Chapter 156: Marching Westward
Returning to Shaanxi again made Zhang Hu full of emotions.
Sun Jie was driven out of Baoning Mansion in a daze in one day. The next step was to run for hundreds of miles without breath. From time to time, he was in fear and was chased away by Shangguan Fei's cavalry. Finally, Zhang Hu suffered a mental breakdown. , committed the first taboo of a general: abandoning the army in Zhaohua and absconding.
The two armies were fighting, swords and guns blind. The generals hid in the safe rear to observe the battle situation and strategize. Those at the front of the front line who had face-to-face encounters with the enemy were at most a few mid-level officers at the tour level. Except for rare cases, it was rare for the deputy commander-in-chief to personally go there. To rush to the front line. Under the premise that the number of people training with equipment is about the same, the side with higher morale will always win, and can even win with less. When fighting with generals, the top soldiers on either side are just cannon fodder. However, although everyone is well aware of this, the soldiers avoid talking about this topic. On the contrary, what they talk about most is that the generals "share the joys and sorrows" with them: What military wells have not been dug will the generals not say? The general will not say anything about being thirsty or hungry before the battle is completed. To put it bluntly, he is just fooling himself to find some psychological comfort - food, drink, clothing, and fun... Which general is really the same as a big-headed soldier? How deep does it have to be in your mind to really believe this. The soldiers at the bottom are easy to fool. If the general can go around the barracks and sit down and chat with the soldiers, his morale will undoubtedly be boosted. If he is like Xiang Yu, he sucks the soldiers with his mouth. A abscess...yes! This guy will definitely die on the battlefield the next day, and there is absolutely no way he will come back alive - he will be so moved that he will not retreat until he exhausts himself to death or is hacked to pieces by the enemy. Soldiers are not afraid of defeat. Victory and defeat are commonplace for military strategists. It's okay for you to run away with them after they're defeated, and it's okay to give orders to which troops to rear up and die. But there's one thing, if you abandon the army, it's over: the commander-in-chief ran away to take care of himself, and the commander-in-chief doesn't want us anymore!
Soldiers will never believe you again!
Tell me how the war will be fought in the future.
If Sun Jie can pursue one more step, Zhang Hu will never have the chance to regain the support and trust of these defeated soldiers. Millions of people will be saved from disaster in the future. This empire may really be able to survive for another life. decades.
Unfortunately, there is no such thing as "if" in the world.
Seeing that the marshal took his cronies and ran away to take care of themselves, he became an outcast. He saw that the army of officers and soldiers had already arrived in front of him with murderous intent... and then, he saw that they turned around and went back!
What is this called?
God willing!
It’s clear that God favors the commander-in-chief and himself! In this day and age, people believe this from the bottom of their hearts.
Some people remembered the story of "The mud horse crossed King Kang" told by the storyteller. It is about the Jin army's invasion of the south. Huizong sent his ninth son, Kang Wang Zhaogou, as an envoy to the Jin camp to seek peace, but he was taken hostage. Zhao Gou waited for an opportunity to escape and fled to Cizhou (today's Handan, Hebei Province). He stayed at Cui Fujun's temple for the night. The horse, so he mounted it and ran for his life. Behind him were the pursuers and in front was the roaring Yellow River. The horse jumped into it and carried Zhao Gou across the river. When Zhao Gou stepped onto the south bank, the horse suddenly disappeared and was replaced by a clay sculpture. Because it had been soaked in the river, the horse's body was dripping with mud... It turned out that the horse that carried him across the river to escape danger was... It was actually the clay sculptured mount in the Cui Mansion Temple! Later, Zhao Gou established the Southern Song Dynasty in Lin'an (now Hangzhou)...
What's this called? Good fortune!
Some people even think of the old gangster Liu Bang: "What is this? The great emperor Gaozu was defeated in Pengcheng and was driven out by the overlord of Western Chu. Didn't he just kick the prince and Princess Lu Yuan out of the car? He kicked him several times. Come on! If you don’t become the emperor in the end, then won’t the prince and the princess also survive the catastrophe and become rich and powerful?”
"You mean the commander is protected by God?"
"Of course! How about your kid tell me what's going on?"
"Yes! God will protect us! Otherwise, if the commander runs away, we will also die!"
Everyone is looking forward to good news in their hearts, especially people in desperate situations. They will convince themselves to believe in everything that is beneficial to them - so everyone feels that they will be like Liu Ying and have a huge fortune in the future. Wait there.
So they spontaneously formed an army again, went all the way north to find Zhang Hu, and stumbled towards Guangyuan. This defeated army unexpectedly regained its confidence.
