Chapter 756 Arrangement
Chen Wu is only sixteen years old this year, but he has a good height of seven feet and seven inches.
But what is more eye-catching than his stature is his transcendental courage. It is said that when he was twelve years old, he led the clan tribe to avenge his father and successfully inherited the family.
Since then, he has been selling illicit salt on the river, and has also attacked the Shanyue people in the Dabie Mountains. It can be said that he is a wealthy man in the Lujiang area at a young age.
Because Lujiang County is located in the Dabie Mountains, it is bounded by the Huaihe River to the north, the Yangtze River to the south, and Chaohu Lake and Shaopi to the east. It can be said that it is truly between the Jianghuai River and the Huaihe River.
Also because there are mountains and rivers, there are not many clans and villages in Lujiang County. The Chen family is one of the more famous ones.
Songzi County, where his family is located, is on the bank of the Yangtze River and occupies an important area for material transportation in the Dabie Mountains and along the Yangtze River, so Chen took advantage of both sides.
There is a shortage of salt in the Dabie Mountains, and the Chen family supplies it to the mountains by controlling the salt roads on the river. What Chen can get are two things, namely Shanhuo and Dingkou.
The tribe can be expanded by absorbing Shanyue and Manliao Dingkou in the Dabie Mountains, and those rare mountain products can be sold along the river.
It can be said that the Chen family lived well relying on the Yangtze River waterway.
But when Chen Wu began to inherit the family business, he was not willing to just stay as a local tycoon. He saw that the world was in chaos and new powers were being reorganized.
And he, Chen Wu, must seize this opportunity.
Originally, Chen Wu was more interested in Sun Jian from this state. Although his power at that time was only in the three counties of Wu, Kuaiji and Danyang. But after listening to the opinions of some local distributors, Chen Wu believed that it was only a matter of time before Sun Jian expanded to the entire Yangzhou.
But alas, time itself becomes an issue. Because at this time Yuan Shao of Yuzhou suddenly set his expansion direction to the south.
After occupying the three passes of Yiyang, Yuan Shao inserted his tentacles of power into Jiangxia and the Dabie Mountains. Although he later gave up on Jiangxia, he did not let go of Lujiang.
The reason for this is that Yuan Shao originally took a fancy to Dingkou in the Dabie Mountains. Since the Taishan Army relied on the Shanliao in Mount Tai to establish such a strong army, he naturally wanted to absorb the people of the Dabie Mountains to expand its armed forces.
In this way, the Chen family, which relies on the Dabie Mountains for survival, must choose between Yuan Shao and Sun Jian. Obviously, the latter is not as attractive as Yuan Shao at all.
Therefore, under the leadership of Li Tong, the rear guard of the Yuan Army at that time, Chen Wu took 600 people from his clan to join the rear guard. They won many honors in the subsequent Jiangxia War and eventually grew into a soldier. A military-level subordinate with more than 4,000 troops.
At that time, Chen Wu was only sixteen years old and was the youngest military leader of Yuan Jun. A real hero comes from a young age.
Someone had advised Li Tong before, saying that Chen Wu was too young. At his age, most of the Wu family's children were out in battle for the first time.
But Li Tong only said this:
"How great you can do has nothing to do with your age. Before me, no one was as handsome as me in any aspect."
So, everyone fell silent.
……
Before crossing the river, Chen Wu met Li Tong and was instructed that after crossing the river, he must send sentries to the north and east and ride out, where traces of enemy troops were likely to appear.
So after crossing the river, Chen Wu sent out the light cavalry under his central army tent. There were not many, only fifty cavalry, but it was all Chen Wu could send out.
He ordered the fifty cavalry to be divided into three groups, changing every five miles. Then he deployed an infantry of about 200 people in a dense forest to the east of him, and then deployed another infantry half a mile east of the dense forest. There is a small stream there that can be used as a temporary stopping point for a ten-man cavalry army.
Then Chen Wu also arranged the same in several places in the north, so that he could continuously monitor the east and north of his own front.
These outposts will build a series of communication lines that can transmit intelligence from both directions to him in a timely manner.
After doing this, Chen Wu led the former army officials and began to move closer to the center of the Riverlands. He wanted to get in touch with the former guards there.
When Chen Wu was advancing westward, behind him, the remaining four armies of the rear guard were also slowly crossing the river.
