By February, the entire county had become a forward position.
A full 60,000 troops gathered here. In addition to the army, there were about 20,000 auxiliary soldiers and more than 10,000 civilians. The ratio of combat soldiers to auxiliary soldiers and civilians was about 2:1.
When Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty attacked the Xiongnu in Mobei, he mobilized more than 100,000 troops and about 500,000 to 600,000 civilians. The ratio was about 1:5.
Why is there such a big disparity?
Because Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty was marching from Chang'an to Mobei, a distance of more than 2,000 kilometers, naturally he had to recruit so many civilians to transport grain and grass, and most of the grain and grass was consumed on the road.
As for Qingzhou's attack on Jizhou, even from Pingyuan State to Wei County, the entire attack is estimated to be only two hundred kilometers, so naturally it does not require so much logistical support.
Since January, Qingzhou has entered a state of combat readiness, with a steady stream of grain, grass and baggage being transported from the rear to the front. Then the frontline troop groups began to adjust their strategic deployments in preparation for the decisive battle.
In the city of Qian County, Liu Bei, Chen Mu, Xun You, Jushou and others were caught up in the exciting coordination work. All kinds of official documents, orders, and transfers were flying to various places like snowflakes.
The officers of the Military Intelligence Department were almost in full action. In the county government mansion, there were hundreds of public officials coming in and out every day, almost without stopping for a moment. All the staff and officials were so busy that they were dizzy and were always in a state of inactivity.
operating status.
At this time, Chen Mu was checking the strength of troops in a room that served as a temporary office in the county government. This time Xun You and Tian Feng were in charge of tactical arrangements. The two of them were studying maps and arranging the deployment of various troops in the house next to them. Jushou was in another room.
Everyone was very busy checking the arrangement of food and supplies in the room.
"Young Master, we have verified everything. The total number of people is one hundred thousand nine hundred and eighty-one, and the actual number is one hundred thousand nine hundred and thirty-four. Except for the forty-seven people who did not arrive due to various reasons, there are
There is no concealment, false reporting, missing reporting or desertion at all."
The clerks did not have a good rest for several days and worked overtime to count all the rosters.
Chen Mu took the checked information and glanced at it casually. After a spot check, he found that there were no problems. He nodded and said, "Very good. Let's submit it to the state pastor for approval."
"only!"
The official went out carrying a large pile of official documents.
Seeing that there were no flaws in the results of several days of hard work, many officials at the venue finally breathed a sigh of relief and left one after another to take a rest.
Chen Mu was still studying the information on military units, and found that both the strength and types of troops had increased significantly. He couldn't help but nodded with satisfaction, and became more confident about whether this decisive battle could be won.
The year before last, the total strength of the Qingzhou Group was still about 100,000, of which there were about 80,000 frontline combat troops and 20,000 troops left behind in the counties and counties in the rear.
But after the decisive battle began this year, the total military strength increased instead of decreasing, and it has grown to 120,000.
If you include Cai Yang's troops in Xuzhou, it can reach 140,000, and if you include Guan Yu's troops in Luoyang, the actual total strength is about 240,000.
Although more than 20,000 soldiers were killed or maimed in the past two years, the losses were considerable.
However, Qingzhou's reserve troops have always been very sufficient, but both Liu Bei and Chen Mu believed that the troops were better than more numerous and did not expand the army.
If he expands his army as much as Yuan Shao did, given that Qingzhou now occupies half of Xuzhou and its total population has exceeded six million, it is not impossible to expand the total military strength to 300,000.
As for the troop strength for this battle, Chen Mu and Liu Bei believed that it should be around 100,000, and they still arranged for around 20,000 to stay in each county while the rest of the army went out.
After several rounds of careful selection and war deployment, the quality of the soldiers and horses under each general has reached an extremely high level.
At present, the deployment of troops, the arrangement of arms, and the deployment of men and horses are almost ready.
At present, among the various types of soldiers and horses, the number of cavalry is about 8,000, the number of naval troops is about 20,000, and the number of mixed troops such as infantry, archers, and weapon troops is more than 70,000.
These infantry also included special forces, such as Gao Shun's 5,000 heavy armored infantry encirclement army and Zhang Liao's more than 10,000 vanguard army.
In addition to the black armor heavy cavalry, the Qingzhou Army also had so many cavalry. Liu Bei had to thank his old friend Gongsun Zan.
Qingzhou is not close to the border, so it will be difficult to get so many horses.
Yuan Shao has been in business for many years, and Jizhou is close to Youzhou and Bingzhou, so it is not difficult to get horses, but there are only more than 10,000 cavalry.
Almost all the cavalry in Qingzhou were bought from Youzhou with the money earned from trade when Gongsun Zan and Liu Bei divided the Bohai Sea in the early years.
