The defenders of Cairo City in Shan Da County left without a fight, making Li Yongji's painstakingly designed frog jumping tactics a joke, and the other party's act of setting a fire, coupled with the placing of blocking ropes and stakes to block ships in the river in advance, also made the task force's attack team unable to pursue quickly, and could only watch the other party escape.

Later, after Li Yongji and his large army arrived, he could only obediently go ashore and set up a nearby resettlement point to receive refugees in Cairo City, while sending people to clean up the river.

Although everyone was scolding the federal army for its cruelty and shamelessness, they actually thought of the trick of Jianbi Qingye, but in any case, this trick was indeed very useful, at least in the short term, blocking the attack of the alliance army and the Chinese, and it was no longer possible to use the river to advance rapidly.

Moreover, it is impossible for the refugees in Cairo to ignore it, although it was the Union Army that set the fire, but when these Americans came out to ask the Union Army for food, drink, and accommodation, they would be able to www.uuxs.cc Chinese it, and the Union Army would definitely take care of it.

In this way, according to the established plan, the Chinese expeditionary force led by Li Yongji was responsible for clearing the river, and the coalition army led by General Charles was responsible for repairing the city of Cairo and relocating the refugees in the city.

Cairo is a small town-like city with a very low terrain, so although it has little potential for development, it is now a very important hub to occupy and cut off the connection between the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.

Although it cannot be said that the connection between the East and the West of the United States will be severed, after all, they still have railways in the north, but at least half of this connection will be broken, and it will also increase their transportation costs, and at the same time, the blow to the morale of the Union army is also quite severe.

In addition, according to the information that Li Yongji has just received, the special detachment he sent mixed with Confederate soldiers has been quite successful in its tactics of breaking diplomatic relations in eastern Nashville, and has already seized two trains one after another, the locomotives of these two trains have been completely destroyed, and the contents of the trains have also been transported away by the Confederate troops on the spot, with the result that the Union Army's train transportation to Nashville has almost stopped.

As Li Yongji thought, the number of locomotives of the Union Army at this time is quite limited, and trains are needed everywhere, so it is impossible to throw trains in the direction of Nashville indefinitely, as long as they continue to play and bomb trains, especially their locomotives, then sooner or later the Union Army will not be able to support it, and it will definitely stop transporting supplies by train to the direction of Nashville.

Of course, now that the Union Army has stopped train transportation and no longer uses trains to send supplies to Nashville, it is also because the two rivers of the Ohio River and the Cumberland River are still in their hands, and once this river is also out of control, and the train transportation is unreliable, then Nashville is really a turtle in the urn.

Why? The reason is very simple, although Nashville is a big city, but the population of the city is quite large, including 150,000 troops, plus citizens, then the whole city has at least 400,000 people, not to mention these 400,000 people, the daily food consumption is not a small number.

In other words, a city like Nashville cannot be separated from supplies from the outside world, especially since Nashville is now on the front line, and needs more supplies.

Once the two lines of railway and river transportation are cut off, then Nashville will not last long, and will definitely surrender to the Chinese and the Allied forces like Vicksburg in another time and space.

This is the so-called trapping strategy, which is cruel and lengthy, but it is very effective and can greatly reduce one's losses.

You must know that Nashville is a city that has been fortified, and its attack is not much more difficult than that of Vicksburg, if you attack directly, even if it is the Dream Division led by Li Yongji himself, I am afraid that there will be many losses, so the best way is not to attack and let them die by themselves.

Once the river and railroad lines were cut off, the defenders of Nashville would be left with only three options: to continue to be trapped in the city, to retreat eastward, or to storm Memphis.

It seems that there are three choices, but in fact, any one choice is a dead end, not to mention the one that sits in the city of sorrow, the remaining two roads, whether it is retreating to the east or storming Memphis, are looking for death.

Why?

Let's talk about the retreat road first, the 150,000 army is not a small number, especially the modern army that lacks means of communication and is very inefficient. With so many troops lacking the means of communication and mobility, the retreat itself is a big project, and it is not something that can be walked away, because when they start to retreat, the people's hearts will be scattered. At that time, once the Chinese and the allied army launched a tail-end pursuit, it would be easy to collapse the retreating 150,000 federal army.

Throughout the ages, there have been countless examples of battles that have been crushed because of poor retreat, not only in ancient armies, but also in modern armies in the twenty-first century.

Therefore, the retreat is actually a difficult tactic, especially the retreat of the front-line troops, if it is not a well-trained ace army, it is easy to mess up.

Obviously, the 150,000 troops in Nashville seem to be a lot, but most of them are improvised volunteer troops, and they are definitely not well-trained, so once the retreat begins, it will definitely be a catastrophe.

Speaking of attacking Memphis, this is not a good idea, because although the number of defenders in Memphis is now smaller, they are the defenders, and Memphis City is easy to defend and difficult to attack, and there is also the fire cooperation of the Chinese.

