Chapter 224: The feeling of violation (2) [Supplement 20/40]
"Something's wrong, this is really wrong..."
On the tower of the south gate of Linzi City, Tian Bao, the Right Prime Minister of Qi, frowned and stared at the Wei warships parked on the Zi River outside the city. He felt that the actions of this Wei army were indescribably strange and inconsistent.
In fact, Tian Tabu felt this violation in the early hours of yesterday morning, but he was too impatient at the time and didn't care.
But thinking about it carefully now, he felt more and more that something was wrong with the Wei army's actions outside the city.
Today is May 28th. Wei general Li Huo outside the city quietly arrived at Linzi City in the early morning of the 27th before it was dark.
In view of the long-term peace in Linzi and the fact that the night had not yet receded, Ju Sheng of the East Gate and other guards on the city did not notice the fleet outside the city at that time.
In this case, the Wei army outside the city did not send soldiers off the boats to try to sneak attack Linzi, but directly used trebuchets to bombard Linzi City, disturbing the entire city.
Why do this?
Why not attack the city by surprise?
This is a big doubt.
As for the second doubt, that is the frequency of Wei troops' attacks on Linzi City outside the city.
Tian Tao was not aware of this incident at first, but after observing it for a long time yesterday afternoon, he gradually figured out the offensive pattern of the Wei army outside the city: during the day, about two hours, a trebuchet bombing and trebuchet attack on Linzi City was launched.
At night, they launched a hasty attack at Xu Shi and Zi Shi respectively. But these two times, even the trebuchets were omitted, and only some crossbowmen sparsely fired a few fire arrows at Linzi, and then they
There was no more movement.
Too tired! Too casual!
If it weren't for the flags with the word "Wei" clearly hanging on those warships, Tian Dan couldn't believe that this would actually be the performance of the Wei army.
Isn't it possible that the Wei general named Li Huo was not afraid of being scolded by the King of Wei for slacking off?
Or is it that the King of Wei had no intention of capturing Linzi?
After much deliberation, Tian Tao still preferred the later guess, because he could not imagine that Wei's army would be so tired.
Then the question arises: Since this Wei army did not come to capture Linzi, what was its purpose?
"Could it be intimidation by force? To force Da Qi to surrender to Wei?"
Tian Tao thought for a moment, then secretly shook his head and rejected this guess.
In his opinion, if Wei general Li Huo was serious about forcing Qi to surrender to Wei, then he should have sent envoys to negotiate with Linzi after the initial trebuchet attack on Linzi City.
But, Li Huo didn't.
Instead, he sent Ju Sheng, the commander of the East Gate, to negotiate with Linzi, and then Li Huocai put forward the harsh requirement of "surrendering to Wei".
It was too casual and too harsh, as if it was a temporary excuse, and he didn't care whether Linzi was willing to accept this harsh condition.
"Your Excellency?"
Just as Tian Tabu was deep in thought, a call came to his ears. He turned around and saw that the scholar-bureaucrat Guan Zhong and Uncle Bao had arrived at his side at some unknown time.
At this time, Guan Zhong and Uncle Bao had already met Bao Yuan, a general from South Korea. When Tian Tao came to his senses, Uncle Bao explained his intention.
It turned out that King Lu Bai of Qi had noticed that Tian Bao and Bao Yuan had not ordered the Northern Navy and Feixiong Army to expel the Wei army on the river, so he sent Uncle Bao and Guan Zhong to come and see what was going on.
"What is the Right Prime Minister thinking about?" Uncle Bao asked curiously: "Yesterday in the palace, I saw that the Right Prime Minister seemed to have something on his mind."
Tian Tao nodded.
In fact, Uncle Bao also asked Tian Bao yesterday after the incident, but at that time Tian Bao only vaguely felt that the Wei army's actions outside the city were a bit strange, but he did not verify it. It was not until one night later that he initially confirmed that the Wei army outside the city
, is really too tired and too casual.
He told Uncle Bao and Guan Zhong his guess.
