At present, there are two main water canals in Huaixi from the Yangtze River to the Huaihe River, Yongyang Canal (Shiliang, Puyang River) and Anfeng Canal (north and south water), but the two rivers are flat water, and the middle has to cross two stone weir locks, and at present, there are many boats and ships for transshipment materials from south to north, but the speed of taking the waterway is not fast.

After Li Xiu and they crossed the river, in order to hurry, they followed the post road that started from the embankment on the east bank of Chaohu Lake, turned east through Shiquan, arrived at Chaozhou City and then north, and arrived at the south bank of Jiaoshan Gorge through Shoudong, all the way.

This post road is the main land road in the north-south direction of Huaixi at present, and the main branch post road along the way connects Donghu, Liyang, Shiquan, Chaozhou, Feidong, Huailing, Shoudong, Shouchun and other most flat and abundant areas in Huaixi.

The post road encounters several relatively wide streams along the way, which used to be mainly based on ferries, and now they are all erected open and closed pontoon bridges.

The opening and closing pontoon bridge is mainly to build concrete or masonry foundation piers in the shallow water area near the shore, and the fixed bridge is erected, and the deep water area in the middle is connected by a pontoon bridge.

The pontoon bridge is opened and closed at a fixed time period, so that large and medium-sized ships that cannot pass through the shallow water area can pass through the pontoon during the open time of the pontoon bridge, and land vehicles and horses can take the post road during the opening and closing time of the pontoon bridge. This reduces the construction time and cost of large bridges, and does not block the waterway of the river due to pontoons.

When encountering narrower ditches, straight iron girder bridges are basically erected; The traditional arch bridge has become extinct on the main post road, and is currently used to ensure the smooth passage of horse-drawn carriages and ensure the ability of land transportation.

This post road is not new, after Tangyi took over Huaixi, two years were mainly repaired and renovated on the original basis, but Li Xiu was extremely impressed, which also fully reflected the strength of Tangyi stronger than other states and counties.

What impressed Li Xiu was that the carriages passing on this post road were different from other states and counties, and most of them were four-wheeled carriages.

The Jianghuai water system is developed and the boats are convenient, and it is very rare to use horse-drawn carriages to pull goods, and in the Central Plains, four-wheeled horse-drawn carriages are also extremely rare.

This is mainly due to the fact that although the weight of the traditional four-wheeled carriage is large and the body is relatively stable, the four wheels are fixed on the frame, the steering is extremely stiff, the road conditions are slightly complicated or slightly bumpy, and the consumption of wheels and animal power is great.

The four-wheeled carriage in Huaixi does not seem to have these drawbacks, and judging from the goods loaded, a heavy carriage walks on a straight post road, almost carrying thirty stone of goods, and the carrying capacity can be said to be extremely amazing.

In addition, there is another thing that impresses Li Xiu, that is, there are more than 40 iron girder bridges on this post road that is nearly 400 miles long.

To ensure the passage of the load-bearing carriage with a total weight of more than four or five thousand catties, the bridge needs to be straight and slopeless, otherwise it is impossible for a military horse to pull such a heavy body across the bridge, but the bridge body is straight, considering that there may be three or four load-bearing carriages and a number of pedestrians passing at the same time, the traditional wooden beam is difficult to bear its weight, not to mention that the masonry material can only be used for the construction of the arch bridge.

Tangyi uses iron beams.

When the world smelting iron casting can be said to be quite developed, the official and private iron workshops are distributed in Zhuzhou County, but large castings, such as more than 2,000 catties of four-claw iron anchors, are still only in Xuzhou, Donghu smelting workshops have the ability to cast.

A grooved iron beam weighing more than 1,000 catties seems to be much lighter than a large iron anchor, but it is three zhang long, and it is necessary to ensure sufficient and deep repeated pressure, and the casting difficulty is much greater than that of an iron anchor.

