Chapter 284 Zong Baikui () triggers 'Heavenly Thunder' again
It has been nearly two months since Liu Jingdun entered the Jiayuguan Pass. In more than fifty days, he has gone from being eager at the beginning to being calm and calm now. Naturally, there are reasons for this.
The governor of Gansu has been changed, and the governor of Gansu has also been changed. No one will force him to attack this first pass of the Ming Dynasty.
Yes, the first pass of the Ming Dynasty today is Jiayuguan, not Shanhaiguan, because in history, Shanhaiguan became the "first pass in the world" largely due to the rise of Houjin, the fall of Liaodong, and the Ming Dynasty's urgent reinforcement and strengthening of Shanhaiguan. This is
Among them are not only the dangerous reasons of the pass itself, but also the reasons of changes in the strategic situation.
The transfer of governors and governors directly affected the direction of the war. Since Wang Tingzhuan and Xiong Tingbi took office, the two houses of Gansu governors and governors changed their previous attitude of forcing Liu Wei to retake Jiayuguan, entrusting all military issues to Liu Wei instead of directly intervening.
Following Gao Yuanfu's instructions before leaving Beijing, the two carried out various political and economic work in Gansu to lay a solid foundation for the subsequent military layout.
The order Liu Wei received was to ensure the security of Suzhou and wait for an opportunity to recapture Jiayuguan. This was a rather redundant task. The basic requirement was that Suzhou must be secured, and the upgrade requirement was to recapture Jiayuguan.
Suzhou can naturally be guaranteed, because even though the Chahar Mongolian army now has a strong musketeer configuration, they still seriously lack artillery and do not have the actual ability to storm the great city of Xiongguan. Burihatu was captured in one fell swoop
Jiayuguan and Suzhou City mainly relied on that successful sneak attack.
Liu Wei's troops have been greatly strengthened in the past two months. The army originally prepared for the Western Expedition has basically arrived and is now stationed in Wubao between Suzhou and Ganzhou.
Why not concentrate on Suzhou? Of course, it is because stationing nearly 100,000 troops in a city in the west of the Ming Dynasty will greatly increase the logistical pressure, and it is also not conducive to Suzhou City's drinking water and other health and safety guarantees.
Fighting a war is not easy, and "adapting measures to local conditions" is always the key factor. Can fighting in a place like the northwest be the same as in the south of the Yangtze River? In the south of the Yangtze River, you can station a hundred thousand troops. As long as you don't find some desperate camps such as Stone Mountain to camp on the mountain, you can fight at will.
Some wells also ensure safe drinking water.
But it's completely different in the northwest. It's no wonder that in many places there is no water even after digging wells. Without a safe and sufficient water supply, even a million-strong army can die for you in minutes, and they will fall before they start fighting.
The entire army was wiped out.
Moreover, Suzhou has not stationed 100,000 troops in a hundred years. Once such a large army is suddenly stationed in full force, just dealing with human and animal excrement will be a huge safety hazard. Especially at the turn of spring and summer, the possibility of epidemic disease is very high.
Therefore, while Liu Wei cautiously ordered the engineering troops to build the barracks in Suzhou, he dispersed the Western Expedition army among dozens of forts along the line between Suzhou and Ganzhou.
On the one hand, this is to ensure that the army will not be harmed by epidemics; on the other hand, it is also to familiarize the soldiers mobilized from other places with the climate characteristics of the northwest so as to avoid being acclimatized after the expedition.
In short, it is still the same sentence: war is not a child's play. Soldiers are not military models in the game. They are living people with real physiological characteristics and physiological limits. Generals must consider all kinds of details to avoid
Misleading yourself and others.
However, the Western Expedition Army and the Jiayuguan Mongolian Army did not just stare at each other across this distance every day. Both sides had launched offensives. However, as if there was a tacit understanding, the scale of the offensives of both sides was not large.
"If the other party slacks off, our troops may be able to make a sneak attack".
Of course, neither side succeeded - after all, both sides were very vigilant during this period.
