The coachman called twice in succession, but saw a young man wearing a Chu-colored official robe walking over in front of him. He waved his hand and said, "No hurry, let the old prime minister sleep a little longer."
"How can that be done? Well, I heard that the emperor will personally pick him up from the front." "It doesn't matter, let's unload the things first."
"Well, it stands to reason that I don't know who you are, but I'll just listen to you for once."
When these conversations reached his ears, there were only faint faint sounds. Han Chengxu opened his eyes, noticed that the carriage had stopped, sat up, wiped his face with a handkerchief, and prepared to get off.
His hand reached the edge of the carriage and someone supported him.
Looking up, Han Chengxu was slightly startled and said, "Your Majesty?" "Mr. Han is here, take a look at Kaifeng City."
Han Chengxu then slowly got off the carriage and saw Yang Guo standing behind Li Xia with a cane. He couldn't help but laugh at himself.
"I have thought about the situation of recapturing Kaifeng countless times. Who would have thought that I would actually fall asleep when I arrived here? Your Majesty, please come and help me."
"You can still sleep, so you're not too old yet." Yang Guo pretended to be indifferent and said, "The reason I left Kaifeng back then was because I knew I would come back one day."
The three of them all smiled and walked to the Shili Pavilion on the roadside, planning to sit for a while and wait for the team to enter the city to be arranged.
There were a lot of things to talk about, about the Northern Expedition, about logistics, about the situation in the DPRK. Han Chengxu pondered, but first said: "I heard that your Majesty has taken in another concubine."
Li Xia rarely felt guilty and asked, "Is the Queen angry?"
"I don't know, I know." Han Chengxu said with a smile, "But whether the queen is angry or not, your majesty can tell from the letters home."
In fact, Gao Mingyue's letter said that Yan Rong was very angry about this, but Li Xia didn't know how angry he was, so he asked casually.
"What's the reaction from North Korea and China?"
"Some people are happy, and some are worried. In short, it is the Northern Expedition, and the ministers in the court don't care about it. I want to say that if your majesty still wants to change customs, you can do it now."
"Mr. Han understands me."
"Your Majesty doesn't like to be restrained, and he has many strange habits. I am worried that if you give too many advices in the future, your Majesty will be troubled."
"Let's talk about it later, don't worry." Li Xia couldn't think of any other ancient bad habits that he needed to break, and said, "Qiao'er also said that he would accompany Mr. Han to his hometown in Guide Mansion in a few days."
Han Chengxu quickly waved his hand and said: "I won't go, I won't go. Only when this battle is over and the north is settled can we return home with peace of mind."
After the small talk, Han Chengxu put on a more serious expression and said: "There are some official matters that need to be reported to Your Majesty in person. The cotton armor, firearms, medicinal materials and other items that are lacking in the army will definitely not be available before spring.
Your Majesty, please do not blame the officials of the ordnance workshop and various workshops for this matter. If you want to be punished, the veteran minister alone will be responsible."
Yang Guodao: "Veteran, I can assure you that the relevant officials have done their best. However, supplying more than 200,000 troops must be done step by step."
"That's because my requirements are too strict." "That's absolutely not what I meant."
Han Chengxu hurriedly said: "I think we only need to wait until spring before attacking Yanjing. Firstly, we don't need such a large number of cotton-padded armors and cotton-padded clothes, and secondly, we can make up for the rest of the supplies by then."
"When it comes to difficulties, I understand them all." Li Xia said, "But this battle cannot wait until spring, so we must fight it now."
"It can be said that the weather and location are conducive to the cold weather in Yanjing, which is not beneficial to our army."
"Cold is worse than hunger. Both Han Lao and Yang Lao understand the situation. It just depends on how to measure it. This year, relying on seizures, the military camp will ask for some compensation from Zhao and Song Dynasty, and barely supply the army with food and grass. If we wait until spring, who can guarantee
When will the warm sun come out? How will the situation change? Our soldiers are all farmers. In February and March, they are worried about their fields. Their soldiers are all bandits, so they will have no psychological burden by then. Kublai Khan would rather shrink the defense line.
The decisive battle is waiting for us when we are at our weakest. He is a leopard retreating, gathering strength and waiting to pounce. Since we are sure that the further back we get, the hungrier we will get, so we have to kill it with a stick while we still have the strength.
.”
Han Chengxu and Yang Guo are the ones who have been with Li Xia for the longest time.
The batch of people looked at each other and knew that Li Xia had made up his mind, so he stopped trying to persuade him and only mentioned the troubles he wanted to solve.
"I will urge you for supplies later. If you don't have cotton armor, prepare cotton-padded clothes."
"If you don't have cotton-padded clothes, then send fur coats, fur goods, and cloth to the north. Send whatever you have. "Yes. In addition, many people in the court judge that this battle will have to wait until winter is over."
"It is human nature to want to put it aside when encountering difficulties. If they want to give up this idea, I will personally go to Yanjing to take charge."
