A thousand-year-old family that began with the Battle of Makino

Chapter 980: Rebuilding the Tang Dynasty and the Khitan Rise, Two Dragons vs. Wild Deadlock
Although Li Cunxu has inherited the ambitions of his father Li Keyong in recent years, revitalizing the State of Jin and conquering the east and the west.

The Jin State, which was originally in a survival crisis and had become a second-rate vassal state, was transformed into the "Tang Dynasty" that dominated Hebei and Henan, repelled the northern tigers, and conquered and stabilized the country, becoming the number one state in the world.

It can be said to bring honor to the family and is something that no one else in the world can do.

However, when the Later Tang Dynasty was first established, it was just like the current Liang State. In addition to the threat from the Liang State, on the northern grasslands, the Khitan leader Yelu Abaoji took advantage of the civil strife in the Central Plains to annex the various tribes on the grasslands.

With the joint support of all the tribes, he ascended the throne, imitated the Central Plains dynasty, established an empress and hundreds of officials, and called himself the Heavenly Emperor.

Although there were many internal conflicts in the Khitan Kingdom and the ties between the tribes were not close, the relationship between Yelu Abaoji and his brothers was not so harmonious.

However, due to the large number of princes in the Central Plains, they had neither the time nor the strength to go north to the grassland to suppress this grassland eagle that was about to take off.

Because of the emergence of the Khitan State, the Tang State had to station a large number of troops on the northern border to prevent looting.

Fortunately, with the help of the Song army in Youzhou area, the two armies helped each other on the border and were able to block the Khitan army's southward advance several times with the least amount of troops.

Otherwise, Li Cunxu would have to spend all his energy just to resist the Khitans, so how could he compete with the Liang State?

According to statistics, the Tang Kingdom had tens of thousands of troops stationed in Feng, Sheng, Yun, Gui, and Tan states in the northern border.

When the Song Dynasty attacked and conquered the State of Yan, Li Cunxu originally wanted to take over the Liaodong and Jibei regions while the Song army was trapped in Jicheng and unable to escape.

However, the Khitans came too quickly, and Li Cunxu had to give up the grassland tribes he had already obtained, as well as the Liaodong region that he had not yet obtained.

Then he turned to digest the newly acquired states of Gui, Tan, and Ji.

But Li Cunxu overestimated himself, and by the second year, the Jin army no longer had the strength to defend Gui, Tan, Ji and other states.

He had to give it to the State of Song to relieve his military pressure.

In the 15th year of Tianyou, Jin and Song renegotiated the "Changping Alliance". Jin gave up the Youzhou area and retreated to the west of Yunzhou, just in exchange for the support of the Song army when the Khitans moved south.

Otherwise, the Khitans' annual looting in the south would be enough to force Li Cunxu to try his best to annex the two towns of Chengde and Yiwu.

In order to guard the northern gateway, the Song State stationed 60,000 troops in Youzhou, including 40,000 infantry and 20,000 cavalry, all of which were elite troops.

In addition, Duke Baijian of Song divided the four states of Gui, Tan, Ji and You into the Jiedushi of Youzhou, and appointed Li Cunqian to the post, who was fully responsible for the war with the Khitans.

Relying on this elite border army of 60,000 people, Li Cunqian repelled the Khitan's invasion to the south several times.

There was even one time when Yelu Abaoji personally led 500,000 cavalrymen to invade Youzhou in the south.

Fortunately, the Youzhou army was tenacious and successfully waited for the support of Baijian’s 100,000 main forces.

Seeing that the main force of the Song army had arrived and defeated his attacks many times, Yelu Abaoji knew that his plan would not succeed.

Therefore, they took the initiative to withdraw their troops, and Youzhou was spared from large-scale looting.

As for why Baijian did not take the opportunity to go north out of the grassland and follow the example of the ancients to wipe out the Khitan Kingdom before it rose completely.

In Bai Jian's own words: "The Khitans are nothing but barbarians. The Central Plains is unstable, the grassland is unstable. If Yelü Abaoji is gone, there will be Yelü Jia and Yelü Yi."

"Without the Khitan, there will be the Xi and Shiwei."

"If the Song State loses the opportunity to fight for the world because of the northern expedition to the grassland, it will be putting the cart before the horse, and that will be the real crisis for the Central Plains."

"Therefore, the most important thing we should do now is to end the chaos in the Central Plains as soon as possible and use the power of the world to disperse the dragon energy of the grassland."

