Chapter 293 Jianguo

Liu Bei gritted his teeth with hatred, but even he himself knew that his strength and barely self-protection were a problem at present, let alone avenge his third brother.

Shortly after paying homage to Zhang Fei, Liu Bei redeployed the existing troops at hand.

In the battle of the wild king, 50,000 soldiers were lost, and most of them were veteran soldiers who had been fighting for a long time. After Liu Bei joined the three states, he could barely piece together 70,000 to 80,000 regular troops.

In terms of Bingzhou, Liu Bei ordered Wu Yi and Ma Dai to station troops in Taiyuan County and Hedong County respectively. Only less than 20,000 troops tried to rely on the danger of Bingzhou to barely save the state.

On the side of Yongliang, Liu Bei also ordered Li Yan and Li Hui to lead 5,000 troops respectively, stationed in Chencang and Qishan to guard against the enemies of Hanzhong.

In terms of Tongguan, Liu Bei ordered Zhao Yun to lead 10,000 troops to garrison as a barrier to the east of Chang'an.

Under such a deployment, there are only about 30,000 mobile troops left by Chang'an.

In order to make up for the lack of troops, Liu Bei had to order the vigorous recruitment of troops in Yongliang and the three states. At the same time, he also made great profits to Qiang Hu in Xiliang and borrowed brave Huqi from him.

When Liu Bei was struggling to restore his troops, Liu Feng was not idle.

Due to the victory of the Battle of Hanoi and the obedience of Sima Yi, the whole Hebei is almost invincible.

Under such circumstances, Liu Feng ordered Ling Tong, Pan Zhang and other generals to lead their armies, about 40,000 soldiers and horses, and marched to Hebei on the way. Several soldiers and horses **, all the counties and counties passed were expected to fall. Within two months, they were peaceful.

Liu Feng's northern expedition was a great success, and his territory was unprecedentedly developed. Although his territory was very large, the soldiers were tired from a hundred battles, and the new people of the states were not touched, and he could no longer recruit troops on a large scale in a short period of time.

Therefore, while Liu Feng sent generals to subjugrate the states, he returned to Luoyang with 100,000 soldiers and officially assisted the government as a big Sima.

Liu Feng has a way of fighting, but governing is not his strength. At this point, he also has the name of autonomy.

Therefore, not long after returning to Luoyang, Liu Feng took the fate of the Han Emperor and worshipped Pang Tong as the Shangshu order, so that he had full authority to handle all kinds of government affairs on his behalf.

At the same time, Liu Ba, Kui Liang, Gu Yong and other literary ministers, or the meritorious ministers of Yuan Cong, or the famous and powerful new ministers who surrendered, Liu Feng did not hesitate to reward them, so that they were listed among the nine ministers and did their best.

As for the generals, Liu Feng also wantonly rewarded them. Wei Yan, Huang Zhong, Gan Ning, Ma Yan and other generals were assigned to the left and right generals before and after, and the rest of the new and old generals such as Chen Zhi, Xu Shu, Wenpin, Meng Da, Pan Zhang and Ling Tong were also rewarded.

In March, after the Emperor of the Han Dynasty returned to the capital, Qingzhou Zangba and other forces, seeing that Liu Feng had sat firmly in the Central Plains, the general trend had been settled, and he did not hesitate any more. They sent their families to Luoyang as hostages, and Zang Ba himself also asked to remove himself from the position of Qingzhou assassin and enter the court as an official.

Liu Feng took the opportunity to accept Zang Ba's request, named him as the general of Zhenbei, transferred him to the court as an official, and changed Jiang Wan as the governor of Qingzhou, so that he could replace Zang Ba.

As soon as the matter of Qingzhou is solved, there is no need to worry about the convenience of the east. The trauma of the war in the Central Plains is slowly healing, the hearts of the officials and the people are gradually attached, and everything is developing in a good way.

In the spring of this year, some people began to feel uneasy.

The first uneasy person was Ma Yan. He publicly praised the achievements of the great Sima Liu Feng, and asked the Emperor of the Han Dynasty to make Liu Feng the Duke of the state to show his achievements.

