Chapter 1040 Aiming at Jinzhou

Chapter 1040 Aiming at Jinzhou

After Li Tai's emotional and rational persuasion, Wu Mingche also accepted this arrangement. With the addition of Wu Mingche, the team prepared by Li Tai for Chen Chang has a strong support point.

Because he still had to discuss with Nan Chen the issue of cooperating to send troops to attack Huainan, after finalizing the repatriation of Chen Chang, Li Tai arranged for the envoy to rush to Jiangdong to inform Chen Baxian of the matter.

Next, Li Tai specially prepared a family dinner to see off the cousins ​​Chen Chang and Chen Xu. During the banquet, the two of them were very grateful to Duke Tang and seemed very excited. They were probably imagining the indescribable freedom they would have after leaving the prison in Guanzhong.

Looking at them like this, Li Tai couldn't help but wonder in his heart that in a few years, when they are led back to Guanzhong as people who have subjugated their country, will they think of the joyful thoughts they had when they parted today?

After the banquet, Li Tai arranged for Wu Mingche to lead a thousand elite soldiers to escort Chen Chang and his party out of Wuguan southward, all the way to Jiangdong.

At this time, the mobilization of personnel and materials among the various states and counties in the Western Wei Dynasty was also in full swing, and money and food from all parties were continuously transported to Tongzhou.

The mobilization of troops was more efficient than the transportation of materials. In just ten days, more than 100,000 troops had gathered in Tongzhou.

This 100,000-strong army is only the troops who have been included in this recruitment sequence, and does not include those who stayed behind. Such a large-scale mobilization was also a big test for the people of the Bafu. From the arrangement of routes and the formulation of military periods to the setting up of forts and the supply of food and grass, they had to work hard and work hard. Dare to neglect.

The mobilization of a war will not only test military construction. If the administrative side cannot provide full cooperation, then even if the troops are reluctantly gathered, the army may not be able to carry out a long-distance campaign.

Perhaps the masses paid too much attention to this, and instead used too much force. The specific manifestation was that the speed and efficiency of the army and supplies greatly exceeded Li Tai's prediction.

It should be noted that this was also the first time for him to experience the dispatch of personnel and materials of such intensity and scale. Although he had made predictions based on past experience and data, the process was extremely smooth because of the hard work of the masses, and the goals at different stages of the recruitment task were achieved. Much ahead of his estimate.

This brings up a question, that is, whether to leave and when?

Although Sima Xiaonan, the governor of Northern Yuzhou, surrendered this time, in fact Heluo was not the main battlefield as Li Tai expected, but he needed Northern Qi to regard Heluo as the main battlefield for the next battle.

Northern Yuzhou is located in the Northern Qi Dynasty east of Heluo. If you want to coordinate and receive it, you will inevitably need a large army to go directly to Heluo. This is the most basic and normal idea, and it was precisely because of this that the last battle at Mangshan was fought. Moreover, Li Tai had a brilliant record in Heluo and had almost no defeats. Now that he is recruiting a large number of National Middle School A-level soldiers, he will inevitably have to fight in Heluo again!

Not only ordinary people, but also many subordinate officials in the Ba Mansion who are not involved in confidential matters, also believe that this big war must be another attempt at Heluo, and may be used to recapture the old capital of Luoyang and occupy it for a long time.

As for Northern Qi Middle School, this view must be generally held. People's understanding of things first comes from experience. For people and events that you have never seen before, even if you have some imagination, it is difficult to gain universal recognition. In particular, the blows and bruises Li Tai brought to the Eastern Wei and Northern Qi in Heluo were impressive, so most people should follow this inertia and make assumptions about the problem.

What Li Tai wanted was such an effect. He put pressure on Northern Qi by recruiting soldiers on a large scale from the country, thereby forcing Northern Qi to invest a large amount of military power in Heluo to prepare for war. By this time, if he launches an attack from other directions, the Northern Qi army will naturally be put into a passive position.

Although the Jinyang soldiers of the Northern Qi Dynasty are still strong and elite soldiers, they are not optimistic in other aspects.

First of all, the previous battle across the river to attack Jiankang destroyed a large number of fresh troops in Henan, Huainan and other places.

Secondly, the heavy labor force in these years has also greatly consumed the national power of the Northern Qi Dynasty. Although there have been no large-scale wars in the past two years, the Great Wall in the northern border of the Northern Qi Dynasty is still being built and reinforced, and Jinyang, Yecheng and other places in the country are also A great deal of construction work was carried out to build palaces and gardens, and buildings such as Santai in Yecheng were always in use and consumed people's labor.

Under such circumstances, if the main force of the Northern Qi Dynasty carried out a stressful rush for reinforcements, their combat effectiveness would inevitably be greatly reduced. If any more personnel rifts and conflicts are exposed as a result, it will be even more distressing.

Of course, it was impossible for Li Tai to publicize such a strategic concept to everyone. In order to confuse his opponents, he even deliberately carried out some operations that disrupted judgment.

For example, the forward troops were sent to Tongguan first, and the military roads on the Weihan front line and supplies along the way were built, etc. Of course, the most important thing was to delay the official departure of the troops through the recruitment process.

