While the Tiance army was dormant for a winter, the Jiuhu and the Rus people did not relax their vigilance about their rear areas.
After the Tiance army moved north to rescue Dingbeicheng, the Ruos and Jiuhu people saw that there was no hope of going south, so they quietly began to withdraw their troops in the winter. As the snow stopped, these withdrawal operations were stopped.
At this time, Duke Lvov only left 5,000 wounded soldiers in Noda's camp, and the Jiuhu people also left 3,000 wounded soldiers.
When Xue Qianren, the general of Youying Yangwei, led 20,000 light cavalry to the Sanguan Mountain Road, he found that at the entrance of the mountain road, three five-foot-high male passes had been erected.
From a distance, it looks like it is covered in snow. This is a fortress built of ice and snow.
"We have been fooled!" Xue Qianren, the general of Youying Yangwei, has not seen a grain team heading south for three days here. After decades of fighting, he still doesn't understand what happened. Snow White
His beard trembled, his body swayed, and he fell off the horse.
In the south, less than a day later, the Tiance army marched out of Dingbei City, only to find that the Russians and Jiuhu people on the opposite side did not come out to fight.
General Yuan Ling of Zuo Ying Yang Wei sent two regiments of light cavalry to test the enemy's camp, but no one stopped them.
After shooting an arrow, what fell from the watchtower was not an enemy corpse, but a scarecrow covered in leather armor.
The two regiments of light cavalry did not dare to enter the enemy camp without permission for fear of an ambush. One side quickly sent its men back to report, while the other side alternately groped around the perimeter of the enemy camp.
"no one!"
"I don't have one here either!"
"Commander, there's none here either!"
…
At this time, 140,000 troops were mobilized, the flags were flying high, and the morale of the entire army had reached its peak after the Prince's call in front of the formation.
"What?" Zuo Ying Yang Wei General Yuan Ling grabbed the cavalryman who came back to report the news.
"General, there is really no one outside the enemy camp. Captain Sun was afraid that there was an ambush in the enemy camp, so he just walked around the outside camp. There is really no one!" The cavalryman was also aggrieved, but he couldn't conjure up the enemy camp.
!
"Come, hurry up and report to the prince, deputy commander, and other generals of the Six Guards. The Jiuhu and Ruos may have withdrawn!" Yuan Ling ordered and slapped his thigh.
After reporting the news, Prince Zhao Zaicheng felt a suffocation in his chest when he heard the news.
"Prince?" Gong Xiangcheng of Anding County looked at the prince and asked.
Frustrated?
Frustrated!
The enemy killed someone and fled.
Then what's the use of these 160,000 troops coming to the north!
"Ling... um..." Prince Zhao Zaicheng's body shook, his mouth sweetened, and a mouthful of reverse blood spurted out from his throat.
Zhao Zaicheng's vision went dark and he supported Su Ce beside him.
Swallow the blood in your mouth, take a deep breath, and pull down the mask with your left hand.
"Let's check again. General Gongxiang of Anding County has led the entire army. I need to calm down for a while." Zhao Zaicheng stood up straight with great effort. Now that the enemy's situation was unclear, he was furious. The army of hundreds of thousands had to be controlled by someone.
"Here!" Xiang Cheng was close and saw something was wrong with the prince. He quietly turned sideways and blocked the prince behind him.
The smell of blood!
Su Ce glanced at the prince beside him. No one could see the prince's expression under the cover of the golden mask.
Xiang Cheng knew that the morale of the army could not be weakened at this moment, so he sent out the Tiger Guards on the left and the Bear Guards on the left and the Flying Bear Guards on the left and right, with 80,000 troops, heading towards the enemy camp.
Zuo Fei, General Xu Bi of the Xiong Guard, and the other three generals of the Guard led their troops to the enemy camp.
At noon, the sound of fighting came from the enemy camp.
The Tiance army suffered very few casualties, but the whole army showed no smile. General Yuan Ling of Zuoying Yangwei sent all the reconnaissance cavalry he had to the north to search for the enemy.
