Xinshun 1730

Chapter 65
On the lower reaches of the Nen River, the emperor camped.

Li Gan seemed to be suffering from hemorrhoids, pacing back and forth in the big tent with his hands behind his back, unable to stop at all.

From time to time, he asked the eunuch to open the big tent and poke his head out to have a look, hoping to see the knight holding the blue flag to announce the victory.

The news from the frontline these days is not very optimistic.

Everyone knew that Liu Yu was young and had never been on a battlefield. Although many veterans thought Liu Yu's memorial was reasonable after reading it, he was probably just a Zhao Kuo, or perhaps made alarmist remarks in order to show that he knew Western learning.

But the current situation on the front line is really as Liu Yu expected. The forwards have attacked Mulijiwei for nine consecutive days, and they have lost troops and generals, and they have not fallen yet.

In particular, the three daily reports from the front line verified Liu Yu's words: Assaulting the bastion by storm, the place with the most casualties is the slope closest to the bastion, and the attack requires skill.

At the beginning, Liu Yu did not elaborate on this sentence because of the ulterior purpose of "reform needs thousands of lives as a price", and it was hidden in a pile of nonsense, and was briefly mentioned.

But now, the words that were mentioned in one stroke at the beginning have been turned out and become prophecies.

In nine days of fierce fighting, six hundred soldiers were killed and countless wounded.If it weren't for the dispatched national elite, if it wasn't for the emperor not far from the front line, the morale of the army would have collapsed at this point in the battle, and there was no way to attack again.

The Rakshas who guard the fort are cunning.

On the first day of the siege, the Luocha artillery defending the city fired two shots sparsely.

Half of the gunpowder was installed, and the elevation angle of the muzzle was adjusted, so that the frontline siege generals misjudged the range of the Rakshasa artillery.

The misjudgment of the range of the artillery led to the selection of the assembly point for the siege attack too far ahead. During the assembly process, they were attacked by the Rakshasa artillery and suffered heavy losses.

The grandson of Yasukuni Duke Yuan Lan was crushed by Luocha's cannonballs on the spot and broke his leg. He bled profusely and died.

In the ensuing artillery battle, Dashun's heavy artillery had not had time to completely destroy Luocha's artillery, and under the pressure of the emperor's military order that the city must be broken in [-] days, a strong attack was launched.

On the slope in front of the two moats, they were attacked by crossfire from Rakshasa, and the corpses filled up a section of the moat.

After all, it was Li Gan's first time to go to war, the emperor's personal conquest, in a prosperous age, it is best not to go if you are not sure of victory.

Now, the day when the agreed meeting with the leaders of the Khalkha Mongolian tribes is getting closer, and there is still no good news from the front line, Li Gan is really anxious.

It is useless to increase troops, and it cannot be deployed at all. We can only urge the Jilin defense envoy to continue to transfer the artillery downstream.

But it coincided with a mountain rain, the Songhua River surged, the road was muddy, and the reinforcement of the artillery on the front line was not smooth.

In the big tent, several veterans of the real power faction in the army sat under the military stools, all in armor, without saying a word.

Yuan Lan, the Duke of Jingguo, is 68 years old. He has been stationed on the front line of Rehe all the year round and suppressed Monan Mongolia. His ancestor Yuan Zongdi; After mediation, he returned to fight against the Qing Dynasty, and was granted a noble title like Yuchi Jingde, and now he is in charge of the Beijing camp drills; Xie Wuji, Marquis of Zichuan, was called the number one bandit in Shandong by the Manchus in his ancestors, and once killed Sun Zhixie alive , now out of the town of Liaodong, was responsible for building the post station before.

Jing Guogong Yuan Lan, who had just experienced the pain of a white-haired man sending a black-haired man, held an "Old Book of Tang" in his hand, deliberately pretending to be calm.

But the "Biography of Gao Xianzhi Feng Changqing Brother Shu Han" has not been turned over for more than half an hour, and the place where the finger is pressed is the tragic "Battle of Shibao City".

He knew very well that it was the first time for the emperor to go out on an expedition, and at this time, these old nobles like himself were the backbone of the emperor.If he was as restless as the emperor, the emperor would probably be even more restless.

