At the beginning of October, there were actually not two battles in the northwest, but many times.

Because the Song army was essentially divided into two routes, but the army on the west route acted separately, led by Zhang Kang and Jingtai, and attacked Miaochuan City and Zhuo Luo City respectively.

At the same time, the Song army that cooperated with the Jingyuan Road launched a clean-up offensive against the Western Xia army on the border, causing heavy losses to the Western Xia army in Qingtang and Zhuoluo and the southern area.

On the East Road, Huanqing Road and Yanyan Road jointly organized the harassment of the territory of Western Xia, and tens of thousands of Song troops were divided into pieces, and attacked the fortresses and watchtowers in the territory of Western Xia at the battalion level.

Except for the city, all military facilities in the field were the target of the Song army, which frightened the Western Xia people on the border and fled back to the city to hide.

The Great Song Dynasty has now cut off the Song-Xia mutual market, the Song people galloped on horseback in the grassland, and the Western Xia people only had the share of being beaten and had no power to fight back.

After all, the only long-range means of the Tangut people is to rely on artillery, and if they meet in the field, they use cold weapons to fight with the Song people's muskets, and before they get close to the position of one mile, they have already been shot and scattered, which is really impossible to compete.

The two sides attacked each other, and the Western Xia army in the border field was wiped out for a while. Some cities were also heavily guarded, relying on the artillery built by the Western Xia themselves.

Ren Fu, the commander of the soldiers and horses of the Eastern Front, led more than 10,000 men and horses, repeatedly went out of the customs, and constantly harassed the Western Xia, which seemed to have the meaning of going deep into the summer realm.

The front was at a stalemate for a while.

Just when the situation in the northwest seemed complicated, but in fact it gradually became clear, and the Great Song Dynasty gradually gained the upper hand, the Liao-Song campaign in the northeast also slowly kicked off.

Also at the beginning of October, in the bay of Dengzhou on Jingdong Road, a fleet of the Great Song Dynasty Navy raised its sails and headed north.

Since the first year of the Great Song Dynasty, Zhao Jun has been continuously expanding the scale of the navy and building new warships.

During the Tang and Song dynasties, the development of ships was in full swing.

According to the records of the "Xuanhe Envoy Goryeo Tujing" written by the navigator Xu Jing during the Xuanhe period of the Northern Song Dynasty, the Northern Song Dynasty already had a single-keel pointed bottom boat, called "Fortune Boat".

On this basis, the Great Song Dynasty built a series of warships.

Including the Fuchuan battleship with a length of more than 60 meters, a width of more than 20 meters, and a displacement of more than 1,000 tons.

There are also Flying Tiger frigates with a length of more than 40 meters, a width of more than 10 meters, and a displacement of more than 800 tons.

and the Sea Falcon attack ship with a length of more than 30 meters, a width of 8 meters, and a displacement of more than 600 tons.

The rest of the assault ships, assault ships, landing ships, combat ships, supply ships, and logistics ships with a displacement of 2 to 500 tons.

A naval fleet numbered 5,000 men, with a Fuchuan battleship as the main ship, equipped with 24 wheel oars, 50 oarsmen, 27 guns, and 3 large sails, and could accommodate more than 400 people as a whole.

In addition, two Flying Tiger frigates, five Sea Falcon attack ships, more than 20 assault ships, assault ships, landing ships, supply ships, etc., the total tonnage of a naval fleet is about 10,000 tons.

This tonnage is definitely not good compared with later generations, not even a fraction of an aircraft carrier formation, and even worse than the early Ming Dynasty.

For example, Zheng He's treasure ship in the Western Ocean is more than 150 meters long, more than 60 meters wide, has a displacement of more than 3,000 tons, and can accommodate more than 1,000 people.

But at least for the moment, the Great Song Navy fleet, which is equipped with artillery, is already an invincible existence in the world.

There is no rival in the entire ocean, or even in the world.

It's ironic to say.

Zhao Jun established the navy in the name of protecting maritime trade and fighting piracy.

Originally, there were two fleets, namely the Huainan Taizhou Town Navy, the Hebei Binzhou Ding Navy, and the original Ping Navy of the Great Song Dynasty in Dengzhou, which were three fleets.

After that, four more were added one after another, namely the Shandong Dengzhou Wei Navy, the two Zhejiang Taizhou Ning Navy, the Fujian Quanzhou An Navy, and the Guangdong Guangzhou Jing Navy, with a total scale of more than 30,000 people in seven fleets.

If you add a part of the navy stationed on Tsushima Island and Jeju Island, the total tonnage is about 80,000, and the number of people is also 40,000.

