The 100,000 Western Xia army arrived at the Hue military city, which is about 100 miles away from the Hetao, after the Weifu army in Montenegro was completely annihilated, it was also uprooted by the Song army More than 200 soldiers died, fled and fled, the grain and grass in the city were burned, and the military city was also razed to the ground, leaving only a little ruins left.

The general looked at this military city with a blue face, in the impression of all the Western Xia troops, it was they who burned the city of the Song Dynasty and the battalion of the Song army.

"Clean up this place!"

He ordered the abandoned city to be cleaned up left and right, and the army immediately continued north.

At noon the next day, the 80,000 troops of the front army and the Chinese army were the first to arrive at the entrance of the Hetao, and the smoke from the Song army's sentry tower in the distance rose to the sky.

Meng Meng snorted heavily, and the horsewhip pointed at the beacon, "Destroy it!" ”

Two thousand soldiers immediately rushed to the mountains in the distance, and the Song army Fengsui was on top of the mountains.

The army crossed the Yellow River and continued to speed up and slaughtered in the direction of Wuyuan City in the Song Dynasty.

They didn't care about the baggage fleet behind, which was escorted by 20,000 men in the rear, and was generally one or two days later than the front army and the middle army.

But they could not have imagined that after they crossed the river, they marched less than fifty miles when a fleet of fifty steam-engine ships appeared at the mouth of the river and turned around and headed south to the south of the Yellow River.

.........

The fleet of hundreds of giant rafts stretched for more than 30 miles, and thousands of slender men pulled the rafts full of baggage and walked slowly.

Although it is going along the river, the flow of the Yellow River is very gentle, without the help of the slender man, the speed will be very slow, and another important role of the slender man is to control the boat, to prevent the raft from getting out of control on the Yellow River, although the water flow is slow, there are many undercurrent vortices on the Yellow River, it is easy to make the raft encounter the undercurrent and overturn.

On the shore, 20,000 Western Xia troops rode on horseback, trying to keep pace with the raft.

At this time, there was a roar from the Yellow River, and a very strange boat appeared in the sight of the Western Xia soldiers, two huge chimneys were erected on the boat, black smoke was emitting from the chimneys, and two large paddle wheels at the stern of the ship were tumbling, driving the ship forward.

"Wait! It seems to be a ship of the Liao Kingdom. ”

The soldiers found out that the flag hanging on the big ship was the wolf's head banner of the Liao State, which made them very shocked, how could the ships of the Liao State appear here, something they had never heard of.

But this was only a small trick, and the rear commander immediately came to his senses and shouted: "All rafts dock!" ”

The raft slowly approached the shore, but not completely, this is not a pier, the bank of the river is mostly covered with rocks, the edges of the stones are sharp, and the bottom of the raft is easy to scratch.

But even if the raft is close to the shore, it does not mean safety, but only enters the protection range of the 20,000 rear army.

The flag on the ship had been replaced with the Yellow Dragon Flag of the Song Army, and a 5,000-stone Song Army steamship was speeding towards the raft of the Western Xia Kingdom.

The commander of the rear army immediately shouted: "Shoot the arrows!" ”

Five thousand Western Xia soldiers rushed to the river to release arrows, and the arrows rained down on the steam ship more than 20 zhang away, the steam ship had already prepared, and the ship was surrounded by straw people and haystacks, and in a moment, the arrows were all over the haystacks.

But the first steamship had already approached the giant raft, and the arrows of the Western Xia army immediately stopped, and if it continued to shoot like this, it was not the Song army ship that was injured, but its own raft.

Just when the steamship was about five or six feet close to the raft, several porcelain bottles and thunderbolts were thrown into the raft, and there was a continuous explosion sound in the raft, and the dense iron and porcelain pieces suddenly shot through the thin sheepskin, which is also the biggest weakness of the sheepskin raft, afraid of fire, afraid of sharp objects, and the thin sheepskin is easy to be pierced and deflated.

"Boom!" The first giant sheepskin raft lost its balance, and thousands of stone of grain poured out of it and tumbled into the Yellow River.

The steamer did not stop, and continued to sail south along the perimeter of the raft, and every time it approached a raft, five or six porcelain bottles of fire and thunder were thrown into it, and they exploded in an instant, and the giant raft that began to deflated quickly would not have any chances, and the raft could only carry goods by balancing, and once it lost its balance, the raft full of baggage would soon overturn.

