If the sneak attack failed, it would be very embarrassing because Liao Sheng had to cross the river.
Either take the west bank of the Xiangjiang River and cross the Xiangjiang River further downstream. Or take the east bank of the Xiangjiang River and cross the Lu River on the other side of Lukou Town.
There is a bridge in Lukou Town. It was built in the Song Dynasty. It is more than 150 meters long. It is a wooden pier and wooden beam structure. It needs to be repaired every few years. If you don't walk on this bridge, only Liling Bridge will be left along the entire Lu River.
The Lujiang Bridge next to it is also a Song Dynasty bridge with wooden piers and wooden beams.
Liao Sheng did not have a dedicated naval force, and his ships were only used to transport baggage.
Zhao Han's navy cannot come from Jiangxi, and the ships can only be used to transport baggage - of course, they can make a long circle from the Yangtze River and then follow the Xiangjiang River to here.
Crossing the Xiangjiang River was too difficult, so Liao Sheng had no choice but to cross the bridge at Lu River.
After landing on the south bank of Lushui River, Liao Sheng breathed a sigh of relief. The rebels finally did not set fire to the bridge.
They set up camp across the river and did not move that day.
Liao Sheng asked his brother Liao Kun to lead 1,500 water-resistant elites to go upstream at night and sneak across directly. At that time, the main force would cross the bridge, and the surprise troops would attack from the east at the same time. If they attack from both sides, they can win in one battle.
Fei Yinggon didn't respond at all, as if he didn't know how to guard against enemy troops sneaking across.
When the news came that his brother had successfully smuggled across the border, Liao Sheng sneered in the camp: "The thieves guarding the food route are so stupid and incompetent. This battle will definitely be won!"
There are two reasons why Fei Yinggon didn’t move:
First, although he can now command a thousand regular soldiers, Huang Yao took away 500 for siege. He only had 500 regular soldiers and 500 peasant soldiers. This combat power was too weak after dividing the troops;
Second, if the enemy is not allowed to cross the river, how can he annihilate them all?
At noon the next day, the 1,500 regiments who had successfully smuggled across the border were led by Liao Kun to fight over after resting and recovering.
At the same time, Liao Sheng forcibly crossed the bridge in advance to contain the rebels and cooperate with his clan brothers to successfully reach the battlefield.
With shield bearers and spearmen in front, and three hundred archers at the back, only a few hundred troops can be invested at one time. There are too many people to stand on the bridge.
They were not in a hurry to attack, so they just shot at the other side from the bridge, waiting for the friendly troops who were smuggling to arrive, and then attacked from both sides.
"Dad, the enemy from the east has come and smuggled more than a thousand people into the country," Fei Ruhui said.
Fei Yinggong turned around and looked: "No hurry, just wait."
The five hundred regular soldiers guarding the bridge were holding shields to defend themselves against bows and arrows. When the 1,500 regiments on the side approached, Fei Yingcong suddenly exclaimed: "Quickly retreat!"
Taking advantage of the gap between the archers' shooting, the soldiers guarding the bridge turned around and ran away. They seemed to be afraid of being attacked from two sides and were completely frightened.
Very poor acting!
However, Tuan Yong who was attacking on the bridge believed it, and so did Tuan Yong who sneaked in and outflanked him.
Since they formed an army, they have been fighting against bandits for a long time. Those bandits also fought in this way, and were defeated once they were ambushed or outflanked.
Liao Sheng on the other side of the river said urgently: "Ming Jin, Ming Jin, gather across the river, don't chase!"
"Dang-dang-dang!"
The gong rang frantically, but it was already too late.
The Tuanyong who crossed the bridge and the Tuanyong who smuggled across the bridge saw that the Datong army was escaping, and they immediately became hot-headed and swarmed to kill them.
Obviously, these elite regiments are unable to follow orders and prohibitions at all.
After Liao Sheng crossed the river, his troops had been divided into two groups. One group was chasing the Datong Army, and the other group was very obedient and gathered on the shore. In desperation, he led his troops to chase while blowing the trumpet to stop the troops in front.
This is a commercial town. If there are too many people, it is impossible to form an array, so we can only advance along the bluestone streets.
Two streets, in the shape of "⊥".
One extends horizontally along the river, and the other extends vertically along the shops.
