While Ma Chao was desperately rushing to Tianshui County, the war situation in Hebei County was slowly developing in a direction that was not conducive to Liu Bei's group.
The first one to bear the brunt was the city defense of Ji County.
In fact, the defenders of Ji County did not suffer much losses. During the five or six days when Guo Huai besieged the city, they only injured about 2,000 people. There are still nearly 20,000 defenders in the city.
But the problem is that there are already several cracks in the city wall of Ji County. This is what worries Zhang Xi and others the most.
Once the city wall is destroyed, Guo Huai can lead his troops to break into Ji County. At this time, the defenders of Ji County have no advantage in city defense, and they are really doomed.
Of course, you can also say that after the cavalry enters the city, it is limited by the terrain and does not have much combat effectiveness at all. They can stay and fight in the streets. One thing to say, this does make sense. There are houses and residences everywhere in the city, and the cavalry The impact of the attack was not fully exerted, and the defenders, who were mainly infantry, were not without the power to fight.
But this is just a theoretical conjecture. In fact, after the city wall collapses and Ji County is breached, it is still unknown how much morale and fighting will the defenders in the city will have left, and how many people will be willing to engage in street fighting with the enemy.
I believe that at this time, most of the soldiers will either surrender or escape from other city gates in search of a chance of survival.
The organizational capabilities of the army in this era were simply not enough to engage in street fighting. Generally, if a city gate or wall was captured, it would be a default that the defense of the city had failed. The soldiers would just run for their lives in a hurry and would not have the courage to stay and fight the enemy in the street.
It is not ruled out that some special cases can be achieved, such as Geng Gong and Guo Xin in later generations. But it is precisely because they are so uncommon that they can stay in the annals of history.
Zhang Xi did not dare to place his life and hopes on special cases, so the top priority was to stick to the city wall.
At the same time, Zhang Fei, who was sent by Liu Bei to rescue Hebei County, had already arrived fifty miles southwest of Hebei County.
At this time, Zhang Fei was a little uncomfortable moving forward quickly, because Zhang Fei encountered Qiang and Hu cavalry.
Zhang Fei had a lot of dealings with cavalry. Whether it was Cao Jun's elite Tiger and Leopard Cavalry or the Wuhuan Cavalry from the north of the Han Dynasty, Zhang Fei had fought against them. Therefore, Zhang Fei would never take the cavalry lightly.
On the one hand, Zhang Fei quickly sent a messenger to report the current situation to Liu Bei. He told Liu Bei that there were no less than ten thousand Qiang and Hu cavalry on their way to Xi County, so that Liu Bei could prepare for defense.
On the other hand, Zhang Fei ordered his men to form a car formation.
In these days, the most effective means of blocking cavalry are the spear formation and the car formation.
However, the spear formation has extremely high requirements for the quality of the army, and even if it can block the impact of cavalry, its own casualties will not be small, and it does not have a very good defensive effect against cavalry riding and shooting, so most people are leading the infantry. When encountering cavalry, they still use car formations to ward off the enemy and attract the enemy to attack.
In addition, Zhang Fei's troops are the Yuanyang formation soldiers who Zhang Xi helped train in the early years. Zhang Fei has always been practicing military training methods. Zhang Fei even used the chariot formation and the Mandarin Duck formation to stop the tiger and leopard cavalry, so Zhang Fei He has great confidence in this set of tactics.
Soon, Zhang Fei ordered the entire army to move into a vehicle formation for defense. The vehicle formation was erected and circled, and then a four- to five-meter long spear was mounted as antlers. After combat practice, Zhang Fei discovered that the Langzhen was a powerful weapon. Recruit training and the first battle have miraculous effects, but for truly elite soldiers, wolves are not as useful as spears.
Therefore, in Zhang Fei's army now, langzhen has been gradually eliminated, and they are basically using long spears instead.
After setting up the chariot formation, Zhang Fei waited for the group of Qiang and Hu cavalry to launch an attack on his chariot formation.
As a result, after waiting and waiting, Zhang Fei miraculously discovered that this group of Qiang and Hu cavalry seemed to have not seen his own army. No one came forward to attack at all.
Hmm. That doesn't seem right. These Qiang and Hu cavalry must have seen their own military formation, but they all avoided it one by one.
Zhang Fei is wondering, are you still cavalry? !
When the cavalry saw the infantry, even if they were defended by a vehicle formation, why did you still walk around? !
But the leaders of the Qiang and Hu cavalry said, you think we are fools, who have nothing to do to provoke the Han army.
You led more than 20,000 people and set up such a large car formation. Aren't you obviously waiting for us to attack? You Han people have been doing this in Liangzhou for almost four hundred years. We No matter how stupid the Hu people are, they will never fall for this evil trick again.
Besides, our purpose of sending troops this time is to carry out plunder in a reasonable and legal manner, and it is not to fight with you Han people. Why should we take the initiative to provoke you Han people.
Anyway, whoever is short-sighted can attack, but I won't go.
Most of the barbarian leaders had this idea.
