The Emperor ordered Zhao Tang

Chapter 46: The cold air spreads through the golden watchtower, and the cold light shines on the iron armor

On the seventh day of April, the sage arrived at Fengtian County with 10,000 infantry and cavalry.

The military envoy, Imperial Censor Xu Yanruo, and the deputy envoy, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Revenue Du Honghui, were stationed here to organize the civilians to manage the army's food and supplies.

Fengtian County was originally Qian County. After the Jingshi Rebellion, many officials followed Emperor Dezong to flee to Qian County, so it was renamed Fengtian.

The sage rested here for a night, met with Xu Yanruo and others, and asked about the transportation. Because the terrain was flat, and there were only more than 27,000 soldiers mobilized, there was no pressure at all, and the civilians were not tired.

In the afternoon, the elders of eleven local wealthy families presented fruits, eggs, dried meat, and bread to the saint. The things were not precious, just ordinary farm food, but the precious thing was the thought.

It can be considered as helping the saint to fight against the enemy.

There is no way out. The common people have been badly harmed by the warriors.

In addition to offering food, a landlord named Cao Wei also led more than 200 family members to surrender, and also came with more than 400 local farmers, all of whom were strong farmers.

"What will happen?" In the county government office, the saint looked at Cao Wei with interest and asked.

"My ancestor was Cao Zida, a general of the Bining Army during the Xingyuan period. He and Prime Minister Hun and others led troops to guard the emperor in Qian. My family has been in the army for generations. During the Chao Rebellion, only the common people of the Fengtian clan survived. This time, I heard that the saint had destroyed the bandits in Qishan, so I came to serve. The two hundred sons and daughters are all brave warriors of the family. They are good at riding, shooting, and military affairs. They are as brave as the warriors of the classics."

When the generals present heard this, they all looked sideways.

Fighting and risking one's life is no less than that of a regular warrior? You are so arrogant!

Wang Congxun stared at him, as if he wanted to ask him to bring out his nephews and nephews for a competition.

"Your spirit is commendable." Li Ye thought about it for a moment and said, "How about bringing two hundred of your family members to serve under Wang Congxun? You will be in charge of your own people. I will give you ten generals, and your job is to capture the dead. How do you think?"

Cao Wei did not expect the saint to be so magnanimous and was quite surprised. He bowed down and said, "I accept your command."

Li Ye was very excited about this.

This is the status, this is the righteousness. You don't need to be very capable, just come and join the emperor.

Of course, whether you can retain people or not requires further efforts.

This is also the advantage of leading your own troops to fight - you have the opportunity to build a team that is completely your own.

"Sage, Cao Wei and his men brought their own horses, bows and arrows, and weapons, but they didn't have armor." Wang Congxun leaned close to his ear and whispered, "Don't build a capital, but incorporate the farmers who came with them. I've seen the farmers, and they're all strong men."

Hearing this, Li Ye was a little surprised at first, but then he felt relieved.

Their ancestors have been warriors and landlords for generations, so it is not surprising that they accumulated these things for self-defense during troubled times.

So he nodded and said, "You decide for yourself."

He had also prepared himself mentally for this expedition, watching more, listening more and making fewer decisions, and leaving professional matters to professionals as much as possible.

The little king may not be a qualified subject, but he is undoubtedly an excellent warrior.

"Please give us a military call, Saint."

"Do all the two hundred young men in the family have mounts?"

"One person and two horses, either horses or mules." Wang Congxun replied: "All they need is armor and a few days of training, and they will be able to fight."

motherfucker.

These landlords are really rich!
Weren't the government soldiers back then mainly composed of these landlords' sons and daughters?

He had his own weapons and armor, and had practiced martial arts since childhood. He also had a stable income and knew why he was fighting. This alone was enough to crush the damn recruits by a huge margin!
Moreover, the warriors who were born in a family and raised in a clan were taught by their uncles and parents from an early age, and were instilled with various Confucian values of filial piety, brotherhood, loyalty and trustworthiness. Their obedience was not comparable to that of the recruits of varying quality.

