My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 376: Be prepared for war, waiting for the Northern Expedition

Lü Kuang surrendered to Cao around the tenth day of June. Afterwards, Cao Cao issued an edict to conquer the entire Qinghe and Anping counties. It was late June when all this was done.

It was already early July when they returned to completely surround Yecheng and began to prepare to dig ditches to flood the city.

The top brass in Cao’s camp knew very well that as long as the water attack was successful, Ye City would not last more than three to five months and would definitely be captured after winter at the latest.

Historically, it took Cao Cao so long to besiege Yecheng because he did not make up his mind to attack by water at the beginning. He knew that a water attack would cause too much damage to the population and facilities of Yecheng. After he occupied Jizhou in the future, his strength would also be damaged, and it would also have a great impact on the people's hearts and minds in Jizhou.

But now with Liu Bei threatening him from behind, Cao Cao wanted to do everything quickly and could not care less about so many things. That's why he "went all out right from the start and blocked the door to the Novice Village directly", leaving no chance for Yuan Shang at all.

However, when the water attack strategy was actually implemented, there were still some minor flaws compared to the same period in history:

In the original history, when Xun You persuaded Cao Cao to attack Yecheng by water, he also used a trick of showing weakness to cover up. That is, when digging the ditch, he dug it very shallowly at the beginning, pretending that he didn't know how to do this water conservancy construction and pretended that he didn't understand the water conservancy conditions in Hebei. Shen Pei, who was guarding the city, saw it and mistakenly thought that Cao's army didn't know how to do it and didn't understand the hydrology of Zhangshui River, so he didn't take too much precautions.

In fact, Xun You used this "shoddy construction" as a cover. After deceiving Shen Pei into letting down his guard, he suddenly accelerated the construction in secret. Eventually, he deceived the public and dug a ditch to launch a water attack.

(Note: This is a historical fact. The original text of "Records of the Three Kingdoms" is "At first, the river was made shallow, to show that it could be crossed. Pei looked at it and laughed, and did not come out to compete for profit. Taizu dug it overnight, making it two meters wide and deep, and opened the Zhang River to flood. From May to August, more than half of the people in the city starved to death.")
But in this life, the butterfly effect was manifested on this issue: because Tian Feng had not died after the Battle of Guandu, although Yuan Shang did not trust Tian Feng as much as his close friends like Shen Pei after he came to power, Tian Feng still had a say on some tactical issues.

After Xun You's "shoddy construction" smoke bomb fooled Shen Pei as expected, it failed to fool Tian Feng's eyes. Tian Feng saw that Xun You would be able to speed up the construction and complete the water attack, and urged Yuan Shang to send a death squad out of the city in the middle of the night to disrupt the construction.

Yuan Shang asked Shen Pei how to deal with him and whether it was necessary.

At first, Shen Pei also thought it was unnecessary and would be a waste of manpower. However, after Tian Feng and Shen Pei debated face to face in front of Yuan Shang, Shen Pei finally realized that there was indeed such a danger. It was not like someone like Xun You would make such a low-level mistake, so he reluctantly agreed to send troops to make a desperate charge.

Unfortunately, Yuan Shang's absolute strength was much weaker than Cao's army.

If the army in Yecheng had the strength to defeat the enemy in a field battle, they would not have been trapped in an isolated city.

Therefore, a suicide squad was sent out to sabotage the city at night. Although this caused a lot of casualties to Cao's ditch-digging laborers at the beginning, as Cao's army strengthened its defenses and increased its manpower, this kind of sabotage turned into a war of attrition.

The final result was that it caused more casualties on both sides than the Battle of Yecheng in the same period of history, and also delayed the time for Cao's army to complete the water attack.

If it weren't for the butterfly effect brought about by Tian Feng's disturbance, Cao Cao might have completed the action of flooding the city within ten days, but now it has been delayed for more than half a month.

As the fighting between the two sides became more intense and the casualties increased, the population in Yecheng also decreased slightly, and there were fewer mouths to feed. After Cao's army flooded the city, it took longer to "starve most of the people in the city to death."

Casualties during the siege also increased, and the number of prisoners captured and spoils recovered after the city was breached also decreased.

In a nutshell, judging from the two dimensions of time and battle results, Cao's army gained more slowly and reaped less than the same period in history because of Tian Feng's obstruction.

