Chapter 210: Ambush
Wolf smoke curled up.
Yanglongkeng, two hundred miles north of Guiyang, is a pool several miles wide, sandwiched between mountains. This area is rich in water and grass and has beautiful scenery. It is not only a famous natural pasture, but also a lively place. Legend has it that there is a dragon in the pit. Whenever the crops need rain, the dragon will fly out of the pool and travel with clouds to sow rain. . Although no one has seen it, it is said that there is a nose and eyes, and the local people always prepare a lot of fruits and grains and throw them into the pits to repay the harvest.
This is where the saying of “raising dragons” comes from.
The fireworks that conveyed the news on various mountaintops within a dozen miles have been extinguished one after another, leaving only a few embers, and occasionally meaningless wisps of faint smoke rising into the blue sky.
These fireworks piles have completed their mission.
An Bangyan led the She'an Allied Forces, totaling more than 100,000, to rise up in Guizhou. In addition to dividing 40,000 to 50,000 troops to attack in various places, he also connected with the guards of Longli, Weng'an, Pianqiao, Pu'an, and Annan, and surrounded Guiyang with 20,000 troops. The remaining 30,000 elites were all ambushed by him in this mountain.
It is led by She Chongming and his son.
They have been waiting here for three days.
They are waiting for someone: Zhang Fang.
Zhang Fang, the chief military officer stationed in Zunyi.
An Bangyan was sure that Mr. Li Jingwu would dispatch Zhang Fang to help as soon as possible after the police arrived in Guiyang - Yanglong Pit was the only way from Zunyi to Guiyang.
So he transferred 30,000 horses to She Chongming and asked him to set up an ambush here.
Sure enough, they waited for it!
As the top military officer who guarded the rebel base after the Yang Rebellion in Pingbo Prefecture, Commander Zhang Fang simply looked down on the barbarians around him: most of them didn't even have armor, and they didn't know how to organize troops. They screamed and rushed forward... weren't they just a group of monkeys! Monkeys can still climb trees! Oh, well, they can also climb trees, and they can climb no slower than monkeys. Huh, so what? If they were scattered in the mountains and really hard to find, Marshal Zhang wouldn't want to play hide-and-seek with them or, what, siege the city in the wild? Ha, aren’t you looking for death? After a few rounds of arrows, a large area lay down! Then, if you mobilize a few armored troops to form a square formation and attack them, won't you win the battle? Who dares to rebel? It's obviously a reward for our Lao Zhang's head!
So during the period when he was stationed in Zunyi, Marshal Zhang took matters into his own hands to disarm.
Of course, Zhang Fang's disarmament was not to provide military pay for the Ming Dynasty. On the contrary, the imperial military department received reports from General Zhang asking for soldiers and pay every now and then. Surrounded by barbarians, surrounded by dangers...it's all just nonsense. It’s no wonder that the best way out for a scholar is of course for someone who is on the right track in the imperial examination and is talented but unlucky. He can work as an aide in a governor or magistrate’s office, or even worse, find a magistrate to be his teacher - and accumulate some connections. With experience in officialdom, he can also find a way out for his nephew in the future. As a martial artist, how can you expect to write any good articles? It would be great if there are no typos throughout the article. Therefore, these reports were thrown aside by adults, and many of them were not even read.
Zhang Dashuai was aware of this, and in fact, this was the effect he wanted. This is what the officialdom of the Ming Dynasty is like. If you keep asking for it, even though they won't give it, they won't try to change your mind. If you don't want it, haha, maybe someone will come over tomorrow to "assess" it, and then pay it. It's a knife in the middle!
Therefore, Marshal Zhang’s disarmament call is both true and false: you can say that he laid off the army. There is not a single person missing on the military roster of the Ministry of War, and from time to time, more troops are requested - and it is rejected by being scolded. Another thing, anyway, it is common for generals to be scolded, and the commander-in-chief doesn't care. You said he has not been laid off. There are three of the eight military battalions with swords and armor left, and the people in the other five battalions have all been scolded. The handsome man put away his clothes, armor, swords and guns and went to farm with the auxiliary soldiers. After Yang Yinglong was wiped out, there was so much good land without an owner, how could the commander not make the best use of it?
