Chapter 82: First encounter with the yellow scarf

Gao Shun decided that the two infantry brigades would advance in parallel, with the first brigade of the Rong Division on the west side and the third brigade of the trapped camp on the east side, and rush to Hanchang first, and the reconnaissance report would be returned, Hanchang was still in the hands of the Han army, and the reconnaissance troops had not yet crossed the river in Xiaquyang, because it was on the south bank of the Hutuo River, and the reconnaissance troops had not yet crossed the river, so the enemy situation was unknown.

Arrived in Hanchang, sure enough, it was still under the control of the Han army, and there were a few county soldiers in the city, asking them, they didn't know whether Xia Quyang had been occupied by the Yellow Turbans, only that there was indeed a Yellow Turban Bandit to attack Xia Quyang.

The Bingzhou army did not stop, passed through the city, and soon reached the north bank of the Hutuo River, and the scouts reported that the water of the Hutuo River reached here and entered the plain, so the flow rate was slow, but the river was also much wider, and there was no shallow water nearby to cross the river on foot.

There are no bridges in the vicinity, and they all rely on a few boats to cross the river. Gao Shun and others visited the river bank to investigate and found that the river was indeed quite wide, hundreds of zhang wide, and could not be crossed.

Zhu Ling suggested that the engineer battalion should build a pontoon bridge, the engineer battalion is a new branch of the Bingzhou army, and it was originally assigned to the division-level combat unit, or Gao Shun forcibly borrowed it from Xu Huang before leaving, and his Rongyi division was not yet equipped with the engineer battalion.

After accepting the task, the commander of the engineer battalion led several company commanders to inspect the hydrological situation, the river flow speed is slow, and the depth is not very deep, but it can build a pontoon bridge.

However, the engineer battalion had limited manpower, and in order to complete the pontoon bridge on time, it would need support from brother units. Gao Shun ordered all brigades to give full support, and soon the officers and soldiers of the prefecture went to the nearby mountains to cut down trees, and went to the nearby people and temples to borrow the door panels, and soon built a pontoon bridge over the Hutuo River with the trees as stakes and the door panels as the face.

To ensure the timely passage of the whole army, Gao Shun told his subordinates to give compensation for the borrowed wooden planks according to the price, and the pontoon bridge was also left to not be demolished for the time being, and before the flood came, the local people could cross the river from here.

There is indeed a Yellow Turban Army in Xiaquyang County, they have beaten away the original county order, occupied the county seat, and are busy opening warehouses to release grain, robbing shops, and recruiting a lot of hungry people to join the gang, and the team has expanded to more than 10,000 people.

However, they relied on the Hutuo River as a barrier, and did not guard against anyone from the north at all, and their attention was focused on the south.

When the Rong 1st Division and the vanguard of the trapped camp arrived ten miles north of the county seat of Xiaqu County, the city gate was still wide open, and they entered and exited at will, and many Yellow Turban troops even went to the countryside to rob the powerful landlords.

When the Rong 1st Division launched an attack on the county from the north gate and the trapped camp from outside the east gate at the same time, the leaders of the Yellow Turban Army, who had been hastily assembled after receiving the news, felt that the forces of the two sides were equal, and they actually divided their troops to go out of the city in two ways to fight.

Although before coming to Jizhou, Lu Bu repeatedly told Gao Shun, Cheng Lian, and Zhu Ling that although the Yellow Turban Army was rebellious, they were all Han Chinese, and the Han people killed each other, which would only cheapen the foreigners. Therefore, try to persuade and persuade to surrender, and if you really want to fight, you must also try to capture prisoners.

But when it really came to the moment of action, Gao Shun would not show mercy to his subordinates in order to reduce the casualties of the Han people, so that his subordinates were timid, and they were still carried out in strict accordance with the infantry drill of the Bingzhou Army.

