The Leisurely Life of the Prince of the Tang Dynasty

Chapter 421 My Tibetan Brothers
The other party's sincerity is sufficient, but it concerns the relationship between Tubo and the Tang Dynasty... Wang Xuance scratched his head in pain and said, "This matter should be asked to His Majesty."

Rulaijie added: "It doesn't matter, my children are still willing to fight for the Tang Dynasty."

Ru Laijie was called a wise man by the Tibetans, so Wang Xuance was still wary. He almost fell into his trap with just a few words.

It's better to be careful when talking to him.

In the following time, Wang Xuance, the princess, and the Tianzhu villagers discussed how to capture Qunu City.

And these days, as these villagers spread the news, more and more Indians gathered here. These are Indians who are willing to resist Alonashun.

To be precise, they are the princess's subjects.

The first thing to do is to deal with the troublesome war elephants. On this issue, the wise old man of Tubo, Rulaijie, gave a good idea, which was fire.

When he was young, he lived alone in the snow-capped mountains and fought wits and courage with a pack of wolves for several days. He survived by relying on fire. Now he is still convinced that fire can definitely deal with war elephants.

It turns out that the princess's war elephants are also afraid of fire.

These days, the Indians and the Tang people get along well.

The princess invited the general to sit on the back of the war elephant. When the Indian subjects saw the general and the Indian princess riding on the same elephant, they cheered.

Wang Xuance didn't know what this meant.

It was not until the night when the princess walked into his room and climbed onto the bed that Wang Xuance realized what the ritualistic event that took place during the day meant.

The next day, Wang Xuance looked at the princess sleeping beside him, quickly put on his clothes, and walked out of the room.

As soon as he went out, he saw the Tibetan elders Ru Laijie and Li Yibiao.

Wang Xuance held his forehead in distress and said, "I drank too much last night."

Last night, the princess of India walked into Wang Xuance's room openly, as naturally as if she was walking into her own home. Several deputy generals had already informed the accompanying officials of the Ministry of Rites, Li Yibiao, the deputy envoy on this mission, of this matter.

Noticing the other person's smile, Wang Xuance straightened his expression and asked, "Can I marry this woman back to Chang'an?"

Li Yibiao asked, "What about Xuanzang?"

"She has no relationship with Xuanzang, I am sure of that."

Li Yibiao understood and said, "It's okay to marry her, but is she willing?"

In front of the wooden house, the Tibetan old man Ru Laijie still had a smile on his face, but this old guy's smile was ugly.

Wang Xuance withdrew his gaze with a stern expression.

Afterwards, several Indian women walked into General Wang's room with smiles on their faces. They even looked at General Wang for a second time, and then walked in quickly to help the princess wash.

Here she seemed to have returned to her luxurious life, but the dilapidated village was still in front of her.

Wang Xuance inexplicably married the princess of India. Did he marry in India?

Confused in every way, he said again: "I must return to the Tang Dynasty. With the enemy at hand, I cannot think of anything else."

Li Yibiao added: "In fact, it is reasonable for General Wang to marry her formally. Besides, the Ministry of Rites has also instructed that more Tang people should go abroad and spread the blood of the Tang people. Maybe His Majesty will reward them."

Afterwards, Wang Xuance and the princess walked together to inspect the village, and were bowed to by the Tibetan subjects.

When asked whether this woman who would "do whatever it takes" to restore her country was willing to go to the Tang Dynasty, she shook her head and refused.

Wang Xuance listened to her and thought that if the two of them could have a child, the child would be able to become independent when he grew up.

She would go to the Tang Dynasty in the East to look for the husband with whom she would be officially married.

She also knew very well that Tianzhu could not keep Wang Xuance.

He asked: "What if the Tang people do not allow the existence of India?"

The princess of Tianzhu smiled and said, "Our child is a Tang Chinese. I can only teach him to speak the Tang language."

What an open-minded woman she was. Wang Xuance decided in his heart to take her back to the Tang Dynasty after the Indian affairs were settled. As for what happened in India, he would first build a protectorate there and it would not be too late to deal with it later.

After getting familiar with Tianzhu for a month, in July of the third year of Qianqing, Wang Xuance led his troops and marched northward towards Tianzhu with 7,000 soldiers. The horses raised a cloud of dust along the way.

In order to resist Alonashun, the Indian subjects who obeyed the princess offered three war elephants, a total of four including the princess's elephant.

In the eyes of many Indian subjects, they saw Wang Xuance's very wise tactics, using ladders, crossbows, besieging the city to attack reinforcements, and encircling the city.

The Tang army's way of fighting was not like that of the Indians. In contrast, the Indians only knew how to charge recklessly, while the coordination between the Tang army's teams seemed to be an innate skill.

They won victory after victory, leaving the Indians dumbfounded.

