The Han culture is spreading strongly in Southeast Asia

Chapter 770 Destruction

The old ones are always the wisest. Amar Singh Tapa's arrangement is obviously much better than that of his nephew Ata Singh, even on a higher level.

If his arrangement was followed, Wang Lian's eight or nine hundred men would be attacked from the front and back by more than ten thousand people. Even if they could hold out until reinforcements arrived, the casualties would definitely be heavy.

But unfortunately, the Dayu Pingkuo army arrived too quickly, which was beyond the Gurkhas' expectations, leaving them completely unprepared.

In history, although Fu Kangan fought beautifully when he crossed the Himalayas to fight back against the Gurkhas, the Gurkhas had long known and were certain that Fu Kangan would cross the Himalayas to attack them in May or June.

Therefore, a year ago, the Gurkhas built complete defensive fortifications on the Jialgula Mountain northwest of Yangbu (Kathmandu) and mobilized nearly 20,000 elite troops from across the country.

The Jialgula Mountains are part of the Himalayas, with a huge drop in elevation. The highest point on the mountain is close to 6,000 meters, while the foothills are less than 2,000 meters.

If the Qing army wanted to attack, they had to first climb from about 3,000 meters in the north to more than 4,000 meters, then capture a bunch of forts on the mountain at more than 4,000 meters, then pursue the retreating Gurkhas, and then go down to the southern foot of the Jialgula Mountain at about 2,000 meters. You can imagine how difficult it was.

Moreover, in history, the Qing army had struggled to cross the Jilong River Valley, forced their way across the Resuo River, and by the time they reached the Jiaergula Mountains, they were already at the end of their strength.

After they won the battle of Jiaergula Mountain at heavy casualties, they could no longer fight and could only accept the "surrender" of the Gurkhas. At the cost of their substance, they saved face and stabilized the inherent border.

But Dayu was different. The Qing Dynasty was restricted by the situation in the northwest at that time and could only send about 10,000 people into Qiangtang. However, Dayu had been operating in the northwest for more than ten years from Li Xianwen to Crown Prince Dalao Sen, and was managed according to wartime standards.

Zheng Xin, the Cihang Pudu Zunfo of Xining, also basically controlled all the tribes in Qinghai. He could mobilize the materials of the tribes in Qinghai more thoroughly than the Qing Dynasty and fully support the court.

Of course, what is more important is that Dayu can mobilize the power of all Han people, instead of just mobilizing hundreds of thousands of bannermen in Beijing like the Qing Dynasty. The war potential of the two sides is not at the same level at all.

Therefore, when Dayu dispatched nearly 20,000 people and a large number of Qinghai tribesmen into Qiangtang, the action of eliminating the Gurkhas was particularly quick.

Before Gorkha could even react, the campaign to wipe out the invaders in Qiangtang was basically over.

After that, the Gurkhas began to prepare to build fortifications on the Jialgula Mountain, but considering that the Dayu Pinggu army would not be dispatched until at least May, the action was not very fast.

This was also due to the fact that Luo Siju's delaying tactic played a big role.

The Gurkhas originally thought that it was impossible for Dayu to cross Mount Sumeru (the Himalayas), which was taller than the sky, so if they came just to punish them, they would most likely use courtesy first and then force.

Therefore, as soon as they received Luo Siju's notice, many people began to relax.

As a result, Luo Siju crossed the Jilong River Valley through the ice and snow in March, two months ahead of schedule, and then took the unprepared Resuo River at an extremely fast speed.

When Dayu Pingkuo's army appeared at Jiaergula Mountain, not only was the construction on the mountain only halfway completed, but even the people in Yangbu City had not received the news that the Pingkuo army had crossed Mount Sumeru.

This is the greatest manifestation of the general's ability. An excellent general can, after integrating information from all parties, find the enemy's loopholes and weaknesses in time and space, and launch unexpected and precise strikes.

Although the Pingkuo army forced its way through the Jilong River Valley in March, 370 people were killed by falling and freezing.

Many warriors died without even seeing the enemy, which is completely different from the casualties of only thirty to fifty people when Fu Kang'an crossed the Jilong River Valley in late May.

But the effect achieved was enough to cover up the loss of more than 300 people.

Historically, Fu Kang'an lost more than a thousand people in the Battle of Jiaergula Mountain, accounting for 20% of the entire army, and the loss of generals was even more severe.

This time, Luo Siju had not fought any battle at Jiaergula Mountain. Now he had reached the outskirts of Yangbu City, and only twenty or thirty people were killed in the battle.

More importantly, at this point, the Dayu Pingkuo Army had not experienced the fierce battle of Jiaergula Mountain and still maintained a strong desire to fight.

