Just when Zhang Zhao was preparing to launch the final attack on the Ganzhou Uighurs, it was definitely not an exaggeration to say that Ganzhou City was starving to death.
In the past, on the busy streets, the wild dogs that ran past were so depressed that they were weak. From time to time, you could see emaciated corpses, which were pulled out of the city on carts and buried hastily.
The reason for all this is the blockade of the Guiyi Army.
The entire Ganzhou Uighurs lost their external source of food almost overnight.
In fact, there were times like this in the past, but at that time, the Khan would take the warriors out to clear grass and grain.
Whether it is the Long family in Shangsuzhou, the Sanshamomo in Liangzhou, or the Dadan people on the grassland, they are all the targets of plunder by the Uighur warriors.
But it doesn't work now, because the core military force of the Ganzhou Uighurs was actually almost destroyed in the Battle of Suzhou.
The remaining warriors did not dare to go out and rob casually. After all, with such a powerful enemy as Zhang Zhao, the only people they could rob were the Dadan people.
But by robbing the Dadan people, the only way out for the Ganzhou Uighurs was gone.
For Renyu Khan, after being unable to defend Ganzhou, he was planning to leave the desert and seek refuge with his compatriots north of the Tianshan Mountains. If he offended the Dadan people, he would not be able to cross the desert.
Over the past year or so, Ganzhou Renyu Khan had good luck. Zhang Zhao was ordered to go to Guanzhong to quell the rebellion. He left for seven months, giving him extremely precious preparation time.
But the imagination is beautiful, but in fact, even with ample time, what Renyu Khan can do is still very limited.
Because although Zhang Zhao is gone, the six armed athletes are still there.
Zhang Zhao deliberately did not bring Shen Nianban and General Zhao Zhen with him on this expedition, just to allow the Shen family in Yangfei Valley and the Zhao family in Xiyinghe to continue to put pressure on the Uighurs in Ganzhou.
Shen Nianban and Zhao Zhenjiang also did very well. Under the arrangement of Yin Yaozi, they attacked various Ganzhou Uighur settlements regardless of day or morning or evening.
Seize the Falcons' horses, burn their crops, and kill anyone who dares to resist.
Among them, the knights of the Shen family, with their good equipment and excellent horses, often harassed people from all directions and were the main force in this plundering war.
Sometimes, they would even join forces with the left-behind general Zhao Zhen's family, go north to the desert from the Baiting Sea, and then go south through the Juyan Sea, making a ∩-shaped detour to plunder Ganzhou.
At the same time, Zhang Zhao's policy of tightening Ganzhou's grain production also achieved great success.
Although Zhang Zhao can no longer buy much grain from Ganzhou, that is because there is nothing left to buy. The price of grain in Ganzhou is already more than twenty times higher than usual.
At the same time, the Ganzhou Uighurs' two consecutive spring plowing and autumn harvests were disrupted, resulting in an extreme reduction in grain production.
Zhang Zhao was not even allowed to let go of a grain of grain from Liangzhou and Shazhou to Ganzhou, thus blocking the lives of the Ganzhou Uighurs from both ends.
Under the multiple blows of these policies, in March this year, when Ganzhou Renyu Khan was still preparing for spring plowing, many Uighur families had already run out of food, and poor Uighur herdsmen and farmers often starved to death.
In February alone, there were thousands of victims who fled to Liangzhou from Xiedan and other places controlled by the Ganzhou Uighurs. Zhang Zhao absorbed and resettled them one by one.
Those who have a deep hatred against the Guiyi Army are, to put it bluntly, the upper class of Ganzhou Uighurs headed by the Yaogeluo royal family. However, for the poor herdsmen, they do not have much hatred against the Guiyi Army.
It is impossible for Zhang Zhao to completely kill all the more than 200,000 Ganzhou Uighurs. There is no need to do so. It is correct to split them up and integrate them.
And he couldn't kill them all, because the Uighurs were a horse race after all. Among the twenty to nearly three hundred thousand people, about one hundred thousand were actually distributed from the north of Ganzhou to Juyanhai and on the vast grasslands.
They often mix with the nomadic Tatars. It is not difficult to defeat them, but it is difficult to kill them all.
....
At the end of March, it was the time to sow spring wheat, corn and other crops. Unlike Liangzhou where a large number of people participated in the most important spring plowing of the year, the Uighurs in Ganzhou had to gather together again.
Because Ganzhou Renyu Khan received a tip, Zhang Zhao from Liangzhou got the title of ambassador of Hexi Longyou Jiedu and came to deal with them.
Only a few dozen miles to the west from Panhe County, Liangzhou is Yanzhi Mountain, and more than 70 miles beyond Yanzhi Mountain is Jiedan, the important Uighur town in Ganzhou.
Jiedan, also known as Shandan in later generations, is the most famous place because it was first built by Champion Hou. It has continued to play a role in the hands of the People's Liberation Army. After the Soviet Union's Don River Military Horse Farm was disbanded, it became the world's largest military horse farm——
Shandan Military Horse Farm.
This was Zhang Zhao's first time coming here. From what he could see, the entire Jiedan area was flat and endless, with luxuriant water and grass, and rivers like jade belts winding around the grassy plains.
Because it is too flat, even the sky seems to have become much lower, and the clouds in the distance seem to be within reach.
"What a treasure! It is indeed a treasure of Feng Shui. The best horse farm in Hexi is here, right?"
Liu Tao, who was following Zhang Zhao, sighed that this scholar was still a bit courageous. The older Director Lu simply drank and ate meat in Liangzhou, but he followed Zhang Zhao around happily.
