In September of the thirteenth year of the Beacon Fire Era, in July of the first year of Jianwu, it was the time when Ma Lao Cao Huang and autumn and winter were approaching.

In the Tianlong Fortress of the Beichen Empire, the generals of the Beichen Empire gathered, among which Yue Fei, Zhang Han, Xue Rengui, and Li Zhaoliang all gathered here. The generals Zhao Yun, Ma Chao, Hua Rong, Yue Yun, Zhang Xian and many other famous generals also led the troops here to wait. In addition to the dozens of famous generals of the Beichen Empire, the Tianlong Fortress is also full of soldiers and horses at this time, and the army of more than 2 million people gathers here, which is magnificent.

Half of the soldiers and horses gathered in the Tianlong Fortress were soldiers and horses belonging to the Jingshi garrison. Not only were all the Beijing battalions dispatched, but even the Praetorian Guards guarding the capital were more than half dispatched, with a strength of up to 1.2 million. In addition, 500,000 troops were drawn from the local garrison and pulled here. The rest are some personal guards led by generals from all over the country.

The personal guard troops, among the generals of the Beichen Empire, are very rare. Because you are not at the level of a general, you are not qualified to recruit personal guards, and you can only be protected by the brocade guards sent down from above. But after you get to the general, it doesn't mean that you can recruit the guards if you want to. Among them, miscellaneous generals, as well as those partial generals and generals, can only report to the Ministry of War, and the Ministry of War will arrange for the dispatch of specially trained guards in China. In other words, no matter what, you can't hide from the surveillance from above.

The generals with some names such as Yang, Dang, and Ask for help in the middle are much better. The military department will not be specially deploying a large number of guards to protect them, after all, it takes a lot of effort for a guard. It's good to say that the general can't have more than 100 guards, but the military department is still capable of handling it. But there are some generals with small names, and the number of guards is as low as 500, and the number of guards is as high as 800. With such a large number of guards, let the military department find someone for them.

There are many Jinyi guards, with four or five hundred thousand, but they are the pro-army of the Son of Heaven, and they are not under the influence of the military department. Besides, Jinyiwei is willing to let you accept it, but do you dare to accept it?

Therefore, without the military department's distribution of guards, those generals can only take the money to recruit guards on their own. However, after recruiting the guards, they first had to prepare a case at the military headquarters, and then they would be given ideological education by the military headquarters for a month before they could officially belong to the general's personal guards. Of course, let the generals recruit their own guards, and the state cannot say nothing, and half of the guards' salaries are paid by the state, and the rest is paid by individuals.

For those who hold the positions of generals above the four towns, four expeditions, four flats, and four determinations, the personal guards are recruited from their respective families. After all, the Beichen Empire still belongs to the feudal empire, even if Xiao Chen's thinking is progressing, the people below can still do what they want. The rise of an empire will always bring about the rise of countless families. Today's high-ranking officials in the Beichen Empire have not yet formed a family.

The advantage of the aborigines over the family is undoubtedly obvious, because when the Beichen Kingdom first appeared, they had already formed a family model. Only those recruited god generals and famous generals are still slowly developing their own families. Although they are all weak people, they can't resist that they are at the top of the Beichen Empire. With such an advantage, the historical celebrities and the aboriginal families have formed two rivals of equal strength.

The generals of the four towns and so on, each of them can have three thousand to five thousand guards, and sometimes even more. Xiao Chen didn't care much about this, because the feudal empire was like this, it didn't mean that if you relaxed casually, the generals below would be disobedient. Like now, when the Beichen Empire is in a strong period, even if these people give them hundreds of thousands, hundreds of thousands of personal guards, they will not rebel.

Their interests with the empire have been fiercely entangled, and if they want to separate, it is not as simple as talking. Only the existence of the empire can make their family develop more rapidly, which is related to the interests of their family, and cannot be taken lightly. Maybe only a few hundred years later, when there is a faint monarch in the Beichen Empire, will it be possible for everyone. But, does Xiao Chen care about this? I don't care...

What Xiao Chen cares about now is how this war should be fought and how to create greater benefits for the Beichen Empire.

The arrival of Meng Wu three months ago clearly expressed the meaning of the Great Qin Empire's Emperor Yingzheng, that is, to take advantage of this autumn and winter season, the two countries gathered heavy troops to launch an attack on the Mongol Empire. It is not a request to occupy much of their land, only to kill people, to kill livestock. Only by killing people and killing cattle and sheep and other livestock can the goal of weakening the Mongol Empire be truly achieved.

