The hottest June finally endured. The prefectures and counties affected by war in Youzhou and Jizhou gradually calmed down. The situation gradually became clear. Only the last two focus areas remained in the main battlefields of fierce fighting and tug-of-war.

The plague epidemic caused by war has gradually subsided as the heat has passed. This year, more than 2 million people in Youji land have decreased, and more than half of them have been killed by the plague caused by war killings.

At any time in ancient times, unless it was a super famine, the main cause of death in the population was a plague.

Time has come in mid-July, and the battlefield in Yecheng has entered a full-scale battle and attack from the siege. Every day, there are at least hundreds of people on both sides, and there are as many as thousands, not to mention those injured and infected.

If you want to completely conquer it, it is probably impossible without months of consumption.

The battlefield of Jicheng siege in Youzhou started to fight half a month earlier than Yecheng. The 30,000 defenders in the city and the civilian Ding Zhuang, who was pulled to the city by Yuan Xiqiang, were also seriously injured.

Moreover, the situation in Jicheng is more precarious than Yecheng. If Yecheng can be maintained for at least three or four months according to estimates, Jicheng will probably only be more than a month.

Who made Liu Bei's army stronger in offensive ability than Cao Cao's army? At the same time, Yuan Xi's defenders in the city were weaker than Yuan Shang's defenders in Yecheng. The city defense facilities in Jicheng were not as strong as Yecheng, which was the capital of the pseudo-chapel of Guandong.

At the same time, while Zhang Fei was organizing Xu Huang and Wang Ping to attack the city, Pang Tong also helped him come up with several new attack strategies, which further expanded the offensive advantage of the offensive side. These are factors that Yuan and Cao could not have expected, resulting in additional deterioration of the situation.

As Cao Cao finally freed up his hands, time gradually passed, the weather turned slightly colder, and the operation to rescue Youzhou was imminent.

Not only is the defense facilities in Jicheng not last longer, but it is also because the autumn grain is about to be collected. If Cao Cao takes action later, Zhang Fei will be able to obtain Youzhou's grain harvest this year, so that he will no longer have to worry about logistics supply issues.

Since sending troops in April, Zhang Fei has relied on the water transport of the Sanggan River and Hutuo River. The food he got from Bingzhou, Hedong and even Guanzhong in the rear will no longer be relied on, and it will be enough to eat local grains in Youzhou directly.

Youzhou is the coldest state in the territory of the Han Dynasty. In addition, the crop varieties in ancient times were poor, so the growth period required was much longer than that of modern improved crops, so Youzhou could not start full autumn harvest around halfway through the eighth month of the lunar calendar.

If harvesting starts about twenty days in advance, the wheat harvested will be too oleic acid, prone to rot and not tolerate storage, and can only be made into a spicy strip-like food. At most, it will be rancid for two months and will lose 20% of the yield due to insufficient growth.

These are all things that Liu Bei had summarized and tried twelve years ago. Now people with a little bit of cultural and agricultural experience in Youyan have already known it. So Cao Cao and Yuan Tan will also be wary of this.

As for Jizhou, a little south, the weather is warmer than Youzhou and the irrigation is sufficient. The grain harvest period is more than half a month earlier than Youzhou. So in mid-July, you can start harvesting milled wheat, and after a little more than seven or eight days, you can start harvesting full winter wheat.

Cao Cao must lift the siege of Jicheng within more than half a month! At least it will open up control of the Youzhou counties from east of Jicheng to western Liaoning on the seaside!

Otherwise, the autumn harvest of these places will be completely gained by Zhang Fei's occupying army!

...

The situation is urgent, but there are many difficulties.

Almost a month ago, Cao Cao had already sent a small but highly mobile cavalry unit, with a population of about thousands, led by Le Jin to carry out surveillance tasks. Understand Zhang Fei's movements and find out how long Jicheng can hold on.

Le Jin knew his weight, so from mid-June to mid-July, he didn't dare to fight with Zhang Fei's main force for a whole month, so he could only patrol and defend on the south bank of Yishui.

Unless you can indeed catch a garrison of Zhang Fei's troops, Le Jin will sneak through Yishui and go to the north bank to harass and rob, destroying Zhang Fei's logistics and control of the local area.