Li Xiu thought that if he could urgently erect two iron beam bridges that were not easy to be destroyed by the enemy on the two trenches between Lijia Xinzhai and Xia Caicheng, so that Lijia Xinzhai and Xia Caicheng could really be horns of each other, not cut by the enemy, so that the enemy could not attack after besieging Li Jiaxinzhai unscrupulously, maybe there was still the possibility of holding the village.

It's just that Feng Xuan only gave him a team of sixty craftsmen, and even if he could requisition two or three thousand laborers from the homeless people, it would be impossible to build two iron beam bridges while reinforcing Xinzhai.

Seeing Li Xiu staring at the stream trough in the west, Zhou Qiaoan asked: "General Li wants to set fire to the pontoon bridge between Xia Cai and Xinzhai for the enemy, and wants to erect an iron beam bridge?" ”

"Hmm." Li Xiu yīn replied with a calm face.

"This is what Feng Shuai specially instructed Zhou Qiao'an to assist General Li as soon as possible, General Li is worried about the lack of manpower?" Zhou Qiaoan asked.

"What is the sufficiency of this manpower, is it possible that hundreds of stonemasons can be urgently recruited from among the homeless?" Li Xiu asked coldly.

"Ha, you came all the way from East Lake, don't you still think that the iron girder bridge in Huaixi is built on a stone foundation?" Cao Ba sneered.

"Not masonry?" Li Xiu asked suspiciously.

He came all the way to see that there were too many places in Huaixi that were different from other states and counties, but he was depressed, and he hurried under the custody of the guards, and he really didn't stop to see many details.

"Take our General Li and take a trip near the pontoon bridge to open your eyes." Cao Ba joked.

It was a matter of life and death for the five or six hundred members of the Li family, and Li Xiu didn't mind Cao Ba's sneering attitude, so he took Li Chi, Li Yan and others to drive to the pontoon bridge where he had walked twice.

At this time, he settled down to take a closer look, and only then did he notice that the piles on both sides of the stream trough with huge ropes were gray and white cliffs at first glance, but they were actually huge pillars that looked like stones and were not stones, and they were deeply rooted in the mud pillars, and neither of them could surround them.

Look at the top of the giant pillar, there are more than a dozen thin iron bars the thickness of thumbs sticking out.

"This isn't a natural stone pillar?" Li Xiu asked in shock.

"This is the stone mud produced in Huaixi, mixed with river sand, gravel, between the iron bar cage watering solidification, before the time is too hasty, only the foundation pile is watered to fix the floating boat, and then watered one more zhang high, erected with iron beams, and even the iron beam and the pile foundation are poured together, not the enemy can destroy it casually!" Cao Ba said triumphantly, "You don't need to spend manpower to open the mountain and quarry!" ”

Cao Ba patted Zhou Qiao'an's shoulder and said jokingly: "It seems that General Li knows very little about Huaixi, no wonder he was so miserable this time!" By the way, in the past, the inspectors of the Weaving Bureau had in their eyes, and this kind of stone and mud pile Huaixi was first used when repairing the plank road of Huazhu Peak, and you still don't know a little about it? ”

Li Ji also ignored Cao Ba's cynicism, grabbed Zhou Qiao'an's confirmation that he could erect the two iron girder bridges in the shortest possible time, and calmed down his mind a little, seeing that there was still a period of time before it was night, he first asked Cao Ba to take Li Chi and more than a dozen generals to rush to the camp where the displaced people were concentrated to recruit the strong.

There will be more strength to be used, and all things can be spread out in turn.

He took a few generals to discuss the plan for strengthening the camp with Zhou Qiaoan.

If it weren't for the fact that hundreds of members of the Li family were here, Li Xiu wouldn't mind leaving some flaws in the camp, even if the wall was thinner, even if it was easy to be broken by the enemy, there would be no problem at all, but it would be more convenient to introduce the enemy army into the village to fight a battle of annihilation.