"The prince is fine. He is just suffering from severe heat and bleeding in his stomach. He will be recovering for a while." Su Ce breathed a sigh of relief after listening to the doctor's words.
In the next few days, bad news continued to come back. The enemy only stayed in the camp with wounded soldiers who had not recovered from fighting and soldiers with winter frostbite. The number was only eight thousand.
The Tiance army showed no mercy and left no one behind.
Five days later, General Yuan Ling of Left Ying Yangwei and General Xue Qianren of Right Ying Yangwei met in the south of Langyan Mountain. Looking at the ice and snow pass towering south of Sanguan Mountain Road, a strong attack at this time would undoubtedly cost the soldiers their lives.
It took four months for Daqian labor troops to mobilize, but it seemed like a futile effort. Most of the Jiuhu and Rus people evacuated.
At the beginning of the war, the 80,000 Dingbei Army defeated less than 150,000 enemy troops, which became the biggest result.
The Jiuhu people and the Rus people united and fought a draw with Dagan in the north. For Dagan, failure to win meant defeat.
The man eats the horse and eats the horse, and a lot of manpower and material resources are wasted on the pass.
Within three years of the Great Qian Dynasty, there was no way to fight another major battle involving more than 200,000 people in the north.
This is the consensus of all the generals in the Tiance Army.
Two months passed by in a flash, and the ice and snow barriers built by the Jiuhu and Rus people in winter also melted and they retreated to the north of Langyan Mountain.
The Tiance army was searching for the corpses of their comrades on the northern grasslands like a comb.
Fires were constantly lit on the grassland highlands, and after the remains were incinerated, the ashes were put into general jars.
Carloads of general jars were transported back to Dingbei City from the highlands, and the wooden signs on the general jars struck the earthen jars.
Even so, the bodies of tens of thousands of people could not be found. The Minister of War sat in front of the documents and signed the memorials of the deceased, and silently closed the military register of the Dingbei Army. There were 84,000 casualties.
For two months, there has been no sound in the oppressive Dingbei City. Everyone seems to have been drained of energy.
The people who came down from the highlands did not go to the north, but mixed with the people in the northern grasslands. Pei Lin, the Minister of Household Affairs, only slept for two hours a day, staring at the dark circles under his eyes, and settled the people everywhere.
At the same time, news also came from Chang'an that the crown prince Zhao Zaicheng and the second prince returned to Beijing to report on their duties and hold them accountable.
Gongxiang City of Anding County was left in Dingbeicheng, and Anbeicheng was changed to Wuding City, while Dingbeicheng was changed to Anbeicheng.
The Dingbei Governor's Office was abolished, and the Anbei Governor's Office, which had just been abolished for more than two years, raised a war flag again. The Tiance Army was changed to the Anbei Frontier Army.
It's not like Daqian never thought about fighting in Langyan Mountain, but a late spring cold made everyone calm down, and Daqian was no longer able to go out and fight everywhere.
During the prosperous years, for twelve years, there were wars every year. The people of Daqian needed a breather. They had to fight against each other's soldiers and recruit new ones every year. The situation of plainness in various places can be seen everywhere. If these days continue, Daqian will only It will collapse from within.
In the twelfth year of the Longsheng period, a late spring cold in the north made Daqian calm down.
There was peace in the country with singing and dancing, but it could not stop the cries of those who lost their loved ones, and they were tired of fighting.
The previous declaration of credence made the surroundings of Daqian calm down, and no one wanted to break the rare peace.
Although it has not reached the point where swords and guns are stored in storage and horses are released in Nanshan, Daqian's attention has now shifted from fighting on all sides to recuperating and recuperating at home.
The Shangshu Province published three memorials in a row: "Guardian of Borders", "Encouraging Farmers" and "Xianwen".
Emperor Zhao Yumin gave full approval, and six ministries, five prisons, and nine temples responded one after another.
At this time, everyone understood that this time the civilian forces had reached a consensus.
A junior official in the User Department said: "The nobles and generals only talk about fighting, fighting, but where do the soldiers come from? Where do the food come from?"
Soldiers! Food!
