Chapter 3: 100,000 Barbarians

As mentioned in the last episode, Liu Hou led his Hong army to come out of the nest and go to crusade against the rebels of Yonghong and Meng Huo. The army stayed overnight all the way, all the way south, and gradually reached the rugged and difficult mountain forest.

The so-called Nanzhong region is quite south of the Dadu River in Sichuan Province and Yunnan and Guizhou provinces in later generations. Liu Hou suffered a lot along the way, so he had to order the army to slow down and set up camp after advancing 30 miles a day.

Although Liu Hou had foreseen that the trip would be difficult before his departure and had made a lot of preparations for it, the difficulties were still beyond his expectations.

In order to prevent mosquito bites, Liu Hou's army wore long clothes and trousers, shoes and socks on their feet, and a hat on their heads, and a layer of light veil under the hat to cover their heads, faces, and necks.

In addition, Liu Hou brought a lot of medicines to treat mosquito bites, as well as sulfur and other things to repel snakes and insects. After camping every day, the first thing I do is to get some firewood and grass, smoke the camp with thick smoke, and drive away snakes, insects, rats and ants.

Such measures were effective, not many people were injured by snakes and insects, and very few were reduced for this. However, the side effects are also very strict, the main thing is that the marching speed is too slow, about the same as the speed of ants;

The second negative effect is that it is very hot, June and July are the hottest days of the year, and everyone can imagine the feeling of walking through the subtropical jungle in long sleeves and long pants. Liu Hou doesn't have much to do, if he doesn't wear it like this, he will be bitten by poisonous insects or even bite to death, which will be even worse. Liu Hou could only give the sergeants more salt, let them drink more salt water to replenish the lost electrolytes, and let the military doctors regularly boil some herbal tea for everyone to drink, so as to minimize the number of people suffering from heat stroke.

The third adverse effect is that Liu Hou's troops are like a huge beacon tower, no matter where they camp, the enemy can see it dozens of miles away, and there is no way to see it, and the whole camp is full of smoke and mosquitoes, as long as it is not a blind person who sees the smoke that is a thousand times larger than the scale of the beacon fire, he knows what is going on.

In order to march in the mountains and forests, Liu Hou also made some preparations, one of which was that everyone wore leggings, which seems simple, but it can effectively reduce the bruising of the calves due to excessive walking, so that the feet will not be swollen after walking for a day. In addition, the reason why Liu Hou set up camp after walking 30 miles every day was to leave enough time for the soldiers to rest and soak their feet in salt water.

I am afraid that there is only one army that soaks its feet in salt water during marching and fighting. Guo Youzhi persuaded many times, saying that this would be arrogant to these big-headed soldiers, and if they could not develop the character of bearing hardships and standing hard work, their combat effectiveness would definitely be greatly reduced. Liu Hou refused to listen to anything, and insisted on doing so at the expense of wasting a lot of salt and time every day.

Liu Hou also equipped a group of men and horses with mountain knives, and let them go ahead, cutting down thorns and shrubs that grew too luxuriantly along the road, so as to clear a relatively comfortable road for the army behind.

In this way, after stumbling all the way, Liu Hou finally led his army into Yuewang County (now Xichangdong, Sichuan). Here, he finally encountered Meng Shu's army.

Although Liu Hou thought about the story of Zhuge Liang's seven captures and seven verticals along the way, he also wanted to learn from him to capture Meng Huo seven times like this, so that Meng Huo would be convinced and gain the heart of the barbarians, but after encountering Meng Huojun, he couldn't think of any way to capture Meng Huo, even once.

People are hiding in an army of 100,000, how do you go to capture their commanders alive? Liu Hou looked at the other side of the mountain, there were people all over the sky, and he couldn't help but worry, how to fight this battle? What intrigues can be applied at this time?

There is a tenfold disparity in the strength of the two sides, and the gap in strength is even greater than when facing Xu Huang. These barbarians are walking like a fly in the mountains and forests, on the contrary, their own people cannot move an inch, and if the army is defeated, they may not even be able to escape.

Liu Hou occupied a hill, camped his men and horses halfway up the mountain, and climbed to the top of the mountain, which was not too high, to observe the enemy's situation. I saw him take out a pair of monoculars, stretch the tube and look at the enemy camp.

The last time he returned to Chengdu from Jingzhou, he found that the institute had finally ground out the concave and convex lenses that he had asked for a long time.

He had arranged the project a few years ago, and he had hired the best jewellers to do it, using highly translucent crystal. This kind of thing is too expensive at this time, and it is also due to Liu Hou's strong family background, so he bought a batch of crystals from all over the world for these people to study.

At first, these craftsmen grinded many pieces of crystal, and they couldn't grind out the concave and convex lenses that met Liu Hou's requirements. It wasn't until Liu Hou returned from Jingzhou that they finally grinded out these two lenses. Liu Hou was overjoyed and immediately asked for two pieces to let the craftsman build this telescope.

Liu Hou asked those craftsmen to set up an optical research institute to produce and research various optical instruments. In addition to producing more telescopes, Liu Hou gave them the task of carrying out research on microscopes and astronomical telescopes.

Of course, this is not a matter that can produce results in one or two years, and even Liu Hou is mentally prepared that it is difficult for their research to make progress before the high transparency glass comes out, but some things need to be done in advance, especially this kind of research that does not know how long it will take to produce results.

