Xu Wen was also capable and very decisive. After receiving the news from the scouts, he immediately organized auxiliary troops and burned all the supplies that had been piled up outside in time to be evacuated.
Food, fodder, tools, tents, wound medicine, etc. were all set ablaze, with thick smoke billowing into the sky.
This man seems elegant and easy-going, but he is not sloppy in his actions and is also a ruthless character.
Li Tangbin arrived in Qingkou on the evening of the first day of May. The first thing he did was to follow the order of King Xia and send scouts upstream to inspect the river banks to see if anyone was secretly building a dam to block the water.
He was not very satisfied with King Xia's remote control. As a general, how could I not pay attention to this? Qingkou is in a low-lying area, how could I not be on guard?
But the scouts who went out on patrol really gained something: they met their colleagues.
Obviously, everyone is thinking about the same thing. There is really nothing new about fighting in Huainan. Yang Xingmi is addicted to playing with water. Sun Ru was washed away by the flood in Xuanzhou in May. It is also May now, and Yang Xingmi is thinking of the same trick again.
Repeat?
The frontal battle began on the third day of May. The Longhu Army first launched an attack, trying to attack the camp guarded by the Huai soldiers along the narrow passage.
However, they only attacked once and then retreated, replaced by Tu Tuan countrymen.
There are swamps and puddles everywhere, and the terrain is limited. It is impossible to deploy troops in a frontal attack. The Huai people's arrows are very fierce, causing too many casualties. They can only use the local brave to consume a wave first.
It should be said that Xiangyong worked very hard. It only took two days to fill up various obstacles and try to launch an attack. After they were defeated, the Longhu Army and the Yicong Army followed, and within three days
He defeated two camps inside and killed more than three thousand thieves. His momentum was like a rainbow.
Later, Li Tangbin sent people to cut trees downstream, seemingly to build a pontoon bridge. The Huai army's remaining ships immediately sailed down the river to stop their attempt. This movement also reduced the pressure on the frontal battlefield - when attacking the camp
He was constantly shot from the side by the crossbows on the warships, and the accumulated casualties were not small.
On the evening of the eighth day of May, Xu Wen climbed to the camp watchtower and observed the enemy's formation.
Zhang Hao was holding the heavy sword that was still dripping with blood, breathing heavily.
Li Shenfu, the governor of Chuzhou, also came. He sent people to deliver 5,000 bundles of arrows, and at the same time sent 500 Chuzhou soldiers and 3,000 local warriors to reinforce the Qingkou camp.
The Xia soldiers were a bit fierce. Even though the battlefield conditions were very unfavorable to them, they still charged and killed with high morale, which made the Huai soldiers who were guarding the camp a little confused. It would be okay if they let the field fighting go, and they couldn't be defeated in one wave——
In the past few days, it was not that they had gone out of the city to fight. In fact, they had gone out to fight four or five times. However, the Huai army only won once, that is, the first time. They still bullied the Xia people who were not familiar with the battlefield environment and relied on the sudden attack of naval ships.
With the help of the boat, they killed more than a thousand elite members of Xia Junyi's army and returned with a great victory.
"The route to Surabaya is actually blocked." Li Shenfu said with emotion as he looked at the scattered battlefield.
"Li Shijun, if we gather the fleet to go north, the Xia people will not be able to stop us. The Surabaya route may or may not make sense," Xu Wen said.
Li Shenfu smiled.
In his opinion, the opportunity in this battle has been lost. Now that the Xia army has reached Qingkou, Xuzhou is already in great danger.
This danger comes from the psychological level, that is, have we been abandoned? This is something that every martial artist in Xuzhou is doubting. If no adjustments are made and this kind of thinking is allowed to spread, Xuzhou will be in danger.
"In my opinion, it is better to withdraw the soldiers and civilians of Xuzhou to the south as far as they can go." Li Shenfu said: "Then we simply don't even have to defend Xiapi, and retreat directly to the Huai River, relying on the strong city and the boat division to defend the enemy. The further we go, the more we can move forward."
To the north, the narrower the river and the shallower the water, the less conducive it is to the movement of warships."
Li Shenfu is very capable and pointed out the problem to the point.
Xuzhou is like a fragrant bait, luring the Huai army to continuously invest resources in it, and then they are all trapped there. Are you really confident that you can win the war in Huaibei?
Historically, Li Shenfu was one of the only two undefeated military generals in the late Tang Dynasty and Five Dynasties. His vision was ruthless, and he could see the balance of power between the enemy and ourselves very clearly - the other one was naturally Fu Cunshen.
He has commanded more than a hundred battles in his life and has never been defeated.
Comparatively speaking, Fu Cunshen's record seems to be more valuable. He defeated the Tuyuhun chief Helianduo, defeated Zhu Quanzhong, defeated the Guanzhong warlord, and went north to defeat the Khitan. Li Shenfu is suspected of picking up weak chickens to improve his record.
, but it's still powerful. After all, it's not easy to win again and again with a strong attack on a weak opponent.
"I'm afraid the king is unwilling to give up Xuzhou." Xu Wen actually agreed with Li Shenfu's idea, but he stayed with Yang Xingmi all year round and knew the obsession in King Wu's heart - maybe it can be called delusion?
"The situation is pressing. Sometimes we have to accept our fate and wait for the right time." Li Shenfu sighed and said, "Just guard it well. King Wu has been playing hide and seek with Shao in the west for so long. It's time for him to wake up."
"What time is it? You are talking like a cloud." Zhang Hao was a little displeased with Li Shenfu and asked in a rough voice.
