My life is like walking on thin ice

Chapter 315 You deserve it!

"This is the Henan area that the Right Wise King worked so hard to manage, and even did not allow the Chanyu Court to get involved?!"

"——The Han people took away our precious land for raising horses and spending the winter without any effort!!!"

"Right Wise King, is there nothing to explain?"

In the first year of Emperor Rong Xinyuan, on the twenty-eighth day of the eighth month in autumn.

Mayi County Government Office.

Looking at the letter for help written in blood in his hand, and the three or four ragged and dusty warriors from the Right Wise King's headquarters beside him, Junchen's face was so gloomy that water could drip out of it.

Meanwhile, in the hall, the Right Wise King Yizhixie lowered his head expressionlessly, seemingly looking lonely, but secretly, he did not feel any guilt at all.

——You deserve it!

Who asked you, the Great Khan, to bring me, the Right Wise King, with me to Mayi for close surveillance?

After all, he was the Great Khan of the Xiongnu, the leader of the nomadic people who grew up on horseback;

Don’t you have any strategic vision at all?

The border between Han and Xiongnu was extremely long, stretching from west to east for thousands of miles!
When attacking one of them, don't you, the Great Chanyu, also have to be on guard in other places to prevent the Han people from making a feint to the east and attacking in the west, and opening up a second battlefield?
Well, even if you, the great Chanyu, are really as the Han people say, eating raw meat and drinking blood, uncivilized, and without human wisdom, and cannot think of such a grand strategic issue;
But Henan is the most precious land of the entire Xiongnu - the entire grassland, and it is the most precious real estate of the Xiongnu!

In particular, this land is adjacent to the Han people's Beidi, Longyou, Shang, Dai and other counties, and faces direct military threats from the Han people.

Even if you are certain that the Han people do not have the courage or the ability to take the initiative to attack, don't you still have to be a little cautious?
Speaking of this incident, Yizhixie was full of complaints and had no place to vent.

Before the war, someone reminded the military officials about this matter: At the beginning of this year, the Han people had just won a "victory" in the north. Once there was a change in the north, Henan would likely encounter an accident.

But the military officials at that time were full of vigor and confidence, and they concluded that the Han people were simply unable to rely on their bulky infantry to actively launch an attack from low terrain to high terrain, and further defeat the cavalry in the Hetao area.

Seeing that Junchen was unwilling to leave enough troops in Henan for defense, Yizhixie had no choice but to save the country in a roundabout way. He proposed to stay in Henan, lead the Right Wise King's troops, and take charge of the guarding of Henan.

As a result, this proposal was still rejected by Junchen without hesitation.

As for the reason, Yizhixie could roughly guess it.

——Anyway, the war was imminent, and Junchen was worried that he would take the opportunity to cause trouble in the rear and threaten the Chanyu's court.

What can Yizhixie say?
Should!
You don't do your work for a day, but just suspect this and that;

Are you dumbfounded?

Now that Henan is gone, you, the great Khan of the Xiongnu, don’t even have a decent place to spend the winter.

If they really fail to retake Henan, the Shanyu Ting will have to spend the winter in any mountain south of Mu, such as the Helan Mountains, the Qilian Mountains, or even at the foot of the Yin Mountains.

These places originally had owners.

After being occupied by the Chanyu court, the tribes that originally owned these places could only seize the territories of other weaker tribes.

The rich and powerful are eating vegetarian food, and the nobles are also eating coarse grains. Can the lower classes still have a good life?

For a moment, Yizhixie even felt a little gloating!

If Henan really escaped from the control of the nomadic peoples of the grassland and became a horse-breeding area for the Han people, then Junchen, the Great Khan of the Xiongnu, would certainly suffer a great loss of prestige!

The Han people, who pride themselves on being a nation of rites and rituals, would no longer be respected by the ministers if their king’s prestige were greatly damaged;

This is especially true in the grasslands where the law of the jungle is followed and the social order is based on the word "admiration for the strong".

As a result, Junchen lost the Henan area, which caused dissatisfaction among the grassland tribes, and even more evil intentions;

Then Yizhixie...

"The Right Wise King's tribe possessed the most fertile pastures and warmest land of our Great Xiongnu, but they handed it over to the cunning and despicable Han people!"

"The Right Wise King will never be able to escape this crime!"

"But the most important thing right now is to retake Henan from the Han people, so that my Shanyu Court headquarters will not be able to spend the winter in Henan after winter comes."

"As for the matter of convicting the Right Wise King, we will wait until we return to Henan and Chenglitian will personally pass down the will of the gods."

Seeing Yizhixie's disdain, Junchen was angry but soon calmed down.

