The cane has been used for many years, and the green bamboo has turned yellow.
Zhao Fang used it to lean on the ground with great force. The bamboo pole collided with the stone slab at the bridge head and slid into the stone slab, making deep marks and making a creaking sound.
Zhao Fang lowered his head and stared at the carvings on the stone. After a long time, he bent down and touched it. The carvings went from shallow to deep, and there were cracks at the bottom. These should be the marks made by a heavy knife a long time ago.
On the roadbed at the head of this section of the bridge, the original exquisite picture of Pegasus riding on the clouds is almost invisible, but a large number of scratch marks can be seen everywhere.
The traces are obvious and are caused by the collision of the shaft and shaft of the car, but there are also many deep and long marks made by knives and axes. If you distinguish carefully, you can still see the results of fierce shooting at close range with strong bows and arrows. However, after decades of wind and frost, the traces are only tiny white spots. If you don't look carefully, you can't distinguish them clearly.
This was once a battlefield, where the armies of the Song and Jin Dynasties fought to the death.
Xiaoshang Bridge is a bridge on the Xiaoshang River at the junction of Linying and Yancheng. It is said to have been built in the Sui Dynasty. The bridge has a single arch with open shoulders and is extremely beautiful. It has been an important link on the official road to the south from Kaifeng for hundreds of years.
However, this place really became famous seventy-six years ago when King Yue Zhongwu launched his Northern Expedition to the Central Plains.
In the tenth year of Shaoxing, in early July, King Yue defeated the Jin general Wanyan Zongbi's Tiefutu and Guaizima elite troops in Yancheng, and then advanced northward. On July 13, seventy-six years ago today, Yang Zaixing, a brave general under the command of King Yue, led 300 cavalry on a patrol and suddenly encountered Wanyan Zongbi's army gathered again in Xiaoshangqiao.
Yang Zaixing led his troops to fight to the death, killing more than 2,000 enemies, and more than 100 officers below the rank of 8 Jin from ten thousand households. Unfortunately, Yang Zaixing himself was trapped in the Xiaoshang River. He was hit by countless arrows and died bravely in battle. Later, the Jin army obtained his body and after burning it, they obtained as many as two liters of arrowheads.
After this battle, the Jin army was frightened. King Yue sent his troops to advance again, and defeated Wanyan Zongbi's 130,000 horses in Yingchang. They killed all the people with blood and the horses with blood. The formation killed more than 5,000 Jin troops, captured more than 2,000, including 78 generals, and captured more than 3,000 war horses.
After that, there was the battle in Zhuxian Town. But at the last moment when the door to Bianliang was opened and King Yue was about to regain the capital, the imperial court awarded twelve gold medals in a row. As a result, ten years of work were ruined. King Yue died unjustly, and the footsteps of the people of the Song Dynasty were no longer there. I have never been close to Bianliang.
Zhao Fang often imagined the road from Xiaoshangqiao to Zhuxian Town in his dreams. When he was a boy, he often heard the elders at home talking about the majesty of King Wang's Northern Expedition, and the enthusiasm of the people in the north, bringing their old and supporting their young, to welcome King King with tears. Sometimes he would even secretly imagine how glorious it would be if he were King Yue, leading such an army to conquer the Helan Mountains for the Song Dynasty and wash away the shame of Jingkang.
This kind of imagination, decades later, suddenly became a reality.
At this time, the troops and horses of the headquarters began to move, and the flags were raised high. As Bianliang approached, the morale of the soldiers became higher and higher, as if they had no fear. Groups of infantry and cavalry mingled in the march. The sound of the flag hitting the wind, the sound of footsteps hitting the ground, and the clanging sound of the armor and stomach all gathered together in one place, like thunder.
Amidst the rumbling thunder, Zhao Fang clenched his cane tightly. His thoughts were complicated and his heart was surging.
He was happy, he was excited, and he felt confused and sad.
"What is father thinking? Has the military situation changed and made him worried?"
Zhao Fan, the eldest son who was accompanying Zhao Fang and the newly appointed head of the Jinghu Manufacturing Department, asked.
He was eager to try again: "If the Jin army is still fighting somewhere, I am willing to lead one to defeat them!"
Zhao Fan is thirty-four years old this year. He is in the prime of life. He joined the army as a young man and went to battle to kill the enemy during the first year of his reign.
Since the army entered the territory of the Kingdom of Jin, the enemy troops have been routed wherever they went. Meng Zongzheng and Hu Zaixing, the vanguard of the army, have achieved successive victories. Zhao Fan obviously cannot restrain his desire to make meritorious deeds. At this moment, he asked Zhao Fang what he was worried about, but actually he meant to ask for a fight.
Zhao Fang shook his head.
"You go and keep an eye on the rear team's baggage and urge the march. Don't worry about the rest."
