Yiyang is located between the northern foothills of the Dabie Mountains and the upper reaches of the Huai River. Geographically, it can view Jianghan from the southwest and plot the rivers and Huaihe River from the northeast. It is a very important strategic location for military strategists.
Ever since the former governor of Beisi Prefecture, Yang Yaren, led his troops to the south to quell the rebellion of King Qin, the important town of Yiyang had no powerful figures in charge. Although Yang Yaren was appointed to stay, he was only in charge of the city and did not play much role in military and political affairs.
It was not until Liu Zhongli sent his general Xia Houqiang here that Yiyang City had something to rely on for city defense and management.
The Xiahou family in Qiao County also has a long history of being a famous family. Although times have changed and the clear hope has gradually been lost, there was still Xiahou Dan before. The brothers Xiahou Kui were famous ministers and generals in Nanliang who were in charge of Huainan. Xiahou Qiang was a relative of the same clan. Therefore, Xiahou
The Xia Houqiang family had considerable influence between Suilu and Huainan. Relying on this popularity, Xia Houqiang was able to take charge of Yiyang affairs.
Although Xia Houqiang was sent by Liu Zhongli, Liu Zhongli himself did not have many troops to allocate to him, so he could only rely on his own ability to organize the Yiyang armed forces.
He led nearly a thousand tribesmen and went north through the three passes of Yiyang. On the way, he recruited some barbarian armed forces and entered Yiyang City with 3,000 Han barbarian troops. He expelled the garrison appointed by Yang Yaren before.
He received more than 2,000 defenders in the city, and then notified the counties around Yiyang that still belonged to Nanliang, announcing his arrival to them, and obtained some personnel and materials from these cities, so he had a foothold.
Yu Yiyang's capital.
Xia Houqiang's business here has initially achieved results, but he doesn't want his old boss Liu Zhongli to overturn the situation again. He is still hesitant to go south to Yiyang Sanguan to rescue Liu Zhongli, but the people who stayed behind have already surrendered to the Western Wei Dynasty.
Suddenly, Xia Houqiang's troops became a lonely army.
However, the good news is that after the Western Wei Dynasty captured the entire territory of Eastern Han Dynasty, it did not continue to expand its results. It should be that it was unable to expand. Even the Suilu area it occupied was entirely dependent on the surrender of the local defenders.
Although both Wei Dynasties split from the Northern Wei Dynasty, the Western Wei Dynasty has long given the impression of being poor, weak and barbaric. Although its Mianbei region has been quite successful in recent years, it has still not been able to reverse this long-term image.
Xia Houqiang was quite disdainful of his colleagues who followed Lu and defected to the Western Wei Dynasty. He also knew in his heart that these people were just acting selfishly. He felt that the Western Wei Dynasty was not powerful enough and had to rely on their surrender to control the place. No matter how powerful the enemy was,
Just change the door after entering the country.
Xia Houqiang naturally did not need to surrender to the Western Wei Dynasty. In his opinion, the Western Wei Dynasty simply did not have the strength to invade Yiyang. In this case, wouldn't it be better for him to separatist forces and continue to strengthen his own power?
Of course, he also knew that his current strength alone was not enough to deter the Western Wei Dynasty and the surrounding forces, and he still needed to find a bigger backer for himself. And the Eastern Wei Dynasty general Murong Shaozong, I heard that he is now in charge of Xuanhu City in Runan.
It is naturally a very good target to recruit and accept surrender forces from all sides.
Therefore, while Xia Houqiang mobilized the Anlu people to seize the city with troops in order to gain greater power and territory, he also sent envoys to Xuanhu to meet Murong Shaozong and express his willingness to surrender to the Eastern Wei Dynasty with the land of northern and southern Sizhou.
While waiting for news from both parties, Xia Houqiang also stepped up his expropriation and expropriation around Yiyang. This township was originally an important area for communicating with a large area. In addition, due to the wars in the surrounding areas, personnel movements became more frequent, almost every day.
There are dozens and hundreds of people crossing the border.
