Han Zuo Gaomen

Chapter 1457
In early spring and February, Jiangdong is already the season for new vegetation and recovery of all things, but in Hebei, it is still frosty and frozen, and there are large tracts of monotonous and dull pale snow between the sky and the earth, and the vitality of all things is also oppressed by this. Depressed to the extreme.

But what should happen will inevitably happen, and the oppressed vitality will eventually break through this layer of shackles until it blooms brighter.

As one of the frontline battalions of the king's division, Dongwu City had assembled an army of [-] in the past cold winter.This is only the strength of a camp in Tobu City. If you count Qinghe Ancient City, which is a corner with Tobu City, and Guangchuan, which is further north, there are more than [-] main forces of the East Road King's Army here.

In the past winter, although there was no direct battle between the East Road Master and the Jie army, the task was still not easy.The straight-line distance between Tobu City and Xindu of Jie Kingdom is less than [-] miles, and there are no mountains, rivers and land hazards within the territory for defense.

Although the severe cold weather in Hebei has greatly restricted the military activities of both the North and the South, the country of Jie first has the advantage of fighting at home, and the established cavalry army has adapted to the combat environment in Hebei. is unknown.

If Shi Hu, the host of Jie, really wants to choose to attack in the winter army and attack Tobu City, Tobu City can only guard against death, and can only fight to the death to prevent the country of Jie from breaking through this line of defense and entering the already naturalized country. Southern Hebei area.

As the general of the Eastern Route Army, Shen Mu was naturally unwilling to hand over the initiative on the battlefield to others.But under the constraints of this kind of weather, no matter how hard he strives to forge ahead, he can't take the initiative to attack Xiang Xindu regardless of many practical difficulties.

It should be noted that in addition to gathering heavy troops in Dongwu City, the logistics supplies of the East Road King's Division are also stored here.With such a large amount of materials, it is necessary to maintain the East Road Master Wang until the warm spring and flood season, and there is absolutely no room for loss.Once there is any mistake in these materials, the nearly [-] troops of the East Road Master will be paralyzed on the land of Eastern Jidong due to lack of food, which will bring irreparable losses to the Northern Expedition.

Because, the current Shen Mu does not seek meritorious deeds, but seeks no faults.As long as the results of last year can be maintained until the spring blossoms in the new year, it is only a matter of time before the letter of the Jie Kingdom is broken, and this time is destined not to be too long.

Perhaps it was because of the end-of-year struggle of the Central Route Army, during the most difficult period of winter, the worst situation of the Jie army's attack did not happen.

With the passage of time, the hearts of the officers and men of the Eastern King's Division gradually eased. Time is firmly on the side of the Southern King's Division. It will once again resume the rhythm of triumphant and enterprising like last year. No matter how many troops Xindu has gathered from the Jie Kingdom, they will not be afraid of a battle.

You must know that what is currently entering Hebei is only the main front-line combat force of Wang Shi, and in Qingzhou, Henan, there are still a large number of Qingxufu soldiers on standby, and they can reinforce the northward at any time.

The country of Jie is currently in decline. In addition to taking advantage of the severe winter and the critical moment when Wang Shi is not easy to dispatch, there is still a certain threat to counterattack. Once the war progress is dragged to spring, the weather will no longer be a constraint. In terms of mobilization efforts, the size of the Jie country is far inferior to that of the Xingtai.

But after the new year, there were still some weird signs between Tobu Castle and Xindu.

It was the scout army of Tobu City who first discovered the signs of the mutation. Although Tianshi also brought serious restrictions to the activities of Wang Shi's scouts, in order to ensure the safety of Tobu City and be able to control the dynamics of the Jie army at all times, Shen Mu still Many scouts were sent.Although the scouts could not directly reach Xindu, the farthest they had moved was Zaoqiang City, which was less than a hundred miles away from Xindu.

As an important stronghold outside Xindu, Zaoqiang's strategic significance is similar to that of Jiangdong's quarrying in Jiankang.Around September last year, the East Road Master also once occupied this territory, but under the fierce counterattack of the Jie army, they finally changed hands with regret.Later, the Jie Kingdom gathered heavy troops here and used it as a bridgehead to defend against the king's division of Tobu City.

