After the fiasco of Duanping and Luo, before the Southern Song Dynasty had the next corresponding action, as the then Mongol Great Khan Wo Kotai officially opened the curtain of the Song-Mongolian War under the pretext that the Song Empire reneged on the alliance.

Of course, in Duanping into Luozhong, there was almost no one between the Song army and the Mongol army to fight dog brains.

From this time on, the Mongols began to launch a formal southward invasion of the Song Dynasty.

......

In December 1235, the Mongol prince Kuoduan, together with an army of 500,000 ethnic minorities, marched from Fengzhou (northeast of present-day Fengxian County, Shaanxi) to Xichuan (present-day western Sichuan) and reached Xichi Valley. Gao Jia, who knew that Song Zhizhou, believed that the main force should be controlled near Chuzhou, so that the Mongol army would not dare to drive into Shu for a long time because of their worries.

The Song Dynasty did not accept it, and only Gao Jia was left to guard the state. The Mongol army entered the Liugu strain from Baishui (northeast of Lüyang). There was no city in Chuzhou, Gao Jia had to use the mountains to organize defense, and used the strategy of vanity and hypocrisy, multiple flags, drums and shouts, but in the end because he was outnumbered and had no strong defensive position, he was finally defeated by the Mongol army. Gao Jia died in battle, and Kuoduan occupied Chuzhou.

After Gao Jia was killed in battle, Zhao Yanna entered the Tun to Qingye Plain, the throat of Shaanxi and Shu, and was surrounded by the Mongol army. Cao Youwen, the commander of Lizhou stationed in Shimen, led his army to help, defeated the Mongol army, and relieved the siege of Zhao Yanna. Later, the Mongol vanguard army Wang Shixian's division moved to Da'an.

Cao Youwen sent the Feng Army to control Wang Zi, and the Tabai Army to control Bai Zaixing to defend the Jiguan Pass (southwest of present-day Mianxian County, Shaanxi), and ordered the Left Army to control Wang Jin and take Yangping Pass; Cao Youwen completed the command and deployment of Dengxiling, and tens of thousands of Mongolian troops rushed to Yangping Pass.

Cao You heard that the left army and the guerrilla army attacked, and led the tent soldiers and the back army to rush to the front of the battle, and ordered the army to gallop left and right; the Mongolian army was frustrated and retreated; Cao You heard that the Mongolian army would turn to attack the Jiguan Pass, and urgently sent Chen Geng, the chief of loyalty and righteousness, to lead the troops to help; the Mongolian army attacked the Jiguan Pass with more than 10,000 cavalry, and Chen Geng led 500 cavalry to gallop bravely, and when the infantry could be divided into the left and right flanks to advance together, Wang Zi and Bai Zaixing, who were guarding the pass, went out of the pass to meet the battle, attacked from both sides, and defeated the Mongolian army. Cao Youwen took advantage of the situation to advance north, regained the Xianren Pass, and forced the Mongol army to withdraw from the Song realm.

Later, Cao Youwen led his troops to guard the Xianren Pass, and found out that the Mongol soldiers combined with the Western Xia, Jurchen, Huihui, Tubo and Bohai navies were attacking in a big way, and said to Cao Youwan: "The safety of the country is in this move, and the outnumbered are invincible, so how can we afford to fight." However, when taking advantage of the high ground, surprise soldiers, hide and ambush to wait for the attackers, and swear to live and die with the position. ”

Cao Youwen dispatched the troops to rush to the Jiguan Pass and Yangping Pass to guard. As soon as the deployment was decided, tens of thousands of Mongolian troops had already broken through to Yangping Pass, and they were ordered to attack. He also personally commanded the tent soldiers and the back army to stand out in front of the formation, galloping left and right to shoot back the enemy soldiers. Friends predicted: "The enemy will return to attack the Cockscomb Pass, and reinforcements should be stepped up." Later, the Mongolian army really attacked the pass with more than 10,000 infantry. Cao Youwen immediately ordered the cavalry to rush forward to attack left and right, and the enemy was defeated and retreated after more than 10 miles of blood.