Zhao Fan bowed angrily and went to the back line. Not long after, the sound of the wheels of large wheels rolling over the ground rumbled.
Zhao Fang straightened up and stepped across the bridge.
When he was a young man, he was enthusiastic about his book business. He felt that making meritorious deeds on the battlefield seemed very simple, and killing people and killing people was just a number on paper. With his own talents, he wanted to achieve the great cause of liberation, and he could do it in a blink of an eye.
However, as the official position gradually became larger, Zhao Fang organized the army in Jinghu and practiced martial arts. In order to achieve results in military training, he had to use a large number of old people and troops of the Yue family army. From this, he became more and more aware of the extraordinaryness of the Yue King.
He often thought that compared with King Yue, he had lived a long life in vain, and I was afraid that his civil and military talents were not as good as one-tenth or one percent of King Yue's.
Under the rule of the Song Dynasty, there were hundreds of millions of people, and an old scholar like Zhao Fang was nothing. But as he grew older, all his black hair turned white. Zhao Fang saw that the Wu Jie brothers had failed to achieve their ambitions, that Yu Zhongsu had great ambitions but unfortunately died too late, and that Han Kanwei failed in his attempt to make the Northern Expedition. Without a capable general, he wasted his own life; watching Xin Jiaxuan exchange his employer's tree-planting book with ten thousand words of military strategy...
It’s too difficult. It’s too difficult to make a career in the Song Dynasty.
So many sages and seniors cannot do it. Is it because they are incompetent? Of course not, it’s just that the current situation forced me to be held back by too many people!
And today the Song Army is here, is it because I, Zhao, am so talented?
I was just very lucky, and the situation caught me off guard!
What's ridiculous is that this situation was not at all due to the efforts of the Song Dynasty, but because of the civil strife in the Jin Kingdom!
Because all the hundreds of thousands of elite soldiers and generals of the Jin Kingdom were lost in the battlefield with the Black Tartars in the north!
Because within the Kingdom of Jin, the Han'er named Guo Ning swept over half of the Kingdom of Jin with his mighty force, forcing the princes of the Kingdom of Jin to rely on Tokyo Bianliang to pray for the possibility of survival in the three-party battle!
For many years, the Song Dynasty looked down upon the Northerners, feeling that there was absolutely no hero among the millions of Northerners. Otherwise, we should have taken the initiative to destroy gold.
But now, the heroes among the northerners have reached this level. The Duke of Zhou, Guo Ning, rose up in the wilderness, with no land and no people to rely on, but he had already killed the Jurchens in the north to a river of blood, and then used Bianliang in Tokyo as a execution ground. , We are going to tie a rope and make a noose around the neck of the Kingdom of Jin!
The Han heroes in the north rose with such ferocity, what did the Song Dynasty do when the Jin Kingdom was in decline?
The Song Dynasty is the one who should hate the Jin Kingdom the most in the world. The Song Dynasty should work hard to recover, and it should work hard for decades. There is a way, God's way is easy to repay, China has justice, people's hearts obey, and every man will take revenge!
This is what they say, but Song Dynasty actually did nothing.
Even in this joint operation to destroy the money, the Song Dynasty was completely exploited.
There are some things that Zhao Fang can understand even if he is in Xiangyang or Tangzhou. Half a year ago, Mr. Shi Miyuan was moved by the trade profits released by Guo Ning. On the surface, he had no dealings with the Dinghai navy regime in the north. In fact, his subordinates were running wild for money and bribes.
As a result, the Song Dynasty's military strength was used as a tool to entangle and weaken the Kaifeng Jin Army.
In order to prevent his own power from being overthrown by the turbulent scholars in the government and the public, Mr. Shi actually furiously advocated the Northern Expedition, and established a military and national policy as if it were a child's play!
Is Mr. Shi a fool?
Doesn't he know what it means to the Song Dynasty that a new Han'er regime replaces the Jin Kingdom?
Shi Xianggong is so good at balancing, of course he knows.
It's just that he doesn't care about that. What he values more is the wealth and honor of his family in front of him. He wants to let the entire historical party overcome the turmoil in the court and continue to be in power at all costs. As for what happens next, no matter how difficult it is to lose authority, he is too lazy to care that far!
So, I, Zhao Yanzhi, actually stood on the Xiaoshang Bridge and watched the soldiers continue heading north.
But is this also considered the Northern Expedition? Is this also considered a restoration?
Zhao Fang is very confident in the combat effectiveness of his 20,000 elite troops, and also believes in the bloodshed and loyalty of his soldiers. But to decide the fate of a great country in the world, how can 20,000 people be enough?
Just going to fight like this, do you really expect to win Bianliang?
So what if we were lucky enough to capture Bianliang? Twenty thousand people faced the tiger and wolf troops sweeping across the north, and then relied on the rhetoric of the scholar-bureaucrats in the court?
