I want to be emperor

Chapter 202 Planning is not as fast as change

Yicheng, an ordinary small city in the northern part of Chu, few people paid attention to at first, but after Tiansha's thieves captured Xiangyang City, they conquered Xiangyang Mansion, Nanyang Mansion, Yunyang Mansion and other places. Fighting, and the officers and soldiers were defeated and retreated.

The name of Yicheng, a small city, also gradually appeared in the high-level letters of both the rural protection army and the Ming court.

Because Yicheng is located on the edge of the Han River, south of Xiangyang.

If the rural protection army wants to go south along the Han River in the future, it must conquer Yicheng and then go south.

Similarly, if the Ming army wanted to counterattack Xiangyang, it also needed to use Yicheng as a bridgehead and a place to garrison troops and store food.

The strategic role of a place sometimes does not depend on whether it is a dangerous place, easy to defend and difficult to attack, but more often depends on the impact of this place on the warring parties.

As for Yicheng, which is neither a grand pass nor a big city, its strategic position has risen rapidly in the past two months, and it has finally become the core area of ​​battle between the two armies.

In a small town on Nanxia Road, Luo Zhixue listened to Xu Zhixian introduce the basic situation of Yicheng:
"Yicheng's city defense facilities are not outstanding. It used to be at the level of an ordinary county town. Although the Ming army has been trying to strengthen and reform the city's city defense facilities in the past two months, they are still very limited."

"Of course, even if the city is not a fortified city, if the defenders rely on the city wall to defend stubbornly, it will still be more troublesome to fight."

"In terms of the enemy's garrison strength, according to our various investigations, especially the information obtained by the colleagues of the intelligence department who sneaked into the city, the defenders in the city are about 1 people, but the ratio of soldiers and guards is relatively large. Big."

"We speculate that there are about 3000 soldiers in the city's garrison, and about 9000 soldiers in the guards and county warriors organized by the local government."

"As for auxiliary operations, there are 5000 civilians without weapons and equipment."

"In terms of weapons and equipment, the armored rate of the defenders in the city is not high. It is estimated that there will be no more than 2000 armored soldiers, and no more than [-] heavy armor."

"There are more than 200 short-barreled loose guns of various types, mainly attacking army guns and tiger squatting guns weighing tens of kilograms, and a small number of general guns and Flang machine guns weighing less than [-] kilograms. For the time being, no Hongyi artillery has been found here. .”

"Generally speaking, the strength of the defenders in the city is limited. If they dare to go out to fight in the field, it doesn't take much. With the cooperation of cavalry and artillery, our main brigade can defeat them."

Li Chengtong, the commander of the First Infantry Brigade, said with a chuckle, "They have only 3000 soldiers in total, not as many as our brigade, and the number of armored and heavy armored troops is only comparable to that of our main regiment."

"If a main brigade beats them, that's a high opinion of them!"

One of the main brigades of the Township Protection Army is quite powerful, such as the First Infantry Brigade, which has the First Infantry Regiment and the Second Infantry Regiment. The First Infantry Regiment is the old First Infantry Brigade before the reorganization.

In the Battle of Sanyuanzhuang, this unit was able to resist Lu Xiangsheng's central army of 2000 men without wavering with a mere 8000 troops.

The brigade commander of the Second Infantry Brigade at the side, the old farmer Xu He said with a smile: "However, they are unlikely to come out to fight us!"

As soon as Xu He said these words, everyone present couldn't help but sighed in unison.

That's right, those damned Ming troops in Yicheng never went out of the city to fight them!
Speaking of which, it has been more than two months since their Xiangyang Army captured Xiangyang. During this period of time, the Army has been keeping a low profile and not going south.

Even after Luo Zhixue led the main force to Xiangyang in late June, he never said he would take the initiative to go south.

why?
The purpose is to show the enemy's weakness, and to attract the Ming army in Yicheng and Nanzhang to take the initiative to go north, and then the rural protection army will take the opportunity to go out of the city and have a dignified field battle with them, directly killing the local Ming army.

However, the Ming army in Yicheng and other places seems to have also heard about Lu Xiangsheng's disastrous defeat in the Battle of Sanyuanzhuang, and also heard about the disastrous defeat of Zuo Liangyu and others outside Yuzhou City.

As a result, it was determined that the bandit protection army was good at field battles and could not survive the city, let alone run up to counterattack Xiangyang.

As for Hong Chengchou at the top, although they let the Huguang officers and soldiers counterattack Xiangyang from time to time, they quickly wiped out the security guards.

But the local officers, soldiers and generals are not stupid, and they will not make fun of their own lives just because of Hong Chengchou's order.

Anyway, in their view, it is impossible for them to counterattack Xiangyang alone. Since they can't counterattack, why go to Xiangyang and die.

It's better to stay in Yicheng honestly and slowly wait for more reinforcements from the south to arrive.

Not to mention, this strategy is quite effective. The defenders of Yicheng can't survive, and then the defenders in the city have gradually increased from a few thousand to more than 1 now.

What Luo Zhixue did was like shooting himself in the foot.

Now I heard that more than [-] Ming troops came from the south, but Luo Zhixue didn't dare to let these Ming troops go to Yicheng.

It really made this tens of thousands of Ming troops also go to Yicheng, and it will be even more difficult to storm Yicheng later.

