Chapter 716: Battle
Ju Yi did not expect to win the opposite barrier with the help of Shaowu and Yunzhong's troops.
Behind him, there were about twenty battalions advancing slowly. Except for some of them were manor warriors recruited from Runan, most of them were veterans who had experienced the baptism of war for several years.
In the past, these people were either the crossbowmen of King Chen Liu Chong, or the personal soldiers of Yingchuan Prefect Kong Ni, or the demobilized soldiers recruited by Ding Yuan. But now, forged in the furnace of Yuan Shao's army, they all became Chen Guoshang. A is also a well-deserved responsible for force.
Not to mention, Zhang He had three thousand Beifu knights behind him.
Regardless of what Ju Yi had against Zhang He, he had great trust in these Beifu knights. These people were highly disciplined and had superb riding skills. They were the best cavalry unit.
In fact, it is not that there are no other cavalry units in Ju Yi's army. There are also a few thousand knights around him, but these people are too flashy.
Wearing feathers and cloaks, they are gorgeous, but they can only be used as messengers. They have not been on the front line for who knows how long.
This is actually Ju Yi’s own fault.
In the early years, Ju Yi would personally lead the cavalry to break out of the battle, but his position in the back was getting higher and higher, and his position on the battlefield was also getting further and further back. His subordinate cavalry, who were good at fighting before, now have no idea of their combat power. How's it going?
At the same time, Ju Yi also brought his secret weapon this time. In addition to his own improved crossbow, he also reproduced the Taishan Army's crossbow.
Yuan Shao spent a lot of money to obtain this from the Taishan Army. At that time, they were sent out part by part, and they were reassembled after arriving in Runan.
Once the secret of the Taishan Army's ballistae was cracked, Yuan Shao began to reproduce the ballistae on a large scale.
Yuzhou is the largest state in the world, with the best population and material resources, so Yuan Jun installed a large number of crossbows in a short period of time.
And now Ju Yi is accompanying the army with about sixty ballistae, always ready to surprise the Taishan Army.
So with such confidence, he was a little unscrupulous and directly asked Yu Qi to pass his order. Three moments later, Chunyu Dao would lead the entire Shaowu Army northward to attack the Taishan Army barrier.
After the military order was issued, the horse rushed straight to Shaowu's army.
I don’t know what kind of trade-offs Director Chunyu made, but at three o’clock, Shaowu’s army began to form in horizontal formation and slowly advanced towards the Taishan Army’s barrier in the north.
If so, Ju Yi nodded with satisfaction, then rode his horse to a gentle slope, ready to see the battlefield situation.
……
Under the scorching sun, Guo Pu, the commander-in-chief of the Zhaoyi Army, was standing on the watchtower, looking seriously at the unfolding of Yuan's army opposite.
For him, holding the position is the most important thing at this moment.
This is not only because Guo Pu realizes the importance of Otani Pass, but also because this is the atonement battle of Zhaoyi Army.
He looked down at his subordinates who were also preparing for the battle with determined expressions, and understood that the moment for their Zhaoyi Army had come.
At the same time, Guo Pu also had an intuition in his heart. He believed that the king's reinforcements were nearby. Although he did not know why the reinforcements did not send someone to convey the message to him, he still believed that the reinforcements had arrived.
At this time, it is even more important to defend the frontal barriers so as to create opportunities for friendly forces.
According to Hu Muqiu's previous military order, Guo Pu led Zhaoyi's army of about a thousand people to set up a wall to the east of the valley entrance.
The direct distance from the valley entrance is about five miles, which is just enough to contain the enemy's full expansion. At the same time, because it is in the northeast, it can directly threaten Yuan Jun's right wing.
If Guo Pu's troops are not taken down, his troops will be like a cone knife pressed against Yuan Jun's waist.
So after Guo Pu got the order, he chose the current camp area.
Behind their camp is a rugged and complex mountainous area. Spring water flows down from the mountain through the camp, ensuring the Zhaoyi Army's water supply.
At the same time, directly in front of them was a gravel field, which should be the remaining stones left by the craftsmen who polished and built the stone elephants outside the upper palace of the imperial mausoleum.
The so-called Shi Xiangsheng is also called Shi Wengzhong. Wengzhong was a bronze man made by the First Emperor to cast the world's iron soldiers, so Shi Xiangsheng is also Wengzhong made of stone.
The stone elephants were highly respected in this dynasty. Not only the emperor, the royal family, and the ministers would erect stone elephants in front of their tombs. On the one hand, they were used to ward off evil spirits, and on the other hand, they showed the identity of the tomb owner and his achievements during his lifetime.
