The north wind was howling on the vast Hebei Plain.
If you stand on the city wall of Xiongzhou City and look out, you will see that the world outside the city is desolate.
Withered and yellow weeds are everywhere in the wilderness, there are countless dense jungles in the wild, and fallen leaves are scattered all over the ground.
The original villages and farmlands had long been dilapidated and no one had cultivated them for decades.
In this chaos, only an official road in the south of the city still tells people that there are at least people passing by here.
After the Battle of Chanzhou, the Song Dynasty relocated its border residents inland to prevent the Liao from raiding the valleys. Today, there are no villages or fields left along the border, only cities and military strongholds.
However, this does not mean that there is no one here at all. Merchants heading north to China and merchants from Liao and Song who come to the market to trade will still come here.
But after the war broke out, no matter how fearless they were for the sake of profit, they had already scattered like birds and beasts and fled far away from the border.
On December 26th, only four days before the end of the year, Di Qing, who was on duty in Xiongzhou City, had already seen from afar several knights flying towards the south city.
He looked for a while and then ordered someone to open the city gate. He recognized one of the knights, who was his subordinate Zhang Yu, who was now the Defense Commissioner of Xiongzhou due to his military achievements.
It is worth mentioning that Di Qing also performed very well in the war with Western Xia. He was promoted like a rocket and was already the military commander of Hebei Road with 5,000 men under his command. He had already reached the threshold of the general level, and the next step was to become a general.
Zhang Yu hurried into the city. When the gates opened, he saw Di Qing and quickly reined in his horse, saying, "Han minister, here I come."
"What's coming?"
Although Di Qing had some guesses in his mind, he still wanted to ask.
Zhang Yu dismounted immediately, wiped the Hanshui on his forehead, took two gulps of water from the soldier next to him, and then said, "Yesterday, the General Manager defeated the Liao army in Baosai, and their remnants are retreating north!"
"Quick, go back and tell Shuai Si!"
Di Qing immediately took a horse, jumped on it, and headed straight for Zhang Kang's mansion in the city.
A moment later, Zhang Kang received the news and was cheered up.
"Very good."
He slammed the table and stood up, saying to Di Qing: "Order the three armies to fight!"
"yes!"
Di Qing also answered in a resounding voice.
After a while, the entire Xiongzhou City became excited, and all the soldiers in the city were ready.
Except for one thousand people left to guard the city, the rest of the people went out of the city to intercept the defeated Liao army.
Similar situations also occurred in many important border towns such as Suicheng, Ansu, Rongcheng, Baoding, and Wen'an.
If it were the Hebei Army in the past, even if the Liao Army was defeated, they probably would not dare to go out of the city to pursue and kill them.
But Lao Fan placed the elite Northwestern Army in many border cities just for this moment.
The morale of the Northwest Army was much stronger than that of the Hebei Army, so they naturally dared to go out of the city and fight a decisive battle.
These are all the same military merits.
At the same time, after the Liao army suffered a major defeat, it was unable to reorganize its troops.
Because the Song army was chasing them closely.
Fortunately, the cavalry galloped all the way north and managed to escape.
But it’s hard for the infantry.
Although most of the Song army were infantry, their morale was high and they chased desperately for military merit.
The Liao army's infantry had to flee madly in order to survive.
In one night, the two sides chased for hundreds of miles, and the entire border line of more than 200 miles in Baozhou, Ansujun, Guangxinjun, Xiongzhou, Dingzhou, etc. in Hebei Road was full of enemy and friendly soldiers.
Fan Zhongyan could no longer control his subordinates because the enemy fled in scattered groups and the Song army pursued them in scattered groups. There was even a strange incident where a small group of more than 200 Song soldiers was chasing a Liao army infantry corps of more than 3,000 people.
So he simply did nothing. After issuing the pursuit order, he led a few thousand people and slowly headed north towards Ansu.
The garrison commander on Ansu's side was the newly appointed governor of the western route of Hebei, Zhao Zhen. He did not have many cavalry, only about 3,000 men, and with the infantry, there were only about 10,000 men. However, he stationed himself at Huludi in a swaggering manner, intercepting a large number of Liao troops in the rear.
Huludi is located on the bank of Caohe River south of Ansu. This Caohe River is not the Caoyun Canal, but a tributary of Fuhe River, a tributary of Daqing River. It originates from Wuhuiling in Yi County, Baoding City, and is the only way to cross the river.
According to historical records, this place was also a place where accidents frequently occurred. From the third year of Kaiyun in the Later Jin Dynasty to the fifth year of Xuanhe in the Northern Song Dynasty, it was the frontier position for defending against the Liao Dynasty for a total of 178 years.
Wars between Liao and Song often took place here.
But it was once the Langshan Stronghold on the south bank of Huludi that the Song State cooperated with the Ansu City to resist the Liao army. Now the Song army went to the north bank to intercept the Liao army, which seemed to be a rebellion against Tiangang.
The remnants of the Liao Dynasty ran around like headless flies. A large part of the nearly 200,000-strong army followed Yelu Zongzhen towards Dingzhou.
The troops of Liao's younger brother Yelu Chongyuan were there, and Yelu Chongyuan could protect them as they returned north from Dingzhou.
The rest of the Liao army was not so lucky. They just wanted to escape from the Song State as quickly as possible, so they chose the fastest route, which was also the closest route to hell.
Zhao Zhen set up an ambush at Huludi and defeated the Liao army again when they crossed the river, killing more than 3,000 people and capturing 5,000.
The commander of Suicheng intercepted more than 10,000 fleeing Liao soldiers at Busan Village and also defeated the enemy, killing more than 2,000 of them and capturing more than 3,000. The remaining 5,000 to 6,000 fled back to Liao territory in a panic.
Zhang Kang, the defender of Xiongzhou, personally led the cavalry and pushed westward. He was too lazy to kill the small groups of Liao troops he encountered, and only pursued Liao troops of at least three to four thousand people each time. In just a few days, he killed more than ten thousand enemies and took no prisoners.
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