The offensive and defensive battle in Daliang City was more difficult than expected.
Among them, the Liang people's tenacious will to resist is one aspect.
On the other hand, it was Xu Guo’s help.
In fact, at the end of June, after losing all its peripheral strongholds and cutting off contact with the outside world, Daliang City was completely isolated. The city defense was shaken by the attack and it was almost impossible to hold on.
It may be that it was at this time that the Liang people sensed that something was wrong, and immediately sent an innate master to break out while the Chu army was unprepared.
After leaving Daliang, this innate master as an envoy did not go to the hinterland still controlled by Liang State, but went directly north to Xu State.
The situation in the hinterland of Liang Kingdom is already very bad.
Liang Guo is in the rear. Although it still controls the territory of six or seven counties, the population in these territories is still about 20 million.
But these 20 million people have lost all their youth and strength, and there are no males left, only the old and the young.
In this case, by squeezing out the remaining young and old, we might be able to build an army of one to two million people.
But this two million army will all be children and old men under the age of fifteen and over seventy.
The quality of such a large army composed of soldiers is not as good as that of civilians. They are not qualified to be sent to the battlefield to serve as cannon fodder. What use can they be used for?
Therefore, it may be feasible to recruit a large army from the rear, but it will not break the siege of Daliang City.
Although there are two to three million soldiers and horses to the south and east of Liang State, there are also a large number of Chu troops in these two directions, and there is even a troublemaker like Tang State.
Although the troops and horses in these two areas can be mobilized, once they are gone, the Chu army and the Tang army will come.
The hinterland behind the six or seven counties will no longer belong to the Liang Kingdom.
If this is the case, it would be better to let Daliang fall.
Without Daliang, Liang could still survive.
But without the territory of the counties behind him, Liang Guoke died suddenly.
Which of the two is more important, the monarchs and ministers in Daliang City can naturally see clearly.
Therefore, you can't save Liang by yourself, and you can't let Liang Guo survive this disaster.
I want to keep the beam, and I want Liang Guo to lose less after losing the beam.
The last resort is to invite foreign aid.
Looking at the surrounding areas, the only ones that can help Liang State at this time are those bordering Liang State, and even Xu State, which is already bordering Chu State and is also facing the threat of Chu people.
Therefore, the envoys sent out by Daliang City had a clear purpose after breaking through the siege, which was to go to Xu State to mobilize reinforcements.
As for whether Xu Guoguo would be willing to help them, Liang Guo was still very confident about this.
Because now, the situation is obvious.
Daliang is now looking like he is about to lose his life.
As soon as Daliang was lost, Liang County fell.
The Chu people captured Liang County, plus Jiyin County they had already occupied last year, and formed a pincer attack on Dongping County in Qingzhou, which is now controlled by Xu State, from the south and west.
Dongping County will face attacks from two aspects of Chu State, and the border environment will be extremely bad in an instant.
It will be extremely difficult for Xu Guo to hold on to this territory, and it may be lost at any time.
But does Xu Guo dare to lose Dongping County?
Dongping County is one of the only two counties in Zhongzhou in Xu State in Henan.
It was also last year when Liang Guo took advantage of the loss of power and took the opportunity to seize the territory.
It is also a carefully selected site.
Last year, Liang State was in such a state of decline and its hinterland was so empty. Why did Xu State just grab Dongping County?
The biggest reason is that Dongping County is located in the south of Xu State, and also east of Le'an County, another county controlled by Qingzhou of Xu State.
Yes, the biggest role of Dongping County is to act as the eastern barrier of Le'an County to prevent Chu State from infiltrating into Le'an County.
The status of Le'an County is roughly equivalent to the East County of Zhao State.
Not only does it accommodate half of the population of Xu State, but there are 12 million people in the county. It is now the imperial capital of Xu State, and all the dignitaries of the country are there.
Yes, since last year, it seems that Chu State has become increasingly unstoppable in Zhongzhou.
It is also because of the cold wave in the north, which has become more and more serious.
