choke element

Chapter 1022 Reinforcements (Part )

Tuolei had been patrolling around Kaifeng for two days. In just two days, his cavalry had carried out more than twenty ambushes, killing at least three generals, and no less than twenty generals and officers above the rank of general. As for the heads of the regular soldiers in armor, Tuolei personally participated in counting more than 3,300 of them.

And the number of civilians who died in the process was countless, perhaps 30,000, 50,000, or 100,000? The population of the Central Plains was thriving, more so than in Hebei, where the Mongolian soldiers were more familiar, and far more than what they had seen in Hezhong in the Western Regions. This was like an endless supply of prey on the grassland, which aroused the Mongols' brutality.

When fighting against the Jin Dynasty and the Western Regions, the Mongols constantly destroyed agricultural areas, destroyed towns, and massacred people, thus making the opponent's economy exhausted and the people miserable. This must have been an effective means for the Great Zhou.

They have also blocked traffic to many large cities in Henan, directly cutting off any internal and external information from any stronghold, which will spread fear and force strongholds that have not yet been attacked to waver. If they are lucky, some large and incompetent cities may collapse from within, just like stupid rabbits jumping out of their holes one by one and falling into the hands of hunters.

Everything is going smooth.

If we must find a little regret, it is probably because it is winter and the farmland has been harvested long ago, so no matter how much the Han people trample on it, they will not lose anything. On the contrary, the Mongolian cavalry had to attack several military forts and pastures in order to seize fodder, but because a large amount of military supplies from Henan Road had been transported to the north before, the gains were not sufficient.

This was not a problem for many Mongolian thousand households and hundred households. They obtained a huge amount of wealth by burning, killing and looting the people, which was comparable to the gains from the Western Expedition. Stimulated by the interests, many people were planning to attack Kaifeng. As for the source of military supplies, Tolui could worry about it.

Tolui did not think that the restlessness of the thousand households was a big problem.

The Mongols' desire for war was ultimately due to greed. Even with Genghis Khan's prestige, he couldn't let the thousand households suffer losses and work hard every time. Anyway, the defense of Kaifeng City was solid. The thousand households led their men to fight with the small group of Zhou troops that went out of the city to fight. They immediately knew that the men in the city were still fighting. It was not easy to expect such a large city to be guarded by tens of thousands of strong men.

In order to thoroughly convince the thousand households, Tolui also asked the prince consort Chiju to interrogate several captives and find out the details of Kaifeng City. The results of the interrogation were exactly as Tolui judged.

The team that rushed out of the city to rescue the wounded was not even a regular Han army, but just a temporary gathering of craftsmen and caravan guards, with at most a few guards sent by the garrison commander Guo Zhongyuan. The professional soldiers who were the real backbone of the garrison stood still on the top of the city from beginning to end, and the captives had only seen them from afar.

Tuo Lei had already found out that the commander of the Zhou army who was now in Kaifeng City was Guo Zhongyuan, with whom he had fought on the battlefield in the past.

It is said that this man was born as a ruffian in Daxing Prefecture, Zhongdu. He used harsh punishments to govern his army and treated beheading as a common practice. When fighting against a strong enemy, he would kill several people on his side who did not obey his orders before the two sides met.

Back then, Guo Zhongyuan relied on the intimidation of the axe and led a group of improvised peasants to resist several thousand surrendered soldiers under Tolui. Now that the elite troops of his own army were not moving, it was in line with his style to let the improvised ragtag group go out of the city to test the waters.

Obviously, Guo Zhongyuan had already suffered a great loss. Afterwards, he would be punished, and even his head would not be possible. Therefore, defending Kaifeng City was his bottom line as the garrison commander in Nanjing. For this reason, his elite soldiers and generals must be placed in the most important places for key purposes.

If they really want to attack the city casually, they will be extremely stupid and will only bring trouble upon themselves. The subordinates of each Mongol thousand households are the foundation of their lives. The thousand households are not fools and will not easily waste their foundation in a brutal siege.

On the other hand, Tolui was not worried about the current military supplies.

In terms of his understanding of the situation in the Central Plains, Tolui can now almost be considered half a Han Chinese. He has traveled all over the country for many years and has a very broad horizon.

As early as the Wufu Plan was proposed, the Song people promised to give a number of iron cannons, but required the Mongols to obtain them only after passing through the Lizhou East Road, and then directly use them in subsequent wars. In this way, if the Zhou court blamed them, the Song people could say that they were robbed by the Mongols when the Lizhou East Road was lost.

However, Tolui insisted on obtaining these powerful gunpowder weapons in advance and using them thousands of miles away in the direction of the grassland in order to show strength to the maximum extent.

The Zhou army's fighting style was largely inherited from the Jin Dynasty, with great emphasis on equipment advantages. Under the threat of a large number of iron cannons, the Zhou army must have mobilized a huge amount of material reserves, including food, gunpowder weapons, carts for temporary formations on the grassland, various iron materials needed for camping, etc. Only when these were sufficient could the Zhou army fight a strong-on-strong battle with Mongolia on the grassland.

In the fall, it was possible to move supplies north. The material transportation capacity brought about by the booming business in the Great Zhou also guaranteed this. But now that winter has arrived, it is a bit difficult to bring supplies back.

The Yellow River, the artery of the Central Plains, was shallow, and the Caohe River in Hebei was even more frozen. Most of the large amount of military supplies that the Great Zhou court had previously sent from the Central Plains to the north were stored in Qing, Xian and other states along the Caohe River. It was impossible to transport them south in time. Even if some of them were shipped to Tianjin Prefecture, they could not be transported south by sea.

