Yelu Deguang was not as urgent as Zhang Zhao thought, because the situation at this time was not simply beneficial to Zhang Zhao's side, but also to Yelu Deguang.
After taking control of Xingyang, Gongxian and Yanshi, the Khitans had broken through the Xuanmen Pass, one of the eight passes in Luoyang.
For the Yongliang army, Luoyang's strategic location has completely failed, and the Liao army is now in the Luoyang Basin.
Moreover, Yelu Deguang had great trust in Gao Song's military ability. Brother Guang knew that Gao Song was one of the few warriors he could completely trust.
If it were another person, Jin Yong would have been beaten ten to one outside the city, and he would have probably been eaten by Murong Nobunaga. Takamatsu could still retain most of the main force. This is ability.
Moreover, Gao Song also wrote a secret letter and sent it down the Yellow River by boat to Yelu Deguang. This was Gao Song's summary of the lessons learned from the tragic defeat at Jin Yong City.
Gao Song summarized the three advantages of Yongliang cavalry in his letter.
The first is the polygonal crossbow, which makes the long-range strike power of the Yongliang cavalry very terrifying during the first collision.
The second is that the explosive speed of war horses is very amazing, especially the impact speed of armored cavalry, which is far higher than that of Khitan cavalry.
If heavy armor is used as a hedge, the Khitan Armored Cavalry will often suffer in terms of charging speed.
The third is that the tactics are different from the past. The heavy cavalry of the Yong Army adopted the attack mode of charging on the wall. When the people and horses are densely packed, the lethality caused is very terrifying.
Gao Song also proposed a way to deal with it. He suggested that Yelu Deguang adopt a fighting habit that is more inclined to fight against the divination people.
It is a common wolf pack fighting method for prairie cavalry, which mainly focuses on roaming and harassing, and does not seek to take the initiative to engage in close combat.
To deal with heavy cavalry charging on the wall, Takamatsu suggested that when encountering heavy cavalry, you must try to avoid direct confrontation and attack the auxiliary units around the heavy cavalry first.
For example, in his own failure, Gao Song believed that the key point was that the Khitan cavalry was driven together by Yongliang's hussars, and then was repeatedly attacked by the armored cavalry, which in turn caused a lot of losses.
Takamatsu even saw the only shortcoming of this tactics, that is, although the charging heavy cavalry is extremely powerful, it relies heavily on the cooperation between other arms. At least it requires more overall cooperation than traditional heavy cavalry.
As for the advantages of the Yongliang Iron Cavalry's multi-angular crossbows, Gao Song did not say anything, because this is purely an equipment advantage and basically unexplainable.
Unless Yelu Deguang can immediately take out thousands of horn bows and crossbows, and then let the soldiers quickly practice them.
After receiving Gao Song's report, Yelu Deguang had a rough idea, and through Gao Song's tactical analysis, he also roughly analyzed the Yongliang Army's current routine.
That is to say, they want to lead the Liao army to the Luoyang Basin where Yanshi City is located, and use the narrow Luoyang Basin to allow the fast-accelerating and advanced cavalry to repeatedly charge and kill the Liao cavalry.
Well...
It cannot be said that it is wrong. Zhang Zhao did have this intention, but it was not the main reason.
Yelu Deguang made a mistake and guessed the cause wrongly, but the result was correct.
Therefore, in addition to placing Yelvbode's 10,000 cavalry in Yanshi City, Guang Ge's army remained stationary in Gong County and would never cross the Xiaoyi Bridge or enter Zhang Zhao's ambush circle.
This made Zhang Zhao very depressed. Yelu Deguang's idea should be that he could not advance westward until the follow-up army and baggage were gathered. In other words, he wanted Zhang Zhao to take the initiative to attack.
But Zhang Zhao is also in a dilemma. If he takes the initiative, the transshipment pressure will be great due to the lack of reliable ports on the south bank of the Yellow River.
The Khitans in Zhongli City and Heyang also had more than 8,000 cavalrymen in Gaosong. In order to prevent these cavalry from attacking the rear and grain roads, Zhang Zhao had to leave at least 10,000 cavalry behind, which was not cost-effective in any case.
While he was having a headache, Zhao Hongyin and Zhao Kuangyin and his son arrived together. These two father and son were natives of Luoyang, so they were sent out by Zhang Zhao to inquire about the military situation.
Zhao Hongyin's face was full of dust. When he saw Zhang Zhao, he quickly raised his hand and said: "Your Majesty, the general has already found out that the Khitan people have indeed kept a secret. They often send small boats from Zhongli City to Gong County to report the situation.
In addition, the Mengjing Pass has long been ruined and cannot stop the Liao State's wandering Yi army. The Khitans can even pass through this pass and go to the river to personally spy on the situation in Zhongli City."
Good guy, Zhang Zhao said that Yelu Deguang has never been in a hurry. His feelings are that his blockade is not tight enough.
It turns out that there is a three-character geographical pattern between the Yellow River, Mang Mountain and Yanshi.
The Yellow River is the top line, Mang Mountain is in the middle, and Yanshi is in the south of the mountain.
There is also a very narrow passage between Mang Mountain and the Yellow River, which was the location of Mengjinguan Pass in the Han Dynasty.
Not only could Gaosong send a report to Yelv Deguang via a boat on the Yellow River, Khitan scouts could also pass through Mengjin Pass to conduct close inspections and verify with their own eyes whether Zhongli City was in danger.
With such a convenient way to obtain information, Yelu Deguang can certainly take his time.
