Chaos of the Three Kingdoms Summons

Chapter 2696 The Second War Between Tang and Jin, Li Mu's Naval Attack on Lelang

November of the fifth year of the Qianyuan era.

As winter approaches, especially in the north, heavy snow begins to fall.

In such weather, if a major war were to break out rashly, it would be a bad thing for neither side.

Starting a war in winter is a huge burden in itself!

Generally speaking, if there is a war in the Central Plains, it is preferred to start in March, April or May. Of course, the further south you go, the more casual the timing becomes, and there are not so many restrictions on the timing.

If there were wars on the grasslands, autumn would be the season they liked best.

However, neither side would enjoy fighting each other in winter unless absolutely necessary.

However, in the winter of the fifth year of the Qianyuan era, Li Mu, with the help of Xu Cheng, crossed the sea to attack Lelang. After a month and a half of fierce fighting, he killed Ashina Rangan and Ashina Tumen, and took back the last county in Youzhou that had fallen into the hands of the Tang Dynasty.

As for the Li Tang reinforcements, they were still on their way at this time!

In the dead of winter, with marching fraught with difficulties, how could their reinforcements possibly fly over?

Unless we travel by water, the speed might be a little faster!
However, after the naval battle fought by Qi Jiguang, how could they still travel by water?
How many troops can those remaining ships transport?

Moreover, at the same time, Xue Rengui and Han Xin also advanced towards the Li Tang dynasty once again, and the second major war between the Tang and Jin dynasties officially began in the winter of the fifth year of the Qianyuan era.

With war breaking out in all directions, it was even less likely that the Li Tang dynasty could send reinforcements.

The battles fought in winter were indeed life-threatening.

During the first Tang-Jin War, the imperial court had already considered that it might not be able to end the war in a short time, and that it would inevitably drag on into winter.

In addition, taking into account the climate of the Li Tang region, a large amount of cotton clothing and warm clothing were stockpiled.

However, due to the short-term demise of the Tuoba Wei dynasty on the grasslands, Kublai Khan and Xuan Ye reached a compromise, and thus, given the possibility of intervention from the grasslands, they temporarily ended the first Tang-Jin war.

Therefore, the supplies that had been stockpiled were used in this second Tang-Jin war.

After all, it hadn't been long since the First World War, only about two years.

The reason for launching the second Tang-Jin war at this time was naturally because the Jin court felt the time was ripe.

First, the Kushan battlefield has reached a fever pitch. Neither the more than 300,000 troops of the Great Jin nor the more than 300,000 troops of the Yuan Mongols can break away so easily.

Secondly, Temujin fell ill again!
Even under normal circumstances, it's quite normal for people to experience some health problems as they get older, especially in winter.

Moreover, although this is not the first time in recent years, he has survived the previous times and persevered to this day.

But surely this old thing can't really hold on that long?

Furthermore, regardless of whether Temujin can pull through, at least for the next few months, until it is certain that Temujin's health will not relapse, Kublai Khan and his close associates will not dare to leave the royal court in person!
If something were to happen to Temujin, and if Kublai Khan or his close associates were not in the royal court, resulting in insufficient strength at the time, even a situation that was originally not a problem could become problematic. Therefore, at such a critical moment, who would dare to take the risk?

Thirdly, the Li Tang dynasty had been forcibly blockaded for two years, confined to a narrow area in the northern part of the peninsula. The grain produced was far from meeting domestic demand, especially given the unavoidable need to maintain a large military force.

Not to mention, in the past two years, the connection between the Li Tang dynasty and the grasslands has not been as smooth as before.

For the past two years, the legions in the northern provinces of the Great Jin Dynasty have been adjusting the ratio of infantry to cavalry, continuously reducing the proportion of infantry and increasing the proportion of cavalry.

The Jin Dynasty's cavalry training included practical combat exercises.

One of them is imitating the way grassland people harvest grass.

However, while the grassland people came to the Central Plains to hunt for grass, the people of the Great Jin Dynasty naturally went to the grasslands.

Of course, these are all areas near the border; they won't actually venture deep into the grasslands.

It was at least to give the cavalry some practical combat training, not to actually start a full-scale war prematurely.

If you go in without any preparation or any sense of direction, it's questionable whether you'll even be able to get out!

This kind of combat training is actually quite taxing!

However, all of this was just preparation for the final battle to come!

For the Great Jin Dynasty, as long as the losses are kept within a certain range, whether it is the loss of personnel, warhorses, weapons and equipment, especially armor (particularly the iron armor), and can be recovered in time, then the losses are actually limited.

In ancient warfare, a major defeat could be devastating. While troop losses were a small part of the problem, the real cost was the loss of weapons and equipment, especially large quantities of iron armor, which were often irretrievable after a major defeat.

If this thing can't be recovered, that would be a real loss for a country.

If the Youzhou army wanted to train troops on the grasslands, it would naturally be the grasslands closer to the Tang and Manchu territories. Therefore, this directly affected the connection between the Tang Dynasty and the grasslands.

Of course, even without this incident, the grasslands would have offered them limited assistance.

The food shortage in the Li Tang dynasty was no small matter. Could the grasslands conjure up food for them? Without sufficient food reserves, how could he possibly produce food out of thin air?
After two years, the Li Tang dynasty has declined to an unknown extent compared to two years ago, and since this summer, it has been plagued by civil unrest of varying sizes.

Large numbers of people fled towards the grasslands, those near Youzhou fled towards Youzhou, and those near the southern part of the peninsula fled towards the direction where Han Xin was located.

Under various circumstances, the Jin Dynasty believed that the time was ripe, so it finally decided to start this war, which triggered the second major war between Tang and Jin.

Choosing to start the war in winter, although very disadvantageous to the army, could indeed catch Li Tang off guard in such a season.

After all, the Great Jin Dynasty had already established a sufficiently large logistics system in Youqing and Youzhou two years ago.

This massive logistical system, while insufficient to completely eliminate the impact of their operations during the winter, can at least minimize it for them.

(End of this chapter)