choke element

Xu Jun stood in front with a sullen face, just pretending that a few civil servants didn't exist.

Li Dadong reckoned that it was because he was too worried about his resolute appearance just now, which aroused the veteran's vigilance.

Tens of thousands of soldiers and horses marched silently, with awe-inspiring momentum.People and horses stomped on the ground, making a dull sound.The sharp sound of arrows and whistles continued to be heard from the rear of the queue, which meant that the ambushing teams of the Jin Army had escaped from the pursuit and escaped from the wetlands and lakes.As for when he will join the main force and how many people who went to fight will come back, Xu Jun doesn't seem to be bothered to say, and it's inconvenient for civil officials to ask.

In any case, there was always a battle.Asked by outsiders, at least they responded decisively, without losing Huang Song's face.

Zhao Shanxiang comforted himself in this way, and turned to greet the small school next to the queue, asking him some military trifles.

His son, Zhao Rulu, was discussing marriage with Shi Xiang's daughter, and he himself was regarded as Shi Xiang's capable wingman. He guessed that Shi Xiang might not necessarily give up on his family, and his mentality was more relaxed than Li Dadong's.

In the early years of Jiading, he served as a judge of Wuwei Army, served as a transit judge in Huainan, and served as a prisoner in Huaixi. He asked about military affairs, but he still had ideas.After a while, I came back and told Li Dadong that the direction of the march at the moment was to cross Feishui via Xiebu, and then go directly to Luzhou.

The team responsible for escorting the old coins was left far behind the team, and now they have sent extra capable people to surround them, and it is expected to return two days in advance, so there will be no hindrance.What's more, the Jin cavalry was insufficient, and the marching route was close to the river, so they didn't dare to drive away for a long time, so they can rest assured.

"There is not enough cavalry, so you dare not stay away? The Jin people are fierce. Seeing that we are weak, how can there be no reason not to pursue them?"

"..."

Zhao Shanxiang was stunned for a moment, and wanted to remind Li Dadong that just now everyone was still angry and said that they would chase the dead and chase the north and beat the Jin army.However, it is normal for court officials in the Song Dynasty to talk about ornithosis. You think the two truths are too abrupt, and the other party can say seven or eight other truths when they open their mouths.

At the moment, he only explained: "A soldier who died later reported that the Jin army is busy cleaning up the battlefield and picking up arrows."

"So what do you say?"

"Just now the two armies came into contact with each other for a while. Our army rained down arrows, and the Jin army also had archers to fight back. However, many of the arrows they shot were polished by themselves with old things. It is estimated that the Kaifeng mansion gathered troops in vain. Tens of thousands, it looks scary on the surface, but it is actually very embarrassing. In my opinion, not only Xu Dutong does not want to fight, but the Jinren may not be willing to fight..."

After hearing these words, Li Dadong felt depressed for a while, and felt that he should insist on fighting just now, but then he thought that he no longer had to be on the battlefield, and felt a lot more relaxed.

He smiled reservedly, and whispered to Zhao Shanxiang:
"Xu Jun's idea is nothing more than seeing that he is not happy to pay the New Year's coins, and he deceives us that we have just arrived and lack foundation. Therefore, he deliberately avoids the war and wants to take advantage of the momentum of the Jin army going south to give us a bad reputation."

After all, he is a scholar of the Hanlin Academy, so there are indeed some clever places, and this angle is very good!

Zhao Shanxiang nodded again and again, and then frowned: "I see...Xu Jun is a veteran general, and he is well-known all over the Huaihe River. As expected, he is in a difficult position for us. How will we deal with the next battle?"

Li Dadong said in a deep voice: "The Jin people in Kaifeng and Zhongdu are separated from each other in Shandong by the Red Coat Army entrenched in the military prefecture west of Taishan and Yishan. This situation has been maintained for more than a year. It's obvious that neither side wants to face each other head-on and cause a large-scale war. So this time the Jin people went south to plunder, and they may not be willing to make much noise in Huainan..."

"If you really want to win Huainan, then if you go around a circle and face Ding Haijun from Shandong!"

