Jiujiang County, Chengde County.
This is Lu Xun's base camp, and it is also the current command center of the entire Huainan Army.
This time Soochow's attack on Runan County of Cao Wei was a battle planned and personally directed by Lu Xun, the governor of Qingxu.
All the previous arrangements were going according to Lu Xun's plan in advance.
Zhou Li pretended to surrender and successfully gained Cao Xiu's trust. He launched the rebellion in advance and finally attracted Cao Xiu, who was stationed in Ruyin, to lead an army to respond.
But what happened next was somewhat beyond Lu Xun's expectations.
The first unexpected thing was that Cao Xiu brought out a total of 50,000 troops.
This is already beyond all of Runan's standing troops.
According to the intelligence collected before the war, Lu Xun could judge that the total military strength of Runan was about 30,000. In order to ensure the defense of Runan after the expedition, Cao Xiu could only go out with 20,000 to 25,000 men at most. But this All of a sudden, the number of troops doubled.
The second thing that was beyond Lu Xun's expectation was that Cao Xiu didn't seem to be too concerned about supporting Zhou Li and marched slowly. On the contrary, he launched an all-out attack on the three counties near the Runan border.
According to the news from the three counties, tens of thousands of people were attacking in each county. It was obvious that they were going to defeat the few with more troops and achieve a quick victory.
Although Lu Xun wanted to give up these three counties from the beginning, and even secretly gave instructions to the defenders of the three counties. They could choose to surrender if they judged that they could not hold on, but Cao Xiu's arrangement still allowed them to surrender. Lu Xun felt a little surprised.
Judging from these two points, Cao Xiu was not what Lu Xun thought at first, a coach with an egotistic temperament and impatient tactics.
In this case, it is possible that just because Zhou Lihe is a county, Cao Xiu may not be able to attract Cao Xiu to go deeper. It is even possible that after occupying four counties, Cao Xiu will choose to suspend his advance, rest on the spot, and digest the territory.
This is not what Lu Xun wants to see.
One thing to say, the current Cao Xiu did not allow Lu Xun to find too many loopholes to carry out the next battle plan.
However, Lu Xun didn’t find it too difficult.
Marching combat is like this. It is impossible to predict everything. Even if you make the most detailed battle plan before the war, when the battle actually starts, it still depends on the general's command on the battlefield.
This is also the true embodiment of the importance of a famous general in these years.
Let's take the Battle of Chibi as an example. Before Zhou Yu led his troops to the battle, he first resolved the issue of whether to fight, but the actual question of how to fight had to be decided before the battle.
Even for the strategy of burning warships, Zhou Yu was not the only one who thought that when Cao Cao stupidly connected his warships, not only Zhou Yu, but also Huang Gai thought of using fire to attack.
This is the embodiment of the ability of famous generals.
Therefore, Lu Xun saw that Cao Xiu was not completely fooled and was not in a hurry. He could wait and mobilize his troops to lure Cao Xiu to go deeper.
Lu Xun's first response was to ask Sun Sheng, who was based in Shouchun, to dispatch troops to the four counties.
It is impossible not to send troops.
The Zhou bream all "rebelled", and they occupied such an important place as Dangtu. If they could not recapture Dangtu County quickly and let Cao Xiu lead his troops into Dangtu, Shouchun's attack channel would be opened.
Therefore, there must be an army to counterattack Dangtu, and I am afraid that this battle cannot be an act, it must be a hard fight, otherwise it will not be able to attract Cao Xiu to speed up the pace of marching into Dangtu.
As for the other three counties, in the face of such a superior force siege, Shouchun cannot give up rescue directly. Therefore, reinforcements still have to be sent, but it is hard to say how many will be sent and whether they can arrive in time. But not sending troops is impossible.
Of course, this is not the most important thing. The most important thing is that Lu Xun is deliberately transferring Shouchun's troops out to drain Shouchun's defensive troops.
You, Cao Xiu, won’t be fooled by just using Dangtu County as bait, but what if Shouchun is used as bait? !
Lu Xun didn't believe that Cao Xiu would not even be tempted by Shouchun.
As Lu Xun began to mobilize his troops, and after Cao Xiu noticed it through scouts and agents, Cao Xiu was indeed tempted.
There is no way, the temptation is too great, and the current situation is really great.
Also based on pre-war intelligence gathering, Cao Xiu knew that Soochow had assembled about 40,000 troops in Jiujiang County in Huainan to deal with threats from the direction of Runan.
