Zhou Shan is an "old" general who followed Liu Yan and fought out of the massacre in Yunzhou's defeat. On the way to Shuozhou, he fought side by side with everyone in Chushan. He basically stayed with Liu Yan as a bodyguard.
He was just over thirty years old, but he had a weathered face, his skin was dark and thin, like elm bark, with wrinkles and scars intertwined - Xu Huai was also deeply impressed by him.
Knowing that before Jianye City was besieged, Zhou Shannai was specially arranged by Liu Yan to organize Ding Zhuang to defend the village in Yuelong Village. Xu Huai bent down to help him up and said, "Commander Zhou, there is no need to be polite. Tell me about the current situation near Jianye."
what's the situation?"
After the defeat of the Jianye Navy, on the one hand, the rivers from Jianye to Luzhou and Chizhou were basically blocked by Japanese warships. On the other hand, tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers crossed the river on the east and west wings of Jianye and came ashore. Jingxiang arranged to go to Jianye
The scouting activities were greatly restricted, and it was difficult to send news back to Nancai in time.
When Xu Huai rushed to Jianye, the first thing he wanted to know immediately was the current defense of Jianye and the distribution of the captive troops on the south bank.
"...Everyone was stunned all of a sudden. We are still a little confused now. We only know that after the navy was defeated, the soldiers successively brought thousands of cavalry to the south bank, burning, killing and looting everywhere.
They did not dare to leave the stronghold during the day, but only sent one or two people to contact nearby strongholds after dark. It is impossible to know how many soldiers there are at present. However, Beijing is still relatively safe, and the soldiers only sent some siege equipment in the past two days.
Transported here from the North Coast..." Zhou Shan said with a trembling voice.
When the Chihu Navy approached Jianye, Liu Yan suggested that Beijing organize an interception, and at the same time volunteered to go to the military stronghold located near Jianye to recruit Jian Rui and form a rebel army to participate in the defense.
However, the Suwei Forbidden Army encountered a slight setback on the west bank of the Yupu River. Wang Boqian and Yang Maoyan couldn't wait to order all the Suwei Forbidden Army to withdraw to Jianye City and completely give up control of the suburbs of Jianye. Liu Yan hastily recruited three thousand young men, but was unable to do so.
Standing alone to fend off powerful enemies outside the city, they had no choice but to retreat into Jianye City under the imperial edict.
To the west of Jianye, in addition to the garrison troops stationed in Dangtu, Lishui and other counties, Yuelong Village is located at the mouth of the Caochang River, and extending southward from the Caochang River are Niushou Mountain, Xianku Ridge, Yuanzi Mountain, etc.
It varies in height from ten feet to ten feet and stretches for more than 60 miles, stretching across the south bank of the Yangtze River and across the mountains of Jiangning and Dangtu counties.
Niushou Mountain not only built the west wing of Ye Fanping, the imperial court also placed the homes of tens of thousands of Forbidden Army soldiers here in recent years. There are more than a dozen military villages scattered around - Yuelong Village is opposite Caochang River, Niushou Mountain
, and the significance of building Ye City, Liu Yan certainly understood clearly, so he specially arranged for Zhou Shan to stay here with a small team of elite soldiers and horses, and organized young men to actively defend and wait for reinforcements.
However, now everything outside Jianye is in chaos. Prince Ping Yanzong has mobilized thousands of highly mobile cavalry to partially cross the river and snipe at nearby counties such as Jianye, Dangtu, Lishui and other counties. They were ordered to go to Jianye
King Qin's soldiers and horses were assembled to massacre the village. Even if Zhou Shan wanted to find out the news, he was unable to do more than contact nearby villages at night.
To the west of Jianye, he generally knew that Dangtu, Lishui and the most critical capital city of Jianye had not yet been captured. Of the many military strongholds near Niushou Mountain, only two lost their defenses and were captured by Japanese soldiers. Thousands of generals and soldiers were captured.
The little one was massacred.
In addition, Zhou Shan is not yet able to understand the specific distribution of the captive soldiers crossing the river near Jianye City. He only knows that the main force of the captive soldiers crossing the river is mainly along the Pogangdu (Qinhuai River) east of Niushoushan.
They were stationed on both sides of the outer river.
