choke element

Chapter 1050: Mission (Part )

The development of the Great Zhou to this point was achieved through hard work. The largest, most brutal and most glorious battle was the one that took place in the deep winter of the fifth year of Longwu, north of Jingzhao and on the banks of the Yellow River.

In fact, everyone in the delegation was well aware of the course of that war.

Because every two years in the past ten years, the Great Zhou would choose a place within its territory to hold a grand martial arts competition. All the routes and provinces of the Great Zhou, as well as the vassal states of Jiangnan, Mobei, and overseas, would send teams to participate. The number of elite soldiers and generals participating in the first competition was several hundred, and by the fifth competition, there were fifty-five teams with more than three thousand people.

The three thousand people gambled on the reputation and expectations of the local military and civilians to participate in dozens of competitions such as horse riding, archery, short weapons, long weapons, hand-to-hand combat, weightlifting, throwing, marching, polo, and rowing. The process of each event simulated the battles of the founding of the Great Zhou Dynasty, interspersed the competitions between large-scale exercises, and in the end, the team with the most victories won the championship of the entire competition.

The team that won the championship would receive rewards from the court, and the winners would receive special treatment in the future, whether they were in the military, politics, or even farming or business. For this reason, the influence of this martial arts competition has been growing in recent years, and the passion of the participants has been getting higher and higher.

When the delegation set out, it happened to be the first time that a martial arts competition was held on the banks of the Qiantang River in the Jiangnan vassal state. The simulated battle was the decisive battle that Yuan Haowen had mentioned. The members of the delegation were specially invited to watch the exercise.

Although the soldiers did not use real swords and guns but were equipped with sticks and armor, the warriors were fierce by nature and would never let the exercise become gentle. Every step of the exercise was filled with the fierceness of fighting on the battlefield. At the end of the day, blood was splattered on the field. There were no less than two or three hundred people who were seriously injured and left the field or even needed emergency treatment by medical officers.

Compared with this high-intensity confrontation, the one-on-one fighting popular in Jiangnan was just a performance. Many weak people in Jiangnan were frightened just by watching this scene, and they were even more amazed when they saw the ups and downs of the war being displayed one by one in the exercises.

The role of the martial arts competition in showing off the military might was fully demonstrated. The members of the delegation were naturally excited to watch it, and they also reviewed the entire process of the battle.

At that time, the Mongolian Khan led his troops to Pujin, intending to join the rebels and intercept our army. However, the Emperor of the Great Zhou saw through the plot and sent light cavalry to block it. When the two sides first engaged in battle, our army was outnumbered and was surrounded by Mongolian cavalry several times.

The most dangerous time was when the Mongolian cavalry broke through a gap in the Zhou army's main formation and could rush in at any time through the gap and break the army formation. The generals around the emperor were scattered, and the only ones that could be mobilized were more than a hundred cavalry guards. So the emperor fought in person, and waited until the army stabilized the situation and forced back this wave of attacks. More than half of the guards were killed or wounded, and the emperor himself was wounded all over, with blood staining his military robe.

After the battle that day, various units of the Zhou army arrived one after another. Seeing that the emperor had more troops, he dispatched his generals to the north and west to seize various towns, forts, and passes, thus reducing the Mongols' space for activities. He also issued an edict to send troops to the southeast and north of the river to disrupt the Mongols' flanks.

During this period, Gao Xin, the deputy commander of the Longxiang Army, led 500 elite cavalrymen to raid the Mongolian ranch in Luochuan, and met the Mongolian army that came to rescue and defeated them in a battle. Then Gao Xin's troops were attacked by a large group of Mongolian troops and suffered heavy losses. Gao Xin ordered the troops to retreat first, and he led his own cavalrymen to fight hard in the rear.

When the Mongolian general Subutai was about to kill Gao Xin, Wanyan Chenheshang arrived with hundreds of cavalry. In the gully area south of Luochuan, the power of the heavy armored cavalry was fully exerted. The bodies of the Mongolian soldiers filled the valleys, and the number of dead was incalculable. But Wanyan Chenheshang himself was also seriously injured.

This scale of battle was only a small part of the entire battle. The battle lasted for more than ten days, with more than 100,000 troops from both sides fighting each other in a range of hundreds of miles. The two armies repeatedly maneuvered and attacked each other, and encounters, obstructions, ambushes and killings of all sizes broke out one after another, like fleeting waves on the roaring sea.

However, what was rising beneath the waves was not foam, but layers of blood and countless corpses.

The cost of such a war was also astronomical. In order to support the war, the Mongolian army plundered the savings of the Xia Kingdom. Many knights had begun to drink horse blood, eat camel meat, and collect a large number of clothes and weapons from the dead. The army of the Great Zhou was used to fighting rich wars. Even if they did not carry various heavy weapons and equipment, the amount of supplies used was also huge. Especially the loss of weapons, even if Hebei and other places fully shipped supplies, they could not afford it. There were many cases where sword and shield soldiers had no shields and crossbowmen had no arrows, and they only fought with short weapons.