That's more

It can hit the enemy's spirit.

However, hundreds of women and children of the Li family are in the village, even if the reinforcements in Xia Caicheng can ensure that the enemy army does not dare to encircle the village easily, but they also do not want the village to be easily torn open in the frontal attack of the enemy.

Fortunately, Zhou Qiaoan and Guan Cone are extremely capable, Li Xiu only needs to make a request, and they can draw up the corresponding plan, and even arrange the manpower and other things can be thought out in a very short time, without Li Xiu's hard work.

Li Xiu and his nephew Li Yan (Li Changfeng's third son) gathered dozens of young soldiers in the clan, first acted as scouts, and guarded the periphery of Xinzhai, and it didn't take long to see Cao Ba riding a thin horse to rush over.

Li Xiu thought that there was any obstacle to the recruitment of the homeless people, so he frowned and looked over, but Cao Ba waved his hand and said disapprovingly: "Your nephew is very capable, I will take him on a trip and get acquainted with people from all walks of life, so as not to be troubled, and the rest will be supervised by him, nothing will happen to me!" There are also materials needed to build bridges and strengthen the stockade here, I made a special trip to Feng Yi to say hello, and there is no problem. Cao Ye, my face is still quite effective in Xia Cai......"

"How many villages will be built on the periphery of Xia Cai City, and how many strong and strong people do Xia Cai City plan to recruit from the displaced people as a supplement for the villagers?" Li Xiu frowned and asked Cao Ba.

He now needs to have an overall understanding of Tangyi's defense plan on the north bank in order to better decide how to strengthen Xinzhai and how to fight its defense in the future, but at present, this information can only be inquired from Cao Ba.

"Five stockades should be built on the periphery of Xia Cai, so that the north entrance of the pontoon bridge can be protected, so that a small group of enemy troops will not have the opportunity to insert themselves into the pontoon bridge and burn it - each stockade seems to be planned to make up six to eight hundred strong households, and our side is the most; In addition, Xia Cai City will make up 3,000 households," Cao Ba pouted and said, "However, you don't have to worry about these haves or not, the enemy army is really going to assemble on a large scale to the east bank of the vortex, and at that time, this side will transfer 20,000 elite war horses from the rear, and you won't really expect your Li family women and children to defend this stockade - when the time comes, there will be 80,000 Tangyi soldiers and horses in Danxian and Xia Cai, how can it be enough to fight, is it possible that the Weizhou rebels can still tilt the hundreds of thousands of main forces to the southern front to fight a decisive battle with us?" ”

Li Xiu shook his head and said without optimism: "If I am the commander of the Southern Courtyard of the Mengwu people, Wusu Dashi, in addition to instructing Zhu Rang, Xu Mingzhen, and Sima Tan to gather 100,000 foot soldiers to fight between Danxian and Xia Cai, I will also transfer another 30,000 to 40,000 elite cavalry over, how will Tangyi deal with it then?" ”

"The Muguls have not yet gained a firm foothold, and now they are going to engage in a general war with us?" Cao Ba didn't believe Li Xiu's judgment, shook his head and asked.

"The Liang army in Bianjing is less than 20,000 horses, and they are almost disabled, and it should not be the first target of the Muguls to be eliminated at present, and the only thing to do is to inflict heavy losses on the Tangyi army on the west bank of the whirlpool, which is its first purpose," Li Xiu said solemnly, "Only in this way can the confidence and low morale of the Shouzhou army and the Xu Si army be reorganized." Otherwise, the Mengwu people forcibly pushed Zhu Rang, the puppet puppet emperor, out to integrate the forces and men in the eastern part of the Liang State, which would always be an empty shelf, not to mention that it would not pose any threat to Tangyi, and it would be difficult to form a substantial threat to Huaidong - this is definitely not what Wusu Dashi or Xiao Yiqing are willing to see. ”

"Listening to you say this, there is some truth, Xu Mingzhen has indeed been scared by the Tangyi army over the years, and the Tangyi army really has no pressure at all against the Shouzhou army." Cao Ba scratched the back of his head and said.