In the past two years, Tuolei has also worked hard to find out the sea routes between Zhou and Song. It is said that in the three months from mid-September to early December every year, the north wind can be used to speed up the sailing speed. These three months are the most favorable window period for the northern fleet to sail south.

But in fact, the window is only two months from mid-September to mid-November. In late November every year, the ports of Tianjin Prefecture, Gaizhou, Fuzhou and other places in the Great Zhou would be frozen, and most of the fleets that could go south would depart from Licheng Port in Goryeo.

Since the port is frozen, what else can we talk about? The supplies in Tianjin Prefecture can't even be transported to Shandong, let alone from Shandong to the Central Plains battlefield!
Not to mention military supplies, even the elite troops in the north of the Great Zhou could only return to the Central Plains if they traveled light.

The reality that various parts of the Central Plains were constantly being destroyed made it impossible for them to replenish sufficient military supplies at their destination, and they eventually came under the iron hoof of the Mongolian army exhausted and unarmed.

Tuo Lei could guarantee that if the Mongolian army, after all the looting, still felt that the military supplies were a bit tight, then the Zhou army coming south to rescue would have to eat grass roots to survive. Considering that the Mongolian army destroyed a large number of villages and towns in the shortest time and created no less than hundreds of thousands of refugees, if the Zhou army still wanted to pretend to be a royal army to help the refugees, it would only be ten times more embarrassed than the Mongolians.

The first half of the whole Wufu plan had been successfully implemented, and Tolui was looking forward to the second half with great excitement. For this reason, he had been running around since the army entered the Central Plains, making sure that the situation on each battlefield developed exactly as he expected, without any surprises.

During the rise of Guo Ning's power, there were only two real battles with the Mongolian army, one in Shandong and one in Hebei. In the two battles, Tolui's troops and Genghis Khan's headquarters were defeated respectively. However, his tactics were the same, which was to use a certain target to lure the Mongolian army to advance straight in, and then wait for the enemy to tire themselves out.

But this time, the Mongols must be the ones waiting for the enemy to attack. Leaving Kaifeng or another big city behind would also be a good bait to attract the main force of the Zhou army.

Of course, nothing in war is absolute at any time. Just like when the Mongols set up a large group to hunt, sometimes the weather was suitable and the grass was lush, but after a lot of hard work, they could not see any worthy targets except a few marmots.

There was a little whitewash in what Tuolei had just told the thousand households. That is, he actually had not received any news that the garrisons from all over the Great Zhou were rushing to help, not at all.

Tuolei invaded the Central Plains ten days ago. At present, he had seven thousand households under his command who were ordered to go out to slaughter and plunder. The cavalry's daily route had already threatened Xuzhou in the east, rushed along the river in the north, and once approached Mengjin in the west, burning the ferry there.

The war spread to such a large area within ten days. Even if we look back at the battles of the Mongolian army in the Western Regions, it can be seen as a raging fire.

In the edge of this vast area, there were more than 200 Nakers sent by Tolui to serve as scouts to monitor the movements of the Han army and collect information at any time. Driven by these Nakers, there were half Alejinchi who roamed around freely and half Tolechi who controlled a certain road. There were also many Nayans, centurions, decapitations, and Batuers from five thousand households, a total of 416 cavalry teams.

In addition to such a large number of scouts, there were countless people running around on the road to communicate. There were always people watching over Tolui, and he himself was also paying attention, waiting for Han'er's reinforcements and for the Great Zhou Emperor Guo Ning to arrive with his powerful troops.

The problem is that there is no news at all.

Outside the Mongolian army's sweeping range, countless Han people fled frantically, countless garrisons in the fortresses were anxious to strengthen their defenses, and some guards at the pass took the initiative to dig up bridges and roads. They had all kinds of violent reactions. But the only sign that the Zhou army should have mobilized in a large scale and intended to go south to rescue was not there.

Tolui found this very strange. He knew that the intelligence work of the Great Zhou Dynasty had always been excellent. Before the Wufu Operation, the Mongolian army relied on simple and crude killings to isolate their eyes and ears. But now, the army has rushed into the Central Plains for ten days, and all the previous disguises have completely failed. Anyone in the Great Zhou court who is not a fool can see that their confidant has been hit hard. How could they not rescue?

Perhaps... it was because there were too many frontier warriors in the Great Zhou court. These people were as hard-hearted as stone. How could they hold their ground while watching their own soldiers and civilians being slaughtered? They must have tried their best to mobilize the army, but they were hiding in the distance where the Mongolian scouts could not detect them, and they did not dare to go south easily.

Thinking of this, Tuo Lei could not help but sneer. If an army did not care about the lives of the people under its rule, it would be difficult to control. But with the habits of the Han Dynasty, could it really do that?

Shi Miyuan, the prime minister of the Southern Song Dynasty, did everything he could to eliminate dissidents and secure his position. Even so, he was still hesitant to promise to give way and give up some lives, and the negotiations took several months. The Great Zhou was a newly emerged dynasty, so it had to have some dignity, right? Even if it didn't care about the people, so many military settlements were the foundation of the military!

Tolui never believed that they could bear such losses, never believed that they could endure such massacres.

In order to prepare to capture some larger cities, Tolui had sent people to gather a lot of young captives at Pangang in the east of the city, intending to use them to fill the ditches. At this moment, he was very ruthless, so he waved to Na Ke'er beside him and planned to send someone to order the captives to be taken to the bank of the Yellow River and killed in large numbers, so that the people on the north bank of the river could see it clearly.

But at this moment, a knight suddenly rushed over and said something to the Red Horse Prince Consort. The Red Horse Prince Consort immediately got angry and kicked the knight over.

"What's going on?" Tolui asked.

"The prisoners rioted and killed many of our men."

(End of this chapter)