Since it was unreliable to lure the enemy to go deep, and heard that a large number of reinforcements from the enemy were going north, the staff officers of the Township Protection Army, headed by Xu Zhixian, quickly changed their strategy: besiege the city and fight for reinforcements!
Xu Zhixian pointed to the map and said: "Actually, we don't need to besiege the city for reinforcements, we only need to leave a small number of troops to monitor them, and our main force can directly bypass Yicheng and go south to wipe out the enemy troops going north from Hanyang." on the way."

Li Chengyong said: "Don't besiege the city? If the enemy army from Yicheng goes out of the city, and the enemy army goes north to attack our army from north to south, will our army fall into a passive position?"

After hearing this, Xu Zhixian smiled and said: "If they dare to go out of the city, we will directly kill a carbine, quickly defeat them in the wild, and then seize Yicheng."

"Even if it's not to kill the carbine and seize Yicheng, then there will be other tactics to choose from."

"As long as they dare to go out of the city, there are too many directions for us to choose. We can continue to fight for reinforcements, kill a carbine, or even let them join up, and then directly defeat them in the field battle."

When Xu Zhixian said this, he seemed full of confidence.

The others seemed to be full of confidence after hearing his words.

Luo Zhixue is also quite relieved about this, the current self-confidence of the generals under his command is a good thing, at least they will not want to run away when they see large-scale officers and soldiers like before...

At that time, they always regarded the Ming army as officers and soldiers, and themselves as bandits...

When the thief saw the officers and soldiers, he was naturally hit.

Now, the generals of the Rural Protection Army rarely feel this naturally short.

Because in the past few months, the Township Protection Army has won every game, and it has won simply and beautifully, many times winning more with less.

This series of victories also gave the soldiers of the Township Protection Army confidence.

However, it is one thing to have self-confidence, and it is another thing for self-confidence to become arrogance, so Luo Zhixue also poured cold water on it appropriately: "We should be cautious and cautious when going south this time. There are only three regiments, and there are more than 2000 garrison troops (the fifth garrison brigade is less than one regiment), plus supplies, artillery and cavalry units, the total strength is only more than 1000 people."

"In terms of the number of troops, we are still at a big disadvantage. We should be more cautious in this battle, so as not to capsize in the gutter."

Hearing what Luo Zhixue said, the generals, who seemed to be full of confidence before, calmed down a little. However, when discussing the basics of the battle, the suggestions they put forward were quite bold.

In the end, they finalized the battle plan proposed by Xu Zhixian, which is very simple at the strategic level.

Go south all the way, bypass Yicheng and continue south, directly intercepting the Ming army going north from Hanyang.

Calculating based on the positions and marching speeds of both sides, the Township Protection Army was completely able to stop the Beishan Ming Army reinforcements at least one or even two days before they arrived in Yicheng.

After stopping them, there is no need to say more about the next battle plan, just come to an encounter and get them down.

During this process, if the enemy army in Yicheng dared to leave the city, it would depend on the situation. If they followed closely, then they would directly kill one back with their carbine.

If the opponent is more cautious and follows them farther away, then ignore them first, but continue to go south, first lay down the reinforcements who went north, and then turn back and beat them.

If the opponent has a master soldier, the ability to move is also beyond the table, so that the rural protection army will not have a chance to kill the carbine, and at the same time, there is no way to kill the northward reinforcements first.

Then just set up the battle and let them do it upright.

In short, the main thing is not a siege battle, and the rural protection army has the confidence to fight them.

Even if one's own infantry is at a greater disadvantage.

Because in addition to the three main infantry regiments in the Rural Protectorate Army, there are two other forces with absolute superiority.

That is the 24 two and a half catties field guns belonging to the First Artillery Regiment.

The six hundred elite cavalry of the Independent First Cavalry Brigade led by Wang Xiazi.

In terms of field artillery, the Xiangbao Army can definitely overwhelm the Huguang Ming Army, even if the opponent clearly has more, even hundreds of small artillery pieces.

In the elite cavalry, the rural protection army also has an absolute advantage.

The strength of these Huguang local troops in the south does not have much elite cavalry. Now the entire Huguang Ming Army south of Xiangyang, their combined cavalry strength is not as good as that of Zuo Liangyu's troops.

At any rate, Zuo Liangyu's troops still had five hundred fine cavalry. At that time, the five hundred fine cavalry were relatively unlucky in the early stage of the battle.

In this way, the cavalry under Wang Xiazi found a chance and defeated them.

And these local guard soldiers in Huguang couldn't find five hundred fine cavalry, let alone five hundred, probably not even a hundred fine cavalry.

With the absolute advantage of fine cavalry and field artillery, even with a relatively small number of infantry, a group of generals of the rural protection army are confident enough to defeat them in the field.

Compared with the confident army who went straight to Yicheng all the way to protect the countryside, the Ming army in Yicheng was extremely panicked.

At this time, they still don't know that the rural protection army is going south quickly, and they are rushing to fight for aid.

They thought that the Township Protection Army was coming to storm Yicheng.

That is the bandit protection army that can even win Xiangyang City and defeat Lu Xiangsheng!
The defenders are not very confident about whether they can stop the bandits and defend Yicheng.

After hearing that the bandit army was going south quickly, the magistrate of Yicheng County in Yicheng panicked for two days, and before the bandit army arrived, he quietly left the city and slipped away.

This official, he is wrong!
And this person absconded before the bandit army arrived, and the morale of the defenders in the city, which was already extremely low, fell to the bottom.

As a result, there was a situation that even the Ming army and the Xiangxiang army could not have expected.

Before the bandit army arrived, the more than ten thousand defenders in Yicheng abandoned the city and ran away along the Han River towards the south...

(End of this chapter)