As soon as Zhang Ju's vanguard stepped into the Han army's river defense trap, Liu Bei, who was stationed in the county seat of Yongnu, soon got the news.

Because the Han army had to defend a forty-mile-long river, it still had to disperse patrols in peacetime to avoid stealing the enemy in the absence of an enemy, and only gathered reinforcements after discovering the enemy's situation.

"Back to Duwei, the enemy situation has been discovered in the section of the river 15 miles downstream, and a beacon fire has been raised." The lookout on the tower of the city saw the beacon fire and immediately reported to Liu Bei.

Liu Bei thought about it, that section was the defense area patrolled by Zhou Tai, and immediately ordered: "Let Yun Chang lead the main force to quickly reinforce!" Yide also led a thousand cavalry along the river to clear the fish that had slipped through the net! ”

Liu Bei's generals, now only Guan Yu and Zhou Tai know how to fight water, so the fleet patrol mainly depends on them.

Zhang Fei was a native of Zhuo County, and he was not very good at swimming, so he could only take half of Liu Bei's cavalry to attack the enemy troops who were lucky enough to cross the river and land.

As for the other half of the cavalry, they were taken away by Zhao Yun and went to patrol the upper section of the Three Forks River, responsible for warning and harassing the enemy troops found by the delay, so there was no opportunity for Zhao Yun to play on the main battlefield.

Li Su took advantage of Guan Yu's rectification of the people, and also asked Liu Bei for his life, hoping to go to the scene with the army. By the way, take Mi Zhu, who has been nervous since the fleet was requisitioned, to harvest the spoils of war and stabilize people's hearts.

Liu Bei is right to think about it, it is rare to encounter the enemy for the first time, the enemy army must be killed by surprise, this kind of victory scene should indeed let the "investors" see, so that the investors can rest assured about his capital.

Liu Bei admonished: "Boya, then Zizhong will be handed over to you, it is enough for him to see the prestige of our army, don't let him get too close to the enemy." ”

"Don't worry." Li Su agreed, and then took Mi Zhu to follow Zhang Fei by land.

More than ten miles, running horses and galloping for a few minutes. When Zhang Fei sprinted to the scene, Guan Yu's fleet was still six or seven miles away.

Then Li Su and Mi Zhu saw a spectacular scene: at least three or four hundred intact war horses on the north bank of the river had lost their owners to wander there and were captured and controlled by the army patrol soldiers of the Han army.

On the river, it can be seen to the naked eye that there are at least 100 floating corpses, most of which are like hedgehogs and killed by arrows.

Obviously, the first wave of vanguard cavalry in Zhang Ju's exploration was too careless, and he did not expect the enemy to appear on the river.

Li Su asked Zhou Tai, and sure enough, it was the same - those people didn't do any investigation at all, and when they saw that there were no boats on the south bank to collect, they actually wanted to find a shoal to ride their horses down the river and wade to the other side to find a boat.

Then Zhou Tai, who was patrolling here, killed a sturdy half-crossing attack, and stabbed directly in the waist of the rebel vanguard, cutting it into two sections, approaching and shooting intensively with crossbow arrows.

Think about it, many cavalry are slowly flowing forward in the river more than one meter deep, and they are being shot as live targets, which is called a miserable!

After the war, Zhou Tai cleaned up the battlefield and cut off the heads of three or four hundred rebel cavalry at once. As for their horses, they were captured except those who were shot dead and lame in battle.

Li Su was very satisfied with what she heard, and encouraged Mi Zhu with a smile:

"Come on, Brother Zizhong, these three hundred horses are put away, put your heart back in your stomach - didn't I tell you earlier, Liu Duwei is a person who knows the soldiers, and investing money, grain, vehicles and ships in him to suppress thieves is definitely a profitable business, and it can also be rewarded for national merit and safety, isn't it the best of both worlds!"

It turned out that when Liu Yu, the state pastor, requisitioned the Mi family's fleet and manpower, the rent offered was to give an additional 300 horses, but he didn't say how long the requisition lasted. If the war is not going fast, then owe it first, and then give it when it is captured, which once made Mi Zhu a little worried.

