Chapter 961: The Great Chu Chi Banner, all over China
The Jin army was defeated, and the Chu army launched an all-out attack. In less than a quarter of an hour, they broke through the entire Pingcheng line.
In the afternoon, Da Chu's red battle flag finally flew high over Pingcheng. This desolate ancient city guarding the northern frontier of China was finally included in Da Chu's territory.
Once Pingcheng was lost, Yanmen fell.
Sima Yi didn't even dare to go to Daijun anymore. He took his eunuch son and thousands of remaining soldiers and fled from Pingcheng, crossed the Great Wall, passed through Yin Hall, Wangtao County, and fled to the territory of Tuoba Xianbei.
go.
After Yan Liang captured Pingcheng, of course he did not indulge in victory. Instead, he ordered Zhao Yun, Zhang Liao and others to lead their troops to pursue Sima Yi.
At the same time, Yan Liang ordered Wen Chou and Huang Zhong to lead 30,000 troops and horses from Yanmen to the east, and together with Sima Yi from Youzhou, they attacked Han Meng and Sima Lang's troops stationed in Dai County.
Because Sima Yi abandoned Pingcheng too suddenly, the Jin army in Daijun had no time to move. Wen Chou's army killed the Jin army by surprise.
In the battle of Daijun, Han Meng, who had experienced many lords, was killed. Sima Yi's brother Sima Lang crossed the Great Wall with only a hundred riders and fled outside the wall.
The large army led by Wen Chou then met up with Taishi Ci's troops and Dai County Shengli, the governor of Dai County.
The Battle of Pingcheng ended with the complete victory of the Chu army.
So far, the fourteen states of You, Bing, Ji, Qing, Si, Yu, Yan, Xu, Yang, Jing, Jiao, Yi, Yong, and Liang that originally belonged to the Han Dynasty have all been included in the territory of Da Chu.
Sima Yi was expelled to the grasslands outside the Great Wall, Liu Bei fled to Goguryeo, Zhang Feiyuan escaped to Japan, and Yan Liang's remaining enemies were all expelled from the legitimate territory of China.
Looking at China, there is no one who is disloyal.
On the fifth day after Pingcheng was captured, Yan Liang left Zhang Liao to guard Yanmen and Taishi Ci to guard Youzhou. To guard the northern border of Chu, Yan Liang led his own army and returned to the northern capital Yecheng.
Yan Liang didn't want to go all out and killed Sima Yi on the grassland, and also eradicated the Xianbei people outside the Great Wall.
However, from the campaign in Liaodong to Taihang, the army fought for years. Although they won consecutive battles, the fatigue of the soldiers also reached its peak.
The morale of the Chu army was at the end of its strength. It had to rest and recuperate before it could go out and fight.
Moreover, in order to ensure the logistics supply for the Battle of Bingzhou, Yan Liang recruited a large number of people from the three states of Bingsi and Hebei to serve as soldiers. Thousands of Dingfu died of exhaustion on the rugged mountain roads of the Taihang Mountains. After this battle, the people suffered losses.
Not light either.
With such heavy hard labor, the people of the three states will inevitably complain, and Zuo Ci's Taoist sect took advantage of this opportunity to use the people's complaints to incite dissatisfaction with Da Chu. He wanted to expand the Taoist sect's influence and plot irregularities.
.
Although Zuo Ci's rebellion was eventually broken down in advance, it also gave Yan Liang a wake-up call, making him realize that he could no longer spare the people's power and continue the war without any interruption.
Soldiers need to rest, and people who have served hard labor for a long time also need to rest.
What's more, the successive Northern Expeditions also depleted the grain and grass that Chu had accumulated for many years. The granaries everywhere were almost exhausted.
Now that summer has arrived, Yan Liang needs to spend this autumn safely and use a nationwide bumper harvest to provide him with food and grass security for his battles.
After weighing all the considerations, Yan Liang decided to take the class first.
