They had used up all the men and could squeeze them further no more.
The Xilian army fought for so long only because Qiang feared the Han Dynasty would kill them all.
Thinking of being crushed for their earlier rebellion, the tribe kept supplying the Xilian army until Han Dynasty had stopped caring about pacifying Xilian and destroying it instead.
Even so, Qiang’s support wasn’t much, 100,000 men at most.
When the Han Dynasty came to wipe them out only a few hundreds escaped.
The Qiang tribe of a million was thus cut down to a fifth.
It could send 70,000 more men at best, or the tribe’s situation would be critical. There was no point in fighting if it would mean the end of the tribe.
After six months of war, the whole west of Tongguan was severely depopulated.
And the clans in the Xiliang army withdrew from the corps and posed no threat to court. But even so the court would not spare the Xiliang army even if they surrendered.
They would smash them to annihilation so that nothing in thousands of miles would rise up.
Since antiquity, the basis of every regime was population. No matter how large the territory, having no people supporting it was having it for nothing.
After the Mongols unified the plains, the army wasn’t much to look at. Only after conquering some countries with a rich population did they gain enough power to take on Eurasia.
The Qing Dynasty started by occupying Liaodong and was even weaker than Ming that had the whole of China.
But once he led the court, he had the support of three powers led by Wu Sangui that started the emperor’s path to unifying the nation.
These empires were strong only after gaining support of many Han forces.
The same applied in Xiliang’s case. After such a long war, Guanzhong was sucked bone dry, the land barren, the people fleeing.
If the war dragged out for even two more months, Guanzhong would become desolate.
Without people to work the fields from the endless war, Liangzhou would starve.
There would be no way to feed the clans.
Guanzhong would lose its cultural heritage, degenerating into a savage land in the times of Qin Dynasty, abandoned and isolated by the Central Plains.
How long would it take for it to recover to its previous state? Decades? Centuries? The Qin Dynasty needed 300 years to restore Zhou’s homeland, Guanzhong, after the Quanrong rebellion.
While it was recovering, the Central Plains was expanding in this period.
That was why Qin was denounced by savages, refusing to establish any kind of diplomatic relations.
The Guanzhong’s clans wanted to follow Qin’s example to restore their prosperity. It was then Guandong’s clans turned to suppressing Guanzhong.
August, after another month of fighting, Guzang City which had long since fallen into disrepair, was finally open during another attack by Han troops.
A flood of soldiers poured into the city to plunder it for spoils. The defenders were killed, while the two leaders, Han Sui and Ma Teng, fled with 10,000 west of Wuwei Region to reorganize a defense against the Han Dynasty.
The city resounded with the cries and screams of the people as the soldiers released their desires on the hapless citizens after months of fighting.
The people had it bad from the war to start with and now they were massacred.
According to the records, the city had around 5,000 people before the attack. Now, only 40 have to bury their dead.
The horror of war was reflected in this moment. It perfectly justified living on your knees than dying on your feet.
And the officers were actually condoning such behavior.
For good reason though. The soldiers had to vent their frustration and anger, lest it would lead to mutiny.
And besides, the officers were clansmen from Guandong, so why spare Guanzhong’s people? They were more than happy to reduce Guandong clans’ power.
The fate of these people was determined the moment the city fell.
The citizens were now regretting having not joined the defense, instead of putting their trust in that rotten clan.
They gave up with hardly a fight and now the people paid for it.
After the massacre, the soldiers calmed and the army left 50,000 men behind to look after Guanzhong as the rest advanced.
As for Han Sui and Ma Teng, the escapees, none of the worthies cared about them, the Wuwei Region and two more around it hardly had any people, just around 60,000. It was hard pressed to even feed the 10,000 that escaped, least of all mount a counter offensive.
So they left behind some men to defend the territory and transferred the rest of the army back to Guandong.
While the 120,000 men returned to Central Plains, Zhong Yu was in Jiangling City gave a speech to go north with 500,000 strong.
All they waited was for his order and Central Plains would be his.
After this last half a year spent on organizing his territory, the south was stable. With fiefdom as his supreme weapon, all the clans no longer wanted him gone since they could build their long lasting legacy and honor their ancestors.
This option was never even considered in the feudal system. Why would he just give up land for free, only to go to the Han Dynasty’s broken wasteland?