April 17th, the first year of Tongguang in the Later Tang Dynasty

Li Jitao, the defender of Luzhou, sent an envoy to Chang'an to express his intention to rebel and join the Later Liang.

Because Pei Yue, the governor of Zezhou, defended the city and refused to surrender, Li Jitao's path to surrender was blocked.

Zhu Youzhen therefore ordered Dong Zhang to attack Zezhou and support Li Jitao in order to annex the entire Zhaoyi Town. At this time, Liang State took advantage of Li Cunxu's pacification of Chengde and Yiwu Towns to recapture Huaizhou and even occupied most of Puzhou, leaving only Hedong, the seat of Puzhou, to hold on.

The Liang army's attack on Zezhou and its support for Luzhou directly threatened the security of Taiyuan.

They should have sent troops directly from Taiyuan to recapture Luzhou and confront the Liang army in Zezhou head-on.

However, because they needed to guard against the Khitans in the north, they had occupied two-thirds of the Tang Dynasty's military forces.

The tens of thousands of people Li Cunxu has now are not enough to turn the tide of the war.

After much deliberation, Li Cunxu decided to take a radical approach.

He first wrote a letter to Baijian, his ally in Kaifeng, and then summoned his troops, deciding to take advantage of the Liang army's weak defense in the west to launch a surprise attack on Tongzhou and Shanzhou.

Cut off the Liang army's left wing offensive, and then wait for an opportunity to choose either Luoyang or Chang'an to attack.

No matter which city is conquered at that time, it will be a major blow to the State of Liang.

April 28
Li Cunxu ordered Li Siyuan to lead 5,000 infantry and cavalry to cross the Yellow River from Cizhou to the west overnight in the rain, and to attack Tongzhou, an important gateway to Guanzhong, in one fell swoop.

At this time, Zhu Youzhen was supervising the war in Luoyang and heard that the Tang army was advancing westward.

On the one hand, he ordered Wang Yanzhang in Chang'an to lead his troops to stop the Tang army from advancing westward in Liyang, and to send troops to garrison Huazhou to prevent the Tang army from attacking Tongguan.

On the one hand, he ordered Duan Ning, who was besieging Hedong City, to retreat to Shanzhou to prevent his retreat from being cut off by the Tang army.

On the one hand, he ordered Dong Zhang to continue attacking Zezhou.

He personally led his troops to station in Huaizhou, to supervise the battle in Zezhou and to support Shanzhou.

He also sent Huo Yanwei to attack Xiangzhou, intending to open up another front and enter Luzhou from Mingzhou.

Faced with Zhu Youzhen's arrangement, Li Cunxu ordered Zhou Dewei to guard Luzhou, while personally leading a large army from Jinzhou to rescue Puzhou.

May 3rd
Wang Yanzhang left his general Wang An to guard Liyang, and crossed the Weishui River himself. He personally led troops from Tongguan to Fenglingdu, and with the help of Duan Ning's troops in Shanzhou, he captured Puzhou Pass.

He planned to first cut off the connection between the Tang army in Hedong and the Tang army in Tongzhou, and then completely wipe out Li Siyuan's troops in Tongzhou.

Li Cunxu ordered Zhu Shouyin of Puzhou to abandon Hedong City, load up military equipment and cross the Yellow River from Puzhou overnight to assist Li Siyuan in defending Tongzhou.

May

Li Siyuan crossed the Wei River at night, captured Weinan County, and cut off Wang Yanzhang's connection with Guanzhong.

In this way, Wang Yanzhang cut off Li Siyuan's retreat, and Li Siyuan cut off Wang Yanzhang's retreat.

However, Wang Yanzhang had Luoyang as his back, while Li Siyuan was alone and deep in the enemy's territory, which was even more dangerous.

Fortunately, Li Cunxu's follow-up troops are about to arrive.

The two are now racing against time. Whoever can't hold on first will be defeated first.

May 23
Wang Yanzhang advanced to Tongzhou from the direction of Puzhou and attacked Li Siyuan together with Wang An's troops from Guanzhong.

In order to capture the key city of Puzhou, Wang Yanzhang led his troops to attack day and night, and deployed nine giant ships across Hejin to block the Tang army's reinforcements from Puzhou to the west.

But no matter how hard Wang Yanzhang tried, he just couldn't capture the Puzhou City.

The two cities of Gushi and Weinan to the west of Tongzhou were also as solid as a rock under the defense of Tang general Li Zhou. Liang general Wang An attacked them many times but failed to make any progress.

(End of this chapter)