Zhang Hu didn't know that Fang Ge had defeated Lu Guangyu, and had already made plans to fall into the trap - even if Lu Guangyu huddled in Yangping Pass and couldn't come out, his group would be doomed: Sun Jie behind him would never be able to You have time left to build siege equipment. With the strong pass in front and the pursuing troops behind, it is only a matter of two or three days before the entire army is annihilated. Unexpectedly, Fang Ge could easily open the way to the north, and he couldn't help but be overjoyed. Not long after I was happy, I got a report. A team came from the south, but it scared a few people half to death: it must be Sun Jie who defeated the defeated troops and caught up! Zhang Hu's second surprise was that the soldiers he had thrown at Zhaohua were coming, and their morale was very high! After asking about the situation, even Zhang Hu believed that he was the man who had been given great responsibility by heaven - Cheng Xi was a peasant who had never seen the world. Regardless, Zhang Hu and Fang Ge had no regard for the officialdom. Their cognition is limited to military commanders and local landlords drinking their soldiers' blood, and civil servants using money and food to demand bribes and bullying military commanders. The methods of the gang of troublemakers in the court have gone far beyond their scope of cognition, so they still regard this desperate situation as a chance of survival. Doing God’s will is the most logical thing.
Several people discussed it and decided to divide their forces into two groups. Zhang Hu and Fang Ge marched north, as far away from the evil star as Sun Jie, the better. We have just defeated the official army head-on. As long as we avoid those fortified cities and don't be held back, most areas in Shaanxi Province should be safe. As a bandit himself, he doesn't have the worries of an official army. He supplies supplies on the spot and eats what he grabs. He doesn't need so many auxiliary soldiers - not only will it slow down the marching speed, but he himself doesn't have much to transport. Multiple auxiliaries The soldiers will have more mouths to eat, and they can leave a thousand strong ones behind and capture the local people when needed. There is no need to think about what to feed them. They can just capture them wherever they die. Cheng Xi took the remaining auxiliary soldiers and the civilians who had escaped with them, and took in some more along the way. They pretended to be civilians fleeing from the military disaster and returned to Shunqing. They settled down first and later waited for Marshal Zhang to come back.
Zhang Hu had a very good impression of Sichuan: when he was a frontier soldier in northern Shaanxi, he drank wind and ate sand every day. Since entering Sichuan, he ate enough white flour, steamed buns and rice every day, except that there were a lot of red dogwood in the dishes, which made them a little spicy. It was hard to get used to it at first, but now Dashuai Zhang likes it. Moreover, Sichuan is very easy to fight. If he hadn't met Sun Jie, Marshal Zhang might have become famous in the Shu Palace in Chengdu! By the way, it's impossible for Sun Jie to stay in Sichuan for the rest of his life, right? Hum, as soon as you leave, Commander Zhang will come back to kill you!
After Cheng Xi left, Zhang Hu and Fang Ge discussed again. Zhang Hu at least remembered the road he took to Sichuan, but that was all, while Fang Ge was completely unfamiliar with Shaanxi Province. This is not difficult to solve: if you capture a few postmen from Lueyang and question them, you will have a pretty good understanding of the surrounding environment. There are many places to grab around, such as Chengxian, Huizhou (now Huixian, Gansu), Liangdang, Fengxian... but they can't go there. Because these places are all in the north of Lueyang, there are many passes on the road, such as Yuguan Pass, Maling Pass, and Feiqiu Pass. Although there are not many defenders, if they are blocked for two or three days, no one can say whether Sun Jie will catch up at any time and stab him in the back. It is best to run faster. A few days ago, Lueyang was the Chinese army command post for Mr. Xiu Da, and Gonggong An’s grain station was also here. Together with the grain rushed out from Jianzhou, Zhang Hu had enough supplies to last for a while, so he didn’t want to grab it. . It's definitely not possible to go eastward. That's Hanzhong Mansion, with high walls and deep trenches. Even without the threat of Sun Jie, these battalions will definitely not be able to take it down. Then we can only go west. Gongchang Mansion was the way Zhang Hu came to Sichuan, and it was no longer possible: in order to delay the pursuers as much as possible when he came, people were robbed and burned wherever he went. It has not been a year now, and it is still possible to It was a good achievement to recover three or four, but we absolutely could not afford the transportation of thousands of troops and horses, so we could only go all the way west, from Jiezhou (now Longnan City, Gansu) to find a way to enter Minzhouwei and then go north.
Zhang Hu Fangge led the army west to Lueyang. Since there was not much baggage, there was no need to rely too much on the waterway of the Western Han River. The whole army rushed directly from the land route to Qifang Pass (today's Kangxian County, Gansu Province) sixty miles away. I learned from the postman that although Qifang Pass has the word "Guan" in its name, in fact it is no longer a hard bone at this time, but a big piece of fat: at the beginning of the dynasty's establishment of the tripod, In order to guard against harassment by the Southwest Fan tribe, seven defense passes were set up along the Qin-Shu strategic road (from Gansu to Shu). With the peace of the world, especially the Songpan Guard built in Sichuan Province, any tribe that grew stronger would be bloodied, and its strategic significance gradually faded. The Qifang Pass became an inspection department, which was different from Huizhou's approval. The Tea and Horse Division under Qinzhou was responsible for inspecting the trading of Panma between Shaanxi and Gansu tea merchants and Tibetans. Until the Qing Dynasty, the main suppliers of tea for trading Panma were still Shaanxi, Sichuan and Hubei. The current Qifang Pass only has one inspector and one petty official, and dozens of archers, which are more than enough to exploit tea merchants and make things difficult for merchants. Facing thousands of rogue thieves, they are nothing more than fish and meat on the chopping board!