At the beginning, there were only one or two thousand people. When Gongsun Zan and Liu Bei divided the Bohai Sea, it expanded to 5,000, and then slowly accumulated to 8,000 now.
Liu Bei has been raising these cavalry as treasures. Even when Pingyuan City was lost, he was reluctant to use them. He planned to wait until the enemy attacked Gaotang and fought a decisive defensive battle.
Fortunately, Chen Mu cooperated closely with Luoyang and did not let Yuan Shao go to the south bank of the Yellow River, so Liu Bei was not allowed to use this trump card.
The reason why cavalry is precious is that they are strategic weapons, so one less one is lost.
The Han Dynasty was really short of horses. When Liu Bang founded the country, he couldn't even find a four-color horse-drawn carriage. When the Tang Dynasty was first established, they only managed to get 5,000 horses from here and there.
Except for the Song Dynasty, which had 210,000 horses in the 19th year after its founding, war horses were really scarce when other Han dynasties were first established.
Although Yuan Shao had more than 10,000 cavalry during the Battle of Guandu, this meant that Yuan Shao was wealthy and powerful.
At that time, Cao Cao only had 600 or 700 cavalry at his expense. Even these pitiful 6700 cavalry defeated Wen Chou's 5000 or 6000 cavalry. This shows how valuable horses are to the Central Plains dynasties or princes.
Liu Bei had been reluctant to send out cavalry troops to fight Yuan Shao before. That was because he was fighting a river defensive battle. The two sides fought around the Yellow River, so except for Zhang Fei's surprise attack on Ganling, he brought 3,000 cavalry.
, most of the time without cavalry.
But now that the counterattack begins, Jizhou is a plain area of 800 miles and a flat plain. The cavalry's ability to fight in the wild is much stronger than that of the infantry, so they must be brought along.
Chen Mu checked the troop allocation this time and was particularly attentive to the arrangement of arms.
Don't underestimate the arrangement of arms. In ancient times, an army must be properly equipped, whether it was various types of swordsmen, spearmen, archers, cavalry, heavy infantry, etc. in the infantry.
Otherwise, in an army of 5,000 people, 4,000 of them are archers, and the other 1,000 are all swordsmen and axes. How can we fight this battle?
Therefore, the configuration of troops is very important and there is no room for sloppiness.
In addition to cavalry, the others are infantry groups. Currently, the Qingzhou Army is divided into five infantry groups.
Gao Shun had 5,000 trapped troops, Zhang Liao had more than 10,000 vanguard troops, then Dian Wei had more than 10,000 troops, and Zang Ba had more than 10,000 troops.
Liu Bei personally commanded about 30,000 men. Although Qian Zhao was a general, he was subordinate to Liu Bei. Xu Chu was currently the commander of the yesterday's guard and was with Liu Bei.
As mentioned before, the army of the Han Dynasty was organized into a team of five people, two teams and a shi, five shi as a team, two teams as a tun, five tuns as a qu, five qus as a unit, and five units as an army.
Therefore, a normal army led by a general should have 12,500 troops. This is a very regular army configuration with all types of arms.
When Lu Zhi attacked the Yellow Turbans, he led the three armies with a total of 37,500 troops and defeated everyone.
But that was the regular army configuration of the unified dynasty. Naturally, it didn't pay so much attention in the troubled times of the late Han Dynasty.
Sometimes hundreds of thousands of people can be called an army. Even a small general with few soldiers dares to call himself a general. The standard system has long since begun to collapse.
It's just that since the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, everyone's military organization has always been like this, and there is always a reason for it. Firstly, such an arrangement allows for strict coordination of arms, and secondly, it facilitates management and makes it easier for generals to command operations.
Therefore, the Qingzhou Army organized its army in strict accordance with the orthodox regulations of the dynasty. The number, elite level, training methods and configuration of the troops were also uniformly arranged with reference to the above specifications.
Among them, except for the Xuanjia heavy cavalry and the trapped army, which are special units with only one thousand to five thousand personnel. The other armies also have soldiers privately deployed by the generals or their own personal guards, but the number of personnel is nothing more than
No more than ten thousand to fifteen thousand.
For example, although the Pioneer Army has been given a name, it is the third army with an official name besides the Black Armor Heavy Cavalry and the Trap Army. However, they are not a special unit, but an ordinary infantry group under Zhang Liao, and due to the selection conditions
It is extremely demanding, so the number of personnel is not enough, with only more than 11,000 people.
The composition of Zang Ba's army is more complicated. In addition to the ordinary soldiers recruited, there are also many brothers of Zang Ba and Sun Guan who were bandits in Mount Tai in their early years. Therefore, it is filled with some related households and many Taishan thieves.