The commander of the rear army on the shore was so anxious that he jumped to his feet and shouted: "The first army is in the water and stop the enemy!" ”

More than 1,000 small rafts were thrown into the Yellow River, the soldiers boarded the rafts one after another, each raft had four people, two rowed boats, two people fought, dozens of steam engine boats behind were killed, some of the Song soldiers on the boat shot arrows, and some threw porcelain bottles of fire and thunder.

The raft is too small in front of the big ship of 5,000 stones, and the huge warship is like an ant shaking the pillar to the raft, so that they have nothing to do, many soldiers want to destroy the overturned wheels on both sides of the big ship, but the waves next to the overturned wheel are too big, the raft is difficult to approach at all, and the soldiers on the ship will not give them any chance to destroy.

More than 1,000 rafts were constantly sunk and blown up, and the rafts loaded with heavy supplies began to catch fire and burn, the soldiers launched an attack with gunpowder arrows, and after the burning gunpowder arrows pierced the rafts, they burned directly inside, and soon, the thick smoke on the river surface was billowing and the flames were monstrous, and hundreds of rafts were powerless to resist at all, so they could only be burned down until they sank into the Yellow River, and the flames gradually disappeared.

Three months of food and military supplies for 100,000 soldiers disappeared from the Yellow River in just one hour, and at the same time, more than 5,000 soldiers of the rear army disappeared on the Yellow River.

In desperation, he had to send people to the north to report to the commander of the rebellion, and at the same time sent people back to Xingqing Mansion to ask for emergency support, 15,000 soldiers and 6 or 7,000 people had no food, and it was difficult for them to return to Xingqing Mansion by themselves, let alone continue to go north.

Dozens of steamships had turned around and headed north, and their next step was to blockade the Yellow River and completely cut off the retreat of the main force of the Western Xia army.

When Li Xinliang sent several soldiers to report the military situation to Meng Meng, they were intercepted by the Song army patrol on the Yellow River, three of them were killed, one soldier was captured alive, and the letters were also searched by the Song army patrol.

The 80,000-strong army led by Gang Mengzhen arrived at Wuyuan City two days later, but the army had no tents, so they could only rest in the wilderness and eat a little dry food they had brought with them.

They will generally carry two to three days of dry food, and then wait for the rear army's supplies and baggage to arrive, and generally the Western Xia army will also consider the enemy's sneak attack on the baggage, so they will arrange a heavy army to escort them, and 20,000 cavalry is enough to protect the baggage team.

However, the Tangut people forgot that although it was difficult for the Song army's ships to come from the south, and the Yellow River, which was about 1,000 miles from Lanzhou to Mingsha County, could not be sailed, and could only be transported on rafts, but the Song army's ships could be killed from the north, and they neglected this point, even if the 20,000 heavy army could not protect the baggage in the Yellow River.

At the head of the city, Fanning looked coldly at the boundless soldiers under the city, were they still waiting for baggage and siege weapons?

Yang Wenguang sighed: "The Western Xia people are indeed brainless, they still don't understand the strategic plans of the Song army, they don't know how the Song army reversed and defeated the Liao army, don't they care about how powerful the Song army's naval army is?" ”

Fan Ning said lightly: "The generals who can really fight well in Western Xia have been killed and degraded by the Liang group, and her brothers and internal favorites are in charge, such as the boss in front of him, called Meng Meng, who looks like a talent, and is very effective in bed, Empress Dowager Liang made him the commander of the Northern Expedition, and wanted him to take this opportunity to establish prestige, but you look at his way of leading troops, who does the old general think he is?" ”

"A complete idiot who doesn't understand military affairs!"

Yang Wenguang blurted out a scolding, and said to Fan Ning: "I can still understand the previous battle, Cui Shancheng made a mistake in judgment, he didn't carry too much food, and he wanted to fight a surprise battle, so he rushed to Wuyuan City overnight, but this battle was a big battle of 100,000 people!" What does this mean, it will take at least a few months to fight, and it is necessary to build a battalion step by step, first build a logistics area, and then find out the details of the enemy's army, and then the army can go north.

But what is he like now, he doesn't care about the food and baggage, he is like a sentry, first to inquire about the intelligence of the Song army, but how can there be 80,000 outposts in the world? Empress Dowager Liang used such a fool as the main commander, and sooner or later she would bury the national fortunes of Western Xia. ”

Fan Ning nodded and smiled: "The old general's judgment is completely correct, but what I am more interested in is that it seems that the three thousand iron harriers of the Western Xia people are also among them, can you take this opportunity to bury them together." ”