Fu Li has been recovered, and Zhao Bing can't stay at Lingbi anymore, but he did not go to Fu Li's front line, but issued an order to go to Xuzhou. After hearing another wave of advice, everyone said that although Xuzhou has been recovered, the days are still short, the people are unstable, and the dispersed enemy troops have not been cleared out. The surrounding prefectures and counties are still at the enemy, and Liuzi Town is still fighting fiercely, and it is possible to counterattack at any time.

However, Zhao Bing was unmoved and insisted on going. He knew that with the three brigades of the Imperial Guards led by Ni Liang to the battlefield and Liu Zhixue's department freed up their troops to join the battle, the troops had already exceeded the trapped Tutu Ha tribe, and it was only a matter of time before he could wipe them out. And he also understood that with the two enemy guards' personal troops being annihilated, the recovery of Yingtian Prefecture was just around the corner. The Northern Expedition was coming to an end, and the days of his return to Beijing were not far away. Therefore, Zhao Bing wanted to use the limited time on the front line to inspect Xuzhou, understand the situation on the spot, and lay the foundation for the next step of arrangement.

In the Lianghuai area, there is no need to mention the importance of Xuzhou's geographical location. It also has coal and iron resources, its population is advantageous, and the Grand Canal passes by, which makes the transportation convenient. Therefore, Zhao Bing did not want to build Xuzhou into a support point for the front line of the Lianghuai, and also wanted to use the rich coal and iron resources to develop industry, especially the military manufacturing industry.

You should know that the current military manufacturing industry in the Song Dynasty was developed based on the supervision of large internal tools. It has now gradually expanded into five major supervisions: military tools, ships, mining and smelting, weaving and miscellaneous work supervision. It has more than 100 workshops of various colors and more than ten smelting mines, forming a complete military system. However, after entering Jiangnan, they were all concentrated near Hangzhou for safety reasons.

The minerals around Hangzhou are not rich, and most of the required raw materials need to be transported from various places and further refined. After the manufacturing is completed, they have to be re-shipped to the troops stationed in various places. This not only increases the cost, but also consumes a lot of time. In addition, Hangzhou is narrow and has a large population, with few idle land, and the development of workshops is limited. However, the demand for weapons is constantly increasing. Now it is full-load production, and it is still difficult to meet the needs. It is urgent to choose a place to develop.

Therefore, I have long considered moving some workshops out. Xuzhou is very suitable for both location and transportation, and can obtain raw materials nearby and have skilled craftsmen, which has long been one of his locations. However, Zhao Bing also knew that due to the flooding of the Yellow River, most of the mines around Xuzhou were destroyed, but most of them were collected information and the real situation was not clear. The military workshop is related to national strategies. If a blind relocation is caused, it will cause immeasurable losses. He needs to personally inspect it before he can rest assured.

However, Zhao Bing still made a compromise. He took only a hundred miles of land from Zembi to Xuzhou, and the journey took only two days. However, he had to pass through a large area of ​​mountains and had to rest on the way, so he was prone to attack. The waterway was relatively safer, but he had to retreat from the old canal to Sizhou first, and then turn to the new canal to Xuzhou. This was equivalent to going around a semicircle and the journey increased several times.

Zhao Bing originally wanted to take the land route to save time, but no matter how everyone agreed, he had to compromise in the end. The next day, the baggage regiment also escorted the baggage, and the food and grass went to Fuli. The driver, with his personal guards and the guard camp, entered the canal under the escort of the imperial naval army, heading south first. On the way, he temporarily stopped receiving the political magistrate Wang Yinglin, who was in charge of supervising here, went to Xuzhou with his...

Luo Datong looked up at the full moon rising in the east on the wall, and felt a little melancholy. Today was the fourth day they entered Liuzi Town, and Du Shuai had not arrived yet. He didn't know whether the battle there was not going well or was blocked by Fu Li's enemy, and he didn't know when they would arrive, which made him feel a little vague.

As the moon rises higher and higher, clear moonlight spreads over the earth, illuminating the inside and outside of the town. The river channel is covered with corpses of people and horses. From time to time, seriously injured and dying people make shrill screams. Coupled with the bloody smell and stench of corpses, the scene is like the Shura hell, which makes the veterans who have been through many battles shudder.

This battle also made Luo Datong more and more afraid of fighting. Of course, he was not afraid of sacrificing himself on the battlefield, but was afraid that he could not complete the task of annihilation of Tutuha troops. After capturing Liuzi Town, perhaps because Tutuha did not understand the situation and did not launch a large-scale attack while hesitating, so that they could build defensive fortifications relatively calmly, but they were attacked fiercely the next day, and now they still felt scared.

Luo Datong thought that the enemy would retreat decisively after judging the situation, and fierce battles would inevitably occur between the two sides, and Tutuha's decisiveness also changed his view of it. According to the Mongolian habit of siege, they would first capture the people everywhere and use them as the front drive to consume the strength of the defenders and attack the morale of the defenders. During this process, elite troops may be arranged. After discovering loopholes in the defenders, they will suddenly launch an assault, quickly open the gap, and clear obstacles for subsequent troops.

