Silver Fox of the Three Kingdoms

Chapter 139 Defeating Li Tong and attacking Yingchuan again
Xiping is located in the northeast of Wuyang and west of Dingying.

There is a Baiting ten miles north of the city, which is the land of the Baizi Kingdom in the Spring and Autumn Period.

There is Tangxi Pavilion in the east of the city. In Jianwu Middle School, the ancestors named Shezi, the king of Sishui, the Marquis of Tangxi.

At this time, Li Tong led 5000 people out of Xiping East City, passed Tangxi Pavilion, and headed for Dingying.

The two places are very close. Xiping County in the Han Dynasty was located more than ten miles southeast of Wuyang in later generations, and Dingying was located more than ten miles east of Xiping County in later generations.

At that time, Xiping and Dingying belonged to the upstream and downstream relationship. Xiping was in the middle of the Zhushui River. After the river reached Dingying, it flowed into the Rushui River.

Therefore, the official road is on the bank of the Lushui River, passing the Tangxi Pavilion, and heading east, about [-] kilometers away, to Dingying.

Man Chong learned that Liu Bei had set off from Shangcai to attack Dingying in the early morning of July [-]st.

He could choose to go.

But the reason why he stayed to defend the city was because behind him were the two counties of Zhaoling and Liqiang, which had no soldiers and horses, and Xudu was further north.

In addition, he believed that Liu Bei recruited mostly mobs, not many supplies, and even lacked complete weapons and weapons. He should be able to hold on to the city until Li Tong came to help him.

But when Shen Chen arrived, he knew that the situation was over and he had to abandon the city and flee.It was just too late, and was finally stopped by Shen Chen, who shot him to death on the spot.

At that time, the battle ended at noon, and Man Chong sent the messenger to ride to Xiping on horseback. Since the horses could not gallop continuously, it took an hour and a half to report to Li before noon.

Li Tong assembled the troops temporarily and asked his deputy Xiping County Magistrate Zhao Yan to stay to guard the city, while he packed lightly and ordered the soldiers to bring 20 days of dry food to Dingying for support.

Therefore, when Man Chong was killed, Li Tong had just left for a short time. According to the time, if he marched at a speed of eight kilometers per hour, it would take about five hours to reach Dingying County.

So Shen Chen believed that Li Tong was eager to rescue Dingying, so he would definitely not send scouts to investigate at any time, so he suggested to Liu Bei to immediately attack Li Tong from the west and set up an ambush along the way.

This suggestion was approved by Liu Bei.

It's just that the soldiers he recruited were relatively average. From Shangcai to Dingying, they had exhausted their physical strength after not fighting much. Many of them had sore feet and couldn't continue walking at all.

Shen Chen could also understand this point. The soldiers recruited by Liu Bei were mostly low-level poor people, and their food and use were far inferior to the elite soldiers carefully cultivated by Huang Menting. Moreover, the amount of training on both sides was also different, so naturally they couldn't compete with them in physical strength.

So in the end, Liu Bei asked Jian Yong, Sun Qian, Mi Zhu and the three left generals to lead the army and rest in Dingying City. He personally led a small number of cavalry and elite soldiers brought from Yuan Shaona, about 3000 troops, plus Shen Chen's 7000 troops. The troops, totaling [-] men, intercepted Li Tong westward.

In this way, the two sides rushed to each other along the official road of Lushui River.When Li Tong was more than 20 kilometers away from Dingying, Liu Beijun also went west for more than ten miles. After walking for about an hour, he finally found a hill on the south bank of the Lushui River and began to arrange an ambush.

This piece of hill is densely forested. It is located on the south side of the post road. It is a small hill from west to east, several kilometers long. The hill is not very high, and the highest point is less than [-] meters. Within Yu Zhang.

The soldiers hid in the forest one after another. It was daytime, and the birds went out to look for food, and there was no such thing as going into the forest at night to disturb the birds. In the small hill on the south side of the post road, Liu Bei and Shen Chen's army were everywhere among the grass and trees.

Time passed by minute by minute.

After about half an hour, the end of the road in the west was already full of dust.

Li Tong was really in a hurry to fight the fire, because after Sun Ce was assassinated, Sun Quan was busy with internal affairs and would not attack Xudu, so the Cao army in the south withdrew from Runan to near Yingchuan to guard against Shen Chen in Kunyang.

As a result, Liu Bei never expected to appear suddenly, summoned the remaining forces of the Yuan family in Runan under Yuan Shao's order, and began to attack Xudu in the north.

