choke element

Chapter 992 Iron Fire (Part )

"This..." Huo Luchi had absolutely no idea what Mu Huali was talking about.

So he took the exquisite porcelain bowl from the rider and poured kumis into it. The kumis was fresh and foamy, and the leather bag containing the kumis had two layers, the inner and outer layers, and the gap between the two layers was filled with ice cubes that were about to melt. It was undoubtedly a pleasure to drink such a cool drink after a long journey.

After the Mongolian army established a huge base in the Western Regions, they also absorbed many systems and cultures of the great powers in the Western Regions. The Mongolian generals who returned from the Western Regions had improved their manners and enjoyment, and their lives were very different from their previous life of eating raw meat and drinking blood.

For example, this double-skin bag for holding ice cubes has been a treasure passed down in Khwarazm for hundreds of years. In the early days when Khwarazm was still weak, they made two-layer lead molds, filled them with ice cubes, and then shipped watermelons. They were then transported to Baghdad as tribute to Wasig, the ninth caliph of the Abbasid Dynasty.

Over the next few hundred years, the custom of using ice to insure fruits and drinks has been passed down, and the lead molds for transporting ice have gradually turned into leather bags under the influence of nomadic peoples.

When the Mongolian army marched long distances, they used to drink goat milk and horse milk to maintain their strength. After storing horse milk in sealed leather bags for several days, it fermented naturally. Some of the milk that was not tightly sealed and became rancid was discarded, and the remaining was kumis. The taste of this simple fermentation product is really hard to describe, but after combining it with the Khwarezmian people's ice storage method, it suddenly became an indispensable delicacy for Mongolian nobles.

After taking a few gulps of kumis, Mu Huali threw the porcelain bowl back, looked at the village he was in, and sighed with satisfaction.

"This should be the last village within hundreds of miles around?"

At this time, another person climbed up the mountain road and heard what Mu Huali said. He immediately shouted: "Yes. According to your instructions, we broke through the village in the shortest time and killed all the people in this area... To do this, we used all our precious iron cannons!"

There is actually a hint of anger in these words?
Before the Western Expedition, Muhua was a Wanhu who was responsible for the important task. During the Western Expedition, his status and power continued to rise, almost on par with the Khan's sons. As the classes within the Mongolian army became increasingly clear, even the ordinary Qianhu Nayan had to kowtow to Muhuali when he saw him.

Who dares to be so bold and speak like this?
The Batuers surrounding Mu Huali turned around together and saw a person who came with an unhappy face. It turned out to be Yeliyasi, an old subordinate of Mu Huali and a powerful captain in charge of guarding the grassland.

When Mu Huali first led the Five Surrenders to surrender, Yeliyas was Mu Huali's capable subordinate, and he had followed Mu Huali to successively capture the Jin Dynasty's Beijing Dading Prefecture and Zhongdu Daxing Prefecture. Later, when Mu Huali participated in the Western Expedition, he was impressed by Yeliyas's quick thinking, so he kept him in his hometown.

Unfortunately, Yeliyas was no match for the members of the Golden Family, and the interests of the tribe had been robbed a lot in the past few years. Even the cash cow he had been managing, the market for trading with the Central Plains, fell into the hands of Beilegutai. So he had always been in a sullen state in the past few months.

In order to prevent him from getting into trouble due to his anger, Mu Huali transferred him back to his side after returning to the grassland. But Yeliyas was unhappy at the moment, not because of the loss at that time.

He strode to Mu Huali and asked through gritted teeth, "It doesn't matter if we leave the thirty or so villages deep in the mountains alone. When our army passes by, the people in the villages will not be more daring than the yellow rats digging holes everywhere on the grassland..."

"They are just a bunch of bandits. They are no match for us. This trip is to let the surrendered people see blood and get used to killing."

"But we have used up two hundred iron cannons here! How many do we have in total? These things can be used to attack the strongest city walls, why are they all wasted! This is like sending the most ferocious hunting dogs to eat carrion!"

Yeliyas asked in a low voice. Because he was so excited, his saliva sprayed into Mu Huali's ears.

When Batu's men saw how furious he was, they quickly gathered around him, ready to capture him.

