My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 767: Gao Shun breaks through the enemy lines and defeats Qufu

"Situ is really good at predicting things. Although our army has withdrawn so many troops from the front line, the strong attack on Guantao and Suiyang fronts looks exactly the same as it was half a month ago, and even more fierce.

No wonder Cao's army was stuck in those two main battlefields, with no spare energy to guard other places. This section of the Yellow River defense line clearly has wild crossings available, and should be heavily guarded, but now there is almost no one on the other side, allowing us to cross the river so easily. "

On the 15th day of the seventh lunar month, the Ghost Festival, at a ferry crossing on the north bank of the Yellow River in Qinghe County, Jizhou.

Early in the morning, before daybreak, Taishi Ci led an army of 30,000 to 40,000, assembled enough warships here, and then began to cross the Yellow River to the south, entering the territory of Yanzhou from Jizhou and the territory of Jibei County.

Crossing the river at night is prone to congestion and collisions, so it is necessary to ensure some visibility. However, crossing the river in broad daylight is easy to be too conspicuous and attract the attention of the enemy, who may be on guard and attack you halfway across the river.

Therefore, the best option is to rush across the river at daybreak, so that there is some visibility and it is not easy to be discovered. Even if the enemy discovers it later, it will be too late to intercept it. By the time the counterattack troops arrive at the battlefield, most of the attacking forces may have already landed and established a foothold.

At this moment, Taishi Ci experienced the initial slight nervousness, and then became more and more calm. Half an hour passed in a flash, and more and more troops had established a firm foothold on the south bank. Taishi Ci knew that this matter had been accomplished without any danger.

Taishi Ci felt such emotion in his heart, impressed by Situ's strategic planning, and also by the realistic acting skills of General Guan and Zhou Yu.

Even though so many people were deployed to the front line, the enemy could not see it. This made the sudden change of direction and the surprise attack extremely unexpected.

After Taishi Ci successfully landed on shore, he immediately rushed towards the heart of Jibei County.

The main territory of Jibei County was roughly based on the prefecture-level city of Tai'an in later generations, and also included some counties adjacent to the prefecture-level cities around Tai'an. The total area was not large.

In a nutshell, Jibei County, like its neighboring State of Lu, is located in a basin protrusion on the edge of Mount Tai.

Since the Taishan Mountain area (belonging to Taishan County) had been controlled by Liu Bei's army for many years, Liu Bei's army only needed to attack from the westernmost end of the Taishan remnant and the Yellow River in the north, and it would be easy to cut off this salient.

As soon as Taishi Ci took action, Cao's army in Jibei County quickly panicked. The Cao army located in Boyang, the county seat, hastily organized a desperate defense while withdrawing the garrisons in the eastern counties of the county to avoid being divided and surrounded.

As Taishi Ci advanced along the way, he discovered that many people in the local counties had been relocated in large numbers. He captured and interrogated some captured grassroots officials and learned that Cao's army had only recently started doing this, so the news was relatively isolated and Liu Bei's army was unaware of it.

"It seems that there are also experts in Cao's army who have predicted in advance that our army might suddenly change its tactics and attack Yanzhou when the war in Hebei is at a standstill?
So they want to avoid unnecessary additional losses to their main forces and shrink their troops to preserve their strength? "

Taishi Ci was not stupid either. Moreover, before he launched the attack, he had listened to the repeated deductions and instructions from Zhuge Jin and Zhou Yu. Naturally, he figured it out immediately at this moment.

However, this is not a bad thing for him personally. The more the enemy shrinks, the more advantageous it is for him to expand his territory and gain military merit.

It's just a little difficult to annihilate the enemy's manpower, just like punching cotton, with no place to use the strength.

……

While Taishi Ci was advancing smoothly in Jibei, Zhang Liao and Gao Shun, who had just entered Lu on the southern front, felt similarly.

Even more energetic than Taishi Ci, with nowhere to use his energy.

Of course, this is also because Gao Shun is an outlier. He is more talented in attacking tough situations and has more strength than Taishi Ci, so he has more strength but nowhere to use it.

Zhang Liao's cavalry left the Taishan mountain area and suddenly entered the Lu Basin, directly cutting through the plains and advancing rapidly all the way.

Even though Cao's army in Lu had already moved its focus westward under the command of Cheng Yu, the work of relocating the military and civilians had also been effectively carried out.

But Zhang Liao arrived too quickly and too violently, so violently that it was beyond Cao's army's expectations, causing Cao's army's withdrawal and resettlement work to be caught off guard to a considerable extent.

For example, in Cheng Yu's plan, Cao's army initially intended to gradually evacuate the easternmost counties in Lu to delay the enemy's actions.

But the city of Qufu, the capital of Lu, must still be defended. In Cheng Yu's opinion, the retreat route west of Qufu would not be cut off all at once, and there would always be time to retreat after the fighting really broke out.