"That's right!"

Li Dadong motioned Zhao Shanxiang to lower his voice, and then continued: "I think most of their strength is directed at Jingxi Road, at most Qingyuan Mansion on Lizhou West Road...those places have nothing to do with us, we have their own Fang and An Bing are going to have a headache! They are all called soldiers, how can they not handle it?"

"Then Huainan..."

"Xu Jun put on such a bad face, do we really have no one available? We have plenty of available people in Anqing Mansion, Zhenzhou, Chuzhou, and Yangzhou!"

"This……"

Of course Zhao Shanxiang knew which route Li Dadong was talking about.But the identities of this group of soldiers and horses are somewhat special, and Li Dadong suddenly wants to use them, which cannot but make people hesitate a little.

It turned out that after the Southern Crossing, the original imperial army system of the Song Dynasty collapsed, so it attached great importance to the role of local force, and often granted local officials the power to raise their own financial resources and recruit troops.The town soldiers recruited by these officials belonged to the Privy Council and the Infantry Division in front of the imperial court, but they were actually controlled and dispatched by local civil servants with the titles of system envoys, appeasement envoys, and Xuanfu envoys. , Left Wing Army, are well-known among them.

In the past few years, the situation along the northern border has been complicated, and the former imperial army, which was originally the backbone, known as the garrison soldiers, performed very unusually during the Kaixi Northern Expedition, which greatly disappointed the central government.Therefore, the literati and officials along the northern border gradually gained authority here.

For example, the Huaidong side began to aggressively recruit the rest of the Red Coat Army who had fled from the north, and gradually formed the so-called Loyalty Army; while the Huaixi side generally worked hard on the smuggling force of the local people’s self-funded cottages and tea merchants.

However, the cottages in Huaixi were too scattered, and they were even broken by the Jin army recently, and many people became prisoners captured for the Jin army; and the smuggling forces of the tea merchants were too close to the Kaifeng government. To send people to exterminate them, they have already shown mercy.

Therefore, it is natural to rely on the loyal army in Huaidong.

However, it has only been a few months since the formation of the Loyalty Army, and there are still many complicated backgrounds.

For example, the Loyalty Army itself is divided into two groups. There is the unit of Yang You, the "Nine Kings" of the Red Coat Army recently promoted by Shi Xiang, and the unit of Liu Quan and Guo Yaoer, who were previously taken in by Ying Chunzhi and Li Jue. Said that there is still the support of the fourth lady Yang Miaozhen behind her.

The two are competing with each other, and there are entanglements and conflicts of interests.At the same time, they have conflicts with the local management of the imperial court.And the recruitment process of the so-called Loyalty Army actually affected the interests of the two commanders of Jiankang and Zhenjiang of the imperial army, but in Lin'an, there were always people talking with the ancestral law, always trying to check and balance each other, provoking contradiction.

This chaotic situation is naturally inseparable from history.

Shi Xianggong is really not the kind of strongman with an iron fist. He lives by balance and patchwork every day, and he thinks the same way in military and political affairs.So even if the subordinates go out with powerful wings, they will inevitably tear each other down.

At this moment, Li Dadong and Zhao Shanxiang looked at each other, thinking of Ying Chunzhi and Li Jue, who were originally highly valued, but now they are looking at the unlucky ones, and thinking of last year, they were only county magistrates, and this year they flew high into the blue sky Jia She, thinking of what Shi Kuanzhi, the son of Shi Xiang, and Jia Sidao, the son of Jia She, have been doing in Zhenzhou and Anqing Mansion since last year...

These people are all historical figures, but some people are already unlucky, but they still cling to the soldiers in their hands; He thought he was a family member of Shi Xiang, and he despised the authority of court officials.

Of course, the last item can only be thought about in private, and it cannot be said.

Now that the Jin army is going south, if we don't take the opportunity to weaken their strength, when will we wait?

"I will write a letter and report, saying that the battle in Huainan is urgent, and we must drive all the ministries to meet the enemy."

"I will go to Anqing Mansion and Zhenzhou first!"