As the commander-in-chief, Xu Huai was also the leader of the charge. He tried his best to leave all the tedious matters to Xu Wujiang, Zhou Jing, Fan Yong, Zhang Xiongshan and others to coordinate with the rebel leaders. He and Wang Ju stayed in the Nanxunmen Gate Tower as much as possible.
Recharge your batteries.
The morning light shone brightly from the Chaohui Pavilion. Xu Huai was sitting on the ground with his back against the wall, his long knife across his knees, and he was chewing meat. He saw Fan Yong with three soldiers, one old, two young and three, wearing uniforms of the imperial army.
Come over here, pat the tiles in front of your knees, and signal Fan Yong to sit down and talk, no need to be formal:
"Are there any old soldiers of the Jingsheng Army among the defenders at Changtai Bridge?"
"Chantai Bridge was surrounded by more than 500 defenders. They all gave up resistance. There are eleven people in the old army of the first commander." Fan Yong knelt down and said to Xu Huai, "Where are the seven generals?"
"I'm catching up on my sleep inside." Xu Huai pointed at the tower and said.
Nanxun Gate has experienced several wars, and there are traces of burns everywhere, but the overall structure is still in good condition. The generals who have taken turns lying on the ground directly in the tower, snoring one after another, but they are not disturbed.
"Hurry and bring General Seven here." Fan Yong ordered one of the guards.
"Why are you calling me?" Wang Ju took a nap for a while. He couldn't sleep soundly at this juncture. Hearing the movement here, he walked out of the tower and asked.
"Ge Xun has met the Seventh General - Does the Seventh General remember me?" Ge Xun, an old soldier, saluted the king.
"Ge Xun 1. Wang Ju excitedly grabbed the old soldier Ge Xun's shoulders, looked at his deeply wrinkled face and frost-white sparse crown hair, and asked, "Why are you still in the army? Why don't you come to find me?
With Fan Yong? Don’t you know we have all arrived at Chushan?”
"If you don't look like a human being, how can you go to the Seventh General? Little Fan Ye 1 Ge Xun briefly talked about the circumstances after leaving Jingzhou, pulled his two stepsons forward, and asked them to give them to Wang Ju, Xu
Huai salute.
"Wang Shuai died unjustly. These two boys were still young when they were adopted into my Ge family. I will take one character from Wang Shuai's name as their names. Please also ask Commander-in-Chief, Seventh General, please don't blame Ge Xun."
said.
"How can you blame me? We are people who don't understand right and wrong?" Wang Ju said, "You just stay with me and do things from now on1"
"I'm afraid it won't work at this time. Mr. Zhou is urgently asking Ge Xun to help - I just want to bring them over to meet you first," Fan Yong said.
At this time, they have identified a total of twenty-seven veterans of the Jingsheng Army. What they need to do urgently now is to sort out the list of veterans of the Jingsheng Army that they know are still among the surrendered troops in Bianliang.
Bianliang City, which is seventy miles away in Zhou Dynasty, is still too big and complicated in the eyes of the world.
The rebel generals have limited combat effectiveness, and the number of elite Chushan soldiers that can be concentrated and used is limited - not to mention storming the inner city (inner city), they want to capture the thirteen gates of the outer city and the nearby military camps one by one in a short period of time.
, it is an impossible task to defeat the nearly 40,000 Bianliang surrender troops stationed in the outer city one by one.
Two years ago, he rushed thousands of miles to attack Taiyuan in the cold winter. It seemed that the journey was much longer, but at that time Xu Huai was sure that the core target of the Red Husbands was Bianliang, and he expected that the main force of the captive troops would never be able to easily return to Taiyuan before Bianliang fell.
Therefore, although the Red Husbands had tens of thousands of troops on the northern front at that time, Xu Huai had the opportunity to attack them calmly and calmly.
After rescuing the soldiers and civilians of Taiyuan and withdrawing into Luliang Mountain, Xu Huai did not worry about facing a crazy pursuit by the Japanese soldiers when he evacuated southward.
The situation in this raid on Bianliang was completely different.
The main force of the Chi Hu and surrendered armies was located in Zhengzhou, where Xiao Qian was stationed, away from Bianliang. The cavalry could rush to Bianliang in just one day. The current home base of Yuehai Tower, Zhiwanqiu in Chenzhou, was less than three hundred miles away from Bianliang.
Bozhou, Xusu and other places where the main forces of the Chihu Ping Yan Army and the Yan Jijiang Affiliated Army were stationed were only three to five days' journey from Bianliang.
Strictly speaking, Xu Huai and the others may only have two to three days in Bianliang, which is a relatively comfortable time. After this time point, if they cannot evacuate in time, they are likely to be besieged by the enemy's elite troops who have returned several times for reinforcements.
It was difficult to escape from Bianliang.
In such a short period of time, not to mention the capture of the inner city of Bianliang, and even if Yang Jingchen led more than 10,000 elite troops to defend the inner city and did not come out at all, they would not be able to occupy the entire outer city simply by force.
For this attack on Bianliang, the more critical thing is to calmly retreat in the face of several or even ten times the enemy's encirclement and interception - this also determines that in the early stage of the attack on Bianliang, troops and horses must be used sparingly and major incidents must be avoided.
casualties.
In fact, after defeating and capturing the Changtai Bridge defenders, in addition to stationing a group of rebel generals at Changtai Bridge, Wuchihai's troops rested for a while near Changtai Bridge, while Fan Zongqi and other generals led new guards from both capitals.
The soldiers rushed to Changtai Bridge, and together with Han Changfu and other rebels, continued to kill Guangli Gate.
