Chapter 156 Westward Expansion

Returning to Shaanxi again made Zhang Hu full of emotion.

was driven out of Baoning Mansion by Sun Jie in a day, and then he was out of breath for hundreds of miles, and from time to time he had to be scared of being killed by Shangguan Fei's horse team, and finally Zhang Hu had a nervous breakdown and committed the first taboo of being a general: he abandoned the army in Zhaohua and absconded.

The two armies fought, and the swords and guns were eyeless. The generals hid in the safe rear to observe the battle situation, strategize, and at the front of the front line, they faced the enemy face to face with the white blades, at best, a few middle-level officers at the level of the tour, except for very few rare cases, very few deputy commanders of the general army personally ran to the front line to rush and kill. On the premise that the number of equipment training is about the same, the side with high morale will always win, and even win more with less. Fighting with the generals, the big soldiers on either side are cannon fodder. However, although everyone is well aware of this, the soldiers avoid talking about this topic, on the contrary, what they talk about most is that the generals "share weal and woe" with them: what military wells have not been dug will not say that they are thirsty, and generals who have not yet completed the military stove will not say that they are hungry, and so on. To put it bluntly, it's just fooling yourself to find psychological comfort - eating, drinking, wearing, playing...... Which general is really the same as the big soldier? How deep does it have to be in your mind to really believe this. The soldiers at the bottom are very easy to fool, if the generals can go around the barracks and sit down to cheer with the soldiers, they will undoubtedly boost their morale, if they are like Xiang Yu, they use their mouths to suck an abscess...... Gotcha! This guy will die on the battlefield the next day, and he will never come back alive - he will be so moved that he will not retreat until he is exhausted to death or hacked to death by the enemy. Soldiers are not afraid of defeat, victory and defeat are common things in soldiers. It's okay to defeat you and run with them, and it's okay to send any army to death when you give a death order, but there is one thing, if you abandon the army, it's over: the marshal runs away on his own, and the marshal doesn't want us anymore!

A soldier will never believe you again!

You say how to fight the war in the future.

If Sun Jie can pursue one more step, Zhang Hu will never have a chance to regain the support and trust of these defeated soldiers, and millions of people will be spared from being destroyed in the future, and this empire may really be able to continue its life for decades.

Unfortunately, there is no such thing as if.

Seeing that the marshal took his cronies and ran away on his own and became an outcast, he saw that the officers and soldiers of the brigade had already driven murderously in front of him...... Then, I saw that they turned around and went back!

What is it called?

Providence!

It's clear that God favors the handsome and himself! In this era, people believe in this from the bottom of their hearts.

Some people remembered the story of the storyteller who told the story of "King Kang on a mud horse". It is said that the Jin soldiers invaded the south, and Huizong sent his ninth son, King Kang Zhao, to envoy Jin Ying to sue for peace, but was taken hostage. Zhao Gou waited for an opportunity to escape, fled to Cizhou (now Handan, Hebei), and stayed overnight in Cui Fu Jun * Temple, Cui Fu Jun dreamed that the Jin soldiers were about to leave the danger quickly, Zhao Gou woke up and came out in a panic, and saw a horse tied to the temple, so he rode on and fled. Behind him was the chasing army, and in front of him was the surging Yellow River, and the horse jumped in and carried Zhao Gou across the river. When Zhao Gou stepped on the south bank, the horse disappeared all of a sudden, and was replaced by a clay horse, because it was soaked in the river, and the horse's body was dripping mud downward...... It turned out that the one who carried him across the river to escape was actually the clay mount in Cui Fujun's temple! Later, Zhao Gou established the Southern Song Dynasty in Lin'an (present-day Hangzhou......

What is it called? Charmed life!

Some people even remembered the old rascal Liu Bang: "What is this? The great Han Son Grandpa Gao, who was defeated in Pengcheng and was driven by the overlord of Western Chu, didn't he kick the prince and Princess Lu Yuan out of the car anyway? Kicked several miles in a row! Later, they didn't become the son of heaven, so aren't the prince and the princess also immortal and rich? ”

"You mean that the handsome man has God's protection?"

"Of course! Or your baby said, what's going on? ”

"Yes! , God also bless the foreheads! Otherwise, if the handsome man runs away, they will die! ”

Everyone is looking forward to good news in their hearts, especially those in desperate situations, and they will convince themselves that everything is good for them - so everyone feels that they must be like Liu Ying, and there will be a great fortune waiting for them in the future.

So they spontaneously formed an army again, went all the way north to find Zhang Hu, and stumbled in the direction of Guangyuan. This rout army actually regained confidence by mistake.

