Xu Huai, Wang Zhen, Deng Gui, and Lu Xiong tried their best to save the hearts and minds of the two or three thousand soldiers and civilians trapped in Huaiyuan.
And as the bandit armies of various villages took advantage of the surrounding mountains and valleys, small and medium-sized villages established strongholds one after another and blocked Huaiyuan. Whether it was Wang Zhen or Deng Gui, their influence on the various clans that retreated to Wubao continued.
We can only leave it to fate.
For the bandit army, although blocking Huaiyuan required more manpower than expected, the slight waves they set off quickly swept into a devastating storm deep into Tongbai Mountain.
The momentum was so great that neither Xu Huai nor Wang Zhen could fully predict it beforehand.
The soldiers and horses of the bandits in various villages were indeed restrained in the early stage.
Wubao, where various large clans lived together, was mainly built on the transition zone extending from the hilly ridges on both sides of the Huai River to the main ridges of the north and south ridges.
Such as the Lutai villages, since they control the cultivated land resources in the hilly belt, they are easy to defend but difficult to attack.
A large number of bandit troops from various villages were restrained on the outskirts of Huaiyuan, and they certainly did not dare to use their elite direct descendants to attack these strong forts.
However, the slight waves made the poor and young people at the bottom agitated, but the clan could not easily suppress them.
Even the long-term conflicts caused by the continuous division within the clan have become difficult to recover, and at this time it became a catalyst for the further deterioration of the situation.
However, all these are signs.
Such as the subtle opposition between Xu Fangxu and Xu Fangxu in Lutai Village; for example, after Pan Chenghu occupied Shangliu Village, Han Qi and other young men were easily bewitched to kill the big traders in the village, such as Zhou Jianxiong, Yin Peng, etc.
Wu Liangsheng and others could not wait to surrender to the bandits; for example, the dispute over the bloodbath of the Zhong family came from Tieshi Lane and Liushi Lane in Huaiyuan.
As the turmoil arose, hundreds of impoverished young men not only joined gangs but also rushed to join the bandits.
Quite a few people, stimulated or induced by Zhong Changqing's bloodbath of Zhongjiazhuang, remembered the hardships of oppression and exploitation for a long time. When the coalition forces of various villages raised the banner of robbing the rich and helping the poor and attacked some small and medium-sized forts, they
Be willing to be in the front line and be a vanguard.
What's more, before some people surrendered to the bandits, dozens or even dozens of people secretly joined forces to seize the powerful people in the clan who were usually domineering, and either tied them up or killed them directly, and then opened the village gate to welcome them.
Allied forces from various villages were stationed.
Seeing that the turmoil caused by Hutou Village was gradually starting a prairie fire, Laoyatan, Shuanglong Village, Huangnifeng and other copycat forces all came out of the deep mountains and old forests to join the copycat coalition. In just over a month, the thieves
, it expanded rapidly to eight or nine thousand people.
With Huaiyuan Market as the center, the surrounding Zhongxiaowu Forts fell almost every two or three days, and a large number of refugees fled into the wild.
The wind rises at the end of Qingping, and the waves form between gentle waves.
The rebel army failed to completely block Huaiyuan, but Xu Huai and the others were still able to get news from the outside world in time.
They knew that not only the bandits in Tongbai Mountain had become powerful, but also in the Huaiyang Mountains east of Tongbai Mountain, across the southwest states of Huainan West Road, and stretching for thousands of miles, large and small cottage bandits were also active.
Xu Huai stood on the newly built watchtower in Puyuan. The weather was fine and he could overlook the situation near the four strongholds built by the rebels on the east bank of the Baijian River seven or eight miles away.
On the outskirts of the market, in addition to Hutou Village, there are also three gangs of thieves, including Laoyatan Guojunpan and Shuanglong Village Zhou Tian. Each of them has a stronghold in a small village. They only gathered two groups on the east bank of the Baijian River near the market.
Thousands of thieves.
Pan Chenghu was afraid of fighting at first because his unit had been severely damaged in the past, but these days four to five hundred new bandit soldiers have been added to the army. Even if it is to eliminate the weak and retain the strong, even if it is training, it has also contributed to Pan Chenghu and Guo Jun's dispute, and Zhou Tian
During this period of time, the thieves chief continued to launch tentative attacks on Heshi Market.
