Fu Yuanxian's plan is actually quite risky, because in this era, it is difficult to say what kind of effect such a strategic cooperation can achieve. Because of the distance, the troops could not communicate with each other. For example, when the appointed time came, whether the Huguang side sent troops to make a feint according to the agreement, Fu Yuanxian, who commanded the army in Shaanxi, could not know in time, and he could only assume that the Huguang side sent troops on time. But if Huguang is delayed because of something, (even if you don't consider the intentional delay caused by the deliberate demolition of the platform or the small plan such as "the dead friend does not die the poor road", it is not small because of its own unintentional mistakes or some unforeseen factors.) Then naturally there will be no effect of mobilizing the enemy's army, and Fu Yuanxian, who still sends troops according to the original plan, will crash headlong into the iron wall of the superior enemy army, not to mention defeating the enemy, it is difficult to say whether he can retreat with his whole body.

Even if the army on Huguang's side launched a feint on time according to the plan, whether this move could mobilize the "thief army" was completely unknown to Fu Yuanxian. The enemy may have been mobilized, and then he led his troops to kill them quickly, and he was able to defeat the "thief army" in one fell swoop; However, the situation may also be completely different, the "thief army" was not fooled at all, their main force did not move, and then Fu Yuanxian took his army and crashed headlong into the den of the superior thief army, and finally failed.

In terms of Fu Yuanxian's consistent advocacy, he is most opposed to such gambling-style adventures. But now that he has been activated again, it is not without reason that the first battle plan he came up with is such a risky plan. To this day, he still believes that the top priority of the imperial court is not to immediately exterminate the Liukou, or to eliminate the Tartars outside the Guan, but to shrink and stabilize. However, contraction is also conditional, it does not mean that if you want to shrink, you can contract, and if you don't do it well, it will become a rout. And as the saying goes, "this time, that time", when he was not imprisoned in the Beizhen Fusi Prison, the power of the imperial court still had a clear advantage over the "Liukou", and it was not too difficult to shrink directly at that time. But the current situation is completely different, although the imperial court is not exhausted now, but it has also been greatly weakened, and the "Liukou" and Tartar have become stronger, at this time, it is not easy to shrink. So Fu Yuanxian felt that at this time, he could only take risks. If this venture can be successful, the imperial court may still have a chance to shrink peacefully. Of course, he was also a little worried, if he really succeeded, with the character of Emperor Chongde, although he also expressed his support for the policy of temporarily turning to defense at this time, but at that time, it is really difficult to say whether he will shrink or "chase after victory" again. But in any case, right now, Fu Yuanxian has to take an adventure.

After Fu Yuanxian asked the platform correctly, he immediately left the Beijing Division, traveled day and night, and spent more than a month to rush to Fengtai, and then stayed there for more than 20 days to wait for Hu Dawei and He Dalong's troops to arrive.

He Dalong was originally very reluctant to leave Huguang, during this time, he followed behind Zhang Bingzhong and Luo Mengde, he didn't fight much, but he grabbed a lot of things, and now he was a little happy, but he suddenly received an order to let him go north, He Dalong was naturally very unhappy. At one point, I didn't really want to obey orders. However, officials in the Huguang area, as well as other military leaders, including Zuo Liangyu, were particularly supportive of this order. For the magistrates of Huguang, He Dalong, a lawless guest army who is more powerful than the rogue robbers, naturally rolls as far as possible; And for a military leader like Zuo Liangyu, the loss of He Dalong also means that his chances of robbery will increase, which is naturally a good thing.

As soon as the magistrate of Huguang received the relevant order, he immediately cut off He Dalong's supply of military rations. And Zuo Liangyu immediately began to rub against He Dalong. Under such circumstances, He Dalong naturally found it difficult to gain a foothold in Huguang, so he had to agree to go north. However, people like He Dalong naturally refused to suffer in vain, so when he went north, he was like a locust crossing the border, and completely plundered the places he passed along the way, and in the relatively rich Huguang area, he forcibly created a no-man's land with a width of more than 30 miles and a length of hundreds of miles.

By the time He Dalong's headquarters and Hu Dawei's headquarters were in place, it was already August, and the weather began to gradually get colder. Fu Yuanxian sent an envoy to Ding Qirui to convey the imperial court's request for him to immediately organize troops to launch a feint against Henan. and agreed with Ding Qirui on the time of action.

At this time, Zuo Liangyu was chasing Zhang Bingzhong and approached Sichuan again, so Ding Qirui gave Zuo Liangyu an order to return to Xiangyang and prepare a feint attack on Henan. Zuo Liangyu did not return immediately, but asked his subordinate Li Guoying to return to Xiangyang with less than 3,000 soldiers and horses. And most of the less than 3,000 people were recruits with only one spear, that is, all the troops that Zuo Liangyu participated in this operation.

Ding Qirui saw that the number of people was very small, so he naturally did not dare to go deep into Henan, so according to the agreed time, he took these people north to the area of Tang County, and even the "thief army" did not have time to see it, so he shrank back. Anyway, this can be regarded as his army has already gone to Henan to "feint". Of course, in fact, Huang Zide didn't even know that Ding Qirui had such a "feint".