Pogangdu originates from Baohua Mountain and divides into two channels in the south of Jianye City. The inner river enters the city through the water gate at the south gate of Jianye City, and the outer river bypasses the west of Jianye City and rejoins a waterway at the northwest corner of Jianye City before joining the Yangtze River.
Regardless of whether the soldiers were intercepting the eastward advancing reinforcements of King Qin, or preparing to storm Jianye City, Pogangdu Waihe River was their key line of defense in building camps.
This was what Xu Huai and the others had anticipated when they set out from Nancai.
Of course, if the main force of the Beijing-Xiang reinforcement division can successfully reach the Pogangdu line, the siege of Jianye will not be much of a threat.
If Prince Ping Yanzong really wants to capture Jianye in one battle, the north bank will not allow the elites of Beijing and Xiangzhou to approach Lujiang County, and the south bank will not allow the elites of Beijing and Xiangzhou to enter Tongling County of Chizhou.
This was also the fundamental reason why Xu Huai had to come to Jianye himself.
After losing control of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, it was too difficult for elites from Beijing and Xiangzhou to reach Jianye by land in a short time.
The south and north of the Yangtze River are connected by post roads. The areas on both sides of the Yangtze River between Jiangzhou and Jianye are not only squeezed into a long and narrow corridor-shaped terrain by the Huaiyang Mountains and Huangshan Mountains on both sides, but are also squeezed by the large and small mountains that developed from the Huaiyang Mountains and the Huangshan Mountains.
The stream was cut into pieces.
Normally, there are ferries, pontoons and even wooden bridges that connect the post roads on both sides of the river from end to end to facilitate the rapid passage of merchants. However, during the war, especially the Lubing Navy had an absolute advantage in this section of the river.
, even in winter, there are still obstacles that need to be overcome for the Beijing-Xiang reinforcements to advance eastward.
Especially on the south bank of the Jiangnan West Road, the water area at the mouth of Poyang Lake between Xunyang County and Hukou County, where Jiangzhou belongs, is still as wide as ten miles after winter. How can the Beijing-Xiang aid division cross it?
If we go around to the upper reaches of Poyang Lake and Ganjiang River, and then go around to Raozhou first, how much time will be spent here?
The reinforcements from Beijing and Xiang have been unable to advance eastward. How long can the city of Ye be sustained?
Once Jianye falls, Emperor Shaolong and all the ministers in the court will again become prisoners of the Chihu people or be slaughtered. In addition to Jingxiang, there are several countries in the world who will continue to resist rather than surrender to the Chihu people.
?
Xu Huai arranged in advance for Jiang Ping to lead a small team into Jianye to lurk in order to assist Princess Yingyun and King Zhao Yin of Qi to disguise themselves as civilians and find opportunities to escape from Jianye City. However, the problem was that after the fall of Jianye City, Emperor Shaolong, Wang Boqian, and Yang
Will Shigeyan, Zhou He, Gao Chunnian and others simply surrender?
Even if Jiang Ping, Zheng Tu and Wang Fan finally succeed in escorting Princess Yingyun and King Zhao Yin of Qi to Biyang, will Han Shiliang and Ge Yu recognize them in Shouchun? Will Gao Junyang recognize them in Hanzhong?
Escorting Princess Yingyun and King Zhao Yin of Qi to Biyang was actually the last and most unavoidable choice, but if there was a chance, Xu Huai still had to ensure that Jianye would not be captured by the Chihu people.
Xu Huai also had to consider the two defeats, which had a heavy blow to the morale of the Huaixi and Huaidong defenders. As time went on, whether the defenders trapped in Shouchun, Shucheng, Lujiang and other places would lose their will to resist?
Choose to surrender the enemy?
Xu Huai had no choice but to come to Jianye.
"How many troops did Xu Shijun lead to kill this time?" Zhou Shan asked excitedly, "How many soldiers came across the river? Zhou Shan has no way of knowing the exact number, but it is currently expected that it will not exceed 20,000 infantry and cavalry. Xu
You will definitely be able to kill them all without leaving a single piece of armor behind!"
"How can I kill the soldiers crossing the river without leaving a single armor behind with only these few men around me?" Xu Huai pointed to hundreds of armored soldiers on the river beach and asked Zhou Shan with a smile.