When Hou Jingqian occupied Shouyang, he also tried to win over the people of Huainan by exempting land rent and city tax. Today, this influence has not faded, and many people and materials have left for Shouyang. They only know that Hou Jing has made great achievements in Jiankang.
The prime minister, who was more powerful, did not know that Wang Xiangui, who Hou Jing arranged to stay behind, had surrendered to the Eastern Wei Dynasty again.
There were even many barbarians among them, and they actually escorted some valuable goods to Shouyang in an attempt to sell them and make a fortune. Xia Houqiang was naturally rude to this, and detained all travelers and merchants who were passing through the border, and organized the personnel into the camp and the materials.
Charge into the warehouse.
After such operations, Xia Houqiang's power expanded faster. When Hou Jing Shouyang raised his army, he only had more than 8,000 soldiers, but Xia Houqiang now has nearly 10,000 followers. In his opinion, with such a strong force, even if he cannot go south to Jiankang
, it is more than enough to sit on one side of the Yiyang separatist regime.
However, just when he was enjoying the surge in power, bad news came from the south. Because Ma Xiu, an old man, led the city people to resist fiercely, his tribe's plan to seize the city failed, and they had to flee in defeat.
Xia Houqiang was furious when he heard the news, but because he still had not received a reply from the Eastern Wei Dynasty, he did not dare to act without permission even though his strength had increased sharply. He went south to attack and follow the mainland, but retreated to the next best thing and ordered the defeated tribesmen to flee.
People retreated to the Three Passes of Yiyang. In this way, as long as he got answers and assistance from the Eastern Wei Dynasty, he could directly lead his troops to break out of the Three Passes and recapture Anlu!
But misfortunes never come singly. He had just arranged soldiers to garrison the three passes of Yiyang. The troops of the Western Wei Dynasty, who he thought were already unable to expand, actually bypassed Tongbai Mountain and appeared directly on the north bank of the Huai River, posing as if they were about to build a ship to cross the river.
Xia Houqiang was shocked when he learned about this. Although he looked down on the Western Wei in his heart, compared with the Eastern Wei, he did not feel that he could easily defeat the Western Wei troops. After all, in addition to being poor and weak, the Western Wei also had a poor man.
!
Fortunately, there is still the Huai River to block the advance of the Western Wei people. Xia Houqiang had been recruiting people around Yiyang, and he also recruited many boats in the upper reaches of the Huai River to the naval docks in the tributaries of the Huai River in Yiyang, leaving the Western Wei people with no troops.
Having enough boats and equipment to cross the river can be regarded as a resourceful response to anticipate the enemy's opportunity.
Although it was difficult for the troops of the Western Wei Dynasty to cross the Huaihe River in the short term, Xia Houqiang did not dare to relax. He inspected and strengthened the river defenses on the water every day.
Under the current situation of a powerful enemy, in order to expand his own military strength, many of the barbarian tribes who had been captured by him and whose goods were originally used as camp slaves were now released by him, and he promised that as long as he could defeat the invading Western Wei army, he would
These barbarians took them into their own generals and rewarded them with mountains and swampy land around Yiyang.
Faced with Xia Houqiang's promise, the barbarians responded enthusiastically. After all, who doesn't yearn for the living environment of the fertile plains? Therefore, they also carried out Xia Houqiang's orders seriously, making Xia Houqiang rely more on them and delivered it to
They have more city defense characters.
However, on this day, Xia Houqiang went to the waterside to patrol the camp and was waiting to lead his troops back to the city. When he arrived at the city gate, he was turned away by the barbarian soldiers guarding the city and was not allowed to enter.
"You ignorant barbarian slave, open your eyes wide and see who I am! Open the city gate quickly!"
As a dignified city lord, Xia Houqiang was turned away from the city by his soldiers. Naturally, Xia Houqiang was furious. He raised his finger and pointed at the barbarian soldiers standing in the horse-rejecting formation and cursed loudly.
At this time, he didn't notice anything unusual, but he thought it was because these barbarian soldiers were dull-eyed and had recently been transferred here, so they didn't recognize him.
