Chapter 128: Walking to the Wheat City

It is said that Liu Hou led the troops to rush all the way to the south, and finally broke out of the encirclement of the Wei army, which not only means that they are out of danger, but at the same time, because they can finally connect with the baggage team, a lot of materials can be replenished, and now the Shu army needs to replenish the most is rockets.

Previously blocked by Guo Huai's troops, in order to quickly open the road, Liu Hou ordered all the rockets to be shot out, and ploughed the Wei army's position back and forth several times.

However, this time the baggage team brought not many rockets, only 300, but it was better than nothing, Liu Hou immediately allocated these 300 rockets to the Second Artillery Corps. There is a way that there is no panic when there is food in his hand, but Liu Hou is now: there is a bullet in his hand, and he is not panicked.

With these 300 rockets in hand, even if they encounter the Wei army again, they can temporarily deter them. It was not easy to manufacture rockets, and only 300 were produced during the period after Liu Hou sent troops, and all the previous reserves were exhausted in this war.

Speaking of which, rocket artillery was only used three times: the first time was when Liu Hou was attacked by artillery on the city wall of Xiangyang, and he retaliated back in anger; the second time was when retreating, bombarding Xiangyang City with rocket artillery to attract the attention of the Wei army; The third time was on the way to escape, encountering the obstruction of Guo Huai's army, in order to do his best to open the way.

The three times of use are not long, but in such a short period of time, the Shu army has been in reserve for a few months, and thousands of rockets have been exhausted, which shows that the power of rocket artillery is great, but it is also a bottomless pit with huge consumption.

In addition to the money, manpower and material resources consumed in manufacturing, even in transportation, it also occupies a lot of resources. When Liu Hou watched the tail of the rocket fly out with smoke and fire, it was as if he saw a bundle of banknotes # tickets flying out, which was really painful.

However, no matter how painful it is, it is better than watching his soldiers sacrifice, Liu Hou has always believed that problems that can be solved with money are not problems, and it is better to use money to stone the enemy to death than to sacrifice the lives of soldiers to fight the enemy.

Therefore, before more rockets are sent over, Liu Hou does not plan to launch a new round of the Northern Expedition, but now it is better to rest for a while and wait for the sufficient number of weapons of mass destruction.

Liu Hou felt that the production speed was too slow, so he immediately asked Guo Youzhi to draw up a holy decree to send him back to Chengdu in an urgent manner of 600 miles, so that Zhuge Liang and Dong Yun could increase their resource investment and expand the production scale of rockets and rocket artillery, so as to produce enough Dongfeng 1 to support the next battle.

After Liu Hou and Zhu Bao rendezvous, they did not encounter the ambush of the Wei army again, and the army returned to Maicheng in a mighty way. When he arrived at Maicheng, Liu Hou decided not to go south, and the army was stationed here, waiting for the arrival of the Wei army.

Although Maicheng is a small city with low walls, it still has some city defenses. Moreover, Maicheng is the material transit station of the Northern Expedition of the Hong Army, its role is similar to the Wuchao of Yuan Shaojun, where enough food and gunpowder are stored, if the Wei army really attacked, when the time comes, the attack and defense will be against the trend, and he will rely on the city defense with firearms troops, Liu Hou believes that no matter how much the Wei army comes, he will not be able to help himself.

However, after waiting in Maicheng for three days, Liu Hou did not wait for the arrival of the Wei army, but waited for the scouts to report, and several units of the Wei army retreated to the vicinity of Xiangyang City, and once again relied on the terrain outside Xiangyang City to be stationed in a pocket-like manner.

Liu Hou was depressed, he originally wanted to use Maicheng as a meat grinder to attract the Wei army to attack, and then slowly grind away the more than 200,000 Wei troops who committed the crime, who knew that this Sima Yi was so shrewd that he didn't even pursue it. Didn't you say that Zhuge was only cautious all his life? Why is this old fox Sima Yi so cautious?

If the Wei army didn't come, Liu Hou had no choice, and now he didn't dare to go over, so he had to temporarily settle down in Maicheng and let the army rest for a while.

In this expedition, the losses of the Hong army were not large, except for the wounded soldiers who could heal and return to the team, the number of soldiers who died and were disabled to be discharged was about 1,000. According to the number of dead and wounded, this confrontation between Shu and Wei is undoubtedly won by Shu.

The Wei State lost 50,000 horses! Guo Huai led 50,000 men to set up a small pocket in the Jingshan area to ambush the Shu army, but was later defeated by the Hong army and almost completely annihilated. In the end, only a few thousand people escaped into the mountains and forests, and after being wild men for a month, they successively found the large forces of the Wei army to return to the team.

In addition, the Shu army twice bombarded the city walls and the city with rocket artillery in Xiangyang City, causing more than 10,000 casualties, and the two combined, the Wei army lost only a lot more men and horses than 50,000 people. The battle loss ratio between Shu and Wei was almost one to fifty, and the difference between the two sides was very large.

The disparity in battle damage is mainly due to the terrible power of rocket artillery to melt and tear apart. In the case that the Wei State has hot weapons, and the number of Wei troops is several times larger, such a battle loss ratio can be obtained, in addition to the Shu army has better and more advanced weapons, there is another factor that is both accidental and inevitable, that is, they slip fast.

said that it was an accident because at that time everyone didn't understand what conspiracy Sima Yi had, and even if he had a conspiracy, Guo Youzhi only instinctively felt that something was wrong before mentioning that he retreated.

