I am Emperor Shizu of Song

Chapter 92: The General Shocks the Emperor

"Complete victories in both the Wujiang and Huzhou battles? 30,000 enemies annihilated, 8,000 beheaded? Two enemy commanders killed?! Hiss… And the commander of the Huzhou bandit army, Zhao Zicheng himself led the charge, personally beheading him in front of the soldiers of both armies, before a huge crowd of people?"

After reading the battle reports from Suzhou and Huzhou, Tong Guan took a deep breath.

If this happened in World of Warcraft, it would definitely be deeper than the one Onyxia took.

Tong Guan first rubbed his eyes, then carefully looked at the seal and signature on the battle report.

Indeed, neither of these two battle reports was written by Zhao Zicheng himself. The Suzhou report was submitted by Zhao Lin, the Suzhou prefect, and the Huzhou report was submitted by Wei Xian, the Huzhou prefect. Therefore, the authenticity of the content is highly reliable, and it is impossible for the prefects of both states to be shielding Zhao Zicheng. Furthermore, each of their reports mentioned that they had already prepared the head and were awaiting inspection by the imperial court.

According to them, Zhao Zicheng, as the temporary Tongpan of Suzhou, only boosted morale according to the court's laws, led several commanders of the state's wing troops to defend and counterattack, and when the counterattack was successful, he pursued the enemy out of the country, killing them all the way from Wujiang to Huzhou.

In fact, there are certainly some discrepancies, but the battle report must be slightly embellished, which is also reasonable. Zhao Lin and Wei Xian both adopted this writing style on this detail.

Neither of them had discussed it before and just took the initiative to use such wording. It was because they knew the ancestral system of the Song Dynasty and the "Song Criminal Code" too well, so they subconsciously created an image for Zhao Zicheng that "he continued to pursue the victim without interruption after self-defense", so as to avoid being nitpicked by people and being said that "the defense had been interrupted, and continuing to pursue the victim would be an overstepping of authority, which is excessive defense/intentional injury".

This white lie undoubtedly misled Tong Guan to some extent, and made him imagine in his mind the image of a young hero who "fought fiercely for several days, chased and killed for hundreds of miles, and was invincible."

"In this world, is there anyone who can take the head of an enemy general amidst a vast army, and he's a civil servant who graduated from the Imperial Academy? Could martial arts even be innate? Such a person, reckless and impulsive, without regard for the consequences, is quite possible... He declared that Zhu Jie deserved his punishment and acted on his own initiative. This shouldn't be an attempt to shift the blame onto the emperor and seek credit for himself. Perhaps he simply didn't think it through."

Although Tong Guan was later listed among the Six Thieves and a treacherous minister, he was indeed better at "martial arts" than the other five thieves. This may be because as a eunuch, he had an unattainable admiration for truly heroic heroes.

After reading about Zhao Zicheng's recent battle achievements, he was subconsciously impressed and was just waiting for the official confirmation of the results. If everything was as the battle report said, then at worst he would use the power given to him by the emperor to help Zhao Zicheng and speak well of him.

Thinking of this, Tong Guan called his attendants and gave them a few instructions.

"Fang La is besieging Hangzhou urgently. The city's fate is uncertain. We cannot wait for the follow-up infantry to gather. Pass on my order to mobilize two battalions of accompanying Western Army cavalry, plus the local Jiang Defense Corps of Zhenjiang Prefecture, to gather 5,000 men. Send them south as quickly as possible to Huzhou and Xiuzhou to assist the local garrisons in rescuing Hangzhou.

The enemy army is very strong, and the reinforcements may not be a match for Fang La, so we should let them play it safe and advance step by step. We only need to divide Fang La's forces so that Hangzhou can hold out for a while longer."

Historically, Tong Guan arrived in Jiangnan three months after Fang La's uprising. Now, it's only been a month and a half since Fang La's uprising. However, the troops Tong Guan has arrived with are only the vanguard light cavalry. If the main infantry force is already assembled, it would be more than two months after Fang La's uprising, which is a reasonable timeframe.

However, the military's equipment readiness is not as good as it was historically. Many units lack complete equipment, and the prolonged period of peace has left arsenals severely depleted. Many pieces of equipment that exist only on the books have either mysteriously disappeared or rusted and decayed from years of disrepair when they are finally deployed.

Moreover, in history, another important reason why the Western Army came to quell the Fang La Rebellion three months later was that local reports were slow and the Secretariat controlled by Cai Jing initially thought the matter was not a big deal, repeatedly delayed it, and wanted to cover up the matter, so there was almost no effective response in the first month.

In this life, before Fang La rebelled, Zhao Zicheng repeatedly wrote petitions requesting the abolition of the Flower and Stone Gang. The matter caused a big stir, and he also predicted that if the Flower and Stone Gang was not abolished, something unexpected would happen sooner or later.

Public opinion had been heating up for a long time, and students such as Chen Dong had been paying attention to it. In addition, Zhao Zicheng's people and Wei Xian helped to bring the matter to the forefront as soon as possible.

Therefore, when Cai Jing's people received the news of the Jiangnan upheaval, they could no longer cover it up on the first day. Since they had saved a month or so, it was normal for Tong Guan to arrive so quickly.

……

Tong Guan ordered the local garrison troops in Zhenjiang to march south to reinforce Hu and Xiu. It took one or two days to prepare for the army's departure. It took at least two days to march along the Jiangnan Canal into Taihu Lake. It took another two days to cross Taihu Lake, land in Hu and Xiu, and set up camp again.

In total, it will take at least until the end of early October before the troops can be deployed on the front line again and return to combat status.