On the second day after Ding Qirui launched a "feint attack", Fu Yuanxian took He Dalong, Hu Dawei, and Li Guoqi with three general troops, more than 30,000 and nearly 40,000 troops, from Fengtai to Kaifeng. Fu Yuanxian knew that if he wanted to win this battle, in addition to hoping that Ding Qirui could attract Huang Zide's army, another key was that his army must move quickly. Therefore, Fu Yuanxian ordered the army to abandon almost any baggage that slowed down the march, and only carried food that could be eaten for seven days, and rushed to Kaifeng day and night.

Whether it is He Dalong, Hu Dawei or Li Guoqi, the training of the troops under them is not good, and the long-distance attack is a huge test for the training level and physical condition of the army. On the first day, Fu Yuanxian forced everyone to walk more than 70 miles in one go, but when it was time to stop and camp, he counted and found that the whole army was actually missing seven or eight thousand people. These people were left behind because they couldn't keep up with the ranks during the rapid march.

That night, He Dalong and Hu Dawei went to meet Fu Yuanxian together, asked to slow down the march, and pointed out that if this continued, when the army arrived in Kaifeng, I was afraid that there would not be even 10,000 people left. Fu Yuanxian believes that only by staying fast can there be a possibility of winning. Those soldiers who will fall behind on the march do not have much combat power in the first place, and it is not a pity to fall behind.

The next day, Fu Yuanxian continued to urge the army to march, and on this day he walked another seventy miles, and as a result, there were more than 6,000 fewer people in the army. But Fu Yuanxian was unmoved, continued to hurry, and in the evening of the same day, arrived at Xiuwu. At this time, there were only about 20,000 people left in the whole army.

Fu Yuanxian therefore had to let the army rest in Xiuwu for a day, and on the fourth day, early in the morning, before the sun came out, Fu Yuanxian urged the whole army to the south.

On this day, He Dalong's department began to fall behind on a large scale. When he set out from Xiuwu, there were nearly 10,000 people, and he actually only walked fifty miles that day, but at night, there were only 1,000 cavalry left under He Dalong, and the rest of the people were all left behind.

When they were camping that night, Hu Dawei and several of his subordinates discussed for a long time in the military tents, so on the fifth day, Hu Dawei's subordinates also fell behind on a large scale. That night, Hu Dawei had no more than 3,000 soldiers and horses left, and Li Guoqi, Fu Yuanxian had been staying in his army, and his own soldiers had been staring at Li Guoqi's soldiers, but on this day, Li Guoqi had only more than 200 soldiers.

It was also on the afternoon of this day that Fu Yuanxian's army came into contact with the scouts sent by Huang Zide.

At that time, Huang Laiheng, the righteous son of Huang Guo, led more than 20 cavalry to patrol the north of Kaifeng. To the north of Kaifeng is the Yellow River, and the water level of the Yellow River is much higher than most places near Kaifeng, and naturally it is also higher than the station of Huang Zide. Xuanyi Daoist pointed out to Huang Zide that one of the most important things to guard against now is that someone on the imperial court side will open the Yellow River embankment and use artificial floods to deal with the revolutionary army, so it is necessary to strengthen reconnaissance in the north. Therefore, the scout cavalry of the revolutionary army was quite dense along the Yellow River.

At that time, Huang Laiheng had already led the cavalry to patrol along the Yellow River for dozens of miles. I was stopping to rest on the embankment near Liuzhuang and eating something by the way, when I saw smoke and dust rising high in front of me. Huang Laiheng was only sixteen years old at the time, but he had already fought for five or six years, and he was quite experienced, and after just one glance, he judged that this must be the dust raised by a large number of men and horses when they marched.

Huang Laiheng asked people to go back to report this information, and on the other hand, he asked people to find a small boat, and he crossed the Yellow River with a horse and walked towards the place where the smoke and dust rose.

Huang Laiheng knew that there would definitely be scout cavalry in front of the army, and once he encountered them, he had only one person, and he couldn't beat them anyway, so he could only rely on running. So he didn't get on his horse at this time, but led the horse on foot, so as to save horsepower for the escape later.

Huang Laiheng saw that there was a temple on a hill not far from the riverbank, and there was a pagoda in the temple, so he went over there.

The hill is not high, but it is only twenty or thirty zhang, and Huang Laiheng did not take much time to reach the gate of the temple. He looked at the mountain gate, but saw that the gate had fallen to one side, and the plaque on the mountain gate also fell to the ground, and the plaque read "Zhenhe Temple". Huang Laiheng knew that the monks in this temple were afraid that they had already gone out to escape the famine. So he led the horse into the temple. Sure enough, there was no one in the temple, Huang Laiheng led the horse to the bottom of the pagoda, tied the horse to the stone railing on the side of the pagoda, and then walked into the pagoda.

The pagoda is pitch black, full of cobwebs, quite eerie, if it is placed in future generations, it is definitely a suitable place to shoot horror movies, but Huang Laiheng has seen more eerie and terrible things, so he doesn't care, just groped up, and soon reached the top of the pagoda. He looked through the small window on the top floor of the pagoda in the direction of the rising smoke, and a marching procession caught his eye.

"Looking at their direction, it should be going to Songjiadu." Huang Laiheng thought, "Song Jiadu is still under the control of the official army, they are going to cross the river from there to attack us!" ”