My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 380 Cao Ren: Zhao Yun is alone, why not take this opportunity to kill him? It will be difficult to kill him when Guan Yu arrives!
At first, Cao Ren didn't believe that Zhao Yun entered the country for him, so when he confirmed this, he naturally didn't feel the need to ask for help at the first time.

During a war, the less one side expects the enemy to make a certain choice, the less afraid he is of the enemy making that choice. The more it means that in his opinion, the enemy's choice is simply stubborn.

It is true that Liu Bei's army has slightly more troops than Cao Ren, but that is based on the premise that Zhao Yun and Guan Yu are advancing together. If there is only Zhao Yun and his number is less than Cao Ren, then what is there to be afraid of?

However, Cao Ren was ultimately a famous and steady general. He always felt that Zhao Yun was not the type of person who would be so reckless. Could it be that Zhao Yun and Guan Yu had originally agreed to advance together, but because of the long journey and he was in the middle, the two sides of the enemy army had poor communication and were unable to grasp the progress of the other friendly army?
Therefore, before making the final decision, he discussed this possibility with Man Chong and Lu Qian, and Man Chong and others also agreed with it.

Cao Ren decided to hold out for another day or two, and sent a fast messenger to Qi County, ordering the Qi County garrison to hold out to the end, and also sent him a small number of reinforcements. Anyway, no matter how strong Zhao Yun was, it was impossible for him to capture Qi County in a few days. On the other hand, Cao Ren also urgently sent people to search the eastern front to find out the situation of Guan Yu's advance.

One day later, the southern front reported that Zhao Yun's cavalry vanguard had arrived in Qi County. A day later, Zhao Yun's rear infantry also arrived in Qi County and began to set up camp and divide the troops to besiege the city. Zhao Yun's cavalry, still using its mobility advantage, continued to move north to cause destruction.

Qi County is only sixty miles away from Fuli, which is a very easy distance for cavalry. It can be said that as long as Cao Ren wants to counterattack, he can send troops out of the city to counterattack Zhao Yun at any time.

Of course, Zhao Yun's cavalry had the advantage of speed, so they could run away if they couldn't win. But only after they reached Qi County and joined forces with the infantry, it would not be so easy to run away afterwards.

The infantry's marching speed had no advantage over Cao's army, and there were no rivers or waterways to rely on on the 130 to 40-mile journey from Longkang to Qi County and then to Fuli, so Liu Bei's army could not bring into play its naval advantage.

At the same time that Cao Ren was scouting out all this happening on the southern front, the eastern front finally sent back absolutely accurate and up-to-date military intelligence.

Man Chong had been waiting for this information for the past two days. When the messenger arrived, he glanced at the military situation and rushed to Cao Ren's shogunate to report to Cao Ren urgently:

"General! We have already found out the movements of Guan Yu on the eastern front that you asked us to investigate. Two days after Zhao Yun sent out his troops, Guan Yu set out from Xiaxiang and went upstream along the Sui River. He arrived at Suiling the day before yesterday and arrived at Qulu yesterday. He then divided his troops to surround Qulu and continued to advance along the Sui River.

However, General Zhang (Zhang He) of Pengcheng Prefecture listened to the advice of General Guo (Guo Jia) and began to set up defenses in Quliu this spring to prevent Guan Yu's army from entering. General Zhang secretly ordered people to dig the riverbed near Quliu County, fill it with reefs, and also deployed iron spikes to sink into the riverbed.

After Guan Yu's troop transport ships and grain ships arrived at Quliu, even though they surrounded the county town and ensured that the defenders could not leave the city to cause destruction, his ships were unable to sail through the blocked river sections, and thus his advance was blocked!
According to the latest intelligence, Guan Yu's army has been staying in Quliu these days, apparently trying to dredge the river and destroy the hidden reef iron spikes. Guan Yu also encouraged the morale, saying that Zhuge Jin must have a magic way to quickly break through the obstacles and will not affect the food supply route. "

After hearing the news, Cao Ren was overjoyed and began to think that Zhao Yun's advance alone and ahead of schedule was not a strategy to lure the enemy, but that he had originally agreed with Guan Yu to come together, but Guan Yu delayed it!
He quickly took the map and confirmed the defensive geographical situation around the twin cities of Fuli and Zhuyi: Guan Yu was to his east, Zhao Yun was to his south, and the two places were about the same distance from him.