These five or six days are enough time for the express messenger to travel 600 miles to convey the latest situation in Jiangnan to Bian Jing.

The victory reports from Huzhou and Suzhou were also processed again by Tong Guan, who attached his own summary and then sent them to Zhao Ji in Bian Jing.

Tong Guan also desperately needed a victory to reassure people and maintain the emperor's confidence in him.

Originally, in history, Tong Guan had just arrived in the south of the Yangtze River when he came across the victory news that Wang Ziwu, the commander of Xiuzhou, had defended and counterattacked in Xiuzhou and repelled Fang La. So he rewarded Wang Ziwu and others generously and reported to Bian Jing as soon as possible. As a positive example of suppressing the rebellion, he also promoted the Battle of Xiuzhou as a "turning point in suppressing the rebellion."

In this life, Zhao Zicheng's military achievements caught up with those of Prince Wu of the original time and space, and he was then established as a positive example.

Back in Bianjing, the time difference between the two messages Zhao Ji received from Jiangnan was much greater than that received by Tong Guan. As early as the first two days of October, Zhao Ji received a joint memorial from Suzhou's three prefecture-level officials, requesting the execution of Zhu Jie to appease public anger. The memorial detailed Zhao Zicheng's actions. The subsequent battle report, announcing Zhao Zicheng's great victory, arrived five days later.

In contrast, it took only one day for Tong Guan to see the two pieces of news. Because the first piece of news was about domestic affairs rather than military affairs, no one would specifically inform Tong Guan who was on the way, so Tong Guan was "offline" for a while.

Zhao Ji was never "offline" from beginning to end, so it was normal for the messages he saw to have a time difference. There was a time difference of several days when the messages were sent and when they were received.

Therefore, Zhao Ji was very angry when he learned that his distant nephew had openly killed Zhu Zhen, who had died at the hands of thieves.

Zhao Ji's political acumen and ability to manipulate power were actually even better than Tong Guan's, so he realized at the first moment that his distant nephew was "taking credit for himself and bringing disgrace to the emperor and father."

But Zhao Ji also knew that this was the critical moment to quell the rebellion, so no matter how unhappy he was, he had to keep it to himself for the time being.

So he was angry for five or six days, feeling uncomfortable all over every day. Even his beloved concubine, Concubine Liu, did not dare to provoke him.

It was not until the ninth day of October that the news of the great victory in Suzhou and Huzhou finally reached Bianliang.

The news of the great victory was personally delivered to Zhao Ji by the great eunuch Liang Shicheng. Of course, he had to do it personally to announce the good news to the emperor and make him happy.

Neither Cai Jing nor Wang Fu was able to seize this opportunity.

"Your Majesty! Great joy! Great victory in Suzhou! Great victory in Huzhou! 30,000 bandits annihilated! Two of their generals beheaded!"

When Zhao Ji heard about this, his first reaction was that Tong Guan had won the battle, and he couldn't help but feel very happy:
"Oh? Tong Qing's advance was so rapid? He reached Suzhou and Huzhou in less than a month, and immediately launched a counterattack? Tong Qing is truly a pillar of the nation!"

Liang Shicheng was stunned for a moment, then explained, "General Tong has indeed arrived in Jiangnan, but he has only just reached Zhenjiang, and only the vanguard light cavalry has arrived. The main force of the infantry, over 100,000 strong, is still along the Huai River, and the fastest has already reached Huaiyin."

The great victory in Suzhou and Huzhou was won by the local Xiang army in Jiangnan."

Zhao Ji was stunned, then he unfolded the victory report and examined it carefully.

"Zhao Zicheng, amidst a host of thousands, slew the leader of the bandit army attacking Huzhou? He led the troops himself, defeating the enemy with a single blow? He fought two battles in three days, beheading eight thousand people? Hiss..."

Zhao Ji was stunned for a while, then went back to look at the cover over and over again. He found that this victory report was endorsed by Tong Guan, and was followed by Tong Guan's own analysis and congratulatory words.

If even Tong Guan acknowledged this record, then it must be true.

However, this matter was too unbelievable, so Zhao Ji still had Tong Guan's seal and handwriting checked repeatedly. Fortunately, Liang Shicheng also guessed that the emperor would be shocked and confused, so he did a very thorough job of relevant work, allowing the emperor to check whatever he wanted, and the final result was of course true.

Zhao Ji suddenly came to his senses and recalled that he had met his distant nephew more than a year ago when he was in Genyue and Fanlou.

Although the other party left a good impression on him at that time, at best Zhao Ji felt that "this boy is similar to Kai'er, and both are talented and outstanding young people in the royal family", but that was all.

After all, the two have too little contact and their understanding is very one-sided.

Zhao Ji didn't know much about other aspects of Zhao Zicheng, so he subconsciously put himself in the shoes of his third son, Prince Yun Zhao Kai, and thought that "other aspects of Zhao Zicheng must be similar to Kai'er's."

Now it seems that how could it be similar! His son Zhao Kai is definitely not the same as Zhao Zicheng in terms of martial arts!

Why didn’t I see last year that such a handsome and elegant young man could actually fight?

Zhao Ji's shock was several times greater than Tong Guan's. Because Tong Guan had never met Zhao Zicheng, there was no first impression, and no cognitive contrast could occur.

Zhao Ji had met Zhao Zicheng before, and precisely because he had met him before, he felt the contrast was even more dramatic.

Zhao Ji could not connect his nephew who spoke eloquently last year about "The virtue of the Son of Heaven is to pacify the people, why Emperor Taizu should have passed the throne to Taizong so that our great Song Dynasty could replace the virtue of Zhou Dynasty" with the image of him beheading the enemy general in the midst of thousands of troops.

(End of this chapter)