My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 368 The Enemy Learned from the Lesson
After mobilizing the army, Taishi Ci led his cavalry and gradually approached the Nanpi battlefield.

The cavalry marched very quickly. On the morning of April 25, when the army broke camp and set off for the last time, they were only forty or fifty miles away from Nanpi City.

For cavalry, this distance would take less than a morning to reach. However, Lu Kuang and Lu Xiang still did not send anyone to fight and intercept, and they hid in the siege camp outside Nanpi City. The rear army reserve was only dragged as far as Dongguang County upstream of Nanpi.

Yuan Shang's army had been besieging Nanpi for more than half a year, so the facilities and camps were very complete. A simple riverside corridor was built from Dongguan County, which served as the attack base, to Nanpi to protect the food route, allowing for travel both by land and water.

Yuan Shang's army's rations were mainly stored in Dongguang County. After all, it was protected by the city wall, so it was safer to store large amounts of food there. The troops in the Nanpi siege camp generally only stored rations for ten days or half a month. When they had almost eaten all the rations, they would transport them from Dongguang County in the back, which was only a few dozen miles away.

In terms of absolute numbers, the armies of Lü Kuang and Lü Xiang were quite large, about the same size as when Cao Hong and Zhang He attacked last year.

At their peak, Cao Hong and Zhang He had 50,000 to 60,000 troops in the Bohai battlefield, but later, because Cao Cao moved the main attack direction to the west and did not use all his strength on the Bohai side, he pulled back a small half of them. Finally, when Taishi Ci, Chen Dao and Tian Yu attacked, Cao's army had only more than 30,000 people in total.

This time, Lü Kuang and Lü Xiang were ordered to attack, with a total of 50,000 to 60,000 troops, but their quality was very poor, and they also included the newly captured local laborers who transported grain. In addition, Yuan's army was fighting on the interior and on the home front, so if they captured people regardless of their quality, they could indeed gather a lot of people.

Moreover, Yuan Shang's main attack target so far has been Nanpi. He wants to completely swallow Bohai, recover the entire Jizhou, and then turn back to deal with other threats. Even though the high-ranking officials of Bingzhou were killed by Cao Cao last winter and early spring this year, Yuan Shang still continued to fight to the death with his eldest brother regardless.

Therefore, Lu Kuang and Lu Xiang have not encountered the problem of dividing troops like Cao’s army did last year, but it is hard to say in the future.

Until now, when Taishi Ci attacked, Lü Kuang and Lü Xiang still had nearly 20,000 Jizhou troops, more than 10,000 newly recruited soldiers, and nearly 20,000 local laborers conscripted from Bohai and Qinghe counties to transport grain and auxiliary personnel responsible for destroying city defenses and building corridors and camps, all adding up to about 50,000 to 60,000 people.

There are only about 17,000 to 18,000 people who can really fight, and the rest are just there to make up the numbers.

However, Yuan Shang had enough old weapons left in the armory in Yecheng, so all the new recruits and civilians would be given enough weapons.

At least each person had a rusty and tattered ring-handled sword, or a bamboo spear with an iron head, but they did not have armor.

Even the veteran soldiers could not ensure that everyone had armor, including leather armor, so the new recruits and civilians naturally had to go without armor at all.

However, because the combined forces of Taishi Ci and Zhou Yu on the opposite side were less than 10,000 men, and Liu Bei's army had traveled thousands of miles across the sea, it was impossible for them to bring too many men, so Lü Kuang and Lü Xiang were still very confident in their chances of winning.

They also knew that the enemy was well-trained but small in number, and could only rely on their warships to move quickly on the Zhang River. So they built defensive fortifications in advance, built high walls and deep trenches, and surrounded the city without fighting, hoping to wait for Taishi Ci and Zhou Yu to storm their well-built siege camps.

……

Taishi Ci arrived safely not far from the city of Nanpi. He led two to three thousand cavalrymen and challenged Taishi Ci for a fight. However, Lü Kuang and Lü Xiang just defended the camp and shot arrows when they saw Taishi Ci approaching.