Therefore, in order to contain the powerful enemy and the pressure of survival, Xu State finally decided to officially move the capital.
In September last year, Emperor Xu moved to Leling, the southern capital, with hundreds of court officials, ministers, nobles, royal families, and a large number of troops.
This wave of migration not only brought a large number of elites, but also millions of people from the northern capital accompanied them.
With so many people moving south, Le'an County has naturally become more and more crowded, making it gradually difficult to relocate.
Moreover, in the Xuzhou area, Xu State also controls the territory of three counties. Together, these three counties are home to 112 million people.
But the cold wave in the north had already approached the northern border of Xu State again last year.
It is estimated that the land of these three counties will not be preserved for a few years.
The remaining tens of millions of people in Xuzhou, Hebei, will also intensify their migration southward in the next few years.
In other words, there are more than 10 million people in Xu State who are in urgent need of resettlement.
Cola'an County is already extremely congested. How can there be more land to accommodate these people?
The newly occupied Dongping County to the east is open enough that with a little development, tens of millions of people can be accommodated.
But facing Chu State directly there, it has become the front line of Zhao State, and there is no telling when war will ignite.
Immigrating to such a border area would only do this kind of thing if you are crazy.
Therefore, Dongping County is not a good place to resettle.
But if Dongping County fails, Xu State will have no new territory.
In total, it only occupies two counties in Qingzhou. Now that these two counties have been planned, there really isn't much room for survival.
If Xu State wanted to resettle immigrants, it had to find a new site to accommodate more people.
If Xu Guo wanted to continue to expand and want new territory, there was only one option left, and that was to ask Liang Guo for it.
After all, the Liang Kingdom is located in Qingzhou and has six or seven counties, and its strength is declining sharply. Naturally, it is the best fat in the eyes of many evil wolves around it.
Who wouldn't want to bite him like that?
But here comes the awkward part.
Now Xu and Liang have just formed an alliance.
Just last year, in August last year, before Xu State wanted to move its capital, in order to stabilize the security environment near the imperial capital and to better support Liang State, it formed an alliance with Liang State.
Both sides are allies, and they have just formed an alliance. Then you, Xu State, attack your allies.
Tell me, if this news spreads, how will Xu Guo get along?
This is even worse than the Chu State stabbing the Wei State in the back.
Because although Chu State stabbed Wei State, one thing that no one can deny is that there has never been any alliance between Chu State and Wei State.
Neither on paper nor verbally.
Over the years, Chu State has been pursuing a policy of neutrality.
In other words, it is a policy of having both sides.
When Chu State opens its doors for business, everyone is a friend. As long as you give money, Chu State will sell everything.
Whether it's weapons, food, cloth, medicinal materials, etc., Chu can sell anything as long as it can afford it.
In addition, Chu State was far south of the Yangtze River, did not participate in the Zhongzhou War, had its own strong strength, and there were indeed needs from various countries during the war.
Under various conditions, a middleman like the Chu State was recognized by all the nine states hegemons.
This is also the reason why Chu State was able to do business with Wei State, Liang State, Zheng State and Jin State before, and even took a long way to do business with Zhao State and Xu State.
It has done business with so many countries, and even in order to maintain these businesses, Chu State cannot form alliances with other countries, or even take partial actions.
Under such constraints, it is certainly impossible for Chu to form an alliance with Wei.
The so-called joint dispatch of troops before was just to set a direction and then fight separately.
The two armies have not joined together. One is attacking Helong and the other is attacking the grassland. They are facing different enemy forces. Talking about a union is an exaggeration.
It can only be said that the general direction and purpose are consistent, and there is a tacit understanding between the two parties.
Therefore, theoretically speaking, Chu State stabbed Wei State in the back without any psychological burden.
This is not a betrayal of an alliance. There is no paper agreement between Chu and Wei.
At most, it would be a business partner with whom they have always cooperated tacitly, which would have a great impact on the business and a greater impact on the business reputation. From now on, the Chu State would not want to do business with other countries.
As for the others, there really aren’t any.
