Chapter Ninety-Seven: The Southern Expedition

The decree to canonize Yang Wu as the prince of Wu arrived in Suzhou on October 13. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

In the past two months of war, Yang Wulian has made meritorious achievements and is resourceful, and he has long been impressed by these generals in the army. And Yang Wu himself was also excited about this, after all, the Yang Wu in history was not canonized as the prince until Yang Xingmi's death, and finally inherited the throne of Hongnong County as the eldest son of King Wu.

Along with this decree, there were also two letters of appointment, one was to appoint Yang Wu as the envoy to the south, and both led Zhang Kezong, Qin Pei and other generals to continue to attack Huzhou in the south; Another letter of appointment was the appointment of Xu Wen as the assassin of Suzhou.

Everyone had expected the previous appointment letter, but the latter letter appointing Xu Wen as the assassin of Suzhou surprised the generals in Suzhou.

It stands to reason that this southern expedition to break through Suzhou City should appoint Zhou Ben as the assassin history, even if Zhou Ben is not the assassin history, then Qin Pei or Li Jian or even Yang Wu can be appointed as the assassin history, but now Xu Wen, who has not made much contribution, is the assassin of Suzhou, but what is the reason?

Of course, what they didn't know was that the appointment of Xu Wen as the assassin of Suzhou was a secret request from Yang Wu to Yang Xing.

Yang Wu was jealous of Xu Wen, but because Xu Wen had been keeping a low profile, he couldn't find a good way to deal with Xu Wen at all. Yang Wu felt that since it was difficult to deal with him, he would simply come to Mingsheng and secretly descend, and appoint Xu Wen as the assassin of Suzhou, which seemed to promote Xu Wen, but in fact, he drove Xu Wen out of the power center of Guangling.

After the death of Yang Xingmi in history, local generals like Liu Wei, Tao Ya, Li Yu, etc., all had deep prestige, but they could not control the power of Huainan, but Xu Wen, a general with less prestige, could hold power alone, and he relied on sitting in Guangling to give orders in the name of the Yang family.

But now that Yang Wu drove Xu Wen to Suzhou in advance, does he still have a chance to "coerce the Yang family to order the princes"?

In addition, Suzhou is a rich place, when Jiangnan was not completely chaotic, Jiangnan provided the imperial court with taxes as high as 6 million yuan every year, of which Suzhou provided 1 million yuan in taxes; In the early years of the Ming Dynasty, Suzhou provided one-tenth of the national tax on money and grain every year; Today, Suzhou, if not as prosperous as later generations, is still one of the richest states in the south, providing at least one-third of the tax for Qian Biao.

In such a rich place, Yang Wu didn't want to hand it over to a military general who didn't know how to govern the place. And Xu Wen is relatively good in terms of his ability to govern the place. Therefore, Yang Wu hopes that Xu Wen can govern Suzhou well and make Suzhou an inexhaustible source of finance for Huainan.

As for whether Xu Wen will sit big in Suzhou, Yang Wu is not worried about this, after all, even if Xu Wen wants to sit big, it will take at least nearly ten years, and at that time Yang Wu has already inherited the position of the Huainan Jiedu envoy and stabilized his rights.

Fortunately, Yang Wu has recently made continuous meritorious contributions, and his status in Yang Xingmi's heart is increasing day by day, and the weight of what he says is naturally more sufficient; And the reason he used when he made a request to Yang Xingmi was also that Suzhou was prosperous, and he needed a person who was good at governance to be the assassin, and only Xu Wen was the most suitable among the generals in Suzhou, so Yang Xingmi agreed to Yang Wu's proposal without thinking too much.

Now that the will has been made, the generals in Suzhou, although they are dissatisfied, still accept the appointment. As for Zhou Ben, he led his troops and horses back to Yangzhou to rest.

However, Yang Wu did not immediately lead the army to the battle, after all, the Huainan army was also very tired during the nearly two months of the previous attack on Suzhou and needed to rest. Taking advantage of this opportunity, Yang Wu began to reorganize his army.