Mu Huali waved his hand to let the guards back off. He and Yeliyas had known each other for many years, so they wouldn't fall out over something like this. Mu Huali could understand Yeliyas's emotions.

The nomadic peoples on the grasslands were indeed less civilized than the regimes outside the grasslands. After the rise of the Mongols, they clearly realized this, so when they were attacking everywhere, they attached great importance to absorbing advanced knowledge that could be used in war. This is what is meant by "relying on the horsepower of the north and the skills of the Central Plains."

At the beginning of the war between Mongolia and Jin, before attacking Chang, Huan and Fu, the Mongols first conquered Dongsheng and Yunnei, north of Datong Prefecture, in order to gather craftsmen there. Later, when they invaded the Central Plains, they promoted Jin officers who knew how to make siege equipment to general managers and marshals several times.

When Mu Huali was in Dading Prefecture in Beijing, he also relied on the Han armed forces active in the local area to urgently manufacture many machines.

These weapons did not play the expected role in the subsequent battle with the Dinghai Army. Firstly, because the offensive and defensive forces of the two sides were different, the Dinghai Army was full of fierce men, and they were able to attack the Mongolian army all the way; secondly, in terms of the advantages of weapons, the Dinghai Army's gunpowder weapons were unstoppable. In comparison, the Mongolian hastily put together gadgets were not worth showing off.

However, the failure of their expedition to Central Plains also taught the Mongols a lesson. With their conqueror instinct, they discovered the great value of gunpowder weapons and continued to try to realize it during their westward expedition.

Such an attempt is very difficult.

It was difficult for the brutal and rude Mongolian nobles to become leaders in technological research; the small number of Han craftsmen who followed the army had to undertake a huge amount of weapons repair and maintenance work, and they had to strive hard for living conditions that would allow them to survive, so it was difficult for them to come up with sudden inspiration.

It took a long time to complete the process, until a group of craftsmen who had been looted from the Xia Kingdom were transferred to a certain place and some of the Tangut people's sharp weapons, "fire caltrops", were returned. Only then did progress in this regard gradually emerge.

After the army returned to the grassland, the thousand-household Nayans who remained in the grassland generally lacked confidence in attacking the Central Plains. The Khan deliberately gathered them together, demonstrated the power of the iron cannon, and told them that the Mongols also had the same weapons as the Han people in the Central Plains.

Yeliyas was present at the time. He witnessed with his own eyes an iron weapon the size of a water jar exploding, and dozens of slaves in armor bleeding from all their orifices and falling to the ground dead. He also witnessed a larger jar exploding, and a fence made of thick wood stacked up toppled over.

Yeliyas was delighted by this and felt that the situation was about to turn around.

But not long after, Mu Huali told him privately. Too many processes are controlled by the foreigners with ulterior motives. The manufacture, transportation and storage of such weapons are very difficult for the grassland regime. 2 The quality of the current batch is almost completely out of control. It is very likely that the previous iron cannon will burst out with great power, while the next iron cannon will only emit a puff of black smoke. Not to mention that the stable supply of iron and gunpowder has never been achieved.

All Mu Huali could do was to take advantage of the opportunity of Yeke Mongol Ulus to start building the capital of the grassland and try to reproduce many of the processes that the people of the Central Plains were accustomed to. During this period, Liyas also contributed the few Han craftsmen he had. But it was not a one-day or one-year job after all, and it required a long period of hard work.

Until now, the Mongolian army still had very few iron cannons available, and Mu Huali had only two or three hundred of them.

This powerful weapon is so precious that its manufacture and use must be under strict supervision. That is why Mu Huali personally led the so-called artillery army to the south.

Yeliyas originally thought that after sweeping the mountainous area, the vanguard would continue to advance, using the iron cannons in their hands to break through some important pass, thus clearing a path for the follow-up army to break into the Central Plains. Who could have known that before leaving the mountainous area, Mu Huali would have spent all his most important assets just for a group of ant-like bandits and a few shabby villages?
How to fight the next battle?
The passes built by the Han Chinese in the Central Plains are all made of iron. Do you really want to risk your life to crack them?

(End of this chapter)