The scale of the pirates was very different from that of the Great Song Navy, and the pirates in the coastal waters had almost been wiped out by the Great Song Navy, and only the bandits of the two countries were occasionally infested near the sea trade routes between Japan and Goryeo.

This situation also made some complaints within the imperial court, and many officials wrote to ask for the abolition of the imperial court's spending a lot of money to build a navy, because it was useless and wasted financial resources.

But these suggestions were ignored by the Constitutional Yuan, including Zhao Zhen issued an order to plead on these officials, after seeing the importance of maritime hegemony in later generations, even Zhao Jun did not have to come forward, naturally the emperor and many prime ministers endorsed his decision.

This time, the fleet dispatched by the Great Song Dynasty was the Binzhou Ding Navy, the Dengzhou Ping Navy and the Wei Navy, the Wei Navy had already gone east to Goryeo to help, and the Ding Navy and the Peace Navy would go north to attack the hinterland of Liao.

At this moment, Di Qing was standing on the deck of the main ship "Guardian Ship", and the cloak behind him was spread. We are accustomed to fighting wars on land, but this is the first time we have fought at sea.

Standing beside him was the commander of the Dengzhou Ping Navy, Hu Yan Shouyong.

Hu Yanshou saw that Di Qing had been looking at the distant ocean since he went to sea, and it had been more than an hour, so he said with a smile: "Di Shuai shouldn't have been to the sea much before." ”

"I haven't been out before, and I haven't fought a sea battle, which makes me a little nervous."

Di Qing is quite honest.

He simply admitted the fact that he was not good at naval warfare.

However, there is no need for him to lie, because since he destroyed Annan, he has been promoted to the rank of deputy privy councillor because of his merits.

The promotion of military generals in the Song Dynasty was no longer promoted to a certain lieutenant or a certain general, but to the three yas or the privy council, such as the three major commanders of the three yas, as well as the privy council envoys.

It's just that the three yamen are in a fictitious position, and they can be regarded as taking a back seat and not holding power. The Privy Council is different, it is still the Privy Council, and it belongs to the real power department.

This time, Di Qing served as the deputy envoy of the Privy Council and the chief of the navy.

Therefore, theoretically speaking, all the navies of the Great Song Dynasty are now under his control, and the rank is the superior of the superior of Huyan Shouyong, even if he says that he can't fight a naval war, he doesn't have to worry about someone seizing power.

Hu Yanshou scratched his head and said: "Don't hide it from Di Shuai, in fact, we don't know how to fight a naval battle." ”

"Huh?"

Di Qing was dumbfounded, staring at him.

Hu Yanshou saw Di Qing looking at him in surprise, so he hurriedly said: "It's not just our Ping Navy, other navies don't fight at all. ”

"Why?"

Di Qing wondered, what is the use of this TM who can't fight?

"Because I haven't been beaten."

Hu Yanshou spread his hands and said: "The sea is full of my Great Song Dynasty's warships and merchant ships, even if there are pirates, even if there are pirates, they don't need artillery for their little broken ships, they can be crushed if they collide directly, where is the battle?" ”

"Amount"

Di Qing thought about it, the Great Song Navy had no opponent since it was established.

Because the opponent did not form a navy at all.

Isn't their role completely useless?

So it's not so much that they can't fight, it's better to say that although they have training, they don't have any actual combat experience.

This is also one of the drawbacks.

"It's okay, anyway, this is also a landing operation, and our task is to get close to the border of Liao, occupy Yuguan, and cut off the main force of Liao."

Di Qing turned over and comforted Hu Yanshou with a word.

This is also true.

The Great Song Dynasty is not able to pinch and calculate, they just found that it is the best choice for Liaoxia to attack the allies of the Great Song Dynasty and force the Great Song to take the initiative to attack and expose the flaws, which does not mean that they know the position of the main force of Liaoxia.

What's more, both the Liao State and the Western Xia were well hidden, and they did not expose their hole cards, and adopted various methods to cover up the main force, so that the Song army scouts could not figure out the situation.

This is the case with information warfare, the two sides are false and real, and for the enemy and the enemy, all kinds of messy information will be placed in the Constitutional Yuan, and it is not so easy to make a quick judgment.

The two generals, who did not know how to fight a naval battle, took the fleet to the north, and when they passed through the Bohai Bay, they joined the Dinghai Navy, and the total number of the two fleets was about 10,000 people, but there were more than 50 or 60 large and small ships, and the momentum was huge.

A few days later, Fan Zhongyan, who was far away in Zhuozhou, led more than 100,000 troops to the north on the grounds that Goryeo had signed a mutual assistance treaty with the Great Song Dynasty and the Liao State had attacked the Great Song allies.

