In the first year of Longwu, one morning in early February.

An army of the world is advancing from the southeast of Luoyang to Luoyang, the ancient capital of several dynasties, holding the banner of nine-headed birds, and marching from southeast to northwest in a neat line.

Luoyang is located in the Central Plains, in the center of the Quartet.

Since ancient times, the rise and fall of the world, the whole world is bound to depend on the Central Plains. Enterprising the world, you can't get around the Central Plains, and the Central Plains is a place to fight. To stabilize the world, the Central Plains is also the top priority, and the central government can be controlled.

If the world is unified, the situation will be concentrated in the Central Plains.

The world is divided, and the situation is scattered in all directions. From governance to chaos, the situation is scattered from the Central Plains; From chaos to order, the situation converges on the Central Plains from all directions.

Liu Jun started in Huguang, rose in Liaodong, and was powerful in Youyan. When he basically controlled the situation in the imperial court, he finally officially marched into the Central Plains.

The Central Plains is a place where the deer compete for the world from the side.

Liu Jun will never let this piece of Central Plains fall into the hands of thieves, nor will he let the center of the world be occupied by bandits.

The establishment of the Central Plains Military Region also marked Liu Jun's formal intervention in the affairs of the Central Plains. Although Yang Wenyue became the governor of the Central Plains, Cai Yuan, the commander-in-chief of Denglai, could be appointed as the governor of the Central Plains, and Zhang Shan, the commander-in-chief of Huguang, was appointed as the commander of the Central Plains, and served as the commander-in-chief of the Central Plains to suppress bandits.

Zuo Liangyu's knowledge of the times withdrew from Henan, clearing the way for the Chu army to control the Central Plains, and now, the only opponent in front of them is the thief Li Zicheng.

The Central Plains is located in the Quartet, connecting the Quartet, and is the hub of the world, from the Central Plains to the surrounding areas, and from the surrounding areas to the Central Plains, which is very convenient.

In any competition in troubled times, the Central Plains is a place to fight.

Only the Central Plains is the place where the world is truly competing for hegemony. Only control the Central Plains. Only then can we take advantage of the superior geographical conditions of the Central Plains extending in all directions to obtain the situation of rapid control in all directions.

Only when the Central Plains is stable can the Quartet be stabilized.

However, although the Central Plains is important, in troubled times, the Central Plains is extremely stable and stable. Because the Central Plains is a place of four wars, there is no danger of mountains and rivers, and there are enemies on all sides.

In some ways, it is also very meaningful that Liu Jun did not choose to divide his territory in Hubei, and Li Zicheng did not run Shaanxi, but came to Henan. He even wanted to establish a political base around Luoyang, which in Liu Jun's view was the biggest strategic mistake.

Although the Central Plains is good, he does not have a certain strength, and he boldly entered the Central Plains to compete, and it can only be said that although Li Zicheng has gained the effectiveness of some literati and strategists, these people are still too ordinary after all.

Throughout history, when the world was in turmoil, although the Central Plains was a battlefield where groups of heroes competed. And then. Although the deer are in the Central Plains, the heroes who can really join this battlefield are mostly in the four corners of the border land rather than the Central Plains.

First according to the dangerous and solid land of the four corners of the mountains and rivers, establish a base place. Because of heaven and earth, according to the geographical advantage, win people, calmly operate and then accumulate strength. Then they are eligible to enter the Central Plains competition.

If you can't even consolidate the first stage, you are not qualified to enter the Central Plains.

The Central Plains is known as the land of the four wars, in terms of the geographical situation of its body. It is difficult to divide it into four relatively independent and independent areas. The Sanchuan River Valley in the northwest, the Nanyang Basin in the southwest and the upper reaches of the Huai River in the southeast, and the Hanoi area in the northeast.

These four regions, each with different geographical conditions and facing four different directions, are of great importance to Luoyang.

What Li Zicheng now occupies is the Sanchuan River Valley to the west, but he does not control the other three sides. In this respect, Li Zicheng has already lost three-quarters of the way.

Nanyang had always been an important town under the direct control of the Chu army, and now Zuo Liangyu had withdrawn from Henan, and Zhang Shan and Cai Yuan were marching from the upper reaches of the Huai River in the southeast to the Sanchuan River Valley.

The Sanchuan River Valley is located in the northwest of Henan, between Zhongtiao Mountain, Kunshan Mountain, Xiong'er Mountain, Funiu Mountain and Song Mountain, and is formed by the alluvium of three major rivers: the Yellow River, the Yi River and the Luo River.

Luoyang, that is, in the middle.

The Sanchuan River Valley is blocked on three sides, only the north side is slightly open, but there is the Yellow River crossing, which has made up for it to a certain extent.

Surrounded by these river valleys, the surrounding areas of Luoyang can be regarded as mountains and rivers, and there are many passes that stand according to the dangers. Tongguan rejects its west, the risk of Cuihan; The tiger firmly blocked its east, choking the passage between the northern foot of Song Mountain and the Yellow River; Longmen blocks its south, and the Yihe River valley passage between Cho Song Mountain and Bear's Ear Mountain; Mengjin blocked its north and choked the Yellow River crossing; In addition, Guangcheng Pass controls the passage from the direction of the Ru River, and Yuyuan Pass controls the passage from the direction of the Yinghe River.

At this time, the Chu army was pointing straight to Luoyang along the Rushui.