If you, the State of Wei, think you are on good terms with me, the State of Chu, that is your business, what does it have to do with me?
In terms of righteousness, the Chu State had no moral misconduct and could be regarded as maintaining its final bottom line.
But the relationship between Xu and Liang is not like this.
They had a clear alliance and signed a letter of alliance.
If Xu Guo stabbed Liang Guo at this time, it would be a real betrayal of the alliance, a breach of trust in the world, and would be despised by all countries.
In the future, if Xu Guo wants to cooperate with other countries and conduct various diplomatic and commercial activities, it is impossible to even think about it.
All countries will also be on guard against Xu Guo and be extremely wary of this villain who betrays the alliance.
Xu State will fall into an even more isolated situation than Chu State.
Well, that's the theoretical consequence.
In fact, with the rising variable of Chu State, it is somewhat difficult to say how various countries will eventually treat Xu State.
After all, before the greatest righteousness of resisting Chu, Xu, an important hegemon, was still a force that was hard to ignore.
Without Chu State, according to the original international rules, everyone can naturally isolate Xu State at will.
But with the Chu State, under the pressure of life and death, everything may be uncertain.
But it’s just a matter of time, so anything is possible.
Countries may target Xu State, or they may not. The probability between yes and no is enough to make people fearful and not dare to try easily.
Xu Guo didn’t dare to do it anyway.
Already bordering the Chu State, it is even possible to become the next unlucky person to be attacked by the Chu State after Wei Liang and Zhao Zheng.
Xu Guo's need for international help is no less than Liang Guo's.
Without the help of Liang, Wei, Xu, Zheng, Zhao, Jin and other countries, Xu had no confidence that it would be able to survive against the Chu State without being destroyed.
Therefore, international reputation is still extremely important to Xu State.
This also leads to the fact that he clearly has an urgent need for expansion, and there are also excellent expansion directions in the surrounding area.
But out of concerns about reputation, he did not dare to take action against Liang Guo.
But if you are not good at martial arts, you will have to resort to writing in the end.
Therefore, after moving the capital last year, it started to establish a foothold in Lean County.
While Xu Guo was vigorously helping Liang Guo, he was also constantly sending envoys to Daliang to communicate and work with the kings and ministers of Liang Guo.
The purpose of this is to persuade these high-level officials of the Liang Kingdom to discuss with them the cession or sale of the territory.
As long as Liang Guo is willing to give up a county, Xu Guo is willing to pay a large price to buy it.
This activity has been carried out for more than half a year and has achieved considerable results.
Now.
Seeing that Daliang was about to lose its hold, the envoy from Xu State who was still staying in Daliang City took the initiative.
Liang Guo ceded a county in exchange for Xu Guo's offer to send troops to rescue him.
In the face of the fall of the capital and the crisis of life and death, this proposal has been approved by the monarchs and ministers of Liang State.
As long as Xu Guo can send one million troops to rescue Daliang and help Liang keep Daliang, or help them rebuild a new second line of defense after Liang, which is the Shanyang County defense line behind Liang.
Then Liang Guo is willing to cede Qingping County in the rear and give this county to Xu Guo as Xu Guo's third county in Qingzhou.
Well, this Qingping County is in the northeast of Qingzhou, at the junction of the four states of Xu, Qing, Henan, and Jing. It is a real border area.
The population is not large, about 17.8 million.
The north and east of this county were the territory of the Tang State. For the Liang State, they were also bordered by enemy countries.
For the safety of this county, Liang Guo stationed 300,000 troops here, and in addition there were 500,000 Xu Guo troops stationed here.
From the above complex ingredients, it is not difficult to see that the situation in Qingping County is very bad. Not only is it facing the foreign enemy Tang, it is also suffering from the infiltration of Xu.
It can even be said that there are already many prefectures and counties in Qingping County, which are actually under the control of Xu State.
Liang Guo's control here was not tight, and his rule was quite weak and not stable at all.
If this territory hadn't been an important stronghold to prevent Liang Guo from invading Qingzhou and shield its hinterland, Liang Guo would have stopped wanting it.
