After climbing over the highest point of Majian Mountain, the vast sea of loess was trampled under his feet. Although Zhang Yue knew that the white clouds and mountains in front of him blocked his sight, on a clear day, he could see the Hexi Corridor.
To the north is a big river and the Hanhai Sea, to the east is the Loess Plateau to the south, but to the west is Lanzhou, which is thousands of miles of fertile wilderness!
On the way down the mountain, we experienced a snowstorm. The sudden heavy snowfall and the strong wind on the high mountains made the soldiers' lips turn blue from the cold.
Zhang Yue was dressed neatly, but he had never encountered such a strong wind or such heavy snow.
It is no exaggeration to call this Mount Maxian the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau of Longxi.
After we got down the mountain, the snow stopped and the slope became gentler. It was a blessing after all the hardships.
Zhang Yue slowly descended the mountain, only to see that Wang Shao had temporarily set up camp halfway up the mountain, and his soldiers were making a fire to cook.
Zhang Yue saw that the scenery here was much better. Although it was cold winter, he could still see the greenery at the bottom of the mountain, the beacon fires rising one after another from the distant road, and the Wachuanhui standing on the main road.
Now Lanzhou is in front of the army!
This Maxian Mountain is the junction between Xixia and Tubo. After Li Yuanhao defeated Tubo, he also took Lanzhou on his way back to the army.
Li Yuanhao built the Wachuanhui here and cut off the tribute road between Tubo and the Song Dynasty.
In the Tangut language society, it is the market.
Xixia traded with the Tubo people through the Wachuan Hui.
After a dozen Xixia soldiers were captured, their faces were full of panic. They never dreamed that the Song army would cross Maxian Mountain and appear in Lanzhou in the twelfth lunar month of winter.
When they all went out of the city to conduct reconnaissance after seeing the beacon fire, they were ambushed by the Song army and captured here.
Several Xixia soldiers initially thought that the Qingtang and Tibetans were so cowardly that they dared to cross the border and invade Xixia. They even scolded them when they were kidnapped. However, when they heard the other general speaking in Chinese in the big tent, they were speechless.
One is not that he is pale.
That's right, if Wang Shao had sent troops not from the ancient Weizhai but from Qinzhou, he would have captured Huizhou first and then attacked Lanzhou.
Lanzhou was undoubtedly the rear of the Song-Xia front line.
How could the Song army appear here in the dead of winter?
Wang Shao ordered his soldiers to interrogate him, but the leading Xixia general was very tough and refused to explain a word. Wang Shao ordered his men to drag the man out and behead him without thinking.
After the death of the Xixia general, the Tibetan troops under him became much more honest and rushed to explain.
It turns out that there were one thousand Xixia troops and two thousand Tibetan troops in the Wachuan Hui. Yes, the Xixia army, like the Song army, also used local Tibetan people. In addition, there were hundreds of craftsmen and their family members accompanying the army in the city.
Zhang Yue asked: "How to attack the city?"
Wang Shao said: "No need to attack! Will they leave the city on their own?"
"Out of town?"
Wang Shao nodded and said: "If they don't leave the city, we will massacre them on all sides!"
Zhang Yue was silent, Wang Shao was a very murderous person. In another time and space history, he died of a malignant sore. When the sore festered, his internal organs could be seen. Others said it was because he killed too many people.
Zhang Yue advised: "We will still collect them from Lanzhou in the future! If there are too many killings, I'm afraid it will be difficult to manage here in the future."
Zhang Yue also knows that laymen cannot command experts, but the problem is that as a general, you only need to consider winning or losing when fighting a war, but as a civil servant, many must consider politics. This is the contradiction.
Then again, benevolence cannot lead the army, and righteousness cannot lead the army.
But Zhang Yue was the nominal commander after all. Wang Shao said in a conciliatory tone: "It's okay not to kill him, but to kidnap him. But I'm afraid it will be difficult to restrain the Tibetan army."
Zhang Yue thought to himself, apart from the fact that the Yue family's army froze to death without tearing down their houses, and starved to death without robbing and looting, how much discipline could the army in the feudal era have?