In August of the second year of Duanping, the Mongolian soldiers captured Xingyuan Mansion and wanted to rush to Da'an. The Southern Song Dynasty made Zhao Yanna order Youwen to control Da'an in order to protect Shukou. Cao Youwen Chishu Zhao Yanna said: "The danger of Shuyang is important, my heavy troops are here, the enemy has worries, and he must not cross Weiyang and enter Shu, and Cao Youwan and Wang Xuan echo from end to end, which can ensure a great victory." Da'an is a flat terrain, there is no trap to defend, just give full play to the strength of the enemy's cavalry, our infantry is short, the situation is outnumbered, how can it be controlled on the flat ground. ”

Cao Youwen's thinking can be said to be correct, but he still can't withstand the degree of the pig boss's teammates.

And in a sense, Zhao Yanna is not only a teammate, but also his savior. In a sense, this can be regarded as a kind of revenge.

Zhao Yanna disagreed, and held a small red card 7 times a day to urge rapid action.

Cao Youwen thought that to attack the crowd with outnumbered, it was necessary to take advantage of the night to surprise the troops inside and outside. So he ordered Cao Youwan and Cao Youliang to lead the troops to the Rooster Pass and display many flags to show the enemy the determination of our army to hold on. Cao Youwen selected 10,000 elite troops, crossed the Jialing River at night, and secretly ambushed Liuxigou. When the enemy arrived, he responded with drums and fires and a call for killing, and attacked the Mongol army on both sides.

The deployment was set, and on September 22, the Mongolian soldiers really attacked, and Cao Youwan rushed out of the front to meet the battle. The enemy general Badulu has more than 10,000 people, and Dahai leads 1,000 people, fighting back and forth, and arrows and stones are like rain. Cao Youwan was wounded several times, so he ordered the army to raise fire. On September 27, Cao Youwen sent all his troops to meet the battle in an all-round way, and personally led 3,000 elite soldiers to gallop to Jiguan Pass.

Unexpectedly, the weather was not beautiful, and it rained heavily on the way to the army. The generals requested: "The rain does not stop and the mud is not enough, and we will fight again when it is a little clear." Cao Youwen reproached: "The enemy knows that my ambush is here, and if you are slow, you will miss the opportunity." Then they marched together.

Cao You smelled the tail of the dragon, Cao You heard that the five drums had sounded, that is, rushed out of the cockscomb pass and met Cao Youwen, the two armies inside and outside fought to the death, pinched the enemy, the blood flowed for 20 miles, the Mongol camp was broken by the Song army dozens of times, and the corpses were piled up outside the Yangping Pass.

Xichuan's army used to replace iron armor with cotton fur, and at this time it was soaked in rain, which was not conducive to fighting on foot.

At dawn on the 28th, the enemy general Wang Shixian led a large number of Mongolian troops to surround the Song army on all sides with iron horses.

So he scolded the war and killed the horse he was riding to show his determination to die for his country. The bloody battle became more intense, Cao Youwen and his younger brother Cao You were all killed in battle, and the whole army was annihilated. Wang Shixian sighed: "General Shu is a real man!"

After Cao Youwen's death, there was no longer a field army in Shuzhong. The Mongol army commander drove into Shu, like a land where no one was in the land. More than 20 prefectures on the three roads of Chengdu, Lizhou and Tongchuan were captured by the Mongol army.

......

In Huguang, the Mongol army launched a large-scale military operation almost subsequently:

In this year, the Mongol army broke through Xiangyang Prefecture, Suizhou, Yingzhou, Jingmen Army, Zaoyang Army, and De'an Mansion on the Jingxiang battlefield, and the entire Jinghu defense line of the Southern Song Dynasty was full of holes.

In October of the third year of Duanping (1236), the middle of the Mongol army, under the leadership of the main general Ta Chaer, attacked Qizhou (now Qichun, Hubei) in the Southern Song Dynasty. Song Lizong was so busy that he was anxious to rush to the Song general Meng Heng, who was stationed in Huangzhou, to rescue Qizhou. Thinking about the brotherhood under Caizhou City a few years ago, now Meng Hui and Ta Cha'er want to meet each other, which is quite a bit of a sense of vicissitudes of life. Tachar was clear about Meng Heng's ability and didn't want to entangle with him too much. As soon as Meng Heng arrived, Ta Chaer withdrew from the siege and prepared to attack Jiangling. For the first time, the Mongolian iron cavalry approached the Yangtze River, the main artery of the Southern Song Dynasty.

