On August 27, the third year of Jianji, Xia Jun had rested for one day and two nights in Macheng County.
In these short two days, they successively captured three cities in Macheng County, Qianjinye, and Liucheng Army, capturing and killing more than 800 people. If you include the two or three hundred killed by Liu Zhijun on the road, the number has exceeded 1,000.
Already.
Is it a lot? In fact, it's not much at all. It's simply unbelievable that the dignified frontier fortress military state has such a small number of troops.
Of course, we all know that the war in the north has been fierce in recent years. Daxia has conquered cities and destroyed many vassal towns. As the most stubborn vassal town in the north, Hedong naturally wants to help the younger brothers, so a large number of soldiers and horses are sent to the battlefield and are constantly consumed.
Among them are Youzhou soldiers and horses.
In addition, the most important thing is that Li Cunzhang took the Lulong Army away, resulting in the Pingzhou garrison being emptied. Now the only one with a little strength is Linyu Pass. There are still thousands of soldiers and horses there, but there are many mixed among them.
The fighting ability of a Tutuan countryman is just that.
Youzhou is following the same path as Li Keju, Li Kuangwei and Li Kuangchou.
At the beginning of the hour on the 27th, Chishui Army envoy Fan He sent Kang Huaiying and 2,500 men to attack Lulong County, while he himself supervised the craftsmen in Qianjinye City to make weapons and armor and replenish military supplies.
This small town was captured on the night of the 25th. Fan He personally led the team, killed more than a hundred enemies, and easily captured the most important weapons manufacturing base in Youzhou. The defense force was shockingly weak. In comparison, the second
The Liucheng Army, which was only captured during the day on the 16th, had 300 troops left behind - all of whom were also killed.
Nearly 5,000 soldiers and horses have landed, and their losses so far are very slight. They are still taking advantage of the enemy's surprise to attack Lulong and Shicheng counties. The offensive is very fierce.
"Why do Youzhou warriors like Tielao and Guduo and other strange weapons so much?" Within Qian Jinye, Fan He picked up an Tielao and tried it, and said with a smile.
Li Siyuan likes to use Tie Lao, Li Cunxiao loves to use Tie Lao, Zhou Dewei also likes to use Tie Lao...
"And these swords, are they all used by the Sogdians?" Fan He asked curiously as he picked up a curved scimitar.
The scimitar is very long, but it is curved, which requires considerable skill and craftsmanship. Hedong now uses a large number of Shatuo Sanbu and Zhaowu Jiu surname soldiers, so it is not surprising that these weapons appear.
"Send an order to all the foremen in the workshop. All the money and silk seized in Macheng County will be rewarded to you. Give me a day and night to work on long and short weapons and make arrows and armor. If you do a good job, I will not hesitate to reward you generously." Fan He
said.
"Yes." Immediately, a soldier came over to deliver the order.
Fan He picked up the new armor stocked in the workshop or the old armor sent back from various places for repair, and felt happy.
In his opinion, no place in the Tanji camp in the four states is worth as much as a thousand pieces of gold. For an army like theirs that goes deep behind enemy lines and is extremely short of all kinds of supplies, they can get a lot of weapons and armor to arm themselves.
It is simply a timely help.
Fighting requires a large amount of arrows, weapons and armor will be damaged, and tools used daily will also be consumed. It is unimaginable without replenishment. After all, relying on grabbing is extremely unstable. Once you can't grab it and are surrounded, you can basically declare it.
Ruined.
"Collect food, grass, horses, mules, and carts as soon as possible. The more the better." Fan He then ordered: "Don't be polite to the Yan people. Take action when it's time to do it. Just use your discretion."
If you are too pedantic because of the enemy's food supply, you are destined to fail. Now Fan He can also imagine why the Feilong Army has such a bad reputation. In fact, their reputation was not bad at the beginning, but their tactics
They were destined to plunder on a large scale, and during the plundering process they would inevitably encounter resistance, so they would have to kill them.
Over time, it was impossible to maintain military discipline. Even if military officials at all levels tried to improve discipline, they could only pretend to do so. If they really wanted to take action, they would be killed.
"Let's go to the dock and have a look!" Fan He said with a wave of his hand.
******
The pier is in the southeast of Macheng County. It is not very big. It seems that it can only berth a few large ships at the same time.
Yesterday morning, there were dozens of defenders on the dock. They dispersed when they saw the Xia Army brigade approaching. The biggest role of these people is not to guard the dock, but to maintain order and collect food.
Taxes, that's all.
There are many laborers on the dock, all of whom were captured. Their job is to help unload cargo, which is food, weapons, armor, wound medicine, tarpaulins and other materials on many ships that are still anchored offshore.
In addition, there is a group of people who set out yesterday. They went along the wet river to the vicinity of the estuary and were responsible for pulling fibers on the ships.
Strictly speaking, when the southeast wind blows strongly, fiber drawing is not necessarily necessary. However, when summer and autumn alternate, the wind direction sometimes changes, or there is no wind at all on one day, and the river itself has a certain curvature.
Therefore, to be on the safe side, specialized trackers are still needed to take every precaution.
"Macheng County can be thrown away, and under extremely unfavorable circumstances, Qianjinye can be thrown away, but the dock cannot be thrown away." Fan He looked at the slightly dilapidated dock and was filled with emotion.
He could tell that the dock was not used much anymore. Rotten wood could be seen everywhere, and the wooden boards were broken in many places. They were not repaired very much, so they just left it there and used it make do.
In the yard near the dock, the grass grows very high, and there is only a small area where obvious indentations can be seen where goods are often placed.
