Autumn of the 17th year of Chongzhen

Chapter 554

In "Sun Tzu's Art of War and Military Struggle", "the encirclement must be queried" is one of Sun Tzu's eight principles of fighting with soldiers. The "que" in it means "gap". The siege is commonly used in siege and one is missing.

In siege warfare, encircling the enemy on all sides is likely to prompt the enemy general to make up his mind to fight to the death, but if a gap is intentionally left, the enemy general may hesitate between fleeing and fighting to the death, and at the same time, the enemy's soldiers will lose their fighting spirit. .What's more important is to besiege the enemy army who is sticking to the castle. Once they abandon the city and flee, they can avoid the pain of attacking the city. In contrast, the difficulty of fighting the fleeing enemy is obviously much smaller than fighting the deadly enemy , the cost will be much less.

Generals with a little bit of brains can calculate this account, so "surrounding the division must be queried" is a common method of warfare used by the generals of the past dynasties. The trick is to lure the city guards out of the city, and then use the cavalry advantage to annihilate them.

Wang Yan encircled Wan County, so he naturally adopted this strategy. In fact, the Ming army basically did not deploy any troops in the east and north of the city.

In the Ming army camp, Xia Guoxiang revealed Wu Sangui's plan, "hanging a sheep to beat a drum, and a hungry horse to lift a bell." Taking advantage of the Ming army's promise of a truce, he slipped away from Beicheng overnight, turned over and fled across the mountains to escape from Kuizhou.

After hearing this, Wang Yan and the generals of the Ming army were greatly surprised. This Wu Sangui was so determined that he chose to go to the barren and inhabited mountains, and he didn't think about it anyway.

The reason why the Ming army did not encircle the North City and the East City was because of these two sides. The east side was the Three Gorges. After entering, there was a blockade at both ends, and they were waiting to starve to death. The Wushan Mountain in the north was also a vast virgin forest, which was easy to enter and difficult to exit.

Since Wu Sangui chose this path, Wang Yan can only give him a ride to fulfill his determination to be a clean dog.

Immediately, he ordered the men and horses to secretly investigate the terrain outside the northern city in order to set up an ambush, and then asked the patrols to pay attention to the situation in the city, but don't be too deliberate to avoid being noticed by Wu Sangui.

Sure enough, not long after, there was a patrol report, saying that there would be dense gongs and drums in the city from time to time, and there were faint sounds of horse neighing bells.

Wang Yan listened and smiled slightly, and only then did he completely believe Xia Guoxiang's words, so he asked his personal guards to take Xia Guoxiang to the commander's tent and loosen the ties, so that the generals could know from him the strength of the various tribes in Guanning, and the generals In short, we must know ourselves and the enemy, and the world will be determined in one battle.

Since Xia Guoxiang has already sold Wu Sangui, he can only sell it a little more thoroughly. He answers every question about Guan Ningjun, knows everything, has a very correct attitude, and strives to be lenient.

In the commander's tent, Wang Yan and all the generals gathered around the sand table and pointed out: "Tomorrow, Dai Zhifan, you will bring the two battalions of Zhongyong Zhenjuhe and Budou to lie behind this mountain. The three battalions of Tiger and Ben are in ambush to the east of the city gate, and the Zhenwu Battalion of Zhongyi Town is in charge of entering the city~"

When the Ming army was discussing an ambush strategy, Lu Shikui came in hurriedly, clasped his fists and reported: "My lord, just now the patrolling soldiers found that something was wrong in the city. Rarely, after it goes out, no one lights it up again."

Wan County is the prefectural city of Kuizhou. Although it cannot be compared with the densely populated plain prefecture, there were originally more than 4000 households with more than 1 people. But after the outbreak of the war, half of them fled, and there were still more than [-] people in the city, with more soldiers than civilians. .

It is a challenge for Hu Guozhu to kill more than 1 people quietly, but Wu Sangui has an order not to kill all the people in the city. Once the army leaves, the people will definitely report to the Ming army, and the Guanning army will be miserable .

In a courtyard, nearly a hundred residents of a square were assembled by the Guan Ning army into a courtyard, surrounded by elite Guan Ning soldiers. The residents looked at these Qing soldiers with knives and guns, feeling terrified.

The old Baozheng stepped forward anxiously, bowed and asked, "My lord, this is~"

Before Baozheng finished speaking, the leader of the officer cut down the old man with a backhand knife, and the surrounding Guan Ning army immediately rushed up, slashing and killing each of them expressionlessly, as if they were chopping wood, nearly a hundred people were counted in a short time Hack and kill, then put away the saber and go to the next workshop.