Unexpectedly, on the first day of the actual enemy, Zhou Tai captured 300 horses, and the quality of the horses of the enemy's vanguard was quite good, and Mi Zhu made a lot of money.

"Captain Liu is really a person who knows the soldiers, he commands the troops so rigorously, and he defends the battle to a certain extent. Although the envoy is elegant and righteous, he must have a hero like Liu Duwei to fulfill it. ”

Looking at the three hundred horses that Liu Bei's subordinates personally paid him, the balance in Mi Zhu's heart tilted in Liu Bei's favor again.

The vision of those top big businessmen is the best at looking at "potential stocks".

In the past few days of contact, Mi Zhu has already seen that Liu Yu is just a noble bloodline and a starting point that is too high. It is precisely because Liu Yu is already well-known in the world, and if you come to the knot now, the degree of attention you will get will also be given priority.

And although Liu Bei is still a county magistrate, how fast is the rise of the people? Half a year ago, he was still a county lieutenant, and four months ago, the imperial court gave the county magistrate no do, and abandoned the official to get the world's fame, and begged to give you a promotion to 600 stone county order, and now he is a thousand stone captain......

This growth rate, a proper top unicorn!

At the moment when he looked at Zhang Fei and Zhou Tai's heroic appearance of killing thieves, combined with Liu Bei's courtesy to him personally in the past few days, Mi Zhu had already decided to skip Liu Yu and go directly to Liu Bei.

As soon as Mi Zhu finished collecting the spoils, he saw a large force of cavalry rushing over on the south bank, this time it was obviously Zhang Ju's main force who heard that the vanguard was destroyed and rushed to take revenge, and from a distance, it seemed that there were at least five thousand horsemen or more, and it was impossible to see clearly behind the smoke and dust.

Mi Zhu had never seen this kind of scene, and suddenly his legs trembled, Li Su also knew that anyone has an adaptation process, and hurriedly called a few personal soldiers around Zhang Fei to escort Mi Zhu to retreat to a distance to watch the battle.

Zhang Ju came in anger, and when he saw the death of hundreds of pioneers, he just felt that "I was accidentally overshadowed, if I was prepared to fight in a dignified manner, these miscellaneous fish would not be enough for me to clean up", so he did not hesitate at all, and directly ordered the whole army to rush forward and fire arrows together.

The cavalry under his command was mainly light cavalry with bows and arrows.

However, the stirrup in the late Han Dynasty was only unilateral, generally a hemp rope loop, and the saddle was also a soft leather material, which was not very stable.

Therefore, the cavalry of Wuhuan and the Southern Xiongnu also used to stop the horses, ride on the back of the horses and shoot, or let the horses run in small steps relatively smoothly.

Only the more ferocious Xianbei cavalry, or those officers and generals who are good at cavalry and archery, will shoot at high speed.

Thousands of cavalry of Zhang Ju's front army, just like this, walked slowly along the river when they were dozens of steps away from the river bank, while frantically firing arrows.

"Aggressive~" The sound of sharp dwarps and bone tufts stuck to the wooden board made the Jiujiang soldiers who encountered the Hu people's fierce opponent for the first time tremble.

These soldiers, who were still displaced two months ago, had only fought a bloody battle with the Danyang soldiers before, and the big waves and sands selected this relatively elite person to retain. Many people have not seen what the nomadic Hu people look like until yesterday, and it is inevitable that the fighting spirit will not be firm.

Fortunately, however, the panic only lasted for a short time, and when they discovered that most of the arrows of the enemy archers had been blocked by the freshly reinforced wooden planks of the cabin, their confidence quickly returned.

Some of the small fishing boats along the coast of Hebei also have canopies made of straw or some curtains, so when the Wuhuan cavalry first met from a distance, they did not know how strong the superstructure of these seagoing boats was.

I thought it was like a straw canopy that could shoot through and shoot the sailors behind the bunker, but I ended up doing so much useless work.

