Late Tang

If you rely on the mountains, you will eat the mountains, and if you rely on the sea, you will eat the sea. .

With a fleet of more than 30 people, the food consumption is also huge.When Li Jing went to sea from the mouth of the Heishui River, he didn't carry much food.For Li Jing, every grain of grain and grass transported from the Central Plains to Bohai Sea is precious, because the journey is too long and transportation consumes a lot.But this is not difficult for the Qin army. A huge fleet is walking on the sea, and they are not worried about food.There is everything they need in the sea. Qin Jun's navy is the most powerful water army of this era, and it is also the most powerful fishing team of this era.

The navy warships escorting the transport fleet played their second hand at sea, fishing.

Every day, while sailing and guarding, the warships of the navy catch a large number of fish. These catches not only fully meet the sea needs of more than [-] people, but even have leftovers for making canned fish.

On the sea, Li Jing started every morning with a bowl of seafood porridge made of various seafood.This is also Li Jing's rare leisure time. Although there are occasional storms during the sea trip, the crew of the fleet are all extremely experienced, and they go easily.There is no need to ride on horseback every day, nor do you need to sleep in the open air. You can bask in the autumn sun on the deck during the day, chat with a few women in the cabin at night, and occasionally talk about strategies and tactics with the staff in the attendant room, etc. Questions, or simply participate in fishing with the guards, or pull.

Such a rare relaxed and leisure life is like an extremely rare vacation, more like a one-month trip.

At least, this comfortable leisure lasted until September.

In September, the fleet sailed around the coast and returned to Vladivostok.

The fleet stopped at Vladivostok for supplies and repairs. They ate fish for a month. They urgently need to supply some other food in Vladivostok, especially some fresh vegetables and fruits, and at least some beans. Bean sprouts.Long-distance voyages at sea, if there is no supplement of vegetables and fruits for a long time, it is very likely to suffer from sepsis. Therefore, it is necessary to eat fruits and vegetables to supplement vitamins.Moreover, after floating at sea for a month, Li Jing was basically cut off from the outside world. He urgently needed to know the latest situation in the Bohai Sea battlefield and the Central Plains.

After getting off the boat, Li Jing's attendant's room quickly started to work with the fastest efficiency.

Countless documents and reports quickly piled up in front of Li Jing, but the first thing Li Jing started was reading newspapers.

However, it was filtered and screened by the attendant's room for him. The important information in each newspaper was marked. Li Jing read the newspaper and waited for the attendant's room to collect the updated and more important information. More and more comprehensive news.

Browsing hastily, Li Jing saw ten lines at a glance.Driven by Qin Fan's pioneers in the newspaper industry, today's newspaper industry is very prosperous, even a little deformed.Especially in the Qin Dynasty, with the rapid development of papermaking, printing and post station system, the prosperity of newspapers was born.A large number of industrial workers, as well as the rapid popularization of new education, gave Qin Fan the highest literacy rate, and also made newspapers more prosperous.There are countless big newspapers and tabloids.People also like to read newspapers, whether they are officials or literati, or soldiers or ordinary people, everyone likes to read newspapers, and likes to get the big and small things from the newspapers.

Even the intelligence department of the Office of Supervision uses newspaper code words to convey various information.

Li Jing read ordinary newspapers first. Although they were all small things like people's livelihood, and some big things were true or false, what he wanted to read were things like people's livelihood.It can be known from the newspaper that this year's harvests in various places, especially in the land of Huanghuai, Shandong, Hebei, within the Qinfan Pass, have achieved a bumper harvest, even two bumper harvests in summer, and the rice harvest is gratifying.Although there is only one season of wheat, the main crop outside the customs, it has also been harvested.This news made Li Jing feel very happy but also relieved.

Fighting wars is still about logistical supplies.If the harvest is not harvested this year, it will not only affect the war, but also make the people's livelihood of Qin Fan who has just recovered a little bit difficult.Li Jing is not the generals of other feudal towns, they only think about militarism, Li Jing controls a powerful feudal town, he must ensure the prosperity and prosperity of his rule, first from the inside out, as long as the inside is stable, there will be no harm to the outside world.For a powerful feudal town like Qin Fan, it is already difficult to destroy them from the outside, and the only thing that can really destroy such a powerful feudal town is from the inside.

The news in many other newspapers was not bad. In short, nothing bad happened to Qin Fan that worried Li Jing.