We have great cadres, but they cannot be spent on useless areas. Central Guizhou has not yet been recovered, and civil servants prefer places where they can be educated, rather than driving away all enemies and grabbing land like noble generals.
Without people, no matter how much land there is, it will only be abandoned.
When he returned, the prince Zhao Zaicheng was still riding a horse, but the prince, who had no beard at first, also grew a beard in two months.
The nobles in Chang'an City have probably made compromises with the prime ministers of the three provinces.
Zhao Yumin should also have made a counterattack. The prince had too much power before and had seriously threatened the imperial power.
There are so many factors involved that Su Ce can't figure it out, but it can be seen from the restaurants in Suzhuang that in recent years, the Qianqian army has fought in all directions. One war resulted in hundreds of thousands of casualties, and it only lasted for twelve years in the prosperous year. By that time, the Daqian Meteor Soldiers had exceeded 700,000.
A young man who enters the Zhechong Prefecture at the age of fifteen takes two years to become a qualified sub-prefecture soldier. When he joins the border army, it may just be an accident, and his life has ended before it even started.
After a government soldier dies in battle, Da Qian will make arrangements for his death. Su Ce knew that in the tenth year of the prosperity of the country, 20% of Da Qian's annual tax revenue was given to the government soldiers, and only 10% of the 20% became the Ministry of War, and the rest One percent was given to the Ministry of Revenue, because the Ministry of Revenue wanted to use the money to support the families of the soldiers who died in the government.
On the way, Su Ce rode beside the prince. When he left, the 160,000 Tiance troops were high-spirited. When he came back, only 3,000 brigade Ben troops followed him, and they were demoralized.
These days, the marching speed is fifty miles per day. Compared with the desperate running of one hundred and fifty to two hundred miles per day, the current speed is considered slow.
The further south you go, the more green you see in your eyes, but the prince remains silent.
The straight waist told people around him that Zhao Zaicheng was not tripped up by any "little things", but Su Ce understood that the prince was not as strong as he appeared.
After crossing the Wuding River, Su Ce stopped letting the Lu Ben army guard the prince outside the house at night, because the prince told him that he wanted peace and quiet at night, and it would be too noisy for the Lu Ben army to guard the prince outside.
The Luben Army was also a former soldier, but it took him half a year to learn how to guard. With a full set of armor, he walked like a cat, so there was no way he would cause trouble.
The prince's reason was lame, but Su Ce didn't challenge it.
"I will stay outside. The prince can ring the bell if he needs anything." Su Ce quickly gave him a solution.
Lu Ben's army only stood guard outside the small courtyard of the post station at night, with a rope and a copper bell. If the prince wanted to use someone, he could just pull the rope.
On the third day, the prince's eyes were swollen, so Su Ce found a bamboo hat for the prince to wear.
The second prince wanted to hand over the troops, civilians, and warehouses in hand to Xiang Cheng. He returned to Chang'an two o'clock later than the prince, but he caught up with him on the sixth day.
The second prince tried various ways to make the prince happy, but the prince always responded by pulling down his visor and remaining silent.
Until the night when he saw the Wei River, the prince called the second prince into the house.
Su Ce and Jiang Lan stayed outside, while Xiang Mao was left in the Anbei Protectorate by his father Xiang Cheng.
The second prince left late at night and did not return to Chang'an City with the prince.
Born into a royal family, he was born to be a prince, but he never lived for himself anywhere. He was timid when he was close to his hometown. Su Ce looked at Su Zhuang from a distance, but he was only passing by the official road. The prince asked Su Ce to go back and have a look, but Su Ce did not respond. , with responsibilities on his shoulders, the prince came back this time and faced greater pressure than before.
In Su Ce's eyes, the civil servants of Daqian were very contradictory. They maintained the majesty of the prince, but were unwilling to let the prince have too much power. They also preferred that the prince only listen to the government, but who could discuss the government in name only? If it were proposed to be removed, the civil servants' counterattack would be extremely fierce.
The nobles, generals, and civil servants all wanted the prince to grow up, but they did not want the prince to have too much real power, which was as contradictory as the emperor Zhao Yumin.
But these are not things Su Ce should consider now.