Take the big road to take Langzhou, and then forcibly break through the Yongjiguan Ancient Road, which is heavily guarded, and finally forcibly attack the capital of the Li Dynasty, Shenglong?

After listening to Di Qing's words, Nong Zhigao only felt that his head was buzzing, his eyes were foggy, and he was a little confused.

I've seen arrogance, but I've never seen such arrogance.

You must know that the Li Dynasty is not as good as fighting the Western Xia and the Liao State, and perhaps the Li Dynasty has some gaps with them in terms of combat power, but in terms of terrain, Li Yue has an absolute advantage.

He couldn't help but say to Di Qing: "General, wouldn't this be too reckless." ”

Saying that, Nong Zhigao pointed to the map and drew a line in the periphery of Yongji Pass: "After this side out of Yongji Pass, it is the border of the Great Song Dynasty Menzhou, and there is Menzhou Pass in the rear, which is controlled by Jiaozhi, and a road leads directly to Langzhou, but although this road is quite smooth, it is a high mountain on both sides and a straight road in the middle." ”

"We are not without horses in the local area, and according to their report, Guo Shengyi, the lieutenant of the Li Dynasty, has been heavily guarded here. If they want to forcibly detain the pass, they only need to set up an ambush on the mountains on both sides, isn't it no different from sending them to death? ”

The terrain of Western Xia and Liao was flat, and the two sides did not have much geographical advantage to speak of. Even the Song State has a city, which may be a little more advantageous in a non-field war.

And the Li Dynasty is full of mountains, although after the northern mountains of the Red River Delta, it is the endless Red River Plain.

But it's the mountains that are sad.

After all, since ancient times, there has only been one path of desperation, which is very dangerous.

This kind of road is not open for a long time. As long as you occupy the choke point, you can use a small number of soldiers and horses to block thousands of troops and horses outside.

The most typical example is that Jiang Wei occupies the Jianmen Pass, and the more than 100,000 troops outside the pass cannot move an inch. If it weren't for Deng Ai leading 5,000 men and horses to smuggle across the Yinping Trail and take Chengdu directly, I am afraid that another 100,000 Ji Han would be difficult to perish.

The same is true of this Yongjiguan Ancient Road.

Although the combat effectiveness of the soldiers and horses of the Li Dynasty is not necessarily high, there is such a dangerous terrain, unless the army goes south, otherwise how can it forcibly break through such a desperate road without much advantage in troops?

But Di Qing also has a reason, the current war is not like the cold weapon combat before, the enemy occupies the mountains and occupies the mountains, can you occupy so many mountains along the way?

As long as the cannon is erected on the opposite hill, no matter how many camps the enemy builds, how steep the pass is, and how many men and horses the opponent has, it will be a one-shot bombardment.

So Di Qing just smiled and said: "I don't know anything, don't look at our number of only 10,000, but our combat power is extraordinary." And they are more able to fight in the mountains, they like to be in the mountains, and we can fight them so that they have nowhere to hide. ”

"Amount"

Nong Zhigao was even more puzzled, but seeing that Di Qing was quite confident, he didn't dare to argue with him, so he had to say: "It's better to ask the general not to be careless." ”

"Don't worry, I have my own strategy."

Di Qing responded, and then said: "It's just that although there is a strategy to attack the enemy, I still have to actually observe the terrain, and I hope Tongzhi is familiar with the enemy's situation, and I hope Tongzhi will take me to see it tomorrow." ”

"Will you go tomorrow?"

Yang Cha couldn't help but say: "Yongzhou is still four hundred miles away from Yongji Pass, and the general has come all the way over, do you want to rest first?" ”

"It's okay, we can go first, stationed in Guanzhong, and when I have observed the terrain, we can officially send troops. His Majesty and the Prefect both want me to make a quick decision, and I don't want to delay it for too long. ”

Di Qing waved his hand.

At present, June is the hot time in Guangxi, and there are a lot of mosquitoes, so he is afraid that there will be epidemics in the army, so it is best to solve it quickly, and he does not want to drag it out.

Seeing Di Qing's insistence, Yang Cha was helpless, so he had no choice but to respond: "I hope that the general will put the overall situation first, and don't take risks easily." ”

"That's nature."

Di Qing answered, and then everyone talked about some things, and then the meeting was dismissed.

At the end of the meeting, everyone was in a different mood.

Yang Cha knew that firearms were powerful, but he had never seen them on the battlefield with his own eyes, so he didn't know if this 10,000 firearms army could play a role.

And Nong Zhigao didn't say that he had seen it, he hadn't even heard of it, the southwest transportation was inconvenient, and the news was blocked, especially since he was not a court official before, but just a leader of a border ethnic minority, so it was even more impossible to know about the existence of firearms.

