In the winter of the twenty-fifth year of Jian'an, the Sun-Liu alliance sent troops at the same time, and the attack made Cao Wei dizzy and at a loss.
But in fact, even Liu Bei did not expect that this time Jiangdong would use Hefei from the north as a suspect to launch a surprise attack at a time in winter that was not suitable for a river-breaking operation. He would conquer Guangling, which had been unable to be conquered before, and quickly open a gap. Conquering cities and territories in Xuzhou.
Yes, this time, it was not the advance strategy discussed by the Sun-Liu Alliance, it was entirely the result of each acting according to their own circumstances.
After so many things happened, the alliance between Sun and Liu was probably only a nominal alliance. Liu Bei could no longer have any hope for Jiangdong. Naturally, he did not agree to go north with Jiangdong in this Northern Expedition.
Jiangdong's action was entirely the result of Zhou Yu's urging Sun Quan.
After all, the situation is really great.
Since Guan Yu launched the Battle of Xiangfan and Cao Cao deployed troops from Huainan and Xuzhou to support the Xiangfan battlefield, the number of defenders in the Huainan and Xuzhou areas has never returned to its peak, and the quality of the soldiers has also declined significantly. Zhou Yu saw this In eyes.
Previously, Sun Quan asked Lü Meng to attack Jiangling secretly. Although it was unsuccessful, Lü Meng did not cause too many casualties to the soldiers of Jiangdong Army. Because they were recovered in time, the elite soldiers were preserved to a certain extent.
Afterwards, Jiangxia had to be ceded to Liu Bei as compensation and the alliance was re-maintained. However, in recent years, Jiangdong's development in Changsha and Guiyang has slowly seen results. With the bumper grain harvest, Jiangdong's strength has also been restored to a certain extent.
Now it happened that Liu Bei was leading the Northern Expedition. Cao Wei's entire attention was on Yongliang and Nanyang, and the defenses of Qingxu and Huainan were further weakened. If he didn't take advantage of this, he wouldn't be Zhou Yu.
Therefore, Zhou Yu urged Sun Quan and hoped that Jiangdong would send troops to Huainan and march to Qingxu. Zhou Yu had a feeling that if he could not capture Huainan and march to Qingxu in his generation, then the entire Jiangdong would fall into a situation of self-defense based on Jiangdong. In his mentality, he completely lost his enterprising spirit.
It's not that Sun Quan doesn't want to send troops, but the problem is that in recent years, Jiangdong has attacked everywhere, and the final result is that he was beaten back in disgrace. Sun Quan was indeed a little discouraged.
Especially Hefei, which has been attacked four times. Except for the second time when Hefei City was briefly captured, the remaining three times, they had to retreat without even seeing the shadow of Hefei City.
Now, although Sun Quan doesn't have much doubts about Hefei, he always has a strange feeling that he can't conquer Hefei at all.
Therefore, Sun Quan hesitated.
In order to convince Sun Quan, Zhou Yu spent a lot of effort and also formulated a very brilliant plan - to pretend to leave Hefei, collapse the river and attack Guangling.
Zhou Yu finally figured it out. Over the years, he had always failed to make progress, which somewhat hurt Sun Quan's self-confidence.
Therefore, for the most dangerous and difficult "feint attack on Hefei" in this plan, Zhou Yu decided to take action personally. As for the opportunity to conquer Guangling, which was an easier opportunity to gain military exploits, Zhou Yu asked Sun Quan to take action in person.
To be on the safe side, Zhou Yu also asked veteran Lu Fan and Jiangdong rookie Lu Xun to follow Sun Quan to ensure nothing went wrong.
To be honest, in fact, the most suitable candidate should be Lu Meng. But Lu Meng has always felt ashamed of his superiors since the failed sneak attack on Jingzhou. In addition, his health has not been very good. He has been recuperating since returning to Jianye. Winter this year He was so ill that he couldn't even get out of bed. He didn't know whether he could survive the winter, let alone lead an army in battle.
After formulating the plan and convincing Sun Quan, Zhou Yu personally led 30,000 troops, falsely claiming to be 50,000. With the clan general Sun Huan as the vanguard, he led Zhu Ran, Sun Shao, Quan Cong, Pan Zhang and others to send troops to Hefei to attract the attention of Cao Jun in the Huainan area. force, creating opportunities for Sun Quan to overthrow the river and make a surprise attack.
The result was also very smooth. Sun Quan captured Guangling in the first battle and besieged Xiapi in the second battle. Lu Xun, Lu Fan and others divided their forces to attack various parts of Xuzhou.
Zhou Yu, on the other hand, relied on his superior strength to easily suppress Jia Kui's Hefei defenders. He was encircling them instead of attacking, setting up traps, waiting to eat up any reinforcements that might arrive from Cao Wei.
Jia Kui in Hefei City is now very anxious.
When he accepted the city of Hefei from Man Chong, there were only more than 5,000 defenders in the city. He finally recruited and trained a group of new soldiers, and the total number of troops did not exceed 8,000. It was much smaller than when Zhang Liao, Le Jin, and Li Dian were guarding Hefei. , less than a thousand people more.
Although the opponent did not have that many troops, the leading general was Zhou Yu. This was a famous general who even caused great losses to King Cao Cao of Wei.
Moreover, Jia Kui could clearly feel that although Jiangdong Army was attacking Hefei, the offensive was not violent and seemed to be holding back. It was obvious that this was to preserve combat power. Jia Kui could also guess what the purpose was. .This is waiting for his reinforcements to arrive.
Zhou Yu must have a conspiracy, and this conspiracy must be against the 50,000 Chinese reinforcements brought by Cao Xiu.
Jia Kui couldn't guess what Zhou Yu planned to do for the time being, but there must be a conspiracy. Therefore, Jia Kui quickly wrote a letter to Cao Xiu who came to help, telling him to be careful and not to rush in along the way.
