Zhao Yucheng was confident. He took out the topographic map of Luoxiao Mountain drawn during this period, pointed at the traffic arteries one by one, and handed these traffic arteries to different officers to lead troops to guard.
Generally speaking, the traffic roads in the mountains are very dangerous. It is not an exaggeration to say that one man can guard the barrier and ten thousand people cannot open it. Therefore, if the terrain advantage is properly used, the battle can be fought.
Moreover, there was still discord within the Song Army and it did not go all out. This was the basis for the victory of the peasant army.
With such belief, Zhao Yucheng and Du Qi arranged a combat plan together and continued to monitor Shao Hongyuan's army.
On the other hand, Shao Hongyuan was very angry that Qi Fang did not provide him with enough guides. He felt that Qi Fang had bad intentions and had two intentions towards the court.
"This person has been stationed here for a long time, but has not taken any action. His subordinates either bully men, dominate women, or do evil. It doesn't look like they are fighting at all. He is most likely trying to support the bandit's self-respect. I must expose this person to the court! "
Shao Hongyuan hated Qi Fang with gritted teeth, but his subordinates dissuaded Shao Hongyuan.
"After all, Qi Fang was appointed as the commander-in-chief after winning the battle. Now he has made contributions, but the general has not. News has been sent to the court. If he writes a letter to defend himself, the outcome is uncertain. It is better to wait for the general to make contributions and win. , and then report Qi Fang with the merits of victory, then everything will be fine."
After hearing what his subordinates said, Shao Hongyuan felt that it made sense, so he decided to focus on winning the battle and then talk about other things.
It was late March in the third year of Hongwu. After some preparations, Shao Hongyuan found some mountain roads and roughly determined the location of the peasant army in the mountains, so he began to move troops into the mountains.
According to his arrangement, there were a large number of peasant armies in the mountains, but their weapons and equipment were poor and they had little military knowledge and training. They were just a bunch of bandits, so it would not be difficult to fight.
It's just that the roads in Shandong are difficult and it's easy to be ambushed, so I'm worried.
So he asked the army to advance in an orderly queue. The crossbowmen should always be on guard, and the sword and shield bearers should also be on guard at all times. Before sending troops, he even asked his troops to practice the formation and fighting methods of entering the mountains.
It can be said that he was well prepared and was waiting to fight the peasant army.
However, only three days after the battle began, reality hit Shao Hongyuan head-on.
The Song army had no idea how to fight this battle.
To be precise, his army could not find the peasant army, but the peasant army could always find them. Only a few hours after entering the mountains, they began to be attacked by the peasant army.
Arrows, stones, clods of earth, all kinds of terrible traps and the like.
As they walked, more than a dozen arrows were fired at them. When the Song army reacted in the chaos and wanted to pursue them, the archer had disappeared.
Or while walking, the trap was suddenly triggered, and a whole group of soldiers fell into the pit and were stabbed to death or injured by the sharp bamboo spears buried in the pit.
Although Shao Hongyuan was good at the army, he couldn't fully equip the army with armor. He asked Qi Fang for armor before, and Qi Fang gave him more than a hundred pairs to deal with it, and then said that he didn't have armor either.
Therefore, Shao Hongyuan's armor and equipment were very limited, and a large number of grassroots soldiers were unable to wear armor. Faced with sudden attacks and traps by the peasant army, they suffered heavy losses.
Such attacks and traps are not rare, nor are they absent during the day or night, but they may occur at any time during the day and night.
I don't know when a group of peasant soldiers will pop out and shoot arrows, or they will encounter a trap pit. Many people will fall down unprepared and die on the spot with bamboo guns.
Because something like this happened, the soldiers of the Song Army were almost frightened. They moved forward slowly step by step, basically losing their mobility.
However, the main force of the peasant army never appeared. It was like a ghost wandering around in the mountains, appearing and disappearing, causing the Song army soldiers to suffer from neurasthenia.
Shao Hongyuan's troops advanced into the mountains with a battalion of 500 men as the basic combat unit. The roads in the mountains were difficult and their movements were slow, not to mention the peasant army that appeared from time to time.
This was true during the day and even worse at night. The peasant army gave full play to its night attack expertise and launched frequent night attacks against the Song army, making the soldiers of the Song army unable to rest and depressed.
They didn't dare to walk quickly during the day, and they didn't dare to sleep peacefully at night, for fear that the peasant army would attack them.
As a result, the five battalions that first entered the mountain couldn't hold on for five days and retreated one after another, saying that it was too dangerous to fight in the mountain.
We can't find the thief army, but the thief army can find us, and we can't rest at night. How can we fight this battle?
The number of casualties was not too high, with more than 100 people killed and more than 400 injured. However, the first tentative attack failed, which made Shao Hongyuan very unhappy and also affected the morale of his troops. Very big.
After all, Shao Hongyuan and his troops had no experience in mountain warfare. They thought they could defeat the peasant army with low military literacy, but they did not expect that the opponent's military literacy was not as good as imagined.
What made Shao Hongyuan even more unacceptable was that after Qi Fang learned that Shao Hongyuan was defeated, he immediately came to laugh at him.
"Didn't General Shao say that we can definitely win? How could he fail? I thought General Shao could really do what he said, but I didn't expect it..."
After saying that, Qi Fang walked away with arrogant steps, leaving behind a series of barbell-like laughter.
Shao Hongyuan's face turned red with anger.
When Qi Fang was there, he didn't dare to show off his face on the spot. After Qi Fang left, he drew his sword and cut off the wooden table he was using.
"Rat! How dare you mock me!"
Originally, after this battle, Shao Hongyuan planned to re-study the situation in Luoxiao Mountain, redesign tactics, and let the army become familiar with the situation in the mountain before entering the mountain to suppress the bandits.
But Qi Fang's behavior was difficult for him to accept.
With various emotions, Shao Hongyuan held a military meeting and learned that the peasant army used small groups of troops to attack day and night, which made the Song army frightened and finally collapsed mentally. He hated these cunning peasant troops very much.
The mountains have obviously become their home field. Although the large forces are powerful, due to traffic restrictions, the movement speed of the large forces is relatively slow and the response is not very timely.
So Shao Hongyuan decided on the strategy of "dispersion versus dispersion".
He believed that the peasant army was good at sneak attacks and did not dare to engage in direct combat. This must be due to their lack of hand-to-hand combat ability.
His troops inherited the sophisticated training from the Li Xianzhong era and have good hand-to-hand combat capabilities. Therefore, as long as they enhance their mobility and reaction capabilities and reduce the number of people in a combat unit, it may have a miraculous effect.
As soon as the peasant army saw that they were few in number, they might be willing to come out and fight with them, which would have the effect of attacking their new force.
Shao Hongyuan then decided to use this tactic.
After laying out his tactics, he decided to use fifty people as a basic combat team, break the army into pieces, and spread it over the mountains and plains into the Luoxiao Mountains.
He assigned sounding arrows to each combat team. When they encountered the peasant army, they would release the sounding arrows to let the surrounding combat teams know the news.
The surrounding combat teams must move closer to the location of the sounding arrow as soon as possible, coordinate operations, and kill the effective forces of the peasant army.
In order to increase the sustainability of combat, he equipped the combat team with enough food and water to last them seven days of combat.
He felt that this would give him enough advantages to kill the new force of the peasant army and win victory.
Facts have proven that this was the second wrong decision Shao Hongyuan ever made.
He overestimated the discipline and organization of his troops, and underestimated the combat effectiveness of the Luoxiaoshan Peasant Army.
