Han Zuo Gaomen

Chapter 730
In June, when Qiqi, the military chariots are in order.

It was late June when Jiehu's army and the Huainan army really had direct contact.Jiehu's army of [-] infantry and cavalry arrived in Yingkou. Although they have not yet launched a formal attack on Yingkou, small-scale conflicts between them have continued.

Yingshui runs through the southern part of Henan and connects to Heluo. It is the most important tributary of the middle Huaihe River.Naturally, once the north is to be used for the south, Yingkou will become the biggest breakthrough in the middle of the Huai River. Once snatched, the army can continuously pour into the Huai River, and go down the river to Shouchun!

Therefore, Yingkou is also the fortress where the Huainan Army has the strongest troops stationed except for Shouchun Town.Here in Yingkou, there are strong fortresses on the left and right, and the water is used as a defense. The two fortresses on the left and right are equipped with thousands of troops.

In midsummer, when the water rises, the river becomes especially open, which has some adverse effects on defense. It is difficult to stop the enemy from attacking the river, and it is not easy for the left and right fortresses to respond to each other.But at this time when Jiehu did not have a strong navy, the Huainan Army still held the initiative on the waterway, and overall it was still in an advantageous position.

The former commander of Jiehu's army was Shihu's general Zhang Jackal.After their troops arrived at the east bank of Yingkou, they did not directly launch an attack on the Huainan Army stationed in Yingkou. On the post, they chose a place to dig deep and build a fortress, and put on a posture that seemed to be a long-term confrontation.

In the past few months of preparing for the war, the Huainan Army has also made full arrangements for the operation of the Huaibei Land.The area along the Huai River is not only solid and clear, and there is no human habitation, even some vegetation such as bamboo and wood on the ground that can be used for military purposes and can provide shelter at the same time.

All these tasks were handed over to the Huaibei refugees in Nantou. While on the road, they undertook these labors to donate to the military and exchange food and other survival resources.It can be regarded as taking into account the purge of the region while appeasement of the refugees, such a convenient arrangement saves the Huainan army from deliberate investment, and the effect is not bad.

Today, the area between Huaihe and Yingying is not completely barren of grass, but there are no large-scale forests or bamboo forests. Both sides are exposed to each other's surveillance. Once there is a large-scale dispatch, it is difficult to maintain hidden.It is true that this has caused difficulties for the Huainan army's sneak attack, but Jiehu can't even think about sneaking a surprise attack.In particular, there is a lack of bamboo and wood materials obtained locally, which caused a lot of trouble for Jiehu at the beginning of his foothold.

Because not enough materials can be obtained, the Jiehu camp has not been completed for a long time to have enough protection, so we have to keep vigilant day and night.The Huainan army also made full use of this geographical advantage. Whenever night fell, boats and boats on the Huai River moved in unison, holding up torches and beating drums to harass the enemy.

In such an environment, Jiehu has to build camps during the day and keep vigilant at night.I was exhausted from a long journey, and I had no peace day and night, and it was miserable for a while.

In this process, the two sides are also fighting wits and courage.After sweeping for two consecutive days, taking advantage of Jiehu's paralysis, a group of hundreds of infantry with swords and shields came ashore in the middle of the night, rushed into a tent on the outer edge of Jiehu and killed them, winning a small victory.However, the next time he tried to repeat the old trick, Jiehu had already dispatched soldiers to hide by the water in straw felts. As soon as the boat docked, he was boarded by Yudu. On the warship, more than [-] soldiers died on the bank of the river.

In order to provoke the general to disturb the enemy, both sides also did everything possible.Jiehu put the corpses of the Huainan Army's dead soldiers into the riverside with wooden stakes, killing the corpses to vent their anger.The Huainan army also floated the beheaded Jiehu corpse on the river to lure fish and shrimp.

But in terms of military strength, after all, Jiehu still has the advantage, even if it is only in the front line, it is better than the Yingkou defenders.After the initial tentative contact, the slave general Zhang Jackal took turns to divide his troops and rush to build the camp day and night, while maintaining a sufficient guard force.Even if the Huainan Army harassed the enemy again, they did not dare to go ashore easily because of insufficient troops. They watched a fortress made of earth and stone rise from the ground!

Similar fortresses do not only appear near gills.Similar garrison fortresses appeared one after another in Xiashi City downstream, and on the opposite bank of Bagong Mountain directly in front of Shouchun City.When these fortresses were all built and Jiehu had a preliminary defensive front in Huaibei, the slave soldiers became more active and began to attack frequently to pull out the wharf and water fortress built by the Huainan Army on the opposite bank.

In this process, Jiehu's superiority in strength and the strong mobility of cavalry can be said to be brought into full play.Often a temporary simple pier with no more than a hundred troops stationed is besieged by thousands of soldiers at every turn.In such a battle, the Huainan army naturally had no way to resist, so they could only float into the water to avoid the edge temporarily.

The lack of troops is the biggest shortcoming of the Huainan Army, and the Jiehu army has brought its strength advantage to the fullest when it first arrived. It is difficult to completely sweep the Huainan Army into the Huai River by relying on the superiority of numbers alone. Keep a foothold on the opposite side.

At this stage, the performance of the Huainan Army can be described as extremely poor.Although the navy has an absolute advantage, the strongholds along the river have been pulled out one after another. The navy cannot quickly land and fight, and it is difficult to pose a direct threat to the enemy.

