Chapter 372 Capture
When Guo Dian discovered that the cavalry of the Taishan Army had returned for reinforcements, he was despairing.
Because he knew that not only the reinforcements from the Zhongshan Kingdom might have been in trouble, but his own breakout channel had also been cut off.
Again, why did he dare to break through? Isn't it because the enemy's cavalry was transferred away?
Now that the cavalry is backing up, can he outrun the cavalry?
With this thought, Guo Dian's face was as dry as a carved sculpture.
But at this time, another military officer from the battalion came with an order flag and said on the spot:
"Master Fu, my camp general said that he would come to help after the officials have eaten!"
Does what this person says make sense? Of course it makes sense. It's already noon and there's not even a drop of rice yet. How can we have any combat effectiveness?
But when is it now? Guo Dian hasn't even eaten yet, so you still want to delay?
So Guo Dian couldn't bear it anymore, so he personally picked up his Huanshou sword and chopped off the military officer in front of him with one blow.
Before he died, the military officer couldn't believe why he would be killed just because he came to deliver an order.
After killing this man, Guo Dian felt extremely regretful.
Before the war, he felt that the battalion leaders lacked the will to fight due to the reorganization of their troops. So they were placed in the back line a little later as a reserve team.
But what now? After another, after another.
What do they want?
Don’t you know that if we don’t unite as one in this battle, we will definitely die without a burial place?
Guo Dian's sudden killing spree startled Wei Shou who was standing next to him.
But he quickly found a solution. He stepped forward and suggested to Guo Dian:
"The camp leaders will be slack, but they will not dare to surrender in front of the formation. Because these people have no idea how much Taiping Road blood is on their hands, they have no way to retreat. Therefore, Ming Gong can order these camp generals to come to our camp quickly to answer the order, and then Then just exchange your confidants for generals.”
Wei Shou's method is not a method.
Because it is a taboo to change generals before the battle. A new general is assigned to the head of the camp. The general does not know the soldiers, the soldiers do not know the generals, and there is no running-in between the top and bottom. How can he go to war?
But Guo Dian understood the essence of Wei Shou's plan. It was not to let these people go to fight at all, but to stabilize these battalion heads and avoid defecting in the face of battle.
Guo Dian had no choice but to take this as a countermeasure.
But at this moment, the sound of roaring mountains and tsunami came from the opposite side.
Then Guo Dian saw dozens of flags representing the camp heads of the Han army being thrown in front of the formation by the enemy. At this time, the Han army on the front line realized that all their reinforcements had been wiped out.
As a result, morale fell directly to the bottom.
Among the people behind Guo Dian, Zang Hong's face turned pale. He knew that his father was probably in trouble.
It was also when morale was faltering that a sergeant from the Taishan Army came out with a loud voice and shouted:
"Destroy Zhongshan first, then Julu. Surrender will be lenient, resistance will be strict. Surrender or not?"
Finally, the three armies shouted:
"Surrender or not?"
At this time, the faces of all the Han soldiers turned pale, and they were so horrified that they dropped their weapons.
……
The victory of this battle has been decided.
With no reinforcements from outside and no food or fodder inside, what else could the Han army do to resist fearlessly?
Once the battle formation collapses and morale collapses, the military, no matter how tight it was before, will fall into chaos, and everyone is trying to find a way to survive.
The Han army camp head in the front line was blocked and had no choice but to surrender to the Taishan army. Their survival depends on whether Taishan Army is really the King Master as rumored.
The Han army camp heads in the middle and rear formations began to flee toward the southwest. Although the Taishan Army was guarding there, they could escape as much as they could.
After seeing the collapse of the Han army, the Taishan Army naturally began to chase the enemy northward.
The trained assault riders also put on new war horses, followed the flow of people, and began to pursue the victory. The pursuit of troops was endless, stretching from the north to the south of Handan.
Guo Dian had already run away, taking Wei Shou and other staff and county officials with him. They also had war horses.
But Tian Feng was not among the crowd, because he had been abandoned by his colleagues.
But it can also be said that Tian Feng gave up on them.
Tian Feng understood that all these people were doing was in vain, because at this time, there was a big pocket outside Handan City, and the trenches, corridors, and walls outside had already surrounded the Han army inside. The Taishan Army has blocked several large fighting passages, so they can't go anywhere.
So since the ending has nothing to change, why is it so disgraceful?
So Tian Feng sat on a dilapidated bullock cart in the chaos of the crowd, facing the direction of his hometown in the northwest and smiled.
Then he took out his dagger and stabbed himself in the chest.
