Chapter 313 Fighting Alone
If it weren't for the timely and secret delivery of homemade bombs to the three most pressured passes by Baoding Prefecture, the Tatar nobles' wishful thinking would have indeed succeeded.
With the war between the two countries dragging on for so long, the weapons and equipment of the Great Wei border army have indeed become insufficient, and the soldiers' energy has indeed declined significantly.
Even as logs, stones, and arrows of all sizes became increasingly scarce, the Tatars had already repeatedly breached the city gates and scaled the city walls, engaging in close combat with the Wei garrison.
In this situation, without the secret delivery of powerful weapons from the rear, the Wei border troops would indeed suffer more casualties more quickly.
When it came time to claim credit, the nobles of the Tatar royal court and the leaders of the large tribes naturally wouldn't let those guys from the small and medium-sized tribes rush to the front.
However, to their surprise, the Great Wei Dynasty surprised them at this critical juncture when they were preparing to reap huge rewards of lives and military merits.
In the ensuing battles, these people were naturally reluctant to sacrifice the lives of their own men, but they would send people from smaller tribes to the front lines again...
They did think that the leaders of those small and medium-sized tribes were not puppets to be manipulated at will.
Previously, they had stayed in the back and only ordered the soldiers of the small and medium-sized tribes to charge, which made those people resentful of them.
But at that time, they could still see a chance of victory. There was a delicious carrot dangling in front of them, and the people of the small and medium-sized tribes were well aware of the difference in strength between them. With many concerns, even if they were dissatisfied, they would not show it on their faces.
However, the situation is different now than it was then.
Even if they lose many more lives now, the scales of victory will still not tip in their favor.
Unable to breach the northern defenses of the Great Wei and invade the Central Plains to burn, kill, and plunder, they naturally could not make up for their losses through a southern expedition.
In other words, the carrots they used to lure those small and medium-sized tribes have become something distant and unattainable.
With the defeat in battle and the morale of the army dampened, these Tatar nobles, who were originally high above and had seized the most benefits, not only had to passively bear the greatest responsibility, but also lost some of their original privileges.
The most direct manifestation of this in the military is that the small and medium-sized tribes have become less obedient.
Especially those medium-sized tribes whose overall strength is only slightly inferior to that of large tribes, they will never be foolish enough to let others command them again.
The more cautious ones joined forces with other tribal leaders who shared the same intentions and began to obstruct the orders issued by the Tatar nobles in the name of the royal court.
Some of the more adventurous ones simply led their tribesmen out to go and work independently.
They figured that it was impossible for the Great Wei to equip all the passes with that new weapon, since it would take a lot of time to make it.
Although this was just their speculation, they felt that their speculation made a lot of sense.
After all, if the Great Wei had manufactured such divine weapons long ago, they wouldn't have had to fight a protracted war with us.
Based on the timing of its appearance and the caution and restraint with which the soldiers of the Great Wei used it, some Tatars concluded that the Great Wei must have only recently managed to produce a relatively limited number of these things.
Given the current distribution of the Tatar army's forces, they guessed that the Great Wei must have sent all of these limited supplies to the three passes where the defense pressure was greatest.
What does this mean?
This means that other passes that only had a small number of Tatar soldiers harassing and containing them must not have this thing.
Although those small passes with few troops were mostly located in strategically important areas, unsuitable for the rapid advance of the Tatar cavalry, and the land behind them was mostly barren, desolate, and sparsely populated, the Tatars felt that settling for second best was not a bad option, given that the three major passes, including Zijing Pass, could no longer be breached.
Two medium-sized tribes and one large tribe in succession secretly broke camp and headed to the small to medium-sized pass they had chosen as a "second choice". Upon receiving the report, the military commander sent by the royal court was so angry that he directly chopped the simple table in front of him into pieces.
Those two medium-sized tribes were one thing, but they had always been used as pawns by these Tatar nobles, so it was understandable that they became less obedient after the defeat in battle.
The large tribe that was so afraid of falling behind and missing out on even the slightest benefit was what angered the Tatar commander the most.
It should be noted that the leader of that large tribe was one of the Tatar nobles who had targeted those small and medium-sized tribes.
So he wanted to take all the good things in the world back to his tribe.
The Tatar commander-in-chief cursed and summoned other generals for a meeting that very night.
Most of these so-called other generals came from the royal court and several large tribes of the Tatars. Only a very few leaders of medium-sized tribes with considerable strength were qualified to appear here.
As for the smaller tribes, they have always been under the unified command of the larger tribes they belong to, and naturally they are not qualified to participate in the war meetings within the command tent.
The Tatar commander didn't care whether his own leaders had heard about the misdeeds of the three tribes. With a stern face, after all the Tatar nobles, some with downcast eyes and silent, some glancing around aimlessly, some yawning, some looking puzzled, and some with impatience written all over their faces, had arrived, he went straight to the point and told them the latest news he had received.
What he didn't know was that four of the tribes that had been camping right next to the three tribes, and who had been cooperating and fighting alongside them, had quietly chosen to leave the camp under cover of night.
With the departure of these seven tribes, the total number of Tatar soldiers stationed outside the three major passes was reduced by approximately one-third.
The Tatars, already in a precarious position due to the Wei's development of a new weapon, are now even more severely weakened by demoralization and dwindling numbers. They can no longer even attempt to use human lives to replenish and deplete the Wei's new weapon.
It wasn't that they felt the Great Wei had so many new weapons that they couldn't exhaust them with the lives of their own soldiers. Rather, with morale severely low and some large and medium-sized tribes showing signs of disobeying orders and fighting independently, they could no longer fight in a way that would accelerate the disintegration of morale.
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