At present, the shipbuilding yards in Jingzhou and Nancai have been transformed into nearly twenty small and medium-sized tortoise-shell warships on the basis of walking warships and stern warships. However, considering that Chihu scouts have penetrated into Jiangzhou and Qizhou areas, their outposts
Ships even appeared on the river east of Huangzhou. If Xu Huai wanted to ensure that he could quickly pass through the blockade of the Yangtze River by the Imperial Navy, it would be impossible to build a large-scale fleet to move eastward along the river.
Only a small-scale reconnaissance fleet sent downstream seems to be used for military reconnaissance, and it is possible for the Japanese soldiers to ignore and despise it.
In fact, during the years of war, although the two sides would pay attention to each other's reconnaissance troops, they would not deliberately organize troops to encircle and kill them.
On the one hand, the scouts are all their own elites. They are good at hiding and escaping. They are extremely slippery and difficult to surround and kill.
On the other hand, if you really want to organize soldiers and horses to surround the opponent's scouts, you never know if there are traps waiting ahead.
Therefore, when we discover enemy reconnaissance troops, we usually focus on expelling them and restricting their penetration.
It is even less possible to organize a hunting team with superior martial arts among the generals - these experts are all young generals, who would be willing to use them for hunting alone in the wild?
Therefore, it is said that a reconnaissance fleet will be formed with three gondolas and two meng boats. They will first set off from Nancai at night. They will appear in the Huangzhou section of the water at dawn the next day and stay there to fight with the enemy's forward sentinel ship.
After hiding for a day, he once again passed through the enemy navy's not too tight blockade in Qizhou and Shuzhou flows at night, and arrived east of Tongling County, Chizhou, close to the waters of Fanchang County, Jianye Prefecture.
Even though the Lubing Navy had not attracted enough attention, it was impossible to let them over easily and began to organize more warships to intercept and expel them.
At this time, there were many Japanese warships on the upper and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. Xu Huai and the others entered a river branch in Tongling County and struggled with the pursuing enemy ships for a long time. Then they fought their way out of the river branch in the evening and took advantage of the darkness of night again.
We followed the cover along the river until we arrived at the mouth of the Caochang River early this morning.
When Xu Huai and the others entered the Caocha River, the enemy ship pursued them for a while without success, then gave up and evacuated. It was not unexpected. Who would have known that there was such an important target hidden inside?
The mouth of the Caochang River was only sixty miles away from Jianye City, so Xu Huai decided to land near the Caochang River - obviously the soldiers had not paid special attention to this small fleet at this time. Perhaps based on many news,
I thought it was a small group of soldiers sent by Beijing and Xiangxiang to come to Jianye to contact them.
This itself cannot be completely blocked by the Chihu people.
In addition to the 500 elite vanguard soldiers selected, in order to install as many replacement armors and arrows as possible, each tortoise-shell warship, in addition to the necessary oarsmen and boatmen, has a minimum number of naval soldiers, totaling
There were only more than 200 soldiers.
"Ah, Commander Xu will bring this few people here?" Zhou Shan asked unexpectedly and shocked.
"Why, it's not enough for me to come to Jianye in person?" Xu Huai asked with a smile, pressing his sword, "Does Jianye lack the men and horses to resist the Japanese troops? In Jianye, Dangtu, Lishui and other cities, there are more than 20,000 imperial guardsmen, but there are no large soldiers.
The government army and the sword archers from various counties were able to organize nearly 10,000 soldiers and horses. Mr. Liu Yan organized thousands of rebels. On the left and right, the Xiaosheng Army was near Niushoushan, Yuanzishan, and Xiankuling. There were 60,000 small families, among whom the brave ones were able to fight.
There will be no less than 10,000 Rui. There are still Zuo Xuanwu's soldiers in the south of Lishui County, with 30,000 to 40,000 soldiers. The number of Jian Rui who dare to fight will not be less than 8,000, not to mention the continuous supply of reinforcements from Jiangdong, Jiangxi, and Zhejiang.
Reinforcements are coming, not to mention that there are still 100,000 young and strong people in Jianye City, so many people are not enough to resist the Red Husbands?"
"Enough, enough!" Zhou Shan immediately wanted to understand the significance of Xu Huai coming to Jianye "alone". He was shocked and excited and knelt down on the ground again, shouting, "Zhou Shan's life will be given to him."