Therefore, seeing that only 10,000 people came to the imperial court, I couldn't help but be a little pessimistic about this expedition.

It's just that Di Qing seems to be full of confidence, and seems to think that with the tens of thousands of people in Guangxi alone, plus the manpower in Dali, he can wipe out the important pass of Jiaozhi guarded by tens of thousands of troops.

Let Nong Zhigao inevitably give him an evaluation of pride and arrogance in his heart.

"It's fine."

"This Di Qing thought that the Great Song Dynasty had defeated the Liao State and the Western Xia, so he had no one in his eyes, let him go and break the bloodstream, he would know that it was powerful."

"When the time comes, it will be reported to the imperial court, since I have already dissuaded it, it has nothing to do with me."

Later, when the imperial court saw that 10,000 people alone could not break the cross-toe, it was even more furious, and it was possible to send 200,000 heavy troops. In this way, it will be possible to completely destroy Cochin. ”

Out of the state capital yamen, when he returned to his own yamen, Nong Zhigao thought to himself.

So, everyone has their own thoughts, and the night passes.

In the early morning of the next day, Di Qing took 300 people on the road lightly, and under the leadership of Nong Zhigao, they headed in the direction of Pingxiang Cave.

Pingxiang Cave is the later Pingxiang City.

On the Song-Vietnam border, there are quite a lot of prefectures in this area, up to more than ten, among which Menzhou is the town of Tongdeng in Vietnam in later generations.

Like Dali, the Song and Vietnam were not directly connected, but were separated by a large number of ethnic minority tribes, and the market towns formed by these tribes were nominally part of the Great Song Dynasty, but in fact they were all autonomous.

The Li Dynasty adopted strategies such as wooing, dividing, and squeezing these border tribes, so that the local people were very disgusted and raised troops to resist, which allowed Nong Zhigao to rise.

It's just a little ashamed.

These areas have been the territory of the Central Plains Dynasty since ancient times, but the important keepers of such an important pass as Yongji Pass were not the Song army, but the ethnic minorities on the border.

They were caught between the two countries, unable to stop the Li Dynasty's attacks, resulting in frequent border losses.

Before the Li Dynasty conquered Yongzhou in history, the Li Dynasty repeatedly sent troops to harass the border checkpoints, plundering the border states of the Great Song Dynasty, such as Menzhou, Frozen Prefecture, Xiashi, Pingxiang, Xizhou, Shangshi, and Xipingzhou, posing a serious threat to the border people.

If this were not the case, it would not have allowed Nong Zhigao to raise his arms and respond to every call, and in a very short period of time, he would have grown from a few thousand troops to tens of thousands.

They are all border ethnic minorities who were oppressed by the Li Dynasty and rose up to resist.

Nong Zhigao's prestige on the border is actually average, and he needs to rebel against the Li Dynasty many times in history, recruit troops and buy horses many times, and become stronger and stronger before he is respected by the surrounding border tribes such as Nong and Huang.

At this point, he hadn't gotten to the point where he was later.

However, his father Nong Quanfu had a high prestige, and he used to be the largest minority force in the border area, leading the tribes to rebel against Li Yue.

Therefore, Nong Zhigao knows many tribal leaders on the border, and for the sake of his dead father, the leaders of those caves and tribes will basically sell him face.

With him leading the way, the journey was very smooth.

Di Qing came out of Yongzhou, walked for more than ten days, passed through Guwan (Fusui), Taiping (Chongzuo), Siming (Ningming) and other large states, and finally arrived in Xizhou, which is more than ten miles away from Pingxiang Cave.

In fact, there are large roads along the way, and there are many plain areas. For example, Taiping Prefecture and Siming Prefecture are many plains, fertile soil, there are many tribes living here, and there are even many Han people, and these border peoples have formed a situation of "I have you, you have me".

But Di Qing still walked for more than ten days, not because the road was not easy. However, there were too many forests, and every time he went, Nong Zhigao had to introduce him to the local chief, so it was delayed for some time.

I have to say that although it is a plain area, there are too many trees. Later Ningming covers an area of 3,705 square kilometers, most of which is plain. But at this time, most of the area is forest, and the endless forest sea seems to have no end in sight.

It is no wonder that in ancient times, timber was donated to the imperial court, and it had to be transported from Guangxi in the southwest, and the richness of this timber resource is really breathtaking.

Di Qing was born in Fenzhou, Shanxi, and was incorporated into the Bianliang Forbidden Army at the age of 16. But he kept such a strange terrain in mind, thinking about how he should deploy troops if he came here to fight.