In order to deal with the sudden resistance brought by Tian Feng, Cao's army also had to make adjustments on the spot. For example, because of the large number of casualties among the digging workers, they had to forcibly recruit more auxiliary soldiers on the spot.

The additional losses caused by fighting against the suicide squads that launched a counterattack against Yuan’s army outside the city, as well as the additional regular army soldiers needed to capture and protect the civilians, also had to be replenished from the rear.

This resulted in the Cao army having to further withdraw troops from other defense zones on the basis of the original plan after entering July.

Although Cao Ren's Xuzhou and Huaibei defense zones were already the most important defense zones of Cao's army at the moment, Cao Cao had inevitably withdrawn thousands to tens of thousands of troops from them, causing Cao Ren to become increasingly stretched.

In comparison, more Xiahou Dun and Yu Jin were transferred to the Nanyang direction. Cao Cao dared to do this out of helplessness. He was sure that Liu Biao was a man without ambition and it was impossible for him to break through Bowang and Ye County from Wancheng and go north, so he took this gamble.

These new movements of Cao's army, no matter how secretive they were, would sooner or later be discovered by Liu Bei's camp, which had been keeping an eye on them for a long time.

All of this will also turn into an opportunity for Liu Bei's army to prepare for the Northern Expedition to Xu Huai.

……

The timeline goes back to early July, and the focus returns to Hefei, Huainan County.

Since arriving in Hefei in April, Liu Bei has not been idle for more than two months. He has been secretly preparing for war, just waiting for Cao Cao to be trapped and the Cao army's southern front to be depleted of troops, so that he can lead his troops to the north.

Zhao Yun and Guan Yu have also been working diligently in the past few months, training their troops, keeping in close contact with their lord at all times, and reporting on the armament status of their respective defense zones.

With the winter wheat planted last winter, which had another bumper harvest in May this year and was dried, stored and collected in June, Liu Bei's army's food reserves in the frontier areas also reached a new high, enough to recruit more troops to fight on the front line.

In the battle between Guan Yu and Xiahou Yuan last winter, he captured nearly 20,000 prisoners. These prisoners were all combat soldiers, not auxiliary soldiers or civilians. Their quality was completely different from the cannon fodder captured by Taishi Ci in the recent Battle of Nanpi.

Guan Yu's captives were mainly Langya bandits, Taishan bandits, some of Li Dian's private soldiers, and Cao's Qingzhou soldiers. These soldiers had solid fighting will and fighting quality, but their military discipline and loyalty were problematic. After Guan Yu's reorganization for about half a year, he finally digested these 20,000 people thoroughly and was able to safely let them participate in the battle against Cao's army.

Anyway, it doesn't matter who the Langya bandits and Taishan bandits serve as soldiers for, they are not from Cao Cao's direct lineage.

As a result, Liu Bei's army had 20,000 more soldiers available on the Xu-Huai defense line. The total number of soldiers in the army also increased from about 150,000 last year to as many as 170,000 this year.

Of course, Liu Bei's army still had more than 8,000 elite soldiers, who were placed in Bohai County in Jizhou by Taishi Ci and Zhou Yu to help defend Yuan Shang. Together with the several thousand people in Qingzhou who were helping to defend Yuan Tan, the northern defense line occupied more than 10,000 troops of Liu Bei's army.

In addition, the hinterland of Jiangnan and the southern part of Jingzhou also need more than 10,000 troops from Liu Bei. After all, the area is so vast, and there are many mountainous areas in the south, so some soldiers must be left to maintain order and eliminate bandits. Jiaozhou and the coastal escorts together occupy more than 10,000 troops.

Therefore, excluding these four parts, each of which occupies 10,000 or 20,000 troops, Liu Bei's army still has more than 110,000 combat-ready soldiers on the Xuhuai front. Some of these people must be reserved for local defense, and not all of them can be used for attacking.

But even if Zhao Yun and Guan Yu each left more than 10,000 troops to guard their homes, they could still gather at least 90,000 pure offensive troops and enter enemy territory to fight.

If the defensive forces were squeezed together to form a force of 100,000 to focus solely on attack, it would be possible.

It can be said that Liu Bei had never fought such a prosperous battle even though he had been raising his army for many years.