By the way, we will also announce Cao Cao's military presence north of Yishui, which will give Yuan Xi some spiritual support and encouragement to the encirclement of Jicheng.

But I would never dare to fight. After Zhang Fei's troops came back to defend, Le Jin ran away immediately.

During this month's tug-of-war, Le Jin discovered some practical difficulties in rescuing Youzhou, which helped Cao's army accumulate practical experience at the military level.

The most important one is Le Jin discovery that if he only fought in the inside of Bohai County on the south bank of Yishui, then Cao's army could still eat wherever he went due to food.

However, if you want to cross the Yishui River and go north and go deep into the enemy-occupied areas that have been controlled by Zhang Fei. Because Zhuo County, Guangyang County and Yuyang County have been cleared by the strong walls.

Therefore, unless Cao's army advances again during the autumn harvest, it can still be eaten by the freshly harvested new grain. Otherwise, the food from Bohai County will be difficult to transport to the hinterland of Youzhou on the north bank of Yishui. If it is more than a hundred miles away from the river, it will be impossible to advance.

To put it bluntly, this principle is actually very simple. So after Le Jin led his troops to fight for a while, he quickly noticed that the main reason why Youzhou and Jizhou were divided into states was that the Haihe River Basin and the Yellow River Basin were two major water systems that did not communicate with each other.

Although Jizhou has a vast territory and covers most areas of Hebei, in fact, almost all cities in Jizhou, except Changshan County and Zhongshan County, can be transported into the Yellow River through various rivers and tributaries.

Boats in the Yellow River can drive to every corner of Jizhou except Zhongshan Changshan.

Youzhou is a Haihe River system, which is composed of five tributaries including Yishui, Yongding River, Sanggan River, and Sanggan River. This time, Zhang Fei came from the Hutuo River and Sanggan River, and surrounded the two counties on the southernmost side of the Haihe River Basin, which was equivalent to taking all the counties in the Haihe River Basin.

So much so that after Cao Cao surrounded Yuan Shang in Yecheng, he looked back and found that he did not even occupy a county in the Haihe River Basin.

Under such circumstances, Cao's army certainly had almost no ship capacity in the Yishui River Basin. Even if Lejin temporarily confiscated some civilian boats, they were still broken and weak, much worse than Zhang Fei's.

Of course, this problem is not unsolvable, and the solution is actually about to emerge:

That is, you must first drive the ship from the Yellow River Basin into the Bohai Bay, then move a little along the coastline three to four hundred miles north, and then turn into Yishui from the entrance of the Haihe River Basin.

Especially in Sanhan and Danluo, Cao Cao's army had been engaged in maritime colonization, population plunder and trade in rare goods for many years. Cao Cao had a fleet of large-scale sea trade ships under his command, and also had a certain naval force.

Cao Cao originally considered using his naval power as early as March, and took advantage of Yuan Shao's death that the Yuan family was unable to stop him from taking over Mi Zhu, who "provided taxes for the Yuan family", and completely occupied Liaodong.

It’s a pity that God is willing to make people beat people and the situation is abrupt. Due to Liu Bei’s invasion, the fighting on the front battlefield in Jizhou was tug-of-war, and Guan Yu’s small actions in Kunyang and Dingling restrained Cao Cao’s more troops.

This made Cao Cao feel stretched, and his attack on Liaodong was completely put on hold indefinitely.

The Navy has not found a battle to cooperate with for more than three months, and cannot act alone. Now it is finally being misappropriated:

From taking Liaodong directly, it became an escort for the army, ensuring sea power along the Bohai Bay coast between the estuary of the Yellow River and the Haihe River. It also escorts Cao's ration fleet that will go deep into Yishui in the future, and at the same time suppresses Zhang Fei's small broken ships entering Yishui from the Sanggan River and the upper reaches of the Hutuo River.

This demand was achieved by Le Jin and Zhang Fei after a month of harassment and stalemate, and it must be resolved. Since Cao Cao decided to take a gamble, he must do his best to suppress the relevant deployment.

With nearly 10,000 naval personnel and hundreds of large and small ships, they launched another 70,000 army, including 20,000 cavalry and 50,000 infantry, and a total of 80,000 troops. They cooperated with Yuan Xi and defeated Zhang Fei. This was a bit possible.

