Chapter 440: Shi Chonggui: I Am Not Made of Dough

In the seventh year of Tianfu of the Later Jin, the tenth month of 942 CE, Yelu Deguang broke camp at Yuanshi City and marched south with an army of eighty thousand. By this time, the Khitan army had already penetrated nearly seven hundred li into Later Jin territory.

Yet in this seven-hundred-li deep thrust, apart from sending troops to take Yuanshi, the Khitans had not attacked any other prefectural cities of the Later Jin.

In other words, except for the line from Yuanshi City to Beizhou, the Khitans had basically taken no place at all.

Yelu Deguang's eighty thousand troops, plus Zhao Yanshou's fifty thousand, had almost no secure supply line, relying only on a certain number of cavalry to transport small quantities of grain and fodder.

It could be said that without the coordination of traitors within, the Khitans would never have so precisely discovered Beizhou, where the Later Jin stored its grain, and Yelu Deguang would never have dared to drive straight south like this; he would probably still be gnawing at the strong walls of Zhending and the two prefectures.

And after obtaining the hundred and fifty thousand shi of grain and fodder at Beizhou, the Khitans' supplies suddenly became ample.

Beyond supplying the army's needs, this ample grain and fodder gave Yelu Deguang the leisure to put on a performance.

He strictly ordered all Khitan divisions, whether Khitans or Balhae people, not to plunder the people of Hebei in all directions.

Toward the surrendered officers and men of the Yongqing Army at Beizhou, he also treated them with benevolence, never killing indiscriminately, and never withholding their pay.

It could be said that, as things appeared at present, Yelu Deguang truly had the bearing of a sovereign.

At this time, the Khitan and the Later Jin faced off across the Yellow River.

Shi Chonggui and Jing Yanguang led their forces and encamped at Chanzhou on the south bank of the Yellow River.

Zhang Yanze and Gao Xingzhou, the two generals, crossed the Yellow River and positioned themselves to the north and northeast of Chanzhou, serving as the Jin army's footholds on the north bank.

And after Yelu Deguang broke camp and marched south, he made Beizhou his new garrison base.

He pushed Zhao Yanshou, originally stationed at Beizhou, further forward, not stopping until he reached Weizhou, close to the Yellow River.

At the end of the tenth month, Yang Guangyuan had been in open rebellion at Qingzhou for more than three months, but the Later Jin court simply had no energy to send troops to attack him.

After a period of boredom, Yang Guangyuan finally learned that the Khitans had driven straight in and already reached the banks of the Yellow River.

Coincidentally, at this very moment, Yelu Deguang also sent someone to invite Yang Guangyuan to bring out his troops and jointly strike the Later Jin army in a pincer.

Yang Guangyuan thereupon led more than seven thousand men of the Pinglu Army, then swept up over ten thousand able-bodied men, claimed fifty thousand, bypassed Qizhou—the later Jinan—and reached Linyi north of Qizhou.

He also sent out a vanguard to probe toward Yucheng, now only a few dozen li from the Yellow River bank.

Learning that Yang Guangyuan had led his army to the north of Qizhou, Yelu Deguang was immediately invigorated.

He once again led his army south from Beizhou and entered Weizhou, while Zhao Yanshou in Weizhou City received new orders.

Yelu Deguang ordered him to select thirty thousand elite troops and join forces with Yelu Wuzhi, the Right Pishi Xiangwen, making sixty thousand in total, to besiege the Jin general Gao Xingzhou, who was garrisoned at Qicheng.

Besides besieging Gao Xingzhou, Yelu Deguang also detached thirty thousand tribal troops and gave them to the great general Mada, ordering him to go east and attack Bozhou—the later Liaocheng in Shandong.

Bozhou also belonged to the territory of the Yongqing Army. With their old nest Beizhou taken, and seeing tens of thousands of Khitan troops coming, the Yongqing Army, with only two or three thousand men, instantly collapsed, and Bozhou fell without a fight.

Mada plundered Bozhou City and slaughtered several thousand civilians. Then the whole army poured out, intending to force a crossing of the Yellow River at Majiakou northeast of Bozhou and join forces with Yang Guangyuan's Pinglu Army.

If that happened, the Yellow River defense line that the Later Jin had so painstakingly built would collapse without being attacked.

