Chapter 237: The fierce horse in the sky attracts the attention of the world
There were nearly five thousand troops behind Huo Qubing. They were the same troops that Li Gan and Yao recruited to attack the Nuoqiang.
After Yao Zhao was ordered to return to Chang'an to report on his duties, this team was all led by Li Gan and has been active in Xiguan.
For nearly ten months, Li Gan gradually explored the Qilian Mountains, found a passage, and completed the hiding of troops as ordered.
Fortunately, there had been a major cleanup of the surrounding Qiang villages before, and there were no Qiang people nearby, otherwise it would have been difficult to keep the whole process secret.
Early this morning, Huo Qubing came to the border to join Li Gan, and then led Roshna and other envoys to advance quickly in the mountains.
Li Gan had explored the road in advance and built plank roads on some cliffs where it was difficult to travel, making it barely passable.
The plank road is to drill holes and stuff wood into the cliffs to build a passable road. It is also called a complex road. It began during the Warring States Period.
The Han army was very good at this.
In the past, the Marquis of Huaiyin built a plank road secretly to Chencang, and the training program of the forbidden army also included the plank road crossing the cliff.
When Roshna and others saw the plank road, they realized that Huo Qubing was fully prepared, which was far beyond their expectations. It was obvious that he had made arrangements for this battle very early.
After passing through the Qilian Mountains and arriving at the other end, Roshna, Zhang Qian and others saw nearly five thousand elites waiting here, ready to go.
Huo Qubing led the troops and immediately launched a surprise attack.
They fought their way out of the Qilian Mountains and marched north. They became a surprise force beyond everyone's expectations and rushed into the hinterland of the Western Huns from Yanzhi Mountain and Wushaoling.
The road is wide and the sea is wide, so you can swim freely.
Then they marched straight north, attacked the Fupu tribe, and set fire to the camp.
Cruelty is synonymous with war. There is no need to be kind to the enemy, otherwise it will be cruel to oneself.
It was already the morning when the sun was rising, and we met the third tribe along the way.
In the sound of Huo Qubing waving his hands and giving orders, the rear army was like wolves and tigers, and under the leadership of Li Gan, they attacked the tribes ahead.
The whole army took long bows and fired two rounds of long-range shots while galloping rapidly. The bowstrings trembled and arrows rained like rain.
Then when they reached a distance of fifty feet from the target, they switched to firing with crossbow arrows, and finally close combat.
The Xiongnu tribe on the opposite side was not completely defenseless. Huo Qubing led his troops to fight all the way. Not only did he crush a small group of Huns' outposts on the way, but he also overturned two tribes, both of which were in flames.
During the attack, it was impossible to carry supplies, so the fire burned them all.
This third tribe was a medium-sized tribe inhabited by thousands of people. The Han army did not conceal its location and was discovered by them when they rode in.
The entire tribe immediately mobilized, sent out a signal for help, and ignited cow and horse dung, forming a giant smoke that soared into the sky.
At the same time, wooden thorns were set up outside the tribe to resist horses.
As soon as the leader gave an order, even the children and women in the tribe who were over seven or eight years old picked up sharp spears made of wood, with fierce expressions on their faces, preparing to fight the Han army to the death.
"The Han people are coming and want to rob us of our cattle, sheep and horses, but I will never agree! Let me fight these Han people to the death..."
The leader of a tribe in the tribe shouted loudly and was mobilizing the entire tribe to fight.
There was a buzzing sound, and before the leader of the tribe finished speaking, Li Gan opened his bow, fired two arrows in succession, and shot him to death through his throat!
Li Gan inherited his father's archery skills and ranked among the top ten in the Han army.
The Han army's cavalry attack with bows and crossbows as they approached had killed about a quarter of the Xiongnu men in the periphery.
Some of these Han army recruits from Yulin and Hubenwei came to Xiguan with Yao Zhao two months ago, but they are all carefully selected troops.
In addition, the nearly two months of battles and continuous fighting have allowed this tribe to grow rapidly.
At this time, nearly five thousand soldiers and horses rode towards the Xiongnu tribe.
Huo Qubing was stationed a little further away, accompanied by a small group of soldiers, Luo Shina and other envoys, as well as Zhang Qian.
When the front army charged into the formation, they used Li Gan as the leading edge and formed a front-line formation.
