shed and my last breath is spitted. But God punished me for betraying the Great Song Dynasty, and the allies who had sworn to defend us against all invaders abandoned us at the last moment, and I decided to accept the Song army's conditions and surrender the city! Accepting this fact is more painful than drinking poison, but in order to save my people from the fire, drink it! ”

The next day, the lord of Gaochang announced his decision in the early court, and the ministers of the palace were very surprised by the sudden decision made by the lord, and their hearts were mixed, after all, it was not a glorious thing to be forced to surrender the city, but they were also relieved, after all, the decision of the lord of the country rescued them from the nightmare and saved tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians in the city, but they did not understand why the lord changed his mind overnight.

In fact, Biler was also forced to a desperate decision, he convened several important ministers of the lord last night to discuss and analyze the current situation. It was thought that the people of the city were indignant and dissatisfied with the inaction of the lord, that the army had suffered heavy losses and that there was no desire to fight, and that if anyone jumped out, it would cause a riot, and they could not do anything about it. And the Song army will definitely take advantage of the situation, and the results at that time are unimaginable.

Moreover, it was a foregone conclusion that the Western Liao would be unable to come to the aid of the Seljuk Empire in the face of the invasion, and the opponent they faced was very powerful, an old empire with strong soldiers and horses ruling the whole of West Asia. Although Xiliao is not weak, it has only been established for more than ten years, and there is still a considerable gap between it and Seljuk's strength, and the outcome is unknown. It's okay to win, but once you lose, it will be a disaster for Gaochang. Bilgor knew that the Seljuks were a hundred times more greedy and murderous than the Western Liao and Song people, and that they believed in Islam. The conquered countries will be converted to their religion, or they will die.

Bileco and several ministers did not dare to bet on Xiliao. Because they can't afford to lose. Although the Great Song Dynasty in front of them is an enemy, they are also an empire that has existed for hundreds of years. With the economy of East Asia prosperous, and their emperor also enterprising, the strength of his army was in front of them, and the Western Liao were no match for them, and it was not easy for the Seljuks to defeat them. More importantly, the Great Song did not reject their belief in Buddhism, and would never do anything that required them to change their faith.

After a night of deliberation and repeated weighing of the pros and cons, it was a hundred times better for Bilge to surrender to the Great Song than for the Seljuks to slaughter and exterminate the clan. As for Western Liao, they have lost confidence. In his eyes, Gao Chang is just a chess piece, a tool that can make money for them, and an abandoned child who can be discarded at a critical moment. So it was decided to accept the conditions of the Song army unconditionally, to punish himself, to cancel his title, to hand over the national seal, and to wait for the disposal of the Great Song Emperor, and at the same time ordered the states to which Gaochang belonged to give up resistance and stop all supplies to the Western Liao army......

Gao Chong and Zhao Li looked at Brother Bile's descent. I was also deeply relieved that they would run out of ammunition in two more days, and the men and horses would starve! The two accepted Gao Chang's surrender and ordered to stop the shelling. At the same time, the troops were ordered to prepare to enter the city. The gate of Gaochang City, which had been closed for nearly a month, was finally opened to the Song army, and Bilge took off his royal robe and went out of the country to seal the city diplomatically. Led the Manchu Dynasty to surrender civilly and militaryly.

Gao Zhong then led his army into the city to control the traffic arteries and occupy the city walls. Ordered Gao Changjun to lay down his arms and leave the city. At the same time, Zhao Li led a brigade of infantry into Miyagi. Receiving the palace and the official office, sealing the storehouse property, and imprisoning Bilge and his concubines and children in the inner palace, they should be provided as usual, waiting for the emperor's edict to dispose of it. Then the two of them went out in the name of the Marshal's Mansion of the Great Song Dynasty, and officials at all levels temporarily took up their original posts, cleaned up the ruins as soon as possible, buried the corpses, rebuilt the market and resumed trading.

Three days later, Gaochang City regained its calm, the Song army replenished the grain and grass, and Gao Zhong led the dragoon brigade and the desert army and the various subordinate armies to Qiuci and Yanqi to meet the Western Xia army, which was still confronting the Western Liao. Zhao Li led two infantry brigades, a baggage brigade and a cavalry brigade to stay in Gaochang City, while counting the spoils of war and preparing to transport them back to China, reporting to the emperor and waiting for the next instructions from the court.

At this point, the war of the western expedition to Gaochang was basically over, and the battle of Gaochang City, which was thought to be the most arduous, ended with zero casualties. They relied on their superiority in weapons to strike at the enemy's depth and important targets, which not only reduced the losses of the troops, but also achieved the desired combat results. This kind of long-range attack with artillery fire has brought unbearable pressure to the enemy's politics, economy, and people's psychology, and has played a tremendous role in promoting the course and outcome of the war, making the people of the world further realize the power of artillery, and leaving a shock in the history of war.