The Liao side really increased its defense, with Xijin Mansion as the core, and arranged defense lines in the surrounding Liangxiang, Wanping, Yuhe, Gaoliang River and other places.

The two sides quickly entered the phase of confrontation.

In the midst of this saber-rattling, the Song army took the lead in firing.

However, it was not Fan Zhongyan on the front line who started the fight.

After all, Fan Zhongyan had just started to attack, and he was surrounded by artillery from the Liao people, and if he forcibly attacked, he would be sent to death.

Therefore, after entering the territory of Liao, Fan Zhongyan adopted the old method and stationed several large camps on the periphery of the Liao army from Liangxiang, Wanping, Yuhe and other places.

The camp was outside the range of the Liao army, and they built high walls, placed artillery, and constantly transported grain and grass, which was quite a bit of a protracted war with the Liao State.

Almost when the Liao and Song dynasties entered the tense and exciting confrontation, the two navies of Hebei Ding Navy and Shandong Ping Navy had slowly appeared in Pingzhou, Nanjing Prefecture, Liao State.

Pingzhou is the area from Kaiping to Qinhuangdao in later generations, and Yuguan at this time, but also the famous Shanhaiguan in later generations, is here.

In the early morning of October 9, in the early winter, the weather in the north became colder and colder.

In Guangning County, Pingzhou, the cold winter wind makes the sea waves crash, and there is a small port on the shore, and there are still some ships staying in the port.

In fact, there are some naval armies in Liao, but the number is not large, and they only operate in the near sea, and have not been out to the far sea. Among them, Yingzhou, Quang Ninh and other places have stationed a navy, called the Neighboring Navy.

In addition, there are several troops such as the Liaoxing Army, the Xingshan Army, and the Haiyang Army, which are mainly used to guard the important pass of Yuguan.

Although it was effortless for the Liao State to obtain the sixteen states of Yanyun, the importance of Yuguan was very high, and the Yanshan Mountains north of Yanyun blocked the offensive between the white mountains and black waters in the northeast, and were important strategic mountains in the Yanyun region.

If the Liao State wants to transport troops south, there are only two most convenient roads, one is Guihua Prefecture, which is Zhangjiakou in later generations. The second is to go to Yuguan.

Yelu Zong really wanted to hide people's eyes, and when he went to Tokyo Road, the main army also followed his side, otherwise the Song people should have detected that the Liao State Pi Room Army did not follow him, and they would definitely suspect that there was fraud in it.

So at this time, Yelu Zongzhen himself was in Tokyo, the leather room army was also in Tokyo, and the main force of the Liao State was attacking Goryeo.

Now sneaking to Nanjing, it is bound to pass through Yuguan.

Above the county seat of Quang Ninh County, soldiers from the neighboring navy were boredly looking in the direction of Yushui (Shihe) to the northeast.

Although they were nominally naval forces, since the last time the Liao State organized a fleet to pull the few thousand naval troops of the Liao State over and went to Japan to prepare to get rid of the sulfur trade of the Song people, the neighboring navy has existed in name only.

These neighboring navies are also some Han soldiers who are familiar with the water recruited nearby, and they do some work on weekdays to garrison the seaside city, or drive a boat to hang around the coastal water.

Now that the Liao and Song dynasties were about to go to war again, they saw that in the northeast, groups of leather room troops were crossing Yushui and heading towards Xijin.

"Wa'er, this is the first batch of Liao."

A middle-aged soldier at the head of the city was whispering to a young pawn next to him.

The young pawn said in a low voice: "Second uncle, from the day before yesterday to today, there have been four batches, no less than 20,000. ”

"It's a pity, now that there is a sudden war, the border and the sea are blocked, and no entry or exit is allowed, otherwise we can spread the news."

"Why don't I go to the agreed place tonight?"

"Forget it, if the people above find out that you leave your post without permission, I'm afraid you will be suspicious."

The middle-aged soldier denied.

The Imperial City Division has naturally not done anything over the years.

Due to the full opening of commerce and trade between the Song and Liao in the past few years, the commerce between the two sides prospered rapidly, and many Liao and Song people came to each other's borders to do business.

But naturally, there are many inspectors on both sides who disguise their identities and go to the enemy's country in the name of trade, but in fact, they should respond internally.

The Liao people had many spies, and the Great Song Dynasty had no fewer spies than them.

Like these two soldiers from the neighboring navy, they were developed by an envoy of the Imperial City Division who smuggled ships.

