I am not an ant thief in the Three Kingdoms

Chapter 432, Military Deployment

In the middle of June of the second year of Xingping in the Eastern Han Dynasty (AD 195), Xu Wei arrived in Wei County to form the Southern Expedition Command!

Chief of Staff Wang Ge, Jizhou Inspector Zhang Baiqi, Zhonglang General Wang Yong, Huang Long, Li Gang, Yang Feng, Duan Peng, Colonel Song Yi, Sun Qing, Duan Yun, Bao Yu and other high-ranking officials gathered here !
Jia Xu, who joined the army, reported in detail the current situation of the gathering of the armies participating in the war.

"The [-] cavalry recruited by Zhao Rong, the prefect of Yunzhong County, in the desert has completed their training and is now rushing to Wei County through Mayi. It is estimated that in seven or eight days, the army will reach Wei County.

The 5 cavalry recruited by Liu Hu, the governor of Liaodong, have now crossed Lulongsai and rushed towards Weijun. They can reach Jizhou in about half a month. , the people in Liaodong are too enthusiastic about joining the army, [-] people are not enough! "

Zhang Baiqi scolded with a smile: "How many people does he have in Liaodong? He has been allocated 5 soldiers, and he is not satisfied. As the main battlefield in Jizhou, I can only get 10 soldiers!"

Xu Wei said solemnly: "Tell Liu Hu to recruit soldiers according to the plan. Too many cavalry will consume too much food and grass! You are not allowed to recruit more soldiers!"

If it weren't for the fact that Liu Bei and his allied forces had too many soldiers this time, Xu Wei didn't plan to recruit these 10 cavalry. There is not much reason, but the cavalry consumption is too large.

The consumption of cavalry on the grassland is still relatively low, which has formed Xu Wei's bad habit of recruiting 10 cavalry at every turn to fight.But now after he brought this bad habit to the Central Plains, he only fought a battle of Jizhou. These [-] cavalry galloped in Jizhou for several months, consuming millions of shi of grain. Such a big money is distressed.

As soon as the cavalry arrived in the inland of the Central Plains, there was no pasture to eat, and they could only eat food. The consumption of this cavalry rose sharply. The food and grass consumed by one cavalry were almost the same, which was equivalent to the consumption of 10 infantry.

In the battle of Jizhou three years ago, 10 cavalry not only consumed more food than hundreds of thousands of infantry, but even adding hundreds of thousands of civilians was not as much food as these 10 cavalry!
Through the Battle of Jizhou, Xu Wei finally understood why the infantry was absolutely dominant in China's thousands of years of history. Although there were cavalry, they were in an auxiliary position. Even a dynasty at its peak would only raise tens of thousands of cavalry, because The cost performance of the cavalry in the Central Plains is too low. There is no pasture in the Central Plains to raise war horses, so they can only be raised with grain, but one war horse eats more than 10 people! No matter how high the combat effectiveness of 1 cavalry is, it cannot compare with the combat effectiveness of 10 infantry!
The only exception is that the Hu people broke through the Yanyun line of defense and went deep into the interior of the Central Plains. Like the Jin Kingdom, they can lead hundreds of thousands of cavalry to fight without worrying about food and grass.

Their solution to the problem is also very simple, which is to massacre the Han people in the Central Plains, seize their food, and use the food of the Han people to feed their cavalry, so they don’t need much logistics, but they can guarantee the rations of the cavalry, so every time Hu The invasion of human cavalry will cause signs of no human habitation for thousands of miles.

But such a tactic Xu Wei definitely can't learn.He occupied Yanzhou not only could not kill people indiscriminately, he even spent food to relieve the people here
Jia Xu nodded when he heard Xu Wei's words, knowing how to answer Liu Hu.

"Youzhou's 10 troops have assembled in Jixian County, and the soldiers are rushing to Jizhou in rail carriages! They will come to Jizhou to gather in the camp in less than ten days.

The 10 soldiers of Jizhou's three major battalions in Wei County, Qinghe County, and Pingyuan County have also been assembled!

General Fan Xian of the Dagan Navy has led 1000 transport ships into the Yellow River and reached the designated ferry on the north bank of the Yellow River. As long as we start a war, these transport ships can transport our soldiers across the Yellow River to launch an attack on Yanzhou!
If all goes well, in half a month, our [-] troops will be able to assemble on the north bank of the Yellow River, and then we will be able to attack the Central Plains with an order from the ruling party.