After all, Ci Bu controls the army, so Zhang Yue didn't say anything else.
On the way down the mountain, Zhang Yue saw thousands of Fan cavalry fleeing in all directions, and Liu Xishi came to ask him.
Liu Xishi was surprised when he heard about it. Over the years, he had learned a lot as a walking horse.
The Song army's tactics, whether offensive or defensive, were to stand firm and then wait for the enemy to charge.
But this kind of tactics is very rare.
Zhang Yue said: "My father-in-law, all the people in the Tibetan tribe are soldiers. Those who are sent to plunder are young and strong, and those who are left behind are old and weak women and children. Don't underestimate these old and weak women and children."
"They are responsible for setting up camp and keeping watch. Even unloading saddles and horses, baggage and carriages are under the control of women and children."
"This also takes care of the luggage, clothing, money and other things you bring with you when you go on an expedition."
"What if there's a fight? What will they do?"
Zhang Yue said: "When the Tibetan tribe fights, the old and the young will go out together. When the enemy is engaged, the old and the weak will be organized into the rear camp."
In this way, taking all the cattle and sheep with them on the expedition meant that the Tibetan army had no supply line problems, so the Tibetan army relied on grazing and plowing grain along the way to sustain itself.
When the army arrived at Wachuanhui, the city did not seem to know that the Song army had arrived, so a cavalry force of nearly a thousand people came out to fight to cover thousands of civilians entering the city.
There happened to be a fierce battle with the Song Army's forward.
In the evening, when Zhang Yue and Wang Shao led the elite Song army to Wachuanhui, they saw that the grass market outside the city gate had been burned to a white ground.
The Cao Shi is the market outside the city. Businessmen usually resided here, but now they are in ruins due to the war.
Nearly a thousand Xixia cavalry who went out to fight during the day were ambushed by the Song army's forward led by Wang Hou because they did not understand the situation, and hundreds of them were annihilated.
At this moment, night fell, and the Song army set up camps around the city. Standing on the hill and looking from a distance, they saw fires burning in many places several miles away.
Zhang Yue knew that this was the Tibetan army that had been sent out to clear grass in the valley during the day and was looting. After looting, he set fire to the pasture.
When Zhang Yue arrived at the camp, Qing Tang and Tibetan cavalry dressed in furs were driving large groups of cattle, sheep and horses, talking and laughing back to the camp.
There were still many prisoners. It turned out that thousands of people who were trying to escape into Wachuanhui were intercepted by the Song army's forwards. Only a small half of them entered the city, and most of the rest were captured.
Now they are locked up in a circle like oxen and horses, with panic and fear in their eyes. They are guarded by tribes with bows on all sides. These are the things done by the old and weak, women and children, while Jingzhuang recharges his energy and is only responsible for fighting and robbery.
plunder.
Zhang Yue knew that as far as Khitan was concerned, there were servants working in the grass-grazing valley and servants guarding the campsites.
In Mongolia, it is called Oru, which is the soldier who guards the camp.
They all exist as auxiliary soldiers.
That night, the Tibetan army climbed over Mazhi Mountain and camped under the city of Wadanghui. The light of countless grease torches floated in the cold night. When the mules, carts and carriages arrived at the camp, there were countless people shouting and horses neighing.
It’s all there.
The commotion lasted for half the night before the 100,000-strong army was stationed. It was not until dawn that the cold mist hung at the foot of Maxian Mountain, and the melodious and desolate sound of the Qiang flute suddenly spread throughout the city and beyond.
The Song army surrounded Wadanghui on three sides.
Surrounding three towers and one, leaving the north side to allow the defenders to escape, this is also the traditional military strategy of city attackers.
After dawn, Wang Shao wanted to lure the defenders into a decisive battle, so he asked seven of his subordinates to command the Song army to dispatch three, and set up a formation under the city, making it clear that he did not need to take advantage of you with the advantage of his troops.
Seeing that the defenders did not leave the city, Wang Shao pushed more than 20 Xixia prisoners to the city and chopped them all down in front of the defenders. The Xixia soldiers at the top of the city were so angry that they cursed.