Taishi Ci circled around for a long time but couldn't find a loophole to attack, so he could only retreat temporarily.

"Although Lü Kuang and Lü Xiang are incompetent, they know their own strengths. They are not like Cao Hong who attacked our army the first time last year. This is a bit tricky. They have been besieging Nanpi for more than half a year. The siege camp is very solid and complete. A strong attack will surely cause heavy losses, and it may not be possible to break through..."

Taishi Ci also didn't expect that he only brought 3,000 cavalrymen, while the enemy camp had 10,000 to 20,000 regular troops and tens of thousands of cannon fodder and miscellaneous personnel, but they didn't dare to fight.

Perhaps Lü Kuang and Lü Xiang also realized that the size of their cavalry units was not large enough to absolutely crush Taishi Ci. Once Taishi Ci started running, the tens of thousands of slow-moving main forces would not be able to catch up, so they did not fight.

After all, their Jizhou Army had only 17,000 to 18,000 veterans, and the proportion of cavalry among them should not exceed 20% to 30%. With the soldiers not as elite as the generals, it was a bit risky to let the cavalry fight Taishi Ci alone.

However, considering that he arrived earlier than Zhou Yu, Taishi Ci was unwilling to waste time, so he spent more than a day trying to find opportunities to harass the enemy. For example, when it was dark at dawn, he would have his cavalry wrap their horses' hooves and sneak around to the weak points of the enemy camp, trying to raid the camp or harass them with arrows.

Lü Kuang and Lü Xiang had a large number of people, and they were on guard in batches, so they were quite vigilant. Taishi Ci's raid on the camp failed, but at least there was no loss. They also kept the enemy troops frightened, which affected their physical strength and morale.

Seeing that tens of thousands of his own troops were being suppressed by thousands of the enemy, and the commander did not allow them to fight, Yuan Jun must have been depressed and realized the weakness of his own combat effectiveness.

Taishi Ci failed to raid the camp, so on the second night he changed his tactics and used cavalry to wrap their horses' hooves to approach the enemy camp and then use rockets to set fire to it, continuing to harass and weaken the enemy.

This trick was indeed more effective than directly raiding the camp, mainly because Taishi Ci's troops were small and moved quickly, and the enemy could not catch them at a distance in the dark. The enemy troops in the siege camp would light torches to patrol at night, and the firelight was very obvious, and the chevaux de frise, wooden granaries, tents and other buildings could be clearly seen, so they could just shoot rockets at those targets from a distance.

Lu Kuang and Lu Xiang were caught off guard and some targets were set on fire. They sent people to put out the fire repeatedly, but still lost some supplies. More importantly, their morale became increasingly low.

After putting out a fire, Lu Kuang was also very surprised and discussed with Lu Xiang: "How could the enemy general come and go so quickly, suddenly appear a hundred steps outside the camp, and then directly fire rockets? If they want to set the fire, don't they need torches? Did the soldiers on the watchtower neglect it?" Lu Xiang thought about it and agreed with him.

This cannot be blamed on their lack of knowledge, but rather that fire sticks were not invented in this era, and were not invented until the end of the Northern Wei Dynasty. Therefore, it is very troublesome to quickly spread fire in the wild.

Normally, if you want to fire rockets, you always have to get a few torches first, then quickly light up the arrows, one to five, five to twenty, twenty to a hundred, and generally each round will only spread the fire four or five times at most. By the time most of the rockets are lit, the lookouts in the camp should have already seen a large area of fire in the distance.

But Taishi Ci's surprise attack was completely different.

He was literally in the dark, and suddenly a large amount of fire appeared out of nowhere.

Before the defenders could react, a rain of arrows had already come from the field which was dark half a cup of tea ago. The suddenness of the attack increased by an order of magnitude.

Lu Kuang and Lu Xiang had never seen such tactics before, so it was no wonder that they were so exhausted by the harassment.

……

While Lü Kuang and Lu Xiang were in low morale and were harassed to the point of having no sleep at all, Taishi Ci, on the other hand, was quite proud of himself and was quite satisfied with the result.