If you want more troops, Cao Cao really couldn't draw out. Moreover, among these 80,000 people, Cao Cao's own direct troops were only 30,000 (including the navy), and 50,000 Yuan's army, who had only surrendered to Gao Lan for a month.

Cao Cao had no choice. After all, Zhang He and Gao Lan nominally surrendered Yuan Tan and did not betray the former leader of the Yuan family. If they were asked to transfer their weapons to attack Yecheng immediately and attack Yuan Shang, Cao Cao was afraid that Zhang He would be unable to overcome his face and his army would be depressed, which would only increase uncontrollable risks.

In history, the Cao Wei regime was best at letting troops change defenses in other places. In this case, Cao Cao of course also wanted Yuan Shang to surrender his army to rescue Yuan Xi, and let the Cao family's own direct troops save Yecheng, so that both sides could do their best without worrying about unifying their thoughts.

Of course, during this scheduling process, there are also counselors who remind Cao Cao to pay attention to the relevant risks.

Guo Jia is now in Yancheng and Xuchang, responsible for stalemate with Guan Yu and Zhuge Liang. He is not on the front battlefield in Hebei and cannot give Cao Cao a timely opinion. Therefore, the most powerful military strategist around Cao Cao is Cheng Yu.

After seeing Cao Cao's dispatch, Cheng Yu had no objection to Cao Cao's infantry and cavalry deployment, but he raised objections to the navy deployment.

Cheng Yu said: "Lord, although our army has tens of thousands of naval ships and hundreds of sand boats, it seems to be majestic and majestic, far from comparable to Zhang Fei's Sanggan River and Hutuo River boats.

However, since he wanted to go along the Bohai Sea coast, the navy of Mi Zhu from Liaodong must be guarded. Although Mi Zhu is not martial and does not manage the military rigorously, he has many sea boats and is excellent.

In recent years, Mi Zhu was called Yuan Shao’s tax quota, and he paid tens of millions of dollars of military funds and grain and equipment every year. But in my opinion, he was forced to obey due to Yuan Shao’s power. If Yuan Shao had a navy as strong as his lord, it would be better to destroy it directly! Once and for all!

Our army is busy taking over Yuan Shang's counterproduction this year and has no time to look east. If we could make a free move, we would definitely destroy Mi Zhu. At this moment, if Mi Zhu was eager to jump over the wall and use the Liaodong fleet to support Liu Bei, he would be rewarded with the powerful ships of Mi Zhu. Mi Zhu's ship is powerful and matched with Liu Bei's elite soldiers and generals, I am afraid our army will suffer! "

Facing Cheng Yu's reminder, Cao Cao had to be careful. After thinking about it for a while, Cao Cao evaluated:

"What Zhongde said is quite reasonable. However, Mi Zhu is very weak, and only Xu Rong can consider the Liaodong army at present, while Xu Rong is only good at land battles but not water battles. He can only be self-conceived and defended with a long distance, which is not enough to make progress.

The navy, especially the navy of the sea boats, is not just a ship. It needs to be trained and trained in a few years before it can form an army. Even though the troops and horses of Zhang Fei, Xu Huang and others under Liu Bei also have elite soldiers who have long-term battles, they may not be able to learn about water, and they are even more unlikely to learn about sea battles.

The elite troops on the land and the excellent warships may not be equal to the excellent navy. Therefore, the problem is still not big. Moreover, our army is imminent, and it is impossible to wait for Zhang Fei to cut off the autumn grain in Youzhou before rescue. Even if all Zhang Fei's fleet is destroyed, he will not need to transport grain."

Cao Cao's argument is indeed wonderful, and even Cheng Yu has to admire it after hearing it.

It was as wonderful as before the Battle of Red Cliff in history when Cheng Yu reminded Cao Cao to pay attention to the fire attack. Cao Cao refuted Cheng Yu with the weather and seasons as the reason.

After all, the truth is indeed like this. It is not a good warship, and the elite army soldiers are equivalent to a good navy.

Mi Zhu had only the army that defended Liaodong and a merchant fleet that was quite good at navigating.
Chapter completed!