Chapter 782: Don't Leave Since You're Here
When Ma Chao led the army to destroy the 60,000 troops on the Wusun East Road, Zhou Cang also led the 10,000 Kunlun army to capture the capital of Wusun City, Chigu City, by this time, in fact, the war against the Wusun Kingdom had basically come to an end.
Although there were still 80,000 Kangju and Dawan reinforcements in the mountains of the southern part of Wusun Kingdom, Guan Yu did not intend to annihilate them all this time. At this point in the battle, the 120,000 troops of the Pingxi Army participated in the battle suffered less than 10% of the casualties, and it also cut off the back road of Kangju Dawan reinforcements, even if they were trapped, they could trap these guys who came in from the west of the Green Ridge (Pamir Plateau).
The reason why he wanted to leave the lives of these 80,000 reinforcements was only because Guan Yu had a more careful long-term plan.
After Ma Chao led his army to Chigu Castle, the 40,000-strong army carried out a thorough purge of the Wusun people who resisted to the end in the city, leaving only the 1,000 guards in the palace and the Great Kunmi and Xiang Dalu untouched.
Ma Chao asked people to throw the heads of the left general and the right general into the palace, and found a few Wusun people who could understand Chinese, and asked them to shout into the palace, claiming that they had completely wiped out the total of 100,000 troops on the west and east roads of Wusun, if they didn't want to see Chigu City slaughtered and Wusun Kingdom slaughtered, then lay down their arms and surrendered, and the Han army promised not to kill Da Kunmi and Xiang Dalu.
The Great Kunmi and Xiang Dalu in the palace were on the verge of breaking down, and when they saw the two bloody human heads thrown in, they finally stopped having any illusions and hopes. Although it was a very humiliating thing to surrender out of the palace, for the sake of the lives of tens of thousands of innocent Wusun people in the city, as well as the lives of more than 500,000 people of various tribes in Wusun Kingdom, Da Kunmi and Xiang Dalu finally chose to surrender.
More than 200 years ago, in order to unite the Wusun people to attack the Huns, the Han emperor married Princess Xie Wei to Wusun, which once opened a golden age of the Wu-Han alliance. Although it has been many years since the Wusun people broke away from the control of the Han Dynasty with the departure of Princess Xie Wu, Da Kunmi and Xiang Dalu still heard the story of the closeness of the Wuhan for more than half a century from the generations of their ancestors.
Therefore, Da Kun Mi and Xiang Da Lu believed what the Han army general said, they did not come for the slaughter, as long as Da Kun Mi and Xiang Da Lu came forward to appease the tribes in Wusun to give up senseless resistance, they could avoid a disaster of extermination. Of course, nine times out of ten, this time it is going to be destroyed.
Dakun Mi and Xiang Daro, who walked out of the palace, were not humiliated by the Han army, but were escorted out of Chigu Castle. The 1,000 guards in the palace were not destroyed, but were told to stay where they were, and the Han army provided them with food, saying that they would be released after a while.
After completely controlling the entire Chigu City, Ma Chao left 10,000 troops to temporarily join with the 10,000 Kunlun Army, and the military advisors Tian Yu and Zhou Cang stayed together. Ma Chao led 20,000 Xiliang troops to "escort" Da Kun Mi and Xiang Da Lu to the mountains south of Wusun, and sent several Wusun captives into the mountains to send a message to Kangju and Dawan reinforcements, informing them of the loss of Chigu City and the capture of Da Kunmi.
The 80,000 Kangju Dawan reinforcements, who were confronting the 60,000 troops on the west road of the Pingxi Army at the southern foot of the Tianshan Mountains, immediately sent people out of the mountain to verify the authenticity after learning of this shocking news, and they really saw the great Kunmi and Xiang Dalu who had become hostages.
At this moment, Kangju and Dawan's reinforcements were like eggplants beaten by frost, and they completely wilted, and they no longer had the courage and fighting spirit to fight to the death with the Han army.