However, the journey Zhao Yun had to take from Longkang to Qixian and then to Zhuyi was a total of more than 130 miles, and it was a pure land route with no rivers to use.

Guan Yu was different. He fought upstream along the Sui River from east to west. Cao Ren's base camps Fuli and Zhuyi were also along the Sui River. So if Guan Yu wanted, his ship could go directly to the outskirts of Cao Ren's base camp.

This meant that if Guan Yu and Zhao Yun wanted to attack Fuli from both sides, with Guan Yu attacking from the front and Zhao Yun cutting off the retreat, a major premise had to be guaranteed, which was that the food needed for long-term combat had to be transported along the route provided by Guan Yu.

Zhao Yun probably only carried enough food for ten days or at most half a month. After he had finished eating, he had to meet up with Guan Yu and rely on Guan Yu's food to support him. Otherwise, Zhao Yun would definitely be exhausted, especially if Longkang and Qi counties in the rear were not breached. Zhao Yun's troops would have to fight for a while and then retreat to Longkang for resupply.

Anyone who knows a little about military affairs understands this principle: the cost of water transportation is one twentieth of that of land transportation, which is an order of magnitude difference. For tens of thousands of troops fighting for a long time, food may only be transported by land for the last few dozen miles. The long distance ahead must be transported by water, otherwise the cost will be unbearable.

Ancient water transport is equivalent to the long-distance logistics of later express delivery companies. Both large trucks and trains have container-level transport capacity. Ancient land transport can only play the role of the "last mile" delivery service of the courier riding a small electric donkey. The two are completely incomparable.

……

After Cao Ren confirmed the reason for Guan Yu's delay in advancement, a bold idea arose in his mind.

To ensure everything was in order, he looked at the map and asked Man Chong one last question: "What is the current situation in Quli County? How long can Zhang He's troops hold out? How much territory do the enemy and our army occupy?

How many troops does Zhao Yun have now, and how many have advanced to the north of Qi County?"

Man Chong had done enough homework in advance and knew all this information by heart: "Sui Ling and Quli County are both located on the south bank of the Sui River. Sui Ling County is in the hands of our army and has just been surrounded by Guan Yu from the east, west and south. The land on the north bank of the Sui River is still under the control of General Zhang. A few hours before this urgent report was sent, Guan Yu had just launched a northward crossing of the Sui River in order to control the north bank so that he could clear the obstacles and clear the waterway. However, Guan Yu's small force was defeated by General Zhang halfway across the river, and lost about hundreds of people.

If Guan Yu's army cannot control the north bank, the construction of the waterway will probably be slow.

As for Zhao Yun, four days have passed now, and we have fully discovered that he sent out more than 30,000 troops, but Gan Ning's 10,000 troops were unable to leave the waterway, so they stayed in Longkang, responsible for protecting the Woshui grain route and harassing both banks along the Woshui River.

On land in Longkang County, Zhao Yun sent several thousand soldiers to assist Gan Ning in besieging the city. After arriving in Qi County, he laid siege to the city with more than 10,000 soldiers, and continued to march north with more than 6,000 cavalrymen to harass Fuli and Zhuyi, destroy our army's strongholds, and collect food and grass.

Cao Ren nodded, very satisfied with the result.

Even though Zhang He suffered a series of defeats when he followed Xiahou Yuan last year, now that he is working with me, he has actually dealt a small blow to Guan Yu!
It seems that Brother Miaocai is not as good at using people as I am and has failed to bring out the talents of Zhang He.

After summarizing the entire situation, Cao Ren finally made a bold and decisive decision:
"Zhao Yun was so arrogant. He had more than 30,000 troops entering the country, yet he dared to divide his troops like this! In the end, there were only more than 10,000 troops in Qi County, plus the 6,000 cavalry patrolling and harassing, the military strength was at least half of what it was when it first entered the country!
However, Zhao Yun went deep into our territory every day, and his whereabouts were erratic, so he could not grasp the situation in the rear and other fronts in time. Guan Yu's progress was not good, and there was no way to inform Zhao Yun. Even if he sent someone to inform him in a roundabout way, he would not know where Zhao Yun had advanced!

