I am not Yuan Shu

Chapter 255 You said you wanted to surrender?

Liu He only killed one person, but the Han army had wiped out their entire army of 40,000. The level of terror between the two sides was completely not on the same level.

So when the news came that the Han army was approaching Puyang City, the fear brought by Gao Wei's death had no effect.

More and more people were clamoring to escape. The garrison in the city and the barracks outside the city were in varying degrees of chaos. Even many middle and low-level officers were so frightened that they chose to flee.

The dark cloud of destruction completely enveloped Puyang City, which directly led to the top leader Liu He being on the verge of collapse.

With a last glimmer of hope, he called Gao Cheng, Wang Ji, Wen Mu, Sun Zun and others to his front, and actually began to discuss with them the possibility of surrender, whether it was still too late to surrender now, and whether they could survive...

This directly made these people burn on the outside and tender on the inside.

Brother! It's already this late, and you're actually thinking of surrendering?
What’s the difference between surrendering now and directly reincarnating?
If you want to surrender, why don't you just not rebel in the first place?

Now you are the leader of our rebel army, and you are also the General of Cavalry. You even spread the news that the emperor of Luoyang court is a fake emperor, not legitimate, and you want the people of the world to fight against him together...

And then you say you want to surrender?

They immediately began to doubt whether Liu He's head contained brain matter or gold juice.

A group of people immediately started talking at once, trying to make Liu He understand that he was in a state of certain death. If he did not persist in fighting and create a future, what awaited him would be torn into pieces by five horses, or something even more miserable than that.

After drooling for a while, Liu He finally reacted. He was now in a state of despair. If he wanted to survive in the world, he had only one option, which was to hold on to these 50,000 or 60,000 troops as the last bargaining chip and fight a desperate battle with the Han army.

As long as they can defeat Duan Xing, they will have hope of breaking the impasse. If they cannot defeat him, they will die.

Liu He was somewhat unwilling to accept this conclusion.

"The imperial army is strong, and Duan Xing is very good at fighting. It will be very difficult to defeat him. Shouldn't we think of some other ways? For example, temporarily avoid the sharp edge? Leave Puyang first and retreat to Jiyin County, and then let Zhang Hao and Jiong Fei lead troops to support us?"

Regarding the idea proposed by Liu He, military advisor Sun Zun said it was difficult to achieve.

He thinks more deeply and practically.

He believed that when the rebels were at their peak, many local officials chose to surrender, but this surrender was temporary and not reliable.

If the rebels can win and gain momentum on the battlefield, their loyalty will become reliable. However, once the Han army wins a battle and defeats them miserably, it will be questionable whether the loyalty of these local officials is stable.

In the final analysis, this group of people are fence-sitters, leaning to which side the wind blows stronger. If they leave Puyang and go south to Jiyin County, or Liang State or Pei State, they will most likely be ambushed by local forces.

Once these fence-sitters learn that the rebels are retreating, they will certainly try every means to stir up trouble to win credit from the Han army. By then, they will lose the city, be ambushed by local forces in front, and be pursued by the Han army behind. They will be attacked from both sides and will inevitably collapse.

Therefore, their only choice was to hold on to Puyang and use the existing city defense conditions in Puyang to fight an offensive and defensive battle with the Han army.

Sun Zun listed some advantages that would come to the rebels after doing so.

"The imperial army is good at field battles, but our army is not. We can avoid field battles by defending the city. In this way, we can offset the advantages of the imperial army. In addition, the imperial army does not have many soldiers. According to reports, there are about 20,000 to 30,000 soldiers, while our army has 50,000 soldiers, more than twice the number of the imperial army.

As long as the city is defended, it would not be so easy for the imperial army to capture Puyang. Moreover, the city currently has sufficient food and weapons. Even if the imperial army is more capable of fighting, how can 20,000 or 30,000 people capture a city defended by 50,000 people in a short period of time?

Moreover, the imperial army came from a long expedition and was already exhausted, while our army was sitting in the city, clearing the fields and waiting for the enemy to tire. Isn't this an advantage? Moreover, we are not isolated and helpless. Zhang Hao and Jiong Fei are still leading troops outside, and there are still troops that can be mobilized.

Just send someone to contact them immediately, don't let them come to Puyang, and let them lead the army to threaten the food supply of the imperial army. In this way, in the severe cold, once the imperial army runs out of food, they will definitely retreat. In this way, our army can turn the situation around! Survive from death!"

