choke element

Chapter 1007 Punishment (Part )

This large-scale military operation was organized by Tolui from beginning to end.

It was extremely difficult to keep this plan secret in the still crude Mongolian ruling system, and Genghis Khan himself was skeptical about the feasibility of the plan.

Therefore, when Tolui proposed this plan, he immediately moved away from Genghis Khan and used his own team to promote it, thus ensuring that there would be no risk of leaks and that the Mongolian headquarters would not have to bear the losses of failure.

At that time, no one knew what Tolui was busy with after being kicked out of the core circle by his father Khan, so many people were full of contempt for Tolui.

It was not until the plan was suddenly launched and the army began to march forward to conquer that everyone more or less understood how deep the foreshadowing was, how important patience was in the early stages, and how much effort Tolui had invested in managing the Xia and Song kingdoms.
In Xia alone, the Mongolian army received more supplies than the two previous expeditions to Xia combined. Along the way, the Xia people contributed the arsenals of seven military supervisory offices, from the Black Mountain Weifu Military Office to the Zhuo Luo and Southern Military Offices, providing more than 4,000 sets of iron armor and excellent weapons such as the God Arm Bow and the Three-edged Arrow.

You should know that after Genghis Khan destroyed the Kereyid tribe and united the Mongolian tribes, he attacked the Xia Kingdom before convening the kurultai to ascend the throne of the Great Khan. Before attacking the Jin Kingdom, he had already beaten the Xia Kingdom to the ground three times, causing more than one-tenth of the total population of the Xia Kingdom!

By this calculation, the hatred between Xia and Mongolia was deep as the sea. However, Tolui was able to seize the opportunity of the constant internal strife between the Tangut nobles and powerful ministers of Xia and the illegitimate succession of several generations of kings, and forced the current king of Xia to become a collaborator of Mongolia.

How huge and complex a circle of friends did Tolui have to arrange to achieve this?

Not to mention the countless passes that belong to the State of Song that they are about to pass through.

The Mongolian nobles generally did not know much about the Song Dynasty, but they at least knew that the Song Dynasty was a great country that had existed for hundreds of years alongside the Jin Dynasty and the Xia Dynasty. Moreover, its scale was huge, not less than that of the Jin Dynasty. The Mongolian army's conquest of the Jin Dynasty a few years ago was certainly a great victory at the beginning, but what was the final result?
Those failed experiences still haunt many people. So the Song Dynasty should not be underestimated.

But Tolui was able to win over the high officials of the Song Dynasty and let him come to meet Genghis Khan in person to show his goodwill! This Song man named Dong Juyi was no ordinary person. He was a big shot in charge of the entire western defense of the Song Dynasty. He had 100,000 troops under his command and was in charge of 100 iron passes!

In the Yeke Mongol Ulus, this position should be at least the commander of the left wing, right? That is already a terrifying big shot!
Even if he resigns now, it is said that his successor will still be a member of his party. His coming here to kneel before Genghis Khan means that countless strong passes in the south are open to the Mongols, and that the Song people who do business with the Zhou Kingdom are attacking their partners who have made fortunes together.

Who could have imagined such a thing before? Even though the Mongolian army destroyed countless countries in the Western Regions, it had never seen an army that did not move, but relied on a few people and a few mouths to introduce such a help!
Everyone was shocked by this and therefore full of confidence in their own victory.

It turned out that from the first day Genghis Khan returned to the grassland, the harassment and fighting of the three Zhaotaosi along the border of the Great Zhou from the northeast to the southwest were all planned. As the plan progressed, the pressure exerted by the Yeke Mongolian Ulus on the Great Zhou was so appropriate that the Great Zhou naturally believed that the northern border could become a meat grinder for the Mongols to die.

What was even more satisfying was that during this period, the Great Zhou Dynasty also ruthlessly purged the troops stationed on the southern border. For example, in the Military Command in Kaifeng Prefecture, Nanjing, many of the soldiers who were clamoring for war were thrown to a country called Goryeo outside the East China Sea.

The number of troops that any regime can control is limited, and it is impossible to control all aspects of the border. Therefore, the more complete the Zhou army's deployment in the northern border and the more far-reaching its control over the sea, the weaker they are in the south.

Who could have imagined that the Mongolian army's powerful attack would explode from the heart of the Zhou Kingdom?
The military operation was progressing rapidly, and with each day's smooth progress, Tolui was gaining more and more praise and admiration from people.

After Tolui reported all the arrangements for the next step, he left Genghis Khan's tent. Whether it was to make up for the previous years' neglect or for other reasons, until his horse galloped for a few miles, there were still people urging their horses to follow, either chatting attentively or just seeing him off politely.

It was not until Tolui repeatedly waved his hands, signaling everyone to stop sending him off, that they slowly turned their horses back, like a flock of sheep splitting up and then merging together again.

Genghis Khan narrowed his eyes and felt very happy when he saw his son being respected so much.

