In general, the road from Mang Castle to Mengyang City is a very safe path, and with Jiang Yu's understanding of the environment in this area during this time, there will be no accidents from Mang Castle to Mengyang City.

This road is so safe that Jiang Yugang can rest assured that Ah Tian can go back and forth between Mengyang City and Mang Ancient Castle on this road alone, and Li Chong can undergo several months of full training, and he is one of the best performing secret army of the Mystical Academy under him, it is impossible for a problem to have problems in this kind of place.

Jiang Yugang thought so, and the problem fell into a dead knot with this analysis.

Since it wasn't a problem on the way from Mang Castle to Mengyang City, the biggest possibility was that Li Zhong didn't receive information from the Barbarian Temple Village at all in Mang Castle. didn't receive information, so naturally there was no reason to come to Meng Yangcheng to deliver a letter to him.

Thinking of this, Jiang Yu's heart sank, what was the reason why he didn't receive the information?

It was the Mansi Village battalion that had sent reinforcements, but the news of the reinforcements had not been sent to Manggu Castle from Mansi Village; Although the barbarian temple camp received their request for help, it still did not send reinforcements; Or perhaps the most disturbing situation: the Mansi Zhai camp did not receive any information about their request for help, and did not even know the situation on the side of Mengyang City.

The more he thought about it, the more Jiang Yugang felt uncomfortable.

One word suddenly came to mind: the fog of war. He has also experienced many battles in the past, mainly the battles that broke out between the Luchuan army on the Mangu Mountain, and the battle to clear the bandits in the area of the Manggu Mountain.

But the number of people involved in those battles and the scope of the battles were actually within a very limited range, and the largest battle was the battle in Nansangzhai.

And even in that largest battle, the number of people involved did not exceed a thousand, and the scope of the battle was only the size of a cottage. And there is an essential difference between the battle of that scale and the battle of Mengyangcheng that will be faced now, and this difference may be regarded as a qualitative change brought about by a quantitative change.

That is where the fog of war arises. In the past, battles took place in the size of a village, with no more than 1,000 people, so the result was that no matter the layout of the soldiers on the battlefield, the battle situation, or all the battle points, they could be mastered by the commander of the battle in a very short time.

In other words, the most critical information about the battle in skirmishes is something that can be fully grasped by the battle commander, and if it is a card game, it is possible to see the cards in each player's hand.

And in a large-scale battle like the Battle of Mengyangcheng, the information of many battles has become difficult to grasp.

First of all, in terms of the number of soldiers, not to mention the military strength of the enemy's Luchuan army, even if it is the number of his own Ming army, Jiang Yugang is not particularly clear, only a relatively vague number.

The military deployment around Mengyang City is mainly divided into four parts:

The first part, the troops garrisoning the city of Mengyang; the second part, garrisoning the villages south of the Indoji Great Lake north of Mengyang City; the third part, the troops guarding Nanmazhai east of Mengyang City to Heping Town; The fourth part is the troops guarding the lines of defense in other areas.

Theoretically, the number of soldiers in the entire garrison of Mengyangcheng exceeded 7,000, and the personnel of logistics personnel such as minfu craftsmen were also about 7,000, and the total number should be about 15,000.

But at the moment, the actual number of people who maintain the defense line of Mengyang City is obviously not so large, and the reason for this is also very simple: attrition.

There are two types of attrition, the first of which is naturally attrition in battle. Although there were no large-scale battles of tens of thousands of people like the Jiangtou City front line in the defense of Mengyangcheng for several months, collisions of one or two thousand people still occurred from time to time.

If this standard is lowered a little, the Battle of Nansangzhai commanded by Jiang Yugang can barely be regarded as a battle of this scale, and the defense line of Manggu Mountain was originally just a defense line that was responsible for a hundred households, and it was not a very important place, and at the same time, there was another point, that is, places like Mang Castle were actually many of the many defense lines in Mengyang City.

From this point of view, this kind of large-scale battles actually happened a lot in the Mengyang area, although under normal circumstances, the situation may be relatively close to the state of Mang Castle, and the Ming army with fortifications and advanced military literacy is in an advantage, whether it is superior in numbers or more with less, it can defeat the Luchuan army.

But even in this very good case, attrition is inevitable, and casualties are inevitable. In the early stage, there may be some reinforcements from Nandian and Longchuan as a new force to replenish the troops, but with the departure of the army and the long-term continuation of the war, Mengyangcheng will soon be unable to obtain reinforcements from Nandian and Longchuan in the rear.

The only remaining means of replenishment is to forcibly replenish personnel from logistics personnel to make up for some troops with excessive casualties, and at the same time, it is also to fill the number of troops, the main role is to boost the morale of the army, and at the same time, it is also to fill the defense line to ensure the composition of the defense line of the Luchuan army.

If you want to find an example here, you can actually use the original Mangu Mountain defense line as an example. Before Jiang Yugang crossed over to the Manggu Mountain defense line, the Manggu Mountain defense line was treated by the Luchuan Army as a major offensive and harassment direction, trying to control the entire people of Manggu Mountain as their own soldiers, and then occupy Manggu Mountain to launch an attack on Mengyang City.

However, the original Manggu Mountain did not have such a high status as the Luchuan Army in Mengyang City, because the Manggu Mountain itself has complex terrain, many jungles are in an uncivilized state, and it is bordered by the Ava forces in the southeast, and the forces are mixed.

