In the Southern Song Dynasty, I competed with Mongolia for the world

Chapter 452: Difficult Return (Happy New Year Everyone)

At this time, there were also sentry riders in front bringing a steady stream of information.

The latest information they already know is that the Song army has swept through the territories of Chagatai and Wokuotai, but not much of Batu's territory.

Guyuk was even more unhappy now. He discussed with Meng Ge and Choermahan and decided to go to Chagatai territory.

The Song army did not go to Batu territory much because Batu territory was too far away.

The Song army only fought a short way in and then came back. The main purpose of the Song army at that time was to capture Qianzhou and defeat the main force of the Mongolian army. How could they have the time to clean up the Batu territory with all their strength.

But in Guyu's eyes, he began to suspect that Batu was in cahoots with Song Jun and did so on purpose.

In January of the eighth year of Yuanzhen, the Mongolian army arrived at Chachi.

This was an important town in the westernmost part of Chagatai territory and later the capital of Uzbekistan.

Because the Song army was too far away from here, it did not reach here. It is still intact at present, and many people from the Chagatai territory who fled to the east are crowded here. Chachi is almost overcrowded. Seeing hundreds of thousands of Mongolian troops returning eastward, many people The Mongolian people were in tears and ecstatic.

Although Guyou was eager to return, they had too many troops and supplies were a big problem, so they could only wait where they were.

The Mongolian army sentry cavalry approached Ke Shihaer and took a look. A Song army was shooting arrows at them. The soldiers and horses in the city were unknown, but they must have been occupied by the Song army.

It is probably more than 400 miles away from the current position of the Mongolian army.

The Song army invaded on a large scale and swept across the surrounding areas. The focus was on attacking the core area ruled by Chagatai. The local herdsmen were either killed or fled.

As mentioned before, in Chagatai's territory, the main population is concentrated in a dozen important towns. In addition to Alimali, which he originally planned to be the capital of the Khanate, there are also Chachi, Keshihar, and Anduan. , Yili, Zailimi, Hamili, Hezhou and other places.

"Is it okay to fight first?" Brother Meng immediately couldn't wait.

The Mongolian military sentries sometimes ran for hundreds of miles without seeing a single person.

In this territory that originally belonged to the Mongols, there was not a single Mongolian in sight. Guyu was also shocked.

The Mongolian army sentry cavalry in all directions, continuing to inquire about nearby news.

Continuing to go east, if you can't find the tribesmen and only have the city controlled by the Song army, you will have to face the problem of siege options and supplies.

Normally, most of the herdsmen would concentrate on herding and living around these places. Now the Song army occupied all the towns, and except for the escaped herdsmen, all the rest were killed.

On January 7, Choermahan signaled the entire Mongolian army to stop and not rush on their way.

Because there is almost no ethnic group to be found in this area for hundreds of miles.

The Mongolian army did not find a single herdsman after entering the Kesh area for two days. At this time, they began to consider supply issues.

"Stop first, don't keep going forward, and then find a place with supplies." Cho'ermahan discussed with Guiyou and decided to go back to Tajikistan, which is still a place controlled by the Mongols, where they can get supplies.

The Mongolian army of 260,000 troops came in. If they could not get supplies, how could they fight the Song army?

Unfortunately, the trebuchets marched too slowly, and Guyou was in a hurry to return. The trebuchets were all over Batu, or stayed in Europe.

A few days later, news came to Guiyou from all directions. The nearest important town occupied by the Song army was Keshar (later Kashgar).

After a short rest and supplies, the Mongolian army continued eastward, passed through Tajikistan, and entered the Kesh and Ali areas, the core areas of Chagatai territory.

But Shihar's city was only five or six meters high and had earthen walls. If the Mongolian army had brought a trebuchet, it would have been easier to fight.

Tajikistan is now the territory of Chagatai, but it is a relatively remote area. The Song army did not focus on this area because it was too far away. When Guiyu passed by, he could still see local people and towns. It's still complete, but it's the same after entering Ke Shi and Ali.

Zhuo'ermahan and the others discussed it and concluded that the situation was quite bad now. They had to either attack the Song Army's important city and obtain supplies, or they had to find a place where supplies could be supplied and quickly bypass Ke Shihaer.

But the nearest town is Keshhar, and they can only choose to attack Keshhar.

The Mongolian army has always relied on war to support war. During the Western Expedition, they plundered enemy villages and towns to obtain supplies. In addition, European civil structure castles were easier to attack, so supplies were never a problem.

Now that they have returned to their own territory, they cannot see any of their herdsmen for hundreds of miles. They cannot obtain supplies by plundering and can only attack the towns where the Song army is stationed.

Choermahan has as many as 260,000 soldiers and horses, and the requirements and difficulties for supplies are even greater.

Most of them are European servants, and their eating habits are also different from the original Mongolian army.