Even among Liu Hou's advisers, there were still people who did not approve of the retreat, but fortunately, Liu Hou had the knowledge of later generations and had enough reverence for Sima Yicun, so he accepted Guo Youzhi's opinion instead of Deng Zhi's opinion. There was a bit of luck in the process.

It is inevitable that Guo Youzhi, Bu Qi, and Liu Hou have fought a lot, and they have a keen intuition about some bad wind directions, and their judgment of the shape is quite timely and accurate. This intuition is somewhat similar to an animal's instinctive sense of danger, a sixth sense, to use a fashionable term.

It is their keen sixth sense that makes them choose to flee quickly before danger comes. If they didn't flee as soon as they felt something was wrong, but hesitated and wanted to wait and see, then it is likely that they were either besieged by the Wei army and eventually ran out of ammunition and food and died, or they were killed by Sima Yi's sea of people tactics.

In a word, this time they were slippery enough. However, the victory or defeat of a war is not determined by who dies more and who dies less. From the perspective of strategic objectives, the Northern Expedition of the Shu Army this time was undoubtedly a failure, and it can even be said that it was a complete defeat.

A few months before Liu Hou led the Shu army to the Northern Expedition with great pride, this war had already attracted the attention of the world, and it can be said that the people of the whole country were watching his performance this time, and the significance of his success or failure in this Northern Expedition was not only in the military.

This was Liu Hou's first performance after becoming the real emperor of Shu, and his appearance in this Northern Expedition was also related to his personal prestige, and it also had a lot of unexpected effects on politics. This Northern Expedition will affect many people's judgments of Shu and Liu Chan, the little emperor, and will affect some of their choices and decisions.

However, in such an important performance, he failed to act. As soon as he arrived in Xiangyang, he was chased back by Sima Yi like a rabbit, not only almost lost his life, but also retreated more than 100 miles, and finally defeated Maicheng like Guan Yu did back then.

The world does not pay attention to how many people died on both sides in this battle, nor do they know which side died more and which side died less, they only pay attention to which side won and which side lost.

They will also think that the little emperor of Shu is really young and vigorous, or he is too young and vigorous to do anything or even measure himself, and he dares to touch Cao Wei's tiger whiskers, you see, as soon as he goes up, he will be driven back, you know it's wrong, right? Look at how dare you scream.

Liu Hou didn't know that there were many people in the world who were laughing at him, not only people from Wei and Wu, but even some people in Shu were making fun of him. But he was depressed right now.

He is now in a dilemma in Maicheng, and he is not sure that he will retreat under the encirclement of more than 200,000 troops of the Wei army, and he will not be able to retreat, and the Northern Expedition must be done as soon as possible, the longer the time drags on, the more firearms the Wei army has, and the more difficult it will be to fight in the future.

It has only been a year since Wei obtained the secret of firearms manufacturing, and he has already made so many firearms, who knows what Cheng Dù will develop in a longer time.

Of course, Liu Hou didn't know that these firearms were made by Cao Pi by smashing pots and selling iron to gather the strength of the whole country, and all of them were made of pure copper. Copper is money, and copper famine is also money shortage, and many people now have no money to trade, so they can only use the primitive barter trading method.

Second, I really can't afford to lose this face. He swore that he would conquer the Central Plains, and he came up with a lot of reasons to persuade Zhuge Liang to let him lead the Northern Expedition, but who knew that he would be defeated as soon as he left the division.

Guan Yu was defeated and retreated to Maicheng back then, and now he is also defeated and retreated to Maicheng, although he did not die before leaving the school, although he ended up with a martial saint, but it is always a very faceless thing to return to the feathers, how can he have the face to go back to see Zhuge Liang and go back to see the ministers?

In the evening of this day, Liu Hou climbed the wall of Maicheng and watched the afterglow of the setting sun in his thoughts. He wondered if the route was really wrong, and whether he should choose the route of Qishan. On the side of Qishan, at least Tianshui and Wudu can be subdued lightly, and it is said that Jiang Wei is from there.

If you can accept Jiang Wei as your younger brother, you will have one more talent who can take charge of yourself in the next few decades. It's better than not getting anything right now. Zhuge Liang is out of Qishan six times, do I have to go out of Xiangyang six times?

Just when he wanted to get into his mind, Guo Youzhi came over. Liu Hou looked at Guo Youzhi, who was out of breath because he had climbed the city tower, and asked, "Is there something wrong with Mr. Guo?" ”

Guo Youzhi bowed to Liu Hou and said, "Your Majesty, you have thought of a strategy that may be able to break the current dull situation." ”

Of course, the dullness that Guo Youzhi said did not refer to Liu Hou's depressed appearance in Maicheng in the past few days, but to the situation that the two armies of Wei and Shu are now based in the two cities, far away from each other, neither fighting nor refusing to retreat.

"Oh? Mr. Guo has any ideas, come quickly. Liu Hou was overjoyed when he heard this, could it be that these three stinkers were better than Zhuge Liang?

"Your Majesty, please move to the palace, and then come together for Your Majesty." The so-called palace is just the palace of Maicheng, because the emperor lives here, so it is called "palace".

"Okay, I'll go back with you, and hear what you have planned."