Sun Zun, the military strategist, was quite capable and came up with a plan that seemed very feasible. For Liu He, who was in despair, this was like a blessing in disguise and like meeting an old friend in a foreign land.

Surprised, Liu He immediately adopted Sun Zun's suggestion and ordered the concentration of troops to defend Puyang. He then sent messengers to contact Zhang Hao and Jiong Pei, asking them not to continue threatening the State of Chen and Chenliu County, and to immediately lead their respective armies to move northward, threatening the Han army's food supply and trying to cut off the Han army's food supply.

It should be said that Sun Zun’s plan was not entirely a fantasy. If it was really implemented well, it would indeed bring some trouble to the Han army.

But the problem is that in many cases, plans are plans, and execution is execution. The planners are geniuses, and the ones who execute the plans are fools. Even President Chiang led the elites of Whampoa and suffered greatly, and was in a corner of the southeast, not to mention Liu He who led a group of eunuch remnants. For example, fortifying the walls and clearing the fields.

Liu He ordered the implementation of this strategy, sending the army out of the city to destroy roads, pollute wells, and cut down trees, and by the way, move all the residents outside the city into the city. This was equivalent to comprehensive destruction, preventing the Han army from having any supplies to use locally, and also increasing the material reserves in the city.

The idea is nice, but the execution is terrible.

As soon as the soldiers in the city left the city, a group of them deserted and fled. No matter how strictly the officers watched them or how they killed those who tried to escape, they still managed to escape.

As for the rest, the campaign of scorching the countryside simply turned into looting, smashing, and burning.

They wreaked havoc on the residential areas outside the city, killing, robbing and burning everywhere. Those who knew knew that it was the rebels carrying out the mission of clearing the countryside, while those who didn't think it was bandits from somewhere who came down the mountain to rob.

Many self-cultivating rural villages outside Puyang County suffered a devastating blow and were reduced to ruins, with countless men, women, old and young killed.

At the same time, there were many farms of powerful landlords outside the city. The rebels attacked them all equally, trying to seize more food. The defense forces in these farms were much stronger than those of the self-cultivating villages, and they fought back and forth with the rebels.

Some farms were successfully defended and many rebels were eliminated.

Therefore, this policy of clearing the countryside was indeed implemented, but the effect... is really hard to say.

For example, Sun Zun suggested that Liu He gather all the troops outside the city into the city, because he was worried that the troops outside the city would flee in large numbers and affect the city defense force, so the troops should be kept inside the city.

Liu He thought this was a feasible approach, so he ordered the troops outside the city to abandon their barracks and enter the city.

But the execution of such an order turned out to be a disaster.

Originally in the barracks, many people could not find a chance to escape. Now the order came for them to abandon the barracks and go to the city. Then the distance between the barracks and the city was the best opportunity to escape.

The rebels had three military camps outside the city, each with a garrison of 10,000 troops. Liu He arranged for Wang Ji, Gao Cheng and Wen Mu to go to the three barracks respectively to coordinate the troops' entry into the city.

As a result, Wang Ji was the one who completed the task best among the three.

How many people did he bring back?
Eight thousand seven hundred people.

As many as 1,300 people left the team in the short period of time from the barracks to the city.

They either fled, were killed, or disappeared from the face of the earth. Even Wang Ji himself didn't know how the missing people disappeared.

The altitude was slightly worse, but not too much. He brought back more than 7,100 people.

The situation on Wenmu's side is more difficult.

During the journey from the barracks to Puyang City, the army led by Wen Mu suffered large-scale chaos. Wen Mu failed to deal with the situation in a timely manner and acted too slowly and too weakly, resulting in a large number of soldiers either fleeing, being killed, or being trampled to death. By the time they arrived in Puyang City, they were counted to only a little over 6,000 soldiers.

Of the 30,000 garrison troops, only 21,000 were left when they returned to Puyang City. This meant that nearly one-third of the force had been lost before the battle even began.

The huge loss made Liu He so angry that he almost fainted, and he almost drew his sword to chop Wen Mu to death.

Fortunately, he was stopped by Wang Ji, who said that this was the time when people were needed and they must not allow internal strife to break out again. Only then did Liu He calm down.

But no matter how calm he was, if he couldn't even do the first thing well, how difficult would it be to defend the city next?

From this time on, Liu He's heart was filled with doubts and worries, but he no longer had time to think about improving the specific implementation plan.

On December 17th of the first year of Zhengshi, the vanguard of the Han army arrived at the city of Puyang.

On the 18th, the main force of the Han army arrived at the city of Puyang.

(End of this chapter)