The sky is so blue that it feels greasy, the sun has just set, and the sunset on the horizon has burned half of the sky red, and it seems that tomorrow will be a good day. Liu Hou observed the enemy camp with a telescope, and couldn't help but gasp, only to see that the other party's camp tent was densely covered with three hills, how many people must be there?

It seems that there are really 100,000 people in Meng Huo this time, and the ancient people generally like to exaggerate the strength of the army in order to achieve the purpose of scaring the other party, for example, during the Red Cliff War, Cao Cao himself only had 150,000 people, plus the army, that is, more than 200,000, so he dared to call himself an army of 800,000, and the water was not ordinarily large.

Therefore, looking at the strength of the troops that the ancients said when they were fighting, it may be the actual number of people to fold what they said in half and then fold it in half. This Meng Shu is so real, saying that there are 100,000 people, there are really 100,000 people. Doesn't it mean that these barbarians are very sparsely populated? Where are there so many soldiers and horses?

As everyone knows, Meng Shu concentrated nine ditches and eighteen villages in the four counties of Qike, Yuewang, Zhuti, and Jianning, and seventy-two large and small barbarian tribes. This tribe gave out five hundred, that one thousand, and even one or two hundred, and in this way they put together 100,000 horses for him.

Although the number is frightening to death, it can be imagined how much combat effectiveness the troops put together in this way can have. Although each of them is known to be brave and good at fighting, and they are not afraid of death when they fight, but there is no organization and no discipline, and the more people there are, the more people are prone to accidents, and it is better to have these people than not.

Sure enough, after Liu Hou woke up from the shock of seeing the scale of the other party's military camp, he carefully observed the details of the military camp and found that the other party's military camp was in a mess everywhere. There are piles in the east and piles in the west, and the camps are completely out of order. The barbarians in the barracks also scurried around, some eating, singing and dancing around a bonfire, some drinking, and many fighting.

The most outrageous thing is that Liu Hou still saw women, and it was nothing to see women, and he even saw a few field battles from the telescope, which really opened Liu Hou's eyes.

The army has always been a forbidden area for women, and it has always been the case, and the more famous the general, the more he will abide by this iron law. If an army accompanied a woman to the barracks, it would be not long before the army was defeated.

Liu Hou looked at it and couldn't help but be happy. It turned out that his opponent turned out to be such a rabble. There is no comparison with Xu Huang's troops at all, and if he can defeat Xu Huang, he will definitely be able to defeat them.

Seeing this, Liu Hou no longer had the heart to think about any conspiracies, nor did he think about any seven captures and seven verticals, to deal with such a rabble, he only needed to crush the past in a dignified manner.

Liu Hou went down the mountain, ordered a night's rest, and the next day sent troops to confront the barbarians. Guo Youzhi hurriedly dissuaded, saying that the thief army was powerful and it was advisable to think in the long run. Liu Hou pursed his lips and said to Guo Youzhi, if you want to discuss it in the long run, you can go and discuss it yourself, I will go back to sleep, if you can think of any good plan before tomorrow, we will use your strategy, if there is no good plan, we will call it directly.

"This, this ......" Guo Youzhi was dumbfounded by Liu Hou's words. This prince, how can he be so irresponsible, has he become a descendant of the prince?

I was trying to discuss military aircraft with him, why did the prince leave the next sentence and run away? He knew that his crown prince was very intelligent, and he was inspired by the last brainstorming meeting in Jingzhou, and he believed that one person is short, and two people are long. He also deliberately pulled Fei Yi over, hoping to gather the wisdom of the three of them and brainstorm a good plan to solve the current dilemma.

How do you know that the prince reversed the past style of being a polite corporal, polite, and planning before acting, and so directly refused to discuss strategies with the two of them, did he really want to fight these barbarians like this by rushing and ramming?

Even if you have the advantage of firearms, it will not be so easy to defeat the hundreds of thousands of barbarians.

Liu Houcai ignored these two people, he was tired and died after rushing for so long, it was better to go back to sleep early, so he didn't want to spend his brains to stay up all night with them and think of some strategies.

After he saw the barbarian camp, he was completely relieved, such an unorganized and undisciplined force would never be able to break through his own musketeer defense, if it was a tiger and leopard riding himself, he was still a little afraid, relying on these barbarians to charge? Forget it, I must have brought food to myself.

The next day, Yin Shi cooked, ordered troops at Mao Shi, and then went out of the camp to fight against Meng Huo. Guo Youzhi and Fei Yi followed Liu Hou with four panda eyes, and they discussed it all night last night and didn't come up with any good countermeasures.

There is no need to think about water attack, there is no river here, fire attack cannot be used, there is abundant rain here, the grass and trees are verdant and wet by dew, unless there is the legendary oil, otherwise there will be ghosts who can burn.

As for the division of troops and sneak attacks, there are barbarians all over the mountains, the disparity in strength is already enough, and it is easier to be crushed by people if they divide the troops, besides, they are camped on the opposite mountain, condescending, every move of their side can be seen clearly, what movement of men and horses will be known at any time, so how can they sneak attack?

After thinking about it all night, it was dawn before I knew it, and I couldn't think about it, so I had to follow the prince to fight to see if there was any good way for this prince, who had always been full of magical colors.