In the Song-Liao border trade, in order to pay less taxes, there are bound to be many smuggling ships.

The Liao State welcomed them very much, because the sulfur smuggled from Japan was much cheaper than that of the Great Song merchants who came from the orthodox channels.

After the Great Song Dynasty severely cracked down on smuggling boats, border cities such as Guangning and Yingzhou were even very prosperous because of smugglers, and there were many prostitutes, restaurants, taverns, and shops.

It's just that in the past two years, the Great Song Dynasty has cracked down on smuggling ships very strongly, and the businessmen's sense of smell is very keen.

At the end of September, the Great Song Dynasty ordered the cessation of the Song Liao and Song Xia Changchang markets, and many people speculated that there was another war, so the border became depressed again.

Originally, the superiors of these two small soldiers often traveled back and forth between Cangzhou in the Song State and Pingzhou in the Liao State, one to engage in commercial activities, and the other to engage in espionage activities. But now they are also forced not to set off, so that the information cannot be brought back.

The two of them were discussing in a whisper, when they suddenly heard various shouts in the distance, and they quickly turned their heads.

Seeing that the soldiers near the east city wall seemed to be quite in turmoil, many people were curious and leaned over there, and the two of them ran to the direction of the east city wall, and looked in the direction pointed by the soldiers shouting on the city wall.

I saw a small black dot on the sea level in the distance, and I don't know when it appeared.

Is it a smuggling ship?

The idea came to the minds of the two Song people for the first time.

I didn't expect that when the war was about to start, there were smuggling ships that were not afraid of death coming over, but I don't know if it was their superiors or other smuggling ships.

"Great, there is a fleet of Song merchants coming over again, and the beaks are about to fade out here these days."

"You have to buy some wine, the wine of the Song people is very good, especially the spirit liquor that calls for burning spring, I heard that it was brewed in the land of Bashu in the Tang Dynasty, and when you drink it, you will be feverish, and you will drink this wine in winter to warm your body."

"Not only that, but I heard that their emperor also made a lot of wine. Alas, the wine of the Song people is good, but it is a pity that it is too expensive. ”

"It's going to be a war anyway, so it's better to just rob them."

"Is it a brain plague that is robbed? Once they have been robbed, there will be no more ships coming from them, and it is only when there is a war that they should be offered as Yayah. ”

The neighboring naval soldiers inside and outside the city were talking, and many of them touched their pockets and stared at the black spots in the distance.

Even some impatient officers had already gone down to the city, opened the south gate, and ran to the port to wait.

After all, since the Tang Dynasty, there has been a strong liquor called Shaochun in Sichuan.

After that, Zhao Zhen set up a field and produced a lot of sorghum wine, distilled wine, wheat wine and other liquors through various methods, which sold well overseas for a time.

Especially now that it is winter, it is the most comfortable time to drink some spirits, so the Liao people in the north are very fond of the wine of the Song Kingdom.

There were not many defenders in Quang Ninh City, only a few hundred people, and many of them stared at the sea in the distance.

Not only Guangning City, Yuguan, which is a few kilometers away from Guangning, also has a city, but it is not as big as Guangning City, which has been established since the Tang Dynasty, and has set up a city wall about three miles long from north to south.

At this moment, after reassuring the latest batch of Liao troops who had entered the pass, the defenders of Yuguan also saw the black spots on the sea level in the south, and many people were hooked by alcohol, and they also left their posts and came to the seaside dock to wait.

For a time, from Shanhaiguan to the large area around Qinhuangdao in the rear, the seaside wharf and port, nearly a thousand Liao people had gathered one after another, anxiously waiting for the arrival of those ships.

Soon the ships were getting closer and closer, from the first black dot, slowly to two, three, four...

Dozens of ships of various sizes slowly appeared on the surface of the sea.

At first, the Liao soldiers were full of excitement.

As the number of boats grew, they became more aware that something was wrong, and the crowd waiting for the drinks became agitated.

"Are those the merchant ships of the Song people? When did the Song people have such a large fleet? ”

"Don't say it's a black businessman, even if it's a Song official, there aren't so many merchant ships."

"What the hell are they?"

"Could it be?"

A thought quickly came to everyone's mind.

These ships, aren't they?

"Enemy attack!"

Almost when the Liao soldiers on the seashore were restless, on the city of Quang Ninh, the officers defending the city let out a sharp cry and blew the horn at the same time.

The city can be seen far from the heights, and the eyesight of the officer guarding the city is good, and when the ship is almost eight or nine miles away from them, although he can't see it very clearly, the man can clearly see that the red Great Song flag is fluttering on the other party's ship!

(End of chapter)