To be honest, since the beginning of winter, Shen Mu has been somewhat unable to see clearly the operations of the Jie Kingdom.It is a normal idea to send heavy troops to defend Yu Zaoqiang, but in the next few months, Zaoqiang's garrison strength fluctuated severely.

Most of the time, the dense army flocks to this place, not only the city is full, but there are also many soldiers outside the city.On rare occasions, there were almost no signs of garrison activity at the top of the city, and there was no scout activity in the outskirts of the city at all, so that Wang Shi's scouts could even bypass Zaoqiang directly and arrive at the suburbs of Xindu to spy on the situation.

Shen Mu imagined many possibilities, but he was not sure. He once wanted to send the [-] troops stationed in the ancient city of Qinghe to Zaoqiang to try to occupy this important place, but he was worried that this might be a slap in the face of the Jie Kingdom. Once this action is taken, this part of the army will be surrounded by the Jie country.

After all, although there are more than [-] troops stationed in Tobu City, they cannot be mobilized without authorization. It is necessary to ensure the safety of the supply camp and firmly defend the Qinghe North border defense line.Once the old city army is thrown into Zaoqiang, and the Jie army goes back and forth again, this part of the army will be reduced to a dangerous situation of self-destruction.

Therefore, when the front-line scouts detected Zaoqiang's garrison retreating and the city defenses were empty again in late January, although Shen Mu was already itchy, he still restrained himself from making some overly aggressive temptations, and only increased the investment. Scout scale.

But in this season, the realm is still densely covered with frost and snow. Although the scale of the scouts has expanded, the actual scope of investigation has not been greatly expanded.After all, the scouts were outside, and there was no chance for Nono to supplement them, and between Tobu City and Xindu, Master Wang did not stay in a stronghold.

But in this way, at least the vicinity of Zaoqiang was completely covered by Master Wang's scouts.However, the weak city defense lasted for several days, and the Jie army completely disappeared here, but there were some strong bandits passing through the city from time to time.

Combined with the letters sent back by the frontline scouts, Shen Mu finally made up his mind and dispatched [-] infantry to march towards Zaoqiang city.The reason why it was difficult for him to make a decision before was that the winter march was different from the past. Due to the severe restrictions on logistics and distribution, once the troops were dispatched, they had to directly carry sufficient supplies with the army.If we still follow the practice of marching in batches, once we encounter bad weather such as wind and snow on the way, the front batch of soldiers will be in danger of running out of food at any time.

Regardless of the supply of food and armor, Master Wang is absolutely excellent.Three thousand infantry plus armaments are enough to be used in Jie country to arm tens of thousands of people. Shen Mu naturally needs to be cautious about this.

Marching in winter is really hard work, especially for the [-] soldiers with all their luggage, and the daily journey can hardly be more than [-] to [-] miles.The distance from Dongwu City to Zaoqiang is less than [-] li, and the journey by Wang Shi still takes a long time.

But just as the army was marching along this route, the abnormal recruitment from Zaoqiang's side became more and more serious.The Jie army disappeared without a trace, needless to say, but there are many refugees from north to south, appearing near Zaoqiang.

Shen Mu naturally knew that there were a large number of villagers gathered around Jie Guoxin Capital.During the advance of the Wang division, similar to the northern border of the Qing Dynasty, including the Bohai Sea, and Guangzong in the Central Route Army theater, the rural households were almost completely requisitioned by the retreating Jie army.Even in Zhangwu, Yanguo and other counties in the north, according to the letters from Xu Mao on the sea route and Wen Fangzhi on the Liao border, the people were severely conscripted by the Jie army.

The gathering of such a huge mass of people is no longer able to be clearly detected by scouts simply looking at the flowers and peeping from a distance.But even according to the most ambiguous estimate, the expropriation of villagers across states and counties in Jie country, and even some rural tycoons Wubi are not spared. The current letter is all around, and at least the gathering of people will cost hundreds of thousands remember.

It is also because of such a large gathering of living people around Xindu, Tobu City has never been able to find out exactly how many Jie troops are assembled inside and outside Xindu.