Li Gan shouted repeatedly during the charge, gathered the troops at the rear, and waved his gun in the air.
The war spear sent out phantoms one after another, just like throwing spears, destroying the enemy from a distance.
In the Xiongnu tribe, several leaders-looking people were stabbed to death by Li Gan one after another, and their blood spattered down.
The team changed rapidly during the charge. The two corners of the rear formation were the first to accelerate and lead, changing from the front formation to an inverted vertical triangle. Then the two rear columns began to close and gallop relative to each other.
The middle area where the queues intersect is the Xiongnu tribe.
The entire tribe was merged into the team and crisscrossed over it.
In the end, the Han army's cavalry formation turned into a crossed X shape.
Seen from a distance, the team is like a pair of scissors closing together, sandwiching and cutting the Xiongnu tribe in the middle.
When the horse's hooves stepped over, everything was involved in the array and shattered.
This is the most lethal basic formation in the military formation, the scissors formation, which is very fierce.
Because during the process of opening and closing, the troops would wave the war guns in their hands at lightning speed to form a stab. After the formation passed, as long as the enemy was within range, there would be at least one more bloody hole penetrated by the war gun. After two sweeps back and forth, opening and closing the scissors, very few Huns survived. There were corpses everywhere on the ground, and the blood was red.
It's too cruel... Roshna turned her head in the distance.
She also knows that there is no room for mercy in war, but she just doesn't want to witness this process with her own eyes.
Roshna turned to look at Huo Qubing, just in time to see his eyes as calm as ice and snow.
The experience of this night made Roshna truly realize how powerful this general, who was less than twenty years old but already famous all over the world, was. His flexibility in using troops had taken commanding operations to another level.
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Seeing his marching and fighting process, Roshna and others felt emotions that were difficult to express in detail.
With the Huns taking the lead and occupying a favorable terrain, Huo Qubing's dispatch of troops almost changed the situation on the battlefield of the Western Huns.
No one could have imagined that he would come up from the Qilian Mountains and cut straight into the Yanzhi Mountain and Wushaoling areas.
The Huns' food and grass were threatened, and the situation was invisibly dominated by Huo Qubing.
He seized the vital point of the Xiongnu's food and fodder, and the entire Western Huns' troops and horses were mobilized and rushed to intercept and stop it.
The battlefield situation has therefore undergone tremendous tilt and uncertainty.
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Who wins and who loses depends on how Huo Qubing fights next.
All the art of war and means of war are actually teaching soldiers how to find the enemy's weaknesses and avoid them to attack them.
This is what it means to be a soldier in a deceitful way and to attack with troops.
Soldiers use deception on the battlefield. Whoever can outwit his opponents and take advantage of himself to earn maximum results with minimum expenditure is the basis for invincibility.
There are always clever military strategists who defeat more with less because they can concentrate their advantages, stir up the overall situation, and attack the enemy's weakness.
Faced with a head-on attack, he actually fell behind.
Only when you meet on a narrow road or when you attack forcefully will you fight with courage.
The real competition between military strategists is about command methods, the wisdom of looking at the battlefield, and seeing who can turn the tide and tease the opponent in the palm of his hand.
Roshna's mind was filled with thoughts and she asked: "What is Huo Hou going to do next?"
"Let's fight the Huns first."
Huo Qubing said calmly: "I will eat these small Xiongnu countries bit by bit and see if the lettuce will come!"
Because the Western Xiongnu is adjacent to the Western Region, it is similar to the situation of many countries in the Western Region. The tribes are also called small countries. This is a difference caused by geo-culture.
After Huo Qubing spoke, he made a gesture, and his soldiers immediately sent orders to set fire to the camp, withdraw their troops, and prepare to attack the next place.
After destroying a small Xiongnu country, the Han army quickly completed the push.
"We defeated several Xiongnu tribes in a row, and the Xiongnu are already alert. Wouldn't the fire burning the camp expose our position faster?" Zhang Qian said from the side.
"So what if it's exposed?
Let them come and take the opportunity to mobilize the Western Xiongnu troops and see what ambushes they have here." Huo Qubing said calmly.
Zhang Qian was also well versed in military affairs, and even led troops himself in the official history. He felt enlightened after hearing this.
Soon after, this small Xiongnu country burst into flames and burned fiercely.