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At the end of the Battle of Gaochang, another great battle had already begun. The banner of the crescent moon was slowly raised in the sky, and the warriors of Allah heard the news of the holy war coming from everywhere. Under the influence of Sanjar, the Muslim princes of Khorasan, Ghul, Kochening, Sijistan and other places led their troops to come, and 100,000 Muslim warriors from all over the country gathered under the banner of Sanjar. The grand military parade before the departure lasted for six months. Four centuries earlier, Muslim warriors had defeated Gao Xianzhi's Tang army at Talas and had since turned Central Asia into Allah's domain. Now, Sanjar is trying to reinvent his legacy.

In April, Sanjar led his army across the Amu Darya River into the city of Samarkand, where he joined Mahmu, and a great battle was on the verge of breaking out. At the request of Mahmu, Sanjar ordered to first attack the Qarluqs who had rebelled against Mahmu's attachment to Western Liao. Unable to resist Sanjar's army of 100,000, the Qarluqs sent messengers to Western Liao for help. After receiving a letter from the Qarluqs asking for help, Yelu Dashi, who was in the city of Husirdo, immediately wrote a letter to Sanjar, asking Sanjar to stop the attack and the two sides to settle the existing dispute peacefully.

But the arrogant Sanjar saw the letter as a sign of weakness on the part of Jerodashi. He believed that his Allah would bless him and that he would achieve victory over the infidels. He dismissively threw aside Dashi's letter and sent an envoy to bring a letter to Jerodashi. And the letter that Sanjar wrote was not a call for peace, but a naked intimidation. He believed that with his own strength, he could easily crush the resistance of Yelu Dashi.

In the letter, Sanjar demanded that Yelu Dashi lead his men to surrender unconditionally, and at the same time renounce his faith and convert to Islam. He boasted of his might, with warriors from all sides gathered under his banner, and he boasted of the warriors of Allah who were like gods with arrows and could shoot the hair of their enemies. Faced with the imposing envoys of the Seljuk Empire, Yelu Dashi read the letter under the guard of his ministers, and he read Sanjar's arrogance and arrogance in the letter.

Jerodashi ordered Sanjar's envoy to pluck off one of his beards and give him a needle. Let him prick his own beard with a needle to verify Sanjar's boast that his warriors can break the beard of their enemies with arrows. This is simply an impossible task, the needle pricked, the beard slid to the side, and it could not be pierced at all, and the result was naturally that the envoys of the Seljuk Empire lost face in front of the Western Liao. Jerodashi decided to fight, and asked the Seljuk emissaries to tell Sanjar that he would fight him on the battlefield.

In this way, the battle between the two powers was inevitable, and after sending away Sanjar's envoys, Yelu Dashi immediately mobilized his men and horses to prepare for the expedition, and only then did he find himself in a very embarrassing situation......

Although the Seljuk Empire was also a country founded by the Turks, it was very different from the so-called Turkic countries that the Western Liao had conquered, and after a hundred years of territorial expansion and absorption of foreign cultures, it had transitioned from a primitive slave society to a feudal society, and was no longer a nomadic tribe, but had a relatively advanced political system and a perfect social system. However, unlike the Central Plains civilization accepted by the Western Liao, they accepted the Western Islamic civilization.

The Seljuk Empire followed the political system of the Abbasid and Persian dynasties, with a prime minister under the Sultan and a plenipotentiary caliph to handle political, military, financial and religious affairs, and to play a leading role in handling state affairs. The provinces were governed by governors, mostly Seljuk nobles. Economically, a military fiefdom system was introduced, and the military governor could inherit the land granted by the Sutan. The peasants paid the land tax in kind, and part of it was handed over to the state treasury. The state treasury spent huge sums of money to dig canals, build avenues, and open post stations to ensure the smooth flow of trade routes between the east and the west.

Religiously, Sunni is followed. The construction of a large number of mosques in the empire, and the establishment of Inizam in places such as Baghdad and Neshapur? The religious university, named after Mulek, has hired famous scholars from all over the world to teach, disseminate the teachings of the Sunni Ashri school and the Shafiyi school, and train religious scholars and government officials. In terms of academic culture, scholars are rewarded for academic research and writing books. It also built a new observatory, recruited scholars to engage in astronomical measurements and research, revised the Persian calendar, and compiled the famous "Jhelal Calendar", which is more accurate than the "Gregorian Calendar".

It is much more difficult to deal with a highly civilized country than a barbaric tribe, and the Great Song Dynasty is a good example of this, the two countries fought and killed for more than a hundred years, although they once achieved military victories, but in the end they chose to live in peace with them and learn from their advanced cultural and political concepts, and Sanjar was an arrogant, greedy and bloodthirsty monarch, and it was not easy to defeat him.

What made Yelu Dashi even more uneasy was that the Great Song army, which also had a high degree of civilization and the most advanced weapons in the world, was eyeing him behind him, and Western Liao had to face the attack of the two major powers of China and the West at the same time, and they would be reduced to powder in the collision if they were slightly wrong...... (To be continued......)