In early July, he and Nong Zhigao arrived in Xizhou.

Just listening to a certain cave on the border, I thought that these ethnic minority tribes all lived in caves.

But in fact, the cave can also be said to be a mountain, which belongs to the local administrative name, and the corresponding words are a bit like the township of the Great Song Dynasty, and the scale is no different from the town.

Xizhou is a street as a town, and the local villagers live in the mountains to farm. And the head of the ethnic minorities in Xizhou, the state lord Huang Yingwen cannot be said to be the leader of the ethnic minorities, but more like a local landlord.

He wore the silk silk worn by the Han people, lived in a mansion where the rich Han people lived, and behaved and spoke in the same way as the Han people.

This is also the norm for ethnic minority leaders on the southwestern border.

In addition to the ethnic minorities who still live in the deep mountains and live a traditional life, the ethnic minorities who go down the mountain are basically very sinicized, and in later generations, many Han people surnamed Huang in the southwest are actually these ethnic minorities in their ancestors.

Huang Yingwen warmly entertained Di Qing and Nong Zhigao, and then personally took them to Pingxiang Cave, where he met with Qin Dafu, the cave owner, and introduced them to the local situation.

July 9th, at midnight. On the official road north of Yongji Pass, a team of more than 1,000 people, riding horses, slowly marched forward.

Di Qing raised his head and looked at the surrounding mountains, the surrounding mountains were actually not high, only a few dozen meters and a small hill with a maximum of less than 100 meters, but the forest was as lush as the sea, the roadside was overgrown with weeds, and although the official road was wide, it was undulating, and it was still very difficult to walk.

Mule and horse caravans can also be seen from time to time on the Song-Yue border, which is not very prosperous.

However, when the Great Song Dynasty fully opened up trade and encouraged commercial development, many Guangxi merchants still went to Vietnam to buy spices, ivory, and jewelry to sell back to China.

The appearance of this group of Song troops on war horses on the border naturally attracted the attention of many people, but Di Qing, as a general, naturally could not be stupidly unprepared. The perimeter is defended by Nong Chico's local troops, and the inner ring is kept on guard by the musketeers.

Once a battle breaks out, unless Nong Zhigao suddenly mutinies, as long as the troops outside delay for a few seconds, the musketeers who have already loaded will shoot as soon as possible, which is enough to deal with any force except the main force of the Li Dynasty.

Nong Zhigao has now been rewarded by the imperial court and has become a local official, so naturally it is impossible and unwilling to rebel - how can being a traitor be as comfortable as a court official?

So Di Qing is very safe.

The local natives did not attack them, but got along with them very well.

They inspected the Yongji Pass, and Di Qing saw the dilapidated pass, although the city wall was still there, it had been mottled and cracked, and many places simply lost their barriers and became a ruin.

Di Qing's attention was all on the terrain, and in the next few days, he continued to observe the terrain, draw maps, and determine the direction of the main attack on the Li Dynasty.

At the same time, Yang Cha also began to mobilize troops and horses, contact the ministries and ask them to send troops and gather in Xizhou.

The main force of the firearms corps also began to move southwestward.

It's just that a small Song army was stationed near Yongji Pass, which naturally attracted the attention of Guo Shengyi, who was located in Langzhou.

After all, the border was full of people, and many Vietnamese went to Da Song to do business, so the news was soon reported to Langzhou.

Knowing that a Song army came to the border, and there were also a large number of soldiers and horses in the Song State, Guo Shengyi was very surprised, could it be that His Majesty paid tribute to the Emperor of the Song State and did not make the Song Emperor angry?

He hesitated.

After hesitating, it was decided to incite a rebellion of the ethnic minorities on the border attached to the Li Dynasty, attack that Song army squad, and test the enemy's situation.

On July 19, in the afternoon, on a hilly hillside north of Pingxiang Cave, Di Qing's team was stationed in the Fort Scenic Area of Pingxiang City in later generations.

After they set up camp in the local area, each military camp was sealed with mosquito nets, and when they slept at night, they had to use wormwood and artemisia grass to light it with smoke to repel mosquitoes, or sprinkle herbs and peppermint to prevent mosquito bites.

But even so, the mosquitoes in this jungle can sometimes be so numerous that they can carry people away. It was barely fine when I slept in the tent, and it was terrible to get out of the tent.

In the evening, several soldiers in the camp were lighting wormwood, and someone said while tickling: "There are too many mosquitoes in the southwest, I raised my head yesterday and saw a cloud of mosquitoes on my head, which almost scared me to death." ”

"The newspaper said that the epidemic was caused by the bites of these mosquitoes, and we must cover every part of our body on this hot day, even if we are not bitten by mosquitoes, we will die of heat."