The Tuanyong who were the first to cross the bridge went into the vertical streets to pursue them. The 1,500 Tuanyong who smuggled in pursued them from the alleys outside the town. They were all dragged into a long snake formation, or to be precise, they were dragged into two long snakes.
They went completely crazy chasing him, just like they used to chase bandits.
"Hush!"
A sharp and piercing copper whistle sounded, and the five hundred regular soldiers who fled from the main street suddenly stopped and assembled in formation.
This kind of operation could only be accomplished by a few troops in the entire Ming Dynasty. Most of the officers and soldiers, local braves and bandits, even if they had made arrangements in advance, fled and collapsed, and the feigned defeat directly turned into a rout.
If the regiment heroes couldn't do it, they thought the Datong Army couldn't do it either. They firmly believed that the Datong Army was really in retreat.
"The world is unified!"
“Farm and eat!”
The five hundred regular soldiers who had quickly formed their formation suddenly shouted in unison, frightening the regiment who was chasing at the front to tremble with fear.
"kill!"
On the narrow bluestone street, at most a dozen people could line up side by side. No matter how many soldiers were chasing after them, they could not move away at all. They were instantly strangled by the Datong troops arrayed at the street entrance.
"Run quickly, there's an ambush!"
Tuan Yong, who was running in front, turned around in a hurry, but Tuan Yong behind him was still rushing forward, and soon they were huddled together at the street intersection.
Tuan Yong's command system had completely failed at this time, and even the officers were crowded into the crowd.
All shops in the town were closed, and a few shops had two floors. Shopkeepers, clerks, and merchants... all watched from the second-floor windows, and they saw a very exciting scene.
I saw five hundred soldiers, arrayed in a crescent shape at the street entrance, and countless regiments crashed into the concave gap. A regiment was often assassinated by several spears, and was crowded in front and behind, unable to advance or retreat.
The Tuan Yong chasing after them didn’t know what was going on at first, so they stood behind and collectively entered a state of sleepwalking. They were strangled like this for at least a minute, and then the Tuan Yong behind them began to flee. However, the middle area was crowded with people, and countless Tuan Yong were panicked.
If they fell down, many regimental heroes would simply be trampled to death by friendly forces.
An out-of-town businessman staying in the inn watched the whole battle through the window and couldn't help but sigh: "On one side are the elite troops and on the other are the mob. This battle was not lost unfairly."
On the other side, a group of 1,500 stowaways, led by Liao Kun, chased and outflanked them from the alley outside the town.
They ran into five hundred peasant soldiers!
There are houses on one side of the path and dry fields on the other side. Liao Kun raised a flag and shouted for formation.
Facing the peasants and soldiers who were waiting in full formation, the regiment heroes did not dare to pursue them any more, and jumped into the dry fields one after another and began to form formation.
However, before they could complete their formation, five hundred peasant soldiers also jumped into the dry fields, trotted and began to charge in a mandarin duck formation.
These regiments were indeed elite, and they were not defeated immediately. They were much more powerful than the regiments of the Zhou family in Xiangtan.
That's all.
The 1,500 regimental warriors who were not even in formation faced the 500 peasants and soldiers who were charging in formation. They held on for about two minutes and were directly killed from the middle. The regimental warriors wanted to fight, but all they saw were wolves.
Then suddenly a spear stabbed me.
Liao Kun raised his knife to split two wolf swords, and was suddenly stabbed by a wolf sword. As he was parrying and retreating, another spear was stabbed at him. He was then shot in the shoulder, abdomen, and chest, and fell to the ground on the spot.
Kill.
Liao Sheng himself came with his troops, but the two regiments had all fled, so he could only retreat to the bridge to form a response.
However, more and more broken troops rushed back, and the Datong Army was chasing after them. Liao Sheng's main formation was shaken instantly. As the broken troops got closer and closer, some of the regiments responsible for responding were so frightened that they turned around and ran away.
Liao Sheng led the entire army to a rout, and Liao Sheng could not even kill several people to suppress them.
The five thousand regiments brought by Liao Sheng were already the most elite troops in the entire Shonan region at this time.
They have been fighting for more than a year, and they are all veterans who have seen blood. The other troops, including the soldiers under the command of Governor Wang Zhiliang, are farmers recruited temporarily. They have no combat effectiveness at all and can only be used to defend the city.
The only elite troops in southern Hunan were defeated in this way.
