Han Zuo Gaomen

Chapter 735 Sweeping Huaibei
In the ancient war environment, the significance of water power is beyond doubt.Especially in the case of confrontation between the North and the South, the control and utilization of the waterways will often lead the war and even the direction of the national destiny!
If the offense and defense of the Land of Shouchun are only obsessed with winning or losing on the frontal battlefield, it is undoubtedly ignoring this excellent geographical environment bestowed by God.And if the geographical conditions are not used to the limit, then whether this place is abandoned or kept, it will not have the original meaning.

Being strong in the north and weak in the south is a natural limitation that is difficult to overcome in this era. Once a powerful military group rises in the north, it does not even need to form a complete monopoly on the Central Plains to form a powerful suppression of the southern regime.

But even so, once the situation of division and confrontation is formed, if you want to conquer the south and make contributions to complete the unification of the north and the south, you have to prepare troops and plan for years, and you have to wait until the regime in the south is corrupted to the extreme.In addition to manpower, it also depends on the weather. This is because the southern regime has an absolute geographical advantage.The Jianghuai River is a natural moat, and mediocrity cannot be crossed.

The heaven and the earth have their own great power, which is often beyond the reach of human power.In the chaotic times of the Northern and Southern Dynasties, the battle front was maintained at the Huaihe River most of the time. They were quickly taken back again, and it was difficult to occupy the north for a long time.

Until the Qi-Liang transition period, Pei Shuye, the governor of Yuzhou in the Southern Dynasty, surrendered to the Northern Wei Dynasty with Shouyang. Huainan land, but every time it ended in failure.Trapped by this, Xiao Yan even thought about building weirs and dikes in the middle of the Huaihe River, so as to submerge Hefei, Shouchun and other places in one fell swoop.

However, this conception project cost a lot, coupled with the strong troops of the Northern Wei Dynasty to stop it, it could not be done in the end.And a similar strategy was used by Sun Quan, the ruler of Wu, as early as the Three Kingdoms period and was implemented by the Soochow army.

But in this process, the Nanliang army did not do nothing.In this battle, the Southern Dynasty had a group of famous generals such as Wei Rui, known as "Wei Hu", who used their troops skillfully and accumulated small victories. Once collapsed.Not only could the Nanliang army fail to keep the victory, but had to retreat inside, while the Northern Wei Dynasty took advantage of the situation to attack, with the potential to attack the great river all the way.

During this pursuit, the Nanliang army trapped Zhongli City in Linhuai, and the Northern Wei Dynasty's tens of thousands of troops besieged the isolated city.During the siege, various parts of the Nanliang army also rushed to help, but it was difficult to break out due to the overwhelming strength of the Wei army.At that time, the torrential rain poured down, and the water in the Huai River rose more than seven feet. Due to the situation, the Nanliang army advanced greatly and defeated the Wei army at Zhongli.

The Battle of Zhongli was one of the few great victories in the war between the North and the South after the failure of the Yuanjia Northern Expedition in the Southern Dynasty.Although the difference in the amount of troops invested by the two sides is not as great as that of the Battle of Feishui, and its reputation in later generations is far less than that of the Battle of Feishui, but its impact on the situation at that time was not inferior to that of the Battle of Feishui.

After the first World War, the internal contradictions in the Northern Wei Dynasty became more acute, and rebellions continued one after another, which eventually led to the Six Towns Rebellion.And Nanliang had not been established for a long time, and through this victory, it deterred the internal and external situation, and won the continuation of the national fortune for decades.If it hadn't been for the overreaching of the Buddha, coupled with the Hou Jing's chaos that ruined the mountains and rivers and ruined all his achievements, Emperor Wu of Liang Xiao Yan's life would undoubtedly have been more glorious.

Shen Zhezi can't know all about these past and future events, but this does not prevent him from using the right strategy at the right time.

Jie Hu Nanlai is fierce, and Shihu's tyranny in using troops is beyond people's imagination.Probably in their minds, there is no concept of human life at all, and the consumption of human life is the worst situation for the Huainan Army.If the small number of troops is lost too much in order to defend Yingkou, then the meaning of defending Yingkou will no longer exist, and it may not be able to hold it in the end.

But even if you give up, you can never let Jie Hu succeed so easily.Shihu obviously also has awareness and precautions against floods, and formed a camp to disperse and use rangers to link up and defend.Regardless of the use of water and fire, it is difficult to achieve great results.But when Yingkou's breakthrough was imminent, he was finally paralyzed and underestimated the enemy.

And Shen Zhezi never failed to live up to his expectations. In Shouchun's defense, he fully realized and used the advantages of water power, and defeated the Siye weir. As a result, the Huai River surged, and soon broke through to the north without much repairs. rough embankment.The flood was raging and swept in, and soon it overflowed the mouth and rushed directly to the tens of thousands of soldiers assembled inside and outside the camp.

