Yicheng, this ordinary small town in the northern Chu region, originally paid little attention to, but as Tiansha's rebel army captured Xiangyang City, they conquered Xiangyang Prefecture, Nanyang Prefecture, Yunyang Prefecture and other places. Fighting, but the officers and soldiers retreated after defeats.
The name of the small town Yicheng also gradually appeared in high-level letters between the Baoxiang Army and the Ming court.
Because Yicheng is located on the edge of the Han River, south of Xiangyang.
If the Baoxiang Army wants to move south along the Han River, they must capture Yicheng and then move south.
Similarly, if the Ming army wanted to counterattack Xiangyang, it would also need to use Yicheng as a bridgehead and a place to station troops and store food.
The strategic role of a place sometimes does not depend on whether it is a dangerous place, easy to defend and difficult to attack. More often, it depends on the impact of the place on the warring parties.
And Yicheng, a place that is neither a grand pass nor a big city, has seen its strategic status rise rapidly in the past two months, and eventually became the core area of the battle between the two armies.
In a small town on the way south, Luo Zhixue listened to Xu Zhixian introducing the basic situation of Yicheng:
"Yicheng's city defense facilities are not outstanding. They were originally at the level of an ordinary county town. Although the Ming army has been trying to strengthen the city's defense facilities in the past two months, they are still very limited."
"Of course, even if the city is not a fortified city, it will still be troublesome to fight if the defenders rely on the city wall to resist and hold on."
"In terms of the enemy's garrison strength, according to our various spying, especially the intelligence gathered by colleagues from the Intelligence Department who sneaked into the city, the garrison in the city has about 12,000 people. However, the ratio of combat soldiers to garrison soldiers is relatively small. big."
"We estimate that there are about 3,000 soldiers in the city's garrison, and about 8,000 to 9,000 soldiers in the garrison and county warriors organized by the local government."
"As for auxiliary operations, there are four to five thousand civilians without weapons and equipment."
"In terms of weapons and equipment, the armor ratio of the defenders in the city is not high. It is expected that there will be no more than 2,000 armored soldiers and no more than 300 heavy armored soldiers."
"There are about two hundred short-barreled cannons of various types, mainly assault cannons and tiger squatting cannons weighing tens of kilograms, and a small number of general cannons and folang machine guns weighing less than three hundred kilograms are in service. No red barbarians have been found here for the time being. artillery."
"Generally speaking, the strength of the defenders in the city is limited now. If they dare to go out to fight in the field, it doesn't take much. With the cooperation of cavalry and artillery, our main brigade can defeat them."
Li Chengtong, commander of the 1st Infantry Brigade on the side, laughed and said: "Their soldiers only have a total of 3,000 soldiers, which is not as many as our brigade, and the number of people wearing armor and heavy armor is only equivalent to our main regiment."
"If a main force brigade attacks them, it still looks down upon them!"
One of the main brigade of the Baoxiang Army is quite powerful. For example, the First Infantry Brigade has the First Infantry Regiment and the Second Infantry Regiment under its command. The First Infantry Regiment is the old First Infantry Brigade before the reorganization.
In the Battle of Sanyuanzhuang, this unit was able to resist Lu Xiangsheng's 7,000-8,000-strong Chinese army with only 2,000 troops without wavering.
The old farmer Xu He, the commander of the Second Infantry Brigade on the side, laughed and said: "But it's unlikely that they will come out to fight with us!"
As soon as Xu He said these words, everyone else present couldn't help but sigh.
Yes, those damn Ming troops in Yicheng didn’t even go out of the city to fight them!
Speaking of which, it has been more than two months since their Baoxiang Army captured Xiangyang. During this period, the Baoxiang Army has been keeping a low profile and has not moved south.
Even after Luo Zhixue led the main force to Xiangyang in late June, he did not say anything about taking the initiative to go south.
Why?
The purpose was to show the enemy's weakness and to attract the Ming army in Yicheng and Nanzhang to take the initiative to move north. Then the Baoxiang army would take the opportunity to go out of the city and have an upright outdoor battle with them, directly defeating the local Ming army.
However, the Ming army in Yicheng and other places seemed to have also heard about the disastrous defeat of Lu Xiangsheng in the Battle of Sanyuanzhuang, and also heard about the disastrous defeat of Zuo Liangyu and others outside Yuzhou City.
As a result, it was determined that the security army was good at fighting in the field and could not leave the city alive, let alone run up to counterattack Xiangyang.
As for Hong Chengchou and the others above, although they asked Huguang officers and soldiers to counterattack Xiangyang from time to time, they quickly wiped out the security forces.
But the local officers, soldiers and generals were not stupid, and they would not make fun of their own lives just because of Hong Chengchou's order.
Anyway, in their opinion, it is impossible for them to counterattack Xiangyang alone. Since they can't counterattack, why go to Xiangyang and die.
It is better to stay in Yicheng and wait for more reinforcements from the south to arrive.
Not to mention, this strategy worked quite well. The Yicheng defenders could not escape alive. Then the number of defenders in the city slowly increased from a few thousand to more than 10,000 now.
Luo Zhixue felt like he shot himself in the foot.
Now that he heard that Ming troops of about 10,000 were coming from the south, Luo Zhixue did not dare to let these Ming troops go to Yicheng again.
If the Ming army, which numbered tens of thousands, were to rush to Yicheng, it would be even more difficult to attack Yicheng later.
Since it was unreliable to lure the enemy deep, and they heard that a large number of enemy reinforcements were heading north, the staff of the Home Guard Army headed by Xu Zhixian quickly changed their strategy: siege the city and call for reinforcements!
