Chapter 79 The battle of wits and courage in the confrontation stage
Chen Mu camped outside the theater pavilion.
The camp stretches for several miles, with flags fluttering. It is connected to the Wei River in the north and Hongqing Mountain in the south, as if it wants to occupy the entire plain.
At night, while he was writing a book in the camp, suddenly there was a loud bang of drums outside the camp, and thousands of zhengs sounded.
Chen Mu was unmoved, as if he hadn't heard anything, and continued to write.
He was unmoved, which can be understood as calm.
However, the strange thing is that even though the mountains are already so noisy, the entire camp is silent and motionless.
After beating gongs and drums for a long time, the Kwantung Army continued to do its own thing as if nothing was wrong.
Zhang Liao was sleeping soundly in his tent. He was woken up by urination in the middle of the night. He got up and went to pee. The patrol guards on duty outside saluted him and said hello.
As a last resort, he could only take out the cotton from his ears, and then he heard the sound of gongs and drums coming from the mountain. He couldn't help but wonder: "Dong Jun from the mountain really came to harass me. When did it happen?"
The patrolling guard chief smiled and said: "Captain, let them knock for a while. Even if we are too tired, they won't be able to disturb us. The Prime Minister has said that if we are to stay still, they don't have the guts to attack.
I only dare to beat gongs and drums."
"Well, continue patrolling and be careful."
Zhang Liao found a secluded place to urinate in water, then took a lazily stroll back to his tent, stuffed his tent with cotton, and continued to sleep soundly.
Chen Mu did not choose to camp at the foot of the mountain, but about two to three hundred meters away from Hongqing Mountain.
Therefore, although the defenders on the mountain followed Xu Rong's orders and beat gongs and drums vigorously to create a posture of attacking, they were far away and the sound was not as loud as expected. In addition, the soldiers were stuffed with cotton.
Can't hear it at all.
Therefore, Xu Rong's plan to tire out the enemy was obviously over-thought and had no effect at all. Li Cai ordered the soldiers to knock on the enemy all night long, even though he was almost exhausted, it had no effect on the enemy.
The next day, Li Cai, who was on the mountain, saw from a distance that the Kwantung Army camp was getting up to drill normally, making fires and cooking. Everything was in order and without any panic.
"how so?"
Li Cai was confused. He had been knocking all night, so why did the Kwantung Army seem to be fine?
Aren't they afraid of a sneak attack in the middle of the night?
However, Li Cai certainly could not have imagined that with the introduction of new species, cotton plugs in the ears to isolate noise would appear on the stage of history in advance.
You know, before cotton existed, people could not find anything to replace it.
It's soft, comfortable, and can be twisted into balls and stuffed into your ears.
Although you can also twist strips of cloth into balls and stuff them inside, the problem is that the strips of cloth are not soundproof. As for traditional heating materials such as reed catkins and linen, not to mention, they have no soundproofing effect.
Therefore, this series of operations of the Kwantung Army obviously touched Li Cai's intellectual blindness, and he did not understand how they managed to remain unmoved in a noisy environment.
At this time, a group of Kwantung Army cooking soldiers in the distance ran to Xihe River to fetch water. In winter, the water in Xihe River is very shallow, like a small stream. After all, its source is the Weihe River. The Weihe River is in dry season in winter. As a
The flow of water in tributaries is naturally less.
The trickling river just passed by Hongqing Mountain. Li Cai stood on the mountain and saw someone from the Huotou Army at the foot of the mountain walking to the edge of the mountain and shouting to the mountain: "Why don't you stop knocking? Keep knocking. Then play music and dance.
!”
After that, he also danced an elegant dance of the ancient Chinese nation.
Li Cairen was dumbfounded.
Not very harmful, but extremely insulting.
"Fire the arrow!"
Frustrated, he ordered the arrows to be fired in a rage.
For a while, arrows rained down one after another.
But bows and arrows are not machine guns. Even if you stand on a mountain and shoot upward, the range will be much longer, and it will take a while to hit someone.