The Han army, led by Huo Qubing, rushed to the next Xiongnu tribe.
"Hou Hou seems to like to make raids and destroy Xiongnu tribes?"
Roshna was a little strange. This champion was very persistent in breaking the camp. After finishing one area, he rushed to the next one, as if he had rehearsed it in advance.
"If I can't join forces, I'm afraid future generations will scold me."
Everyone was puzzled and didn't understand its meaning.
Huo Qubing actually refers to the historical champion Hou who defeated the enemy camp in succession during the Battle of Hexi.
Historically, the champion came out from the northwest corner of Longxi, passed through Lanzhou in later generations, passed through Wuting and went upstream, and advanced westward along the grassland on the north slope of Wushaoling.
Then it passed through the Tuopu tribe, the Hunu River, and the Shiyang River. After six days of fighting, five small Xiongnu countries were defeated in succession.
Its combat policy is to kill those who resist and those who are willing to surrender to the Han can surrender without death.
Doing so divided and disintegrated the Huns' will to fight to a great extent.
Huo Qubing then crossed Yanzhi Mountain, which was later known as Dahuang Mountain in Gansu Province, and continued to advance northwest for hundreds of miles, meeting Hunxie and Xiutu.
The two sides fought fiercely. Faced with the superior strength of their opponents, the Han army still defeated the two coalition forces.
Make the opponent's remaining soldiers retreat and flee for their lives.
The Han army gained a lot in this battle. Not only did they capture Prince Hunxie, Xiangguo, Duwei and other leaders, but they also beheaded nearly 10,000 people, achieving their first victory on the North Road of the Qilian Mountains.
However, Champion Hou also suffered heavy losses in this battle, with less than half of the more than 10,000 troops remaining after the war.
These troops were no longer enough to continue advancing, so Huo Qubing led his troops back to the foot of Gaolan Mountain, south of present-day Lanzhou, and encountered a joint sniper attack by the Huns King Zhelan and King Luhou.
Huo Qubing commanded his troops to defeat the two coalition forces again, greatly boosting the power of the Han army, and finally returned to the army victoriously.
This was the whole process of the First Battle of Hexi. With tens of thousands of troops, he broke through the opponent's two prepared blockades by the coalition forces, and defeated five small countries of the enemy, officially kicking off his reputation as the God of War.
The current situation has changed, and Huo Qubing has also made adjustments, and instead fights out of the Qilian Mountains, running northward into the hinterland of the Western Huns.
However, the strategic goals of the two generations of Huo Qubing are highly unified, both of which are to defeat the enemy with weakness.
After entering the hinterland of the Xiongnu, the route that first routed the Pu tribe overlapped again, with a striking resemblance.
Huo Qubing is currently preparing to reveal the great achievements of the Battle of Hexi in history. The Six Days and Five Kingdoms must be done.
The sun is like fire.
At noon after the Han army galloped away, a group of Xiongnu troops rode to the burned tribe.
Everyone in this Xiongnu tribe rides on a tall horse. All members look cold and solemn, and there is an invisible murderous aura as the team marches.
There are nearly ten thousand people in the entire team, and the leader is middle-aged, tall and thin, wearing a wolfskin robe, and his eyes are sharp, as if they are luminous.
After he led his men closer, he inspected the remaining traces of the battle underground, and a slight look of surprise slowly appeared in his eyes:
"The traces outside the tribe are almost all the hoofprints of the opponent's horse advancing in a straight line, entangled and fighting, and there are no hoofprints of changes in advance or retreat.
This shows that the tribe’s resistance was completely crushed by the opponent, what an elite team.”
This man's eyesight is quite powerful, and he can analyze the general situation of the battle just by looking at the hoof prints.
Behind him, on the left side, there was a thin Hun woman. She sniffed the air and looked at the horse hoof prints on the ground.
When Huo Qubing left, he did not use his marching strategy, and his hoof prints were obvious.
The woman sniffed the scent to make sure that the hoof prints were not deliberately left by the Han army as a trick to avoid chasing in the wrong direction.
After a while, the woman said: "King Zhelan, they are going west."
It turns out that these soldiers and horses are the famous Zhelan Cavalry of the Western Huns, a powerful army inherited by the Huns for a long time.