Outsiders generally believed that because Tolui had not made any achievements on the battlefield in recent years, Genghis Khan became increasingly distant from this son and valued him far less than his elder brother. In fact, they were all wrong.

Deep in Genghis Khan's heart, he and Tolui had one thing in common: they were both losers on the battlefield of the Central Plains, and both were defeated by the Great Zhou Emperor Guo Ning.

Therefore, all the ridicules of Tolui by the Mongolian nobles in the past few years were almost equivalent to slapping Genghis Khan in the face. It was just that Genghis Khan used his brilliant victory in the Western Expedition to make outsiders forget this common point.

Therefore, Genghis Khan appreciated Tolui's contribution more than anyone else, and looked forward to the victory brought by this long march to Ofu more than anyone else. For him, this victory would not only wash away Tolui's shame.

Genghis Khan was always willing to make great efforts to investigate the enemies who had brought him painful memories, in order to clearly analyze their strengths and weaknesses. He had already calculated the battle this time more than ten times.

The Great Zhou Army was an army that relied heavily on logistical support.

This army had no shortage of war horses, so it seemed that it had the ability to march far and wide, but in Genghis Khan's eyes, the reason why Guo Ning was rampant in the northern border was because the northern border was close to the Han capital, and its army could squander all kinds of supplies like money when fighting. Including a large number of vehicles, armor, weapons, arrows and gunpowder consumed in combat, etc., which could be called up nearby, and even continuously drawn from the vast territory in the south.

However, these materials had been transported to the north for many years and it was impossible for them to fly to the south. If these materials were removed and the main force of the Zhou army traveled a long distance and returned from the northern border with light equipment, they would have no advantage over the Mongols.

Moreover, it is still unknown whether they have the possibility of turning back.

Mu Huali, with many vassal tribal troops in the northern border, will entangle the main force of the Zhou army at all costs; and Genghis Khan himself will wait for Li Ting's troops of the Zhou army stationed in Fengxiang, Jingzhao and other places to move, and then launch the most ferocious pursuit.

If everything goes well, the road for the main force of the Zhou army to rush back to the Central Plains from the border will be a bloody road. Most of them will die on the road.

Even if they came back, they would only see mountains of corpses and seas of blood, because the elite Mongolian troops marching to Wufu would completely destroy the Central Plains.

It was not the instinctive plunder and slaughter of nomadic peoples, but the free movement of the enemy's territory under strict military law, constantly avoiding the strong and attacking the weak, and carrying out planned and thorough destruction. This kind of destruction was the real skill that the Mongolian army had forged during the Western Expedition.

The Mongolian army once slaughtered villages, razed buildings, and trampled living people into meat paste to fertilize the fields. They once soaked the streets with human fat and set them on fire. They once spread salt to destroy the results of farming, dug up dams and washed away fields, restoring everything to the wilderness and grassland state of tens of millions of years ago. They once drove the people as the vanguard, forcing ordinary people to turn into crazy beasts and kill each other, cutting off any possibility of maintaining order and rule.

In Genghis Khan's view, the Mongolian army's invincibility during the Western Expedition was largely due to the destruction along the way.

Because no army could remain calm when their homes were destroyed and their families were slaughtered. As long as the reputation of the Mongols spread, any army would have only two states when fighting against the Mongols: either become a cowardly gazelle or a stupid wild boar.

The Mongolians hunted yellow sheep and wild boars, whose weaknesses were so obvious that they were easy to kill.

The more the soldiers were from the family, the more so. How could Guo Ning's army be an exception? Genghis Khan was curious about whether they would turn into yellow sheep or wild boars when they returned to the Central Plains and found that their homes and relatives no longer existed.

In short, everything has been arranged. This blow will surely break the hearts of the Han people, and will also surely kill all the Han troops. Genghis Khan even thought about how to treat Guo Ning after the victory.

He was once filled with anger and wanted to chop off Guo Ning's limbs and head, and then send them around to parade to tell everyone that he had severely punished the enemy and washed away the shame of the previous defeat. But now he was full of pride and felt that he was gradually grasping the victory, so he flicked his whip and asked the Bijachis around him:
"What do you think we should do if we catch Guo Ning?"

The Bijachis spoke in unison, expressing many ideas, some of which were extremely humiliating and some were extremely cruel. Only one person answered, "In any case, the Great Zhou emperor is a rare hero in the world. I think he is qualified to enjoy the glory of dying without bloodshed, just like Jamukha."

This sentence not only praised Guo Ning, but also explained the previous failure of the Mongolian army, which undoubtedly touched Genghis Khan's heart.

Genghis Khan leaned over slightly, wanting to give some reward, but found that the person who spoke was Tolui's old subordinate, the Jurchen Nianhe Chongshan, who once held great power in the Western Regions.

For some unknown reason, Genghis Khan's good mood suddenly faded and he suddenly felt a little bored.