Among Yuan Jun's five armies, the front guard army has always been the most powerful, followed by Chun Yuqiong's middle guard army, then Li Tong's rear guard army, and Li Zheng's right guard army is on the same level as Li Tong. The one with the worst combat power was Zhou Xin's left guard.
Almost all of the Zuohu Army were Yellow Turban rebels from the Tongbai Mountain area. If their leader Zhou Xin hadn't been Yuan Shao's personal servant, how could this army have crossed the river in the second echelon?
But there is no way, Dahan is such a humane society.
Not long after Chen Wu's army crossed the river, Li Tong also arrived at the north bank of Yishui with his army and officially joined the battlefield.
He crossed the river with Ding Feng's Chinese army. But in fact, Ding Feng was just Li Tong's general. He was too young and had almost no ability to coordinate military forces.
Ding Feng and Chen Wu are different. Although Chen Wu is young, he has his own family tribe. Even the foundation of the front camp is Chen Wu's 600 troops, so he can control the army.
Ding Feng couldn't do it. He had almost nothing except martial arts, so Li Tong just put him in his post there, and he still had to do the dispatching of the Chinese army himself.
Not long after the entire army crossed the river, they began to move closer to the center of the Riverlands. They wanted to join Zhang He over there.
At this time, under the canopy, Li Tong was squinting and looking ahead, where his more than 10,000 men had fully deployed, almost covering the entire land.
There was an endless stream of chariots and people, and it was a dazzling scene.
Among them, Chen Wu's army was walking at the forefront, but now the marching column was no longer visible, and only the vague black shadow could still be identified.
Not far to his right, Wu Shuo's army was divided into two columns, occupying the northeastern side of the Riverlands. They would cover the north side of him.
Then there is Liu Jing's Runan Army on the left, heading towards a dock wall ahead. According to the pre-war plan, their mission was to occupy that place first to provide a battlefield resting place for the entire army.
At this time, seeing the boundless Yuan army surrounding them, the owner of the dock wall seemed to have given up resistance and could only open the door and wait for Liu Jingjun's arrival.
But Li Tong knew his team and what the fate of the people in this wall would be.
Then he looked at the back of Liu Jing's army. There was Chen Gong's army. They were pushing a large number of carriages and ballistae behind.
These are all deadly weapons for attacking the Taishan Army. Therefore, although the road is muddy and difficult to travel, the officials of Chen Gong's army are beating the packmen and Lifu hard with whips in order not to abandon a single artillery carriage.
Before the war, he told Chen Gong that even if all the strength of your army were wiped out, you could not miss a single ballista.
But now it seems that Chen Gong did a good job.
To the north of Chen Gong's army were Li Tong's real elite, five hundred Jianghuai cavalry.
These Jianghuai knights carrying horses are trudging through the mud with difficulty. Their gorgeous robes are now full of filth, like a group of fighting cocks wrestling in the mud. But Li Tong looked very happy, because this meant that the enemy's cavalry would do the same, and he would not forget who had the advantage of the cavalry.
In the previous contact battle, he had already wondered why the Taishan Army was at a disadvantage in the battle between the cavalry and the cavalry. Of course he recognized Wen Chou's bravery, but he was not arrogant enough to think that Wen Chou alone could change anything.
And the subsequent battle became clear. It turned out that King Zhang actually dared to dispatch all the cavalry to attack the Kansai Army to the west before the decisive battle with them, and ended the battle in one battle.
This is truly a formidable opponent.
……
"The Taishan Army is a terrible opponent. Any omission you make at this moment will cost you your life."
At this time, in the middle of the river, Zhang He was riding on his horse and roaring angrily at his subordinates who were struggling to build rafts.
You can't blame Zhang He for being so anxious. He knew that he was the only one who couldn't make any mistakes, otherwise those Taishan troops would suddenly appear and hang him.
Just before, the sentinels he sent out came back, but only three of them came back.
They didn't even reach the east to find Li Tong's troops, but they were already driven back by the Taishan Army's sudden cavalry near the battlefield.
Now, they have not found Li Tong's troops and have been cut off from traffic by the Taishan Army.
Here, although the mist has dissipated, the gloomy clouds still block most of the sunlight, and the visibility on the battlefield is still very poor.
Therefore, Zhang He did not know his current situation. He was not even sure whether the friendly forces had been destroyed and he was the only one on the battlefield.
But he didn't tell his subordinates any of this, and asked them to build fortifications here as soon as possible.
The only thing Zhang He can be sure of now is that the enemy has at least taken the initiative on the battlefield, and may also have an advantage in numbers, at least in terms of the number of cavalry.
