The spearman is the nemesis of the cavalry, but this life is not absolute. First of all, if the spear army is loose, it is inefficient, and if it is dense, it is not easy to turn, and it is easy for the cavalry to rush to the flank, or even copy the back road. What if there were spearmen on all sides? The march is slow, the cavalry can not only ride and shoot at it, but also take you around in circles and walks, and if you can't run a few hundred paces, the spear phalanx will inevitably be confused, thus revealing the flaws all over your body.

Unless they are all armored and unarmed with crossbows, the only means of attack is to ram, and the main general will only ram...... The main responsibility for the cavalry of the spear array is also on the cavalry generals. In these years, the level of armor has gradually improved, and the range of protection has become larger and larger - the Han army has barrel sleeves and both arms are protected, which has never been done in previous generations - but there is no armored cavalry, theoretically even if the armor is the most advanced, it is only between light and heavy cavalry, and it must be equipped with a bow and crossbow. Not only that, the cavalry lance is generally nearly two zhang long - the so-called "zhangba snake spear" is also, much longer than the infantry spear, even if the head-on enemy, as long as the horse's head is not deliberately hit on the tip of the human spear, it may not be down.

Just like Xiahoudun at this time, he didn't think about it, and relied on his hundreds of horseback to rush directly into the enemy's spear forest - if he really did that, then he would die, and he would leave the name of a fool - as soon as he approached the enemy formation, he first turned his horse sideways, and then swept it horizontally. Immediately, the first line of Cao Bing's spear formation had also been killed, and both sides used spears to stab, and when even if the blood splashed and more than a dozen people lay down, their respective arrays were shaken.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, Xiahoudun commanded the cavalry to find a gap and fight into the enemy's formation, trying to tear up the gap. Behind the spearmen, there are usually sword and shield soldiers. However, the knife is short and the shield is small. Unable to fight the cavalry head-on. If you want to stop Xiahoudun from continuing to move forward, you can only rely on the generals to fight.

So Zhou Tai and Zhou Youping came out and directly met Xiahou Yuanrang.

The two horses circled, and in an instant they intersected seven or eight rounds. Xiahou said in his heart that he was indeed worthy of being a Jiangdong general who hit Gao Xing hard, and he was skilled in martial arts, although he was a southerner, he could still see the equestrian skills. If this is a solo duel, Xiahoudun is confident that he will defeat Zhou Tai within thirty times - of course. With Zhou Tai's bravery, it is easy to defeat him, and it may be difficult to run away or kill him - but now it is a melee between the two armies, and both of them are the main generals in the front line, so they must guard against the enemy's small soldiers, and they must also control the rhythm of the battle at any time, and they can only take out five points of strength and spirit to fight immediately, so it is not easy to distinguish between victory and defeat.

A brutal battle began in the front, and at this time, the two wings of the Cao army gradually came up. The number of Jiangdong soldiers was originally small. It is also densely guarded, and the width of the front is far inferior to Cao's army. Therefore, the formation of the Cao army gradually changed from a cone to a horizontal formation, and from a horizontal formation to a geese marching, the wings were opened, and the arrows rained down - just like "Sun Bin Art of War. "Ten Arrays" in the cloud: "The formation of geese walking, so the shooting also." ”

Naturally, the Jiangdong array also returned with bows and crossbows. Because the array is tightly arranged, one shield can cover three soldiers at the same time, so although Cao's arrows rain is dense, the damage to the enemy is not very great - if you shoot like this, I am afraid that all the arrows will be shot out, and the enemy formation will not be broken. Therefore, Le Jin and Li Dian commanded the crowd to gradually press closer, and began to cooperate with Xiahoudun to attack the enemy from the white blades on both wings.

Cao Cao stood on the chariot and saw very clearly, although the two wings were assigned the same task, and the two generals had almost the same grasp of the situation, but the two of them had very different ways of coping. Le Jin is a fierce general, he is the same as Xiahoudun, he takes the lead and goes straight to the enemy's formation; Li Dian has always been known for his caution, and although his momentum is not fierce enough, he seems to be very calm. So he turned his head sideways and asked Xun You: "Who will make the contribution of the second son first?" ”

Xun Gongda replied: "If the face is sparse, or the enemy is not fine, Wen Qian wins; However, with today's trend, Mancheng is also. "For the elite soldiers in a dense formation, I am afraid that there is not much gain by just rushing forward.