Even if his grandson had just died, he could not show any anxiety and could only use silence to calm the emperor down.

After a long time, Yuan Lan finally put down the "Old Tang Book", stood up and said, "Your Majesty, please sit down. Thanks to Taizong's foresight, the Wude Palace must test the method of geometric measurement. Our army's artillery skills are not weak. There are too many Rakshasas. Even if the brakes are defended against the fort, they cannot last long."

"As a king, one should consider the world, not the gains and losses of one castle and one castle. Besides, the weather has been fine these few days, and there have been no rainy clouds. Since the son-in-law on the front line is determined to die, this castle must go down."

Li Gan looked at this veteran who had just experienced the pain of bereavement, and sighed.

Seeing the gloomy atmosphere in the big tent, he finally said: "You don't need to be like this. There are only a few thousand people in Luocha, not the hundreds of thousands of Liao troops under the Empress Dowager Xiao; , you don’t have to learn from Kou Laigong, just act calm to reassure me.”

"What I am worried about is not this fort, but after. Even if this fort is captured, there are still several forts in Luocha, so what will happen? Heavy artillery is not easy to transport, and soldiers are expensive. We must attack Yuer before the first snow in winter. Otherwise, once Raksha increases his troops and contacts the Junggar tribe, what will happen?"

Li Jiusi, the Duke of E, who was also dying, got up and said: "Your Majesty is very worried. However, as Taizong said, everything should be dialectical. Your Majesty's personal conquest is planned by Khalkha Mongolia."

"Khalka Mongolia, the worry is Junggar. Subject to the Celestial Dynasty and Rakshasa, it can still be the master of one side. But if it is defeated by Junggar, it will be recruited and seize the grassland."

"In terms of dialectics, if Raksha contacted Junggar, the Khalkha tribe must be loyal to the Celestial Dynasty, and it is not all bad things."

"Liu Shou often said: Rakshasa is bitterly cold, and many Mongolian tribes are recruited to join the army, and they believe in the Orthodoxy rather than the Red and Yellow Sect. If it is not a last resort, the Khalkha tribe will not vote for Rakshasa."

"Although he is young, among the ministers, he is conservative and very young, and he is not a boastful person. There is a lot of reason."

This is an old saying, and Li Gan understood it in his heart, but he still sighed: "During the Tang Dynasty, during the time of Emperor Taizong, all the barbarians surrendered, and no one dared to rebel; after Anshi, the barbarians rebelled one after another. It's so different, why? The Celestial Dynasty If the armored soldiers are strong, the barbarians will obey them; if the armored soldiers are weak, the barbarians will rebel."

"Now that I want to settle the troubles in northern Xinjiang, how can I rely on Rakshasa and Junggar to threaten the Khalkha tribe?"

"This time, we need to display our military might and deter the public. The "Tongjian" says: Be afraid of power and not be virtuous. This statement is sincere and not deceitful."

"This time going north, one is to fix the frontier of Rakshasa; the other is to demonstrate in the Khalkha tribe. If only one of them is achieved, and the whole effort is not completed, what is the future of northern Xinjiang?"

"Even if the Khalkha tribe surrenders because of the threat of the Junggar tribe, Xijing is the place where I am facing Longxing. How can I allow others to sleep soundly? The Junggar tribe must be removed. After that, the Khalkha tribe will not have the threat of the Junggar tribe. Will you turn to Rakshasa again?"

"That's why this battle must be fought so that the Khalkha people will be shocked and won't dare to disagree for decades. They can't beat the Junggar, and the Junggar can't beat the Rakshasa. If our army can defeat the Rakshasa, the Khalkha people will naturally Know who you should be loyal to, and only then can you continue the legacy of Emperor Taizong, divide the feudal system, and divide the power among the people, just like Monan, and we will never suffer from the north for thousands of years in the Celestial Dynasty!"

"Nowadays, in the battle of the Muliji Acropolis, the elite gathered and the heavy artillery was ready, and it turned out like this! If the Khalkha tribe came, what would they think? There are only a few hundred Raksha people, and they are not even the elite Raksha Beijing camp. ..."

