Chinese New Year

Chapter 574 The first confrontation
The earth trembled.

On the distant horizon, the light cavalry dressed in black began to accelerate.

At first there were only a few riders, then dozens, hundreds...

The infantrymen who were marching in the field suddenly stopped.

The soldiers turned pale and looked at the officers in panic.

This alone shows that they are somewhat organized. If they were a mob, they would not even look at the officers and would just run away - this is the level of the rebels who started the uprising at the end of every dynasty.

The officers swallowed their saliva. They didn't understand where the scouts had gone and why none of them had returned.
"Form a formation!" The leading troop commander shouted loudly, and then drums sounded and command flags were fired one after another.

After receiving the order, the junior officers immediately led their troops and acted in accordance with the flags and gongs.

Messengers rushed back and forth, delivering subtle adjustment orders to various places.

The soldiers were thirsty and trembling as they piled the only vehicles in front and then piled all kinds of debris and even chevaux de frise in other directions.

While he was busy, he watched the cavalry getting closer and closer, and his hands and feet became increasingly uncontrollable.

Among the team of more than a thousand people, only about three hundred people in the center were still calm.

They came from Wuxing County and were servants of the local tyrant Qian family in Wuxing.

The soldiers have a deep-seated respect for their superiors. If their superiors do not retreat, they will not dare to retreat even if they are very scared.

The weapons in their hands were also pretty good. Some of them were wearing iron armor and holding long spears and halberds. There were also archers and crossbowmen. Looking at the way they coordinated, it didn't seem like they had no practice before.

Overall, it's OK.

These people were the basis of the Jiangdong regime’s separatist rule since the Eastern Wu period: the private soldiers of the powerful families.

After entering the Ming Dynasty, Zhang Chang and Shi Bing rebelled. The governor of Jingzhou and the governor of Wancheng who tried to suppress them were both defeated. The King of Xinye even died in the battle. It was mainly thanks to them that the rebellion was finally pacified.

A typical example is the Zhou family of Yixing, who always led more than 10,000 private soldiers to quell rebellions. Zhou Qi even earned the reputation of "Three Times Conquering Jiangnan".

The main force of the troops suppressing Du Tao's rebellion today is still the powerful tribes in Jiangzhou, Xiangzhou, and Jingzhou, and even the barbarian chiefs.

Of course, Sima Rui was also trying to build his own army. After all, he couldn't always rely on the nobles in the south of the Yangtze River, right? But the time was short, and he only recruited a few 15,000 people to defend Jianye, and he couldn't easily send them out.

Moreover, Sima Rui also encountered difficulties in recruiting soldiers...

The population of Jiangnan was mostly controlled by the nobles and powerful families. There were self-cultivating farmers, but they were few and difficult to recruit. In the end, they could only find a way among the refugees who had migrated south and the nobles and farmhands. It was really too difficult - there was a reason why the Northern Army was mainly composed of refugees from the north who migrated south. It was not easy to recruit local people from Jiangnan.

"Anyone who retreats will be killed!" The military commander Qian Ci took a quick step forward, held his sword in front of him, and shouted loudly.

"Anyone who retreats will be killed!" Led by the officers, Qian's troops shouted with their weapons in hand.

The slightly confused soldiers in front, behind, left and right gradually stopped their commotion and stared at the cavalry that was getting closer and closer with wide eyes.

The ground was shaking more and more violently, and the cavalry's charge was getting faster and faster.

The infantrymen were a little agitated again.

There is really no way. It is so scary to see a tall horse charging forward. It is scary just to watch.

Some people have already started to slip back.

Qian Ci immediately assigned several junior officers to lead their men forward and kill more than a dozen fleeing soldiers on the spot.

When the bloody head was thrown to the ground, the commotion died down again.

"Clop..." The sound of horse hooves continued.

However, as they approached the enemy formation, the horse's speed gradually slowed down.

The officers changed their formations skillfully, and hundreds of cavalrymen were divided into two groups within the range of an arrow, each of which encircled the enemy to the left and right - the enemy was not frightened and defeated, which meant that the enemy in front of them was not a mob, so they would execute the second step and surround and shoot on horseback.

"Swoosh! Whoosh!" Dense arrows broke through the air and fell into the crowd of infantry.

The people at the outermost edge began to cry and scream and ran around in panic.

Qian's troops killed a dozen soldiers who were running around, then the shieldmen moved forward and the archers took the opportunity to shoot, using their advantages in range and power to inflict casualties on the cavalry.

The crossbowman was also clumsily loading the crossbow arrows, but he was too nervous, his hands were shaking, and the loading movement was very slow.

The riders kept screaming and falling off their horses, but the arrows shot from the horse bows also continued to reap lives.

If the power is not enough, then make up for it with quantity.

The five or six hundred riders who charged up were all archers. They kept circling on horseback, drawing their bows and arrows, as dense as flying locusts.

At this time, if there were 300 archers, they would have shot these cavalrymen to pieces under the cover of the shieldmen, but unfortunately, they didn't...

The first problem to arise was in the rear.

This was, after all, an encounter. The infantry encountered the enemy hastily and was not fully prepared. The 300 infantrymen sent to the rear to set up obstacles were locals from Xuzhou, who had been in the army for a short time and were not as elite as Qian's troops. After being shot twice by the cavalry, many were killed or wounded.

At the critical moment, more than a hundred cavalrymen suddenly rushed out from behind the mounted archers, holding a shield in one hand and a sword in the other, and directly dispersed the shaky Xuzhou infantry.

"Jie Nu!" someone shouted.

But it was too late. The sharp iron sword cut through his belly, and the shining saber slashed his neck. Blood gushed out and the infantry fled in all directions.