Needless to say, the disadvantage of the steppe peoples is that they completely rely on cattle, sheep, horses and other livestock. And autumn and winter, which is the season of thin horses and yellow grass, and when war is waged in this season, even if the Mongol Empire is strong, it must carefully consider the consequences of a full-scale war. In other words, Daqin and the Beichen Empire are now directly pinching the neck of the Mongol Empire, and then saying: Dude, brother come over to play, can you see how to entertain you?

A full-scale war, for the Mongol Empire, even if it is victorious, it is estimated that it will be really nerve-wracking. And for the two countries, it is not a big deal to lose a war, isn't it a loss of some elite soldiers, and two years later, buddies can pull out more elite soldiers, which is the advantage of population advantage. Again, this war is not to say that the two countries do not have a chance of winning.

In autumn and winter, there is no food for the grassland, cattle and sheep are thin, and it is easy to die in a large area, and even plague appears. This point is constantly staged on the thousand-year-old grassland, and every time it is autumn, all the war horses have lost weight, and the cattle and sheep have also lost a lot of weight. And when autumn passes, it's the cold winter, and winter is the most terrible.

The arrival of heavy snow is a good year for most Han people, but it is a nightmare for the grassland people. Overnight, the entire grassland was covered in white, and then more than half of the cattle and sheep froze to death. This is not bad, the cattle and sheep are dead, and they can still take meat to eat, and they can still have something to eat for the grassland people. But after that, cattle and sheep don't eat meat. Although a large number of cattle and sheep have been lost, there is not much grass left in the pasture to feed the cattle and sheep, and this is the real trouble.

It is not terrible to freeze cattle and sheep to death, but what is terrible is that all the cattle and sheep that survived after freezing starved to death. In this way, what will happen in the coming year, how can the steppe people live without cows and lambs?

More than two million troops were not the entire force of this war, in addition to the forces gathered here in the Tianlong Fortress, the Beichen Empire had gathered up to three million troops in the border between Lingzhou and the Mongolian steppe in the west and the Sanshan Pass in the north. That is to say, the Beichen Empire sent nearly eight million troops this time, and if you count the people, there must be more than 15 million people.

Such a huge force can already be regarded as a scene of all-out war, and the Beichen Empire can be regarded as desperate this time, and supplies such as grain and grass have also begun to be transported to the two offensive directions as early as a month ago.

In the case of the Beichen Empire sending eight million troops, the Great Qin Empire naturally would not appear stingy. After all, this is also the first ally of the Great Qin Empire since its creation, and it can't show the appearance of a pit teammate. Wuyuan County was an important city in the Great Qin Empire next to the most beautiful playground of the Mongol Empire, and it has always threatened the ribs of the Mongol Empire.

At this time, Wuyuan County had become a frightened bird, and the outside of the city with a circumference of dozens of miles was full of white tents, as well as Great Qin soldiers who walked back and forth to practice. Outside the camp, there were countless elite Qi Bingnan running back and forth, as if to show their strength to the Mongolian border army opposite.

The Mongolian border army had long been frightened by the appearance of the Great Qin Empire, and Wuyuan County was also one of the few fortified cities in the Great Qin Empire. This is not to say how big Gohara County is, on the contrary, Gohara County is not very big, but it can't resist that Gohara County is an all-round military city. There are countless defensive measures inside, and even if the Mongol army occupies the siege artifact of the Huihui cannon, it has been repeatedly defeated under the Wuyuan City.

And now, this Great Qin Heavy City, which originally had a maximum of 500,000 troops, is now too many to count in just three months. This is also one of the things that makes the Mongolian generals headaches, the Great Qin Empire intends to attack the Mongol Empire, which can be seen by blind people. I also sent the news to He Lin behind me a long time ago, but what is the use of knowing that people want to fight me, I don't know how many enemy troops are coming, and whether there are a large number of Qin troops in other places, which is really important.

What the Mongolian cavalry is best at is undoubtedly mounted archery. Especially after being equipped with a compound bow, the Mongol army immediately exerted great power.

In a beautiful playground a hundred miles away from Wuyuan City, a group of Qin army scouts of about fifty people had just broken through a gathering group of only a dozen herdsmen. Before he could pack up the spoils, there was a sound of galloping horses in the distance.