Li Xiu said: "The Marquis of Qianyang did not go north to supervise the battle, but stayed in Xia Cai, which seems to be leisurely, and in fact, it should be expected that this battle is inevitable - of course, this battle is inevitable for Tangyi, but the number of casualties among the generals caught between the two sides is already a concern for some people......"

"When General Li rushed into Shangshu Province with people in order to detain the Empress Dowager Changxin and the new emperor to Chongwen Palace, he didn't seem to think too much about the twists and turns?" Zhou Qiaoan interjected at this time.

Of course, Li Xiu knew that Zhou Qiao'an, who Feng Xuan sent to assist him in governing the Li family's Xinzhai, was by no means an ordinary official in Tangyi, and he came to assist him, and it could even be said that he had the nature of supervising the army, and he could only bear it gloomily in the face of his sarcastic words.

Cao Ba smiled and asked Li Xiu: "According to what you say, the best result of Tangyi's battle is only a miserable victory?" ”

"What else do you think?" Li Xiu asked rhetorically, and when he saw Cao Ba being stopped by him, he sighed again and said, "Of course, for the Marquis of Qianyang, even if it is a miserable victory, it is a result that he can accept......"

Hearing that Li Xiu still believed that the Li clan would be more than lucky in this battle, Cao Ba stretched his waist and said, "Master Cao, I expect to be able to kill a few more enemy soldiers, not as worried as you." By the way, Li Xiu, if you are worried that the casualties of your Li family are too heavy, then call your Li family children to form a team and hand it over to me to bring - the elite people selected from the homeless people, it is estimated that few people can follow me into battle. ”

A soldier and horse, even if it is guarding the stockade, must have a sharp soldier who can climb or fall into battle first, and disrupt the enemy's offensive rhythm from time to time, but this is by no means capable of hastily training a homeless person for ten or twenty days.

Li Xiu's heart is to plan to gather half of the elite soldiers, and then select the same number of homeless people to form a team of elite soldiers as a reserve.

Of course, the Li family has no shortage of qualified candidates to serve as the head of the trap team, but it must be said that in the bloody battlefield, the top candidate for the head of the trap team, the entire Tangyi army may only have three or five people who can compete with Cao Ba!

Wen Bo has a reputation for being good at fighting, and there is a considerable factor that Cao Ba personally leads an elite team into battle, and can always control the trend and rhythm of the local battlefield when necessary.

"You hesitate, do you think that Cao Ye and my little chicken belly will deliberately harm your Li family children to death?" Seeing that Li Xiu was silent, Cao Ba said unhappily.

"I can use you to trap the battle, but if you don't listen to my orders, I will kill you in front of the battle, and I will have nothing to say when Wen Bo returns." Li Xiu said with compassion.

"Twitter like a girl, how long did you surround Chaozhou back then, when did I let you take advantage of half of it?" Cao Ba muttered.

Listening to the information Cao Ba said, Li Xiu estimated that when the battle came, Han Qian might gather more than 30,000 soldiers and horses in Xia Cai, but the hundreds of people of the Li family were nothing in this rolling tide of flesh and blood, and he was not free, and Tangyi was able to command countless generals, and he was not allowed to speak, so he just wanted to seize the last gap before the battle as much as possible and make more preparations.

With the main force of the reinforcement army going north, tens of thousands of homeless people migrated from north to south every day, and the homeless camps on the north bank gathered 60,000 or 70,000 people.

Li Xiu selected 1,200 strong people from them, and moved some of the families to the Li family's new village, which was extremely simple and trouble-free, without any twists and turns.

This time, there were more than 130 family soldiers and quite a number of family soldiers, who were exiled to Xia Cai with the Li family, and they were all elite generals who had fought with Li Xiu in the north and south over the years.

