The battle in the Imperial Capital that lasted for forty-five days finally came to an end with the pillars of smoke rising into the sky from the Tai Chi Palace.
When many historians of later generations look back on this siege battle, which was related to the national destiny of the two great empires of the Holy, Tang, and Turkic empires, they are often very surprised and puzzled because the battle ended so quickly.
The Imperial Capital, this huge city known as the number one in the world at the time, should not have collapsed in such a short period of time, regardless of its complete defense system or its astonishing size.
Moreover, the people stationed in the city at that time were the Holy Tang Emperor himself and more than 100,000 elite troops under his command.
Such a dynasty capital that had all the right time, place and people, no matter how bad it was, should have persisted for a year and a half, but in the end, it was actually unable to survive even two months, which is really incomprehensible.
Their defensive record is probably worse than that of Xiaoguan and Liangzhou Prefecture, which are empty of troops.
As a result, many people who studied the battle of the imperial capital came to a similar conclusion: Li Chengwu was a relatively incompetent emperor in the 800-year history of the Holy Tang Dynasty, and the imperial capital of the dynasty was not as powerful as described in the rumors.
However, these so-called scholars made a fundamental mistake, that is, they only briefly understood the various data recorded in historical materials and analyzed them based on their own cognition, but they forgot an important principle - war. Not flat, but three-dimensional.
At its peak, the imperial capital had hundreds of miles of squares in the city, and a population of more than 1.2 million recorded in the household register. Such a huge city covers a vast area, far beyond what ordinary cities can match.
Just the outer perimeter of the imperial capital has a circumference of more than seventy miles.
The Turkic army besieged the city, and the Shengtang troops guarding the imperial capital included the Forbidden Army's Tiger and Leopard Cavalry, Jinwu Guards, Qilin Army and Jingzhao Yinfu soldiers, totaling 136,000 troops. Distribute them evenly along the long city defense line, with no more than 400 people per 100 meters.
At the same time, the imperial capital still had twelve crucial outer city gates that needed to be defended, and the Shengtang Army's force invested in each city gate at that time had to be at least about two thousand troops.
In this way, the defensive power on the city wall was spread even less.
The diluted defenders had to work tirelessly to resist the opponent's successive attacks. Not only did they not get any replacements or repairs, but they also knew very well that they were making a desperate resistance with no retreat.
That suffocating sense of oppression is really indescribable to outsiders.
But their enemies were in another terrifying state.
In order to conquer the capital of the Holy Tang Dynasty as soon as possible, the Turkic army invested nearly half a million elite troops one after another, and launched a continuous fierce attack almost day and night.
From the first day of the siege, the twelve city gates faced thousands of attacks from the Turkic and Xinjiang armies. Thirty-seven of the giant ramming vehicles were destroyed. The imperial capital city was boarded more than sixty times by the attackers, and five large gaps were destroyed in the thick city wall by trebuchets. The Fourth Golden Army broke into the city three times in a row, only to be pushed back out by the defenders.
Even though the outer city was completely lost later, the Shengtang troops still relied on the inner city's inner city streets to carry out echelon defense. They fought fiercely for another ten days before completely retreating to the imperial city.
After losing more than 20 generals and nearly 100,000 soldiers and horses, the Turks finally gained a dilapidated imperial capital, an irrefutable victory. The forty-five days of unprecedented fierce fighting were a nightmare for the Shengtang Army, and even more so for the Turkic Army.
With such a result, who dares to say that Li Chengwu is incompetent? Who dares to say that the imperial capital is nothing more than this?
At the end of the battle, Prince Chili, the commander-in-chief of the siege front line, was scolded bloody by his father, Khan Ashina Zhijin, without any sense of joy as a winner.
Not only did he fail to get his father's recognition and reward, but the main force under his command also suffered huge losses in this battle. The originally expected glorious battle turned into a loss-making business.
The annoyed Chili couldn't help but vent all his anger on the soldiers and civilians of Shengtang. He first ordered his subordinates to massacre all the surviving civilians and wounded soldiers in the imperial capital indiscriminately after entering the city. Not long after, he felt dissatisfied, and personally commanded the army to attack from multiple directions, frantically raiding the towns and villages around the imperial capital.
Wherever the Turks' iron hoofs went, mountains of corpses piled up and rivers of blood flowed.
If General Yun Qianxue of the Blood Guard hadn't arrived in time to stop Chili with the Great Khan's warrant, I'm afraid all the land thousands of miles inside the pass would have been completely desolate.
It was at this time that Xiahou Ninghan came to Guanzhong. She walked and looked around, asking for information. Many people who fled said that the imperial capital was too badly damaged. The city was in ruins and littered with beacon smoke, and the population in the city was very low. Therefore, the Turkic Khan Ashina Zhijin was not in a hurry to move the royal tent in. Imperial Capital, but still temporarily stayed at Beizhao Temple.
He was accompanied by not only the Blood Guard Corps and the Blood Guard Cavalry Corps, but also a large number of Turkic civilian officials, including medical officers.
Xiahou Ninghan secretly calculated in his heart that if what Soul Eater said at the beginning was true, then the people who are most likely to do such vicious things among the Turkic army are those who practice medicine.
Because only they, who are good at using medicine to treat diseases, have the corresponding knowledge and ability to cruelly transform the poisonous soldiers. Even if the medical officers were not the masterminds, they were probably Ge Shuxuan's accomplices. Therefore, if we want to find that demon, the most promising way at present is to start with those medical officers.