Thinking of this, Li Ye blurted out: "For the time being, I will grant you the title of Imperial Guards and Yicongdu, and I will observe and lead it myself."

It can also be regarded as laying the foundation for the future.

He had made up his mind to follow the path of Zhu Wen and others and set up an institution - the Imperial Guard Department, to select men from all the armies who had talent, bravery, intelligence, trustworthiness, and wives, and to recruit those who were smart and had good martial arts skills into the Imperial Guard Department.

Strengthening the trunk and weakening the branches is not something that can be achieved overnight.

It was also completed by Zhu Wen, Li Siyuan, Shi Jingtang, Liu Zhiyuan, Chai Rong, Zhao Kuangyin and others who passed on the bloody lessons from generation to generation.

Although there are only 200 young men from the Cao family and they are strangers, Li Ye is more inclined to trust them than other bandit troops. Let's observe for a while, and if there are no problems, I will lead this army myself.

If it were handed over to other warriors, they would sooner or later be corrupted by bad habits.

"The saint has granted us the military title, and the imperial guards are the righteous army!" Wang Congxun glared at Cao Wei and shouted, "Those hundreds of farmers outside the city are also under your charge."

"Yes, sir." Cao Wei bowed to the saint again.

The military governor of Yingwu Army saw this and said, "Follow me to distribute armor, food, grass, beans, and weapons."

On the eighth day, Li Yanzhen, the vanguard commander, also sent scouts to report back, reporting that hundreds of Bining's fleeing soldiers had been defeated in Wutingchuan.

Li Ye abandoned his chariot, put on infantry armor and led his troops into Wutingchuan at noon that day.

Wutingchuan is also a very famous place.

In the first year of Xingyuan, Hun Yu, the acting military commander, led the Han and minority armies in a field battle with Zhu Ci's rebel army at Wutingchuan, where they defeated the rebels and beheaded more than 10,000 people, completely crushing the rebels' strategic motive of attempting to kill Emperor Dezong. They then coordinated with the troops of Deputy Marshal Li Sheng in Fufang, Jingji, Weibei, and Shanghua from the east and west to form a momentum to encircle Chang'an and annihilate the main force of Qin Emperor Zhu Ci.

"Don't you see, the country is in ruins, and we still miss Guo Ziyi." A civil official sighed.

Walking on this road again, Li Ye had a lot of thoughts.

In the first year of Guangming, Tian Lingzi led the emperor to flee to Western Shu. At that time, Li was still hanging around the emperor, serving as a captain of the imperial guards and bodyguard. Because he had no mount, he sprained his foot when crossing Wutingchuan, and could not walk when he reached Xiegu. He failed to borrow a horse from Tian's father, and was whipped in public, causing the whole army to laugh, and it became a legend for many years.

Before I knew it, twelve years have passed.

The emperor's brother and Tian Lingzi who walked on this road have both turned to dust.

"What a bad road." Looking at the potholed ancient straight road, Wang Congxun cracked his whip and sneered, "Li Maozhen and his gang don't even want to repair the road, which shows how difficult it is. How dare they rebel?"

"Don't be careless." The saint looked at the other side of the river and said in a deep voice: "Fifty miles across the river is Qiyang County, where there should be rebel troops entrenched."

"you!"

Wang Congxun pointed his whip and said, "Wang Shaorong, take your men across the river to scout and kill the sentinels of Qi and Bin. We have more than 11,000 soldiers, and the reconnaissance range should be 30 miles away. If there are any enemy troops, we can attack them while we are crossing the river and set the mountains on fire."

"If not, please report as soon as possible."

"Yes!" The warrior named Wang Shaorong clasped his fists and accepted the order.

The Yingwu Army sat cross-legged on the spot to rest, eat and drink, in preparation for the battle that might break out on the other side of the river. The officers walked back and forth, asking the common people to finish their dry food and put on their armor on the carts quickly.

The sage listened nearby and remembered silently - if you encounter a river, you cannot cross it directly. You must send scouts across the river first to confirm the situation on the other side to prevent being attacked by those who cross the river.

