Arslan was extremely annoyed.
Because the Ming Dynasty's declaration of war had been sent before, asking him to wash his neck and prepare to die, Ming Dynasty would never let him go.
The reason was that Alan used a knife to force Han Wei, the marching secretary of the Ming Dynasty's Western Expedition, to hand over the Western Karakhan Kingdom to the Khwarezm Kingdom, causing Han Wei to be injured.
After Alan was arrested, he confessed that Arslan forced him to do this, and for this he also captured his family members as a bargaining chip for threats.
Emperor Su Yonglin of the Ming Dynasty was furious and immediately ordered a crusade against the Khwarezm Kingdom, vowing to make the Khwarezm Kingdom and King Arslan pay the price.
Of course Arslan knew nothing about this. He never expected that he would get this outcome when he sent people to ask for land.
He didn't know what exactly happened between Alan and Han Wei, but he roughly figured out the cause and effect based on the outcome of the matter.
There is a high probability that Alan was unable to achieve the results he wanted. In desperation, he decided to use blackmail to force the Ming Dynasty to agree to his conditions. Not only did he fail, but he also turned the Khwarezm Kingdom from an ally to an enemy country. Now it needs to be conquered. .
So he denounced Alan's stupidity and uselessness, carried out an inhumane extermination of Alan's family, and hung their corpses on the city tower for public display to vent his anger.
The anger was vented, but the sadness came back.
Facing the powerful military threat from the Ming Dynasty, he had no choice but to use any military force to resist the Ming army. He was about to be hung on a southeastern branch by the Ming army and fluttered in the wind.
In desperation, he had no choice but to seek help from the emerging power of the Gur Dynasty in the south on the advice of his subordinates.
In order to ensure that the Gur Dynasty would definitely intervene in this war, they also offered a temptation that they could not refuse no matter what.
Of course Arslan knew that he was seeking skin from a tiger and dancing with wolves, but in order to survive, he had no choice.
Of course, with the Khwarezm State's level of confidentiality comparable to that of the Maginot Line, what its senior officials knew in the morning was completely known to the Skynet Army spies in the afternoon, and then passed back to the Ming Dynasty.
Su Haisheng and others, who were making war preparations around Husi Or'er, which was renamed Anxi City, soon learned about this and expressed surprise.
While they quickly conveyed the matter to Zhongdu, they held a military meeting to discuss the matter, and finally came to the conclusion that it should be treated with caution.
All in all, first send a large number of military sentries to the border areas of the Gur Dynasty to explore military intelligence, find out the number, equipment and various types of troops of the Gur Dynasty, and actively inquire about some military-related things in this country. More information about Ming Dynasty.
No matter how difficult it is, you must find a way to achieve your goal. This is the mission of the Skynet Army. In order to achieve your goal, it doesn't matter how much money you spend.
But to be honest, these days it is actually very difficult to figure out the actual situation of the other country before physical confrontation.
Often when two countries start a war, they don’t even have a superficial understanding of each other, and it is difficult to find people who really know each other.
During the Imjin Patriotic War in Korea, the Ming Empire knew very little about Japan. They didn’t even know the names of the leaders of the other side. Based on some previous rumors, they believed that all the leaders of the other side had the surname [Ping], which was completely inappropriate. Understand the Japanese chain of command.
Japan didn’t even understand the Ming Dynasty, otherwise it wouldn’t have the idea of using North Korea as a springboard to swallow up the Ming Dynasty. Toyotomi Hideyoshi even said that he would move the capital to Ningbo and move their emperor to Ningbo to live a comfortable life.
The two countries, which are passionately fighting each other to the death, have no idea about each other's details and true circumstances, and they even don't know much about the top leadership. This shows how difficult it is to collect intelligence.
That's why Sun Tzu said in The Art of War, "Know yourself and the enemy, and you will never be in danger in a hundred battles."