There were Indian ministers who came to surrender and they shouted that the Tang army was the heavenly army.

In fact, this is true. The army sent by Tian Khan is just like this.

In the remaining five days, Wang Xuance relied on only 7,000 soldiers to capture cities and territories, and took more than ten cities. Along the way, he captured more than 3,000 Indian soldiers, 50,000 livestock, thousands of kilograms of treasures, countless food and fodder, and seized thousands of miles of land.

In front of a group of Indian soldiers who were about to flee, Wang Xuance immediately drew his sword and shouted, "Tell your A Luo Na Shun that I will go to Qu Nu City and take his head!"

The Indian soldiers standing by, wearing crude leather armor, also shouted a few words loudly, translating the words of the Heavenly Army's general.

The enemy troops fled in all directions and Wang Xuance won a series of victories.

The successive victories terrified the enemy.

The princess organized the women of India to prepare food and fodder for the Tang army.

Now, Wang Xuance no longer has the original twenty people. He has an army of nearly ten thousand people, which is composed of Tang people, Tibetans, and Indians.

During the remaining month, Wang Xuance led his troops to continue advancing towards India. The Tang army was good at riding fast horses, while the Indians fought around war elephants and moved slowly.

The Tibetans cleared the periphery and moved back and forth.

Deputy General Jiang Shiren led the vanguard and captured Luocheng on the Gandis River.

At this point, within two months, the Tang army had conquered a large area of ​​territory east of Central India and captured more than a hundred cities.

The Tang army used amazing fighting efficiency to tell the Indians that the Tang army was coming.

In fact, the subsequent battles were much easier because the Tang army's successive victories had made the Indians terrified. Some of them collapsed without fighting, but those who resisted stubbornly died miserably.

Wang Xuance was cruel in battle, so after each battle, there were very few prisoners left.

Not to mention the princess who was full of hatred for Alona Shun, the subjects who surrendered to Alona Shun were traitors, not her subjects.

In mid-September of the third year of Qianqing, the Tang army arrived at the banks of the Gandise River. The Qunu City was in sight in the distance, and they confronted the Indian enemy forces across the river.

Now the Tang army is facing Alona Shun’s 80,000-strong army.

Wang Xuance had only 2,000 Tang troops under his command, and with the addition of Tibetans and Indians, it was a battle of 10,000 soldiers against an army of 80,000. This was a battle with a huge disparity in strength.

At this moment, the Tang army side of the Gandis River was very quiet, because what everyone saw was a dense group of war elephants just on the other side of the river. They were not bragging, Alona Shun really had tens of thousands of elephant soldiers.

In Luocheng, Wang Xuance, who had been in Tianzhu for nearly half a year, had become accustomed to living with the princess. In the eyes of the Tianzhu subjects, the two were husband and wife.

Wang Xuance looked at the map in front of him and pondered. The princess packed up her armor and whispered, "I don't need rebellious subjects."

"Your Guanzhong dialect is better now."

The princess smiled with joy, she was pregnant.

In fact, Tang men were very good. At least Wang Xuance, as a husband, never bossed the Indian subjects around. Instead, the Indian subjects became more humble in front of the Tang men. If they won this battle, the Indians would submit to the Tang Dynasty from then on, but if they lost this battle, their fate would be miserable.

When all hopes were placed on the Tang people, the ignorant Indians blindly believed that the Tang army would definitely win.

Alonashun, who led the enemy army, had been gathering troops.

The Tang army across the river was very quiet, and no one knew what they were waiting for.

It was rumored that Alona Shun had an army of 400,000, but there really wasn't 400,000 of them, which was probably enough, but an army of 80,000 was terrifying enough.

When the Tibetan old man Rulaijie came with 30,000 cattle.

Wang Xuance laughed loudly, opened his arms and shouted: "My Tibetan brothers!"

"Haha!" Rulaijie also smiled and came forward to hug him. They patted each other on the back. He asked, "Where is my Tibetan child?"

Wang Xuance pointed to the rear, and saw a group of Tibetan soldiers and horses just under Luocheng.

This old Tibetan man always calls the other Tibetans children. In his eyes, no matter how old the Tibetans are, they are all his children, and the old man always looks like a father with overflowing love.

The princess was very confused. It was obvious that Wang Xuance disliked this old Tibetan man and was very wary of him, but he always acted like a brother to her.

Fighting in India is a very comfortable thing, because this is really a place where God provides food for everyone. There is endless rice. In September this year, the second crop of rice is ripe.

Although the taste is not very good, it can fill your stomach.

Wang Xuance and Ru Laijie walked together, discussing how to face 80,000 enemy troops.

Rulaijie suddenly said, "Such a huge granary, don't the Tang people want it?"

Tianzhu is indeed a huge food source. Wang Xuance put his hands behind his back and said, "I don't like Tianzhu's food. It tastes bad."

