Chapter 1096 Destruction of the country
By the White River.
There are piles of corpses everywhere, and the Tang and Qiang coalition forces are cleaning the battlefield. The victorious Qiang soldiers stripped the corpses of Tubo soldiers clean, then chopped off their heads and tied them around their waists to ask for meritorious service. The remaining headless corpses were carried away. Gathered into piles, and piled up layers of mud to form Jingguan.
Qin Lang rode across the battlefield, and there were such tragic scenes for dozens of miles, like **** on earth.
"This is a great battle, and it must be remembered in the history books."
Su Dingfang couldn't help but marvel.
As the commander-in-chief of the frontline enemy on the battlefield, Liu Lancheng couldn't restrain his excitement and pride on his face, "Taiwei, this is a battle of annihilation. We wiped out the ugly people!"
It is extremely difficult to deal with nomadic tribes like Tubo, especially the 200,000-sized army. It is good enough to be defeated, but this time it is really annihilated.
Yesterday, Liu Lancheng commanded the 100,000 Qiang army to fight the Tubo army here in accordance with the strategic and tactical deployment planned in advance by Qin Lang. They fought fiercely for a whole day. The army's Qingqi front army rushed to the battlefield.
The arrival of Qingqi from the Tang army in Jiannan dealt the most fatal blow to the Tubo army. Originally, the Qiang army was already at the end of its strength, extremely exhausted, and weak in succession. The arrival of Tang cavalry immediately made the Tubo army completely desperate.
As time went by, the Jiannan Tang army continued to arrive, they divided and surrounded the desperate Tubo army, and then massacred them.
One-sided massacre.
"Have you found the Qizong Nong?"
"Not yet, but I can't run away." Liu Lancheng was very confident. Although it was already dark after Tang Jun arrived, the night gave some cover to the Tubo people, which made it more difficult to annihilate them. Many Tubo people took the opportunity to jump into the Baihe River to escape, but Tang Jun also He kept on chasing, and until now, the pursuit and search are still going on.
The defeated Tubo army, which has been beaten without any organizational structure and command, even if it breaks out of the encirclement at night, it is difficult to escape the pursuit.
"I have given an order to pursue, to the end, to the Yak River!"
At dusk, the battlefield was almost cleaned up, and the results of the battle were preliminarily counted. When Cun Xiao took this summary report, he couldn't believe it.
"Is it amazing?"
Cunxiao was stunned, "It is estimated that the Qiang people falsely reported their military achievements, and there is a lot of water."
"Show me."
Qin Lang took this very rough battle report, glanced over it, and couldn't help being speechless.
The battle report compiled by various ministries is indeed terrifying. The total number of beheadings is 134,000 people, and more than 57,000 people were captured.
The total number of beheadings and captives reached more than 192,000, which is not surprising.
According to the previously obtained information, when Tubo arrived at Leiguan in Songzhou, there were about 250,000 troops in the army at that time, which may not be enough. Then they were defeated in several battles, losing almost 30,000 people, and then Maiwa blocked the Tang army, and they were defeated again. The 30,000 soldiers in the rear were almost gone.
Then during the Hequ War, the total number of Tubo troops here was only about 180,000, but now there are more than 192,000, which is obviously a high price for water.
Not to mention the fleeing Tubo army.
To the fleeing Tubo army, the report was about 8,000 cavalry.
According to their numbers, the Tubo army on the battlefield yesterday was 200,000 instead of 180,000.
Qin Lang smiled, this is indeed a lot of water, but it is too much, after all, the main force of the confrontation yesterday was the Qiang soldiers, and the Tang army only played as a support, so today's inventory of military achievements is also reported by the Qiang tribes first. Later, Jiannan will go to check and count.
"I personally took people to check, and only recognized the head and not others." The loyal military envoy Qin Cun filial piety.
Checking the heads and captives is a must, Qin Lang nodded in agreement, but also asked him to be careful, "The Qiangs have made great contributions this time, they are heroes, and they must be treated well."
After finishing speaking, he called Cunyi and asked him to arrange a reward for the army. There were so many dead horses on the battlefield, so he slaughtered a big pot of stew and let everyone have a good meal.
The battlefield is still being cleaned.
Tang Jun still has a lot of things to do here, chasing down the fleeing Tubo army, gathering weapons on the battlefield, gathering horse mules, and treating his own wounded...
The first bend of the Yellow River's nine bends, where Qin Lang set up the commanding tent of the Chinese army. It is dozens of miles away from the main battlefield, and it happens to guard the river bend ferry without smelling the terrible stench.
Qin Lang only sent a brief report on the victory of the enemy to Chang'an and Luoyang on the day of the victory. The specific battle report has not been submitted, and he is waiting for more accurate figures.
"Taiwei, this is the latest battle result data. Ugly Tibetans invaded our Tang Dynasty this time, with a total force of 250,000 horses. They were defeated by our Jiannan Army seven times in Leiguan, Ningyuan Town, and Gansong Village. Twenty-one thousand enemies were wiped out and nine thousand three were captured."
"In the battle of Maiwa Sangli, another 13,000 soldiers and horses in the rear were wiped out, and more than 16,000 were captured."
"Then came the Hequ War, in which more than 98,000 heads were beheaded, and more than 37,000 prisoners were captured. There were also about 30,000 foreign soldiers who were wounded or surrendered after the battle. Wan Yu was chased and beheaded while fleeing..."
"There are still about three to four thousand Tibetans at large!"
Qin Lang looked at this thin jute paper, just a few lines of numbers, but it was the life and death fate of 250,000 Tibetan troops.