Even so, the pressure Liu Wei felt was still growing, because through this period of tug-of-war and testing, he found that Jiayuguan Pass was unavoidable and could only be recovered by force. However, this first pass of the Ming Dynasty was too difficult to defeat.
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Not only is the solidity and majesty of the pass itself now harmful to the Ming Dynasty itself, it is difficult to shake even with heavy artillery bombardment, but more importantly, the battlefield is not wide enough, and the formation that can be deployed during the siege is too small, which is not enough.
Concentrate enough heavy artillery.
In front of Jiayuguan, the front-line army could only form a frontal formation of more than a thousand people. However, the Mongolian army now also had long-range muskets and elite armor-piercing heavy archers, so the Ming army could not get too close.
It further increases the difficulty of solving the problem.
In order to find the weaknesses of Jiayuguan, Liu Wei not only called in local elders to ask for various information, but even called in the county annals to read them carefully.
However, there are not many places that can provide him with reference, because since Jiayuguan was built, except for Burihatu, it has only experienced one fall before.
As mentioned before, the Ming Dynasty regarded Jiayuguan as the western border pass and established a military defense line here for two main reasons. First, the west of Jiayuguan gradually transitioned to multi-ethnic, multi-national, and multi-sectarian areas, while the east of Jiayuguan gradually transitioned to Han and unified
Political power, Confucian culture. This is the humanistic dividing line between the areas controllable by the Ming Dynasty in Hexi and the Mongolian forces in the Western Regions;
Second, the geography of Jiayuguan is special. The Tuolai River Canyon, Black Mountain, and Xincheng Caohu can block traffic. If these natural barriers are connected with the Great Wall and piers, and then troops are stationed to guard it, the Great Wall will rely on natural dangers to form a unique country in Jiayuguan.
Defense line, natural moat, and natural barriers are the main body of the defense system of the Jiayuguan Great Wall. The natural barriers are compact, resulting in low construction costs and high defense efficiency, so the Ming Dynasty chose to establish a national defense line in Jiayuguan.
Outside the Great Wall of the Ming Dynasty, there were transition zones or areas controlled by both the Ming and Mongolia. Hami and Dunhuang west of Jiayuguan were of this nature. At the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, in order to stabilize the border and maintain national defense security west of Jiayuguan, the Ming court set up seven prisons in Dunhuang and Hami.
The second was to establish King Zhongshun in Hami, who was appointed by the court and elected by local leaders; the third was to control the relationship with Mongolia and the Western Regions forces by adjusting the frequency of trade and tax rates at Jiayuguan Pass.
This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! These measures regulated the relationship with the Western Regions, win over and contain the Mongolian forces. There were no weapons west of Zhijiayuguan before the Zhengde Dynasty, and they were basically stable.
However, at the beginning of the 16th century, the Mongolian forces in Xinjiang were succeeded by Mansuer (called Sutan in Ming history, Sutan is the transliteration of "Sudan", which generally refers to the kings and rulers of Central and Western Asian countries, and Mansuer is the eastern Chagatai
The 13th Khan of the Khanate), he had the ambition to restore Mongolia and rule the Central Plains.
Mansor Khan knew clearly that if he wanted to occupy the Central Plains, he must first occupy Hexi. If he wanted to occupy Hexi, he must first occupy Suzhou. If he wanted to occupy Suzhou, he must first break through the Jiayuguan defense line. From then on, Jiayuguan began to be coveted and was subject to attack at any time.
The threat of force from Mongolian forces in Xinjiang.
After several years of hard work, Mansor Khan led more than 10,000 Mongolian troops to march eastward in November of the 11th year of Zhengde (1516). Facing the heavily guarded and difficult-to-surmount Jiayuguan defense line, the Mongolian army did not attack directly from the front.
Instead, they sent a team of men and horses to sneak across the Tiansheng Bridge, which was difficult for men and horses to cross, across the Wenshu section of the Tuolai River, and sneaked behind Jiayuguan.
