No matter how beautiful the dream is, it will eventually wake up. Ding Hong was woken up by the officer who came in a hurry. He was very unhappy when he was pushed awake, but after he heard the other party's voice, There was no sleepiness at all.
"Sir! Your Majesty! It's not good! Something bad is going to happen! The Tang army defeated the returning troops, we, we are finished!" The officer who came to deliver the news was almost crying, and he finally finished what he should have said. if.
In fact, I really don't blame him for being so timid. As long as they hear the news that the 200,000-strong army has been defeated, no one will remain calm.
On the one hand, there were 200,000 reinforcements. Their reinforcements were defeated by the enemy, which meant that they were now isolated and helpless! Who can stay calm at a time like this? It must be very desperate, okay?
On the other hand, that is an army of 200,000! The enemy on the periphery can even defeat an army of 200,000 people. What should we do? It can defeat an army of 200,000 people. Isn’t it a piece of cake to defeat these 50,000 people?
Don't look at the message Ding Hong sent before going to bed, saying that he defeated the Tang army's attack at Nanfengkou, but everyone knows what happened, at least those who have experienced that battle know what happened. One thing.
"What did you say! Say it again!" Ding Hong had just gotten up and was still a little confused. He thought he had heard wrongly, so he asked the officer to report it again.
To be honest, hearing such a report again at this time is simply a kind of torture, but the officer still faithfully fulfilled Ding Hong's wish: "Sir, it's not good! The Tang army defeated our reinforcements, and now we... can only I can rely on myself!"
Hearing his subordinates say this, Ding Hong trembled for a moment, then he stood up suddenly and quickly walked towards his headquarters: "How is it possible! This is impossible! This is impossible!"
Almost at the same time, Qian Jinhang got up from his bed after getting the news. He stood up numbly, put on his clothes, and walked to the already crowded headquarters.
This is not a very large room. There is a map hanging on the wall, which roughly marks the areas controlled by the forces of both sides.
There is a large table next to it. On the table is a larger-scale local map, which shows the situation of the entire southern region.
The officers who learned the news stood there nervously, waiting for their generals to solve the difficult problems they were facing.
Qian Jinhang walked among these people and said what he had been thinking about all along: "Don't be anxious, everyone. I have heard about the matter, but the situation is not as bad as you think."
As an old general, he certainly knew what kind of outcome they would face if the situation collapsed.
Therefore, he must stabilize these commanders. Only these people who firmly believe that they still have hope can help him stabilize the situation and allow them to continue to persevere in Xicong.
"Everyone listen to me!" Seeing that some people were still very nervous, Qian Jinhang continued to comfort him: "I'm serious, the situation is not as bad as everyone thought, so everyone listen to my explanation."
After everyone gradually calmed down, Qian Jinhang continued: "Although the Tang army defeated our troops who came back for reinforcements, in fact, I think it is not very likely that the opponent has captured Nanfengkou. .”
"If the opponent takes Nanfengkou, there is no need to continue to advance to Lijiacun. All we need to do is wait at Nanfengkou and wait for our troops to pass and hit the wall." Qian Jinhang explained very clearly, which also made everyone anxious. They all regained some sanity.
"Moreover! The actual losses of the 200,000-strong army that were defeated were not much." Qian Jinhang talked about the defeated army again: "If we gather them together, we will only lose tens of thousands of people at most, and the rest will just be scattered. It’s just that we can’t contain it in the chaos.”
These were all his speculations, and in fact he was partly correct. The Tang army did not capture Nanfengkou. This was considered correct by him.
"After taking Tengyun, Ding Hong will definitely gather his troops and set up defenses mainly at Nanfengkou. This is also an inevitable choice, because we can't afford to lose Nanfengkou! However, such an arrangement will drain the surrounding troops and allow the Tang army to pass freely. There was no obstruction, so Tang Jun jumped over the Nanfeng Pass and appeared in Lijiacun." The more Qian Jinhang said, the more he felt that what he said made sense, and this thought clarified his thinking.
"So we still have a chance!" He said firmly to his men: "Although the Tang Army seems to have surrounded us, we still have a chance!"
In fact, in addition to the infantry attacking Xicong, Qian Jinhang's army also included a large part of the armored forces preparing to rush to the Sishui area after the Battle of Xicong.