Rulaijie stroked his beard with a smile and said, "When the Tang army swept across Tianshan, didn't you also eat Tibetan barley?"

Wang Xuance replied: "It tastes bad, most of it was fed to the horses."

"Um……"

Rulaijie, who is over fifty years old, hesitated for a long time.

Wang Xuance shouted into the distance: "General Jiang!"

Jiang Shiren stepped forward quickly and asked, "What do you want, General?"

"Thirty thousand cattle have arrived. Send someone to tell the enemy troops on the other side of the river to surrender quickly. Killing people is tiring. Are eighty thousand soldiers going to tire us to death?"

"Yes!" Jiang Shiren jumped on his horse and left without thinking.

Rulaijie hesitated and said, "Let them surrender?"

Wang Xuance nodded.

"You have more than 10,000 men at most, and 15,000 at most including the able-bodied men."

"Yes."

Rulaijie was surprised and said, "Ten thousand men dare to ask eighty thousand soldiers to surrender?"

"Exactly."

After another speechless moment, Rulaijie raised his head and sighed in Tibetan: "The Tang army is so elegant."

This was indeed the case. The Tang army actually sent an Indian to the other side of the river to tell Alona Shun, who was leading an army of 80,000, that the Tang general had asked him to surrender quickly.

Hearing this, Alonashun felt extremely humiliated.

Later, another rumor reached the ears of the Tang army, saying that A Luo was so angry that he broke one of his teeth.

Now, the war was about to start at any time. Wang Xuance was preparing in Luocheng. He saw that the princess was holding a dagger all the time, which was for committing suicide when the army was defeated.

"You can go to the rear, or go to the Tang Dynasty if that doesn't work. The Jingzhao Prefecture will protect the families of the soldiers, and at least let you live in peace for the rest of your life."

The princess shook her head, seeing the low morale in the city, and asked, "Can you really deal with the elephant soldiers?"

Wang Xuance was holding a military book in his hand, still looking like he was studying before a battle, and replied, "They fight with animals, while the Tang people fight with wisdom. This is different."

In the third year of the Qianqing reign, in late September, just after dawn, the sound of a horn was heard.

The soldiers looked up and saw that Alonashun's elephant soldiers had begun to cross the river. How could the war elephants be stepping on the river water?

The thick fog slowly dissipated, and Wang Xuance, riding on horseback, whistled.

The Tang army's battle formation was immediately opened, and the 30,000 cattle were hidden behind the battle formation, surrounded by a fence, with only one exit opened, facing the enemy on the other side of the river.

Wang Xuance said to Rulaijie while riding on horseback: "In our Tang Dynasty, there is a chess game called Xiangqi, and the elephant cannot cross the river."

Rulaijie smiled and said, "If I still have time to go back, I will definitely play chess with General Wang."

Jiang Shiren shouted, "Light the fire!"

"ignition!"

Some soldiers also shouted.

As they put down the torches one by one, people who didn't know would have thought that the Tang army was going to roast beef on the spot.

Wang Xuance suddenly smiled, and the flames were ignited. The cattle whose tails were on fire ran around like crazy. The Tang army held the fence tightly until the cattle found the exit and rushed madly towards the herd of elephants on the other side of the river.

When one herd of cattle had finished charging, the Tang army opened another fence, lit the fire again, and another herd of cattle rushed out.

On both sides of the Gandis River, the cries of cattle mingled with the braying of war elephants.

Thirty thousand mad bulls ran into ten thousand war elephants.

Seeing that the enemy army had been thrown into chaos by the herd of cattle, the three-party coalition forces on Wang Xuance's side remained in good order.

The war elephants were frightened when they saw the fire and turned around and ran back the way they came.

Wang Xuance watched the out-of-control war elephants turn around and run away, with countless enemy soldiers being trampled to death. The roars of the elephants echoed across the plain again and again.

The chaotic situation dumbfounded the Indians, and Rulaijie was also dumbfounded.

It turns out that the Tang army didn't want 30,000 cows just for roast beef.

Only a few war elephants came to the front of the Tang army, but they turned around and ran away when they saw the flames.

Indians kept falling off the elephants' backs.

Dust was rolling on the other side of the river. On this vast battlefield stretching for thousands of miles, herds of cattle and war elephants were stirring among the crowd. The screams and neighing mixed together, and the earth was shaking.

The Fire Bull Formation scattered the enemy troops into pieces, leaving them no time to take care of themselves.

Wang Xuance said loudly: "Soldiers, it's time to kill the enemy. We..."

Before he finished speaking, the Tibetan soldiers rushed to the other side of the river.

Seeing this, Jiang Shiren and Li Yibiao cursed the Tibetans for being unruly, and rode their horses to charge towards the other side of the river.

(End of this chapter)