The unexpected loss of Henan was indeed beyond Junchen's expectations.

To be more precise, the speed at which Henan was lost and the speed at which the Han dynasty seized Henan were so fast that they were beyond the expectations of the military officials.

——Of course Junchen thought about it;
Whether it was this battle or the past few years, when attacking the Han border, the military officials had thought: What if at this time, the Han people took the initiative to attack from other places and turned defense into offense...

At first, the young military official arrogantly denied this possibility.

Later, as his character became more mature and his skills more sophisticated, Junchen gradually reached the threshold of becoming an emperor.

For example, for someone who may pose a threat to the Chanyu's court or the Chanyu, the key is not whether he has the idea or motive, but whether he has the ability to do so.

Just like Yizhixie;

In Junchen's opinion, Yizhixie was a person who had the idea of ​​killing him and replacing him, and had the motivation to do so, but he did not have the ability to do so.

For such a person, the military officials in the early years - not too far back, that is, ten or eight years ago - would choose to nip the threat in the bud and kill Yizhixie, the ambitious traitor, before he could pose a threat to them.

But now, Junchen will no longer act so rashly.

Therefore, Junchen had indeed given serious consideration to the Han people's initiative to attack and turn defense into offense.

Moreover, after concluding that the Han people did not have the ability and courage, they still decided to "put aside the facts" and deduced the actions of the Han people based on the premise that "the Han people did not know what was wrong with their brains and just took the initiative to attack."

According to Junchen's previous deduction, if the Han people left the north and attempted to seize Henan, the first step: crossing the river, would take at least ten days.

This is the time required to cross the river without any pressure or interference, without any human influence.

If the Han people were discovered by the Xiongnu cavalry in Henan during the crossing, they would immediately encounter a river crossing blocking battle. Even under the Xiongnu cavalry's bow and feather volleys, they were still lucky enough to send most of their troops to the other side of the river and to Henan. What followed was another desperate battle.

The Huaiyin Marquis's desperate battle is a classic battle that is well-known both in the Central Plains and on the grasslands, in the hearts of the Han people and in the eyes of the nomadic people - and even in the cognition of later generations.

But the reason why this case is a classic is precisely because the difficulty of this move has reached a level that if it succeeds, it will surely go down in history.

Just like in the present Han Dynasty, whenever the generals mentioned the Huaiyin Marquis's last stand, they all praised him, and even exclaimed in amazement;
But if you ask them: Generals, are you willing to fight such a life-or-death battle?
As long as you win, you will be as famous as Marquis Huaiyin!

I'm afraid that out of ten people, eleven would hurriedly wave their hands and say: I don't have the ability of Marquis Huaiyin, and I dare not take such a big risk.

The most important thing is that Huaiyin Hou's fight to the death, like Xiang Yu's burning of his boats, were both active choices.

Xiang Yu's decision to burn his boats and cauldrons was not because the enemy destroyed his boats and cauldrons, but because Xiang Yu took the initiative to order the rice pots to be smashed and the ferry to be sunk, thus cutting off all the army's rear routes and retreat, in order to live in the face of death!

When the Marquis of Huaiyin fought a desperate battle, he was not chased and intercepted by the enemy, and was forced to the water's edge;
Instead, in order to lure the enemy into attacking, they took the initiative to move the army to a place with its back to the water - deliberately putting the headquarters in an unfavorable strategic situation to lure the enemy troops who were holding their ground to fight.

During this process, the Marquis of Huaiyin did not simply give orders: run to the river, turn your back to the river, fight with the attacking enemy, and then ignore everything else.

Instead, from the beginning to the end, they frequently detected the enemy's movements and performed micro-management to always maintain real-time control of the battlefield;

After the plan was accomplished and the enemy was successfully lured into attacking, the first thing the Marquis of Huaiyin did was to move the army out of the harsh strategic terrain of "fighting with one's back to the river"!

Even if this part of the army that was "fighting with its back to the river" was just bait to lure the enemy, and not all of the troops of the Marquis of Huaiyin...

To sum up all these things, it can be summed up in one sentence: For thousands of years in Chinese history, there have been no more than five people who were willing to take the initiative to fight a battle and had the ability to do it, including Han Xin, Marquis of Huaiyin.

As for the passive battle of fighting with one's back to the water - being forced and besieged by the enemy at the water's edge, it was a nightmare that even Han Xin, Marquis of Huaiyin, did not want to encounter.

Similar cases have occurred in the Han Dynasty as well.

