The news that one of the main forces was almost arriving at Guihua City was really shocking.
After all, it hasn't been long since Gao Pragmatic decided to adjust his strategy a few days ago. At that time, the closest thing to naturalization was actually the Economic Strategy Headquarters. Now that the headquarters of the Economic Strategy Department has not yet arrived for naturalization, there is actually another department that is about to arrive. This is too easy to escape. Could it be Li Rusong?
But Gao Jingshi didn't say anything. Instead, he stopped there, returned to the camp, and asked all the generals to go down and settle down and have a good rest. Before the generals left, Gao Pragmatic said very calmly: "Maybe today is the last good sleep I can get before the war."
After the generals returned, they all wondered in their minds which main force of the Ming army was arriving not far from Guihua City.
Although the Battle of Yuan Dynasty has not yet successfully broken out into a large-scale battle, Li Rusong has earned a reputation as a magical eunuch through his actual performance, and everyone's first reaction should undoubtedly be that Li Rusong has arrived.
But in fact this is not the case. Li Rusong has indeed proved that he and his Li Jiajun cavalry have extremely strong attacking capabilities, but no matter how powerful they are, they cannot ignore the distance itself.
Li Rusong's troops were too far away when Gao pragmatically changed his strategy, and were later asked not to get close to the Jinglue headquarters for the time being. Therefore, he was still at the original Kaiping Youtunwei (Ming Dynasty) about 300 miles northeast of Ming'anyi. After the early period, the residence was moved inland, and its name was Dongliangting.
Due to the military order, although Li Rusong wanted to kill him from the bottom of his heart, even he did not dare to disobey Gao Pragmatic's order. As a last resort, he had no choice but to take this opportunity to recuperate his horse power. Nearly 40,000 cavalrymen were grazing their horses near the East Pavilion and feeding them more food. The soldiers under his command also had a rare good meal to recharge their batteries before the war.
Since Li Rusong is like this, Ma Chengen is certainly no exception, and Ma Chengen's department is a mixed formation of infantry and cavalry. Unless he, like Gao Jingshi, abandons the infantry and advances with cavalry alone, it will be difficult for him to even get in front of Gao Jingshi. His actual location at the moment was at a place called Shuangta, about sixty or seventy miles west of Li Rusong, which happened to be the original headquarters of the Kaiping Guard.
More than a hundred years later, the rammed-earth city left behind by Kaipingwei still has the appearance of a city wall. It is better to make use of it a little than to camp completely in the wild. And the reason why this place is called the Twin Towers is precisely because two high towers were built at that time, and now they can also be used as watchtowers, which is quite rare.
As for the Magui tribe, he is actually the only one who has not received high pragmatic instructions to return reinforcements, so he still remains in the Outer Khalkha tribe. The order received by Ma Gui was divided into two parts. One part was to continue to guard Saliqir and the mouth of the Three Gorges, waiting for the possible return of Abadai Saiyin Khan's troops who had previously served as a cover for Tumen's army to rush back to Helin; It was to control Helin and thereby control the entire Outer Khalkha tribe, so that Abadai Saiyin Khan, who had completely surrendered to Tumen, lost his nest.
Ma Gui is a general who can take the overall situation into consideration. He gave up the great achievement of capturing He Lin personally - even though He Lin is now like a girl wearing only a gauze, and can easily get it. He chose to give up this great achievement to Bhan Naji, while he stayed in Sali Shier to eat the wind and sand, waiting for Abadai Saiyin Khan to crash into him.
However, the "recovery" of Han Naji and Lin went very smoothly, but Ma Gui encountered trouble.
As mentioned before, the military ration supply line of Ma Gui's headquarters had to go through Guihua, so when the Tumen surrounded Guihua, Ma Gui's side actually ran out of food. His troops carried more military rations than Gao Pragmatic and others. In the terminology of later generations, the "troop self-sustainability" was stronger and longer, but it could not withstand long-term consumption.
Therefore, after receiving the news that the naturalized troops were under siege, Ma Gui immediately began to limit the supply of military rations and other measures to try to ensure that his troops could last longer.
The "... and other measures" here include two main methods. One is to find Han Najiyun to supply some dairy products; the other is to send troops to arrange for some scattered tribes in the surrounding Transkalkha region to... one time.
Of course, this arrangement was not a matter of burning, killing, and looting, because Gao Pinggong had given repeated orders before the war. Magui actually gathered these tribes together and designated them to stay in a place not far from Salixier for centralized grazing, and at the same time turned over a part of their "contribution" to him.
But Ma Gui also has some troubles here. Firstly, being pragmatic prevents him from being too harsh on the Mongolian tribes, and secondly, the productivity of these Mongolian tribes is pitifully low. The combination of this means that the "contribution" that Ma Gui can collect is really limited. It is absolutely impossible to at least feed his 60,000 army, and it can only be supplemented by some scraps.
Because Han Naji was on an expedition, he did not carry many sheep. In addition, the dairy products produced by the mares in the army, although there was a little surplus, it could only be regarded as a slight surplus. The two slight surpluses added together are just that, and the food supply of Ma Gui's headquarters is still tight.