So when they saw the cluster of arrows flying towards them, the fire-headed soldiers who were more than a hundred meters away ran away quickly. When they were out of range, they turned around and laughed loudly, constantly provoking the defenders on the mountain, and almost made them angry to death.
.
After the man had gone far away, Li Cai's soldiers cautiously asked him: "Sima, are you still knocking tonight?"
"Knock! Why don't you knock? It will disturb them to death!"
Li Cai gritted his teeth and responded.
He didn't believe that the Kwantung Army was really not affected at all.
Here Xu Rong is thinking about a battle of wits and courage with Chen Mu, and over there Zhang Fei is also garrisoning troops at Gaoting, three miles away from Fengyi.
Compared to Chen Mu, Zhang Fei felt much more uncomfortable, because Chen Mu's order to him was to keep an eye on Dong Jun at Zuo Fengyi and not allow him to attack, which made his hands itchy and unbearable. He rode on dark clouds to chase the snow all day long.
Go outside the city to challenge the generals to fight.
Niu Fu was beaten by Zhu Jun until he couldn't take care of himself. He thought that Zhu Jun was awesome. That was because Zhu Jun was a famous general who conquered the Yellow Turbans. You and Zhang Fei were only powerful in single combat. How could you fight?
So in the face of Zhang Fei's provocation, Niu Fu ignored it and stood firm in the city. At midnight, he chose to go out of the city for a surprise attack and sent five thousand soldiers to attack.
Unexpectedly, Zhang Fei was a bit rough, and he actually set up an ambush early, and the Niu Fu returned in embarrassment, losing more than a thousand men and horses.
For a time, Niu Fu no longer dared to come out to cause trouble, and stayed in the city wholeheartedly.
In Wannian County, Gongsun Zan's troops secretly bypassed Zuo Fengyi and arrived at Huangbaicheng in the north of Chiyang.
What is this area?
It is the location of the tombs of most emperors in the history of the Western Han Dynasty.
From Chiyang down, there are Gaoling, Yangling, Changling, Pinling, Anling, Maoling, etc.
Don't think that these are all tombs. In fact, these are the names of counties.
In addition to Jingzhaoyin, Youfufeng, Haoxian, Xixian, and Liuxian, there are more than ten counties to the west and north of Chang'an, gathering a large population.
The people who moved to Luoyang began to move westward one after another due to the battlefield in the east, and were scattered in these counties.
Because except for the rich, the people at the bottom have almost no ability to move long distances and can only find a way out locally.
The Military Intelligence Department has investigated that in the counties around Chang'an, less than half of the original one million population has died, and the remaining part has moved to Hanzhong, Nanyang and Dongtou Kwantung Army, and returned to Luoyang. There are still about hundreds of thousands of people scattered.
in these surrounding cities.
Therefore, Chen Mu's strategic intention was not to conquer Chang'an at all, but to plunder the population.
certainly.
You can't say that either.
After all, these people from Luoyang are living as hard as weeds. Now the Kwantung Army has given them a way to survive and allow them to go home. For most people, it is a matter of returning from hell to heaven. No one will go
conflict.
The mighty Youzhou cavalry marched towards Chiyang. The defenders of Chiyang only had one or two thousand people. They didn't even fight. They abandoned the city and fled, allowing Gongsun Zan to easily take over the entire city.
"Anbang, relocate the people!"
Gongsun Zan waved his hand, and all the surviving people in Chiyang joined enthusiastically. Except for the locals in Chiyang, all the people from Luoyang from outside joined the migrating team and were protected by cavalry as they headed east.
Don't think that relocating people is a simple matter. Dong Zhuo spent nearly a year to relocate Luoyang's population by force.
It took Cao Cao three or four years to move Hanzhong and the Jianghuai area, and he was taken away in two parts.
The Yongjia Rebellion and Yiguan's migration to the south lasted for decades. Countless people died on the way during the migration.
From this point of view, it can be seen that ancient population mobility was far from being as simple as imagined now.
Food has to be eaten one bite at a time, and Chen Mu does not expect to evacuate the entire Guanzhong within a month, but he believes that the current population of Guanzhong is actually not as large as imagined, and many people from Luoyang hope to return to
Luoyang, so the difficulty of migration is not as difficult as imagined.
