Chapter 12: Guerrilla Duel

As mentioned last time, Liu Hou's army was dragged into the quagmire by Lu Xun with guerrilla tactics in Hengyang.

Faced with all kinds of traps, big and small, the road was full of headaches.

In fact, most of these traps are very simple and naïve, such as digging a hole in the road, a very small pit that can sink only one foot into it, and covered with turf so that there is no problem with the appearance.

But if you step on it, your foot will sink in, which is similar to a child's prank. I believe that many rural children have played similar games when they were young.

But the bottom of these pits is covered with bamboo chips or wooden nails sharpened at the top, and stepping on the foot of straw sandals will undoubtedly be stabbed, although not fatal, but it is also annoying enough, because this wounded soldier is bound to be unable to participate in the battle in the short term, and the combat power of the Shu army is equivalent to being damaged.

There are also various forms of traps such as stilts, flying logs, etc. Most of these traps are simple and have limited damage, but there are more than enough.

Simple means easy to set up, the materials are usually taken locally, and even like a trap, there is a shovel can be set, the Eastern Wu army has sufficient manpower, and a large number of these simple traps are set up on the way through the Shu army, which makes the Shu army overwhelmed.

It's not that they can't identify and eliminate these traps, Liu Houjun has many craftsmen and many masters of mechanics, and these traps are just pediatrics for them.

The problem is that marching so carefully that at each step there is a danger of being detected for traps and, if any, eliminated, is a waste of time. And once a unit loses its mobility, it is a very dangerous thing.

Only then did Liu Hou realize that when he set up a large number of traps in Jingzhou to deal with the Wei cavalry, the other party was depressed.

Later, Guo Youzhi came up with the idea of having soldiers go to the nearby countryside to buy a large number of cattle, sheep and donkeys, and let them walk in front of the team, and use violent means to make these traps appear.

Followed by a team of sappers, with shovels in hand, quickly fill in the existing pits, as for other trigger-type traps, once triggered, they lose their power and lose their effect, but they don't need to be ignored.

Later, Liu Hou saw that the hooves and legs of the animals on the road were easily damaged by the pits and the spikes inside, so he called the craftsmen in the army to make shoes for the cattle and developed a kind of leggings made of iron sheets.

This is equivalent to equipping the legs of these animals with iron armor, which greatly increases their service life.

Later, Liu Hou found that arrows were constantly being shot at those animals from the dense forest, some of which were automatically fired by traps, and some of which were ambushed by Eastern Wu soldiers in the dense forest.

So, Liu Hou ordered people to use bamboo chips to make armor for livestock. First, cut the large bamboo with thick walls, cut the bamboo into pieces of bamboo that are the size of mahjong, and then use iron wire to stir up these bamboo pieces to make armor draped over the animals.

This is Liu Hou was inspired by the mahjong mats of later generations. As soon as he told the craftsman, the craftsman understood, because the scale armor was also produced on this principle, but the scale armor was made of metal sheets, and the gaps would be overlapped, and the process was much more complicated.

This kind of temporary armor for livestock naturally does not need to be complicated, it is enough to resist the arrows temporarily, and there is no need to consider the problem of being too bulky, no matter how heavy it is, the buffalo and the big yellow ox are not a problem. As for the weak sheep, they can only retire and become military rations.

Under this series of measures, the trap problem was solved, and although the marching speed was still very slow, it was much better than before, and the loss of personnel was much less.

In addition to traps, of course, the Eastern Wu Army inevitably arranged personnel to lurk in the mountains and forests, and from time to time released cold arrows to sneak attack. The Shu army is very experienced in dealing with this situation, and it has encountered this situation many times in the past when fighting with the barbarians in Nanzhong.

Liu Hou immediately ordered all the rattan armor soldiers to wear armor and walk on both sides, sandwiching the musketeers without armor in the middle. In this way, the cold arrows flying out of the dense forest can no longer threaten the Shu army. However, the burden of marching in rattan armor is really heavy, and it is not decent to be tired after marching every day.

Fortunately, the tradition of the Shu army is that the daily march is very short in this kind of wartime, and the traps must be eliminated first, so the troops are stop-and-go, so that the Tengjia army has sufficient rest time.

At the same time, Liu Hou also sent special forces to infiltrate the dense forest to cut off the attacking Dongwu soldiers. When he was in Nanzhong, Liu Hou formed a special combat team, which was playfully named the Cobra Force at that time. They gained a lot of valuable experience fighting the barbarians in the dense forest.

The barbarians who are good at fighting in the mountains and forests can't defeat this army, let alone the Eastern Wu soldiers. As a result, a large number of Eastern Wu soldiers lurking in the mountains and forests to ambush the Shu army were cleared.