Even an outsider like Li Ye can imagine that scene. No matter how powerful your troops are, stop struggling and wait for death!
Here.

Liu Xianyuan, the commander of the Longjie Army, also shouted and scolded loudly, and organized the knights to observe the water depth and cross the river in batches in an orderly manner from the shallows. If they encountered a slow-moving soldier, they would be stabbed twice on the back of the head.

"Why did the cavalry cross the river first?" The saint patted Wang Congxun and asked in a low voice.

"It is to cover the infantry brigade." Wang Congxun explained: "The cavalry can cross the river quickly, and after landing, they can spread out quickly, and use nets to drive out and kill the scouts under the command of the enemy's patrol commander. If the enemy army is approaching in formation, they will stop when they see the cavalry and organize their troops to fight."

Li Ye nodded and learned another trick.

These seem like simple common sense, but Li Ye asked himself if he might not have considered them if he were leading the army alone.

There is a sequence in learning, and different specializations in skills. That’s all.

Watching the large group of cavalrymen riding their horses and wading through the river, with water splashing on the surface, Li Ye was inexplicably a little excited. It was a complex feeling of excitement, curiosity, brutality, and a fighting instinct from animals.

At dusk, scouts under General Wang Shaorong returned to this shore one after another - they discovered traces of a large number of enemy troops in Qiyang County.

It’s just that the defenders are not Qi people.

The person entrenched here now is Wu Xiong, the general of Bing Town, and there are eight small military camps built outside the city.

It is impossible to verify how many soldiers there are...

However, after Wang Congxun repeatedly inquired about the news from various scouts, and compared the numbers of carriages, flags, military camps, and beacons reported, he estimated that the enemy army was between three thousand and five thousand.

Li Ye thought about it and found that the information matched that of his disciple Liu Gong.

Li Jikan, who claimed to be the last one left behind, was killed by his generals, and Li Maozhen retreated all the way to Dazhen Pass. Wang Xingyu had only about 20,000 soldiers and horses, and since he wanted to hunt down Li Maozhen and his son, he couldn't leave too many people here.

Tenth General Wang Shaorong emphasized: "The Bin army has occupied Qiyang for a long time. The people have no crops to farm, and men and women are hungry and leaning against the walls. The Bin army kills hundreds every day. There are more than ten stone mortars outside the city. They take people alive and grind them to pieces, then eat their bones. We can take them down in one battle!"

"Haha!" Wang Congxun laughed and said, "General Bin is so hungry, how can he fight against the well-fed soldiers of our heroic army?"

So the Yingwu Army began to cross the river in batches, and set up camp on the other side at dusk.

If you go further, the group of man-eating monsters in the city will come out to attack you.

To win, you need a night of rest.

Li Ye didn't expect that Wang Congxun, who was always domineering and bold, would be so cautious in fighting. Perhaps this is what it looks like to enter combat status.

The heart has the Tigers, fine sniffing the rose.

Because there was a possibility of the camp being hijacked by the enemy, Wang Congxun led his personal soldiers to supervise the construction of the camp. This kind of field camp could not be built by civilians, and the soldiers knew that this was a way to save their lives, so they worked very hard and did not finish the construction until late at night.

Dinner was vinegar cakes which were widely popular in the Tang Dynasty.

Since the more than 10,000 people who crossed the river were all infantry, cavalry and armored soldiers, in addition to three vinegar cakes per person, they were also given plenty of pickles, fried rice, dried meat and lard.

It is called: full meal.

The saint walked around the camp. The soldiers ate in silence, few spoke, and the atmosphere was very tense. This was because the king had issued a ban: no running, no noise, no lighting a fire, and sleep after eating.

Li Ye originally wanted to hold a bonfire party and give speeches to boost morale like what was written in those novels, but after thinking about it, he decided to give up.

His dinner was also simple.

The same vinegar cakes, pickles, dried meat, and fried rice, but I'm not used to smearing lard on them. The taste of the vinegar cakes is okay, sour and crispy. Air-dried cakes can be kept for more than a month, and they can be kept longer in winter.