However, when the scolded barbarians raised their crossbows and fired at him, Xia Houqiang suddenly felt something bad in his heart. Fortunately, the soldiers around him had quick eyesight and quick hands, and directly pulled him into the team, shielding him from the body of the guard.
However, Xia Hou Qiangcai was not shot directly on the spot.
"Lord of Dogfoot City! Steal my property and kill my children. Taking your city now is revenge!"
The barbarian chiefs guarding the city gate pointed at Xiahou Qiang, who was surrounded by soldiers, and yelled and cursed, with expressions of exasperation and raised eyebrows. Their armor was crude and they did not dare to go out to attack, but they were able to guard the city gate.
Xia Houqiang and others are expected to enter the city.
"How dare you rebel against me! How dare you rebel against me! When I bring back the fine people, I will drive you all away and kill them all!"
Xia Houqiang was extremely angry at this moment and did not dare to stay here any longer. He ordered his men to go around to other city gates and notified other garrison troops in the city to attack and kill the rebels here. He himself galloped towards Shuiying, where
There are still more than 3,000 soldiers stationed to block the water day and night to prevent the Western Wei people from crossing the river to the south. But now he can't care so much. It is better to gather his troops to kill all the barbarians who rebelled against him and take back the city.
The reason why the barbarians dared to rebel here was naturally because they had something to rely on. While Xia Houqiang was being refused entry to the city, Zhao Gang, who had sneaked into the city first to contact and persuade the barbarians to act righteously, had already ordered people to light beacon smoke in the city.
The troops who had been waiting for a long time gave the signal to attack.
Thousands of elite soldiers who came over the mountains and scattered around the city saw the signal. They immediately wore light armor and held short soldiers and charged towards the city gate marked by the beacon.
At this time, the city of Yiyang had long been alarmed and confused by these changes. The soldiers Xia Houqiang gathered in a short period of time did not have the ability and experience to deal with these changes. Seeing enemies emerging from both inside and outside, they were already at a loss.
I'm confused and don't know how to deal with it.
When the internal and external troops gathered in the city, Zhao Gang also appeared to take charge of the situation.
Among the defenders in the city, barbarians account for a large proportion, and Zhao Gang has been closely communicating with these barbarians in Liyang City at the western foot of Tongbai Mountain. Although some barbarian chiefs did not know about this at first, they saw Zhao Gang show up to control the situation.
After that, everyone immediately gathered around.
At this time, Xia Houqiang had also recruited troops from the water camp to fight back again. It was difficult for Zhao Gang to integrate the chaotic troops here and distribute complex military orders, so he simply sent his troops to destroy a warehouse in the city where Xia Houqiang's recent wealth was stored.
Let the Han barbarian soldiers present divide it among themselves, and tell these people that if they are willing to stay, let them guard the golden city in the city. If they are not willing, they can take the property and run out of the city for their lives.
In the end, only more than 2,000 people followed Zhao Gang into Jincheng. In addition to his own troops, only more than 1,000 original defenders of the city joined in.
However, these troops were enough. The other defenders fled, which greatly divided and hindered Xiahou Qiang's counterattack. When he finally found the enemy's main force, Zhao Gang had already led his troops to arrange arrangements according to local conditions in Jincheng.
After a while, he turned against the enemy and faced the enemy.
Xia Houqiang knew that there were troops from the Western Wei Dynasty on the north bank of the Huaihe River preparing to cross the water and go south. Here he urged his troops to launch several attacks on Jincheng, but they were all repelled by the enemy troops defending inside.
Seeing that it was difficult to recapture the city in a short period of time, Xia Houqiang did not dare to fight. He could only take another look at Yiyang City, where his dream of hegemony was entrusted, and then led the rest of his troops to hatefully flee south, dreaming of reaching Yiyang City.
Yang Sanguan gathered the tribesmen stationed on the other side and then fought back.
In troubled times, whether a person can achieve great success depends on ability and vision, but luck is more important.
If Xia Houqiang knew that just two days after his defeat from Yiyang, the Eastern Wei Dynasty appointed him as the governor of Nansi Prefecture and that the reinforcements sent by Murong Shaozong would arrive in Yiyang, I am afraid he would be even more upset to death.