At this moment of life and death, Shi Chonggui and the Later Jin court moved with remarkable speed.

Since they only knew that Yelu Deguang had divided his forces but not where exactly they had gone, the Later Jin court could only order the Tianping Army of Yunzhou and the Taining Army of Yanzhou, which had come as reinforcements, to rush north at top speed.

He Chongjin, An Yanwei, Bai Zairong, and other fierce generals each defended the Yellow River line from Heyang to Yangliu, guarding against breakthroughs at every point.

And at Majiakou, where the Khitans were most likely to break through, Shi Chonggui ordered Li Shouzhen, Chief Commander of the Palace Guard Cavalry, and Huangfu Yu, Commander-in-Chief of the Right Shenwu Army, each to lead ten thousand men, with a hundred warships and several thousand mules and horses, advancing along the Yellow River by both water and land to defend it.

It seemed Shi Chonggui also understood the consequences if the Khitans entered the prefectures of Qi, Qing, and the like.

Because if that truly happened, the entire Shandong Peninsula would be finished, and the natural barrier of the Yellow River would become an empty phrase.

The hundred warships and several thousand mules and horses in the hands of Li Shouzhen and Huangfu Yu were almost the main mobile forces Shi Chonggui possessed.

And events proved it was worth it.

In the early eleventh month, when Li Shouzhen and Huangfu Yu reached Majiakou, the Khitans had already erected a pontoon bridge, and over ten thousand vanguard soldiers had crossed the Yellow River. They were building field fortifications at Majiakou to receive the follow-up Khitan troops crossing the river.

Seeing this, Li Shouzhen gathered the large ships among the hundred-odd warships at the head of the fleet, and selected soldiers of extraordinary strength to stand at the prows holding spears more than two zhang long.

The large ships went downstream with the current and in an instant broke the Khitans' pontoon bridge. The Khitans crossed in small boats to drive them off, and the Jin soldiers struck back with long spears, bows, and crossbows.

Although the Later Jin army's so-called hundred warships were mostly very small vessels, the leading few were still quite large.

The large ships were far steadier than the small ones, and they also had the advantage of longer weapons. The Khitan navy, trained on the Liao River, could not adapt to the Yellow River, which was still full of water at this time, and was immediately routed.

And the ten thousand-odd Khitan soldiers who had already crossed the Yellow River, seeing most of the pontoon bridge destroyed, were instantly shaken in morale.

Huangfu Yu, holding a great club, led the charge himself. The Jin soldiers roared with joy and, heedless of fatigue, followed Huangfu Yu in a fierce assault on the Khitans' still-unfinished camp.

These Khitans were not skilled at attacking cities, and naturally they were not skilled at defending them either.

Moreover, in order to get his soldiers across as quickly as possible and hastily build the camp, Mada had at first let only men cross, not horses. The ten thousand-odd tribal troops, who should have been cavalry, had to dismount and fight on foot.

What does it mean to fight with one's own weakness against the enemy's strength?

This is it!

The Khitans were not only defending a position, but had also dismounted and become infantry. Fighting like this, how could they be a match for the Later Jin army?

At first the Jin army was still awed by the Khitans' fearsome reputation and the impression left by Shi Jingtang's groveling subservience, and was somewhat timid.

But once they made contact, these Khitan troops were far weaker than they had imagined. So their morale soared, and every man vied to be first in charging fiercely forward.

Huangfu Yu fought ten thousand Khitan troops with ten thousand men, and in less than two hours broke through more than ten camps in succession.

The Khitans collapsed like a mountain falling, and could only flee downstream, wailing and howling.

Some, fleeing in blind panic, jumped straight into the Yellow River, and those who drowned were beyond counting.

Mada, left on the west bank, could do nothing but watch helplessly as the ten thousand-odd men on the east bank were routed.

The Khitans on the west bank and east bank were almost all from the same few tribes. Now, seeing their own kin and brothers being killed, the two banks of the Yellow River were for a time filled with earth-shaking weeping.

Huangfu Yu grew ever more valiant as he fought, and only withdrew his troops after pursuing more than ten li downstream.

However, according to his original intent, Huangfu Yu had wanted to annihilate these ten thousand-odd Khitan soldiers completely.

But Yang Guangyuan, encamped north of Qizhou at this time, heard that the Khitans and the Jin army were locked in a great battle, and hurriedly broke camp, leading more than ten thousand men to aid the Khitan army.