Since the Han Dynasty, Wang Mang has been the only one who has been called the Duke. Everyone knows that being the Duke is the first step towards usurping the throne.

At the time of Cao Wei, there was also a public opinion in the court that supported Cao Wei as the Duke of Wei. At that time, Cao Wei took a tacit attitude.

Originally, Emperor Han had been forced to make Cao Wei Gong, but later Lien was defeated, which made Cao Wei have no intention to think about it again.

The current environment Liu Feng is in is one day and one earth compared with Cao Yan. While his strength has soared, Liu Feng certainly hopes that he can get a corresponding higher power.

Therefore, with Liu Feng's acquiescence, after Ma Yu, Pang Tong, Kui Liang, Liu Ba and other important ministers appeared to the Han Emperor one after another, and then the local members of each state and county also followed suit.

The snowflakes flew to the court. Liu Xie, the emperor of the Han Dynasty, had no reason and did not dare to refuse. In desperation, he had to make Liu Feng the title of Duke of Song.

Liu Feng naturally learned from Cao's appearance in those years. He was modest and refused the reward of Emperor Han.

Emperor Han also knew that Liu Feng was going through the motions, so he had to edict again.

After the three concessions, Liu Feng no longer refused, so he appreciated and accepted the reward of Emperor Han and officially called him the Duke of Song.

Under the hint of Liu Feng, Liu Xie not only made Liu Feng the Duke of Song, but also gave him Jiuxi, which symbolized his power, and divided into nine counties, Liang, Pei, Chen, Shanyang, Jiyin, Runan, Chen Liu and Pengcheng, a total of nine counties as the fiefs of Liu and Song.

After Liu Feng called the Duke of Song, he took Chen Liu as the capital of the Duke of Song and set up his son Liu Yu as the son of the prince. At the same time, he granted more official positions of the Duke of Song to the court, and gradually transferred the military and political disposal institutions of the court into his own principality system.

Liu Feng sits in the land of Jingyi Jiaoyang and other eleven states, and there are two parts of the world. It is also logical to say that the founding of the People's Republic of China is a natural thing. Naturally, there are people who oppose it, but they are also some people who shake trees, and they can't reverse the general trend at all.

However, Liu Feng's claim to be the founding of the People's Republic of China made Liu Bei in the west unable to sit still.

Less than three months after Liu Feng was promoted to Duke of Song, Liu Bei sent messengers to Luoyang to express himself as the king of Guanzhong to the Emperor of the Han Dynasty.

At least Liu Feng was the first to be public, and Liu Bei went straight to the king. This taste is really big.

But it's no wonder that no matter how much Liu Bei hated Liu Feng before, their anti-Cao positions were the same.

Moreover, Liu Bei is the uncle admitted by the Emperor of Han himself, and has the title of left general awarded by the imperial court. At least in terms of name, he is much higher than Liu Feng, a "wild warlord".

But now, Liu Feng has taken the hand of Emperor Han. He not only obtained the qualification to take charge of the military power of the country from the legal theory, but also turned out to be the title of the founding of the People's Republic of China. This status suddenly threw Liu Bei away from a few streets.

How could Liu Bei swallow this breath? In order to overshadow Liu Feng, and in order to find a reason to add a title to his subordinates and attract people's hearts, after weighing it over and over again, Liu Bei decided to become king.

After Liu Bei's performance arrived in Luoyang, Liu Xie naturally could not see it, but directly sent it to Liu Feng's hand.

Seeing Liu Bei's performance, Liu Feng smiled.

Since claiming to be the Duke of Song, Liu Feng has been planning the plan to unify the Central Plains from the Western Expedition of Liu Bei. Now, Liu Bei's title of king just gives him a full excuse.

Three days later, the Emperor of Han gave an edict to remove Liu Bei's imperial nationality and denounced him as a rebel.