So Zhang He directly changed his combat formation.
Previously, due to the presence of friendly forces, Zhang He arranged his five armies in three square formations, so that he could take advantage of his heavy armored infantry and resist the line.
But now that friendly forces have not appeared as planned, it will be very dangerous for Zhang He to arrange the formation like this.
Because the front line facing the enemy in this pinzi formation is too short, if they encounter a large-scale enemy force, they will be surrounded by the enemy force. At that time, the former guards who have no room to move will have no choice but to die.
So he changed the formation now, changing the original pin shape into a horizontal formation.
That is to say, all the original three square formations are lined up. This way they would have a longer frontier to engage the enemy, making it harder for the enemy to outflank them.
Zhang He had specially inspected this battlefield before, and he found that the terrain was suitable for him to use this kind of horizontal formation to deal with the enemy.
There is a forest on both sides of him, which can block the enemy troops on both sides. More importantly, the heavy rain in the previous two days came just in time.
The plain where Zhang He and others were located was the most important fertile farmland in Gyeongsang Province, so most of the land under their feet had been plowed, and when a heavy rain ended, the thick clay immediately turned into a quagmire.
Therefore, Zhang He realized that by selecting this place as a battlefield, he could greatly slow down the enemy's attack and also give full play to his side's advantage in crossbows.
When he thought of the enemy troops wearing heavy armor and struggling to advance, being harvested by his own crossbows, Zhang He felt more and more that he had chosen the right battlefield.
Once the tactics were chosen, Zhang He began to confirm the number and combat readiness of the crossbows on his side.
Soon he got the data he wanted.
In this battle, there were actually three thousand archers and crossbowmen who accompanied the army across the river.
This is a very scary number. Zhang He never thought that he would have so many crossbowmen under his command.
In fact, this is also the reason why Zhang He took over the former guard army for too short a time. He didn't know very well that Ju Yi had been implementing a new combat method on his former guards, which was the "stacked formation method".
Although Ju Yi was later transferred from the former guard army, the former guard army still maintained a very high-quality crossbow team. Although these people were usually equipped with spearmen or swordsmen, they were always equipped with crossbows.
So the problem is simple.
On the one hand, Zhang He was impressed by Ju Yi's generosity, and on the other hand, he began to make the following arrangements.
He arranged all five armies under his command into five square formations. Among them, the central army is directly in the middle, the front army is placed on the left side of the central army, and the left army is placed on the left wing. Then the right army was placed on the right side of the center army, and the right army was placed on the right wing.
Then the three thousand archers were divided into five divisions, four of which were inserted in the gaps between each army. The last division was directly affiliated with the central army as a reserve.
After arranging the five armies in this way, Zhang He ordered the fortifications to be arranged accordingly, with antlers placed in front and wooden stakes inserted in front of the crossbowmen.
From this arrangement, it can be seen that Zhang He did not keep any reserve troops, or in other words, the guards in his hands were reserve troops.
Of course, Zhang He understood that this was a taboo in the art of war. There were no reserves, which meant that the armies on the front could only hold on by themselves. They had no reinforcements to supplement or replace them.
Therefore, this places extremely high demands on the generals of the five armies under his command.
Huang Zhong of the left army and Man Chong of the right army were both veterans, and Zhang He was the most at ease, so he handed over the two most difficult wings to them.
What he was most worried about were the Lujiang soldiers in the front camp and the Liang Peibing soldiers in the back camp. These teams were not bad in terms of individual combat capabilities, but they lacked sufficient war experience and did not have enough middle- and high-level military officials to suppress them.
So Zhang He made a decision. He split the elite Beifu knights he had in hand. He placed a total of 500 Beifu knights in the two armies.
In Zhang He's opinion, in the current battlefield environment, the cavalry is not of much use. It is better to decentralize them to the front and rear battalions and let them serve as grassroots military officials, so that he can feel more at ease.
After all these arrangements, Zhang He decided to draw an elite team from the Beifu Knights. Their mission was to go to the front of the battlefield to explore the battlefield situation. It would be best to find the main force of the enemy and determine the size of the enemy's army.
In order to successfully complete this task, he sent his general Zhang Xi out. Zhang Xi is not only a member of his own tribe, but also follows him to fight in the world, so he has enough ability to take up this position.
Zhang Xi did not refuse, and led fifty Beifu knights to scout the northern area.
There, the fog of the battlefield will lift.
(End of chapter)