Li Shenfu did not compete with this fool and said leisurely: "The time may have passed. We should not have tied our hands and gone directly north to seize Zhu Quanzhong's territory. If we could accept his defeated troops and surrender his generals, the situation would be much better. It's a pity that King Wu
Hesitating and hesitating, missed the opportunity, and finally got Xuzhou. What, what!"
Li Shenfu was the governor of Chuzhou, and he dared to "slander" King Wu like this. Xu Wen was a government general, but he didn't dare. He could only change the subject and said: "If you keep your mouth clear, you have to rely more on Li Shijun."
"It's just a trivial matter." Li Shenfu said with a smile: "If you really can't hold it anymore, you don't have to open up the Huai River embankment, break a few cofferdams, divert water, and turn Qingkou into a muddy pond. Maybe -
It doesn’t have to be so troublesome.”
Li Shenfu looked up at the rustling military flag and said, "The rainy season is coming."
Cofferdam is a relatively common water conservancy project in Huainan. To put it bluntly, it means competing for land from the swamp, that is, using a dam to block the water and artificially create a field. There are many such projects in Chuzhou, and some even build cofferdams to block the water.
Seawater engineering. In the Huainan area, there are actually many places named after "polders", such as Yiwei, Erwei... Eleventh, Erwei, etc.
When the imperial dynasty developed Jiangnan, they drained the swamps little by little and slowly transformed them. Undoubtedly, this cost was very high and the transformation was also very difficult. During the Yuanhe period of Emperor Xianzong, an inventory of registered land acres in the world showed that the average household size of Jiangnan people in the Taihu Lake Basin was
There are only a few acres or more than ten acres of land, which is far inferior to that in the north, which shows the difficulty of development.
Li Shenfu's intention was to open the gates on the cofferdam and release water to stop Xia's army at the expense of destroying farmland.
The war drums in the north are rumbling, murderous intent is rising, and another wave of offensive is coming.
******
"Zhou Ben wants to run away?" Shao Shude received the information from the scout at the handover point between Xu and Si.
Li Yixian spread the silk map on the grass.
The map is very detailed, and the landscape of the mountains and rivers is clear at a glance. There are also many notes written on it, in neat small regular script and elegant handwriting, with the word "Feng" in the lower right corner.
Zhou Bentun was stationed in Xiapi. He had been renovating the city and hoarding supplies. He had about thousands of soldiers and horses.
Shao Shude had some impression of this person.
When Yang Xingmi sent the fleet to assist Zhu Quanzhong, it was Zhou Ben who led the troops. Several years later, Zhou Ben was still leading the fleet south and north, doing his job as captain of the transport brigade.
"Wang Jingxuan, the Marquis of Yu, the capital of Yi Congjun, led his army to conquer Suqian County and built a pontoon bridge over the Surabaya River. He also looked for blacksmiths everywhere to try to smelt iron chains and cut off the river. After Zhou Ben learned about it, he wanted to abandon Xiapi and go south to Qingkou.
He also sent an envoy to send a message to Yang Xingmi and captured him for me." Li Yixian briefly introduced the source of the information.
"How far is this place from Suqian?" Shao Shude asked.
"It's a day's journey, but Suqian is east of Surabaya." Xie Tong glanced at Shao Shude in surprise.
Shao Shude understood what Xie Tong meant, laughed and said: "Just as Yang Xingmi wants to catch me, why don't I want to kill Xingmi? Huainan is like that. Once Xingmi dies, if Zhu Yanshou, Tian Yan, Yang Shihou and others are still alive
, there will definitely be trouble. But there are tens of thousands of troops in the secret army, and they seem to have some rules. Without tens of thousands of infantry troops, it will be difficult to defeat them. You have also tried the Mountain-Based Army, how about it?"
"If the Huai people dare to stay away from the Bianshui River, they will definitely be wiped out. What kind of ability is it to march under the protection of the boat master?" Yang Hongwang, the Silver Spear Army envoy, said unconvinced.
I did try it. The light and heavy cavalry continued to harass, but the rebel army did not collapse. They did not dare to charge hard. They even had hundreds of sidecars. They hid behind the barriers and shot with rifle bows and stabbed with spears. It was very difficult.
It is difficult to deal with them. The Bianshui River can also provide them with food, grass, arrows, and transport the wounded. The navy can sometimes use crossbows to assist the infantry in defense. It is just like when Liu Yu marched along the Yellow River, resisting cavalry harassment all the way.
The number of miles westward.
These tens of thousands of people should be Yang Xingmi's old base. If they are eliminated, the south will no longer have an army capable of fighting.
"Don't be angry!" Shao Shude straightened his face and said, "Yang Xingmi still thinks that my cavalry is bullying people. In ancient times, the southern government has its own special skills in being able to settle on one side. What we should do is to study the strengths of others and find out
The way to solve it is not to chatter like a woman all day long.”
"I will finally be taught." Yang Hongwang's face turned pale and he bowed and apologized.
"Let's get back to business." Shao Shude cleared his throat and said: "The guide also said before that the rainy season will come at any time. Under the torrential rain, the cavalry will be unable to move even an inch. If the Huai Army launches a counterattack by then, with the help of silver spears, the Flying Bear Army can
Can you block it? Forget about your foot fighting skills. You are all veterans, can't you tell what Yang Xingmi is planning?"
"I have firmly memorized the military principle of utilizing strengths and avoiding weaknesses. Don't fight the enemy in the way they are good at, and hurt others without killing them. Remember." Shao Shude continued: "Our cavalry comes and goes like the wind, so we should use this method.
Advantage. Don't get entangled with Yang Xingmi. Go east to Suqian and kill Zhou Ben first. After the fight, if you still have time, you can come back and play with Yang Xingmi."
"Your Highness has mastered the essence of cavalry in his use of troops." Xie Tong praised.