A mature, previous with a team of 100 people

Military attachés with training and combat experience, who are only responsible for bringing fourteen or fifteen new soldiers, are naturally handy.

Even though the time before the battle was extremely tight, it was barely enough for simple training.

Li Xiu formed a formation team with sixty elite soldiers and one hundred and forty homeless people, with Cao Ba as the leader of the team - the training of the trap team was even simpler, and it had the strength to fight almost on the day it was formed.

The follow-up is mainly to defend the village, and there is no need to control too complex changes in the battle formation, and the battle formation with the sword, shield and spear as the main blade, with nearly one-third of the elite soldiers as the backbone, can be proficient in three or five days of training.

Li Xiu also used several old family soldiers to assist Li Yan in organizing the children of the family soldiers into an internal guard team to prevent the wall from being torn open and protect the inner family.

Li Chi was more proficient in housekeeping, and together with his mother Zheng, he took the Li family's healthy wife to cooperate with Zhou Qiao'an and Guan Cone to clean up the homeless families and build a camp.

In addition to the reinforcement of the camp on the east and north sides, which are easy to be attacked by the enemy frontally, and the eight-pillar stone and mud core pillars support the thin fence wall, Li Xiu still piled earth and stone in the fence wall.

Without sufficient manpower and time, these soil and stones cannot be compacted layer by layer according to the construction method, but they can effectively attract the impact of the outer fence wall.

Han Qian came to inspect twice, and in the end, according to the standard of the main battle camp, he gave the Li family Xinzhai Township Yong armor and weapons.

This is also the part that Li Xiu values the most.

200 arms and crossbows, new pawns only need to learn to open the strings and load, they can cover a certain range of battlefields, and the drill can come in handy for more than ten days; The longbowman, on the other hand, did not have three or five months of hard training, and did not know where to shoot the arrow, and thirty paces away he might not be able to speak of accuracy.

In ordinary counties and counties, the township warriors wear leather armor at most, and fight with swords, spears and small shields, while the main camp of the Tangyi army, the elite veterans can almost wear heavy armor based on armor.

The protection of heavy armor and leather armor on the battlefield are completely two different concepts.

Cao Ba's trapping team, all wearing armor, can face the enemy's arrow rain to charge, with swords and spears, it is difficult to break through the armor.

Leather armor may be able to withstand long-range arrows, but close-range bows and crossbows are difficult to protect, let alone close to spear stabs.

The heavy armor coverage of the Tangyi army is higher than that of the guards and pro-army, and the confrontation between the Shouzhou army and the Tangyi army in these years is deeply felt on the battlefield.

It is also thanks to the fact that most of the Shouzhou army is the elite of the original Chu army, and it has not been too ugly on the frontal battlefield over the years, but the huge strategic disadvantage still causes the Shouzhou army to retreat one after another.

In the face of the Tangyi army, the Shouzhou army had no psychological advantage at all, not to mention that it withdrew to the two sides of the vortex water after the year, which was extremely unstable at this time.

Li Xiu also concluded from this that the Mengwu people would definitely transfer the elite cavalry to the battlefields of Danxian and Xiacai, and would never expect the Shouzhou Army, which had been repeatedly defeated, to really serve as the main force on the southern front and fight the Tangyi army.

Li Xiu estimated that the Tangyi army with the same size of soldiers and horses could beat the Shouzhou army out of at this time, and it was impossible for the Mughurs not to consider how bad the situation in Hehuai would be if the Shouzhou army was defeated on all fronts.

More than ten days after the Li clan people arrived in Xia Cai, the advance of the reinforcement army to the north was also extremely smooth.

Although the Shouzhou army sent a large number of elite soldiers and horses on the southern flank of Danxian County to intercept the reinforcement army according to the favorable river terrain, it was defeated in several engagements and had to retreat into the walled city in the north.