Since the Yellow Turban Army had no cavalry, it was all infantry, so the formation of the Bingzhou Army was that the shield soldiers were at the front, the crossbowmen and longbowmen were behind them, and the spearmen also picked up the longbows or crossbows, acting as longbowmen and repeaters first.

As soon as the two sides engaged, the shield soldiers were in front, and then each slowly advanced. Conduct a round of long-range attacks first, due to the poor equipment of the Yellow Turban Army, it is far less sophisticated than the Bingzhou Army.

This Yellow Turban Army was not the main force, only equipped with a small number of archers, and there were not many shield soldiers, so they could only organize a sparse shield wall. The protection of the soldiers was even worse, only a small number of elite soldiers were equipped with armor, and most of them were still running naked, with only yellow turbans tied to their heads.

If there were no yellow scarves on their heads, then they would be just a group of ordinary people. However, everyone in the state army was equipped with armor, and the shield soldiers were equipped with heavy armor.

The Yellow Turban Army's sparse long-range attacks were easily blocked by the large shield of the Bingzhou Army, and the longbows and repeaters of the Bingzhou Army, whether it was range, accuracy, or the power of the arrows, completely crushed the Yellow Turban Army.

Before the two sides could engage in a short battle, a third of the Yellow Turbans fell under the arrows, and the Yellow Turbans were crushed with just one charge, and the spearmen of the state army all raised their spears, and the longbowmen and crossbowmen also picked up their ring-headed knives and charged forward.

On the one hand, they are well-trained, especially the veterans of the Rong First Division have crawled out of the pile of dead, while the Yellow Turban Army is a rabble, and it has only survived until now by virtue of the blind confidence of defeating the Han army before, and has not been intimidated by the repeater.

And real melee combat, hand-to-hand combat is a game that tests courage and guts. It was completely beyond the capacity of these Yellow Turban Army, and it soon became a one-sided scene, but fortunately, the secretaries of the state army were constantly reminding them not to kill the prisoners, and to surrender and avoid death.

Therefore, the Yellow Turban soldiers who put down their weapons in time and knelt on the ground and begged for mercy were all left behind and became prisoners.

The Bingzhou army followed behind the broken Yellow Turban Army and rushed into the county seat of Xiaqu County, and recovered the entire county in a short time.

The state army first posted a notice to calm the people, and then opened the county jail, releasing the county lieutenants, county officials, and others who were imprisoned by the Yellow Turban Army and had not yet had time to be killed, and they were still in charge of the county.

The two thousand county soldiers sent by Zhongshan State were also followed by the state army of Zhongshan, and four thousand people were killed and wounded in this battle, and 5,000 people were captured, and these prisoners were temporarily handed over to the county soldiers to take care of.

The military situation was urgent, Gao Shun did not delay much, left dozens of wounded in Xiaquyang, buried the bodies of more than ten fallen soldiers on the spot, cleaned the battlefield briefly, and continued to set off south.

encountered a small force of the Yellow Turban Army in Luancheng, and easily defeated the other party, but got a bad news, Gaoyi has been broken by the Yellow Turban Army, and Wang Fen, the assassin of Jizhou, has been martyred.

It's still a step too late, but Gao Shun decided that he had to move on, and he would meet the main force of the Yellow Turban Army for a while, and I heard that this Yellow Turban Army was personally led by Zhang Liang, the "General of the People's Father".

Before arriving at Gaoyi, when it was more than ten miles away from the city, the scouts came to report that the main force of the Yellow Turban Army had heard that another Han army had come and had taken the initiative to attack, and the two armies were still ten miles apart.

Gao Shun looked around, and where he was located was a low hill, and there was this kind of terrain nearby. Now that the enemy is coming, let us stop our advance and wait for their work, for ten miles will be enough for them to walk for a long time.

The horses of the state army also stayed in Xiaquyang, Zhu Ling left a battalion to defend Xiaquyang, and there were 2,000 county soldiers, and the back road was worry-free.