They came to seek refuge, causing the number of people to exceed the limit, reaching 15,000.
So the current general situation of the Qingzhou Army is this. There are about 70,000 regular army infantry troops, led by Liu Bei, Zhang Liao, Dian Wei, Zang Ba, and Gao Shun, plus 8,000 cavalry troops, commanded by Zhang Fei, and
The navy of 20,000 people was led by Huang Zhong and Tai Shici.
In this way, the entire Qingzhou Army, consisting of one hundred thousand nine hundred and thirty-four people, is almost complete. After a series of coordination and deployment, the various troops will plan and arrange the offensive route with the staff headed by Chen Mu. .
It is worth mentioning that there are currently five great counselors in Qingzhou: Chen Mu, Jushu, Tian Feng, Xun Yu and Xun You, each with their own division of labor.
Originally there was supposed to be another Yan Zhong, but the old man is too old. You must know that Jia Xu is already 52 years old this year, and Yan Zhong is still Jia Xu's elder. He is already over 60 years old. His health is getting worse and worse, so he can only go back. Linzi cultivation.
Others, such as Hua Xin, Jian Yong, Sun Qian, Shiyi, Sun Shao, Wang Lang, Mao Jie, Cui Yan, etc., all have their own duties. Some are good at internal affairs, some are good at governance, some are good at public affairs, some are good at making laws, and none of them are good at it. They followed the war materials, so they served as local officials in various places, and did not serve as counselors with the army.
Therefore, apart from the five great counselors, the size of the counselors group during this expedition to Jizhou was not very large. But it was enough. Didn't Cao Cao mainly rely on the five great counselors? It would be useless for those counselors who are not good at fighting to come over. They might as well Let them go where they can use their talents.
After Chen Mu handled the personnel transfer, overall arrangements and deployment of troops for the entire army, totaling 100,000 people, he was ready to go over to meet Liu Bei. First, he would report the situation, and second, he planned to start the overall planning arrangements before the war. .
It is not easy to prepare for a large-scale military operation. In order to prepare for the Battle of Guandu, Yuan Shao began planning to go south to attack Xudu in June of the fourth year of Jian'an, that is, July 199 AD. By the time he officially set off, he had already arrived in Jian'an. In the first month of the fifth year, that is, February 200, it took half a year to prepare.
In addition, in order to prepare for the Battle of Chibi, Cao Cao spent more than seven months from the first month of the thirteenth year of Jian'an, that is, February 208 AD, to the official dispatch of troops in July of the thirteenth year of Jian'an. After completing the preliminary preparations, he began to go south to conquer Liu Bei, Liu Biao, and Sun Quan.
Although whether it was the Battle of Guandu or the Battle of Chibi, Yuan Shao and Cao Cao were both negative examples. After preparing for so long, they were beaten into a panic and ran away. But this also shows from the side that a battle will determine the outcome. , not that easy at all.
The preparations for Qingzhou actually started when Yuan Shao evacuated the plains. The time was from September of the second year of Yonghan to February of the third year of Yonghan. It has been almost five months of preparation. All the preliminary work has been done. Pretty much the same.
This includes writing letters of persuasion to the governors of various counties in Jizhou, spreading the news to the people in various places in Jizhou that Yuan Shao is treason, and Liu Bei is crusading in the name of the court as a righteous person, and contacting various princes to prepare for Guan Yu in Luoyang and Xianyu Fu Gongsun Zan in Youzhou. A series of arrangements such as time can be counted as part of the preliminary preparations.
Nowadays, all parts of Jizhou are infiltrated by the Military Intelligence Department, rumors are spreading, and undercurrents are surging. Many officials have secret communications with Qingzhou, and letters are exchanged frequently. When a large number of people learn about the coming war, they drag their families and move to the north or other places. , the southern princes also rushed to start the war.
For a time, the entire Guandong region, Henan, Hebei, and even Luoyang, Youzhou and Bingzhou were turbulent and stormy. As Luoyang and Qingzhou began to deploy heavy troops on the border, Yuan Shao also actively responded and prepared
Welcome the coming war.
At this time, after Chen Mu finished handling the work at hand, he slowly walked along the eaves corridor towards the hall of the county government mansion.
Liu Bei is now like an emotionless review machine. All official documents have to be sent to him, and he often cannot read them carefully because there are too many. They have all passed the review of Chen Muju, Tian Fengxunyou, so he
Just be responsible for signing, and the whole person will be numb.
The spring breeze is blowing in February, the weather is getting warmer and the sun is shining.
Chen Mu had just walked to the door when he suddenly saw Ju Shou walking towards him with a pile of official documents in his arms.
The two people immediately looked at each other, smiled, and spoke in unison.
"Are you here too?"
Then they looked at each other and smiled, becoming happy.