After receiving Master Li's order to mobilize troops, Marshal Zhang clapped his thighs and was extremely happy: Shuixi is close to Zunyi. As long as An Bangyan is beaten away, his military base can be more than doubled! This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We can take this opportunity to expand the number of soldiers by two or three times - the army will quell the chaos. Let's see if the civil servants have any reason to stop it!
Of course, people who should work should be left in the fields. In addition, Marshal Zhang picked up all the other people he could find, opened the arsenal and fired the swords and guns. Everyone with knives and sticks was counted as a soldier. In fact, there was nothing. Even the auxiliary troops gathered more than 20,000 people and rushed towards Guiyang with full of longing and fantasy for a better future...
Then, he plunged into She Chongming's ambush.
Marshal Zhang organized the three remaining combat barracks into the Chinese Army. According to his idea, when the enemy is engaged, all the fifteen or six thousand cannon fodder of his left army and right army will rush forward. Even if they fight with the thieves and soldiers, both sides will suffer losses. When the thieves have exhausted most of their physical strength, these three elites will Once the main camp starts again, it won't be a big victory like chopping melons and slicing vegetables!
This method is one of the standard tactics of this era. If the enemy you face is not very strong, this is the best strategy. In real history, Li Zicheng often used this method to defeat the Ming army. In front of him were tens of thousands of civilians serving as cannon fodder. Anyway, most of the Ming army on the opposite side was a hastily put together ragtag army. The combat power of the refugees who only have sticks in them will always be somewhat stronger, but there are a lot of them, so in general the two sides can often be evenly matched. After they have fought for a long time and are exhausted, they can then add elite troops to join the battlefield, and they will most likely be able to defeat them. However, this method of warfare also has great disadvantages: once encountering the enemy's elite, such as Sun Jie's troops, even if there are only a few thousand people, the cannon fodder army's front line will be easily destroyed, and everyone will lose their courage and cry. If you run back screaming, the elites behind you will also be rushed to pieces and defeated.
However, Marshal Zhang sincerely looked down on An Bangyan's Miao soldiers, so it was only natural for them to march in this posture.
Unfortunately, this time he met She Chongming.
What's even more pity is that although these so-called "armies" of Marshal Zhang are all peasants, they are not as good as the cannon fodder that Li Zicheng coerced - the Ming army will kill them mercilessly when they encounter the latter, and Li Chuang also has Supervising the battle team, they usually fight tooth and nail, but Zhang Fang and the others were not mentally prepared at all. They just gave the commander's order, put down their hoe, picked up a stick, and followed the commander on the road!
However, objectively speaking, not many people were killed by the She'an coalition in this "battle" - most of them ran to death or trampled each other to death. Well, they slipped and fell to death or drowned. There are quite a few. There were definitely a lot of them. They brought out 24,000 to 5,000 people, but less than half of them followed Zhang Fang and ran back to Zunyi.
She Chongming ambushed An Bangyan's Shuixi Army on the hills outside Yanglong Pit, and led 5,000 Yongning Army at the bottom of the pocket formation, near Xifeng Station, to intercept them head-on. According to King She's expectation, since it was to relieve the siege of Guiyang and the troops were very fast, the Ming army would definitely arrange the most elite troops to open the way in front, with a few battalions of average strength protecting the Chinese army's baggage, and the auxiliary troops following at the back. After discovering the ambush, the front troops of the Ming army will definitely launch a desperate assault and try their best to open a bloody path for the rear. She Chongming set the main battlefield in the Yanglongkeng Valley and placed the most capable Yongning army in the Xifeng area, just to fight against the elite Ming army. Risking two to three thousand lives to block the Ming army's path. Once the Shuixi Army on the four sides completes the encirclement, this Ming army will not be able to escape!
She Chongming never expected that after discovering that the Ming army had arrived at the predetermined location and ordered people to light the beacon fire, the front line of the Ming army did not immediately form a formation. Instead, they huddled together in panic, and many people ran away. Run on the hills on the east and west sides! Not only that, seeing the smoke rising from the surrounding hills one after another, the tens of thousands of Ming troops two or three miles away who had not joined him in the battle... actually blew up the camp on the spot!