This is too rash! If someone is not a hero but tries to get lucky, he will probably be laughed at for hundreds of years if he ends up in the history books.
This feeling and scene is like a lotus in a mire, straight on the outside but painful in the heart. Unfortunately, as a minister of the Song Dynasty, he could only do his best for the sake of the imperial court's luck.
Seventy-six years later, the Song army came here again. The court of the Song Dynasty was still ignorant, but the soldiers of the Song Dynasty were still passionate, and the scholar-bureaucrats of the Song Dynasty were still... No, the Song Dynasty also still had scholar-officials who cared about the country and dared to fight bravely!
"Zhizhi Xianggong! Zhizhi Xianggong!"
While he was thinking about it, the soldiers rushed over shouting: "There are light cavalry from the Jin Army approaching to take a look!"
"Oh? Where?"
As Zhao Fang asked, he quickly got on his horse, stood up straight in the stirrups and looked out. He immediately saw the appearance of Jin Jun Qingqi.
That small group of cavalry was completely different from Wanyan Yoke's troops who had previously fought in Tang, Deng and other places.
They all wore military robes on the outside and light iron armor on the inside. Although the military robes were dusty, the weapons in their hands were bright and shiny. Looking at the dozen or so of them, they are all riding tall horses from the North. Everyone has a second horse to accompany them, and their riding movements are all very skilled. The man and the horse seem to be integrated into one, with a free rhythm.
Such a sophisticated cavalry must move at an unimaginably fast speed, so Zhao Fang's covering cavalry placed on both sides of the formation failed to stop them.
It wasn't until they approached the Chinese army that the Song army's cavalry caught up slightly. Worried that the commander would be disturbed, more than a hundred knights shouted warnings and turned around from several directions, trying to surround the cavalry group.
But this group of cavalry didn't seem to care too much. They continued to move forward along the Xiaoshang River until they could clearly see the distance between the Song troops.
Zhao Fang also saw their appearance clearly. They were all capable men, with confident faces and high-spirited attitude.
A cavalryman noticed Zhao Fang and the general's flag behind him, so he pointed in the direction of Xiaoshang Bridge and said a few words to his leader. The cavalry leader also looked here, cupped his hands from a distance, and then led the team to ride away.
Until they retreated far away, the encirclement of the Song Army's cavalry had not yet formed.
Many cavalry were cursing and wanted to pursue. Zhao Fang hurriedly ordered: "No need to pursue, those are Ding Haijun's scout cavalry... They are our allies!"
Under the command of Zhao Fang, the Song army no longer paid attention to the scattered Jin army and stopped attacking small villages along the way. The 20,000 infantrymen from Jinghu speeded up their march again, chasing the retreating Kaifeng Jin Army.
On July 14th, the Song army arrived at Linying; on July 15th, they arrived at Changshe; on July 18th, they arrived at Weishi.
On the night of July 19, the Song army arrived forty-five miles south of Bianliang City.
Early the next morning, the envoy rushed to Kaifeng and reported to King Sui: "The Song army has arrived just after our reinforcements, and they are already at the gates of the city!"
Tian Zhuo stood up excitedly: "Our opportunity has come!"
The envoy rushed to Lincai Pass and reported to the remaining generals of the Thirteen Commandants who had gathered here yesterday evening: "The Song army is approaching, do we have to retreat again?"
Monk Wanyan Chen was busy comforting the wounded and collecting food last night. At this time, his body was stained with blood and had not been bandaged. He stood proudly and said with enthusiasm: "How can we retreat? Retreat into the city and sit back and watch the enemy troops siege the city and starve and trap us to death? Previously, the enemy troops attacked from north to south, and our army was short of food. It’s inconvenient, and it’s inevitable that the left and the right will be tied up, which is not a crime of war! Now they have gathered at the gate of Kaifeng City, just in time to kill them!"
The envoy rushed to Chenliu and reported to Admiral Ding: "Yesterday evening, the Song Army came in hot pursuit of the Jin Army. The Jin Army stationed at Lincai Pass and joined Monk Wanyan Chen and Jia Guze's troops who had arrived earlier. The Song army occupied Zhuxian Town."
Guo Ning laughed, stretched out his arm, and held Tie Guduo: "Both the Jurchens and the Song people traveled hundreds of miles, and it was really hard... Don't let them slow down! Send the order, raise troops and go to war! Let's go to war!" Defeat the Central Plains in one battle!"
The second year of Xingding in the Jin Dynasty, the first year of Yuanguang's reign in Kaifeng, and the ninth year of Jiading in the Song Dynasty.
July 20th at the turn of summer and autumn. The red sun rises, shining on Bianliang City, and also on the hundreds of thousands of troops gathered by the three forces within a hundred miles of the city.
No matter whether you are high-spirited or tired, excited or lucky, no matter whether the trapped beast still fights or the food is destroyed, the sword flashes or intrigues, it is time to see the outcome.