However, Yan Liang did not return to Luoyang, the eastern capital. Instead, he left the emperor in Yecheng to train soldiers nearby, so that he could immediately raise troops from Yecheng to go out as soon as the autumn harvest was over.
And this upcoming battle outside the fortress is very different from Yan Liang's expeditions from east to west in the Central Plains.
Fighting out of the fortress, thousands of miles of grassland, infantry has almost no place to use. If Yan Liang wants to wipe out Xianbei, he can only use Dachu's cavalry regiment.
Since the capture of Xiliang in the early years, the number of Da Chu's cavalry has been rapidly expanding. After capturing Youzhou and stabilizing Liaodong, the expansion of the cavalry reached its peak.
Up to now, the number of light and heavy cavalry that Da Chu can use in combat has reached an unprecedented number of about 60,000.
Of course, many of these cavalry are stationed in Xiliang, and the number of cavalry in Youbingzhou is less than half.
In order to wipe out Xianbei, Yan Liang has decided to use all the cavalry. In other words, Yan Liang plans to use 60,000 cavalry to fight in the fortress, imitating the decisive battle between the Han Dynasty and the Huns, using cavalry against cavalry to wipe out Xianbei in one fell swoop.
Therefore, after Yan Liang returned to Yecheng, he ordered Liangzhou to transfer all the foreign cavalry stationed in Liangzhou to Hebei.
When cavalry fights, they have to wait until the autumn is high and the horses are fat, and the horses have eaten enough grass and gained fat before they can fight with all their strength.
After all, the current strength of the Xianbei people is far superior to that of the Qiang people, the Southern Xiongnu, and the Wuhuan people. According to intelligence, there are a total of four to five million Xianbei people outside the Great Wall.
With the war mobilization capabilities of the nomads, it is not impossible that a tribe of four to five million people can mobilize nearly one hundred thousand cavalry.
This means that if the Xianbei people can unite, Yan Liang will even use inferior troops to wipe out the superior enemy.
Of course, although the Xianbei people have a large number of cavalry, the quality of their weapons and armor is not as sophisticated as that of the Chu army.
In addition, the military discipline of the Xianbei Hulu army is not as strict as that of the Chu army. They can fight with the wind. Once the situation is unfavorable, they will easily break up. Unlike the Chu army, under the iron discipline, they can still fight despite being at a disadvantage.
Ability to fight tenaciously.
The Chu army's discipline, sophisticated equipment, and the logistical support of the fourteen Chinese states were the key to Yan Liang's confidence in winning this battle beyond the Great Wall.
In Yecheng, Yan Liang was busy preparing to go out and destroy the Hu, but the war on the grassland was coming to an end.
It was exactly what Yan Liang had judged. Not long after he captured Pingcheng, the small Xianbei army was attacked and destroyed by the two Xianbei armies in the east and west.
Tuoba Liwei killed Ke Bineng with his own hands, and in one fell swoop he annexed the tribe's 50,000 to 60,000 Dingkou, and hundreds of thousands of cattle and sheep, becoming the most powerful tribe on the grassland.
As for Murong Xianbei in the east, he also took the opportunity to annex the other Xianbei tribes in the central part, and his strength also increased greatly.
Yan Liang believed that if he left the battlefield immediately, the two Xianbei troops would most likely choose to put aside their prejudices and fight side by side to deal with Yan Liang in a crisis. This would not be conducive to his destruction of Xianbei.
Therefore, Yan Liangcai chose to retreat first, making the two Xianbei troops suspicious of each other, and then he took advantage of the opportunity.
Sure enough, not long after Yan Liang returned to Yecheng, intelligence came back from the grassland. Although there was no large-scale war between the Tuoba Tribe and the Xianbei Tribe, there were constant small frictions between them.
As the saying goes, there is no room for two tigers in one mountain. It is easy to stand on three sides, but it is difficult for two ambitious wolves to coexist.
Yan Liang was not in a hurry. While waiting to gather strength, he smiled at the Xianbei Hulu on the grassland, biting each other's dogs.
