Do You Know?: I, the Little Cabinet Elder, Regent of the World.

Chapter 87 Expanding the Territory by Two Thousand Miles!
Quechang City.

"What? Dasong wants to borrow five hundred men from me for support?"

The garrison commander, Sengzongbao, looked at the soldier who came down to report the news with a look of astonishment.

The messenger nodded repeatedly.

"How many soldiers does the Great Zhou have?" Sengzongbao asked hesitantly.

The messenger replied confidently, "At least five or six thousand men."

"Five or six thousand?"

Sengzongbao pondered for a moment.

Generally speaking, the difficulty level of attacking armies is three to five times that of defending armies.

Now, the Great Zhou army has five or six thousand soldiers attacking the city, while Da Song has one thousand soldiers defending it, which is three to five times the usual number.

Dasong was anxious, so he asked to borrow five hundred men.

As a fellow commander defending the city, Sengzongbao understood perfectly.

A short while later, five hundred soldiers guarding the city came out.

Little did they know that a large army had quietly arrived forty miles from the border town.

When the army arrives, scouts are naturally indispensable.

"Five hundred people left?"

When the scouts reported it, Wang Shao was somewhat surprised.

He had originally planned a surprise attack on the city.

As a result, the city's garrison strength was suddenly reduced by half?
This is really an unexpected surprise.

"If we capture the border town, the soldiers' morale will soar, and our advance will be unstoppable." Jiang Zhao stood with his hands behind his back, smiling faintly.

It should be noted that the Tibetans were not yet assimilated into the culture of the Tubo people, and their permanent settlements were almost always villages or fortresses.

Compared to besieging a city, besieging a fortress or stronghold is undoubtedly much easier and more difficult.

The two cities, Quechang and Dingqiang, are located on the frontier and are among the few places that are easy to defend and difficult to attack for the Mengjiaoluo and Moershuiba tribes.

Once we capture the border town, taking advantage of the soldiers' high morale, we can launch surprise attacks one after another and take Hezhou in one fell swoop.

Of course, this kind of thing is not difficult in a literal sense; it depends on the individual.

For the vast majority of generals, military strategy is of mediocre talent, and expanding territory is as difficult as ascending to heaven.

Coincidentally, Wang Shao was one of the few people who could easily expand his territory.

"Give the order to proceed to the outskirts of the city, which is ten miles away from the border town."

Jiang Zhao raised his hand and said, "Have the soldiers cook earlier and go to sleep at dusk. At midnight (11 PM to 1 AM), take torches and travel thirty li. Zichun will then attack the city."

Upon hearing this, I immediately sent word.

The tactic of surprise attack has proven effective time and again throughout history.

Throughout the Zhou Dynasty, there was no shortage of brilliant scholars and generals, and Wang Shao was one of those who excelled at surprise attacks.

Jiang Zhao's task is to maintain stability as much as possible. Regardless of whether the surprise attack succeeds or not, he can provide reinforcements.

The cooking fires flickered, and as dusk fell, they were extinguished, allowing the 12,500 soldiers to rest.

The end of midnight.

In the border town, the soldiers guarding the city moved slowly, all of them already quite sleepy.

If you're lucky, you might not encounter any enemy activity for a year or two when defending a city.

It was a boring, repetitive task, and it was the middle of the night; anyone would feel sleepy.

Just then, a torch was suddenly raised.

This was followed by hundreds, or even thousands, of torches.

Before the defending soldiers could react, they were met with a hail of arrows.

"Torpedoes, form up!" With the order, thirty trebuchets were pushed forward.

The catapults advanced, continuously hurling stones into the air.

"Break!" With the command flag waved, the ramming carts and moat bridge carts advanced together, crashing into the city gate.

Archers then fired arrows, leaving the already small Moershuiba tribe unable to defend itself.

"despair!"

"Click!" "Tap!"

With no one to stop the city gate, the gate of the border town was suddenly flung open after repeated ramming.

"kill!"

Everything happened too fast and too suddenly, leaving no room for resistance.

A scout came to report from ten miles away.

"Reporting to the commander, the siege is going well, and the city gates have been breached."

Jiang Zhao, mounted on his horse, gazed at the flickering firelight in the distance and nodded slowly.

"rush to the rescue!"

After he finished speaking, the three armies, totaling 7,500 soldiers, rushed to his aid.

With the city gates breached, the two armies engaged in a fierce and earth-shattering battle.

In less than half an hour, 7,500 people rushed to the aid.

They had 12,500 men to fight against 500.

"I surrender! I am the general! I surrender!" The defending general, Sengzongbao, dressed in armor, knelt down and begged for mercy.

As expected, nearly all 500 men were wiped out, and the battle was a resounding victory!
After a resounding victory in the first battle, the army was rewarded.