Sure enough, the front Xiahoudun was blocked by Zhou Tai, and it was difficult to break through the enemy's array, and the same was true of Lejin on one side, who took the lead in attacking two or three times, but could not shake the formation of the Jiangdong Army. He was facing the Jiangdong veteran Huang Gai Huang Gongfu, after all, he was old, and he had exchanged a few tricks with Le Jin, and he felt deeply invincible, so he retreated into the formation and ordered his subordinates: "But the spears are dense, and it is okay to shoot them with bows and arrows." ”

After fighting with each other for a while, the number of arrows in Lejin's department became more and more, and the array was a little scattered. Huang Gai seized this opportunity in time, and suddenly sent Xiao to launch a counterattack against Dong Xi, with spears like a forest, and instantly forced Lejin's department back more than ten steps. Immediately, Dong Xi led the sword and shield men to look at a gap and rushed straight over, and immediately cut the enemy formation into two sections.

Le Wenqian saw that the situation was not good, so he had to retreat. Huang Gai ordered the arrow to be released again, and Cao Bing suffered a lot of damage, and even Le Jin was hit by an arrow in his shoulder, and he fell on the saddle with an "oops". His troops hurriedly guarded the main general from the battlefield left and right, and the eastern flank of Cao's army collapsed.

The collapse of the eastern flank affected the middle road, and Xiahoudun did not dare to rush anymore, so he made a trick to get rid of Zhou Tai and ordered to retreat for the time being. Originally, Cao's army retreated in formation, but it was not a big defeat, and it was withdrawn to reorganize in a stone's throw away, and there was the possibility of a comeback, and at the speed of the dense formation, it was impossible to catch up at all. But who would have thought that Dongwu's "several arrays" suddenly turned, Zhou Tai went left to assist Han Dang against Li Dian, Huang Gai did not chase Le Jin, but swept over from the flank, and gave a hard blow to Xiahou Xuan's subordinates, who were retreating.

If Xun was here, he would definitely be taken aback and blurt out - "Car hanging!" In fact, the Uesugi family's "car suspension array", which was later boasted by Japanese folklore, is a circular formation, which is a rolling wheel and suddenly forward. The power of this formation lies in the fact that the pawn of the striker can be changed at any time, if the enemy does not move, it is equivalent to a hundred people taking turns to punch an opponent, and it is not a punch but an uppercut; However, the rarity of this is that the various departments must cooperate very closely, but if one of them is not connected, it is easy to expose flaws and be taken advantage of by the enemy.

Jiangdong's "car suspension array" is just a prototype, fortunately, all the generals have been on the battlefield for a long time, and they cooperate with each other very tacitly. Xiahoudun couldn't stop the momentum of defeat and retreated, and was forced to continue to retreat; Li Dian's troops did not suffer much losses, and Li Mancheng saw that the opportunity was quick, and hurriedly retreated, trying to temporarily disengage from the enemy's white-knuckle contact. As a result, Jiangdong's dense formation dispersed. It turned into a hook array—and it was Huang Gai who protruded forward. The left hook is open. Nai Han Dang, Zhou Taiye.

Cao Cao saw the momentum on the chariot, not only did not panic, but clapped his hands and shouted: "Wonderful! Xun Yu reminded him next to him, don't just cheer for the enemy, hurry up and give the order - this is the right time! Cao Cao smiled slightly, and then raised the small flag again.

In the sound of drums, a group of cavalry on the left and right of Cao Jun suddenly stood out, accelerating instantly. After the direct insertion into the Jiangdong Army. On the east side is the elite "tiger and leopard cavalry" of the Cao army led by Cao Xiu, and on the west side is the cavalry led by Zhang He, each with no less than 500 horsemen, like two iron pincers, moving forward and wedged into the enemy formation.