This made Li Jing heave a sigh of relief, and began to sip the already cold tea.

After drinking a copy of this year's Mingqian Longjing and eating a few pieces of osmanthus cake made from freshly punched osmanthus, Li Jing picked up the internal reference on the other side and several other internal newspapers with more important news.In these few newspapers, there is a lot less breath of life, and the excitement of ordinary people is a little more serious.Li Jing read very slowly, struggling to see the parts circled by the key points, and it took a long time to finish reading.

After he read it, the attendant's room brought another stack of documents, but they were all briefings of the important affairs of the past few months that they had just sorted out.

"Let's read it directly!" Li Jing waved his hand and read the newspaper for a long time. His eyes were a little tired, so he simply leaned back on the soft chair, changed to a comfortable listening position, and closed his eyes half-closed. with.

"Yes!"

"The first news is that Li Keyong launched an attack on Shanxi Province in May. In this attack, Li Keyong united Zhenwu, Tiande, Baoda, Dingnan, Chengde, Weibo, Hezhong, and Hezhong. Nine towns in Yangyang launched an attack on Shanxi, Beiping, Hebei, Shandong and other places at the same time. At almost the same time, Zhu Quanzhong in Henan joined forces with Zhou Ji, Lu Yanhong, Zhu Cun, Li Quanzhong, Han Jian and other nine towns to reinforce Chenzhou, and attack Caizhou, Huaixi, and Yinghao states."

Li Jing has seen these news in the newspapers just now, whether it is ordinary newspapers or internal references, there are reports on this matter.These two coalition forces, a total of [-] towns, attacked the Qin army. People all over the world believed that the relationship between Chang'an's new court and Li Jing broke down, and a formal war between the two sides began.In particular, some newspapers other than the Qin Fan, even reported with nose and eyes, saying that all eighteen princes would attack the Qin Fan. The biggest reason was that Li Jing rejected the request of Emperor Chang'an to make his eldest daughter the Queen.He also said that the reason why Li Jing refused to be the emperor's Taishan father-in-law was because Li Jing was now full-fledged and ready to usurp the throne and seek the dynasty and establish himself as emperor.They even produced some evidence. The evidence is that many famous civil and military officials of the original court, and even some famous aristocrats in the world, have received Li Jing's invitation to go to Yanjing.It is said that they were going to Yanjing to participate in Li Jing's enthronement ceremony.

However, although there was a lot of discussion in those newspapers, and the eighteen feudal towns also launched an offensive against the Qin feudal clan at the same time, the court in Chang'an did not make a formal statement.So far, the Yang brothers have not made any remarks on the attack on Li Jing.Regarding the military operations in Shiba Town, they seem to have turned a blind eye to the military operations.

Li Jing just thought about it for a while, and knew the reason for this result.

The attitude of the Yang brothers showed that they didn't want to go to war with Qin Fan so soon at first.They proposed to make Li Jing's daughter the queen, because they wanted to buy more time and increase their control over the various towns of the new court.But things backfired. Li Jing vetoed their proposal without hesitation, broke their strategy of delaying troops, directly incorporated the rest of Huang Chao's troops, and quickly instigated the three feudal towns in Henan, commanding them to attack Chen Xu behind the scenes. Behind Luoyang, where the new imperial court was installed, the Central Plains were shaken.

However, Li Jing's reaction was tough, and Li Jing did not hide that he invited famous people from all parties to go to Yanjing to discuss the establishment of a new emperor. This made the Yang brothers have no choice but to turn against Li Jing in advance. .But on the other hand, they didn't want to make things difficult, so they connived secretly, and even planned this two-way eighteen towns attack, but they didn't express their position publicly at all.In doing so, he wanted to gain the upper hand in the military first, and then force Li Jing to return to the negotiating table.

Regarding the military power of the Qin army, the Yang brothers are still very jealous. What they want to do now is to force Li Jing to admit to the new court of Chang'an while Li Jing's main force is outside the customs. , and at the same time gain more preparation time.

It is precisely because of this that this war is a bit strange from the beginning.

It is said that the momentum is huge, and it is indeed very large. The eighteen feudal towns were divided into two groups to attack the Qin feudal clan at the same time, but on the other hand, the battle this time was a bit tepid.