In the Shouzhou Army in Wuyang, the forward of the Xu Si Army, thinking of attacking the flank of the reinforcement army with Wen Bo as the main general, also returned several times in vain, and could only watch the main force of the reinforcement army advance step by step towards the city of Danxian County.

This situation is in line with Li Xiu's prediction.

Li Xiu also believed that it was unlikely that the Shouzhou army would be the main force and would not be able to hold the walled cities on the west bank of the whirlpool such as Danxian and Wuting under the strong offensive of the reinforcement army.

Xu Mingzhen, as a veteran general who has been in the Jianghuai River for half his life, self-knowledge is indispensable, and based on the performance of the Mengwu people in the north in the past two years, Li Xiu also concluded that they must have a very clear understanding of the situation of the Tangyi army and the Shouzhou army.

If it weren't for this, the Muguls would not have been able to make so many moves in Jinling City before.

Every time he thought of this, Li Xiu felt an uncontrollable tingling pain in his chest.

In the more than ten days after the Li clan arrived in Xia Cai, Yang Yuanpu, the king of letters, led more than 30,000 elites to sit on the wall in Chuzhou and watch, without crossing the Huai River at all and advancing to the hinterland of Xu Si, and even the basic attack was not seen, which made one after another Xu Si army soldiers and horses able to get out of the north bank of the lower reaches of the Huai River, bypass the north bank of Hongzepu, and advance to the east bank of the lower reaches of the whirlpool.

The battle predicted by Li Xiu when he first arrived in Xia Cai can already be said to be a reality at any time at this moment.

In the east bank area of the lower reaches of the whirlpool, the reinforced Xu Si army crossed the whirlpool, and was able to join forces with the soldiers and horses of the Shouzhou army stationed in the vortex, and directly inserted between Danxian and Xia Cai; Crossing the Huai River to the south, you can go south to attack the area between Zhongli, Linhuai and Zhunling in Haozhou.

Even if the Tangyi Navy firmly controls the Huai River waterway from the north of Haozhou at this time, the time will soon enter the late autumn season, and in another two months, the middle and lower reaches of the Huai River will still be frozen again.

No one could expect the battle to end in two months.

If the battle had not ended in two months, or even just begun, the Tangyi naval army would have to withdraw from the frozen Huai River, and a large number of enemy troops would have crossed the Huai River directly to the south, and they would have been able to attack Shouhao and other hinterlands.

In fact, time, and the initiative in the battle, is in the hands of the enemy.

For Zhu Rang and the Mengwu people, at this stage, they only need to hold Luoyang, Xingyang, Yanshi, Hanguguan and other key fortresses in the Heluo area, and not be taken away by Zhu Yu.

In this way, the Mughurs and Zhu Rang could have delayed until the end of October or even November, and then launched the battle at a time that was more favorable to them.

This also forced Tangyi not to dare to relax the land defense of Linhuai and Zhongli, and further limited the scale of elite soldiers and horses that Tangyi could assemble in the Xiacai area on the north bank.

Cao Ba once said that if necessary, Han Qian would transfer an additional 20,000 elite soldiers and horses into the Xia Cai area, but in fact he had to place an elite brigade in Linhuai, and in the end he only transferred the three reinforced main brigades of Dou Rong, Zhao Qi, and Xiao Dahu to Xia Cai, merged Feng Xuan's department, and gathered 20,000 elite soldiers and 10,000 auxiliary soldiers to make final preparations for the upcoming battle.

By the beginning of September, in addition to the fully mobilized Shouzhou army of 70,000 soldiers and horses, the Xu Si army and horses gathered in the east bank of the lower reaches of the vortex also exceeded 30,000 soldiers; The Tangyi scouts also reconnoitred that the Weizhou cavalry, which was about 10,000 at the end of August, was heading south from the Xigi area of Bianjing, but Li Xiu knew very well that this was by no means all the enemy troops on the southern front, and the main cavalry of the Mughurs would definitely go south to participate in the battle......