This was obviously beyond Cao Jun's expectations. After all, the rear of Runan was extremely empty at this time. Most of Xudu's defense forces were in the southwest, and there were only a few more than 2000 people from Man Chong in the southeast.Therefore, Li Tong was afraid that after Liu Bei defeated Man Chong, he would go north to attack Xudu, so he hurried away.

At this time, the soldiers had trotted for an hour and a half, about forty miles, and the whole team was almost out of touch. The soldiers were thirsty and tired, and the officers were still beating them with whips, urging them to speed up .

"General, take a break."

One of Li Tong's lieutenants persuaded: "The soldiers have been galloping for an hour and a half, and they will soon reach Dingying. If the soldiers are not allowed to rest, they may not have the strength to fight the enemy when they reach Dingying."

Li Tong turned his head and glanced behind him. The team was sparsely walking. It was the intersection of summer and autumn. Bai, it is indeed as the lieutenant general said, we cannot continue to march in such a hurry.

So he looked ahead, pointed to the mountains in the distance and said: "There is a mountain in front, and the river is on the opposite side. Let's go to that forest to have a rest."

"The general has an order to rest in the mountains ahead."

"The general has an order to rest in the mountains ahead."

"The general has an order to rest in the mountains ahead."

The messengers galloped on their horses, shouting as they ran all the way to the rear. Li Tongjun's soldiers were immediately refreshed, and their pace of death couldn't help but speed up a little, and they ran towards the forest at high speed.

indeed.

The dozens of kilometers along the road are all flat plains, with villages and farmlands on both sides of the river. Only the forest can shade the blazing sun. It is normal for Li Tong to choose this place.

The most important thing is that he thinks that Liu Bei is still besieging Dingying. The news about Shen Chen is that he sent people from Kunyang north to attack Yangdi the day before yesterday. How could he have expected that Shen Chen's army had trained a pair of iron feet, and in just three days, he could Can run here to intercept him?

At present, Li Tongjun ran towards the mountain forest like flying, and more people ran towards the river like having fun.Along the way, the rear army ate all the ashes of the former army, and their bodies were dirty. Even if they couldn't take a bath, they could just drink some water and scrub their arms.

At this time, in the forest, Liu Bei, Chen Chen and others were lurking in the forest, and they had already seen Li Tongjun running from a distance. They were waiting for work at leisure. All the soldiers instinctively clenched their weapons, and some raised their crossbows.

"Brother, they are here."

Zhang Fei lowered his voice as much as possible, and said softly, "Kill it."

"No."

Shen Chen shook his head and said: "Now in the past, we can't completely wipe out the enemies. When they are resting by the river and no one is on guard, then we can catch them all in one go."

Zhang Fei glared at Shen Chen: "You child, you were not born when I fought the war."

Shen Chen also stared back: "General Zhang, I heard that you often flog soldiers for no reason. If one day, you are under my command, I will let you taste the flogging too!"

"you!"

Zhang Fei was furious, Zhang Ba Snake Spear was in his hand and looked at him.

Liu Bei looked at Zhang Fei, frowned and scolded: "Third brother, don't be rude, listen to Mr. Xiao."

"Humph."

Zhang Fei was irritable, snorted coldly, and stopped talking.

Shen Chen didn't bother to talk to him, he didn't want to have a good relationship with everyone, and Gan Ning had an easy-going personality, but he was very murderous on the battlefield, and his personality was quite persuasive.

If Zhang Fei doesn't care about the low-level soldiers and still wants to go further and further on the road to death, he doesn't mind letting Zhang Fei taste the whip.

While speaking, Li Tong's large army had already arrived at the foot of the mountain. Except for a small number of soldiers who went to rest in the forest, most of the soldiers clustered and ran towards the river.

Seeing that the other party was about to enter the forest, Shen Chen saw that the time had come, picked up a bone whistle, put it in his mouth, and blew it with all his strength.

"Beep beep!"

Immediately there was a whistle in the whole mountain forest, which was the command to release the arrow.

"Fire arrows!"

"Fire arrows!"

"Fire arrows!"

Countless figures suddenly appeared in the forest, bows and crossbows were fired, and thousands of arrows fell like raindrops.

Li Tongjun was caught off guard and fell heavily.

The sudden change here frightened the soldiers by the river. Some wanted to take up arms to fight, some instinctively wanted to run away, and some simply jumped into the river and swam to the other bank when they saw that the other bank was not far away.

In an instant, the 5000 troops of Li Tong's army were in a mess, and Li Tong himself was actually waiting for his guards to fetch water for him on the post road.

Seeing the sudden ambush, his face changed drastically, and he immediately shouted: "Assemble, assemble, form formation!"

"Dong dong dong dong!"