When they saw the city of Keshar, these European servants were also shocked.

After all, towns like Keshar are rare in Europe.

But if they knew that a town like Shiha'er was not as good as even a county in the Song Dynasty, they don't know what they would think.

In mid-January, 260,000 Mongolian troops surrounded Keshihar and began to attack the city.

But the goal of Chuo'ermahan and Guiyou's return to the army was not to break through the Song army's small town and kill the Song people.

Their main purpose was to join up with other Mongolian troops and defeat the main force of the Song army.

Attacking Kesihaer is for supply issues.

While Chuo'ermahan sent people to attack Ke Shihaer, he also asked his sentries to run further away, looking for a place that could supply more than 200,000 people.

He made two preparations. Once he captured a town without Song troops in a short period of time, he could not spend a long time here and led his troops to leave decisively.

Because the supplies he brought with him, more than 200,000 men, were limited and could not be consumed by the Song army in the city.

The Mongolian army attacked Kesihar for three days with no results and suffered many casualties.

Chuo'ermahan had no choice but to make a decision immediately. He led the army and immediately turned around and left, heading northwest to the Wokuotai territory, and soon arrived at Yemili.

This journey lasted more than two thousand miles. The Mongolian army speeded up and traveled three to four hundred miles a day. Along the way, they encountered several groups of herdsmen who were lucky enough to escape the massacre by the Song army and were still in the local area. In the end, they were directly robbed by the Mongolian army themselves. , euphemistically called expropriation. Finally arriving at Ye Mili, we found that the Song Army was also occupying it.

Chuo'er Mahan and Guyu organized another wave of troops to fight, but the result was of course a futile defeat. There were more Song troops here, much more than Ke Shihaer. The Mongolian army had no choice but to go around from the west.

There are two ways to bypass Yemili. The shortest way is to the east, but to the east is the Junggar Basin. It is no problem for a small group of cavalry to enter. However, if the Mongolian army of 260,000 horses enters, eating and drinking will be a big problem.

Therefore, the Mongolian army could only choose the west. From the west, they would have to go around the entire Yemili River, which would add hundreds of miles to their journey.

Fortunately, this section of the road goes along the river, and there is no shortage of water sources. Moreover, Mongolian herdsmen will choose to stay near water sources when they are herding. Therefore, it is much safer for the Mongolian army to go this way than in the Junggar Basin.

In this way, Choermahan and Guyu's Mongolian army made another long journey of nearly two thousand miles. At the end of January, they finally approached Qianzhou and finally encountered other Mongolian army sentries coming from the north.

Only then did they know that Qianzhou had been captured by the Song army. The Mongolian army retreated to the Altai Mountains thousands of miles away in the northwest and was contacting Batu thousands of miles away.

This group of sentry riders has been looking for Choermahan, and they almost cried when they saw Choermahan and Guyu.

Choermahan and the others were almost like beggars and refugees. They walked thousands of miles, climbed mountains and waded in rivers, and carefully took many detours to the vicinity of Qianzhou. The whole army did not have a good rest on the road, especially when they entered Chagatai, the nest. After the Kuotai territory, there were Song troops everywhere in the territory, and I was afraid of being ambushed by the Song troops every night when I went to bed.

Because of supply problems, they killed many war horses. There were also servants who could not keep up with him. Some even sneaked out and surrendered to the Song army.

When they set out from the Aras River, they had an army of 260,000, and they had just returned from the western expedition, high-spirited and imposing. As a result, they failed twice in the siege of Chagatai and Ogedai territories, and the morale of the army was hit. , when they arrived in Qianzhou, due to various reasons such as casualties and escapes, the entire army still had about 240,000 soldiers, which was already 20,000 less.

Hearing that there were still 70,000 to 80,000 defeated Mongolian troops resting and recuperating near the Altai Mountains, Choermahan and Guyu had differences of opinion.

Guyuk wanted to bypass Qianzhou and continue his return eastward, and meet up with his father Khan Wokuotai near Shanxi.

Because the Song army cut off the connection between the Mongolian army on the east and west sides, Guyu and the others had not received any information from the Mongolian army on the east for a long time, and they didn't know what was going on over there in Wokuotai?

Chuo'ermahan originally looked down on the Song people, but after losing two consecutive sieges, he also felt the terror of the Song army, so he strongly requested to join Chagatai and Kuoduan's troops first, and then go to Batu.

In this way, the Mongolian army can form a super army of 500,000 or 600,000 troops.

When the time comes, we will come back to break through Qianzhou and open up the connection between eastern and western Mongolia.

The two argued for a while, and Meng Ge finally sided with Choermahan.

They all agreed that the Mongolian army had never lacked supplies in the past and always marched in enemy countries. Now it is marching in its own country but is seriously short of supplies.