People say that it is difficult to leave one's homeland and to relocate again. Most of the people in Guanzhong were forcibly relocated by Dong Zhuo. Naturally, many people want to return to their hometown. Now that the Kwantung Army is willing to send troops and food to rescue them, I think most people will be willing.
As for those who don't want to leave, just let them go.
The most important thing for Chen Mu to relocate the population this time is to save time.
He must restore Luoyang's population to at least 300,000 within three months, so that the fields in the Luoyang Basin will not be barren and food can be cultivated before next spring plowing.
As long as the land in Luoyang can be cultivated, the pressure on grain and grass in the rear will be much less.
After all, transporting grain and grass from Jizhou and Qingzhou is equivalent to sending it from Hebei and Shandong to Shaanxi. It spans almost half of China, and the losses in the middle are also considerable. As time goes by, whether Wang Fen is willing to continue supplying is not a matter of course. Qingzhou alone has
It may seriously damage the vitality and affect people's livelihood.
When Gongsun Zan took the opportunity to relocate the people of Chiyang, Chen Mu fought wits and courage with Xu Rong. For several nights, Li Cai continued to beat gongs, drums, and trumpets on the mountain. In the end, the Kwantung Army was not exhausted to death.
Tired myself to death.
After discovering that the strategy of tiring the enemy was of no use, Xu Rong came up with another plan. He sent people to take a detour from behind Hongqing Mountain, which was almost the area of Weinan City in later generations, and sent people to attack the Kwantung Army's food road.
Hongqing Mountain is still very important to Xu Rong. Not only are there high mountains in this area, but also the famous Mount Li is located here. The Kwantung Army is not familiar with the roads in the mountains, but Xu Rong has local people as guides and can easily navigate through these mountains and forests.
Weaving back and forth.
But after the soldiers and horses he sent spent a long time and detoured, they looked at the endless Weinan Plain and discovered that the Kwantung Army did not transport food and grass from Zheng County at all, but from Xiagui on the other side of the river.
County shipping.
The geographical location of the Kwantung Army at that time was very simple. Xiting was connected to the Weihe River in the north and Hongqing Mountain in the south. Behind Xiting was not Zheng County, but Xiagui County to the north of the Weihe River.
Xiting - Xiagui - Zheng County, the difference is that Xiting and Zhengxian are on the south bank of the Weihe River, while Xiagui is on the north bank of the Weihe River, across the river from Weinan City in later generations.
This means that the entire plain area of Weinan City is freed up. Originally, Xu Rong thought that the Kwantung Army's food route was sent directly from Zheng County to Xiting. In this way, he could rely on the Hongqing Mountains to appear and disappear, and he could constantly harass the people on the plains.
Food transport convoy.
However, the people he sent were dumbfounded, because Zheng County was indeed the center of grain and grass in the rear of the Kwantung Army, but they had first transported it to Xiagui across the river, and then from Xiagui to Xiting.
Therefore, the Kwantung Army did not receive food from its own rear, but from the Wei River in the north. They cut off other people's food routes and directly cut off the loneliness.
Xu Rong was speechless when he heard the report from the returning general.
He has never seen anyone delivering food like this.
However, Xu Rong also had to admit that this routine was indeed effective.
Because this is different from the Battle of Changping. In the Battle of Changping, Zhao State was greedy and wanted to occupy Shangdang County, which led to its own front being too long. In addition, its logistics was far inferior to that of Qin State, and it eventually collapsed.
But the current situation is different from the Warring States Period. It is almost equivalent to the Qin State going to war with the four kingdoms of Han, Zhao, Wei, and Qi. Although the battle lines are very long, the logistical pressure on both sides is not great, so even if the Kwantung Army takes a long way to deliver food and grass, Xu Rong still
There's really nothing we can do.
For a time, the two sides were in a tense and exciting confrontation stage, and the situation fell into a stalemate. The Kwantung Army neither attacked nor retreated. It stood like a mountain in the area of the theater pavilion, as if it were a tourist, standing here to look at the scenery, which made people feel uncomfortable.