Chapter 143 Plan
What approached Baoning was actually only half of the Tiger Wing Battalion and a thousand auxiliary soldiers sent by Sun Jie. The main force of Sun's army is still hundreds of miles away in Dingyuan, and there is a whole Shunqing Mansion between them and Zhang Hu.
It's not that Sun Jie is passive and avoids fighting. When the military order was received, the troops were resting at Fotuguan next to Yucheng, and were preparing to continue boarding boats to sail westward along the Yangtze River in two or three days, until they arrived at the destination of the trip, Luzhou - from Luzhou to the south along the Shunna River, after passing Luzhou Wei, there was She Chongming. Yongning Xuanfu Division, and not far to the south is An Bangyan’s Shuixi Xuanwei Division!
Pushi Station, Mani Station, Chishui Guard... a series of military key points are all along this almost straight line. On the way here, Sun Jie had been staring at various maps. Although they were not very accurate, they were enough to give him a general understanding of the environment. Sun Jie is confident: Even if the situation really deteriorates out of control, as long as Zhenxiong Prefecture and Usa Prefecture (today's Weining Yi and Miao Autonomous County) in the west, Zunyi Prefecture and Pingyue Prefecture in the east can guard their respective borders. , don't teach the defeated bandits to rush in, your troops will be like a steel knife, piercing the heart of the She'an family. With proper logistics support, these two cancers can be completely rooted out for the imperial court in a year or two at most.
Sun Jie knew that there were high mountains to the east, west and south, and a small group of remnants could escape, but they would never be able to cause any more trouble - it was impossible to support a rebel army of more than a few hundred people in the mountains. In the mountains and forests, people will starve to death within a few days. Therefore, if the two She'an thieves really want to cause trouble, they will definitely go north to disturb the wealthy Sichuan Province. Therefore, Sun Jie came up with a bold idea: after arriving in Luzhou, he first deliberately showed weakness to the enemy, insisted on holding on and never took the initiative to attack, and then personally led the Changjie Battalion to bypass Zhenxiong Mansion and raid Chishui from Tianpeng Cave along the Chishui River. Defend and defend it to the death. At the appointed time, deputy general Shen Chenggang led the main force to fight southward... In this way, using Shen Chenggang as the hammer and himself as the anvil, the main force of the rebels was gathered together in northern Guizhou! What is left is just clearing out the remaining enemies and other tasks that the local guards can do.
Of course, this was just a beautiful vision - soon after Sun Jie was ordered to lead his troops north to engage Zhang Hu, She Chongming An Bangyan was indeed forced to rebel. But the result was very different from Deputy Commander Sun's plan: the She'an Rebellion, which could have been put down in one or two years, was completely defeated in one go due to various reasons such as food and grass, military pay, supplies, wrangling, blind command, bribery, collusion... In the seventeenth year of the Ming Dynasty, two governors and two generals died, and millions of civilians were killed or injured. The war spread to the four provinces of Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan, and Guangxi, and half of the southwest was in ruins... This is something I will not mention later.
After receiving the military order, Sun Jie immediately sent out reconnaissance cavalry. Fortunately, the trackers' boats were all readily available, so the troops finished their rest and recuperation the next day and headed north along the Fujiang River. A few days later, he arrived in Hezhou (today's Hechuan), Chongqing Prefecture, and temporarily stationed at the foot of Diaoyu Mountain. While waiting for the Third Division of Sichuan Province to allocate grain and grass, Sun Jie's reconnaissance cavalry also brought back preliminary military information in northern Sichuan.
After hearing the military situation reported by the scouts, Sun Jie was faced with a dilemma: from Hezhou, he continued to go north along the river. After passing Dingyuan, he could enter Shunqing Mansion, and then go up the waterway of the Jialing River. The march to Nanchong and Pengzhou would be very easy. However, the entire western part of Shunqing Prefecture, with the exception of Yuechi County, has not suffered much military disaster. The several hundred miles along this road have almost become a de facto no man's land, and it is completely impossible to expect to obtain any supplies on the spot! Even if you send away some of the trackers and let your auxiliary soldiers take care of them temporarily, you will still have thousands of mouths under your command!