However, Jia Kui felt that he was devoted to the country, but Cao Xiu did not think so.
Cao Xiu was recognized by Cao Cao as the "Thousand Mile Horse" of the Cao family. Except for the psychological shadow when he faced Zhao Yun at Changbanpo in his early years, his subsequent battles with the army were all smooth sailing. He was highly valued by Cao Cao and the elders of the Cao family. He received many compliments, especially the famous general Cao Ren, who recognized his abilities, which made Cao Xiu really feel that he was just one step away from becoming a famous general in the world with a representative battle as a foreshadowing.
But Jia Kui is famous for being upright, saying whatever he has to say, and not paying attention to politeness or methods at all. He reminds Cao Xiu that the words in his letter are also relatively direct, and giving Cao Xiu a lesson is to teach him. The feeling of doing something.
What's more important is that Cao Xiu and Jia Kui have always been at odds with each other, and their relationship is extremely bad. This leads to the fact that Jia Kui's original reminder letter about discussing matters was, in Cao Xiu's view, a letter mocking himself for not being as good as Zhou Yu.
Now Cao Xiu was even more eager to prove himself.
As long as he defeated Zhou Yu and solved the siege of Hefei, he would be fully qualified to be regarded as a famous general in the world.
At this time, someone suddenly received a letter from Jiangdong, claiming to be Lu Cong, the son of Lu Meng, and wanted to surrender to him.
The reason is that since the sneak attack on Jingzhou failed, Lu Meng was harshly criticized by Sun Quan, who put all the responsibilities on Lu Meng. As a result, the Lu family was ostracized everywhere in Jiangdong, which was quite uncomfortable.
Now Lu Meng is critically ill in bed. Once Lu Meng dies, the Lu family will have no foothold in Jiangdong.
Therefore, Lu Cong wanted to surrender to Cao Wei for the survival of the Lu family.
This time Lu Cong accompanied Zhou Yu on the expedition, and was willing to serve as Cao Wei's internal agent, inform Cao Xiu of Zhou Yu's army secrets, and help Cao Xiu defeat the enemy. He only hoped that the Lu family could go to the north to settle down afterwards.
Faced with such a surrender, Cao Xiu said that whoever believed it was a fool.
Are you treating yourself like an idiot? Why didn't you tell me earlier that you wanted to surrender? Why did you write to me at this time? !
Obviously, this is a false surrender.
However, Cao Xiu still accepted the letter and sent someone to keep in touch with Lu Cong. Cao Xiu wanted to use his plan.
Obviously, Zhou Yu wanted to use a false surrender strategy to ambush him, but Cao Xiu also wanted to take this opportunity to defeat Zhou Yu's army in one fell swoop, successfully rescue Hefei, build his own reputation, and become a real famous general of Cao Wei by defeating Zhou Yu.
Along the way, Cao Xiu used Lu Cong to his advantage while marching. After leading his troops into Huainan, he did not go to Hefei City first, but directly chose to make an appointment with Lu Cong.
After the two sides met, Lu Cong told Cao Xiu about the current march of Zhou Yu's army, especially telling Cao Xiu where Jiangdong Army's grain and grass were stored. He hoped that Cao Xiu could defeat Zhou Yu's army's grain and grass storage. As long as there was no food and grass, Zhou Yu would inevitably retreat. , when the time comes, Cao Xiu will take advantage of the situation to cover up the enemy, and he will definitely achieve great success.
Cao Xiu agreed on the surface, and immediately made battle arrangements after sending Lu Cong away.
First, an army was sent to pretend to attack Lu Cong's so-called grain garrison. The other armies were divided into three groups and outflanked them. They waited for Zhou Yu to ambush the grain robbery team and then counter-surrounded Zhou Yu.
This is Cao Xiu's strategy.
But the problem is that Cao Xiu is still too young after all.
If Zhou Yu could only use such a superficial trick to surrender, would he still be Zhou Yu? !
Cao Xiu's grain robbery team was indeed ambushed by Zhou Yu's army, and "Zhou Yu" was indeed "caught off guard" by Cao Xiu's counter-siege. He desperately broke through the encirclement and quickly retreated.
When Cao Xiu saw "Zhou Yu" breaking through and retreating, of course he refused to let go. This was a time when he had made an immortal contribution, so he naturally led the army in hot pursuit.
Cao Xiu was too eager to make meritorious deeds and wanted to defeat or even capture Zhou Yu to prove himself. When he determined that "Zhou Yu" had been defeated, he led the army in a rapid pursuit. , the front became longer and longer, and finally there was a disconnect between the front and rear.
Cao Xiu, however, knew nothing about this and was still pursuing "Zhou Yu" desperately until he reached a place where Cao Xiu was destined.
Shiting.
Here, the real Zhou Yu showed up, taking advantage of the disconnection between Cao Xiu's army and sending Zhu Ran to easily cut off the connection between Cao Xiu and the rear army, causing a local outnumbered attack in Shiting, surrounded by more than 20,000 Jiangdong soldiers. The front army that attacked Cao Xiu consisted of 7,000 men.
Cao Xiu was beaten badly.
At the same time, Jia Kui in Hefei City, who learned that Cao Xiu was besieged, also fell into a dilemma.
Do you want to save Cao Xiu? !
Go ahead, you only have so many people in your hands. Once you rescue Cao Xiu, the city of Hefei may not be saved.
But don’t go. Cao Xiu is surrounded by people like a bucket. Constrained by the terrain of Shiting, it is really not easy for Cao Xiu to escape on his own. If Cao Xiu is captured or killed by Jiangdong, then he Jia Kui also has to be jointly and severally responsible.
Jia Kui is the sad one
(End of chapter)