Wang Congxun also brought him mutton soup.

I wanted to share the hardships with the soldiers, but after thinking it over, I felt that it was unnecessary.

It is bitter enough to eat vinegar cakes, and if everything is the same as below, it will only make the soldiers look down on the emperor.

Just sleep after eating.

As the nominal commander-in-chief, he was actually strictly following Xiao Wang's military orders, but he refused to sleep alone and secretly asked Xiao Wang to sleep next to him after the meeting.

Scary.

In case of a military riot or the enemy raiding the camp...

Although the hundreds of palace guards under the command of General Du Luyi and other Zhonglang Jiang who accompanied him looked well-behaved and took turns to stand guard outside the tent...

And Xiao Wang feels safe!

At night, Li Ye vaguely heard Xiao Wang getting dressed and getting up several times.

Another scout reported that the Wuxiong tribe of Qiyang had sent a large group of scouts to wander around, observe, and harass the Yingwu army not far from the camp, and had several small-scale battles with the scouts of Wang Shaorong's tribe.

Wang Congxun called Cao Wei, one of the ten generals of the imperial guards, and asked him to select dozens of family members with high riding and archery skills to assist Wang Shaorong's troops in expelling the enemy cavalry so as not to disrupt the morale of the army.

After finishing this, he closed his eyes for a while, then he got up again and called a few former Tianwei Army confidants to a meeting. Li Ye was woken up and heard them yelling and cursing in the outer tent.

"Wu Xiong was so hungry that he sent people to the riverside, howling loudly and lighting torches. The officials sent by the military envoy to Wutingchuan probably didn't dare to organize civilians to escort the supplies across the river." Wang Congxun slammed his fist on the table and said coldly: "I'm going to lead the troops to kill these thieves overnight."

"Old Wang, how many soldiers does Wu Xiong have?" someone asked.

"It's about the same as us."

None of them were outsiders. Wang Congxun said bluntly, "Li Maozhen and his sons can't turn the tables. Only Wang Xingyu has a tough battle to fight. This guy has a total of no less than 20,000 troops, but his main force is on the way to Dazhen Pass. In Bingzhou, the old nest, the saint has sent Yang Shouxin, the Yushan Army, to lead more than 4,000 troops to force. Wang Xingyu got the report and had to return to defend."

"In this way, Wuxiong will have 3,000 to 5,000 men stationed in Qishan, which means Wang Xingyu can trust them."

"I think that Wu Xiong's mission is not only to defend against the Shannan Army and the Saint, but also to collect food and fodder for the thief Wang. Otherwise, why would he capture hundreds or thousands of people a day? There would be too much jerky for him to eat."

After saying that, Wang Congxun cast his eyes towards a thin man and said, "Take 600 men to guard the grain road and meet the officials under the military envoy to prevent Wu Xiong from stealing the grain."

"Six hundred people...can they be strengthened to a thousand?" the thin man pondered.

Wang Congxun shook his head: "The military strength is tight, and we can't allocate more. The saint is in my hands now, and I have to protect him from any harm."

"Alas, our Tianwei Army's more than 3,000 men have not arrived yet!"

"That's it, let's all go back to sleep." Wang Congxun took a sip of water and vowed, "We still have 6,000 Dragon Knights to help us, and we will not lose to Wu Xiong tomorrow."

"Row."

Throughout the night, Wang Congxun got up more than ten times, either to urinate or to patrol outside the tent. When he came back, he wiped his sword and spear and checked his armor.

He caught a warrior on night duty dozing off and hung him up and beat him half to death on the spot.

Du Luyi and other generals who were guarding outside the tent were not feeling very comfortable. It should be said that the more than 500 palace guards were also embarrassed. They were looked at by Wang Congxun more than a dozen times in one night. Was he reprimanding him?

Of course Li Ye didn't sleep well either. He stole glances at Xiao Wang who was sitting there, sometimes wiping his knife and sometimes propping up his face in deep thought.