Uncle Bao and Guan Zhong were secretly surprised after hearing Tian Bao's guess.
Maybe they were too impatient yesterday to notice Wei Jun's strange behavior, but now that Tian Bao mentioned it, they also thought that there might be something fishy about it.
After thinking for a moment, Guan Zhong said seriously: "The Wei army's move may be to force the two generals Tian Dan and Tian Wu to lead their troops back for reinforcements."
"Besiege the city and call for reinforcements?" Tian Bao was shocked when he heard this, but after thinking about it carefully, he felt something was wrong.
You know, even if Tian Dan learned that the Wei army had attacked Linzi and returned to the royal capital, he would have taken the land route of "Wuyan - Mount Tai - Changcheng", while Tian Wu would also have taken the "Tengdi - Ludi"
--Laiwu--Changcheng" road, these two roads, there is no waterway for Wei warships to sail. How can Wei warships ambush these two supporting armies?
"I'm afraid that's not the case." Tian Tao shook his head and said.
As if he had guessed Tian Tao's thoughts, Guan Zhong shook his head and said: "The Right Prime Minister has misunderstood. What I am talking about is not "besieging the city for reinforcements", but just to force me, Da Qi, to withdraw the army into the country..."
Tian Tao was stunned when he heard this, and then suddenly said: "Master Guan is talking about...Song County?"
"Exactly!" Guan Dian nodded, then turned his head and glanced in the direction of Song County, and said in a deep voice: "The Wei State sneak attack on our Linzi can force the two generals Tian Dan and Tian Wu to withdraw their troops and return reinforcements, and it can also force the Lu State's
The army stopped moving forward... I thought that when the Lu State saw our Qi Linzi being attacked, they might temporarily stop and wait and see. In this way, only the armies of the Chu State and the Yue State were left on the battlefield in Song County, which greatly reduced the number of troops.
The pressure from Wei...this is a very clever strategy."
After hearing this, Tian Tao, Uncle Bao, Bao Yuan and others all nodded in agreement.
The Chu army that has invaded Song County at this moment has a general understanding of the situation. Although it is said to be one million, in fact there may only be about three to four hundred thousand fully-armed and well-trained regular troops, and the rest may be a motley crew.
There is no talk of raising food and recruiting soldiers.
These grain-recruited soldiers are fine in a smooth battle, but if it is a tough battle, ten grain-recruited soldiers may not be able to replace one Wei soldier.
This is also the reason why Chu Shuijun of the Chu State hopes to join forces with various countries in Changyi to form a coalition: on the one hand, he is trying to defeat the Wei State in terms of momentum, and on the other hand, he also considers that the Chu State's army can really fight a tough battle.
The army is not large and may not be enough to capture the entire Wei State.
But if Chu Shuijun successfully unites the coalition forces in Changyi, the situation will be completely different.
The army of the State of Lu is over 100,000, the army of the State of Qi is over 200,000, and the army of the State of Yue is about 50,000 or 60,000. These armies are different from the army of the Chu State. They are at least fully equipped with soldiers and armor, and can really be put to use. This army
With a total of 400,000 troops, plus the Chu State's 300,000 to 400,000 regular troops, the number of soldiers in the coalition suddenly increased to 800,000. Adding in the Chu State's grain recruitment of about 600,000 to 700,000 soldiers, it is really unimaginable that the Wei State
How to resist this powerful force.
Perhaps the Wei State predicted this and ordered the Huling Navy to sneak attack the Qi State's Linzi, dividing the coalition forces and making it difficult to meet in Changyi as scheduled.
In this way, Wei State had some more breathing time, and at least it avoided the fate of being captured by the coalition forces and the entire country was captured in one fell swoop.
But having said that, even though they had guessed Wei's conspiracy, there was nothing Linzi could do. After all, the Huling navy outside the city was indeed powerful. It was so powerful that even though the Flying Bear Army and the Northern Navy were both present, Tian Tao could not defeat this army.