Yinshan Mountain, Tuoba Xianbei Royal Court.
In Nuo Da's leather tent, there were two rows of swordsmen, and more than ten half-naked Xianbei warriors, staring eagerly at the few people sitting in the king's tent.
Sima Yi was sitting upright, sipping mare's milk wine, while his general Wang Ji kept looking around, looking worried.
After the defeat of Pingcheng, Sima Yi took thousands of remaining soldiers and crossed the Great Wall to flee outside the Great Wall. This was already the seventeenth day after he arrived in Xianbei territory.
It wasn't until today that Tuoba Liwei decided to meet him.
Looking around at the Xianbei warriors on both sides, the solemn atmosphere in the entire king's tent was nowhere to be seen as hospitality.
Although Sima Yi felt unhappy in his heart, he was also speechless.
He knew very well that no matter how strong you were, how much face would be given to you. Now that Tuoba Liwei had come from nowhere, it was already considered good that he could entertain him with kumiss.
The tent curtain suddenly rose, and Tuoba Liwei, surrounded by a group of Xianbei warriors, strode into the king's tent with his head held high.
Seeing this, Sima Yi quickly stood up and smiled slightly at Tuoba Li.
"It turns out he is the emperor of the Jin Dynasty. Sit down, sit down." Tuoba Liwei walked up to the throne in a swaggering manner, gesturing to Sima Yi like his master.
Wang Ji beside him suddenly changed his color slightly, feeling dissatisfied with Tuoba Liwei's attitude.
Sima Yi smiled sarcastically, tried his best to suppress the displeasure in his heart, and sat down pretending to be indifferent.
"My lord has been busy clearing out the remnants of Ke Bineng these past few days, and I haven't been able to find time to see Lord Sima. You won't be surprised, right?" Tuoba Li said with a smile.
The sentence "Sima Kingdom Lord" pierced Sima Yi's heart like a knife.
Once upon a time, when he took over Bingzhou and proclaimed himself emperor, Tuoba Liwei showed his submission like a dog and respectfully called him "His Majesty the Emperor of the Jin Dynasty".
Now, he lost the Jin Kingdom and came to the country in desolation. Tuoba Liwei "demoted" him to the throne of the country. Even a fool would be able to hear this contempt.
The corners of Sima Yi's mouth twitched slightly, but the smile on his face became even brighter.
"Master Tuoba has a powerful strategy, and it is the general trend to unify Xianbei. I came to the grassland today just to discuss with Master Tuoba. We, Da Jin and Da Xianbei, will unite to deal with that beast Yan Liang." Sima Yi flattered him and did not miss the opportunity.
proposed the matter of union.
Tuoba Li sneered slightly and asked: "To deal with that guy Yan Liang, I, Da Xianbei, can send out 60,000 cavalry, but I don't know how many troops the Jin Kingdom, headed by Sima, can send out?"
Sima Yi was shocked, but Tuoba Liwei stopped him by asking.
He, Sima Yi, has been in such a state of decline that he can only collect three or four thousand warriors under his command, which is already the limit. However, these few soldiers and horses used to fight against Chu are so few that they can be ignored.
Tuoba Liwei asked questions knowingly, and this was clearly a deliberate attempt to embarrass him.
Sima Yi secretly gritted his teeth, and a hint of coldness flashed in his eyes. The coldness disappeared in a flash, and Sima Yi immediately laughed.
"Although I don't have many troops, I am very familiar with Yan Liang's tactics and the terrain of Bingzhou. With these two things, plus your cavalry, Lord Tuoba, we can definitely defeat the Yan thief together."
Sima Yi is trying to put gold on his face.
But Tuoba Liwei laughed and said proudly: "My lord destroyed Kebineng and annexed the Xiaozhong tribe. Now I have 60,000 cavalry under my command. No matter how many Yan thieves have, they are only infantry. Here they come.
There are only things left to be slaughtered on the grassland. I can kill the Yan thief myself, so what else do I need from you?"