On the one hand, Guanglimen is the entrance of the Cai River into Bianliang City. When the sluice is opened, boats can sail directly into the outer city of Bianliang. On the other hand, the Cai River flows into the south outer city, and it is just right to enclose the east-west width of about eight miles and the south-south north outer city.
Two thousand five hundred steps deep area.
br / This area occupies the core of Bianliang South Outer City, located directly south of Bianliang, and is separated from other areas by a river more than ten feet wide.
Including Guangli Gate, Puji Gate, Nanxun Gate and five bridges located on the river, they have become key points to control access and facilitate centralized defense.
Capturing Changtai Bridge, Guanglimen and other key points, and controlling the Cai River in the enclosed area within the South Outer City, were the core goals of the early stage of the assault on Bianliang.
With their military strength, they currently do not have the ability to directly extend beyond this area to conduct operations.
Although the Bianliang troops were weak, they still defended city towers, barracks and other solid buildings with corresponding defensive facilities. No matter how strong the Chushan elite were, they still had to pay a certain price if they wanted to attack by force.
Therefore, they had to find another way to disintegrate the Bianliang defenders.
This is also one of the main reasons why Zhou Jing advocated recruiting old soldiers of the Jingsheng Army before the battle.
Although only twenty-seven old soldiers of the Jingsheng Army have been found so far, among the two thousand soldiers of the Bianliang surrendered army who were captured after the capture of Nanxunmen, there must still be quite a few who are still bloody and are not willing to help others.
In the past, we only became enemies because of circumstances.
At this time, with the old soldiers of the Jingsheng Army as an introduction, we can quickly find these generals who are still bloody and unwilling to fight against the enemy, and persuade them to put down their ideological baggage and worries, and directly serve Chushan.
In the past, it might have taken several geniuses to complete the ideological change, but at this juncture, they did not have such ample time.
Zhou Jing hopes to achieve immediate results, hoping to have one or two hundred men available immediately. However, it is better to use them to lobby and encourage the defenders in other areas of the outer city to abandon the dark side and join the light, divide the defenders in other areas of the outer city, or further weaken their will to resist.
Create operational conditions for conducting assault operations in other areas.
This is also the true meaning of Zhou Jing, Yan Xiaoyi, Zhang Xiongshan, Liu Yueting, Han Qihu and others fighting with the army, instead of simply serving as scouts to spy on the enemy.
In the past, only a small part of the families of the Imperial Guards in the Gyeonggi Province lived in the outer city (Guocheng), while the larger number lived in military villages in the counties of the Gyeonggi Province. They were able to allocate part of their fields for cultivation to make up for the lack of expenses.
After the fall of Bianliang, tens of thousands of soldiers and horses surrendered to the enemy, and most of his family moved to the outer city.
On the one hand, a large number of people in Bianliang City fled, resulting in a large number of empty buildings in the city, and there was also a large amount of abandoned land outside the city that could be reclaimed; on the other hand, it was also to facilitate the control of Bianliang Jiangjun - basically all Jiangjun's families moved in
Residents are concentrated in the outer city area, and they are basically close to the defense areas of the surrendered soldiers.
In other words, when Xu Huai and his men attacked the two thousand Bianliang surrender troops captured by Nanxunmen, their families and children mainly lived in the area surrounded by the Cai River.
Fan Yong hurried back to Nanxunmen. In addition to bringing Ge Xun to see Xu Huai and Wang Ju, another thing was that Zhou Jing wanted to release the captured soldiers who had surrendered their armor and weapons directly to their homes without centralized custody.
When these prisoners are released to their families, they are unlikely to pose any threat to them in a short period of time, and it can also save the number of troops in centralized custody. However, doing so can further soften the will of these prisoners to resist and encourage more soldiers to take their families home.
Xiaotou returned to Chushan.
As for these small families, they should try their best to pass through the rebels as quickly as possible. Before enemy reinforcements arrive, they should immediately evacuate to the outlying states and counties and hide themselves, so as to reduce the pressure of their subsequent evacuation as much as possible.
"You can do it if you have a consensus," Xu Huai said.
Leading troops to fight is far more than just charging into battle. Xu Huai was fortunate to have the help of Xu Wujiang, Zhou Jing, Zhang Xiongshan and other people, so that he could concentrate on the progress of the war.
As soon as Fan Yong and Ge Xun and his son left, there was a movement on the other side of the Zhuque Gate. More than two hundred cavalry and about 500 armored soldiers came out of the Zhuque Gate.
Xu Huai stood on the Nanxunmen Gate Tower and saw these troops entering the enemy array on the south side of Longjin Bridge. The more than a thousand enemy troops who had previously been arrayed on the south side of Longjin Bridge automatically moved to the two wings to get out of the way.
, give up the position of the Chinese army.
"This is a big fish swimming out of the Suzaku Gate." Wang Ju raised his eyebrows and said, "It depends on the situation, we will have to dispatch a surprise cavalry this time."
In order to better pass through the enemy's defense line between Chenzhou and Xuzhou and hide in Yanling and Weishi counties, most of the two thousand guards and soldiers left their horses in Ye County and Wuyang.
However, in order to ensure a certain assault force, the establishment of three hundred assault cavalry was still maintained, and three to four hundred war horses were led into Yanling through various means, and Weishi County was hidden.
At this time, the enemy has 700 to 800 fresh troops added to its array south of Longjin Bridge. It is obvious at a glance that they are the enemy's elite troops. Of course, they cannot be stingy about investing the most elite assault cavalry and horses!
"Okay, let's go meet Wang Xian." Xu Huai habitually pulled out his sword to check the blade before going into battle. He flicked the sword with his finger and made a soft sound. Then he put the sword back into its sheath, pushed it and leaned back.
Niu Er, who was sleeping soundly against the wall, shouted, "Let's go, cut off a few heads of barbarians and have a drink at noon1"