The ministers of the government and the opposition soon smelled the smell of gunpowder, and the ministers came up one after another, scolding Liu Bei as a rebel, making himself king, and asked the Emperor of the Han to issue an edict to fight against the rebellion.

Emperor Han himself could not make the decision. After sending someone to consult Liu Feng, the Duke of Song, he confirmed that Liu Feng was ready to destroy Liu Bei. Then he dared to order Liu Feng to command the army of the whole country in the name of Da Sima to subdue Liu Bei's rebels.

The order to transfer troops was soon issued by the Song Gongfu, and the troops from all over the country quickly began to gather. Within a month, the armies were assembled one after another, and Liu Feng ordered the Western Expedition in the name of thieves.

After the destruction of Cao, after more than a year of operation, Liu Feng had nearly 400,000 regular troops in his hands. In order to destroy Liu Bei in one fell swoop, in addition to guarding Luoyang and all the key places, Liu Feng mobilized as many as 350,000 soldiers and horses.

As for Liu Feng's strategy of destroying Liu Bei, he adopted the "strate to destroy Liu's legacy" left by Sima Yi before his death.

On the Hebei side, Wei Yan, the former general of Liu Feng, was the commander-in-chief of the North Road Army, and ordered him to command 100,000 troops. On the three roads of Binglu, the three counties of Yanmen, Changshan and Hanoi attacked Bingzhou respectively.

In terms of South Road, Liu Feng appointed Huang Zhong as the commander-in-chief. Together with Ma Yan and Meng Da, 50,000 soldiers attacked Guan Long from Chen Cang and Qi Shan respectively.

In the middle of the road, Liu Feng self-unified 200,000 troops, of which 50,000 troops were recruited by Wenpin. He launched an attack on Wuguan from Nanyang and threatened Chang'an from the southeast.

Liu Feng rode 100,000 steps from Luoyang and attacked Tongguan head-on through the Hongnong army. With Gan Ning, he led 50,000 water troops along the Yellow River to the westward, riding on water and land with Liu Feng's 100,000 steps.

350,000 troops launched a semi-circular attack on the three states ruled by Liu Bei from three aspects: north, middle and south.

Liu Bei seems to have expected that his title of king would attract Liu Feng's military attack, so while he was a great vassal of ministers, he was also intensively deployed to deploy the defenses of all roads.

After more than a year of recovery, Liu Bei has barely expanded his troops to 100,000. Liu Bei's plan is to rely on the consolidation of the four fortresses in Guanzhong and the dangers of mountains and rivers, and to force Liu Feng's attack with a protracted battle.

As for the side of Bingzhou, if you can keep the rules, you can give up if you can't. Soldier Martin returned to the customs and gather all his strength to retreat to the two states of Yongliang.

As Liu Feng expected in advance, since the beginning of the war, the Wei Yan army on the North Road has won a series of victories, successively attacking Changshan, Leping, Yanmen, Xinxing and other counties, and the soldiers went straight to Taiyuan County, the governor of Bingzhou.

Seeing that the situation in Bingzhou was unfavorable, Liu Bei moved 50,000 households in Bingzhou into Guanzhong, and 30,000 soldiers and horses withdrew into Guanzhong and stationed on the front line of Pubanjin to prevent Liu Bei's army from crossing the Yellow River in the west.

After the enemy abandoned Bingzhou, Wei Yan's troops wiped out Bingzhou within half a month. In addition to leaving some soldiers and horses stationed, 80,000 elites entered Hedong County in the south, with an attitude of preparing to cross the Yellow River in the west.

Except for Wei Yanjun on the North Road, the other two troops were hindered.

Not to mention Huang Zhong's Hanzhong Legion. With the natural danger of Qinling, Liu Bei blocked Huang Zhong's northward march with only 10,000 soldiers and horses.

As for the middle road, Liu Bei personally led 50,000 elite soldiers to sit in Tongguan. Liu Feng's main army, 150,000 troops of water and land, and a series of strong attacks did not make any progress for half a month.

In the late summer and early autumn season, the two sides fell into a stalemate on the front line of Tongguan.

(to be continued)