Zhang Hu didn't know that Fang Ge had defeated Lu Guangyu, and he was already ready to fall into the grass - even if Lu Guangyu shrank in Yangping Pass and didn't come out, his gang would be dead: Sun Jie behind him would never leave you time to build siege equipment, there were Xiongguan in front and chasing soldiers in the back, and it was only a matter of time between two days and three days before the whole army was destroyed. Unexpectedly, Fang Ge easily opened up the passage to the north, and he couldn't help but be overjoyed. It didn't take long to get the report, and a team drove over from the south, which scared a few people half to death: it must have been Sun Jie who defeated the rout and caught up! Zhang Hu's second surprise was that it was the soldiers he threw in Zhaohua, and the morale was still very high! When he asked to understand the situation, even Zhang Hu believed that he was the one who had been entrusted to the Si people by heaven - Cheng Xi was a peasant who had never seen the world, regardless of Zhang Hu or Fang Ge, their understanding of officialdom was only limited to the military generals, the local masters drank the blood of the soldiers, and the civilian officials withheld silver and grain to ask for bribes and bullied the generals.

Several people discussed it and decided to divide the troops into two ways. Zhang Hu Fangge waved his army north, and the farther away from Sun Jie's evil star, the better. The official army has just been defeated head-on, as long as those fortified cities are avoided and not dragged down, most of Shaanxi Province should be safe. It's a rogue, and he doesn't have the scruples of the official army, so he supplies on the spot, and he doesn't need so many auxiliaries - not only will it slow down the speed of the march, but there is not much to transport in itself, and many auxiliaries will have more mouths to eat, and they will pick the strong ones to leave a thousand people, and then catch the local people when they need to, and they don't have to think about what to eat for them, and they can catch them at any time when they die. Cheng Xi took the remaining auxiliary soldiers and the people who escaped with them, and sheltered some more along the way, pretending to be the people who fled from the army and disaster to return to Shunqing, settle down first, and then respond when Zhang Dashuai came back.

Zhang Hu's impression of Sichuan is simply too good: when he was a border army in northern Shaanxi, he drank wind and ate sand every day, and since he entered Sichuan, he ate enough white flour steamed buns and rice every day. Moreover, Sichuan is very easy to fight, if it weren't for Sun Jie, maybe Zhang Dashuai would have eaten and drunk spicy food in the Shu Wangfu in Chengdu now! In other words, Sun Jie can't stay in Sichuan for the rest of his life, right? Hmph, as soon as you leave, this Zhang Dashuai will come back again!

Waiting for Cheng Xi to leave, Zhang Hu and Fang Ge discussed it again. Zhang Hu still remembered the way he entered Sichuan, but that's all, and Fang Ge was completely unfamiliar with Shaanxi Province. This is not difficult to solve: after catching the post guards of Luoyang and asking a few questions, they will have a good understanding of the surrounding environment. There are many places to grab around, such as Chengxian, Huizhou (now Huixian County, Gansu), Liangdang, Fengxian...... But I couldn't go. Because these places are all in the north of Lüyang, there are many passes on the road, such as Yuguan, Maling Pass, and Waste Hill Pass. Although there are not many defenders, if they are blocked for two or three days, no one dares to say whether Sun Jie will catch up at any time and stab him in the back, or it is best to run faster. A few days ago, Luoyang was still the command post of the Chinese army that repaired the great people, and the grain station of Gonggong An was also here, plus the grain rushed out of Jianzhou, Zhang Hu had enough materials in his hands to support him for a while, so he didn't grab it. It is definitely not possible to go east, there is Hanzhong Mansion, the walls are high and the moats are deep, even if there is no threat from Sun Jie, these battalions will definitely not be able to gnaw down now. That would have to go west. Gongchang Mansion is the way for Zhang Hu to enter Sichuan, and he can't go: because he came in order to delay the pursuit of the soldiers as much as possible, he even robbed and burned the people who passed through them, and now it is less than a year, and it is good to be able to recover three or four achievements, and he can definitely not afford to supply thousands of people and horses to cross the border, so he can only go all the way to the west, from Jiezhou (now Longnan City, Gansu) to find a way to enter Minzhou Wei and then go north.

Zhang Hu Fangge led the army west out of Luoyang, because there was not much baggage, there was no need to rely too much on the waterway of the Western Han Dynasty, and the whole army rushed from the land path to the Qifang Pass (now Kangxian County, Gansu), which was sixty miles away. From the mouth of the post guard, I learned that although there is a word "Guan" in the name of the Seven Defense Pass, in fact, it is no longer a difficult bone to gnaw at this time, but a big piece of fat: at the beginning of the Ding Dynasty, in order to prevent the harassment of the southwest Fan tribe, seven defense passes were set up on the main road of Qinshu (Gansu into Shu). With the pacification of the world, especially the construction of Songpanwei in Sichuan Province, which tribe would be bloodied when it grew stronger, its strategic significance gradually diluted, and the Seven Defenses became the Inspection Division, which was subordinate to the Tea and Horse Division of Qinzhou together with the Huizhou Approval Office, responsible for inspecting the trading of Panma between Shaanxi and Gansu tea merchants and Tibetans - until the Qing Dynasty, the main supply of tea used in the trade of Fanma was still Shaanxi, Sichuan and Hubei. Now the seven defense passes, there is only one patrol and one small official, dozens of archers, and it is more than enough to exploit the tea merchants and make it difficult for the merchants, and in the face of thousands of thieves, it is just fish and meat on the board!