The reason for the defeat turned out to be Fei Yinggon's clumsy feint of defeat, which caused these elites to ignore military orders and pursue the ambush point.
At this moment, more than 3,000 of the 5,000 elites were still alive. A small number of them fled along both sides of the river bank, and most of them were squeezing towards the wooden bridge, trying to cross the river through the only bridge. On the other side of the river was their camp.
Liao Sheng was unable to prevent the rout, so he could only retreat quickly with the protection of his trusted followers among the rebels.
Liao Sheng successfully crossed the bridge and ran away, but more regiment soldiers were squeezed on the bridge, and many defeated troops were even pushed into the river.
"kill!"
Fei Ruhui, a woman, rushed forward with a spear in her hand, stabbing at the defeated soldiers quickly. She preferred to use a sword, but when fighting on the battlefield, it was more comfortable to use a spear.
Several people were stabbed to death one after another. The defeated soldiers on the bridge jumped into the river one after another, and the rest were chased across the bridge.
"Slow down, slow down!" Fei Yingcong shouted anxiously, fearing that something might happen to her daughter.
However, Fei Ruhui had already rushed to the other side and chased him several miles away before finally stopping to rest out of breath.
Liao Sheng fled frantically with the remaining soldiers and returned along the original route of the Xiangjiang River. After escaping until dark, he finally saw no pursuers. He asked his confidants to count the number of people, and found that only more than 80 were left.
Liao Sheng was about to cry but had no tears. These were his five thousand elite soldiers!
Although Leiyang and Hengshan each had 3,000 regiments to defend the city, and Hengyang had 1,500 regiments to defend the city. However, those 7,500 regiments were all weak in combat effectiveness and were a ragtag group recruited by other gentry.
Liao Sheng was in a daze and felt that there was no way to recover.
He has lost all his elite troops, so what's the use of returning to Leiyang, Hengshan, and Hengyang? Even if he goes back, he probably won't be able to command them, because they are other people's soldiers, and there are conflicts within the gentry.
That's it, that's all, no more fighting.
Liao Sheng waited by the river for two days, and more than 200 regiments fled back one after another. These were his soldiers, and there were only 300 left. He simply found a ferry to cross the river and fled all the way back to his hometown of Longhui.
Along the way, you must rob landowners to raise food rations.
After hearing that Liao Sheng's main force had been wiped out, the military morale in the three cities of Hengyang, Hengshan, and Leiyang on the southern front suddenly fluctuated, and deserters occurred every day.
Zhang Tieniu took the opportunity to surround Leiyang, and Liu Zhu took the opportunity to surround Hengshan.
Hengyang between the two cities was about to become an isolated city, and the magistrate was so frightened that he ran away. The magistrate was a wise man, and stepped forward in the face of danger, opening his treasury to recruit troops on the spot.
However, the number of Hengyang garrison recruits decreased.
The county magistrate recruited one, and seven or eight escaped that night.
Hengyang is a large commercial city with many wealthy merchants, and almost every wealthy merchant maintains numerous slaves.
There was a wealthy slave named Zhang Feng. After he became rich, he asked scholars to change his name to Zhang Wenyu.
He had never been to Jiangxi, but he got a copy of "Datong Collection" from Jiangxi merchants and began to inquire about the situation of domestic slaves in Jiangxi.
In the latest version of "Datong Collection", there is an article called "Freeing Slaves", which classifies tenants, long-term workers, domestic servants, and military households as slaves. It is believed that only by freeing slaves can the world be truly united, and these slaves should also be treated equally
.
Seeing that only two to three hundred of the Hengyang defenders had escaped, Zhang Wenyu immediately began to communicate with each other, and half of the slaves in Hengyang City were incited.
Judging from the slave rebellion in the late Ming Dynasty, the intensity of the domestic slave rebellion was far lower than that of the peasants.
In most cases, domestic slaves only beat their masters, forced them to hand over the deed of sale, or forced their masters to improve their treatment. Only a few would kill their masters. The reason is simple. All slave rebellion movements were led by powerful slaves.
, these wealthy slaves also have a family business, and they don’t want to make it too big.
The two cities of Hengshan and Leiyang have not yet been conquered, but Hengyang in the middle has changed its flag.
Zhang Wenyu led countless domestic slaves to drive away the Hengyang defenders and set up an autonomous Datong military flag.