Chapter 1226: To Fight or Not to Fight

When the battle gradually unfolded in the ditch surrounded by Hararuwei, a Song army was nesting in a dry ditch a hundred miles away from Fu outside the city for two days, they could not make a fire to cook every day, they ate dry food, drank the muddy water that seeped out of the pit dug on the spot, and they slept without clothes, pillows and waiting, living like frightened mice, and they were really aggrieved.

"Alas......" In a drainage channel shaded by shrubs in the depths of the dry ditch, Luo Datong, the commander of the Fifth Brigade of the Imperial Front Protector Army, was half-leaning on the dirt slope, squinting at the sunset in the west and sighing.

Luo Datong was ordered to stay in Lingbi, taking on the task of protecting the camp and baggage, so that he lamented the injustice of God, the Fifth Brigade has fought in Changshu since it joined the war, but it is also a battle to defend the city, surrounded by the enemy, although it won, but it is also very aggrieved, not waiting for them to fight back, people quietly ran away. As a result, the Fifth Brigade contributed a lot of strength, but did not gain much, and the top and bottom were very depressed.

After the Jiangdong Campaign, the Fifth Brigade went north with the army, preparing to participate in the battle to capture the two capitals, but watched several other brigades of the Guardian Army go north to Fuli to participate in the battle, and he was left behind in Lingbi to watch his home. This work sounds good, it is to put the emperor's safety and the life of the whole army on the five brigades, and to put it in a big way, it is even more related to the victory or defeat of the battle, and even the rise and fall of the country's fortunes, which can be described as a heavy responsibility.

Luo Datong felt that the task of protecting His Majesty was glorious, but the daily task of their imperial guards was to protect the emperor's safety, which was where the accusation lies. And letting them stay behind is 'discrimination' against the Fifth Brigade, thinking that they are newly formed troops, and their combat effectiveness is not as good as the old 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Brigades, and they are only worthy of carrying out the simple tasks of staying behind in the rear, so they are holding their breath in their hearts.

Although during this period, there was an incident of the Mengyuan enemy army sneaking up on Lingbi, but Luo Datong thought that the Fifth Brigade did not play any role in this battle, mainly the naval army and the personal guard regiment, he had just surrounded the enemy army and drove into the reeds, and His Majesty put a fire to burn the enemy without leaving a piece of armor, and they were at best just beating the side drum. It's a pity that there are no real swords and guns, and they defeat the enemy army in a dignified manner.

Therefore, this time the emperor asked the Fifth Brigade to plan and participate in the task of encircling and annihilating the enemy to aid the enemy, Luo Datong was very happy, thinking that he could finally confront the enemy on the frontal battlefield, let the Fifth Brigade fight a turnaround battle, and no longer let his colleagues look down on him. But when he led the troops to Fuli in a hurry, the task he received was to bypass Fuli, sneak to the battlefield in the future, intercept the enemy troops who should be sent by Tianfu, and cooperate with the other three brigades of the escort army to complete the encirclement and annihilation mission.

When Luo Datong watched Du Shuai lead the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd brigades to set off to encircle and annihilate the enemy troops in Xuzhou, he was really angry and disappointed, and felt that he still regarded them as reserves. However, he was pleased that he was accompanied by the Guardian Artillery Brigade and the Cavalry Brigade, but he was soon not happy, and the commander only said that they should rush to the enemy to set up an ambush, but did not tell them how to go.

You must know that there are not 10, 8, or 180 people who go to ambush behind enemy lines, but four regiments of the fifth brigade plus one artillery regiment and a direct subordinate team, and there are tens of thousands of personnel; The artillery brigade had three artillery regiments and one baggage regiment, and the number was also three thousand or several hundred; The cavalry brigade was smaller, more than 4,000 people, but they still had horses! Counting the 20,000 horses without alarming the enemy to go around to the rear of the enemy-occupied area and march on the plain without cover, this is really a bit difficult.

In the face of this difficult problem, Luo Datong and the cavalry brigade were all in charge of Fang Sheng, and the artillery brigade was in charge of Zhang Ping. Relatively speaking, in addition to being numerous, the Fifth Brigade has an advantage, they can walk on two legs, they can march in various terrains, they can also obey orders, and take care of themselves, and those two brigades are not easy to say. Especially Zhang Ping, his hair is almost gray, and the power of the artillery is great, but the artillery is heavy, it needs to be dragged by livestock, and the marching speed is also slow; In addition, the artillery has poor self-defense ability, and when marching in the theater of operations, it is generally necessary to follow the infantry to provide cover for it, which is a drag.

The cavalry was fast, but their weaknesses were obvious. One is that the march of the brigade is very quiet, the horses are full of dust and smoke when they run, and the sound of hooves is shocking, and you can know that the cavalry is coming from a distance of ten miles; The other is that the terrain is limited by the terrain, which makes it difficult to march in the mountains, wetlands and tidal areas, otherwise the horses will be injured; Then there is the fact that the horse eats a lot, and eating grass alone cannot ensure that the horse has sufficient physical strength, and it also needs to supplement concentrate feed to charge into battle; And the war horse is a beast after all, although it has been trained, it is not as obedient as a man, and if it loses its temper, suddenly rushes out of its hiding place, or is frightened and roars a few times, it will be all exposed.

As the saying goes, 'three stinkers have competed against Zhuge Liang', and the three of them are all senior officers who have joined the army as teenagers, have been on the battlefield, and have entered martial arts, and have both theory and actual combat experience. Knowing that the war was urgent, they had no difficulties to go up, and they had to go up if they had difficulties, and after a few people settled down and discussed, they came up with a solution to the difficulties they encountered.

