stubborn thief

Chapter 421

After autumn, Hehuang is getting colder and colder, and Kangning Mansion on the plateau is already freezing.

On the third floor of the Zhaqu Manor in Nangqian County, Cao Yao sat beside the fire in the sun hall with a gloomy face, pressing tobacco into the jade carving pipe little by little, with two open letters and a letter from Uszang in his hand. The persuasion table.

Bai Yantaiji, who was dressed in thick Uzbek brocade, sat across from him with a kind smile on his face, and beside him stood two Mongolian warriors with their belts and swords removed.

Cao Yao raised his finger to the two Mongolian guards, and waved his finger to the side: "Go out."

The two guards looked at Taiji Baiyan in embarrassment, the latter's smile froze and he nodded his head twice.

After the guards went out, Cao Yao handed the pipe to the attendant to light, and continued to stare at Bai Yan with gloomy eyes, until he stared at Bai Yan in a panic, then gritted his teeth and said softly: "The commander-in-chief is supported by the Mongolian tribes, I let you You said that, the three of you brothers said this?"

There are two letters in his hand, one is the announcement that Liu Chengzong was supported and called Khan, and the other is a letter written by Liu Chengzong himself, telling him that he is going to get married, and asking him and Yang Dingrui to return to Xining. The opinion of the successor of the Corning House.

And the letter of persuasion to Jin was written to Liu Chengzong by the three brothers Taiji, Lazun, and Guru Taiji, Huo Luochi, from the Qinghai Tumote Tribe, to persuade Jin Dahan to inherit the Datong and become the Emperor of the Yuan Dynasty.

What Cao Yao wanted to express was to ask the three brothers in Wusi Tibet to give some blessings, express their support, and submit the form to surrender, but he said that Taiji brought the form of persuasion, in his eyes, it was a job Children fooling around.

Let's not talk about such harmful things as persuading Jin to proclaim himself emperor.

Who wants to inherit the name of that unlucky country? The real Great Yuan has long since been abolished by the ancestors, and the remaining one called Bei Yuan is considered a Mongols to save face. Generally speaking, its proper title should be Remnants of Yuan Yuan.

Taking ten thousand steps back, even if you really want to become emperor, you can't use Dayuan. Anyway, if you become emperor at this moment, Cao Yao thinks that they probably won't be able to fight back to the mainland, so the name of the country will be Daqing.

If he rushed back to the mainland to consider, Cao Yao felt that the country name of Dunta Wulusi was very good. Later, Liu Shizi became the king, the country name was Dazhong, and the year name was unified.

Give him the useless country title that Emperor Taizu wanted to use back then.

Putting words, Tai Jiqiang said with a smile: "It's not a good thing for the commander-in-chief to proclaim himself emperor."

"Good thing?"

Cao Yao leaned forward and looked at Taiji Bai Yan very seriously: "I see...are you three brothers really angry at being called sweaty by the commander-in-chief?"

Putting words on Taiji's mind, he blinked and turned his head to glance at the side, before he argued, "Why are we angry?"

Cao Yao didn't speak, but turned his head and exhaled turbid air, raised his hand and tore the watch of the three Huo Luochi brothers into two and threw it into the stove.

Speaking of it, Cao Yao was not surprised at all by the news that Liu Chengzong was supported by the Mongolian nobles as Khan. His reaction was like most Han generals in the Marshal's Mansion. It was good, but it didn't matter.

Because calling the king, the emperor, and the khan are essentially the same, representing the status and the distribution of benefits.

It is not inappropriate for Kublai Khan to rely on the Han army to fight for the world, and it is not wrong to become the emperor; although Cao Yao still does not understand what kind of agreement Liu Chengzong reached with Oirat, but the tens of thousands of Mongolian troops in the hands of the marshal's mansion alone, [-]% The territory is all pasture land, and it is also due to be called Khan.

But Liu Chengzong couldn't proclaim himself emperor because the time had not yet come. To proclaim himself emperor meant that he had to settle accounts with his subordinates, and they had to be given official positions and titles, which they couldn't afford based on their current territory.

But having said that, Cao Yao, who is even more outrageous, has also seen it.

For example, the babbling Taiji in front of him is the current Lord of the Uzang Snow Region.

Kangning is not far from Uzang. Although Uzang is vast and boundless, its main population is concentrated in the Lhasa Valley. Moreover, Kangning Prefecture has always had trade relations with the Huoluochi armed group that entered Tibet, so the news lags behind. Sex is basically one to six months.

One month is when the three Huoluochi brothers took the initiative to inform, and six months is when the rumor spread to Qamdo.

In the past two years, not only Liu Chengzong was busy fighting in the north, but the three Huoluochi brothers of Tumote were also busy fighting in Uzang. Until this year, the three brothers finally captured Sangzhu Zizong Fort and took control of the Lhasa Valley, becoming a veritable the king of Tibet.

But in fact, the difference between whether they are masters or not is not very big in Cao Yaoyan's eyes.