And the tea and horse market is ...... It's unbelievable. In two words: toss. To put it more precisely, it would take five words: toss to death. In fact, all the mutual markets, well, almost all the business of Daming, are almost like this. In order to ensure the long-term peace and stability of the empire, for fear of fraud by local officials, the Son of Heaven has to send the imperial historian to patrol the place from time to time. Toss! Taking the Seven Defenses as an example, in the 14th year of Jiajing, Liu Xilong, the superintendent of the imperial history, laid off a large number of approval offices on the grounds that "there are many private tea sellers, and it is not beneficial for Ma politicians to be fat and greedy" - the institutions that issue tea quotations (tea sales licenses) are gone, and all tea merchants have become illegal overnight, and the mutual market will naturally disappear. In the seventeenth year of Jiajing, the new imperial historian was called Shen Yue, and he sprinkled a heroic article: As soon as the chieftain commits a crime, there will be more than 100,000 people, and it takes warriors to resist them, right? Warriors need to ride horses, right? Horses have to be exchanged for tea, right? If the mutual market is stopped, there will be no tea, right? If you don't have tea, you don't have horses, right? Without horses, the warriors don't dare to fight hard, right? If the warriors are not brave, they can't stop the foreign enemy, and they can't protect the country's safety, right* (not that I made it up, the original text is appendice)...... And then it was back again! Anyway, if every adult doesn't make a 180-degree turn in the work of his predecessor, he will have no political achievements! Every adult has a reason, every adult has a resounding political achievement, and every adult is a winner - well, there are winners and losers, so who are the losers?

Da Mingbei.

In this way, the empire is weakening day by day in the constant internal friction.

Zhang Hu effortlessly seized hundreds of tea merchants in Qifangguan piled up tea bricks like a hill, and then realized the exchange of shotguns for guns: several neighboring Tibetan tribes all had blood feuds with the Ming Dynasty - the Baimalu Tuansi, the Qiming Tuansi, and the Zhanzang Xianjie Tuanji were all suppressed by the imperial court Song Panwei for various reasons, burning bunkers, capturing cattle and sheep, and killing local people...... Zhang Hu was fighting with Daming, Zhang Hu had tea in his hand, and Zhang Hu didn't care about the price of the exchange...... So Zhang Hu received the warm hospitality of more than 1,000 horses and large and small heads, and under the relay guidance of many Tibetan guides, he sneaked all the way along the Sino-Tibetan border to cross Minzhouwei, suddenly crossed Huanshui, and conquered the Taozhou military and civilian Qianhu (now Diebe County, Gansu) in one fell swoop, and appeared in Taozhouwei in Shaanxi Province.

Diebu, known as "Diezhou" in ancient times, means "thumb" in Tibetan - the mountains are continuous, like a natural barrier separating Han and Tibet, and here, the god pressed his thumb and a gap appeared. Along this north, it is Taozhou Wei, and then to the north, it is the Shaanxi Xingdu Division of Lintao Mansion and Daming.

*Cui Fujun: Taoist immortal, Sui and Tang dynasty people. Zeng Shi Cizhou Fuyang Order, it is said that the day is yang, the night is yin, and it is also said that he is the judge in the underworld (the other is the first of the four judges). In addition to the mud horse crossing King Kang, the more famous deeds also gave Tang Xuanzong a dream, telling him that An Lushan "will be destroyed", don't run away......

* Shen Yushi's Xiongwen: Sixty miles to Hui here, 200 miles to Qin, and tea and horses are Tongyan, how can there be no official guards and public offices? In addition, there are more than 100,000 people, and the nearest one is the most refined, and Harashen is also captive, from time to time to invade the south, and the wall is blocked, although there are Qin, Gong, Lin, Ping, Gan, Ning, Gu, Jing Zhulu soldiers, but the crowd is outnumbered, and how soft and brittle, looking at the dust to follow, do not dare to support. People think that the captives are strong and I am weak, but they don't know that the royal captives are in the soldiers, the fighters are in the horses, the animals and horses are in the tea, and the tea is in the public office. The office is not established, and there are few people who want tea. Tea classes are insufficient, and there are few animals who want horses. The horsepower is uneven, and the people who want to fight are rare, the soldiers are not excited, the outside wants to capture the enemy, and the people who want to protect the state in Anxia have not heard of it before, but the construction of the fire drill town procuratorate is not less and slow?

As we said in the previous chapter, the style of these people's writings: heartache, clouds and mountains and fog covers, big truths, grand strategies...... You see if that's the case ^_^