The Song army massacred and surrendered, and not a single ethnic group could be seen on the grassland for hundreds of thousands of miles. If they wanted to take a detour back, they had to walk more than three thousand miles. If they wanted to go to Shanxi, it would be at least four to five thousand miles.

Even if this army of more than 200,000 people has one person and two horses, and each horse is loaded with supplies, it is not easy to cover the more than 4,000 miles safely.

They had traveled thousands of miles and it was time to take a rest.

At this time, only a few of the Mongolian troops returned to the east of Zan City. Everyone just wanted to find a place to rest, and they really had no strength.

After walking more than 10,000 miles from the west and fighting two waves, they were still defeated. No matter how powerful the robot was, it couldn't stand it. Guyu had no choice but to compromise.

In early February, Choermahan's men and horses finally joined forces with Chagatai and Kuaduan troops near the Altai Mountains after hard work. The two armies exceeded 300,000.

The Mongolian army has strong soldiers and horses, but with so many people and horses, supply is a big problem.

Near the Altai Mountains is the former Batu territory. The Song army did not come to sweep because it was too far away. There are still many herdsmen guarding the area, but the Mongolian army is too many. There are nearly 300,000 troops and more than 600,000 horses here. , the daily food and drink is an astronomical amount.

While Chagatai sent people many times to recruit Batu, who was five or six thousand miles away, to return eastward, he also collected food and grass from all over the place. At the same time, he rested and reorganized, and planned a decisive battle with the Song army.

There was no news from the sentry riders who went west. It was not until late March that the first wave of sentry riders returned, saying that Batu was in poor health and was recovering from illness.

Chagatai was furious and decided to go to the Volga River in person to urge Batu to return eastward.

The five to six hundred thousand Mongolian troops were cut off by the Song army in the west, and life in Wokuotai in the east was not easy.
-

In early January of the eighth year of Yuanzhen, Jinan, Shandong Province of the Song Dynasty.

Jinan returned to the Song Dynasty during the Baoqing period. Zhao and Rui made Jinan the capital of Shandong Province and the provincial capital. After more than ten years of development, the place became more and more prosperous.

Shandong was separated from the Song Dynasty for hundreds of years, and the people originally had a low sense of identification with the Song Dynasty.

But Zhao Yurui had the propaganda magic weapon of his ancestors in hand. After Song Ting obtained Shandong, he focused on propaganda. In addition, Zhao Yurui twice granted tax exemption to the entire territory of Shandong for ten years, which suddenly won the hearts and minds of the local people.

Shandong only began to collect agricultural taxes in the sixth year of Yuanzhen. At this time, after more than ten years of management by the imperial court, the people had a stronger sense of belonging and their lives were richer than before, which was relatively acceptable.

Early this morning, Shandong's envoy Wu Qian hurried out of the city with a group of people and headed for the Daqing River.

In March last year, Wu Qian was appointed as the envoy of Shandong Province from the Ministry of Industry.

In the second year of Yuanzhen, Emperor Zhao Yurui made up his mind to regulate the Yellow River, and Wu Qian was the main person in charge at that time.

With the advice of Wu Qian, Chen Dai, Wang Gang and other ministers, Zhao and Rui changed the management of the Yellow River to regulate the river course.

That is to say, the focus is not on the Yellow River, but on all rivers in the world, giving priority to those that need to be managed, rather than blindly managing things like previous emperors did, or dealing with problems when they arise.

In fact, the principle is to put prevention first, consolidate and strengthen defense, and give priority to the Yellow River and Canal.

Wu Qian and others spent two or three years in the early stage traveling through the country's major rivers and designing canals according to the emperor's requirements along the way. Zhao Yurui wanted to completely dredge and manage the Great Song Canal to reach or even exceed the level of the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

But Zhao Yurui was not in a hurry to start all these things. In the early stage, they focused on survey, design, and budgeting. In a small number of places that urgently needed to be consolidated, they would recruit civilians and use prisoners to do it. After the war between the Song Dynasty and Mongolia was settled, the army would After a period of recuperation, he will invest. By then, he may not need so many troops. He will probably send some troops to supervise the prisoners obtained during the Western Expedition to work on these important projects.

From the second year of Yuanzhen to the present, in the past six years, the imperial court has invested less than 50,000 people in river management. The scale is relatively small, and it has not affected Zhao and Rui from fighting everywhere.

In the past two years, the main focus has been on governance around Jinan.

In ancient times, Jinan was far away from the Yellow River and was not affected. Until the fifth year of King Ding of Zhou Dynasty (602 BC), the Yellow River first made a major migration. There was a section of the river that turned near Linqing, passed through the east of Dezhou, and along the Heading to the north of Cangzhou and finally entering the sea, this suddenly shortens the distance to Jinan.

This river course remained unchanged until the time of Emperor Wu of the Western Han Dynasty. After more than 400 years, the river bed accumulated heavy silt and many problems began to affect the area near Jinan.

(End of this chapter)