In the fourth year of the Han Dynasty, Liu Bang, the King of Han, gathered a coalition army of 560,000 soldiers and attacked the capital of Xiang Yu, the King of Chu: Pengcheng, and defeated him.
Upon hearing that the capital had been breached, Xiang Yu, who was attacking King Tian Heng of Qi in Qi, immediately turned back with 30,000 elite cavalry.

It was precisely these 30,000 light cavalry, led by the Overlord Xiang Yu, that defeated Liu Bang's 560,000-strong coalition army of princes.

Chasing all the way to Suishui, the great Emperor Gaozu of Han, Liu Bang, was forced into a passive situation of fighting with his back to the river by the 30,000 light cavalry led by the overlord Xiang Yu.

How is the result?

According to historical records: Emperor Taizu Liu Bang fled across the river, with a hundred or so followers.

The number of soldiers killed in battle or drowned was incalculable;
The Sui River stopped flowing because of this.

This is a passive fight - 99% of what will happen when you are forced into a fight of your own.

A certain stream stops flowing because of this.

No matter how many soldiers you have or how strong your fighting power is, once you are forced to fight with your back to the river, the bodies of your subordinates who died in battle or drowned will block the river behind you and make it stop flowing.

Of course, if you have a high talent for public speaking and can fully mobilize the emotions of your soldiers and make them understand that your situation has reached a point where you must die if you fail;

Then maybe you really have a chance of inspiring the soldiers' desire to survive and thus successfully defeating the enemy.

This was probably the logic behind Xiang Yu's decision to burn his boats and break his cauldrons.

But how many Xiang Yus have there been in China over thousands of years?

How many people dare to say that they have such eloquence and appeal, as well as the strategy and military force to match them?
Furthermore, even if you really have the ability to do all of this, if given a choice, who would be willing to choose this kind of hellish start where you cut off your own limbs and are certain that you can drown your enemies with saliva?

This is exactly the basis for Junchen's conclusion that even if the Han people successfully crossed the river and the Han army really set foot on Henan, they would still not be able to pose a threat to Henan.

——In a fight to the death, there is a 99% chance that we will be defeated, and be annihilated!

The remaining 0.1% will result in heavy casualties even if victory is achieved, and the army will be severely damaged, making it impossible to take further action.

Therefore, the military officials concluded that if the Han people planned to take over Henan, it would take them ten days to cross the river and dozens of days to fight with their backs to the river;

This has been more than a month.

Even if the Han people really showed off their skills and won the decisive battle and gained a foothold on the west bank of the Yellow River, it would still take some time to recover and replenish troops from the rear.

By the time the Han army regrouped and began to march towards the central area of ​​Henan, at least two months had passed since the first day of the war.

In two months, let alone in Mayi - even in Mobei, Junchen has the confidence to rush thousands of miles and rush back to support Henan!
Therefore, before this battle, Junchen rejected everyone's proposal, whether it was to 'divide the troops to garrison Henan' or to let Yizhixie, the protagonist and Right Wise King, stay behind, Junchen resolutely rejected them.

——Bringing as many troops as possible is to be able to capture Mayi more quickly and easily, to make a warning to the young Han emperor: Don’t think that you, the Han family, will be invincible just by defending a Chaona Pass!

As long as we, the Great Xiongnu, want, your Han people’s cities will be as fragile as a piece of rag!
The battle of Chaona Sai was evidence of the incompetence of the Right Wise King Yizhixie, not the incompetence of our great Xiongnu or the Xiongnu Chanyu!

As for bringing Yizhixie with him, the main purpose was, of course, to keep him under close surveillance, to prevent the military officials from getting into trouble in Mayi and Yizhixie from being a scoundrel in Henan.
Furthermore, Junchen also had the intention of "letting Yizhixie see how the war was fought" and "seeing how talented and capable the Great Khan of the Huns was."

Unfortunately, the current situation is clearly completely out of Junchen's control...

"Ma Yi was given up so easily by the treacherous villain Cheng Buzhi."

"——The purpose is precisely to keep the main force of my Chanyu Court in the Han Yanmen County, and thus prevent them from returning to Henan as soon as possible."

"But now that Mayi has been taken, our army will march southward for hundreds of miles and will hardly encounter any strong obstacles along the way;"

"And a few hundred miles away is the capital of Dai: Jinyang..."

His tone was unable to conceal his confusion as Junchen's eyes, as sharp as an eagle's, swept over everyone in the hall one by one.

In the end, the choice fell squarely on the right wise king of the Xiongnu: Luandi Yizhixie.

"What do you think our army should do next?"

"Return to Henan to provide assistance?"

"Or should we march straight in and completely destroy the entire northern part of the Han people?"

"or……"

(End of this chapter)