And the key point is that Qufu has been an ancient capital since ancient times. As the former capital of the State of Lu and the hometown of Confucius, it is politically unacceptable to give up without even fighting.

Although Confucius' status at the end of the Han Dynasty was not as high as in later generations, and his level of sainthood and historical status were not as high as those of Zhou Gong, he was at least the second sage in Confucianism.

Confucius' hometown was lost without even fighting a battle. Cao Cao's camp could not afford to lose this person.

Due to these political considerations, and Cheng Yu's feeling that "if we can resist a little in Qufu, we still have a chance to withdraw and will not be killed instantly", all this ultimately led to the slow movement of Cao's army in Lu and their lack of decisiveness.

As a result, the troops led by Zhang Liao and Gao Shun had more opportunities to achieve merit and annihilate the enemy than Taishi Ci on the northern front.

Taishi Ci wanted to fight a tough battle but it was completely impossible. The enemy did not give him the chance to encircle and annihilate him. They all resisted for a while and retreated after they could no longer hold on.

On the Lu side, Qufu held out for a while, but was then penetrated and cut off by Zhang Liao's cavalry.

Then Gao Shun's assault troops rushed forward, surrounded Qufu from all sides, and began to prepare for the siege.

At this time, the counter-effects of Cheng Yu's initial deployment of "about to withdraw" began to appear.

If Cheng Yu had not thought of retreating at the beginning, and had insisted on fighting to the end, and tried his best to motivate the front-line defenders and let them fight tenaciously, then the Cao army might have risked their lives and really fought Gao Shun to the death.

But Cheng Yu's order had already been secretly passed down to the frontline defenders. Everyone knew that even if they fought, they would only resist a little and consume the enemy. If they couldn't hold on any longer, they would have to retreat. At this time, if they were surrounded by the enemy again, how could the generals still have the heart to hold on?

More importantly, Cao's army has always had strict military laws. If their superiors had not issued the order to "resist for a while and then leave", and they abandoned the position without authorization, then the families of the soldiers might be implicated and punished.

Now that Cheng Yu had given such instructions in private, they also knew that more people might know the truth. How could they still have the same tenacious will to resist as they did at the beginning?
The only positive effect of Cheng Yu's actions on the war in Lu was that it helped Cao's army save some important generals and core trusted troops.

Without exaggerating or slandering, Cheng Yu's contribution must be acknowledged.

Because before the war, when Cheng Yu did nothing, the general of Cao's army guarding Qufu was Le Jin, one of the Five Elite Generals.

Later, Cheng Yu decided to retreat in an orderly manner and only delay the two frontline counties instead of defending them to the death. Then he transferred Le Jin back and placed him in the second line of defense, Dongping and Shanyang.

Because he also knew that it was dangerous to place a general like Le Jin in an increasingly prominent salient. Once he was cut off and surrounded, the loss would be too great. Cheng Yu's move saved Le Jin from being destroyed by Zhang Liao and Gao Shun's penetration and attack, but it also caused the Cao army on the Lu front to become increasingly weak and their fighting will became increasingly weak.

If Le Jin isn't here, what's the point of the rest of the people staying here?

Zhang Liao had just cut off the connection between Qufu and the rear, and Gao Shun organized his soldiers to rush to build bulldozers with anti-arrow shields to fill the moat. There were also large thick wooden shields erected on the ground as cover for the archers of the attacking party.

At the same time, they also rushed to build some simple ladders for use in climbing the city walls.

As for large-scale ladders, Gegong cars, and catapults, Gao Shun could not build them for the time being. This was because they were crossing the Taishan mountainous area to fight, and the transportation capacity was insufficient. It was impossible to transport the spare parts of heavy engineering equipment to the front line, and it was too troublesome and time-consuming to build them temporarily.

However, even without the Ge Gongche and the catapult, traditional engineering equipment alone, plus the bulldozers that filled the river with almost no damage, were enough for a famous siege commander like Gao Shun to break into the city.

As the former capital of the State of Lu, Qufu is located on a plain. The city itself has no strategic location for defense, and it relies entirely on city walls and moats. However, during the Han Dynasty, Qufu's status had declined and it was just an ordinary county seat. Wars rarely broke out here, and the city walls were not extra high or reinforced.

Gao Shun observed the city defenses and then sent out thousands of archers with divine arms, who hid behind large wooden shields and suppressed the top of the city. Then dozens of bulldozers took turns to pile earth into the moat.

The Cao soldiers guarding Qufu were also seeing Liu Bei's army's new equipment, the Shenbi Bow, for the first time. At first, Gao Shun's archers were still quite far away and seemed out of range, so they did not take much precautions.

The officers who were patrolling and observing on the city walls forgot to hide in advance and just wanted to better observe the enemy situation.