Wei Jun was fully confident.
In the afternoon of that day, Bao Yuan tried to lead the Northern Navy to attack the Wei fleet on the river, but the effect was not good. It is undeniable that this Northern Navy has great potential, but in the final analysis, it is still a new army that has set foot on the battlefield for the first time. Even on weekdays,
No matter how rigorous the training is, panic will inevitably occur when you actually get to the battlefield.
No, Wei general Li Huo just fired a volley of crossbow bolts, which caused the marching army to be thrown into chaos.
Fortunately, the damage was not serious, so Bao Yuanquan should just use it as a training exercise.
It is worth mentioning that in the afternoon of that day, the Beihai Navy and Feixiong Army moved some bed crossbows out of the city and used them to attack the Wei fleet on the river.
Not to mention, the only way to deal with those Wei warships that seemed to be thick-skinned and rough-looking was to rely on this powerful war weapon.
On that day, two Wei army guard ships were sunk by Qi army's crossbows, forcing Wei general Li Huo to retreat three to five miles along the river.
However, the Qi army also suffered heavy casualties for this.
The reason is simple: the Wei Liannu on the Wei warship has a farther range than the Qi crossbow, let alone the trebuchet on the ship.
But no matter what, this can be regarded as a victory. At least for land armies such as the Flying Bear Army and the Northern Navy, they finally have a powerful weapon to restrain the opposing Wei warships.
But what I didn't expect was that on the next day, May 29th, Wei warships launched a revenge attack inside and outside Linzi City.
This time, the Wei army used twice as many warships as yesterday, so that the number of Tiger warships reached 24, and the number of escort ships was close to 50. These warships almost completely blocked the entire Zishui River.
of throwing
The stone machine bombarded the east wall of Linzi City indiscriminately, leaving this section of the wall full of holes, and even collapsed in the southeast corner. Linzi City was so frightened that Linzi City quickly sent troops to guard the city to avoid being attacked by the Wei army.
.
But in fact, the Wei army did not. After the revenge, the general Wei ships sailed away, seemingly back to Boxing River Port. Only the other half stayed - a general who was from the Beibo Army like Li Huo.
Chen Si.
Although the Wei generals had changed, their methods of attacking Linzi were basically the same. In the words of Tian Bao, the Right Prime Minister of Qi, they were very tired and casual, as if they were just content to put Linzi into panic.
As strange as Tian Tao said, except for sending General Cai Qinhu to capture the empty-defended Boxing and collecting grain, grass and vegetables in the city to satisfy the consumption of Wei soldiers, the Wei army did not attack Qi this time.
The second city was captured, and I don’t know why.
This continued until the second day of June, when the army led by Tian Dan finally arrived in Linzi.
Seeing this, Wei General Chen Si immediately sent people to Boxing River Port to report the matter to Li Qi, the deputy general of the Huling Navy.
After learning about this, Li Qian took out a secret letter from Tiance Mansion from his arms on the flagship anchored at Boxing River Port.
It was not that they received the letter at Huling Water Village, but it was given to them by the Green Crows from Luoyang a while ago when they docked in Dingtao County to replenish food and weapons.
The contents of the secret message were just a bunch of numbers, and some numbers had horizontal lines under them. I don’t know what they meant.
However, the Huling Navy received two identical secret letters at that time, sent by people from different Blue Crows.
It is conceivable that the content of this secret letter must be very critical.
It is worth mentioning that at that time, two other groups of Green Crows found the Huling Navy and gave them another thing, a thin booklet with only one page of content, densely packed and neat, but it was a
There are a lot of words that are impossible to read clearly.
Opening the booklet, Li Qian made a final verification against the numbers written in the secret letter in his hand.
"Three and six...well, wait, six and seven, field, fourteen...it's six, back..."
Comparing the numbers in the secret letter, Li Qi wrote the corresponding words from the booklet on a piece of paper, and finally formed this sentence.
Wait for the fields to return to Qi, and attack Ji along the coast!