The number of people in the market township camp gradually expanded from the initial 60 to 150 people, which restricted the thieves outside the scope of the market, but there were also a total of 50 or 60 casualties.
This number may not seem like a lot, but there are more than 2,000 soldiers and civilians in Huaiyuan, and there are just over 1,000 young and strong men. The rural camp and the patrol officers and soldiers have accumulated more than 100 casualties in the past half month. This ratio is not low.
Already.
The better thing now is that the internal supplies are relatively sufficient, and the connection with the outside world through the Huai River is not completely cut off. After the Huaiyuan soldiers and civilians withstood the initial panic, they were not frightened by the casualties and the large number of traitor soldiers.
In fact, although the thief army was large, threatening eight or nine thousand people, and pulling out a heavy cloud, they successively captured Zhongxiaowu Fort - the thief army lacked soldiers and armor, and relied on the seizure of food and fodder, even the most basic
He has no training and is currently unable to attack a large walled city such as Wubao.
In the past few days, the market has demolished the surrounding houses, dug shallow trenches, and built short parapets with broken bricks and broken wood. The defense can be said to be quite crude, but the rebels made several tentative attacks, and they were all stopped by Xu Huai.
Leading the crowd to collapse easily.
Although the Xu family did not directly send troops from Yuhuangling to challenge the rebel army, with the persistence of Xu Wujiang and others, they finally crossed the Qingliu River and built a small fortress on the north bank before the rebel army became stronger.
There is such a small fort with a radius of more than 100 steps standing in the north village of Qingliu River. It not only blocks the passage of the rebel army from the north bank of Qingliu River to attack Liuzhai, Dongzhai, Xiema Mountain and other places, but also can be regarded as giving the enemy their edge.
exposed.
Don't look at the fact that most of the people in Xuqing's lower house are poor, but compared to other clans with big surnames, the clan's property can extract thousands of money and grain every year, which is used for ethnic studies, ancestral halls, autumn training and disaster relief, so there is no conflict between the upper and lower houses.
So intense.
The most critical point is that before the situation worsened, Xu Wufu was forced by the situation and several large families in the clan to spend large sums of money to develop Shituoling and other places. He also hoarded supplies and actively expanded the scale of internal manufacturing.
These give the young people in the clan ample opportunities to work.
The newly reclaimed fields between Yuhuangling and Shituoling are also promised to be leased and sold to households without land for cultivation.
Within the clan, even though Xu Wufu, Xu Wujiang and others have their own scheming plans, under the current critical situation, the elite backbone of the clan can still unite together.
It can be said that Xu successfully mobilized fully before the crisis broke out.
The Xu family has more than 2,000 young people in Yuhuangling, and there are seven or eight small and medium-sized villages like Shangliu Village nearby. They can mobilize up to 1,500 or 600 young people who have received rural soldier training at a time.
In addition to a large amount of food, I also stocked up on a large amount of iron materials and cooked cowhide. I secretly expanded the scale of the blacksmith shop in the village in advance, forged weapons, and made armor...
To say that the allied forces of Zhuzhai are not afraid of the Xu family suddenly coming out from behind is to deceive themselves and others.
Therefore, the defense of Hedong market seems weak, but with Yuhuangling as a worry, the thieves do not dare to use all their strength to attack the market from the east bank of Baijian River. They can only focus on the west bank and constantly build new strongholds.
Little by little, they were approaching the military stronghold.
This is actually the shallow attack and fortification tactic that the Hexi armies have summarized from many battles against the party members over the past hundred years.
To put it bluntly, it is very simple. The armies in Hexi are facing the overwhelming advantage of the party's cavalry, and there is a sandy moraine belt (Gobi Desert) stretching for hundreds of miles outside Hexi, making long-distance roundabout operations extremely difficult to achieve and the risks are high.
.
In the fight against the Dangxiang people, the Western Army relied more on short-distance attacks by infantry, using the infantry to quickly build forts and military strongholds within a short period of control, and expand the territory bit by bit.
Lu Xiong had previously taught the township camp to use this method to cooperate with Xu Huai in resisting bandits at the edge of the market.
