Qian Song

Chapter 141 Fighting (ask for a monthly pass!)
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It is not an easy task to fight such a large-scale battle involving hundreds of thousands of troops.

——If not both sides have the intention of a decisive battle, it is difficult to fight such a big battle in a short time, and it is even more difficult to decide the winner in a short time.

It can even be said that a battle of this scale is possible even if it lasts for several years.

But then again, if both sides of the decisive battle are determined to win the battle, it is not impossible to win or lose in such a battle in a short time.

The most typical example is the duel between the Fang Layi Army and the Song Army on the Western Front.

The scale of that battle was by no means smaller than the scale of this battle that Li Cun and Liu Yanqing were about to fight, but that battle was decided within a few days.

Of course, that was mainly because Fang La was too eager to fight.

——If Fang La doesn't take the initiative to attack, but sticks to the city and the dangerous land, no matter how capable he is, the battle will last at least a month or two.

Li Cun wants to fight decisively, but he will definitely not attack blindly like Fang La.

Based on this strategic thinking, Li Cun ordered Wu Desi and the pro-army Duwei Mansion to pay close attention to every move of Liu Yanqing's Song Army while heading north.

When Li Cun confirmed that Liu Yanqing's Song Army had a strong intention to fight a decisive battle, Li Cun ordered to prepare for a decisive battle with Liu Yanqing's Song Army in Suzhou.

The reason why Li Cun chose to fight Liu Yanqing in Suzhou was mainly because Suzhou was relatively close to Li Cun, which allowed the Huben army led by Li Cun to arrive in Suzhou much earlier than Liu Yanqing's Song army to deploy defenses, and then waited for work.

August eleventh.

The vanguard of the Huben Army led by Li Cun came to Suzhou.

Liang Zhen, who was stationed in Suzhou, had long ago helped the peasants who arrived in Suzhou to build camps according to the cloth village map explained by Li Cun, and started to build fortifications centered on Suzhou City, blocking the passages inside and outside the city with interconnected trenches.

After Li Cun arrived in Suzhou City, he divided the Wuzhou Army and the eastern Soviet Union who had rushed to participate in the decisive battle into ten teams, stationed at strategic places including Huqiu or near the city gate, and then strengthened the defense with fortresses built.

In order to better increase the attack power of the Huben army, Li Cunming built a large number of towers about 12 meters high.

Each of these towers has upper, middle and lower floors, and a bed crossbow and a certain number of crossbowmen are placed.

In this way, when the two sides are fighting, the Huben army can not only observe the movement of the Song army of Liu Yanqing's department at all times, but also suppress the Song army of Liu Yanqing's department with firepower.

After that, Li Cun ordered the military craftsmen of the Cheng army to make two thousand small counterweight trebuchets and hand-pulled stone catapults.

As for the large catapults used in the attack on Xiuzhou City, Li Cun, who likes to suppress firepower, certainly didn't waste it-Li Cun had people arrange them on the city wall of Suzhou City.

In addition, Li Cunyi defended the front army, guarded the middle army, guarded the left army, guarded the right army, guarded the rear army, the second pole army, the eastern tiger army of the [-] Su army, and the [-] Liang Zhen army. The army and the two guard horse troops formed a formation for a decisive battle, which was practiced every day.

By the time Liu Yanqing's Song army arrived at the city of Suzhou on August 25, Li Cun's side had already been arranged in a mess.

Originally, Li Cun wanted to take advantage of Liu Yanqing's unstable foothold, and send Han Bie and Yao Xing to lead the guard horse army to charge Liu Yanqing's Song army in a wave, winning the first battle and boosting the morale of the Huben army.

But what makes Li Cun very regretful is that Liu Yanqing actually took the [-] horse army as the vanguard, so Li Cun didn't dare to act rashly.

Soon after, Liu Yanqing's Song army arrived at the city of Suzhou one after another.

At this time, the Song army of Liu Yanqing's department was no longer more than 20, but almost [-].

It turned out that the Song army of Liu Yanqing's department forcibly conscripted many people from the Liangzhe area to serve as peasant husbands and help them transport grain and grass.

This part of the people also filled the number among the Song army of Liu Yanqing's department.

In addition, the Song Army of Liu Yanqing's department also forcibly conscripted some people from the vicinity of the city, preparing to have them transport stones, log trees, and make various utensils.

There are also many of these people.

When Liu Yanqing's Song army arrived at the foot of Suzhou City, the main force gradually dispersed, and a large number of military strongholds were set up in the north of Suzhou City.

There are so many of these military strongholds, big and small, countless.

The soldiers of the Song Army under Liu Yanqing were still openly holding banners in the fields, and went between the various army camps.

Chen Kuutong recognized it at a glance, Liu Yanqing was setting up a sparse formation.

"Those who are sparsely arrayed, so they bark like a bluff."

The method of forming a sparse array is due to the small number of troops, so it is necessary to show strength.

Specifically, flags can be used to show might, and more weapons can be used to show that there are many people.

Therefore, the distance and interval between the ranks must be increased, and more flags of various kinds must be planted, and bright and sharp weapons should be inserted beside them.

The formation is sparse, do not let the enemy approach; the chariots do not gallop, and the infantry do not rush away.

The general usage of sparse formation is to divide the soldiers into several fighting groups, or advance or retreat;

To put it bluntly, sparse arrays are meant to scare people.

But Liu Yanqing set up a sparse formation, not only to scare people, he was still using this formation to defend.

That's right.

Although Liu Yanqing, a tortoise, was going to fight Li Cun decisively, he actually planned to use defense instead of offense.