In this way, Zhao Yun will not know that he is alone. I have made up my mind. Our army can take advantage of the few days when Zhao Yun arrives first and Guan Yu is late to arrive, and take the initiative to attack, concentrate several times more troops to defeat Zhao Yun first! If we can kill him, it will be even better, which will be enough to ensure five years of peace in Huainan!"

Man Chong was shocked when he heard this: "General, you must not underestimate the enemy! Last year, when General Xiahou attacked Guan Yu, he also had several times the number of troops. At that time, he had more than 50,000 men against Guan Yu's 20,000, but in the end he was defeated and lost nearly half of his troops.

Now the number of troops stationed in Fuli and Zhuyi is no more than 50,000. Even if Zhao Yun only has 16,000 to 17,000 troops to go north and divide them into two parts, Zhao Yun's 6,000 cavalry have the advantage of swiftness. If they encounter an attack from our army, they can immediately retreat and join the enemy troops besieging Qi County.

Our army cannot send out all the Fuli defenders to fight. Even if we only leave 10,000 elite soldiers and rely on the temporarily recruited local militiamen to defend the city, we can only gather 40,000 people at most. 40,000 people against 16,000 people. With the sharp weapons and armor of Liu Bei's army, how can we guarantee victory within a few days? General, think twice!"

Cao Ren waved his hand firmly: "You don't have to say anything! Liu Bei's generals thought I was only good at defense, but they didn't know I was also good at attacking. If they dare to underestimate the enemy, I will make them pay the price! Moreover, how can the situation today be compared with last year?
Last year, Miao Cai went deep into the East China Sea and besieged Qu County for more than a month. He was stationed in a strong city. His troops were old and tired, so Guan Yu's main force came to counterattack and rescued Mi Zhu. Moreover, more than half of Miao Cai's troops last year were Langya thieves and Taishan thieves such as Zang Ba and Sun Guan. How could their fighting power be compared with the direct troops of the court?

Now it is Zhao Yun and Guan Yu who have taken the initiative to invade the imperial court and prefectures. Zhao Yun has penetrated 200 miles into our territory in a few days. The Art of War says: Those who are eager to gain advantage within a hundred miles can be promoted to generals, let alone advancing 200 miles. Now it is Zhao Yun's turn to underestimate the enemy and be proud, while our army is resting and waiting for the enemy to tire. Guan Yu will not be able to arrive for a long time. If we don't seize this opportunity in just a few days, we will regret it forever in the future. "

Cao Ren still has absolute decision-making power in the Xuhua battlefield.

Moreover, Guo Jia was not in Fuli but in Zhang He's place in Pengcheng. This time difference opportunity was fleeting, and Cao Ren had no time to find someone to discuss with Guo Jia. Moreover, Guo Jia was farther away from the battlefield in the north, so it was impossible for him to fully understand the situation and obtain first-hand information.

Guo Jia, who made decisions by relying on information as a second-hand receiver, might not necessarily make better decisions than Cao Ren, who made decisions with first-hand information - at least that's what Cao Ren himself thought.

Cao Ren always adhered to a concept: defensive battles must also be fought first, or at least ensure that there are garrisons outside the city, with the potential to launch counterattacks, raid camps, and harass the enemy at any time, so that it is possible to win. If you just keep defending the city, there is no future, and morale will not be boosted.

While the enemy has just arrived and the army has not yet gathered, we should first strike Zhao Yun, who has not yet gained a firm foothold, to establish the military's prestige, which will make it easier to fight later.

With this thought in mind,
The next morning, as Zhao Yun's cavalry patrolled north of Qi County and between Qi County and Fuli, destroying, harassing, and seizing food and grass,
Cao Ren's army also had a hearty meal and was in high spirits as they marched south from Fuli to stop Zhao Yun.

At noon in the morning, on the Huaibei Plain, more than 20 miles south of Fuli and more than 30 miles north of Qi County, Zhao Yun's 6,000 cavalrymen met Cao Ren's main army of 30,000 to 40,000 head-on.

Of course, Zhao Yun's detachment was composed of cavalry, so they must have enough scouts and were spread out far enough. So there was only one possibility for him to run into Cao Ren head-on: Zhao Yun had already discovered Cao Ren, and he had no intention of running away in advance.

This can be considered a very sincere two-way effort.

(End of this chapter)