At this time, he received a report from Tanma, saying that traces of the Mongolian army led by Abadai Saiyin Khan were found about fifty miles east of the Three Gorges mouth. After investigation, it was confirmed that the latter was indeed coming. This made Ma Gui feel happy, and he immediately prepared to fight Abadai Saiyin Khan's offensive at the entrance of the Three Gorges. He also led troops from Saliqier to the entrance of the Three Gorges to support.
However, the result was that when he arrived at the mouth of the Three Gorges, Abadai Saiyin Khan still did not launch an attack. This surprised Ma Gui. Your nest and Lin are about to be destroyed, so why are you still dawdling?
As a result, after waiting for another two days, there was still no movement from Abadai Saiyin Khan's side. Instead, he withdrew his troops twenty miles east - about seventy or eighty miles away from the mouth of the Three Gorges.
This is a safe distance, plus the time it takes for the horse to be discovered and reported back. Even if the Ming army at the entrance of the Three Gorges sends troops to attack, Abadai Saiyin Khan will have time to escape if he wants to. And if he wanted to fight, he would also have an advantage, because if the Ming army ran seventy or eighty miles, they would definitely be exhausted, and it was the right time to attack.
This truth is of course very clear to a veteran like Ma Gui, but he really can't understand why Abadai Saiyin Khan can be indifferent to He Lin's loss.
Although Helin's city has become extremely desolate over the years due to the overall decline of the Meng Yuan Dynasty, it still has the appearance of a city after all. With He Lin in hand, this king of the Outer Khalkha Tribe is truly worthy of his title, right?
In addition, the status of this place is very special (as mentioned above), and the loss of Helin is an extremely serious matter. Why doesn't he care?
After another day, Ma Guicai probably knew the reason. Han Naji sent someone to report that Helin had been easily recovered, but it was almost an empty city in Helin-if Helin could still be considered a city now.
Han Naji said that there were only old, weak, sick and disabled people in Helin City, not even women and children. There were less than 500 people in the whole city, and it almost became a dead city.
And when he sent troops continuously around Helin, he discovered that not only Helin, but also the surrounding areas were almost empty. The remaining small tribes are very small in number, and many of them are people who do not agree with Abadai Saiyin Khan for various reasons.
Probably the only good news is that most of the people who stayed will regard Hannaji as one of their own, and have no objection to being included in the rule of Tumed Chechen Khan, and are even quite happy.
Of course, both Han Naji and Magui knew very well that although most of these people should be leaning towards Tumut rule as the news said, it was inevitable that they were not influenced by Abadai Saiyin Khan or Tumen Khan. Sand, this needs to be debated slowly, which is very troublesome.
At this time, Ma Gui felt more and more troubled. In fact, to a certain extent, Hannaji's hand in the Outer Khalkha was a highly pragmatic idea. Hannaji himself was not very interested in ruling the Outer Khalkha - you have to ask. What's the point?
Well, why did the people of the Southern Song Dynasty not want the imperial court to regain the Central Plains? The nature of these two things is roughly similar, except that Han Naji himself had similar thoughts to ordinary people in the Southern Song Dynasty.
To put it simply, the Outer Khalkha Ministry was actually a "negative asset" for Tumut at this time. Its social productivity is far lower than that of Tumut, which is gradually becoming Chinese, and its various outputs are very small. If Bhannaji wants to rule it, it may have to pay a high cost of governance, so it is not cost-effective.
It's just that Gao pragmatism believed that it was more inconvenient for the Ming Dynasty to directly rule Transkalkha, so he had to let Han Naji take over this unlucky situation. Of course, Hannaji couldn't just pat his chest and take on this job without asking why, so Gao pragmatically proposed to develop Transkarkha in the future, and Hannaji reluctantly agreed. As for how to develop it, Gao pragmatically didn't say. But Hannaji was very confident in Gao Pragmatic on this issue, so he did not continue to oppose it.
Since he needs to rule the entire Outer Khalkha in the future, of course he must continue to conquer or convince the other tribes of the Outer Khalkha at this moment. Since the area under the jurisdiction of the Outer Khalkha is very large, it is almost the territory of the later Mongolia, and Mongolia People are nomadic, so Han Naji had to "persuad and educate" one by one. In this way, he would not have any extra strength to support Ma Gui.
At the same time, Ma Gui is currently facing the problem of what to do with Abadai Saiyin Khan.
In terms of military strength, Ma Gui has 60,000 men, which is about twice the advantage compared to Abadai Saiyin Khan who suffered losses last year. However, there are two main roads leading to Helin from the east, which he is currently guarding. Salixier and the mouth of the Three Gorges. Not all of Ma Gui's 60,000 cavalry were cavalry. In fact, there were only about 20,000 cavalry, and the remaining 40,000 were infantry.
This means that under normal circumstances, he can only guard two places with 20,000 infantry in each area. He personally leads 20,000 cavalry as a mobile force to support the side that is threatened or directly attacked. It is difficult to take the initiative to send troops to defeat Afghanistan. Badai Saiyin Khan.
