Incredible expeditions
In late February, in the nineteenth year of Yuan Zhizheng (1359), Mr. Guan (Guan Duo), the leader of the middle road of the Longfeng Red Turban Northern Expeditionary Army, who swept Mobei, burned Kaiping Mansion, the capital of Yuanshang, and captured Liaoyang Road, Mr. Guan (Guan Duo), Potou Pan (Pan Cheng), Sha Liu Er (whose real name is lost) and others were so confident and passionate that they wrote a letter to the then Goryeo Kingdom (now North Korea) Lord Gongmin Wang Yuan, the content of the letter was very intimidating, ultimatum, and persuasion to surrender:
"Thinking that the people have been trapped in Hu (referring to Mengyuan) for a long time, advocating righteousness and raising troops, restoring the Central Plains, surpassing Qilu in the east, sending letters to Qin in the west, passing through Fujian and Guangzhou in the south, and arriving in Youyan in the north, all of which are attached. Like the hungry get the ointment, and the sick get the medicine stone. Now let the generals strictly discipline the soldiers, so that they will not disturb the people, and those who are naturalized by the people will be attached to them, and those who are obsessed with the brigade will be guilty."
Although the king of Gongchou Wang Yuan is a little afraid of this group of Chongzhou and invincible red scarf warriors, but after all, Goryeo is a vassal state of the Great Yuan, and the successive kings of Goryeo have been intermarrying with the Yuan clan for more than 100 years, and the two families are in-laws, and the third queen of the current Emperor of the Great Yuan, Qi Shi, is the daughter of the nobles of Goryeo, and the lords of Goryeo in the past dynasties have been recruited by the Yuan Emperor as a concubine, and the descendants born are all Mongolian and Goryeo mixed blood, and the ruling classes of the two countries have long been connected by blood. For example, he once sent 30,000 troops to help the Yuan Dynasty to fight against the salt lord Zhang Shicheng, and now that I am threatened by the "Red Turban Thieves", do you have to help the Great Yuan? King Gongchou felt that the Yuan Dynasty would not sit idly by, and besides, the Goryeo people were not vegetarians, so he ignored the ultimatum of the Red Turban Army.
The first battle was won, and the famous city of Diek shook Goryeo
On November 29, the 19th year of Zhizheng, more than 3,000 dragon and phoenix soldiers wrapped in red scarves crossed the Yalu River as the vanguard and opened the curtain of the expedition to Goryeo. The vanguard of the Red Turban Army defeated the Goryeo border garrison in one fell swoop and established fortifications on the other side of the Yalu River to meet the main force that followed suit. In history, the vanguard of the Red Turban Army smashed into Goryeo for a few days, the wind blew strongly, the weather was cold, and a thick layer of ice formed on the surface of the Yalu River. On December 9, he conquered Jingzhou again, killed Jin Yuanfeng, the commander of Goryeo, and immediately took advantage of the situation to attack Linzhou and Tiezhou successively.
King Gongchou of Goryeo did not expect that the "Red Turban Thief" could be so fought, and immediately appointed the famous general Li Yan as the marshal of the northwest capital, Qing Qianxing as the deputy marshal, Jin Depei as the commander of the capital, and Li Chunfu as the Xijing Yin, leading the army to resist.
The lonely army is deep, people and land are both born, the logistics supply is poor, and the sharp spirit is quickly lost......
The Goryeo army set up a formation on the north bank of the Qingchuan River to meet the battle, and the Red Turban Army fought at Tieshan, the Red Turban Army was defeated, and many soldiers were lost, and Mao Jujing led the army to retreat to Linzhou and Tiezhou. After a short rest, Mao Jujing broke the Goryeo army in Xuanzhou, captured countless people, and took advantage of the victory to conquer Dingzhou. On December 28, Mao Jujing's overseer army conquered Goryeo Seogyong, which is today's Pyongyang.
The Red Turban Army, which made the first expedition to Goryeo, took advantage of the high morale and sharp edge of the first soldiers, and although it won many victories, it was a lone army that went deep into the country, fighting in a strange foreign land, with sparse life, language barriers, and supply difficulties, and soon became unsustainable and showed the end of the crossbow. When the Koreans gathered a large army to launch a counteroffensive, it was difficult for this lone army to support.
Tens of thousands of troops were killed and wounded and captured, and only more than 300 remnants of the defeated army were returned to China
In the first month of the twentieth year of Zheng (1360), the Goryeo army counterattacked and besieged Xijing, and the Red Turban army was unable to fight, and was forced to abandon Xijing and retreat to the area of Longgang and Xiancong. On the fifteenth day of the first month, the general of the Goryeo army, Li Fangsil, led the army to attack, the Red Turban Army fought hard, the two sides launched an earth-shattering battle, the Goryeo army was well fed, the cold equipment was perfect, the Red Turban Army was quite wounded, the food and grass were scarce, and the soldiers were still fighting to the death, and the superior Goryeo army fought bloodily.
In the fierce battle, the prefect of Kaesong, Goryeo, Xin Fu, the general Li Jian, and the commander Jin were killed, and the generals of the Red Turban Army, Huang Zhishan and Shen Ra, were captured by the Goryeo army, and more than 20,000 Red Turban soldiers were killed.
The Goryeo army pursued the victory and attacked the poor Kou, and the Red Turban Expeditionary Force was almost completely annihilated, leaving only more than 300 remnants of the defeated army to cross the Yalu River in panic and flee back to China in panic, and the Red Turban Army's first expedition to Goryeo ended in tragedy.
[Picture from the Internet]