"Lieutenant, this number is not the most accurate, but it has been checked twice, and it is verified by the head and the head. We will conduct a more detailed inventory verification in the future, and try to be more accurate. "
Qin Lang believed in these figures, after all, Cunxiao was personally responsible for this matter.
In the battle of Hequ alone, nearly 100,000 soldiers were killed. Among the 180,000 Tubo army at that time, the number of soldiers killed was astonishing, more than half, but the number of prisoners was less than 40,000, less than 100,000. Half of the array cut. You must know that in a normal war, even if it is a big battle, the number of formations will not be too high. Often when the enemy is wiped out by about 20 to 30%, the enemy army will be completely defeated, and then it will become a pursuit battle. More defeated soldiers will eventually die. If you choose to surrender, a large part of the deaths will be caused by the wounded soldiers who died after the battle.
More than half of this kind of array cut is almost only seen in the most tragic siege battle.
But in this short day, 100,000 people were killed and nearly 40,000 were captured.
Not to mention that there are still 30,000 wounded soldiers who were killed by supplementary swords, as well as the prisoners who were killed. Counting this, the array has already reached 130,000, and another 10,000 were killed during the pursuit.
Of the 180,000 Tubo troops, there were only 37,000 captives in the end, and about 4,000 were fleeing.
If you add the number of captives killed in the Songzhou and Maiwa battles, then the Songzhou battle is really shocking.
Thinking back when Li Jingbei attacked the Turks, the Tang Dynasty sent out 180,000 elite troops. In the end, Li Jing, Su Dingfang and others did not achieve such a great result. A small group of elites raided the enemy's lair, and then chased them all the way. After he was captured alive, the rest of the Turks surrendered one after another. There were hundreds of thousands of Turks, but only a few thousand were truly wiped out.
Qin Lang planned a decisive battle against Tuyuhun Fuyun Khan at Yematai, and fought for many days. Although he won a complete victory in the end, the number of kills only accounted for a small part of the enemy, and most of them were captives who surrendered.
The beheading in this battle is indeed exaggerated.
In the battle of Songzhou, more than 162,000 soldiers were killed, and more than 67,000 prisoners were added. This adds up to about 230,000 soldiers, which is still about 20,000 short of the 250,000 soldiers from Tubo. , so there are at least seven or eight thousand people in Tubo who are really at large, or even more.
Is there still an error of tens of thousands of people? It may be that the war dead have not been counted, or some drowned in the White River and the Yellow River when they fled directly, or some fled to the nearby mountains and have not been found yet. .
"Those Qiang people are too ruthless." Liu Lancheng laughed.
Although the Qiang people have also belonged to the Tang Dynasty for many years, many Qiang people are still subordinate to the various governors' houses, and they have often been trained in the border towns of the Tang army. They are not the barbarians of the Qiang tribe before Zhenguan, but they say After all, they are just tribal soldiers after all.
After experiencing a super battle, the Qiangs themselves suffered huge damage, so the red-eyed Qiang soldiers did not stop killing many Tubo soldiers who surrendered.
It is considered conservative to say that 30,000 wounded soldiers and prisoners were killed. In fact, in the battle of 98,000 soldiers, it is estimated that there will be 10,000 to 20,000 prisoners, or even 20,000 to 30,000.
While more than 10,000 were killed during the pursuit, it is obvious that most of them were killed after surrendering.
Anyway, the Qiang people who survived these days have piles of military merits in their names. After the war, they carried piles of heads to report their meritorious service. On the banks of the Baihe and Yellow Rivers, there are piles of heads everywhere. The military exploits of these Qiang soldiers, after the war, they fought everywhere to cut off their heads, and they were their own. They piled up in a pile, just like piles of treasures.
After the registration, they were very careful to protect these heads, and directly used soil to build a small Beijing temple, and set up a mark with stones or wood on the side, not to set up a monument for the Tubo people. , but draw his own mark on it to show that it is his own. In case Tang Jun wants to test his military achievements again, there is always evidence.
In this way, you don’t have to worry about being robbed of credit or something.
It was a pity in Qin Lang's heart that he could have sold 100,000 more captives as slaves, not to mention the huge sums of millions of dollars if 100,000 Tubo captives were sold as slaves. With so much development, manpower is needed everywhere, domestic industry and commerce needs workers, frontier colonization also needs serfs, mines need miners, and 100,000 Tibetan slaves are really a pity.
"How many casualties did we have?"
"The Ninth Army of Jiannan suffered more than 6,000 casualties, of which more than 2,000 were killed in battle, and more than 1,000 were seriously injured and disabled and needed to be retired. The rest can be raised."
As for the 100,000 Qiang soldiers, there were more casualties. There were more than 46,000 casualties, of which about 17,000 were killed in battle, and more than 20,000 were seriously injured and disabled.
In the first battle, 40,000 people were killed or maimed, which accounted for 40% of the Qiang army.
The entire Songzhou campaign lasted for three months. The Tubo army dispatched 250,000 horses, the Jiannan Tang army mobilized 100,000, and the Qiang coalition army mobilized 100,000. It was a grand battle of 400,000 people in total. The Tubo army was wiped out. Half of the army suffered casualties, and the Tang army suffered the smallest loss. However, after several battles, there were also more than 6,000 casualties.
Throughout the battle, the Tang, Fan and Qiang families suffered a total of nearly 200,000 casualties.
Qin Lang didn't even know how to report victory to the emperor. This battle was the largest since Zhenguan, with the most enemies wiped out.
(end of this chapter)