As a result, when the first volley of arrows from the Shenbi bow came over unexpectedly, the Cao army's archers and officers who were not hiding on the city wall immediately suffered heavy casualties.

What’s more crucial is that this sudden attack can effectively put the defenders into a state of confusion.

The soldiers were already afraid of the unknown enemy weapons, and when they saw that many grassroots officers who were observing the enemy situation were suddenly shot dead, the command of the troops became problematic.

Gao Shun was such a famous general in attacking strongholds that he could keenly observe the enemy's confusion from the changes in the defensive firepower of the Qufu defenders.

He immediately urged his troops to speed up the attack and even changed the plan. Instead of filling several points in the moat at the same time, he concentrated the bulldozers to fill one or two points first and try to cross the river as soon as possible.

Dozens of bulldozers were working like a continuous shaft, connected end to end, rushing forward and piling up soil. The two key points for filling the river quickly became narrower and shallower at a flying speed.

Then several trench bridge vehicles were laid on the almost filled soil, and several wooden donkeys were used as pathfinders to cross the river first, attracting Cao's firepower and digging the soil to create panic. Then, simple ladders followed the path of the wooden donkeys to cross the river.

The whole process was completed in one go. The three types of engineering equipment were like mercury pouring out on the ground, concentrated around several points. The smoothness of the offensive made Cao's army feel more pressured.

In just half an hour, the vanguard soldiers under Gao Shun, wearing steel-filled armor and wielding horse-slaying swords, rushed up the ladders and engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the defenders on the top of the city.

These soldiers were retrained by Gao Shun according to the method he used to train the Xianzhen Camp. Although the soldiers' will and combat experience could not be compared with the old Xianzhen Camp which had long since withered.

However, when these soldiers were selected in the first place, they were all in good physical condition and their equipment was far better than that of the old trap camp. These two strengths were enough to make up for their shortcomings in fighting will and combat experience.

The surging elite infantry rushed towards the top of the city and attacked fiercely, shouting loudly as Gao Shun requested:

"The Cao rebels are doomed! Lu and Jibei are surrounded by the anti-rebelion army! You have no reinforcements! Those who surrender will not be killed!"

In fact, the slogan shouted by Gao Shun was still conservative, because at this moment he did not know Cheng Yu's plan of "successive resistance and delay, orderly retreat", nor did he know that some high-ranking soldiers among these Cao army soldiers had already known about this plan by Cheng Yu.

If Gao Shun knew all this, he would definitely let the shouting soldiers shout even more excessively and without any concealment.

But even such a shouting made the defenders of Qufu feel distressed.

The two sides fought not long before an officer of Cao's army wavered and led his troops to lay down their weapons and surrender.

The loss of fighting spirit was contagious like a plague, and soon more and more Cao's troops collapsed.

Gao Shun saw that the situation was very good, so he seized the opportunity to deploy more reserve troops to expand the results of the battle. More and more attacking soldiers gathered on the city wall, and finally they climbed up to the city wall, seized the city gate, and let the army enter the city.

The siege of Qufu officially ended on the first day after Gao Shun launched the formal attack.

Thousands of Cao's soldiers who did not have time to be evacuated by Cheng Yu were directly annihilated by Gao Shuncheng. This was also the biggest achievement of Liu Bei's army in the process of capturing Jibei and Lu.

Over the next ten days, the two armies led by Taishi Ci, Zhang Liao, and Gao Shun attacked from the north and south, gradually tightening the iron clamp and completely cutting off the connection between the two counties and the rear of Cao's army.

During the whole process, the Cao army, which had not yet retreated, was frightened by the fate of the Qufu defenders and dared not offer any substantial resistance anymore. They basically retreated at the sight of the enemy.

As long as there is a possibility of being surrounded, retreat in time.

Cheng Yu was struggling to organize and dispatch the defensive forces, and cooperated sincerely with Le Jin, both civil and military, to try their best to cooperate with each other, so that the situation of Cao's army would not collapse too quickly and to ensure that all retreat arrangements could be more orderly.

By August, the battles in Jibei and Lu were over, and two more counties fell into the hands of Liu Bei's camp.

If we count carefully, since the twelfth month of last year, Liu Bei's army has captured a total of eight complete counties in Jizhou, plus several counties in Bohai County that were recovered.

In Yuzhou, about two and a half counties were captured, that is, the entire Qiao County, plus half of Yingchuan, Chen County, and Liang County, which together amounted to almost two and a half counties.

Now in Yanzhou, he has seized two more counties from Cao Cao.

If the battlefields of the three states are added together, there are a total of thirteen counties.

In nine months, thirteen counties across three states were transferred from the Cao family back to the Liu family, and the gap in strength between the two sides further widened.

Cao Cao's rule over the entire Guandong region had fallen into a state where he had to either fight to the death or slowly be cut by a blunt knife and bleed, waiting for a slow death.

(End of this chapter)