The beating of drums and horns are intertwined.

There were Li Tongjun's beating drums and Liu Beijun's beating drums. Groups of soldiers rushed out of the forest to kill Cao Jun.

If this is a group of elite people, they may be able to react quickly.

But Li Tong's army was second- and third-line soldiers, and they were tired all the way, and they drank a lot of river water just now, and their hands and feet were weak, so they couldn't take up weapons to fight.

Therefore, almost as soon as the two sides came into contact, they were defeated like a mountain.

There were fleeing Li Tong's army everywhere in the wilderness, and Li Tong himself was running fast, and he didn't stay to fight to the death like Man Chong. After seeing the army collapsed and the situation was over, he immediately rode his horse and fled westward.

And the rest of Li Tongjun was miserable. After drinking the river water in a very exhausted situation, let alone run away, they couldn't even walk. They were almost completely wiped out by Liu Bei and Shen Chen's coalition forces.

Maybe it can't be said that they were completely wiped out. It was only the first few waves of crossbow shooting that killed and injured more than a thousand people, and almost all the remaining people knelt down and surrendered, without giving them a chance to be killed at all.

Liu Bei didn't have Cao Cao's hobby of killing prisoners, so he ordered all the prisoners to be escorted to Dingying. Most of these soldiers were from Runan, and the Yuan family still had remnants of power in Runan. He could use Yuan's influence to send these soldiers to Dingying Get into your team.

On July [-]st, at dusk, Liu Bei and Chen Chen sent [-] coalition troops to escort more than [-] captives from Li Tong's army back to Dingying. Naturally, Jian Yong, Sun Qian, Mi Zhu and others were responsible for recruiting and reorganizing the soldiers and horses. prepared by.

On July [-]nd, the entire Dingying city was in chaos. Liu Bei's army did not have a solid foundation, the number of elites was small, and [-] troops were recruited, which would naturally lead to chaos in the entire establishment. It looked like a mob.

But this can't be helped, the total force is now nearly [-], and Lao Liu has never been so rich in his life.

When I was in Xuzhou, it was called Xuzhou Mu, but there were only a few thousand troops directly under it.Later, when he became a shepherd in Yuzhou, he had even fewer soldiers and horses.The only time Mi Zhu commanded tens of thousands of people in battle was when Mi Zhu contributed a large number of servants, and was defeated by Lu Bu in the first battle.

So the current military strength is nearly 2, which is completely beyond his ability, so it took two or three days just to organize the soldiers and horses, and it was only with the help of Shen Chen that the recruitment was barely completed.

On July [-]th, this miscellaneous team, which seemed to be pieced together, began to set off on a mighty journey.

But their marching speed was not fast at all. They could only walk fifty or sixty miles a day, or about twenty kilometers. It took two days to go to Yancheng.

You must know that Shen Chen's troops are elite soldiers who have undergone rigorous training, and their ability to run long distances is extremely excellent. The daily walking speed can be maintained at four to five kilometers per hour, and the limit of a day can be seventy to eighty kilometers, which is faster than Sima Yi's attack on Mengda. quick.

But now the speed is three or four times slower, so it can be seen that more troops are not a good thing.Because this will make the troops too bloated, and the quality of the soldiers is not high, and the fighting spirit is relatively poor, which is not as strong as a small group of elites.

But Shen Chen also knew that a small group of elites was only suitable for surprise attacks.For example, Deng Ai's sneak attack on Yinping, and Li Yanxue's entry into Caizhou at night only brought 5000 people with him.If you attack a fortified point head-on, you still need a large army.

At this time, Xia Houyuan and Li Dian finally knew that Shen Chen had played another tactic, and that he actually cooperated with Liu Bei to defeat Li Tong in just one day and occupy Ding Ying.

Therefore, they hurriedly gathered their forces and returned to defend the Linying and Yiqiang areas to protect the safety of the south of Xudu. At the same time, they asked Cai Yang to join them to jointly guard against Xudu.

Cai Yang was Cao Cao who led [-] elite soldiers from the front line of Guandu, and went south to Runan to attack Liu Bei.

In history, he was beheaded by Liu Bei, and Cao Cao sent Cao Ren to defeat Liu Bei. In the end, Liu Bei had to flee back to Yuan Shao, and then went to Nanyang under the name of Nanlian Liu Biao.

But now before the Caiyang people arrived, the Manchong people were gone, and Li Tong was also defeated. He would die if he went to Runan again, so he was transferred to Liqiang to garrison with Li Dian.