She Chongming helplessly looked at the backs of the Ming troops who were swarming back, and he was puzzled: Not to mention Sun Jie's troops, the Chengdu central defender was also very good, but they were still the Wei Suo army! Isn’t it said that Marshal Zhang Fang, who is in charge of Zunyi and Sichuan and Guizhou, is very powerful? Why did you run away before we even had a fight - we were still several miles apart!
King She, who has rich battlefield experience, knew at a glance that this was not a false defeat, but a real rout: people were running in chaos, and soldiers in armor were scattered all over the ground. Just by looking at their gait, you could tell that they were completely defeated. Regardless of physical strength, you won't be able to run very far before you lose strength, and there is no structure anymore - without structure, there is no chain of command, no chain of command, and no matter how many people there are, they are just pigs and sheep to be slaughtered!
Chase it.
The Yongning Army, which was supposed to be the first to engage the enemy, was now the farthest away from the Ming Army. They had to pay attention to maintaining their physical strength when pursuing the enemy. Therefore, by the time She Chongming and his son arrived, the battle was nearing its end. Well, there was no fighting. The total number of Ming soldiers who actually resisted the Shuixi Army in each village was less than three to four hundred. The number of people who ran away and blew up their lungs was more than ten times that number, and some were trampled to death. , those who fell to death... The Shuixi Army captured four to five thousand prisoners, but they all couldn't run away and threw themselves on the ground with their heads in their hands and resigned themselves to their fate.
Zhang Fang is fine.
Fortunately, he had all three combat barracks under the control of the central army, with hundreds of servants and guards fighting to the death to protect the master. Several combat barracks were fighting and leaving - well, the "fighting" ones were all his own people who were blocking the way, so finally there were They escorted Marshal Zhang back to Zunyi without any danger. As soon as the marshal closed the city gate, the master hurriedly opened it again: to ask for soldiers and pay from the imperial court, to express his grievances to Mr. Li, and to call General Huang Shen from Tongren to come quickly to join the army. Mr. Wang Ershan said that the rebels are very powerful. You have to help me find people from the court to ask for money, food and equipment. Those guys didn't listen to what I said. I asked for it so many times before and they didn't even show it to you. Now this matter is causing trouble to me. Zhang is not telling lies...
Marshal Zhang was busy asking his master to write letters one after another, and Mr. Li Jingwu in Guiyang City was living like a year. Four hundred soldiers were intercepted and more than a thousand soldiers were recruited into the garrison. The total number of soldiers in the city was less than 5,000. Including the government officials and civil servants, there were barely 8,000 people. These eight thousand people are the entire guard force of Guiyang City.
At this time, there were as many as 400,000 people in the small city of Guiyang, most of whom were old, weak, women and children - excluding the original residents, after An Bangyan captured the guards of Zhenning, Puding, Anshun and Pingba, They took all the young men and women hostage, but opened the net and drove all the old and weak to Guiyang.
Before the new emperor arrived, Li Jingwu shouldered the huge responsibility of defending the city without hesitation. After experiencing the unexpected incident at Tianbai Sheng Town in Beimen, Mr. Li invited the censor Shi Yongan and the official Liu Xixuan to form a three-person wartime leadership group. We could no longer let the Fan and Zhen gangs play football all day long. The guys are messing around and messing up. At the same time, Lord Li also sent several groups of capable confidants to sneak out of the city to find Lord Xinfu Wang - Lord Li had no intention of throwing hot yam*, he wanted to let Lord Wang know about the betrayal in advance and bring as many people as possible with him. Some people came over.
The capital also received military information that Zhang Fang failed to rescue the siege, so they immediately took necessary measures...
What? Deploy troops and allocate funds? Haha, you are overthinking, of course not. The imperial court just sent people to find Wang Ershan - you are already the governor of Guizhou, and the matters there are your business. You can figure it out yourself. hurry up!
Then...everyone is looking for him, where is Mr. Wang?
*Knowledge points in this chapter:
Yam, formerly known as yam. However, in order to avoid the taboo of Li Shimin's name (the ancient pronunciation is different from today's), the name was changed to "Shu Yao". In the Song Dynasty, the Yingzong's name was Zhao Shu! Yes, it needs to be changed. Therefore, the name of yam is still used today.