When Amar Singh Tapa ordered his nephew Yuda to lead 4,000 men out of the city from the south gate and try to go around behind Wang Lian's troops, the Gurkha warriors were almost walking along the city wall to the west gate, but they ran directly into the 1,000 Jiarong soldiers led by Fu Kangan himself.

The Jiarong area where the Big and Small Jinchuan are located, which is later part of Sichuan's Ganzi, Daliangshan, Kangding and other areas, has always been an important transportation route into Qiangtang.

The land here is barren and transportation is inconvenient, but it happens to be a major transportation route, with far more oil and water than other plateau areas, which has attracted a large number of forces to fight for it. The Han, Tibetan, Yi and Qiang cultures have collided fiercely here. For hundreds of years, each of them has been independent and wars have continued, with the only difference being whether the fights are large or small.

This unique environment has shaped the people here into a tough and hard-working character. The extremely harsh natural environment also makes it easy for people to not take their lives seriously, because there is nothing to cherish and life is just like that.

When the Dayu Dynasty was established, the Qing Dynasty had already completed the transformation of the Jiarong area, mainly the Big and Small Jinchuan, making it quite easy for Dayu to deal with this place.

Mo Zibu also continued Qianlong's policy, which was to win over the people vigorously. After all, there were few people in the Jiarong area, so as long as there was a brave warrior, he could directly use money to throw it into the army and eliminate the disaster.

The world is very big, and Mo Zibu is least afraid of the emergence of ruthless people who are unwilling to settle down and farm, and like to kill people and rob money everywhere.

For example, during this conscription, Mo Zibu first asked the Sichuan Governor Liang Wenying to take the chiefs and warriors of the Jiarong area to Chengdu to experience the world of pleasure, and then conferred a large number of official titles on them.

For example, deputy centurion, centurion, thousand-householder, Yulinlang, Yunqiwei, Enqiwei, etc.

These officials with imperial favor have no real positions and cannot be inherited. Basically, they are given money, rice, salt, sugar, tea, etc. Whether you can obtain them depends entirely on the emperor's decision.

The Jiarong people who came down the mountain and saw the colorful world and knew that the emperor could give away mountains of gold and silver with a wave of his hand immediately became extremely obedient. This time, three thousand people were recruited. Those who were selected cheered, while those who were not selected were as sad as if they had lost their parents.

The so-called young man in fine clothes and riding a fierce horse, I am Dingzhen Litang Wang.

This joke is always funny, not about the people involved. As a typical Jiarong person, the young man who was promoted by the local government and was very successful did have many minor flaws in his living habits and could not even read a single word.

But he is definitely a person who can endure hardships, and will really work hard.

From here, from the Jiarong people who have been classified as Tibetans in the new era, we can still see the character of their ancestors.

He is brave and strong, able to endure hardships, but other than that, he doesn't have many advantages.

However, at this moment, Dayu Chao, Mo Zibu, and Luo Siju in front of him only need to use their strengths, and their weaknesses are not a big deal at this moment.

The two sides met unexpectedly. Under the leadership of Fu Kang'an, the Jiarong soldiers quickly formed a fighting posture and charged directly towards the Gurkhas who were marching in a long snake at the foot of the city wall.

The Gurkhas' response was much slower. Their pre-war mobilization was insufficient, and the responsibilities of superiors and subordinates were unclear when they were temporarily mobilized. The soldiers and generals were unfamiliar with each other, and they were unable to respond quickly.

Commander Yuda roared loudly, hoping that the entire army would gather in the center where he was. However, before the Gurkha warriors at the front and rear could arrive, after a crackling volley of gunfire, hundreds of Jiarong soldiers directly defeated Yuda's central army.

These fierce warriors wore cotton armor, held long swords in their right hands, flintlock pistols or even muskets in their left hands, and fought their way in and out of the smoke.

Yuda, who was known for his bravery, also came to fight with his personal guards holding a scimitar, but in one round, he was knocked off his horse by a Jiarong warrior, and the Gurkhas lost their command in an instant.

Now it has really become a snake like Changshan. If you hit its head, the tail cannot reach it. If you hit its tail, the head cannot reach it. If you hit its middle, neither the head nor the tail can reach it.

After defeating the center and chopping off Yuda's head, the Jiarong soldiers ignored the tail and attacked the head. In just over ten minutes, they killed more than a thousand Gurkha front troops.

More than a thousand Gurkha rear troops did not come up at all. They were frightened by the ferocity of the Jiarong soldiers and retreated to the south of the city.

In the city, it was almost five o'clock in the afternoon. Amar Singh Tapa, who was in charge of commanding the attack on Wang Lian, had no idea that the 4,000 men outside the city had been defeated and his nephew Yuda had been killed in the battle because of the twilight and the sounds of fighting everywhere.