It must be admitted that this was exactly the purpose of the Mongolian army's large-scale mobilization of the main force of the Zhou army. After losing the advantage in equipment, the Han people, like the Mongolians, could only rely on courage to fight.

In the fierce battles, the number of casualties was incalculable. Because the battles were prolonged, many officers and staff officers were killed, and the organization of the troops was disrupted and reorganized, so it was impossible to timely compile casualty data. Some lieutenants and captains who originally led many subordinates were simply used as ordinary soldiers, and some ordinary soldiers were forced to become the chief officers of a unit because their superiors died one after another.

Even the war horses in the army could feel the sadness of not being able to find the bodies of their comrades on the desolate battlefield, and they neighed and groaned from time to time in the night.

The Mongolian army also suffered huge losses. Every member of this army relied on the instincts shaped by long-term slaughter and looting to persevere.

Genghis Khan ran around all day, repeatedly encouraging everyone day and night, telling everyone that this was the best and only chance to defeat the powerful enemy. If they won, there would be no more opponents for the Mongols under the sky, and the Mongols would dominate the world, and everyone would get wealth and glory beyond imagination. If they lost, the Mongols would lose their grasslands, their dignity, and their future. At the same time, the execution squad in the Mongolian army responsible for beheading fugitives never stopped.

The two ferocious beasts were covered in wounds but they were still fighting fiercely. Neither of them was willing to retreat, and neither of them could grasp the chance of victory that was always just ahead.

The situation continued until New Year's Day of the following year, when heavy snow fell across Qin and Long.

When the battlefield was covered with snow, the snow was one foot deep on the flat ground, and the sight was all desolate. At this time, the scouts could not tell the direction, the horses were difficult to drive, and the soldiers were frozen and could not form an army. Only the most elite and best-protected group of people could persist in this environment.

The Emperor of the Great Zhou and the Mongol Khan both chose a certain time to launch a final attack on their opponents; and the marching routes planned by the two sides were so close.

The moment the two armies' sights crossed the falling snow and looked at each other, it was the scene described by Yuan Haowen. The long-distance mobility of the Mongols and the advantage of the weapons of the Han people could not be fully utilized here, but instead forced the most outstanding warriors of the two proud nations to display their will, strength and all combat skills without reservation.

Thousands and thousands of soldiers were crowded together, fighting fiercely. When their weapons broke, they picked up the weapons on the ground and used them. When their horses died, they staggered forward. When they were injured, they roared and continued to fight until they had no more strength. When they died in battle, they fell in the snow, letting the white snow cover their red bodies.

Yuan Haowen was a scholar, and he did not actually participate in the fighting. But after he rushed to Qinlong from the rear, he watched the battle scene from a distance as a member of a temporary staff team.

So he clearly remembered the scene he saw at that time, and the roar that filled his ears at that time, which was inspired by the vitality of countless people and then merged into the sky above the battlefield. In this roar, the once invincible conquerors suffered defeat again, and this defeat completely broke their backbone, making them lose their original sharpness from then on, and they had to admit that the newly rising Han Empire had the power to conquer everything.

Even though ten years had passed, Yuan Haowen still felt excited when he recalled the situation at that time. And that victory gave him the confidence that as a Han Chinese, he did not need to be afraid anywhere.

It's not just Yuan Haowen, every member of the delegation is like this.

So when the Arab cavalry captain finally killed the Madans in pieces and turned back to boast about his own military strength, he found that although the delegation was on high alert, there was no admiration in the eyes of the members.

Yuan Haowen looked at him and asked doubtfully, "I heard that these Madan people were originally kind residents near the port, cooperating with many caravans and even praised by a certain emir... The situation in your country is so tense that even these originally good people have been forced to become bandits?"

After hearing what the interpreter said, the cavalry captain's face turned serious and he spoke a lot in a gibberish. The interpreter listened and did not repeat what he said to Yuan Haowen for a while.

Yuan Haowen urged him a few times before he reluctantly said, "The captain is saying that the pagans who are destined to go to hell are coming soon, and all kinds of hypocrites will do harm sooner or later. If they want to die, let them die; even if they don't want to die, the Caliph will get rid of them sooner or later."

After the interpreter finished speaking, a look of fear appeared on his face. Apparently in their cultural tradition, once the topic extended to pagans, hypocrites, etc., it was very serious. Even if they were close family members and friends, once there was a conflict over this, it would often be a fight to the death.

But these guests from the East were all pagans, and it was said that they believed in thousands of gods. The captain said that the pagans should go to hell. To the pagans, wasn't it a threat?

At this time, the cavalry captain also realized something was wrong, and hurriedly pointed at the interpreter and said repeatedly: "Tell them that pagans are different from pagans."

Fortunately, the Han people generally did not take this seriously, and everyone laughed it off, and the matter was over. Only a few members of the delegation secretly murmured that there were warlords everywhere, and there were foreign enemies, and there were also ethnic and religious disputes inside... We are all educated, and this situation is familiar to us! It is clearly the end of the world!