Therefore, if you want to take Memphis, you must be at least mentally prepared to sacrifice more than 30,000 people. But it is clear that although Nashville has 150,000 men, they will definitely not be able to play a tactical operation that can withstand 30,000 casualties.

Without 30,000 casualties, with the medical level and mental state of this era, as long as they lose 10,000 people, no, as long as the casualties exceed 5,000, or even 3,000 people, they will lose their offensive ability and will not be able to attack Memphis.

After all, this is the army of the sixties of the nineteenth century, and neither the organizational ability nor the ideological control ability can be compared with the era of the First World War, so it is difficult to expect to send a large number of soldiers to death to achieve victory.

In fact, if we take a closer look at the history of mankind, we can know that the more advanced science and technology, the greater the scale of casualties in war, and this so-called scientific and technological progress is not only the progress of weapons and equipment, but also the progress of thinking.

Human fear of death is an instinct, so unless the human mind is controlled by a coercive thing, such as patriotism, nationalism, militarism, etc., brainwashed and diluted the instinct of fear of death, can we face death without fear.

But in the sixties of the nineteenth century, this kind of thinking was not perfect, at least the Americans did not have this kind of thinking, so their casualty tolerance was within the normal range.

The so-called normal casualty tolerance is the ratio between the number of casualties of a unit and the total number of troops.

Generally speaking, if a unit suffers more than 20 percent casualties, the unit loses its offensive capability, and if the casualties exceed 30 percent, the unit will collapse and must be reorganized.

Of course, this law is mostly applicable to regular armies with average morale, especially large troops, and if it is a small number of elite troops with particularly high morale, then it is necessary to say two things, as for the militia, the casualties will collapse if they exceed one achievement.

Therefore, the so-called casualty bearing capacity actually has a lot to do with the morale of this army, the higher the morale, the higher the bearing, and the lower the morale, the lower the bearing.

If Nashville's 150,000 troops were the Imperial Army or the Red Army in another time and space, with explosive morale, they would definitely be able to break Memphis, but they weren't, so they were doomed to be unable to break through Memphis' defenses.

In short, the casualty bearing rate of a unit actually has a great deal to do with the morale of the troops, and the improvement of this morale has a relationship with many aspects, such as the training level of officers and men, the level of education, the level of thinking, the number of victories, and even the leadership of the generals.

The so-called patriotism is more embodied in those middle classes, and those Americans from the poor class at the bottom cannot shed their blood for the so-called abolition of slavery or the maintenance of national unity.

Second, the training level of these American officers and soldiers is also very average, most of them have only been trained for a month and then hurriedly sent to the front line, in fact, they still know nothing about the war, they have only learned to obey orders, but this kind of obedience is a kind of inertia, once the casualties are too large, they will soon be cut off.

In the same way, most of these soldiers have not experienced any vicious battles, let alone tasted any victories, so it is nonsense to expect to use victories to cultivate high morale.

Finally, there is the leadership of the generals.

There is no doubt that the commander of the Nashville garrison, James Murphy. McPherson is a good general, but not a character general. He can do everything and make his deployment watertight, but he can't have the Sherman personality and can't use words or actions on the battlefield to motivate his soldiers.

In other words, James. McPherson wasn't a morale-boosting general, he was just a good organiser.

In this way, Nashville's 150,000 people look very powerful, but in fact, in the face of the threat from Memphis, they are only more defensive and less offensive.

Once such an army loses external supplies and finds itself in a dilemma, there are only two results: either defeat and surrender, or surrender on its own initiative!

"So, this place in Smithland, we are determined to win!" Li Yongji pointed his finger at the place that symbolized Smithland on the map, looked up and said to General Charles of the Union Army, "General Charles, since Cairo has become like this, there is no point in you continuing to defend here, because you can no longer play the task of containing the enemy army."

Therefore, I think you should leave five thousand men here to guard against St. Louis, and by the way, maintain order in the area, and let the rest go with us to attack Smithland. ”

"I'm not against attacking Smithland." Charles frowned, "But is it okay to leave only five thousand men to defend here?" It is important to know that there are at least 50,000 Union troops in the St. Louis direction. ”

"Don't worry." Li Yongji smiled and shook his head, "Although there are still 50,000 people in St. Louis, it will be difficult to defeat your 5,000 people in a short period of time unless they come out."

Besides, although we are going to attack Smithland, we have the river transportation, we have our radio communication system, and we have our spies in St. Louis, so even if we are in the front, we can know what is going on here.

If Cairo is actually attacked, or if there are signs of attack, we can always use ships to bring back troops in advance. This is the advantage of having the power of mobility, being able to give full play to our advantages in mobility, and we do not have to divide our troops everywhere, so there will be no danger.