If this tactic fails, the Mongolian Yuan army will use weak combat forces to attack the city with weak combat power and continue to consume the strength and supplies of the defenders. At this time, once the defenders are tired, the Mongolian Yuan elite will join the battle, launch an attack continuously, and take down the city in one go. As soon as the Tutuha changed this convention, the attack began to use a thousand households of the Han army's right guard and a firearm guard to launch an attack, and the cavalry of the imperial guards carried out a restraining attack on the Song army that blocked the old road outside the town.

The origin of the guards of the Mongolian Yuan and Han army can be traced back to Hebei, which was the first to surrender to the Mongols. The Han marquis in Shandong Province. These areas have experienced wars for a long time, and the people are martial and brave in fighting. They followed the Mongols to participate in the destruction of Jin, attack the Song Dynasty, and suppressed the rebellion of the Mongolian princes. They made great contributions to Kublai Khan. Later, in order to prevent the Han marquis from becoming bigger, they gradually seized the military power of the marquis and marquis of the troops and horses to garrison in Jiangnan, and the elite troops were incorporated into the personal army of the guards.

Because the Han army guards participated in the assassination of the powerful Mongolian Yuan Ahema incident, Kublai Khan's suspicion, and replaced the Han army's guards with Mongols and Semu people. Although they were still responsible for the task of defending the capital, they spent more time on military farming. In recent times, due to lack of training, their combat effectiveness has declined. However, they all entered military households and served as soldiers for generations. The trend of martial arts is still strong. Moreover, officers have experienced actual combat from bottom to top, so they cannot be underestimated.

The enemy army rushed in like ants. Even if Luo Datong, who had experienced the bloody battle in Changshu, had a numb scalp, you should know that the defense facilities of Liuzi Town are far inferior to those of Changshu City, that is, there are no outer city defense facilities of the urn city, sheep and horse walls, moats, and no defensive fortifications such as horse faces, horn towers, forts, city gates, thousand jin gates. Moreover, since the town was built across the canal, the spacious river in the middle has become a road due to siltation, and there will be no village walls. Although fortifications were blocked and built, they are still very weak and naturally became the focus of the enemy's attack.

The troops were disparity and the city defense was weak. Luo Datong could rely on his only reliance on was his powerful firepower, so the battle was full of gunpowder at the beginning. The Song army launched a tenacious blockade against the enemy with artillery and muskets, and the firepower points arranged in advance outside the town also carried out disruptive shooting of the enemy from the flanks. With the cooperation of the two hatchbacks, they repelled the enemy's attacks again and again.

However, there are also dangers in the battle. The defense system of the Song army relies on the support of artillery, but artillery has an insurmountable difficulty. Because continuous fire of artillery will increase the temperature of the barrel, and the thick barrel cannot quickly dissipate heat. The launching medicine directly crashes into the barrel. Once the temperature is too high, the launching medicine package will spontaneously ignite, causing the artillery to explode. Therefore, after the artillery fire is fired for a period of time, the enemy will take advantage of the gap in which the artillery fire is weakened.

Although the enemy soldiers fell down in waves with the Song army's muskets, the enemy still flocked to them and suppressed the Song army on the village wall with crossbows and firearms. Under the repeated attacks, the horse-resisted horns in front of the village wall were destroyed, and the simple fortifications repaired were also in danger. Luo Datong commanded the rapid-fire cannons that could be fired to strike in front, and prevented various small cannons from blocking the fire, but it was still difficult to resist the enemy's impact, and several times allowed the enemy to rush into the formation. He had to use the reserve team to launch a counterattack on the first day before expelling the enemy.

The next day's battle ranged from sunrise to sunset, and the enemy retreated from the battle. Thousands of corpses were left on the battlefield, and nearly a thousand people were killed or killed in the Song army. How could Luo Datong not be afraid? The enemy's troops were far superior to him. If they attacked in a row regardless of the casualties, their troops would be exhausted soon, and they might not have waited for the arrival of reinforcements. Fortunately, although fierce battles broke out on the left-wing position, the degree was far inferior to that, allowing him to take a breath.

Neither side was idle that night, Luo Datong ordered the demolition of the houses in the town to strengthen the fortifications overnight. The Yuan army continued to send troops to launch night attacks, leaving them with no time to rest. As soon as the day dawn, the battle began again. Today, the main attack was replaced by the Han army's central guard, and the firearm guards also invested most of the troops. In addition to the continued attack of fierce attacks, their tactics also launched an attack on firepower points deployed outside the town, intending to clear them.

Luo Datong immediately realized that he had made a mistake when he arranged firepower points in front of the formation because of his experience when defending Changshu. He intended to use a small team that combines infantry and artillery to occupy favorable terrain to attack the enemy flanks of the siege, thereby reducing the pressure on the defenders on the city. However, there is a weakness in the firepower forward. Due to the small force and weak firepower, it is necessary to pass through medium and heavy artillery to suppress the enemy and cover each other between the firepower points to consolidate the position. However, he neglected that it was very familiar with the mountains and the mountains that could be used to exploit, so that the enemy could not launch large forces to siege. But now the position forward forward only occupies the commanding heights, and the surrounding area is wide flat ground, and the enemy can be sieged from all sides...
Chapter completed!