But at this moment, a horse came running towards him. He was chasing death, but suddenly he saw that this man was so energetic. With a thought, he nailed Tian Feng's hand with a flying arrow.
Tian Feng wailed in pain, and the dagger in his hand fell to the ground.
Then I heard the knight say to his companion:
"This man is a man of integrity, take it."
So the companion dismounted, pulled out a rope and tied up Tian Feng.
Tian Feng had no resistance and was sent to a net bag. Looking at the heroic knight, Tian Feng endured the pain and asked:
"Who are you? Why do you want to save me?"
When the knight heard this, he clicked his tongue. It seemed that the Confucian scholar knew what was good and knew that he was saving him.
But the knight didn't care about this. At this moment, he heard a colleague in front shouting:
"The enemy commander is on the left front."
The knight couldn't help it any longer, so he greeted his companions and hurried after him.
Tian Feng was left alone on the battlefield. He was trapped in a net bag and could not move. He had to wait for the Taishan Army infantry behind him to come and take him into custody.
Tian Feng was looking at the sky blankly, when suddenly a voice came:
"The one who saved you is my husband, Changshan Zhao Zilong."
But it was Zhao Yun's companion who couldn't see his husband's way of doing good deeds without leaving his name, so he came to make him famous.
Tian Feng's eyes focused slightly, read the name, and then sighed again.
……
Wei Shou has been separated from Guo Dian and others.
At this time, he was running wildly with two knights accompanying him.
Just as Tian Feng thought, Wei Shou also knew that he would probably not be able to escape this time. But people who are dominated by fear will not sit still and wait for death.
Even if they are running around like headless flies, they will feel that there is a slight chance of survival.
"Whoosh" an arrow shot from nowhere, knocking off Wei's companion and dismounting from his horse.
Soon, there was another arrow, but Wei Zao and the others dodged it.
Wei Shou cursed secretly:
"Aren't these killers from the Taishan Army supposed to be treated leniently?"
As everyone knows, the Taishan Army treated the prisoners leniently, not the defeated troops. As long as the weapon is not thrown away, the battle is not over.
Another wave of random arrows came, and this time Wei Shou and his companions were not so lucky.
His companion was shot through the neck by an arrow, while Wei Shou fell off his horse due to avoidance.
Knowing that he couldn't run away, Wei Shou decisively lay down in the pile of corpses and pretended to be dead.
Soon, the Taishan army, chasing the defeated troops, ran near Wei Shou. But because Wei Shou was concealed, these people all chased Wei Shou, and no one found that there was a living person lying there.
But Wei Shou's joy could not last long.
Soon behind the pursuers, a wave of people came up to clean up the battlefield.
They inspected the corpses one by one, classified them separately, and cleaned them in an orderly manner.
Wei Shou could no longer hide his whereabouts, so he had to get up and secretly threw away the ribbon around his waist, trying to sneak into the crowd of prisoners.
But Wei Shou's little idea was immediately seen through. A Taishan soldier grabbed Wei Shou's cuffs and saw that the lining was made of silk, and said angrily:
"Who are you? You dare to pretend to be a soldier? Tell me, what position do you hold?"
Wei Shou was frightened. He didn't expect that any soldier in the Taishan Army would have the awareness to actively observe, so he hurriedly explained:
"I am a general of a group, and I was so frightened that I panicked."
The Taishan soldier didn't say much and sent the man to the back.
He wasn't worried about this person lying, he had a trick up his sleeve.
Soon, the soldier discovered another six Han troops gathered under a trench. He immediately rushed forward, swung the knife horizontally, and shouted:
"Why don't you come out and surrender? Do you dare to resist?"
These six people were already so frightened that they dared not resist after hearing these words, so they had no choice but to tremble out of the trench and surrender.
These six thick men showed no resistance in front of this Taishan Army.
This is the military power of Taishan Army.
……
The pursuit of the captives was still going on, but over there Wei Shou was walking among the crowd of soldiers, bowing his head.
He didn't expect that he could sneak in so easily.
But soon, he realized something was wrong, because he saw that prisoners were being registered in front of him. This is not good. Why did the Taishan Army regard the prisoners' mouths as so important and specially selected a group of liberal arts writers to do this?
In fact, Wei Shou did not understand that the Taishan Army had grown from a force of less than a thousand people to the present. A big task was to melt the prisoners of the Han Army and replenish its troops.
Zhang Chong has always regarded absorbing Han captives as an important task to supplement the army. Because these people generally have good military skills and are proficient in military formations. More importantly, absorbing these military combatants can maintain regional stability.
