Chapter 1105: One Battle Decides Hexi

Jing Qiong's momentary rashness destroyed the Uyghur main force, lost the Shandan Khanate court, and doomed the entire future of the Ganzhou Uyghurs. Though with the rise of the Central Plains Han Empire, that day would have come sooner or later, the final outcome was perhaps far more brutal than the Uyghurs could have imagined.

The central army led by Guo Rong set out somewhat later, but upon receiving Guo Jin's report, after initial astonishment, they did not hesitate in the slightest and dispatched reinforcements in force. All six thousand-plus Han and barbarian cavalry in the army were concentrated, led by Wang Yansheng, and rushed to the rescue at full speed.

Wang Yansheng's marching speed matched his temperament—sweeping like fire. Even accounting for rest and meal stops along the way, by the evening of the day Guo Jin was trapped at Rouge Mountain, he had already closed to within thirty li.

At that time, Chen Wantong, who had been roaming outside, also broke free from the Uyghurs' entanglement with the remaining thousand-plus Han cavalry. The two sides made contact, learned of the battle situation at Rouge Mountain, and Wang Yansheng decisively ordered the troops to camp in a valley on the spot.

This gave his soldiers—who had been driven so hard they had barely enough breath left—time to rest, and also let Guo Jin at Rouge Mountain recuperate for a night. As long as the Uyghurs gave up their assault, he would have plenty of options. At the same time, he dispatched elite cavalry to seize all the roads, hunting down Uyghur scouts and anyone within visible range who might leak news of their arrival. This was a sign of caution, and it also wrought some slaughter between Gan and Liang, for the Uyghur scouts had not even deployed thirty li out.

They endured the night in a tense atmosphere. The next morning, before dawn, the six thousand-plus cavalry were roused to drink water and eat. At daybreak, under Wang Yansheng's leadership, they made a grand display and rode straight for the Rouge Mountain battlefield.

This relief force was high-spirited. Originally burdened with worries about the long expedition to the Western Regions, upon learning that the Ganzhou Uyghurs had rebelled and attacked the vanguard imperial troops, they were all filled with righteous indignation and fighting spirit—they wanted to rescue, they wanted to kill the rebels. Of course, the most important thing was not having to leave their homeland for a distant campaign in this season. This effect, just as Guo Rong had anticipated, caused the soldiers' morale to burst forth vigorously.

Even without concealing their movements, by the time the Uyghurs discovered the Han army's reinforcements, they were already within ten li of the battlefield. Then, while the Uyghurs were at a loss, the combined force of nearly eight thousand Han and barbarian cavalry closed in on the Uyghur army with the speed of a thunderbolt, forming ranks and preparing to attack.

The Uyghur Khagan Jing Qiong was roused from sleep. He was exhausted too, and his spirits were low, having spent much energy arguing with the noble generals. So he had slept deeply. When he learned that Han reinforcements had arrived, Jing Qiong felt as if he had been suddenly plunged into an ice cellar—he was completely stunned.

Just the previous night, someone had warned him to beware of Han reinforcements and suggested he lift the siege and fall back to defend Shandan, but he had refused in his fury and desperation. He never imagined the words would prove prophetic so quickly.

While he was still asking how many men the Han relief force numbered, even inside the great tent he could feel the ground trembling slightly, along with the rumbling of hooves growing louder and clearer.

Forgetting all dignity, in his utmost urgency Jing Qiong ordered the noble generals of each tribe to organize their forces and lead the troops to meet the enemy. However, the Uyghurs' advantage lay in numbers, and numbers demanded a great deal of organization and command.

Under normal circumstances, there might not have been much of a problem, but in this panicked haste, facing thousands of iron cavalry bearing Han banners, how could they not be flustered? The greatest blow was to morale. Having personally experienced the brutal slaughter of the past two days, they had faced a "mere" five thousand Han infantry and cavalry with several times their numbers and still could not overcome them—now here came even more "Han troops."

The Uyghurs, who had not experienced intense warfare in years, had had most of their fighting spirit ground away in the previous bloody battles. As the saying goes, fear before battle—under such circumstances, how could there be a good outcome?

As the supreme commander of the Uyghurs, Jing Qiong possessed a certain resolve and bearing to stake everything, but his generals and his people did not. Before Wang Yansheng launched his attack, he issued repeated orders to concentrate the encamped army from its siege formation, striving desperately to save the situation.

But the reason miracles are called miracles is that they happen very rarely. The Uyghur Khagan Jing Qiong made his final struggle, but in the end it was all in vain.

By the time the Han forces adjusted their attack formation and launched their fatal charge, the Uyghurs had still not completed their reorganization—from top to bottom, inside and out, everything was still in chaos. Thus, when the Han army crashed into the Uyghur camp with unstoppable momentum, a battle that was easy overall yet extremely bloody unfolded.

Facing the Han attack, some answered the call and gathered to meet the enemy, some panicked and scattered in all directions, and some simply abandoned the field and fled in disgrace... In short, it was utter chaos.

