Yuan Shao, the father of Fanghua in the Three Kingdoms

Chapter 826: Concealing the truth

The third year of Jian'an is destined not to be a peaceful year. The battle between Yuan and Cao has continued from the early years of Jian'an to the present. With Yuan Xi's raid on Nanyang at the beginning of the year, leading to the current Battle of Qingzhou, Yuan, Tan and Cao Cao successively participated in the war, and the situation became more and more intense.

Including the previous war between Yuan Xi and Jiangdong, the princes of the world suddenly discovered that this Yuan son named Fierce Tiger was unstoppable. He had no scruples at all when facing those who provoked him. Whoever provoked him would be killed. Fight back hard.

Cao Cao was defeated in Nanyang, and he recovered a lot of the benefits he had gained from the Yuan family with capital and profits.

Jiangdong took advantage of the situation and occupied several large cities along the Yangtze River in Lujiang County, but the price he paid was even heavier. Not only did he lose his troops, Jiangdong also showed signs of instability.

Now Yuan Xi has raised another army to attack Yuan Tan. The two sides have been facing off for more than two months. During this period, dozens of small-scale battles took place, almost all of which were fought between cavalry.

Yuan Tan's cavalry was obviously not as good as the Youzhou cavalry who had undergone targeted training. Every time they fought, they were bound to be at a disadvantage, and the battle loss ratio was extremely ugly.

The small groups of tiger and leopard cavalry sent by Cao Cao failed to get a good deal, and some even performed worse than Yuan Tan's cavalry.

In just one month, the marauding Tiger and Leopard Cavalry were caught by the Youzhou cavalry and raided seven or eight times. Hundreds of people were killed or captured. Several Cao family members were killed in battle. Seeing that the military situation was not good, Cao Cao issued an order. Let all the cavalry retreat.

In this way, the pressure was all on Yuan Tan, but Yuan Tan still didn't understand why Yuan Xi had such a clear grasp of the movements of his small group of cavalry.

Yuan Tan is also a man who knows the military and understands that if the cavalry marches along the road or towards a water source, it is easy for the enemy to predict its movements. Therefore, he planned the march route for the purpose and asked the cavalry to reserve water and dry food. Take remote and deserted roads to avoid being blocked by enemies.

However, after two plunders, the Youzhou Army quickly figured out the pattern. After that, Yuan Tan's Army repeatedly fell into ambushes, which made him puzzled.

The sergeant who escaped also told Yuan Tan an extremely bizarre incident. He said that he had seen an extremely huge round object floating in the sky. He did not know what it was, and Yuan Tan's cavalry was frightened.

After all, in this era, there was nothing that could be lifted into the sky by manpower, so Yuan Tanjun thought it was a sign from heaven. He was in awe and panic, and did not dare to look directly at it.

This is actually the balloon created by Zhuge Liang and Yuan Xi. Although silk is light, it is not heat-resistant, so the two racked their brains and failed several times before finally coming up with a solution.

Use heat-resistant fine linen as the lining, and cover it with several layers of tough silk as a guarantee to prevent rupture. Place a thin tin can with a lid on the top underneath, put coal mined in Montenegro inside, supplement it with kerosene, and then look for The short and light soldier took off into the sky with a telescope.

These balloons cost a lot of money, so only two were made, and the lift-off time was not long, so they were released high on the top of the mountain and used the height difference to glide, which would last longer.

When Cao Cao and Yuan Tan's cavalry entered Yuan Xi's territory to harass them, Zhuge Liang still couldn't figure out the pattern of their actions in the early stages. However, after a few times, Zhuge Liang screened out possible action routes that the enemy might choose from the map, and then released balloons near them.

With the help of the telescope, the soldier in the balloon can quickly find traces of the enemy. He will release a rocket in the direction of the enemy. When the Youzhou cavalry waiting near the balloon sees it, they will launch it as quickly as possible. Rush to the scene of the incident.

Because the Youzhou army had been well prepared, not to mention their numerical superiority, their weapons and tactics were extremely targeted at Yuan Tan and Cao Cao's cavalry. As soon as the two sides met, the Youzhou cavalry launched an almost one-sided massacre.

With the help of this unprecedented tactics, Yuan Xi's cavalry gradually established an advantage. Cao Cao and Yuan Tan's cavalry suffered a lot of casualties. Cao Cao was okay, after all, he still had the road to retreat to Yanzhou.

But Yuan Tan can't. He only has Qingzhou. If he can't keep this place, where can he retreat?

So Yuan Tan also aroused his fierceness. On the one hand, he expanded the size of his cavalry, and on the other hand, he stepped up large-scale troop formation. Then he connected the cities and mobilized a large number of soldiers to sweep vertically along the line between the two cities and sweep them horizontally.

At the beginning, Yuan Tan acted quite restrained. After all, Qingzhou was his territory. However, after that, Yuan Tan's main force never encountered Yuan Xi's army. Instead, several teams he swept up were attacked by Youzhou cavalry.

By the time the main force nearby arrived, the Youzhou cavalry had already disappeared. Some of the generals who led the troops were extremely aggrieved. They were originally from the Yellow Turban Army and had a bad temper, so after being beaten several times and unable to hold their heads up, they finally Erupted.

Unable to find the Youzhou soldiers, they turned to the local people to vent their anger. The military rations were not supplied in time, so they used the food requisition as an excuse to plunder the villages and towns of Qingzhou.