For example, in front of the tomb of the champion Hou Huo Qubing was a stone statue of "a horse trampling the Huns and a strong man hugging a bear". In front of the tomb of Emperor Guangwu, there were stone statues of his civil servants and generals to show the righteousness of the emperor and his ministers.
Nowadays, these stone elephants have long been disfigured by the rain and wind, but the remaining stones left outside the mouth of the valley are still widely spread, and now they have become a natural line of defense for the Zhaoyi Army.
There is this broken stone road, and no cavalry can pass through it.
Originally, Guo Pu was still strengthening the defense line, but today Hu Muqiu once again gave him an order.
Previously, Hu Muqiu did not give Guo Pu any set goals, but just asked Guo Pu to contain part of Yuan's army. But today Hu Muqiu told him that the Zhaoyi army must defend this dock wall and would not be allowed to retreat without his order.
Guo Pu carried out this military order unconditionally because he had originally planned to do so.
He was very confident in the barrier he had built and believed that Yuan Jun would not be able to capture the barrier without paying several times his own casualties.
Of course, Guo Pu also understood that this was just an ideal result, because even though his troops were full of morale, they were insufficient in armaments. He had already pursued military supplies with Hu Muqiu, and he should have sent a batch of them.
After all, different levels of tasks naturally require different resources.
However, there is good news for Guo Pu, that is, it rained lightly last night, and the mountain road to the southwest of him is a bit muddy, which will be troublesome for Yuan Jun who is eager to march.
But what Guo Pu didn't expect was that the rain last night also brought some kind of cover to Yuan Jun. Just like now, he was not sure how many Yuan Jun were on the opposite side.
Guo Pu watched for a while on the watchtower and saw that the enemy troops were still fiddling with their formations slowly and delaying an attack, so he thought this was the enemy's strategy to tire them out.
So Guo Pu asked the two small battalions under his command to take turns eating, trying to have a full meal before the enemy attacked. Then he handed over the task of observing the enemy's situation to his deputy and went down.
Guo Pu's meal was very simple. He squatted on the ground and ate steamed buns with his brothers in the camp, and then ate some pickles for his last meal before the war.
It's not that Guo Pu and the others don't even have any meat anymore, or that Hu Muqiu of the Bohai Navy is demanding even this small amount of dried meat.
In fact, although Hu Muqiu was indeed very stingy in the supply of armaments, especially the powerful ballistae, he was actually not that bad in terms of supplies. Before the war, the Bohai Navy from behind also sent them as a surprise attack. A box of dried meat.
But Guo Pu himself decided to use all the dried meat to supply the thirty-six riders in the camp.
These thirty-six cavalry were the only remaining cavalry seeds of the Zhaoyi Army. In order to preserve the strength of these men, Guo Pu did not even send them to scout the enemy. The general of these thirty-six horses was a Wuhuan man named Dou Rong.
But to be precise, Dou Rong is a naturalized person. Apart from his accent, this cavalry general is no different from the Han people in the North.
This is actually an advantage that the Wuhuan people have over the Dingling and Xianbei people.
That is, the Wuhuan people look almost exactly the same as the Han people, and they can be naturalized into the Han people after a little melting. But some Xianbei people, especially the Dingling people, have white skin and deep eyes, so even if they stay among the Han people for a long time, people will notice the difference at a glance.
Dou Rong was an excellent cavalryman, especially good at capturing prisoners at short distances or thrusting through, which was closely related to the grassland life of the Hu people.
He was one of the earlier Wuhuan people to join the Taishan Army. So when most of the Wuhuan people were still serving as grassroots officials, he was already the deputy general of the Zhaoyi Army's cavalry, commanding a hundred-man cavalry team.
But unfortunately, the current Zhaoyi Army only has this little flesh and blood left.
At this time, Dou Rong and Thirty-Six Riders got off the horse cage and ate dried meat together. Even the war horses were fed fresh chicken. However, no one in the Quan Zhaoyi Army said anything about the special treatment given to these people.
Just because these people will later perform the most brutal assault mission, these people have the right and should receive the best resource supplements in the camp.
Dou Rong was eating dried meat and was in a daze. He wanted to say something to these knights, but as soon as he opened his mouth, the Yuan's troops outside the barrier had already blown their horns, and the war drums from behind also encouraged them, shaking the sky.
In response to Yuan Jun's reaction, the Zhaoyi Army just sounded the alarm bell on the watchtower. The Zhaoyi Army, who had quickly finished their meals, returned to the barrier under the leadership of their respective officers, and waited with bated breath for the enemy's arrival.
At this time, Guo Pu also rushed to the watchtower and took over the command from deputy general Zheng Guo.