At this time last year, the emissary of Taiji went through Qamdo to Nangqian, and approached Cao Yao, who borrowed people who could make plans, and said that many nobles in Uzang had already attached themselves to them, and only the Zangba Khan occupied the sect. The fort had not yet been captured.

Cao Yao didn't know whether the three brothers had experienced the defeat in Qinghai and learned to unite; or whether they had new enemies hidden in Usi, which made them lose interest in Wo Li Dou.

In short, they had a good time in Wusi Tibet, and the strategy they used was simple and easy to understand, looting.

There is no way, compared to the local army of Uzbekistan, the complex terrain and strong mountain fortress can weaken the advantage of the Mongolian cavalry to the greatest extent.

But in field battles, the Uzbek army can't take advantage of it.

Therefore, the local nobles refused to engage in a decisive battle with the Huoluochi brothers, and hoped that they would gnaw and knock on each mountain fort.

Of course, the three brothers were not that stupid. They extended the span of the war. Teams of Mongolian horses roamed the snowy plateau and plundered every territory.

It doesn't matter if the enemy runs away or defends the fort, they will return to their pasture after they have plundered all the people, livestock, money, and food outside the fort.

Then the caravan set off for Qamdo, and sold all the labor and goods into Qamdo, and they couldn't support them anyway.

Send troops again next year to ask those enemies if they obey or not, and if they don't obey, they will do it again.

Everyone lost their temper because of their way of fighting, and they all came to the table to follow. Lhazun became the religious leader of Uzang in Zongshan, Guru Taiji became the political leader, and Yan Yantaiji became the military leader... They became the masters of the snow domain.

The policy is still changing every year, [-]% Timba is levied every year, and the rest is ignored. The local government should continue to be separated, and everything will continue as usual.

To put it bluntly, Taiji borrowed people who knew abacus from Cao Yao, not for anything else, but to find some smart people to enter Uzbek, and calculate the annual income of those noble fiefdoms so that Timba can be expropriated.

It's not that the three Huoluochi brothers don't understand the structure of the Kangning Mansion. To put it bluntly, Taiji still remembers the agreement with Liu Chengzong. He wants Liu Shizi to send him officials to govern the place, but he wants to cut off the local nobles.

Can't do it.

On the one hand, it is to say that Taiji tried to manage the place according to the method of Kangning Prefecture and set up county officials, but unless there is another war and the Uzang is smashed, otherwise it will be the same as if it has not been established.

On the other hand, Yang Dingrui refused to send officials to Uzang, because their own officials were not enough.

In the seven counties of Kangning Prefecture, many people who can read and write have been trained in two years, but they are all old aristocrats with a certain level of education in the past. The children they place high hopes on have not yet grown up.

Moreover, Yang Dingrui and Cao Yao, the military and political officials of the Kangning Mansion, had the same views on the issue of Uzang. They did not want the Marshal's Mansion to bring Uzang under direct rule.

Occupying Kangning can also be said to be an advance base for marching into Sichuan. What is the occupation of Wusi Zangtu, Fengchan Himalayas?
In Cao Yao's view, it is very easy for his army to penetrate the Lhasa Valley. He does not need to send any generals. As long as he can safely pass through the dangerous road into Tibet, he can give Li Laozhen 3000 troops and push them all the way. Lhasa Valley.

It is useless to have too many people. In the terrain over there, an army of [-] is not as flexible as an army of [-].

But occupation is not something that [-] troops can do.

Now is not the time to do it.

In fact, occupying and ruling the Kangning Mansion has caused Yang Dingrui and Cao Yao, the generals of the mansion, to suffer a lot.

Now the troops led by Cao Yao, Li Laozhen, and Luo Rucai have all changed from the middle-mounted infantry when they entered Kangning to light-armed musketeers.

This is the only way for them to maintain their combat effectiveness under the existing conditions.

War horses, donkeys and mules died too much in the plateau counter-insurgency and bandit suppression battles. They lost the tall and strong Hequ horses. They could only use local horses to supplement them. It's dead, but the load capacity is a little worse.

The best load of a Corning horse is [-] jin, which can travel [-] miles a day on the plateau.

According to local conditions, the equipment and tactics of the entire army were all changed. At first they used one man and two horses, but later found it too extravagant, because the seven counties in the region also needed horses as a means of transportation.

Later, it became a single horse, but the load capacity of a single horse was insufficient, so it could only reduce the load.

Due to the high degree of mules and horses in the Shuaifu army, the load has always been high. Suddenly there is no large number of horses, and Kangning's mountain warfare does not allow a large number of vehicles to accompany it, resulting in a sharp drop in the army's combat effectiveness.

Bows, arrows and muskets are not light, with two bow belts and four pots of arrow belts, including the bow and quiver, it weighs [-] catties; a musket, [-] ammunition, and five coils of matchlocks weighs less than [-] catties.