Liu Hou also thought that the clearance speed was not fast enough, so he transferred 5,000 barbarians who were good at mountain warfare from the Tengjia Army, equipped them with advanced crossbow arrows and other equipment of the Shu Army, and joined the clearance operation. These barbarians were originally Zhuge Liang's Wudang Flying Army in history, and the Eastern Wu people fought with them in the mountains and forests, completely attacking the enemy's strengths with their own shortcomings.

This is how the shape shì was gradually reversed, Lu Xun originally thought that by splitting the large army into small troops, relying on the terrain to constantly harass and sneak attack the Shu army, he could consume a large amount of the Shu army's vital strength. Unexpectedly, I met an upgraded version of the Wudang Flying Army, which is better at harassing and sneak attacks in the mountains and forests.

In this way, it became that the vital strength of the Soochow army was greatly consumed. Of course, the Shu army also suffered a lot of losses, at least, Liu Hou believes that Lu Xun's style of play, the exchange ratio between the Shu army and the Eastern Wu army, is much greater than a head-to-head duel.

Although Lu Xun was not able to defeat the Shu army by this tactic, it can be regarded as the method that can cause the greatest losses to the Shu army at present.

In addition to small battles such as traps and dense forest sneak attacks, the Eastern Wu Army also organized several large-scale sneak attacks, including three fire attacks, five water attacks, and more than a dozen attacks relying on the terrain. After all, they have the advantage of troops, and they have enough manpower to make all kinds of attempts.

Lu Xun is a wise man, after he knew that the invulnerable armor of the Shu army was rattan armor, he quickly thought of the weakness of the rattan armor, that is, fear of fire. Therefore, the first thing he launched was a fire attack.

However, the Shu army was very cautious in its marching, strictly abiding by the marching principles such as Fenglin Mojin, and would rather detour than directly pass Guò when encountering dangerous places, and if it was really impossible to detour, it was necessary to send a large number of scouts to detect the enemy situation clearly, and then pass Guò in batches.

The choice of camp is also very particular, in a word, Liu Hou will definitely not be like the brain-dead vulture bone, and plunge the troops into a dead place like the Snake Valley. This made it impossible for Lu Xun to find good terrain to carry out a fire attack.

Later, they reluctantly launched fire attacks in some relatively narrow valleys, but to their disappointment, the Shu army's rattan armor could not be lit at all, even if there was fire oil stained on the rattan armor, these rattan armor soldiers rolled on the ground a few times, or grabbed the mud and sand to cover the fire point, and the fire could be extinguished quickly.

Since it was not a dead place, the Shu army could quickly withdraw from the setting point of the Dongwu people, so the fire attack of the Dongwu people did not have a great harvest except for burning a few livestock on the road and blackening countless rattan armor.

As for the water attack, it is nothing more than digging up the river embankment and releasing water to flood the Shu army. However, the Shu army was very vigilant on the march, and a large number of scouts must be sent to reconnoiter along the banks of each river before they reached each river. It added great difficulty to the water attack of the Soochow people.

Later, the Eastern Wu people finally found an opportunity to carry out a water attack, but because they were discovered by the scouts of the Shu army, they could only launch in advance, and in the end they only rushed out the five thousand vine armor army of the Shu army, which could not pose a threat to the Chinese army of the Shu army.

However, in the end, to the great disappointment of the Dongwu people, the rattan armor soldiers who were washed away by the water were still alive, not because they were good at water, but because the rattan armor on their bodies had the function of life jackets.

Most of the rivers here are tributaries, and compared to the Yue River, it is really a small thing, and the Yue River is such a wide river, it is not possible to completely wipe them out, let alone this kind of small stream.

Only then did the people of Eastern Wu know that the rattan armor of the Shu army was not only invulnerable, but also invulnerable, like a divine object.

Some of the musketeers were also swept away, but when they saw the flood, they immediately grabbed the vine armor soldiers beside them, and most of them also escaped with their lives in this way, but the gunpowder on their bodies was soaked and could no longer be used.

In general, the fire attack and water attack of the Eastern Wu army did not cause much damage to the Shu army in the end, but the Shu army was very wolf, and the trip was greatly delayed.

As for relying on favorable terrain to block the Shu army, it will be even more useless. In this case, the Shu army bombarded with artillery, flew into the sky with hot air balloons and threw thunderbolts to blow up, no matter what kind of terrain was pushed and blown up, and then the Shu army easily occupied the enemy's position.

In the end, the Shu army still walked to Hengyang City with difficulty, and the journey that could be completed in less than ten days was originally completed in less than ten days, and they walked for more than a month, which can really be described as turtle speed. However, compared to their turtle speed, the Xuanzhi Qin in Panyu City was even worse, and he had only finished pulling his stomach now, and was just about to set off north to catch up with Liu Hou's pace.