Guan Ning mobilized tens of thousands of people, sealed off the districts, gathered more than a hundred people at a time, and slaughtered them separately. It took two or three hours before the city was slaughtered.

The movement in the city would not have been noticed by the Ming army in the past, but because of Xia Guoxiang's relationship, the Ming army remained on the surface on the surface, but in fact strengthened the surveillance of the city. Although the Qing soldiers tried their best to reduce the movement, they still An abnormality was detected by the Ming army sentry.

After hearing Lu Shikui's report, several people in the tent couldn't help turning their eyes away from the sand table, straightened up, and then looked at Xia Guoxiang in unison, which made him feel shocked and complained again and again, he really didn't know this!

"Sir, does Wu Sangui want to escape early?" Chen Bangyan on the side looked puzzled, not sure.

Sure enough, at this time Qin Feng rushed into the tent again, and without waiting for the people to ask, he hurriedly said: "Master, Wu soldiers have left the city."

In the northern city of Wanxian County, Wu Sangui rode a war horse and stood by the road, watching more than 5000 Guan Ning troops. Under the cover of night, they quietly left the city. .

Wu Bing left Wan County by the faint moonlight. The soldiers' armor was shining coldly. They left all their luggage and surplus food. OK.

These rice grains and horses are the guarantee for Guan Ning to browse through the virgin forest in eastern Sichuan.

Wu Bing actually left the city ahead of time, which caught the generals in the tent a little unprepared. The generals only thought that Prime Minister Xia was hiding something, so they immediately drew their swords and wanted to kill Prime Minister Xia again.

He was so frightened that he hurriedly explained, "Sir, the criminal will never know about this matter, and the criminal will not know that Wu Sangui will escape early."

How could the generals in the tent listen to what he said, most of them didn't believe it, they cursed again and again and asked Wang Yan to kill him.Xia Guoxiang really couldn't explain why he had lied to the Ming army once before, so he could only kowtow to the ground.

Seeing this, Wang Yan frowned. He waved his hand to stop the generals. Right now it was not about whether Xia Guoxiang had concealed it, but about not allowing Wu Sangui, the cooked duck, to fly away.

"Xianggong, what should we do now?" The generals calmed down, the Wu soldiers withdrew early, but the preparations of the Ming army were not yet ready, and all the generals were anxious. The army surrounded for so long, and more than 1 people died. , can not be without gains.

The horses of the Guan Ning army are not only the supervisors, but also the other towns are eager to salivate. They are all counting on Wanxian to get rich after the first battle, carve up Guan Ning, and become a big cavalry.

Wang Yan frowned and pondered for a moment. The plan of the Ming army this time is to force Guan Ning to surrender or annihilate him, and wipe out a major force of the Qing army in Sichuan. With Hauge's cooperation, the Ming army did not dare to set foot in the Chengdu Plain.

In this way, the war in Sichuan will enter into a see-saw, and the main force of the Ming army will be trapped in Bashu for a long time, which will obviously make the Ming Dynasty passive, so Guan Ning must not be allowed to escape safely. Wang Yan immediately stood up and slapped the commander The case made all the generals look at him together, and then ordered loudly: "Wang Shixiu, Yuan Zongdi, you two, immediately mobilize your troops and go to pursue them. Be sure to pester Wu Sangui so that he does not run away."

Hearing the words, the two of them made a promise, clasped their fists in salute, and were about to turn around and leave. Seeing this, Chen Bangyan, the aide, hurriedly said: "Wait a minute!" Then he bowed to Wang Yan and said: "Mr. Chaos before war."

The ancient army is not suitable for night battles, mainly because it is difficult to organize and cannot be commanded. Therefore, it is often seen that thousands of people attack camps, and tens of thousands of horses are defeated. One very important reason is that in the dark night, there are many people. On the contrary, it is not easy to mobilize one side, and once it becomes chaotic, the defeat cannot be recovered.

Right now, the preparations for the Ming army are not yet ready. If it is broad daylight, they can just chase after them, but now that it is dark, it is very difficult to mobilize on a large scale.

Wang Yan listened, but did not change his mind, looked at the two standing generals, and resolutely said: "It is to cause chaos, the two towns of Zhenzhen and Zhongzheng, Zhongyong will not move, and hold the battle for you two, you just lead people to charge Fight hard, don't care about the chaos, as long as you can rush into Wu's soldiers, Wu Sangui has more than 2 people, there is no reason not to stay in chaos, once there is chaos at night, it will be difficult for us to organize, and the Wu soldiers are the same!"

(Thanks to Generation Xiongxiong 388, thanks to Yuedong Woxin, come on Jinye for their rewards, and thanks to Liudi Chunxiaoyuan Community for the two monthly tickets.)
(End of this chapter)