Zheng Hui, as Cai Zheng's mastermind, was hiding behind the scenes and causing such a big disturbance. He made Chen Zixiao and other bandit chiefs use this tactic to invade the military stronghold from the west bank. It can be said that they are of the same origin.
This made Xu Huai feel that if time dragged on, the balance of victory would definitely tilt towards their side.
Ten days ago, in order to fulfill his duties as the magistrate of Tangzhou and the supervisor of the army and horses, Chen Shi mobilized more than 800 archers from Biyang County and state-selected training soldiers, entered Tongbai Mountain from the west entrance of Zouma Road, and stopped at Yushan
There was a battle with the bandits at Yehu Valley outside the post.
Although the prefecture and county later sent a letter to Huaiyuan, saying that more than 400 corpses of thieves were recovered during this battle, the prefecture soldiers not only did not continue to attack Yushan Post after the war, but they withdrew from Tongbai Mountain in a hurry.
However, the bandit army that subsequently besieged Huaiyuan had many more standard robes, armor, and weapons.
It can be seen from this that Chen Shi must have suffered a big loss in front of Yushan Post when he sent troops to suppress in a hurry, but afterwards he did everything possible to cover up the truth of the defeat and whitewash peace.
In addition, in addition to the rural soldiers, county sword archers, patrolling military soldiers and Xiang soldiers, Tangzhou also has a battalion of the Forbidden Army, and the economic and strategic pacification embassy is located in Dengzhou, which is also located in the Nanyang Basin.
.
However, more than a month has passed since the bloody massacre at Zhongjiazhuang. Prefectures and counties also reported that they had reported to Lu Si many times. However, judging from the feedback from the prefectures and counties, it only said that Lu Si had already arrived in Tongbai Mountain.
The crime was reported to the court.
Although there were a total of 14,000 to 5,000 soldiers and horses stationed along the South Beijing Road, including imperial troops and state troopers, Wang Zhen, Lu Xiong and others were not optimistic about the situation.
Whether it is to support the bandits or to clear up his own dislike, Cai Qing, in charge of the Privy Council, will definitely advocate that the South Beijing Road handle the suppression of bandits on its own in the early stage.
This is also normal.
The economic strategy and appeasement made Gu Fan serve as the military and political chief of thirty-four counties in eight states including Tang, Deng, Xiang, Sui, Jin, Fang, Jun, and Ying. When banditry broke out in his jurisdiction, Gu Fan never tried to use Lu Si's authority to control the situation.
When the various states mobilized their troops to carry out a campaign, they directly requested the imperial court to dispatch elite imperial troops from other routes. Wasn't it too easy for this strategic and pacifying envoy to get mixed up?
However, based on Wang Zhen's understanding of Gu Fan, even if he had to take responsibility, he would probably conservatively build a fort at the west entrance of Tongbai Mountain Road, fill in troops for defense, and limit the banditry to the east of Nanyang Basin.
Picture it.
This means that Huaiyuan cannot expect reinforcements to appear in just two or three months.
In two or three months, there may be no problem for Huaiyuan to hold on, but Xu Huai is really not sure whether the situation in Tongbai Mountain will become even worse.
Seeing how the banditry spread like wildfire in such a short period of time also made Xu Huai deeply moved by the small piece of written memory that suddenly flashed in front of Mopan Ridge a few days ago.
If the historical trajectory does not change, in the near future a large number of barbarian enemies will invade from the north or west. The troops will approach the city but Bianjing will not defend it, and the emperor will flee south in panic. This is not unimaginable to Xu Huai.
Throughout history, it was not uncommon for Hulu invaders to invade the Central Plains. At its worst, the Central Plains was ravaged by foreigners for hundreds of years.
What Xu Huai had previously puzzled over was that even if the officials fled from Bianjing in a hurry, they would still have many guards and horses around them. How arrogant the bandit Chen Zixiao was, or how many thieves he had gathered under his command.
Dare to block the passage for officials to escape from Xinyang to Nanyang?
Xu Huai had previously thought that if the thief chieftains like Chen Zixiao gained power again, they would be able to gather three to five thousand soldiers and horses, which would be enough to conquer the sky.
However, everything that was happening in front of him made Xu Huai understand. He had simplified the problem before.