Therefore, after several large-scale battles, except for some who were injured and retired and who had great public resentment, most of the prisoners were replenished to the various battalions in the army to maintain the combat effectiveness of each battalion.
But these prisoners are not taken in casually. After several summaries, the Taishan Army mainly used these methods to melt the captured soldiers.
One is the story of the sacrifice of an old prisoner. One is to persuade and educate local people. One is to explain the Taishan Army's land distribution policy.
And when seniors who have become generals and corps commanders all speak with their hometown accents, greetings and explaining the land they will receive after joining the army, how can you not make these poor Han soldiers feel moved?
Don't think that today's Han soldiers are the same as the Chinese soldiers in the Spring and Autumn Period. Nowadays, the sons of the rich and nobles are officers, and the Guizhou leaders and liberated slaves are soldiers.
And these people are generally squeezed out of military merit in the Han military system. In addition to receiving some trivial rewards, they will be soldiers for the rest of their lives. It's not like here in the Taishan Army. What I hear and see everywhere is that this person performed well and became a corps commander in three days, and the other person was promoted on the spot because he was more capable.
In short, everything here in Taishan Army is so incompatible with the environment of Han Army.
At the beginning, every battalion head of the Taishan Army liked to recruit this kind of captured soldiers. Because these people have combat experience, they can immediately develop combat effectiveness as soon as they enter the camp.
On the other hand, the local field guards who were often recruited by the Taishan Army in the past were often very demanding, and their combat capabilities were not as good as these captured soldiers. Therefore, each battalion recruited a large proportion of captured soldiers, and even field guards came to report, but they were not required. situation.
This matter was quickly stopped by Zhang Chong.
He knew all too well the drawbacks of this kind of thing. That is, although the captured soldiers are strong in combat, they are still willing to work with you. But because their interests are not bound or constrained, these soldiers will become deserters once they encounter defeat or retreat.
Because no matter how well you talk about dividing the fields, you are still short-term. After all, you have not been able to reach their hometown.
But this is not the case for dividing fields and soldiers. Their interests are only related to the rise and fall of the Taishan Army. If Taishan's army is defeated and their fields in their hometown are completely unprotected, how will they be able to withstand the powerful forces who return home later? So even if the war is difficult, these people will do their best for the Taishan Army.
Even less so if you deserted during the retreat. Zhang Chong still remembers that when he led his troops out of Changshao, he led his troops to attack Mou County overnight, and more than a hundred people were lost during the night. If they were ordinary soldiers, these people would have fled long ago, but these field guards can still find their own troops and actively return to the organization.
Therefore, in the composition of the Taishan Army, a certain proportion must come from field guards.
However, Zhang Chong also understood. At this stage of the development of the Taishan Army, it is an inevitable trend to absorb captured soldiers on a large scale, because they can form combat effectiveness faster and be better able to deal with subsequent counterattacks.
Therefore, Zhang Chong gave each battalion a target, that is, in each battalion, field guards must account for four floors, and the remaining 60% is reserved for prisoner soldiers.
Although this ratio is very large, in fact, all the prisoners captured in the past are counted in this 60% indicator. Therefore, every time, each battalion attaches great importance to the captured soldiers it wants to absorb.
But just as Wei Shou planned, there will definitely be many military officials who infiltrate the ranks because they have blood debts on their hands and are worried about being liquidated.
So there was a scene that Wei Shou saw. The Taishan Army registered every prisoner.
After registration, these prisoners will be divided into dozens of teams, and then the two groups of military officials and sergeants will be screened out. Then the prisoners of the same organization identified each other, and then the military officials identified them. After such cross-identification, the true situation of each prisoner is often revealed.
In this way, Wei Shou's identity was revealed in the first wave of identifications. When they heard that this man was the chief emissary of the Yellow Turbans back then, and the traitor who betrayed his old brothers during the Guangzong Incident, everyone in the Taishan Army was filled with indignation and wished they could beat Wei Shou to death.
After all, the Taishan Army and the Yellow Turban Army are still a family, and their hearts are still close to each other.
If the military officials had not stabilized the situation, Wei Shou would have been hammered to death. It was at this time that a burst of jubilant cheers suddenly spread from the front, but it was:
"Zhao Zilong captured Guo Dian, the governor of Julu, Cai!"
Then Wei Shou saw that his good gentleman was like an old dog being grabbed by his belt by a heroic young general, coming in high spirits.
It seems that our Ming Gong has not been able to escape either.
In this way, Wei Shou and Guo Dian saw the despair in each other's eyes as they crossed paths.
(End of chapter)