In June of the twelfth year of Jian'an, in Dangqu County, Ba County, Cai Mao in the county government kept rubbing his temples.
Cai Du, a close confidant around him, saw that he was very upset, so he asked, "Uncle, what's going on? Although the recent offensive is not going well, it's not a serious problem."
Cai Mao shook his head and said: "Your Majesty's letters urging me to use troops have been flying in like snowflakes these days, which makes me very sad."
Cai Du thought for a moment and said, "Uncle, why don't you write a memorial about the current situation and tell it to Your Majesty?"
"It's useless to say it."
Cai Mao, who was in his fifties and had gray hair on his temples, stood up with a melancholy look on his face. He walked slowly in the hall with his hands behind his back and said, "Besides, even if my offensive goes smoothly, I will never continue to advance."
"Why is this?"
Cai Du was Cai Mao's nephew, so he didn't have so many scruples about what he said. He asked, "If I defeated Zhang Lu and captured Xichuan, wouldn't it be a great achievement for my uncle?"
"hehe."
Cai Mao sneered and said: "What a great achievement? I'm afraid the day when Xichuan is captured will be the day when your uncle and I die."
Cai Du was shocked and said: "Ah, why is this happening?"
"The eldest prince has no heir, and your elder sister has married the second prince. Your Majesty's biggest worry now is that once he dies, our Cai family will take control of the entire south. Once the south is captured, I will surely die for your majesty."
Cai Mao thought of the correspondence between him and Kuai Yue from the beginning of the year to the present. He didn't believe it before, but during this time Liu Biao's letters seemed to be becoming more and more dissatisfied with him.
In the past six months from the beginning of this year to now, I have received at least five letters almost every month, as well as official documents criticizing him.
This sudden change of attitude also made Cai Mao realize that maybe things were really as Kuai Yue said.
Although the truth is what Liu Biao thought, Cai Mao and Kuai Yue just wanted to push Liu Cong to power so that they could control the entire south.
But the problem is that we have the intention to be powerful officials, but you can't eradicate us powerful officials.
Now is the key to life and death, which makes Cai Mao extremely depressed.
When Cai Du learned about this, he was shocked. Cai Mao was the backbone of the Cai family. If he fell, the Cai family would be doomed, so he quickly said: "The general will not obey the military orders abroad. My uncle is in charge of the army. Why don't we delay it for a while?"
Already?"
"snort."
Cai Mao snorted coldly: "I don't want to delay the time, but your Majesty has been holding court meetings frequently recently, saying that he wants to summon me to Xiangyang and send a civil servant to take over my position. I think he is very angry at my repeated failure to conquer Zhang Lu.
dissatisfied."
Cai Du hurriedly asked: "What should we do?"
Cai Hao rubbed his temples and said: "I plan to write to Your Majesty to launch a general offensive this year to delay the war. When the war comes, we can't change the generals on the spot."
"That's all it can do."
Cai Du thought: "Now that Zhang Lu has occupied Hanchang, it will be difficult for us to conquer it in a short time. Even if we can conquer it, we can delay the attack on Liu Zhang for a year or two, maybe by that time."
"I hope so."
Cai Mao nodded noncommittally, his eyes full of melancholy.
Historically, he and Kuai Yue became capitulators and handed over the huge Jingzhou to Cao Cao.
But the situation is very different now.
Because Liu Bian now really has the power to dominate the world.
It's just that he is too old, so he may not be able to complete it in his hands, but there is a lot of hope in the hands of the second generation.
In other words, once Liu Biao takes over the entire south and Liu Cong takes over, Cai Hao will suddenly become the most powerful person in the world.
As a relative, he is at least a general.
It is hard to say that in the future, if we can rule the world again, we will be able to go to the palace with swords and shoes, enter the court without rushing, praise and worship without recognition, add nine tins, crown with ten feathers, ride in a golden chariot, drive six horses, use the emperor's ceremonial ceremony when entering and leaving, and even.