When the Mi family got on the boat, countless bows and crossbows quickly spewed arrows out from the cleverly trimmed porthole holes, and the slaughter effect was simply better than the crossbow array that first entered the camp and met the white horse Yicong——

The crossbow array that landed first in the camp did not have the positional defense and mobility of the ship's bows and crossbows. And Zhang Ju's archers and cavalry, their martial arts are far inferior to Gongsun Zhan's later genuine white horse righteous servants.

Soon the screams were incessant, which made Zhang Ju begin to doubt his life - my dream of being an emperor had only been done for a few days, how could I have encountered such a defeat?

The enemy sailors only have a thousand people at most, right? Counting the five hundred cavalry on the other side, a total of one thousand and five, they actually pressed their own seven or eight thousand people and beat them severely!

At this moment, the battle had lasted for nearly ten minutes, and there were golden drums in the upstream direction, and it was Guan Yu's main force to support Zhou Tai.

Guan Yu has more archers under him, and his archery skills are more elite.

In addition, Zhang Ju's cavalry didn't notice it at first, and in order to encircle Zhou Tai, they naturally formed a moon formation on the bank of the river, so the two ends of the moon array were too close to the river bank. After Guan Yu came, a burst of ten thousand arrows fired at the same time, and all the Wuhuan cavalry in the westernmost protrusion of the Qiyue Array were shot into blood gourds.

"Withdraw! Evacuate! Don't shoot at the enemy! Take a detour and find another way around the river! Fortunately, Zhang Ju was also decisive, and when he saw Guan Yu shoot a corner of his formation so completely that his parents didn't know him, he hurriedly beckoned to retreat.

Because of the river blockage, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei could not cross the river to pursue, so they had to let Zhang Ju retreat temporarily.

Zhang Ju counted the number of people in shock, and found that at least five or six hundred people were shot dead - it is estimated that four hundred died when he shot at Zhou Tai, and the last wave of firepower that Guan Yu appeared took away the younger two hundred in an instant.

"Nearly 8,000 cavalry, 900 lost on the first day, and lost two battles in a row! How about fighting like this! ”

Zhang Ju was remorseful, there were no strategists around him, and the scholars did not mix with him at all. He could only rely on the military literacy he had accumulated when Taishan was too punctual to think of countermeasures.

After thinking about it, he unsurprisingly thought of two things: first, try to see if he could give full play to the speed advantage of the cavalry and bypass the enemy's naval army in a roundabout way.

It really can't be done, so I can only go around the place where the water is very shallow, but it will have to go around a long way, almost to the edge of the Yanshan Mountains, and those roads will not be able to carry the supplies of these thousands of oxen and donkey carts.

Of course, Zhang Ju was reluctant to give up the things he had already grabbed, and he would definitely have to desperately find a way to transport them back until the last moment.

So he called out to a master of the Wuhuan tribe named Wuyan who was temporarily obeying his dispatch, and ordered: "Wuyan, tomorrow you will divide the 2,000 cavalry of your headquarters and make a feint near Yongnu County, pretend to cross the river, lure the Han army and sailors to intercept it, and create an opportunity for me to cross the river downstream." After crossing the river, I will kill the Han army from behind and take you across the river. ”

Because Zhang Ju was only slightly defeated, and he had robbed so many good things with everyone before, his prestige was still quite good.

This Wu Yan was originally the leader of the Wuhuan tribe in Youbeiping County, and he was also familiar with Zhang Ju, so he did not question his orders.

It's a pity that their evasion strategy was all discussed by Liu Bei, Zou Jing and others at the military conference before the interception.

In the next five or six days, Wuyan changed his route to go around the Han army every time, and each time he only made small contact and killed dozens of cavalrymen before retreating.

But the gap he pulled out was never big enough, and it was too late to let Zhang Ju's main force cross the river. At most, it was just to let Zhang Ju sneak past hundreds of light cavalry without baggage vehicles.

And once Zhang Fei's cavalry rushed over to patrol the river, the hundreds of light cavalry who crossed the river could not be defeated at all, and at first those Wuhuan people did not believe in this evil, and wanted to rely on a small number of vanguard troops who had already crossed the river, and carried Zhang Fei hard against the disadvantage of numbers, so as to buy time for the follow-up large army to cross the river.