On July 170th, it took four full days before Liu Bei's large army arrived at Zhaoling. This place is located to the south of Liqiang, less than [-] miles away from Xudu, which is equivalent to the distance from Luohe City to Xuchang City in later generations, about [-] miles away. Kilometers, converted into Hanli is [-] five miles.

After the army arrived at Zhaoling, Shen Chen proposed to Liu Bei again that night to divide the troops.

Zhaoling County Government House.

Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Zhao Yun, Tai Shici, Jian Yong, Sun Qian, Mi Zhu, Mi Fang, Shi Ren, Liu Yan, Yuan Wei, Xia Houzuan and other generals and advisers gathered together. At this time, Chen was only a captain of the personal guard, and he was standing at the gate. guard.

Liu Bei took the position of the left general of the great Han Dynasty and Yuzhou Mu as the head. Guan Yu and others sat under Liu Bei's left hand. Shen Chen was not his subordinate and belonged to the friendly army. Below Liu Bei's right hand.Because the right is respected in the Han Dynasty, this is a kind of respect for the guests.

After everyone was seated, Shen Chen bowed his hands to Liu Bei and said, "Mr. Xuande, Cao's army is gathered in the south of Xudu. At this time, the rear is empty. I plan to lead the troops northward, cross Yingshui from Yingyang, and then break through Yingyin and kill Xu. Du, when the time comes, Xia Houyuan and others will be in chaos, and you can sweep the hole in Liting, and go straight to Xudu!"

Liu Bei frowned and said, "If this is the case, then Cao Jun will definitely withdraw to Xudu to protect the city of Xuchang. Isn't Mr. Xiao in danger?"

Shen Chen smiled and said: "It's okay, as the saying goes, soldiers are expensive and fast. Our soldiers drill day and night, but they can make six hundred in three days, and one thousand two in six days. Zhaoling is just a short distance from Xudu, and our army can arrive there in one day. It will take some detours to go up to Yingyang, but you can get to the city of Xudu in at most two days, so Cao Jun will definitely not react so quickly."

Sima Yi and Xia Houyuan are considered to be the top marching speeds of the Three Kingdoms, but one walks an average of more than 40 kilometers a day, and the other walks [-] kilometers.Shen Chen is faster than Xia Houyuan, and can walk [-] kilometers a day. Although he is not as fast as the iron feet of our army in later generations, he was already extremely fast at that time.

of course.

This speed can only be achieved on plains such as Henan and Hebei, and in mountainous areas such as Sichuan, Shu, Liaodong, and Qinling. Naturally, it is impossible to achieve this speed.

Hearing Shen Chen's words, Liu Bei asked with concern: "Is it really possible?"

Shen Chen replied: "Three months ago, we already killed Xudu once. That time, within five days, we first feinted to attack Xudu, then broke through Ye County, Kunyang, and Wuyang, and then went north to directly capture Xudu. To fight for six hundred miles, you have to walk more than one hundred miles every day."

Although it is six hundred miles, it is only about two hundred kilometers.But within five days, feints, battles, and ambushes were still required, with an average of [-] kilometers a day. This marching speed is already very surprising.

Everyone in the hall suddenly exclaimed again and again, their eyes met, and they all felt incredible.

Liu Bei said in awe, "I've heard about this incident as well. At that time, I only knew that Mr. Xiao had fought outside the city of Xudu, and Cao Cao was forced to rush back to Xudu overnight to defend, but he didn't know that the process was so tortuous."

Shen Chen said: "I also know that the soldiers are exhausted, but this is also a last resort. The enemy is stronger than us. If we don't think of a way, how can we save the Han Dynasty?"

Liu Bei nodded and said: "Mr. Xiao's heart to help the Han Dynasty is admirable. Well, I will listen to what Mr. Xiao said. After two days, no matter whether Mr. Xiao arrives in Xudu or not, I will start to attack Li Qiang. Even if we can't reach Xudu, we still have to delay the enemy for my husband."

"Thank you, Lord Xuande."

Thank you Shen Chen.

Although Liu Bei led a bloated army, he also took great risks and had to face the main force of Cao Jun.

The army itself is not an elite soldier, and Cao Jun will focus on him. If he is not careful, he may be defeated by Cao Jun.

And Shen Chen is just a small group of troops sneaking around the rear. With Xu Du extremely empty, the probability of success is very high. Therefore, it can be said that compared with the battlefield behind the enemy, Liu Bei's pressure on the frontal battlefield will actually be greater.

So after deciding on the strategy that day, Shen Chen asked the soldiers to rest for a day. On July [-]th, Liu Beijun set off again to the north, preparing to encircle Liqiang County, but Shen Chen broke away from his army, and first Head west towards Dingling.

(End of this chapter)