If it was an ordinary army, under such an attack by the Eastern Wu Army, it might never reach Hengyang City. Even if you can get there, you will definitely lose a lot.

However, although Liu Hou's Hong army came very slowly, it arrived at a good time, and the losses were not too heavy. In this guerrilla warfare confrontation, the Shu army lost more than 1,000 people, which means dead, and at least more than 2,000 wounded.

For other troops in this era, such a casualty rate is really not too heavy, after all, this is facing a sneak attack by 200,000 enemy troops.

However, in the history of the Hong army, this can be regarded as a relatively strict loss. Even if it confronts 100,000 people head-on, with the current maturing tactics of the Hong army, it may only lose a few hundred people. From this point of view, Lu Xun is indeed a person with some ability.

Compared with the losses of the Shu army, the casualties of the Eastern Wu people were several times greater, and they died at least 5,000 people this time, most of whom were killed and wounded by the Cobra special forces of the Shu army.

The two sides confronted each other under Hengyang City, and in the face of the Shu army, which only had 3 or 40,000 troops, Lu Xun did not dare to underestimate the other party at all. He now knew some of the secrets of the army of the Prince of Shu Han, and knew how terrifying their attack power was.

Lu Xun ordered Ding Feng to lead 50,000 people to confront the Shu army on the high ground on the left side of the city, ordered Zhou Tai to lead 50,000 people to confront the Shu army on the opposite bank of a river on the right, and he and Xu Sheng led 100,000 horses to respond in the city.

The three armies of Eastern Wu faintly surrounded the Shu army in the middle, which could not only respond to each other, but also have their own natural dangers to rely on, obviously afraid of the strong attack power of the Shu army. Blocked by terrain such as cities, highlands or rivers, it can prevent the Shu army from breaking through one part in one fell swoop, and the other troops will not have time to rescue.

Sure enough, Liu Hou also had a headache for such a situation. Lu Xun's simple character layout is not so simple. As soon as one is attacked, the other two will be activated to flank the enemy.

Originally, this simple formation was not difficult to break, as long as the same soldiers were divided into three ways and competed with the three roads of Dongwu respectively. Speaking of which, the number of the Hong army is too small to divide the troops and restrain the people of the three roads of Eastern Wu at the same time.

If the troops are divided, there are too few people and horses on each road, and they can't become large, whether it is a rattan armor soldier or a musketeer, they can't stop the enemy's fierce and death-defying charge.

Liu Hou, who was at a loss, had no choice but to order the troops to choose favorable terrain to set up camp and confront the Eastern Wu army for the time being. The Shu army did not attack, and the Eastern Wu army did not attack automatically, and also camped and waited for the changes.

After waiting for three days, Guan Suo brought the men and horses to recover Lingling and chased after him. It turned out that Liu Houbu was under the endless traps and sneak attacks of the Eastern Wu soldiers, and the marching speed was super slow, and during this time, Guan Suo had completed the occupation of Lingling.

Zhao Yun transferred 5,000 soldiers from the Fifth Division to take over the city defense of Lingling, and then continued to transfer manpower from the baggage team to supplement the strength of the Fifth Division. Guan Suo, on the other hand, took the soldiers who went out to fight day and night, catching up with the pace of Liu Hou's army.

Seeing Guan Suo come back, Liu Hou was overjoyed, and with the return of this group of soldiers, the strength of the Hong army was much more sufficient. Although it is still a little little, it can barely fight with the Soochow people.

The battlefield is not infinite, and there is no place where more than 200,000 troops can fight together. Although there are many people in Dongwu, they must only take turns to fight.

As long as he chooses the terrain well, sets up camps, and does not let the Dongwu people attack his troops at the same time from all directions, he doesn't care how many people the Dongwu people have.

Liu Hou also divided the troops into three routes: left, center, and right, with about 10,000 rattan armor soldiers and 2,000 musketeers on each road. Prepare to start a fight with the Eastern Wu army.

Liu Hou first chose to attack Ding Fengbu on the high ground. The reason is very simple, the easiest place for the Shu army to pass is this highland. Unlike the Zhou Taibu on the other side of the river, if you want to fight them, you must first have the tools to cross the river, and you must also have a strong force to suppress them to prevent the enemy from attacking halfway.

As for the city, it is even more difficult to fight, after all, the city wall is not so easy to break through, and there are 100,000 Eastern Wu soldiers in the city, it is not so easy to gnaw on. In line with the principle of picking soft persimmons, Liu Hou decided to hit Ding Fengbu first.

Although Liu Hou didn't know if Ding Feng was the weakest among the three troops of Eastern Wu, they knew that the high ground occupied by Ding Feng was the easiest to go up, and this reason Liu Hou thought was enough, but in fact, it was just his lazy thinking that was doing tricks.

ps. There is not enough time, and it is too late to segment, so I can only send a 4,000-word chapter together