Qiande ii, October.
Zhao Kuangyin, who was in Fenjing, received a secret letter, which was originally sealed by the Later Shu Emperor Meng Chang and passed on to the Northern Han Emperor Liu Jun, who hoped to unite with the Northern Han regime to jointly besiege the Song Dynasty.
At that time, the Song Dynasty had just finished the expedition to Jiangnan and had already rested for more than half a year.
Zhao Kuangyin was hesitating whether to continue to attack southern Tang in the south or to attack Houshu in the west, and the arrival of this secret letter had undoubtedly told Zhao Kuangyin a perfect answer.
In order to crush the plan of the two of them, Zhao Kuangyin immediately made a strategic deployment:
North Road Army: Wang Quanbin, Wang Renzhan and Cui Yanjin unified 30,000 troops from Fengzhou to the south
East Road Army: Liu Guangyi and Cao Bin commanded a 30,000-strong army from Guizhou along the Yangtze River
The two large armies of the Song army suddenly marched, and the Later Shu monarch Meng Chang quickly ordered the general Han Baozheng to fight and garrison Xingzhou to resist the Song army's attack.
Wang Quanbin, the commander of the Northern Route Army, who had led the attack, had just set out from Fengzhou, and in the posture of ploughing and sweeping the caves, he successfully attacked Xingzhou with the three major strongholds of Qianqudu, Wanling, and Yanzi on the outskirts of Xingzhou, capturing more than 7,000 Hou Shu troops and capturing 400,000 grain.
This battle between the Song army and the Later Shu army can be described as a complete victory.
The Xingzhou defender Lan Silei (林思綰) and the remnants of his troops fled from Xingzhou to Xixian County, and Han Baozheng (汉保正), the Rear Shu general who was guarding Xingyuan, also led his army to abandon the city and retreat, preparing to retreat to Xixian County.
Lan Sixian and Han Baozheng did not expect that the Song army was in hot pursuit, and could only continue to lead the troops to retreat, and met Shi Yande, the commander of the Song army's forward army, at Sanquan Village, and hurriedly ordered the rapid back of the mountain to line up, trying to resist the song army that was attacking wildly, but was defeated by the fierce Song army, Han Bao was captured, and the Song army once again captured 300,000 yuan of military food.
As a result, the entire outer defensive strongholds of Houshu were taken by the Song army, and in order to prevent the Song army from entering the territory smoothly, the Houshu army burned the Yemeng Pass Boardwalk leading to Houshu, thinking that it would completely cut off the pace of the Song army's advance.
Wang Quanbin saw that the boardwalk was burned and ordered to approach the territory of Houshu in two ways:
Cui Yanjin led the Song army to rebuild the boardwalk
Wang Quanbin led the Song army to break through the Luochuan Mountain Road
The commander of the Later Shu army, Wang Zhaoyuan, was stationed in Lizhou at the time, and he concluded that the Song army could not successfully invade the territory of Hou Shu and did not fortify the mountain roads along the way, but he never expected that when Wang Quanbin led the Song army through the Luochuan Mountain Road, Cui Yanjin also repaired the Yemeng Pass Trail at the same time, and the two armies successfully joined forces in Shendu.
Wang Zhaoyuan commanded his troops to fight, and was defeated in three battles on the southern flank of Lizhou, so he could only lead the main army to retreat to Jianmen Pass, and the Song army once again captured 800,000 yuan of military food, and the reinforcements arrived outside the Jianmen Pass, and confronted the Later Shu army.
At the same time as the North Road army won consecutive battles, the East Road army was also constantly attacking from the east wing.
The Eastern Road army led Liu Guangyi to break through the three strongholds of Sanhui and Wushan all the way, and beheaded more than 5,000 enemy troops to approach Kuizhou. The defenders of the city of Fuzhou would be Gao Yanli, and the supervising army would be Wu Shouqian, but the two men could not reach a consensus on the offensive and defensive plan, and there was a natural danger on the Yangtze River on the outskirts of Kuizhou, and the Later Shu army built a fence on the thirty-mile-long defensive line to prevent the Song army's water boats from crossing the Yangtze River.
They thought that this would be foolproof, so they relaxed the defense of the Yangtze River defense line, and instead focused on the city of Kuizhou. Liu Guangyi ordered the whole army to first seize the strongholds along the Yangtze River, and then board a boat to cross the river.
By the time the Song army had taken the coastal strongholds, the Later Shu army had reacted, but it was too late, and the Song army had already arrived at the city of Kuizhou.