The house is also in dilapidated condition, and the people have fled. The furnishings in the house are filled with an outdated atmosphere, and there are even many shortages.
I heard that only fishing boats occasionally go into the sea at Macheng's port, which seems to be true. In fact, more fishing boats go into the sea from Le'an Town, which is near the southern estuary.
Most of Machengpo's business is actually inland water transportation, mainly supplying military supplies to the north.
Le'an Town is a military town that has been abandoned and became Laoting County in later generations. It was very prosperous during the Jin Dynasty.
In the sixth year of Xiankang, "King Hu of Zhao ordered Si, Ji, Qing, Xu, You, and the people of Yong Qizhou to take three out of five dings and two out of four dings, and combined them with the old soldiers of Yecheng, totaling 500,000, and equipped with ten thousand ships.
, from the river to the sea, transport 11 million dendrobium grains to Le'an City...in order to attack the swallows."
Shi Hu sent people to transport 11 million dendrobium grains to Le'an City, intending to attack Yan. He also recruited 500,000 troops, which was a bit crazy. Take three out of five and two out of four. This kind of temporary farmer,
I don't know what kind of fighting power it has.
Let’s not talk about the war between Shi Hu and the Murong clan, but at that time, the port conditions in Le’an were indeed quite good.
After the establishment of the former Tang Dynasty, Le'an County of the province was merged into Macheng, a coastal county was moved inland, and more emphasis was placed on inland river (wet water) transportation. Shipping on the Bohai Sea was limited to starting from Cangzhou, and the Fuhai went north to Liaodong to Pinglu.
The army provides military rations.
Fan He had carefully studied this period of history before coming and knew it in detail. He also focused on learning about the two ports of Le'an Town and Linyuguan - yes, Linyuguan had a port since the Jin Dynasty.
Fan He looked left and right, and he had the urge to send troops to recruit troops and repair the port. However, Pingzhou's population was too small and the area was large, so it might be difficult to capture enough of it in a short time.
"Military envoy, General Zhu sent someone to report that a fleet sailing from Lushun appeared in the outer sea." Suddenly, some soldiers came in a hurry to report.
"Oh? King Zhao is here, where are they?" Fan He asked with joy in his heart.
"It is said that it is already in the southern border of Yutian County." The soldier replied: "But King Zhao himself is outside the sea."
Yutian County? That is a county under Jizhou. It seems that they landed directly in Jizhou.
Fan He suddenly felt a little sore. According to the original plan, the fleet from Liaodong went straight to Pingzhou and Jizhou to capture these two places, while they went to Youzhou to land and penetrate into the core of the enemy.
But a strong wind changed everything. They were blown away. Some of them landed in Pingzhou, and there was no news about the others. Now they met King Zhao's troops here, which was really embarrassing.
"Send someone to greet him." Fan He waved his hand and said.
****
Shao Siwu disembarked near Le'an Town, surrounded by Liu Wei, Wang Jiao, Gao Youqing and other generals.
Cao Yijin brought him several sacred horses, followed by three thousand warriors, most of whom were warriors brought from Dunhuang. They were now Shao Siwu's direct troops.
He looked back at the sparkling sea.
Fifty or sixty ships, large and small, gathered on the sea, lowered their bow and stern anchors, and waited silently to enter the harbor.
Some brave captains actually tried to maneuver their ships upstream and inland. However, they were quickly dissuaded and parked nearby in the river channel and began to unload cargo to the east bank.
The auxiliary soldiers began to search for forests and cut down trees to build fences.
"Xilulu..." The horse was carefully hoisted off the deck by a net bag woven with hemp rope.
War horses have always galloped on land. This time when we were crossing the sea by boat, we were already dizzy. Now we experienced the feeling of "leap" from the air and landed on the ground. We were so panicked that the horse's hooves kept shaking.
Shao Siwu and the generals laughed loudly.
If it is a ship with a low side, the horses can just get on the steps and walk over. However, the deck of this ship is very high and there is no dock nearby, so the horses have to be hoisted down one by one.
This is the difficulty of landing operations. Chaos, chaos, chaos!
"The Chishui Army is probably going to attack Pingzhou." Shao Siwu sighed: "The city is empty, and this is almost a waste of their efforts. Let's go to Linyu Pass and pull out this city."
Linyu Pass is to the east and Jizhou is to the west, which means that the troops starting from Liaodong will be divided into two halves. However, Linyu Pass is indeed more dangerous and cannot be fought without fighting.
There are thousands of troops, and if they are given time to react, they may even recruit local peasants and strong Tibetan tribesmen. Leaving such a large group of enemies behind them is undoubtedly a huge threat.
There was no way, the Chishui Army had taken the easy-to-eat meat, and the Guide and Longwu armies could only chew the hard bones.
"Since His Highness has this intention, what if we attack him? The boys can't wait for a long time." Cao Yijin, the "big licking dog", said.
"If we attack him unprepared, it is still possible to capture him. If we fail, we will retreat and lure him to attack. If Pingzhou falls, I don't believe that Li Cunhao is not in a hurry." Liu Wei expressed cautious optimism.
Shao Siwu looked at Wang Jiao again and asked, "What will the king think?"
"Liu Junshi is right. If he can't pull it out suddenly, it will show his weakness. In fact, the whole Youzhou is very empty, and Li Cunhao is more anxious than us. If he doesn't want to be punished by Li Keyong, sending troops is inevitable. Perhaps,
Our army can ambush him halfway, overwhelm his army, kill his generals, and then calmly capture Linyu Pass to relieve this flank worry." Wang Jiao said.
"Since you said so, we will attack Linyu Pass eastward." Shao Siwu made up his mind and said.
