Chapter 395 Advice
On the fifteenth day of the twelfth lunar month, the weather was freezing cold, and the atmosphere in Ligu Town, located in the center of the Jin army's exaggerated camp, was almost frozen.
There was no way. The nobles above all had grim faces, and the people below could not help being restricted layer by layer. Besides, there was no reason for them to be happy… The Yellow River froze on the tenth day of the twelfth lunar month, and then the war of attrition became more and more intense day by day. As a result, until yesterday, that is, the fourteenth day of the twelfth lunar month, many soldiers rushed forward but failed to break through the Song army's defense line, and only sacrificed countless lives in vain… In this situation, not to mention the middle-level Meng'an Moukes, even the officers of the Haner reinforcements were not in a good mood.
As for the lower-level soldiers and civilian laborers, let alone the contracted soldiers, they are the direct sufferers of casualties. How could they be happy?
That’s right, yesterday evening, the Jin army’s first general offensive, which had been planned for three or four days, ended in such a muddle.
It's not that there was no fighting, but the imagined scene of five Wanhu going from west to east, three Wanhu going from east to west, two Wanhu in the south, two Wanhu in the north, and one in the center of Gao Jingshan, where everyone fought together and the Song army could not hold on and collapsed across the board, did not occur.
With the death of Wang Bolong, a Wanhu suddenly disappeared. In the afternoon's battle, Shaohe in the north was alone and dared not launch any decent offensive towards the Song army's strongest northern defense line. Wanyan Bendu, Elubu, Ali who came to rescue, and Gao Qingyi and Pu Suyue who escaped from the city, all mustered their strength, followed their military duties, and launched several tentative attacks, but quickly retracted like a cat showing its claws.
There was really no way. The disappearance of Wang Bolong and his Wanhu could not be concealed in the east and the north. The morale of several Wanhu in the east, from top to bottom, was extremely depressed. None of them had the spirit to fight to the death.
On the other hand, in the west, with such a huge battlefield and delayed news, the army was able to muster up some courage under Yu Balisu's military order and charged twice. However, such an offensive was not effectively tied down in the east and north, and was blocked by the Song army, which had high morale and continuous support.
Finally, as the Song army's second-line troops provided full support and began to display a large amount of spoils captured by Wang Bolun's troops, the Jin army's top brass, fearing that it would cause a collapse in morale on the front lines, had to call off the troops.
In fact, at that time, some people even worried that the Song army would use the captured heads of the Jin army as cannonballs... What else could they do if they didn't withdraw?
"How do you mean?"
In a fairly spacious house in the town, Gao Qingyi was sitting alone on the porch, leaning against the stove and drinking fish soup, with a copy of the latest Song Dynasty newspaper next to him. When he heard someone coming in, he asked directly without even raising his head.
The person who came was none other than Shaohe, the Wanhu from Bohai.
Hearing this, he did not answer directly. Instead, he asked his attendants to help him take off his helmet and armor. Then, he took a bowl, chopsticks and spoon, sat down opposite Gao Qingyi, poured himself a bowl of hot soup, took a few sips, and then sighed:
"What can I say? It's such a mess, not worth talking about!"
"I still have to tell you, and I'll tell you in detail." Gao Qingyi's face was calm. "After what happened yesterday, how can I be scared again?"
"It was just a quarrel..." Shaohe picked up the bowl and took a few sips before he took a long breath and told the story in general. "Seven or eight Wanhu who were not on the eastern front were still confused until today. They just couldn't believe that a whole Wanhu was gone so quickly, and it was Wang Bolong's Wanhu. When Erlubu had his men dump Wang Bolong's frozen body in the yard, everyone in the court dared to believe it, and then they started to pass the buck, saying that it was the men on the eastern front who watched him die without helping. Later, Pu Suyue went up and told him what he had seen on the city wall, and the matter was over. Then they put the blame on everyone, saying that Wang Bolong was a man who had harmed the country, and then said that Erlubu and Ali were ineffective in rescuing him. Wanyan Bendu even blamed the incident on Gao Dutong in the city, which caused me to argue with him for half a day."
Gao Qingyi's expression remained unchanged, as if he didn't care about the matter. "Is that all? What did the King of Wei say to the Marshal? Didn't they discuss future strategies?"
"That's exactly what I want to say." Shaohe said in a sullen voice. "After a long time of fussing, the Fourth Prince just kept silent. Maybe Wang Bolong's old injury was irritated. Anyway, I don't know what he was thinking. Balisu simply came at noon and said that he was going to inspect the barracks and distribute some rewards to the soldiers..."
“That’s right.”
"Of course he was right... The situation was stabilized only after Balisu came." Shaohe took a sip of the soup bowl and continued. "After the situation was stabilized, this guy acted like a marshal and said a few decent words... The first one pointed out that Wang Bolong's arrogance had ruined the country, lost his army and humiliated himself, and it had nothing to do with others; the second one was to promote Pu Suyue to the temporary commander of ten thousand households, which was to gather the twenty or thirty Moukes brought out of the city with the few remaining infantry and defeated soldiers of Wang Bolong, and add some signed soldiers to make up a ten thousand households..."
"What else can we do?" Gao Qingyi finally showed some expression, but he smiled bitterly. "A Wanhu was lost in such a muddle... Even if we have to make do, we have to keep this Wanhu organization, otherwise the morale of the army will be lost."
"It's better than nothing, right? As for the morale of the army, it's completely gone since yesterday." Shaohe put down the bowl and looked at the attendants feeding the horses in the yard. He was a little depressed for a moment. "In fact, how could I not know that so many Wanhu, all of them are either veterans or nobles, the reason why they are so noisy and chaotic, isn't it because they are afraid of me and use this to cover it up? Even if I quarreled with Ben Du, it was actually the same inside... At the end of the quarrel, some people were already shouting to withdraw the army, withdraw to Yanjing, and some people said that it would be better to leave a few tens of thousands of people here to confront, and the rest of the troops and horses directly took advantage of the freezing of the Yellow River to go south to the city of Dongjing, and set up a siege... Besiege Wei to save Zhao."
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