This is Cao Cao's plan in advance. 60,000 against 40,000, fighting in a frontal formation, to say that the victory was not small, but Zhou Yu was used to fighting, in case he took advantage of a loophole in a small detail. The odds of victory and defeat are still likely to tilt; Second, if the Jiangdong Army retreats back to the river after the defeat, Cao's army will have no pursuit. It's hard to expand the results of the battle, so even if he wins this battle, it doesn't mean much - Cao Cao doesn't have the strength to fight them for a long time.

Therefore, when the two armies clash, they might as well temporarily show setbacks, retreat to the north, attract the Jiangdong Army to pursue, create a certain gap between the array and the barracks, and then attack left and right with elite cavalry, wedge into the formation, break their camps, and demoralize them. At the end of the day, the frontal army stabilized its position and launched a strong counterattack, which not only won, but also most likely made the Jiangdong Army dumplings on land, making it impossible to board the ship.

Well, dumplings are "invented" by Xun, Cao Cao loves them very much, but he is used to eating simple food, and he usually eats more vegetarian dumplings, not like Hongfu, can the dumplings be called dumplings without meat? Vegetarian stuffing? It's heresy!

Cao Cao planned well, and as for how to retreat to lure the enemy, he handed it over to the front-line generals to judge the situation and plan independently-he couldn't retreat too obviously, so that Zhou Yu could see through it at a glance. Originally, Cao Cao thought that our army was strong and well-armed, so we had to kill for an hour or two first, and when the first-line damage was too great and the soldiers were in decline, he pretended that the follow-up troops could not follow up in time, and then retreated, just like the real thing. But I didn't expect the Jiangdong soldiers to be very brave, Zhou Yu set up the formation skillfully, and took the initiative to kill the Cao army - so he applauded, not only to praise Zhou Yu, but also to be proud: Save me how much effort!

If you really fight the front line for an hour or two, there will be no less loss of soldiers and horses—although the enemy's damage will also be great—and now that this retreat, not too many people have died on both sides. Wouldn't it be the icing on the cake if you could get the opportunity to play tricks and finally win the battle on the premise of killing as few people as possible?

Most of the main forces of the Cao army came from the Central Plains, and there were a lot of war horses, especially since Xun annexed the Southern Xiongnu Huchuquan Department, Zhao'an Xianbei Tuoba and other departments, and then Cao De guarded Mushuozhou and Cao Cao pacified Youzhou, there were a considerable number of good horses from the north who paid tribute or sold them one after another, making the proportion of Cao Jun's horses the highest in China - even Lu Bu and Han Sui in Liangzhou could not compare. In this southern expedition, because of the unaccustomed water and soil, the death and casualty rate of war horses was very high, so high that even Cao Cao would feel distressed when he thought about it, but the remaining number was still not comparable to the Jiangdong Army.

Jiangdong does not produce horses at all, but there are a lot of donkeys and mules, and the war horses in the Jiangdong army can make more than 500 generals have one horse, then it is already the sky. The Cao family was different, even if a large number of war horses died, even if the part of the lower quality that could only be used for carts and packs was discarded—this part, which could be transported to Jiangdong and be regarded as a treasure—there were still nearly two thousand good horses to choose from. Cao Cao used these good horses to form today's raid troops, both in terms of speed and impact, which were difficult for the Jiangdong Army to match, or even unimaginable.

In Cao Cao's opinion, as long as the Jiangdong army formation can be induced to move to the north, leaving a gap between the array and the base camp, the two cavalry can be wedged in, even if it is difficult to destroy the enemy's base camp for a while, Zhou Yu reacted quickly and returned in time to help, but cut off the Jiangdong army's way to board the boat, and the enemy's morale will also fall greatly. This army takes advantage of the situation to advance, and it is undoubtedly victorious!

But if Zhou Yu is broken, Xiling can also go down with a drum, build a fortress along the river, block the southern army, even if he fails to take the entire Jingzhou and is forced to withdraw his troops, then this trip is not in vain. In time, Liu Biao and Sun Quan will definitely bow down and become ministers, and the world can be determined! (To be continued......)

PS: I have something to go out for a while today, I just got home after dinner, and I'm late for the update, sorry.