I am Da Song

Chapter 521

The Song army had made all the military deployments, but everyone waited from midsummer to late autumn. The fortifications were well built and the logistics supplies piled up like a mountain, but the legendary crusaders still couldn't even see a shadow!
At this time, two years have passed since the Crusades declared that they would carry out the Eastern Expedition!
If this did not really happen, the generals of the Song Army could not believe it was true.

The news that the Song Army received was accurate, and the Crusaders really came to participate in this holy war with full enthusiasm.

At Vezelay Cathedral in Burgundy, the Frankish Kingdom, St. Bernard, the Pope's special envoy, gave a very provocative sermon at the meeting.After he finished his sermon, King Louis of France knelt before him and accepted his blessing. Hundreds of knights, many of whom were old enemies, followed him, decided to put aside their differences, and took an oath to join the Crusade.

Bernard tore off his tunic and gave them the cross.

This time, almost all the Frankish nobles participated.

No one doubted the enthusiasm of these single-minded French knights to participate in the holy war.

Since women were not allowed to participate in the crusade, many ladies from the Frankish court decided to go with them.Louis' queen Eleanor and her maids dressed as Amazons and ran before the knights, expressing their willingness to fight for Christ.

Under such circumstances, the Crusaders are definitely going to fight a grand and mighty battle with no retreat.

But they did indeed, it took two years and they still haven't reached the territory of Byzantium.

This speed simply surpassed the imagination of the Eastern generals.The senior Song army couldn't understand, what were they doing?
Even if you climb forward at the speed of a turtle, after two years, you should climb from Frank to Constantinople, right?

After all, his marching distance is roughly equivalent to starting from Chengdu to Nanjing.

If it takes two years for an army from the Central Plains to arrive without a war, all the nine tribes of the chief general will be killed.

Li Jingping and Xiao Mian, marching and fighting at the same time, took only three months to pacify the whole south.

With this as a reference, throughout this year, there has been an endless stream of impeachments against Niu Gao in the imperial court, and the piles of papers are as high as mountains, enough to bury Niu Gao alive and then pile up a grave.

The overwhelming accusation impeached him to support his own self-respect, and led the three armies, but he could not move forward, and he had an antipathy in his heart.

If it weren't for Li Yanxian, the commander of the elite field army Shenwu Zuojun, who helped him bear half of the firepower, he really could hardly bear it.

After all, there are [-] troops on the front line, and there are countless vassal troops. The court minister accused him of supporting his own self-respect, and he really couldn't justify it.

Fortunately, today's son dismissed these accusations, Zhao Huan believed that even if Niu Gao had ten more courages, he would not dare to rebel when Yue Fei and Han Shizhong were there, and Zhang Jun and Yu Yunwen were in their prime.

Moreover, the 5000 kings and [-] people on the front line were directly commanded by Li Yanxian, the commander of the Shenwu Zuo Army.

Niu Gao led those 5000 people to rebel, didn't he seek his own death?

Given the current situation of the empire, the soldiers' loyalty, beliefs, cultural level, and awareness of national concepts, there is no possibility of a general rebelling.

Therefore, Zhao Huan suppressed all the impeachments and let the front line carry out military deployment on its own.

In fact, as early as early summer, the high-level officials of the Persian Protectorate, the chief general of the Song Army Field Army, and the Privy Council guards at the front line had already begun to design multiple sets of active attack plans.

But one of these plans counts as one, and after reading it, people are too speechless, and the front line cannot be settled at all.

It is not a matter of switching from defense to offense as a whole. For the elite Song army, such a long time is enough to complete the transition from offense to defense.

The biggest problem is that the Crusader countries are too far away from Song Dynasty!
Song Jun has never thought of sweeping the cave in Liting until now.

The army can't conquer Constantinople all the way, break through Byzantium, besiege Vienna, then attack Frankfurt, and then go to Paris to meet these slow French knights.

Meals always have to be eaten bite by bite. Song Jun finally decided to help the Crusaders speed up under the decentralization of high-level officials.

The army adopted Yue Yun's proposal and directly marched into the Asia Minor peninsula, turning all the land east of Constantinople into the territory of the Song Dynasty.

In order to confuse the Westerners, the forward of the Song Army sent out a message to turn Constantinople into a barrier for the Easterners, but this time he was not called Istanbul, but was given the name of Loulan Castle.

"I would like to put the sword down from the waist and cut Loulan straight."

"How late is it that the country returns, and Loulan has not returned it after being killed."

These lines were familiar even to the Byzantines.

This really frightened the Byzantines. How could Byzantium have to bear the consequences of the Crusades' jihad?

If Constantinople is no longer in the hands of Byzantium, what glory does the Eastern Roman Empire, which claims to have passed down for thousands of years, still have?

The handsome old emperor of Byzantium was worried and died of illness when the Second Crusade triggered the war between the two worlds last year.

The new emperor, Manuel I, who is known as the greatest emperor of Byzantium, succeeded to the throne. After taking on the heavy responsibility of the whole country, he finally recognized the vision of his father. The ground flesh and blood will only burst into a cloud of blood mist.

The Asia Minor peninsula, which the empire had managed to recover with great difficulty, was completely lost in an instant.

But Manuel has no room for repentance, so the vast land is lost, he must continue to support the Crusades.

He sent letters one by one to Frank, urging the army of the Holy Roman Empire to march eastward.

Finally, they got a response in the depths of winter. The army of the Holy Roman Empire had been transferred back from the north, ready to go south to enter Greece, and then marched to the battlefield to carry out holy wars to the east.

The emperor of the Holy Roman Empire was naturally not moved by Manuel I's letter, but the iron cavalry of the empire had repelled the barbarians from the east and recovered the Elbe River.

At least, that's what the top brass of the Holy Roman Empire think.

These proud nobles believed that their heroic battles repelled the rampaging Rus.

Now these heroic German aristocrats are about to go south, and with their sharp swords, they will continue to repel the more distant Easterners in order to guard the light of God.

However, the ironic fact is that the retreat of the Ross people is also thanks to the Song army, the target they are about to fight.

Because it was the King of Song and Qin who led the troops from the Caucasus into the vast Eastern European plains, recruited a large number of Ross barbarians as vassal troops with unparalleled wealth, and began to expand the territory, which attracted the retreat of the Ross people.

(End of this chapter)