Jiangling was an important town in the middle of the Yangtze River, and after the loss of Xiangyang Mansion in the Southern Song Dynasty, the Jinghu Preparation Division moved here. If the Mongol army captures here, it can not only attack Sichuan and Shu in the west, but also advance east along the river, and also go south to Huxiang, and the consequences are unimaginable. In this urgent situation, the Song court ordered the Yanjiang and Huaixi Departments to organize rescue, "everyone said that there was no one who exceeded the problem".

Meng Heng also set off without saying a word.

At this time, the Mongolian army made rafts in Zhijiang and Jianli and prepared to cross the river, and the situation was pressing. Meng Hui's subordinates, including himself, are all from Jingxiang. Hearing that his hometown had been kicked in, the generals were very indignant, and the call for "returning home for revenge" was very high. Meng Heng is worthy of a generation of famous generals, he knows that there is a huge disparity in strength and he can't work hard. So he suppressed the anger in his heart and concentrated his forces on blocking the river first. Then he used the tactic of suspecting the soldiers, showing the crowd with a small number, constantly changing the colors of the flag and military uniform during the day, and at night bluffing torches and lining up dozens of miles along the river, posing as if a large army was coming to help. The Mongol army did not know what was true and was immediately panicked.

Meng Heng took the opportunity to give the order to attack, and in a big battle, he broke through 24 enemy camps, rescued more than 20,000 captured people, and burned the Mongolian army's river-crossing equipment, achieving victory and containing the Mongol offensive posture. The Mongol army, which had just encountered the Yangtze River, had no choice but to withdraw. The Southern Song Dynasty successfully survived a crisis.

Meng Gong can be said to be one of the most famous generals in the Southern Song Dynasty to resist the Mongol army at that time.

The Battle of Gangneung was only the first of many victories against the Mongols.

In October of the first year of Jiaxi, the Mongol army invaded south again, and attacked Huangzhou with the main force led by Wen Buhua and the general Zhang Rou at the mouth of King Zong. The defense of Huangzhou was first launched on the river, Meng Heng sent his troops to attack the Mongolian navy, and the Song army fought bravely, forcing the Mongolian army to retreat to the north bank of the Yangtze River, and captured more than 200 warships.

The plans of the Mongol naval forces to cross the river were completely bankrupt. So the Mongol army shifted the target of attack and attacked the east embankment of Huangzhou, wanting to cut off the connection between Huangzhou and the naval army.

In this way, the Mongol army had to attack the city of Huangzhou directly. Due to the continuous and non-stop attacks of the Western Regions troops and the subordinate army in the former Western Xia region, Huangzhou was in a critical situation.

In order to destroy the siege of the Mongol army, Meng Heng sent Liu Quan and other troops into seven routes, and quietly went out of the city at night, and the troops were divided into seven routes to raid the Mongol army. As an old friend, Zhang Rou also gave Meng Heng a lot of face, and his camp was well guarded, so that the Song army's sneak attack failed. The victory of the Song army on the sixth route made the Mongol military camp chaotic and the morale of the army shaken.

After the Mongol army was reorganized, it once again launched a round-the-clock attack. The Mongolian army used artillery to bombard Huangzhou and burned all the towers on the city wall of Huangzhou, but due to Huangzhou's insistence, the city head could fill the gap at any time, so that the Mongolian army could not take the opportunity to attack the city head.

The Mongols rushed to the city of Huangzhou to dig the city wall, and wanted to dig a hole directly in the city wall to kill into the city, Meng Heng sent people to build another city wall in the city where the Mongolian army dug the wall, and dug a big pit as a trap on the inner side of the dug city wall, known as the "mass grave".

When the Mongol army finally dug up the city wall and rushed in, the front was still a strong city wall, and the front army fell into the pit one after another under the push of the rear army and was stoned to death by the Song army.

By the spring of the following year, the Mongol army, which had been killed or wounded "seven or eight out of ten", finally retreated. Meng Hui once again reversed the passive battle situation of the Southern Song Dynasty.