Xu Zhixian pointed at the map and said: "Actually, we don't need to besiege the city for reinforcements. We only need to leave a small number of troops to monitor them. Our main force can directly bypass Yicheng and go south to annihilate the enemy troops coming north from Hanyang. on the way."
Li Chengyong said: "Not besieging the city? If the Yicheng enemy troops leave the city and attack our army from the north and south, will our army be passive?"
After hearing this, Xu Zhixian smiled and said: "If they dare to leave the city, we will directly kill a carbine, quickly defeat them in the wild, and then seize Yicheng."
"Even if we don't fight back and seize Yicheng, there will be other tactics available."
"As long as they dare to leave the city, there are too many directions for us to choose from. We can continue to send reinforcements, we can kill a carbine, we can even let them join together, and then directly defeat them in the wild battle."
When Xu Zhixian said this, he seemed confident.
The others also seemed confident after listening to his words.
Luo Zhixue is also relatively relieved about this. The confidence of his generals now is a good thing. At least they will not want to run away when they see a large number of officers and soldiers like before...
At that time, they always regarded the Ming army as officers and soldiers, and themselves as thieves...
When the bandits saw the officers and soldiers, they naturally attacked them.
Nowadays, the generals of the Baoxiang Army rarely feel like they are naturally short.
Because in the past few months, the Baoxiang Army has won every battle, and the victory has been crisp and beautiful, many times with less and more.
This series of victories also gave the soldiers of the Baoxiang Army confidence.
However, it is one thing to be confident, and it is another thing for self-confidence to turn into arrogance, so Luo Zhixue also poured cold water on it appropriately: "This time we have to be cautious when going south. Our army has limited troops going south, and the main force is But there are three regiments, and more than 2,000 garrison troops (the fifth garrison brigade lacks one regiment), plus baggage, artillery and cavalry troops, the total strength is only more than 11,000 people."
"In terms of the number of troops, we are still at a big disadvantage. We still need to be more cautious in this battle to avoid capsizing in the gutter."
Hearing what Luo Zhixue said, the generals who had seemed confident before calmed down a little. However, when they later discussed the battle, the suggestions put forward were still relatively bold.
Finally, they finalized the combat plan proposed by Xu Zhixian, which was very simple at the strategic level.
Go all the way south, bypass Yicheng and continue south, directly intercepting the Ming army heading north from Hanyang.
Judging from the location and marching speed of both sides, the Baoxiang Army was completely able to stop the Beishan Ming Army reinforcements at least one day or even two days in advance before they arrived in Yicheng.
After stopping them, there is no need to say more about the next battle plan. Let's just engage in an encounter and defeat them.
During this process, if the enemy troops in Yicheng dare to leave the city, it will depend on the situation. If they follow closely, then just kill one of them first.
If the opponent is more cautious and follows farther away, then ignore them first and continue south, knocking down the north reinforcements before turning back to attack them.
If the opponent has soldiers who are masters and their mobility is beyond the limit, the Baoxiang army will not have a chance to fight back, and at the same time, they will not be able to kill the reinforcements heading north first.
Then just set up your formation and let them fight in an upright manner.
In short, it is not mainly a siege, so the Baoxiang Army has the confidence to fight them.
Even if one's own infantry is at a great disadvantage.
Because in addition to the three main infantry regiments in the Baoxiang Army, there are also two other troops that have an absolute advantage.
That is the twenty-four two-and-a-half-pound field guns belonging to the First Artillery Regiment.
The 600 elite cavalry of the Independent First Cavalry Brigade led by Wang Xiazi.
In terms of field artillery, the Baoxiang Army can definitely destroy the Huguang Ming Army, even if the opponent apparently has more, or even hundreds of various small artillery pieces.
In terms of elite cavalry, the Baoxiang Army also had an absolute advantage.
These Huguang local forces in the south do not have elite cavalry. Now the entire Huguang Ming army south of Xiangyang, their combined cavalry strength is not as good as Zuo Liangyu's.
After all, Zuo Liangyu's command still had 500 elite cavalry. At that time, these 500 elite cavalry were relatively unlucky in the early stages of the battle. They were directly bombarded from a long distance by the Baoxiang Army and were caught off guard.
Only then did Wang Xiazi's cavalry find an opportunity and defeat him.
And these local guardsmen in Huguang could not find five hundred fine cavalry, let alone five hundred, they probably didn't even have one hundred fine cavalry.
With the elite cavalry and field artillery having an absolute advantage, even with a relatively small number of infantry, a group of generals from the Baoxiang Army were confident enough to defeat them in a field battle.
Compared with the Baoxiang Army who were full of confidence and headed straight for Yicheng, the Ming Army in Yicheng was extremely panicked.
At this moment, they didn't know that the rural protection army was quickly moving south to fight for reinforcements.
They thought that the rural protection army was coming to attack Yicheng.
That was a bandit-protecting army that could even capture Xiangyang City and defeat Lu Xiangsheng!
The defenders didn't have much confidence in whether they could stop the rebel army and defend Yicheng.
After hearing that the rebel army was rapidly heading south, the magistrate of Yicheng County in Yicheng was in panic for two days. Before the rebel army arrived, he quietly slipped out of the city.
He is no longer worthy of this position!
And this man absconded before the rebels arrived, causing the already extremely low morale of the city's defenders to hit rock bottom.
So much so that a situation occurred that neither the Ming Army nor the Baoxiang Army could have expected.
Before the rebels arrived, the more than 10,000 defenders in Yicheng abandoned the city and fled, rushing south along the Han River...