When Guan Yu dealt with Xiahou Yuan last year, he only had more than 40,000 men, and more than 10,000 of them had to be separated in Langya as a reserve for counterattack, leaving only 30,000 on the front battlefield.

Although Guan Yu and Zhao Yun have been mobilized in the two major defense zones, the main attacking force has reached nearly 100,000, which is a huge improvement.

This was also the first time that Liu Bei's army had more troops than Cao's army in an offensive campaign - Cao Ren on the opposite side, and his generals Zhang He, Li Dian, Cai Yang, Li Tong and others, did not have 100,000 soldiers available.

After all, the main force of Cao's army had returned to Hebei and was fighting for Jizhou. The troops Cao Ren had at hand accounted for less than 30% of the total strength of Cao's army.

……

Time flies and it is the sixth day of July.

During the day, Liu Bei had just finished reading the report on the military preparations of Xuzhou sent by his second brother and Ziyu, which said that in the direction of Xuzhou, Guan Yu and Zhuge Jin could send 60,000 troops for the attack.

This news made Liu Bei very excited.

As a result, in the evening, another messenger brought the latest military intelligence in Hebei, saying that Cao's army had finally completely surrounded Yecheng and began to dig trenches and attack with water.

Liu Bei was very satisfied with the news. He immediately called Zhuge Liang and Pang Tong, intending to announce the official establishment of the General of Chariots and Cavalry's headquarters in Hefei tomorrow, and then promote and reward the generals and send troops to the north.

Zhuge Liang was cautious. He carefully asked for the intelligence and saw that it did not mention the specific progress of Cao's naval attack. Zhuge Liang advised:
"My lord, it is better to be cautious. I estimate that we should wait for another three to five days, or at most seven to eight days, until Cao's army is completely trapped in the quagmire, unable to swallow or spit out. Then our army will attack again, and it will definitely be more effective. Moreover, I estimate that Cao Ren's troops in Xu Huai may be withdrawn by Cao Cao later."

Liu Bei was stunned when he heard this: "We are already preparing to attack Yecheng by water, what else could go wrong? Isn't it enough for Cao Cao to capture Yecheng with only the troops already in Hebei?"

Zhuge Liang pointed at the words on the page and analyzed them sentence by sentence: "My lord, please read this. The military intelligence does not mention the progress of the naval attack. I think that Yuan Shang's army still has a counselor like Tian Feng. Even if his voice is not as powerful as Shen Pei's, when it comes to the critical moment of life and death, Yuan Shang should listen to Tian Feng.

With Tian Feng's wisdom, he would never stand still while watching Cao's army prepare for a water attack. He would definitely try to create trouble for Cao's army. After Tian Feng successfully created trouble for Cao's army for the first time, this repeated time point was the best time for our army to launch an attack.

Waiting a few more days now can ensure that Cao Ren's troops will be less after our army is launched, which is definitely worthwhile. Of course, these few days will not be in vain. Here is a form for the generals to discuss promotions and rewards. Shi Yuan has also seen it. It was drafted according to the lord's previous instructions.

My Lord, please make a final confirmation. In the next few days, we will finalize the reward for the troops and the promotion and award. When the time comes, our army will be able to march north immediately!"

Liu Bei naturally had absolute trust in Zhuge Liang's judgment. Zhuge Liang said that Tian Feng could still cause trouble for Cao Cao and cause Cao Cao to draw blood further to the north, so let's wait and see.

Anyway, even if Yecheng was attacked by water, it would take at least several months of flooding before the city was broken.

In comparison, Liu Bei did not rush to seize the short time of five or six days, and just regarded it as sharpening the knife before chopping wood.

Liu Bei took the list of rewards from Zhuge Liang's hand and took a look at it.

Most of the above content is actually Liu Bei's own opinion. Zhuge Liang only wrote some notes to remind Liu Bei to pay attention to the order of importance of certain merits and to help him find and fill in the gaps.

After Liu Bei finally confirmed it, he nodded solemnly and said, "Sir, you are very thoughtful. Let's follow this slightly adjusted plan. The official ceremony for the completion of the shogunate will be held in five days, and the promotions and rewards for the civil and military officials will be announced at that time."

(End of this chapter)