Seeing that Li Gan became more and more irritable, Yuan Lan got up and said, "Your Majesty, didn't Liu Shouchang say that? It's the same with Westerners attacking the bastions nowadays. They are surrounded by ten times and heavy artillery are gathered, and they often take several months to go down. He knows Western learning, What you said must be true. All countries in the world besiege the bastions like this, and your Majesty is eager to attack, how can there be no losses?"

Li Gan clapped his palms and sighed, "That's the problem! You and I have heard from Liu Shouchang that Westerners attack fortresses like this. But do the Khalkha people know? They know that Westerners attack fortresses in the same way." Is it difficult? What they saw was our army gathering and throwing more than a thousand corpses in front of the bastion garrisoned by hundreds of Rakshafu soldiers."

"You and I know the details, so what we see is naturally different; but the Khalkha people don't know the details, which is quite different. For example, when the Zheng family attacked Taiwan, our army thought it was nothing more than that, and more than ten thousand people attacked hundreds of people and could only Besieged, I thought the Zheng family was weak. Now that I have really experienced the attack and defense of the bastion, I know the difficulty of crossing the sea and attacking the fort."

"Therefore, there is a moral saying: the sergeant hears the Tao, and he practices it diligently; Laughing out loud, feeling disdainful, will surely bury the root of rebellion in the future. We used to think that Zheng's attacking the fort was weak, how can we expect the Khalkhas to understand how difficult this fort is to attack?"

In the final analysis, this battle is after all a show battle between two North Asian powers in front of small forces.Since it is an exhibition battle, it is necessary to fight as beautifully and beautifully as possible.

This is not a question of "you can do it, you can do it". The Khalkhas know that they can't do it, but they need to know who is really good at Dashun or Russia.

Siege is not an end, but a means.The real purpose is to show military power to Khalkha Mongolia.This is completely different from the purpose of previous wars.

The DPRK and China have long made a general plan for the settlement of northern Xinjiang.

Khalkha Mongolia must be completely surrendered, and then a post station line will be built along the Mobei Mongolian grassland. In the future, elite soldiers will be sent to the northern foot of the Tianshan Mountains along the northern line of the grassland.

The southern line follows the old roads of the Han and Tang Dynasties, and takes the Hexi Corridor, forming a situation of two sides, so that the disaster can be completely cut off.

The construction of post stations on the northern line is nominally to solve the Khalkha Mongol's great enemy Junggar, but in fact it is to prepare for the future construction of post stations and military stations to control Mobei.

The Khalkha people are not stupid, they have been delaying the construction of post stations and military stations, because they know very well that once the post station and military stations are completed, the fate of the tribes in Mobei will be the same as those in Monan.

Anyway, they understood that it was impossible for Dashun to allow the Junggar tribe to annex them, and to use this as an excuse, Dashun had nothing to do.

As soon as Junggar sent troops, Dashun would help.The Khalkha tribe is not in danger of being completely annexed for the time being, so it does not agree with the construction of the station military station at all, and it does not contribute, and it is even more obedient.

It's impossible for Dashun to really be "abundant in martial arts", tearing his face apart and not talking about strategy, and going to war with the Junggar, Luocha, and Khalkha tribes at the same time, he can only be so disgusted.

Unless this performance battle completely scares the Khalkha tribe, let the Khalkha tribe understand who is the real suzerain that Mobei Mongolia can rely on.Use a performance battle against Rakshasa to let Khalkha know how much he is, and then he will be happy and loyal, contribute people to repair post stations and military depots, and completely give up the illusion of swaying independence.

But now it seems that this performance battle is not as smooth as Li Gan imagined.

When the atmosphere in the tent gradually became restless, the shout that Li Gan had been looking forward to finally came from outside.

"Good news! Good news!"

Li Gan, who could no longer calm down, couldn't wait for the eunuch to open the big tent, so he stretched out his hand to open the big tent, and saw a rider holding a blue flag symbolizing victory from a distance, and got off the horse before the horse stopped. Jump down, shouting loudly.

"The third son of Yi Guogong, Liu Yu, the honorary guard in front of the palace, destroyed the Raksha Castle, Fu Luocha reinforcements, beheaded [-] people, captured more than [-], and restored the Luhan Mountain Guard City. The mothflies of the Raksha King were captured. !"

(End of this chapter)