Jia Xu's last words were sonorous and forceful, and the high-level executives present were all excited.If the battle of the Central Plains is won this time, it will be just around the corner to calm down the world!

Then Wang Ge explained the movement of the princes of the Three Kingdoms of the Han Dynasty on the south bank of the Yellow River!
"Although Cao Cao's army assembled quickly, they marched slowly, and the number of supporters in Yanzhou was small, only [-] troops. The rest of Cao Cao's army was assembled on the south bank of the Yellow River in Qingzhou. Obviously Cao Cao was also worried that we would raid his old lair, so he gathered a large number of troops to defend Qingzhou.
And Yuan Shao deployed 5 troops in Guanzhong to guard against our attack on Guanzhong, Hedong, and Yuan Shao in Hanoi County also conveniently deployed 2 troops as the peripheral defense force of Luoyang City!There are 3 troops stationed in Luoyang City.

Yanzhou has only 5 troops, but Yuan Shao mobilized Xuzhou's army, Yuzhou's army is supporting Yanzhou, the two armies add up to about 10 people, and Liu Bei also mobilized Yangzhou's Guan Yu's army, Jingzhou's Zhang Fei's department, and follow-up Jingzhou's army is gathering.

If the Han army is assembled in Yanzhou, the entire Yanzhou will concentrate an elite army of 25 to 30 Han.

However, precisely because their troops were mobilized from all sides of the Han Dynasty and the distance was long, the Han army had neither cavalry nor track construction, and the speed of assembly was slow.

The speed at which we can assemble the army should be more than half a month faster than that of the Han allied forces!
"If we launch an attack in advance, we will definitely win a complete victory in the early stage of this battle and capture many cities in Yanzhou. Moreover, our cavalry can also ambush the Han troops who come from all directions. It can create some obstacles for us, but if it is a field battle on the plains, the Han army is just the prey of our cavalry.

As long as our speed is fast enough, the coalition forces of the princes of the Han Dynasty will be defeated by us before they can form a joint force. Therefore, the speed of this battle is the key, and the cavalry is our sharpest knife. "

Zhang Baiqi asked: "Will this scare Yuan Shao and the others? The reason why we chose to attack Yanzhou in this battle is to take advantage of Yanzhou's terrain that is conducive to cavalry, annihilate the main force of the Han army, and lay the foundation for us to pacify the world in the future." , but if we attack too early and too fast, scaring Yuan Shao, Liu Bei and Cao Cao, and they are no longer supporting Yanzhou, then we will attack Yanzhou city by city, which will not only waste the combat power of 10 cavalry , Such and such a siege battle will also bring us huge casualties!"

"If this is the case, we might as well attack Guanzhong. After all, Guanzhong is sparsely populated and there is no drought yet. We occupy Guanzhong. As long as we do a good job of emigrating and building water conservancy facilities, Guanzhong will soon restore the scene of the land of abundance. Afterwards, it can also become our logistics base for attacking Luoyang City."

But if we captured Yanzhou, but did not wipe out many troops of the big Han, we would be dragged down by the disaster in Yanzhou.

Judging from the information we have obtained now, this year the Central Plains is about to lose all crops, and the disaster has even affected Jizhou. There are about 100 million or nearly 200 million people in Yanzhou.When we capture Yanzhou, these people will need us to feed them.

It takes about [-] to [-] million shi of grain to feed this kind of people, plus the grain consumed by our assembled army this time.

Our Dagan granary will once again fall below the water level of the warning line. Judging from the continuous natural disasters in Dahan in the past few years, if we want to launch an offensive again after this war, we must wait two or three years to accumulate food and grass.

And in two or three years, the various princes of the Han Dynasty will not only recover, but also improve their strength. I am not worried about them in field battles, but I am worried that they will learn from Yuan Shao and build Wubao on the site. The price of unifying the world is too great! "

"So for us, if we can't annihilate the main force of the big Han, but only capture Yanzhou, it will only reduce the burden for Yan Shao and the others, and increase the difficulty for us to dominate the world. In my opinion, capturing Yanzhou under such circumstances is not worth the candle!"

(End of this chapter)