Coupled with their cotton clothes, armor, helmets, weapons, and rations, the normal load of an armored soldier is basically about [-] catties. Now the conditions are not good, so they can only go into battle lightly.

First, they didn’t wear armor and shields, and then there were more military craftsmen in the Arms Bureau of Kangning Mansion, so they didn’t even wear shields, and each had a musket with a waist knife; finally, he didn’t bring a waist knife anymore, and took a gun knife to suppress the bandits. .

If it is not forced by the situation, Cao Yao is absolutely unwilling to let soldiers go to the battlefield like this.

Since the change of clothes in the Kangning Mansion, there have been seventeen large-scale and large-scale bandit suppression battles. Cao Yao saw it many times in the battle report.

But Cao Yao couldn't be fooled by this, he knew that such imaginary scene didn't exist, but he didn't care that the general used such rhetoric to encourage the soldiers' courage.

After all, Cao Yao was the first person in the Marshal's Mansion to play with the blunderbuss knife. As early as Liu Chengzong had not been a soldier, Cao Yao had used the blunderbuss knife in the Beijing Army's firearms battalion.

Soldiers can use this to defeat the enemy's formation entirely because they have too many muskets, and the enemy can't shoot at them at all. But to say that soldiers equipped with muskets are not to chase down the defeated enemy, but to really use this to crush the enemy... Cao Yao thinks he can change generals.

Take Liu Chengzong, the number one horse archer in the Marshal's Mansion as an example, Cao Yao would not fight Liu Shizi with anything he wanted, even a two-foot-long blunderbuss knife, and he was not sure of winning.

But if Liu Shizi had a blunderbuss with a blunderbuss knife in his hand, let alone a spear, even if he was given a fast spear of about the same length, Cao Yao felt that there was no problem and he could shoot.

The blunderbuss knife weighs less than two catties, the musket weighs more than eight catties, and a piece weighs ten catties, and the way it is held is basically a strange weapon.

An eight-foot-long short spear weighs only five catties, and it would be too much of a disadvantage for a bird gun to be equipped with a knife to fight with this thing.

But Cao Yao doesn't think this thing is useless, it solves the problem of having or not, and it suffers a disadvantage when fighting with cold weapons, but when fighting with a musketeer, it must have the glory of a musketeer.

He used to think that this set of treasures was out of date, but now he doesn't think so.

Because in the past, it was the Ming army that used the most firearms around. The Ming army was equipped with gun knives, but they couldn't stab other people's cold weapons. But now it is still the Ming army that uses firearms with the highest rate of equipment, so things are interesting.

So the gun knife is quite necessary.

Cao Yao planned to return to Xining this time to attend Liu Chengzong's wedding, take a team of light musketeers back, let Liu Shizi look at the army of Kangning Mansion, measure their combat effectiveness, and avoid making wrong strategic judgments in the future.

I thought it was three thousand heavy soldiers entering Sichuan, but it turned out that there were three thousand light musketeers, and it would be a joke at that time.

Cao Yao had already seen from the news that Liu Shizi transferred them to the north that the future strategic focus of the Marshal's Mansion would shift to the east.

The only thing he's worried about now is the Huoluochi brothers in Wusi Zang, especially after these three guys have made a persuasion...they want to say goodbye.

To put it bluntly, Taiji watched Cao Yao burn the persuasion watch, stared at him and didn't know what to say, so he heard Cao Yao say: "You write now, forget it, you come back to Xining with me, and meet the commander-in-chief with him." Speak."

"I'm going to Xining?"

To put it bluntly, Taiji didn't want to go to Xining. He remembered how Liu Chengzong treated those nobles in Kangning Mansion. Now their brothers have become the biggest nobles in Uzang.

This made him dare not go to see Liu Chengzong, so he could only talk about him and said: "How about Cao Dashuai go first, and I will go back and prepare a gift for him?"

Without even thinking about it, Cao Yao shook his head and said, "Taiji, what do you think, why don't we enter Wusi Tibet?"

He didn't know why Cao Yao asked this question, but after a little thought, he said, "The commander-in-chief is someone who wants to enter the Central Plains to be the great emperor. Uszang is in a humble corner, and the commander-in-chief looks down on him."

Cao Yao shook his head again, and looked at the words with a half-smile: "Wusizang is a bit mean, but if you want to go, Qamdo is here, so Zongshan is so far away? Maybe not."

"We didn't enter Uzang three years ago because Uzang was too high. We have been stationed in Qamdo and Nangqian for three years, and Uzang is no longer high."

These words made Taiji's tailbone feel cold.

In fact, the power of the Huoluochi tribes is many times stronger than before entering Tibet.

But he clearly remembered how Liu Chengzong captured Nangsuo Qianmo Palace three years ago. Those fortresses that were difficult to attack were useless to the firearms troops of the Marshal's Mansion.

However, in the past two years, the deterrent effect of the Marshal's Mansion on him has only increased.

"The reason why we don't enter Uz-Tibet now is entirely because the Generalissimo regards you as a friend."

　good evening!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)