The leader of the Great Qin Scout Team immediately pressed the ring-headed sword on his waist and looked around at the dust raised in the distance.

"Hey!"

The team leader shouted, and the Great Qin scouts who had already noticed movement in the distance around him immediately gathered behind the team leader and put on a stormtrooper formation.

As soon as dozens of Great Qin scouts gathered together, they immediately showed the great strength of the Great Qin Empire. Each scout is the most elite unit in a country's army, and sometimes even the emperor's guards may not be able to compare with scouts. This is a good habit that Huaxia has cultivated for thousands of years, and the warrior who really kills from the sea of corpses and blood should be in the battlefield where he should be, rather than protecting His Majesty at the rear.

"Crossbow, prepare! The rest of the people, charge with me! ”

"Kill!" Of the fifty scouts, about thirty immediately rushed towards the Mongol cavalry hundreds of paces away, armed with a large crossbow in their hands.

The remaining twenty scouts pressed the horse's speed, so that the horse always maintained its full physical strength. In his hand, he was busy, and the feather arrows with a three-edged cluster of arrows were stuffed into the crossbow in his hand, and he kept stuffing ten arrows in a row before stopping.

When the Mongolian cavalry saw the Great Qin scouts rushing over, they naturally did not turn their horses and flee. In their eyes, every Great Qin person is an enemy, and it is still a sea of blood and hatred. As for the combat effectiveness of the Great Qin Scouts, they were naturally very clear. But they are not vegetarians, they are also crawling out of the sea of corpses and blood, everyone is a scout, and no one is better than the other.

The compound bow in his hand was immediately taken off the saddle, and he pinched out a feather arrow, and the Mongolian cavalry didn't even look at it, but directly put on the feather arrow and pulled the bow for the full moon. The arrows sprang out.

The two scout teams were only five hundred paces apart, which was already a very long distance, and people with poor eyesight might not be able to see how many people were on the other side. The Mongolian cavalry relied on the 800 paces range of the compound bow in their hands, and naturally took advantage of it. Although the compound bow has a maximum range of 800 paces and can still penetrate leather armor, the real effective killing distance is still within 500 paces. Because of this world, the armies of most countries are wearing iron armor, 800 steps away, and going up to the sky is just scratching the enemy's itch.

The leader of the Great Qin Scout Team looked at the rain of arrows flying and immediately covered his head with the shield hanging on his arm. The Great Qin soldiers behind him naturally did the same thing, fighting for so many years, and some common sense scouts still knew about it. But even so, five or six of the Great Qin soldiers were shot over and fell off their horses.

That's enough, though.

There were only twenty or so Great Qin scouts left who were armed with individual crossbows, and they immediately raised their crossbows and shot towards the Mongol cavalry, who were still four hundred paces away. The Mongol Empire had a matching bow, and the Great Qin Empire, as an old opponent, naturally would not be without long-range weapons against compound bows. Among them, the individual crossbow in the hands of the cavalry is one of them. The individual crossbow does not look much different from a normal crossbow, but its range is 700 paces.

You can wear iron armor from 700 steps away!

This is the power of a crossbow, and the power of a crossbow increases exponentially compared to a bow. Similarly, the crossbow can only shoot directly, which is very troublesome when facing too many enemies, and it is comfortable to shoot upwards without a compound bow. However, in order not to be hung alive by the Mongolian cavalry hundreds of paces away, he honestly used this thing to fight.

More than twenty crossbow arrows did not hit a few Mongol cavalrymen, but this is not a killing move, the real killing move is behind.

Under the cover of dozens of teammates in front, the thirty cavalrymen behind quickly increased their horses and came to the range of the repeaters. Then the mouth of the crossbow was raised less than ten degrees, there was no way to this is the maximum elevation angle of the crossbow, and it was not powerful at all for a long time, and it shot directly into the sky.

Twenty repeater crossbows flew out more than 200 crossbow arrows in just five seconds, and the Mongolian cavalry on the opposite side fell more than 20 horses in an instant.

Then the twenty crossbowmen dropped the crossbows in their hands, immediately drew their waist knives, and followed the brigade towards the opposite Mongolian cavalry.

After the Mongol cavalry fired another round of feather arrows, they also gave up the compound bow in their hands, drew their scimitars, and shouted loudly to kill the Great Qin scouts.