In other words, the Dahua Army in the Xicong area actually has quite a few armored units. Now as long as Qian Jinhang is willing to invest in these armored units and turn his spearhead towards Lijiacun, he will still have a high degree of confidence in breaking through.
At least, that's what he thinks.
But what he didn't know was that the force the Tang Army invested in Lijiacun was an armored division, and it was the very main 2nd Armored Division.
With this force in charge, the Dahua army is unlikely to penetrate the Tang army's defense line. The main reason why Qian Jinhang made such a misjudgment was that he did not understand the true strength of the Tang army.
Of course, even if Qian Jinhang knew that the Tang army had indeed surrounded his troops, he could only continue to say so.
Otherwise, what can he say? Can he tell his subordinates: Brothers, we are done, the Tang army has surrounded us, we can only wait to die, go back and write a suicide note, right?
Don't be kidding, even at the last moment, he must continue to lie, not only to lie to all his men, but also to himself.
In the view of this relatively experienced senior commander, the situation of the Dahua Army in front of him is actually very bad, and any decision is a risk.
Does anyone think that breaking out at this time is not the most important thing? Actually it’s really not the case! Rushing to mobilize troops to break out is actually very risky.
If the troops were so easy to mobilize, just like playing a game, just click a mouse button, then anyone could be a commander, right?
The first is that the troops supporting the surrounding area cannot easily shrink. These troops must stay in place and ensure one's basic strategic depth.
At the same time, the most capable troops must be quickly mobilized and moved in the direction where a breakthrough is needed - this is a fast job, but it must be kept as secret as possible.
Everyone knows the truth. If the news that he wants to break out of the encirclement is easily exposed, then only God knows how much combat power the remaining troops who support the encirclement have.
The main force was mobilized under the premise of confidentiality and speed, and then the force was asked to choose the weakest direction of the enemy's encirclement to start breaking out. Whether they could win was another matter.
For Qian Jinhang, the actual battle situation is as follows: Today's Dahua troops actually occupy half of Xicong, and many troops are stationed in the city. In this kind of weather, this is also the best choice.
To break through, a force must be exposed in the wilderness and engage in a field battle with the Tang army in Lijiacun. This is actually very disadvantageous, because in the field, the combat effectiveness of Dahua's army is obviously not as good as that of low-handed soldiers.
Whether he could defeat his opponent was completely unknown, and Qian Jinhang himself was not sure, so he had to consider the outcome of failing to break through.
On the other hand, he really has no way to break through now: the route to Nanfengkou is full of broken troops, and it will take at least two days to gather them together. Without cleaning up these defeated troops, how could his troops drive through the crowded roads to fight?
Moreover, he had just learned the news of the army's defeat. He didn't know yet what the attitude of Feng Kezhi and the emperor was.
As the commander of an army of hundreds of thousands, all he can actually do is wait: only when the people above him make a decision can he proceed with the next step of command and deployment.
The simplest question: Did the person above let you run away? If Feng Kezhi asked him to continue the fierce attack on Xicong, but he gave up Xicong earlier and broke through, then even if he led his troops to break through successfully, he would still be a sinner who escaped before the battle and died without mercy.
Another problem is that if he abandons Xicong and returns to break out, hundreds of thousands of troops will move to the wilderness, and the situation will be worse than if he stayed where he was.
This is hundreds of thousands of soldiers eating horse chews. Just food will consume an astronomical figure in a day. If they really abandon the city and camp in the wild, their mobility and self-sustainment will be greatly reduced. By the time we arrived at Lijia Village, the situation had probably changed.
So he could only wait here honestly, just like Marshal Paulus who had been waiting for a month. In other words, Paulus's state was exactly the same as Qian Jinhang's trapped in Xicong.
They all had to consider the weather, and at the same time they had to face pressure from high-level people in the country. In short, they could not decide their own choices flexibly and could only wait for others to decide their life or death.
However, after hearing their superior's explanation, many senior commanders of the Dahua Army calmed down.
In their opinion, this is indeed the case: they still have hundreds of thousands of troops, and there has never been a precedent in history for so many troops to be surrounded.
Therefore, many of them were very optimistic after reacting. They felt that it would be very easy for hundreds of thousands of troops to break through anyway.
But what they didn't know was that many details in Qian Jinhang's explanation were actually wrong. For example, half of the defeated Dahua troops actually became prisoners of the Tang army, so they escaped back to Xicong's troops and Not as many as they thought.
(End of chapter)