Although Cai Mao has not thought that far yet, he will never let go of the opportunity to ascend to the throne of power in the world overnight, not to mention that it involves life and death.
So at this moment, Cai Mao had a complicated emotion.
Not only did he want to pacify the south as soon as possible and allow himself to reach the top, but he also wanted to delay until Liu Biao's death before he could become a general.
So I felt extremely conflicted for the moment.
However, no matter how contradictory it was, the immediate priority was still a matter of survival. Under Liu Biao's pressure, he had no choice but to launch a forcible attack on Zhang Lu.
It can't even be defeated.
Once defeated, not only would Liu Biao have an excuse to kill him, but his military power would also be taken away, so he could only go all out.
In July of the twelfth year of Jian'an, Cai Mao once again launched a fierce attack on Pingxiang Pass.
There was a heavy rain in Hanzhong in August, and the water level of Qianjiang River surged. The lower reaches of Qianjiang River are very wide, but the upper reaches of Pingxiang area are relatively narrow, making it difficult for Cai Mao's navy to exert its force.
Now that the water level has skyrocketed, the fleet has arrived at Pingxiang. Their position is even higher than the city built by Zhang Lu in Pingxiang. Countless arrows rained down from the ship at Pingxiang Pass, and almost no one dared to defend the pass.
Taking advantage of this opportunity, Cai Mao immediately ordered his infantry to attack the city. Pingxiang Pass was quickly captured, and Zhang Lu's army quickly retreated to Hanchang.
By late August, Cai Mao had completely captured the entire Pingxiang Pass.
After the capture of Pingxiang Pass, the pressure on Cai Mao was relieved to a great extent. Liu Biao stopped mentioning Wenpin to replace Cai Mao at the recent court meeting, but he still continued to urge Cai Mao to defeat Zhang Lu as soon as possible.
For this reason, Cai Mao had to continue the attack. Pingxiang Pass is the most dangerous pass. It should be easier to defeat Hanchang City after passing Pingxiang Pass.
But this also greatly extended Cai Mao's supply line. Originally, most of his grain sources were transported by water from Jingzhou, along the Yangtze River to Jiangzhou, then north from Jiangzhou to Dianjiang, and finally from Dianjiang to Danqu.
, traveling thousands of kilometers.
These previous rivers were all big rivers. Although they flowed countercurrently all the way, water transportation was better than land transportation. However, after Pingxiang, the upper reaches of the Qianjiang River became narrower and there were faults and waterfalls, making it difficult to transport by water.
The overland route was the Micang Road, but it was also extremely rugged. The transportation from Daququ stretched for hundreds of kilometers, which made Cai Mao suffer a lot. He could only temporarily stay in Pingxiang to wait for the follow-up supplies.
In October, after waiting for more than a month, large quantities of grain and grass were sent from Dangqu County one after another. Cai Mao went north to send troops to Hanchang and surrounded the city of Hanchang.
The two sides reached a stalemate again.
Until November, Cai Mao's army was close to running out of grain and grass. Fortunately, a new batch of grain and grass from Jingzhou arrived in Danqu, and it could be replenished soon.
However, what no one knew was that on the Bashu Road in the east, Zhang Lu sent general Yang Ang and 10,000 elite troops to quietly go south.
Although Zhang Lu suppressed Liu Zhang, he was able to occupy the northern part of Ba County because he accepted a lot of property in Guanzhong. During Dong Zhuo's rebellion, countless people from Guanzhong moved to Hanzhong, which greatly increased his troops and strength.
But his total military strength was only 50,000 or 60,000, and he had to defend other places. Therefore, the actual number of troops fighting Cai Mao was only more than 30,000, which was far from the 50,000-strong army he claimed to have.
Therefore, when he was attacked by Cai Mao, he could only accept the advice of counselor Yan Pu and let his brother Zhang Wei, the commander of the frontline army, retreat back to Hanchang.
What people did not expect was that after retreating back to Hanchang, the weak point of Cai Mao's army's difficulty in supplying was exposed.