As soon as his troops arrived at the foot of Suzhou City, Liu Yanqing immediately began to arrange for the captured peasants to dig trenches, cut down trees, and gather the transport equipment they brought.

At the same time, Liu Yanqing also arranged for civilian men to dig a trench three feet wide and one foot deep. The trench was filled with wooden piles, and the outward end was sharpened and blackened with fire. Antlers, set traps in front of the antlers.

A wooden fence is set up behind the trench, which is more than two feet high and one foot deep into the soil.

In addition, he also set up many arrow towers in the village.

As for lighting braziers and fires all around the camp to prevent the Huben army from stealing the camp, it was Liu Yanqing's routine operation.

In addition, Liu Yanqing also released a large number of scouts, guard posts, and secret posts.

In short, Liu Yanqing simply built his camp into a turtle shell, without the slightest awareness of being an officer.

After finishing all this, Liu Yanqing sent someone to send a letter of recruitment to Li Cun, reasoned with Li Cun, moved them with affection, and even wrote a lot of bad checks.

After Li Cun finished reading it, he directly sent Liu Yanqing a letter of challenge:
"Those who are close to him will fight against crimes by the sky, and they will be invincible. There are millions of people in the current ruling army, and they are willing to play with the general."

And then... no more.

Liu Yanqing continued to build his tortoise shell, and seemed in no hurry to fight Li Cun decisively.

After confronting Liu Yanqing for a few days, Li Cun finally realized that he really couldn't beat Liu Yanqing, an old tortoise.

Moreover, Li Cun received accurate news that the Song army of the Zhongshi Daoist Department had entered Muzhou, and it seemed that he wanted to wipe out the remnants of the Fang Layi army entrenched in Qingxi as soon as possible, and then come to help the Song army of Liu Yanqing's department.

So this decisive battle really cannot be delayed forever.

September [-]st.

Li Cunqin led an army of [-] people preparing for a decisive battle with the Song army to escort the towers, small counterweight trebuchets and hand-pulled catapults, before going to the Song army camp, and put on a posture of a decisive battle with Liu Yanqing.

But Liu Yanqing was standing on the arrow tower in the camp, carefully observing the formation of the Huben army, and he had no intention of going to war at all, and scratched his head anxiously for all the young generals of the Song army who wanted to make contributions.

Seeing that Liu Yanqing didn't come out like this, Li Cun stopped being polite to Liu Yanqing.

Li Cunxian ordered Jieyuan to command the bed crossbow on the tower to take the arrow tower of the Song army, which threatened the Huben army, and then followed Li Cun's order, more than 2000 small counterweight trebuchets and hand-pulled stone throwers , and began to continuously fire a large number of cannon stones into the Song Army's barracks.

Although Liu Yanqing's formation was sparse and the soldiers of the Song Army were not so densely distributed, it still couldn't support the constant bombardment of [-] small counterweight trebuchets and hand-pulled catapults.

After all, there are always those who react slowly, or who run slowly.

And once these people are hit by the artillery stone, they will almost die.

The point is that these people dare not make a big move yet, because the Huben army may be waiting for them to make a move, and then rush into their stronghold to kill them.

Faced with such a situation, Liu Yanqing did not order the ready-to-go horse army to go out to fight, nor did he let the soldiers of the Song army in the camp retreat to hide.

This made the Song generals very puzzled, wondering what Liu Yanqing was waiting for?
In the end, Liu Guangshi couldn't help asking: "Father, why didn't you issue the military order so late?"

Liu Yanqing also knew that if he didn't give a reasonable explanation to the soldiers of the Song Army, and let the soldiers of the Song Army be beaten passively, the soldiers of the Song Army would definitely not accept it.

Therefore, Liu Yanqing pointed to the eye-catching tower and said: "There are about [-] towers in this tower, and each tower is covered with a bed crossbow and [-] crossbowmen. But it is not enough to defeat me completely, I am afraid that the ant thief will have a stronger support."

"This……"

All Song generals looked at each other in blank dismay: "The bigger reliance, what reliance?"

Liu Yanqing continued: "Ant thieves falsely claim to be one million, if you fold them in half, half of them should be there, but here there are only about a hundred thousand ant thieves, where are the rest?"

"Yeah, where are those ant thieves, they really can't act rashly."

After a pause, Liu Yanqing asked his last question: "Furthermore, look at the formation formed by the ant thief. Who knows what formation it is?"

All Song generals looked at it for a long time, but none of them recognized what formation it was.

Only veteran Wang Huan said: "This formation is somewhat similar to the Crane Wing Formation, but it is not a Crane Wing Formation, its shape and momentum are different."

Wang Yu, who is quite good at formation, said: "This formation is indeed not the Crane Wing Formation, but its performance should be similar to that of the Crane Wing Formation. On the side, the horse army will close the mouth, and when our army enters the formation, the two wings will be stretched and encircled."

Several veterans who were good at array duels nodded in agreement, approving Wang Yu's conjecture.

Liu Yanqing said: "This formation is easy to win. If you use the horse army to attack the Chinese army, if you break it, you will be defeated. However, what I worry about is that this is a trap for bandits."

It's no wonder that Liu Yanqing is worried about this. In fact, it is said in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Five Dynasties that the crane wing formation is the only formation that can actively attack.

In other words, if you don't have the confidence to annihilate the enemy, you dare not use a formation like the Crane Wing Formation at all.

But Liu Yanqing really couldn't figure it out, where did Li Cun get the confidence to annihilate them?
……

……

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(End of this chapter)