These days, being able to know oneself and the enemy is not a standard feature of war, but a top-level feature of war, the kind that can't be beat anymore, similar to the fully open map and God's perspective in computer games.
More than 98% of the wars in human history did not have this condition.
What’s even more interesting is that the most important place for two strange countries to enhance mutual understanding, apart from the trade market, is the battlefield. The more wars they fight, the more they will understand each other better.
Such as the Western Han Dynasty and the Xiongnu.
Before this, the Ming Dynasty had no official exchanges with the Gur Dynasty, no official-level exchanges, and even commercial trade was not carried out directly. It mainly relied on second-hand dealers, two strange countries that had never known each other.
But this does not prevent the two sides from going to war.
Su Haisheng and Han Wei worked closely together, worked together, and then reported the specific information to Jiang Liangping, who was guarding Congling. If there were no problems with Jiang Liangping, it would be best to send someone to help.
Because the battlefield was too far away from Zhongdu, Su Yonglin gave Su Haisheng important discretionary authorization, allowing him to flexibly exercise power according to emergencies.
As long as it involves a third country, this matter must be told to Su Yonglin, and then what should be done, without delaying the fighter opportunity.
The Ming army originally did not plan to send many troops for this battle. They thought that 20,000 people would be enough to make the Khwarezm Kingdom kneel down and call daddy. But now that there is one more participant, 20,000 people may not be enough.
The Ming army has asked Masud, King of the Western Karakhan Kingdom, to organize at least 20,000 troops to accompany the Ming army on the expedition. Now it has decided to increase its troops to 30,000 to form a coalition of 50,000.
The main force of the Khwarezm Kingdom was wiped out by Xiliao, and they could not raise many troops in the short term. The main thing now is to see how many people the Gur Dynasty can raise.
This will directly affect the Ming Dynasty's prediction of the strength of the Gur Dynasty, and will also directly affect the size of the Ming Dynasty's future military garrison in the two provinces of Anxi and Beiting.
Directly affected by food production and transportation problems, the Ming Dynasty was unable to maintain an army of more than 100,000 in the Western Regions for a long time. With the stability of the two major provinces, the troops of the Second Corps and the Sixth Corps were retreating in an orderly manner.
In the future, the Ming Dynasty's garrison plan in the two major provinces of the Western Region is actually based on settlements, because there are not many places where people can live in the Western Region, mainly oases, so the Ming Dynasty's garrison and transportation roads will all follow. Oasis was built.
As a result, the vast areas of Anxi Province and Beiting Province will be uninhabited or sparsely populated areas in the future. Naturally, there will be no need for too many troops to stay and garrison. Now they are supported by marching and storing food, which is very costly but is also possible. Can be maintained.
Once the situation enters a normal state in the future, the army will not be able to gain a foothold in the local area until the production and construction corps is established.
Therefore, Su Yonglin still planned to leave a small number of troops in Anxi Province and Beiting Province. The Second Corps and the Sixth Corps would jointly assume the garrison duties, and not set up a separate main battle corps to reduce the military burden.
On this issue, Su Yonglin and the General Staff Headquarters fully referred to the strategies of the Tang Dynasty, which was very successful in managing the Western Regions and Central Asia.
At the peak of the Tang Dynasty, that is, during the Kaiyuan and Tianbao years, the number of regular troops stationed in the Western Regions was about 45,000, which belonged to the Anxi Protectorate and the Beiting Protectorate.
The number seems to be sparse, but the territory is vast. With more than 40,000 people controlling a vast territory of one million square kilometers, it is difficult to achieve the goal.
This is not the case.
During the heyday of the Tang Dynasty, the national prestige spread far and wide was definitely not an empty talk, and the name of Tian Khan was definitely more than just a name.
From Chang'an to Central Asia, many small countries and tribes that were not directly under their own territory but within the sphere of influence bowed to the Tang Empire. If something happened, they were obliged to send troops.