In view of this, Xiahou Ninghan made up his mind to bypass the imperial capital occupied by the Turks, continue westward, and go directly to Beizhao Temple where King Ashina Zhijin's tent was located to explore the culprit of the poisonous soldiers.
Xiahou Ninghan has great martial arts, delicate mind, and great courage. Unfortunately, she didn't know what a terrifying experience awaited her next.
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Just when Xiahou Ninghan went to Beizhao Temple in the capital to track down Shu Xuan, the culprit of the poison soldiers, the battle report that the imperial capital was captured by the Turkic army also reached Ulan City in the Ghost Desert of Western Xinjiang.
Gema Khan, the governor of Western Turkic Territory and the leader of the Yelun tribe, looked at the parchment sent back from the front line and was not happy at all.
The first batch of 40,000 people, and later the second batch of 40,000 people, totaling 80,000 sons of the Yakut Independent Army, were taken by his son-in-law, Prince Chili, to attack the imperial capital.
Unexpectedly, after this fierce battle, not only did things not go as expected, the Yelun tribe soldiers and horses returned laden with countless gold and silver treasures, but they also lost a lot of blood and paid an extremely painful price.
Twenty-three thousand-man troops of the Yelun Clan were directly disabled, and more than half of the troops needed to be reorganized and merged to maintain their combat effectiveness.
Gema Khan's little heart was about to break.
These soldiers and horses were the elite troops he had accumulated over decades of hard work. He originally expected to rely on them to dominate the Western Continent and continuously expand territory for the Yelun tribe.
It's a good thing now that he was completely exhausted by Chili, that prodigal son!
Gama Khan was now starting to regret it. He thought from the bottom of his heart that he should not be greedy for Dongfang's wealth and jump up and down to accompany Ashina through this muddy water.
What's even more terrible is that the Yakut Independence Army's huge losses on the Eastern Expedition front also directly affected its strategic security in Western Xinjiang. If not, I am afraid that even I will capsize in the gutter.
Gema's worries are not without reason - in the past half month, the situation in Western Xinjiang has become worse than before.
The reorganization of the new Western Xinjiang Army has now come to an end. Overall, the effect is still very significant. Two of the divisions with relatively strong combat effectiveness have begun to take on the task and were dispatched to disperse and garrison the Twelve Army Town in Guimo. In addition, several important vassal courts also dispatched additional purely Turkic Yakut cavalry units to strengthen the defense and control of those places.
However, these developments have not fundamentally solved the problems in Western Xinjiang.
In various divisions of the Western Xinjiang Army, the conflict between Turkic soldiers and local soldiers is still very acute, and there are signs of continuing to deteriorate rapidly. The two sides became increasingly dissatisfied with each other, and verbal conflicts continued almost every day.
In particular, several clean-up operations some time ago have brought more variables to the already unstable situation.
The cause of the matter is this:
As the Turks continued to increase their exorbitant levies and taxes, civil dissatisfaction intensified in many towns and villages, so much so that a large amount of food, grass and military pay were not collected on time.
Regarding this issue, the commanders of the local Turkic garrison had a relatively simple idea:
Dry!
Since it's shameless to give face, then don't give face and send troops directly to the door!
Some places, such as the relatively wealthy countries such as Hami and Qiuci, were more or less able to cooperate obediently when the Turkic army arrived, and the goods that had been overdue for a long time were presented to them one by one.
But in some towns with barren land and strong folk customs, what the villagers offer is not money and food, but kitchen knives and sticks.
Faced with open robbery, people in Xijiang have relatively simple ideas:
Dry!
The strong resistance made the Turks put aside their remaining hesitation, immediately drew their sabers, and slashed to death. In the two towns where the situation was most serious, the residents were almost slaughtered by the Yakut cavalry.
The corpses of the common people were hung on wooden stakes one by one, one pile at a time, and they were lined up along the main road from the entrance of the town, which could stretch for seven or eight miles.
The direct result of this simple, crude and inhumane approach was that the Xijiang Army was in trouble!
Seeing the Turks murdering their fellow villagers, every local soldier in Western Xinjiang was bloodshot to the forehead. Not only did they directly refuse to carry out the clearing orders issued by the Turkic commanders, but they also organized an organization to block the towns where the tragedy was about to occur. In name, they were assisting in the operation, but in fact they were standing between the Turks and the people to stop the beasts from taking action.
In addition to overt resistance, the soldiers in Western Xinjiang also made numerous secret actions. Many Turkic warriors who were most enthusiastic about massacring the villagers during the day would disappear inexplicably at night, with no one alive or dead.
There were more and more such weird cases, so that in the end, the Turkic commander had to issue a special order for the Turkic soldiers to camp separately away from the soldiers in Western Xinjiang. When they went out to urinate at night, they should be in groups of at least five.
In this situation, it is a difficult question for Gema, not to mention organizing forces to destroy the Xinjiang Army, but also whether he can stabilize his troops and avoid being messed up by his subordinates.
However, the fact that Gema Khan was unable to provoke Metasequoia City did not mean that Metasequoia could live in peace with him and everything was peaceful. Ever since Li Jiangyao suddenly came back, the arrogant look of the Xinjiang Army immediately refreshed Ge Ma's understanding of the ghost desert in Western Xinjiang.