The following day, more than 12,000 people headed straight for Nanchuan Village and Anxiang Pass.

Jiang Zhao devised a plan to lure the surrendered garrison commander, Senggezongbao, into the city by having him pretend to be fleeing for help. This allowed them to open the city gates from the inside.

More than 12,000 people, in 32 days, captured three villages and four forts in Hezhou, advancing with unstoppable momentum.

During this time, Gu Tingye arrived as reinforcements, and more than 14,000 people gathered in Xiangzi City, capturing the leader of the Moershui Ba people alive.

This leader of the Moershui people was the cousin of Yulongke, the leader of the Yulongke tribe, one of the largest tribes in Tibet.

May of the seventh year of the Jiayou era.

Jiang Zhao, Gu Tingye, and Wang Shao led only about twenty men and went straight into the Tibetan Yulongke tribe's camp.

Jiang Zhao and Yu Longke slept side by side, and with the condition that "the emperor would bestow a surname upon him and grant him an official position," they successfully persuaded Yu Longke to submit and recruited 120,000 of his followers.

Yu Longke entered the capital and was given the name "Bao Shun" by Emperor Zhao Zhen.

Once this move is completed, it will mean the collapse of the Tibetan alliance, and a large number of pro-Zhou forces will emerge within it.

When the Tibetan king Qusiluo fell seriously ill, Jiang Zhao took the opportunity to openly support the pro-Zhou faction, exacerbating the division within Tibet.

In July, Duke Zhang Fu of Yingguo, Marquis Gu Yankai of Ningyuan, and Marquis Zheng Shun of Zhongjing arrived in Xinjiang. With the strong support of six Grand Secretaries of the Cabinet, Jiang Zhao remained the leader in expanding the territory.

At the end of September, the Tibetans wanted to recapture Hezhou. Gu Yankai and his son Gu Tingye feigned an attack on the Qiang people, which drew the main force of the Tibetans to their aid. On the way, they devised a plan to ambush and annihilate a large number of Tibetan elites, thus stabilizing Hezhou and expanding their territory.

In October, Jiang Zhao manufactured the "matchlock gun," which was a significant leap forward compared to the firearms of the Great Zhou Dynasty. It greatly solved the problems of accuracy and safety and was specifically designed for offensive operations.

Wang Shao ordered his men to carve out an ice road and used matchlock guns and crossbows to suppress the Tibetans, inflicting a major defeat on the enemy army and thus expanding the territory of Taozhou.

January of the eighth year of the Jiayou era.

Transport Commissioner Jiang Zhao and Duke of Yingguo Zhang Fu led the main army, advancing rapidly and capturing Minzhou, Diezhou, and Dangzhou in succession.

The transport judge Shen Kuo devised the "ice road grain transport" system, which utilized the frozen Tao River in winter to quickly transport military supplies and support expeditions.

In February, in the Western Xia region, the former subordinates of Mezang Epang launched a rebellion, and the regime of the new emperor Li Liangzuo became unstable.

Jiang Zhao made a decisive decision and selected Marquis Zhongjing Zheng Shun and Wang Shao to lead troops to attack. The two of them defeated the Western Xia army and captured Lanzhou and Lezhou.

Li Liangzuo merely sent troops to attempt to reclaim lost territory, then claimed he was powerless to do so, barely giving the country an explanation before continuing the suppression.

Thus, Lanzhou and Lezhou fell completely into the hands of the Great Zhou.

From the beginning of the Three Kingdoms period, the Great Zhou army built fortresses and cultivated land, monopolized the tea-horse trade, and exchanged a large number of Tibetan warhorses. They also established a Tibetan school in Hezhou to teach Chinese classics, which attracted Tibetan and Western Xia children to enroll.

Thus, through a four-dimensional strategy of appeasement and division, military raids, economic control, and cultural assimilation, the border army led by Jiang Zhao fought across thousands of miles and expanded its territory to seven prefectures.

From the memorial to the emperor in July of the sixth year of the Jiayou reign (1847) regarding the strategy of pacifying the barbarians, to the successful training of troops in February of the seventh year of the Jiayou reign (1848), which led to the expansion of the territory, the campaign continued until March of the eighth year of the Jiayou reign (1849).

The duration was nearly two years in total.

Expanding the territory to seven prefectures, uniting two thousand miles of mountains and rivers!
The last time the orthodox Central Plains dynasty arrived in this place was during the Tang Dynasty.

More than 240 years have passed since the An Lushan Rebellion.

Finally, we regained our land!
……

　I originally intended to delay writing a more detailed account of this part, but after thinking about it, I decided not to. There's still the Liao Dynasty, the Xia Dynasty, the Tubo Kingdom, and the Dali Kingdom to come—there's so much more to come, a little more won't make a difference.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)