So Yan Pu immediately proposed a strategy to him. After leading Cai Mao into Hanchang, he sent people to take the Bashu Road to Xuanhan. However, they did not attack Xuanhan when they arrived. Instead, they took a small road, which was the area around Shuanglong Town in Dazhou City in later generations, bypassing Xuanhan City. , go straight to Danqu!
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Huang Zu on the Jiangdong side did not have as many troubles as Cai Mao.
Because he belongs to Liu Qi's faction, Liu Qi is smart, capable, and has sufficient prestige, so he will not become a puppet of Cai Mao and Kuai Yue like Liu Cong.
So Jia Xu, Huang Zu, and Shen Chen are basically the three cornerstones Liu Biao left for Liu Qi's future succession.
However, Jiangdong could not be conquered for a long time, so Liu Biao was asked to send documents to urge him every month.
Huang Zu had no choice. Although he had made considerable progress and conquered more than ten cities in the east of the Yangtze River, he had captured Nanling in May of this year and rushed to Ruxukou, but was blocked by Ruxukou.
This place is easy to defend but difficult to attack, and Huang Zu failed to capture it despite repeated attacks. Although he could also attack Jiangdong by land, if Ruxu could not break through, he would be seeking death if he went deep alone.
Just as Liu Bei has already reached Luocheng and is within easy reach of Chengdu, it is obviously impossible to attack Chengdu behind him without breaking Luocheng.
Therefore, the two sides can only fight at Ruxukou.
Sun Quan personally took charge of Spring Valley City, forming a tripod with Ruxukou and the Zheqi City occupied by Huang Zu, that is, Nanling.
The three parties are intertwined in this area, entangled with each other, and the fighting almost never stops every day.
Although Huang Zu had an army of more than 100,000, Mei Gan, Lei Xu, Chen Lan and others were local forces that were just outsiders. Naturally, they were unwilling to help with their lives. They were greedy and excessive in asking for food, grass, weapons and equipment, which was annoying.
Therefore, Huang Zu actually had nothing to do against Sun Quan in a short period of time.
The two sides remained in a stalemate until September of the second half of the twelfth year of Jian'an. Due to the war, almost all the people in this area had fled. On the sixth day of September, Huang Zu launched another attack on Ruxukou.
After a day of fighting, the Jiangxia navy returned to the barracks very tired. These days were a great torment for both sides of the battle.
Jiangdong's army was exhausted, and Jiangxia's army was also exhausted, so both the enemy and ourselves were at an extremely nervous state.
On this day and night.
A group of soldiers and horses quietly left Ruxukou and headed towards Mei Gan's camp at night.
At first, Huang Zu was still very prepared for night attacks, but after a long time, he became very tired of being so prepared every day. He thought that Sun Quan didn't have the guts to make a sneak attack with his army of more than 100,000, so he gradually relaxed.
As a result, there had been no raids for more than a year, which completely wiped out Huang Zu's original caution. Only a few men and horses were left to keep vigil, and most of the soldiers were resting in the military camp.
Even Huang Zu's army was like this, let alone Mei Gan, Lei Xu, Chen Lan and others. Their troops were originally Jianghuai bandits, and their quality was not as good as Huang Zu's army.
Therefore, the sudden attack by the Jiangdong Army directly caused the Mei Gan Army to bomb the camp, tens of thousands of people roared in the camp, and caused a terrible stampede and collision accident.
This was the case with Mei Qian's army, and it was similar with Lei Xu and Chen Lan's army. Soon this kind of bombing of camps spread to the entire army. Except for Huang Zu's headquarters in Zheqi City, most of the military camps outside the city were affected to varying degrees. influence.
Sun Quan then took advantage of the night to attack with his entire army and launched a major counterattack against Jingzhou!
This day.
This prosperous building in Jingzhou is going to collapse!
Okay, basically this book has entered the middle stage. The progress is very fast. It is expected to be about two million words by the end. I will work hard to finish it before the first half of next year.