At this moment, the team was led by King Zhelan and pursued westward.
In the afternoon after they left, two more groups of troops arrived at the burned Xiongnu tribe.
One of them is the subordinates of King Hunxie.
The other team was led by a young Huns in his twenties.
This Xiongnu young man is tall and thin, with raised eyebrows and sharp eyes. He is a disciple of Yudu and the son of the great Chan Yu Yi Zhixie, Luo Tijian.
Three groups of troops pursued each other in the direction where the Han army disappeared.
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Chang'an, in the next two days, received battle reports from the Xiguan front one after another.
"The 40,000-strong Imperial Army that left Chang'an accelerated their march and have reached the northwest border."
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"The champion marquis led his troops into the Western Xiongnu. Within two days, they successively destroyed Tuopu, shovel sacrifice, Xiaolan and other five Xiongnu kingdoms, and burned all the food and grass!"
"The Hunxie tribe and the Xiutu tribe of the Xiongnu have more than 10,000 troops together. The Zhelan tribe has 8,000 elite cavalry, and Shanyu's son Luotangjian has 8,000 troops. Three groups of people are chasing after Huo Hou to intercept them." "By yesterday afternoon, Huo Hou led his army to turn around to meet the enemy. The target was Xiu Tu's troops who were pursuing him.
At the right time, the various Xiongnu tribes separated to encircle us. Unexpectedly, our army was being pursued from multiple directions, so we dared to counterattack.
The two sides fought hard, and before other Xiongnu soldiers came up to encircle them, more than a thousand of Xiutu's troops were killed by Huo Hou's army.
Our army retreated before the Xiongnu tribes surrounded them.
By the evening of yesterday, Huo Hou led his troops to frequently cross the border, and they fought fiercely with the Xiongnu pursuers from all walks of life, but they all escaped before the enemy encircled them."
Dong Xu, who was responsible for reading the war news, was sweating on his forehead, and he could feel between the lines that at this moment, on the grassland of the Western Xiongnu, the storm was turbulent and murderous intentions were everywhere.
Huo Qubing's orthodox soldiers fought thousands of miles away.
The situation of being chased by multiple Hun soldiers was deliberately created by him to test the reality of the Hun's arrangements.
Huo Qubing may have other strategic intentions, but no one knows yet.
In the study, there were people who understood military affairs, such as the emperor and several generals, Dong Zhongshu was also considered half of them, and other smells could be heard from the war news.
Huo Qubing fought against these Xiongnu tribesmen one by one, and was able to withdraw at any time during the process, which showed that he firmly controlled the initiative.
However, messages coming one after another still make people feel their hearts tightening.
When surrounded by enemies, if you are not careful and get entangled, you will fall into a deadly battle.
Another person would never dare to act as unscrupulously as Huo Qubing.
In special operations, this is called going deep behind enemy lines.
Dong Xu swallowed and read out the last sentence: "Huo Hou sent back the last message this morning, saying that he had used the marching strategy to get rid of the chasing troops and start the next phase of the battle plan.<
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At present, Huo Hou's traces have disappeared again, and no new news has been reported for several hours.
However, Zhang Jun, the governor of Xiguan, sent a message saying that the army had left the pass and entered the battlefield."
There was uncontrollable joy on the emperor's face, and he looked at the ministers and said: "The champion Hou commanded his troops to defeat the five Xiongnu kingdoms in two days. I want to know who else, the famous generals of ancient and modern times, can do it?
I will imitate my oral instructions and kill the champion princes into the Western Huns, and inform the world as if they have entered an uninhabited country, so as to boost the morale of our Han people.
Send another edict to the Xiongnu Chan Yu Yi Zhixie, telling him that my general will destroy the Xiongnu. Ask him to bow his head and come to court, otherwise he will be beheaded the next day!"
"Wei!" Dong Xu bowed and agreed.
……
Sunset and evening light.
On the Xiongnu grassland, a Han army suddenly rushed out of the mist and galloped rapidly from north to south.
The whole team was like a long sword unsheathed, full of murderous intent.
After the early stages of attacks, camp breaking, testing, and confrontations with pursuers, it was time for a real fight to intimidate all parties!
In front of Huo Qubing is the camp where the Xiutu tribe and the Hunxie tribe were jointly stationed. It is a key location of great strategic significance.
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