In the second year of Jiaxi, Meng Hui actively sought to march into the army and recover the important town of Xiangyang Mansion in the middle of the road, so the Song army launched a counteroffensive on the Jingxiang battlefield. In December of the same year, the Song general Zhang Jun recovered Yingzhou, He Shun recovered Jingmen, and Liu Quan defeated the Mongol army three times at Zuntou, Fancheng, and Langshenshan.

At the beginning of the third year, the Xinyang army was recovered. Encouraged by the successive victories of the Song armies of all walks of life, Liu Tingmei, a local warlord who originally took advantage of the emptiness of the Mongol and Song armies to abandon Xiangyang and occupied Xiangyang City, and then surrendered to Mongolia, secretly asked the Song army to unify the rivers and seas to attack the Xiangyang Mongol army. Due to the internal response, the Song army smoothly advanced to the Xiangfan area and recovered Fancheng.

In April, Jiang Hai led the Song army from Jingmen, recruiting officials, militiamen, and peasants along the way to make long-term business preparations after the recovery of Xiangyang. In the face of the powerful offensive of the Song army, Xiangyang Meng captured Liu Yi and surrendered to the Song army after capturing You Xian and others. At this point, the Song army recovered the entire Jingxiang region.

Xiangyang began to gradually recover its vitality and became a military center again. At the beginning of the fourth year of Jiaxi, Meng Hui discovered that Zhang Rou led the army in Tuntian in Henan Province by collecting intelligence, and at the same time accumulated shipbuilding timber in Dengzhou and Shunyang. He changed the old method of "soldiers coming to block and water to cover the earth", learned the methods of the Mongols, and took the initiative to send troops to harass and sabotage the Mongolian offensive preparations.

Meng Heng ordered Zhang Ying to leave Suizhou, Ren Yi to leave Xinyang, and Jiao to enter and exit Xiangyang, and successively attacked and harassed the Mongol army by separate routes, so that the Mongol army could not rest assured that Tuntian. At the same time, Wang Jian, a general of the dispatch department, attacked Shunyang and burned all the shipbuilding materials accumulated by the Mongolian army, and sent Zhang De and Liu Quanquan to attack Caizhou and burned the enemy's material warehouses to the ground. The Mongols did not expect that the Song army, which had always been passively beaten, would be able to engage in active defense. It can be said that the Song army won a major victory in the offensive operation against the rear base of the Mongol army, and nipping the enemy's offensive in the bud, which is known as the "Battle of Deng Sui" in history.

When the battle situation in Jinghu eased, Meng Heng was ordered to rush to the rescue of the precarious upper Sichuan battlefield. Meng Heng's military defense system was properly deployed, interlocking, and echoing each other from afar.

The Mongolian army slammed their flesh and blood heads into Meng Hui's iron wall. After hitting a big bag, I felt that it was both boring and painful. The Southern Song Dynasty had frequent good news: the Mongol army on the south side of Shizhou was defeated by Meng Jing's general Liu Yi in Qingping, and the victory was not counted.

Meng Jing won a great victory in a fierce battle in the west of Guizhou, and the Mongol army lost its armor and retreated to Kuizhou, and all the materials captured before were returned to the Song army. This is the famous "Battle of Daya Village" in history.

(Meng Jing is Meng Gong's brother, but his talent may not be as good as Meng Gong's, so he is willing to be commanded by Meng Gong.) ）

At this time, Meng Hui himself had not yet been to the front line, and he was leading his headquarters to move westward.

By the time Meng Heng arrived at the front line in a leisurely stroll, Kuizhou had already been recovered. It was the thousands of Song troops that should have been used for defense that cut back more than 100,000 Mongolian beasts.

This time, the 45-year-old Meng Hui was highly recognized by the Song court for his outstanding military exploits, and became the third banner general of the Southern Song Dynasty after Yue Fei and Bi Zaiyu, and assumed the heavy responsibility of establishing the Sichuan defense system. After Meng Hui's vigorous rectification and the governance of Yu Jue, the new Sichuan envoy two years later, the Sichuan war situation took on a new look, and the Song army, which had recovered its combat effectiveness, persisted until a few years after Song's death.

(End of chapter)