Come to think of it, the Kangju Dawan coalition army advanced eastward this time as a guest army to support the Wusun Kingdom, and now that the Wusun Kingdom has been pacified by the Han army, they have no meaning to continue to stay and fight. Even the Wusun Kingdom is about to be destroyed, what is the value of fighting to the death with the Han army now?
Since they don't want to fight, let's withdraw? That won't work either! Because now they have been surrounded by the Han army in the north and south, and there is no hope for them to move forward, and there are large armies blocking the way backward.
The unbelieving Dawan people sent 10,000 troops to challenge Ma Chao's interception, wanting to force the follow-up troops to open a bloody road, but found that the 20,000 Han troops blocking the way were really powerful, and the dense arrow rain could not pass through at all, and charging forward was basically sending them to death.
The Kangju people, who also did not believe in evil, sent 20,000 men to break through the blockade of the 20,000 cavalry led by Ma Chao, but they were unfortunately attacked by the heavy cavalry, and fled back to the mountains after leaving thousands of corpses.
The Kangju Dawan coalition army, which was wounded, sent an envoy to ask for a meeting with the commander of the Han army, hoping that the two sides would cease fighting and let them live. Guan Yu's reply was that it was okay to cease the fighting, but all the Kangju Dawan troops who came to Wusun had to lay down their arms and surrender out of the mountains, waiting for the two countries to send people to Wusun to ransom them.
The Kangju and Dawan people carefully calculated that if they wanted to break through the 20,000 Han troops blocking the way, they would send at least 50,000 troops to launch a fierce attack, but in this way, there would only be 20,000 troops left against the 60,000 Han troops in the south. The 20,000 men could not withstand the attack of the 60,000 Han army in any case, and when their main force fought bloody battles on the northern front, the main force of the Han army would break through the blockade of the remaining troops and attack from their rear.
In desperation, Kangju Dawan reinforcements finally chose to surrender out of the mountain. Of course, according to the requirements of the Han commander, they could not go north into the territory of Wusun to surrender, they had to come to the area controlled by the Han infantry south of the Tianshan Mountains under the guidance of the Han army.
After some tossing, the 80,000 Kangju Dawan reinforcements who came to Wusun at the beginning were only 60,000 when they finally surrendered, and the remaining 20,000 were consumed in the process of fighting on the southern front and breaking through on the northern front.
After these battles, a total of 100,000 captives from Wusun, Kangju, and Dawan were captured, which has formed a one-to-one ratio with the remaining 110,000 people of the Pingxi Army. So Guan Yu decisively stopped the war and began to redeploy to the north and south of the Tianshan Mountains of Wusun and Yanqi.
Guan Yu ordered Xu Rong to lead 20,000 Kunlun troops north to Chigu City, reunite with the 10,000 Kunlun Army led by Zhou Cang, and garrison the southern region of Wusun Kingdom; he also ordered the 30,000 Western Liang Army led by Ma Chao to garrison the western region of Wusun Kingdom to guard against Kangju and Dawan; and ordered Ma Dai and Ma Xiu to lead a coalition army of 20,000 Yanqi Che Division to control the northern region of Wusun Kingdom.
At this point, there were 50,000 cavalry and 30,000 infantry garrisons in the territory of Wusun Kingdom, which was enough to deal with any rebellion and commotion.
Guan Yu himself led 40,000 Pingxi troops to escort the 60,000 Kangju Dawan soldiers who had surrendered back to Yanqi.
As early as the beginning of the war against Wusun, Liu Yu ordered people to build several large prisoner of war camps in the territory of Yanqi State, which were enough to accommodate 200,000 captives to eat, drink, and Lazar. Therefore, although 100,000 captives were escorted into Yanqi one after another, it did not cause any problems.
These captives will either be sent to the mines of Yumen Pass in the future, or they will be exchanged for ransom by Kangju and Dawan. In Zhao Xing's words, these captives were a huge fortune, enough for the Pingxi Army to cover the cost of this battle.