"Do you have any good suggestions? Especially the Heyang army and the people of Luoyang are familiar with geography. As long as you have good suggestions, you will be rewarded!"
After Zhang Zhao heard the report, he asked Yan Ruise about the Heyang Army military academies who were being received by him. Of course, local snakes like them were the best at this kind of thing.
All the military schools whispered among themselves, and one military school stood up and said, "If your Majesty can give me a reward of two hundred guan, I will have a plan!"
Zhang Zhao is not surprised at all. The Fifth Generation Yabing Military Academy, no matter who you are, the emperor or the king, he is so direct in his words. If you have money, it will be easy to do things. If you don't have money, just go away.
"You tell me, if it's useful, not to mention two hundred strings, even three hundred strings wouldn't be much."
The military academy scratched his head and chuckled, "I grew up by the river, and there were many river boatmen in my family. Although many of them were killed by the Khitans, some of them were still there.
The Heyang Army originally had hundreds of naval athletes, but now there are still dozens of them.
If the king can trust his servants, he can summon them to intercept the Khitan communication boat."
Zhang Zhao's eyes lit up, this was a solution, but he still had doubts.
"We have people, but the boats on the river have long been looted by the Khitans. Where are you waiting for the boats?"
"This is easy. There are many warships going down the river. We might as well recruit the civilians and drag them downstream." This was Zhao Kuangyin's suggestion.
That's right! Zhang Zhao nodded and sailed on dry land. Isn't that the new dynasty's elegant government? The omen is pretty good.
"Your Majesty can also have Mengjin Pass repaired. First, it can prevent the Khitan Rangers from infiltrating. Secondly, even if there are boats that slip through the river, they can be chased along the river to prevent them from landing."
Zhao Kuangyin continued to suggest, and Zhang Zhao became even more satisfied, "Then I will appoint your father Zhao Hongyin as the envoy of Mengjinguan Town, and you will be the deputy envoy. You will be fully responsible for controlling Mengjinguan and intercepting the Khitan letter ships on the river."
Just go ahead and do it. Zhang Zhao asked Zhao Hongyin and Zhao Kuangyin and his son to block Mengjing Pass, and at the same time asked them to recruit Yellow River boatmen and fishermen.
More than 2,000 civilians were recruited to carry out the elegant administration of the new dynasty and go boating on dry land.
At the same time, Zhang Zhao was also prepared to show Gao Song his strength, because there were not completely no ways to deal with Zhongli City.
This has to start with the location of Zhongli City. The section of the Yellow River in Luoyang is only more than 500 meters wide. Zhongli City is built on a sand island in the water, so the distance is even closer.
It is only a little over a hundred meters away from the north bank, and the south bank is slightly wider, about 1,780 meters. This distance is just within the range of a large trebuchet.
It just so happens that Zhang Zhao's Yongliang research on trebuchets was very early. Craftsmen of various ethnic groups led by Liu Di, the director of the Ministry of Industry, had basically figured out the principle of the counterweight trebuchet.
Zhang Zhao immediately asked Li Xiaojie to summon Liu Di, and then ordered him to quickly assemble at least three large trebuchets.
Since the pontoon bridge is so narrow that I can't attack it, then use trebuchets to hit it. It depends on how many trebuchets your small town on a sandy island in the middle of the river can withstand.
In order to show that he really wanted to deal with Zhongli City first, Zhang Zhao began to release a large number of cavalry from the beginning of July.
The Yongliang cavalry crossed Yanshi City and began to harass the Khitans everywhere, covering and moving away the people from Luoyang to Zhengzhou. The infantry continued to approach Yanshi City, pretending to attack by force.
Yelu Deguang believed it to be true. He was not afraid of Zhang Zhao's attack on Yanshi City. Instead, he planned to withdraw Yelv De's troops to the east as soon as Zhang Zhao attacked.
However, just when Yelu Deguang was about to withdraw, he suddenly discovered that the letter ships from Zhongli City that had been coming continuously were intercepted by a skilled naval force on the Yellow River.
Yongliang troops also began to appear at Mengjin Pass, where the mountain road is narrow. They seemed to be rebuilding Mengjin Pass.
On July 21st, before the Mengjing Pass was completely closed, the Liao army's You Yiqi, who was on sentry duty, brought back a piece of news that frightened Yelu Deguang and all the Khitan generals.
The Yongliang army built four catapults more than six feet high and were bombarding the city of Li.
Although Zhongli City is strong, it is too small to withstand the bombardment of such large catapults.
Once Zhongli City falls, the blockade of the Yellow River will immediately become ineffective.
Although Yelv Deguang wanted to lure Zhang Zhao to fight in Gong County, it did not mean that he felt that he could not defeat Zhang Zhao, it was just to increase his own advantage.
But now Zhongli City is in a huge crisis, and communications have been cut off. Brother Guang worked hard all night and couldn't think of any good solution.
And this feeling of just waiting is really excruciating.
In addition, the logistical supplies were basically in place at this time, so Yelv Deguang gathered hundreds of civilians who were lucky enough not to die from exhaustion, performed a ghost arrow shooting ceremony, and set off in Gong County to swear an oath.
After receiving the news, Zhang Zhao was furious. He also took more than a thousand Khitan soldiers captured in Luoyang City, Tokyo, to the outside of Yanshi City and beheaded them collectively. They sacrificed the flag with the blood of the Khitan people, and then really started to attack Yanshi.
city.
The moment of decisive battle has finally arrived.
This chapter has been completed!