However, with Zhang Fei's courage and two or three times the numerical advantage of the local battlefield, these Wuhuan people who did not know how to die were quickly taught to be human beings.

Three days later, even if there was a small group of Wuhuan light cavalry to sneak across the river with a time difference, they would never dare to fight Zhang Fei again, but immediately ran as far as they could, and each of them slipped away for the sake of battle.

As a result, the soldiers ran back, and the backlog of supplies in Henan became more and more - there were only 6,000 cavalry left around Zhang Ju, but not a single cart of baggage grain and grass could be transported across the river.

"Do you really want to give up all these belongings that you have worked so hard to get from most of Bohai County? Flee back to Liaoxi lightly? No way! I have only just started the incident, if I give up this property, what will Qiu Liju think of me?

I have promised that I will lead the way to rob the people of Hebei, so that they will always have no worries about food and clothing. Now, if I can't collect food, and let the hundreds of thousands of troops in Qiu Liju go hungry, who else will support me? ”

Zhang Ju didn't want to give up the money and food supplies no matter what.

He knew very well that he and Zhang Chun's uprising was all relied on provoking the Hu people to use for him, and the two of them were their own descendants, all of whom added up to less than 20,000 people, and the reason why the Hu people followed them and served them as their leaders was not because the Hu people were cheap, but because the Hu people believed that they could take the Hu people to rob countless property.

This is the foundation of Zhang Ju's business, and it must not be thrown away, otherwise, there may be cracks in their cooperative relationship with the Hu people at any time.

After being blocked by Liu Bei by the river for ten days, Zhang Ju finally thought of another attempt: he sent a secret envoy to negotiate with Liu Bei and let Liu Bei let him cross the river.

……

In Yongnu County, Liu Beiren, who has been in good spirits during the recent war, is in good spirits on happy occasions, drinking wine and eating stew, and talking and laughing with Li Su:

"Zhang Ju, this guy, has been trapped by us on the south bank of the water for almost ten days, and it has finally stopped. I don't think he's trying to retreat? In the last two or three days, no cavalry has been sent to harass and send them to death.

The last time I heard the battle report, it was the Wuyan Department that sent hundreds of horsemen to bypass from the upper Liangxiang Valley, but they were shot and killed by the patrol Zilong and forced to retreat, right? ”

Li Su also followed with a cup: "It's impossible to force back, you must be thinking of other tricks, more than 100,000 people in Qiu Liju are waiting for him to grab grain and grass and go back." ”

The two were chatting when suddenly a messenger came to report that there was a messenger on the other side of the river asking to see them.

"Slashed! What qualifications does such a thief have to send a messenger? Liu Bei didn't even think about it.

"Huh! Don't worry, listen to it. Although Zhang Juzhi's envoy can be beheaded, we also have to give some face to the other newly attached Hu people, leaving an opportunity to persuade some Hu people to do so in the future. Li Su hurriedly persuaded.

He will still be engaged in diplomatic work often in the future, so he does not want to cut off the other party's envoy first to make it more difficult for himself in the future.

Liu Bei agreed to listen reluctantly.

After Zhang Ju's envoy came in, he said bluntly: "Meet Liu Duwei, my family...... The king said that as long as Liu Duwei was willing to let him cross the river, he was willing to sacrifice the wealth he had plundered in Bohai County...... One-third, comforting the army of the county lieutenant Liu. ”

Li Su was happy when he heard it: Hehe, isn't this the condition that Jin Wushu gave Han Shizhong on the way back after the crazy plundering of the Taihu Plain?

No, Jin Wushu gave Han Shizhong a five-five split split!

Zhang Ju actually only gave one-third, it's too insincere!

Lao Tzu wants them all.

——

PS: War plots, if you are not careful, it is easy to write long and detailed. But I'm still on a free period, and I'm sending you an extra thousand words, and this chapter is more than four thousand words, so don't spray water.