He deliberately set the time for the expedition to be one month. One month was enough for Northern Qi to increase its troops and improve defenses between Heluo and Heluo. Even if Northern Qi had doubts about this in the later period, it was impossible to dismantle the completed defense layout just because of an unfounded guess.

But now, because the subordinates of the Bafu group are all as excited as chicken blood, it only took only ten days to complete most of the recruitment tasks. These guys worked overtime to complete the tasks, and are probably still happily preparing to welcome them. They were rewarded, but they didn't know that their being so active would cause flaws in Tang Gong's plan to confuse the enemy.

For Li Tai, this is a relatively happy trouble. On the one hand, we are happy and proud of the country's mobilization efficiency, but on the other hand, we have to find ways to cover up the mobilization progress.

Fortunately, for such a large-scale military dispatch, it would be difficult for ordinary people to accurately judge the specific mobilization progress without mastering the key core data reports. If even this kind of secret could be leaked, then Li Tai would no longer have to plan these operations, he could just clean his neck and wait for Bei Qi to play Assassin's Creed with him.

In fact, the current military mobilization is to a large extent a covert operation, and the real tactical strategy that Li Tai wants to implement has been laid out long ago.

When he first visited Hedong, he gave instructions to use his feudal wealth, money and food to dredge the canals and waterways in Hedong. In addition to the Yongfeng Canal, a canal related to the salt industry, Sushui, another waterway in the east of Hedong, has also been renovated and dredged to ensure the smooth flow of water transportation.

In the past two years or so, business transactions between Fen and Jiang have become increasingly prosperous. Through the smuggling trade at these borders, on the one hand, the trophies captured in the previous battles of the Western Wei Dynasty can be realized and profited, and on the other hand, the personnel penetration of the Northern Qi Dynasty can be strengthened.

At the same time, there is another more important role, which is to establish a logistics and warehousing system that can be converted to military use at any time through these commercial activities.

Generally, in such a large-scale military operation, it is difficult to carry out surprise operations such as sudden advance and retreat, and thousands of miles, even if the troops are able to execute orders and prohibitions, and have super strong execution ability for various military orders.

However, with so many people moving forward and retreating, a series of preparations such as the arrangement of roads, the search for water sources along the way, and the supply of food and grass must be made well before the army sets off. Otherwise, hundreds of thousands of troops would be deprived of food and water at every turn. Not to mention whether they could win the battle or not, whether they could return as an organized force was a question.

Since Li Tai's patrol to the east of Hedong, the Western Wei Dynasty continued to expand the city garrison along Fenqu. While pushing the defense line outward, the Northern Qi border soldiers were obsessed with the huge profits in the border market, and built a city under their noses. A storage system, and some of the warehouses store considerable amounts of military rations and equipment.

This approach was of course a bit risky. Once the Northern Qi army invaded and occupied these cities, garrison and warehouses, they would be alert to the Western Wei Dynasty's big plans in this direction while seizing these materials.

But the damage caused by a powerful opponent is far less than that of a pig teammate. In order to ensure the continuation of smuggling in this city, Wang Wecan of Changle, who was in charge of Jinzhou in the Northern Qi Dynasty, strictly prohibited his soldiers from taking the initiative to provoke, and even maintained small-scale conflicts and frictions that the Western Wei Dynasty could provoke with the purpose of desensitizing them. Tolerant attitude.

A few days later, Li Tai personally went to the Chaosan River Defense Camp and secretly summoned Wei Xiaokuan, who was guarding the jade. After meeting, he directly asked Wei Xiaokuan: "According to what the general sees, how confident is it of taking Jinzhou directly at the moment?"

"Jinzhou is an important town for thieves. Even if we ignore the Zhengping and other places in the north of Fen, we still have the city garrison on both sides of Fen. We still need to clear out a few areas. In addition, Pingyang Baima City is divided into several layers, and they are subordinate to each other. The prefectures, prefectures, towns and other prefectures each have their own control, and even if there is a leak in one place, it can be quickly repaired in other places, which is really difficult. "

Wei Xiaokuan is also a master of espionage. When Tang Gong proposed such an idea last year, he stepped up his penetration and spying on Jinzhou. He talked about the streets and alleys in Jinzhou city like a treasure. And precisely because he understood it very carefully, he was not very confident in conquering Jinzhou as soon as possible.

Jinzhou is not as single-functional as Northern Yuzhou. It is a large town in Linfen. There are more than 20,000 military personnel engaged in garrison work alone. These personnel are under the jurisdiction of different generals. Although Wei Can, the governor of Jinzhou, was incompetent, he still corrected the mistakes without losing the cooperation of personnel. Even if he wanted to imitate Sima to eliminate difficulties and directly occupy the city and surrender to the enemy, he could not do it.

Wei Xiaokuan took out a map of the defense layout around Jinzhou and continued his analysis: "After the city garrison in Jinzhou is defeated, it may not be necessary to stay. If you want to besiege the city, you will need at least 30,000 people. If you want to capture Jinzhou, , success does not come with speed, and it is especially necessary to cut off all the routes for reinforcements. The passages such as Queshu Valley and Thousand Miles Path in the north need to be divided and garrisoned..."