And the tea-horse trading market... is simply indescribable. In short, two words: tossing. A more precise expression requires five words: tossing to death. In fact, all mutual markets, well, almost all business in the Ming Dynasty are similar to this. In order to ensure the long-term peace and stability of the empire and fear of fraud by local officials, the Holy Emperor would send censors to inspect local areas from time to time. So how does the powerful censor show his political achievements? What a toss! Take Qifangguan as an example. In the 14th year of Jiajing reign, Liu Xilong, the supervisory censor, dismissed a large number of batch inspection offices - Facha Yin (selling tea) on the grounds that "there are too many private tea merchants, which is useless for politicians and corrupt officials". Tea license) institutions were gone, all tea merchants became illegal overnight, and the mutual trade naturally disappeared. In the 17th year of Jiajing, the new censor named Shen Yue wrote a eloquent article: Once the leader invades the border, there will be more than 100,000 people. To resist them, we need warriors, right? Do warriors need to ride horses? The horse has to be exchanged for tea, right? If the mutual market is stopped, there will be no more tea, right? Without tea, there would be no horses, right? Warriors wouldn’t dare to fight without horses, right? If the warriors don't fight bravely, they can't stop the foreign enemies and can't keep the country safe* (I'm not making this up, appendix to the original text)...and then it recovered! Anyway, every adult will have no political achievements if he doesn’t make a 180-degree turn on his predecessor’s work! Every adult has a right, every adult has resounding political achievements, and every adult is a winner - well, if there are winners, there are losers, so who are the losers?
Ming Dynasty.
In this way, the empire was gradually weakening due to constant internal strife.
Zhang Hu effortlessly seized the tea bricks piled up like a hill by hundreds of tea merchants at Qifang Pass, and then realized a shotgun for a cannon: several neighboring Tibetan tribes all had blood feuds with the Ming Dynasty - Baimalu Cusi, Qi The Mingcu Division and the Zhanzang Xianjie Cu Division were both suppressed by the Songpan Guards of the imperial court for various reasons. They burned fortresses, captured cattle and sheep, and killed native people... Zhang Hu was fighting against the Ming Dynasty. Zhang Hu had tea in his hand. Zhang Hu He didn't care about the exchange price... So Zhang Hu received warm hospitality from more than a thousand horses and people of different sizes. Under the relay guidance of many Tibetan guides, he sneaked along the Sino-Tibetan border, crossed the Minzhou Guard, and suddenly crossed the Huan River. , In one fell swoop, they captured the Taozhou Military and Civilian Thousand Households (now Diebu County, Gansu Province) and appeared in the Taozhou Guard in Shaanxi Province.
Diebu, known as "Diezhou" in ancient times, means "thumb" in Tibetan - the mountains are continuous, like a natural barrier separating China and Tibet. Here, the God pressed it with his thumb, Then a gap channel appeared. Going north along here is the Taozhou Guard, and further north is Lintao Prefecture and the Shaanxi Xingdu Division of the Ming Dynasty.
*Cui Fujun: Taoist immortal, from Sui and Tang Dynasties. He once served as the Fuyang Order of Cizhou. It is said that he dealt with the Yang during the day and the Yin at night. It is also said that he was the judge in the underworld (another theory is that he was the head of the four great judges). Among the more famous deeds, in addition to crossing King Kang on a mud horse, he also gave a dream to Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty, telling him that Anlu Mountain "must be destroyed", so don't run away anymore...
* Shen Yushi's heroic article: This place is sixty miles away from Huizhou and two hundred miles away from Qin Dynasty, and the tea horse road leads to Yan. How can there be no official guard or office? There are more than one hundred thousand bandits of Kuanglu chieftains. Among them, Ji Nang's Anda is the most powerful one, and Harashen is also a cunning bandit. From time to time, they invade from the south and block the wall. Although there are Qin, Gong, Lin, Ping, The soldiers of the Gan, Ning, Gu, and Jing roads are outnumbered and many are weak and brittle. They are running around in the world and no one dares to support them. People think that the captives are strong and we are weak, but they don’t know that the soldiers are in charge of the captives, the horses are in charge of the warriors, the tea is in the livestock and horses, and the tea is in the official office. The official office is not established, but people who want tea are rare. Tea classes are not enough, but those who desire horses are rare. The horse power is not uniform, but there are few who want to fight hard, and the soldiers are not working hard. They want to fight the enemy externally to capture the captives, but internally want to stabilize Xia to protect the country. I have never heard of it before. How can it be less and more slowly?
As we said in the last chapter, the writing style of these people is: heartbreaking, cloudy and foggy, great principles, grand strategies... Do you think this is the case^_^