Although Xindu also has a lot of countrymen, officials and ordinary people who came to seek refuge with Master Wang, but one is that there are no real heavyweights, and the information provided is also different, and the other is that Shen Mu does not dare to listen to hearsay, so that he does wrong judgment.

It is not surprising that there are many people fleeing from Xindu Youshi, and it has been uninterrupted since last year.The reason why Zaoqiang classified it as a strange omen is that the scale of the refugees fleeing south they detected was too large. If they let the horses gallop in the wild, they would encounter several fleeing teams within a day. The number ranges from thousands, and there are even large teams of up to [-] people!
When Shen Mu learned of this, first of all, he felt a warning sign in his heart, guessing that the refugees came from the south or it was a cover-up that the Jie army was preparing to launch an attack.You must know that groups of refugees, hundreds or thousands are common, but if the scale is really too large, there is no doubt that there must be some powerful factors behind it.

The bad situation is naturally what Shen Mu was worried about. The Jie army used the refugees as a cover for its army movements, and drove the refugees south to attack the defense line of Tobu City.The good situation is that some unknown changes occurred in the country of Jie, which caused Xindu to lose control of the people gathered outside the city, causing a large number of people to flee.

No matter what the situation is, Tobu Castle King Master must make preparations in advance.You must know that even if the situation is good, if such a large number of exiles come to the south, if there is still no hope of life, it will also cause a riot of corruption.

Therefore, Shen Mu made a decisive decision, and first sent people to send messages to the general of Yecheng and Guangzong Hurun to express their emergency, and then ordered the three thousand troops in the front to immediately divide the troops into two thousand, and seize Zaoqiang first with light clothes.Even if the main force of the Jie country attacks and occupies Zaoqiang one step ahead of time, it will be able to slightly curb the Jie country's offensive.

At the same time, [-] infantry stayed behind to guard the luggage on the way, and Tobu City sent another [-] light cavalry northward.If the Jie army captures Zaoqiang, the two thousand cavalry will be the first batch of reinforcements in Dongwu City, and if the Jie army does not come, they will completely occupy Zaoqiang City after joining forces.

At the same time, Shen Mu ordered the [-] troops from Qinghe Ancient City to move closer to the camp of Tobu City, and he himself led [-] troops to follow the cavalry's back and march straight towards Zaoqiang. The army joined the battle here.

After years of experience in being in charge, Shen Mu now has the air of a general, even in the event of a sudden change, he can still dispatch all parties in an orderly manner.

Although Tobu City, including the scouts, had mobilized nearly [-] troops, even if Shen Mu was attacked by the Jie army on the way, the troops could still be maintained for a while if they were divided up and responded to each other.Although the country of Jie has the advantage of the home field, the master of Tobu City has endured a bitter winter, and the soldiers have not lost much strength, and the great achievement of destroying the country is in front of them, which is enough to motivate the soldiers to fight to the death.

And if the Jie army bypasses the front to attack Tobu City, Tobu City will still have [-] guards, and the [-] troops from Qinghe Old City will follow up to reinforce them. Even if they are besieged and attacked by the Jie army, they can maintain it a little Support until the arrival of the Hurun Department of Guangzong City.In this way, even if the country of Jie exhausted all the soldiers in the country and sent tens of thousands of troops, it would be difficult to break through the defense line of Tobu City in a short time.

As long as the war is delayed for a while, it will be March in a blink of an eye. Even if the East Road King Division is suppressed across the board, Xie Ai, the Central Route Army of Xiangguo, will have enough time to react and attack Xindu, the old nest of Jieguo.

Jie country has recently moved its capital, and people's hearts are hard to follow. Once the old nest of Xindu is breached, no matter how many troops are dispatched, they will lose sight of one another, and the army will become rogue souls.Even if it can be maintained for a short period of time, the war will be dragged directly to April and May, which is the most favorable time for the Wang Division as a whole to fight.

Shen Mu in the old years, although he did not lack the experience of bravely advancing and conquering achievements, but he did not have a comprehensive analysis without thinking about victory and first thinking about defeat as he is now.And whether this is intentional or not, is the huge difference between the generals!
(End of this chapter)