On November 15, a pincer attack from the east and west, using troops in many places, launched a comprehensive attack on Jiayuguan and its defense line. At that time, Ruining was appointed as Suzhou guerrilla general. He had served as the commander-in-chief of Jiayuguan around the second year of Zhengde. He learned about Jiayuguan.
Being besieged by the Mongolian army, Ruining led his troops to rescue him on the 16th. He went to the Manjusri and Fengjiagou areas, encountered the Mongolian army and was intercepted. The two sides fought fiercely for a day. In the end, all the Ming troops were killed, and Ruining was also killed by an arrow.
.Jiayuguan fell on the same day, and then the Mongolian army surrounded Suzhou.
As for the battle of the fall of Jiayuguan, there are no records in history books or chronicles. Only the huge amount of grain stored in Xiaobohe Temple (Temple Camp Zhuangzi) located in the west of Yemawan Village in later generations shows that the battle was extremely brutal.
However, the history that Liu Wei inquired or verified was not of much help to him.
Since Chenghua, Xinjiang has produced a large number of displaced refugees and refugees due to tribal disputes and competition for the throne. They returned east to the Ming Dynasty and were resettled in and around Suzhou City. Among them, there were a large number of Mongolian spies and undercover agents. These spies and
Undercover agents have long been engaged in collecting intelligence, instigating rebellion against the barbarians, and developing troops behind enemy lines. The information on the garrison, deployment, combat strength, fortresses, routes, etc. of the Jiayuguan defense line was obtained by Mansuer.
They rioted in Suzhou City on the 16th, trying to cooperate inside and outside, and captured Suzhou City. The Suzhou defenders tried their best to suppress and finally stabilized the situation, but they were unable to send troops to reinforce Ruining in time and were unable to send troops. Of course, conversely, Ruining
Ning's troops fought fiercely with the enemy in Wenshu, which also bought time for the Suzhou Ming army to quell the rebellion. Therefore, in the end, the internal plan failed, and the Mongolian army retreated after looting.
In other words, Mansur Khan also relied on sneak attacks to capture Jiayuguan. And it has to be said that although Ruining's heroic death in battle deserves recognition, his death as the commander of an army in a field battle outside Jiayuguan also indirectly caused
The main person responsible for the fall of Jiayuguan, the feudal army general, died in battle, and everyone knows the consequences.
Looking at it this way, it confirms one thing: as long as the defenders in Jiayuguan are careful and don't act blindly, there is basically no weakness.
Unable to launch a surprise attack, and unable to concentrate enough heavy artillery on the frontal battlefield, Liu Wei had no choice but to explain the situation to the cabinet and then inquire whether a force attack was feasible - in other words, whether it could cost lives.
Gao Pangshi was also scratching his head when he received Liu Wei's military report. He had never been to the current Jiayuguan Pass, but he briefly visited it in later generations. Although he could not get a glimpse of the entire Jiayuguan Pass in the Ming Dynasty, he also had a general understanding that this place was indeed easy to defend.
Difficult to attack - just as Liu Wei said: There is no way around it, and there is no way to get out of the formation.
However, it would be impossible for Gao Jingshi to agree to take human lives.
Even if you don’t say that life is precious, if you just say that sending a soldier to Jiayuguan is just for fun, do you know how much it will cost? If you pile this kind of cost on a large army to fill the natural barrier of Jiayuguan, and then continue the Western Expedition, then he
Can Gao Yuanfu not allocate an additional one or two million yuan to fight the war?
Gao Pingshi called Zhou Yong, and the two of them rushed to the Ministry of War to discuss with the Grand Sima Song Yingchang how to break the barrier.
There was nothing Zhou Yong could do. He was essentially a civil servant. He didn't have many military exploits when he was governor of Liaofu and Jiliao. He only had some merit in defending the territory. It was unrealistic to expect him to have any clever tricks in offensive operations.
Song Yingchang was better than him. At least his performance in the early stage of the Korean War was considered to be a commander-in-chief. However, facing Liu Wei's current Jiayuguan problem, he couldn't think of any solution. If he hadn't become the Minister of the Ministry of War, he would be more aware of the cost of killing people.
