Early the next morning after Mingshan City was captured, people came from Yazhou City. The messenger claimed that they were ordered by Cao Zhizhou of Yazhou to take over Mingshan City.
The envoy first told Ouyang Xuan that the Yazhou army was on its way, and boasted that the army would be victorious in every battle, so that when the Mongolian army heard that the elite soldiers of the Yazhou army were coming, they fled after hearing the news, allowing the Perak army to take advantage in vain.
This shameless statement made Ouyang Xuan burst into laughter, and the rest of the Pili Army burst into laughter.
Seeing that Ouyang Xuan didn't take it seriously, the messenger took out Cao Zhizhou's letter and handed it to Ouyang Xuan. After Ouyang Xuan read the letter with a smile, he asked someone to drive the messenger away.
Cao Ergou was confused and asked what was going on. Ouyang Xuan told everyone the content of the letter. Before he finished speaking, everyone burst into laughter again.
It turns out that Cao Zhizhou also knew that no one could easily give up the territory he had fought for, and since he had won it from the Mongols, reporting to the court must be a great achievement.
Therefore, in the letter, Cao Zhizhou first addressed Ouyang Xuan by his first name as a superior addressed his subordinates, implying that he was just a small Yongkang County Magistrate. He also claimed that he had a big backer in Lin'an, in order to use his power to get back Ouyang Xuan. Mingshan City and achieved the victory of defeating the Mongolian army.
He knew that the Pili Army had always been semi-independent and had never participated in the officialdom, let alone follow arbitrary orders.
In the afternoon, Yazhou’s so-called
The "army" really arrived as promised. Judging from the crowd, there were quite a few, probably around 2,000 people. It's just that although there are many people, there is absolutely no
"Elite soldiers" look. These Yazhou soldiers had been walking under the scorching sun for most of the day. Their ranks were scattered and their appearance was not in order, and some of the weak ones were already staggering.
The equipment is only some bows, arrows, swords, spears and wooden shields, not even siege weapons. These soldiers were already thirsty and unbearable. When they saw that the city gate was closed, they kept cursing and saying that if the city gate was not opened as soon as possible, the city would be destroyed. Some soldiers even fired arrows at the top of the city, almost injuring the soldiers on the top of the city.
This made Cao Ergou furious and ordered the artillery fire - but not at the Yazhou soldiers. The huge roar immediately made the soldiers in the city stop shouting and cursing. They saw that the branches and leaves of the weedy trees nearby were blown away. They immediately curbed their arrogance and rushed towards Yazhou along the original road.
One day later, Yazhou sent another messenger. Ouyang Xuan frowned after reading the letter. It turned out that Cao Zhizhou knew about the Pili Army caravan and said that if Mingshan City was not returned, there would be no chance of passing through Yazhou City.
It is not an exaggeration to say that Cao Zhizhou is exaggerating. Due to the weak military, the Southern Song Dynasty had very weak control over ethnic minority areas, so they mostly used girdle management.
Lizhou managed many Jisuzhous such as Diao and Yan. However, Lizhou only governs one county in Hanyuan, and there are more Tibetan people than Han people. It only has a few hundred soldiers to fight. It even relies on Yazhou for public security and suppression of bandits.
Although the Perak Army caravan is not weak in combat power, it is impossible to forcefully rush through the two states of Li and Ya while carrying goods.
In addition to using the caravan as a bargaining chip, Cao Zhizhou also hinted to Ouyang Xuan that in order to make up for the cost of sending troops, the Pili Army could do things cheaply in Mingshan City. This was actually telling Ouyang Xuan to launch troops and plunder.
Although Cao Zhizhou's words were cruel, it was normal in this era for troops to plunder cities. In fact, except for the Mongols, most of the Song army also looted after capturing the city, because for most soldiers, the property and women after breaking the city were the biggest motivation for them to work hard.
For these behaviors, the leading generals often condone them in order to boost morale. The reason why Cao Zhizhou did this was because in his opinion, it was not cost-effective for the Pili Army to exchange a caravan for the richest city in Yazhou, and he was afraid that Ouyang Xuan would not agree with this suggestion.