For Deputy Commander Sun and the generals of the Ming Dynasty who were as dedicated and loyal as Deputy Commander Sun, suppressing bandits was never a problem—what the brothers who went to suppress bandits would eat was always the biggest problem.
A large part of the secret of the Sun family's victory in every battle is actually its emphasis on logistical support. The Sun family's auxiliary barracks are not regarded as disposable consumables like most other generals. Instead, they have a relatively strict command system like the combat troops - of course, relatively speaking. Many generals of the same generation were often unwilling to spend their own money to support auxiliary troops. When necessary, they would go around to arrest people to make up the numbers. Whether they were refugees or good citizens, the men who were not strong enough to support the women were the ones they caught. This improvised civilian corps cannot be expected to be efficient, and people have to be sent to keep an eye on it to prevent them from escaping in the chaos. The result will of course greatly affect the mobility of the troops. The auxiliary soldiers of the Lao Sun family can also be regarded as a quasi-combatant force with hereditary members and a relatively stable structure. In terms of treatment, they are even better than the regular combatants in most military towns. In terms of scale, the ratio to combat soldiers is constant. Maintain a luxurious ratio of four to one or even five to one. The effect is obvious, but the cost is also high - the commander of the ace army, who is most trusted by the Holy Emperor and is second to none in the Ming Dynasty in terms of combat power. The wealth accumulated by the entire family in the past two hundred years is actually not as good as that of some people who have never led a single soldier. Commander.
Therefore, Sun Jie had no choice but to send half of the Tiger Wing Battalion, who were good at seducing people, as the vanguard to go north to receive the enemy's early warning. At the same time, he was allocated a thousand auxiliary soldiers and brought half of the army's rations to ensure the supply of this small unit, while the main force was Slowly move northward, and finally stationed near Dingyuan, waiting for the grain and supplies that the Third Division of Sichuan Province would successively call over.
While stationed in Dingyuan, Sun Jie was not idle. In addition to getting the topographic map of northern Sichuan from the county magistrate to study carefully, the scout network was also spread out in all directions. Soon, Sun Jie had a preliminary understanding of the terrain in northern Sichuan: to the north was Shunqing Mansion, which was almost an uninhabited land, and further ahead was Baoning Mansion. Most of Zhang Thief's main forces were currently near Fucheng and to the east. Don't worry about the surface, it's all mountains. If Zhang thief fled eastward, he would cling to him and follow him all the way. If he caught a flaw, he would bite him hard. After hundreds of miles, the defeated thief would have become more and more distracted, and in the end he would have completely lost order. The organization's retreat turned into a wild run that no one could control, and destruction was the only result. To the west of Baonyeong Prefecture, it borders two prefectures and one prefecture, and from north to south are Longan Prefecture, Chengdu Prefecture, and Tongchuan Prefecture. For the sake of the safety of King Qiantui of Shu and the Three Divisions of Sichuan Province, Chengdu Prefecture will definitely put heavy troops on guard and leave it alone. Long'an Prefecture has already learned from Baoning Prefecture and should make sufficient preparations. As long as it can last for a day or two , bite harder, Zhang Thief still can't escape. Sun Jie, the defense officer of Tongchuan Prefecture, never thought about it: He was just a stone's throw away from his headquarters' attack route. Unless he was defeated head-on, there would be no chance for Zhang Thief to jump there - as for defeating himself head-on, this Such a boring question has never occurred to Deputy Commander Sun!