Therefore, although there is a strong relationship between Manggu Mountain and Mengyang City in terms of geographical location, only a hundred households of troops are arranged to garrison it. Of course, Meng Yangcheng did not have an attitude of abandoning Manggu Mountain to arrange military strength, this hundred households of the army was actually under the command of Qianhu as the main force to attack the elite, because there was really not enough manpower to arrange the defense line, so the army of the hundred households was sent to garrison Manggu Mountain, trying to use quality over quantity, and make full use of the terrain of Manggu Mountain to resist the Luchuan army.

This plan cannot be said to be unrealistic empty talk, after all, Jiang Yugang relied on the individual quality of the defenders of Manggu Mountain in the first battle against the Luchuan army, although there were only a few dozen people, but almost everyone was the best firearm user and melee warrior.

Under Jiang Yugang's bold tactical design, by introducing the Luchuan army into the camp, with the help of the camp's terrain and the improved technology of firearms, a successful defense was carried out, and the defense of Manggu Mountain was broken in this way.

However, if we focus our attention on before Jiang Yu's crossing, we can see that under the continuous attack of the Luchuan army, the Ming army suffered serious casualties and tactical failures in defense.

The first point was casualties, the excessively large range of the defensive line, the small number of people scattered to each point of the defensive line, led to a long battle, numerical disadvantage, exhaustion in state, and unclear about the origin of the enemy, almost completely in a passive state.

In this case, it is easy to produce all kinds of accidental and non-accidental casualties, resulting in a high casualty rate of soldiers, taking the first bloody battle of Manggu Mountain in which Jiang Yugang participated as an example, the casualty rate has reached almost 30%, which is already the limit of casualties.

In this brutal situation, the officers in charge of the garrison in various places could not guarantee their own safety, and the middle and junior officers of the various defense lines were widely involved in the fierce fighting, and the direct result was a large number of casualties among the middle and junior officers.

When Jiang Yugang crossed over to the Manggu Mountain defense line, the hundred households and the general banner who were originally in charge had all been killed, and the entire defense line was in a semi-autonomous situation without command. That is to say, the soldiers of the Mangu Mountain defense line are the strongest elites in combat effectiveness, and they can still maintain the defense line in this situation, but they are actually on the verge of collapse.

On the one hand, the collapse of this defense line is mental, because of the too brutal battle, the officers in charge suffered serious casualties, and the heavy casualties were already very shaken to the morale of the soldiers, and the death of these officers who undertook the task of mobilizing the morale of the army further aggravated the collapse of the mentality of the soldiers.

The other is the result of simple attrition, a large number of casualties brings a lot of attrition, and the attrition itself leads to the collapse of the defensive line. And on the Manggu Mountain defense line that Jiang Yugang just crossed over, the weapons that the craftsmen were also issued with, and the state of being ready to fight at all times showed a situation, under a large number of casualties, the reinforcement of the Mengyang City defense line had already reached the limit, even if it was to call for the reinforcement of logistics personnel, it was necessary to consider a lot, and there were not enough people for replenishment.

After all, the people and craftsmen in charge of logistics are not simple reserve soldiers, they are responsible for the actual work, and the Meng Yang layer is an important transfer hub for materials, and it is impossible to have many people to support the logistics of the 100,000 army.

The first time Manggu Mountain received a large number of logistical reinforcements was after the miraculous victory in the first bloody battle of Manggu Mountain, and the commander of Qu Jingwei personally confirmed the shape of the battle before deciding to provide reinforcements for Manggu Mountain.

And if Manggu Mountain loses the battle because of excessive casualties, there will naturally be no later reinforcements, and then the outcome of the Manggu Mountain defense line will become a pure rout.

That's the second point, tactical failure. Because the eyes of the personnel can only blame the casualties and bring about tactical failures. The collapse of the defensive line due to a large number of casualties led to a kind of silent death in the defense system of Mengyang City.

The silence here is naturally a rhetorical device, because there are actually many battles taking place. And why "quietly"? This is because there is no actual outbreak of a particularly large battle, but in constant small battles, the soldiers of the defense line continue to die, and this casualty has actually exceeded the ability to replenish the personnel, and finally led to the rout of the defense line.

Jiang Yugang believed that Bai Qianfan, the defender of Mengyang City, as the main person in charge, was responsible for this tactical failure. But at the same time, he also understands Bai Qianfan's helplessness, without much background, Bai Qianfan, who simply relied on generations of military merits to become a commander, is a microcosm of the military generals in the early Ming Dynasty, they grew up in battle, made meritorious contributions in the war, became the leader of the army, and were pure soldiers.

In fact, by the time of Yingzong, there were fewer and fewer soldiers like Bai Qianfan. These soldiers once served in a great army, made countless feats in the vast land, and created countless legends. They were not accustomed to defeat, and did not recognize the reality that this army in the Yingzong era had lost its former glory.

Bai Qianfan, who took on the impossible task, finally went to inevitable failure, which was Bai Qianfan's personal failure and the failure of all those involved in this matter. And the most intuitive manifestation of this failure is the rout of the important line of defense in the past few months.

From the loss of the cottage south of the Indoji Great Lake to the breach of the important Heping Town in the northeast of Mengyang City, the fall of this series of defense lines has put the current Mengyang City in a desperate situation that is close to no danger to defend.