Of course, this is also due to Shen Zhezi's tactical arrangements. Since there are more chariots in the town for formation, it is inevitable to give up on the construction of the camp on the other side of the Huai River.The reason why some insignificant strongholds are still left is that they want to use this kind of hand-to-hand combat in order to cause as many casualties as possible to the Jiehu forwards to dispel their spirits.

However, these slave soldiers completely put on the way of bullying the few. If they encountered resistance for a while, they were not in a hurry to attack. Instead, they paused and waited for the reinforcements from the rear to gather, and then formed an formation to push out with completely superior forces.And those camps are not lacking in crudeness, and they are not strong strongholds at all. Facing such enemies, they can only be bombarded into the sewers, and it is really difficult to cause any major damage.

On the opposite side of the Huai River, fortresses were erected everywhere, and after these fortresses were established, they were quickly filled with sufficient slave soldiers.These slave soldiers echoed each other, and if they attacked one of them, the ten parties rushed to help, and soon built a complete and thorough defense network across the Huai River.And when this defensive network was built and formed a substantial deterrent to the Huainan Army, the slave army began to enter the frontline battlefield one by one.

Due to the wide field of vision on the other side, the Huainan Army can clearly see the movements of Jiehu's army.The slave army has a unit of [-] people and maintains a very stable frequency. Almost every day, [-] to [-] slave troops arrive at the Huaibei battlefield, and soon fill up an area of ​​Huaibei.Looking around, the opposite bank was already full of banners and flags, and countless slave soldiers entered and exited the camp, howling along the river.

The intention of the slave army is obvious, it is to use this method of arranging troops to disintegrate the resistance of the Huainan army as much as possible.

Of course, the terrain in Huaibei is vast and vast, not to mention hundreds of thousands, even a few million slave soldiers, it is difficult to fill every inch of land.In addition, in the low-lying areas of the Huaibei Plain, there are not garrisons everywhere, so the garrison front is still very long, and there are gaps between each department, ranging from several miles to tens of miles.

However, with such a short distance and the flat terrain, although the battalions were established independently, there was no danger of being defeated one by one.Once the Huainan army dares to take risks to attack one of them, it will soon be besieged by other ministries and rangers!

As the slave soldiers officially arrived in the Huaihe River, Shen Zhezi spent almost all his board and lodging on the boat these few days. He moored on the river and looked at the formation of the slave soldiers, feeling quite disappointed.To be honest, Shen Zhezi had never dreamed of following the example of Lu Xun, the former sage in Jiangdong, and burning the company camp for [-] miles when he heard that the slave army was about to come south in a big way.But when I was actually on the battlefield, I felt that it was a bit unreliable to borrow the method of the predecessors.

Lu Xun was able to set fire to the company camp because the Shu army was far away from the waterways and scattered camps in the mountains and forests, which provided the geographical environment for the fire attack.But now there are many open places on the Huai River, and the dense bamboo and wood forests have been cleared by the Huainan army first. Even if they use fire attack, it is extremely difficult for the fire to spread, let alone a burning company for seven hundred miles.

Of course, it cannot be said that the Huainan Army's previous clearing of bamboo and wood materials was a petty mistake. Even if the Huainan Army did not cut down, the slave army would use local materials for military use when they came to the south.It would be too irresponsible to leave a large amount of military materials to the enemy simply for the delusion of a former sage.

Those who watched the battle with Shen Zhezi were many old people from Huainan, and some of them even experienced the battles in Shilenan in the early years.At this time, looking at the appearance of the slave army, I immediately felt that the current momentum of the slave army was quite different from that of ten years ago.

Of course, this is also nonsense. Although Shi Le had the prestige of defeating Sima Yue's army in his early years, he was only a general under the Han and Zhao dynasties. Dun Bing Ge Bei tried in vain to attack Jianye in the south.

Although he failed in the end, the trip was not fruitless. At that time, many remaining beggars who were active in Yuzhou were taken over by Shi Le and became the backbone of his future sweep of Hebei.For example, Shi Kan, who performed well in the war with Han and Zhao, and Ran Min's father, Shi Zhan, were all included in Shi Le's command during this period.

Today, Shi Le seems to have become the lord of the Central Plains, exhausting the Chinese soldiers and coming south, the weather has naturally changed qualitatively compared to the early years.

The slave army put on such a formation, which seemed to be a bit of a majestic teacher.It seems that Shi Hu really listened to Shen Zhezi's call to Huaibei.But this is not enough to make Shen Zhezi secretly happy. The slave army suppressed massively and set up forts everywhere on the Huai River, which not only brought huge psychological pressure to the Huainan Army, but also had to expand their defenses. The small number of troops dispersed the actual predicament along the upper Huaihe line.

Of course, if you can have a deep understanding of the actual situation of each unit of the slave army, it is not impossible to guess the focus of the slave army's strategy by watching the formation and make defensive adjustments.However, Shen Zhezi didn't dare to believe the military information obtained from Zu Yue. Even if Zu Yue didn't harm him, he might not be able to know the truth about his situation in the slave army.

But the information is still useful after all. At least it can be confirmed that Shi Hu and Guo Ao have deep grievances. In this way, Lu Yongjun, who guards the vortex, can be transferred back to Shouchun, and the plight of Shouchun's lack of soldiers can be slightly alleviated.

On the last day of June, Shihu's Chinese army tent appeared in the enemy's camp, and sent envoys to call for battle along the river.

(End of this chapter)