At present, the descendants under his command include two parts, one is the 4,000 people under Qin Pei, and the other is the 3,000 people led by his own subordinate Zhu Siqing. Now Yang Wu has been supplemented by the surrender of troops in Suzhou, and simply reorganized his subordinates into two guards, each of which is 5,000 people.

Among them, Zhu Siqing served as the commander of the left guard, and the following five were served by Chen Fan, Fan Sicong, and Gu Chengen, Di Yuan, and Zhong Li, who had received military sticks in Kunshan last time. Since the last time these three people received the military stick, shame and courage, not only loyal to Yang Wu, but also more brave in battle, this battle of Suzhou led the army to attack the city many times, meritorious service is not small. So Yang Wu promoted them to the head of the capital.

As for the commander of the right guard, it was naturally Qin Pei who served as the envoy. Qin Pei has always been actively moving closer to Yang Wu, and after Yang Wu's observation, he has now fully accepted Qin Pei as a confidant general. This reorganization naturally did not benefit him, although it did not promote his position, but replenished his army to five thousand men. As for the capital head below, it was appointed by Qin Pei, and Yang Wu did not interfere.

In addition to the descendants of the two guards with a total of 10,000 people, Yang Wu also formed a cavalry capital of more than 1,000 people.

A few days ago, his father, Yang Xingmi, sent a general who was good at cavalry combat to serve under his command.

This cavalry commander named Hou Zan was a northerner who went south with Zhu Jin and Li Chenghe, and was a cavalry general under Zhu Jin back then, following Zhu Jin's side in hundreds of battles and performing meritorious deeds; Now that he has come to Yang Wu's command, he has brought more than 800 cavalry, plus Yang Wu's original cavalry, and now the number of cavalry under his command has reached thousands.

Compared with Hou Zhan, Tian Neng, the cavalry commander appointed by Yang Wu before, was only a captain after all, and his ability to command troops was naturally not as good as Hou Zhan, but he had a good grasp of the "line charge" tactics that Yang Wu said, so he was appointed by Yang Wu as the deputy commander of the new cavalry, specifically responsible for training the soldiers to charge in a uniform manner.

As for Sun Yan, firstly, he said that he was unwilling to fight with Qian Di, and secondly, Yang Wu was not so at ease with him now, so Yang Wo temporarily asked him to return to Guangling and did not participate in this southern expedition.

With a large increase in the number of soldiers under his command and a strong cavalry, the army under Yang Wu's command has finally become stronger, and his title of commander is finally worthy of the name.

In addition to reorganizing the army, Yang Wu also did another thing, that is, to ask Fan Yu to send a fine work to Huzhou to inquire about the news. After all, Huzhou is different from Suzhou, although Suzhou is located on the front line, but it is far away from Hangzhou, the foundation of Qian Biao, so the defenders are small, only 10,000 people.

Huzhou was closer to Hangzhou, and its defense was tighter, with 20,000 defenders. Fortunately, before the Huzhou Assassin sent his son Gao Wei and Huzhou commander Tu Huanzhi to lead 8,000 people to reinforce Hangzhou, but they were ambushed by Xu Juan in Lingyin Mountain and defeated, and only a few people returned to Huzhou under the leadership of the general Zhu Xingxian. Today, Huzhou's military strength should be only about 13,000 people.

After all preparations were made, on October 20, Yang Wu led an army of 15,000 generals such as Zhang Kezong, Qin Pei, and Zhu Siqing to continue southward, aiming directly at Huzhou. But before he could attack Huzhou, he had to take Jiaxing, which was located between Huzhou and Suzhou.

Compared with the big cities of Suzhou and Huzhou, Jiaxing was still only a county seat at this time, but Jiaxing is now also populous and well-guarded.

Seven years ago, the Huainan army once besieged Jiaxing, but the then Jiaxing garrison Cao Gui was very good at defending the city, under his persistence, the Huainan army besieged Jiaxing for more than a year but was never able to break through the city, and finally was defeated by Gu Quanwu, who came to relieve the siege.

This defensive battle many years ago shows that although Jiaxing is a county seat, its defensive facilities are enough to compare with Suzhou and Huzhou. In fact, after more than 30 years in history, Wu Yueguo officially divided Jiaxing and established a new Xiuzhou, and the place of governance was in Jiaxing.

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