The order they received was to cut off the connection between Ji County and Xixian County and contain the defenders of Xixian County. This was not to fight against a well-trained Han army to resolve the conflicts between you Han people. It would be better for you Han people to resolve it on your own. .
Zhang Fei is the depressed one.
If this group of barbarians did not attack, Zhang Fei would not be able to rely on the chariot formation to defend and at the same time use bows and crossbows to kill these cavalry on a large scale.
However, if these Hu cavalry were allowed to follow him, he would not dare to march too fast. He would have to worry about being attacked by these Hu cavalry at any time, and even the food roads would have to be protected.
In this situation, how can we quickly rescue Yuan Chang? !
No, Zhang Fei felt that he had to find a way to attract these barbarians to take the initiative to attack.
Zhang Fei thought for a long time and finally came up with a way to divide his troops.
Zhang Fei dared to do this only after careful analysis and consideration.
Zhang Fei discovered through several observations that these Hu people did not seem to have a unified command. Many of the Hu people acted individually in groups. Some of them had thousands of people, while some of them only had a few hundred people. Not subordinate.
Zhang Fei once saw that two groups of Hu cavalry discovered his car formation, but in the end, the two groups of Hu cavalry did not join forces, but dispersed one to the south and the other to the west.
This happened more than once.
If this is the case, Zhang Fei does not have to worry about these barbarians setting up an ambush and uniting to besiege him. At the same time, Zhang Fei also has the confidence to divide his troops.
Zhang Fei divided his soldiers into ten thousand-man teams, and asked these thousand-man teams to disperse and act independently from the main army.
Zhang Fei led the remaining 10,000 men to secretly follow these thousand-man troops, using ranger scouts to maintain contact.
In this way, there will always be blind Hu people who want to attack these thousand-man teams, and the Thousand-man team can use car formations to set up defenses on the spot, while I lead 10,000 soldiers to quickly reinforce, and I can always kill these Hu cavalry.
In fact, Zhang Fei's judgment was correct.
The Yi Cong of the Qiang and Hu cavalry are, at best, a barbarian army, but at worst, they are just a group of tribal alliances.
In this alliance, there are not only Qiang people, but also Di people, Xianbei people, and even a small number of Jie people.
There is no ethnic group among these Hu people. There are all kinds of conflicts between the Qiang tribes and the Qiang tribes. The Qiang and Di people have been entangled with each other for nearly a hundred years, and the hatred between the two sides is great. .
If it weren't for Guo Huai's deterrence this time, these Hu people would be beaten if they didn't respond to Guo Huai's actions. It would really be impossible to gather so many Hu people to follow him.
But now, Guo Huai is fighting with Zhang Xi in the city of Ji County over a piece of women's clothing. These barbarians were sent by Guo Huai to the south of Ji County. Without Guo Huai's restraint and deterrence, who can do this? Listening to whoever is listening is not just taking tribes as a unit and acting individually.
Zhang Fei's fishing behavior really caught a lot of barbarian tribesmen, thinking they had an advantage, and then attacked some thousands-man troops. In the end, Zhang Fei led an army to catch up, and they were bullied.
But Zhang Fei's gains were actually not great. The reason was that Zhang Fei led infantry after all, while the Hu people were cavalry.
Zhang Fei could attract these barbarians by fishing, and then use crossbowmen to effectively kill them, but as soon as these barbarians ran away, Zhang Fei's infantry would definitely not be able to catch up.
In addition, Hu people are not stupid. If Zhang Fei is fishing like this, it won't be long before all the Hu people nearby know about it. No matter how much Zhang Fei wants to fish, no Hu people are willing to take the bait.
Anyway, there are people in other places who can rob. Even if there are no people, Guo Huai will give them enough rewards after this battle is over. Why do they have to fight against these Han armies? This is what the Hu people think.
But Zhang Fei couldn't do anything about it. The infantry was really short-legged and couldn't keep up with these barbarians.
If he encounters barbarians robbing the people on the march, Zhang Fei can still deal with them, but he cannot rescue the people he does not encounter one by one. After all, Zhang Fei's military order is to rescue Zhang Xi. .
In this way, Zhang Fei was fishing and marching along the way. He not only had to deal with the barbarians, but also defended his own grain road, and his marching speed could not be increased.
And this was the purpose of Guo Huai sending these Hu people to the south of Ji County.
I really don't expect these barbarians to defeat Liu Bei's army. They just need to hold back Liu Bei's army so that they will not rescue Ji County quickly.
Guo Huai's purpose is to take advantage of this gap to quickly defeat Ji County. With Ji County in hand, Guo Huai has a base to advance and has no worries. He can lead his troops to fight Liu Bei. .
Now, Guo Huai has seen this hope. Some parts of the city wall in Ji County have become loose and fallen off. If he uses a concentrated attack with thunderbolt vehicles, the city of Ji County will be broken in a day or two at most.
By that time, not only would Guo Huai no longer need to wear women's clothing, he would also be able to take the initiative in the entire Liangzhou war situation.
But at this moment, Zhang Xi's reinforcements arrived.
As for this reinforcement, not only Guo Huai did not expect it, but Zhang Xi also did not expect it.
(End of chapter)