Li Shouzhen had by now also completed the demolition of the pontoon bridge, and the two men combined their forces into twenty thousand.

Although the soldiers under Huangfu Yu were utterly exhausted after fighting for four hours, they had just won a victory, and their morale was at its peak.

So the two of them simply left a thousand or so soldiers to guard the war boats, while the remaining fifteen or sixteen thousand men formed ranks facing east to meet Yang Guangyuan.

Yang Guangyuan and his son had hurried down from north of Qizhou, still short of breath, and without catching sight of the imagined Khitan heavenly troops, they ran headlong into Li Shouzhen and Huangfu Yu coming east.

The two sides met at Qihe Town east of Qizhou. Yang Guangyuan personally donned armor and took the field, charging in ferociously to teach the junior Li Shouzhen a lesson — only for Li Shouzhen to send several hundred cavalry flying out from his formation.

But they did not charge Yang Guangyuan's battle line. Instead, they hurled several hundred sets of Khitan armor and clothing at Yang Guangyuan's Pinglu Army, while men shouted that the Khitan army had already collapsed.

Hearing this, and seeing the several hundred sets of Khitan armor on the ground, Yang Guangyuan reckoned it was true, and hastily stripped off the armor he had just put on, giving up on taking the field himself.

And when the Pinglu Army saw Yang Guangyuan do this, their hearts instantly went cold by half.

The moment the two sides clashed, the Pinglu Army was beaten back again and again. Nearly twenty thousand men fought and retreated, and the two sides battled until dusk. The Pinglu soldiers were utterly exhausted, with over a thousand casualties, and truly could not fight on.

Seeing the situation, Yang Guangyuan knew the cause was lost. He and his son Yang Chengzuo took several hundred picked cavalry, turned, and fled — and the Pinglu Army collapsed at once.

In a single day, Li Shouzhen and Huangfu Yu had defeated the Khitans and the Pinglu Army in succession, and their fame soared.

From then on, the pressure on the Later Jin's eastern front vanished immediately.

The Khitan general Mada, taking advantage of Li Shouzhen and the others besieging Yang Guangyuan, built another pontoon bridge downstream and ferried the more than four thousand badly shaken Khitans over to the west bank.

After that, he did not dare cross the river again. He simply burned the pontoon bridge and retreated toward Beizhou.

Yang Guangyuan's army of more than ten thousand was completely wiped out. Father and son fled back to Qingzhou with only a few hundred cavalry, the Pinglu Army was all but destroyed, and from then on they were reduced to shutting their gates and waiting to die.

At the same time, on the Khitan western route, the Xi chieftain Wei Wang led more than forty thousand Khitan tribal troops to besiege the prefectural seat of Xingzhou, Xiurong — that is, the city of Xingzhou in Shanxi.

Liu Zhiyuan at once summoned ten thousand picked cavalry of Bai Chengfu's Tuyuhun contingent, plus fifteen thousand infantry and cavalry from Hedong, a total of twenty-five thousand men, and marched north to break the siege.

A great battle was fought outside Xiurong. Bai Chengfu and the other Tuyuhun and Turkic peoples had long suffered under Khitan oppression, and this time they finally had their chance. They struck with pent-up hatred, fierce and fearless beyond measure.

Wei Wang's left wing was the first to crack under the pressure, defeated by Bai Chengfu's several thousand cavalry.

Then the garrison inside Xiurong also sent crossbowmen out of the city to join the fight.

Liu Zhiyuan dispatched Guo Wei and Guo Rong with more than a thousand picked cavalry to circle behind the Khitans and launch a sudden attack.

The battle raged from early morning until noon. Wei Wang's army suffered a crushing defeat, leaving more than three thousand corpses behind, and fled all the way from Xingzhou to Crow Caw Valley, over two hundred li away, before finally steadying their ranks and gathering their scattered remnants. Of forty thousand troops, barely more than ten thousand remained.

Wei Wang had no choice but to lead his remnant force east along the Mianman River (the Tao River at Yangquan, Shanxi) to rejoin the Khitan main force.

Up to this point in the fighting, Yelu Deguang had split his forces into two routes, and both had returned in crushing defeat. All that remained was the central main force under his own command.

All chapters have been cached for you. Download the APP to view.