"The Southwest is not a place for people."

They're complaining.

Outside, there was a sudden noise of noise, and all kinds of shouts and killings were all over the sky.

Everyone hurriedly ran to the camp to see.

I saw hundreds of people dressed in local indigenous costumes rushing in outside at some point, cutting people and killing them everywhere.

Nong Zhigao's indigenous troops were stationed on the perimeter to protect them, and by this time they were in disarray.

Nong Zhigao himself was commanding the troops to defend, and at the same time, someone hurriedly came over and shouted: "General Di, General Di, the enemy is coming." ”

"Toot toot toot!"

Almost instantly, the whistle sounded throughout the camp.

Immediately afterwards, Di Qing walked out of the camp tent quickly and shouted: "Line up!" ”

Soon, the three hundred soldiers of the Song army lined up in formation at the entrance of the camp in less than a minute.

They were based on a hundred people, squatting a hundred people at the bottom, standing a hundred people in the middle, and a hundred people at the back, and discharging a square array to block the entrance of the village.

Then Di Qing ordered: "Send a message to Nong Tongzhi, let him retreat to both sides, and let the enemy in." ”

"Yes."

Immediately a soldier went out to give orders.

A moment later, Nong Zhigao, who was in the middle of a bitter battle, received an order, and although he did not understand why Di Qing got his confidence, his troops suffered heavy losses and had to be ordered to withdraw to both flanks.

As they left, the road to the hill was empty, and a thousand people shouted and began to charge up the hill.

The slope of the mountain is actually not steep, it is said to be a hillside, that is, it is a long slope with a steep angle.

And because it is near the entrance of the cave, the local people have cut down a lot of trees in the mountain, so that the view is quite open, except for the extremely vigorous vegetation, it cannot obstruct their view.

At least one or two thousand men charged mightily up the slope, howling like wolves coming out of their mouths, as if they were about to devour everything in front of them.

"Shoot!"

Almost when the other party was less than a hundred steps away from the entrance of the village, Di Qing gave an order.

"Bang bang bang!"

The muzzle of the gun erupted with a loud bang.

The next second the soldiers of the first row retreated to the back and began to reload, the soldiers of the second row crouched down and continued to fire, followed by the third row, the fourth row, the fifth row...

The gunfire continued to ring, forming a dense network of fire, and all the enemies rushing in front of them were shot and fell, wailing all over the field.

In less than a minute, there was no one standing a hundred paces away, the ground was littered with corpses or wounded enemy soldiers, and the rest were stunned, and then fled screaming as if they had seen a ghost.

Everything happened so fast, no one thought that the Song army did not even have hand-to-hand combat with the enemy, and at such a distance, these sudden enemies all fell, and there were few survivors.

Nong Zhigao's troops in the grass on both sides were stunned, and they didn't come back to their senses for a long time. They saw that the sound continued, and then the Song army's position was shrouded in white mist, and in the smoke, the enemy fell like this, completely unaware of what was happening, and it was as terrifying as a fairy magic.

"This"

Nong Zhigao was dumbfounded, and even after the remaining enemies fled, he forgot to give the order to pursue.

It was the sound of a fight from the bottom of the mountain that woke him up.

It was Qin Dafu, the owner of Pingxiang Cave, who learned that someone was coming, and hurriedly brought his headquarters to help, and fought with the enemy.

After about 20 minutes, Qin Dafu escorted a group of prisoners up the mountain and reported the situation to Di Qingyu.

It turned out that these were the natives of the nearby Qiyuan Prefecture, which was the area of Van Lang County in Vietnam in later generations, which was controlled by the Li Dynasty of Vietnam.

Upon learning of this, Di Qing said angrily: "I didn't expect that there are border people who act as lackeys for Jiaozhi, Qiyuan Prefecture was originally the territory of the Great Song Dynasty, but it treasoned and surrendered to the enemy, and this clan can be destroyed!" I should send troops to exterminate these traitors, and I must die for the Li Dynasty, and the country must be destroyed for this! ”

"The general is mighty!"

Qin Dafu shouted again and again, they had long been fed up with Li Chao's anger.

Only Nong Zhigao, who saw the powerful firearms with his own eyes, could he come back to his senses, and hurriedly asked Di Qingdao: "General, is my Great Song Heavenly Army so powerful?" ”

"That's nature."

Di Qing grinned and looked at the north: "There are more powerful things than this!" ”

As soon as the artillery came out.

It doesn't matter if you're an army of 100,000 or a million.

It's all gone!

(End of chapter)