If you are too big, I will probably agree with Liu Wei immediately.
After all this, Gao Jingjing had to find a solution in the end. And what made Gao Jingjing quite dumbfounded was that just by looking at their eyes, it was clear that these two people could not come up with a good solution, so they immediately placed their hopes on him, who had always been victorious in every battle.
Yuan Fu looked at him eagerly.
Well, you, the Chief of General Staff and Minister of Defense, can't handle your professional work, so you expect me, the head of the government, to bring you a Wagner? But Jiayuguan is not Bachmut!
Gao Pragmatic does have "private mercenaries" in his hands, but he is more difficult to withstand large losses than the imperial army. Apart from anything else, at least the pensions for the imperial officers and soldiers are much cheaper than the pensions for his servants.
There is another saying on this matter: Within the Jinghua system, the pension for domestic servants in the Ming Dynasty is the most expensive and the most difficult. The pension work for the armies in southern Xinjiang is far easier to handle than the pension for domestic servants in the Ming Dynasty.
This is because Gao Jingjing actually controls political power in southern Xinjiang, and also controls land, the most important means of production. In southern Xinjiang, especially the recently captured Nanyang Islands, there are still a large number of "unclaimed lands" and "unclaimed wasteland".
"Land", so even if the war losses in southern Xinjiang are not compensated with money, they can still be given hard currency such as land. Basically no soldier's family will refuse land compensation - as long as there is no "short pound".
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This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! However, in the Ming Dynasty, there is no way, basically you can only give money. After all, although the Ming Dynasty is big, the fields have long been scarce, and in many places you have money.
You can't buy suitable land either, because unless you are really desperate, who in a farming society would be willing to sell their land easily?
This is one of the important reasons why Gao Pingshi dared to let Gao Yuan, who was only thirteen years old, practice the war in southern Xinjiang against the Mughal Empire at its peak, but in the Ming Dynasty he only dared to let famous generals like Liu Wei take charge of the imperial family of a province.
The reason - the country really cannot afford the loss, or in other words, the compensation.
However, no matter what, now Zhou Yong and Song Yingchang have nothing to think about when facing Jiayuguan. Gao Pragmatic must find a way to solve the problem even if he is reluctant. However, this kind of unavoidable, powerful attack and indisputable lineup of Xiongguan Fortress can still be
What can be done?
Gao Jingshi frowned deeply and remained silent for a long time. Zhou Yong and Song Yingchang held their breath and did not dare to disturb Gao Jingshi's thinking.
Master Yuan Fu thought for a long time, then suddenly sighed and said, "Have you ever heard of the battle when Zhuo Jing defeated Lang Son?"
The two were stunned for a moment, looked at each other, and then looked at Gao Yongshi. Zhou Yong said in astonishment: "I heard that Yuan Fu caused the lightning strike to break it... Could it be that Yuan Fu wanted to go to Jiayuguan in person and trigger thunder from the sky again?"
Gao pragmatic waved his hand and said: "You want to say 'attracting thunder from the sky'. I can really do this kind of thing, but it requires building a high tower... Come on, let's not joke, defeating Lang Son is not because I cast a spell to attract the thunder from the sky, that is
A very powerful gunpowder.
But that thing is very dangerous. If you don't pay attention... for example, if it shakes a little too hard, it will explode violently. Therefore, after using it only once, I ordered a ban on production. However, this time the situation is really forcing me to do it.
Order Jinghua to rush to make a batch and send it to Suzhou. It will cause trouble along the way. You arrange a group of people to escort it and there must be no problems."
Zhou Yong glanced at Song Yingchang, and Song Yingchang muttered: "This thing is as powerful as thunder from the sky, and Yuan Fu also said that it is easy to detonate, so this escort is really a big deal. The lower official suggested mobilizing part of the Imperial Guard.
Escort, I wonder if it’s okay?”
Gao pragmatic nodded and said: "Yes." Then he added: "The emperor's tiger talisman is needed to mobilize the imperial guards. I will go and talk to the emperor about this in person."
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