Guo Pu's thugs looked into the distance and saw an overwhelming number of enemy troops coming. The shining armor soldiers greatly impacted Guo Pu's mind.
The enemy should have fully deployed their troops, and their tactics are a typical formation of infantry in the middle and rangers on both sides.
In the middle of the formation, there is also a group of warriors wearing apricot yellow military uniforms. They wear copper pockets on their heads, armor on their chests, and advance slowly holding eight-foot-long rifles.
On both sides of them were light cavalry. Their numbers looked small and their equipment was not very good.
Just the Yuan's Armor in the middle had already given Guo Pu quite a shock. He originally thought that Yuan Jun's strength was about the same as that of the Central Plains princes, otherwise he would not use tricks to win the battle.
But the armor rate he saw before him, especially the apricot-yellow uniforms, almost made Guo Pu think that the Yuan Army in front of him was his core Sixteenth Army.
Guo Pu calmed down and then looked around at the enemy troops, trying to see some fighting opportunities from their formation.
After a while, Guo Pu really saw something different.
He carefully counted the enemy's phalanxes, and there were about eight. If one phalanx had 500 people, then what he saw in front of him was a standard 5,000-man army.
But behind these eight square formations, Guo Pu could see blurry, but he could still find that the distance between the square formations behind and the eight square formations in front was actually quite a bit.
Guo Pu didn't dare to judge anything, he just instinctively felt that this was an anomaly.
However, this bit of information is actually of little use to him. He has too little capital, and even if he discovers some flaws, he doesn't have the strength to fight back.
He just kept this in mind silently and waited for Yuan Jun's arrival.
……
In front of the Zhaoyi Army's barrier was Shao Wujun, who had just been ordered to fight.
At this moment, Director Chunyu, the leader of the Shaowu Army, looked very ugly. He had scolded Ju Yi countless times just now, saying that this dog slave knew that he wanted to consume their Shao Wujun.
Even Director Chunyu complained more than once about why his brother, Shao Wujun, had to be placed under Ju Yi's camp. He knew that the two sides were like fire and water. Wasn't this pushing his brother into a pit of fire?
Originally, when Director Chunyu received Ju Yi's order, he actually didn't want to obey it at all, but everyone persuaded Director Chunyu, saying that Ju Yi was going to find excuses to punish us, but now that we are resisting the order in front of the battle, that is giving people more power. Handle.
Director Chunyu had no choice but to accept the order.
His original plan was that it would take time to deploy the troops, so he would delay it until as late as possible.
But Ju Yi didn't care at all about Director Chunyu's little thought, and didn't even ask anyone to urge him.
Ju Yi, who had been watching the formation on the slope behind, saw that Shao Wujun was fully deployed, and immediately asked the drummer behind him to beat the drum beat.
In this way, Chunyu Dao's troops were completely unaware of the situation. They thought that the Chinese army had given the order, and the ministries below really started to prepare for the war.
As all the ministries responded to the call, Director Chunyu, who was being held up, could only scold Ju Yi a few more times, and then began to dispatch the troops in earnest.
In fact, Director Chunyu's unwillingness to go to war was not entirely due to factional strife. In fact, he himself also understood the current situation of Shao Wujun.
Because of the continuous march, especially on the way out of Dtanikou, many troops of Shao Wujun were behind.
As the fifth army under Yuan Shao's command, Shao Wu's army was originally full in strength. Later, when it went on an expedition, it was supplemented by about a thousand Ruyang soldiers.
But now Shao Wu's army arrived on the battlefield, only more than 4,000 people, and a large amount of equipment was left behind.
Therefore, Chunyu Dao really wanted to wait for the troops behind to arrive before he could attack.
But Ju Yi didn't give him a chance and almost forced him out of the battle in a brutal way.
Therefore, Director Chunyu silently made another note to Ju Yi. After the war, he insisted on giving Ju Yi a try to make him understand that the Chunyu family could not be bullied.
No matter how hasty Shao Wujun was, and no matter how reluctant Chunyu Dao was, Shao Wujun's actions still showed superb military capabilities.
These veterans who had been fighting for several years began to disperse outside the formation in small groups before the battle began.
After these stragglers broke away from the main force, they quickly occupied various key points on the periphery of the Zhaoyi Army's barrier.
There was even a small force that bypassed their barrier and climbed directly to Wan'an Mountain to the northeast of them, obviously intending to occupy the commanding heights here to observe the movements in Guo Pu's camp.
Obviously, neither Guo Pu nor Hu Muqiu in the rear could let Wan'an Mountain pass, and they both deployed sentries here.
So, before the two armies were fighting, deep in Wan'an Mountain, a sharp golden sound was faintly heard from the depths of the dense forest.