The only hidden worry is in the north, which is also the most recent, most familiar, and most likely escape route for Thief Zhang: Thief Zhang originally came all the way south along the Jialing River, so it is natural to run back along the way, and it is just across the provincial border. Hanzhong Prefecture in Shaanxi Province! With the title of "Prime Minister of Sichuan and Guizhou Military Affairs", he can ask for the cooperation of civil and military officials in Sichuan and Guizhou provinces in the name of military affairs, but... he has no control over Shaanxi! As long as Thief Zhang enters Shaanxi Province, there is a high probability that he will not be able to catch up with him - because the thieves will not have any scruples and will just grab whatever they need. After looting, they can also set fire to it, creating logistical supply difficulties for the chasing army. The officers and soldiers can't just rob the people like thieves, right? Without the Holy Emperor's express decree, officers from other provinces have no chance of counting on the support of the provincial government. Everyone will ask you to catch up with the thieves as soon as possible and kill them all. As for what the soldiers eat and drink, that is your business! If you are "prevaricating" and "fearing the enemy like a tiger" because of unreasonable reasons like "having nothing to eat", well, just wait for those endless black reports! Because he is a military commander, who would mistakenly think that Sun Jie does not understand the game conventions that prevailed in the Ming Dynasty officialdom? That would be to underestimate the Sun family's knowledge of others and self-knowledge that has survived for two hundred years!
Therefore, Sun Jie asked his master Shang Wenchang to draft a memorial, emphasizing the importance of Shaanxi Province's defense, and at the same time implicitly expressed his hope that the Holy Emperor would authorize "control of Shaanxi Province's military affairs."
Sun Jie estimated that if everything went well, it would be enough to completely eliminate Zhang Hu in about half a year: half of the Tiger Wing Battalion would be stationed in Pengzhou to meet the enemy, monitor the Zhang thief's movements and provide early warning at any time, and send the Huben Battalion to Nanchong to station in Nanchong to provide support. In the first month and a half, about 5,000 civilians were recruited from local areas to establish a series of supply points along the coast from the Jialing River in Shunqing Prefecture to Nanchong. Each point would be able to stock up on enough food and grass for the army to last for one to three days, and at the same time arrange for a team to arrive. Auxiliary soldiers set up camp and cook meals. In this way, the army marches north, disembarks from the ship in the evening to eat and sleep, and can directly board the ship after breakfast the next day and set off, so the troops are expensive and fast. After the main force arrived in Nanchong, Huben camp left Pengzhou, and it took the same amount of time to continue to establish supply points along the way... The forward base was set up in Pengzhou, where there must be enough supplies to support the army's free movement for a month. When the whole army arrived at the front line of Pengzhou, it would take a few months to capture Baoning. Zhang was able to capture the city in half a day, but he himself couldn't capture it in a month. He might as well kill himself to avoid embarrassing the ancestors of the Sun family. !
In the future, we can defeat the enemy with food: officials in Sichuan Province hinted in secret that both Boryeong Prefecture and Jianzhou had a large amount of food. Sun Jie thought with his toes and knew that most of what they said was the truth. However, they used other methods to seize and benefit the enemy. It was not his own food. There was no need to pierce the window paper, which made everyone look ugly, right? .
However, Sun Jie's nearly perfect plan still largely failed. He originally thought that he had the royal mandate of "prime minister for military affairs" and that he was fighting for Sichuan Province. The three divisions would always cooperate unconditionally. However, he missed one person, who did not take the royal mandate into consideration at all.
Because he is Zhu Zhishu*, the king of Shu.
In Sichuan Province, in a sense, Sun Jie was more than Zhang Hu's enemy, and the enemies he "received" should also include this one.
Zhu Zhishu didn't take it seriously when it came to recruiting grain and grass. Anyway, King Qiansui of Shu would only use a gold-inlaid tooth chopstick to scoop out one or two mouthfuls of white rice from a beautiful jade cup at every meal. No one dared to take advantage of the palace's grain depot, but it was urgent. Recruiting civilians and preparing supplies will inevitably incur considerable expenses. When Zhang Hu attacked, Chengdu Prefecture raised three police officers overnight. Of course, the local officials had to recruit civilians to assist in defense. Soldiers need to be paid, people need to be rewarded, everyone needs to eat and drink, and guards and supplies need to be bought - these all cost money! No one dared to empty the official treasury in one breath, and they had to keep some, so the local officials came to the King of Shu to apply for subsidies... Then Zhu Zhishu became anxious.
*The real name of the last Shu king was Zhu Zhishu, and his behavior was as bad as Zhu Zhishu here, or even worse.
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