Amar Singh Thapa personally commanded the artillerymen trained by the English and was setting up old artillery.

These artillery pieces were not three to six pound guns with gun carriages. The British Army in India did not have many of these field guns, so how could they be willing to sell them to the Gurkhas?

These wicked things that England sold to the Gurkhas were old naval cannons directly removed from broken-down armed merchant ships.

They hadn't figured it out. The Gurkhas were high up in the mountains of Nepal, with such inconvenient transportation, yet they still had to use artillery that weighed thousands of pounds. So, just as Amar Singh Thapa had painstakingly set up the artillery, before he could even fire, Fu Kangan arrived with a thousand Jiarong soldiers.

Fu Kangan accurately found the weakest link of Amar Singh Tapa and miraculously sneaked in through several Gurkha army gathering places.

Seeing these Jiarong soldiers rushing towards him like mad tigers, Amar Singh Tapa quickly ordered his guards to take over.

He had hundreds of flintlock rifles in his hands. Even if the enemy suddenly appeared, as long as he held on for a while, the surrounding tens of thousands of Gurkha soldiers would react and surround them immediately.

But in the end, the Jiarong soldiers were extremely brave, and the Gurkhas' lead bullets rained down on them, almost all of the dozens of people in the front fell down, but it did not affect the people behind them at all.

They shouted "Long live the emperor" and rushed forward without hesitation for a second.

Only those who have been slaves know the value of having a court title and having imperial food on time. Compared with this, their lives are insignificant.

Amar Singh Thapa's guards only had time to fire one round before they were immediately engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the Jiarong soldiers and were killed and forced to retreat.

Wang Lian, who had been harassing the Gurkhas who were setting up artillery behind the earth wall, also saw the flags of the Jiarong soldiers. He immediately organized hundreds of his men to suddenly jump out from behind the earth wall and launched a counterattack.

At this time, there were at least 13,000 Gurkhas around the west gate, but they were unable to form a joint force due to poor visibility and poor command.

The pressure of commanding them instantly fell on Amar Singh Thapa.

If he could muster up the courage and personally lead his guards to withstand the attack of the Jiarong soldiers, it would only take an hour at most for the rest of the Gurkha warriors, no matter how slow they reacted, to come and surround them.

But unfortunately, Amar Singh Thapa is no longer the heroic young man who bravely followed Prithvi Narayan, the founding king of the Gorkha Shah dynasty, to unify Nepal twenty years ago.

Amar Singh Thapa's territory was in western Nepal, which later belonged to the Indian state of Uttarakhand and bordered the Ali region.

Even if Yangbu was captured and the close relatives of the Shah Dynasty were executed by the Great Emperor of Zhendan, it would not necessarily affect him.

On the contrary, if he sacrifices the lives of his trusted clansmen or even his own life, his territory may be invaded.

With his mind racing and his heroic spirit vanishing in the face of reality, Amar Singh Thapa only considered for two or three minutes before immediately ordering a retreat to Hanuman Dhoka, the last fortress in the city.

As for how to fight the next battle, let Regent Bam worry about it.

But Amar Singh Tapa never imagined that he was not the only one who had this little idea, but others also had the same idea.

Nepal has been unified for more than fifteen years and has enjoyed the benefits of occupying Qiangtang for eight years. The brave founding soldiers of the Gurkha Dynasty are either old or corrupted by the wealth and luxury, and are no longer the battle-hardened troops they once were.

As long as Amar Singh Tapa was still there, they could still hold on. But once Amar Singh Tapa left, these people no longer had the heart to fight and they all withdrew at once.

Seeing this, Fu Kangan and Wang Lian knew that the opportunity was not to be missed, so they immediately launched a large-scale attack. They deliberately made a huge noise so that the Gurkhas could not figure out how many people had come from Dayu.

Fu Kang'an even ordered some Jiarong soldiers to ride out of the city on war horses to sweep the mountain city. For a time, the Gurkhas were defeated, and more people were trampled to death than those who died in battle.

When the sun set, Luo Siju led the remaining 3,000 people into the city. Taking advantage of the night, they began to block the city street by street. The Gurkha warriors were terrified and fled to the Hanuman Dhoka Palace in the city.

In Hanuman Dhoka Palace, Regent Bam was furious. He certainly knew how the outer city was lost.

Fourteen to fifteen thousand people were defeated by the Zhendan army of less than two thousand people, losing more than four thousand people and a large amount of military equipment.

But he couldn't punish anyone because Regent Bam still needed these people to fight for their lives, otherwise even the Hammandoka Palace would be lost.