This army totaled 30,000 people, consisting of a division in Huguang Town led by Zhang Shan and a division in Denglai Town led by Cai Yuan.

Including cavalry, infantry, artillery, engineers, baggage troops, etc., this is a standard Chu army, a new-style army. Both the establishment and the firepower, including their training, are completely new. Although the Chu army has expanded rapidly in the past two years, this Huguang town was also reorganized last year with the soldiers and horses of the former Changsha Township Association, plus the township corps in Hubei to train security guards. And Denglai Town is also reorganized from the Liaodong soldiers and horses of the two associations and the black flag army of the four associations.

However, under the standardized training of the Chu army system, coupled with the unified equipment configuration of the Chu army and the combination of firepower, they are still very different from the traditional army.

Most of their officers came from the old units of the Chu army, and many of the senior officers had received further training in the lecture hall. In addition, although there are a lot of recruits in the army, they have a lot of experienced instructors and non-commissioned officers, plus the artillery of each department is basically from professional officer training and training, plus a large number of equipment muskets and artillery, making this a unit that does not need much time to train individual martial arts.

In the shortest possible time, they will be able to master the technique of firearm shooting.

For the Chu army, which is mainly armed with firecrackers and with line rifle salvos as the main tactics, as long as the equipment is timely and the ammunition for training is in place, it does not take too long to quickly convert the recruits into qualified nine-headed birds.

On this still cold February morning, the people of Xiangcheng, located at the foot of the first mountain on the side of the Beiru River, suddenly noticed the appearance of a large number of cavalry.

Xiangcheng.

It belongs to Kaifeng Mansion in Henan Province and is located in the southwesternmost part of Kaifeng Mansion, and its west is Jiaxian County of Henan Province and Nanyang Mansion of Hubei Province to the south. This Xiangcheng, which is close to the Beiru River and the first mountain, can be said to be at the intersection of various provinces.

At the same time, it is also the southeasternmost city controlled by the Chuang army.

Appearing outside Xiangcheng were light cavalry from the town of Denglai, the number of a battalion.

In the Chu military system, the army is mainly divided into two categories: army and navy, of which the army has infantry, cavalry, artillery, engineers, army sailors and marines, while the navy also has sailors, artillery, engineers, baggage soldiers and marines.

The cavalry never became the main force of the Chu army, but the Chu army never neglected the role of cavalry. In the early days, when the number of Chu troops was a little smaller, the Chu army even once achieved that the infantry was equipped with horses. Although the scale of the Chu army is expanding now, it has long been impossible to equip all the infantry with horses, but the Chu army also has a lot of cavalry.

Although the cavalry of the Chu army was not large, it was clearly classified, and several cavalry units were set up according to different combat missions. The cavalry of the Chu army mainly consisted of light cavalry, heavy cavalry and firecracker cavalry.

The four types of cavalry have their own emphasis and a clear division of labor.

The largest number of them were the musket cavalry, which was actually a dual-purpose infantry and cavalry army, each of whom was equipped with horses and received dual training of cavalry and infantry, and each was equipped with a long gun and two handguns in addition to a saber. Equipped with a spear, they can be used as cavalry and used in pursuit and other tasks, but also take on rapid maneuvering, riding horses to reach the designated battlefield and then dismounting, and the formation acts as line infantry.

They were stronger than the other class of infantry, the mounted infantry, and the equestrian infantry in the infantry were only mobile musketeers, and could not fight on horseback.

With the exception of mounted infantry and musketeers, the closest cavalry to traditional cavalry was the heavy cavalry.

These cavalrymen, who were also the main force of the cavalry, were each equipped with a piece of bubble nail cotton armor, and had a shining iron cuirass weighing twenty pounds, as well as iron helmets, and thick heavy boots, and their horses were all the tallest horses, and they were covered with armor.

The heavy cavalry is not very numerous, they are a killer weapon among the various departments, and they bear the heavy responsibility of charging and breaking through the formation at a critical time. However, the weight of these heavy cavalry is too high, and they only have the ability to explode for a short time, and once they leave the war horse, it is difficult to move an inch. In the Chu army, the number of heavy cavalry was small, but it could not be ignored.

In addition, the cavalry of the Chu army also had light cavalry. Light cavalry is an important branch of the army that undertakes the tasks of reconnaissance, sentinels, messengers, liaison, and orders, and also undertakes the task of attacking the enemy's flank on the battlefield and is responsible for the pursuit mission.

The light cavalry was the most experienced and skilled cavalry, and they took on the heaviest tasks on the battlefield.

At this time, the cavalry that suddenly appeared outside Xiangcheng was a light cavalry battalion from Denglai Town.

The uniforms of the light cavalry are also mainly blue and red. However, their decoration is slightly different, their helmets have a trident, each fork has a small red flag, they also wear breeches and boots, and the blue style is hung on their shoulders.

The heavy cavalry had a small iron spear on top of their helmets, red tassels on it, and black and red draped over their bodies. The musketeers wore red cloaks, a short thorn on their heads, and a small red flag on them.

And the mounted infantry, their helmets are crowned with a blue flag.

The battalion commander with two tigers on his arm armor glanced at the city gate that was being hurriedly closed, and smiled, "Surround Xiangcheng, before the brothers in the back arrive, don't even think about flying away from Xiangcheng to ventilate the news!" (To be continued.) )

PS: Thank you for the support of Mu Yuchen and Perfect Life 1989, thank you. The cold hand has frozen, the cold in the south, it is really cold.