In fact, to Ouyang Xuan, the lives of hundreds of brothers in the caravan are much more valuable than the value of Mingshan City, not to mention that the caravan also has supplies and horses that are urgently needed by the Pili Army. What is more important is the letter Ouyang Xuan sent back from Boss Qian. It was learned from the news that the caravan has established a stronghold in Fan District and has obtained stable material channels, which will be of great help to the future development of the Perak Army.
After pondering for a moment, Ouyang Xuan replied to the messenger, agreeing to use Mingshan City in exchange for the safe passage of the caravan, but if the caravan was damaged, it would suffer the thunderous wrath of the Thunderbolt Army.
As for robbing his own city, Ouyang Xuan would never do it or tolerate others doing it. Of course, not looting does not mean there is no harvest. At least there is a lot of property in the official warehouse of Mingshan City. Although the Mongols took away part of it, there is still a lot of silk, tea, and grain.
As for the properties of wealthy families who took refuge with the Mongols, they were also confiscated. After Ouyang Xuan informed Cao Ergou about the follow-up matters, he took the horses, prisoners of war and captured property to Baizhang City, accompanied by the navy company and Zhou Jianshen's reformation camp.
The reason why he hurried back was that there were still a lot of things at home waiting for him to make a decision. Huang Dagen also received a secret report, saying that the Mongolian troops in the direction of Chengdu had begun to gather again and seemed to be planning another major military operation.
For this reason, he told Cao Ergou that once he escorted the caravan to Qiongzhou, he would immediately lead the field camp back to Chongqing Fucheng.
On their way back, Ouyang Xuan and his party arrived at Baizhang City at noon because they took the official road and had horses and ponies left by Qian Laoer to carry the baggage.
After taking a short rest, Ouyang Xuan left Zhou Jianshen's reformed battalion to guard Baizhang City, while the navy company and teaching company continued to follow him to Qiongzhou with their horses.
The more than 400 prisoners of war from the newly affiliated army stayed in Baizhang City to repair and strengthen the city's defenses, and then they would be sent to mine in the mountains of Qiongzhou.
On the fifth day after Ouyang Xuan left, the caravan appeared outside Mingshan City. After months of hardship, they finally saw their own people, which made the caravan rejoiced.
Needless to say, Boss Qian heard about the marriage between Cao Ergou and Qian Yimei on the way. He was very relieved. The Qian clan members have been deeply bound to the Pili Army since then. As long as they work hard, they will have nothing to worry about. future.
Li Ganzi and other caravan squad leaders were also extremely happy to see their former comrades. At the moment, both parties are having a feast, and the star on the table is horse meat.
The people in the city were grateful to the Perak Army for driving away the Mongols, and also sent fruits, vegetables and other food. Although Cao Ergou and others already knew the general situation of the caravan's trip through the messenger, everyone was still in awe after listening to the detailed explanation by Boss Qian and others.
In the past few days while waiting for the arrival of the caravan, he had been ordering people to scrape salt in Mingshan City. Therefore, when Cao Ergou talked about the Perak Army using firearms to defeat the Mongols, he accidentally mentioned the problem of the lack of fire and saltpeter. Boss Qian took over the problem and said that the goods brought back by the caravan contained a lot of crude fire and saltpeter. .
With Ze Lin's full help, the caravan collected a lot of crude saltpeter when they were making arrow stoves, and a lot more when they stopped in Lizhou.
The bigger surprise was that just two days before they returned from Lizhou, they learned from the locals that there was also a fire salt mine nearby.
Boss Qian sent Qian Bao to accompany the villagers to inspect and found that the reserves were quite large. Boss Qian always kept in mind the items Ouyang Xuan requested to purchase. He would miss this opportunity. He immediately paid a large sum of money to buy the mine from the local people, retained management personnel, and prepared to recruit local people for large-scale mining.
Compared with the fire, saltpeter, mercury and other strategic materials purchased during this trip, horses were the biggest gain from this trip.
In addition to the 400 war horses captured from the grassland tribes, the caravan also purchased more than 300 mules and horses along the way.
The cost of purchasing these mules and horses and eating horse chews during their stay in Lizhou were really expensive. Even if Boss Qian ordered them to save money, all the thousand taels of gold presented by Zetian were used up.
