Since the Accounting: A Chronicle of the Roman Khanate

Chapter 21 The Khitan People
In the era of the Turkic shogunate, the fear of the East disappeared with the familiarity of both sides, because soon, a greater stimulus will come.

The Seljuk dynasty unified the vast area from the middle of the river to the Mediterranean Sea, captured the Eastern Roman emperor alive, entered Asia Minor, which the Tianfang sect countries had not been able to touch for a long time, and divided the Sultanate of Roma here.

In the east, after the Liao was destroyed by the Jin, Yelu Dashi led the remnants to flee to the Western Regions, established the Western Liao Dynasty, and had conflicts with the Seljuk Dynasty, the overlord here.Sanjar, the master of ZTE of Seljuk, decided to conquer and destroy these heretics from the east.

Sancar is not stupid.On the contrary, he was young and promising, and he fought all his life. He was a famous hero at that time.

At the age of 11, Sancar, who lost his father, served as the governor of Khorasan, crusading east and west, and suppressing rebel forces everywhere.After that, he joined the routine civil war of the Turkic dynasty. At the age of 19, he defeated a group of relatives, seized the throne of Sultan, and became the suzerain of the Turkic dynasties.

When facing Xiliao, Sanjar was 57 years old, and he was still fighting everywhere in person.He is obviously not a person who does not understand military affairs. On the contrary, from the Kara Khan in the Central Asian grasslands to the dynasties of Syria and Minor Asia, he has almost fought against each other. He has reunited the fragmented world of Tianfang Sect by force. He has military experience. and political experience are very rich.

And his enemy, in the real sense, Yelu Dashi, who was famous from Khitan to Ireland, was two years younger than him.In terms of record, it is also much inferior.

According to the point of view of the Northern Song Dynasty, Yelu Dashi was actually a civil servant.Although he has the surname Yelu, his family has too far a relationship with the emperor, and finally he became an official only through the imperial examination.

The only imperial examination in the Liao Kingdom was the Chinese Examination, and the content of the examination was traditional Chinese examination questions.Although it has been released to all ethnic groups in the later period, other people who want to take the exam have to take the exam with the Han people.There are few people in the first place, and the cultural background is not as good as others, so very few people are admitted.And Yelu Dashi is one of the only two Khitan Scholars in the history books, and he is a figure of the master class.

After passing the exam, he went to the Imperial Academy.The Khitan language called Hanlin "Lin Ya", so in the history books of Song Dynasty, he was also called "Great Stone Lin Ya", which means to be the big stone of Hanlin.The only advantage is probably that the Liao and Song systems are quite different. They learned more about the Tang system, so the separation of civil and military is not obvious, so Yelu Dashi still has some opportunities to participate in the military.

However, before coming to the Western Regions, Yelu Dashi's record was not very good.

His highlight moment on the battlefield was to counterattack the Northern Song Dynasty's attack.

In the last few years of the Liao Kingdom, failure was almost a foregone conclusion.In the Yanyun area, the rule became seriously unstable. Many local Han people hoped to join the Northern Song Dynasty and obtain asylum. Many local officials voluntarily surrendered to the Northern Song Dynasty.

The Northern Song Dynasty believed that this was a good time to recover this place, so it mobilized a large army, with Tong Guan as the envoy of Xuanfu, and the way of cultivating teachers as the control, leading an army of 15 to the north.

The regime of the Liao Kingdom had collapsed at this time. Emperor Tianzuo fled by himself, and he didn't know where to hide. The officials in Yanjing couldn't find the emperor, so they elected Yeluchun as emperor, known as "Northern Liao Dynasty" in history.The small regime in the Northern Liao Dynasty had few people and was alone, and only 2 people were gathered to go to the front to confront the Song army.

Song Jun soon discovered that the enemy's rear was very empty, so he decided to select 10 elites to bypass the front line and attack Yanjing.General Liu Yanshi led [-] people as backup.Yanjing's guards were indeed very lax, the Song army successfully mixed in, and there were Han people in the city responding to the Song army. In the end, all seven city gates were controlled by the Song army, and the people in the city did not even notice any abnormalities.

However, after the success, the Song army did not expand the results of the battle. Instead, they all went to drink, rape, and wantonly slaughtered and looted citizens.The citizens were suddenly attacked, tried their best to resist, and became entangled with the Song army.As a result, the court of the Northern Liao Dynasty got breathing time and urgently dispatched troops from the front line to help.

The reinforcements from the Northern Song Dynasty arrived late, but the Liao army dispatched 3000 people to rush back quickly.At this time, the elite Song army entering the city was still fighting back and forth with the citizens, unprepared.When the two sides were at a stalemate, the Liao army suddenly came, and the Song army was defeated. The 400 elites were almost lost, and only more than [-] people fled back.

Hearing that the elite strikers had failed, the main force of the Song army was terrified.A few days later in the evening, a wildfire happened outside the camp, and the Song army immediately blew up the camp.The commander-in-chief Liu Yanshi directly burned the camp and fled. The main force of the Song army trampled on each other, lying dead for more than a hundred miles, and countless people fell to their deaths in the mountain stream.The large amount of military equipment accumulated during the Xining and Yuanfeng years of Emperor Shenzong was almost lost.

At this time, the Liao army didn't even realize what happened.It was only after dawn the next day that Song Jun had collapsed.At this time, Yelu Dashi led his army in pursuit.The Liao army scolded the Song Dynasty for breaking the covenant, and chased to the ancient city where the Song army was the rear base, and the Song army's follow-up troops also collapsed.

This is Yelu Dashi's best record.It seems that the result of the battle is great, but Yelu Dashi's role in it is very limited, and it may not be as good as the wildfire that evening.Moreover, defeating the Song Army is nothing to brag about to be honest, and it does not reflect the true level of a general.

When facing the real enemy Jin Bing, Yelu Dashi was very embarrassed.He served as a local official several times, but he didn't last long, because once he defended the city, he was attacked by the Jin people once.Throughout his military career, he maintained a record of total defeat against the Kingdom of Jin.This kind of performance is really hard to say.

Of course, Sancar may not know his record.However, this will not affect the mentality of a veteran.

Although he wrote a provocative letter to Yelu Dashi before the war, it should be just a ploy to stimulate the enemy.In fact, Sancar did not underestimate the enemy. On the contrary, although he despised Xiliao in words, he attached great importance to these new enemies in action.

In order to fight, Sancar used the prestige of the sultan and the appeal of religion to summon the troops of Khorasan, Sistan, Ghazni, Mazandaran, Gur and other regimes to participate in the jihad.Most of the Tianfangjiao world was mobilized, and according to the records of Persian historians, more than 10 soldiers arrived.It took Sancar just six months to convene and inspect the army.

In 1141, the year when the Song and Jin Dynasties negotiated peace and Yue Fei was recalled by the Twelve Gold Medals of the Southern Song Dynasty, Yelu Dashi led the Xiliao army to march westward to face the Seljuk army on the Katwan grassland north of Samarkand.

(End of this chapter)