"Derun is right, this is the Jiedan Racecourse built by the former Han Dynasty champion Hou Huo after he died in Qilian County.
Its unique conditions are also located in the Liugu Valley of Liangzhou and the Yellow River Valley of Lanzhou. In the past, the Han army was invincible in Yunei, and it mostly relied on the power of the Shandan Army's horse farm!"
Within a few days, Zhang Zhao stopped calling Liu Tao an angel and directly called him by his name.
While the two were talking, dozens of Uighurs on horseback sprang out from nowhere. It seemed that they were being chased by the rebel cavalry and had no way to escape. They panicked and ran towards Zhang Zhao.
Guo Tiance, who was beside Liu Tao and Zhang Zhao, was immediately frightened, because there were dozens of Uighur knights running over, but there were only two of them on Zhang Zhao's side, and the rest of the guards were preparing wine and meat in the distance.
Prince Zhang is not here to attack Xiedan City at this moment, but to personally inspect whether Xiedan is suitable for raising horses as rumored.
Because at this time, Zhang Zhao's second and third generation mixed sweathorses and broken-eared horses were being bred very rapidly, and they were in urgent need of a good horse farm, so Zhang Zhao couldn't bear to go and inspect it in person.
The dozens of Uighurs who were cornered saw that there were few people here and Zhang Zhao was well-dressed. Perhaps they wanted to catch Zhang Zhao and threaten the Guiyi cavalry who were chasing behind them, so they rushed over without losing momentum.
Zhang Zhao sneered. His riding and shooting skills were average, so he simply dismounted and held the divine arm bow.
Three arrows were fired in succession, and the two Uighur knights without armor immediately fell down, and the momentum of the Uighurs' charging was stopped.
At this moment, Li Cunhui came over on Pegasus, waving his hands like an eagle spreading its wings.
Within a dozen breaths, he shot seven arrows in a row. Each time he shot an enemy knight, he fell to the ground. He actually shot the Uighur knights who were rushing towards him and scattered them.
Seeing that the imperial enemy's cavalry were frightened, Li Cunhui gave up his bow and arrows, held a long spear in hand, and relied on the explosive power of the broken-eared horse under his crotch to rush into the Uighur knights and beat them randomly.
He beat twenty or thirty Uighurs by himself and screamed in agony, but no one even fought back.
The reason why Li Cunhui was able to arrive in time when no one was around Zhang Zhao was because he had been paying attention to Zhang Zhao.
Li Cunhui was deeply shocked by his journey to quell the chaos in Guanzhong in the past few months.
In addition to feeling that Zhang Zhao might take over the Central Plains, or at least Guanzhong, he also deeply felt the benefits of Murong Nobunaga being Zhang Zhao's eldest son.
Originally, he and Murong Nobunaga were both in the rebel army, but now, Murong Nobunaga is much more famous than him and can even marry a princess.
Li Cunhui felt that he did not need Murong Xinchang to send him. He felt that what he lacked was to worship Zhang Zhao as his adoptive father.
So as soon as he returned to Liangzhou, Li Cunhui wrote a letter to his father Li Shaozong, telling him his grievances.
The day before yesterday, Li Shaozong's reply arrived, saying that he would personally go to Liangzhou and bring Li Cunhui's aunt and all the younger generations of the Li family.
Li Cunhui's dream of worshiping Zhang Zhao as his adoptive father should come true soon.
"What a heroic son!" Liu Tao couldn't help but clapped his hands and praised loudly: "Prince, I heard that this son is from the Li family in Longxi?"
Zhang Zhao replied with a smile: "Not only is he a son of the Li family in Longxi, but he is also a branch of the Tang Dynasty clan. His ancestor Cun Hui'er is the sixth son of Emperor Taizu Jing, King Xun."
Emperor Jing, Taizu of the Tang Dynasty, refers to Li Yuan's grandfather Li Hu, and King Li Yi is Li Hu's sixth son and Li Yuan's sixth uncle.
Li Cunhui's descendants are the descendants of Li Yi. To be precise, they should be the descendants of Li Youliang, the sixth son of Li Yi and the former governor of Liangzhou.
However, this guy's conduct was not very good, and he was eventually executed for treason. Li Cunhui and his group basically only mentioned Li Yi, or even directly mentioned Li Hu.
After dozens of Uighur knights were killed and dispersed, they were soon overtaken and hacked to death by the rebel cavalry who swarmed after hearing the news.
Wen Chongle, who had made this big mistake, ran over with a pale face and knelt down directly in front of Zhang Zhaoma.
Zhang Zhao frowned. Although Wen Chongle was a bit of a thief and liked to take advantage of opportunities, he was still very careful and would not even be able to clean up the Uighurs who had deleted the horse farm.
Sure enough, before Zhang Zhao asked, Wen Chongle loudly reported: "Your Majesty, a group of hundreds of cavalry suddenly appeared in the southwest. I led my soldiers to surround them. Letting the thieves and cavalry disturb your Majesty will be punished by death!"
"For officers above the rank of captain, each person has twenty military sticks. You have thirty military sticks. Mark them down first. You will be spared one level of beheading!" Zhang Zhao waved his hand, signaling for Wen Chong to cheer up.
"Who is coming?"
"The leader claims his surname is Huang, and says he is an old friend of the king!"
Zhang Zhao smiled. He knew who it was. He said hello to Bai Congxin and Qiongre Duojin. Zhang Zhao took more than a hundred riders and headed straight to the southwest.