Of course, normally speaking, it is impossible for the Union army in St. Louis to attack us, because they do not have the strength to match our fleet, and once they do not have a strong fleet, they cannot control the Mississippi River, and without the control of the river, they will lose the ability to attack along the river.

So, as long as they are not stupid, they will definitely not attack Cairo, in fact, if we don't fight them in the case of losing the river control area, they will shout God bless! ”

Hearing Li Yongji say this, General Charles nodded, obviously agreeing with this point of view.

Indeed, in this era, most of the attacks of large armies must rely on transportation routes such as rivers, railways, or highways, otherwise, there will be no convenient transportation of supplies, and there will be no way to support the long-term operations of large armies.

In the past, due to the relationship between the Mississippi River, most of the routes from St. Louis to Cairo were directly transported through the guò river, and the transportation modes such as railways and highways were relatively lagging behind.

Therefore, whether it is to attack Kairo from St. Louis or St. Louis from Cairo, it must rely on the Mississippi River.

"Okay, I agree." Charles nodded, "But I still have one request, and that is that since we are going to fight together this time, not separately, I ask you to treat you equally in terms of supplies." I mean, we won't fight with you for weapons, but in terms of food, our people must always be the same as you Chinese, right? ”

"Why do you mention this again?" Li Yongji frowned, "Didn't you say at the beginning, the logistics systems of each other's troops will not interfere with each other, and everyone will do it according to the original standards, don't you think it's too much for you to make this request this time?" ”

"I don't think it's too much." Charles smiled, "Originally, the task I received was only to attack and contain Cairo, and there was no order to continue to attack Smithland, but now you ask me to lead troops to Smithland, which is an additional request, to help you."

Since we are helping you and working for you, it is only right that you provide us with the corresponding logistics during the attack on Smithland. ”

"Help us?" Li Yongji also smiled, "Are you mistaken?" Who are we helping with you? We're here to help you throughout, right? Now you're helping us in reverse? No fever, right? ”

"Then I don't care." The general, Charles, spread his hands out, "I have been instructed to fight to Cairo, and now that my purpose has been accomplished, I have the right to stand still."

You have to figure it out, although our two armies are an alliance, they have independent command authority for each other, and I can't command you, and you don't expect to be able to command us casually.

So, if you really want us to sell our lives, show some sincerity. I don't expect you to give much, but at least my people will work hard for you, and they must be treated the same as your soldiers, right? Am I asking too much? ”

"You!" Li Yongji raised his eyebrows, and just wanted to refute, but after thinking about it, it seems that he can also get a lot of benefits by doing so, after all, there is a good saying, it is difficult to go from luxury to frugality, once this US army enjoys its own treatment, I am afraid that it will eat the marrow in the future, and it will no longer be able to do without itself.

Thinking of this, Li Yongji smiled again: "It's not too much, it's not too much." ”

"Oh?" Faced with Li Yongji's attitude, Charles was also a little surprised, because he really didn't expect this General Li to agree.

"So, you're agreeing to my request?" Charles asked cautiously.

"yes, why not." Li Yongji smiled and said, "You want to be treated with my soldiers, right?" Yes, no problem, but I also have a request, that is, if you want to enjoy the treatment of our army, you must bear the corresponding obligations, and you must accept my command unconditionally, can you agree to this? ”

"Agreed, of course agreed!" Charles's eyes lit up, "We have enjoyed your treatment, so naturally we are the mercenaries you have hired." Since he is a mercenary, he should listen to his employer and serve his employer. ”

"That's good." Li Yongji smiled and nodded.

"Well, can you ask another question?" Charles suddenly said with some embarrassment.

"What's the problem?"

"That is, since they are hired by you, is the treatment of the officers the same as that of your Chinese officers?"

"Hahaha, of course, of course it's the same." Li Yongji laughed, "For example, General Charles, you are a brigadier general, and you can enjoy the treatment of our army's brigadier general during your acceptance of our army's command." ”

"Really?" Charles's eyes lit up, "Don't lie to me? ”

"Of course I don't lie to you." Li Yongji nodded, "But there is one thing I have to say in advance, that is, this employment can only be our private matter, can we do it or not, do you understand what I mean?" ”

"Yes, of course."

"Good." Li Yongji nodded, "Then let's officially sign a secret agreement when we go back......"

"Wait a minute!" Charles suddenly said, "Why do you have to sign an agreement?" ”

"Of course." Li Yongji nodded, "If you don't sign the agreement in black and white, what if you don't admit it when you turn around?" So this is a piece of evidence, and it has to be signed!

But don't worry, this is just our private secret agreement, no outsiders will know about it, as long as you perform your duties well and don't play tricks with me, as soon as this private employment is over, this agreement will be destroyed, and no evidence will be left, after all, this matter is a risky scandal for you, so why not for me? ”R1152