Not to mention sending precious troops to garrison here.
Now that the Xu State has a need to expand its territory, and the Liang State itself also has a need to seek reinforcements from the outside world, the two sides naturally hit it off.
It is a very cost-effective thing to exchange a border county that has been semi-out of control and has been initially infiltrated by Xu State in exchange for Xu State's millions of reinforcements.
In this way, Xu Guo could climb up the hole in the north.
The current Liang State would almost die if it faced a Chu State.
There really is no more energy to deal with another mad dog-like Tang State.
Throw the useless piece of Qingping County to Xu Guo, and then let it help Liang Guo resist Tang Guo, help shield Liang Guo's northeastern border, and fight with that mad dog.
Liang Guo himself could also draw back the 300,000 frontier troops in Qingping County and use them on the more important front line in the west.
Now Liang State, after a series of losses, is very short of troops.
Regardless of whether Daliang can be defended or not, it cannot change the fact that the Liang Kingdom lost millions of troops because of this battle.
Whether this battle is won or not is of little significance.
Regardless of victory or defeat, how to rebuild the western defense line after the war is Liang Guo's top priority.
If this cannot be accomplished, even if the beam is saved, it will not be of much use.
Because you don’t have the troops to defend it, even if the flag of Liang is still hanging on Daliang City, can this city still belong to Liang?
It's just a matter of letting the people of Chu take whatever they want.
Even if the defense line cannot be filled in time, let alone Daliang, whether the counties of Liang State behind Daliang can be saved is a question.
After losing a large amount of territory, the Liang State became a general hegemon. Without the foundation of being the best country in the world, its shortcomings were revealed at this time.
A normal hegemonic country, even if it monopolizes a state, would only have a population of 20 to 30 million.
With this little bit of information and a desperate effort, we were able to produce four to five million soldiers and horses.
Liang Guo now has one million people on the eastern front, more than one million people on the southern front, and more than one million people on the western front. The total is only four million troops.
But now, Chu State's second Northern Expedition, the 1.2 million soldiers and horses in the Daliang defense area on the western front were all used up in one wave.
More than a quarter of Liang's troops were lost.
With its national strength and population, after losing these troops, it will not be able to recover for more than ten years before the children in the country grow up.
But now where is the ten years left for him?
Therefore, this wave of blows is a real and completely irrecoverable loss.
Liang Guo's war potential was directly emptied by a quarter.
And there was a fatal hole in his defense line, which was in urgent need of new strength to fill.
Dongping County's 300,000 soldiers and horses became crucial at this time.
But these 300,000 people can only quench their thirst for a short time. It is simply impossible to build a new western defense line with this few people.
A million people would be enough.
However, given the current situation of Liang State, there are still millions of people to be sucked out by it.
We can't just recruit the elderly and children under the age of fifteen and over seventy as mentioned above, right?
With the nature of those princes and nobles, they don't have much psychological burden on this, and they can do such unlimited things.
But if you can do it, it must work.
If this kind of ragtag army is really drawn to the battlefield, I am afraid that not only will it fail to stabilize the defense line, but it will instead make the defense line weaker, more chaotic, and more vulnerable.
Therefore, if you can’t seek it from within, you can only seek it from the outside.
The million-strong army of Xu State came to rescue Daliang. This was only one aspect.
Using the opponent's troops and horses to build a new western defense line is the real key core.
After the two countries reached an exchange of interests, Lu Yuan's Daliang strategy suddenly added new variables.
In mid-July, bad news suddenly came from the northeastern part of Liang County, which was originally occupied by the Chu army.
A large number of Xu troops entered the country. With the cooperation of the local Liang people, they expelled the Chu troops in the area and recaptured the area.
Outside Daliang City, the flag of Xu Jun appeared.
Daliang City, which had been besieged by the Chu army for a long time, regained contact with the outside world.
If you like Cultivation of Immortality, Start with Immortality, please collect it: () Cultivation of Immortality, Start with Immortality. Bookstore updates are the fastest.