"The fire starters that the princes have studied are indeed very useful. I heard that last year when Gao Shun was guarding Ju County, he wanted to leave the city at night to burn Zhang He's grain fleet, but because it was too slow to start a fire at night, he didn't achieve much success. The princes were able to make such a magical thing just for this matter. The first actual battle was a bargain for me."

Taishi Ci knew his limits, knowing that the first person to be thanked for this was his leader, and that he was only an executive. If he were asked to set fire with the same equipment as Gao Shun last year, he might not be able to do better than Gao Shun.

Such a small thing allowed the army to ignite a large fire source from scratch at night, and the speed was many times faster. The previous moment, it was still "blackout" and sneaked past quietly, and the next moment, a large area of fire suddenly appeared. How could the defenders be on guard?

Unless Lü Kuang and Lü Xiang dared to send out dense night cavalry patrols to give early warning. But if Lü Kuang had the courage, he would not have defended the siege camp without fighting.

After Taishi Ci set these harassing fires to boost morale, Zhou Yu, who had taken a detour by water, finally arrived at the battlefield early the next morning.

Taishi Ci took the initiative to retreat to the northeast to join Zhou Yu, then discussed with Zhou Yu the harassment he had carried out over the previous two days and listened to Zhou Yu's opinions.

Taishi Ci's official position in Liu Bei's army was definitely much higher than Zhou Yu's. After all, he arrived earlier, had military merits, and was already a general of miscellaneous rank, while Zhou Yu was only a captain.

But after this period of contact, Taishi Ci also discovered that Zhou Yu was quite knowledgeable in military tactics, had a good brain, and was willing to discuss things with Zhou Yu when encountering unexpected situations.

After hearing Taishi Ci's retelling, Zhou Yu didn't take it seriously at first:

"It's not a big deal to defend the camp and not leave. Since the general's cavalry is useless, I will use the fleet to advance along the Zhang River. If they use bows and crossbows to fight back, I will fight a war of attrition with them.

Our warships are well protected. Archers can shoot arrows from the portholes, which is better than shooting arrows from the city walls. We are not afraid of counterattacks. Didn't our army force Cao Hong and Zhang He to retreat last year? Can Lü Kuang and Lü Xiang be stronger than Cao Hong and Zhang He?"

Taishi Ci stroked his beard and said with a bit of worry, "I am afraid that Lü Kuang and Lü Xiang have learned the lesson from Cao Hong and Zhang He last year. After all, Cao Hong dared to directly attack our army last year, but Lü Kuang doesn't dare to do that this year.

They also know that our army defeated Cao Hong on the same battlefield last year, so how could they use the same tactics to meet the enemy? Maybe they have also thought of ways to restrain us when we are alone in deep with warships. "

Zhou Yu: "How do you know if you don't try? As for the tactics of using land to control water and restraining warships with strong defenses, I have thought about it. It's nothing more than firing rockets at the ships from the shore, or using powerful crossbows and thunder chariots to meet the attack.

But I have never heard that Yuan Shang's army is good at making catapults, so they should be far inferior to Cao's thunder chariots. As for rockets, our army's fire-fighting skills are not comparable to those of the Northern Army. The ships are loaded with bentonite mud, which can be used to put out fires at any time."

When Taishi Ci heard Zhou Yu's analysis, he knew he was right.

Use kaolin, Guanyin clay and other bentonite clays with a large amount of water to form a mud with strong adhesion, and pour it on the side of the ship to extinguish the fire. This was also a technical means invented by Zhuge Jin five years ago. At that time, when fighting against Liu Xun and other generals under Yuan Shu and fighting naval battles on the Yangtze River, Taishi Ci used it personally and knew the usefulness of this thing.

This kind of thing was still very new to the northern princes. They had never fought a naval battle before, so they had no idea there were so many twists and turns. If Lü Kuang just wanted to set fire to the fleet, it would be a simple matter.

"Since Gongjin has thought it through so thoroughly, let's try the water route first. If something goes wrong, retreat immediately. My cavalry will support us on the east bank." Taishi Ci finally made the decision and let Zhou Yu give it a try.

(End of this chapter)