"Your Majesty is going north again?" Han Chengxu was surprised, and soon understood that the reason why Li Xia transferred him to Kaifeng was so that he could be away from going north, so he had to ask: "When will your Majesty leave?"
"It's almost time. I'm still waiting for some news before I can rest assured."
one
In fact, Li Xia was already anxious to go north, but the strange thing was that he had not received news about Jia Sidao's withdrawal.
Logically speaking, if there is a change in the Song Dynasty, it will inevitably cut off food and grass and recall the army to conquer Shu. Jia Sidao obviously has not yet reached the point where he can incite the army to rebel, and it is impossible to continue fighting if there is insufficient food and grass. Li Xia speculates that there are only several ways
possible.
Either the grain and grass that Jia Sidao was carrying could last for another two or three months, and he was deliberately putting pressure on him; perhaps Jia Sidao was retreating secretly, but just deceived the defenders of Sichuan and Shu; or Jia Sidao returned the favor.
There is even a possibility that other methods can be used to stabilize Song Ting after Han Zhen's death. It has only been two months since Han Zhen's death, and the news from Jia Sidao was too slow, so no decision has been made at this time.
Li Xia couldn't tell for sure, so he could only wait.
But what he was waiting for first was not news from Sichuan and Shu, but a box.
The style of this box is a bit strange. It is engraved with very complicated patterns and is inlaid with several red, green, and blue gems. The handle for opening the box is made of leather.
Lin Zi stepped forward, opened the box himself, looked at it carefully for a while, and then handed it to Li Xia.
There was a faint smell of decay permeating the hall, but fortunately it was not too strong. In the box was a head covered with lime.
"Is he Kantamanga?"
"Your Majesty, yes, the commander-in-chief said that he paid a price for his friendship with Kublai Khan." Li Xia nodded and told Lin Zi: "Pretend, I will take you to Yanjing." "Yes.
"
Li Xia turned to the messenger sent back by Gao Changshou and said, "Tell me the specific situation."
"Yes, after receiving the order, the commander-in-chief and Liu Xianggong marched in two directions. Liu Xianggong led 20,000 people along the Tang-Tibo Road, while the commander-in-chief led 30,000 people along the route where Wu Liang joined forces to attack Dali and marched towards Duosima.
Marching into Tibet, many soldiers were killed or wounded shortly after entering Tibet. When we arrived at a place called Huolu, we encountered an ambush from the Mozi barbarians. Our army fought back with all their might and captured the chieftain Huo Tuoyin..."
While Li Xia listened to this, he pulled out a book of poems from the desk.
This is a collection of poems by Liu Bingzhong, which contains dozens of poems describing the scenes along the way when he accompanied Kublai Khan on his southern expedition to Dali. It has become important information for Li Xia to understand the situation in Tibet.
At this time, I looked again and found that most of the turbulent places were where the troops of Kublai Khan and Wu Lianghetai passed by.
"According to Huo Tuoyin, Kantuo Mengjia summoned nearly 30,000 people from Duosima, Hada, Duogansi and other places, intending to enter Sichuan and Shu from Songpan, Jinchuan, Muya, Jintang and other places.
The commander-in-chief was worried that it would be difficult to encircle and suppress the enemy troops after they were dispersed, so he led us on a rapid march to Pantuo Village. We concentrated our forces to attack the main force of Kantuomengjia. At the end of last year, after conquering all the tribes, the commander-in-chief continued to march towards Sakya and fought with
Liu Xianggong joined forces, defeated his brother-in-law Zangbu and captured Mekaton...
"Are there many casualties?"
"Your Majesty, the casualties are probably more than half, and 80% of the cattle, sheep and horses they carried were lost."
The cattle, sheep and horses were all fine. They were all captured in the Battle of Helan Mountain. If they were lost, they were lost. However, the casualties were a bit too high.
Li Xia paused for a moment and asked again: "Where did you go back to the teacher?"
"At the end of the day, the commander-in-chief and Xianggong Liu have also set off. I think they will be able to return to Chengdu before the Chinese New Year."
Li Xia nodded and asked someone to arrange for the messenger to go and rest.
He wrote a long letter, recruiting
Lin Zi ordered: "Send someone to deliver this letter to Gao Changshou and ask him to rush to Hanzhong as soon as possible."
"Hanzhong?"
-
After making this arrangement, Li Xia decided not to wait for news about Jia Sidao. It was time to go to Yanjing.
~
This time, Li Xia did not bring any other entourage, only 500 cavalry from the selected vanguard camp.
But along the way from Kaifeng to Yanjing, all those who were marching in an endless stream were his soldiers.
The withered grass on the roadside was already covered with frost. Whenever the rapid sound of horse hooves reached the ears of the soldiers of the Tang Dynasty, some generals would always turn around and prepare to ask which friendly army they were coming from.
What they saw was a flying dragon flag. "Is that... Your Majesty?"
In an instant, this small group of cavalry had moved from far to near and quickly disappeared into the wind and snow farther north.