It can be seen that Xiao Wang is a little nervous.

He used to be just a general, and the most soldiers the Jiedushi had ever let him lead were only a few thousand. Now he had to command more than 10,000 troops together with Ximen Yuanyuan, the Right Wing Envoy, and Liu Xianyuan, the Dragon Army Envoy, to confront the brave Bin Division head-on, and also shoulder the important task of protecting the saint.

How not to be nervous!
However, the saint feels that the young king still has the potential to become a great general.

Although he was mediocre and unknown, judging from the deployment of troops in the past few days, his quality as a general was completely qualified and even excellent. Although he had no obvious advantages, his biggest advantage was that he had no obvious shortcomings.

Prime ministers come from the state governments, and brave generals come from the army.

Cultivate it slowly.

On the ninth and tenth days of April, the Yingwu Army did not leave the camp. Wu Xiong, who was entrenched in Qiyang County, stopped making meat jerky, but did not attack rashly. Instead, he continuously sent small groups of troops to harass the food supply route, and fought bloody battles with the Longjie Army on the river bank many times.

On the tenth day, Wu Xiong led his troops out of the city.

At dawn, the sounds of battles of varying sizes rang out on the plains. Scouts from the Bin army swarmed out, searching and killing the Yingwu army scouts. The knights of the Longjie army were lining up on the east and west sides, all wearing swords and holding four or five meter long lances, ready for battle.

When the sun was three poles high, the sage climbed up the watchtower.

But on the spring day, smoke and dust rose up from the green fields. On the horizon, a large group of infantrymen came like a tide. After leaving the city, they rested and ate once on the way. At this time, their pace was slow, and the flags were flying. The front line was surging like a wave. Finally, Wu Xiong stopped about five miles away and began to form a team.

Judging from the rough formation, there are about three to four thousand people, only one-third of the armies of Long Jie and Ying Wu.

The army formation was strict, and the advance and retreat were orderly. Swords and spears were like a forest, impenetrable. This was Li Ye's first impression of the Bining Army.

No wonder in history, when Emperor Zhaozong sent the Shence Army to fight against the armies of Qi and Bin, the imperial guards dispersed after just one look at the enemy formation.

With some enemy troops, you can tell whether you can defeat them just by looking at them.

The corners of Wang Congxun's mouth twitched subconsciously, and he seemed to be on the verge of extreme excitement. His eyes quickly became bloodshot, and his teeth made a terrifying clattering sound. The other military academies were also in a commotion, shaking their legs, clapping their hands, staring, laughing foolishly, and clenching their fists...

Li Ye was horrified by what he saw.

Oh shit.

Did this trigger some kind of atavism?
dong dong dong.

Drums were beating wildly in the camp, and dozens of warriors pushed and smashed the camp gate open.

The densely packed tents let out a chaotic roar, and the soldiers picked up their equipment and walked out while putting on their armor. The officers ran around in a hurry, shouting and urging them to move. If anyone was slow, they would turn their knives over and hit them in the face.

Suddenly, Wang Congxun shouted, "Give me a reward!"

"Everyone, give me a piece of silk. Kill them ruthlessly! Defeat the enemy and I'll give you three more pieces of silk!"

"Woo..." Hearing this, the soldiers immediately cheered.

outside.

The Bin division organized the troops, and the warriors in the front row hit their shields with their swords, and let out earth-shaking howls: "Kill, kill, kill!!!"

"Saint, come down!" Wang Congxun grabbed the saint's arm and took him to the big tent without any explanation. He ordered Du Luyi and other guards to surround the big tent. He also personally selected dozens of strong and trusted personal soldiers to guard with knives and ordered them not to let the saint disappear from sight.

He also said: "Anyone who dares to approach will be killed immediately."

"Yes!" The soldiers drew their swords and shouted.

After a while, the other twenty or so civil officials who accompanied the emperor were also brought to the saint's tent by the soldiers.

"March out!" Wang Congxun waved his hand and hurried away with the military students.

The war is about to start.

(End of this chapter)