Grouped in the south, they are more in the rescue of Chen Xu Erzhou, trying to recapture Cai, Ying, and Hao Zhuzhou. The Qin army still uses the four newly recruited troops as the main force, and then Yang Xingmi and Xu Sixing battalion send a troop For reinforcements, the battle between the armies of the two sides in the Chen Xu area was somewhat tepid. For more than half a year, the battle was still stalemate without any progress, just like a big quagmire.Although Shang Rang, Qin Zongquan, and Ge Congzhou did not capture Chenzhou, Zhu Quanzhong and Li Quanzhong did not repel the Qin army either.

In the north, however, it was not a battle, but more of a multi-pronged attack, and the towns were not fighting a storm, but a raid.They invaded the four provinces of Shanxi, Hebei, Shandong, and Beiping. Instead of attacking cities and villages, they plundered completely, just like the invasion of the grassland tribes outside the Great Wall.Moreover, their purpose was very strong. This invasion was not an ordinary looting, but they sent troops directly to the north during the wheat harvest season, and went directly to grab the wheat that had just matured and was about to be harvested.

The nine towns in the north assembled a large army and brought a large number of peasants to harvest wheat.Wherever it passed, it was like locusts sweeping away, leaving no grains, only short stubble, and even the stalks were taken away.

While they were harvesting the wheat, they were also looting.They did not attack any larger walled city, but the villages outside the protection of the walled city were all looted.

The Qin army's garrisons in various provinces attacked, but they were not fond of fighting, they attacked everywhere, and left as soon as they succeeded.The Qin army fought everywhere, but after all they did not dare to pursue too much, in case they were ambushed by superior enemy troops in the wild.As a result, the summer harvest in the north suffered a great loss. On the borders of the four provinces of Shanxi, Hebei, Beiping, and Shandong, at least 10% of the summer harvest was lost, and about [-]% was damaged.Many border villages were destroyed by the war, and more than [-] people were looted.

Since then, the Nine Towns have continued to adopt this kind of looting tactics on the border. Because the main force of the garrisons in various places is in the north, they mainly defend some important pass cities on the border, so they dare not fight in the wild on a large scale.As a result, although the four northern provinces did not lose an inch of land or a city, they suffered heavy losses on the border.

Especially in the autumn harvest that just passed, although the garrisons in various provinces strengthened their defenses this time and recruited a lot of reserves, they still suffered huge losses in the face of the invading armies of various towns.

Li Jing directly interrupted the attendant staff to continue to read other news, clenched his fists with a black face, and muttered: "Why don't you fight back?"

The staff officer said carefully: "This is the result of the discussion at the joint meeting of the left behind. King Qin and the army are not in the pass, and facing the attack of the eighteen towns at the same time, the left behind meeting finally chose a defensive strategy."

"Defense me!" Li Jing cursed angrily, "It's good that I took away hundreds of thousands of troops, but they won't mobilize the whole people for reserve service? Huh? Mobilize the reserve force, or even half of the mobilization, there will be tens of thousands of troops. Tens of thousands of horses. Besides, the battlefield in Henan is fought on the opponent's territory, and the real counterattacks by important personnel are only in the four northern provinces, and they are only dealing with the troops of the nine feudal towns. Damn, these guys are afraid What a bird. Could it be that hundreds of thousands of Qin troops can't beat the invasion of a few feudal towns? You know, this is fighting on our territory, damn it, shame on you."

Li Jing was really angry and slapped the table. When he left, he took away a lot of soldiers and horses, but most of them were mobilized from several provinces outside the pass.This was what was considered at the time, fearing that if other feudal towns took advantage of the fire to loot, the Qin army would be able to counterattack.But now, there are still so many troops in the pass, especially when he planned to recruit Shang Rang, Qin Zongquan and others from Henan. These surrendered troops attacked Chenzhou, and the nine feudal towns had to be nailed to the battlefield in Henan.

But under such circumstances, when Li Keyong and other nine feudal towns attacked Qin Fan's north from all directions, the left-behind joint meeting still chose an extremely conservative defensive defense, which made Li Keyong wait for nothing. In the land of human beings, wantonly robbed on the border.

This is simply a shame. The so-called result of not losing an inch of land and not losing a city, in Li Jing's view, is a complete failure.

The loss of 10 people, the destruction of countless villages, and the looting of a large amount of food, such a result, there is no doubt that the Qin army is losing.

"Notify the navy immediately, call out a squadron, and return to Yanjing immediately!" Hearing the situation in the Central Plains, Li Jing couldn't wait any longer.He needs to return to Yanjing immediately! (To be continued.)