Luo Datong and the three decided to streamline all the personnel and equipment they didn't need in order to keep the team lean, and at the same time, because they were fighting behind enemy lines, they could not get supplies in time, so they carried as much ammunition as possible except for five days' dry rations. In order to avoid being detected by enemy sentinels, the march route should avoid the main road and march at night.

Therefore, they chose to cross the muddy water to the south first, far away from the main road from Yingtianfu to Fuli, which was sparsely populated, and Linli over there had just passed through the battle between the two armies, the inhabitants had already fled, and the enemy sentry cavalry would not cross the river to patrol. They camped in the woods or villages during the day, and were not allowed to make fires for cooking, and they were not allowed to march at night. At the same time, scouts were sent to closely monitor the enemy forces in Yingtianfu, and to detect their marching speed and camp.

When approaching the ambush area, the team turned north and crossed the muddy water to prepare for the ambush. But they faced another problem: the lack of shelter in the plains made it difficult to hide an army of 20,000. And there are merchants and pedestrians on the main road, even if the enemy sentry does not arrive, they will be discovered. In addition, the shelter should not be too far from the ambush area, and the transportation is convenient, so that they can enter the battlefield quickly.

However, Luo Datong and others still thought of a solution. In the past, whether it was Kaifeng, Yingtianfu and Fuli, and even the transportation in the Central Plains depended on canals to transport materials. However, during the reign of Emperor Hui Zong, due to the fact that the shipping department made the grain ships change the effective transfer method since the Tang Dynasty (according to the flow rate, water potential and characteristics of the canal in different seasons, it was transported in sections) to direct transportation, which not only increased the loss of the boats, but also increased the transportation cost, so that the transportation volume of the Bianhe River was greatly reduced. It has also led to the increase in the riverbed of the Bianhe River year by year, the stranding of large sections of the waterway, and the transportation of the river has been quite hindered.

After Jingkang, the Bianhe River sometimes even dried up for more than a month, resulting in the impassability of Cao Yun, and at this time, it could only be navigable for half a year per year. Despite this, Zhao Jijunchen still wantonly searched for "Huashi Gang" in various parts of the south of the Yangtze River, snatched the ships of Cao Yun, blocked the Cao Yun channel, and further overloaded the canal. And then the Jin soldiers invaded the south, and soon Kaifeng was surrounded, and the upper reaches of the Bianhe River were already "embankments and defenses, and the Bianqu was extinct for a long time". After the fall of Bianjing, the Song Dynasty crossed to the south, and the Jin people used the Bianhe waterway to chase after the boat division, and Gaozong ordered to destroy the Bianhe waterway in order to prevent the Jin soldiers from advancing, and the north-south water transport was cut off.

After the Song dynasty moved south, the Song and Jin countries fought many battles here, and they used water as a soldier to destroy the river many times, resulting in frequent diversions of the river and further silting up the canal. More than 30 years later, the Song Dynasty sent an envoy to the Jin State, and the back and forth passed through the old road of the Bianhe River, and he saw the desolation of the Bianhe River with his own eyes. As far as Suzhou, the Bianhe River is even more seriously silted, and in some sections the river is almost level with the riverbank, chariots and horses are walking in the river, and in some places even houses have been built, and crops have been planted at the bottom of the river.

In the past, in order to ensure that the canal was abundant, through human intervention, the surrounding rivers of all sizes such as muddy water and water flow into the Bianhe River, but with the silting up of the Bianhe River, and the destruction of war and natural forces, it not only caused the canal to dry up or cut off, but also affected the changes of the water system in the whole region, so that many rivers were diverted, cut off, or became seasonal rivers, and the result was that many rivers that flowed into the Bianhe River became many dry ditches of large and small, criss-crossing and criss-crossing.

Some of the dry ditches are dozens of miles long, dozens of zhang wide, and some of the old rivers have been broken for decades, or even a hundred years, and the dry ditches have long been barren and overgrown, and the two banks are overgrown with shrubs and miscellaneous trees, covering the river channel. The men and horses are hidden in it, and it is difficult to detect them from a distance, and if they deliberately disguise themselves, they can avoid the inspection of the sentry riders.

Two days ago, Luo Datong led the army to march day and night, and went through hardships on the way to the area of Fuli that was a hundred miles away, and the various parts were scattered and hidden in several dry ditches distributed around the periphery. What made Luo Da anxious was that the enemy army from Ying Tianfu was almost there, but the reinforcements led by Du Shuai had not heard from him for a long time, and he didn't know if he could reach the battlefield as scheduled, otherwise they would have to face several times their own men and horses alone, and with their strength, they would not be able to complete the plan of annihilating the enemy army at all.

With the approach of the enemy army, Luo Datong is even more anxious, if he does not fight the enemy army, he will have to drive straight to Fuli, then the strength of the Fuli enemy army will be greatly strengthened, forming a greater obstacle to the next battle, and the battle may last longer, unable to complete the task set by His Majesty to recover the two capitals before the arrival of the rainy season. Moreover, he was very unwilling to let the enemy army pass in front of him, and he really didn't want to let go of the rare fighter.

If he fought, Luo Datong felt that he had no bottom in his heart, and he was worried that in the end, not only would the enemy not intercept it, but it would also bring him into the danger of being surrounded by the enemy's counter-attack, and eventually lead to the loss of the opportunity for the whole army to compete for the Central Plains......

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