Therefore, the Regent Bam suppressed his anger and kept appeasing the generals below. He granted them official positions and made promises, including many lands directly under the royal jurisdiction.

“The Hanuman Dhoka Palace is the highest point in Yangbu. The Cathayana army has at most 6,000 to 7,000 men. They cannot break through the palace in a short time.

As long as we hold on, and have our vassal states bring their armies to Yangbu, with internal and external support, we can quickly drive out the Zhendan people."

In addition to giving benefits, they also had to paint a rosy picture. Regent Bam vowed that victory was still on his side, which boosted morale a lot.

But unfortunately, Luo Siju would not let him have his wish and would not give him time to win over the people's hearts. So the next morning, Luo Siju ordered his generals to divide the city into sections to control the Nepalese.

At this time, there were about 70,000 people in Yangbu City, and at least 50,000 people were controlled by the Pingkuo army with swords and spears.

Luo Siju separated the men from the women, children, the elderly and the weak, organized the men into teams of ten, and used their parents, wives and children as hostages, forcing them to attack the city like ants. Anyone who refused would have his entire family killed.

And it’s not just killing one person’s entire family, but killing ten people’s entire families.

In other words, if one person doesn't do it, the families of his entire team will be in danger. This is to make these young men supervise each other and not dare to retreat. Even if one of them ignores his family, the others still have to take care of him.

Luo Siju and the Pingkuo army's methods were extremely smooth and skillful, which was frightening, because this was the way they had been done for thousands of years in China. The few words "making the people like ants climbing a city wall" were full of blood.

The Gurkhas had never seen this kind of operation before. It’s not that they don’t know how to do it, but it’s impossible for them to be so efficient and accomplish this in such a short time.

For a time, tens of thousands of Yangbu residents, crying and shouting, holding scrap metal and even wooden sticks, launched a frantic attack on the Hammandoka Palace under the intimidation of the supervision team.

Luo Siju also asked some people to transport the cannons that Amar Singh Tapa had previously brought from Hanuman Dhoka Palace to the outside of the palace, and after adjusting the trajectory, they bombarded the palace.

However, this palace named after the Hindu monkey god Hanuman was indeed the most difficult fortress in Yangbu City. After five days of fighting, thousands of Yangbu people were killed or injured, but they still failed to capture it.

Luo Siju immediately adjusted his plan. He ordered people to spread the news, claiming that he was here only to kill the main culprit and not the accomplices, and that the only people he wanted to kill were the Regent Bam and other members of the Shah dynasty royal family.

At the same time, he pretended to be careless and left an escape route from the north of the city.

At the same time, under the pressure of Luo Siju, a new wave of ants climbed onto the city wall on a larger scale.

Under these three pressures, many Gurkha nobles who did not want to wait for death in Yangbu became divided. They disobeyed the orders of the Regent Bam and fled out of the city at dawn from a place with three walls and one gate selected for them by Luo Siju.

But these people had no idea that this was all a trick of Luo Siju. Seeing that these people had been fooled, Luo Siju immediately ordered the Black Flag Army to pursue them relentlessly.

The Black Flag Army had 1,300 war horses, which gave them a great advantage in mobility, while the Gurkha nobles who broke out did not have enough war horses or even enough food.

Two days after their escape, they were overtaken by the Gandak River, thirty kilometers west of Yangbu (Kathmandu), which originates in the Gyirong Valley and eventually flows into the Ganges.

In this battle, the desperate Gurkha nobles were defeated and killed. More than 2,000 of their 7,000 men were killed in battle, and more than 1,000 were forced to jump into the icy river. Only one in ten survived.

The remaining 4,000 people who knelt and surrendered were all killed by Fu Kang'an, including high-ranking nobles such as Amar Singh Tapa, Damodar Pande, Bhimsen Tapa, and Ugil Singh Tapa. All of them were beheaded by the Gundag River.

Afterwards, Fu Kangan led his army back and impaled the heads on spears as a demonstration to the people in Hanuman Dhoka Palace. The morale of the army in the city collapsed in an instant.

April 1798, 4. This was the 21rd year of the Guangzhong reign of the Great Yu of China, originally the rd year of the Jiaqing reign of the Qing Dynasty, and the sixth day of the third lunar month.

Hanuman Dhoka Palace, the last fortress in Yangbu City, was captured. The regent Bam Bahadur Shah burned himself to death in the palace, and most of the more than 6,000 defenders in the city were killed.

More than seventy members of the Gorkha Shah dynasty, including Sher Bahadur Shah, were captured, and only a few escaped from the city.

At this point, Dayu’s most important military expedition has basically come to an end, and what remains is how to deal with the aftermath.

(End of this chapter)