At first, they restrained themselves in order to deceive others, but after several plunders, some generals discovered that they had gained a lot of benefits from it, so the Yellow Turbans' robbery tradition in their blood was once again stimulated, and they began to expand the scope and scale of plunder.

The people of Qingzhou could not bear the disturbance, so they secretly informed the Youzhou cavalry and joined the ranks of collaborators, causing Yuan Tan's cavalry to suffer heavy losses.

The greater the losses, the angrier General Yuan Tan became, and he acted more unscrupulously and intensified his torture on the people. This in turn further aroused the people's resistance. In addition, Yuan Tan had previously taken back a large amount of land that Yuan Xi had given away, and the people's anger accumulated. The situation in Qingzhou Starting to get out of control. Yuan Tan took back the land, which was also calculated by Zhuge Liang and others. After all, food did not fall from the sky. Yuan Tan's approach was actually an inevitable choice out of desperation, so he could only step into this careful step. Designed in a trap.

The reason for this is that Yuan Tan and his counselors limited the destructive power of the common people to the rebels of the Yellow Turban Uprising, believing that as long as the Yellow Turban thieves were included, the rest would be honest people who would accept the situation.

But the reality is different from what they imagined. The land has already been distributed to the people, and taking it away from them is tantamount to killing them. As for whether the land is divided and taken back by the same group of people, they They don't care, they only know that Yuan Tanchong stole their land from them!

As a result, large and small riots began to break out in various places in Qingzhou, and some people began to take advantage of the rumors of Taiping Road and Yuan Xi's prophecy to start troubles.

For Qingzhou, where the Yellow Turban Army was mentioned, the local people were too familiar with this process, so people from all over the country swarmed to help Yuan Xi, intending to drive away Yuan Tan's army that had taken away their land.

By the time Yuan Tan realized that something was wrong, everything was out of control. Not only was he now in a situation where tens of thousands of troops were short of food, but also because of the peasant uprising in the countryside, most of the supplies that had been shipped to the city were cut off.

What makes Yuan Tan even more aggrieved is that almost two months have passed and he has not yet found the main force of Yuan Xijun!

This question often troubles Yuan Tan. Where is the main force of Yuan Xijun?

He clearly entered Qingzhou with at least 40,000 to 50,000 people?

Inside Yuan Xi's mansion, while looking at the military situation, he smiled at Zhuge Liang and said, "The military advisor deceived Yuan Tan this time."

"I'm afraid he would never have thought that after the land was divided, most of the soldiers did not stay in Qingzhou, but secretly returned to Langya County to help the local land reclamation and farming."

"Except for a small group of Youzhou cavalry, Yuan Tan is now fighting wits and courage with the air. Tens of thousands of troops eat food every day. If he knows the truth, will he be angry to death?"

Zhuge Liang gently shook his feather fan and said with a smile: "The main reason is that my lord looks too much like a decisive battle. No one would have expected that my lord would dare to leave only a small number of troops, while most of them are farming in the neighboring Langya County."

"These soldiers have to work hard, and the harvest will at least make up for the shortage of military rations in the next half year. However, Yuan Tan is sitting on nothing. I am afraid that in another month or two, the situation in Qingzhou will completely collapse. .”

The two men also deliberately concealed this battle plan. The soldiers who returned to Langya to reclaim the wasteland were also in groups of several hundred. In fact, no one in Qingzhou who left Qingzhou in the name of changing defenses knew that there were hundreds of groups just like them.

In this way, even if there are a small number of spies inside, no effective information can be sent back. What's more, it is not easy to send news to Qingzhou. After all, Yuan Xijun has to hold talks and study meetings at night, and it is difficult for spies to find time to be alone.

What's more, Yuan Xi himself did stay in Qingzhou to fight. This kind of thing cannot be hidden, and it will definitely be passed on to Yuan Tan, which will strengthen his confidence that Yuan Xi will fight to the death with him. How could he have expected that Yuan Xi would dare not Keep most of the soldiers around?

Therefore, for more than a month, Yuan Tan was unable to see through Zhuge Liang's plan to conceal the truth, and was unable to grasp the internal situation of Yuan Xijun.

Now Yuan Tan has fallen into the quagmire step by step and has not yet woken up. Even if he finds out now, it is actually too late.

Now, the negative consequences of using a single state to recruit a huge number of soldiers are finally becoming apparent with the rapid consumption of military rations.

Tian Feng, who originally proposed this idea, probably didn't expect that this strategy would not be used on Cao Cao, but on Yuan Tan's side. Yuan Tan's tit-for-tat countermeasures were also greatly affected by the emergence of the reconnaissance balloon. limited effect.

At present, although some of Yuan Tan's counselors smell something different, they have not fully seen the seriousness of the situation. This is because of their limited vision.

Guo Tu was good at conspiracy, and Xin Ping was good at internal affairs. In terms of military affairs, the two were quite different from the combination of Guo Jia and Zhuge Liang, so it was natural for them to be suppressed.

Maybe some counselors in Cao Cao's camp noticed this, but the counselors around Cao Cao wouldn't worry about Yuan Tan for various reasons.

But the person who has the ability to detect something wrong is now in Xu County.

Xun Yu.

Now he was answering in front of Emperor Liu Xie. Liu Xie said: "Xun Aiqing, what do you think of the affairs in Qingzhou?"

Xun Yu hesitated in his heart. Liu Xie's intention to win over him was very obvious, but did he still have a choice?

(End of this chapter)