It was already night at this time, and the terrain inside and outside the camp was cramped and narrow, so a large number of slave soldiers formed a group, and the orders were chaotic.In the dark, stormy waves surged straight in, and the soldiers advanced or retreated, screaming and howling, and the situation inevitably became more chaotic.Except for the soldiers who were still assembled in the distance and did not approach, there was still time to turn around and run away. Almost none of the soldiers gathered inside and outside the camp were spared.
No matter how fierce the army is, how unstoppable it is, facing the sweeping impact of the surging water waves, it is no different from the earth and rocks, and even the situation is much worse than the earth and rocks.The soil and gravel just drifted with the current, while the soldiers who fell into the water were struggling desperately, ups and downs in the surging water, dancing with their hands and feet, trying to grab everything they could.

And in the process of this struggle, many of the slave soldiers who were slightly transparent and might have escaped the catastrophe were also pulled by their struggling companions, their limbs were entangled and wrestled, and many of them drowned to death!

In midsummer, the Huai River was already surging. Earlier, the Huainan Army built more weirs to divert and discharge the flood.Soon Yingkou, a low-lying area, was completely submerged by the flood, and at the same time, the water was still spreading farther away!
People and horses howled in the night, although there were huge waves roaring, it was still difficult to be completely submerged.In order to ensure the suddenness of the water attack and obtain the maximum results, even the Huainan defenders in Yingkou did not know about it. The waves overwhelmed, and most of the soldiers fell into the water.

Therefore, when the defenders approached the battlefield, they were not in a hurry to rush up and kill the defeated crowd, but gave priority to rescuing Paoze.Although it only lasted for two days, Yingkou's defenders suffered huge damage. Those who fell into the water were rescued one by one, and then transported back to the south bank with an empty boat for assembly. There is no time to calculate the specific damage.

The response to the Yingkou defenders lasted for nearly two hours, and at this time the original Yingkou battlefield had already been exhausted into Zeguo.There are so many corpses floating on the water, almost covering the area around ten miles to the left.Among them are the corpses that were too late to collect in the previous fierce battle, and a large number of slave soldiers who drowned in the water before they retreated in time.

At the same time, there is no shortage of bamboo and wooden floating boards on the water, and many soldiers are lingering on the trees.But although they were lucky enough to survive the catastrophe, they still couldn't escape the follow-up suppression by the Huainan army.At midnight, a large number of troop-carrying warships and rafts gathered on the water surface and rushed north along the water.Whenever they encountered such surviving slave soldiers along the way, they had no time to capture them, and they directly stabbed them to death with bows and spears.

This time the water attack, almost none of Jiehu's camps near the water was spared, even if there were many people escaping, it was too late for the camp tents to be taken away.There were also some camps stationed on high ground, which were lucky enough to avoid the impact of the water waves. At this time, all sides were flooded, and many soldiers were trapped on isolated islands.When the Huainan army boats approached, they were desperate and frightened, and they had no desire to fight, and they abandoned their weapons and surrendered one after another.

In the early morning hours, the world finally returned to silence.The Yingkou camp where the two armies were originally fighting was completely submerged by the flood. It became muddy, making it difficult for people and horses to walk.

More than [-] Huainan troops had already been transported by boats and gathered in Jiangbei. Under the leadership of Han Huang and Lu Yong, they broke away from the waterway and rushed to the surviving slave camps.The slave camps were scattered, and only a few were truly submerged in last night's flood, but the psychological impact was undoubtedly huge.At this time in Huaibei, although a large number of camps still survived the impact of the flood, the soldiers inside had already fled across the camp, leaving only one empty camp remaining in place.

Shi Hu personally sat on the front line to command the attack on the Yingkou camp. As a result, when the accident came, he was the first to bear the brunt. Jiehu's ministries almost lost their restraint orders, and a large number of soldiers fled northward under the leadership of their respective commanders.The Huainan army attacked tens of miles away, except for a small number of routs in the countryside who would disperse at a touch, there was almost no organized and large-scale resistance!
In the process of sweeping northward, the only resistance the Huainan army encountered was Shihu's Chinese army camp. Thousands of soldiers gathered here, and under the orders of the slave generals, the Huainan army was kept in the camp outside.But obviously during the turmoil last night, Shihu did not return here in time to sit in the town, so when the Huainan Army received reinforcements later, these soldiers did not dare to stick to it anymore, and they fought and retreated, and finally completely abandoned the camp and went to the camp. Flee from the rear.Therefore, the Huainan army seized Shihu's fortress and many ceremonial vessels preserved in it!

In the end, because they were too far away from the shore and worried about being attacked by Jienu, the Huainan army stopped the pace of sweeping, maintained a strict formation and retreated slowly, with their own boats to respond, and returned in a big victory.

At this point, most of the camps originally set up by the slave army in Huaibei were removed. Hundreds of thousands of troops came in a hurry and retreated in a hurry.After more than ten days, the flood gradually receded and returned to the old Huai River.However, the areas covered by floods also often turn into muddy beaches, which makes it difficult to accommodate the large army to approach the assembly activities.

(End of this chapter)