At that moment, a Song general came to the city to scold the formation. He first scolded the defenders for their incompetence, then unbuttoned his pants and peed on the city wall, and finally told an inappropriate story about the relationship between your Empress Dowager Liang and the powerful minister Liang Yimi, his younger brother.
Zhang Yue, who was standing by, slapped his legs and laughed. Seeing Song General scolding him more and more vigorously, the Xixia people fired a hail of arrows.
The Song general laughed loudly and rode his horse to avoid it. He also raised his whip to knock off several stray arrows. Then he braved the arrows and entered the city. He immediately raised his bow and nocked an arrow. He aimed three arrows at the flagpole of the Xixia Army on the tower.
.
Suddenly the Song Army burst into enthusiastic cheers!
It turned out that these three arrows were firmly nailed into the Xixia flagpole from the top, middle and bottom, and the feathers at the arrow tails shook mercilessly, making the Xixia army in the city lose face in mockery.
Zhang Yue couldn't help but cheered: "Awesome, whose general is this?"
Wang Shao smiled and said: "This man's name is Chen Si. He is one of the more than ten imperial students sent by Shiren to my account."
Zhang Yue understood that there were more than a dozen martial arts students he had recommended to Wang Shao's army, but most of them could not endure the hardships of Gu Wei and later returned to Bianjing. Only a few of them stayed in Gu Wei.
The more Zhang thought about this, Chen Si had already returned to the Chinese army.
Zhang Yue greeted the opponent personally and said: "What a skill, the general is really as brave as Xue Rengui!"
Chen Si bowed down and said, "Students are ashamed of themselves."
Wang Shao laughed and said: "If you pass it on, the general will reach the Tianshan Mountains with three arrows, and the strong man will enter Han Pass with a long song!"
The Song troops below the city shouted in unison!
"The general reaches the Tianshan Mountains with three arrows, and the strong man sings into Hanguan!"
Listening to the shouts of the Song army, the defenders on the city had pale faces, but they endured until the end and were not fooled. Even when they saw the Tibetan cavalry looting everything in all directions, they still endured it.
Since the defenders did not go out to fight, Wang Shao summoned the generals of the Tibetan and Han Dynasties to discuss in the tent that night. As a result, most of them did not advocate attacking the city.
Because Wadang would be a fortified city, a large army that lacked the ability to attack fortresses would not be able to capture it if it stayed here for more than ten days.
Wang Shao had no choice but to give up. Now that the Song army's morale was high, it was a good time to use troops. If they were blocked by a fortified city, it would not be a good idea. They could only bypass the city.
After the agreement was reached, everyone planned to surround the city the next day. Unexpectedly, in the middle of the night, a fire suddenly broke out in the city. More than two thousand Xixia troops rushed out at night, abandoning the people in the city and ignoring them.
Facing this scene, Wang Shao and Zhang Yue were both surprised and happy.
The Song army captured Wadanghui without any effort, and then Wang Shao sent out Fan cavalry to plunder all the surrounding areas and stopped staying. Wang Shao and Zhang Yue continued to send troops northward. Zhang Yue wrote a letter and sent people to Qinzhou to report the victory.
Wang Shao left a Song army under his command and 500 strong cavalry from the Tibetan tribe to guard Wadanghui.
Wang Shao did not go to Jincheng where Lanzhou was located, but led his army westward into Nuzhe Valley.
The land in Longzhong is mostly composed of loess hills with crisscrossed ravines, but Lanzhou is different. The river valleys here intersect, making it a good land for farming and grazing.
Nüzhe Valley is also the winter pasture for the Tibetan tribe in Lanzhou.
Here Wang Shao met the main force of the Tibetan tribe in Lanzhou who had surrendered to Xixia. According to reports, there were more than 30,000 Tibetan troops here!
At the same time, according to investigation, the Xixia army learned that after the Song army crossed the Majian Mountain, they sent troops from Huizhou, the north of the Yellow River, and the direction of Jincheng to help!