The Later Shu commander Gao Yanli wanted the infant city to be defended and wanted to drag down this army of shareholders. However, the supervising army Wu Shouqian did not agree, at that time, the power of the supervision army was far greater than that of the commander in the army, and Gao Yanli had no choice but to let Wu Shouqian lead thousands of people out of the city to meet the battle.
Seeing the Later Shu army leaving the city, the Song general Zhang Tinghan personally commanded his troops outside the city to meet the battle, and defeated Wu Shouqian.
Wu Shouqian led his troops to retreat, and Zhang Tinghan was willing to give up such a good opportunity to attack the city, and he ordered a vigorous siege of the city. At the same time, Liu Guangyi also led the main army to attack the city, and the city of Kuizhou was successfully captured, Wu Shouqian was defeated, and Gao Yanli set himself on fire.
After the Eastern Route army attacked Fuzhou, the nearby Kaizhou, Wanzhou, Shizhou, Chungju, and Suizhou all surrendered, and the Guancheng city of the Western Flank of Later Shu was almost swept away in an instant.
Three years of Qiande, the first month.
Wang Quanbin, who was facing off against the commander of the Later Shu army outside the Jianmen Pass, had no good strategy, the Sword Gate Pass was dangerous, and it was impossible to easily attack the front, and the only way was to unexpectedly attack the rear.
Both sides of this sword gate are high mountain dangerous roads, and rushing into it is likely to be a fatal move, but as the commander of the march, does he have a better choice?
Of course.
Wang Quanbin's better choice was to let the generals break into the mountain road, so he was ready to divide his troops into two ways to attack the sword gate pass:
Main army: stationed in the northern wing of Jianmen Pass, attracting the attention of The Later Shu commander Wang Zhaoyuan
Raiding army: along the mountains small to detour to Su Village, Qingqiangdian detour to the southern wing of Jianmen Pass
Wang Zhaoyuan, the Commander of later Shu who was guarding the Sword Gate Pass, heard the news and quickly led his troops to retreat to Hanyuanpo, leaving only a part of the army to guard the Sword Gate.
Wang Zhaoyuan led his troops to retreat, making the defensive force of Jianmen Pass extremely weak, and the Song army attacked in the north and south, successfully breaking through the Jianmen Pass and approaching Hanyuan Slope.
At this critical moment, something ironic happened, and this Later Shu commander Wang Zhaoyuan was lying on the bed and could not stand up. No one knew whether he was frightened and weak, or whether it was to escape the consequences of defeat, after which the Shu army was instantly leaderless, and could only temporarily let the deputy general Zhao Chongtao rush to fight.
There was no doubt that the Song army had won a great victory.
When the Song army won a great victory, this Wang Zhaoyuan was able to stand up, and he also ran to Dongchuan with a smoke, and was subsequently captured by the Song army. Wang Quanbin ordered that the Song army take advantage of the victory posture of taking Jianzhou in one fell swoop and slaughtering more than 10,000 Hou Shu troops, and the entire Hou Shu regime had no danger to defend.
Qiande three years, the seventh day of the first lunar month.
Later Shu Emperor Meng Chang sent emissaries to Wang Quanbin, commander of the Northern Road Army, to ask for surrender, Wang Quanbin led his troops into Chengdu, and Later Shu Emperor welcomed Wang Quanbin into Chengdu with the gift of subjugation.
At the time of this great victory, Liu Guangyi, the commander of the East Road Army, also happened to lead the troops to Chengdu, and the two major armies began to rob this immortal achievement. Wang Quanbin even plundered the Shu land with his arsonists, causing dissatisfaction among the local troops.
When Zhao Kuangyin heard the news that Later Shu had been pacified, he ordered Wang Quanbin to move all the soldiers of Shudi to Fenjing to prevent a recurrence of the incident, and at the same time asked Wang Quanbin to allocate silver to these Shu soldiers, wang Quanbin was greatly dissatisfied, and continued to plunder and humiliate these surrendered Shu soldiers.
The Shu soldiers who had surrendered throughout Sichuan gathered in response, and the Xingbing rebelled against Wang Quanbin's oppression, and Wang Quanbin, in a fit of rage, killed 20,000 Shu soldiers who surrendered in Chengdu.
After that, it took two years to finally put down the rebellion in Shudi.
The Song Dynasty pacified the Shu Dynasty and further expanded its territory, and no one would have thought that this dynasty that had risen brazenly in the chaotic world would become the most humiliating dynasty hundreds of years later.
No one thought that the Jiangshan that Emperor Taizu had worked so hard to fight would become a foreign territory.