If the troops are sent in the safest way, that is, a joint attack of 20,000 infantry and 20,000 cavalry, Ma Gui believes that the fight will naturally be defeated, but the opponent may not be willing to accept the fight. This can be clearly seen from the previous war process.
If you want the other party to dare to challenge, you must first reveal your flaws and let Abadai Saiyin Khan feel that there is an opportunity to take advantage of him. For example, forcibly sending troops regardless of the seventy or eighty miles away, and waiting to be defeated by a tired and useless battle; or without infantry, using 20,000 cavalry to fight against the opponent's 30,000 cavalry.
The former was directly rejected by Ma Gui. He believed that although the cavalry was precious, in terms of the mission at this time, the infantry must not be missed, otherwise the plan to block Abadai Saiyin Khan might fail.
Attack with cavalry? Ma Gui thinks it is feasible. Although this seems more dangerous, the cavalry does not have to run seventy or eighty miles at a time - I will rest halfway through, and there is no need to build as many fortifications as the infantry. If you dare to sneak attack, then I will fight. Okay, it's not like I don't have a sentinel to detect the horse.
But something unexpected happened. Not long after Ma Gui and 20,000 cavalry left the mouth of the Three Gorges, Tan Ma came to report that Abadai Saiyin Khan turned around and ran away.
This really confused Ma Gui. I have 20,000 and you have 30,000, but we are still fighting a cavalry battle, and you, the Khan of most of Mongolia, just run away without saying a word? If this word spreads, aren't you afraid that Genghis Khan will jump out of the mausoleum and scold you for being an unworthy descendant?
Ma Gui tried to catch up, but found that it didn't work. The Ming army's cavalry was now significantly heavier than the poor cavalry of the Outer Khalkha tribe, and it was impossible to catch up without affecting their combat effectiveness. It's hard for a clever woman to make a meal without rice. Seeing this, Ma Gui had no choice but to retreat and think carefully about how to defeat the enemy.
In fact, it was okay for him not to defeat the enemy. After all, his mission was to block Abadai Saiyin Khan's westward journey. Gao Pragmatic just did not allow the latter to join Tumen. It doesn't matter whether he is defeated or not. After all, in winter, if the opponent doesn't have a place to stay, he will freeze to death.
It's just that Ma Gui has relatively high demands on himself, and feels a little aggrieved that others are hanging around so much that he can't even get them under his nose. And sure enough, as soon as Ma Gui retreated, Abadai Saiyin Khan immediately followed him back and continued to stop at the previous position, which made Ma Gui very unhappy and sent troops again - but he repeated his old tricks and again. Let’s go in circles.
The strange stalemate on the northern front meant that neither Ma Gui nor Han Naji could go south to rescue and naturalize. The amazing thing here is that Han Naji is not in a hurry - of course he has a reason. The reason is that he believes in Gao's pragmatic commitment and also believes in Qi Jiguang's ability.
Yes, it was the Imperial Guards who moved south very quickly. As the first army of the Ming Dynasty that Qi Jiguang personally trained for several years, the Imperial Guard not only received the best material treatment among millions of Ming troops, but even the infantry were equipped with horses and became so-called mounted infantry. The rigorous training also made them Has extremely strong mobility.
Mobility obviously had its limits under ancient conditions, and differences in training levels would make the limits of different troops vary widely.
For example, in August of the 29th year of Jiajing, Anda Khan moved eastward after a long siege of Datong, and drove straight in from Gubeikou, killing and plundering the officials and people of Huairou and Shunyi without any plan. At that time, the Ming army collapsed at the first touch and set up camp in Gushan, Rukou and other places twenty miles east of Luhe River (later northeast of Tongzhou). The troops were directed towards the capital, and the capital was under martial law.
At that time, the capital of the Ming Dynasty had not suffered a military disaster for a long time since the Tumubao Incident. Upon hearing of such changes, Emperor Jiajing hurriedly ordered the border troops from each town to enter the capital to serve the king.
At this time, Qiu Luan, the frontier commander of the Ming army, temporarily stayed at Juyongguan to listen to the expedition. When Anda made a surprise attack and entered the capital, Qiu Luan set out from Juyongguan on August 17th and arrived in Tongzhou to form an array on August 18th.
In just one day and one night, the emergency trip lasted about 150 miles (this is calculated as a clear mile, 1 clear mile is 180 feet, about 560 meters in modern times, slightly larger than what we often call one mile). The speed of the rescue surprised even Emperor Jiajing - so Qiu Luan's later reuse was not entirely to brag about his military exploits. Although many of his military exploits were fake, at least his performance that night proved that he was not a complete waste.
It seems that Qi Jiguang did not intend to let Li Rusong take the lead this time. When Gao Jingshi talked about this with his subordinates, he had already detoured to Chi'er Mountain northwest of Guihua City, which was only 200 miles away from Guihua City. He was in the forefront, but he was just outside the range of Tumen's horse detection. It could be said that he was a magic weapon descended from heaven.
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