The cavalry seized the opportunity and, risking their horses' slowdown, advanced and advanced again, penetrating deep into the crowd of enemy infantry and creating great chaos.

The infantrymen were in an uproar, and the originally orderly counterattack formation collapsed in an instant.

The crossbowman gave up reloading, at a loss as to what to do.

The archer turned around and looked back, and subconsciously shot the Jie cavalry rushing from behind.

But behind them, a denser rain of arrows than before came quickly, breaking through the shieldmen's blockade, drilling into the gaps and gaps, and knocking down the archers in groups. It turned out that the Xiongnu and Jie light cavalry cruising on the periphery saw their own shock cavalry wedge into the enemy formation from behind, disrupting their rhythm, and immediately got bold enough to approach, shooting and killing the Jiangdong infantry with better accuracy at a distance of thirty steps.

Under attack from both inside and outside, this infantry of more than a thousand people immediately showed signs of defeat.

Liu Hezhu, who was watching the battle from more than a hundred steps away, decisively deployed the reserve troops: three hundred mounted archers and two hundred melee cavalry.

Five hundred cavalrymen raised up dust and quickly approached the Jiangdong infantry who were already in large-scale retreat. They shot their bows and wielded their sabers, easily taking lives.

The commander of the army, Qian Ci, led more than a hundred infantrymen and fought desperately from the center of the battlefield where soldiers and horses were intertwined.

They did not run away, because running away would mean death, but fighting would not necessarily mean death.

More than a hundred people formed a formation around the chariot, with shieldmen on the outside and spearmen and archers on the inside, trying to put up a last-ditch resistance.

No one paid any attention to them.

Liu Hezhu commanded his light cavalry to chase and kill the fleeing soldiers, trying to destroy the enemy's manpower as much as possible.

Qian Ci and others were so angry that their eyes were bloodshot, but there was nothing they could do.

More than a thousand cavalrymen rampaged for a while, and only after they killed the last Jiangdong infantryman still standing on the battlefield did they gather their formation and watch Qian Ci and others from afar.

There was no persuasion to surrender.

A moment later, a horn sounded, and this group of bloodthirsty and man-eating criminals began to circle around Qian Ci and others again.

The circle was relatively large at first, but slowly began to shrink. When the first arrow fell, it meant that the bloody final battle had begun.

It was almost a one-sided massacre.

There were only a few Jiangdong archers surrounded in the center, and only a dozen or so were killed or wounded, and they were soon nailed to the ground.

The remaining spearmen and sword and shield men had almost no ability to fight back.

In desperation, they broke out of the chariot formation and launched a desperate charge against the Jie cavalry.

too late.

The Jie cavalry scattered and surrounded them on horseback, shooting and quickly extinguishing the last embers.

Liu Hezhu walked forward slowly and looked at the devastated battlefield silently.

For a moment, he regained his confidence.

The tactic of circling and shooting with cavalry, which had been tried and tested, had once failed, making him doubt his life. Now it seemed that it was still useful.

But he soon thought of the overwhelming rain of arrows from the Silver Spear Army. Damn it!
What kind of brain is it to train every soldier to be an archer, swordsman, or spearman?

A troop whose members are all capable of archery and close combat is simply the nemesis of their light cavalry.

In fact, the Jiangdong infantry we encountered today was not that bad.

At least, when Shi Le first arrived in Yecheng, his soldiers were only at this level, as Liu Hezhu saw with his own eyes.

However, these Wu people were not equipped with a large number of archers and crossbowmen. This was their mistake, or it may be that they did not react in time. After all, such large-scale cavalry charges were rare in Jiangnan.

A desolate song was heard on the battlefield.

The light cavalry had dismounted and were burying the bodies of both sides on the spot.

Amid the singing, the rivers and lakes in the south can be vaguely seen.

That is Xia Pi, a city surrounded by water on all sides.

Outside Xia Pi City, there were many navy ships and warships, but that was not their home ground.

"Report the victory to General Xi and kill Zu Ti's vanguard general Qian Ci and his 1,230 men." Liu Hezhu ordered.

The military clerk spread out paper and pen and began to write a victory report.

The ancients said "boats in the south and horses in the north", which is indeed true.

There is also the saying “Use your strengths to attack the enemy’s weaknesses”.

The first confrontation between the two major military and political groups, Shao Xun and Sima Rui, ended twenty miles northeast of Xia Pi.

After the victorious party cleaned up the battlefield, they left in a hurry.

The losing party arrived at the vicinity of the battlefield by boat in the evening, sent people to search, and finally determined the location of the battlefield and the outcome.

The front-line commanders of both sides, Xi Jian and Zu Ti, respectively reported to Xuchang and Jianye as quickly as possible.

In the following days, there was a calm between the two sides. Each side withdrew its troops and tried to find out the other side's deployment and how to avoid fighting in a scenario where the other side had an advantage.

Xi Jian tried to use the relatively good field combat capabilities of the cavalry and infantry to defeat Zu Ti's main force in one fell swoop.

Zu Ti tried to take advantage of the terrain of Xia Pi, which was surrounded by water on all sides and had numerous rivers and lakes nearby, to defeat the enemy in one fell swoop.

Besides, he was waiting for another advantage.

On May 18, heavy rain arrived as expected and lasted for several days.

Between Xia Pi and Pengcheng, it was as if the sky had fallen, and the area was flooded.

At this time, the news also spread to Kaocheng via Xuchang.

Shao Xun, who had just met with scholars from all over Yanzhou, opened and read the letter as soon as possible.

In addition, he received another "good news": someone came to look for him because he had not been home for a long time.

(End of this chapter)