In such a situation, the greatly aggrieved Guo Jin, after a night's rest, did not hesitate to lead the Han soldiers on the mountain who still had fighting strength into the battle. Though they were a pack of weary tigers, their fangs were still sharp, and filled with fury, when they erupted, they too took lives.

Attacked from front and rear, in the confusion the Uyghurs resisted for only a little over an hour before their entire army collapsed. Of the more than twenty thousand Uyghur troops, over half were killed or wounded, yet fewer than three thousand actually escaped the battlefield. In the panic and confusion, many Uyghurs were separated from their horses...

Fully ten thousand-plus Uyghurs chose to lay down their arms and surrender in defeat, becoming prisoners of the Han army—including some nobles, generals, and ministers, and the biggest fish of all, the Uyghur Khagan Jing Qiong, though he was captured alive after being thrown from his horse in the melee.

The Battle of Rouge Mountain, setting aside the earlier struggles, was won cleanly and decisively by the Han army, and with that single battle, the Hexi problem was essentially declared solved. After all, the Uyghurs' main strength was virtually annihilated in this battle, and the Khagan along with numerous civil and military nobles became prisoners of the Han army.

Three days later, Duke of Ying Guo Rong finally led the central army, together with the baggage train, to the Rouge Mountain battlefield. It could be said this was an unexpected victory—though the result was the same, the process had completely diverged from the plans of the Great Han's central government and its frontline commanders.

The pincer attack to settle Gansu had been conceived from the overall Hexi situation, yet all such calculations came to nothing. The Guiyi Army ultimately never got to see action, and the battle that decided everything at Rouge Mountain was, in the end, a victory achieved through combined internal and external effort—a true pincer attack.

The key to all this was that the Uyghurs' reaction and audacity exceeded the imagination of the Great Han's rulers, ministers, and generals. Analyzing Jing Qiong's choices in hindsight, perhaps the Uyghurs' proactive strike accelerated their destruction, but one cannot simply judge by the outcome alone.

Even if they had not attacked, the eventual development would have been no more than the well-prepared and clearly intent Han army arriving at their gates, calmly laying siege, and cutting off all external communication. They might have held out longer, but they would still not have escaped destruction.

It was just that Jing Qiong and those nobles had commendable courage, wanting to wipe out the Han vanguard with a surprise attack—only to find it was a bone too hard to gnaw. Not only did they break their teeth, they buried their entire people.

To evaluate the Uyghur Khagan Jing Qiong's performance: he was like a drowning man—whether or not it would help, he had to try to struggle, at least to make some splashes. Otherwise, he would sooner or later be swallowed by the Great Han. Since ancient times, monarchs who, because the enemy was strong, offered no resistance and voluntarily surrendered their lands, cities, people, and wealth have been extremely rare (Qian Hongchu: that's right, it's me).

Most people still lean toward putting up a fight—Jing Qiong simply made the choice most would make.

But the consequences were severe. This act enraged the Han army, especially the vanguard officers like Guo Jin who had suffered heavy losses. Before Guo Rong arrived at Shandan, Guo Jin and Wang Yansheng led their troops and executed all the captured Uyghur nobles and soldiers.

Both men were ruthless. Guo Jin acted out of intense vengeance, while Wang Yansheng vented long-suppressed negative emotions. Over ten thousand people, their weapons confiscated, were dealt with in batches, separated and disposed of—first beheaded, then buried alive in pits, then shot with arrows. When the last four thousand remained, they were gathered together, and the Han and barbarian troops swarmed in, butchering them with a flurry of blades...

They committed a horrifying massacre. Afterwards, Wang Yansheng and Guo Jin felt some fear, because killing prisoners was also forbidden by military discipline. But then again, they were only Uyghurs—surely that was not much of a problem?

When Guo Rong arrived and learned of the news, he naturally flew into a rage. However, he did not punish the two men on the spot. Instead, he did the cleanup work—not trying to conceal the news, for it could not be hidden anyway—but burying all the dead.

Then he led the army forward to Shandan. Shandan, whose military strength had been almost completely destroyed, resisted stubbornly to the very end, even though their Khagan had already been captured. For no other reason than that massacre.

But in the face of absolute power, Shandan's city walls proved feeble. It held out for only half a month before falling under the assault of the Han army's elite troops and heavy equipment. The Uyghurs' stubborn resistance once again enraged the Han army, and this time even Guo Rong did not stop the soldiers' looting and killing—those pairs of hate-filled eyes stirred something in him too.

The fall of Shandan also heralded the complete end of the Ganzhou Uyghurs as a minority regime. The subsequent battles for Ganzhou and Suzhou were both quite easy. Just as Guo Rong had anticipated, many Uyghurs were unwilling to submit to the Great Han and, led by nobles and chieftains, voluntarily withdrew westward.

In response, Guo Rong sent cavalry in pursuit, chasing and killing all the way. In the end, fewer than fifteen hundred households of Uyghurs managed to escape the Gansu region...