But now, the garrison force of the four counties was divided between 11,000 troops, and Zhou Li rebelled again, leaving Jiujiang County with less than 30,000 troops.
Lu Xun mobilized troops and allocated 10,000 troops to counterattack Dangtu County, and another 10,000 troops to support the other three counties under attack. The remaining troops in Shouchun were less than 10,000.
In addition, at this time, Jia Kui's side should have stationed troops on the Pengcheng border. In order to defend against threats that may come from the north, Yinling and Zhongli counties in the north of Jiujiang County should also send some troops to strengthen defense. Now Shou In Spring City, there might only be 5,000 to 8,000 people guarding it.
The defender of Shouchun City is Sun Sheng, the clan general of Soochow.
After Sun Shao defended Shouchun, Cao Xiu no longer wanted to underestimate the generals of the Eastern Wu clan, but the current situation was different from when he attacked Shouchun with a light force.
The number of troops Sun Shao used to defend Shouchun was indeed about the same as it is now, but the number of troops Cao Xiu could mobilize now was much greater than when he besieged Sun Shao.
At that time, Cao Xiu could only use the more than 20,000 soldiers at hand to attack Shouchun, which was guarded by 8,000 people. But now, Cao Xiu's force was twice as large.
As long as Cao Xiu rushes to Dangtu as soon as possible, joins Zhou Li in Dangtu County, and collects the 5,000 Soochow surrendered troops in Zhou Li's hands, then he will have 25,000 men in his hands.
With 25,000 soldiers and the 10,000 soldiers who defeated Soochow in the field and came to counterattack Dangtu, Cao Xiu was still very confident.
After all, everyone really understands the field combat skills of Soochow soldiers. Unless they have an absolute advantage in strength, if the Soochow soldiers come ashore, no one can beat them.
Once the 10,000 Dongwu soldiers who counterattacked were defeated, it no longer mattered whether the three counties behind him were captured. Cao Xiu could set out to attack Shouchun in advance, and then mobilize the remaining 30,000 soldiers to go north through Dangtu. Gathered 55,000 troops and besieged Shouchun, which was only guarded by 5,000 to 8,000 people.
At that time, let alone the unknown Sun Sheng as the guard, or Sun Shao as the guard, Cao Xiu would have decided on Shouchun as well.
The more Cao Xiu thought about it, the more he felt that the situation was now very good and he should immediately speed up his march and rush to Dangtu to meet Zhou Li.
However, the experience of being seduced deeply by Zhou Yu a few years ago and beaten to the point of almost death by being pinned to the ground once again reminded Cao Xiu not to be anxious, but to be cautious and not make the same mistakes as before.
For this reason, Cao Xiu was sincerely calculating back and forth, thinking seriously about the possibility of being attacked by Soochow again.
After thinking about it, Cao Xiu felt that this was not possible.
In my early years, I was indeed a bit young and frivolous. I didn't take the rats of Soochow seriously and despised Zhou Yu. Therefore, I ran all the way and led my troops directly to the vicinity of Shiting. This was the territory of Lujiang County. It was not far away from Ru. Nan and Shouchun were both very far away. It was really not unfair at all for him to be beaten.
But things are different now. Shouchun is less than a hundred miles away from the border of Runan County. If there is a real problem, he can lead his troops to retreat. It is only a hundred miles away. Even if Soochow can fortify layers of defenses, it is impossible to stop him. Leading 50,000 soldiers to break out of the siege should not lead to another siege.
Besides, this time his opponent is not a famous general like Zhou Yu.
If Sun Sheng had Zhou Yu's overall view and could boldly set up ambushes and intercept them at every level, then why would he still be an unknown person until now? !
Even Sun Shao didn't have this ability, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to retreat to Runan calmly back then.
In addition, it’s not like he didn’t leave any escape route.
Even if he was really besieged in Shouchun and had to escape in a hurry, he still had Xu Zhi and 10,000 Runan soldiers left in Runan. Xu Zhi could have gathered these 10,000 Runan soldiers and invaded Jiujiang. County, to support their own breakout.
After thinking about it, Cao Xiu felt that it would be impossible for him to be surrounded and blocked like the last battle at Shiting.
Therefore, Cao Xiu decided to speed up the entire army and stationed in Dangtu County to meet Zhou Li! ! !
Lu Xun finally smiled after receiving the military report that Cao Xiu was about to arrive in Dangtu County.
Although this Cao Xiu seemed to have grown a bit, he still took the bait!
Next, it’s time to start setting up the net! ! !
(End of chapter)
